Rebekah Tromble
@rebekahtromble.bsky.social
Dir. of Global Partnerships, Inst. for Information, the Internet & Democracy, NEU | Union of Concerned Scientists 2024 Defender of Science | Co-founder: https://researchersupport.org/ https://expertvoicestogether.org/ https://independenttechresearch.org/
The name went up in hours. Workers on scissor lifts, done overnight. Taking it down required scaffolding, took all day, and still missed the court deadline. That asymmetry is structural. Capture moves at the speed of power. Accountability moves at the speed of law. One is always faster.
Funny how after every SCOTUS ruling striking down some protection from government abuse, the officials those protections restrained — cops, prosecutors, Republican state electeds — immediately start acting in the precise manner SCOTUS assured us they no longer do.
VC Defensa volunteer Leo Martinez woke up at 3am on Wednesday to federal agents breaking down his door to search his home — the latest escalation in the federal government's campaign to harass and intimidate people who patrol immigration enforcement operations www.huffpost.com/entry/federa...
Federal Agents Target Immigrant Rights Volunteers With 3 A.M. Home Raids
VC Defensa volunteers plan to file a civil lawsuit in federal court, accusing federal officials of harassing people who patrol immigration enforcement operations.
huffpost.com
New piece in Science: Sudden elimination of USAID grants triggered waves of violence in affected regions in Africa, undermining civic governance and fueling civic unrest. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Aiding peace or conflict? The impact of USAID cuts on violence
Less than a week after its inauguration, the second Trump administration issued a blanket stop-work order for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest national human...
science.org
This fall @knightcolumbia.org will host a workshop on the role of the legal profession in resisting authoritarianism. Authors will present draft essays to be published as part of our "Lawyering Without Law" project. The participants are an incredible group: knightcolumbia.org/blog/knight-...
Knight Institute Lawyering Without Law Workshop and Essay Series to Feature Leading Scholars and Jurists
knightcolumbia.org
Dozens of empty Waymos invaded an Atlanta neighborhood and circled a cul-de-sac for hours with no passengers www.wsbtv.com/news/local/a...
Holy balls, this opinion: "As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors . . . will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary. DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case." (via @chrisgeidner.bsky.social) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Memorandum and Order – #38 in In Re: Motion to Quash Administrative Subpoena to Rhode Island Hospital (D.R.I., 1:26-mc-00007) – CourtListener.com
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER : The Court's decision is based solely on its application of the law to the administrative subpoena at issue here. But the discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of fe...
storage.courtlistener.com
Georgia's governor signs a comically transparent law. It makes local elections in 5 big blue counties nonpartisan, to give GOP candidates a chance to win without a party label in places like Atlanta. And it doesn't change anything in the rest of the state, for red counties to know who's GOP.
Brian Kemp signs law making many metro Atlanta races nonpartisan
The law applies to most local government races in Democratic-dominated areas. A court challenge is expected.
ajc.com
Spot on - "our concerns are not about whether one grant or another gets funded, but instead about the independence of science, and the dangers of politicized advice" Thanks to authors @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social, Richard Aslin and Lynn Nadel thebulletin.org/2026/05/nati...
National Science Board a victim of the Trump administration’s cancel culture
The proposed cuts to basic science threaten to cede our longstanding leadership to other countries, most notably China.
thebulletin.org
Wrote about how the conservative majority on the Supreme Court have basically stopped to even pretending that they're not tilting the playing field for the GOP (no matter what John Roberts is saying).
Techdirt@techdirt.com · 3mo agoSupreme Court Breaks Another Election To Make Sure Black Voters Are Disenfranchised Again, I feel like I'm going crazy here, but the obviously extremely partisan Supreme Court has struck again. I will repeat some of the basics, because it's hard to believe how blatant all of this is. In November,…
New from 404 Media: spoke to four people who attended a trade show where senior ICE officials spoke about how much Palantir is supercharging their arrests. List of 20 million people on ICE agents phones now; increased chance of successful arrest from 28 to 80% www.404media.co/ice-agents-h...
ICE Agents Have List of 20 Million People on Their iPhones Thanks to Palantir
The comments made by a senior ICE official at a trade show highlight how Palantir is increasing the speed at which ICE operates. Most people detained by ICE have no criminal conviction.
404media.co
Finally, a major American newspaper whose editorial board is courageous enough to stand up for the rights of big tech companies.
I'm reminded of the number of times in graduate school and during my early career where I heard supposedly rigorous scholars dismiss work on racism as too radical or unserious. “Things have changed” they assured me.
Victor Ray@victorerikray.bsky.social · 3mo agoI'll just note that critical race theory predicts quite a lot about the current racial retrenchment and for being *correct* it was pilloried in the press and by some academics.
