Matt Randall
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mrandall.bsky.social
Matt Randall
@mrandall.bsky.social
Formerly Data for Michigan House Democrats, stac labs, Warren for President, State Voices, Catalist, UMichigan, St Andrews, Georgetown
Reposted by Matt Randall
Our paper on the inflated effects of corporate tax cuts on economic growth, published in the European Economic Review, is the journal’s most downloaded paper and has attracted the most attention on social media over the last 3 years. It's also among the most widely cited papers🧵
December 15, 2025 at 7:43 AM
New hack for a student who's afraid they won't get the grade they want
From the Oklahoma U student paper: the school is now saying it will automatically suspend faculty (with pay) in response to student complaints
www.oudaily.com/news/ou-poli...
December 13, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Reposted by Matt Randall
LOL... Pentagon released a new AI military chatbot and it immediately pointed out that Pete Hegseth is a war criminal.

abovethelaw.com/2025/12/pent...
Pentagon Unveils New GenAI Platform, It Immediately Starts Flagging Pete Hegseth's War Crimes - Above the Law
The Defense Department's new ChatJAG turned out to be better than the human chain of command.
abovethelaw.com
December 12, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Matt Randall
The cat is out of the bag:

The Danish intelligence service names the US as a threat and sources from the Swedish military intelligence share the assessment that the politicisation of the FBI and CIA has caused a deep crisis of trust
USA pekas ut som del av hotbild i Danmark
För första gången pekas USA ut som en del av hotbilden mot Danmark.
www.svd.se
December 12, 2025 at 8:44 AM
I'd go even farther than this and say the Supreme Court majority are not even trying to be judges and uphold the law. They are behaving as an explicitly political body, but not beholden to the voters or any popular legitimacy. They are flouting the Constitution and the law
This is really important. The problem with the Roberts Court is not that they are conservative. It's that they are bad judges.
It's not just liberal judges they're doing this to. They're doing this to plenty of conservative judges too; judges who actually spent weeks and weeks poring over the details and with their arms deep in the guts of thousands of pages of documents and days of testimony.

Those judges are pissed.
December 5, 2025 at 2:06 AM
What the hell is that sheriff's deputy doing just waving cars by? Political leaders need to be firm with their departments that they are not bystanders to abuses by ICE. They need to check ICE's flouting of the Constitution. If you're an elected, have this convo with your Chief yesterday!
Agents in Key Largo, Florida ripped this woman wearing medical scrubs out of her car as she screamed she is a US citizen. Agents cuffed her and put her in one of their cars.

She was eventually let go, per David Goodhue of the Miami Herald, who also took this footage:
December 3, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Is it bad that the Secretary of Defense doesn't know what the fog of war is? Or presumably how it impacts planning? Yes, yes it is bad.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Hegseth says he did not see survivors before second drug boat strike
The strike has prompted concerns that US forces may have violated laws governing armed conflict.
www.bbc.com
December 3, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Pretty soon even the most committed MAGAists are going to realize that defying a historically unpopular Trump carries no electoral penalty. It's going to be like rats fleeing a sinking ship, with only people hoping for a pardon hanging on
Indiana Senate Republican Greg Walker “said he would have reported the alleged violation to federal authorities “if I thought that there was anyone of integrity in Washington that would follow through on my accusation ..”

@adamwren.bsky.social #redistrict
dailyjournal.net/2025/11/26/s...
November 30, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Reposted by Matt Randall
NEW on @indicator.media: A first *full-scale* comparison of Grokipedia v Wikipedia.

Last week the awesome @harold.bsky.social rocked up to my desk bearing gifts.

Hal had collected almost all 900K Grokipedia entries and compared them to their Wikipedia equivalents for text and citation similarity.
Grokipedia cites a Nazi forum and fringe conspiracy websites
A site-wide comparison with Wikipedia sheds light on what Elon Musk is trying to do
indicator.media
November 13, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Matt Randall
Good statement from the US conference of Catholic Bishops
November 14, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Local police need to get ID from anyone dressed up in tactical gear without a non-trivially copied verification. Briefly detaining them is not hardship according to Kavanaugh
New: The FBI is quietly urging ICE agents to properly ID themselves in the field.

In a bulletin to law enforcement last month, it warned of criminals posing as ICE to rob, rape, kidnap—a problem it says now demands national coordination to confront.

