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Interactivity Foundation

The Interactivity Foundation works to enhance the process and expand the scope and health of our democracy by bringing people together in small group discussions of broad topics of societal concern. Our goal is to engage more people in the exploration and development of more possibilities for public policy. We use a facilitated discussion process that is oriented around the notion of collaboration by difference, engaging a group to work together to uncover divergent perspectives on the discussion topic and to develop divergent approaches to that topic.


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​Thomas Albus.

Thomas Albus speaks at a press conference in 2019.

Hillary Levin/Post Dispatch/Polaris

What Meetings Among Trump Lawyers Reveal About the FBI’s Seizure of Election Records in Georgia

The Missouri prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the 2020 vote in Fulton County, Georgia, has taken part in meetings since last fall with lawyers tasked by President Donald Trump to reinvestigate his loss to Joe Biden.

Thomas Albus, whom Trump appointed last year as U.S. attorney for Missouri’s Eastern District, has had multiple meetings set up with top administration lawyers to discuss election integrity.

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How Race and Species are Leveraged Against Each Other

Texas Rep. Al Green held a sign reading "Black People Aren't Apes," protesting a racist video Trump had previously shared on Truth Social. Green was escorted out of the House chamber just minutes into President Donald Trump's State of the Union address.

How Race and Species are Leveraged Against Each Other

This was nothing new.

Before President Donald Trump released a video on his Truth Social account earlier this month that depicted Michelle and Barack Obama as apes, many were already well aware of his compulsive use of AI-generated deepfake content to disparage the former president. Many were also well aware of his tendency to employ dehumanizing rhetoric to describe people of color.

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The New Sovereigns - The Rise of the Billionaire-Diplomatic Complex
a group of people standing next to each other
Photo by Robynne O on Unsplash

The New Sovereigns - The Rise of the Billionaire-Diplomatic Complex

For the better part of three decades, if you wanted to understand the mechanics of American global power, you looked to the "Washington Consensus." It was a predictable, if often criticized, set of neoliberal prescriptions exported through formal, rules-based institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. It functioned on a basic Westphalian assumption: that the state was the primary actor in international relations, and that diplomacy was a conversation between governments.

Today, that consensus has not just been challenged; it has been superseded by a far more idiosyncratic and volatile architecture of power. We are witnessing the emergence of what is being labeled as the "Billionaire-Diplomatic Complex." In this new era, the traditional conduits of the U.S. State Department are increasingly bypassed by a handful of private actors who wield more leverage over global infrastructure and digital sovereignty than most middle-power nations. As the United States integrates proprietary technologies directly into the very marrow of the federal apparatus, the "official interface" of American statecraft is no longer a diplomat’s cable or a formal treaty. It is an algorithm developed by a private individual.

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