Category: Politics

In June 2021, a deadly heat wave pushed temperatures to 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) in Spokane, Washington, a northern city near the Idaho border where many homes weren’t built with central air conditioning.

As the heat lingered for over a week, 19 people died in Spokane County and about 300 visited hospitals with signs of heat-related illnesses.

Scientists say it’s not a matter of if, but when, another deadly heat wave descends on the region. To help save lives, the city teamed up with my university, Gonzaga, to start preparing for a hotter future.

We were excited and relieved when the community was awarded a US$19.9 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to help it take concrete steps to adapt to climate change and boost the local economy in the process. The grant would help establish resilience hubs with microgrids and help residents without air conditioning install energy-efficient cooling systems. The city doesn’t have the means to make these improvements on its own, even if they would save lives and money in the long run.

Less than a year later, the Trump administration abruptly terminated the funding.

Spokane’s grant wasn’t the only one eliminated – about 350 similar grants that had been awarded to help communities across the country manage climate changes, from extreme heat and wildfire smoke to rising seas and flooding, were also terminated on the grounds that they don’t meet the White House’s priorities. Many other grants to help communities have also been terminated.

Many of the communities that lost funding are like Spokane: They can’t afford to do this kind of work on their own.

Why cities like Spokane need the help

Like many communities in the American West, Spokane was founded in the late 19th century on wealth from railroads and resource extraction, especially gold, silver and timber.

Today, it is a city of 230,000 in a metro area of a half-million people, the largest on the I-90 corridor between Minneapolis and Seattle. In many ways, Spokane could be on the cusp of a renaissance.

In January 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a $48 million grant to develop a tech hub that could put the Inland Northwest on a path to become a global leader in advanced aerospace materials. But then, in May, the Trump administration rescinded that grant as well.

The lost grants left the economy – and Spokane’s ability to adapt fast enough to keep up with climate changes – uncertain.

This is not a wealthy area. The median household income is nearly $30,000 less than the state average. More than 13 out of every 100 people in Spokane live in poverty, above the national average, and over 67% of the children are eligible for free or reduced lunch.

The city is a light blue island in a dark red sea, politically speaking, with a moderate mayor. Its congressional district has voted Republican by wide margins since 1995, the year that then-House Speaker Tom Foley lost his reelection bid.

Lessons from the 2021 heat dome

The 2021 heat wave was a catalyzing event for the community. The newly formed Gonzaga Institute for Climate, Water and the Environment brought together a coalition of government and community partners to apply for the EPA’s Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grant Program. The grants, funded by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, were intended to help communities most affected by pollution and climate change build adaptive capacity and boost the safety of their residents.

A key lesson from the 2021 heat dome was that temporary, or pop-up, cooling centers don’t work well. People just weren’t showing up. Our research found that the best approach is to strengthen existing community facilities that people already turn to in moments of difficulty.

Half the $19.9 million award was for outfitting five resilience hubs in existing libraries and community centers with solar arrays and battery backup microgrids, allowing them to continue providing a safe, cool space during a heat wave if the power shuts down.

Another $8 million in grant funding was meant to provide 300 low- to moderate-income homeowners with new high-efficiency electric heat pump heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, providing more affordable utility bills while improving their ability to cool their homes and reducing fossil fuel emissions.

Communities are left with few options

Now, this and other work is at risk in Spokane and cities and towns like it around the country that also lost funding.

According to the Trump administration, the program – designed to help hundreds of communities around the country become safer – was “no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.”

A class action lawsuit was recently filed over the termination of the grants by a coalition that includes Earth Justice and the Southern Environmental Law Center. If the case is successful, Spokane could see its funding restored.

Meanwhile, the city and my team know we have to move fast, with whatever money and other resources we can find, to help Spokane prepare for worsening heat. We formed the Spokane Community Resilience Collaborative – a partnership between community organizations, health officials and the city – as one way to advance planning for and responding to climate hazards such as extreme heat and wildfire smoke.

As concentrations of heat-trapping gasses accumulate in the atmosphere, both the frequency and severity of heat waves increase. It is only a matter of time before another deadly heat dome arrives.

Brian G. Henning receives funding from the Environmental Protection Agency.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The Trump administration has recently directed that a new wave of polygraphs be administered across the executive branch, aimed at uncovering leaks to the press.

As someone who has taken roughly a dozen polygraphs during my 27-year career with the CIA, I read this development with some skepticism.

Polygraphs carry an ominous, almost mythological reputation among Americans. The more familiar and unofficial term – lie detector tests – likely fuels that perception. Television crime dramas have done their part, too, often portraying the device as an oracle for uncovering the truth when conventional methods fail.

In those portrayals, the polygraph is not merely a tool – it’s a window into the soul.

Among those entering government service, especially in national security, the greater anxiety is not the background check but passing the polygraph. My advice is always the same: Don’t lie.

It’s the best – and perhaps only – guidance for a process that most assessments have concluded is a more subjective interpretation than empirical science.

Why the polygraph persists

Polygraphs are “pseudo-scientific” in that they measure physiological responses such as heart rate, blood pressure and perspiration. The assumption is that liars betray themselves through spikes in those signals. But this presumes a kind of psychological transparency that simply doesn’t hold up. A person might sweat and tremble simply from fear, anger or frustration – not deceit.

There also are no specific physiological reactions associated with lying. The National Academy of Sciences in 2003, and the American Psychological Association in a 2004 review, concluded that the polygraph rests more on theater than fact. Recent assessments, published in 2019, have reached the same conclusion.

