Taking a stand ✋️🧍 These authors 🧵 use survey data across 9 countries to assess the downstreams consequences of #AffectivePolarization & intervene to successfully reduce participants #AffectivePolarization in 6 of the 9, improving interpersonal relations and social norms buff.ly/tHRWa65

The (alleged) consequences of affective polarization: A survey experiment in nine democracies | European Journal of Political Research | Cambridge Core

The (alleged) consequences of affective polarization: A survey experiment in nine democracies

cambridge.org

We are opening an investigation into Grok because we believe that X may have breached the DSA. We have seen antisemitic content, non-consensual deepfakes of women, and child sexual abuse material. In Europe, no company will make money by violating our fundamental rights. link.europa.eu/Fh8h84

Italian journalists of RAI (the Italian major TV and public station) stopped and threatened by ICE. This should not be the narrative the US government wants to send abroad.

Good news! The OSCE Democracy Office suggests sending a full election observation mission to Hungary, with 200 observers on election day. Highly necessary, considering the charged situation and persistent fairness issues. @europarl.europa.eu should send a mission too! odihr.osce.org/node/661804

"Minneapolis has become a petri dish for his hardline immigration policies, zeal for militarized law enforcement tactics and attempts to use immigration as a cudgel to crush progressive values in cities that reject his strongman leadership," writes Stephen Collinson | Analysis https://cnn.it/4aWuNJg

Tensions flared in Minneapolis again Thursday in the wake of a second shooting by a federal immigration officer in just one week, as President Donald Trump threatened to invoke a centuries-old law that would allow the deployment of US troops to Minnesota. https://cnn.it/3Nm3sGG

ICE Agents enter Target with no warrant and violently tackle two American citizen employees, evidently because they didn't "look American" enough. (DHS refused to explain their rationale, so we have to guess.) The injured Americans were later dumped in parking lots miles away in sub-zero weather.

‘Madness’: two US citizens violently detained by ICE in Minnesota, officials say

Two Target employees forced to the ground, then into SUV, then dumped in different parking lot

theguardian.com

Scenes from a personalist regime: the president’s personal lawyer threatens to arrest the elected leaders of an occupied city

John Q. Public@publius24.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche calls what is happening in Minneapolis an “insurrection” and threatens to go after Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey over their “terrorism.”

Watch my address on the ongoing federal presence in Minnesota: youtu.be/fGTsYXBWQgU

Governor Walz Addresses Ongoing Federal Presence in Minnesota

YouTube video by Office of the Governor of Minnesota

youtu.be

What could go wrong?

Reuters@reuters.com · 8mo ago

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the integration of Elon Musk's xAI platform, Grok, into military networks as part of a new "AI acceleration strategy" during a visit to SpaceX.

Greenland PM Jens-Frederik Nielsen: "If we have to choose between the US & Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU." "Greenland does not want to be owned by the US. Greenland does not want to be governed by the US" he later added.

@gideonrachman: "what the end of Nato would mean for the US. The continued existence of American military bases in Europe would immediately come into question." "The arms sales to Europe...would also collapse." www.ft.com/content/5690...

Europe needs to think the unthinkable on Nato

Conflict over Greenland could destroy the transatlantic alliance, requiring a new European security treaty to replace it

ft.com

Literal propaganda for the sitting president

Peter Baker@peterbakernyt.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery removes wall text that referred to Trump’s two impeachments — language that had upset the White House. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/a...

Kristi Noem, while governor of South Dakota, supplemented her roughly $130,000 salary by secretly accepting $80,000 donated to a political nonprofit she was affiliated with, records show. She never disclosed this income on federal ethics forms. (Published June 2025)

Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations

A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirem...

propublica.org

Rep. Angie Craig: "We were told because this facility is being funding by the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' not the congressional appropriations act, that we would not be allowed to enter the facility. That's complete nonsense ... I informed them they were violating the law. They said they didn't care."

"We are very well aware of the fact that X for Grok is now offering a spicy mode showing explicit sexual content. This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting. I can confirm we are very seriously looking into this matter." — Spokesperson @thomasregnier.ec.europa.eu

Time to stop writing articles about the "security" or "economic" reasons to capture Greenland, they are irrelevant

Anne Applebaum@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 8mo ago

Not everyone believed me when I wrote that Trump wants Greenland becuase it would make him feel important, but that's what he told the NYT: When asked why he needed to possess the territory, he said: “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success" www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/u...

🚨We've got two tenure track posts in political philosophy @maastrichtu.bsky.social.🚨 Deadlines are 31 January and 26 February. #philosophy #academicjobs | @apaphilosophy.bsky.social www.academictransfer.com/nl/jobs/3566... www.academictransfer.com/nl/jobs/3574...

Assistant Professor in Political and Social Philosophy

Welcome to Maastricht University! At Maastricht University, philosophy plays a vital role in understanding a world marked by political tensions, technological upheaval, and societal transformations. H...

academictransfer.com

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

Hegseth's attack on Mark Kelly reveals a dangerous core belief, @dgraham.bsky.social argues in The Atlantic Daily: Criticizing Trump and defending the rule of law is sedition.

Hegseth’s Appalling Vengeance Campaign

The Defense secretary’s attempts to demote Senator Mark Kelly are a pernicious form of political bullying.

bit.ly

A reminder that the US killed 80 people in Venezuela, and it would be nice if the US media cared enough to think that the life of a grandmother in Caracas whose building is destroyed by a US bomb matters as much as the life of a person in the US.

Congrats again to John Mearsheimer for once again winning the eponymous John J. Mearsheimer Award For Demonstrating To People Who You Really Are: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Seva@seva.bsky.social · 8mo ago

lol come on now

Ladies and gentlemen, the brilliant mind who’s been called the “philosopher behind JD Vance”

Berny Belvedere@bernybelvedere.bsky.social · 8mo ago

"All serious historians agree."

Gaza City's landscape was once packed with concrete residential blocks. In the weeks before a ceasefire in October, Israel widely deployed a new weapon: M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers repurposed to carry between 1 and 3 tons of explosives, Reuters found reut.rs/49fw0cd

DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

📢 Happy that the Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication has just been published ! Have a look at my chapter on “Digital Intra-Party Democracy,” on how digital tools & AI are reshaping internal party processes and political participation. Link to my entry 👉🏻 www.elgaronline.com/display/book...

🫵WE WANT YOU 🎓 Are you interested in political communication, negative campaigning, and social norms? Are you experienced in quantitative methods? Do you have good rain clothes? Then our postdoc position might be just for you: werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies... Thank you for sharing. Merry Christmas

✨✨ Grant self-celebration ✨✨ Super happy I have been awarded a NWO XS grant to study how inequality affects political information! The grant will allow me to develop multi-country experiments and better understand how we read political information when our countries get more unequal! Stay tuned 👨‍💻

Some of the nearly 1,600 people who received clemency from Trump over the Jan. 6 attack have met with Justice Department officials and provided advice on how to retaliate against those who helped put them behind bars, a Reuters investigation finds reut.rs/4qeX9mu