By me & @carolinehaskins.bsky.social:
FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves
In a bulletin to law enforcement agencies, the FBI said criminal impersonators are exploiting ICE’s image and urged nationwide coordination to distinguish real operations from fakes.
www.wired.com
November 4, 2025 at 9:47 PM
These affected counties should also request monitors from Canada and the EU. They can maybe ensure that Trump's goons don't intimidate voters.
apnews.com/article/doj-...
DOJ prepares to send election monitors to California, New Jersey following requests from state GOPs
The Department of Justice is preparing to send federal election observers to California and New Jersey next month, targeting two Democratic states holding off-year elections following requests from th...
apnews.com
October 27, 2025 at 6:30 PM
SNL needs to redo the Obama era "I'm just a bill" sketch but with a president in the throes of dementia playing with toy arches while his staff sign his name to illegal memos
Based on this coverage, I can confidently conclude that the memo process is slightly easier than the legislative and has the added benefit of automatically overriding the Constitution.
President Trump on Wednesday signed a memorandum expanding his administration’s authority to repurpose unspent federal funds to pay members of the military during the government shutdown, escalating his challenge to the authority of Congress on spending matters.
October 16, 2025 at 12:46 PM
I hope some people are doing serious thought about how de-baathification will work under the next administration. Don't think truth and reconciliation commissions will be the right way forward after the violence of the Trump administration
NEW: Pentagon officials are forcing staff to watch Pete Hegseth's "Warrior" speech he forced generals to listen to.

Officials are even "testing" staff to see if they watched — and are threatening consequences if they lie about watching it or if they mock it, sources tell @swin24.bsky.social and I.
The Pentagon Is Ordering Staff to Watch Hegseth’s ‘MAGA Garbage’ Speech… Or Else
Defense Department sources tell Zeteo that staff have been warned that if they don’t watch or read the speech, or if they speak negatively of it, they could face severe consequences.
zeteo.com
October 15, 2025 at 2:40 AM
The people saying this was used in Chile and Egypt are obviously missing the fact that what happened in those countries was almost civil war. The pop equivalent of injured protesters in Chile would be over 181K in the US. And we have 10 times the number of guns per capita. And Chile was less violent
This is such an astoundingly bad idea that I kinda think it’s a false flag or an op of some sort

Merits aside, it is insanely easy to be caught if you do this and the punishment for doing this is much more severe than you’d guess.

(@faineg.bsky.social often writes on stuff like this)
October 13, 2025 at 3:19 AM
Improving clearance rates for violent crimes is a really underrated policy. We know long sentences don't meaningfully impact crime, but clearance rates do. That requires a major focus and investment, but will provide huge benefits long term. Police need to prioritize felonies not traffic stops
October 11, 2025 at 7:42 PM
The writers this season are leaning way too hard into the metaphor that Trump is Pontius Pilate and ICE is the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus.
Gonna be thinking about this lede for a minute.
October 8, 2025 at 4:08 AM
Reposted by Matt Randall
I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.
October 7, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Really useful read that reminds us that Hegseth wants to make a military that could win infantry battles of the 18th century, but isn't prepared to win war as it's fought today:
www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2025/10/06/pete-hegseth-combat-readiness-department-of-war-laura-mctaggart
Pete Hegseth's one-dimensional view of combat readiness
I served on the Navy’s first combatant ship to have women permanently assigned, and all of us on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower were completely qualified for our jobs, writes Laura McTaggart. No combat ...
www.wbur.org
October 7, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Found a giant puffball in the yard today. Kids helped cook it, so hopefully they'll enjoy eating it
October 5, 2025 at 9:23 PM
It would be a horrible shame if other places had to go to the extent France has. When I was living down the street from Synagogue de Nazareth, I always knew the high holy days were coming up when police in full riot gear would shut down the street with barricades and check the ID of everyone
Terrible news that two people were killed in Manchester attending their place of worship at the synagogue in Manchester, with others seriously injured.

Community Security Trust @cstuk.bsky.social who do so much to keep Jewish people safe at faith and community spaces have issued this advice.
October 2, 2025 at 1:11 PM
For those in the back, the Arabic word for submit is Islam, from the same root as peace, Salam (and both linguistically related to shalom)
US Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack:

Peace is an illusion. There has never been peace.

There will probably never be peace.

Somebody wants dominance, which means somebody has to submit. There is no Arabic word for submit. They can't wrap their head around submit.
September 24, 2025 at 12:48 AM
Trump is such a grass
September 17, 2025 at 2:23 AM