Funny how after every SCOTUS ruling striking down some protection from government abuse, the officials those protections restrained — cops, prosecutors, Republican state electeds — immediately start acting in the precise manner SCOTUS assured us they no longer do.

VC Defensa volunteer Leo Martinez woke up at 3am on Wednesday to federal agents breaking down his door to search his home — the latest escalation in the federal government's campaign to harass and intimidate people who patrol immigration enforcement operations www.huffpost.com/entry/federa...

New piece in Science: Sudden elimination of USAID grants triggered waves of violence in affected regions in Africa, undermining civic governance and fueling civic unrest. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This fall @knightcolumbia.org will host a workshop on the role of the legal profession in resisting authoritarianism. Authors will present draft essays to be published as part of our "Lawyering Without Law" project. The participants are an incredible group: knightcolumbia.org/blog/knight-...

Dozens of empty Waymos invaded an Atlanta neighborhood and circled a cul-de-sac for hours with no passengers www.wsbtv.com/news/local/a...

Holy balls, this opinion: "As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors . . . will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary. DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case." (via @chrisgeidner.bsky.social) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

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.

Spot on - "our concerns are not about whether one grant or another gets funded, but instead about the independence of science, and the dangers of politicized advice" Thanks to authors @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social, Richard Aslin and Lynn Nadel thebulletin.org/2026/05/nati...

Wrote about how the conservative majority on the Supreme Court have basically stopped to even pretending that they're not tilting the playing field for the GOP (no matter what John Roberts is saying).

New from 404 Media: spoke to four people who attended a trade show where senior ICE officials spoke about how much Palantir is supercharging their arrests. List of 20 million people on ICE agents phones now; increased chance of successful arrest from 28 to 80% www.404media.co/ice-agents-h...

Finally, a major American newspaper whose editorial board is courageous enough to stand up for the rights of big tech companies.

I'm reminded of the number of times in graduate school and during my early career where I heard supposedly rigorous scholars dismiss work on racism as too radical or unserious. “Things have changed” they assured me.

The anti-data center movement isn’t just about limiting local development—it represents a new front in the fight against tech-enabled authoritarianism. Where else can people push back on job-eating algorithms, distorting deep fakes, and autonomous drone strikes? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

They hacked Canvas during finals week. This is why the faculty need a secure ballroom.

We often think of authoritarianism as lawless. But it can operate through law itself. What does it mean for democracy when that happens? ⬇️ DROPS TOMORROW: Lawyering Without Law, a new biweekly podcast from the Knight First Amendment Institute. Available on all platforms.

The party of local control has decided that "local" means wherever they have control www.texastribune.org/2026/05/08/a...

By far the most corrupt president in history and the media has decided it isn't a story.

I figured I'd write a short something wondering why Sam Alito said we couldn't force Texas to change its unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps in December because people there need "certainty" but he's happy to help Louisiana change its maps now, even as ballots have already sent...

This is also why every client refuses to comment on the record about the receipts brought by the reporter: the whole point is to make it seem like someone out there is organically discovering a film or podcast and sharing their favorite bit but obviously that is not what's really happening.

This is such good reporting from Mia. Clipping is a hallmark of what I'm starting to think of as the anti-social web: the sheer volume crowds out content from people you know (fulfilling demand from the platforms) and the clips themselves are more a product of The Algorithm than the clipped text.

It’s kind of a metaphor for American democracy in the 2020s. After Jan 6 2021, the coup appeared dead and even GOP elites were looking to oust the authoritarian wing. A few years later the same wing controls all of government and intimidated much of civil society into submission

French prosecutors seek charges against Elon Musk and X over child sexual abuse images

I really wonder what the fallout is going to be because the sanitized version of history they’ve sold for a long time is “Jim Crow was a shameful moment in history but we defeated it and came out the other side a better country” and now it’s just… back it’s the end of a myth in the starkest terms

Utah's plan to effectively outlaw VPNs is incoherent.

When democracy is restored, all the people engaged in this sort of corrupt war profiteering need to be put in jail: www.marketwatch.com/story/trader...

