Alex Hertel-Fernandez
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awhf.bsky.social
Alex Hertel-Fernandez
@awhf.bsky.social
2.3K followers 660 following 92 posts
Columbia SIPA professor studying labor policy, politics of policy design, and political economy. Co-director of Consortium on American Political Economy & Columbia Labor Lab. Former Biden-Harris Department of Labor and Office of Management and Budget.
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Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
billkristolbulwark.bsky.social
Also, may I say that I don’t agree with people saying ICE and CBP need “more training.” They’re doing exactly what this administration has trained them to—impose a reign of fear in blue cities. They don’t need more training. They need to be ripped up root and branch.
January 24, 2026 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
gelliottmorris.com
Reminder: All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dems to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump — 3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.
January 24, 2026 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
kylegriffin1.bsky.social
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: "Thank God. Thank God we have video. Because according to DHS, these 7 heroic guys took an onslaught of a battalion against him or something. It's nonsense, people. It is nonsense and it's lies."
January 24, 2026 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
donmoyn.bsky.social
Signs that you might live in a police state, albeit one where civil society is still strong
nytimes.com The New York Times @nytimes.com · 8d
Minneapolis residents have joined a church-run effort to donate groceries to immigrant families who fear being caught in public by federal agents. What started with a couple of hundred deliveries a week has quickly swelled into a vast operation involving thousands of volunteers. trib.al/1qT1xMw
January 21, 2026 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
jamesgoodwin.bsky.social
I hate to keep beating this drum, but it's important. The Trump EPA's action has nothing to do with monetization. This is good old fashioned science denial. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/c...
Trump’s E.P.A. Has Put a Value on Human Life: Zero Dollars
www.nytimes.com
January 21, 2026 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
davidho.bsky.social
This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.
January 20, 2026 at 10:53 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
costasamaras.com
People will get sicker. More people will have heart attacks and lung disease and other health challenges because of pollution. People’s lives will get worse, and shorter. People you know. Maybe me. Maybe you.
January 12, 2026 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
dissentmag.bsky.social
Our winter issue, Socialism in the City, is out now!

Featuring @resnikoff.bsky.social @wlacher.bsky.social @yguichaoua.bsky.social @awhf.bsky.social @alanyan.bsky.social @atossaaraxia.bsky.social @mmschwartz.bsky.social @cgmaisano.bsky.social @arvinalaigh.bsky.social @ninasparling.bsky.social
January 12, 2026 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
nicholasbednar.bsky.social
I have a new post over at @donmoyn.bsky.social's blog discussing the legal authority the president has over the civil service and why the other branches need to do more to prevent the destruction of the administrative state.

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-much-p...
How Much Power Does the President Actually Have Over the Civil Service?
More than you think, which is why other branches need to step up
donmoynihan.substack.com
January 12, 2026 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
michellegoldberg.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/o...
January 8, 2026 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
annagbusse.bsky.social
Just in time for Christmas: a great interview with an absolute legend.

Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta on her career, US politics, the erosion of democracy, and most of all, what to do about it.

sociologica.unibo.it/article/view...
View of Theda Skocpol in Conversation with Edwin Amenta on Sociology, Political Science, Higher Education, and U.S. Politics | Sociologica
sociologica.unibo.it
December 23, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
adamserwer.bsky.social
The right, along the Roberts Court, is trying to nullify the Reconstruction amendments guaranteeing equality under the law, in order to restore the Antebellum Constitution, which envisions “liberty” as an eternal aristocracy of race and class (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
When the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson asked why “we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes,” he was identifying no mere contradiction, but liberty as it was imagined by men who owned other human beings as property. Slaveholders such as John Calhoun saw slavery as inseparable from their own freedom, and they worried that the false doctrine of abolitionism would eliminate that freedom away. “Already it has taken possession of the pulpit, of the schools, and, to a considerable extent, of the press; those great instruments by which the mind of the rising generation will be formed,” Calhoun said. (It seems the “woke mind virus” was telling lies about the great and benevolent institution of American slavery as far back as two centuries ago.) Defending slavery, however, required invasive uses of power, such as banning antislavery literature and returning escaped Black people to bondage. Many white Americans in the 19th century began to understand that the “Slave Power” curtailed their freedoms as well. And this is what many people forget: Systems of domination rarely spread their blessings widely. The Redemption-era revocation of Black freedoms didn’t result in prosperity for white people writ large, but a Gilded Age in which the upper classes gained unfathomable wealth and economic crises left millions destitute. The nation may have held on to white supremacy, but it also got low wages, a threadbare welfare state, and a society dominated by the rich. Everyone else was too divided by race and class to challenge them.
December 22, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
sbagen.bsky.social
This is a great piece on Trump's near-destruction of the National Labor Relations Board. (And I'm betting they don't let the Acting GC go on-the-record about anything after his performance here. Kudos to @msainato.bsky.social for a very effective interview.) www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
‘A very hostile climate for workers’: US labor movement struggles under Trump
National Labor Relations Board, the federal watchdog for workers’ rights, has been rendered toothless as employees grapple with corporations
www.theguardian.com
December 14, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
mbkplus.bsky.social
If we accede to the demand that political appointees can decide what is worthwhile to study and what isn't, we've lost universities as institutions of knowledge, innovation, and progress. This is why academic freedom and tenure are so important.
epopppp.bsky.social Beth Popp Berman @epopppp.bsky.social · Dec 12
This -- a model bill to effectively decimate non-STEM research by requiring 3-3 teaching loads outside of "STEM or Americanism and western civilization" -- seems...extremely bad but also quite plausible.
Proposed Model Bill Would Change College Tenure, Teaching, & Research
Three conservative groups have proposed model legislation that would dramatically change faculty tenure paths, teaching loads, research activities and hiring authority
www.forbes.com
December 12, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
samuel-bagg.bsky.social
Succinct and important summary of what we know about money in politics, and why it’s so different from the conventional wisdom.
adambonica.bsky.social Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · Dec 6
Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:
Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse.
Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight.
open.substack.com
December 7, 2025 at 4:43 AM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
brycecovert.bsky.social
Old enough to remember when the federal government withholding Medicaid funds from states that didn't expand the program under the ACA was deemed unconstitutionally coercive www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/u...
Agriculture Dept. Threatens to Withhold Food Stamps From Democratic States
www.nytimes.com
December 3, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
adamdean.bsky.social
Climate change is killing workers. The fix is simple.

