Ken Hughes
Author of Chasing Shadows and Fatal Politics. Bylines: @NYTimes @WashingtonPost @ConversationUS
- Reposted by Ken Hughes“NPR has identified three Trump officials with close ties to antisemitic extremists, including a man described by federal prosecutors as a ‘Nazi sympathizer,’ and a prominent Holocaust denier.” www.npr.org/2025/05/14/n...
- Reposted by Ken HughesThis seems like an existential threat to Hungary's independent sector. Besides practically forbidding any criticism of Hungary's "democracy" if an organization or media outlet receives foreign funding (including EU money), it would make receiving domestic funding difficult as well.
- @politico.eu: "The bill says threats to national sovereignty include influencing public opinion, promoting democratic debate, or challenging state-defined values like Christian culture and traditional family roles."
- Reposted by Ken HughesThe regime Trump and his allies see as a model.
- @politico.eu: "The bill says threats to national sovereignty include influencing public opinion, promoting democratic debate, or challenging state-defined values like Christian culture and traditional family roles."
- Israeli Officers Warn of Famine The warning from inside Israel’s military reveals that parts of the Israeli security establishment have reached the same conclusions as leading aid groups. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/b...
- Russia Sentences Prominent Election Expert to 5 Years in Prison www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/w...
- Reposted by Ken HughesNothing to worry about, just a shady China-affiliated company with zero revenue stuffing millions into Trump's pockets
- Tiny Company With China Ties Announces Big Purchase of Trump Cryptocurrency The firm, which produces content for TikTok, recorded no revenue last year, but it announced this week that a mysterious stock sale would allow it to invest heavily in the $TRUMP memecoin. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/u...
- Reposted by Ken HughesKinsley gaffe
- While defending Trump accepting a luxury jet from Qatar, Newsmax host says “I would definitely criticize Joe Biden if he cut the exact same deal” www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/whil...
- Reposted by Ken HughesThis was a plot point in Contagion, a film from back in 2011 when we all took for granted that a government official secretly protecting his family from danger while lying to the public about it was a scandal.
- WTH man? Real World bro also serving as Transportation Sec Sean Duffy reportedly changed his wife's flight to avoid Newark and then went on TV to broadcast it's safe to fly in and out of Newark. @paleofuture.bsky.social w the details. ↘️
- Reposted by Ken HughesICE convinced a woman she was being arrested and then threatened to take her baby into custody unless a relative showed up to take her. It was all a ruse to get her mother to leave her house. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
- Reposted by Ken Hughes🚩 The potential for abuse is obvious.
- Reposted by Ken HughesJust hit me that the importing of white folks from South Africa and exporting of brown people is actually, literally an attempt at a great replacement
- Reposted by Ken HughesBecause the constitution says you can’t
- Reposted by Ken Hughes
As a reminder, this is a permanent resident, in the US since she was seven, high school valedictorian www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/n...- New court filing tonight shows that Yunseo Chung, a Columbia student who participated in pro-Palestine protests, was named alongside Mahmoud Khalil in Secretary Rubio's letter terminating their status as legal permanent residents. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
- Reposted by Ken Hughes"Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants. Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant."
- Another scoop from Jeff Mervis (@policyhound.bsky.social): NSF's ~1400 grant terminations have disproportionately affected PIs from groups underrepresented in science: women, racial & ethnic minorities, & those with disabilities. 1/3 www.science.org/content/arti...
- Israeli Officers Warn of Famine The warning from inside Israel’s military reveals that parts of the Israeli security establishment have reached the same conclusions as leading aid groups. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/b...
- Reposted by Ken HughesNew: “This is not a man who respects the rule of law, nor one who seeks to understand it.” Judge Luttig’s new piece on President Trump and “The End of Rule of Law in America” @judgeluttig.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
- Good morning, #FirstAmendmentPeople. #FreeSpeech #FreePress #FreeAssembly #FreedomOfReligion #PeacefulRedress bsky.app/profile/klas...
- "Trump has turned the pardon process into the Wild West." Read this @WSJ article in full, thru the "shopping" section 🎁 🔗 www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
- Reposted by Ken HughesGerman police have arrested three people accused of working for Russian intelligence to plan bomb attacks inside Germany.
- Reposted by Ken HughesYou can't make this up. ICE left a 12-year-old completely abandoned on the street after abducting the adult he was with. www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/...
- Reposted by Ken HughesThe worst happened. We were DOGE’d. Our NSF funding is gone. So now there’s nothing stopping me from sharing Expert Voices Together, a crisis response system for US-based researchers and journalists facing harassment. It's a true passion project. 🧵 1/ expertvoicestogether.org
- I spoke with Science about scholars—myself included—self-censoring. In my case, my team and I feared losing our NSF funding for Expert Voices Together (expertvoicestogether.org), a program, ironically, built to support researchers and journalists under attack. www.science.org/content/arti...
