Robert Richards
@rrichard09.bsky.social
I study how people talk about politics and law and participate in governing their communities. Opinions expressed here are mine alone, not those of my employers or institutions. https://rcrjr.wordpress.com
"The president calls Warsh in bursts—several times in a stretch of days, then quiet for longer periods. Trump has sought Warsh’s counsel on a range of matters, including how the war in Iran and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence are affecting the economy." www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Exclusive | Trump Has Called Warsh Repeatedly Since He Became Fed Chair
The president has sought Kevin Warsh’s counsel on issues such as how the war in Iran is affecting the economy.
wsj.com
DHS has begun summoning Haitian immigrants in Ohio to check-in appointments with officers who are outfitting them with ankle monitors, in what appears to be a new enforcement effort after the Supreme Court allowed the end their humanitarian protections.
ICE begins outfitting Haitian immigrants with ankle monitors, attorneys say
Haitian immigrants in Ohio with temporary protected status are being called to ICE offices for check-ins after federal officials said their protections had ended.
washingtonpost.com
Feds reject Arkansas’ request to renew Medicaid expansion program arkansasadvocate.com/2026/07/31/f...
Feds reject Arkansas’ request to renew Medicaid expansion program | Arkansas Advocate
The Trump administration has rejected Arkansas’ request to renew its hybrid Medicaid expansion, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ office said Friday, creating uncertainty about the future of a program prov...
arkansasadvocate.com
New from me: Some data points for a MAGA melt-down: *Hardcore Trump loyalists declining *Right wing influencers losing viewers *The Heritage Foundation is rife with dissent and incompetence, with conservatives worried about the pipeline of talent 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/is-maga-me...
Is MAGA Melting Down?
Signs and wonders, portents and data points
donmoynihan.substack.com
How a Top Law Firm Went From Standing Up to Trump to Bending the Knee www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/u...
How a Top Law Firm Went From Standing Up to Trump to Bending the Knee (Gift Article)
Paul Weiss was a progressive stalwart for decades and led the legal resistance against President Trump in his first term. Then it surrendered without a fight. This is the inside story of its transform...
nytimes.com
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced Friday that she has restored voting rights for 66,085 people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to vote due to past felony convictions. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
Virginia Gov. Spanberger has restored voting rights for 66,000 people with past felony convictions
The volume presents a dramatic reversal of prior Gov. Glenn Youngkin's tenure, when he restored less than 10,000 voter's rights during his entire four-year term.
democracydocket.com
The former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers who went on strike for 3+ years, only to have the owners sell the paper and fire most of them, have started their own cooperative news org. Important reporting by @maximillianalvarez.bsky.social
Corporate profiteers destroyed journalism. Worker-owned media can save it.
Former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers went on strike for over three years and won. Then, the owners sold the paper and most strikers lost their jobs. Now, they’ve launched “a cooperative news organiz...
therealnews.com
Trump Turns Up the Heat on RFK Jr. to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Trump Turns Up the Heat on RFK Jr. to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines
The president is focused on the shots’ alleged tie to autism, even though White House advisers wanted to tone down attention to the issue ahead of the midterms.
wsj.com
The Presidential 1776 Award competition ended in a disputed finish in the age of suspicion. Sam Fortier reports.
Suspicion and Doubt at the National Civics Contest
America’s finest young scholars competed to mark their country's birthday. It led to a disputed finish in the age of mistrust.
notus.org
What explains the Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership’s remarkable success? Aliprantis & DeLuca point to the supply side: regional access expands families’ housing choice sets, breaks sorting by race and income, and delivers durable gains in neighborhood opportunity. Read now → bit.ly/4fGOmah
Emmett Till was born right here in Chicago on July 25, 1941. And it is with deep humility and great pride that I signed legislation this week at Roberts Temple to declare his birthday as the Illinois Day of Reflection and Remembrance of Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley.
Despite the whining about “ historical accuracy,” the racist backlash to the casting in Nolan’s Odyssey is about the right wanting to justify racial hierarchy by projecting it into a past where it did not actually exist. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Historian of abolition here, Richard Allen’s eulogy on Washington is still the best to read to get at the complexity of his legacy on slavery.
John Garrison Marks@johngmarks.com · 2w agoSome abolitionists once played up an antislavery version of George Washington to try to end slavery. Now the Trump administration is doing it to deny slavery mattered at all. I wrote about the new exhibit at the President’s House in Philly for @theatlantic.com. www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
"Complaints about Nolan’s “Odyssey” are mainly complaints about what counts as Western, manly, and heroic...about maintaining a highly circumscribed and prejudiced boundary of American identity downstream of a facile, vulgar conception of the ancient 'West.'” www.liberalcurrents.com/the-new-vand...
