Michael Romano
@Romano_PoliSci
Professor of PSCI at Shenandoah University. Ph.D. Will post about politics, games, music, movies and more. Comments and opinions are my own. Bluesky=RomanoPSCI
I woke up this morning to discover the book I put literal blood (mostly papercuts but they count), sweat and tears into with @DrToddACurry now has a landing page and is available for preorder on Amazon. That feels very good to say: amazon.com/dp/1138616842/…
Obviously using chatbots makes you more dumb, everyone is skipping over the funniest part: the study authors are such dedicated LLM haters they set up traps to expose AI users lol
MIT just studied how ChatGPT impacts our brains time.com/7295195/ai-cha…
in my new @TuftsUniversity Public Opinion Lab post, I confirm what dating app users already know - men (likely) lie. a lot. my data shows men overreport voting (+4 pts), blood donation (+3.5 pts), and even crime victimization (+1.4 pts). more here: tufts-pol.medium.com/no-you-are-not…
Ex-Superman Dean Cain Says James Gunn Made a ‘Mistake’ Calling Superman an ‘Immigrant’ and ‘It’s Going to Hurt’ the Box Office: ‘How Woke Is Hollywood Going to Make This Character?’ variety.com/2025/film/news…
Ex-Superman Dean Cain Says James Gunn Made a ‘Mistake’ Calling Superman an ‘Immigrant’ and ‘It’s Going to Hurt’ the Box Office: ‘How Woke Is Hollywood Going to Make This Character?’ variety.com/2025/film/news…
A 2017 internal study found ICE would need to interview 500k ppl to hire 10k officers It's worse now, because ICE is even less popular. Becoming an agent makes you more of a pariah. Existing ICE agents don't even wanna do this. This is good news for democracy & the rule of law
NEW: President Trump loves ICE. But a “mission impossible” deportation campaign has left many employees burned out, morally conflicted and miserable, @NickMiroff writes. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Am begging people to just accept and understand that state supreme courts really matter!
As the U.S. Supreme Court embraces federalism, are state supreme courts becoming the new power centers? hls.harvard.edu/today/the-cour…
ohhhhh i get this bill now. you gotta give poor people LESS money to incentivize them to work hard, but you gotta give billionaires MORE money to incentivize them to work hard
Smart move, and not surprising; the litigators had the amended complaint ready to go if the Supreme Court ruled this way. If the lower courts accepts this class, it would lead to the same impact as a nationwide injunction; the birthright citizenship EO would be blocked entirely.
Wow was that fast--an immigrant advocate group already filed an amended complaint seeking class action relief in its birthright citizenship case in federal court in Maryland
Going to just borrow this one from @AnthonyMKreis while I parse through Trump v. CASA
An underappreciated explanation for antitrump politicians’ behavior is that they fear assassination. The more they stand for something, the more death threats they receive. Sometimes they come true. Political systems can’t withstand a constant threat of violence.
Walz announces that Rep. Melissa Hortman is dead as a result of a "politically motivated assassination"
Don’t get it twisted by the pundits. The best scientific evidence is that the 2020 BLM protests helped defeat Trump in the election. These protests are doing the same.
Given the conventional wisdom of pundits and consultants, it's pretty wild that the best estimates we have are that BLM protests really helped Democrats in 2020. ungated: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Straight outta Project 2025, OPM's new "Merit Hiring Plan" makes all fed job applicant (GS-5 or above) write essays and do interviews saying how they would "advance the President's priorities" Partisan loyalty over merit in govt work is key to authoritarianism link in reply
The gerontocracy has real consequences. Every Democrat over the age of 70 should make this their last term and pave the way for new leaders.
Another vote that would have failed if Democrats had been at full strength. Two Democrats died earlier this year, both members in their 70s who ran last year despite cancer diagnoses. A third, Don Norcross, is in the ICU in New Jersey.
An irony of the Constitution is that checks and balances (& federalism) were supposed to protect against tyranny. But instead they just blocked "tyranny of the majority" from doing, like, universal health care & gun control, and they do basically nothing to stop an autocrat
A major news story in Japan today: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made a misleading claim about Japan having 700% tariffs on foreign rice. She failed to mention Japan's minimum access system, which allows a certain amount of rice to be imported duty-free. [1/2]