Accordingly, polygraph results are not generally admissible in U.S. courts. Only a handful of states – such as Georgia, Arizona and California – permit their use even under limited conditions. And they typically require that both parties agree to admission and a judge to approve it. Unconditional admissibility remains the exception, not the rule.

And yet, inside many national security agencies, polygraphs remain central to the clearance process – a fact I observed firsthand during my time overseeing personnel vetting and analytic hiring within the intelligence community.

While not treated as conclusive, polygraph results often serve as a filter. A candidate’s visible discomfort – or the examiner’s subjective judgment that a response seems evasive – can stall or end the hiring process. For instance, I know that government agencies have halted clearances after an examiner flagged elevated reactions to questions about past drug use or foreign contacts, even when no disqualifying behavior was ultimately documented.

In some cases, an examiner’s suggestion that a chart shows an anomaly has led otherwise strong applicants to volunteer details they hadn’t planned to share – such as minor security infractions, undeclared relationships, or casual drug use from decades earlier – that, while not disqualifying on their own, reshape how their trustworthiness is perceived.

The polygraph’s power lies in creating the conditions under which deception is confessed.

A predictable pattern

No administration has been immune to the impulse to investigate leaks. The reflex is bipartisan and familiar: An embarrassing disclosure appears in the press – contradicting official statements or exposing internal dissent – and the White House vows to identify and punish the source. Polygraphs are often part of this ritual.

During his first term, Trump intensified efforts to expose internal dissent and media leaks. Department guidelines were revised to make it easier for agencies to obtain journalists’ phone and email records, and polygraphs were reportedly used to pressure officials suspected of talking to the press. That trend has continued – and, in some areas, escalated.

Recent policies at the Pentagon now restrict unescorted press access, revoke office space for major outlets and favor ideologically aligned networks. The line between legitimate leak prevention and the surveillance or sidelining of critical press coverage has grown increasingly blurred.

At agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, polygraphs are reportedly being used more frequently – and more punitively – to identify internal dissenters. Even “cold cases,” such as the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs opinion ahead of its overturning of Roe v. Wade, have been reopened, despite prior investigations yielding no definitive source.

Government reaction varies

Not all leaks are treated the same. Disclosures that align with official narratives or offer strategic advantage may be quietly tolerated, even if unauthorized. Others, especially those that embarrass senior officials or reveal dysfunction, are more likely to prompt formal investigation.

In 2003, for example, the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity – widely seen as retaliation for her husband’s criticism of the Iraq War – triggered a federal investigation. The disclosure embarrassed senior officials, led to White House aide Scooter Libby’s conviction for perjury, later commuted, and drew intense political scrutiny.

Leaks involving classified material draw the sharpest response when they challenge presidential authority or expose internal disputes. That was the case in 2010 with Chelsea Manning, whose disclosure of diplomatic cables and battlefield reports embarrassed senior officials and sparked global backlash. Government reaction often depends less on what was disclosed than on who disclosed it – and to what effect.

A narrow set of disclosures, such as those involving espionage or operational compromise, elicit broad consensus as grounds for prosecution. But most leaks fall outside that category. Most investigations fade quietly. The public rarely learns what became of them. Occasionally, there is a vague resignation, but direct accountability is rare.

What the future holds

Trump’s polygraph campaign is not likely to eliminate leaks to the press. But they may have a chilling effect that discourages internal candor while diverting investigative energy away from core security priorities.

Even if such campaigns succeed in reducing unauthorized disclosures, they may come at the cost of institutional resilience. Historically, aggressive internal enforcement has been associated with declining morale and reduced information flow – factors that can hinder adaptation to complex threats.

Some researchers have suggested that artificial intelligence may eventually offer reliable tools for detecting deception. One recent assessment raised the possibility, while cautioning that the technology is nowhere near operational readiness.

For now, institutions will have to contend with the tools they have – imperfect, imprecise and more performative than predictive.

As a former US intelligence officer, I am required to submit any written draft, before sharing it with other persons, for prepublication review. I submitted this draft to CIA’s Prepublication Review Board, which responded on 11 June: “No classified information was identified. Therefore, no changes are required for publication or sharing with others.”

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Democrat Josh Cowen is launching a bid by highlighting education and affordability issues in what is already becoming a crowded primary in a tossup Michigan district.

Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, singled out the school choice and voucher programs pushed by Michigan Republicans like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as part of what inspired him to run for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District in the central part of the state.

“I’m a teacher, and I have been fighting Betsy DeVos across the country on a specific issue, and that’s privatizing public schools,” Cowen said in an interview. “She’s been trying to disinvest, defund commitments to kids and families all over the place, and that’s actually the same fight as everything that’s going on right now — trying to protect investing in health care through Medicaid and other systems — protect jobs.”

Several Democrats have already announced bids against Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who flipped the seat last cycle after Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) vacated it to run for Senate. He could be a tough incumbent for Democrats to dislodge and reported raising over $1 million last quarter.

Still, Democrats see the narrowly divided seat as a top pickup opportunity next year, with former Ukraine Ambassador Bridget Brink and retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam among the field of candidates running. Cowen brushed off concerns about a contested primary, saying, “They’re going to run their campaigns. I’m going to run mine.”

“I am going to be running really hard on the fact that I am in this community. I’ve been here for 12 years. My kids went to public schools here. My youngest is still there,” he added.

​Politics

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a big win on June 27, 2025, by limiting the ability of judges to block Trump administration policies across the nation.

But Trump has not fared nearly as well in the lower courts, where he has lost a series of cases through different levels of the federal court system. On June 5, a single judge temporarily stopped the administration from preventing Harvard University from enrolling international students.

