Excellent analysis from @cfr.org of new Kettering-Gallup data on concerns about election integrity. #1 concern is that leaders will attempt to influence election results. www.cfr.org/articles/vot...

Voters Worry About Election Integrity | Council on Foreign Relations

A new Gallup polls shows that Americans are worried that they will not see free-and-fair elections in November.

cfr.org

Absolutely not www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

McMahon Asks US Colleges to Pledge Campus Reforms by End of 2026

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is sending a letter Monday to the leaders of US universities asking them to commit to a slate of campus reforms by the end of 2026 in the Trump administration’s lates...

bloomberg.com

Betting ads made up 17.3% of all World Cup ads in Argentina, more than any other category. Meanwhile, 16% of Argentine teens (13-18) admit they've bet online, and 53% of them believe you can "win money easily." The real story: over 95% of online bettors end up net losers (UC San Diego). #dataviz

Nice account of internal conflicts at Heritage focusing mostly on free trade cons who have been pushed out. This reaffirms that two big parties are not enough to represent the full array of ideologies, and "left" and "right" are too simplistic. 1/ tinyurl.com/4cduet97

What the Crackup of the Heritage Foundation Says About the Post-Trump Right

The bastion of American conservatism best known for Project 2025 has been consumed by an ideological — and generational — civil war.

nytimes.com

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

The schools that stood up to Trump thug demands—first Wesleyan and Princeton, then Harvard, then many others who were emboldened—have won in court and earned honor in history and support from alums. Columbia showed that appeasement always loses. It's never enough. Don't do it, Yale.

Gregg Gonsalves@gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 3d ago

Need to have some frank talk about #Yale President McInnis, General Counsel Alexander Dreier and the trustees. First, they keep saying that they are compelled to enter into a settlement with the #Trump administration. Untrue. 1/

I don't hear about it much, but during Reconstruction 2.0, we need a federal domestic terrorism law that can be used to prosecute groups that inspire stochastic terror attacks as well as promote seditionism.

For our mega-survey on populist attitudes, we asked whether people would prefer a more multi-party system or a two-party system. The former blew the latter out of the water. Asked about specific reforms to get there, people are less sure. Also, Trump populists are the most fond of the status quo.

Americans Hate the Two-Party System But Don’t Know What Should Replace It, ISMA Populism Survey Finds

Voters overwhelmingly want something different, but don’t know or understand the reform options on the table

theunpopulist.net

Well said! And also: merely going back to pre-2024 status quo is not enough!

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 5d ago

It is crucial to keep saying this, because too many people are going to say, "Let's just move on" if the Democrats win in November & 2028. But we can't just do that & leave the entire competitive authoritarian system in place. We have to become a real democracy. That requires institutional reform:

So foreign adversaries can pretty much attack blue states with impunity?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5d ago

Trump: "We heard in Minnesota there was a cyberattack and they blame it on Iran. I don't think so. I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent. Iran's got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota."

Maybe I am just being hysterical but reading this makes me think there is at least a chance that a technology adopted to help people buy plane tickets ends up provoking WW3. Fortunately we are assured "this type of risk can be overcome" www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/t...

Anthropic Says Its A.I. Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations (Gift Article)

The disclosure followed OpenAI’s report last week that its own artificial intelligence had hacked into the network of an online library.

nytimes.com

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...

Rebuilding Democracy Requires Rebalancing Power

What does a power-shifting agenda look like?

donmoynihan.substack.com

SHOOT IT INTO MY VEINS

Henry Farrell@himself.bsky.social · 5d ago

I remember seeing someone (very reasonably) complaining here a few days ago that there seems to be next to no visible thinking on left and center about how to join the dots on administration and democracy. This is the beginnings of an answer to that complaint donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rebuilding...

I can kinda get confusing socialism with communism but fascism is just too much. It's all an obvious but probably successful attempt to degrade the audience's ability to make critical judgments.

Decoding Fox News@decodingfoxnews.bsky.social · 5d ago

In an attempt to compare Mayor Mamdani to Nazis David Asman appeared to evoke the Night of the Long Knives when the Nazis executed their political rivals and enemies. The Nazis were fascists NOT socialists. The Nazis HATED socialists/communists.

So much for making America great again.

Samuel Perry@profsamperry.bsky.social · 5d ago

Can't imagine how this reflects well on any President. During Obama's 2nd term, over 4/5 of adults said they were very/extremely proud to be an American. Only 4% said they were only a little/not at all proud. Two months ago, only about half of Americans said they were very/extremely proud. @prri.org

Perhaps 2024 was less a vote for MAGA than a reflection of deep disappointment and frustration with the Democrats that Trump happened to capitalize on. Not a mandate for mass deportation and gutting the government.

