Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Is TikTok the next platform for election interference?

Is TikTok the next platform for election interference?

Sens. Tom Cotton and Chuck Schumer are concerned that TikTok, which launched in the U.S. last year, is "a potential target of foreign influence campaigns like those carried out during the 2016 election."

Joe Scarnici/Getty Images

No one knows if social media phenomenon TikTok could allow China to meddle in the 2020 election, similar to Russia's attacks in the last presidential campaign. But two senators who are on the opposite sides of almost every issue want to find out.

The Chinese-owned video sharing app is rapidly increasing in popularity worldwide, especially among teenagers. It has been downloaded more than 110 million times in the United States alone. And just two weeks ago it said it was working to steer clear of the next election by banning all political advertising from its site.

Nonetheless, it has now become "is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore" in the view of the two senators, Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and conservative Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

"The platform is also a potential target of foreign influence campaigns like those carried out during the 20I6 election on U.S.-based social media platforms," the pair wrote in a letter this week to Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.


Cotton and Schumer called on the intelligence community to investigate what "national security risks," if any, are posed by TikTok and other Chinese-based content platforms and report those findings to Congress.


Despite TikTok's decision to keep all political candidate or issue advertising off its platform during the 2020 election cycle, there are other avenues that could allow for Chinese influence like the disinformation campaigns employed by Russia in 2016 on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The senators questioned TikTok's terms of service, saying the app collects a wide array of data, including information about a user's location, that could be accessed by the Chinese government and used in efforts to compromise the 2020 election.

Launched just two years ago by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, TikTok has created a global sensation by permitting users to share short videos. In a statement Thursday, the company asserted its independence from the government in Beijing, declared that all its U.S. users' data is stored in the United States and so is not "subject to Chinese law," and said it has "never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked."

Read More

An oversized ballot box surrounded by people.

Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

Keep ReadingShow less
How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court during an oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford to call for an end to partisan gerrymandering on October 3, 2017 in Washington, DC

Getty Images, Olivier Douliery

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote Here" sign
Voters head to the polls in Minneapolis, one of five Minnesota cities that used ranked-choice voting on Tuesday.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Trump Targets Voting Rights and Suppresses Voting

This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy where we demonstrate the link between the administration’s sweeping executive actions and their roots in the authoritarian blueprint Project 2025, and show how these actions harm individuals and families throughout the country.

Two months into his second term, President Trump began attacking the most important pillar of our democracy: free and fair elections.

Keep ReadingShow less
Once Again, Politicians Are Choosing Their Voters. It’s Time for Voters To Choose Back.
A pile of political buttons sitting on top of a table

Once Again, Politicians Are Choosing Their Voters. It’s Time for Voters To Choose Back.

Once again, politicians are trying to choose their voters to guarantee their own victories before the first ballot is cast.

In the latest round of redistricting wars, Texas Republicans are attempting a rare mid-decade redistricting to boost their advantage ahead of the 2026 midterms, and Democratic governors in California and New York are signaling they’re ready to “fight fire with fire” with their own partisan gerrymanders.

Keep ReadingShow less