@jelenasubotic.bsky.social
Poli Sci prof., Global Governance, Global financial relations, money laundering, illicit markets, and comparative welfare state stuff. Also music, food, and the abysmal state of North Carolina politics. #firstgen
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@jelenasubotic.bsky.social
I would emphasize the strategic construction part of the post-9/11 moment. Allies chose to ignore the atrocities so that the decisions wouldn’t become system upending. They did it to save the system because it seemed possible and worth it. It’s reasonable to expect they no longer feel the same.
Right. In other words, because Trump was in power, it will be harder. Or more precisely, it will be increasingly costly to make a credible commitment, assuming we’re willing to try anymore at all. And of course this goes beyond “just” security: any kind of cooperation will be costlier for the US.
Texas State Rep. Nicole Collier spent the night on the House floor after refusing to agree ‘to round-the-clock monitoring by state troopers’ www.keranews.org/texas-news/2...
Feel like one political party kidnapping an opponent should be bigger news
I think this is what a lot of USians, including the pundit class, don’t get. It’s not that Trump is as steady as a willow branch in a windstorm. Trump 2 showed the world that the US electorate is fundamentally unreliable.
Now do the same for sanctions and Cuba.
It’s as if four-year university degrees really shouldn’t be about training people for some narrow job! Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...
This piece, by @rhodesben.bsky.social , is the clearest and best statement I’ve read to date on what’s needed to turn back the MAGA Ponzi scheme. The ? is whether anyone will have the courage to do it. We’re Trapped in Trump’s Reality. This Is How We Escape It. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/o...
How does this get published? Is there any doubt what this is going to say? And oh by the way, there’s a significant conflict of interest in a guy who works for an investment firm saying you should invest. The Stock Market Is Getting Scary. What You Should Do. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/o...
Because poli sci ultimately is a conservative profession.
This was my question. I’d love to see this in a comparative context. My experience is that Swedish unions differ drastically from US unions. They consistently agree to wage suppression in exchange for benefits. Same for Germany, I think.
On top of that, states are giving them incentives to build. So rate/taxpayers are in effect getting double billed. www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/06/...
Right. That’s my question. I really don’t know. I know that the big banks, ie, the ones who have a lot of political power, generate a hell of a lot of data from their own internal operations. HSBC says they process 4.5 billion payments a year. That generates some insight.
Good points. In compliance and illicit finance (which may be different), banks get the vast majority of their data from 3rd parties or directly from their own client base. Do banks have other sources for this data, or do even third-party data providers ultimately trace back to the public stuff?
Curious about your thoughts on an (admittedly not super well thought out) 6th. If we take financialization seriously, we might expect what we’re seeing: accepting pain on production of goods and services in exchange for freeing up of finance and tax cuts.
Challenge: post your last photo taken in DC to show what a hellhole it is.
Gordon Gecko of the left. Morally bankrupt.
Here we go. It’s like crypto assets on speed: a pump-and-dump scheme that redistributes money from the working class and their 401ks to the wealthy. No pocket is too shallow to pick for these greedy bastards.
The good news is probably half the people in the administration think this makes it law. The bad news is that the majority in Congress do, too, and a few in SCOTUS are happy to play along.
I am looking for a PhD student in Comparative Politics @powimz.bsky.social. My research focuses on political (in-)equality, representation, and responsiveness. I would be grateful if you could help to spread the word. stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de#/jgu/job/49637
Institutions signing these agreements seem to think they’re facing kidnapping: pay a ransom, get the hostage back, problem solved. But it’s a mafia-style protection racket: Pay us to stop busting up your shop now and know that you will continue to pay us whenever we want. Better to fight the mafia.
There’s plenty in this article that is disturbing. But tucked in there is the detail that @theatlantic.com has a “corporate partnership with OpenAI.” As a subscriber, I’d like to know what the nature of that relationship is.
A very interesting paper on the way domestic governance shapes how the wealthy use off-shore finance to hide their wealth.
Sounds fascinating and important, Brooke. Looking forward to reading it.
This is Benjamin Netanyahu’s third visit to DC this year. War criminals should not be welcomed by any president or Congress. He should be held accountable for his crimes, not platformed. Beyond shameful.
SCOTUS is fundamentally broken.
Fascinating read tracing the long trail of racists dreaming of alligators killing people of color. “But the streams of authoritarian and racist thought are, if nothing else, predictable.”
IOW, hit dogs are howling. When a call for basic decency seems political to you, it says more about you and your politics than about the person calling for it.
The economy got half a percentage point smaller last quarter
It’s a start. I’m confident we could crowdsource the song list here on Bluesky.
