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President Trump on a large TV screen behind a woman wearing a statue of liberty inspired crown.

How Anti-Bribery Laws Apply to Trump’s Promise of $5,000 Payments if Republicans Keep Control of Congress

​U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally.

The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home

New York Is Making Childcare Affordable. Don’t Forget the People Providing It.

New York Is Making Childcare Affordable. Don’t Forget the People Providing It.

​A sign directs pedestrians towards the United States in Tijuana, Mexico. A person walks in the foreground.

Immigration, Borders, and Belonging: Toward a More Honest Conversation

US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC.

Supreme Court Restores Flawed Federal Voter‑Check System

Depolarization in the age of misinformation

Depolarization in the age of misinformationplay icon
Depolarization in the Age of Misinformation | Jonathan Rauch, David Blankenhorn & Ciaran O'Connor
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The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumMar 03, 2022
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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Braver Angels has never been shy about engaging our nation’s most sensitive political issues. Last year, we held a public debate on the 2020 election exploring themes of voter fraud, voter suppression, and disagreements about the outcome. Recently, we hosted a podcast with a guest who claimed that the January 6th riots were incited by liberal activists working in collusion with the FBI.

After initially taking down the podcast for violating its terms on misinformation, YouTube reinstated the episode after reviewing it in the context of our larger mission. On this episode of the podcast, Ciaran O’Connor hosts David Blankenhorn, president of Braver Angels, and Jonathan Rauch, author of The Constitution of Knowledge, for a wide-ranging discussion on depolarization in the age of misinformation, bridge-building across the epistemological divide, and the Braver Angels approach to controversial content.


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Young adult woman accessing artificial intelligence, managing digital information, and exploring future technology within an office setting

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When One Person Can Do the Work of a Team

The harder question is how many capable people organizations will need. My latest lesson about artificial intelligence did not come from a research report or technology conference. It came from running the Security and Sustainability Forum.

Until recently, I depended heavily on an assistant to manage much of the website and webinar production process. Now I can do many of those tasks myself with Claude and ChatGPT. They help me develop content, revise web pages, solve technical problems, and manage projects that once required considerably more human support.

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AI résumé screening can filter out qualified candidates before a human ever looks. Here's why transparency and human oversight in hiring matter.

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When AI Screens the Resume, Who Gets a Fair Shot at Work?

A job seeker can spend hours tailoring a résumé, checking qualifications and writing a thoughtful application, believing the next step will be a person deciding whether to schedule an interview.

Increasingly, that assumption may be wrong.

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President Trump answers questions from reporters.

U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters before boarding Air Force One on August 21, 2026 in Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Trump’s White House Press Ban Violates 1st Amendment

The principle is simple. Just like politicians are not supposed to pick their voters, government officials don’t get to pick the reporters who cover them.

If they did, the First Amendment would be meaningless. and we would no longer live in anything resembling a constitutional republic. That is why President Trump’s September 18 announcement that he is banning reporters from CNN, MSNow, and Politico from the White House is so dangerous.

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A person interacts with an AI chatbot on a smartphone. The screen displays a conversation interface with the text "Hi, may I help you?" suggesting the use of an AI assistant app. A laptop is visible in the background, emphasizing a tech-savvy environment.

A 2026 study found AI beat elite debaters, until it was slowed to human speed. Why persuasion throughput matters and how to make chatbot tempo transparent.

Chong Kee Siong/Getty Images

Political Chatbots Should Not Be Allowed To Set the Pace

A political chatbot can answer before a citizen has finished reading its previous message. It can add statistics, historical examples, causal claims, and links at a rate no human campaign volunteer could match. That does not necessarily make its case wiser. It changes the contest by allowing one speaker to control the tempo.

A June 2026 preprint offers unusually direct evidence of this problem. Across four preregistered experiments involving 18,978 conversations from 6,923 people, frontier AI systems were more persuasive than laypeople, tournament winners, professional canvassers and elite competitive debaters. The human experts were not casual opponents: the study included world and continental champions, paid preparation, live practice and substantial performance incentives.

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