Campaigns
How YouTube is Weighing on the Democratic Senate Primary in Michigan
Campaigns & Elections
“Between late June and late July, ClarifyAI tallied some 877 negative or oppositional YouTube videos mentioning Stevens, while just 277 featured positive narratives or messages about the candidate. El-Sayed, on the other hand, saw 1,115 positive videos on YouTube compared to 577 negative ones.”
Campaign ridicule was the real winner of Michigan’s Democratic primary
Semafor
“But her opponents weren’t trying to have a serious discourse. They were making fun of her, folding a serious argument (that Stevens was captured by her pro-Israel donors) into a silly argument (about Stevens’ personality).”
Content
The MAGA Media Machine Is Fracturing
New York Times
“The shifts threaten to complicate messaging this year for Republican candidates, who have for years relied on a united front of content creators to rile up Republicans and guide them to the polls each election cycle.”
The AI ‘news’ accounts hyping a blue-state dystopia
Semafor
“Newsom’s office says it worked with YouTube to identify more than 700 accounts since January that were subsequently removed for violating the company’s terms of service through its ‘likeness protection’ program, a new support system for public figures, creators, and journalists that flags when someone’s face is used without their permission in deepfakes.”
Media
Is Americans’ declining trust in media driven by political messaging?
Nieman Lab
“Then Democrats start speaking more positively about the press and Republicans start speaking ever more harshly about the press — to the point where today, Republicans in Congress are on average more negative about the press than they’ve ever been, at least since 1939.”
Social Media
What the Diarrhea Parasite Teaches Us About Winning Online
FWIW
“Consider this account exhibit A: two million views, zero dollars spent, all in the time it takes some teams to get a single video through legal review.”
35 Percent of Young Trump Voters Say an Online Creator Changed Their Mind
Katie Harbath
“They aren’t saying creators are better. They’re saying there’s no separate tier.”
A new media ecosystem is taking root on the left
AP News
“The Democratic National Committee’s relatively new digital media offering, a rapid-response clipping and messaging account with the handle @FactPostNews, has amassed more than 2 billion impressions on Threads, X, Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky in 2026 alone.”
Technology
Congress’ favorite AI tool? ChatGPT
TechCrunch
“Democratic offices accounted for $54,165 in AI purchases, three times the $15,782 spent by Republican offices.”
The Supreme Court’s AI Collision Course
RealClearPolitics
“The constitutional doctrine that currently protects the right of these companies to spend millions in our elections is the same doctrine that will be asked to protect something even stranger: The ‘speech’ of artificial intelligence itself.”
We’re headed toward the first true AI election
Axios
“This will be the first election cycle where AI is both a dominant policy debate — and a widely deployed political weapon.”
Mapping America’s Political Conversations with Claude
Andy Hall
“Politics makes up about half a percent of Claude conversations in the U.S.—ranking 66 out of 189 topics, right next to home furnishing.”
