OUR PICKSLeadership, but No Clear Leader, Failed at Tragic Trump Rally | Will Charging the Parents of School Shooters Help Prevent School Shootings? | The AI Boom Is Raising Hopes of a Nuclear Comeback, and more

Many Americans Say Immigration Is Out of Control, but 24 Hours on the Texas-Mexico Border Showed a New Reality. Will It Last?  (Bernice Garcia et al., Texas Tribune)
The Texas Tribune and The Associated Press visited five locations along the 1,254-mile span to separate the facts from the political narrative during a heated election year.

Disinformation May Thrive as Transparency Deteriorates Across Social Media  (R. Gordon Rinderknecht, The Hill)
In 2016, RAND Corporation researchers described Russia’s attempts at influencing the American public as a “firehose of falsehoods,” characterized by a high volume of content distributed broadly, repetitively and with little commitment to truth and consistency. Our knowledge of these tactics was partly built on a degree of social media transparency that no longer exists in 2024.

Will Charging the Parents of School Shooters Help Prevent School Shootings?  (Andrew R. Morral, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
It’s a sensible strategy, especially in combination with gun-safety laws that are proven to reduce suicides and homicides.

Trump, Twitter, and Truth Judgments: The Effects of “Disputed” Tags and Political Knowledge on the Judged Truthfulness of Election Misinformation  (John C. Blanchar and Catherine J. Norris, Misinformation Review)
Misinformation has sown distrust in the legitimacy of American elections. Nowhere has this been more concerning than in the 2020 U.S. presidential election wherein Donald Trump falsely declared that it was stolen through fraud. Although social media platforms attempted to dispute Trump’s false claims by attaching soft moderation tags to his posts, little is known about the effectiveness of this strategy.

Court: Ohio’s Foreign Money Ban on Ballot Initiatives Can Proceed  (J. D. Davidson, Center Square)
Ohio already bans contributions from foreign nationals to candidates or candidate committees.

Leadership, but No Clear Leader, Failed at Tragic Trump Rally  (Luke BroadwaterKate Kelly and Eileen Sullivan, New York Times)
A Senate committee report on the Secret Service’s inability to protect the former president at a July event depicts a lack of individual responsibility among those charged with planning.

The AI Boom Is Raising Hopes of a Nuclear Comeback (Matt Reynolds, Wired)
Microsoft’s deal to bring back a Three Mile Island nuclear reactor is just one part of Big Tech’s quid pro quo with nuclear power.