The New York Times quickly sending out Douthat to argue that Mamdani’s victory doesn’t really matter is so predictable it borders on self-parody. Remember, folks: Every time the Right wins an election, it’s an undeniable expression of the will of the people. If a lefty wins, it’s just a blip.

It's not lost on me that the part of the White House we are destroying is the part that has to do with women's history in the White House.

Free Greta!

Well this is for sure an incredibly typically American, condescending view of Europe. The more common experience for Europeans is that once they spend time in the US, they suddenly discover how much Finns have in common with Georgians. Nothing makes you feel more European than the US lol

My heart breaks over the gestapo raid in Chicago that ripped naked sleeping children from parents in the middle of the night. Pure evil. There is zero justification for this. None. The democratic world must sanction Stephen Miller, Noem, others. Investigate & prosecute their crimes against humanity

Such things would not happen if the EU had a federal constitution and instruments to retaliate.

Absolutely in love with this idea! Helps to solve two of the most pressing issues of our time: biodiversity loss and Russian expansionism, as Hans Joosten puts it. on.ft.com/4n0zF2H

In early 1990, just before Gorbachev’s visit to Lithuania, hundreds of Latvians sent telegrams to the Lithuanian national movement Sąjūdis, expressing their support for Lithuania’s plans to declare independence.

Watch the slow motion: it appears to me that the officers discuss the photographer and reporter before the one on the end fires on them (it looks to me like he's aiming at the camera, not the reporter, but you decide)

It will take a Herculean effort to even just account for all the harm this regime is doing, on so many levels, at home and abroad.

Von der Leyen ”pledged to legally codify the freedom of scientific research on the continent by proposing a “European Research Area Act.”

Seeing the two titles together: just wow. How can one ever trust putin.

18/19 yo Euro backpackers were detained in Honolulu. “It was a real jail. Metal doors, locked cells, cold air. And they made us do a full strip search. It was really cold. We had to undress completely, including bra and underwear, and even had to squat and spread… it was humiliating and scary.“

And no need to add ‘competitive’ anymore.

Sweet Schadenfreude 👾

A must read. The essence of Ru diplomacy, summarized by a graduate of Ru's top diplomatic academy: "we were taught to cite international law while violating its spirit, to defend norms while dismantling them and to speak of peace while justifying and waging wars."

The key difference being that Nazi Germany was militarily defeated. The more accurate historical equivalent to making a deal with Russia over the head of democratic Ukraine is Molotov-von Ribbentrop 2.0.

Some observations about the Marine Le Pen verdict: 1) WOW. They really went for it: prison term (w/electronic tag) and 5 years of ineligibility. That's almost exactly what the prosecutors asked for, so she's seriously guilty. 2) Will this halt the progress of the far-right in France? No. But... 1/

When the hypocrisy of anti-EU parties profiting off the EU finally catches up

Vous savez ce que c'est le problème, au fond ? C'est ça. L'absence de décence. Dans la vraie vie, aucun condamné n'a accès à une tribune nationale pour "dire sa vérité".

À jamais, Marine! 🍾

As a foreign national, I will say that living and working in a country in which those fundamental protections are suspended for me, or at the very least conditional on not upsetting the regime in any way, is utterly untenable. From the Trumpist perspective, that, of course, is the intended effect.

This *should* be my last post about politics and international relations. As a PhD student in Government.

I find myself thinking a great deal about how quickly, after three laws promulgated in April 1933, the universities and legal profession in Germany submitted.

75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving More than 1,600 readers answered our poll; many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘While Giorgia Meloni has proved to be shrewd on the national and the international stage, she is also operating in a country where the normalisation of the far right has been advancing for decades.’ @jwmueller-pu.bsky.social on Italy’s far-right president: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Das Schuldenpaket ist durch. 513 Abgeordnete haben dafür gestimmt. Das Quorum lag bei 489. Das ist eine relativ satte Mehrheit.

Les États-Unis se sont retirés du groupe d’enquête sur les crimes de guerre russes. Cadeau de Trump à poutine !

ICE stripped a German green card holder naked, drove him from Boston to Vermont to Rhode Island, put him in a cold shower, deprived him of medication, sleep and food until he collapsed. No one knows why he was detained.

Politics hasn't been this simple in a long time: do you think it's good for one man to exercise unchecked, arbitrary power or not. Those are the two available ideologies right now

A very necessary piece to understand how the *still* lingering idea of American exceptionalism hinders the understanding of what the country is becoming. Competitive authoritarianism is not the limit, midterms are no guarantee and Constitution only matters when defended.

Here we go: the rewriting of history has formally begun "Oklahoma proposes teaching standards suggesting 2020 election ‘discrepancies’" www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

lol

This opens the way for mass surveillance and other forms of authoritarian AI weaponisation.

On a brighter note: Poland has already showed that democratic backsliding is not irreversible. Will Hungary be the next?

Surprise! The Russians, who have repeatedly said they don't want a ceasefire, have once again said they don't want a ceasefire

Don’t touch my EU 😡🇪🇺

1/ Donald Trump may be aiming to annex the Great Lakes – and possibly south-eastern Ontario in a maximalist scenario – and kick Canada out of NORAD, judging by first-hand accounts of talks between Canada and the Trump Administration. ⬇️

One of the most useful things that students of American politics can do now is to talk to comparativists who study Russia. Trump works according to Putin’s playbook.

Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year. The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.

Makes me sick how underreported this is in the US media. Trump’s Canada talk and intentions of annexation are real. The informational campaign about Canada “not being a real state” is launched. Reminds me of the russian rhetoric on Ukraine years before the full-scale invasion.

Becoming a military global power by accident would be very EU

Hélas, hélas, hélas!

This was all staged

Who does the Trump admin sees as irrelevant: the EU or women in general?

Ha, soon Putin’s oligarch entourage will become American citizens.

DOGE savings (WSJ): $2.6b TSLA subsidies (10 years): $15b Annual increase in deficit: $900b Cuts to Medicare: $880b

The United States of America are dismantling NATO, betraying the Baltics and giving up Ukraine to Russia. Let that sink in.

So Trump is proposing to surrender Ukrainian territories to russia, refuses Ukraine’s membership to NATO and does not provide any other security guarantees to Ukraine. And he wants Ukraine’s rare earths? What kind of deal is that?

So I’m curious, if the US invades Canada would that falsify the democratic peace theory or prove the US is no longer a democracy?