Please help my student, Sayna Kaushik, who is working on an amazing AI-driven app that helps voters get accurate information about the voting process in each of the 50 states. She needs volunteers to spend about 15 minutes trying out two versions of the app for her research. Link is in the comments.

Many of you have seen the viral clip wherein Steven Bartlett says that '3 glasses of wine' disabled him for three days, and his Whoop fitness sensor says so. It's an ad. Here's the backstory of a complex influence campaign funded by major tech investors. america2.news/the-anatomy-...

This is an important thing to understand about the 1-2 step the Supreme Court engaged in to gut the VRA: they first said that partisan gerrymandering was bad, but there was nothing they could do about it in 2019. That paved the way for Callais. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/power-demo...

The basic idea in the current context is to ‘slice off’ the advantages coming from recent statewide actions. The proposal faces the same obstacles as any targeting partisan advantage. However, it does not ask the major parties to factionalize themselves.

You can apply lots of normalizing frameworks or you can just make a timeline of his calls with Putin. We don’t have a sovereign foreign policy. We have superpower suicide.

Here they are: our two top Iran negotiators. No diplomatic experience. In way over their head. Both with massive financial conflicts of interest, their fortunes tied to the Middle East dictators that make them rich. What a disaster.

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/

11/ Lester Spence anchors the program with an impassioned call for political scientists to be the teachers in our communities--give Americans the language they need to describe and observe democratic decline, injustice, and hte integral relationship between racial injustice and democratic governance

I'm excited to announce this webinar on Wednesday April 29th (4:00PM EST) called "Protecting the Midterm Elections in a Time of Democratic Backsliding." You can learn more about the event and register by following this link: scholars.my.salesforce-sites.com/event/home/d...

Nope. Nope. Nope. This post is just two false statements.

Yes, I'm cautiously optimistic here. The two-thirds majority is basically absolute power in the Hungarian system; if Magyar is capable of maintaining party unity, Tisza has the capability to undo Orbánism and bring back democracy. But it still won't be easy. bsky.app/profile/saur...

Magyar's defeat of Orban in Hungary today illustrates perfectly the concept I describe here: repolarize to depolarize. Shifting the line of conflict from L-R or Urban-Rural to Nation vs Oligarchs was a winning move, and lesson for U.S. Repolarize to Depolarize open.substack.com/pub/betterco...

i will vote for any candidate who offers up this slogan

Lessons that all Americans should contemplate about the road ahead for Hungary and for us

A lot of Orbán's American fans are saying that this election proved he was never an authoritarian in the first place. This is completely wrong — and, in fact, betrays a complete misunderstanding of both Hungarian politics and modern authoritarianism. Here's why.

Orbán's best bet for regime survival — for returning to power — wasn't staging a doomed January 6-style putsch in the face of overwhelming defeat. It was retreating, and doing everything he can to preserve regime elements that would allow for a return to competitive authoritarianism in the future.

The victory of the opposition in Hungary yesterday, like the Polish election in 2023, is a victory for democracy, not just in Europe but around the world.

As someone who researches and teaches comparative democracy/authoritarianism you have no idea how happy it makes me to see people like Zack and @jamellebouie.net who have read the polisci

There are good lessons to learn about voting, organizing etc. But I worry people will learn the wrong lesson about concessions. Orban conceded. Trump never will. We cannot get lulled into a false sense of security for 2026. More tomorrow…

Kudos to all the movement organizers and organizations in Hungary who have pushing back against the Orban regime and showing the world a path away from autocracy. The jury is still out on Magyar but this is a huge step forward. Gratitude and congratulations are due.

This is the paragraph I re-read a few times.

The SAVE Act goes beyond voter ID. It would require a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, which would block millions of American citizens from voting.

Really smart point by @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social "Indeed, it’s quite possible that when all is said and done it will turn out that this war will be seen as a case of a hawkish faction rolling Trump, rather than something that Trump did because he wanted to." open.substack.com/pub/goodpoli...

A potential consequence of populists’ hyper-mediatized approach to politics is they create evidence for their own future indictment. Here’s to hoping.

More corrupt than all other administrations in American history combined, and it’s not close.

