Henry Porter
@henryporter.bsky.social
Wrecking lot proprietor. 🌋
Pinned
Henry Porter
@henryporter.bsky.social
· Dec 21
We need serious local news outlets, doing original reporting, subsidized by and aligned with the Democratic Party.
We need to replace physics with evolution as the paradigmatic science up and down our pedagogy. “Is MAGA ‘fascism?’” is precisely the same sort of question as “are dogs the same species as wolves?” It’s nothing at all like categorical lines in classical mechanics.
🧵 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 👇
@justinscasey.bsky.social and I discuss this, and the heterogeneity of interwar fascism, here 👇
October 5, 2025 at 3:13 PM
We need to replace physics with evolution as the paradigmatic science up and down our pedagogy. “Is MAGA ‘fascism?’” is precisely the same sort of question as “are dogs the same species as wolves?” It’s nothing at all like categorical lines in classical mechanics.
Why is educational attainment so predictive of partisan alignment? We’ve been moving that direction for a while. What happens at college has something to do with resentments of non-college voters. Thread on The Hard Hat Riots…
Between 1962-1972, Harvard and MIT graduated 21,593 students. 14 (1 in 1542) died in Vietnam.
In the same decade in South Boston, 1 in 80 draft-age boys died in Vietnam.
In the same decade in South Boston, 1 in 80 draft-age boys died in Vietnam.
October 5, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Why is educational attainment so predictive of partisan alignment? We’ve been moving that direction for a while. What happens at college has something to do with resentments of non-college voters. Thread on The Hard Hat Riots…
We need serious local news outlets, doing original reporting, subsidized by and aligned with the Democratic Party. Hyperlocal with lots of youth sports and WeRateDogs-type content.
Wrote about Democrats, the media environment, culture, and authenticity for the @nytimes.com
Our problem is bigger than an election: it's that we lack the tools to communicate the vast majority of the electorate who get their information through culture.
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...
Our problem is bigger than an election: it's that we lack the tools to communicate the vast majority of the electorate who get their information through culture.
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...
Opinion | If You’re a Voter Reading This, This Essay Is Not About You
Opt-out voters don’t buy what we’re selling — and even if they did, we’d have a hard time reaching them.
www.nytimes.com
August 6, 2025 at 2:17 PM
We need serious local news outlets, doing original reporting, subsidized by and aligned with the Democratic Party. Hyperlocal with lots of youth sports and WeRateDogs-type content.
Reposted by Henry Porter
C’mon, man,
A. Parties aren’t “brands”
B. It’s not “destroying” anything
Scammy emails are a problem, but Mothership has been blocked from most Dem clients, & what they’re doing appears to not be easy to shut down. I want Dems to bleed them dry, but it’s not the party, it’s feeding off the party…
A. Parties aren’t “brands”
B. It’s not “destroying” anything
Scammy emails are a problem, but Mothership has been blocked from most Dem clients, & what they’re doing appears to not be easy to shut down. I want Dems to bleed them dry, but it’s not the party, it’s feeding off the party…
The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:
$678M raised through those spam tactics
$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.
$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)
The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.
$678M raised through those spam tactics
$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.
$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)
The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.
The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine
How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.
open.substack.com
August 4, 2025 at 3:10 AM
C’mon, man,
A. Parties aren’t “brands”
B. It’s not “destroying” anything
Scammy emails are a problem, but Mothership has been blocked from most Dem clients, & what they’re doing appears to not be easy to shut down. I want Dems to bleed them dry, but it’s not the party, it’s feeding off the party…
A. Parties aren’t “brands”
B. It’s not “destroying” anything
Scammy emails are a problem, but Mothership has been blocked from most Dem clients, & what they’re doing appears to not be easy to shut down. I want Dems to bleed them dry, but it’s not the party, it’s feeding off the party…
Reposted by Henry Porter
You all see how these news companies and TV channels are bowing to Trump? What can be done? Well, here’s a message more Democrats need to get into their heads.
Spread the word 👇
Spread the word 👇
We need serious local news outlets, doing original reporting, subsidized by and aligned with the Democratic Party. Hyperlocal with lots of youth sports and WeRateDogs-type content.
August 4, 2025 at 3:47 PM
You all see how these news companies and TV channels are bowing to Trump? What can be done? Well, here’s a message more Democrats need to get into their heads.
Spread the word 👇
Spread the word 👇
The Cult of SCOTUS is created by law professors and journalists who gain status along with the Court. After WW2 the media became non-partisan and needed non-partisan protagonists. At the same time law schools and law faculty exploded.
