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Independent journalist Derek Sherwood submitted a records request in Centre County, Pennsylvania, in January 2026. He requested an autopsy report related to a 1987 cold case that he was researching for a book project.
After Coroner Scott Sayers denied the request, Sherwood successfully appealed to the Office of Open Records, or OOR, a state agency responsible for adjudicating Right-To-Know Law disputes.

But Sayers still refused to release the report.

On May 14, the day before he was legally required to comply with the OOR’s decision, Sayers obtained a temporary court injunction that shielded the autopsy report from release.

Around the same time, PennLive reporter Jenna Wise requested three autopsy reports related to a 2025 crime spree from Susquehanna County Coroner Jessica Chiaramonte. Like Sayers, Chiaramonte also denied the request and then filed motions with the Court of Common Pleas to seal the reports.

And when I contacted Clearfield County Coroner Kim Shaffer-Snyder in May to request autopsy reports for three men who died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, I was quoted US$2,100 for a short stack of printed pages.

These experiences reflect a wider pattern. In counties across Pennsylvania, coroners routinely refuse to make autopsy reports and other records available to members of the public.

Coroners’ reasons for this are inconsistent and often unclear. Sometimes they say that releasing autopsy reports would jeopardize ongoing law enforcement activities. Sometimes they cite medical privacy standards that do not apply to autopsy reports. And sometimes they don’t provide any reasoning at all.

When coroners do agree to release their records, they charge as much as $700 per case. These fees place autopsy reports out of reach for most requesters, including journalists and researchers like me.

I’m a postdoctoral fellow studying the impacts of mass incarceration on medicine and public health. I’m also a freelance reporter who uses public records to understand what goes on behind the walls of prisons and jails.

In 2022 I partnered with colleague Terence Keel, a professor of human biology and society, to systematically request autopsy reports related to hundreds of deaths in prisons and jails across Pennsylvania.

We submitted requests in over three dozen counties. Then we waited. And waited.

Our plan was to conduct a rigorous statewide study of deaths in custody. Instead, we discovered that autopsy reports are not nearly as public in practice as Pennsylvania law requires.

What PA state law requires

The Pennsylvania County Code provides two pathways through which members of the public can obtain autopsy reports and other coroners records.

First, a requester can obtain them directly from the coroner through the payment of statutory fees. This is the only option available if a requester wants an autopsy report that was produced during the current calendar year.

In most places, however, these fees do not apply to older reports. In all counties with fewer than 500,000 residents, the law requires coroners to deposit the past year’s records with the county prothonotary at the beginning of each new year. The prothonotary is an independent elected official who serves as a designated record-keeper, among other duties.

Once in the prothonotary’s custody, all coroners records are to be made available “for the inspection of interested members of the public” – no fees required. This is the second way a requester can obtain an autopsy report in Pennsylvania.

But the state’s largest jurisdictions, including Philadelphia collar counties such as Bucks, Montgomery and Delaware, are exempt from this requirement. Requesters in those counties must pay the statutory fees no matter how old the requested autopsy report may be.

Due to carve-outs like this, autopsy reports in the counties with the most jail deaths are least accessible to public review.

Philadelphia and Allegheny counties

Philadelphia County and Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, are the only jurisdictions in Pennsylvania to have a chief medical examiner. Unlike a coroner, who is typically elected by the people, a medical examiner is appointed by the county executive or health commissioner.

In a landmark 2023 case brought by journalist Brittany Hailer, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office was subject to the same public release requirements as coroners elsewhere in the state.

Hailer had requested the autopsy report for Daniel Pastorek, a 63-year-old man who died in Allegheny County Jail in 2020 without leaving behind a documented next of kin. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office denied Hailer’s request on the basis that she was not related to Pastorek, and their policy was to release autopsy reports only to next of kin. But the Commonwealth Court ruled that Hailer was entitled to pay the fees and receive Pastorek’s autopsy report, regardless of her identity.

When Hailer finally obtained the report, she found that the medical examiners never performed a full autopsy. They merely viewed Pastorek’s body, then declared that he died of natural causes.

But the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office is not subject to this ruling. Philadelphia, as the state’s largest county by population, is carved out of the section of the Pennsylvania County Code known as the Coroner’s Act.

The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office releases autopsy reports only to next of kin or in response to a subpoena.

James Garrow, communications director for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, which oversees the Medical Examiner, described this to me in a June 2026 email as “a policy decision.”

The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office has made no changes to its policies in light of Hailer v. Allegheny County, Garrow added, citing the Coroner’s Act carve-out and the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter of 1951, which eliminated the office of the coroner.

High fees, but ‘no discretion’ – in theory

Pennsylvania law establishes high fees for coroners’ records – $500 per autopsy report, plus an additional $100 each for toxicology and coroner–investigator reports.

By comparison, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner charges a total of $32 for a comprehensive report that includes all three.

But the hefty price tag in Pennsylvania comes with an unambiguous guarantee.

In a 2012 decision called Hearst Television Inc. v. Norris, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that if a requester pays the fee, the coroner must provide the requested record. The coroner has “no discretion” in such cases, the court ruled.

Yet when Keel and I tried to obtain autopsy reports in 2022, coroners in 21 counties failed to respond to our requests at all. This is despite the fact that Pennsylvania’s Right-To-Know Law requires county officials to acknowledge receipt of all requests within five business days.

Another three coroners acknowledged receipt of our requests but stopped responding to us when we tried to make arrangements to view or collect the reports.

And coroners in 10 counties, including Beaver, Centre, Chester, Dauphin, Indiana and York, denied our requests outright.

We appealed to the Office of Open Records, which consistently ruled in our favor and characterized one coroner’s legal arguments as “frivolous.”

Defying the public deposit requirement

The Coroner’s Act stipulates that in counties with fewer than 500,000 residents, the coroner must deposit “all official records and papers for the preceding year in the office of the prothonotary” for “the inspection of interested members of the public.”

But of the 41 counties we contacted in 2022, only in three was the prothonotary or the county open records officer actually in possession of autopsy reports and able to release them to us.

Some coroners seemed to be unaware of their duty to deposit their records with the prothonotary, telling us they had never done so. Other coroners told us that they had entered into agreements with their local prothonotaries about retaining custody of their records. Such agreements have no clear statutory basis under the County Code.

Still other coroners, however, tried to use the gap between the law and their offices’ practices to stymie our requests.

Sayers, for example, claimed that his office’s autopsy reports were all in the custody of the prothonotary. He suggested we use Webia – Centre County’s online records retrieval system – to locate them.

Webia is a pay-to-use database. It requires a payment simply to set up an account, and it automatically collects a fee for each search a user performs. After a few days of costly and tedious searching, we concluded that Sayers had misled us.

The Office of Open Records agreed.

“There is no evidence that the requested autopsy and toxicology reports were ever deposited with the County Prothonotary,” the appeals officer wrote. “The practical effect is that any requester … is left to obtain them, at great cost,” by paying the statutory fees, he added.

A similar story unfolded in Dauphin County. Coroner Graham Hetrick denied our request and told us to look for autopsy reports at the prothonotary’s office, despite never having deposited them there.

After the OOR accused him of acting “in violation of the public interest,” Hetrick finally released the autopsy reports we requested.

Sayers, however, appealed the OOR’s determination to the Centre County Court of Common Pleas. We didn’t have the resources to fight the case, and the court ruled in Sayers’ favor.

The judge’s 95-word opinion did not address any of the matters raised in the OOR’s 11-page final determination, including the appeals officer’s conclusion that “the County, based upon the actions of its Coroner, may have acted in bad faith.”

