Where America stands, one year after the election. A fascistic movement controls the government; they are building an authoritarian state; but they have not been able yet to extend authoritarian rule across society. A democracy no more, but not a consolidated autocratic regime yet. New piece:

The moment Trump dies, this will be the sum total of the GOP. It took them 60 years, but the Dixiecrats finally took over the entire party.

Absolutely shameful abuse of state power. Video in link. Protestors were there after ICE picked up a man and two kids on their way to school.

Mail voting seems to amend one of the most commonly highlighted downsides of electoral democracy: low information voting. It affords voters the opportunity to take their time to learn about the candidates & choices so they can make choices that truly reflect their political values & priorities

Our 249-year-old system -- two-party presidentialism -- has sometimes worked in spite of itself due to favorable conditions, un-codified norms, & a few periodic fixes. That run is clearly over. I argue below that we need a multiparty democracy with the legislature supreme and a limited executive.

I jump into the moderation debate. I agree with @adambonica.bsky.social and @gelliottmorris.com on the methodology, but I want to draw attention to a bigger issue. The collapse of candidate effects generally. leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-modera...

Donald Trump broke a promise and then ruined something? Well, I never.

No institutional design can overcome a lawbreaking president, a Congress defending lawbreaking and forfeiting its own power, a Supreme Court that pretends legal text doesn’t count to facilitate lawbreaking, and a citizenry that votes for all that. Need at least one that wants rule of law. Maybe two.

To his great credit

This will be a great discussion with my colleague, @jennifermccoy.bsky.social. Hope you can join us!

I wrote back in June that Trump is essentially attempting a Little Rock 1957 deployment only this time for white people, and he just tweeted it out smotus.substack.com/p/welcome-to...

I am of the relatively rare belief that LLMs are very useful and not environmentally damaging in comparison to most anything else we do but that generative video is horrifically bad on both counts and mixing that with the attention dynamics of social media is a disaster.

Gifting this one: interesting, important read on how the USA shook off authoritarianism of 1920s. Yes cataclysm is part of it. But bolstering the WEB Duboises & Sidney Hillmans of today? Pushing Grand Experiments for democracy? BRING IT ON. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...

Back in 2016 I wrote a chapter called "The President as Minority Leader" in a volume on the just-concluded election (link in next post). Feeling pretty good about that early conclusion...

Fusion is a good single-seat complement to a PR system that presumes multiple parties fielding joint lists. Thanks to PD for this work and for inviting my feedback!

The president said, in a televised speech, that he's sending his new, less restrained, more violent military into US cities to practice their brutality on immigrants and minorities, to better train them to apply that brutality to other countries. He said this out loud.

The president just gathered the highest ranking officers in the military to tell them that he may order them to kill American citizens -- and that they better follow his orders. All in response to a series of crises that have no basis in reality. I don't know how to yell any louder.

I’m opening a movie theater in which I show recently released films that I ripped from the internet but the studios are welcome to opt out if they wish.

This is really fucking bad.

It’s also crucial to note, however, that public support for political violence is not partisan. Across the political spectrum, Americans overwhelmingly reject the idea of political violence. This is crucial.

BREAKING: Touching the stove is bad

More independent media please

One thing that’s different now is there’s virtually no shared foundation of reality, at least not online. And that’s largely purposeful. It’s all a bunch of engines to produce emotional reactivity, and we’re all parts of those engines—consciously or not—while also being subjected to their effects.

I had an interesting conversation with my undergrad students yesterday about Charlie Kirk's death. These kids grew up in conservativism and many felt they knew Kirk, they had a parasocial relationship with him. They, of course, felt like they lost a friend, and worse, they saw it happen.

🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics. The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.

This is patently unconstitutional. For one, 18 USC § 700 has been void since Texas v. Johnson (1989) and United States v. Eichman (1990) under the First Amendment. Second, there is no federal authority for an anti-flag burning statute. The national government does not have a general police power.

The proper term for these seizures is "partial nationalization." Throughout the 20th century, the United States government would coup any country they could that expropriated capital this way because they thought it was communism

All of the legacy media outlets that told us last year that Trump and the GOP really loved voting by mail and criticized me for saying it wasn't true were wrong. Now Trump is trying to ban VBM and he also wants to take over vote counting and certification. I hope they listen to me this time.

So if a group of men -- all of them wearing masks, with no uniforms or badges visible, driving unmarked cars -- approach anyone on the streets of DC, they're just supposed to submit?

The President cannot commandeer any local law enforcement. The President does not run the Smithsonian. The monthly BLS jobs report is required by law. Release the Epstein files. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

ChatGPT will tell 13-year-olds how to get drunk and high, instruct them on how to conceal eating disorders and even compose a heartbreaking suicide letter to their parents if asked, according to new research from a watchdog group.

Ganz killing it here, combining a critical methodological perspective on how polling is done with fundamental political theory about what politics is & what it involves:

Article 1, Section 9 & 10 have been removed from the official Govt website on the US Constitution. Among numerous points: •Section 9 forbids suspending The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus •Section 10 forbids ex post facto laws This better be a joke. Ignoring these is full blow dictatorship

🧵Introducing the Trump Action Tracker website! Today I’m launching www.trumpactiontracker.info - a live, searchable list of authoritarian‑style actions from Trump’s second term (over 740 actions so far). 1/14

The moment has arrived! The final version of "Birthright Citizenship and the Dunning School of Unoriginal Meanings," co-authored by @evanbernick.bsky.social, @gowder.io, and me, is live on the Cornell Law Review Online website. Check it out! publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/lawreview/20...

Hard to think through problems when we are in a mode where the current problem gets eaten by a bigger problem within hours.

NYC: This happened at the batting cages in Riverside Park at 104th Street. So infuriating! Of course the kids are Americans too!

People really, really, really need to update their "liberal media" mental model. Billionaires bought all of it.

This is why I'm so focused on tracking crypto campaign spending at followthecrypto.org and citationneeded.news. The industry and Congress don't want people to so much as mention crypto's hundreds of millions of dollars in political influence.

You can write the same story now after every disaster or violent event. The rumor mill and propaganda machine collide as self-serving influencers & online crowds spin up & politicians join in. Same stock villains. Any friction is “censorship”,any factcheck is “media lies”. I wrote a book ab this 🤷🏻‍♀️

A political problem with prioritizing plutocracy over populism? It’s unpopular.

apologies, this was too good not to bring over

We are in the middle of it.

social media has done enormous amounts of damage but maybe the worst of it is driving the tech and finance bros completely insane all the weird rich guys spend all their time losing their minds online instead of going on vacation to the bahamas or some shit

Several items on Declaration of Independence list of grievances against George III also apply to Trump today, most notably on immigration, trade, and deportation without due process. Like King George, he is "unfit to be the ruler of a free people": reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Mini 🧵 Time to update the textbooks. Here's how the legislative process works in the US Congress now: 1. Press sets the agenda, outlines the bill (can't introduce it, obvs.) 2. House passes a big bill (if it deals with taxes, must start in House a la US Constitution.) 1/2

Every major health system in Louisiana is warning Speaker Mike Johnson and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation that the Senate GOP’s planned Medicaid cuts “would be historic in their devastation.”