“The Supreme Court has clarified a vision of US politics in which partisan affiliation serves as an antiseptic to the politics of race. But let’s be clear, it is a vision in which the rights of all voters are subordinate to supposedly ‘race-neutral’ claims of partisan advantage.”

Controlling For Party Affiliation open.substack.com/pub/mikelatn...

Budapest 2026: Consolidation Through a Hyper-Responsive Electoral System open.substack.com/pub/mikelatn...

My latest @houstoninstitute.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/mikelatn...

Callais arguments didn’t go well, as expected. Listening to the solicitor and LA counsel was like watching the dog poop throwing scene from Parks and Rec.

Saturday really came through, nice work Saturday! You are my favorite.

for Oakland residents: what’s being done in your county

Had a great chat @scholars.org on the gerrymandering arms race now underway, how we got here, and what we can do to fix this dysfunctional system.

Why suppress votes when you can just steal seats?

A growing number of GOP-led states are restricting student voting access, from banning campus polling places to making it harder to prove residency. Earlier this yar, Indiana banned student IDs for voting. boltsmag.org/indiana-bann...

Updated blog post here If we replicate using voter validated weights, Harris still wins among nonvoters If we assume ppl unmatched to voter file are nonvoters and use commonweight, Trump wins nonvoters data4democracy.substack.com/p/did-non-vo...

The recent DOE climate science report misrepresents the work of many researchers. Carbon Brief asked those cited to review the parts of the report where their work was used, and we collectively found 100+ misleading or false statements: interactive.carbonbr...

Really important questions raised by @justinlevitt.bsky.social Voters need a clear message about what they are authorizing. Then buy the ticket, take the ride.

Heavily armed used car salesmen ready to kill anyone who makes them feel uncomfortable. #FucktheRedeemers

FL Court trouncing both the VRA and their own voters who supported a fair maps initiative in 2010, which worked in that redistricting cycle.

4 U.S. citizen children, with their mother, held in a detention facility for 2 WEEKS. Denied access to lawyers and even communication with family. Disappeared. Held Incommunicado. No charges have been filed.

23 years ago, a groundswell of outrage from Republicans, including a GOP president, led Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi to resign after praising a segregationist on his birthday. Today, a Republican calls a colleague a "Muslim terrorist"—and every Republican silent.

The retaliatory firing today of over 100 EPA employees who stood up for scientific integrity — it’s shocking. But it’s also July 3. So this won’t even get on people’s radar.

Today I am on the hunt for ways to help. Message me if you have suggestions! The family wants to stay together (mother, father, baby). Their stuff is still in the apartment. They’d like to negotiate w/ the landlord to stay if possible. They need housing & a lawyer. This is in Jamaica, Queens (NYC).

It is increasingly clear that we are at the end of an era, and those committed to political equality and democracy need to build a shared vision of electoral system reform for the next era. We are on borrowed time.

Thanks to the folks @lseusablog.bsky.social for having me on to chat about democracy, my favorite subject! blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/20...

"Donald Trump’s appointees at the Department of Justice have removed all of the senior civil servants working as managers in the department’s voting section and directed attorneys to dismiss all active cases..." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I'll be totally honest. At 3am on Saturday, my heart sank as I combed through my spreadsheet and discovered wrongly listed "never residents." I've barely slept since and didn't think my reporting would make any difference. At least for now, it has. #ncpol andersonalerts.substack.com/p/ncsbe-give...

Bookmarking this valuable tracker on student visa revocations, from @insidehighered.com As of right now, IHE database shows that more than 1,000 international students & recent graduates have had their legal status changed by State Dept. www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...

to all who celebrate...

Road to the VRA: 60 years ago today, after a day-long meeting, Democratic and GOP Senate leaders announce that they have reached an agreement with the Johnson administration on expanding the scope of the proposed Voting Rights Act.

"dei medal" you might as well just put "n*gger medal" because that's what they mean to say

The effort to truncate legislatively enacted programs and to purge their employees, at the utterly misinformed and erroneous judgment of Elon Musk, who heads a department that is not really a department in the legal sense, is a manifestation of what Balkin has rightly called "constitutional rot."

Wow

Threatening to use the criminal sanction of the state against an elected opposition figure for making statements well within the ordinary scope of political discourse. This is a deeply disturbing letter.

This is called party building mailchi.mp/boltsmag/new...

A huge success by all measures! Thank you to everyone who attended the Guinier Project’s Research Roundtable, especially the research team that put together 50k+ words in a few months. Stay tuned, this team is doing great work!

Making new friends underwater, thank you Manolo and Scuba Dogs PR! #scuba #spsa2025

I should have mentally prepared for the fact that if you have a conference in PR you are going to see political scientists in swim suits.

The impeachment vote in Korea was a secret ballot. I think that if the US Senate voted that way, Trump would have been convicted after January 6.

Thread, and paper. During crunches, social service cut more than cops. During booms, cops get more than restored, social services do not. A constant bipartisan prioritization of policing over all else. Despite clear evidence—this is me, not paper—that that is bad policy for our marginal dollars.

Tsunami warning:

In light of the other constitutional crises bound to erupt, @stephenwolf.bsky.social does a nice job illustrating that we still need to fix this corruption of federalism

No net change = errors will randomly cancel out change

Happy to share a new collaborative paper on the conceptual and empirical distinction between PoC solidarity and PoC identity, with #SethGoldman, #YuenHuo, #TatisheNteta, and #LindaTropp. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

If only there were some way to depoliticize the creation of district boundaries. Then again GOP looking to get about 21% of CA House seats while Trump got 38% of statewide vote, not from gerrymandering but from the seat bonus the largest party gets under our restrictive electoral system.

Great new analysis of the education realignment shows individual & geographic change. Because cultural industries are dominated by the educated & the educated spend a lot more on reading & entertainment, institutions, culture, & audiences move left www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...