I contacted Hetrick and Sayers last year to ask for their responses to the OOR’s criticisms. Neither responded. I reached out to Sayers in June 2026 with a more detailed list of questions, but again he did not respond.

Only 3 of 41 counties readily provided reports

Of the 41 counties we contacted, only Lancaster, Lebanon and Lehigh counties released the autopsy reports we requested without attempting to charge us the statutory fees or requiring us to appeal the matter to the OOR.

In two of those counties – Lancaster and Lehigh – previous court decisions explicitly ordered the coroners to deposit autopsy reports with the prothonotary.

During the 2023-24 legislative session, the Pennsylvania State Coroners’ Association worked with state representative Carol Hill-Evans (D-York) to introduce a bill that would have eliminated the public deposit requirement entirely. Michael Kriner, a registered consultant for the PSCA, confirmed the association’s involvement in an email to me last year.

The proposal never made it out of committee.

In counties with fewer than 500,000 residents – that’s currently 60 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties – the coroner is still required to deposit all autopsy reports and other records for the preceding year with the prothonotary.

That’s the law, whether coroners follow it or not.

The Conversation U.S. reached out to the Pennsylvania State Coroners’ Association to ask why coroners across the state are withholding autopsy reports and failing to deposit their records with the prothonotary. The Conversation U.S. also asked for clarification on the association’s position regarding the release of autopsy reports in exchange for the payment of fees.

The PSCA did not respond.

A ‘united front effort’ to prevent release

In February 2023, after more than six months of fighting for autopsy reports in numerous Pennsylvania counties, Keel and I obtained a batch of emails through a Right-To-Know Law request that shed light on what was happening behind the scenes.

Within days of receiving our request for autopsy reports in June 2022, Sayers contacted the Pennsylvania State Coroners’ Association to ask for guidance.

“Can you find out if any other coroners received a request like this?” Sayers wrote in an email to Scott Grim, a former Lehigh County coroner who was then the PSCA’s executive director.

A few days later, Susan Shanaman, then an attorney for the PSCA, sent an email to a list of numerous recipients, including dozens of sitting coroners. She suggested that coroners take the maximum extension allowed by law before responding to our requests, since they contained “unique issues … such as the requests seem to be all related to police-involved shootings and deaths in prison.”

Later, in another email, Shanaman suggested “that the requests be denied.”

In yet another email, Shanaman wrote, “I did a little more digging.” She attached a magazine article describing Keel’s research about jail deaths in Los Angeles. “A legacy of confronting injustice,” read the headline. This material, wrote Shanaman, “speaks of the goal to find racism in death investigations.”

A few months later, Chester County Coroner Sophia Garcia-Jackson sent an email to the same list. “If any other counties are dealing with the right to know UCLA Terrence Keel appeal with the Office of Open records, can you please reach out to me directly,” Garcia-Jackson wrote.

“My Solicitor and I would like to discuss a united front effort to prevent these records from being released,” she added.

Garcia-Jackson’s “united front effort” did not succeed.

In December 2023, the Commonwealth Court ruled in Terence Keel v. Chester County Office of the Coroner that Garcia-Jackson had no legal basis upon which to withhold the autopsy reports we requested.

We won.

The OOR now cites the case, alongside Hailer v. Allegheny County, when it orders coroners to turn over autopsy reports.

Despite this victory in court, however, the records we requested remained inaccessible to us in practice. The ruling affirmed the public character of autopsy reports, but it did not comment on the coroner’s failure to deposit them with the prothonotary.

Our only option was to obtain the records directly from Garcia-Jackson’s office. In June 2024, she informed us through an attorney that her office would charge the full statutory fee for each report, plus an additional duplication fee.

At least 14 people died in the custody of Chester County between 2008 and 2021. Autopsies were performed on 12 of them. If we want to study those cases, we will have to pay the coroner $7,520.

That total includes only autopsy and toxicology reports. Getting coroner-investigator reports could cost another $1,200 or more.

I contacted Garcia-Jackson, Grim and Shanaman in March 2025 to ask for their comments on the contents of their emails. None responded.

I also reached out to PSCA president and Washington County coroner Tim Warco to ask whether the PSCA helped to coordinate a statewide effort to prevent the release of autopsy reports to Keel and me.

He didn’t respond either.

Breaking the law – and public trust

In Pennsylvania, the public’s right to review autopsy reports is protected by state law. Yet many coroners do not welcome public oversight.

The autopsy report Sherwood requested in Centre County remains temporarily sealed. The court will hold a hearing at a later date to determine whether this seal can be permanent.

The court in Susquehanna County ruled in Wise’s favor. She obtained the three autopsy reports in April and has since put them to use in a major investigation published on PennLive.

After Shaffer-Snyder quoted me $2,100 in response to my query about the three men who died in ICE custody, I asked whether the relevant autopsy reports had been deposited with the prothonotary, as required by law. She did not answer the question.

Instead, Shaffer-Snyder told me I could travel from California to her office in Clearfield County to view the reports in person. But I would not be allowed to duplicate them in a manner consistent with news reporting or academic research.

“There will be no electronic devices permitted to be present while the files are being reviewed,” she wrote in an email, without providing an explanation or legal justification.

When coroners attempt to shield autopsy reports from scrutiny, they’re not just violating the public trust. Often, they’re also breaking the law.

This article was made possible by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Jonah Walters 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

More than 10,000 lawyers, many of them from the U.S. Department of Justice, have left the federal government during the second Trump administration. “Their departures show how rapidly the president has eroded the image of the federal government as the gold standard for lawyers seeking public service roles,” writes The New York Times.

Politics and legal affairs editor Naomi Schalit spoke with John E. Jones III about the mass departure of federal government lawyers, as well as other recent issues related to the Department of Justice. Jones, now the president of Dickinson College, is a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002.

Schalit: What are the repercussions of this exodus of lawyers?

Jones: One thing that I could rely on as a federal judge was the professionalism of the Department of Justice, and hand in hand with that was its collective credibility.

When you have an exodus of those professionals, and when you have, unfortunately, Department of Justice attorneys going into federal courts across the country and outright misrepresenting – the stronger word is lying – to federal judges, it really creates a massive reputational problem for the department.

So “massive reputational problem for the department” means what happens between lawyers and judges. What are the on-the-ground implications of that for people who are caught up in the justice system?

It’s well to remember that the attorney general’s client – the Department of Justice’s client – is the United States of America. It is not the president of the United States, even though one would think that based on the way this president operates his administration. The mission of the Department of Justice is within its name: It’s to do justice, to uphold the rule of law, to operate without fear or favor, and to make sure its prosecutions are righteous and well founded.

There’s no question that through history we’ve had attorneys general who’ve gone off the grid, so to speak. But I don’t think there’s ever been historically as seamless an interface – in a bad way – between the president and the Department of Justice as what we see today. The president in his second term has had the attorneys general essentially do his bidding and prosecute his enemies.

Even going back to the Nixon years, Attorney General John Mitchell committed a number of acts that ended up with him spending almost 20 months in prison. But it didn’t involve selective prosecutions – it involved crimes that were largely outside his role as attorney general.

When Robert F. Kennedy was his brother John F. Kennedy’s attorney general, despite their brotherly attachment you didn’t see anything like this. In fact, history informs us that they were always concerned about conflicts and promoted the independent operation of their U.S. attorneys.

There have also been grand juries rejecting attempts by the Justice Department’s attorneys to get indictments.

