Chiara De Franco
@chiara-defranco.bsky.social
1.1K followers 330 following 42 posts
Associate Prof of IR @ Uni of Southern Denmark | human protection | EU, UN, AU | diplomacy| languaging | mother of two | she/her
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chiara-defranco.bsky.social
Presented my paper on the EU and human rights at a brilliant LSE/KCL workshop on Europe in the Trump era. Big thanks to the organisers Federica Bicchi, Benedetta Voltolini, Karen Smith and Benedetta Morari. Also my first time back in London in 12 years—I’d missed this city (even the tube).
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
Baltic crisis, cyber chaos, pipelines blown, NATO sweating—just another Monday in the classroom with our BA students in political science and Cand.Negot.
They nailed it. They tuned in, negotiated, made decisions despite uncertainty.
Props to Hendrik Huelss for co-running the madness.
Reposted by Chiara De Franco
oalexanderdk.bsky.social
Why aren’t you wearing a suit?

Have you said “Thank you” to Greenland and Denmark for allowing you to have a base on Greenland?
Reposted by Chiara De Franco
ditzkoff.bsky.social
me coming in guns-a-blazing, with absolute certainty and confidence that what I say next will eliminate any doubt about my competence
Pete Hegseth post: "So, let's me get this straight."
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
Yes. He’s a very specific case of ‘the political is personal and the personal is political’. Not the feminist way. Rather the narcissistic pathological way.
timothysnyder.bsky.social
Trump has no concept of the nation or of its security. This is not an insult to his intelligence. These are just not cognitive categories for him. He can’t care about national security because it’s not a thing in his world.
theatlantic.com
Trump has grown frustrated with the negative headlines the Signal security breach has caused, @jonlemire.bsky.social reports. Yet the president and his allies are focused on attacking the media rather than showing concern for the national-security blunder: theatln.tc/2vzda50K
Reposted by Chiara De Franco
Reposted by Chiara De Franco
joniaskola.bsky.social
The same people who are responsible for the signal gate think that they can negotiate a lasting end to the war in Ukraine. Putin’s russia is eating them alive. They project weakness and amateurism on scales unseen before
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
Dump&Vile continue to cancel history and make idiotic statements. Denmark has been a steadfast ally—Danes have lost lives, limbs, and sleep in Afghanistan. More than any other ally (pro capita). If they wanted more US military presence in Greenland, they could’ve just asked… three months ago.
antongerashchenko.bsky.social
US Vice President JD Vance:

"Denmark, which controls Greenland, is not doing its job and it's not being a good ally. How are we going to solve that problem? If that means we need to take more territorial interest in Greenland, that is what President Trump is going to do because ⤵️
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
Inspirational.
marcelias.bsky.social
Now that Trump has proven to be a ruthless autocrat, too many have grown timid and silent.

That is simply not who I am. It is not what I believe, and it is not what I will do.

Instead, I will worry. I will hope. And I will fight.
www.democracydocket.com/opinion/i-wo...
I Worry, but I Fight
From Marc | Despite that worry, I cannot stop standing up for what is right. I cannot turn a blind eye to injustice.
www.democracydocket.com
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
Instead, give them instruments to understand how they can help the judges and local authorities that are already defending your democratic institutions. there’s plenty of research on non-violent resistance to draw from, for example by @chenoweth.bsky.social and colleagues.
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
This is where good journalism has an advantage over scientific analysis: you can make autocracy real to your target audience before risks materialize; 3) don’t stop at scaring your audience. There’s nothing worse than making warnees feel powerless.
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
2) what is a stake for you, all of you, including trump’s voters. Including the Schumers. I suspect many Americans might not fully realize what it means to live under the power of an autocrat. Give detailed examples of how their life would get transformed in tragic and yet mundane ways.
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
There’s unfortunately plenty of historical and contemporary cases to draw on for comparison, but Americans might believe their institutions are stronger than, say, Turkey’s so I’m not so sure these comparisons help. Just focus on how things might look like in 6 months if Trump is not contained;
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
My research shows legacy media like @nytimes.com can produce persuasive warnings affecting policy makers and broader public: you need to step up! You need to explain: 1) What is happening in very specific and unambiguous terms: your democracy is dying and you are becoming an electoral autocracy
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
I have studied warnings for nearly 17 years now and when it comes to the deadly risks the US democracy is facing, I keep seeing very strong warning indications (as in the case of the article below) but almost no proper warning, which is typical of developing crises www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/w...
‘This Is Worse’: Trump’s Judicial Defiance Veers Beyond the Autocrat Playbook
The president’s escalating conflict with federal courts is even more aggressive than what happened in countries like Hungary and Turkey, experts say.
www.nytimes.com
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
“They perform omnipotence so convincingly that only when they fall do we see how brittle their power truly was.”
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
“strongmen project invincibility to convince people resistance is futile. They want to crush any hope of justice. By sowing fear, they seek to stifle our democratic imagination.” www.cjr.org/world/dutert...
On the Arrest of an Autocrat
Journalists, lawyers, clergy, and human rights activists persisted in the Philippines, even when hope for accountability seemed nonexistent.
www.cjr.org
Reposted by Chiara De Franco
adambonica.bsky.social
1/🧵 Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative). This isn't partisan opposition to Trump—it's the judiciary functioning as intended by cutting across partisan lines to uphold the Constitution.
Title: Both Liberal and Conservative Judges Rule Against Trump
Description: A scatter plot showing the rulings of judges against or in favor of Trump, categorized by ideology using the DIME score. The x-axis represents Judge Ideology (DIME Score), ranging from liberal (-1) to conservative (1), and the y-axis represents the case outcome (against or for Trump).
	•	Blue dots represent liberal judges, purple dots represent moderate judges, and red dots represent conservative judges.
	•	Some judges are labeled, including Rudolph Contreras, Lauren King, John Coughenour, and James Emanuel Boasberg on the liberal to moderate side, and Carl Nichols, Richard J. Leon, and Joseph N. Laplante on the conservative side.
	•	A note mentions that Boasberg, though slightly right-leaning, was initially appointed by George W. Bush.
	•	The visualization suggests that judges from both ideological backgrounds ruled against Trump.
Reposted by Chiara De Franco
chenoweth.bsky.social
@djpressman.bsky.social, Soha Hammam, and I draw on our research through the Crowd Counting Consortium to show that there is far more protest happening in the US than is commonly understood, and that the shift to economic noncooperation shows powerful potential for future collective action.
Resistance is alive and well in the United States
Protests of Trump may not look like the mass marches in 2017, but they're far more numerous and frequent — and also becoming more strategic.
urldefense.proofpoint.com
chiara-defranco.bsky.social
As a recent SIPRI report shows, the US accounts for 43% of global arms exports, with Europeans as their top customer over the past five years. That market’s about to tank faster than Tesla sales. www.euractiv.com/section/defe...
www.euractiv.com