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Podcast: What will it take to make Democracy more representative?

Podcast: What will it take to make Democracy more representative?

Why has the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in elected office proved so persistent? Some experts suggest that women lack sufficient ambition to run for office relative to men, while others say that districts with majority white populations do not provide adequate resources or opportunities for minority candidates to succeed. These approaches tend to treat women and racial minorities as parallel social groups, and fail to account for the ways in which race and gender simultaneously shape candidacy.

In her book, Nowhere to Run, Christian Dyogi Phillips introduces the intersectional model of electoral opportunity, which argues that descriptive representation in elections is shaped by intersecting processes related to race and gender. The book and this conversation shed new light on how multiple dimensions of identity simultaneously shape pathways to candidacy and representation for all groups seeking a seat at the table in American politics. Phillips is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California, and holds affiliations with the USC Institute for Intersectionality and Social Transformation and the USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute. Prior to becoming an academic, Phillips led organizing and political campaigns in the American labor movement.


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When Good Intentions Kill Cures: A Warning on AI Regulation

Kevin Frazier warns that one-size-fits-all AI laws risk stifling innovation. Learn the 7 “sins” policymakers must avoid to protect progress.

Getty Images, Aitor Diago

When Good Intentions Kill Cures: A Warning on AI Regulation

Imagine it is 2028. A start-up in St. Louis trains an AI model that can spot pancreatic cancer six months earlier than the best radiologists, buying patients precious time that medicine has never been able to give them. But the model never leaves the lab. Why? Because a well-intentioned, technology-neutral state statute drafted in 2025 forces every “automated decision system” to undergo a one-size-fits-all bias audit, to be repeated annually, and to be performed only by outside experts who—three years in—still do not exist in sufficient numbers. While regulators scramble, the company’s venture funding dries up, the founders decamp to Singapore, and thousands of Americans are deprived of an innovation that would have saved their lives.

That grim vignette is fictional—so far. But it is the predictable destination of the seven “deadly sins” that already haunt our AI policy debates. Reactive politicians are at risk of passing laws that fly in the face of what qualifies as good policy for emerging technologies.

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President Donald Trump standing next to a chart in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Donald Trump discusses economic data with Stephen Moore (L), Senior Visiting Fellow in Economics at The Heritage Foundation, in the Oval Office on August 07, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Win McNamee

Investor-in-Chief: Trump’s Business Deals, Loyalty Scorecards, and the Rise of Neo-Socialist Capitalism

For over 100 years, the Republican Party has stood for free-market capitalism and keeping the government’s heavy hand out of the economy. Government intervention in the economy, well, that’s what leaders did in the Soviet Union and communist China, not in the land of Uncle Sam.

And then Donald Trump seized the reins of the Republican Party. Trump has dispensed with numerous federal customs and rules, so it’s not too surprising that he is now turning his administration into the most business-interventionist government ever in American history. Contrary to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” in the economy, suddenly, the signs of the White House’s “visible hand” are everywhere.

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Cuando El Idioma Se Convierte En Blanco, La Democracia Pierde Su Voz

Hands holding bars over "Se Habla Español" sign

AI generated

Cuando El Idioma Se Convierte En Blanco, La Democracia Pierde Su Voz

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a 6–3 decision from its “shadow docket” that reversed a lower-court injunction and gave federal immigration agents in Los Angeles the green light to resume stops based on four deeply troubling criteria:

  • Apparent race or ethnicity
  • Speaking Spanish or accented English
  • Presence in a particular location
  • Type of work

The case, Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, is still working its way through the courts. But the message from this emergency ruling is unmistakable: the constitutional protections that once shielded immigrant communities from racial profiling are now conditional—and increasingly fragile.

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