That proves a couple things: that grand jurors are doing their job and being very, very clinical about issuing true bills of indictment. And also that the pervasive activities of the administration are becoming known to average citizens, and they are looking with a jaded eye toward the prosecutions that are being put in front of them. That’s happened not just in Washington, D.C., but in Chicago and other places across the country, and I would expect that to continue.

President Donald Trump has announced the nomination of Todd Blanche to be the U.S. attorney general. Blanche, a former personal lawyer for Trump, had served as acting attorney general since Trump forced out Pam Bondi. If you were advising senators in confirmation hearings for Todd Blanche, what questions would you recommend they ask?

In terms of the prosecutions of the perceived enemies of President Trump, I would want to know just how much interface and discussions there have been between the White House and the Department of Justice, including obviously the president and Mr. Blanche. I’m not sure that you would get a straight answer, but I think it’s worth asking the question. I might want to know whether he has ever refused to investigate or prosecute someone the president ordered him to target.

I’m not put off by the fact that Todd Blanche was the president’s personal lawyer. That’s fine, he has a history as a prosecutor before that, and the personal relationship doesn’t disqualify him.

I might also ask him hypotheticals where you test whether or not he could speak truth to power – specific hypotheticals about fairly evaluating a White House mandate ordering him to prosecute the president’s enemies. But if he can’t – as even attorneys general in the first administration Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions did – speak truth to power and stand up to the president and instead becomes a rubber stamp to exact revenge on behalf of the president, I think he’s fundamentally unfit for this really powerful, critical Cabinet post.

Let’s turn to another constitutional question. In reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s new book, they detail that there was a move to suspend habeas rights, – which allow a person detained by the government to challenge that detention – for unauthorized immigrants, although one high-level administration lawyer advised strongly against it. As a former judge, what’s your reaction to any attempt to do that?

You know that the Great Writ, as it’s called, has only been suspended about four times in the history of the country. First by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, and it was found to be an unconstitutional action, although the Congress in 1863 stepped up to provide the president the power to suspend the writ during the war when “the public safety may require it.”

On the one hand, it proves that there is at least one attorney in the White House who is willing to speak truth to power. There’s simply no current basis in law or fact to suspend the writ – look at the Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, which says, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

I think the courts would stop the president if he tried to do it. The opinion that the president received from counsel was a mixture of both “You’re going to get stopped by the courts, you’re going to get engaged in litigation right away” and “This is going to look terrible if you do it.”

This would have been a quantum leap in the wrong direction had they actually endeavored to do it. Sadly, expediency regularly triumphs over the rule of law far too often in this presidency, and that puts the rights of all citizens at risk.

John E. Jones III 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

Roughly two-thirds of Americans end their pregnancies by taking two abortion medications – misoprostol and mifepristone. Because these safe, effective medications can be prescribed via telehealth, without an in-office visit, they are how most patients terminate pregnancies in states that ban abortion.

In recent years, anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have seeded a number of challenges to medication abortion. This year, several are coming to fruition.

In 2026, decisions from either the courts, Food and Drug Administration or Department of Justice could end telehealth for medication abortion.

I am a law professor who researches and writes on reproductive health and abortion law. Here’s the abortion news I’m monitoring for the rest of 2026:

Louisiana lawsuit could upend abortion access nationwide

The most imminent threat to mailed abortion pills is the court case Louisiana v. FDA.

Louisiana sued the FDA in October 2025 over the agency’s 2023 decision to remove an in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone.

The state alleges that the rule change was unlawful, purportedly because the FDA failed to weigh the dangers of the drug. Louisiana, which has a near-total abortion ban, claims that it has suffered direct economic harm and threats to its state sovereignty when providers in protective states legally prescribe abortion pills to pregnant Louisianans across state lines.

This case has moved quickly. In April 2026, at the FDA’s request, a district court in Louisiana paused the case, halting the litigation.

Louisiana appealed to the 5th Circuit, which agreed with the state. On May 1, it reinstated the previous in-person prescription and dispensing requirement for mifepristone – a ruling with nationwide consequences. That weekend, patients across the U.S., regardless of the abortion laws in their state, could no longer get mifepristone through telehealth, the mail or in pharmacies.

Two pharmaceutical companies that manufacture mifepristone asked the Supreme Court to intervene, and on May 14, the justices blocked the 5th Circuit’s decision. That emergency order allows providers to again prescribe mifepristone via telehealth while the litigation proceeds in Louisiana.

By the end of summer, its docketing schedule shows, the 5th Circuit will consider Louisiana’s appeal of the district court’s decision to deny the state a preliminary injunction against the FDA.

Past statements in this case signal how the 5th Circuit might rule. In May, Judge Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee, wrote that the FDA “conceded it had failed to adequately study whether remotely prescribing mifepristone is safe,” which “resulted in numerous illegal abortions in Louisiana and in Louisiana paying thousands in Medicaid bills for women harmed by mifepristone.”

However the 5th Circuit rules, the losing party is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court.

There is no guarantee that the court would hear this case. When the Supreme Court intervened in May, it wasn’t deciding the case’s substantive issues but rather on a procedural matter. Whether the justices are willing to decide the future of medication abortion based on what could be a sweeping ruling from the 5th Circuit is an open question.

FDA to review medication abortion

The FDA is also reconsidering the regulation of mifepristone, following concerted political pressure from anti-abortion doctors and lawmakers.

To justify reviewing a drug with an established 25-year safety record, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in May cited a widely debunked study by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank. More than 260 researchers have denounced it for deep scientific flaws and a lack of peer review.

Then, little happened, and anti-abortion lawmakers accused then-FDA head Marty Makary of dragging his feet. In May, Makary was fired, and in early June, it was reported that the FDA would begin its “safety study.”

This process uses the FDA’s Sentinel system – which collects safety information from large electronic health databases of health records, insurance claims, administrative data and registries – to assess possible safety concerns. A status report is due this fall.

The evidence overwhelmingly cuts against reimposing restrictions. A January 2026 JAMA – Journal of the American Medical Association – study of over 5,000 pages of internal FDA documents confirmed the agency’s decisions regarding mifepristone were consistently science-based except in two instances when the agency imposed stricter rules on the drug.

And in October 2025, a federal court in Hawaii questioned the existing restrictions on mifepristone as unsupported by the evidence in Purcell v. Kennedy, directing the FDA to reconsider mifepristone’s regulation.

Contradicting both its own decision-making and a federal court ruling would make the FDA vulnerable to court challenge as “arbitrary and capricious” under federal administrative law.

But Kennedy has stated that his agency defers to President Donald Trump’s decision-making, so a decision rooted in science and evidence cannot be taken for granted.

What happens next?

Reinstating the in-person requirements on mifepristone would not stop all abortion pills from being mailed. Providers would still be free to prescribe and send misoprostol, which has no such restrictions and can safely terminate a pregnancy on its own.

During the 72 hours the 5th Circuit’s ruling was in effect, that’s what some providers did.

Taking misoprostol alone is a safe and effective option endorsed by both the World Health Organization and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. People end pregnancies with misoprostol throughout the world, though it differs from the two-drug combination.

Misoprostol alone is slightly less effective than a two-drug regimen. Misoprostol clears all pregnancy tissue in roughly 85% to 90% of cases, versus 95% when paired with mifepristone. It also takes longer to work – up to three days, compared with 24 hours with mifepristone – and may cause more diarrhea and fever.

Researchers are also exploring additional drug combinations to boost misoprostol’s efficacy without mifepristone, including pairing it with drugs that are otherwise prescribed for non-abortion purposes.

Even with in-person pickup of mifepristone, pregnant people could continue to get legal two-drug medication abortions by traveling out of state. Informal abortion-support networks, which rely on national and international sources to obtain mifepristone, would continue to operate in ban states.

