Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

Further consolidating control over federal research funding under Russell Vought and a cadre of apparatchiks.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

There are many assessments that suggest PragerU "is a central node in the production of misinformation and radicalization in the United States today."

One is available here:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Email from the "PUBLIC RECORDS OFFICE" to Kate Starbird asking for all emails from Jan 1 2021 through July 30 2025 with any of the following keywords: "diversity and inclusion" "DEIA" "DEI" "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging" "DEIB" "gender identity" "racial preference" "ESG" "organizational equity" "intersectionality" "anti-racism" "critical race theory" "LGBTQ+" "transgender" "cisgender" "gender ideology" "white privilege" "privilege walk" "cultural humility" "equity audit" "restorative justice" "racial equity" "implicit bias" "microaggressions" "inclusive pedagogy" "identity-based oppression" "systems of oppression" "queer" "non-binary" "sexuality" “Trump” “fascist”

If anyone is curious about the current list of search terms being used by right wing activist organizations to harass university professors, here's a public records request I received today from Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation. Not intimidating or meant to curtail by my speech at all, right?

Key sections of the US Constitution deleted from government's website | TechCrunch Internet sleuths say the U.S. Constitution's website is now missing key sections from its website, including a key legal provision relating to habeas corpus, which protects citizens from unlawful dete...

The constitution. They sliced out the parts of the constitution that they don’t like from the government website.

Yet another reminder that in an aspiring authoritarian government, you should never rely on online document as definitive sources.

Article 1, Section 9 & 10 have been removed from the official Govt website on the US Constitution. Among numerous points:
•Section 9 forbids suspending The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
•Section 10 forbids ex post facto laws

This better be a joke. Ignoring these is full blow dictatorship

I’ve been having a few too many conversations like this. Them: Hi Kate, how are things with your work, with the world? Me: the university is under attack, democratic norms being broken in half, so, pretty bad. Them: But everything is going to come back and be okay after the midterms. Me: Uhh, no.

When I read about this this morning, I almost fell out of my chair. These idiots have no idea what they’re talking about and yet their conspiracy theorizing is dictating massive policies and petty, vindictive bullshit like this…

Of course they are.

The Harvard Professor Who Quantified Democracy | Harvard Magazine Erica Chenoweth’s data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.

www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/eric...

This is a great example of why propagandists usually try to steer clear of outright lies: if it can be proven wrong and made salient to your audience, you may find yourself in hot water. We usually see lies occur through strategic misinterpretation and misleading framing of real events.

Reposting this from last night. The interactive visualization offers a quick glimpse into the X conversation around Epstein (among high follower accounts) without having to go there yourself. It should be usable on most browsers.
faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/Spot...

Remember Your Heritage

How often do you see papers that suggest easy policies that could reduce electoral misinformation? Here's one I worked on with a great team out of UW and led by @morganwack.bsky.social and @schafer.bsky.social

Recipients of a U.S. Climate Science Fellowship Are Put on Unpaid Leave

Under Trump, NOAA ran the most recent competition for their highly prestigious postdoc program in climate and global change — but funded no one, wasting huge amounts of applicant and reviewer time.

It gets a lot worse. Now current postdocs in the program are going unpaid.

If any vaguely traditional media outlet had done what Grok did today it would be all over. Regulators would come down like a hammer.

Somehow, Grok will end up getting a pass. But this is not a user misbehaving on a channel; it was configured to behave this way by the platform owner.

In @lawfaremedia.org, @cip.uw.edu graduate research assistants @ashlynba.bsky.social and @sprochas.bsky.social explore how "fringe election fraud rumors are becoming legal drama — weaponized lawsuits and policies that present fiction as fact on social media." www.lawfaremedia.org/article/how-...

The Misleading Panic over Misinformation People can’t agree on how to define misinformation and its related terms, making regulation nearly impossible. Instead, free expression serves as a better tool for discovering truth.

🧵 THREAD: Why the Cato Institute’s new paper on “misinformation panic” is dangerously wrong, and why it completely misunderstands the real crisis we face.
www.cato.org/policy-analy...

Reading Jacques Ellul's (1962) book, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. In it, he laments how American scientists had abandoned the term “propaganda” because it “cannot be defined with any degree of precision," calling that "intellectual surrender." We've been down this same road before.

Connective Action and the Rise of the Far-Right: Platforms, Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy Abstract. This volume introduces a “connection action” framework for explaining democratic backsliding. We bring together a mostly political science compar

Just published: "Unraveling the Big Lie: Participatory Disinformation and the 2020 Election." Thrilled to see this work out in the world and part of such an amazing compilation. My chapter features my initial research and model on "participatory disinformation": academic.oup.com/book/60493?l...

Exceited to share this Lawfare article by two star students on our elections research team. It's about how the right has used courts to spread and legitimize (false) election fraud claims as part of a broader effort to justify new restrictions to voting rights. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/how-...

Sadly, I think we've been teaching digital/media literacy all wrong. Instead of focusing on teaching people how to be skeptical and spot manipulation, we should focus on teaching people how these systems work so they can effectively use them to share their messages and promote their values.

As a follow-up to _Calling Bullshit_, Jevin West and I developed the course about LLMs that we think every college freshman should take.

Yesterday I talked about the course in a seminar at UNSW. And thanks to my colleagues there, 24 hours later the video is already online.

Spotlight graph of X discourse about Iranian 'Sleeper Cells' on June 20-22. Graph showing X posts along time (X axis) and cumulative number of X posts shared by that time (Y axis). Individual tweets are sized by the total number of reposts. Graph follows very slow growth from around 8am (EDT) on June 20 through about 9pm on June 21, when the rate of tweets (and retweets) grows substantially for about three hours before tapering off. The rate surges again starting around 7am the next morning.

Here's an interactive Spotlight graph showing the X discourse around 'sleeper cells' on Fri/Sat (June 20-22). The graph features cumulative number of posts (Y axis) over time (X axis) and plots individual posts along that graph sized by # of reposts.

faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/Spot...

How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation As an Australian who wrote about the demonstrations while on campus, I gave my phone a superficial clean before flying to the U.S. I underestimated what I was up against.

This is shocking. Pure totalitarianism from DHS, and also blatantly unconstitutional.

www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Is Fake Grass Safe? A Manufacturer Sues to Stop a Discussion.

A new chapter in the history of science denial:

A Manufacturer Sues to Stop a Discussion. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/c...

Another example of the right wing media machine selectively presenting and then twisting “evidence” into their strategic frames. This is how they work ALL THE TIME. As soon as an event happens, it’s all hands on deck to assemble evidence to fit their frames.

I’ve warned that this was only a matter of time, but it’s still shocking to see in person.

Here AI generated content is being used to create a fake news ecosystem, disparaging a professor who has been critical of unscientific bullshit in the form of deextinction hype.

Next week I will be traveling to Copenhagen for #ICWSM 2025, where I’ll be presenting two papers. Looking forward to connecting with other attendees and engaging with all the incredible work!

(Longish thread. Apologies)

I have met many inspiring colleagues over the past few months, many of whom are in academic institutions targeted by the current administration, and many others who are about to be (the analogy to the ‘eye of Sauron’ has been invoked many times; gallows humor). 1/