And a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade blocked Trump on May 28 from imposing tariffs on China and other nations. The Trump administration has appealed this decision. It will be taken up in July by all 11 judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

After that, the case can be appealed to the Supreme Court.

I’m a scholar of the federal courts. The reasons why some courts have multiple judges and others have a single judge can be confusing. Here’s a guide to help understand what’s going on in the federal courts.

Federal District Courts

The U.S. District Courts are the trial courts in the federal system and hear about 400,000 cases per year. A single judge almost always presides over cases.

This makes sense for a jury trial, since a judge might make dozens of spur-of-the-moment decisions during the course of a trial, such as ruling on a lawyer’s objection to a question asked of a witness. If a panel of, say, three judges performed this task, it would prolong proceedings because the three judges would have to deliberate over every ruling.

A more controversial role of District Courts involves setting nationwide injunctions. This happens when a single judge temporarily stops the government from enforcing a policy throughout the nation.

There have been more than two dozen nationwide injunctions during Trump’s second term. These involve policy areas as diverse as ending birthright citizenship, firing federal employees and banning transgender people from serving in the military.

Trump and Republicans in Congress argue that the ability to issue nationwide injunctions gives too much power to a single judge. Instead, they believe injunctions should apply only to the parties involved in the case.

On June 27, the Supreme Court agreed with the Trump administration and severely limited the ability of District Court judges to issue nationwide injunctions. This means that judges can generally stop policies from being enforced only against the parties to a lawsuit, instead of everyone in the nation.

In rare instances, a panel of three District Court judges hears a case. Congress decides what cases these special three-judge panels hear, reserving them for especially important issues. For example, these panels have heard cases involving reapportionment, which is how votes are translated into legislative seats in Congress and state legislatures, and allegations that a voter’s rights have been violated.

The logic behind having three judges hear such important cases is that they will give more careful consideration to the dispute. This may lend legitimacy to a controversial decision and prevents a single judge from exercising too much power.

There are also specialized courts that hear cases involving particular policies, sometimes in panels of three judges. For instance, three-judge panels on the U.S. Court of International Trade decide cases involving executive orders related to international trade.

The federal Court of Appeals

The U.S. Court of Appeals hears appeals from the District Courts and specialized courts.

The 13 federal circuit courts that make up the U.S. Court of Appeals are arranged throughout the country and handle about 40,000 cases per year. Each circuit court has six to 29 judges. Cases are decided primarily by three-judge panels.

Having multiple judges decide cases on the Court of Appeals is seen as worthwhile, since these courts are policymaking institutions. This means they set precedents for the judicial circuit in which they operate, which covers three to nine states.

Supporters of this system argue that by having multiple judges on appellate courts, the panel will consider a variety of perspectives on the case and collaborate with one another. This can lead to better decision-making. Additionally, having multiple judges check one another can boost public confidence in the judiciary.

The party that loses a case before a three-judge panel can request that the entire circuit rehear the case. This is known as sitting en banc.

Because judges on a circuit can decline to hear cases en banc, this procedure is usually reserved for especially significant cases. For instance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has agreed to an en banc hearing to review the Court of International Trade’s decision to temporarily halt Trump’s sweeping tariff program. It also allowed the tariffs to remain in effect until the appeal plays out, likely in August.

The exception to having the entire circuit sit together en banc is the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, which has 29 judges, far more than other circuit courts. It uses an 11-judge en banc process, since having 29 judges hear cases together would be logistically challenging.

The US Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court sits atop the American legal system and decides about 60 cases per year.

Cases are decided by all nine justices, unless a justice declines to participate because of a conflict of interest. As with other multimember courts, advocates of the nine-member makeup argue that the quality of decision-making is improved by having many justices participate in a case’s deliberation.

Each Supreme Court justice is charged with overseeing one or more of the 13 federal circuits. In this role, a single justice reviews emergency appeals from the District Courts and an appellate court within a circuit. This authorizes them to put a temporary hold on the implementation of policies within that circuit or refer the matter to the entire Supreme Court.

In February, for example, Chief Justice John Roberts blocked a Court of Appeals order that would have compelled the Trump administration to pay nearly US$2 billion in reimbursements for already completed foreign aid work.

In March, a 5-4 majority of the high court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who subsequently ordered the Trump administration to release some of the funds.

The federal judicial system is complex. The flurry of executive orders from the Trump administration means that cases are being decided on a nearly daily basis by a variety of courts.

A single judge will decide some of these cases, and others are considered by full courts. Though the nine justices of the Supreme Court technically have the final say, the sheer volume of legal challenges means that America’s District Courts and Court of Appeals will resolve many of the disputes.

Paul M. Collins Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

As the Philadelphia municipal workers strike enters its second week, so-called “Parker piles” – large collections of garbage that some residents blame on Mayor Cherelle Parker – continue to build up in neighborhoods across the city.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33 union on strike represents about 9,000 blue-collar workers in the city, including sanitation workers, 911 dispatchers, city mechanics and water department staff.

The Conversation U.S. asked Francis Ryan, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and author of “AFSCME’s Philadelphia Story: Municipal Workers and Urban Power in Philadelphia in the Twentieth Century,” about the history of sanitation strikes in Philly and what makes this one unique.

Has anything surprised you about this strike?

This strike marks the first time in the history of labor relations between the city of Philadelphia and AFSCME District Council 33 union where social media is playing a significant role in how the struggle is unfolding.

