Scott L Greer
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scottlgreer.bsky.social
Scott L Greer
@scottlgreer.bsky.social

Political scientist in a public health school. Health policy and politics, especially in Europe. Recent books on EU health policy, federalism and social policy, co-benefits. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Opinions personal. 🚲. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5288-0471 .. more

Political science 31%
Public Health 25%
Pinned
I’ve been writing about the politics and impact of Donald Trump on the US and world, with special attention to Europe and the University of Michigan, and most of it is free to read. This thread, in order, brings it all together. I hope it’s useful as a resource on the different issues.

House Republicans!

Why reviving Venezuela’s oil industry will prove to be a tall order for Trump
Why reviving Venezuela's oil industry will prove to be a tall order for Trump
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and s...
thebulletin.org

wow, an actual sensible argument that Brexit and Trump might jointly lead to something unequivocally good!
Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again | Cory Doctorow
The US president is weaponising tech, but his tariffs and Brexit provide a surprising opportunity to gain back digital control of our lives, says science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory D...
www.theguardian.com

guess who said this?

"Investments in global health programming are a fundamental pillar of America’s national security agenda. [global health] makes America safer... improving health infrastructure to bolster prevention, preparedness, and response….It makes American stronger and more prosperous"
House appropriators advance funding bill codifying USAID closure with more favorable global health funding than White House request
This month, the House Appropriations Committee advanced out of committee a funding bill for fiscal year 2026 that was a mixed bag—while the bill unfortunately codifies the closure of the US Agency for...
www.ghtcoalition.org
@mirandayaver.bsky.social getting featured on the *lead* story on CBS Sunday Morning.

the story is great, Prof. Yaver is great, and on a platform that an average of 5.19 million normies watch.

academics who do public engagement *have* to hunt where the ducks are.
State of denial: How insurance companies impact health care today
YouTube video by CBS Sunday Morning
www.youtube.com

Reposted by Scott L. Greer

Here is the CBS Sunday Morning piece for which I was interviewed about findings from my book Coverage Denied. Health insurance barriers ration health care by inconvenience, imposing hurdles to get prescribed care with administratively burdensome appeals many can’t navigate. youtu.be/SRPOoPDN-7w?...
State of denial: How insurance companies impact health care today
YouTube video by CBS Sunday Morning
youtu.be
Trump's appellate judges have formed a nearly united phalanx to defend his agenda from legal challenges. How often they ruled for him in 2025:

Trump appointees: 92%
Other Republican appointees: 68%
Democratic appointees: 27%

@schwartzesque.bsky.social Emma Schartz www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u...
Trump’s ‘Superstar’ Appellate Judges Have Voted 133 to 12 in His Favor
www.nytimes.com

“Although the list caused anguish among environmental groups, it did not go as far as originally envisaged on trade and economic matters after the administration quietly dropped the World Trade Organization and the OECD from its list of potential targets last year”

US also stayed in IMO
Donald Trump orders mass US pullout from international organisations
Bodies targeted include key UN climate treaty and those promoting development, democracy and human rights
www.ft.com

Reposted by Scott L. Greer

The Dept of Labor’s X feed gets less attention but really brings the fascist vibes

Wtf

“This week’s Presidential Memorandum demonstrated that America is no longer accepting the broken status quo, that this nation is prepared to lead, as it always has, and that sometimes true leadership means knowing when to walk away.”
I feel like it’s an underreported story that the state department has its own substack and is putting out increasingly batshit stuff
Ending the Charade of Wasteful International Organizations
Author: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
statedept.substack.com

this is what polarisation looks like in practice. The US has a severe lack of cross-cutting institutions, and that's partly because it's very hard to share a club, church, anything with people who disagree with you so profoundly on vital personal issues.

This is a really nice synthesis of international and domestic politics that might explain how domestic political dysfunction turns a demolition derby in international politics
The Unconstrained Future of World Order: The Assault on Democratic Constraint and Implications for US Global Leadership | International Organization | Cambridge Core
The Unconstrained Future of World Order: The Assault on Democratic Constraint and Implications for US Global Leadership - Volume 79 Issue S1
www.cambridge.org

though a whole lot of them are... fascinated... with the Nazis a/o the German military.

Must be bad news, for users and for the security & privacy of US patient data.

"Major EHR player Oracle reacted positively to the news. Executive Vice President and General Manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, Seema Verma, was the administrator of CMS during the first Trump administration."
HHS' tech office proposes to gut and reset health IT policy
Editor's note: This is a breaking news story that may be updated. | The rule proposes to eliminate 34 out of 60 requirements for certified health IT in an effort to deregulate the health IT industry. ...
www.fiercehealthcare.com

Reposted by Scott L. Greer

Thanks to a FOIAed spreadsheet from @jasonleopold.bsky.social at www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet..., I have updated the DOGE Tracker with a lot more info on who was getting paid.

dogetrack.info/people/paid-...

