Really excited to share this new report I wrote with my brilliant colleagues, @bilalb.bsky.social & @victorpickard.bsky.social! We explore the roots of the crises facing our media system & argue that a truly democratic information ecosystem must be protected from both state *&* commercial coercion⤵️

New from @rooseveltinstitute.org @bilalb.bsky.social @victorpickard.bsky.social @shahrzadshams.bsky.social "The next chapter of democracy reform must treat our media system as a core infrastructure that makes democracy possible & thus demands protection from both state control & commercial capture."

"[D]ecades of market-first policymaking has systematically eroded the media’s democratic function... consolidation that concentrated power in fewer hands, the abandonment of meaningful public-interest standards, and the rise of platform monopolies with virtually no accountability."

"Market supremacy has shrunk both our understanding of what a civic information economy ought to provide in a democracy, and our imagination about how to better guarantee the public access to reliable, diverse information." new from @rooseveltinstitute.org rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

"The crisis facing American journalism is the predictable outcome of decades of corporate libertarian media policy that prioritized commercial logics over democracy."

spoiler: mass media consolidated in the hands of ad-based corporations owned by a handful of right wing billionaires is easily exploited by a wide variety of bad actors and fatal to democracy and informed consensus

Consider how much time and energy are devoted to talking about media problems in Democratic / progressive political circles vs. how rarely one sees aligned think tanks devoting resources to policy development.

Thrilled to announce the publication of our @rooseveltinstitute.org report that uncovers the policy roots of the current crises facing our news, information & communication systems. We argue that media reform must become central to a US pro-democracy movement. rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

If I were sick, I would simply choose to be healthy. Bing bang boom bsky.app/profile/atru...

Was thrilled to help consult for this fantastic John Oliver segment on the tragic plight of U.S. public media and why, if we hope to be a democracy, we still need public media for so many things that commercial media will never provide. Deserves a wide viewership. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yknM...

You just know that “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” bit would have done NUMBERS in this little clique

“The incalculable damage left by Bush and Cheney’s day-in-and-day-out contempt for national and international law includes the power to sweep forward in time and trivialize into a matter of personal preference any future president’s adherence to the law.“ Elaine Scarry in 2008:

Still thinking about Zohran’s full-throated defense of immigration and how long i’ve waited for it. No bullshit about border security or “legal” immigrants but just unabashed support for immigrants. How many people feel so much more seen today? I know I do. 1/

It is time to admit that Republicans won the 2024 election by running to the center. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/o...

It probably doesn’t matter but I would be flooding the zone with images of the White House destruction right now.

“Let him among you who is without a Nazi tattoo cast the first stone.” -The Bible

🧵 Yesterday’s AWS failure wasn’t just a massive service disruption. It exposed how dependent our economy and public institutions have become on privatized, centralized systems. 1/4 www.fastcompany.com/91425078/aws...

Maybe it's time for the pathetic and cowardly Democratic Leadership to FINALLY ENDORSE ZOHRAN MAMDANI?

Everything about John Roberts's approach to the Voting Rights Act makes sense when you remember that John Roberts has has always been hostile to the Voting Rights Act, never believed it was appropriate, and has spent most of his 45-year legal career working to hollow it out.

Very bad: OSU unilaterally cancelled the registration of grad students attending the joint conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists. And OSU won't fund recruiting at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.

It was inevitable that, without needed change and reform, the War on Terror would swing back to America It’s the march of capitalism and its reliance on hidden and then overt authoritarianism. We can see where this is going by looking at what we did to others, and so we must band together with them

Unsurprisingly all over online right-wing media channels too. Amid the flood of ads for grifty “wellness” products and the occasional pitch to invest in gold, these recruitment ads have joined the steady rotation of horseshit on Rumble

ICE is not only chasing down every random brown person in Chicago, they have a cameraman following them to film this for social media. Cruelty and inhumanity as content.

Last month @rooseveltinstitute.org and NASI launched the Disability Economic Policy & Research Consortium. Read my colleague Lena Bilik's latest below on how a focus on this oft ignore population is crucial to building an inclusive economy. rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/disabil...

Deputy Director of Democratic Institutions lays out the cases to watch in this SCOTUS term. With the influence this court has had on landmark decisions and precedent, the outcomes will have long-lasting impacts.

