Tom Clark
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tomsclark.bsky.social
Tom Clark
@tomsclark.bsky.social

Political scientist at Stanford University studying law, courts, policing, public safety. www.tomclarkphd.com Go birds.

Economics 30%
Law 20%
Pinned
Well, look what just showed up! Advance copies are in, and you can pre-order yours now. It ships June 3. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Donald Trump fell asleep during a Cabinet meeting, raising new questions about Joe Biden's health.
Marco Rubio on Maduro: "He's into the drug business. By the way, it's not me saying it. I'm not just making this up. This was an indictment that came out of the Southern District of New York back in 2020. An indictment! It was undisputed."
Wow.

"It gives me no pleasure to say what I’m about to say because I worked with Pete Hegseth for seven or eight years at Fox News. This is an act of a war crime .... There’s absolutely no legal basis for it.”

- Newsmax's Judge Napolitano
Woah. Newsmax’s legal analyst just said Pete Hegseth and everyone involved in the illegal boat strike should be “prosecuted for a war crime.”

They’ve even lost Newsmax on this one.

I learned a long time ago that the more needlessly complicated and jargony someone’s language, the more vacuous their ideas are. On that score, Hegseth’s machismo descriptions of his crimes are as empty as anything he I’ve ever read. apple.news/A_jcdxFOrQLi...
Hegseth says he 'didn't stick around' for second strike on alleged drug boat — The Hill
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday that he did not “stick around” to see the second U.S. military strike in early September against an alleged drug-trafficking boat that killed two survivo...
apple.news

We've given extremely serious powers to extremely not serious people.
Q: So you didn't see any survivors after that first strike?

HEGSETH: I did not personally see survivors. The thing was on fire. This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don't understand. You sit in your air conditioned offices and plant fake stories in the Washington Post

Pretty remarkable quote, from a member of Congress regarding the President (and his xenophobic tirade at a cabinet meeting):

“The congresswoman thinks his obsession with her is unhealthy and hopes he gets help,” Jacklyn Rogers, a spokeswoman for Ms. Omar, said earlier on Tuesday.

While Hegseth likes the imagery of himself as some tough guy rappelling from a helicopter into a battle zone, dodging bullets, in fact he gave the order to murder these people from the cool, calm confines of an office. This is no “fog of war” situation.
Q: So you didn't see any survivors after that first strike?

HEGSETH: I did not personally see survivors. The thing was on fire. This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don't understand. You sit in your air conditioned offices and plant fake stories in the Washington Post
The Franklin the Turtle image that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted apparently came from a right-wing content creator known as "Maverick Alexander." Among the images Alexander has posted with the Franklin character includes dedicated to 9/11 trutherism.
The end of academic freedom, Flowchart Edition.
TX Tech has a flow chat for guidance on what can be taught in the university system. Two things:
1. Very little content seems to be permitted. This is partisan control of the curriculum.
2. I would not enjoy teaching under these conditions, but I really would not want to be a Chair or Dean.
Chief Bovino is not a political appointee. He is a civil servant, subject to the same requirements to be nonpartisan as any other employee. These messages are being broadcast from an official government account.
A+ headline work from the AP apnews.com/article/dona...
I’d rather question why is Kushner there and why is he laying out a vision? We did not vote him into any gov position nor the senate we voted for has approved his candidacy.

This isn’t a grey zone anymore, it’s 50 shades of grey.
Senator Kelly is correct.

Plus a Public Service Announcement:

KEY section of Department of Defense's Law of War Manual is 18.3.2.1.

The VERY rule on the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders gives as its paradigmatic example of what is "clearly illegal:
"orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."

Everything Trump says is clearly pretext for the use of power in his own, rather than the public, interest. Why can't the media just say that explicitly? He's not attacking universities over antisemitism, and he's not attacking Venezuela because of drugs.
Dimon on why JPMorgan Chase is not funding WH Ballroom:
We have an issue, which is anything we do, since we do a lot of contracts with governments here and around the world, we have to be very careful how anything is perceived, and also how the next DOJ is going to deal with it.
A🧵
This is profoundly irresponsible by AGSulzberger’s NYT, @by-cjewett.bsky.social +eds.

The normalization, “view-from-nowhere”, “born-yesterday”, stenography, “both-sides”, irresponsible headline are disgraceful.
THE story is the CDC&FDA are being destroyed by antiscience & Americans will die.
1/n

State propaganda is a job after all.
What the hell is this "kulturkampf" shit from the Department of Labor? Don't they have actual jobs to do?

Reposted by Tom Clark

What the hell is this "kulturkampf" shit from the Department of Labor? Don't they have actual jobs to do?
This seems like the kind of declaration by a U.S. president that should be mentioned *somewhere* on the front page of CNN or the NY Times, but the fact that it isn't (as of right now) tells us so much both about how this president is covered and the credibility of the U.S. government.
Might be kicking off.
The legal, media, and academic institutions capitulating to an authoritarian ordering payments for favorable treatment are damning themselves to irrelevance. They are destroying their institutions. They will be — and should be — shunned for failing in their most basic purposes for existing.
BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university

Full statement from NU below:
BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university

Full statement from NU below:
5/ Administration explanation to Congress seems to be a bold-face falsehood: claiming double-tap strike was to clear debris, not to kill survivors.

"That explanation has prompted frustration among some members of Congress who say they believe the Pentagon was deceptive."

This is how you do authoritarianism under the guise of law. You simply say that you have "determined" laws giving you certain powers over certain people also apply to other people. You make yourself the legislature, judge, and jury by decree and send your agents out to make it so.
The cases have surged as ICE reclassified millions who have resided in the United States for years as “arriving aliens” or “applicants for admission” — making them subject to mandatory detention typically meant for those who just crossed the border. www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

Reposted by Tom Clark

“Never have so few done so much to so many.”

www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
So, DOGE, What Would You Say You Did Here?
An exit interview
www.theatlantic.com

Reposted by Tom Clark

The cases have surged as ICE reclassified millions who have resided in the United States for years as “arriving aliens” or “applicants for admission” — making them subject to mandatory detention typically meant for those who just crossed the border. www.politico.com/news/2025/11...
TRUMP: If you look at Somalia, they are taking over Minnesota.

REPORTER: What do the Somalians have to do with this Afghan guy who shot the National Guard members?

TRUMP: Ah, nothing. But Somalians have caused a lot of trouble. They're ripping us off.
“You’re a stupid person” — Trump lashes out at a reporter who presses him on the fact that the suspected DC shooter was actually thoroughly vetted before he was let in the US from Afghanistan
Not wanting to disappoint you so much that it lies is the last quality I want in a computer.
This means NSF dissertation improvement grants in the social sciences are simply...not happening.
NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research.

Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
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