Ana Marie Cox@anamariecox.com · 6d ago

These numbers should make me happy or at least feel vindicated but all of these things (except the ballroom, I guess) were obvious two years ago and people voted for him anyway.

New survey data from our Democracy for All Project with Gallup finds 2/3 of Americans concerned about leaders attempting to pressure election officials to influence outcomes. 3/4 report multiple concerns. The full report is coming soon. news.gallup.com/poll/712955/...

Election Concerns Run High Ahead of 2026 Midterms

Americans head into the 2026 midterms concerned about election integrity and broader threats to democratic governance and accountability.

news.gallup.com

Notable that this defense of academic freedom against authoritarianism is coming from champions outside the university. It seems few outside the university understand what's at stake.

Kim Lane Scheppele@kimlanelaw.bsky.social · 6d ago

A powerful op-ed on why universities should not cave into political pressure. wapo.st/4ftHkFX

"The economy remainsTrump’s greatest vulnerability. But flipping immigration from a positive to a negative issue for Trump, and hammering home that Republicans in Congress are refusing to do anything to stop his excesses, could turn a GOP defeat into a rout." www.thebulwark.com/p/civil-diso...

Civil Disobedience Is Coming to Springfield

“No matter what it costs.”

thebulwark.com

Interesting idea.

Tech Policy Press@techpolicypress.bsky.social · last wk.

Dynamite blasting and nuclear waste are treated as "ultrahazardous"—strict liability applies no matter the precautions. Reflecting on the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident, Keith Porcaro of Duke Law argues advanced AI belongs in the same category.

New episode! David French joins me on the postliberal right, birthright citizenship, and whether there is a path out of America’s democratic crisis. But first, @johnfugelsang.bsky.social and I look to the ideology behind Trump. @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

What Trump and the New Right Really Believe | David French

Podcast Episode · The Oath and The Office · July 30 · 1h 16m

podcasts.apple.com

As an International Relations professor, I never thought I would lose track of brinks. How many brinks are there until it is a war or expanded war? Pretty sure we have gone over many brinks by now.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 6d ago

Iran and the U.S. reignited strikes on Thursday, as the brink of an expanded war threatened to draw in more countries. For the first time since the conflict began, Egypt said that it had come under attack, and Saudi Arabia acknowledged direct involvement in joint strikes with the U.S.trib.al/I2FJCqM

Learn more about our solutions to fight corruption.

Nine Solutions for Political Corruption

A new era of anticorruption reform is long overdue.

brennancenter.org

Today @schumer.senate.gov is introducing legislation modeled after a key Brennan Center proposal that would establish a new federal ethics agency to curb political corruption in the federal government, among other reforms.

New survey data from our Democracy for All Project with Gallup finds 2/3 of Americans concerned about leaders attempting to pressure election officials to influence outcomes. 3/4 report multiple concerns. The full report is coming soon. news.gallup.com/poll/712955/...

Election Concerns Run High Ahead of 2026 Midterms

Americans head into the 2026 midterms concerned about election integrity and broader threats to democratic governance and accountability.

news.gallup.com

Several levels of wrongness here. Debates like this make me start to get anti-intellectualism

Aaron Bady@zunguzungu.bsky.social · 7d ago

Okay now it's getting real

"The resistance"🤣 As if capitalism needs brave millionaires to fight for it.

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 7d ago

What fresh hell is this? What is going on over there?

Those pushing policies against trans people aren't concerned about girls or women--the rest of their policies are usually quite misogynist. The NYT and others have mainstreamed far right hate with "well, you know, there are concerns that ..." The side against rights is always wrong.

" No concessions on sports. No concessions on bathrooms. No concessions on gender-affirming care for minors" Damn straight. The Dems should not concede an inch on policies that persecute and oppress trans people. The trans crisis is not too much care for kids, not too much rights, but too little.

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · last wk.

we're witnessing an internal movement of trans people the size of the 'great migration' of Black americans feeling jim crow important piece from @sereneblossom.gay www.liberalcurrents.com/the-american...

🚨🚨🚨 With the confirmation of Clayton, Trump has loyalists in place at the power agencies who will work to enable his election subversion schemes for 2026 and 2028. They're not incompetent, and they're putting loyalists in beneath them. The threat is far greater than in 2020.