Remember the Comstock Act?

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and the FDA present the most imminent challenges to medication abortion access. But others are waiting in the wings.

Both anti-abortion groups and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have urged the Justice Department to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law that bans using the mail to distribute “lewd” or “indecent” content.

If the dormant Comstock Act were to be tapped for the first time in more than a century, mailing abortion pills would be considered a violation of federal criminal law. And unlike an FDA restriction on mifepristone, Comstock enforcement would bar the mailing of all abortion-related materials, including misoprostol.

International pharmacies could still prescribe and mail abortion pills, but their shipments would risk interception by U.S. Customs and could expose recipients to violation of federal law.

Two wrongful death lawsuits filed in Texas have already invoked the Comstock Act as a basis for tort claims against so-called “shield” providers. These are doctors who practice in states where state shield law protects them against criminal prosecution, civil liability or professional discipline in their home state for facilitating abortion services in places where it is banned.

Shield laws in 22 states and Washington have allowed mailed medication abortion to proliferate in recent years. Eight of those states protect telehealth for medication abortion no matter where the patient lives. Shield providers in those eight states facilitated nearly 15,000 abortions per month in the second quarter of 2025 – mostly in states that outlaw abortion.

Shield laws and shield providers also are under challenges.

Beyond the Texas wrongful death suits, Louisiana has issued arrest warrants in all 50 states for at least one shield provider, a doctor in New York. Texas sued the same doctor for civil damages, and Republican attorneys general have called on Congress to pass a federal law that would override shield laws.

Once again, if shield laws fall, abortion medication would not end: People could continue to order the pills from other sources; enforcement would be costly and difficult. But the repercussions for abortion access would be significant.

The bigger picture

Limiting access to medication abortion is one clear step in a national effort to end abortion nationwide.

But by anchoring its campaign to the legal system, the movement has ceded terrain on the ground. While anti-abortion advocates wait on judges and regulators, the abortion-rights movement is adapting its own strategy and rerouting care around restrictions, as it has done since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

In my view, abortion pills won’t disappear, no matter what the courts or the executive branch does.

This article was published in collaboration with Rewire News Group, a nonprofit news outlet that covers reproductive health.

Rachel Rebouché 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

In a recent exchange with reporters about the newly brokered Iran agreement, President Donald Trump was asked whether he planned to submit the deal to Congress.

“I never thought about sending – never even thought about it, but I will,” Trump said. “I will send it to Congress. I like the idea.”

The most revealing phrase in the president’s statement was not “I will send it.” It was “I never thought about it.”

In a constitutional system built around separated powers, the consent of Congress should be more than an idea the president remembers after a reporter asks. Especially when it comes to questions of war, peace and foreign policy, Congress is where the public’s representatives play a crucial role in national decision-making.

Exactly what role Congress has in this particular agreement is not yet clear. The Constitution gives the Senate formal responsibility for approving or rejecting treaties. But presidents also enter many international agreements without submitting them for a Senate vote. As a result, lawyers and lawmakers often disagree about when congressional approval is legally required and when a president can act on his own.

But the legal question is not the only issue. Trump’s comment was revealing because it suggested that Congress had not been part of his thinking from the beginning.

That fits a larger pattern in Trump’s rhetoric. In his public remarks, he rarely describes Congress as a coequal branch of government. It appears as an obstacle, an audience, a pressure point, a rubber stamp or an afterthought.

As a scholar of media and presidential rhetoric, and an endowed professor for the Frank Church Institute, a center established to honor the former senator who once chaired a committee that aimed to ensure Congress’ role overseeing executive branch activities, I pay close attention to how presidents talk about power. The language they use often reveals not only what they intend to do, but how they understand America’s constitutional system itself.

Bypassing Congress

The U.S. Constitution does not imagine the president as the owner of the government with absolute, top-down, decision-making privileges. Instead, it places the president within a system of separated powers. Authority is divided among institutions, and no single office stands above the others.

The modern expansion of presidential power did not begin with Trump. Presidents of both parties have claimed broad unilateral authority. This is especially true when it comes to foreign affairs, war powers, immigration, emergencies, tariffs and administrative actions.

Nor did Trump invent the practice of presidents bypassing Congress by appealing directly to the public. Political communication scholars call this tactic “the rhetorical presidency.”

The basic idea is straightforward. As mass media became central to politics, presidents increasingly used public communication to build support for their agendas and pressure Congress from the outside.

To illustrate the contrast between the era of presidential pressure directly on Congress versus going to the public for that support, Abraham Lincoln actively lobbied legislators to pass the 13th Amendment, which made slavery illegal.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt engendered support for his New Deal programs through press conferences and fireside chats broadcast nationally on radio.

That development changed the presidency. Presidents became not only administrators of government but constant public performers of leadership.

Trump represents a further turn in this theory. He does not merely go over or around Congress to make a public case for his actions. He often speaks as though Congress has no independent claim on national authority, and that the legislature’s main role is to offer him unconditional support. To wit, after Congress voted to limit Trump’s authority to use force in Iran, he called supporters of the measure, including some Republicans, “unpatriotic.”

Who decides? Who represents?

Like Trump, other presidents have also personalized power. In 2006, President George W. Bush drew criticism when he defended keeping Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary by saying, “I’m the decider, and I decide what is best.” The line became famous because it seemed to compress executive authority into one person’s will.

But Trump’s attitude seems more expansive than was Bush’s. He speaks as though being president means being the person who knows more than anyone else, who can act more decisively than anyone else, and who deserves to be questioned less than anyone else. He told Axios that there are “no limits” to his ability to exert power that he has yet found.

When Trump speaks this way, presidential power sounds like personal superiority. His words obscure the fundamental constitutional principle that no government official is beyond scrutiny, correction or institutional constraint.

Power to the people

Congress is not simply a rival power center to the presidency. It is the branch through which citizens are most directly represented in national government. Members of Congress are elected from states and districts. Their roles include hearing from constituents, taking account of local concerns, debating policy, authorizing spending, overseeing the executive branch and making laws.

When a president treats Congress as optional, he is also treating representation as unnecessary. And when representation is unnecessary, accountability can also fall by the wayside.

Congress is where public authority becomes governmental authority. In a representative democracy, the people are sovereign. Public power, meaning the authority government exercises on behalf of the people, does not originate with the president. It originates with citizens and is carried into government through elections, deliberation, law and consent.

Questions about Iran have exposed this tension. When Congress has tried to limit or review Trump’s authority to use lethal force against Iran, the debate has not only been about military strategy. It has also been about whether congressional authorization and oversight still count as legitimate parts of decision-making about military force – and sending American troops into situations in which they could die.

How democracy works

Congress is not infallible, and the Constitution does not suggest that its judgment should automatically prevail over presidential will. Moreover, not every international agreement requires the same kind of congressional involvement.

It is also possible that the public supports the new Iran deal, and so the president has its implicit consent.

But even if these things are true, the point is more fundamental. In saying, “I never thought about it,” the president returned to a claim about power that has defined his political rhetoric since 2016, when he declared that only he could repair what was broken in America: “I alone can fix it.” It’s a philosophy that says the president acts first, and other institutions are invited to catch up later.

The danger is not simply that he is sidelining the role of Congress. It is that this understanding of power makes the constitutional system resemble a hierarchy rather than a republic. And when the institutions through which citizens exercise their authority can be treated as optional, it is ultimately the people who are pushed to the margins of self-government.

That undermines the democratic order. The president does not stand above the people. He serves within a constitutional system designed to keep public authority from becoming personal power.

Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin 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

Under the second Trump administration, the United States has seen mass deportations and a sharp escalation in immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security says the crackdown pushed nearly 3 million people out of the country in Trump’s first year back in office.

For the first time since the 1960s, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. is declining; because most farmworkers are foreign born, those losses are already beginning to strain American farms.

We are social scientists who study immigrant communities in Idaho and the challenges farmworkers face. We also run an annual survey exploring public opinion on a range of policy issues, including immigration and economic conditions. Amid the government’s heated rhetoric, our data shows public opinion on immigration in one of the country’s reddest agricultural states is diverging from national politics and may even be at odds with federal policy.

Immigrant labor in agriculture

According to the Center for Migration Studies, 86% of farmworkers in the U.S. are foreign born, and 45% are undocumented. In 2025 the Trump administration suggested it would not target farms. Still, farmworkers across the country are scared to go to work.

Between March and July 2025, the agricultural workforce declined by 7%, with farms reporting labor shortages in states that voted for Trump, including Pennsylvania, and states that didn’t, including California. Meanwhile, immigration crackdowns are threatening this country’s food security.

National polling on the administration’s immigration policies tends to follow party lines, drawing Democrats’ disapproval and Republicans’ support, but recent polling suggests some softening among the latter. Pew Research Center reported that half of all respondents disapprove of the administration’s approach to immigration, and more than half say Trump is “doing too much” when it comes to deportation. Among Republicans the share is smaller – 20% – but rising.

Research suggests people think about immigration differently at the local level. To explore how public opinion on immigration varies in farm-dependent states, we looked at one of the most agriculture-reliant and Republican states in the country just as its farms face policy-driven labor shortfalls.

A closer look

Agribusiness is important for Idaho’s economy, accounting for 20% of its annual GDP, according to the Idaho State Department of Agriculture. Dairy is a cornerstone: The state is the fourth-largest milk producer in the U.S., according to the Idaho Dairymen’s Association. Ninety percent of Idaho dairy workers are foreign born.

Idaho is also a deeply red state: About 60% of voters are registered Republicans, and 67% voted for Trump in 2024. These numbers make Idaho a clear test of how national rhetoric and intensifying immigration enforcement track with public sentiment in places that have the most to lose.

Our 11th annual Idaho Public Policy Survey polled 1,000 adults in the fall of 2025. Because immigrants have lower crime rates than native-born Americans, we designed a question around long-term residents without a criminal record – specifically, dairy workers and their families who have lived in Idaho more than 10 years.

The results showed broad support for a pathway to legal working status for them: 85% of respondents were in favor, with 56% strongly supportive and 29% somewhat. Just 9% opposed. We expected immigration positions to tie directly to political affiliation, but results cut across party lines, with 79% of Republicans, 88% of independents and 95% of Democrats in favor.

We also asked participants whether increased presence from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, would help or harm Idaho’s agricultural economy. More than half – 53% – said it would harm the economy, 19% said it would help, 18% said there would be no impact, and 10% were unsure.

The pattern was sharpest where it would matter most: Residents of agriculture-dependent regions were more likely to say ICE presence would hurt the economy. Republicans were more likely than others to say it would help; even so, only 35% of Republicans responded that way, compared with 11% of independents and less than 3% of Democrats.

In agriculture-dependent Idaho, many residents say they recognize the role immigrants play in sustaining local rural economies, and research shows that recognition can shift attitudes about immigration, potentially increasing support for more inclusive policies.

According to our research, public opinion in Idaho is more nuanced than the right-left divide suggests. We believe findings here are likely to hold in other places similarly dependent on agriculture, as farmers from Wisconsin to Delaware speak up about their reliance on immigrant labor.

The authors 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

Every election cycle sees its share of controversial, scandal-plagued candidates running for office. But the 2026 midterm elections will feature two such candidates – one from each party – in two of the highest-profile U.S. Senate races.

In Texas, the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, recently secured the Republican Party’s nomination over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

Cornyn and others have insisted that Paxton’s substantial legal and personal baggage – including corruption and bribery accusations that got him impeached by the GOP-led state House of Representatives – might lose Republicans a seat they’ve held for decades.

Democrats in Maine, meanwhile, have nominated Graham Platner, a political novice whose grassroots campaign and brash communication style propelled him to a decisive victory over the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, who remained on the ballot but suspended her campaign in April.

This, despite Platner facing a series of personal scandals ranging from alleged sexual misconduct to a tattoo that turned out to be an emblem of Hitler’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS. Platner has claimed he was unaware of the symbol’s origins and has since covered it up.

Both Paxton and Platner won resounding victories in their primaries over more establishment candidates who were comparatively free of scandal.

As a scholar who studies Congress and elections, and the co-host of a podcast about political scandals, I believe political science offers answers about how Paxton and Platner pulled off victories in their states’ primaries – and why they might win in November.

Historic distance and distaste between the parties

Both Paxton’s and Platner’s flaws were well known prior to primary voting.

Early polling indicates that most of Texas’ Republican voters are likely to back Paxton in November. Polling also shows that Platner will continue to consolidate his party’s support in Maine.

Both parties’ leadership in Congress and beyond have also rallied behind their respective candidates. And both parties have used the opposing candidate’s scandals against them in the campaign, despite propping up flawed candidates themselves.

These actions can coexist thanks to two forces that political science has much to say about, precepts that have been steadily increasing in relevance over the past few decades: party polarization – or the distance between the two parties – and negative partisanship, voters’ tendency to vote based on negative feelings toward the other party.

Democrats and Republicans are far away from each other on policy preferences, issue positions and culture. They are also distant in terms of where they live, whom they support, how they feel and even whom they love.

Political science tells us that this polarized distance has increased feelings of personal animus between members of the two parties. Political psychology says the more different Americans are from each other, the easier it is for them to not just disagree with the other side but to dislike the other side to the point of viewing them as a threat.

These are trends Americans frequently see reflected in public opinion studies, many of which use the “feeling thermometer” to ask respondents to rate their personal feelings toward a person or party on a scale of zero degrees, or coldest/most unfavorable, to 100 degrees, or warmest/most favorable.

In the late 1970s, the average voter in each party was more or less neutral toward the opposing party, with scores hovering just below 50 degrees. By 2024, the average voter sentiment toward the other party had plummeted to 19 degrees.

In 1978, only 9% of Democrats and 7% of Republicans had a very negative opinion of the opposing party. By 2024, vast majorities in both parties – 64% apiece – reported such negative opinions.

Political science also tells us that these negative feelings about the other party are not simply prevalent. They are the driving force behind many voters’ election choices.

In other words, Americans are increasingly making voting decisions based not on who should win elections but rather on who shouldn’t. The opposing party is not just the less preferred option – it’s a threat that must be stopped at all costs.

When feelings about the other side are this negatively polarized, then winning – even with a less-than-ideal candidate as your standard-bearer – becomes more crucial than ever.

In fact, researchers have found that scandals involving candidates in a voter’s own party trigger a “defensive partisanship” that increases their hostility toward the other side. That is, scandals in a voter’s own party can make them more – not less – loyal to their team.

The higher the stakes, the lower the standards

Polarization and negative partisanship are not the only factors at work. The tight competition for control over major political institutions such as Congress and the presidency have raised the stakes of elections higher than ever. And, in the process, it has lowered standards for whom Americans are willing to support.

In her 2016 book, “Insecure Majorities,” political scientist Frances Lee found that partisan control over the federal government is more in question now that it has been in over a century. Lee says that closely fought elections that determine control of government help explain changing governing strategies in Congress.