I don’t know if you’re a musician or not, Simon, but the world could use a band named AD/CVD right now. Maybe @mcopelov.bsky.social will join.
Welcome to the toddlerocracy.
Grow up and do something.
Hey look, @ericlipton.nytimes.com, I guess Elon’s decision to put millions into the President’s campaign wasn’t a bribe bc he hasn’t gotten want he wanted right. So it’s all cool, right?
I bet there are some really nervous Afrikaaner “refugees” this evening.
Wow, wish I’d attended that way back when.
For those of us trying to convince students (and colleagues) to be fundamentally skeptical of AI, this is an amazing resource. It’s going on my syllabi as assigned reading. Thank you , @guinz.bsky.social!
Very good, big-picture piece on the tension b/t Trumpian globalists and the nativist base. But recent budget debates suggest the MAGA base loses. Or maybe both lose because the administration’s policy incoherence. In which case, chaos.
Had this very discussion with a group of parents and students I met with recently. It seems like the days of “coding bootcamps” as a way to a career are behind us. But more than ever, the world needs people who can make sense of the changes all around us. Enter the humanities and social sciences.
But we’ve been over slavery for a long time.
I know not everyone thinks voting matters But the Wisconsin Supreme Court election totally changed Musk’s trajectory Elections really are effective in shifting behavior of those in power Got some important ones coming up in Virginia in little over 5 months… apnews.com/article/elon...
NASA scientists: as we face major budget cuts, how can we show the President that we, too, can be anti-science? Comms guy: how much does a gorilla weigh? Scientist: fully grown or adolescent?
Proud to have co-authored a chapter, with @etsingou.bsky.social , in this comprehensive effort. Ours considers how owning key financial infrastructures gives banks lots of power vis-a-vis states.
A bold claim. Fine, I’ll read the story.
It’s a bribe, even if he doesn’t do exactly what they want. He accepted a bribe. Democracy dies in darkness, but apparently it has the echo of media pedantry in its ears.
It’s tempting to say that this is the end of a saga, but when one party has proved itself willing to overturn free and fair elections, getting thru one election is just a warm-up for the shenanigans to follow. #ncpol
Fascinating. Also somewhat frightening. Actuaries at insurance companies for cruise ships are going to lose sleep.
People in the United States are so unbelievably naive about how corruption works. This is a “akshully it’s a republic not a democracy” level of argumentation here.
The President is literally auctioning off access and he personally profits from it. If you can’t see that as corruption, you’re not up to the job of covering this story.
Griffin showed his colors here. But this story really is about the NC Republican party’s willingness to steal elections that don’t go their way. That includes the Rs on the state Supreme Court. If this had been the Presidential election, they would have pursued it still further. #ncpol
As a #firstgen college student-turned-Professor from rural western Kentucky, I can’t co-sign this hard enough. Not everyone needs, or can earn, a quality four-year degree. But everyone needs the services that technical education programs provide: services now in short supply. It’s a win-win policy.
Raleigh- and Chapel Hill-area Presidents did not. #ncpol
I don’t got a TikTok and I sure never intended for that video to be out, honestly didn’t even know it was recorded, but glad the words are out there. www.tiktok.com/@baxterforhe...
Here is a list of immigration attorneys that can help with student visas that get revoked. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
I’d never heard of a salad spinner until I went to Germany in 1997, because I’m from rural western Kentucky and my family only had iceberg lettuce. Salad spinners were invented in 1997.
More evidence of that 6-D chess the President is playing. If you trash the dollar, no one in the US will be able to afford imports and instead will be forced to buy goods made in America. Genius!
Outstanding writing, argumentation, and analysis by @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social here. DEI is under attack in the US because DEI threatens the affirmative action from which white men in this country have long profited.
As a working-class, #firstgen college student and now professor, I get the populist instinct to cheer when the Ivy League is challenged. But folks need to understand that these attacks on free speech and inquiry are already diminishing the quality of education on every campus, right now. It’s bad.
It’s as if they weren’t hired based on the principles of a meritocracy. We need a phrase or acronym for that. Anyone? Any ideas?
Always fun to see you echo JD Vance quoting Dick Nixon complaining that “professors are the enemy.”
I’d love to invite any of the lovely folks who like to extrapolate from the Ivy League and private school experiences to visit my alma mater, Murray State University. I’d also like them to show me the syllabus for a senior seminar at Bard that teaches how to plumb a house or lay fiber optic cables.
Another day, another example of the chattering classes showing they’ve no notion of life at universities beyond the Ivy League and their co—conspirators. It’s such a warped view and blinds everyone to the radical impact normal public universities have in this world: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o...
