from the chat: SCOTUS might make some maaajor changes to campaign finance
ALSO: updates on the TikTok outage, "neoroyalism," people are selling plasma for Harry Styles tickets, and more
Happy Friday, February 6th!
WELCOME :)
Just a reminder: every Tuesday and Friday, I’ll be in your inbox with the latest in politics, tech & social media, culture, and other relevant topics – and I’ll share some notes and tips on what I’m keeping my eye on.
Want to do a super fun, super cool rapid interview for this newsletter like the one below??? Reply to this email or hit the button below. Tips, thoughts, concerns, good jokes, bad jokes, ☕️, etc?
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🚨🚨🚨 THIS WEEK’S ‘GOT A TEXT’ IS HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL… and NOT actually a real interview! I, like probably everyone, have spent the past 2+ years wondering if AI can really do what I do – and to what extent and at what point in time all of this might happen. So, for this week, I asked Chat GPT to act like an expert Democratic digital campaign strategist with experience in digital content, fundraising, and organizing, while I asked the same amount and same types (half silly, half serious) of questions I always do.
My takeaways: I’m not quaking in my boots quite yet. It took it a bit to actually get into the prompt, and all of the ideas it gave me are ones I have heard or read before (no surprises there). I thought its answer to my third question was particularly articulate – but otherwise, it was what I expected it to be: a somewhat under-nuanced amalgamation of the ideas real humans in this space are having – but, on the flip side, definitely not a bad tool for ideating, having it say things back to you but in a different way to get a new perspective, etc.
LR: You’re advising a colleague who’s currently on a statewide campaign in a true purple state on how to make cross-platform content that not only goes viral, but also has true resonance/staying power. What are the three best-practice tips you suggest that they adopt immediately?
GPT: First, I’d tell them to stop optimizing purely for virality and start optimizing for recognition. The content that actually sticks in a purple state is content that feels unmistakably local and human — it sounds like the way people talk about their lives, their bills, their schools, their commute. If someone sees a clip or a screenshot and immediately knows who it’s for and where it’s from, that’s when you start building real staying power.
Second, I’d push them to think “one idea, many entry points.” Cross-platform content works best when there’s a single, clear narrative spine, but the hook is adapted to how people arrive on each platform. TikTok needs an emotional or visual jolt in the first two seconds, Twitter needs a sharp takeaway that signals values, Instagram needs identity and aesthetics, and Facebook needs context. Same message, different doors — never copy-paste.
Third, I’d tell them the real persuasion happens after the post goes live. Comments, replies, stitches, and quote-tweets are where undecided voters actually encounter the argument. Campaigns that treat those spaces as an organizing and persuasion tool — not just a moderation problem — consistently outperform. You’re not just posting; you’re modeling how supporters should talk about the campaign in the wild.
LR: It’s no secret that many platforms (including, crucially, TikTok and Instagram) are not friendly to progressive content in this era. How can people practically still get their message across on these spaces?
GPT: The reality is that TikTok and Instagram are less friendly to overt progressive content right now, so the practical adjustment is separating values from labels. You can still move progressive ideas on these platforms, but you often can’t lead with campaign language, issue jargon, or explicit political framing. What does travel is story, experience, and consequence — showing how an issue shows up in someone’s life before naming it as political.
Practically, that also means making content feel native to the platform. On TikTok and Instagram, people respond to observation, humor, and specificity more than declarations. “Here’s something that happened” or “here’s what I’m seeing” will go farther than “here’s what you should believe,” even if the underlying message is the same.
Finally, reach can’t depend on a single account anymore. Distributed posting — staff, creators, and supporters sharing the same core idea in their own voice — is one of the most reliable ways to break through inconsistent or suppressive algorithms. The message lands not because one post explodes, but because it shows up repeatedly in trusted feeds.
LR: Speaking of, a huge consideration this cycle has been that of blending discourse about politics and culture (since, in reality, that Venn diagram is a circle, as we’ve clearly seen). There has also been a lot of discourse on if the framing should be bringing culture into politics OR bringing politics into culture. What are your thoughts on all of this?