But Lee’s findings also help explain our choices in elections and how – even in closely fought, high-profile races such as the 2026 Senate contests in Texas and Maine – voters end up nominating such blemished candidates.

In theory, closely fought competition should drive a “race to the top” in terms of candidate selection. Because control over institutions rests constantly on a knife’s edge, Americans might expect both sides to put forward their best, brightest and most electorally compelling candidates to try to win.

But thanks to polarization and negative partisanship, it isn’t always so. Instead, hard-fought elections among a closely divided electorate mean that individual votes matter more; that power hangs by a thread; and as a result, that one’s personal and political enemies are inches away from controlling the government.

Thus, closely divided elections only raise the stakes of one’s vote, along with the cost of defecting from your party’s candidate, however flawed they might be.

The lesser of 2 evils?

Voters constantly report feeling the need to “hold their noses” and vote for the “lesser of two evils.” The alternative – the other party taking power – is too grave to permit a truly principled stand. As a result, the race to the bottom continues, because the other side will always be worse.

These trends can help explain why, for example, Republicans circled the wagons around Donald Trump in 2016 despite his many scandals and serious misgivings within the party. They also illustrate why Democrats rallied around Joe Biden well into 2024, even as serious questions were raised about his physical age and mental fitness for office.

Whether Paxton’s or Platner’s partisan voters end up coalescing around them despite their scandals remains to be seen. Regardless, the reappearance of such imperfect candidates each cycle tells a bitter story about what voters will put up with to win.

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

As the race to build data centers across the United States accelerates, local governments worry that the tech industry mantra of “move fast and break things” means their communities are at risk of being broken.

I’m a Harvard researcher studying the relationship between data centers and energy. I’ve closely monitored how local governments respond to proposals or even just concerns about the potential for data centers in their communities. What I’ve found is a complex story of community needs, political tensions and corporate power – all interacting with local, state and national democratic processes.

Promises and potential

Technology companies stay competitive by being ready to provide data and communications services even before customer demand rises. Data centers already power online communications, shopping and banking systems. Now, expanding demand for artificial intelligence has led to over 1,000 pending data center proposals across the country.

Federal actions also drive development. The Trump administration has identified data center build-out as a strategic priority. The administration has promoted data center capacity as a measure of American strength and signaled that federal regulations on data centers may be eased.

At the community level, technology companies claim that data centers bring jobs, economic revitalization, digital connectivity and economic growth to local communities.

Not great neighbors

So far, however, data centers’ benefits are overshadowed by more visible harms.

Nearby residents experience higher air pollution and excess noise. Data processing also uses a lot of water to cool the buildings and their equipment.

Simultaneously, electricity prices continue to outpace inflation, burdening families across the country. These trends reflect, in part, the costly infrastructure investments needed to power data centers.

The local movement

My research has found that local governments across the U.S. are trying to avoid or reduce these harms.

Some counties and cities that don’t have specific zoning rules and regulations for data center development are using short-term moratoriums. These pauses in data center permitting and construction give communities time to consider how to define new laws and regulations about the facilities’ location, electricity use, water conservation and noise buffering.

Speaking about his town’s decision to impose a one-year data center moratorium, Rick Bella, the town council president in Merrillville, Indiana, about 40 miles southeast of Chicago, stressed a desire to “evaluate real-world impacts and learn from a project developing right next door before determining what may or may not be appropriate for Merrillville.”

Other places want to block data centers altogether. In April 2026, for example, the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority near Detroit, Michigan, passed a yearlong halt to the “delivery, commitment, reservation, extension, or approval of water and sewer services” for data centers. The move blocks data centers, including one under development by the University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory, from getting the water they need to operate.

Separately, towns across Ohio, Wisconsin, Maryland, Nevada and California have put questions related to data centers on their local ballots. Through these referendums, voters can weigh in on construction bans, tax incentives and zoning ordinances.

Power struggles

While public attitudes around data centers have remained largely nonpartisan, local and state officials don’t always see eye to eye.

Officials in Hood County, Texas, for example, rejected a proposal for a six-month moratorium after a state senator urged the Texas attorney general to intervene and prevent the measure.

In 2025, West Virginia passed a bill that reduces local governments’ zoning and regulatory powers in relation to data centers and microgrids. A similar bill in New Hampshire’s legislature was defeated in May 2026.

Tech companies are also flexing their legal and financial muscles. For example, data center developers sued Saline Township, Michigan, and Chatham County, North Carolina, seeking to overturn their local zoning decisions, to be able to proceed with data center construction.

Changing tides

Local pushback comes at a pivotal moment for artificial intelligence technology itself.

As seen in objections to the internet’s expanding AI “slop,” backlash over AI-generated Super Bowl ads, worries about an AI-related financial bubble and complaints about Google’s pivot to AI-directed search, Americans are reckoning with AI’s role in society.

Further, many people are questioning the role of technology broadly. Increasing numbers of teens and adults are addicted to their smartphones, emotionally and psychologically dependent on their availability. Parents and teachers are questioning the usefulness of various types of digital technologies in classrooms. Even the pope has warned that technology must serve humanity – and not the other way around.

Americans are responding to this moment through the power of their voices and votes.

Technology companies may view moratoriums and new regulations as delays in project development. But the town hall discussions, community coalitions, public petitions and even farmers’ unions reflect American democracy at work.

In Sunbury, Ohio, local officials considered a moratorium only after witnessing the scope of public protest over a proposed data center.

In April 2026, voters in Festus, Missouri, removed several City Council members after they supported a new data center despite resident pushback.

The question of whether a community wants or should have a data center does not have a universal answer. I believe it’s a question that deserves deliberate processes, transparency and consideration.

To me, these local-level actions reflect a desire to slow down. There is little question that data centers and AI will be part of our collective future. Today, communities are asking for a fair say in what their futures will be.

Rachel Mural 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

Nearly 1 in 5 felony cases filed in Denver and resolved in 2025 was dismissed with no strings attached.

For misdemeanor cases, the rate was 1 in 4.

A criminal case might be dismissed for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, evidence falls apart. Law enforcement, prosecutor or lab errors can similarly derail a case. Or perhaps prosecutors decide that pursuing it no longer serves the interests of justice. These situations are a normal, inevitable and sometimes even desirable aspect of the legal system.

But other times, cases get dismissed because the system lacks the bandwidth to hold onto them. Heavy caseloads in prosecutors’ offices can lead to more of these dismissals, according to my recent research.

I am a professor who studies prosecutorial policy and decision making. I am also a co-manager of Prosecutorial Performance Indicators, a research and technical assistance project that collaborates with prosecutors’ offices across the country to promote transparency, equity and data-informed policy. Between 2021 and 2024, my research team partnered with elected district attorneys throughout Colorado to produce data dashboards that show statistics on criminal cases and outcomes.

My colleague Don Stemen and I then used data from that project to investigate how prosecutors responded to weekly fluctuations in their criminal caseloads. Weekly caseloads can vary by as much as 15% above or below the average across weeks in a Colorado judicial district, with a mean change of 6%. Our research shows that in weeks when active caseloads are higher, fewer cases get resolved via a plea deal. Instead, dismissal rates rise to compensate.

In other words, as cases pile up, more of them end up getting dropped.

Case outcomes in Colorado

In the American legal system, which relies on plea deals, guilty pleas account for an estimated 95% of criminal convictions across the country. Trials, though constitutionally guaranteed, are rare.

However, a notable share of cases do not result in a conviction at all.

