Teachers unions are notorious figures in state politics, asserting influence over elections and education policy with their large memberships and well-funded PACs. Nonetheless, during the Great Recession Republican-controlled state governments repeatedly clashed with teachers unions over their members' compensation and collective bargaining (CB) rights. Conversely, public safety officers were less frequently targeted-and in some cases explicitly shieldedfrom CB conflicts. Is this because teachers support Democrats, while cops support Republicans? I evaluate this proposition considering state reform patterns and union partisan campaign donations.

I examine firearm homicide and injury data from more cities ( N = 1,328) during a longer timespan (2015–2021) than previous research on firearm violence encapsulating the Covid-19 pandemic. I contextualize the historic 2020 spike in gun violence within a broader trend of worsening gun violence impacting hundreds of US cities since 2015. More cities (364) are surpassing adverse homicide rate benchmarks observed during the 1980s–1990s, and US states situated in all regions contain numerous peak gun violence cities. Examining gun violence trends outside of the largest US cities is imperative, since 42% of all firearm homicides occur in places with populations <250,000, and over two-thirds of peak violence cities (243) have fewer than 100,000 residents. A shared sense of the scope and severity of the problem of gun violence is also urgently needed. For too many American communities, it’s not as bad as the 1990s, it’s worse.

Conventional narratives suggest that during the Great Recession, Republican-controlled state governments seized a political opportunity to de-unionize labor strongholds by enacting sweeping right-to-work laws. However, I contend that two distinct reform approaches were pursued during the recession. One type aimed to restrict the ability of unions to organize and maintain membership (the “right-to-work” approach), while the other sought to constrain collective bargaining without hampering union organizing. My analysis of 2,545 labor relations bills introduced across the U.S. States from 2007 to 2014 confirms the existence of two broad models of reform, each with differing implications for organized labor and partisan politics.

This study asks if Black mayors’ individual and collective responses to George Floyd’s killing were qualitatively different than mayoral reactions to the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. Specifically, I examine whether Black mayors rejected the “timeworn” tradition of respectability politics in favor of a new paradigm in 2020. I also consider the characteristics of mayors, cities, and media that may explain this change. My original dataset includes 232 public statements issued by 31 Black mayors during either the Obama administration (2014–2015) or Trump administration (2020). I find that the cohort of Black mayors leading large cities during Era 2 were demonstrably less likely to activate respectability politics when talking about Floyd’s murder than their predecessors. I discuss the implications of these observations considering the political climate mayors are confronting at the time of writing, around the 2-year anniversary of Floyd’s death.