FFS. #BrokenTimes questions historians filing amicus briefs to the courts. What's the trouble? "What they are hearing is a generally liberal message."
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/u...
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/u...
August 4, 2025 at 12:03 PM
The Cult of SCOTUS is created by law professors and journalists who gain status along with the Court. After WW2 the media became non-partisan and needed non-partisan protagonists. At the same time law schools and law faculty exploded.
This kind of thing will never hit home with voters as long as humanities professors throw a public shit fit when the Secretary of Education says parents expect college to prepare their children for a career.
“American Academy of Arts&Sciences reports 96.3% of humanities grads age 23-32 fully employed. Earnings in humanitiess comparable to social/life sciences, job satisfaction levels too. A serious mismatch bw actual employment for hum grads +general perception."
www.mellon.org/voices/human...
www.mellon.org/voices/human...
Mellon Foundation
The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.
www.mellon.org
August 2, 2025 at 12:42 PM
This kind of thing will never hit home with voters as long as humanities professors throw a public shit fit when the Secretary of Education says parents expect college to prepare their children for a career.
The White House is way too small and it's impossible for Dems to do anything about it without getting trashed in the media so this is good.
July 31, 2025 at 10:15 PM
The White House is way too small and it's impossible for Dems to do anything about it without getting trashed in the media so this is good.
Law schools have a hack gap problem.
#SCOTUS's academic defenders are increasingly arguing that the justices' behavior in Trump-related emergency applications is a response to district court "overreach."
But those claims depend upon cherry-picking from or misrepresenting the examples—and ignoring the Court's own shirking of its rules:
But those claims depend upon cherry-picking from or misrepresenting the examples—and ignoring the Court's own shirking of its rules:
Bonus 170: Whose Judicial Overreach?
Debunking the unpersuasive (and also rather unprovable) claim that the Supreme Court's behavior on Trump-related emergency applications is largely a response to lower courts abusing their own powers.
www.stevevladeck.com
July 31, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Law schools have a hack gap problem.
Reposted by Henry Porter
I know people think that Dems are doing nothing but once again it just isn't true. Part II.
(Good that @gregsargent.bsky.social is on this; you would think from some accounts around here that Dems are trying hard to downplay the scandal).
(Good that @gregsargent.bsky.social is on this; you would think from some accounts around here that Dems are trying hard to downplay the scandal).
Senate Dems are invoking a 1928 law to demand that DOJ release the Epstein files. I talked to procedural experts and they laid out a scenario in which this could actually work. Not at all assured, but definitely worth trying.
My new piece lays it all out:
newrepublic.com/article/1986...
My new piece lays it all out:
newrepublic.com/article/1986...
Trump’s Epstein Fiasco Worsens as Dems Suddenly Find Big New Weapon
Senate Democrats are using a 1928 law to pressure Trump to release the Epstein files. The White House will ignore them. Here’s what could happen next.
newrepublic.com
July 30, 2025 at 7:51 PM
I know people think that Dems are doing nothing but once again it just isn't true. Part II.
(Good that @gregsargent.bsky.social is on this; you would think from some accounts around here that Dems are trying hard to downplay the scandal).
(Good that @gregsargent.bsky.social is on this; you would think from some accounts around here that Dems are trying hard to downplay the scandal).
Minute 31: If you haven’t been the subject of the news it’s hard to describe how disorienting it can be to read something and be like, “Is the reporter a psychopath? Have they not met any human beings?” Only to hear normal people *praise* those journalists.
youtube.com/watch?v=XBbk...
youtube.com/watch?v=XBbk...
Hunter Biden Interview
YouTube video by Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan
youtube.com
July 22, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Minute 31: If you haven’t been the subject of the news it’s hard to describe how disorienting it can be to read something and be like, “Is the reporter a psychopath? Have they not met any human beings?” Only to hear normal people *praise* those journalists.
youtube.com/watch?v=XBbk...
youtube.com/watch?v=XBbk...
One of the things killing our democracy is that the professionalization of journalism has turned Enlightenment fantasies about how democracy works into the background assumptions informing the discourse.
The answer was the president of the United States saying CPB money doesn’t fund Sesame Street. It funds making tv accessible for people in rural American asking a billionaire to his face why his grandkids deserved to access Sesame Street but the grandkids of rural American didn’t.
July 20, 2025 at 1:51 PM
One of the things killing our democracy is that the professionalization of journalism has turned Enlightenment fantasies about how democracy works into the background assumptions informing the discourse.
If only we could a have a democracy as successful and stable as Brazil? What the actual fuck?
