This man might go to prison for allegedly wiping his phone before DHS officials could search it. No warrant for the phone, no specific claim of what 'evidence' might be on it. But he used a duress/wipe password, leading to the charge Watch more and subscribe here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmik...

No congressional candidate in Democratic history ever had as much outside money dumped on them in one primary as Abdul El-Sayed. But El-Sayed has now survived the onslaught in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. Barely.

Michigan’s primary reckoning for the Democrats

Despite record outside spending, Abdul El-Sayed and a slate of left-leaning candidates triumphed over establishment and incumbent rivals.

motherjones.com

New York City’s business elites are long accustomed to direct access to City Hall, where even Democratic mayors felt the need to court the city’s wealthiest and most influential corporate leaders. That access is getting shredded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani Is Shunning New York Business Leaders Who Are Used to Calling the Shots

The mayor fired corporate leaders from a city fund’s advisory board in the latest sign that he is changing the way such power brokers access City Hall.

on.wsj.com

We can help to insulate the American people from the cost of the collapse of the AI bubble by changing bankruptcy laws so as not to protect private equity from their failures deanbaker22.substack.com/p/the-simple...

The Simple Way to Stop the Hidden AI Bailout: Rewrite Bankruptcy Law

It's still capitalism with less PE friendly bankruptcy laws

deanbaker22.substack.com

NY Times Calls It!

AP calls it

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 5h ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Abdul El-Sayed wins Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan.

Like Barack Obama

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 5h ago

I know we are chalking the success of some leftist candidates almost entirely to the DSA. However, it seems like the more common theme is that these are candidates with organizing experience?

"As part of the partnership, Patel has brought officials from China's Ministry of Public Security, or MPS, to multiple FBI facilities in the United States to share ​intelligence and investigative information."

EXCLUSIVE: Under Patel, FBI forges unprecedented law enforcement ties with China, Russia

FBI Director Kash Patel says he has forged new law enforcement partnerships with China and Russia, two longtime U.S. rivals, over the past year in hopes of gaining allies in combating transnational cr...

reuters.com

"Pastors in Name Only" "Wicked Witch of Woke" “I've never seen anyone commit so much blasphemy against the word of God." As pastors become Democratic nominees — at least 5 so far, and likely one more tonight — their Republican opponents are attacking their faith. religionnews.com/2026/08/04/p...

'They're not real pastors': As clergy run as Democrats, Republicans question their faith

(RNS) — 'It's a sign that they are really scared they're gonna lose this seat,' the Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran pastor running for Congress in Iowa, said. She is part of a wave of religious ...

religionnews.com

Missouri voters on Tuesday rejected an attempt by the Republican-controlled Legislature to make it harder to pass citizen-sponsored amendments to the state’s constitution, preserving a tool that voters across the country have relied on to pass laws their legislatures would not. nyti.ms/3TCTELv

Enjoyed my brief time with Willie Geist and Eugene Robinson this morning on MS NOW's Morning Joe discussing my new book 'Save a Seat for Me' #PubDay www.ms.now/morning-joe/...

'Save a Seat for Me: Mark Anthony Neal discusses new book of fatherhood

Author and distinguished professor Mark Anthony Neal joins Morning Joe to discuss his new book, 'Save a Seat for Me: Notes on American Fatherhood.' The book explores Black fatherhood beyond the stereo...

ms.now

Just so everyone knows, this is a tried-and-true mainstream media tactic. For progressives/leftist candidates, every election is a “crucial test” and any loss would serve as proof to the media that the latest left-side moment is at its end. Any win, though, just means it’s time to find a new test.

Politico@politico.com · 2d ago

Michigan will provide another crucial test of whether progressives can not only keep up their winning streak in safe-blue seats but also break through in battlegrounds crucial for control of Congress. The stakes for the Democratic Party are huge.

🧵

Jonas Nahm@jonasnahm.com · 2d ago

10/ So the real story isn't that America onshores Chinese clean-tech. It's finance buyers picking up discounted, aging equipment with no upgrade path, while the actual capability — equipment manufacturing — stays exactly where it was.

www.npr.org/2026/08/03/n...

