USMNT striker Folarin Balogun is playing for the U.S. due to his birthright citizenship, a process now targeted by Trump.

The SCOTUS today reaffirmed the guarantee of birthright citizenship. In so doing, it affirms the 1898 SCOTUS decision in Won Kim Ark. United States. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

We’ll take the W but this birthright citizenship ruling should have been 9-0. It’s insane this was 6-3 (with a 5-4 Kavanaugh split on statutory reasoning). Thomas, Gorsuch, & Alito dissented. The 14th Amendment is incredibly clear, as Justice Roberts definitively lays out in his majority decision.

When state level Republicans seek to deny cities - Democratic or otherwise - from raising the minimum wage that says a lot about their priorities. Good reporting from @nebraskaexaminer.com.

Trinity Moravian Church, a politically diverse congregation in Winston-Salem, N. C., has been raising money to retire medical debt in the surrounding community.

while we’re talking about lawrence, kansas, just a quick plug to say that it’s a wonderful place

OPINION: "[R]edrawing the lines of the 2nd District, which owes its Black majority to the presence of the Mississippi Delta, can only be seen as way to destroy Black political power in a district the GOP has not won since 1984," Chris Danielson writes.

Team Algeria tied Austria 3-3 tonight, and Lawrence's newest home team will advance to the round of 32 in the World Cup. lawrenceks.news/4f7isn1

A federal judge has permanently blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from requiring people to present proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Lawrence, Kansas’s warm embrace of the Algerian team might be the best World Cup story to date. Americans are a kinder, more welcoming people than xenophobic “divide and conquer” politicians want us to be.

Can a well-financed independent candidate tap the state’s large reservoir of voters who claim to reject party labels? And can frustration with partisan gridlock shave off enough frustrated voters from both major parties to add up to a winning plurality? Seth Bodnar intends to find out.

I went to Springfield last night. The town is understandably heartbroken, but united and prepared. Forward together.

New Hampshire Republicans really like making it harder for everyone to vote.

“Dobbs changed Maine because Dobbs changed America,” said Marie Follayttar, who helped lead the local campaign against Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation. “Every woman now knows that rights once considered settled can disappear until the next election." mainemorningstar.com/2026/06/24/p...

Kansas poll of likely Democratic voters favors Holscher for governor, Hamilton for U.S. Senate | via @kansascarpenter.bsky.social #ksleg

KYUK reports on how an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on mail voting could affect thousands of Alaskans:

Black communities in Utah have gathered to commemorate Juneteenth for decades. This year, the celebration is a little bittersweet, advocates say.

New from me: Georgia Republicans abruptly changed course on redistricting Wednesday, retreating from their plans to redraw congressional and state district lines for 2028 less than an hour before lawmakers gaveled in for the special session. #gapol georgiarecorder.com/2026/06/17/g...

Hannah Pingree was pronounced the Democratic nominee for governor, emerging victorious from a crowded field after the five-day ranked-choice voting tabulations concluded at roughly 1:45 a.m. Friday morning. mainemorningstar.com/2026/06/19/p...

This is the America that I love and Lawrence, Kansas is one of my favorite small cities anywhere, a Midwest college town with brains and heart. The World Cup is bringing out the best in the U.S., FIFA corruption and Trump Admin xenophobia be damned!

Mainers may be tired of Susan Collins, but America’s billionaires sure aren’t. Nearly 100 of them (and their spouses) have ante’d up for her Senate campaign. They see her as a good return on investment; meanwhile, most Mainers struggle to pay the bills.

My @kansasreflector.com column today.

Best weekend ever for NYC/NJ? Knicks 🏀 in 5 🙏, World Cup opening match with Brazil 🇧🇷 v Morocco 🇲🇦, and the Puerto Rican Day Parade 🇵🇷. And all of this during 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Pride Month. What a time to be alive… and here!

Is it too early to already be tired of Alexei Lalas?

the single biggest takeaway i have from this interview is that on top of being profoundly incompetent, bari weiss and her flunkies at CBS are genuinely terrible human beings. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/07/m...

Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, legislatures in the South are rapidly dismantling Black political power to help a failing president maintain control of Congress, and claw back gains made by Black people and their allies in their own states www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/o...

