History Professor at Brigham Young University Governance Fellow at R Street PhD - Global and Imperial History - University of Oxford Views are mine own!
Utah, United States
Joined February 2013
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Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
How nice for farmers. No one else has been dealing with high fuel prices and the downstream effects.
President Trump announces at his Kansas rally that USDA is rolling out $8 billion in fuel relief payments for farmers amid high diesel prices.
USDA tonight says it’s tapping an internal (much fought over on Capitol Hill) fund to provide the payments - which are structured like disaster aid.
Farm state GOP lawmakers are still pushing for another +$11 billion in aid for farmers hit by tariffs and high fuel costs in a separate year-end package.
"Porque, depois de passar um único dia no Brasil, você percebe que é muito melhor estar ali do que em qualquer outro lugar naquele momento."
#brasil
Democracy depends on more than elections. It also requires institutions capable of restraining political power. 🏛️⚖️
@JonMadison26 explains what the United States can learn from Brazil’s recent experience.
Read his article 👇
rstreet.org/commentary/lesso…
Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
Graham Platner’s Senate campaign imploded, and Maine has become the latest flashpoint in a much bigger problem.
R Street’s @JonMadison26 argues the real issue isn’t limited to Platner, it’s that America keeps conflating candidate selection with the general election.
Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
Today’s FCC move against @Disney owned @ABC stations shows why this debate is bigger than one network or one controversy.
Broadcast licensing should not become a tool for political pressure. @AdamThierer explains why Congress needs to rein in the FCC’s expanding power over speech, markets, and media.
Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
Gerrymandering lets politicians choose their voters instead of voters choosing their representatives. 🗳️
In his latest for @RSI, @JonMadison26 explains how distorted districts corrupt the People’s House and weaken the basic link between elections and accountability.
Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
My colleague @JonMadison26 has written another excellent piece! This time, he uses the latest escalation in the gerrymandering wars (my state of Virginia) to take a step back and look at this situation through a historical lens, and provide some legitimate solutions.
As someone who worked in the House of Representatives, I strongly believe it *must* belong to the people again, as the Founders intended. The chamber’s increasing politicization and functional irrelevance has severe and negative downstream effects on our governance practices and, in turn, civic culture.
Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
Primary elections are often decisive because so many general elections are not competitive. The piece notes estimates that around 90 percent of U.S. House seats and 80 percent of U.S. Senate races in the 2026 midterms are expected to lack a competitive general election. When that happens, the real decision gets pushed into a low-turnout primary electorate that is often older and less representative than the general public.
🔗 Read the full piece by @JonMadison26 here: bit.ly/4mo46B0
Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
American candidate selection often combines the weaknesses of two very different systems. Parties are too weak to provide strong ideological coherence or meaningful gatekeeping, but primaries are still often too closed and too low-turnout to produce broadly representative nominees. The result is a system that is neither strongly party-driven nor fully democratic in practice.
🔗 Read the full piece by @JonMadison26 here: bit.ly/4sMy3Mz
Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
For much of American history, political parties chose their own candidates through caucuses and conventions. That system could be elitist and exclusionary, but it also gave parties a clearer identity and a stronger role in shaping the candidates who represented their platform. Modern primaries weakened that structure without fully solving the representativeness problem.
🔗 Read the full piece by @JonMadison26 here: bit.ly/3QsZSvG
Dr. Jonathan Hembrough Madison retweeted
The shift to primaries made candidate selection more democratic than the old smoke-filled-room model, but it also helped produce weaker parties and platforms that mean less than they once did. Candidates now often owe their nomination more to a narrow slice of primary voters than to any coherent party organization with a durable brand or governing identity.
🔗 Read the full piece by @JonMadison26 here: bit.ly/4tv7RGR