For those with criminal records, AI is breaking down barriers to employment

Tens of millions of Americans have criminal records that can be barriers to employment. An AI-powered app is helping those eligible to expunge their records at a pace not seen before.

npr.org

Rest in power, Johanna. 🖤

jentrification@jentrification.com · 4d ago

"Dr. Johanna Fernández, the Dominican American historian, prison abolitionist, and movement scholar, died on July 30, 2026, after a years-long struggle with non-small cell lung cancer. She was 55."

+ @douglasmack.bsky.social @orelb.bsky.social @brightwalldarkroom.com @srtoliver.bsky.social @anisekstrong.bsky.social @goldwagnathan.bsky.social @chanda.blacksky.app @gvaughnjoy.bsky.social & many more! Please share the whole thread widely to get all this great work to all the folks, & enjoy, all!

#ScholarSunday Thread 287 (8/2/26) – Black and White and Read All Over

August is here, & with it my 287th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please share as widely ...

blackwhiteandread.com

"You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal." — James Baldwin, born on this day in 1924 #AmWriting

"I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." -- James Baldwin, born #OTD 1924

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read." Happy birthday, James Baldwin!

Words to live by: "I want to be an honest man and a good writer." James A. Baldwin, born on this day in 1924

“Estonians have been able to pay taxes online since 2000. The United States was just getting there last year with IRS Direct File, a Biden-era pilot program that saved users time and money, but Trump killed it after lobbying by tax-prep and software companies.” www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-is-m...

Trump Is Making Government Worse on Purpose

Instead of seeking to simplify and improve citizens’ lives, this administration keeps creating new obstacles and burdens.

thebulwark.com

Bracing 🧵

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 4d ago

Suresh describes this as a literal religious mania. In the 500+ employee businesses Suresh studied, the only people who were promoted - or even spared from being fired - were people who professed "religious declarations of faith" about "the transformative power of AI." 23/

I am excited and humbled to lead @4sweb.bsky.social, which I joined first as a graduate student, into its next half-century. The work of #STS scholars has never been more important, and I aim to continue to build the organization to support our research, education, and public and policy presence!

University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy@fordschool.bsky.social · 5d ago

Congratulations to Professor @shobitap.org, incoming President-Elect of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the leading international association for researchers in science and technology studies! 🎉 Read: https://myumi.ch/WD5D9

Nature did a short piece on our preprint about how LLMs will affect the practice of science; my more detailed thread is below.

Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts

Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.

nature.com

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.

This.

Jeff Lockhart@jwlockhart.bsky.social · 4d ago

I will say I think we need serious empirical research on the growth and cooptation of the current science reform movement as a scientific social movement. In the first draft, we initially just wanted to point out that feminists might reasonably wonder about outside interests with big donor funding.

What does power-shifting mean? This lays it out. A key insight is that progressives need to use policies to build enduring interests who will not just support those policies but also a fairer multi-racial democracy.

YES.

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 5d ago

Very excited for this new essay at "Can We Still Govern?": The key claim is that planning for a progressive future cannot just focus on new policies. It also has to include - to start with - political power. What does a power-shifting perspective look like? 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rebuilding...

As polling gets worse, expect more "digital twin" proposals...which essentially cede epistemic power to whoever designs the simulation.

Jenny Cohn@jennycohn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Milei “said he wants to…allow companies run by machines” & has also “announced a ‘social digital twin’ program, which wld use publicly available citizen data to create simulations intended to inform public policy...” (Thiel recently moved to Argentina & OpenAI opened a data center there.) 6/5/26 1/

IMPACT: that company that was offering to buy books for AI companies’ training data — and probably destroy them in the process — says it will no longer offer this service following 404 Media’s exposure of it www.404media.co/ai-company-t...

Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage

Citing backlash, ISBNdb removed its webpages about training AI, denied ever buying, scanning, or selling a book for AI training, and said the site was a "test of market interest."

404media.co

Along similar thematic lines, I have a piece newly up on SSRN about what the Trump Administration might have to teach us about libertarianism, Reichian/Naderite liberalism, and abundance liberalism. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....