As we wrap up 2025, here’s a closer look at the posts that caught readers’ attention this year.
#10 Three big takeaways from that “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Sarah Binder explained how the bill got passed, how Senate Republicans quietly nuked the filibuster, and what the bill means for our fiscal future.
#9 How to explain the weird ideas of RFK Jr. What explains a guy who wants environmental regulation and organic food but not vaccines? John Sides introduced the concept of “intuitionism” and how it explains RFK’s ideas and a lot of other people’s, too.
#8 How the GOP became the party of vaccine hesitancy. John Sides documented the sharp increase in Republican skepticism about vaccinations and traced it to GOP opposition to the covid-19 vaccine in particular. It’s another example of “partisan metastasis.”
#7 U.S. democracy is under attack. Here are some lessons for democracy’s defenders. Jennifer McCoy and her co-authors explained how “democratic backsliding” occurs and offered six key lessons for how to defend democracy in the face of threats.
#6 Why the blame game finally turned on Trump. Writing in March, Michael Tesler showed how quickly the public came to see Trump, not Biden, as responsible for the country’s economic challenges.
#5 ICE’s popularity is plunging. Michael Tesler documented the decline in ICE’s popularity and linked it to the broader “thermostatic” backlash to Trump’s immigration policies.
#4 What South Africa’s new land act really says. Carolyn Holmes explained South Africa’s Expropriation Act and why it doesn’t constitute the threat to Afrikaners that Trump and others have suggested.
#3 Trump may strike Venezuela. His team makes that very risky. Elizabeth Saunders describes how an inexperienced foreign policy team makes it hard to do the planning that Trump’s military actions in the Caribbean require.
#2 Trump’s verbal attack on Zelenskyy was shocking – and predictable. Elizabeth Saunders unpacks Trump’s fraught Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and shows how it is the natural consequence of Trump’s longstanding views about foreign policy.
And now for the most-read article….
#1 Good to Know: The public is a thermostat. Good Authority fellow Alex Kustov explains the political science behind the never-ending cycle of governments doing something – and the public demanding the opposite.
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