Opposition to data centers is the hyper-local issue that is piercing partisan divides across the nation. Also now leading to proposed regulations in some states. Interesting bipartisan story here from Texas…

Utah Republicans refused to create fair district maps, lost in court, failed to gather enough signatures to put a question on the ballot, & are now stacking their state supreme court with under-qualified male conservatives. Their ideology fueled mediocrity is gutting democracy in the Beehive State.

After months of hard-fought battles between two factions of the Montana Republican Party, it appears that each camp of the GOP won a significant number of races in Tuesday’s primary election, according to results from The Associated Press.

A federal judge struck down New Hampshire’s new law requiring hard-copy proof of citizenship for voter registration Thursday, finding it unconstitutional, in a move that could stop its implementation for the midterm elections. From @ethandewitt.bsky.social #NHPolitics

Interesting analysis of Trump's approval by 'county type' and how those counties voted in 2024. From the American Communities Project, using data from Strength In Numbers www.americancommunities.org/new-analysis...

My final piece on Graham Platner and the US Senate race. At almost 5000 words, it's long but based on several meetings with Platner and others. I'm not arguing with people online, so there are no comments. Life is too short to be stressed. open.substack.com/pub/shaystew...

The Candidate From Rural Maine Fighting Big Money: To get dark money out of politics, Democrats need to reform primary elections barnraisingmedia.com/the-candidat...

Mi Familia Vota said in a statement the Justice Department’s brief shows “MAGA Republicans and their friends in the Trump Administration are once again trying to disenfranchise Latino voters in Arizona.”

Thousands of Mississippians protested in Jackson, Miss., on Wednesday against the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision weakening the Voting Rights Act and the push to remove majority-Black districts throughout the South. Here are some photos from the protest.

My statement on Mayor Duggan's departure from the governor’s race.

MAGA in trouble in Montana: a congressman who won by 30% in 2024 in a deep red district is now underwater. Only 34% of voters in his conservative district now approve of him. Gaslighting voters on affordability, wars, & trade policies is not a winning strategy.

Ken Paxton’s hypocrisy is well-documented. He's one of the loudest proponents for requiring schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Yet he’s famously eschewed Number 7 multiple times (thou shalt not commit adultery).

If you follow Nebraska politics, incl. Omaha’s “blue dot” swing congressional district, @4nsmiley.bsky.social is a consistently good read. Here’s his post-primary look at @deniseforcongress.bsky.social’s surprising Democratic primary win.

Women voters in Maine supporting Graham Platner by 20 points over Susan Collins. He leads overall by 7%, incl. by 13% with independents. Undecideds are 11%.

Do you know I actually think that these people are so inoculated from any public sentiment that they are legitimately shook by a handful of boos at commencements this week?

NEW: Sen Michael Bennet (D) says he will not appoint Gov Jared Polis to the Senate if Bennet is elected Governor. Bennet calls Polis' clemency for Tina Peters "disqualifying"

Susan Collins holds $4.8 million in stocks, including Amazon. She also voted to give Amazon a massive tax break. Coincidentally.

World Cup anticipation in the US was ruined by FIFA greed & its b.s. “world peace” award for the globally polarizing Trump, whose immigration and war policies made travel to the US undesirable & unaffordable. In Mexico City, it felt totally different: excited, patriotic, & ready for a great party.

I remember how huge the run-up to the 1994 World Cup in the US was. It was all-consuming. This time is nothing near that scale even though soccer has grown substantially in the US since then. Feels like the political atmosphere has completely poisoned the event (or at least the anticipation).

Anthropic co-founder to launch AI encyclical with Pope Leo: “His presence…in the Vatican event may offer an opportunity to discuss one of the central questions in AI safety: whether the most powerful systems can be understood well enough to be trusted.” 🎁 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Yesterday, a new generation of civil rights activists marched from Selma to Montgomery to fight for voting rights. As states across the country try to make it harder for citizens to be heard, we need to learn the lessons of those who came before us and refuse to take our democracy for granted.

For you to understand how much the world has changed, in the 1970s as a second grader we were REQUIRED to watch the TV show adaptation of ROOTS. REQUIRED. www.knoxnews.com/story/news/e...

So the Republican Supermajority breaks the law and violates the constitution to strip Memphis of representation — then Speaker Sexton strips Dems of committee assignments for daring to protest. Welcome to Tennessee.

Georgia's governor signs a comically transparent law. It makes local elections in 5 big blue counties nonpartisan, to give GOP candidates a chance to win without a party label in places like Atlanta. And it doesn't change anything in the rest of the state, for red counties to know who's GOP.