The union is getting their side of the story out on Instagram and other social media platforms, and citizens are taking up or expressing sympathy with their cause.

How successful are trash strikes in Philly or other US cities?

As I describe in my book, Philadelphia has a long history of sanitation strikes that goes back to March 1937. At that time, a brief work stoppage brought about discussions between the city administration and an early version of the current union.

When over 200 city workers were laid off in September 1938, city workers called a weeklong sanitation strike. Street battles raged in West Philadelphia when strikers blocked police-escorted trash wagons that were aiming to collect trash with workers hired to replace the strikers.

Philadelphia residents, many of whom were union members who worked in textile, steel, food and other industries, rallied behind the strikers. The strikers’ demands were met, and a new union, AFSCME, was formally recognized by the city.

This strike was a major event because it showed how damaging a garbage strike could be. The fact that strikers were willing to fight in the streets to stop trash services showed that such events had the potential for violence, not to mention the health concerns from having tons of trash on the streets.

There was another two-week trash strike in Philadelphia in 1944, but there wouldn’t be another for more than 20 years.

However, a growing number of sanitation strikes popped up around the country in the 1960s, the most infamous being the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike.

In Memphis, Tennessee, a majority African American sanitation workforce demanded higher wages, basic safety procedures and recognition of their union. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rallied to support the Memphis workers and their families as part of his Poor Peoples’ Campaign, which sought to organize working people from across the nation into a new coalition to demand full economic and political rights.

On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated. His death put pressure on Memphis officials to settle the strike, and on April 16 the the strikers secured their demands.

Following the Memphis strike, AFSCME began organizing public workers around the country, and through the coming years into the 1970s, there were sanitation strikes and slowdowns across the nation including in New York, Atlanta, Cleveland and Washington. Often, these workers, who were predominantly African American, gained the support of significant sections of the communities they served and secured modest wage boosts.

By the 1980s, such labor actions were becoming fewer. In 1986, Philadelphia witnessed a three-week sanitation strike that ended with the union gaining some of its wage demands, but losing on key areas related to health care benefits.

How do wages and benefits for DC33 workers compare to other US cities?

District Council 33 President Greg Boulware has said that the union’s members make an average salary of US$46,000 per year. According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, that is $2,000 less than what a single adult with no kids needs to reasonably support themselves living in Philadelphia.

Sanitation workers who collect curbside trash earn a salary of $42,500 to $46,200, or $18-$20 an hour. NBC Philadelphia reported that those wages are the lowest of any of the major cities they looked at. Hourly wages in the other cities they looked at ranged from $21 an hour in Dallas to $25-$30 an hour in Chicago.

Unlike other eras, the fact that social media makes public these personal narratives and perspectives – like from former sanitation worker Terrill Haigler, aka “Ya Fav Trashman” – is shaping the way many citizens respond to these disruptions. I see a level of support for the strikers that I believe is unprecedented going back as far as 1938.

What do you think is behind this support?

The pandemic made people more aware of the role of essential workers in society. If the men and women who do these jobs can’t afford their basic needs, something isn’t right. This may explain why so many people are seeing things from the perspective of striking workers.

At the same time, money is being cut from important services at the federal, state and local levels. The proposed gutting of the city’s mass transit system by state lawmakers is a case in point. Social media allows people to make these broader connections and start conversations.

If the strike continues much longer, I think it will gain more national and international attention, and bring discussions about how workers should be treated to the forefront.

Francis Ryan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Every design choice that social media platforms make nudges users toward certain actions, values and emotional states.

It is a design choice to offer a news feed that combines verified news sources with conspiracy blogs – interspersed with photos of a family picnic – with no distinction between these very different types of information. It is a design choice to use algorithms that find the most emotional or outrageous content to show users, hoping it keeps them online. And it is a design choice to send bright red notifications, keeping people in a state of expectation for the next photo or juicy piece of gossip.

Platform design is a silent pilot steering human behavior.

Social media platforms are bringing massive changes to how people get their news and how they communicate and behave. For example, the “endless scroll” is a design feature that aims to keep users scrolling and never reaching the bottom of a page where they might decide to pause.

I’m a political scientist who researches aspects of technology that support democracy and social cohesion, and I’ve observed how the design of social media platforms affects them.

Democracy is in crisis globally, and technology is playing a role. Most large platforms optimize their designs for profit, not community or democracy. Increasingly, Big Tech is siding with autocrats, and the platforms’ designs help keep society under control.

There are alternatives, however. Some companies design online platforms to defend democratic values.

Optimized for profit

A handful of tech billionaires dominate the global information ecosystem. Without public accountability or oversight, they determine what news shows up on your feed and what data they collect and share.

Social media companies say they are in the business of connecting people, but they make most of their money as data brokers and advertising firms. Time spent on platforms translates to profit. The more time you spend online, the more ads you see and the more data they can collect from you.

This ad-based business model demands designs that encourage endless scrolling, social comparison and emotional engagement. Platforms routinely claim they merely reflect user behavior, yet internal documents and whistleblower accounts have shown that toxic content often gets a boost because it captures people’s attention.

Tech companies design platforms based on extensive psychological research. Examples include flashing notifications that make your phone jump and squeak, colorful rewards when others like your posts, and algorithms that push out the most emotional content to stimulate your most base emotions of anger, shame or glee.

Optimizing designs for user engagement undermines mental health and society. Social media sites favor hype and scandal over factual accuracy, and public manipulation over designing for safety, privacy and user agency. The resulting prevalence of polarizing false and deceptive information is corrosive to democracy.

