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As nonprofits increasingly use AI to determine access to food, housing, and healthcare assistance, concerns over transparency, accountability, and algorithmic bias are growing. Explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping America's social safety net and why policymakers are being urged to act.
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Why Nonprofits Are Becoming America's Unofficial AI Welfare State
Jul 31, 2026
America's safety net has new administrators. They are not government agencies. They are nonprofits and are making decisions using algorithms.
Nationally, civil society organizations are using AI to determine who receives food assistance, emergency shelter, and medical referrals. In an era of federal and state budget cuts and struggles with the latest administrative databases that support necessary operations, nonprofits have gradually stepped into these roles. An unofficial AI welfare state is emerging, operating beyond the boundaries of official ones.
Government retrenchment over the past decade has pushed welfare functions toward civil society. Nonprofits are no longer just supplementing public services. In many communities, they are replacing them. AI accelerates this shift. Predictive tools that flag food insecurity, triage shelter demand or identify at-risk youth allow smaller organizations to scale their reach. This can be genuinely valuable. But scale introduced through automation carries its own systemic distortions. When machines allocate scarce social resources, the political judgments encoded in those models become invisible. Accountability disappears with them.
The accountability problem is structural. When a government agency determines welfare eligibility, legal safeguards apply due process rights, administrative review and legislative oversight. When a nonprofit uses a proprietary AI system to make equivalent decisions, none of those protections necessarily follow.
Algorithmic bias in social service allocation is not hypothetical. Research demonstrates that seemingly neutral models reproduce structural inequalities, systematically denying help to the communities most likely to need it. The vendors building these tools are not elected. Neither are the nonprofits deploying them. The individuals affected hold no formal right of appeal. Closing the accountability gap in algorithmic systems requires deliberate institutional design — it does not self-correct.
When nonprofits use AI, they usually transfer decision-making authority to their software vendors and proprietary models. These systems now indirectly shape who receives food assistance, job training, or mental health services. That is a welfare function. It carries welfare stakes. Algorithmic systems embedded in social institutions tend to entrench existing power asymmetries rather than correct them. The most affected citizens in communities rarely participate in designing or governing the tools deployed on their behalf.
Not all nonprofits have the same capacity. In metropolitan areas, large institutes have the budgets to acquire sophisticated AI platforms. Many of the smaller nonprofits serving rural & low-income populations in America simply cannot. The distribution of AI-assisted service delivery mirrors and monitors the geographic features of poverty itself. Economic mobility is already highly correlated with social capital and access to institutional resources. If an uneven AI infrastructure is laid on top of such a stratified social system, the result can be to exacerbate, rather than reduce, entrenched inequalities.
Federal AI policy has concentrated nearly exclusively on commercial and national security applications. There is hardly a thing that regulates the use of AI when it comes to nonprofit welfare delivery. But as long as policy interventions (e.g. anthropogenic policies) that call for human intervention in algorithms do not provide binding transparency, fairness and appeal standards, they remain structurally deficient. Nonprofits are behaving like quasi-governmental functions without the accountability of a quasi-governmental status. It is not a technicality, but a structural failure of democratic governance.
Congress and state legislatures need to do three things.
First, expand algorithmic accountability standards to all nonprofits implementing government-supported social services.
Second, require algorithmic impact assessments prior to deploying AI tools in welfare-adjacent programs.
Third, fund independent ongoing audits of all systems used by states to administer food, housing, and healthcare assistance.
America did not consciously choose to privatize its welfare state through software. It is happening by inaction, one algorithm at a time. The decision to govern this shift remains available. But the window is closing fast.
Feroz Ahmed is a Research Assistant at Lamar University, USA, where he conducts research on Management Information Systems (MIS), digital governance, artificial intelligence, and data-driven technologies. Alongside his academic work, he also serves as a 'System Security Analyst' with Amazon & Securitas Security Services USA Inc. in Seattle, Washington, where he is involved in security operations and technology risk monitoring.
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U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks to members of the media as she arrives for the last votes of the week at the U.S. Capitol Building on May 21, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
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Democratic socialists pose no real threat to America’s free markets
Jul 31, 2026
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it’s almost like the GOP is secretly promoting the Democratic Socialists of America, which is now producing a lot of the energy and excitement within the Democratic and Republican parties.
The DSA champions many views that exist wildly outside the mainstream of American politics, including the abolition of the police, prisons, the Pentagon and the U.S. Senate.
This is all, to borrow a term from social science, bat guano insane. Even if you think such proposals make sense on the merits — I don’t! — politically, this stuff is nuttier than a pool party at Mr. Peanut’s pad. For one, the Constitution effectively bans abolishing the Senate, even via amendment. So expending any political energy on eliminating it is like demanding 2+2 equal 5.