I’ve been studying civil rights protests for 20 years. With new mobilization against Trump’s agenda, I’m sharing a thread summarizing my research on how nonviolent & violent actions by 1960s activists and police influenced media, elites, public opinion & voters. 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Resistance as a Framework for Combating Cognitive Offload The post discusses the necessity of resistance in using AI for education, comparing it to physical training. While generative AI can lead to cognitive laziness, integrating resistance can help maintain learning integrity. The author…

V-Dem's 2026 Democracy Report dropped today. Two key headlines: (1) "The USA loses its long-term status as a liberal democracy for the first time in over 50 years." (2) "The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history." www.v-dem.net/documents/75...

The leading alternative to jetting forward with blind ambition is not "introspection" or "being stuck in the past". It is to blend one's ambition with prudence and justice. It is to be -- unlike this pathetic man -- a person of noble ambition...

"'If the U.S. ends up withdrawing' from the Iran nuclear deal, I wrote in March 2017, 'it sets the Middle East on a path to two possible futures: (1) A nuclear Iran. (2) War. Both are much worse than the status quo.' Nine years later, America launched a war on Iran."

This should be a great talk by Bernie Tamas, a leading scholar on third parties.

Sharing this special President’s Day convo with @Kim Wehle on Trump, legal authoritarianism, and the massive erosion of not just law but democratic norms we’ve experienced since we last celebrated this holiday. open.substack.com/pub/robertpj...

In Printz v. United States, #SCOTUS held that the Constitution bars the federal government from forcing or otherwise compelling local or state governments to enforce federal law. The liberal squish who wrote the majority opinion in that case? Justice Antonin Scalia: tile.loc.gov/storage-serv...

Within 4 hours of ICE (actually CBP) killing Alex Pretti, the data suggested that the right wing spin machine was having trouble gaining traction, even on their home turf over on X. Here's a Substack I wrote analyzing X data from that time. katestarbird.substack.com/p/another-mu...

The people of Minnesota have executed one of the most impressive civil resistance campaigns I can remember: - Organized a city wide general strike - Maintained nonviolent discipline amidst violence - Mobilized 10,000s in subzero temps to protest and watch ICE - Flipped public opinion against ICE

On the weakness of state terror: once ppl internalize the regime's lawless brutality, that they are no safer in their homes than in the streets (& vice versa), and that their unwavering defiance is what confounds & disempowers the regime, they also realize they have nothing to lose but their fear.

Oh my God, what an incredibly real and incredibly terrifying story. These grown men were locked inside a restaurant? Wow. It's hard to say where that ranks next to the state-sanctioned murders and the kidnapping of children, but gosh, they were briefly locked inside a restaurant? Heaven forfend.

"Don't forget to add the bit about people only having rights if they agree with what the government is doing."

This week in the USA: * Trump is first prez not to acknowledge MLK holiday * Revealed Trump made at least $1.4B in 2025 * Speaker of the House endorses impeaching judges * Fed regulators threaten free speech of TV talk shows * US announces departure from WHO w unpaid bill

I do not understand why Dems (or someone) are not broadcasting wall to wall montages of ICE thugs abusing our neighbors, abducting children, terrorizing US citizens, invading homes w no warrant, or murdering mothers. This should be a massive exercise in ISSUE SALIENCE driven by Dem elites.

A five-year-old boy seized on his way home in Minnesota and now locked up in Texas. His family didn't know where he was for 24 hours.

Last year a whistleblower said DOGE had illegally accessed a Social Security database. SSA now acknowledges it's true—& that DOGE employees had secret agreement w/ unidentified political advocacy group to use SocSec data to help overturn election results. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Trump/US is clearly an extreme example. In terms of 1) psychological factors driving him, 2) degree of personalization of leadership, and 3) US relative power re: coercion. But Trump’s overarching approach to the international arena is one we’ve see from other populists: Erdoğan, Modi, Orban

The way this would be covered if a Democratic president was talking about doing something this unpopular… To start a quote from @mcopelov.bsky.social “Neither our media nor our political system…”

NEW: President Donald Trump’s redistricting arms race is wreaking havoc across the country, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. But in Missouri, the fight has grown into something that threatens to cut democracy to the bone. www.democracydocket.com/analysis/in-...

Again, I’m going to keep banging the drum that the fact we are threatening the territorial sovereignty of our closest allies is not only a gross violation of our UN & NATO treaty obligations & poses a massive threat to national security & world order but also should immediately end this presidency.

The Founders assumed that Members of Congress would jealously and zealously guard the powers and prerogatives of their branch of government against the grasping of an overweening Executive, and instead we got this supine GOP majority that yearns to lick the boot.