Many analysts identified these problems nearly a decade ago. But now there is a new threat: Some tech executives are looking to capture political power to advance a new era of techno-autocracy.

Optimized for political power

A techno-autocracy is a political system where an authoritarian government uses technology to control its population. Techno-autocrats spread disinformation and propaganda, using fear tactics to demonize others and distract from corruption. They leverage massive amounts of data, artificial intelligence and surveillance to censor opponents.

For example, China uses technology to monitor and surveil its population with public cameras. Chinese platforms like WeChat and Weibo automatically scan, block or delete messages and posts for sensitive words like “freedom of speech.” Russia promotes domestic platforms like VK that are closely monitored and partly owned by state-linked entities that use it to promote political propaganda.

Over a decade ago, tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, and now Vice President JD Vance, began aligning with far-right political philosophers like Curtis Yarvin. They argue that democracy impedes innovation, favoring concentrated decision-making in corporate-controlled mini-states governed through surveillance. Embracing this philosophy of techno-autocracy, they moved from funding and designing the internet to reshaping government.

Techno-autocrats weaponize social media platforms as part of their plan to dismantle democratic institutions.

The political capture of both X and Meta also have consequences for global security. At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg removed barriers to right-wing propaganda and openly endorsed President Donald Trump’s agenda. Musk changed X’s algorithm to highlight right-wing content, including Russian propaganda.

Designing tech for democracy

Recognizing the power that platform design has on society, some companies are designing new civic participation platforms that support rather than undermine society’s access to verified information and places for public deliberation. These platforms offer design features that big tech companies could adopt for improving democratic engagement that can help counter techno-autocracy.

In 2014, a group of technologists founded Pol.is, an open-source technology for hosting public deliberation that leverages data science. Pol.is enables participants to propose and vote on policy ideas using what they call “computational democracy.” The Pol.is design avoids personal attacks by having no “reply” button. It offers no flashy newsfeed, and it uses algorithms that identify areas of agreement and disagreement to help people make sense of a diversity of opinions. A prompt question asks for people to offer ideas and vote up or down on other ideas. People participate anonymously, helping to keep the focus on the issues and not the people.

Taiwan used the Pol.is platform to enable mass civic engagement in the 2014 democracy movement. The U.K. government’s Collective Intelligence Lab used the platform to generate public discussion and generate new policy proposals on climate and health care policies. In Finland, a public foundation called Sitra uses Pol.is in its “What do you think, Finland?” public dialogues.

Barcelona, Spain, designed a new participatory democracy platform called Decidim in 2017. Now used throughout Spain and Europe, Decidim enables citizens to collaboratively propose, debate and decide on public policies and budgets through transparent digital processes.

Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Ressa founded Rappler Communities in 2023, a social network in the Philippines that combines journalism, community and technology. It aims to restore trust in institutions by providing safe spaces for exchanging ideas and connecting with neighbors, journalists and civil society groups. Rappler Communities offers the public data privacy and portability, meaning you can take your information – like photos, contacts or messages – from one app or platform and transfer it to another. These design features are not available on the major social media platforms.

Tech designed for improving public dialogue is possible – and can even work in the middle of a war zone. In 2024, the Alliance for Middle East Peace began using Remesh.ai, an AI-based platform, to find areas of common ground between Israelis and Palestinians in order to advance the idea of a public peace process and identify elements of a ceasefire agreement.

Platform designs are a form of social engineering to achieve some sort of goal – because they shape how people behave, think and interact – often invisibly. Designing more and better platforms to support democracy can be an antidote to the wave of global autocracy that is increasingly bolstered by tech platforms that tighten public control.

Lisa Schirch receives funding from the Ford Foundation. I know the founder of Pol.is and Remesh platforms, mentioned in this article, as well as Maria Ressa of Rappler Communities.

I will not benefit in any way from describing their work.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The legislative package that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, has several provisions that will shrink the safety net, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, long known as food stamps. SNAP spending will decline by an estimated US$186 billion through 2034 as a result of several changes Congress made to the program that today helps roughly 42 million people buy groceries – an almost 20% reduction.

In my research on the history of food stamps, I’ve found that the program was meant to be widely available to most low-income people. The SNAP changes break that tradition in two ways.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 3 million people are likely to be dropped from the program and lose their benefits. This decline will occur in part because more people will face time limits if they don’t meet work requirements. Even those who meet the requirements may lose benefits because of difficulty submitting the necessary documents.

And because states will soon have to take on more of the costs of the program, which totaled over $100 billion in 2024, they may eventually further restrict who gets help due to their own budgetary constraints.

Summing up SNAP’s origins

Inspired by the plight of unemployed coal miners whom John F. Kennedy met in Appalachia when he campaigned for the presidency in 1960, the early food stamps program was not limited to single parents with children, older people and people with disabilities, like many other safety net programs were at the time. It was supposed to help low-income people afford more and better food, regardless of their circumstances.

In response to national attention in the late 1960s to widespread hunger and malnutrition in other areas of the country, such as among tenant farmers in the rural South, a limited food stamps program was expanded. It reached every part of the country by 1974.

From the start, the states administered the program and covered some of its administrative costs and the federal government paid for the benefits in full. This arrangement encouraged states to enroll everyone who needed help without fearing the budgetary consequences.

Who could qualify and how much help they could get were set by uniform national standards, so that even the residents of the poorest states would be able to afford a budget-conscious but nutritionally adequate diet.

The federal government’s responsibility for the cost of benefits also allowed spending to automatically grow during economic downturns, when more people need assistance. These federal dollars helped families, retailers and local economies weather tough times.