The myth of everybody working for free is a lie. Many were appointed GS-15 max salary
Data Reveals Details About DOGE, Government Hiring in 2025
The IRS hired 1,313 employees in January 2025. Over the next two months the agency laid off 11,000 workers, or about 11% of its workforce. Additionally, the data identifies employees tied to DOGE.
www.bloomberg.com

Reposted by Scott L. Greer

I feel like it’s an underreported story that the state department has its own substack and is putting out increasingly batshit stuff
Ending the Charade of Wasteful International Organizations
Author: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
statedept.substack.com

I think we often want to think that people are cynical supervillains, but it's much easier for smart people to delude themselves, and it's easiest of all to just hire not very bright people with not very considered values and accept profound mediocrity as the price of your lickspittles' fidelity.
Lots of good lines

“a hallmark of CBS News editor-in-chief and careerlong opinion journalist Weiss’ relentless rhetorical style is to posit that, whatever one’s political commitments, we can all come together to agree that hers are the right ones”
Another banger from Variety's Daniel D'Addario, who is owning the Kill Tony beat (Dokoupil, not the podcast.)

"Dokoupil has attempted to position himself as something more than anchor: He seems to be, in his mind, the main character of the news."

Read and share: variety.com/2026/tv/colu...

this is the slow reassertion of the laws of gravity in politics- faction fighting in a declining king's court, the inevitable lame duck status of a second term US president. The question remains whether those laws work quickly enough to prevent even bigger disasters than we have seen this year
Dozens of Republicans broke with Trump this week on war powers, Obamacare subsidies and veto override votes, suggesting that he may not enjoy quite as free a hand as he has become accustomed to heading into his second year, writes Carl Hulse. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/u...
As Election Year Opens, G.O.P. Seeks Some Distance From Trump
www.nytimes.com

it's like "viewpoint diversity" in academia: if a certain share of voters, or elites, believe something and your job is to build consensus, then you have to find a way to make that belief sound normal even if by your putative standards (evidence, logic, shared values) it's not normal or valid.
Starting to feel like it's an explicit job requirement for political pundits not to admit the most consequential trend in American politics of the last 40 years.
Thank you TCW for this instant classic of Harper’s Letter sophistry, explaining that the categories "right" & "left" are unhelpful in understanding a campaign of kidnappings & assassinations undertaken by an ultra-right wing secret police force at the behest of an ultra-right wing political regime

"There are an enormous number of baroque neuroses and elaborate purity fetishes of various sorts shaping the discourse around nutrition in our culture... RFK Jr. himself is Exhibit A in regard to these tendencies"
Grading RFK Jr. on the Harvard College curve - Lawyers, Guns & Money
Andrew Gelman highlights the very many absurdities in this Emily Oster NYT op-ed, praising RFK Jr. for not advocating that Americans sprinkle plutonium on their cornflakes: If you actually read the li...
www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com

Reposted by Scott L. Greer

Dozens of Republicans broke with Trump this week on war powers, Obamacare subsidies and veto override votes, suggesting that he may not enjoy quite as free a hand as he has become accustomed to heading into his second year, writes Carl Hulse. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/u...
As Election Year Opens, G.O.P. Seeks Some Distance From Trump
www.nytimes.com
Starting to feel like it's an explicit job requirement for political pundits not to admit the most consequential trend in American politics of the last 40 years.
Thank you TCW for this instant classic of Harper’s Letter sophistry, explaining that the categories "right" & "left" are unhelpful in understanding a campaign of kidnappings & assassinations undertaken by an ultra-right wing secret police force at the behest of an ultra-right wing political regime

The House health research budget is much less draconian than the WH (Steady state without widening access) so that’s good

Lots of good lines

“a hallmark of CBS News editor-in-chief and careerlong opinion journalist Weiss’ relentless rhetorical style is to posit that, whatever one’s political commitments, we can all come together to agree that hers are the right ones”
Another banger from Variety's Daniel D'Addario, who is owning the Kill Tony beat (Dokoupil, not the podcast.)

"Dokoupil has attempted to position himself as something more than anchor: He seems to be, in his mind, the main character of the news."

Read and share: variety.com/2026/tv/colu...
Tony Dokoupil Is Making ‘CBS Evening News’ All About Tony Dokoupil
CBS Evening News is now all about Tony Dokoupil's ego
variety.com

We gave it a bash and applying the theories to American police worked depressingly well (paywall, lmk if you want a copy)
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
20 out of 25 CIO director positions at CDC are vacant and filled by actings (or eliminated), just in the past year via CDC Data Project www.cdcdataproject.org/leadership-c...

The New Yorker has acquitted itself very well over the last decade
I am re-reading the January 6th report and, specifically, David Remnick's intro to it. It's remarkable to be reminded of real-time accounts of how differently this could have gone. I recommend revisiting it:
www.newyorker.com/news/america...
The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection
The House report describes both a catastrophe and a way forward.
www.newyorker.com

Reposted by Scott L. Greer

Alaska officials gave false info to American Samoans, telling them they can vote. (They can’t, due to a unique status.)

Now, the state is threatening them with years in prison, part of GOP’s voting fraud panic.

@burness.bsky.social spent months reporting the story; spend some of your w-e with it.
Americans by Name, Punished for Believing It - Bolts
In a small Alaska town, American Samoans face prosecution for voting in the only country they’ve ever known. They live in a limbo, created by colonial expansion, that now confuses even public official...
boltsmag.org

Feels good to retweet NYT work with approval. This is excellent work. Especially the Upshot- maybe someday it can redeem itself from its awful COVID-19 editorializing.

Reposted by Scott L. Greer

I am re-reading the January 6th report and, specifically, David Remnick's intro to it. It's remarkable to be reminded of real-time accounts of how differently this could have gone. I recommend revisiting it:
www.newyorker.com/news/america...
The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection
The House report describes both a catastrophe and a way forward.
www.newyorker.com