Kyle Saunders
@kylesaunders.bsky.social
Professor of Political Science working at the nexus of a lot of things (but currently fascinated by the dreaded bitcoin/crypto politics) & NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative at Colorado State University; #firstgen; R(whatever)≠E
ED told the Chronicle yesterday there are no direct penalties for ignoring McMahon's request, that "the silence would speak volumes," and that partnering with responsive institutions on research money "would only be natural." All three, one Q&A. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/washington...
Washington Asked Every University for a Statement of Principles. Two Had Already Written One.
Three charters rewritten in one summer, and now the covenant itself is out for signatures.
kylesaunders.substack.com
Everybody won Tuesday, which is the problem. Michigan's county map splits Ann Arbor and Lansing from Detroit, Flint, and Macomb, and the variable is education. New piece on a party that can't read its own returns. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/scp-15-the...
SCP 15: The Michigan Night That Settled Nothing
Everybody won on Tuesday, which is the problem
kylesaunders.substack.com
171 pages, and the college sports bill is mostly thresholds. Sec 115 lets 41 senators kill the cap by declining cloture. Sec 205's $700M line may make FSU, Clemson and UNC unacquirable. Somebody picked every one of these numbers: kylesaunders.substack.com/p/somebody-p...
Somebody Picked These Numbers (in the PCSA)
Nine years. Four years. Thirty days. Sixty votes. Twenty-two percent. Nineteen schools. Seven hundred million dollars. The finalized text is mostly a set of thresholds, and not one of them is a round
kylesaunders.substack.com
40 years of "the Loch Ness Monster of political psychology," the monster was real the whole time. New essay on the measurement instrument that couldn't catch it, the school that built it, & what the missing trend line costs us right now in our study of LWA. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/the-loch-n...
The Loch Ness Monster Was Real
Why weren't we looking for left-wing authoritarianism (LWA)? And why aren't we prepared for it now?
kylesaunders.substack.com
It's been a wild higher ed summer, eh? Secretary McMahon asked every university to post a statement of principles by December yesterday. The AAU published one April 30. Vanderbilt's board published another July 29. The sector wrote the vocabulary. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/washington...
Washington Asked Every University for a Statement of Principles. Two Had Already Written One.
Three charters rewritten in one summer, and now the covenant itself is out for signatures.
kylesaunders.substack.com
1/ Political psychology spent forty years treating left-wing authoritarianism as the Loch Ness Monster. The measure that finally caught it (2022, JPSP, 7,258 subjects) found the same psychological core the field had been calling the conservative mind. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/the-loch-n...
The Loch Ness Monster Was Real
Why weren't we looking for left-wing authoritarianism (LWA)? And why aren't we prepared for it now?
kylesaunders.substack.com
Found a song idea in a 25-year-old notebook: "starlight is old news." That can also apply to a lot of other things, including people and love. Spotify: open.spotify.com/track/4gl6mX... Youtube: youtu.be/DzjY-nUyzxg Substack about it: kylesaunders.substack.com/p/new-music-...
Old Light (Still I Look Up)
ProfGoose · Old Light (Still I Look Up) · Song · 2026
open.spotify.com
A frontier model escaped its sandbox and spent four days breaking into Hugging Face to steal the answer key to its own cybersecurity exam. The victim couldn't get an American model to help investigate and used a Chinese one. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/aipolitics...
AIPolitics 25: The Model Hacked Its Own Exam
A frontier model escaped its sandbox and broke into Hugging Face to steal the answer key. The company it robbed couldn’t get an American model to help investigate.
kylesaunders.substack.com
The PCSA/college sports bill's revised text is supposedly, allegedly, dropping today. Rather than react to it afterward like everyone else, I posted what each outcome does to my probability before seeing a word. Pre-commitment or bust. Link in replies ⬇️ kylesaunders.substack.com/p/before-the...
Before the PCSA Text (Allegedly) Drops...