The changes to the SNAP program included in the legislative package that Congress approved by narrow margins and Trump signed into law, however, will make it harder for the program to serve its original goals.

Restricting benefits

Since the early 1970s, most so-called able-bodied adults who were not caring for a child or an adult with disabilities had to meet a work requirement to get food stamps. Welfare reform legislation in 1996 made that requirement stricter for such adults between the ages of 18 and 50 by imposing a three-month time limit if they didn’t log 20 hours or more of employment or another approved activity, such as verified volunteering.

Budget legislation passed in 2023 expanded this rule to adults up to age 54. The 2025 law will further expand the time limit to adults up to age 64 and parents of children age 14 or over.

States can currently get permission from the federal government to waive work requirements in areas with insufficient jobs or unemployment above the national average. This flexibility to waive work requirements will now be significantly limited and available only where at least 1 in 10 workers are unemployed.

Concerned senators secured an exemption from the work requirements for most Native Americans and Native Alaskans, who are more likely to live in areas with limited job opportunities.

A 2023 budget deal exempted veterans, the homeless and young adults exiting the foster care system from work requirements because they can experience special challenges getting jobs. The 2025 law does not exempt them.

The new changes to SNAP policies will also deny benefits to many immigrants with authorization to be in the U.S., such as people granted political asylum or official refugee status. Immigrants without authorization to reside in the U.S. will continue to be ineligible for SNAP benefits.

Tracking ‘error rates’

Critics of food stamps have long argued that states lack incentives to carefully administer the program because the federal government is on the hook for the cost of benefits.

In the 1970s, as the number of Americans on the food stamp rolls soared, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, developed a system for assessing if states were accurately determining whether applicants were eligible for benefits and how much they could get.

A state’s “payment error rate” estimates the share of benefits paid out that were more or less than an applicant was actually eligible for. The error rate was not then and is not today a measure of fraud. Typically, it just indicates the share of families who get a higher – or lower – amount of benefits than they are eligible for because of mistakes or confusion on the part of the applicant or the case worker who handles the application.

Congress tried to penalize states with error rates over 5% in the 1980s but ultimately suspended the effort under state pressure. After years of political wrangling, the USDA started to consistently enforce financial penalties on states with high error rates in the mid-1990s.

States responded by increasing their red tape. For example, they asked applicants to submit more documentation and made them go through more bureaucratic hoops, like having more frequent in-person interviews, to get – and continue receiving – SNAP benefits.

These demands hit low-wage workers hardest because their applications were more prone to mistakes. Low-income workers often don’t have consistent work hours and their pay can vary from week to week and month to month. The number of families getting benefits fell steeply.

The USDA tried to reverse this decline by offering states options to simplify the process for applying for and continuing to get SNAP benefits over the course of the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Enrollment grew steadily.

Penalizing high rates

Since 2008, states with error rates over 6% have had to develop a detailed plan to lower them.

Despite this requirement, the national average error rate jumped from 7.4% before the pandemic, to a record high of 11.7% in 2023. Rates rose as states struggled with a surge of people applying for benefits, a shortage of staff in state welfare agencies and procedural changes.

Republican leaders in Congress have responded to that increase by calling for more accountability.

Making states pay more

The big legislative package will increase states’ expenses in two ways.

It will reduce the federal government’s responsibility for half of the cost of administering the program to 25% beginning in the 2027 fiscal year.

And some states will have to pay a share of benefit costs for the first time in the program’s history, depending on their payment error rates. Beginning in the 2028 fiscal year, states with an error rate between 6-8% would be responsible for 5% of the cost of benefits. Those with an error rate between 8-10% would have to pay 10%, and states with an error rate over 10% would have to pay 15%. The federal government would continue to pay all benefits in states with error rates below 6%.

Republicans argue the changes will give states more “skin in the game” and ensure better administration of the program.

While the national payment error rate fell from 11.68% in the 2023 fiscal year to 10.93% a year later, 42 states still had rates in excess of 6% in 2024. Twenty states plus the District of Columbia had rates of 10% or higher.

At nearly 25%, Alaska has the highest payment error rate in the country. But Alaska won’t be in trouble right away. To ease passage in the Senate, where the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, was in doubt, a provision was added to the bill allowing several states with the highest error rates to avoid cost sharing for up to two years after it begins.

Democrats argue this may encourage states to actually increase their error rates in the short term.

The effect of the new law on the amount of help an eligible household gets is expected to be limited.

About 600,000 individuals and families will lose an average of $100 a month in benefits because of a change in the way utility costs are treated. The law also prevents future administrations from increasing benefits beyond the cost of living, as the Biden Administration did.

States cannot cut benefits below the national standards set in federal law.

But the shift of costs to financially strapped states will force them to make tough choices. They will either have to cut back spending on other programs, increase taxes, discourage people from getting SNAP benefits or drop the program altogether.

The changes will, in the end, make it even harder for Americans who can’t afford the bare necessities to get enough nutritious food to feed their families.

Tracy Roof does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Elon Musk declared the launch of his new political party on Saturday, a project he has repeatedly floated in the weeks since his explosive breakup with President Donald Trump — but provided no details as to how he planned to jump through the hoops necessary to establish a viable alternative.

The billionaire entrepreneur and onetime Republican megadonor — who mere months ago appeared as the president’s right-hand man in the Oval Office after pouring millions into his campaign — has for weeks publicly contemplated starting a new third party to disrupt the current system.

Musk on Saturday appeared to confirm his intention to launch his “America Party,” after posting a poll to his X account the prior day asking followers whether or not he should create the new party.

