Fabio Sabatini
@fabiosabatini.bsky.social
Professor of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome | IZA Fellow, Bonn | fabiosabatini.site.uniroma1.it | Substack: https://fabiosabatini.substack.com/
Sociology
28%
Political science
28%
Pinned
Will the United States still hold free elections?
How the Trump administration is working to neutralize the vote without formally abolishing elections
civiceconomist.substack.com
🧵 The U.S. House of Representatives has just passed the SAVE America Act. The bill would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship — specifically a passport or a birth certificate — to register to vote, and it would also require a photo ID to cast a ballot.
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Gli Stati Uniti avranno ancora elezioni libere?
La strategia dell’amministrazione Trump per neutralizzare il voto senza abolirlo
fabiosabatini.substack.com
In the post, I reconstruct step by step how the Trump administration’s strategy to neutralize the vote works, and which parts of that strategy are already operational.
Linked here you can find the Italian version.
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Linked here you can find the Italian version.
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Americans will almost certainly still vote in 2026 and 2028. The question is whether voting will still be capable of producing a real alternation in power.
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... the systematic construction of an “election fraud” narrative; and the deliberate erosion of trust in elections — with a clear goal: to make electoral outcomes politically manageable without formally cancelling elections.
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In the post linked at the top of this thread, I analyze how multiple levers are being deployed in combination — redistricting; pressure on state governments; centralization of voter rolls; administrative intimidation; the threat of armed force in the streets and at polling places; [continues]
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This is not a marginal tweak. It is a structural change to the rules governing access to the franchise. And it fits into a broader strategy: to reshape the material conditions of electoral competition well before Election Day, rather than merely contesting results after the fact.
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Credible estimates suggest that more than 9% of voting-age U.S. citizens — roughly 21.3 million people — do not have proof of citizenship readily at hand.
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Nel nuovo post su Substack (link nei commenti) passo in rassegna i numeri del sostegno finanziario, militare e umanitario all’Ucraina, e ne discuto le conseguenze sull’economia politica dei negoziati e sul futuro stesso del continente.
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Questa trasformazione cambia le posizioni negoziali. L’UE deve avere un ruolo centrale in qualsiasi discorso sulla pace. Ma la leadership richiede credibilità strategica, e quindi un’accelerazione verso l’autonomia dagli Stati Uniti.
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Oggi la resistenza ucraina è sostenuta dall’Europa, non dagli Stati Uniti. Nel 2025 il sostegno americano si è quasi azzerato, mentre l’UE ha colmato gran parte del vuoto.
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Chi sostiene la resistenza ucraina
I dati sugli aiuti mostrano il ruolo fondamentale dell’Europa e cambiano l’economia politica dei negoziati
fabiosabatini.substack.com
🧵 Per Trump, sono gli USA a sostenere il peso della guerra in Ucraina. Quindi, l’Europa dovrebbe adattarsi alla strategia americana sulla pace, anche quando coincide con una sostanziale resa del paese aggredito.
I dati sugli aiuti raccontano un’altra storia.
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I dati sugli aiuti raccontano un’altra storia.
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Gallup to stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years
Public opinion polling agency says decision ‘solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities’
www.theguardian.com
Trump has seen his approval rating measured by Gallup dipping to less than 37 percent in its last poll taken in December.
Result: Gallup will no longer track presidential approval ratings after more than eight decades doing so.
Another example of how authoritarianism works.
Result: Gallup will no longer track presidential approval ratings after more than eight decades doing so.
Another example of how authoritarianism works.
In plain terms, the evidence points in one direction: this is not a wartime aberration but a project of conquest built around the erasure and reengineering of identity.
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This is not “the Ukrainian version” of events. It reconstructs the Russian version — from Russian sources, Russian statements, and Russian infrastructure — assembled with methodological rigor.
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The investigation follows internationally recognized research protocols and draws on thousands of open-source materials, independent corroboration, satellite imagery, and cross-verified analysis.
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The report by the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health offers a crucial starting point — one that has been largely absent from the Italian debate. It is documentation in the strict sense of the word, which is to say, the opposite of propaganda.
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Why Russia is taking Ukrainian children
How the deportation, re-education, and militarization system operates — and what it reveals about the logic of Russia’s invasion
civiceconomist.substack.com
🧵 If we want to understand what Russia actually seeks — and what conditions would make a stable, lasting peace possible — we have to look at the network built to deport and “re-educate” Ukrainian children taken from occupied territories.
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civiceconomist.substack.com/p/why-russia...
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civiceconomist.substack.com/p/why-russia...