I will believe it when I see it, but here's what it would change for the probabilities
kylesaunders.substack.com
GAO says the federal earnings test jumped its sixty-day congressional review window. The four-page report went to four members of Congress and, so far, no readers. Why nothing happens next, and why that's the point. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/gao-says-t...
GAO Says the Federal Earnings Test Jumped Its Own Deadline. Here’s Why Nothing Happens Next.
The rule package skipped a congressional-review safeguard, the government’s own auditor noticed, and the entire consequence is a four-page report nobody read.
kylesaunders.substack.com
Split-screen day for the college sports bill: the sponsor selling in a national op-ed by morning, the majority leader deprioritizing it by afternoon. My number: 15-20% down to 10-15%. The piece walks through what moved it. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/the-floor-...
The Floor Vote (on the PCSA) That Wasn’t, At Least Not Yet...
What yesterday's weird wild day told us about the difficulties in regulating college athletics
kylesaunders.substack.com
If you like AI-first, appointee-directed science funding in 2026, you are also endorsing whatever a 2029 administration does with the same switchboard: climate-first, equity-first, whatever-first, at the stroke of a memo. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/quick-foll...
Quick Follow-Up on The White House’s $200 Billion Research Shift Toward AI and Individual Scientists
Universities cut out of the middle, indirect costs cut off at the pipe — the other half of this morning’s story. Lawsuits forthcoming!
kylesaunders.substack.com
The new federal earnings test excludes graduates still enrolled in school from the earnings cohort. So a low-earning alum hurts your program's median — unless you counsel her into grad school, where she vanishes from the calculation. At her own expense. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/the-new-fe...
The New Federal Earnings Test: Washington Seems to Have Stopped Trusting College Degrees Too
For sixty years the government funded colleges on the strength of their credentials. Now it wants to see the tax returns. What the new test can see, and what it can’t.
kylesaunders.substack.com
Heads up if you haven't see it yet...another not great day for higher ed. :( Description in picture below... here's a link... www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
Check out my new single "The Thing That Keeps Me Alive" distributed by @DistroKid and live on Spotify! open.spotify.com/album/2EhZNa...
The Thing That Keeps Me Alive - Single by ProfGoose | Spotify
ProfGoose · single · 2026 · 1 songs
open.spotify.com
This fact sucks – as it doesn't leave us a lot of options. We can scold the liberal "liberals" for ruining liberalism, but statistically they're always going to be there to ruin liberalism for us, right? Is this something that could be changed by education?
Thank you. And, yeah I know right? Whatever. This place sucks more each day.
Micah Warren@micah541.bsky.social · 2w agoEnjoyed this piece. Funny it's not getting traction on Bluesky. 😀
Enjoyed this piece. Funny it's not getting traction on Bluesky. 😀
Kyle Saunders@kylesaunders.bsky.social · 4w agoThe useful idiot at the top isn't the one who won't fight. It's the one who fights half the time and calls it principle. Link to full piece, which has been doing really well--if you like it, give it a share, send it to someone you like (or don't like :).) kylesaunders.substack.com/p/are-libera...
New AIPolitics: the week Washington started governing AI like a petrostate. Gold Eagle, the Grok deal, secret designation criteria, and a backlash arriving through the only institutions Americans still trust. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/aipolitics...
AIPolitics 24: Governing AI Like a Petrostate
Gold Eagle, the Grok deal, and the week Washington started governing AI by concession rather than law.
kylesaunders.substack.com
“The Thing That Keeps Me Alive” is now available on Spotify! #progrock #jamband #indiegroove #newmusic open.spotify.com/track/6RaYcH...
The Thing That Keeps Me Alive
ProfGoose · The Thing That Keeps Me Alive · Song · 2026
open.spotify.com
I wrote a long piece a couple of weeks ago about the idea that "liberals are useful idiots." It went semi-viral. Here's the follow-up, because I kept getting asked "what does the word 'liberal' even mean, man?" Turns out, that's a really difficult question. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/everybody-...
