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Dan Nexon

@dhnexon.bsky.social

13K followers 2.2K following 4.7K posts

"'A man without a plan is not a man.' Nietzsche." Professor in the Department of Government and SFS @ Georgetown. I study international order, power politics, & empires. dhnexon.net | https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com | duckofminerva.com

www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com

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Pinned

Dan Nexon @dhnexon.bsky.social · 4d

It has been suggested that i pin this piece, but I never actually posted it myself. So 👇

Lawyers, Guns and Money @lawgunsmoney.bsky.social · 5d

The State of the Republic is Grim

The State of the Republic is Grim - Lawyers, Guns & Money

If you’re on Bluesky and follow me, you’ve probably seen that I am writing threads that really should be the nucleuses of posts here. You’ve also likely gotten a bead on where I am these days: I say “seems” because it is possible that, behind the scenes, they are taking necessary steps. These include creating […]

www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 12h

If you look at the sheer insanity of what government officials and agencies openly post on XShitter, it becomes abundantly obvious how much the press is complicit. If Dems did even a fraction of this poasting it would be saturated in news coverage.

Laura Jedeed @laurajedeed.bsky.social · 12h

More propaganda with painfully normal people zip-tied at the side of the road please, this will for sure convince the American people that you're the good guys

Homeland Security @DHSgov

We're having an All Night Revival

Still frame from a video: Painfully normal people zip tied on the side of the road, sitting on a guardrail in a row

14:30 07 Oct 25 2.1M Views

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Dan Nexon @dhnexon.bsky.social · 2h

That's pretty obviously the playbooks. A little surprised they haven't waited longer to make it explicit.

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 4h

My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly "carrying drugs," the US Attorney General says "Just like we did with cartels, we're going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa."

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Dan Nexon @dhnexon.bsky.social · 2h

I don't really get how anyone could interpret your post this way, but it happens, and that's okay. Doubling down on the misinterpretation? Refusing to accept your clarification? That's the point when you have to ask if you're dealing with trolls.

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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · Aug 2

In the US AI buildout is so gigantic; contrib. more to US growth than consumer spending in 2025!

China's green boom is so gigantic that Clean-energy contributed more than 10% of China's WHOLE ECONOMIC GDP in 2024 for the first time ever
energyandcleanair.org/analysis-cle...
bsky.app/profile/70sb...

Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · Jul 14

Workers tend to herbs grown beneath solar panels in a photovoltaic plantation in Lihua, Lianyungang, Jiangsu.

An aerial view shows residential buildings with roof-mounted photovoltaic-solar panels in Yinchuan,

Great photos of China's record smashing solar boom
www.theatlantic.com/photography/...

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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 2h

One of the basic points in my new Dispatch piece on the right to record immigration raids and raiders is that ICE agents are already informally “enforcing” their disapproval of at-the-scene recording by roughing up journalists, freelance photographers, and others with cellphone cameras. /1

Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 14h

New from me at The Dispatch: DHS says it's illegal to videotape ICE agents. That's not what the courts say. @thedispatchmedia.bsky.social

DHS Says Videotaping ICE Agents Is Illegal. Federal Courts Disagree.

Filming law enforcement serves important goals central to a free republic.

thedispatch.com

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Duncan Bell @duncanbell.bsky.social · Aug 21

Duncan Bell, “John Stuart Mill on Federation, Civilization and Empire,” History of Political Thought (2025)

go.shr.lc/4mTZyBp

John Stuart Mill on Federation, Civilization and Empire: Ingenta Connect

go.shr.lc

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Ryan Bort @ryanbort.bsky.social · 8h

MAGA lawmakers regularly share its content. Elon called it "one of the best accounts on X." It's run by a Macedonian who has never set foot in America — and who illegally donated to a U.S. congressional campaign.

Great stuff from @jsweetli.bsky.social:

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

The Viral MAGA Accounts Run by a Man Who Has Never Been to America

Two influential MAGA social media accounts are run by Rumen Naumovski, a Macedonian who may have illegally donated to a U.S. election.

www.rollingstone.com

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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 10h

Henry Farrell on the Trump admin’s proposed “compact” for universities, arguing that the rollout signals weakness, and that academics need to band together to reject this authoritarian attack on university independence and academic freedom.

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

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Shower Cat Love @shower-cat.bsky.social · 13h

I had forgotten that Trump caved last time when it appeared that civil aviation was about to collapse. It’s probably the wider public’s most visible interface with the federal government. The system is delicate and overtaxed in normal conditions.

Suzanne Kelleher @srkelleher.bsky.social · 1d

“The air traffic system, in general, is stressed to the max,” a veteran air traffic controller working at a major East Coast airport told Forbes on Tuesday, adding “sick outs will continue to happen because the [controllers] aren’t fit for duty.”

www.forbes.com/sites/suzann...

