Josh Scacco 🗳️

UC’s Academic Council calls on the Office of the President & the UC Board of Regents to unequivocally reject governmental demands that compromise institutional autonomy and #academicfreedom.

This is the way.

#DefendHigherEd

Special issue of Political Communication CFP on "the political communication dynamics at work in democratic decline—and in democratic resilience" - full manuscripts due December 15.
think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...

Live: Rep. Melissa Hortman killed, Sen. John Hoffman shot in ‘targeted shootings’ Gov. Tim Walz said there were targeted shootings in both Brooklyn Park and Champlin on Saturday.

Strib coverage is in front of their paywall. Please follow their coverage and resist the urge to speculate about *anything* about the attack itself.

www.startribune.com/brooklyn-par...

The news isn’t being clear about this but to people hearing about these Minnesota shootings: Melissa Hortman is the Dem leader in the Minnesota House and was Speaker of the House 2019-2025. She’s probably the most influential state-level Democrat barring the governor.

NEW: FBI LA statement to @FoxNews re: Senator Padilla "During a press conference today held at the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, Senator Alex Padilla was detained by members of the U.S. Secret Service assigned to Secretary Noem’s detail when he became disruptive while formal remarks were being delivered. Secret Service Agents were assisted by FBI Police who are in Los Angeles at this time. Senator Padilla did not identify himself and was not wearing his senate security pin. Senator Padilla was subsequently positively identified and released."

A DHS official told me Noem & security had no idea who Senator Padilla was. Now, the FBI is running with the statement that the senator "did not identify himself and was not wearing his senate security pin" — but he very much did identify himself, loudly, on video...

We drill into military officers that Members of Congress have Constitutional oversight rights, Members outrank four-stars in protocol, and even Congressional staffers are treated like generals/admirals.

To see sworn federal officers manhandle and handcuff a U.S. Senator... I'm still shook up.

"If you saw all this in any other country — soldiers sent to crush dissent, union leaders arrested, opposition politicians threatened — it would be clear that autocracy had arrived."

This sounds unlawful as hell. apnews.com/article/mari...

The targeting of reporters in LA is inexcusable. The public interest in press coverage of protests couldn’t be more self-evident.

We helped lead this letter to remind federal officers of journalists’ constitutional right to report on civil unrest.
media.freedom.press/media/docume...

The deploying of American military into U.S. cities is an attempt to functionally curtail the right to peacefully assemble and protest for a redress of grievances.

LA seems to be the prototype to attempt to tamp down the possibility of nationwide protests.

Law enforcement is violently targeting press at protests around Los Angeles, from easily recognizable "mainstream" outlets to freelancers and independents. ALL press have explicit legal protections in California. #JournalismIsNotACrime.

This evidence thread may get graphic. 🧵👇

1 in 12 Americans live in California.

1 in 35 Americans live in LA County.

LA is America

Who Won the Battle of Portland? How Portland, Oregon's uprising turned back President Trump’s authoritarian revival of ‘law and order’ politics. Reporting by Tim Dickinson.

What's happening in LA is a redux of the federal invasion of Portland. It took a 'Wall of Moms' using their privilege to protect more marginalized protesters to turn that around.

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺

Tallying Trump’s online posting frenzy: 2,262 ‘truths’ in 132 days In his current term, the president has left his own record for social media missives in the dust. He posts day and night.

New: Trump is posting to Truth Social three times as often as he tweeted during his first presidency - 2,262 'truths' in 132 days. Outrageously false stuff, too, like that Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by a robot clone. 3 a.m. polemics at a pace surprising even his aides wapo.st/43HBtpb

This is literally an authoritarian using the power of the state to jail an opponent, and attempt to intimidate all other opponents, in the United States of America. This doesn't happen if the US is still a democracy

Journalists: Report the pattern, not just the episode. DOJ charges a sitting Member of Legislative branch. Follows DOJ charges against a sitting member of Judicial Branch.

The Executive is at war with the separation of powers in service of expanding its unilateral power.

Another update: I can't share the text of my appeal but MIT's OGC has said they are happy to connect with OGC at other institutions going through the appeal process. So if you are planning to appeal, DM me and I can make the connection.

. . . It was, for example, a running joke at the Court that outsiders frequently mistook Souter and Breyer for each other. No one could really understand why this happened, because the two bore little resemblance. One day when Souter was making his usual solo drive from Washington to New Hampshire, he stopped for lunch in Massachusetts. A stranger and his wife came up to him and asked, "Aren't you on the Supreme Court?" Souter said he was. "You're Justice Breyer, right?" said the man. Rather than embarrass the fellow, Souter simply nodded and exchanged pleasantries, until he was asked an unexpected question. "Justice Breyer, what's the best thing about being on the Supreme Court?" The justice thought for a while, then said, "Well, I'd have to say it's the privilege of serving with David Souter."

From Jeffrey Toobin's 2008 book THE NINE, this remains the greatest Justice Souter anecdote I can possibly share. RIP.

U.S. press freedom falls to historical low Reporters Without Borders cites economic strains on the media as the biggest driver of press freedom declines globally.

Press freedom in the United States has hit a record low, according to the latest World Press Freedom Index published annually by Reporters Without Borders.

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To read the Criminal Complaint and attached FBI Affidavit that gave rise to Wisconsin State Judge Hannah Dugan’s federal criminal arrest today for obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest

Influencers angle for a bigger seat at the political table

U.S. enters the political influencer era online. Discussed with @juanbennjr.bsky.social at @politico.com the implications for Democrats who lack a unifying national figure at this moment.

This professor studies dictatorships. He helped convince Harvard to stand up to Trump Harvard professor Steve Levitsky has spent decades studying democracies and how they fail. He's now raising alarm bells over what he sees as a slide toward autocracy under President Trump.

'“If we’re going for going to mobilize, it’s going to be the most prominent, the most well-endowed, the most privileged and protected of us in civil society who have to take the lead,” Levitsky said.'

Women, minorities fired in purge of NIH science review boards Scientists, with expertise in fields that include mental health, cancer and infectious disease, typically serve five-year terms and were not given a reason for their dismissal.

Thirty-eight of 43 experts cut last month from the boards that review the science and research that happens in laboratories at the National Institutes of Health are female, Black or Hispanic, according to an analysis by the chairs of a dozen of the boards.

US office that counters foreign disinformation is being eliminated, say officials Conservative critics have long accused the department of helping to censor the American right.

SCOOP: sources tell me that the State Dept plans to eliminate its only office to counter foreign disinformation, as soon as today, delivering a win to foreign governments like Russia, Iran, and China—and the office's mostly conservative critics.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/16/1...

The call for papers for the APSA Political Communication Preconference in Vancouver is now open!

Together with @ashleymuddiman.bsky.social and @patyrossini.bsky.social, we're thrilled to invite your submissions.

📅: May 25th, 2025, 11.59pm PDT (GMT-7)

More information: u.osu.edu/apsa2025/

May this be a lesson to every higher education institution about what compliance will entail.