- Reposted by Ken HughesNever lose sight of how weird and corrupt it is for the president to have his unelected, unconfirmed oligarch friend—his biggest campaign donor—conduct US foreign policy. No other US president did that, and there’s no reason to think he’s representing the American people rather than himself.
- Reposted by Ken HughesOne of the big challenges of the present moment is an epistemological one: how can we know the state of the crisis or collapse of the constitutional order? How would we know if democracy was suspended in the US absent an obviously stolen election? Levitsky suggests: fear of retribution like this.
- Great article with lots of perspectives from scientists who are scared to speak out — and other scientists who are scared of what will happen if they don't. Trump & Musk & Kennedy are devastating U.S. research and setting progress back decades www.science.org/content/arti... on @science.org
- Reposted by Ken HughesNew op-ed in @nature.com: The Trump administration's assault on freedoms and the rule of law is an existential threat to US science. We urge scientists to speak out in defense of freedoms, not just funding. With Andrea Liu @upenn.edu and Sidney Nagel of UChicago! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- Reposted by Ken HughesJamie Raskin on Trump's Qatar plane grift: "We’re talking about corruption at just an epic scale." This is a remarkable description from Raskin of how Trump's various corrupt schemes all interlock with each other: newrepublic.com/article/1951...
- Reposted by Ken HughesFor comparison, they're sad that white men are only 56% of the tenured faculty in 2023 after being 64% in 2013
- The percentage of white men in the US pop is ~30%. Thus, as always, the complaint is that white men are not sufficiently overrepresented (as they have been throughout US history). www.chronicle.com/article/facu...
- Reposted by Ken HughesWhile you're calling Congress today (and you should be), it'll be tempting to just say "stop all the bullshit." But please urge your members specifically to oppose, in the budget bill: - The attack on all nonprofits (formerly HR 9495, now Section 112209) - This ban on AI legislation in the states
- There's a lot of chatter around the proposal being inserted into a budget bill that would put a moratorium on any AI legislation being passed by the states for the next 10 years. I thought I'd say a bit about why this is an absolutely disastrous move. www.404media.co/republicans-... 1/n
- Reposted by Ken HughesGovernment watchdogs, presidential historians and other critics say the Trump Organization's business deals in the Middle East are an escalation of unethical and even unconstitutional conflicts between the interests of the United States and its president.
- Reposted by Ken HughesAmong the guests for lunch with Trump and MBS, the Saudi ruler who ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05...
- Reposted by Ken HughesWashington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi went to a consulate in Istanbul to get a document he needed to get married. Instead, he was murdered and dismembered on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, now a close pal of Donald Trump.
- Reposted by Ken HughesNow the government can smear you without actually making charges that have to stand up in court
- Ed Martin, the incoming "captain" of DOJ's "Weaponization Working Group," said that he'll "name" and "shame" individuals who committed no criminal conduct in what would be a major departure from longstanding Justice Department protocols. www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...
- Reposted by Ken HughesA big thanks to our Spring 2025 interns, Kyle Nguyen and Rachel Zemil, for their support with the Archive's collections and research. Your work with us has been invaluable!
- Reposted by Ken HughesThe gender gap in BA degrees flipped in early 1980s. The gender gap in doctoral degrees flipped two decades ago. White men only earn about 26% of doctoral degrees in US. Conservatives are complaining about a *smaller* decline in WM representation than predicted based solely on education trends.
- EEOC accuses Harvard of discriminating against white men The evidence? White men were: 64% of Harvard tenured positions in 2013 56% of Harvard tenured positions in 2023 {aside: proud to have contributed to this 8 pp drop} www.chronicle.com/article/facu...
- Reposted by Ken Hughes[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Ken HughesSee also our Bright Line Watch survey documenting self-censorship among political scientists brightlinewatch.org/threats-to-d...
- “The lived experience of a scientist right now is terrifying” My colleague Warren Cornwall spoke to @gregggonsalves.bsky.social, @rebekahtromble.bsky.social, @katestarbird.bsky.social and others about “the fear and self-censorship coursing through the nation’s scientific establishment today”. 🧪
- Reposted by Ken HughesLeopards Eating People's Faces Party, judicial branch
- Reposted by Ken Hughes"Our results suggest that a social media message would have to be sent by more than 47 constituents for it to exceed the value of a single face-to-face meeting." academic.oup.com/poq/advance-...