Water. Shade. Rest Breaks.

Our new Health Affairs study: California's heat standard was associated with a 33% drop in heat-related deaths among outdoor workers.

Now it's time for OSHA to adopt a federal heat standard.

tinyurl.com/4wejjhkd
December 2, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
hshierholz.bsky.social
Affordability is dominating the discourse. What I don't like about the conversation is that it focuses almost entirely on prices—as if the only way to make life affordable is to make things cheaper. But affordability is determined by prices *and pay.* 1/
December 1, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
gravelinfluencer.bsky.social
The Boston Globe identified the companies in Massachusetts that employ the most SNAP recipients. A key stat: "In Massachusetts, 74% of working-age recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are employed, half of them full-time."

Full article: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/28/m...
Number of SNAP recipients Amazon 2,456 Walmart 2,318 Uber 1,799 DoorDash 1,462 Tempus Unlimited 1,425 Stop & Shop 989 Mass General Brigham 956 Dollar Tree 952 Albertsons Companies, Inc. 896 Bayada Home Health 887
November 29, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
mattheweadie.bsky.social
And one more other thing I’m seeing now, that Northwestern unsurprisingly didn’t mention in its statement, effectively banning gender affirming care at NU school of medicine
November 29, 2025 at 2:32 AM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
johnpfaff.bsky.social
DOJ is now recruiting for immigration judges by calling them “deportation judges.”

That’s seems really bad.
YOU BE THE JUDGE Help write the next chapter of America. Apply today to become a deportation judge and you may be entitled to these benefits.
November 21, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
ericlipton.nytimes.com
NEW: As Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick drives billions of dollars in foreign payments to help build AI data centers in the US, his sons help run a company earning tens of millions in fees helping finance AI data centers. A NYT investigation. (Free link)

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/u...
Family Affair: Commerce Secretary’s Sons Cash In on A.I. Frenzy
www.nytimes.com
November 20, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
profsaunders.bsky.social
Damn right.
bakerdphd.bsky.social Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · Nov 20
"By any consistent standard, if Summers is unfit to work for each of these institutions [from which he resigned], he is equally unfit to teach at our school. Harvard should not be the only institution in America where Summers remains above reproach."

🔥🔥🔥

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
The Professor and the Pedophile | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
Summers should choose the most straightforward path and resign. Should he refuse to, though, the University must cut ties with its former president to the greatest extent possible.
www.thecrimson.com
November 20, 2025 at 2:03 AM
Reposted by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
sbagen.bsky.social
Things are bad, but pushback can still work. Keep it up.
kathleenromig.bsky.social Kathleen Romig @kathleenromig.bsky.social · Nov 19
The Trump Administration is abandoning plans for the biggest-ever cut to Social Security Disability Insurance, which would have hit older workers hardest.

The rule would have devastated up to 1.5 million workers' financial stability, retirement security & access to health care.

wapo.st/4o48J24
Social Security scraps plan to limit disability benefits after uproar
The policy would have fundamentally altered who qualifies for the two federal disability programs by eliminating or limiting a person’s age as a factor to consider.
wapo.st
November 19, 2025 at 10:22 PM