When this broke, I was coming back from a conference where I presented a paper on the public harms from gov’t ethics violations. Bribery is pretty harmful, it seems! I haven’t studied the public harms from dropped ethics investigations yet. 🫠

Nothing is more central to a free society than the right to criticize one’s government. Nothing.

Join us for the next installment in our Election Matters panel series on "Money, Politics, and the First Amendment." This event will explore the impacts of increasingly expensive elections and the tension between campaign finance regulation and free speech. Register here: go.wisc.edu/190re6

Do your mental health a favor and turn this on for today. You really don't want to watch this. It is awful.

A dear friend’s awesome kid is one of these finalists. So I just spent a delightful morning listening to what kids in America are thinking and talking about. I am so proud of all of them and glad I got to listen in on their lives.

Here is the chart showing the growth of reported protest over time, 2025 vs. 2017, referenced in the piece below.

My team at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@djpressman.bsky.social, Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) has finalized our participation estimates for No Kings Day on 6/14. Here are five key takeaways🧵:

For all of the educators trying to deal with AI, I did a deep dive in early June and these are the four articles I decided to assign to my students. 1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

"PhD-level experts in your back pocket" is a completely nonsensical description of AI but a pretty good description of social media if you follow the right people

Outstanding work, @calmatters.org! California police misconduct records now available in public database

Hey LA, COVID is having a heyday around here. It took out a big chunk of my kids’ camp last week. Our local pharmacy just ran out of Paxlovid, too. Returning students, please consider taking precautions so you don’t miss the first week+ of school. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Guys is it biased to favor a shared sense of objective reality

37, though I counted Louisville and have basically only driven through it (twice).

Using our Supreme Connections database, you can search for the organizations and people that have paid the justices, reimbursed them for travel, given them gifts and more. We just updated it with newly released 2024 financial filings ⤵️

Not only is this absolutely true, but the skills and connections and influence you build through engagement in local power can also be used to affect US House, Senate, and even presidential nominations. Or to affect how a non-party groups act at a national level.

Sharing something I just told 140 people in a zoom room when asked for something positive: Your local government is where you have power. Spend your scrolling time engaging locally instead. Local gov affects your quality of life SO much. Put the screen down, make IRL friends, improve your life.+

Ozzy Osbourne visited my magic shop. He said he'd like to buy some stink bombs. How many? All of them. I had to go through drawers finding every last one. He bought 900 of them. To sign the credit card slip I handed him a shock pen, which he thought was hilarious and bought that too. RIP

NEW: We just filed a major brief in our first-of-its-kind suit over a dark money group that secretly boosted Sen. Joni Ernst’s 2020 campaign. A win could reshape campaign finance law enforcement and increase transparency for voters.

The best part of our jobs is the mentorship. 🤩🤩🤩

Let people enjoy things as long as they aren’t hurting anyone, geez. You are not cool for slagging on a band that has done decades of good in the world, helped push the concert industry toward greener policies, visits places neglected by most global stars, and raises the profile of smaller artists.+

My university has announced a fund to essentially poach doctoral students from US institutions. DM me if you do work on the history/social impacts of AI and are interested in being poached 😂

Have you heard the good news? A forthcoming conference will launch the The Association of Law and Political Economy: a membership organization with a regular annual conference, elected leadership, and an architecture for open participation and collaboration.

The way it really is “the economy, stupid” doesn’t penetrate my institutionalist brain. Most of the things I study are so far upstream of the overall macro economy. I just texted my someone about the potential Powell firing and they replied by telling me their investments were at an all time high.+

🚨 We're hiring! Join our CSES Team @gesis.org Cologne as a Senior Researcher. If you’re into comparative electoral research and love diving into data, this is your moment. Come shape global democracy with us! 🌍📊 www.gesis.org/en/institute...

You ever stay up into the 5th hour of a city council meeting to make your 90 second comment and then remember these officials have hours left to go and also have jobs to do the next day? Thank you, local electeds. (Better you than me!)

Every time Dr. Lee writes an update thread, I learn so much. Korea has put 5% of its prosecutors on this case!