GPT: I think the premise that politics and culture are separate is largely outdated — for most people, politics already arrives through culture, whether that’s media, platforms, fandoms, or day-to-day consumption. So the more useful question isn’t whether to blend them, but where the audience is encountering the issue first.
In practice, I’ve found it’s more effective to bring politics into culture than the other way around. When campaigns try to “add culture” to explicitly political content, it can feel forced or inauthentic. But when you start in cultural spaces people already care about — entertainment, trends, humor, lifestyle, identity — and then show how political decisions shape those spaces, the connection feels natural rather than imposed.
That doesn’t mean dumbing anything down. It means recognizing that culture is how people process meaning and values. If you meet people there, you can have much deeper political conversations than if you ask them to enter a space labeled “politics” from the jump.
Ultimately, the campaigns that are winning attention right now aren’t chasing relevance — they’re acknowledging that politics is already embedded in how people live, consume, and connect. The job is to make that relationship legible, not to manufacture it.
LR: If you could pick three songs to describe the 2026 political cycle thus far, what would they be?
GPT: I love this question because 2026 already has a soundtrack — it’s just a little unhinged.
First would be America Has a Problem. It captures the underlying tension of the cycle so far: high stakes, deep structural issues, and a sense that everyone knows something is wrong even if they disagree on solutions.
Second is Dog Days Are Over — not because things are easy, but because there’s this palpable feeling of transition. Old political assumptions are breaking down, new coalitions are forming, and there’s momentum mixed with anxiety about what comes next.
And third is Anti-Hero. A lot of this cycle has been defined by self-awareness — voters, institutions, and even campaigns grappling with their own credibility, failures, and contradictions in public.
Together, that’s 2026 to me: urgency, transition, and a lot of uncomfortable honesty playing out in real time.
LR: If progressive digital campaigning were a bagel order, what would it be?
GPT: It’s an everything bagel, lightly toasted, with scallion schmear — no lox, no capers, no nonsense.
The everything bagel because progressive digital has to hold a lot at once: policy, culture, humor, urgency, organizing, fundraising. You can’t pick just one flavor and expect it to work. Lightly toasted because it needs polish and intention, but not so much that it loses texture or feels overproduced.
Scallion schmear because it has bite — it’s not trying to be universally pleasing, but it is broadly appealing when it’s done well. And skipping the lox and capers is intentional: nothing extraneous, nothing that only a niche audience appreciates. Every element has to earn its place.
When it’s right, it’s satisfying, recognizable, and repeatable. When it’s wrong, it’s either bland or way too busy. That’s the tightrope progressive digital is walking in 2026.
This Supreme Court decision could upend millions in political spending ahead of the midterms. Here’s how the parties are preparing.
The Supreme Court is expected to decide the case, NRSC v. FEC, that could quietly but dramatically change how congressional elections are funded by giving political parties and their committees the ability to freely coordinate with candidates. The rules, if changed, would eliminate the need for “independent expenditure” operations for party committees — separate and firewalled arms of the committee that have spent a large chunk of campaign committees’ money since 2006, primarily on running TV advertising in the nation’s most competitive races. (POLITICO, 2/5)
‘Neoroyalism’ and What It Says About Trump
The royalist reference has resonated because it captures the president’s imperious style of governing, his policy reversals and his contempt for longstanding international rules — not to mention his admiration for the British monarchy. The theory has much in common with the kind of crony capitalism practiced by authoritarians like Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. (NYT gift link, 2/4)
Lucy’s note: I don’t think we necessarily need this new word invoking royalty as he so clearly is desperate for and has been for many years – I think we can not throw him any more bones and just call it cronyism or oligarchy :)
Why nobody really knows the scale of the U.S. housing crisis
