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Rob Shum

@robshum.bsky.social

2.8K followers 1.1K following 4.1K posts

Public policy ( #climate / energy policy, more specifically ) & IR prof (but also ex-🇨🇦 trade diplomat). PoliSciSky 🗺️, EnergySky 🔌💡, & GreenSky 🌱. Cf. same handles on birdsite & mastodon.social/@robshum

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · Oct 28

How many “Republics” have the USA had? As many as France?

1 possible way to count:

1. Articles of Confederation
2. Current (unamended) Constitution
3. Post-Civil-War
4. Post-Civil-Rights

And we’re currently witnessing an Algerian-type crisis, and waiting for a Fifth Republic.

Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · Oct 28

You don't have to ask <if> or <when> 🇺🇸 democracy will backslide. It it hadn't already, we would not be speculating about where the loyalty of the generals lies & whether that might matter in a matter of days/weeks.

Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · Oct 28

I think it is safe to say that after this week, Trump does not have the loyalty of the generals. That means something

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 50m

The only currently practising Democrat politician (aside maybe from Walz) who gets it. (11/n)

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 5h

Pritzker: "If the Constitution means anything -- and I guess we all are questioning that right now -- the Insurrection Act cannot be invoked ... they just want troops on the ground because they want to militarize especially blue cities in blue states."

Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 55m

From the legend who lost an election because the centrist media decided it was a scandal that a hot mic caught him saying “I hate talking to bigots”.

Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

A moving and intelligent call to action here from Gordon Brown. And yet another reminder of why he is my political hero.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Don’t fall for the authoritarian hype – Reform and the hard right can be stopped in their tracks | Gordon Brown

From the US to Europe and Asia, grievances are being exploited to gain power. But moderate voices are still in tune with the majority, says former prime minister Gordon Brown

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Rob Shum

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 3h

"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

Justin Elliott @justinelliott.bsky.social · 3h

Here is our full story that Vance is dismissing, with primary source documents showing Trump cabinet members with multiple primary-residence mortgages

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 3h

History doesn’t repeat itself — but it rhymes. (9/n)

Keith Fitzgerald @keithfitzgerald.bsky.social · 3h

How Trump's Gestapo is escalating its attacks

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/u...

How Trump’s Chicago Immigration Crackdown Escalated, in 10 Videos

www.nytimes.com

Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 3h

TACO only happens with China — because they’re the only ones not appeasing him. (4/n)

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 4h

My “don’t worry about China, it will all be fine” shirt has people asking a lot of questions that are already answered by my shirt

A tweet from Donald Trump that reads “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!! President DJT”

Reposted by Rob Shum

Bruce Stallsmith @laimosemion.bsky.social · 4h

We’ve always kinda known this, the issue becomes sharper in the US. #USA#ICE

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 4h

Parallel to a comparison of Julia Child with Ina Garten.

The underlying question: would the conclusion of such a dissertation support or refute the economics hypotheses developed by Thomas Piketty and Robert J. Gordon?

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 6h

There’s a dissertation in American history or cultural studies waiting to be written comparing Diane Keaton’s kitchen in Manhattan with her kitchen in Something’s Gotta Give.

Reposted by Rob Shum

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 4h

Shared courtesy of my Penn History colleague, Ben Nathans

Image: A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” engraving, originally published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Each segment of the snake has the name of a university sent Trump’s “compact”: Texas, AZ, Vanderbilt, USC, Dartmouth, UVA, Brown, Penn, MIT.

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Reposted by Rob Shum

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 4h

1) I once again take this opportunity to remind you: to keep its basic functioning, society has to discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities

2) is...is it happening?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 5h

STEPHANOPOULOS: I didn't insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50k as was heard on an audio tape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. You did not answer the question. Thank you for your time.

VANCE: No, George, I sai--

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 4h

Interesting if EU decides to refuse to give in on demands that — in all likelihood — Trump has little awareness of, and that his advisors won’t insist on because they’d be too hard to explain. (11/n)

Euractiv @euractiv.com · 5h

Brussels to back net-zero shipping deal despite Trump sanction threat

Trump administration threatens 'sanctions on officials sponsoring activist-driven climate policies'

dlvr.it

Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 4h

Looking forward to the post-apocalyptic gospel that blames the nuclear war on vaccine bioweapons instead of fascist senility.

Meanwhile in Indiana… @robertlandrumjr.bsky.social · 5h

Donald Trump just recently received his COVID vaccine 💉! For all the horse 💩 medical advice we’re getting from RFK Jr., Trump himself is getting the “deadliest” vaccine in history.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called the COVID vaccines the deadliest in history. Yet the President of the United States (regrettably one of the most powerful people on the planet) just received a COVID booster and a flu shot. So perhaps they're not the lethal bioweapons our HHS Secretary would have you believe.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 5h

I suppose, more precisely, they’re like true-believing DC/Microsoft/Google executives who refuse to acknowledge that their Zack-Snyder-films/Windows/Android products are qualitatively inferior and believe that they can simply *manifest* more market share for them.

Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 5h

Somehow, these guys are taken seriously as politics-knowers, even though they’re like comic book fans who deny any difference between DC and Marvel, or PC users who think iOS and Windows are the same.

