Philip Bump

Made some charts and maps to visualize just how stark the U.S.'s democratic backsliding has been in the past year. https://www.pbump.net/o/visualizing-the-erosion-of-american-democracy/

In this week's newsletter, I answer some questions:
- Where do losing presidential candidates' votes come from?
- Do Senate primaries predict the general?
- Who worked for DOGE?
- Does history forecast an inflation surge?
And more! All for free. Right here: https://www.howtoreadthisch.art/the-answers-to-five-questions/

Instead of blowing up things in Iran, the federal government could have spent $11 billion in a week paying the entire household incomes for everyone in these counties. https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-iran-war-11-billion-income-housing

According to the president, the war in Iran is "ahead of schedule." To which you likely responded: there's a schedule? The answer, almost certainly, is no; this is just something he says, having internalized it as a positive metric back in his developer days.
https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-iran-war-ahead-of-schedule

Who wants to read an overview of how Trump's SOTU rhetoric about the economy has held up over the past two weeks? https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-polls-economy-jobs-report

Inspired by ProPublica’s new database, I created a visualization of the nearly 400 LLCs that make up Trump’s business empire.
That and more in this week’s newsletter. Read! Free!
https://www.howtoreadthisch.art/where-trumps-money-comes-from-and-other-mysteries/

Hello, gang. My weekly newsletter comes out in 12 hours, and it's a good one. A big ol' visualization of the Trump business empire, updating a historic graph from the Times and a new megatool for understanding the world.

And more. Sign up for free! Get it in your inbox! Thrive!
https://howtoreadthisch.art

Will Texas turn blue in November? Well [takes a long drag off of a joint] what does “blue” even *mean*, man?
https://www.ms.now/opinion/texas-north-carolina-primary-elections-red-blue-state

Took that leaked database of proposed changes to the historic presentations at national sites and mapped them. https://www.pbump.net/o/heres-where-national-park-material-is-under-review/

Yes, Trump is way less popular now than Bush was in 2003 and, yes, the Iran strikes are viewed more negatively than Iraq was at first. But this makes his position less fraught, not more.
https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-polls-iran-war-iraq

The newsletter is out! It's about Epstein and birth rates and Minnesota and views of Israel and [touches earpiece] oh I guess war in Iran? https://www.howtoreadthisch.art/this-way-madness-lies-but-you-knew-that/

At SOTU, Trump claimed that young men were becoming more religious because of Charlie Kirk. There's no evidence they are, and certainly not because of him. So why say it?
https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-charlie-kirk-religion-church-attendance

The state of the union is not strong; it is incredibly weak and alarmingly fragile. What Trump was focused on last night was not strengthening the country but on strengthening his base, which is also unusually weak.
https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-state-of-the-union-speech-weakness

I’m on a trip with my family so I wasn’t going to do a newsletter but then I saw that visualization of very grim data that I thought deserved some comment. And then I added other stuff, too. https://www.howtoreadthisch.art/a-visualization-you-should-see/?ref=how-to-read-this-chart-newsletter

I wrote about OuR hErItAgE. https://www.ms.now/opinion/elon-musk-white-immigration-american-heritage

So, about the GOP’s argument that you need ID to prove you’re old enough to drink, so why not in order to prevent “voter fraud”? https://www.ms.now/opinion/save-act-worst-voter-id-argument-republicans

Perhaps the most important element of job growth during the first year of Trump’s second term? The baby boom. https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-economy-jobs-health-care

The newsletter is out! It’s about love and also the opposite of love as it pertains to politics.
https://www.howtoreadthisch.art/may-your-love-be-plotted-logarithmically/

The theme of Trump’s first year back in office: eliminate VA nurses in favor of immigration agents. https://www.ms.now/opinion/federal-government-jobs-hired-fired-2025-data

Remember Trump's scramble in December 2020 to throw out dumb, debunked allegations of fraud in his effort to undermine the election? Well, this time he's getting an early start. https://www.ms.now/opinion/fulton-county-georgia-fbi-ballots-trump-goal

Trump's utterly predictable complaint about Bad Bunny singing in Spanish was thoughtless culture-war stuff — but also failed to understand how many Americans speak Spanish.
https://www.pbump.net/o/actually-lots-of-people-understood-bad-bunny/

In this week’s newsletter, I visualized The Post’s losses, Bezos’s net worth — and how much that net worth has increased each day since he bought the paper.
(That and a lot more, all for free!)
https://www.howtoreadthisch.art/lets-consider-some-disasters/?ref=how-to-read-this-chart-newsletter&attribution_id=6986c55664e5610001f91e9d&attribution_type=post

A look at what Gabbard is up to and why no reasonable person should assume she’s acting in good faith. With an amusing introductory anecdote about just how detached from reality her boss is. https://www.ms.now/opinion/tulsi-gabbard-trump-elections-georgia-fulton-county

Not only have House Republicans decided that the Fourth Amendment is optional, even Republicans understand that its protection of innocent targets is more important than punishing the guilty. https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-mark-harris-ice-warrants-fourth-amendment

Don Bongo — and nearly everyone else on the right — would rather be on the outside hyping Trump’s lies than on the inside trying to make them comport with reality.
https://www.ms.now/opinion/dan-bongino-trump-podcast-fbi

I’ve been noodling this piece over for a while. It ties together a few threads that i think ought to be tied together.
https://www.pbump.net/o/this-is-what-democracy-looks-like/

The two Border Patrol agents who killed Alex Pretti were from Texas. I was curious where the other agents in Minneapolis were from, so I looked it up.
Turns out, it's a secret. https://www.pbump.net/o/where-are-ice-and-border-patrol-agents-coming-from/

I was curious where ICE and CBP agents in Minnesota were deploying from, so I looked at OPM data. What I found is that their duty stations are almost universally redacted from the public data. https://www.pbump.net/o/where-are-ice-and-border-patrol-agents-coming-from/

Oh, so Trump wants to increase housing prices to help those who own homes? Well, guess who that predominantly is.

From the newsletter: https://www.howtoreadthisch.art/whaddaya-mean-home/

The newsletter comes out in 12 hours. This week covers HOUSES and MOVING and SPEEDING and HOW PEOPLE FEEL ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT POSTING FASCIST SHIT ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

Sign up! It's free!
https://howtoreadthisch.art

Some thoughts about the arrest of Don Lemon. https://www.pbump.net/o/its-worse-than-an-attack-on-journalism/

The surge in gun buying over the last 20 years overlapped with fears of a president who would take guns away and with a national crisis. About that. https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-minneapolis-alex-pretti-guns-second-amendment

Wrote about the state of gun advocacy in the wake of Trump's "why'd he have a gun" comments after Alex Pretti's death. https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-minneapolis-alex-pretti-guns-second-amendment

Finally got around to a bit of research I'd been meaning to explore, and: There is no documented instance of an ICE officer being identified and assaulted while off duty because he wasn't masked. https://www.pbump.net/o/ices-excuse-for-wearing-masks-has-never-actually-manifested/

As a public service, Marjorie Taylor Greene offered America a reminder that her politics are unserious and her approach to issues is superficial.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/18/marjorie-taylor-greene-lasers-israel-amendment/

A third of Republicans say racism against White people is a big problem. Only a quarter say racism against Black people is. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/24/desantis-racism-slavery-education/