Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

New Voting Rights Act backed by House majority

A majority of the House has now signed on to legislation that would restore the heart of the Voting Rights Act, the requirement that states and counties with a history of voter discrimination get federal permission before making any changes to their election rules or political maps.

Eleven more members agreed to co-sponsor the bill on Tuesday, bringing the roster of committed lawmakers to the magic number of 218. All of them are Democrats. The leadership has not yet signaled when the House will take up the bill.


Five years ago the Supreme Court effectively struck down the preclearance system, ruling it was unconstitutionally based on an outdated set of criteria. The House measure would institute a new set of rules for the Justice Department to use in determining which states need federal preclearance of election changes. Facing South, a media platform for the Institute of Southern Studies, summarizes the calculation used to determine which states would fall under the rules: those with 15 or more voting rights violations during the past 25 years, and those with 10 or more violations if at least one was committed by the state itself. Under that formula Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia would be subject to preclearance.

Read More

Does Donald Trump Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, holds the Nobel medal at the Kyiv railway station on December 18, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

(Photo by Yevhenii Zavhorodnii/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Does Donald Trump Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sparked widespread debate Thursday by calling for President Donald Trump to receive a Nobel Peace Prize.

Leavitt asserted that Trump merits the prestigious recognition, citing his role in negotiating peace deals and ceasefire agreements across six major international conflicts. However, the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip are still ongoing.

Keep ReadingShow less
Avoiding Policy Malpractice in the Age of AI

"The stakes of AI policymaking are too high and the risks of getting it wrong are too enduring for lawmakers to legislate on instinct alone," explains Kevin Frazier.

Getty Images, Aitor Diago

Avoiding Policy Malpractice in the Age of AI

Nature abhors a vacuum, rushing to fill it often chaotically. Policymakers, similarly, dislike a regulatory void. The urge to fill it with new laws is strong, frequently leading to shortsighted legislation. There's a common, if flawed, belief that "any law is better than no law." This action bias—our predisposition to do something rather than nothing—might be forgivable in some contexts, but not when it comes to artificial intelligence.

Regardless of one's stance on AI regulation, we should all agree that only effective policy deserves to stay on the books. The consequences of missteps in AI policy at this early stage are too severe to entrench poorly designed proposals into law. Once enacted, laws tend to persist. We even have a term for them: zombie laws. These are "statutes, regulations, and judicial precedents that continue to apply after their underlying economic and legal bases dissipate," as defined by Professor Joshua Macey.

Keep ReadingShow less
Build America With Energy Abundance: A Bipartisan Path to Prosperity

Build America With Energy Abundance: A Bipartisan Path to Prosperity

We, here at Washington Power and Light, (washingtonpowerandlight.org, not a public utility, rather a D.C.-based virtual think tank founded by an iconic software developer and an economic policy geek) contend that pragmatism is the new radicalism. Romantics and fanatics now dominate the agenda-setting of the two major political parties.

That’s ending.

Keep ReadingShow less
Migrant Children: Political Pawns in U.S. Border Policy Debate
Crime, immigration and the peaceful transfer of power
Eskay Lim / EyeEm

Migrant Children: Political Pawns in U.S. Border Policy Debate

WASHINGTON — Republicans have warned against the sex trafficking risks migrant children face when illegally crossing the southwest border. Democrats have countered that their concerns lie in hypocrisy.

“Democrats are standing with survivors, while Republicans are shielding abusers,” said U.S. House Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa, referencing President Donald Trump’s efforts to block the full release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Keep ReadingShow less