Once a prosecutor has decided to file charges, cases can follow several pathways other than guilty plea or trial. Defendants may be screened for diversion programming, which redirects eligible individuals away from conviction and toward rehabilitative services, such as substance use or domestic violence offender treatment. They may also receive a deferred judgment, in which they initially plead guilty but avoid formal conviction if they can successfully complete conditions such as community service hours, counseling and remaining arrest-free for a set period of time. Other defendants see their cases dismissed outright by either a judge or prosecutor.

Across the half-million cases in our Colorado sample, about 45% were resolved in one of these alternative ways that avoided a criminal conviction.

Our sample includes all felony and misdemeanor cases resolved in 19 of Colorado’s 23 judicial districts between 2021 and 2024. Data was extracted from Action, the case management system used by prosecutors’ offices across the state, and shared by the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council.

Information from individual, public-facing data dashboards in the state show a similar reliance on alternatives to conviction. In the 20th Judicial District, which is Boulder, for example, 34% of felony cases resulted in a dismissal, diversion or deferred judgment in 2025. That was true for 50% of misdemeanors as well.

For misdemeanors in particular, this represents a 10% decline in the conviction rate in Boulder in just five years. It suggests that hundreds of defendants in less serious cases who would previously have been convicted now receive a different outcome each year.

Outright dismissals make up the bulk of misdemeanor nonconvictions in many jurisdictions. In the 18th Judicial District, which includes most of Aurora and Centennial, 56% of misdemeanor cases did not result in a conviction in 2025. Of those nonconvictions, 77% were dismissals.

Colorado’s dismissal rates do not appear to be outliers. Most prosecutors’ offices do not make their data available to researchers or the public, but more than 50% of all cases are routinely dismissed in some urban areas that do, such as Milwaukee and Philadelphia.

The pressure to dismiss

Prosecutors’ offices in Colorado are battling staff recruitment and retention shortages, with attorney vacancy rates above 50% in some offices.

Consequently, prosecutor caseloads have more than doubled in jurisdictions such as Golden, Colorado’s 1st Judicial District, where each prosecutor opened an average of four more felony cases or 122 more misdemeanor cases than they closed in 2025.

The rise of digital evidence, everything from body-worn camera footage to social media activity, has further increased the time and technology investment required to prosecute. Monthslong turnaround times for forensic testing create additional trouble, forcing prosecutors to proactively prioritize some cases for lab analysis over others.

Prosecutors’ offices across the U.S. are similarly struggling to hire and keep lawyers as they continue to grapple with technological challenges and case backlogs triggered by court closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Anchorage, hundreds of cases were dismissed because there were not enough prosecutors available to move them toward trial in 2024. In 2019, the passage of Kalief’s Law, which established stricter evidence disclosure requirements for prosecutors, sent misdemeanor dismissals caused by failure to meet trial deadlines skyrocketing from 9% to 48% within five years in New York City.

Making prosecution more efficient

Case dismissals triggered by a lack of resources could be construed as the recalibration of a historically punitive legal system. Dismissing more cases, especially low-level cases involving defendants with little to no criminal history, may benefit society more than maintaining high conviction rates. After all, it is expensive to be tough on crime, and the evidence that mass conviction and incarceration improves public safety is thin at best.

Even so, these dismissals are symptomatic of a system in crisis. There are too many cases and too few resources to handle them.

If prosecutors’ offices are able to implement more rigorous early case screening, they are likely to eliminate weak cases faster and with less resource expenditure. This may be particularly effective if prosecutors also use their discretion to decline more undeserving cases up front, treating the use of taxpayer dollars on prosecution as something that requires deliberate justification rather than something that happens by default.

Research suggests that greater selectivity at early stages of prosecution reduces caseloads more efficiently than dismissals later on. Selectivity also spares defendants and victims from the prolonged uncertainty of a lingering case. Though moves in this direction would require an up-front investment by prosecutors’ offices, the long-term benefits may be well worth the effort.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Rebecca Dunlea receives funding from the Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Throughout history, rulers and political movements have used public spectacles of combat to evoke courage, sacrifice, collective strength and national purpose. From Roman gladiator contests to modern mixed martial arts, combat spectacles have served not merely as entertainment but as public rituals through which people experience belonging to something larger than themselves.

When President Donald Trump proposed staging a UFC championship event on the White House grounds as part of America’s 250th anniversary celebration, many observers treated it as another example of his affinity for spectacle and mixed martial arts, or MMA, a combat sport combining striking and grappling techniques from multiple martial arts disciplines. Yet the symbolism runs deeper than a president’s taste for theatricality and combat sports.

I’ve spent decades studying why people are willing to fight, sacrifice and even die for causes, and I see such spectacles illuminating an important psychological process known as identity fusion.

People belong to groups: families, nations, religions, professions, political movements, sports teams. Usually, these identities remain distinct from the personal self.

Identity fusion occurs when that boundary disappears. People do not just support a group – they experience it as an inseparable part of who they are. The group’s successes and failures become personal; threats to the group are experienced as threats to oneself.

The important question isn’t just what happens inside the cage – it’s what such spectacles can do for the audience. Public displays of courage, endurance and sacrifice can strengthen emotional bonds among spectators and deepen identification with the groups, causes or leaders they associate with those displays.

Research with soldiers and other front-line fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporters of Ukraine, Palestinians in Gaza, Taiwanese concerned about a Chinese invasion, and participants in extremist movements shows that identity fusion predicts willingness to endure hardship, accept risk and make sacrifices for a collective cause.

This process does not necessarily produce violence. It can motivate volunteerism, mutual aid, military service and resistance to oppression.

It helps explain how public rituals that celebrate courage, sacrifice and collective strength can deepen commitment to groups, causes and leaders under conditions that appear irrational from a purely material perspective.

Why shared struggle matters

One of the strongest pathways to identity fusion is shared hardship. People who endure danger, suffering or intense challenges together often emerge with unusually strong bonds.

Combat sports play into this dynamic. Fighters publicly test themselves against pain, exhaustion, fear and possible defeat. Spectators witness not simply athletic competition but symbolic demonstrations of courage and endurance. The attraction lies partly in how character is being revealed under pressure.

For ancient Romans, gladiators embodied “virtus” – courage, discipline, endurance and willingness to confront death. Their appeal stemmed not merely from violence but from values they represented.

Modern mixed martial arts is often celebrated in similar terms: a proving ground for toughness, resilience and self-mastery.

In both cases, physical contests become moral dramas about sacrifice and human limits.

MMA has become politically important

The significance of combat sports extends beyond professional competition.

Across Europe and North America, mixed martial arts has become a focal point for segments of the contemporary far right. Organizations known as Active Clubs, now found in countries including the United States, Germany, Sweden, France and Britain, combine physical training with ethnonationalist activism, including recruitment, ideological indoctrination, public demonstrations and transnational networking among ethnic – particularly white – nationalist groups.

Gyms provide venues for recruitment and networking, but their deeper significance is psychological. Training and enduring hardship together and testing oneself before peers generates forms of trust and solidarity difficult to reproduce online. Political commitment becomes literal and embodied.

This helps explain why mixed martial arts has acquired unusual importance within transnational, ethnonationalist networks. Activists from different countries may possess distinct national identities, yet they recognize one another through a shared culture of physical discipline, masculine camaraderie and readiness for struggle. Combat sports provide a symbolic language that transcends borders, reinforcing a broader civilizational identity.

In this respect, mixed martial arts performs a role similar to military training camps, revolutionary youth movements and fraternal organizations in earlier eras. It creates bonds simultaneously local and international.