But, man, do some people eat this stuff up. Specifically, fringe left-wing political activists, young and mostly white progressives with useless college and graduate degrees, and the Republican Party. Now, the first two groups eat it up because they love it. The Republicans eat it up because they’re eager to run against it.
Republicans are increasingly insisting that the only way to stop a takeover by “godless communists” is to vote Republican.
“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” President Trump said during a July 3 speech at Mt. Rushmore. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.” (I agree! Barring some time machine shenanigans, Communism is a bigger threat than Pearl Harbor and many other past events.)
“We’re fighting right now in Congress over whether we’re going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic,” House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted. “Or we’re going to trade that in, dismantle the foundations and go down this dark road of death to communism. That is the question on the ballot this fall.”
There’s a “bootleggers and Baptists” dynamic here. The DSA benefits from the attention, and the GOP benefits from the perception that Democrats are either too radical or too cowardly to confront the radicals in their ranks.
“It’s going to be a hate election,” a Republican working for Trump’s political operation told Axios earlier this month. “Voters have to hate the Dems more than they hate us. And we have material to work with.”
That might be right, but I’m not too worried, even if the GOP fails to weaponize the Red Menace. If you tune out the noise and simply look at the more mainstream question of socialism’s alleged rise in popularity, fears of a socialist takeover of America are absurdly overblown.
Polls do show, particularly among young Democrats, increased support for socialism and a rising distaste for capitalism. But this isn’t a new story. For the last couple of decades, dissatisfaction with the economic status quo has increased support for socialism. That’s because people equate the status quo with “capitalism.” As slaves to binary thinking, poll respondents think, “What’s the opposite of capitalism?” Answer: socialism.
A 2014 survey by the Reason Foundation found that millennials favored capitalism to socialism by a meager 10 points (52%-42%). But when asked if they favored a “free-market economy” to a “government managed economy,” the free market won 2-1 (64%-32%).
Fast forward to 2026. A recent Echelon Insights survey found that among Democrats under 50, the favorability of “capitalism” is minus 31 points (it’s popular with every other group). When asked their view of a “free market economy,” support jumps 41 points to +22 (it jumps up with every other cohort as well).
In other words, “capitalism” means something very different than “free markets,” even to many socialists. And that’s fair enough. I wish our economy was more free market than it is. But the point is that a ton of people think “capitalism” is an adjective describing things they don’t like about the economy, not a synonym for “free markets” or “free enterprise.”
Oh, yeah: Net favorability for Communism is -40.
The same applies for socialism, which means many different things to different people.
Once you get beyond the labels and the quirks of polling, reality suggests that socialism is a much heavier lift. For example, according to Echelon, 74% of Medicare for All fans think it can be paid for solely by raising taxes on billionaires. This is a lie. Medicare for All would cost an estimated $32 trillion over 10 years. The total combined net worth of America’s billionaires is around $9 trillion. Forget taxes; you could confiscate everything the “billionaire class” owns and it wouldn’t cover a third of the cost.
In other words, even if the “socialists” win, they’ll lose at governing. And so will the popularity of socialism.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.
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Trump’s Elections Speech Was Not the Opening Shot; It was the Latest Salvo
Jul 31, 2026
President Donald Trump’s recent address repeating his claim that he won the 2020 election was widely portrayed as a dramatic escalation of his attacks on our election system. It wasn’t.
It is nothing new!
Rather, it is only one element of a broader coordinated multiyear strategy that has combined litigation, executive action, personnel decisions, and state-level legislation to make voting harder and increase the likelihood that valid ballots will be challenged after they are cast.
Supporters argue these efforts are intended to prevent fraud and restore confidence in elections, and proposals such as voter ID requirements and prohibitions of noncitizen voting have appeal beyond Trump’s base. But critics contend that these policies target relatively minor problems while making voting more difficult, inviting more challenges to valid ballots, and further weakening confidence in the electoral system. When paired with repeated claims that elections are “rigged,” these proposals deepen public distrust in election administration and heighten the fear that Trump will contest the midterm results if they do not go his way.
Consider the evidence. In the 18 months since he returned to office, Trump has:
1. Appointed persons to key positions who will not acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 election, including Pam Bondi as Attorney General, Todd Blanche as her successor, Kash Patel as head of the FBI, and Markwayne Mullin, who has frequently called for a federal investigation into the 2020 election, as Secretary of Homeland Security. Bill Pulte, who Trump proclaimed would use the Office of National Intelligence to investigate “rigged elections” from 2020, now serves as the office’s Acting Director.
2. Undermined agencies responsible for election integrity and protection against foreign interference. He gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and referred its former director, Christopher Krebs, who had earlier declared the 2020 election to be secure, to the Justice Department for investigation. Last month, Trump fired two members of the U.S Election Assistance Commission, leaving the body created by Congress in 2002 with no members.