Overstressed, Unpaid Air Traffic Controllers ‘Aren’t Fit For Duty,’ Says Agency Veteran

Cracks in the air travel system are widening, as air traffic controllers bear the strain of an understaffed system and no pay until the government shutdown ends.

www.forbes.com

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Justin S. Casey @justinscasey.bsky.social · 23h

Debates over typical labels (radical or extreme right esp.) gloss over the fluidity, overlap, and cross-pollination between them. Eco's concept of Eternal Fascism - emphasizing how certain ideas can clump together and snowball into fascism - allows us to imagine how these barriers are dissolving

Dan Nexon @dhnexon.bsky.social · 3d

🧵 Fascism is an ideology. The government is fascist. But it's an unconsolidated competitive authoritarian regime, not a totalitarian one.

@justinscasey.bsky.social and I discuss this, and the heterogeneity of interwar fascism, here 👇

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Senator Patty Murray @murray.senate.gov · 1d

The scenes out of Chicago should outrage us all. These federal agents are out of control, committing senseless acts of violence & putting everyone at risk.

American citizens are being detained & brutalized.

This kind of immigration "enforcement" shouldn't be acceptable to anyone.

Immigration agents become increasingly aggressive in Chicago

Activists, residents and elected leaders say increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest cit...

www.pbs.org

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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 1d

this is literally stuff King Charles did, like not only did the American colonists have a revolution to not have this happen, but they did so in the wake of the English revolution, which was about not having stuff like this happen

George Pearkes @peark.es · 1d

Well that's not how appropriations work at all

*WHITE HOUSE TO TRANSFER TARIFF REVENUE TO FUND WIC: LEAVITT

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Malaclypse the Middle @malaclypse.bsky.social · 1d

"And so for two years the worst people in the world have played out the script that was written on October 7, and everything is worse for the Palestinians. Everything is worse for the Iranians, and everything is worse for Americans, too..."

@drfarls.bsky.social nails it.

And Now Everything is Worse - Lawyers, Guns & Money

It’s two years since October 7, and everything is worse. All told, Hamas killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 more captive. It was the bloodiest day in Israel’s history...

www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 1d

"In effect, these voters responded to the most comprehensive attempt to provide concrete benefits to them since the New Deal by loading an economic shotgun and pointing it directly at themselves." prospect.org/politics/202...

House Republicans Take Aim at Red-State Economies

President Biden bent over backwards to help left-behind communities get factories and jobs. Their congressional representatives don’t appreciate it.

prospect.org

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Jeffrey Vagle @jvagle.me · 1d

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 1d

in the short term, it makes sense to see this as the true successor state to text microblogging. which is really ominous

J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 1d

Genuine question - what are OpenAI’s Sora and other video generation tools good for?

I am honestly trying to understand what is so important that it’s worth the cost. If you have examples, I would be interested to hear them.

futurism.com/artificial-i...

People Are Making Sora 2 Videos of Stephen Hawking Being Horribly Brutalized

People are using OpenAI's Sora 2 to generate videos of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking being brutalized in ghoulish ways.

futurism.com

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 1d

We could hear them laughing

Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 1d

Gonna be thinking about this lede for a minute.

(RNS) — Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide. Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray.

“I invited them to repentance,” Black, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), said in an interview. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”

But when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire.

“We could hear them laughing,” Black said.

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 1d

Whichever way history turns, I have a feeling that this will be a historic photo

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Rodger Payne @rodgerp.bsky.social · 1d

For non-scholars, work of @chenoweth.bsky.social and @mariajstephan.bsky.social demonstrated that non-violent civil resistance works better than violence to achieve policy goals. Their book is great, but here's an article they wrote:

www.belfercenter.org/sites/defaul...

www.belfercenter.org

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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 1d

Very nice piece from my colleague @stevevladeck.bsky.social in today's Times on the illegality of Trump's troop deployments to American cities. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/o...

Opinion | No, Trump Can’t Deploy Troops to Wherever He Wants

www.nytimes.com

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Dan Nexon @dhnexon.bsky.social · 2d

@brendannyhan.bsky.social serious question: what is the deal with the Harris/Harvard CAPS poll? It's been like this — and also lean R — as long as I can remember.

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Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 4d

I’ve received multiple death threats + doxing (including my home address) directly following harassment from Turning Point USA, Jack Posobiec, Andy NGO, + Fox News which called me an antifa ‘financier.’

I have been forced to move my classes online.

If journalists want to talk, DM me or reply here.

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Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social · 2d

Actually it did begin with a parade of tanks

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 2d

NEW: The militarization of American cities isn’t happening with a parade of tanks. It’s a slow drip of troop deployments that are probing courts’ willingness to give unlimited deference to the commander in chief — and testing workarounds when they don’t.

www.politico.com/newsletters/...

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Dan Nexon @dhnexon.bsky.social · 2d

"They followed us in a convoy and honked their horns at us."