From Nero to the White House

The Roman emperor Nero was unusual not because he sponsored gladiatorial games – many emperors did – but because, as historian Thomas Wiedemann observed, he openly identified with the arena’s culture. Rather than maintaining aristocratic distance, Nero linked his public image to the virtues and popularity of spectacle.

Something similar occurs whenever political leaders align themselves with combat sports. The significance lies less in the sport itself than in what the spectacle symbolizes. A combat event staged as part of a national celebration transforms athletic competition into a ritual of collective identity and public values.

The White House UFC event was especially revealing because it linked a combat spectacle to the commemoration of the American republic’s 250th anniversary and to Trump’s own 80th birthday. Symbolically, it joined nationhood, leadership and martial virtue in a single public performance.

The symbolism also intersects with recent calls by administration officials, including the newly dubbed “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth, to restore a “warrior ethos” to U.S. military and civic life. The warrior becomes not merely a soldier but an ideal citizen: disciplined, courageous, physically formidable and prepared for sacrifice.

Why spectators experience awe

Mass rallies, military parades, religious pilgrimages, revolutionary festivals and combat spectacles can all produce moments in which individuals feel absorbed into something larger than themselves.

Such experiences do not automatically lead to political extremism. Most do not. But they help explain why people become deeply attached to groups and causes that provide meaning, belonging and a sense of shared destiny.

Spectacular public rituals – especially those involving violence and pain – often evoke what British political philosopher and politician Edmund Burke called “the sublime”: intense experiences of danger, terror and grandeur that transform fear into exaltation before overwhelming power.

The attraction of combat spectacles lies not merely in violence or entertainment. Their enduring power comes from transforming individual contests into collective stories of courage, sacrifice, identity and purpose. They reveal a fundamental human desire not only for security and comfort, but also for struggle, significance and belonging – as George Orwell observed in 1940 when reviewing the allure of Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf.”

In an age when established political institutions and movements command diminishing loyalty, combat spectacles provide more than excitement. They create communities of feeling and, under the right conditions, powerful engines of political commitment.

Scott Atran previously received funding for related research from the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Arrests for betting on the U.S. military operation that removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Death threats from gamblers to a journalist reporting on an Iranian missile attack on Israel. Fears of government officials manipulating world events – including the Iran war – to make a quick buck.

These are some of many concerns that experts have raised about how prediction markets – online marketplaces that allow people to bet on world events – might be affecting national security in the U.S. and abroad.

But prediction markets may not be only influencing international affairs. They could also affect the 2026 midterm elections.

We are social scientists who study gambling, public policy and national security. Here are four things you need to know about how prediction markets may be changing American politics:

Prediction markets turn politics into a game

Prediction markets offer people the opportunity to bet on political events by purchasing “shares” – like stock in a company – of different potential outcomes. If an outcome takes place, the market pays out for each share purchased by those who guessed correctly. More betting activity in favor of an outcome raises its price and lowers its payout, and vice versa.

Prediction markets are different from casinos and online sportsbooks because there is no “house” – like a casino – that determines the size of the payout for correctly guessing who will win or lose a sporting event. In a prediction market, players “bet” against one another, not the house. The markets make money by charging transaction fees on each trade.

Betting on prediction markets allows users to turn many aspects of U.S. politics into a game. For example, betting on election outcomes is very popular on prediction markets. Kalshi – a popular prediction market platform – has a portion of its site specifically designated for election-related markets. That includes the chance to bet on the eventual winner of the 2028 presidential election, the margin of victory in the 2026 South Dakota primary elections and which of two Dan Sullivans could become Alaska’s next senator.

Kalshi also offers opportunities to bet on nonelection outcomes, like whether or not the Supreme Court will ban transgender girls and women from competing on “female sports teams,” or whether the government will confirm before September 2026 that aliens exist.

The gamification of politics through prediction market betting is not new. Predictit, a self-described “political prediction market,” has been operating in the U.S. for over a decade.

What has changed in recent years, however, is that prediction markets are no longer an obscure pastime enjoyed by political junkies. Prediction markets have become quite popular, and media organizations are even integrating betting market data in their political analysis. For example, Kalshi is CNN’s “official prediction markets partner.” In a segment called “The Odds,” CNN commentators often use Kalshi data to make predictions about candidates’ electoral performance.

Insider trading could affect US elections

Insider trading on prediction markets occurs when people with nonpublic information – like internal polling, military intelligence, etc. – place wagers on events. While some prediction markets are trying to crack down on the practice, insider trading could already be affecting the upcoming U.S. midterm elections.

In spring 2026, for example, NPR documented several cases where campaign staffers working on statewide campaigns admitted to using inside information about candidates’ performance in the polls to “buy low” on their candidate’s electoral prospects prior to the release of favorable polling data. Additionally, although prediction markets usually prohibit betting on one’s own campaign, both Democrats and Republicans running for political office have come under fire for betting on their own campaigns.

Betting on one’s own campaign could create a scenario where a candidate’s electoral performance seems more robust than it actually is to prediction market users or watchers, including media organizations who report on prediction market data.

This may in turn generate more favorable media coverage, which could affect public sentiment toward the candidate. Unlike polling, which is not typically prone to the same kind of meddling by campaigns, betting on one’s own campaign could ultimately change voters’ minds regarding the viability of a candidate.

Policymakers are paying attention

Given concerns about insider trading and its potential consequences, we asked Americans whether U.S. government officials should be forbidden from trading on prediction markets. In a nationally representative online survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted via the survey platform Verasight in March 2026, we found that nearly 70% supported banning government officials from trading on prediction markets, while 20% supported a more limited trading ban when government officials have “inside” information.

Lawmakers in Washington are beginning to respond to public opinion. The Senate recently banned senators and their staff from trading on prediction markets, although how this policy will be implemented remains uncertain. However, members of the House, employees of the executive branch, military officials and other government employees can still bet on prediction markets.

Some lawmakers have proposed limiting trading when government officials have insider information about an event, such as internal polling or fundraising data that members of the public do not have access to.

Others in Congress have made an effort to ban all trading on “death markets,” which include war, assassinations and related topics. Known as the “DEATH BETS Act” – its title is an acronym that stands for “Discouraging Exploitative Assassination, Tragedy, and Harm Betting in Event Trading Systems Act – the legislation has been introduced but is pending committee review.

State governments are also taking action to regulate prediction markets.

Massachusetts, for example, is suing Kalshi for allowing “backdoor betting” on sports.

Backdoor betting refers to wagering through less regulated channels like prediction markets, rather than highly regulated state casinos and sportsbooks. Backdoor betting has been estimated to cost states over US$1 billion in tax revenue since prediction markets first began allowing sports wagering in early 2025.

Minnesota became the first state to ban prediction markets altogether, while Illinois has sent cease and desist letters to prediction market operators that it claims are operating without adhering to state gambling laws.

Trump wants control over prediction markets

In a recent Truth Social post, President Donald Trump blasted the idea that states should be able to regulate prediction markets. Referencing their recent regulatory actions, Trump referred to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker as “SCUM” in the post.

Trump also expressed enthusiasm for prediction markets in the post, saying that the U.S. is “at the top” of a “new form of Financial Market.” The president and his family have deep financial ties to the industry. For example, Donald Trump Jr. serves as a prediction market adviser to Kalshi and Polymarket and is an investor in Polymarket.

Following Trump’s post, the administration began reviewing a proposal to give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the exclusive authority to regulate prediction markets.

While the CFTC has repeatedly asserted regulatory authority over prediction markets, some – like former CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler – believe that states, not the CFTC, should be in charge.

Matt Motta receives funding from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.

Robert Ralston 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