Brazil and South Korea both dunking on America historically hard, showing what rule of law democracy looks like.
Yes, future historians, the US response to high level lawbreaking and an attempted coup was to coddle the putschists, and make special exemptions for them. It happened. I was there.
Yes, future historians, the US response to high level lawbreaking and an attempted coup was to coddle the putschists, and make special exemptions for them. It happened. I was there.
Brazilian president: "I'd like to say something to the American people; If Trump was Brazilian and did what he did at the Capitol, he'd be on trial in Brazil for violating the Constitution. He would be arrested if he had done that."
(ht: @ronxyz.bsky.social)
(ht: @ronxyz.bsky.social)
July 20, 2025 at 1:36 PM
If only we could a have a democracy as successful and stable as Brazil? What the actual fuck?
Academics loudly proclaim that you have to let them do anything.
I find this whole thing frankly bizarre. We have reasonably strong contemporaneous evidence of what the framers & ratifiers of the 14th amendment thought they were doing. Do we really need to excavate whether British jurists 260 years earlier were doing something similar or different?
Professor Wurman has made claims that I think fundamentally misapprehend the history and politics of England and Scotland. I also think it overlooks major evidence in the law that runs counter to his position.
July 18, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Academics loudly proclaim that you have to let them do anything.
Media-academy complex is never going to tell you they are the problem. Instead they say that they are democracy incarnate.
As someone who has been writing about comparative democratic decline for a decade, I think we've just seen the two most dangerous signs in the US so far. They are:
1) Successful attacks on media, specifically cowing CBS and defunding NPR
2) The Supreme Court's deference to Trump on executive power
1) Successful attacks on media, specifically cowing CBS and defunding NPR
2) The Supreme Court's deference to Trump on executive power
July 18, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Media-academy complex is never going to tell you they are the problem. Instead they say that they are democracy incarnate.
Intellectual diversity is neither here nor there when you devote a ton of resources to “higher” education for the favored 40% of students and leave 60% a chaos of under-resources choices for training after high school.
ICYMI, part of my thread on how the "intellectual diversity" critique doesn't map on to 1) how universities actually work, or 2) to what goes on in most college classrooms in which students are asked to read and think about events, texts, and ideas.
Our goal is to understand and contextualize events and debates and put them in dialogue with one another. How, for example, does LBJ's emphasize on quality of life in his "Great Society" speech expand on or differ from New Deal liberalism, which is itself a complicated and diverse movement?/9
July 17, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Intellectual diversity is neither here nor there when you devote a ton of resources to “higher” education for the favored 40% of students and leave 60% a chaos of under-resources choices for training after high school.
Reposted by Henry Porter
people would rather blame Tim Walz not saying the magic words because it's too blackpilling to admit the people who decide what our phones show us threw the election on purpose
It’s so fucking crazy that in the closing weeks of the election that Trump’s former chief of staff called him a fascist AND tapes of Jeffrey Epstein saying he was Trump’s closest friend were released—but neither story was considered a major scandal.
July 17, 2025 at 2:28 AM
people would rather blame Tim Walz not saying the magic words because it's too blackpilling to admit the people who decide what our phones show us threw the election on purpose
It takes zero legal changes to end the dominance of neutral journalism. Just a tiny bit of imagination on the part of journalists.
Yes. There is no escaping the US’s downward spiral toward authoritarianism without genuine institutional reform.
1. Multi-member districts and fusion voting—>multipartyism
2. Voting rights guaranteed for all; no more territories.
3. Justice term limits
3. Expand the House
4. Reduce Senate’s role
1. Multi-member districts and fusion voting—>multipartyism
2. Voting rights guaranteed for all; no more territories.
3. Justice term limits
3. Expand the House
4. Reduce Senate’s role
The purpose of the United States Constitution is to prevent the rise of tyranny.
It failed to achieve that purpose. We can obviously blame political elites across the spectrum for its failure; but it’s also worth contending with the fact that our political system is no longer fit for purpose.
It failed to achieve that purpose. We can obviously blame political elites across the spectrum for its failure; but it’s also worth contending with the fact that our political system is no longer fit for purpose.
July 17, 2025 at 12:46 AM
It takes zero legal changes to end the dominance of neutral journalism. Just a tiny bit of imagination on the part of journalists.
Reposted by Henry Porter
New Congress, Two Beers In! @mattglassman312.bsky.social and I discuss the BBB, its institutional consequences for the House and Senate, and the status of Congress’s power of the purse. Listen here! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...