3. Held up an important bipartisan housing bill to force the Senate to adopt the SAVE America Act, perhaps the most dramatic effort to undermine the ability of states to operate elections in history. So far, the U.S. Senate has called his bluff; the housing bill became law without Trump’s signature and SAVE seems to be going nowhere.
4. Attempted to acquire unredacted voting lists from each state in the nation. This is perhaps Trump’s most audacious power grab to date. If he can gain control of state voter lists, traditionally the province of state governments, he can use data to question whether votes were proper and throw election results into chaos.
While 23 mostly-Republican led states provided the data, 30 and the District of Columbia have not. Fortunately, Trump is losing legal challenges to this strategy. On March 31, Trump issued an executive order seeking to create a national voter list, which was promptly blocked by a federal judge. Trump sued states that refused to turn over their voter files. But private attorneys and state attorneys general fought back, and to date, Trump is 0 for 17 in these cases, losing every one that has come before a judge.
Federal control of voter lists is perhaps the greatest danger for the midterms and beyond. Centralized access to state voter files could allow the federal government to challenge voter eligibility on an unprecedented scale, potentially delaying certification of close contests and inviting extensive post-election litigation. The seizure of the Fulton County, Georgia files gives concern that this was a dry run for other confiscations this fall. Federal seizure of ballots or machines could delay final results and there are even scenarios where these delays could be used by the present republican-controlled House to deny seats to Democrats who win this November by small margins in hopes of preventing a Democratic takeover of the body.
5. Attacked mail-in voting. Trump has continually assailed mail-in voting, which is used by 30 percent of all voters and almost exclusively in several states. But when Trump tried to enlist the U.S. Postal Service in his scheme to make it more difficult, issuing an executive order requiring the agency to deliver a voter’s mail ballot only if their name is on a federally created list of enrolled voters, he was slapped down by federal Judge, whose 37-page ruling concluded that the president did not have the constitutional authority to regulate state elections. And the U.S. Supreme Court recent holding that federal law does not preempt states from setting their own deadlines for counting mail ballots only hurts Trump’s efforts.
These court rulings have not stopped the President; he appealed the postal service ruling and on July 17, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stayed the lower court’s injunction, allowing USPS to move forward in implementing President Trump’s order in the states that have provided the files.
6. Warned states that officials could face criminal liability if they count ballots cast by noncitizens. The Justice Department recently sent letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia threatening criminal prosecution if election officials counted any ballots cast by noncitizens in upcoming elections. Utah’s Republican lieutenant governor, called the tactic “bizarre,” and described the communication as “another love letter … from the DOJ … with threats of criminal prosecution…. for… resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin then threatened to strip states of federal election-related aid, and to seek criminal penalties against election officials if they don’t comply with Trump’s demands.
6. Promised to send midterm election monitors to states, including Virginia, Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Hampshire. Federal and state laws largely bar the deployment of federal law enforcement agents to polling places, but neither Trump nor Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche have ruled out the use of ICE for this purpose.
These initiatives, standing alone, do not guaranty that the 2026 elections will be disrupted. But taken together, they represent an unprecedented effort to expand federal influence over election administration—an area long managed primarily by the states. Whether these efforts ultimately succeed or fail, they have already intensified public distrust in the nation’s electoral process.
States Fight Back
This story is far from over. Courts have repeatedly rebuffed the President. After Trump issued an executive order requiring proof of citizenship, for example, a federal judge blocked the effort, saying that only states and Congress had that authority.
And state leaders continue to push back. While the Trump administration has received voter files from 23 mostly-Republican led states, many states resist. In addition, they are enacting measures to prevent federal intervention in elections. California, for example, made it a felony to seize ballots from county election officials, a law Governor Newsom signed on May 27 after the Riverside County sheriff seized more than 600,000 cast ballots.
Thirty-five states have criminalized intimidation and/or interference with election workers. States like Colorado, Nevada, and Virginia now allow election workers to keep their personal information confidential to avoid harassment. Connecticut passed a measure to bar law enforcement from being within 250 feet of a polling location, ballot Dropbox or vote-counting site without the permission of election officials. Washington state made it a felony to disclose personal information contained in the voter registration file to people other than state and local election officials without the permission of the secretary of state.
Eleven states—including New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Minnesota—have enacted their own state-level Voting Rights Acts to establish state-level protections against voter suppression and ensuring independent state courts can protect ballot access regardless of federal action.
State attorneys general, local election officials, and private attorneys have become the front line of election defense, developing contingency plans if the federal government attempts to confiscate ballots or voting machines, disrupts the delivery of mail ballots, or sends troops or immigration agents to polling places. Hopefully, the concern is misplaced, and these defenses will not be needed.
