Welcome to The Smotus Report!1

Who am I? Why am I here?

I’m a political scientist who has spent decades studying and teaching about political parties and the choices they make. I’m the author of five books on U.S. politics, including a new one on how the Republicans ended up nominating Donald Trump a third consecutive time. I also have a long history of describing party politics to a large non-academic audience, including my work with Vox, FiveThirtyEight, Politico, Mischiefs of Faction, and more. This site is the offspring of the Tusk newsletter, which I started in 2023.

Substack is filled with excellent political reporters who can tell you what is happening right now and why it matters. There are also a number of scholars on here who can summarize existing research and some that they’re working on. The Smotus Report operates in a space somewhere between those two. I look at what’s going on and try to provide some context that you won’t find in other places. My approach to studying politics them is a mix of quantitative data (money, votes, polls, etc.) and qualitative work (interviews with key figures, personal accounts from attending political events, historical examples, etc.). This is the kind of material I’ll be offering here.

This is not an explicitly partisan newsletter. I will not tell you with which party to register or for whom you should vote. But I am very much motivated by the survival of democracy and will describe events in those terms.

Topics I’ll be covering

Some things I’m particularly interested in are:

• Party nominations

• The health of US democracy

• General election results, like the 2026 midterms

• The politics of food and restaurants, and other informal spaces where people make political decisions

• What science fiction can tell us about modern politics

• What’s going on in state politics

I post two to three times per week: once on Mondays for all audiences and at least once later in the week for paying customers. I occasionally offer AMA’s, live interviews, and more.

Why subscribe?

Paid subscribers get a number of perks!

• Viewing all my posts, not just the Monday ones.

• Full access to the archives and videos.

• Contributing questions for AMAs.

• There is a discounted subscription available to educators (kindergarten through college).

• Need subscriptions for your whole classroom? Let me know and I’ll work out a group rate.