🚨We're hiring at WashU! I'm co-chairing a search for multiple endowed chairs focused on classical liberal principles: rule of law, free markets, regulatory reform, and accountability. Open to tenured scholars across disciplines. Apply by Aug 15: apply.interfolio.com/166960

Here's a peek at what we're working on for @PoliDashboard.org, our app for tracking ads re: political, election, & social issues on FB/IG. 1) semantic and keyword search of all ads for a particular country & 2) a summary of the advertiser's entire ad portfolio/campaign. #transparency #TargetedAds

Join us for “Year in Review: Democracy Litigation in SCOTUS and the States” Thursday, July 10 at 3pm CT, at the Madison Public Library or online. The panel will highlight the past year’s significant democracy-related decisions at both the state and federal levels. Register here: go.wisc.edu/bl85id

Once upon a time, I wanted to write about resignations like this. I wasn’t aware this one had happened.

So instead of meaningful accountability, we get rituals of exposure and punishment, visible, fleeting, and often misdirected. Real power adapts. It hides behind opacity, while public focus is drawn to spectacle. The system moves on. The damage remains.

Two-year postdoc in political psychology at the University of Cologne, Germany Enquiries: @jorislammers.bsky.social Further info: jobportal.uni-koeln.de/ausschreibun... #SocialPsyc #PoliPsyc #AcademicSky #PhDSky

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...

I’m so glad @gfoysutherland.bsky.social is writing about b-roll and red boxes. My favorite moment of b-roll breaking through to the public was when Daily Show did a segment remixing Ted Cruz’s b-roll. youtu.be/EJaldOWDVxo?... +

/1 Just realized that my latest article with @yalelawjournal.bsky.social just dropped! This is obviously a huge honor. I really appreciate the editors taking a chance on a young, no-name scholar with an idiosyncratic story to tell. www.yalelawjournal.org/article/resu...

I’m coding state ethics laws this summer and just ran across this requirement that members of the Illinois State Board of Elections post a $100k bond within 10 days of appointment. 😳 Refusing to go down rabbit trails right now, but this seems like it would disincentivize service.

This tracks soooo much, just thinking about the conspiracy types in my own life. But I would never have thought to test this relationship. Nice work!

President Declines Gift (1925)

I know I sound like a broken record but I'm still looking for nonvoters--especially in Florida but anywhere will do--who are willing to tell me their stories about why they didn't vote in 2024. Please send this request to your networks! People can reach me at [email protected]

A new analysis found that dark money groups spent almost $2 billion on the 2024 election, roughly double the total spent in 2020. And the full amount is even higher because certain types of spending cannot be tracked.

The pope, who just watched his baseball team lose four games to Kansas City, is hardly the first pontiff to be mad at the Royals

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

NEW JOB: The Knight Institute (@knightcolumbia.org) is looking for a staff attorney to join us for a two-year position. It's an extremely busy time for the First Amendment, and we could use some more hands on deck! knightcolumbia.org/page/staff_a...

DOGE came for a program that shaped me. (Donate link below.) Project Transformation is a Methodist program that connects college students & local volunteers w/ elementary students. It has a HEAVY focus on reading & maintaining literacy, especially over the summer. I lived at SMU & worked +

DOGE came for a program that shaped me. (Donate link below.) Project Transformation is a Methodist program that connects college students & local volunteers w/ elementary students it has a HEAVY focus on reading & maintaining literacy, especially over the summer. I lived at SMU & worked +

How should legal education respond to AI? Together with 11 UCL Laws colleagues, this paper is our vision for the sector. It's rooted in academic integrity, fundamental competences, and concerns around impacts on learning to learn and intellectual risk taking. (🧵) discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10...

okay this is an emergency assistance thread for anyone who got this National Endowment for the Arts email today some of you can still get your money and I’m going to tell you how article to come later this weekend but here is the Cliffs Notes version:

📢 Today I was supposed to be in DC, highlighting what the NSF Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences delivers to US taxpayers. NSF had one of the highest returns on investment (ROIs) of federal grantors 👏🏻 (1) and NSF SBE funded 63% of US social and psychological science research (2). 🧵

Sharing for the contracts law crowd.