“By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it! When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” he wrote. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

Musk’s third-party musings began in earnest after last month’s massive meltdown between the president and his former adviser over the “big beautiful bill,” which the former DOGE head has decried as wasteful.

As Trump on Thursday flaunted his successful push to muscle the Republican megabill through Congress this week, Musk sought to drum up support for his potential third party launch, positing that his new party would target a handful of vulnerable swing seats to leverage political power.

“Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,” he wrote.

While Musk may have the millions to pour into backing certain candidates — which he has already promised to do, pledging to support Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) reelection campaign amid targeting from Trump — establishing a third party involves a series of thorny obstacles including navigating complex state laws, ballot access regulations and other legal hoops.

So far, the billionaire would-be party founder has yet to outline a concrete plan forward. Just two months ago, Musk had vowed to cut back on political spending, saying he had “done enough.”

​Politics

A decade ago, Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York City and ignited a political movement that has reshaped American politics. In a memorable turn of phrase, Trump promised supporters of his 2016 presidential campaign that “we are going to make our country great again.”

Since then, the Make America Great Again movement has dominated the U.S. political conversation, reshaped the Republican Party and become a lucrative brand adorning hats, T-shirts and bumper stickers.

When asked what MAGA means to him, Trump, in a 2017 interview with The Washington Post said, “To me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much.”

But Democratic leaders have a different interpretation of the slogan.

Former President Bill Clinton in 2016 said of MAGA: “That message where ‘I’ll give you America great again’ is if you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you? What it means is ‘I’ll give you an economy you had 50 years ago, and I’ll move you back up on the social totem pole and other people down.”

While MAGA is ubiquitous, little is known about what it means to the American public. Ten years on, what do Americans think when they hear or read this phrase?

Based on the analysis of Americans’ explanations of what “Make America Great Again” means to them, we found evidence suggesting that the public’s views of MAGA mirror the perspectives offered by both Trump and Clinton.

Republicans interpret this phrase as a call for the renewal of the U.S. economy and military might, as well as a return to “traditional” values, especially those relating to gender roles and gender identities. Democrats, we found, view MAGA as a call for a return to white supremacy and growing authoritarianism.

What MAGA means

We are political scientists who use public opinion polls to study the role of partisanship in American politics. To better understand American views about MAGA, in April 2025 we asked 1,000 respondents in a nationally representative online survey to briefly write what “Make America Great Again” meant to them.

The survey question was open-ended, allowing respondents to define this phrase in any way they saw fit. We used AI-based thematic analysis and qualitative reading of the responses to better understand how Democrats and Republicans define the slogan.

For our AI-based thematic analysis, we instructed ChatGPT to provide three overarching themes most touched upon by Democratic and Republican respondents. This approach follows recent research demonstrating that, when properly instructed, ChatGPT reliably identifies broad themes in collections of texts.

Republican interpretation of MAGA

Our analysis shows that Republicans view the slogan as representing the “American dream.” In part, MAGA is about restoring the nation’s pride and economic strength. Reflecting these themes, one Republican respondent wrote that MAGA means “encouraging manufacturers to hire Americans and strengthen the economy. Making the USA self-sufficient as it once was.”

MAGA is also closely related among Republicans with an “America First” policy. This is partly about having a strong military – a common theme among Republican respondents – and “making America the superpower” again, one respondent wrote.

Republicans also wrote that putting America first means emphasizing strict enforcement of immigration laws against “illegals” and cutting off foreign aid. For example, one Republican respondent said that MAGA meant “stopping illegals at the border, ending freebies for illegals, adding more police and building a strong military.”

Finally, Republicans see the slogan as calling for a return to “traditional” values. They expressed a strong desire to reverse cultural shifts that Republican respondents perceive as a threat.

As one Republican put it, MAGA “means going back to where men would join the military, women were home raising healthy minded children and it was easy to be successful, the crime rate was extremely low and it used to be safe for kids to hang out on the streets with other kids and even walk themselves places.”

Another Republican made the connection between MAGA and traditional gender roles even more explicit, highlighting the link between MAGA and opposition to transgender rights: “MAGA people know there are only 2 sexes and a man can never be a woman. If you believe otherwise you are destroying AMERICA.”

Democratic MAGA views

Democrats have a very different understanding of the MAGA slogan. Many Democrats view MAGA as a white supremacist movement designed to protect the status of white people and undermine the civil rights of marginalized groups.

One Democrat argued that “‘Make America Great Again’ is a standard borne by people who’ve seen a decrease in the potency of their privilege (see: cisgendered white men) and wish to see their privilege restored or strengthened. In essence, it’s a chant for all racist, fascist and otherwise bigoted actors to unite under.”

Another Democrat wrote that MAGA was a call to “take us backwards as a society in regards to women’s, minority’s, and LGBTQ people’s rights … It would take us to a time when only White men ruled.”

Democrats also view MAGA as a form of nostalgia for a heavily mythologized past. Many Democratic respondents described the past longed for by Republicans as a “myth” or “fairytale.” Others argued that this mythologized past, though appealing on the surface, was repressive for many Americans.

One Democrat said that MAGA meant “returning America to a fantasy version of the past with the goal of advancing the success of white, straight, wealthy men by any means necessary and almost always to the detriment of other segments of the population.”

Finally, many Democrats interpret the slogan as reflecting an authoritarian cult of personality. In this vein, a Democratic respondent said of MAGA, “It’s a call to arms for MAGA cult members, who believe that Trump and the Republicans party will somehow improve their lives by targeting people and policies they don’t like, even when it is against their best interests and any rational thought process.”

