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Kevin Elliott

@kjephd.bsky.social

27K followers 1.1K following 20K posts

Political theorist studying democracy, ethics, & institutions. Author of Democracy for Busy People (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo194847654.html); more at kevinjelliott.net. Generally poasting my way through this thing

press.uchicago.edu

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · Jun 24

New article out from me, in which I consider: what if I'm wrong about everything re: what's important for a flourishing democracy?

I use a recent book attacking institutions & advocating disintermediated localism to explore the limits of my view.

Get it free here: academic.oup.com/psq/advance-...

Being a Citizen in the Rubble of Institutions
Kevin J Elliott

Abstract

What is the best foundation for democracy: citizenly habits sustained informally by the spontaneous effort of citizens themselves, or formal institutions and the law? C. L. Skach's How to Be a Citizen tells us how someone who dedicated her career to the importance of law and institutions lost her faith in them and came to see the habits and informal relations of citizens as the real site of democracy. Like many observers of politics in recent years, Skach has concluded that the regnant social order based on law and institutional mediation has fatally discredited itself. But giving up on institutions and law is no small thing. There are powerful reasons for, and immense social forces tied up with, coordinating modern societies by means of them. This review article explores the tensions between Skach's approach and some of these reasons and forces. Yet it does so not in the spirit of critique but rather as a challenge for those who view institutions and law as almost unquestionably fundamental to modern life. It seeks to explore what value there is in Skach's informal, anti-institutional approach for those who have not yet entirely lost the faith she once affirmed in modernity's legal and institutional workhorses.
democratic theory, constitutionalism, modernity, judicial supremacy, institutionalism, coordination

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 19m

Slash growth

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 19m

They mean investment

Reposted by Kevin Elliott

David @finagle-a-hegel.bsky.social · 2d

Man if this isn't the perfect quote re Weiss: “She plays to an audience of 200 people,” one Hollywood executive with ties to Weiss told Variety. “It just happens to be that audience is made up of people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Ackman. The superrich f------ love her"

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

have said this before but i am very skeptical about weiss’s vaunted charisma

Raw Story @rawstory.com · 3d

Bari Weiss, the incoming editor in chief of CBS News, once auditioned for a role on the hit daytime television show "The View," but tested so poorly with audiences that she "wasn't invited back," according to a new report.

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 20m

Not only can many fewer trips be made by car with an e-cargo bike, but they're much smaller and easier to store than any car. Many two-car families could easily become one-car-one-ecargo-bike families

News from UK Research and Innovation @news.ukri.org · 1h

ICYMI: E-cargo bikes can replace car trips and reshape family travel #EPSRC #AcademicSky

E-cargo bikes can replace car trips and reshape family travel

Electric cargo (e-cargo) bikes can replace many car journeys, from school runs to shopping trips and family outings, according to new research.EPSRC

www.ukri.org

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 25m

What if a Butlerian Jihad restricting AI was just a run-of-the-hill thermostatic backlash to an economic crisis

Yet according to recent estimates, generative AI now accounts for roughly 40 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product. In other words, if the AI spending boom falls apart, it could take down the entire economy with it.

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Reposted by Kevin Elliott

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 8h

Military families on day 9 of the shutdown lining up at the food bank

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Adam Keiper @adamkeiper.com · 9h

You would not fire these people—including the staff of the hugely, HUGELY important 'Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report'—if you cared at all about public health, if you wanted people to live.

And you would not let your thuggish henchmen fire people like this if you were a responsible president.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 10h

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Senate Judiciary Democrats 🇺🇸 @judiciarydems.senate.gov · 15h

BREAKING: Sens. DURBIN, DUCKWORTH were just denied entrance to the Broadview ICE Facility in Illinois, unable to conduct constitutional role of oversight.

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Greg Greene (he/him/his) @greene.haus · 15h

Project 2029:

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Jeffrey Tumlin 🏳️‍🌈 🌁 @jeffreytumlin.bsky.social · 19h

This gives me hope. That Calif can get serious about climate. That young people and new immigrants to Calif might have same privileges I did. That we can make transit work. And that we transit advocates can learn from this phenomenal work by housing activists

California YIMBY @cayimby.bsky.social · 19h

[VICTORY ALERT] Governor Newsom has signed SB 79, which will make it legal to build multi-family housing near high quality transit!

Our statement:
cayimby.org/news-events/...

cayimby.org

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 18h

Great point from @mjtoma.bsky.social: Millions of us absolutely do see what's happening to the USA.

"We are horrified, shocked, enraged, and ashamed. We are acting, in a thousand ways, to oppose it. This cannot, and will not, be how the United States ends."

newrepublic.com/post/201625/...

Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It

From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else—this is no longer America.

newrepublic.com

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 16h

The US government is undergoing a "rapid scheduled disassembly" that was described in great detail in a 900 page book called "Project 2025" that Russ Vought was instrumental in producing and which Trump falsely claimed he knew nothing about on the campaign trail. knowyourmeme.com/memes/rapid-...

