New legal protections are needed to empower the media to play its vital role in informing citizens about their government. The press and the executive branch routinely battle over access to government secrets. Frequently reporters seek to extract information the government would prefer to withhold and to withhold information the government would prefer to extract....
Senior Biden administration aides summoned Amazon officials to the White House during the height of the pandemic to discuss “propaganda and misinformation” in books for sale on the retail giant’s website that questioned the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. White House officials “spent a week berating Amazon” in March 2021 over books related to “vaccine misinformation” and asked what steps...
In a new JAMA viewpoint, Boston University School of Public Health researchers Sondra Crosby and Leonard Glantz denounce rectal feeding practices that occurred at these prisons, and call for medical officers who enabled this “medicalized rape” to be held accountable for violating ethical and legal standards. Nearly 10 years ago, a US Senate Intelligence committee report detailed for the first time the horrors of forced rectal...
Recent U.S. wildfire events — including the 2023 Maui wildfire in Hawaii, the 2022 Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire in New Mexico, and the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire in Colorado — are tragic examples of how disadvantaged communities can suffer most during and after a wildfire. While all three fires had a devastating impact on an...
City lawmakers in Brazil have enacted what appears to be the nation’s first legislation written entirely by artificial intelligence — even if they didn’t know it at the time. The experimental ordinance was passed in October in the southern city of Porto Alegre and city councilman Ramiro Rosário revealed this week that it was written...
Should it be legal to take away the guns of people who are under a domestic violence protective order, which aims to shield victims from their abusers? That’s the question posed in one of the biggest cases of the current Supreme Court term, focused on the limits of individual gun rights, which will be argued...
Yemen’s Houthi movement launched missiles and drones at Israel on Oct. 31, 2023 – provoking fears of a dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict. With the militia – which controls part of the Arabian Peninsula state – vowing further attacks, Israel countered by sending missile boats to the Red Sea. They join U.S. warships...
Abercrombie & Fitch has landed on the receiving end of a new lawsuit, which accuses the company of participating – and maintaining “intentional involvement” – in a “widespread sex-trafficking operation led by its [former] CEO Michael Jeffries,” who is also named as a defendant in the striking case. According to the complaint that he filed...
It’s no secret that men outnumber women in the halls of Congress and in other political arenas, but new research from Rice University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also found that significantly more men than women study the legislative process in the U.S. and abroad. This has troubling implications for...
Political apathy is growing in democracies around the world. Political apathy, also known as political alienation, describes feelings of separation and disaffection, a sense of powerlessness and an indifference to politics and political institutions. A hallmark of political alienation is a refusal to vote or participate in political activities. Adolescents and young adults are no...