While some Republicans expressed racist, xenophobic or anti-trans sentiments in their understanding of MAGA, some Democrats revealed outright condescension toward MAGA believers.

“The MAGA’s are brainwashed, idiotic members of society who know nothing more than to follow the lead of an idiotic president who has the vocabulary of a 3rd grader,” one Democrat wrote. “It is nonsense idiots parrot,” another respondent said.

In all, in the 10 years since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene, much has been written about the conflicting visions of past, present and future at the heart of America’s partisan divisions.

With the Trump administration’s proclaimed commitment to return the U.S. to its “golden age” and a strong resistance to his efforts, only time will tell which vision of America will prevail.

Jesse Rhodes has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and Demos. He is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Douglas Rice has received funding from the National Science Foundation.

Adam Eichen, Gregory Wall, and Tatishe Nteta do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

As the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic tax and spending package, many critics are wondering how the president retained the loyalty of so many congressional Republicans, with so few defections.

Just three Republican senators – the maximum allowed for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to still pass – voted against the Senate version of the bill on July 1, 2025. In the House, only two Republicans voted against the bill, which passed the chamber on July 3.

Among other things, the bill will slash taxes by about US$4.5 trillion over a decade and exempt people’s tips and overtime pay from federal income taxes.

But the bill has been widely panned, including by some Republicans.

Democrats have uniformly opposed it, in part thanks to the bill’s sweeping cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act marketplace funding. This could lead to an estimated 12 million more people without insurance by 2034.

The legislation is also likely to add between $3 trilion and $5 trillion to the national debt by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The power of the presidency

Trump is not the first president to bend Congress to his will to get legislation approved.

Presidential supremacy over the legislative process has been on the rise for decades. But contrary to popular belief, lawmakers are not always simply voting based on blind partisanship.

Increasingly, politicians in the same political party as a president are voting in line with the president because their political futures are as tied up with the president’s reputation as they have ever been.

Even when national polling indicates a policy is unpopular – as is the case with Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, which an estimated 55% of American voters said in June they oppose, according to Quinnipiac University polling – lawmakers in the president’s party have serious motivation to follow the president’s lead.

Or else they risk losing reelection.

Lawmakers increasingly partisan on presidential policy

Over the past 50 years, lawmakers in the president’s party have increasingly supported the president’s position on legislation that passes Congress. Opposition lawmakers, meanwhile, are increasingly united against the president’s position.

In 1970, for example, when Republican President Richard Nixon was in the White House, Republicans in Congress voted along with his positions 72% of the time. But the Democratic majority in Congress voted with him nearly as much, at 60% of the time, particularly on Nixon’s more progressive environmental agenda.

These patterns are unheard of in the modern Congress. In 2022, for example – a year of significant legislative achievement for the Biden administration – the Democratic majority in Congress voted the same way as the Democratic president 99% of the time. Republicans, meanwhile, voted with Biden just 19% of the time.

Elections can tell us why

Over the past half-century, the two major parties have changed dramatically, both in the absolutist nature of their beliefs and in relation to one another.

Both parties used to be more mixed in their ideological outlooks, for example, with conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans playing key roles in policymaking. This made it easier to form cross-party coalitions, either with or against the president.

A few decades ago, Democrats and Republicans were also less geographically polarized from each other. Democrats were regularly elected to congressional seats in the South, for example, even if those districts supported Republican presidents such as Nixon or Ronald Reagan.

Much of this has changed in recent decades.

Congress members are not just ideologically at odds with colleagues in the other party – they are more similar than ever to other members within their party.

Districts supporting the two parties are also increasingly geographically distant from each other, often along an urban-rural divide.

And presidents in particular have become polarizing partisan figures on the national stage.

These changes have ushered in a larger phenomenon called political nationalization, in which local political considerations, issues and candidate qualifications have taken a back seat to national politics.

Ticket splitting

From the 1960s through most of the 1980s, between one-quarter and one-half of all congressional districts routinely split tickets – meaning they sent a politician of one party to Congress while supporting a different party for president.

These are the same few districts in Nebraska and New York, for example, that supported former Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024 but which also elected a Republican candidate to the House that same year.

Since the Reagan years, however, these types of districts that could simultaneously support a Democratic presidential nominee and Republicans for Congress have gone nearly extinct. Today, only a handful of districts split their tickets, and all other districts select the same party for both offices.

The past two presidential elections, in 2020 and 2024, set the same record low for ticket splitting. Just 16 out of 435 House districts voted for different parties for the House of Representatives and president.

Members of Congress follow their voters

The political success of members of Congress has become increasingly tied up with the success or failure of the president. Because nearly all Republicans hail from districts and states that are very supportive of Trump and his agenda, following the will of their voters increasingly means being supportive of the president’s agenda.

Not doing so risks blowback from their Trump-supporting constituents. A June 2025 Quinnipiac University poll found that 67% of Republicans support the bill, while 87% of Democrats oppose it.

These electoral considerations also help explain the unanimous opposition to Trump’s legislation by the Democrats, nearly all of whom represent districts and states that did not support Trump in 2024.

Thanks to party polarization in ideologies, geography and in the electorate, few Democrats could survive politically while strongly supporting Trump. And few Republicans could do so while opposing him.

But as the importance to voters of mere presidential support increases, the importance of members’ skill in fighting for issues unique to their districts has decreased. This can leave important local concerns about, for example, unique local environmental issues or declining economic sectors unspoken for. At the very least, members have less incentive to speak for them.

Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation