Tech Policy Press fellow Tatiana Dias, covers the rise of “Dona Maria,” an AI-generated political influencer created by a Brazilian Uber driver that is reaching millions online, highlighting the challenge deepfakes and synthetic content pose ahead of the 2026 election.

Alligator Alcatraz is closing after one year and wasting $1B to house 1400 immigrants. That's an eye-popping $714,285 per occupant. That's all because Trump felt it would have great broadcast value.

Mechanical issues with a United plane, second time in a row. Maybe if they spent money on planes as opposed to Christian nationalism, their customers - including evangelicals - would appreciate it.

Sneaking a giant screen into the flagshagger march is one of the funniest things @ledbydonkeys.org have ever done. "STAY HYDRATED" 😂🤣😂

Il ritorno a Serie A

"Across the media landscape, billionaire owners are plowing cash into low-wattage right-wing media personalities that often attract tiny audiences but serve a much more valuable purpose: flattering Trump." www.status.news/p/katie-mill... Low wattage could be like 600 subscribers. [ No paywall. ]

Finally, Ronald Reagan can rest in peace, knowing that children will no longer have to learn that some white people were the bad guys in that whole slavery thing.

What I find so weird about the whole discourse is that I, a college professor, spend most of my time explaining complex ideas to 18-year-old novices. There’s a lot to mock academics for, but most of us couldn’t do our jobs at all if we didn’t know how to communicate with non-experts

Every step taken by the federal government to promote and advance scientific research in the US, which has been the mainstay of US economic growth and strength since roughly 1870, is now being reversed in order to retard or suppress scientific research. This is a conscious policy.

That well known socialist rag, <checks notes> the @economist.com makes the case for partial nationalisation of AI companies 👀 economist.com/leaders/2026...

Historians will wonder why “the high level guys” - billionaires who had it all - decided government should be used to sabotage the country and engage in superpower suicide.

Future iconography of the Trump administration might also include a broken sword.

The Supreme Court’s claims that racial discrimination in voting is no longer a problem are contradicted by clear evidence. bit.ly/3QIYd5B

“Rayner endured months of scrutiny over her living and tax arrangements. But when it emerged that Farage’s partner had bought an £885k house for cash, much of Fleet Street ignored it,” writes Alan Rusbridger

AI companies are writing their own constitutions. Meanwhile, a shared vocabulary for contesting algorithmic power has been traveling across red and blue states, from legislatures to civil society. New from me in @science.org: "A Civic Grammar for AI Rights" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵

Good piece on the ballroom/ bunker with "state-of-the-art hospital" by Jan-Werner Müller: "One could imagine a situation where Trump... would try to hole up and refuse to cede power." Now I can't stop picturing Trump running the Board of Peace from a bunker bed. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Every time I see plans for Trump's ballroom-bunker, I think of Bruno Ganz in Hitler's Final Days. This essay by Jan-Werner Müller about the architecture of tyrannical government and Trump is brilliant and is essential reading for May Day. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

‘The idea that Magyar’s win is a blow to the international far right is somewhat far-fetched. Few people care all that much about elections outside their own country. But far-right intellectuals will no longer find Budapest quite so hospitable.’ Jan-Werner Müller: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Britain’s Ministry of Net Zero (no joke). #StreetPalaceSquare

Future iconography of the Trump administration might also include a broken sword.

Many successful statesmen are three-faced.

Historians will wonder why “the high level guys” - billionaires who had it all - decided government should be used to sabotage the country and engage in superpower suicide.

The President is telling the IRS to give him $10 billion rn

NEW: Under Biden, the DOJ indicted Indian billionaire Gautam Adani for “corruption & fraud at the expense of US investors.” Adani hired Trump’s lawyer Bob Giuffra. He told Trump’s DOJ that if they dropped the charges, Adani would invest $10b in the US. DOJ is now planning to drop the charges.

A Fortress in London. #StreetPalaceSquare

New in PN: The assault on higher ed goes deeper than you think "This is bigger than budget cuts. It’s not just a continuation of things like longtime GOP efforts to cut Pell Grants. It’s a wide-ranging assault designed to drastically limit access to higher ed for all but the rich & well-connected."

It’s very rare to have anticorruption institutions strong enough to hit so close to political power so decisively. In Mani Pulite, Italy’s legendary anticorruption campaign, the biggest fish—Giulio Andreotti and Bettino Craxi— never saw the inside of a jail cell!

"In Russia, the self-immolations of journalist Irina Slavina and Udmurt scientist Albert Razin did not lead to any notable collective action. Could Okunev's suicide have provoked some protest if people had learned about it?"

What better way to illustrate the revolutionary nature of America's democratic government than to have the power mad president abuse his pardon power like a monarch?

How cultural hegemony works:

A Fortress in London. #StreetPalaceSquare

You'll be shocked to learn the reporter Trump called a "dumb person" is a black woman (Akayla Gardner of MSNOW) thegrio.com/2026/05/12/t...

“For too long, we ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Ideas with enormous popularity among billionaires—cryogenic immortality, disregard for punctuation, the Antichrist—have scandalously been excluded from classrooms.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...

Absolute banger from @davekarpf.bsky.social today. Given the fines Musk would have been subject to, it was cheaper for him to buy the government (to the record-breaking tune of $290 million) than face the law. So much corruption. davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/a-story-of...

The self-styled "father of fertility" wants to paint himself as a friend to mothers and children. But if you scratch the surface of his new moms dot gov website, you'll see that it's pure propaganda, and that it traffics in White Christian nationalist tropes. 1/🧵 www.ms.now/opinion/moms...

My views on the role of manufacturing in promoting growth have changed significantly in recent years. This is the short version for why. www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/s...

HEGSETH: We know Russia is a nefarious actor and account for tha-- SHAHEEN: All evidence to the contrary. We're not accounting for that if we're giving Russia the opportunity to earn $4 billion a month by leaving sanctions lifted

It was a political hire. We know that because Bari Weiss had almost no experience in brodcast news when hired. Thus: "When the season finale of '60 Minutes' airs Sunday night, it may very well mark the end of the program as it has long been known inside CBS News." www.status.news/p/60-minutes...

This by Ryan Hass rings true to what I've seen/ heard/ learned about current PRC leaders' view of US. (TL;DR China has enormous problems, but the US is blowing itself up.) Can't imagine MAGA team has any inkling of this. (Cf: "Quick, easy victory over Iran.") www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Given that Rubio and Vance have been two of the most sycophantic, high-profile, and ineffectual members of the failing and deeply unpopular Trump administration, it is bizarre to read this glowing, if substanceless, dual profile. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/10/u...

Was für eine Schlagzeile in den Zeitungen der Funke-Mediengruppe. Putin wird sich freuen.

‘Péter Magyar combined old-style retail politics with creative use of social media, the 19th century – a noble politician doing something for peasants and invoking great writers – with the 21st.’ @jwmueller-pu.bsky.social on Viktor Orbán’s fall. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The Reflecting Pool is the Trump admin in microcosm: *The pool has real problems, like leaky pipes, that are not being fixed *Superficial paint job that will actually make it look worse *No bid contract! No oversight! www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/u...

👇

I built some ecological inference modelling, and found by far the largest swing is abstention -> Ref. Lab -> Ref is relatively small bsky.app/profile/oska...

How cultural hegemony works:

Former Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who was granted asylum in Hungary by Viktor Orbán's government, has been spotted at a US airport. It comes a day after new Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who has pledged to extradite Ziobro to Poland, took office.

A very smart piece, trying to find the narrow path of reconstruction the rule of law without authoritarianism (of course I object, as always, to the label "illiberal"; do judges have to be liberal? No). #Hungary