America faces a serious housing shortage, one that Moody’s estimates would take more than 2 million new homes to resolve. But over at Goldman Sachs, analysts put the number at 3 million. Zillow’s estimate tops 4 million, while Brookings projects 5 million, and McKinsey says 8 million. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans insist the shortfall is closer to 20 million. (WaPo, 2/4 – free version)
Lucy’s note: reminder, if you want to support Post workers, instead of unsubscribing from those left, consider un-Besozing your life
Netflix’s co-CEO went to an antitrust hearing and a culture war broke out
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos on Tuesday tried to reassure lawmakers in the Senate that bigger can be better. Instead, he ended up spending much of his time before the Judiciary subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights pushing back against accusations from Republican senators that the streamer is politically biased. (NBC News, 2/3)
Researchers say no evidence of TikTok censorship, but they remain wary
But a data center outage that wreaked havoc on the platform appears to have disrupted all categories of posts, rather than singling out political content, according to a new analysis in the publication Good Authority. It was conducted by eight academics examining how videos were trending during the ownership transition. (NPR, 2/4)
Lucy’s note: HOWEVER, as the article notes, TikTok is highly opaque, even for researchers… and my thought is if you’re a social media platform already under scrutiny for censorship and suddenly there’s a huge amount of content that you may want to suppress while simultaneously there may be some amount of weather-related glitching… it feels quite possible that you might just pull the plug on everything for a bit
Spotify to let users buy physical books on app through Bookshop.org partnership
Spotify said the physical book purchasing feature will begin rolling out later this spring for users in the U.S. and the UK, with Bookshop.org handling pricing, inventory and fulfillment. Spotify will receive an affiliate fee for purchases made inside its app. (Reuters, 2/5)
Anthropic says ‘Claude will remain ad-free,’ unlike ChatGPT
Anthropic has announced that it won’t be bringing ads to its AI chatbot Claude, in sharp contrast to confirmed plans from OpenAI to allow advertising in ChatGPT. To hammer the point home further, the company is releasing a Super Bowl commercial that makes fun of unnamed rivals adding adverts to their AI. (The Verge, 2/4 – free version)
Fans Are Literally Selling Their Blood For Harry Styles Tickets
The San Diego State University student describes herself as an avid concert goer. “I’ve fought a lot of Ticketmaster wars,” she says. But as a college student, she tells Rolling Stone her schedule has severely limited the type of work she can do to get money and keep up with classwork. She’s deathly afraid of needles, but after failing to find a Styles ticket under $1,000 during the official Ticketmaster sale, she signed up for plasma donation. (Rolling Stone, 2/5 – free version)
Is Fashion Getting Political Again?
Since then, though, brands have gone relatively quiet. It’s rarer to see fashion brands speak out about political issues these days — especially those backed by conglomerates. Still, 71% of consumers say a brand ‘must take a political position’, according to research from Edelman. When a brand doesn’t communicate its actions on social issues, 51% of Edelman survey respondents said they ‘take this to mean the brand is doing nothing or hiding something’. (Vogue, 2/5 – free version)
Why American “quad god” Ilia Malinin skates like no one else
Figure skating experts told me that Malinin is a master technician, which allows him to maximize the height and rotation on his jumps. Meanwhile, scientists have studied Malinin’s quad axel and believe the secret is that he jumps higher vertically on it compared to his peers’ triple axels. The stuff that physics still can’t explain is Malinin magic. (Vox, 2/6)
Rome introduces Trevi Fountain tourist fee
City authorities in Rome have introduced an entrance fee to six historic sites and museums, including the Trevi fountain, which now carries a €2 admission charge, in a bid to ease congestion and offset costs of preserving the capital’s heritage. The Trevi fee was rolled out along with a new €5 tourist ticket fee (the Roma Mic card) for some of the city’s civic museums including the Napoleonic Museum and the Giovanni Barracco Museum of Ancient Sculpture. Residents of Rome are exempt from the fees. (The Art Newspaper, 2/3 – free version)
Extra Credit 🤓
“How a Billionaire Dismantled One of America’s Great Newsrooms” from Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box
“Was social media actually better in 2016?” from Lia Haberman of ICYMI by Lia Haberman
That’s all for now – I’ll see you on Tuesday!