American democracy is not something you ask Republicans for, and if they say no, go "ah well, too bad."

My policy brief on Judicial Capture is now out, as part of The Authoritarian Ecosystem collection by @wfd.org and PSA Courts are now sites of democratic contestation. They can accelerate backsliding or resist it. Understanding how they are captured matters. www.wfd.org/what-we-do/r...

DPIR’s @scottrw630.bsky.social co-authors a policy brief on how autocrats use fake democracy & propaganda to weaken public support, and how advocates can defend democratic norms, accurate info, and civic education. Read more: https://tinyurl.com/mutr5r6y

Ah you see after *this* round of being cruel to foreigners then the government will have established itself as Serious on immigration, surely! The right wing press will start taking a kinder approach to reporting on green energy and nimby racists will reconsider their opposition to new developments!

New from me @notus.com: Internally, FBI agents are now referring to a "payback squad" based in NY or DC. Its remit? Targeting former government officials. www.notus.org/trump-white-...

again, i don’t think any of this is necessary. just say that the court was out of bounds, that it may be correct on the definition of “election” but that this technical matter has no bearing on the results of the referendum, which occurred in a free and fair contest.

If you want to understand the political process that ended Reconstruction and led to a century of racial terrorism in the South, check out this response to Dems losing four House seats.

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

All I will say is that today's results are the very predictable outcome of Labour's strategic decisions. Most of them without any pressure to do so. This is true for both the big losses to the Greens and the normalization and legitimation of Reform.

This paper provides new evidence suggesting support for fiscal austerity is shallow: while many voters endorse debt reduction in principle, few prioritise it over healthcare or social spending. Even worsening fiscal conditions may not significantly increase pro-austerity support.

⚠️ Louise Lucus is one of the architects of Virginia's successful redistricting effort, so it’s almost certain this is politically motivated:

Has US democracy declined under the second Trump administration? For @lseusablog.bsky.social, I've summarized results from a survey of political scientists in the American Political Science Association's Democracy and Autocracy Section: tinyurl.com/3xcnkt46.

We're hiring a Post-Doc (3 years) at the @hertieschool.bsky.social for a @scripts-berlin.eu project on authoritarian influence in the video games industry (I am soooo excited about this project)! More details here (deadline 31 May): hertie-school.dvinci-easy.com/en/p/en/jobs...

In December SCOTUS claimed it was too close to election to block Texas gerrymander but now allowing Southern states to straight up cancel elections to resurrect Jim Crow

Political scientists studying democracy and autocracy think that US democracy has declined significantly finds @scottrw630.bsky.social of @ox.ac.uk blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/20...

Are you an early career scholar? Do you want to be part of the next season of our workshop series and get feedback from experts in the field? Apply by May 31 here: forms.gle/5SSuuybK3739... For more information visit: apsg.work/seminar-rules/

The Voting Rights Act “was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. “Only [the American people] have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the members of this Court.” trib.al/bChcU7j

This Court, and the right more generally, is not merely undermining democracy. They are targeting multiracial democracy. That has always been the dividing line. And as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue, it is multiracial democracy or no democracy at all.

Conference funding opportunity! Deadline May 10. APSA is offering up to $4000 in funding per panel for travel to an international conference of select political science associations. Full info here, including links to eligible conferences including ECPR and CEPSA: apsanet.org/PROGRAMS/Int...

This kind of downstream consequence is precisely how authoritarianism works - even if SPLC beats the case, they suffer severe financial and reputational harms, deterring further opposition.

Breaking: The Trump-aligned FCC is planning to file paperwork as early as this afternoon that will challenge Disney's eight licenses for its eight ABC stations. The early-renewal move would be a major escalation by Brendan Carr and would be widely seen as retaliation over Jimmy Kimmel cnn.it/41XdjH1

🚨 Job alert! 🚨 Postdoc in Comparative Politics/Public Opinion/IR (3 yrs) @unigreifswald.bsky.social Work on democratic resilience in times of crisis using cross-national survey data. flexible start (earliest possible) deadline: 31 May 2026 🔗 www.uni-greifswald.de/en/universit...

Highlights from the MPSA "Town Hall" on US democratic collapse, featuring leading scholars in political science. 🧵 (1) Moderator, @nazita.bsky.social , starts off with a plain description of democratic decline in the US with an impressive list of illiberal activity and rapid decline. 1/

Well, they've finally struck home. #ICE has detained my former #umich student, Yousif Azizi, a PhD student in public policy at Virginia Tech w/a valid visa. He was arrested while taking his children to school in Maryland. After multiple transfers, he is in a detention center in Arizona.