"Haidt’s thesis is broader than just 'new thing bad.' In The Anxious Generation and his public commentary you find a dismissal of young people as a thinking, feeling group: they are anxious because of phones, they empathize with Gaza because of phones."

Important piece by @lookheron.bsky.social tracing how the steady neoliberalization of higher education has sowed fertile ground for its takeover by authoritarians

Stephen Miller said last year this was the plan. They said it out loud. Some of us highlighted his remarks at the time and warned how dangerous they were. Most of the media missed them and/or moved on from them. It’s happening:

A new SCOTUS term begins today. What fresh hell awaits our flailing democracy this time around?🧵

BREAKING: It’s official. David Ellison announces that Bari Weiss, founder of pro-Israel outlet “The Free Press,” is now Editor in Chief of CBS News, per internal memo shared with me:

Good stuff

Breaking news: ICE stops family at gunpoint—smash car window on top of newborn baby. "I was screaming that there was a baby. But they didn’t care," cried mother. “I covered my baby with my body—I was so scared he was going to be hurt because glass was landing on him."

fuck gavin newsome but making states choose between local vs federal backing is a really effective way to combat the Trump Shit and more people should do it.

A new @rooseveltinstitute.org report by @rfunkfordham.bsky.social empirically assesses the antidemocratic effects of Citizens United 15 years after it was decided. The findings speak for themselves: there is no place for big money in our political system. rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

We remember the revolutionary Assata Shakur, who passed away last week in Havana, Cuba at the age of 78.

Since the Ezra & Ta-Nehisi discussion is still happening: the main point I think most are missing is that Klein is saying the role of the journalist-intellectual is to do strategic politics, whereas Coates says the role of the journalist-intellectual is to tell the truth

Free speech depends on a diverse media landscape. Consolidation hands politicians and corporations the power to decide which voices get heard—and which don’t. Its impact is becoming increasingly evident every day, and it is a danger to democracy. rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/threats...

They create states of exception and impose limits on personhood. The “over there” is always right here, and no level of turning away can obscure that a system that sanctions and underwrites this monstrousness has already fenced each of us into a smaller, darker world.

Just left the funeral service for these children, community members killed by Israeli airstrike in South Lebanon yesterday. Dearborn is reeling. What we understand here is that the atrocities we fund and facilitate abroad always come back home.

Civil rights laws were designed to break down barriers & challenge unequal power. Today, the Court uses them to maintain barriers under a banner of “fairness.” Deputy Director of Democratic Institutions @shahrzadshams.bsky.social breaks down the Ames decision. ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cul...

what if... the real discrimination... is when lawmakers attempt to remedy... real discrimination?🤯 I wrote about the conservative legal movement's quest to weaponize civil rights laws in service of undermining those very laws for @ballsandstrikes.org ⤵️

Every post I see from a law professor is like: "I see that people are attempting to 'cancel' my dear colleague Professor Hitler, merely because of some social media outrage directed at his excellent work on Jew killing. I may not always agree with him, but this sort of behavior is indefensible."

We're thrilled to welcome @itsafronomics.bsky.social as our new graduate fellow! She will explore how our economic system burdens women of color—and how bold policy can build real equity. Join us in welcoming Anna! 🎉 rooseveltinstitute.org/press-releas...

Breaking: Transgender people lose Skrmetti, SCOTUS rules that Tennessee's law banning gender affirming care is not subject to heightened scrutiny. I'll be reading and reporting more fully today. Terrible day for transgender people. Full decision here: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

The Supreme Court’s decision in Ames isn’t about fairness—it’s about weakening civil rights law. @shahrzadshams.bsky.social unpacks how the Court is twisting civil rights law to work against the people it was designed to protect in #FiresideStacks 🔥 www.firesidestacks.com/p/the-antidi...

"Flint should have been a warning to the country that “efficiency” without regard for public welfare is a dangerous proposition. Yet DOGE was a far more extreme expression of this logic." Read @bilalb.bsky.social on DOGE www.freep.com/story/opinio...

A recent Democracy Docket report found that the Trump administration has, thus far, lost 96% of rulings in its cases before federal district courts. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...