The Big Beautiful Bill(?) has Passed | Congress, Two Beers In
Podcast Episode · Congress, Two Beers In · 07/11/2025 · 46m
podcasts.apple.com
July 14, 2025 at 11:05 AM
New Congress, Two Beers In! @mattglassman312.bsky.social and I discuss the BBB, its institutional consequences for the House and Senate, and the status of Congress’s power of the purse. Listen here! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...
Reposted by Henry Porter
“'Stop looking for the quick fix. Stop looking for the messiah. You have great candidates running races right now. Support those candidates,' Obama said, calling out the New Jersey and Virginia elections"
www.cnn.com/2025/07/14/p...
www.cnn.com/2025/07/14/p...
Obama’s blunt message for Democrats: ‘Toughen up’ | CNN Politics
Former President Barack Obama issued a call to action for Democrats at a private fundraiser in New Jersey on Friday evening, urging those frustrated by the state of the country under President Donald ...
www.cnn.com
July 14, 2025 at 6:10 PM
“'Stop looking for the quick fix. Stop looking for the messiah. You have great candidates running races right now. Support those candidates,' Obama said, calling out the New Jersey and Virginia elections"
www.cnn.com/2025/07/14/p...
www.cnn.com/2025/07/14/p...
Reposted by Henry Porter
This is among other things a partial test of the president vs. GOP aligned media...although it's possible that for Fox this one might be a trickier product to exploit than it is for, say, single-voice radio talk shows or social media posters.
UPDATE through Fox News' 4 p.m. hour:
Biden: 85 mentions
Epstein: STILL ZERO
Fox is following Trump's marching orders and shutting up about the story currently consuming the MAGA movement.
bsky.app/profile/did:...
·
Biden: 85 mentions
Epstein: STILL ZERO
Fox is following Trump's marching orders and shutting up about the story currently consuming the MAGA movement.
bsky.app/profile/did:...
·
Fox News live mentions today as of noon ET:
Biden: 46
Epstein: ZERO
Biden: 46
Epstein: ZERO
July 14, 2025 at 10:00 PM
This is among other things a partial test of the president vs. GOP aligned media...although it's possible that for Fox this one might be a trickier product to exploit than it is for, say, single-voice radio talk shows or social media posters.
Good forbid someone in Omar's position treat media business models as a variable, a thing which could be otherwise.
People often complain that Democrats are “bringing knives to a gun fight.”
But that’s not quite it, they’re bringing facts to a storytelling fight. And getting totally outspun.
But that’s not quite it, they’re bringing facts to a storytelling fight. And getting totally outspun.
Voters vulnerable to Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” law are reluctant to blame the president or congressional Republicans who approved it, instead directing their frustration at their hospital system.
July 14, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Good forbid someone in Omar's position treat media business models as a variable, a thing which could be otherwise.
Isn’t this just a token of the general problem with critical theory used to make empirical claims, where clever people come up rhetorical moves to argue only “power relations” are real and everything else is an illusion?
you are SUPPOSED to signal virtue. The actual argument, such as it exists, is that people are signaling virtue while not actually being virtuous. But you are supposed to signal virtue and BE VIRTUOUS.
Really was one of the dumbest and most harmful things possible for “virtue signaling” to become some kind of epithet. Sending externally visible signals that you are engaging in pro-social behavior is normal, natural, and good, it’s how society works. Other people can’t read your fucking mind.
July 13, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Isn’t this just a token of the general problem with critical theory used to make empirical claims, where clever people come up rhetorical moves to argue only “power relations” are real and everything else is an illusion?
Meta-process question for @joshhuder.bsky.social after listening to pod. Big Ugly Bill is vandalism but end of filibuster has to be ugly, no? Could you overcome status quo bias without terrible results *from the perspective of Senators voting Yes* from filibuster workarounds like reconciliation?
July 13, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Meta-process question for @joshhuder.bsky.social after listening to pod. Big Ugly Bill is vandalism but end of filibuster has to be ugly, no? Could you overcome status quo bias without terrible results *from the perspective of Senators voting Yes* from filibuster workarounds like reconciliation?
People really struggle with the idea that the New York Times is a for profit company executing a business strategy because that’s not the language used to communicate the strategy to the reporters (or to the public).
Once, ever, NYT should (a) disclose who writes these headlines, and (b) have him or her answer questions about why.
Not “liberal states,” New York Times. Pro-democracy states.
July 10, 2025 at 7:05 AM
People really struggle with the idea that the New York Times is a for profit company executing a business strategy because that’s not the language used to communicate the strategy to the reporters (or to the public).