The anti-data center movement isn’t just about limiting local development—it represents a new front in the fight against tech-enabled authoritarianism. Where else can people push back on job-eating algorithms, distorting deep fakes, and autonomous drone strikes? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The fight against AI data centers isn’t just about tech – it’s about democracy | Astra Taylor and Saul Levin
Claims of nimbyism are a misunderstanding: the movement is about whether regular people have a say in fundamental decisions
theguardian.com
We often think of authoritarianism as lawless. But it can operate through law itself. What does it mean for democracy when that happens? ⬇️ DROPS TOMORROW: Lawyering Without Law, a new biweekly podcast from the Knight First Amendment Institute. Available on all platforms.
The party of local control has decided that "local" means wherever they have control www.texastribune.org/2026/05/08/a...
Greg Abbott threatens grants to exert control over Texas cities
The governor’s threats have produced quick wins on hot-button issues important to the GOP base – immigration and perceived threats posed by Islam.
texastribune.org
By far the most corrupt president in history and the media has decided it isn't a story.
Headquarters@headquartersnews.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew details have been released about Palm Beach International Airport, recently renamed to Donald J. Trump International Airport. Their new contract requires the airport to purchase Trump merchandise from Trump's own licensor, directly violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
I figured I'd write a short something wondering why Sam Alito said we couldn't force Texas to change its unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps in December because people there need "certainty" but he's happy to help Louisiana change its maps now, even as ballots have already sent...
Techdirt@techdirt.com · 3mo agoSomeone Ask Alito: If December Was Too Late To Fix Unconstitutional Gerrymandering For The 2026 Midterms, Why Is May Okay? Last December, Justice Alito told Texans they had to vote under an unconstitutional gerrymander because changing maps in December would deprive them of "certainty" before the…
This is also why every client refuses to comment on the record about the receipts brought by the reporter: the whole point is to make it seem like someone out there is organically discovering a film or podcast and sharing their favorite bit but obviously that is not what's really happening.
This is such good reporting from Mia. Clipping is a hallmark of what I'm starting to think of as the anti-social web: the sheer volume crowds out content from people you know (fulfilling demand from the platforms) and the clips themselves are more a product of The Algorithm than the clipped text.
Mia Sato@miasato.bsky.social · 3mo agoIn the spirit of that, read my FULL story! www.theverge.com/report/92000...
It’s kind of a metaphor for American democracy in the 2020s. After Jan 6 2021, the coup appeared dead and even GOP elites were looking to oust the authoritarian wing. A few years later the same wing controls all of government and intimidated much of civil society into submission
Kevin Morris@kevintmorris.bsky.social · 3mo agoI am really struggling to understand the Bert Callais news as anything other than evidence of how the Big Lie ideology has fully taken root. It is no accident that he was at J6, just like it is no accident that the justice writing the opinion flew an upside-down flag that day
French prosecutors seek charges against Elon Musk and X over child sexual abuse images
French prosecutors seek charges against Elon Musk and X over child sexual abuse images
French prosecutors are seeking charges against Elon Musk and X for child sexual images on the platform, deepfakes, disinformation and complicity in denying crimes against humanity by Grok.
apnews.com
I really wonder what the fallout is going to be because the sanitized version of history they’ve sold for a long time is “Jim Crow was a shameful moment in history but we defeated it and came out the other side a better country” and now it’s just… back it’s the end of a myth in the starkest terms
Ari Berman@ariberman.bsky.social · 3mo agoBreaking: Tennessee Republicans pass new 9-0 gerrymander after SCOTUS destruction of Voting Rights Act eliminating state’s only majority-Black district & last Democratic seat. Splits Memphis, which is 63% Black, into 3 districts to disenfranchise Black voters. Quite literally a return to Jim Crow
Utah's plan to effectively outlaw VPNs is incoherent.
Techdirt@techdirt.com · 3mo agoUtah Wants Websites To See Through VPNs. That’s Not How VPNs Work. Utah has a long track record of short-sighted internet policymaking, but the latest example really does take things to a new level of stupid. As of yesterday, Utah's "Online Age Verification Amendments" bill, Senate Bill 73, has…
When democracy is restored, all the people engaged in this sort of corrupt war profiteering need to be put in jail: www.marketwatch.com/story/trader...
Traders point to suspicious activity in the oil market on Wednesday
Oil contracts worth $1.7 billion changed hands in the hour before an Axios report sent oil prices lower Wednesday. Some experts are calling the spike in activity suspicious.
marketwatch.com
Unearthed reports reveal that RFK Jr. fired every full-time CDC cruise ship sanitation inspector ahead of the Hantavirus cruise ship outbreak. www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-cru...
/3 This noisome pretense was pushed by the mouthpieces of the Right like the Federalist Society and eventually enough minions formed a majority on SCOTUS to enact it. So: to avoid the racism of noticing racism, you can now disenfranchise Black Americans.