Between 2018 and 2020, 1.4 million EU citizens signed the petition ‘End the Cage Age’, with the aim of ending cage housing for farm animals in Europe. In response to this citizens initiative, the European Parliament requested a study by Utrecht University researchers on the possibilities to end cage housing. On 13 April, the scientists...
The Covid-19 pandemic has upended the lives and careers of millions of women, highlighted inequities in health care, education and the economy, and underscored the importance of electing women to political office, according to a new online survey released today by Gender on the Ballot, a partnership between the Women & Politics Institute at American University’s School...
Following recent years of turbulent developments in politics, economics and social media around the world, one might assume these events inspire University of Illinois Chicago researcher Zizi Papacharissi to have an ominous view about what the future holds. That would be an incorrect assumption. It was during the Obama administration when she began to consider...
States regularly use administrative records, such as motor-vehicle data, in determining whether people have moved to prune their voter rolls. A Yale-led study of this process in Wisconsin shows that a significant percentage of registered voters are incorrectly identified as having changed addresses, potentially endangering their right to vote. The study, published in the journal Science...
Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, but his populist ideas may continue to animate the Republican Party. As scholars of American beliefs and elections, we can envision a less Trumpy version of Trumpism holding sway over the party in coming years. We call it “polished populism.” Populism is folk-politics based on the premise that ordinary...
The coronavirus pandemic doomed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ambitious plans last year to combat homelessness, expand behavioral health services and create a state agency to control soaring health care costs. But even as the pandemic continues to rage, California’s Democratic governor said Friday he plans to push forward with those goals in the coming year, due...
Non-violent offenders serving time for drug use or possession should be freed immediately and their convictions erased, according to research published in the peer-reviewed The American Journal of Bioethics. More than 60 international experts including bioethicists, psychologists and drug experts have joined forces to call for an end to the war on drugs which they argue...
The chaos at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday wasn’t typical. Nor was the coverage. Footage carried live by cable news and clips and photos shared across social media were jolting. One image showed a man who had broken into the building sitting in a chair, foot on desk, in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. A...
I’ve been thinking a lot, recently, about the tension between demanding “individual rights” – in the sense of deciding whether or not to wear a mask – and calling for more action on the part of our government to protect us from the coronavirus pandemic. I’m a political theorist, which means I study how communities...
Oregon became the first state in the United States to decriminalize the possession of all drugs on Nov. 3, 2020. Measure 110, a ballot initiative funded by the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group backed in part by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, passed with more than 58% of the vote. Possessing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and...
