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samwang.bsky.social
Neurosciencer, democracy reform studier, plotter of data by hand as first step. At Princeton too. Come visit my long-form essays at samwang.substack.com
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Reminder to the US Marines in Los Angeles: It is unlawful to obey a unlawful order.

From the New Yorker, 2018. I was so ahead of my time.

"No, L.A. is not under lockdown. No, the protesters aren’t Soros-paid agitators. And no, this isn’t Portland 2020. I’m here in Los Angeles. Here’s what’s actually happening" from Nancy Rommelmann

Huh, something I didn't even know was possible: a photograph of the death of the American Constitution

Mass peaceful protests work! @malcolmnance.bsky.social explains why we MUST come out in huge numbers for civil protests. He's on the case tomorrow for "No Kings"! Clips by @chattjazz.bsky.social Full podcast: www.patreon.com/c/PoliticsWi...

As an exercise, try to imagine Ron Johnson being wrestled to the ground in Wisconsin; or Tommy Tuberville in Alabama; or Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Yeah, neither can I. charliesykes.substack.com/p/no-kings-n...

The First Amendment to the Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; **or the right of the people peaceably to assemble** constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay...

My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@[email protected], Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵

Relevant, as the National Day of Protest is coming up on Saturday. Know your free speech rights.

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/12/russian-researcher-harvard-release?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Call your reps. Tell them they need to draw a goddamn line. There are a huge range of procedural tools they can use to slow Congress to a crawl. Use it or lose it. (Scripts/language here.)

Relevant, as the National Day of Protest is coming up on Saturday. Know your free speech rights.

Just checking back in to see where we stand on this @bostonglobe.com fake front page from pre-election 2016

ICYMI: Federal judge GRANTS California Governor Gavin Newsom @governor.ca.gov’s Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, telling Trump he ILLEGALLY deployed the California National Guard to LA. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

At the risk of being repetitive: the US Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Ask for your US Representative or Senator by name, or give a ZIP code. You'll be put through, day or night. Or call their local district office for a more likely live response.

just checked in with the debate to see lander and mamdani eating cuomo alive. go for it.

Area Man Complains About Having Choice Between Partisan Primaries

Wisconsin’s State Capitol is filled this afternoon to honor Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, one of the great jurists in the history of Wisconsin and the nation. The first woman to join the court by election (as opposed to appointment) her decades of service transformed the judiciary.

The point isn't that it will work. Everyone knows it won't. Presidentialism was a grave mistake (bsky.app/profile/mcop...) for this very reason & we should scrap it. The point is for Democrats to signal to voters they understand the stakes & are doing everything they can to fight the fascism.

Even if you think Biden was too old & confused to run things, 👇 didn't happen, because he staffed the entire government, from the top all the way down, with highly qualified & competent people. This is the part the Tapper/Thompson "Worse than Watergate" embarrassment never bothers to engage with.

She is saying, in effect: "We are going to liberate the city from its democratically elected leadership using the military"

As a former Angeleno, I have to say this is simply outstanding. Thank you @dahlialithwick.bsky.social.

It’s completely insane that US troops are illegally deployed to suppress domestic opposition and it’s not uniformly condemned by the press and political elite.

Mice harboring mutations in Fmr1, Cntnap2 or Shank3B show a blunted update of priors during decision-making, suggesting that distinct genetic instantiations of ASD may yield common neurophysiological and behavioral phenotypes www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Again, the big divide within the Democratic Party is not going to be progressives versus moderate (or The Groups). It's going to be fight versus flight. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

What they aren’t showing on Fox News

Earlier today the news broke that the US was pulling some diplomatic personnel out of Iraq and nearby countries. Now it's come out that Iran just executed a historic hack compromising dozens of terabytes of Netanyahu's private files and Mossad Intel files x.com/DropSiteNews...

“sure, he’s a great traffic engineer, but once he ran into traffic to save a child”

Zohran is up. Keep going.

Hard to overstate the harms of the whitewashed civil rights movement right now, widely taught as essentially passive petitioners of the benevolent state. The movement succeeded only bc it mobilized ppl through a variety of tactics including self-defense & economic warfare *against* the racist state.

on the short list of greatest musicians ever, an absolute foundational artist hard to even know where to start with his best work, but "all of Pet Sounds" is as good a place as any

why is the president the only person testing the limits of his power? everyone should see what they can get away with. what if zookeepers gave helicopters to gorillas? nobody has tried this

Will the news media properly cover the "No Kings" protests on Saturday? Or will they decide that "peaceful" equals "boring"? Back in April, NPR decided that 3 million protesters was a small number. Will an even bigger number shake news outlets out of their stupor? My Stop the Presses newsletter.

Despite the fact that three members of their party have died in office this year already, no sign of respectfully easing out old leaders. Here, will DC pay the price?

Trump is urging Texas Republicans to redistrict even more aggressively than their existing map this year, in advance of 2026. However, as the investment saying goes, pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/u...

🔥🔥🔥

And my long conversation with @andreapitzer.bsky.social on the #BethesdaDeclaration is out too. Standing up to power. degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/standing-u...

Every major Dem politician needs to realize that, in this environment, they can schedule a "speech to the nation," like Newsom did, and get tons of media coverage. Just do it.

Periodic reminder that every day is STFU Friday Also, sharing the location of cops in the public performance of their jobs is ironclad First Amendment-protected expression If you're concerned something you've said has you on the Government's radar, call your lawyer instead of posting through it

absolutely the lowest priority item in the news but actually makes me angry