The New Vandals
Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" offends right-wingers' notion that only white men make history.
liberalcurrents.com
It’s heartwarming that Emmett Till is honored in Chicago, but we must acknowledge that the racism in Mississippi which led to his murder thrives, as people there symbolically lynch him on a regular basis by vandalizing a sign marking where his body was recovered We still have so much work to do
Governor JB Pritzker@govpritzker.illinois.gov · 2w agoEmmett Till was born right here in Chicago on July 25, 1941. And it is with deep humility and great pride that I signed legislation this week at Roberts Temple to declare his birthday as the Illinois Day of Reflection and Remembrance of Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley.
NEW: In a stunning admission, the Trump administration admitted in court documents that it canceled billions in energy grants to states "based solely" on politics -- and whether that state was represented by Democrats and backed Harris in 2024. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...
Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him
Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.
nytimes.com
Judge orders ICE to provide immigrants at Adelanto with sanitary conditions, medical care Attorneys for detained immigrants said the court order shows that “no detention facility in this country is above the law” and that deaths at Adelanto were preventable.
Judge orders ICE to provide immigrants at Adelanto with sanitary conditions, medical care
Attorneys for detained immigrants said the court order shows that “no detention facility in this country is above the law” and that deaths at Adelanto were preventable.
lapublicpress.org
Good. We won't stop saying it: Our democracy depends on the freedom of our press.
U.S. Withdraws Subpoenas Issued to New York Times Journalists
A federal judge raised questions about the government’s handling of the subpoenas, which The Times called an attempt to intimidate the free press.
nytimes.com
This brief for @beidelson.bsky.social & @hellmandeborah.bsky.social is excellent--it explains, better than Harvard's own brief does, why the vast majority of incidents alleged in the DOJ suit did not violate Title VI. [1]
Ben Eidelson@beidelson.bsky.social · 4w agoThe brief explains why these lawsuits are foreclosed by both Title VI and the First Amendment. It also highlights some striking distortions in the govt's version of events at Harvard—like blatantly misquoting an email, & apparently defining opposition to speech restrictions as "anti-Israeli". (2/2)
Was a national civics competition for high-school kids ... Rigged? Biased? Botched? I followed one family through Trump's patriotic contest and found a remarkable story about our age of suspicion. For @notus.com: www.notus.org/national/ame...
Suspicion and Doubt at the National Civics Contest
America’s finest young scholars competed to mark their country's birthday. It led to a disputed finish in the age of mistrust.
notus.org
NEW: Trump admin is split on what to do about Chinese open AI models — WH focused on preventing Chinese labs like Moonshot distilling frontier US models — But an executive order to ban Chinese labs is not currently on the table — Commerce instead wants to help US companies to develop open models
Johns Hopkins University released data that shows 2,295 cases have been reported as of Tuesday. There were 2,288 cases confirmed in 2025.
The U.S. has already surpassed last year’s number of measles cases. Here’s what’s driving the surge.
New data data shows the resurgence is being fueled by falling childhood vaccination rates, misinformation and outbreaks concentrated among unvaccinated people.
19thnews.org
The SAVE America Act mandates that all voters must bring to the polls specifically a photo ID which has proof of citizenship “on the front of the document.” So REAL IDs don’t count. If the ID does not precisely conform to that standard, you must also bring separate proof of citizenship.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w agoScalise: "Anybody that gets on an airplane has to show a picture ID to vote. Nowadays, if you want to go to Olive Garden and get unlimited pasta, you gotta show a picture ID. This isn't complicated stuff."
More great news! The 14th Amendment will take center stage this year. variety.com/2026/film/bo...
Ava DuVernay’s ’14th’ Documentary to World Premiere at New York Film Festival
Ava DuVernay's documentary "14th" will host its world premiere at the New York Film Festival.
variety.com
My statement on the United States administration’s intention to impose new tariffs on Canadian goods:
Working at the intersection of political science, history, & law, I knew Migration & the Origins of American Citizenship would be reviewed in these cognate fields. This is the 1st review of my book. Thank you to Prof Somin for reading and reviewing my book. I look forward to a continuing dialogue.
Jotwell@jotwell.bsky.social · 3w agoJotwell Conlaw: Ilya Somin, Federalism, Originalism, and Immigration, JOTWELL (July 17, 2026) (reviewing Anna O. Law, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants (2026)), conlaw.jotwell.com/federalism-o....
A new study published in the American Journal of Political Science suggests that support for authoritarian leaders can spread socially among citizens in established democracies. www.psypost.org/anti-democra...
Anti-democratic attitudes are highly contagious, new psychology study finds
The rise of anti-democratic sentiments might be driven by social contagion. Researchers have discovered that citizens often adapt their personal support for authoritarian rule to align with the politi...
psypost.org