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5h

My version of this is that Vought, Yarvin etc represent a kind of braindead right-Gramscianism, which leaves out all the interesting subtleties and treats civil society _only_ as a realm of indoctrination, where one ideological master-narrative can readily be substituted for another.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 6h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 5h

I’m old enough to remember something called “The Washington Consensus” arguing for property rights, and against nationalization or expropriation. (7/n)

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 6h

Trump has expropriated TikTok U.S. (banned under the law) and is now on the verge of forcing its sale at a below-market price to cronies of his choosing. What could go wrong? www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 5h

Right-wing paramilitary death squads are not merely historical phenomena. (8/n)

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 6h

"Look at the picture... One of these is a member of a private militia that supports the President and was involved in a violent effort to overturn the election, the other is an agent of the state. Can you tell the difference?" donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 7h

The EU and liberal, democratic capitalism made this miracle.

And yet, how many hand-wringing pieces have I already read this weekend about how liberalism has failed (because it somehow has not eliminated “loss”?!) and populism is about to sweep it away??

Tom Calver @tomcalver.bsky.social · 9h

🇵🇱 My @thetimes column: Poland’s economic miracle

12 out of 17 Polish regions are now richer than West Wales. It has faster internet, cheaper electricity and more high speed rail than Britain

When it comes to regional development it’s the UK, not Poland, that needs to catch up

1/3

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 7h

“The officials running Trump’s 2nd adminis’n, as well as Trump himself, have been far swifter & more aggressive in enacting favors for allies in the fossil fuel & mining industries…They have also set in motion an avalanche of attacks on Trump’s perceived enemies & the industries he disfavors.” (8/n)

Democracy Action Network @democracyactionnet.bsky.social · 8h

The Trump administration wasted no time in tapping individuals with ties to fossil fuel industries and right-wing think tanks funded by oil tycoons for key environmental and energy policy positions...

New report examines fossil fuel ties of dozens of Trump administration hires

Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project found 43 fossil-fuel industry insiders among nominees and appointees to agencies charged with enforcing energy and environmental policy.

grist.org

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Reposted by Rob Shum

Khashoggi's Ghost @urocklive1.bsky.social · 19h

Just a reminder that Wikipedia is the only remaining reliable source of information that right wing billionaires can't control. (Although they'll never stop trying.)

Please donate to them whenever you can. Even a little bit helps.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

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Reposted by Rob Shum

Ben Lockwood, PhD @benlockwood.bsky.social · 7h

Worth pointing out that, historically, fascism is often heavily intertwined with mysticism and the occult

John Carl Baker @johncarlbaker.bsky.social · 26d

Peter Thiel’s antichrist nonsense, Ben Shapiro’s new book, and the whole output of Curtis Yarvin show that the right wants to produce irrationality and mysticism and have other people take it seriously as philosophy, which it most certainly is not.

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Reposted by Rob Shum

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 12h

The recent trajectory, in broad strokes:

- Regime starts militarizing the conflict in early summer
- Regime declares all liberal/leftwing political activity as domestic terrorist or terrorism-adjacent in presidential memo
- Regime ramps up the propaganda against “the Left” across all channels

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 12h

The regime gets more deranged every day. A rightwing conspiracy theorist assassinated a Democratic lawmaker - which the attorney general presents as an example of leftwing political violence in order to justify an authoritarian crackdown on the opposition…

We’re in incredibly dangerous territory.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Bondi: "We've been living through a horrific cycle of political violence in this country ... night after night antifa wrecks havoc on the streets of our cities. In Minnesota, a gunman murdered a state lawmaker and her husband."

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Reposted by Rob Shum

Yaqiu Wang 王亚秋 @yaqiu.bsky.social · 8h

I told someone in China who doesn't usually follow politics that this is happening in America. She was like, "What? Can't be!" The cruelty of this stuff is so beyond the pale that even the Chinese - who are accustomed to government unaccountability and abuses - are in disbelief.

Laguna Beach Democratic Club @lagunabeachdems.bsky.social · 1d

Northwest Chicago Suburb: ICE Agents Rip 15-Year-Old Girl from Car, Slam Her to Ground She Screams “I’m 15!” as Man Kneels on Her Neck

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 8h

This applies not only to journalism, but to civil society and citizenship generally.

And is why calls for “civility” are in fact a dangerous trap, for sleepwalking into acquiescence to repression.

The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 15h

"In an authoritarian context, all journalism will tend toward propaganda unless it is explicitly formulated as anti-authoritarian. Unless an institution is explicitly designed to counter authoritarianism, it will end up aiding the authoritarians."

The Washington Post and CBS News are dying. The Bulwark is the future.

We drink their milkshake.

www.thebulwark.com

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 20h

When tariffs met crypto at the orgy of idiocy. (3/n)

CNN @cnn.com · 21h

President Donald Trump’s threat to impose an additional 100% tariff on imports from China sparked a massive cryptocurrency sell-off late Friday that exposed risky leverage in the space. https://cnn.it/46XaaKJ

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 20h

“…I think Pakistan’s patience had been wearing thin. And that’s why they basically decided to take direct action themselves against TTP leaders. And now, obviously, the Taliban would say that it was a retaliatory attack, retaliatory action.”

Heavy clashes erupt along Pakistan-Afghanistan border — Guardian US

Escalation comes after Pakistani airstrike in Kabul, with Taliban launching reprisals against military posts

apple.news

Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 20h

I guess it’s now “solar for none,” in the U.S.

In Georgia, Trump’s Cuts to Solar Projects Hit Some of His Voters

www.nytimes.com

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