One area where we run a surplus w/ China is in services, boosted by the many thousands of students who enroll in higher ed here. China just cautioned its students "against studying in the U.S. The warning came as the U.S. is revoking visas for many of those already here" www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Worth noting that the SEC, FINRA, and exchanges possess access to the Consolidated Audit Trail, a national database designed to facilitate analysis of irregular price movements in equities and options markets. Thus there are numerous actors in a position to assess these possibilities.
To explain: call options are basically a highly leveraged bet that a stock or stocks (with SPY it’s the S&P index) will jump. High volume minutes before a surprise market-moving announcement strongly suggests insider trading.
Watch the value of their crypto ventures.
We're tracking the number of international students whose visas have been revoked by the State Department. We've confirmed over 300 so far and there are likely many more. Get in touch if you've got information you'd like to share with us www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...
Probably, but this should only boost the wind. Just more examples of erratic policy making.
He seems to literally think it means that another country—regardless of GDP, population, or structural factors conditioning production—should buy as much from the US as the US does from them.
A painful but long term good result for the world, it seems to me, might be ending a cycle in which the US gains from the fallout from its bad decisions.
Agree. It’s an egregious violation of ethics. It’s hard to imagine that Obama or Biden could have gotten away with it. Tho I’m not sure any outlet takes the financial ethics of our elected reps too seriously.
Yes, that Venn diagram is a circle.
Correct. Tho Trump was a crypto-skeptic the first time around, before the tech bros helped him see its (cough) potential.
Love that line! And truly, where would financial crime be without Delaware?
It’s hard to imagine how it could be more obvious. And once again, there’s no leadership from Rs or Ds to call it out.
Yes. Or “investors.”
Great reporting by @reuters.com on how Trump and family are wide open to corruption via their various crypto endeavors. Eg, over 94% of the $Trump and $Melania coins are owned by just 40 mega investors. www.reuters.com/business/fin...
And would those votes be pulled from all elections? Because invalid for one means ovaries for all, right?
You know the administration’s approach is off the rails when Oren Cass writes an op-ed saying how to make it a little bit less bonkers.
They really think that Vietnam, a country of 100 million people with a gap/capita of $4,282, is going to buy as many goods (bc their “math” excludes services, remember) from the US as folks in the US (pop - 340 million; GDP/cap $82,769) will buy from Vietnam. Utter insanity.
Drove thru rural NC and VA over the weekend noting so many run-down houses with Trump signs outside. Just imagining what losing $3000 or so per year because of tariffs would mean to them. And getting angry at the fancy houses with those signs, knowing they wouldn’t even notice the loss.
Oh look, the @nytimes.com is going for “nuance.” At least Le Monde gets it right.
A useful analysis for those interested or those who have to teach about it in 2 hours! One request @budgetlab.bsky.social : can you add some context to the table listing “tariffs charged to the USA” explaining that the basis for those numbers from the White House is not at all clear?
According to NAFSA, international students bring $44 billion into the US yearly. And we’re kicking them all out.
It’s worse, even, than them “making up numbers“👇🏼
On Wisconsin.
BBC reporter to S. African ambassador to US, incredulously: are you saying the Trump admin is racist?? SA ambassador: I’m saying when a piece of wood has a hinge, you begin to suspect it’s a door. Spectacular.
Happy to have been included in this great group of authors! And it’s open access.
Bookmarking to show the many political science students in my classes who want to go to law school.
This says it all: “That consideration—the need to ensure, above all, that our firm would survive—weighed extremely heavily on all of us, and especially on me, as the leader of the firm.” Firm above all else.
Unfortunately I’ve seen the hopelessness of glioblastoma up close. mRNA vaccines are the most likely game changer right now: the only current source of hope. These ghouls are building a death cult.
This is good advice. For those traveling to the US, buy burner tech and have backups of everything. God help us.
@nytimes.com is really doubling down on corporate hacks promoting Trump this week. Somehow I’m not surprised that someone who would write that American businesses have always “just hired the best people and served their customers the best they can” would also find DEI policies unconvincing.
Excellent, depressing explainer. My takeaway: when inequality grows so much that the fate of those at the top are fully unattached to the economy around them, they can and will do nasty things to stay super rich. We’ve long surpassed that point in the US.
Every faculty senate, or every faculty member, in the country needs to push their top official to go public in condemning this.
A butternut squash brandy cocktail sounds stress inducing, regardless the price.
What other institutions will have the bravery to do the same, including making their stance public? Most will not. I’ll watch mine closely.
I’m not really sure they can read and I’m certain they are not reading. It’s a group of narrowly trained engineers using “AI” to search for keywords. They’re basically just hitting “Ctrl+f” on the government and freezing anything that is highlighted. Lots of examples confirm this explanation.