Unearthed reports reveal that RFK Jr. fired every full-time CDC cruise ship sanitation inspector ahead of the Hantavirus cruise ship outbreak. www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-cru...

This is a feature, not a bug.

/3 This noisome pretense was pushed by the mouthpieces of the Right like the Federalist Society and eventually enough minions formed a majority on SCOTUS to enact it. So: to avoid the racism of noticing racism, you can now disenfranchise Black Americans.

One year later - my reflections on what's happened to US science since the National Science Foundation grant terminations last year. The problem of misinformation isn't going away, but our ability to study and understand it is under attack. 1/ 🧪 www.tennessean.com/story/opinio...

And, to be clear, this isn’t an anti-AI post. It’s an expression of frustration with a corner of the academy that seems to think the answer is always more, more, more. Ideas worth engaging take time. And I’m not convinced I want quick, efficiently produced ideas. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t.

FWIW, I don’t think the major problem in my field, or related ones, is that people need to move faster & produce more. I read a lot of papers as part of the job, and I’m increasingly convinced we’d benefit from fewer papers and better ones, not more mediocre work produced ever more “efficiently.”

The Supreme Court is basically copying the script that gave us Jim Crow and the New York Times and the Atlantic are running stories about “DEI” going too far and Kendi’s alleged over-reach. It’s almost like they are providing cover or agree.

It’s striking that the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais is in some ways worse than even the "pessimistic" predictions of folks writing about race. Yet, not a single reactionary centrist has admitted that the alleged excesses of "wokeness" weren't excessive. They were realistic.

horrible. this country’s turn away from science based medicine in the name of “wellness” is killing children and will kill a lot more. www.propublica.org/article/more...

Awesome, I'm sure these will stay only among 21+ and not be used by kids at all. MAHA!

Mark Zuckerberg built a massive data center in Georgia just hundreds of yards from people’s homes. Now the water pressure is gone. Sinks don’t run. Toilets won’t refill. Homes shake nonstop. Power outages are routine.

CASE DISMISSED

Our scientific agencies are being run by people who oppose science

I cannot stress how cataclysmically STUPID it is to not fund science.

“Under pressure to deliver in the fight against serious cross-border crime, Europol built and operated a shadow data analysis platform containing large volumes of sensitive information, which operated without key legal and technical safeguards.” www.computerweekly.com/news/3666425...

Also... kinda seems worth noting that half the reason so many Silicon Valley VCs lined up behind Trump was because a pretty toothless AI policy plan from Biden that basically told companies "be more thoughtful." If the Biden admin had talked about pre-vetting models, it would have been a HUGE story.

so far, much of the analysis of Callais out there is focused on what the Court's rulings did to the Voting Rights Act, which is reasonable but now I want to talk about what the Court did to the Constitution bc the threat of Callais goes far beyond the VRA alone ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...

this is so beyond fucked. take care while watching the video.

Remember, back in December this same SCOTUS said it was too late to change Texas' maps (that had just been changed in August) after they were deemed (by a Trump-appointed judge) to be unconstitutional. So Dec. was too late, but May (after ballots have been sent) is fine? WTF?

1. ICE has not paid for detainee medical care for 7 MONTHS The termination of payments to providers has coincided with a MASSIVE SPIKE in detainee deaths. This is a health crisis and a moral crisis. Follow along for details. 🧵

We fought. We won. Others can too. www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carus...

Dropping a gift link so non-subscribers can access this fantastic story: www.texasmonthly.com/news-politic...

This line in particular makes me feel ill: "The dissent would require that the 2026 congressional elections in Louisiana be held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional." SCOTUS' Republican majority has long required elections to be held under illegal maps—when it hurts Dems.

Part of how US institutions have become so brazenly corrupt is that elites have been more focused on maintaining the appearance of legitimacy than on acting with legitimacy. We cannot message our way out of this. On Institutional Legitimacy and Phantom Limbs davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/on-institu...

Given the argument that ended the VRA, I think it’s time liberals did some self reflection about the now decades long obsession with partisan polarization as the problem, as opposed to authoritarianism, extremism, oligarchy, and racism