It Ends With Us
The strength of American elections has never rested solely on laws or courts. It relies on citizens who participate, election officials who administer the process fairly, and institutions willing to enforce constitutional limits. Whatever one’s political views, confidence in elections ultimately depends on broad participation, respect for lawful outcomes, and vigilance against efforts that undermine public trust. Cast your vote as early as you can and encourage your friends and neighbors to do the same.
Trump’s Elections Speech Was Not the Opening Shot; It was the Latest Salvo was originally published by Fights of Our Lives on Substack and is republished with permission.
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Can secure mobile voting expand election access? Explore how smartphone voting could increase turnout, improve accessibility, and modernize U.S. elections.
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Mail-In Ballots Are Still Under Attack. Mobile Voting Can Protect Access To The Ballot Box.
Jul 30, 2026
Late last year, I became CEO of The Mobile Voting Project. Previously, I served as Chief of Staff to two United States senators, Chief of Staff at the US Department of Education, and Chief of Staff for Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. At every step in my public service career, I have always had one clear goal: making government work better for everyday people.
I believe that we cannot make government work better if we do not start at the very foundation of our government itself: democracy and voting. In my current role with The Mobile Voting Project, we are focused on making voting more seamless, secure, and accessible. We believe that putting democracy — literally — into the palms of every American’s hand is how we can boost turnout, reduce extremism, and strengthen our democracy.
Our efforts are even more critical as the main option for accessible voting right now — mail-in ballots — is under attack. President Trump has issued multiple executive orders aiming to restrict vote-by-mail. One of these orders seeks to turn the US Postal Service into a political arm that can decide who can and cannot use a mail-in ballot. It would require the USPS to create a federal list of approved voters and only permit states to send ballots to these voters. Considering this is such a radical overhaul to how we vote, it is no surprise that a federal judge recently blocked the order from taking effect. Yet Trump has appealed, demonstrating how dead set he is on making it harder to vote by mail.
At the moment, it seems as if the only guardrail protecting accessible voting is the judicial branch. But it remains fragile. In late June, the Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, upheld state laws that allow for mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted after. While this is good news, if just one justice had ruled the other way, millions of mail-in ballots could have been invalidated and millions of Americans disenfranchised in upcoming elections.
Imagine you are serving in the military, defending our democracy abroad, a rural voter living far from an in-person poll site, or a home-bound voter with limited mobility. You have applied for a mail-in ballot. You fill it out before Election Day and find the time to physically send it back to your local Board of Elections. But through no fault of your own, delivery is delayed, and your ballot arrives late. The Supreme Court could have invalidated your ballot and disenfranchised you.
But what if there was a way for Americans to vote from wherever they are, no matter their circumstances, without relying on the postal service? The solution is secure smartphone voting.
Mobile voting isn't a radical idea from the future. Millions of Americans already conduct highly sensitive transactions, from banking to healthcare, on their phones every day. Mobile voting is an option in Canadian local elections and has been piloted for limited groups of voters in dozens of states in the US, like for voters in the military from West Virginia or Utah. In April 2026, some cities in Alaska used a version of mobile voting in their local elections too. And the results have been promising. Turnout skyrocketed in a water district election in Seattle. 100% of voters preferred mobile voting over other methods in Denver.
With recent advancements in technology, we are now at a point where we can safely expand mobile voting to many more voters and cities. The technology that exists is end-to-end verifiable and end-to-end encrypted. It verifies voter identity in the same ways it’s done at poll sites, whether through a signature match or ID verification. Every ballot cast on a smartphone would only be tabulated once taken offline at the Board of Elections, and a paper copy is printed out and mixed among traditional mail-in ballots.
While mobile voting is an important additional option and never a replacement for all the other ways we vote now, it can uniquely meet the realities and challenges of modern life in ways that other methods cannot. It's for the nurse who works a double shift on Election Day. Families displaced by wildfires or hurricanes who cannot access their mail or poll site. The person recovering from surgery who is in an extended hospital stay. Blind voters who cannot fill out a mail-in ballot but have accessibility tools built into their smartphones.
Right now, our organization is working in cities and states to provide mobile voting as a secure additional option in municipal elections. We believe that starting small, and in elections that have long suffered from much lower turnout than presidential contests, is where we can have the greatest impact and build public trust as we grow.
Mobile voting is an overdue evolution of how we vote and ensure access. If we want our government to work better and a democracy that is fully representative, we need to build voting systems that meet people where they are. Mobile voting is how we do that, and especially in light of the attacks on voting, we are working to make it a reality.
Sheila Nix is the CEO of The Mobile Voting Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit working to make secure mobile voting an option for all Americans. With nearly three decades of leadership in political, domestic policy, and innovative nonprofit operations, Sheila previously served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Kamala Harris, Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Education, and U.S. Executive Director of Bono’s ONE campaign.
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