- Reposted by Ken HughesThe Founders assumed Congress would defend its prerogatives, not sit passively as the Constitution is subverted
- Congress must act. “This is a takeover of a major component of the legislative branch,” the expert tells Rolling Stone. “There’s no reason that they’re going to stop there.” www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
- Reposted by Ken HughesThe founders were far from perfect and some of their assumptions have been disproven by centuries of experience but they were right to focus so much effort on trying to prevent someone exactly like Donald Trump from doing exactly what he’s doing now
- It is bracing to reread the Framers’ bone-deep fears about foreign corruption of the presidency and realize Trump is exactly what they were trying to prevent. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Reposted by Ken HughesCorruption
- As Elon Musk laid waste to the federal government, the Department of Transportation quietly met with and consulted his tunneling firm, the Boring Company, a $6 billion Amtrak tunnel project connecting Baltimore, DC and Virginia. Our latest: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/t...
- Reposted by Ken HughesEffectively a full repeal of the largest climate bill in history. There’s no strategy for America’s future. We all get sicker and pay more in energy bills and suffer climate disasters, while some rich folks pay less in taxes. That’s it. Disgraceful.
- The House Republican's budget bill is starting to drop. It extends trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy while effectively crippling US manufacturing & energy industries and raising energy costs. It's effectively full repeal of the IRA. Here's tax portion waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/u... 🔌💡
- Reposted by Ken HughesThis is a good article but the @nytimes.com headline made me think that if if Trump actually shot someone on Fifth Avenue the headline would read, “Trump’s Firing of Gun on Fifth Avenue Strains Bounds of Legality.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/u...
- Reposted by Ken HughesTrump, who is set to accept a $400M floating palace airplane from Qatar, tweeted this about Obama in 2012:
- Reposted by Ken HughesIt’s been a long road from Republicans fear mongering about Obamacare leading to “death panels” to complaining that taxpayers spend too much money keeping chronically ill people alive.
- Reposted by Ken HughesPlease do not confuse the legal requirements for the crime of bribery with the concept of corruption.
- Good morning, #FirstAmendmentPeople. “Let me … reiterate today the church’s solidarity with journalists who are imprisoned for seeking and reporting the truth while also asking for their release.” —Pope Leo XIV #FreeSpeech #FreePress #FreeAssembly #FreedomOfReligion #PeacefulRedress
- Reposted by Ken HughesVia @arianalfigueroa.bsky.social: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Monday announced about 9,000 Afghans living in the United States who had been protected from deportation will no longer be shielded as of mid-July.
- Reposted by Ken HughesThis is good journalism. I disagree with the headline's focus on "foreign influence", as this would be extremely corrupt even if no foreigners were involved, but this is a lede that shows how one can talk objectively about the open corruption we are witnessing.
- TODAY the NYT publishes an investigation into the Trump memecoin $TRUMP and how it has turned into a extraordinary venue for foreign influence campaigns. What we are seeing is potentially corrupt attempts to change US policy by paying the Trump family money. This is no "Russian Hoax" nyti.ms/4kkv7D7
- Reposted by Ken HughesI’m old enough to remember stuff like this
- Excellent NYT graphic. In the space of about 3 months, tariffs on China: -- doubled; -- went up ≈ 2.5X from there; -- roughly doubled again; -- went up ≈ 40% from there; -- and now have dropped ≈ 80% from the peak -- but are still 3X what they were in February. www.nytimes.com/article/trum...
- Reposted by Ken HughesThe administration's understanding of the "merit-based hiring" that is supposed to replace DEI is to fire a Black woman with relevant professional qualifications and replace her with a personal crony from a different profession entirely who is literally a guy named White.
- Reposted by Ken HughesThe intensely personalist nature of the regime, and the rapidity of the transition, means that there are only about ten people they "trust." That's not enough to run a small state, much less the US. The problems from that alone, separate from the rest, will take years to fully unfold.
- Reposted by Ken HughesWow! Each $1 spent on Universal Pre-Kindergarten generates between $3-$20 dollars in aggregate earnings. That's enough to offset the costs of Universal Pre-Kindergarten through higher tax revenues.
- Reposted by Ken Hughes
- Excellent NYT graphic. In the space of about 3 months, tariffs on China: -- doubled; -- went up ≈ 2.5X from there; -- roughly doubled again; -- went up ≈ 40% from there; -- and now have dropped ≈ 80% from the peak -- but are still 3X what they were in February. www.nytimes.com/article/trum...
- Reposted by Ken HughesResettling white Afrikaners as refugees is the sort of metaphor for "we are a really racist government" that most editors would remove from a dystopian novel for being way way too ham-fisted. Props to the Episcopal Church for using its religious freedom to call out this disgusting act.
- BREAKING: The Episcopal Church has announced it will end its decades-old partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by the Trump admin. religionnews.com/2025/05/12/e...
- Reposted by Ken HughesOnce a foreign government can openly give the president a half-billion-dollar plane as a personal gift, there’s no red line left between a democracy and a full-blown kleptocracy. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/corruption...
- Reposted by Ken HughesHasan Piker, a popular Turkish American streamer, says he was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers and asked about his political affiliation, opinion of Trump and whether he had connections to terrorist groups upon returning to the U.S.