Everybody Wanted the Term "Liberal." No One Knows What It Means.
What happens to a political word when nobody is ever held accountable for using it wrong...? What does the word 'liberal' even mean, man?
kylesaunders.substack.com
Yes, that's right. "The Thing that Keeps Me Alive" is on Spotify. Holy crap. open.spotify.com/track/6RaYcH... #progrock #jamband #indiegroove #oddmeter #darkgroove #newmusic
The Thing That Keeps Me Alive
ProfGoose · The Thing That Keeps Me Alive · Song · 2026
open.spotify.com
Herbert Hoover gave the word "liberal" away in public in 1930, two years before Roosevelt reached for it: "that term has become corrupted by political use." The supposed victim handed it over first. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/everybody-...
Everybody Wanted the Term "Liberal." No One Knows What It Means.
What happens to a political word when nobody is ever held accountable for using it wrong...? What does the word 'liberal' even mean, man?
kylesaunders.substack.com
A sponsor claimed "probably 60 votes" for the college sports bill this week. The whip count, done name by name, says there's a hard ceiling: twelve Republican defections and it's done, and the tail runs fourteen deep. Here's the math: kylesaunders.substack.com/p/the-arithm...
The Arithmetic of the Protect College Sports Act
Why a week of loud headlines moved no one, at least from what we can see publicly...with updated revenue charts!
kylesaunders.substack.com
Our Party Politics paper: liberals participate regardless of trust, conservatives participate more when they distrust, ideology comes first. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/scp-14-tha...
SCP 14: That Trump Speech Wasn’t Trying to Convince You...
Our Party Politics paper can’t prove that. Here’s what it can say, and why the part that survives is perhaps a little worse.
kylesaunders.substack.com
Sometimes, when your research become relevant in political science, it is not necessarily a happy occasion. x.com/PsyPost/stat...
PsyPost.org (@PsyPost) on X
Does doubting election results make people withdraw from politics? According to new research, it does the exact opposite for conservative voters, motivating them to attend rallies and donate to campai...
x.com
This week's Protect College Sports Act headlines (new cosponsors, LSU's letter to Cruz and Cantwell, a plaintiffs' attorney letter to Senate Democrats) read like momentum, but the math says otherwise. My piece with Heitner: www.linkedin.com/pulse/newsle...
Newsletter, Image, Likeness Vol. 193: The Protect College Sports Act's Math Problem
The Weekly Longer NIL Thought. This week's Longer NIL Thought is co-authored with Kyle Saunders.
linkedin.com
In case you’re puzzled by the strategic reasoning behind tonight’s state broadcast from dear leader…
Kyle Saunders@kylesaunders.bsky.social · 3w agoCheers to PsyPost for the coverage of our (Erin Fitz and my) unfortunately timely piece in Party Politics from earlier this year: doi.org/10.1177/1354... (…which builds off our piece on the 2020 election in POQ @poqjournal: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...) www.psypost.org/election-dis...
New Sacred Cow BBQ: a field guide to how the college sports bill could actually become law — the floor-vote math, the December omnibus path (HISA walked it in 2020), and why the printed text matters more than the floor talk. kylesaunders.substack.com/p/how-a-bill...
How a Bill Like the PCSA Becomes a Rider
Senators are in “deal mode,” Cruz says the floor is a week away, and the leagues want it done by December 1. A field guide to the paths the PCSA can actually take from here.
kylesaunders.substack.com
Cheers to PsyPost for the coverage of our (Erin Fitz and my) unfortunately timely piece in Party Politics from earlier this year: doi.org/10.1177/1354... (…which builds off our piece on the 2020 election in POQ @poqjournal: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...) www.psypost.org/election-dis...
Election distrust mobilizes conservatives, while liberals participate regardless of trust
Does doubting election results make people withdraw from politics? According to new research, it does the exact opposite for conservative voters, motivating them to attend rallies and donate to campai...
psypost.org