• Immigration Polarizes the Right, and Climate Change Polarizes the Left: Study

    Older people, people with a high degree of educational attainment and income, and residents of large cities have the strongest negative feelings toward people who think differently. On average, those who identify themselves as left-leaning are more polarized than those who identify themselves as right-leaning.

  • Holding Trump Accountable Will Not Threaten American Democracy: Research

    New data from the Polarization Research Lab found that 97 percent of Americans — from both parties — oppose political violence. The research has found that despite rhetoric from Trump and his allies, the public do not see the indictment of a former president as a reason to abandon democratic principles or as a call to support violent retribution.

  • Many Once Democratic Countries Continue to Backslide, Becoming Less Free – but Their Leaders Continue to Enjoy Popular Support

    The last decade-and-a-half has witnessed what Freedom House describes as a global “democratic backsliding,” with 60 countries ceasing to be functioning, if at times flawed, democracies. In many of these non-democratic countries, however, the leadership which has put an end to the country’s democracy – for example, in Hungary and Turkey – remains popular.

  • Regulate National Security AI Like Covert Action

    Congress is trying to roll up its sleeves and get to work on artificial intelligence (AI) regulation. Ashley Deeks writes that only a few of these proposed provisions, however, implicate national security-related AI, and none create any kind of framework regulation for such tools. She proposes crafting a law similar to the War Powers Act to govern U.S. intelligence and military agencies use of AI tools.

  • The Fight to Save Israel’s Democracy

    Israeli philosopher and author Yuval Noah Harari says that to understand events in Israel, there is just one question to ask: What limits the power of the government? Robust democracies rely on a whole system of checks and balances. But Israel lacks a constitution, an upper house in the parliament, a federal structure, or any other check on government power except one — the Supreme Court. On Monday, the government took the first of several steps toward what legal scholars regard as hollowing out Israel’s democracy by substantially weakening judicial review of government actions.

  • DOJ Files Complaint Against Texas Over Placing Floating Buoy Barrier in the Rio Grande

    The Justice Department on Monday filed a civil complaint against the State of Texas because the state has built a floating barrier, consisting of buoys strung together, in the Rio Grande River without the federal authorization that is legally required under the Rivers and Harbors Act. 

  • U.S., Artificial Intelligence Companies Work to Mitigate Risks

    Can artificial intelligence wipe out humanity? A senior U.S. official said the United States government is working with leading AI companies and at least 20 countries to set up guardrails to mitigate potential risks.

  • Six Ways AI Can Make Political Campaigns More Deceptive Than Ever

    Political campaign ads and donor solicitations have long been deceptive. These days, the internet has gone wild with deceptive political ads. Ads often pose as polls and have misleading clickbait headlines. Campaigns are now rapidly embracing artificial intelligence for composing and producing ads and donor solicitations, even as there are growing fears that AI will make politics more deceptive than ever.

  • Paying the Costs of Climate Resilience

    The idea that climate pollution can be eliminated by political edict overestimates political power and underestimates economic power. It is not simply powerful economic interests that influence public policy, but the sense of economic well-being perceived and experienced by the mass public. The maintenance of that sense of well-being is a critical foundation of political stability. The transition to a renewable resource-based economy must be careful to reinforce and not undermine that sense of well-being.

  • One- to Four-Family Properties with Multiple Losses Insured by the National Flood Insurance Program

    What are the characteristics of properties that have experienced multiple flood losses (e.g., percentage of overall claims payments, number of losses, and structure characteristics)? What are the socioeconomic characteristics of multiple loss property (MLP) households and the communities in which they are located? What percentage of MLPs have been mitigated, what are the socioeconomics characteristics of neighborhoods where MLPs have been mitigated, and how effective has mitigation been in reducing risk?

  • Can You Trust AI? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t

    Across the internet, devices and services that seem to work for you already secretly work against you. Smart TVs spy on you. Phone apps collect and sell your data. Many apps and websites manipulate you through dark patterns, design elements that deliberately mislead, coerce or deceive website visitors. This is surveillance capitalism, and AI is shaping up to be part of it.

  • Events That Never Happened Could Influence the 2024 Presidential Election – a Cybersecurity Researcher Explains Situation Deepfakes

    The basic idea and technology of a situation deepfake are the same as with any other deepfake, but with a bolder ambition: to manipulate a real event or invent one from thin air. Situation deepfakes have already been used in recent weeks – the first in a Republican National Committee’s ad against President Joe Biden, the second in an anti-Trump ad by Ron DeSantis’s campaign.

  • Americans in Former Confederate States More Likely to Say Violent Protest against Government Is Justified, 160 Years After Gettysburg

    Americans living in the Confederate states that violently rebelled against the United States during the Civil War express significantly greater support for the notion that it can be justifiable to violently protest against the government. Residents of what are known as the Border States, the slave states that did not secede from the Union, are also more likely than residents of Union states to say it can be justifiable to violently protest against the government.

  • Close to 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged in Georgia — Almost All by Just Six Right-Wing Activists

    Many states allow challenges to voter registration, but officials in Georgia and experts say that in the past challengers have typically had relevant personal knowledge, such as someone submitting a challenge to remove a dead relative from the rolls. Georgia, however, is unusual: changes to the law after the 2020 election explicitly allow citizens unlimited challenges against anyone in their county. Georgia officials say that they did not know of any instances of challenges resulting in a successfully prosecuted case of voter fraud.

  • Far-Right Populism is Resurgent in Germany

    The far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party recently won two local elections in breakthrough victories. Rising energy costs, widespread inflation, and migration levels that have doubled over last year are providing fodder for far-right messaging throughout Europe.