Yesterday, journalist Amal Khalil was struck by an IDF airstrike while she was reporting in southern Lebanon. As rescuers tried to save her life, they were fired upon.

Khalil is the 9th journalist killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon this year. [1/2]

It’s simple economics: only counterintuitive if you don’t understand supply and demand. The price of “skills” that can be automated goes to zero, the relative price of anything that the computer cannot do goes up. That means judgment, wisdom, ethics, and knowledge.

“When Democrats’ own voters complain about their party in their own words, the complaint is not that Democrats are too liberal or “weak and woke”, it’s that they’re not fighting hard enough, particularly against Donald Trump.”

Remember, Democrats have repeatedly advanced measures to ban partisan gerrymandering and Republicans have voted against them time after time. This is the game Republicans wanted to play. OK, then.

The special issue of @cpsjournal.bsky.social “Back from the Brink: Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies”, co-edited by myself and Isabela Mares, was just published. The issue includes 8 articles, many of which set new research agendas. A🧵w/overview 1/10 journals.sagepub.com/toc/CPS/curr...

Polish communism was also defeated, in the end, by an election. www.thefp.com/p/orbans-ous...

✍️ Apply to our ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship! The European Institute is looking to support a Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2026/27 academic year. 🗓️ Deadline: Monday 1 June, 23.59 (UK time) 👉 Find out more: https://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/research/postdoctoral-fellowship-opportunity

Why I don't expect liberal democracy to go away any time soon: My article on the resilience of liberal democracy, published in @jeppjournal.bsky.social. Perfectly timed to the day after Orbáns defeat and a small spike in "democracy-optimism". There are, I argue, good reasons for such optimism.

The entire point of a democracy is that no party ever has to do what Tisza did to win an election.

@au.dk is hiring 3 postdocs (2 yrs) on personality cults & strategic communication in autocracies, led by Jakob Tolstrup & Alexander Baturo. They're looking for profiles with text-as-data, survey experiments and/or Chinese politics experience. Start fall 2026. Looks like a great opportunity!

Not forcing parallels - what Hungary did yday was historical - but like with the 2025 German elections (where ppl mobilized against the surge of the AfD) and the Italian referendum last month, it is critical to recall that it‘s easier to form opposition; the harder task is to support a new project.

i will vote for any candidate who offers up this slogan

People will be closely studying how Hungary's opposition pulled off their win in such a pro-incumbent system. Important to note that the theme was corruption. Democrats need to get much better at calling out Trump's corruption.

Now Tisza projected at 138 seats against 54 of Orban’s Fidesz. If these numbers are confirmed, this is a larger victory than Orbàn’s 2010 landslide, which allowed him to change the 🇭🇺Constitution and start backsliding towards an illiberal democracy. A historic day.

Orban concedes in Hungary. Good reminder that incumbents can lose even in competitive authoritarian regimes if there is enough a wave of popular support for the opposition. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/w...

Wow.

Join us tomorrow for our first APSG-APSA Democracy & Autocracy roundtable! Anya Schiffrin, Bardia Rahmani, Erin Baggott Carter, @linettelim.bsky.social and @scottrw630.bsky.social will discuss attacks on media freedom during democratic decline To register: t.co/yeyXAuX0G5

Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here:

Yep. Dems need to be speaking loudly and in unison about the urgent national need to remove this madman from office immediately.

How American officials, be they Republican, Democrat or neither, respond to this moment -- one in which the man who controls our nuclear arsenal has promised what could amount to genocide -- will define so much. May enough rise to the moment with the gravity it demands.

I've seen people on here blaming Biden for what Trump is doing but at the end of the day its the Republicans in the Senate that refused to convict Trump, the Republicans on SCOTUS that gave him immunity, and the Republicans today who refuse to constrain him that are entirely responsible.

This is completely insane and he should be impeached. It is also extremely confusing. He writes "God Bless the Great People of Iran!" in the same post as he threatens them with annihilation (although I guess it makes sense in a sick way) and brags about having ushered in regime change (he has not).

'Don't try to sway foreign elections' says guy trying to sway a foreign election.

Do younger voters turn against older people when politics feels unfair? @alonsoroman.bsky.social & @scottrw630.bsky.social show that perceived age-based political exclusion is strongly linked to explicit ageism across Italy, South Korea, and the US. Read more: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Iran is threatening to target American universities operating in the Middle East. Georgetown, Cornell, Northwestern and other university campuses closed their premises in Qatar until further notice. New York University’s Abu Dhabi operation has done the same.

OK this is much better. Credit where due, given all the criticism. More please.