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 16h

Correct

Reposted by Kevin Elliott

Brendon Slotterback @bslotterback.bsky.social · 16h

e-bikes are so good

Mike Eliason @holz-bau.bsky.social · 1d

since denver launched its e-bike rebate program - the have sold 10,000 e-bikes and reduced an estimated 1,000,000 car trips - replacing millions of VMTs and reducing air pollution

there are no climate silver bullets... but damn - e-bikes and e-cargo bikes are close

denvergov.org/Government/A...

Denver Celebrates 10,000 E-Bike Rebates

Since its inception in April 2022, Denver has distributed over 10,000 electric bikes (e-bikes) to community members through its pioneering e-bike rebate program. As the first U.S. city to implement su...

denvergov.org

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 18h

Took a break from the Supreme Court's ongoing horrorshow to focus on what really matters: how funny it is for a federal judge to decide, as a matter of law, that Drake lost the Kendrick Lamar beef

Federal Judge Declares Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” Too Awesome to Be Defamatory

Apparently, Drake decided that losing in the court of public opinion was not humiliating enough.

ballsandstrikes.substack.com

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 17h

This is an excellent illustration of how an apparently limited space of lawlessness can be arbitrarily expanded to encompass everything

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 19h

Pretty insane stuff from DHS Acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara:

www.thehandbasket.co/p/dhs-fps-me...

Accordingly, if an individual across the street from a federal building throws a rock or bottle at FPS officers on federal property, as many of these rioters are wont to do, FPS can leave federal property and either arrest the malefactors or take other appropriate action in line with FPS's continuum of force policies. FPS could even enter a private residence containing an identified sniper blocks away from a federal facility in order to eliminate that exigent threat. There is simply no legal barrier to FPS taking action off federal property where a reasonable nexus to protecting that property exists.

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Elizabeth (Bit) Meehan, PhD @elizabethbitmeehan.com · 17h

help your #polisky colleagues out in this rough market year y'all

Michelangelo Landgrave @landgravephd.bsky.social · 11d

Just want to thank folks contributing to the #psjminfo job status update section of the site. It's a small thing, but I know people appreciate knowing the status of jobs.

www.politicalsciencejobs.org/status-updates

PS Jobs - Status Updates

This is a listing of job market updates. You can submit updates here.

www.politicalsciencejobs.org

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 17h

So *of course* a priest motivated by genuine concern for justice can be subjected to lawless violence; he's on the wrong side, and deserves everything he gets as a result

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 17h

In friend-enemy politics, the moral desert or virtue of those designated as the political enemy is irrelevant, just as the depravity & corruption of one's friends is irrelevant.

All that matters in this political mode—all that determines your deservingness—is your alignment as one or the other

Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 17h

The right-wing is justifying shooting priests

Media Matters for America @mmfa.bsky.social · 17h

A Newsmax host defended ICE agents shooting a minister in the head with a pepper ball by falsely claiming he was “actually an antifa member masquerading as a pastor.”

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Heidi Kitrosser @heidikitrosser.bsky.social · 17h

Painful to hear the fear in her voice as she says, "let them know." And as others have noted, this seems to violate Judge Ellis's order issued just yesterday about arresting journalists & also about unnecessary physical force. (See 1(a) and 1(h) of order). storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 17h

...and counterproductive? The more you take control the instruments of government communication, the harder it becomes to credibly blame others.

William Adler @williamadler78.bsky.social · 17h

Petty garbage www.cnn.com/2025/10/09/u...

Video of Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for shutdown “rolling out” at TSA security checkpoints across the country | CNN

Travelers waiting in airport security lines across the country will now be met with a video where the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem blames Democrats for the government shutdown.

www.cnn.com

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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 20h

ICE official testifies that DHS “prematurely” sent Abrego Garcia a notice that he would be removed to Ghana.

Just this morning, Ghana’s foreign minister wrote on X that the country had “directly and unambiguously conveyed to US authorities” that Abrego cannot be deported there.

Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa &
@S
_OkudzetoAblak
X.com
Ghana is not accepting Abrego Garcia.
He cannot be deported to Ghana.
This has been directly and unambiguously conveyed to US authorities.
In my interactions with US officials, I made clear that our understanding to accept a limited number of non-criminal West Africans, purely on the grounds of African solidarity and humanitarian principles would not be expanded.
Ghana strongly objects to these misleading media reports.

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Leah Greenberg ❌👑 @leahgreenberg.bsky.social · 19h

"After a few moments of laughter, the No Kings Coalition issued the following statement"

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 18h

“we are reneging on previous deals you’ve made with us until you make another deal with us” wow l can’t think of any reason this strategy ain’t working

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 17h

The right-wing is justifying shooting priests

Media Matters for America @mmfa.bsky.social · 17h

A Newsmax host defended ICE agents shooting a minister in the head with a pepper ball by falsely claiming he was “actually an antifa member masquerading as a pastor.”

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