Newsrooms are shrinking, hedge funds are buying up local papers and clickbait is shaping more and more what you know about the world. What the heck is happening to the news business — and what does this spell for the future of democracy? Journalism professors Jay Rosen and Nikki Usher say the internet isn’t all to blame: Journalists, they argue, need to get more creative about who they reach, what they cover and how they fund their work.
AI-generated “nudification” is no longer a distant threat—it’s harming students now. As deepfake pornography spreads in schools nationwide, educators are left to confront a growing crisis that outpaces laws, platforms, and parental awareness.
While public outrage flares when AI tools like Elon Musk’s Grok generate sexualized images of adults on X—often without consent—schools have been dealing with this harm for years. For school-aged children, AI-generated “nudification” is not a future threat or an abstract tech concern; it is already shaping their daily lives.
Last month, that reality became impossible to ignore in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. A father sued the school district after several middle school boys circulated AI-generated pornographic images of eight female classmates, including his 13-year-old daughter. When the girl confronted one of the boys and punched him on a school bus, she was expelled. The boy who helped create and spread the images faced no formal consequences.
The case ignited debate over internet safety, deepfake pornography, and school discipline. But it also exposed a deeper truth we are reluctant to confront: decisions made by powerful tech leaders are reshaping childhood faster than schools, parents, or laws can respond—and schools are being left to manage the fallout without the tools they need.
Recent survey data confirms this is not an isolated incident. Researchers found that AI “nudification” is increasingly common in schools, used to harass, humiliate, and exert power over peers. What adults may still perceive as shocking misconduct has, for many students, become disturbingly normalized.
In nearly all 50 states and Washington, D.C., creating and distributing child sexual abuse material is a crime. AI-generated deepfakes, however, present a unique challenge. These images are easy to create, can be shared widely in seconds, and often disappear from platforms just as quickly. Even when perpetrators are identified, the speed, volume, and anonymity of digital sharing make enforcement extraordinarily difficult.
Expecting the legal system to track and prosecute every child and teenager contributing to this epidemic is neither realistic nor effective. If we focus only on punishment after harm occurs, we will always be too late. The goal must be prevention.
Research shows that 31 percent of young people are familiar with deepfake nudes, and one in eight knows someone who has been victimized by them. Girls account for 99 percent of the victims. One in 17 youth and young adults has been directly targeted by AI-generated sexual images—roughly one student in every middle school classroom in the United States. This is not a fringe issue or a moral panic. It is a widespread form of sexual harassment enabled by technology that outpaces our safeguards.
Students need clear guidance to navigate a digital world where a single harmless photo can be transformed into a weapon—sometimes without malicious intent, but with devastating consequences. Yet only 28 states and the District of Columbia require sex education, and just 12 include instruction on consent. This gap has created ideal conditions for the deepfake crisis to flourish.
Without education on bodily autonomy, digital boundaries, consent, and meaningful safeguards from tech companies, young people are left unequipped to recognize the harm in creating and sharing explicit AI images. They are even less prepared to respond when they or their peers become targets.
As a mother, I resist the urge to say simply that parents need to talk to their kids. Parents are essential, but many lack the technical knowledge, consistent access, or awareness needed to explain how these images are created, how quickly they spread, and the profound psychological harm they cause. That is where schools must step in.
As a former middle school teacher, I have sat across from parents explaining the seriousness of emerging online trends long before they reached Facebook groups, GroupMe chats, or parent blogs. Schools are often the first places where this harm appears—and they are uniquely positioned to respond.
Schools can and should provide structured, age-appropriate education that reaches all students, ensures consistent messaging, and creates space for honest discussion. Lessons should include:
Educators already manage cyberbullying, hunger, school violence, and adolescent mental health. Some may ask whether this is one burden too many. But integrating education about AI-generated pornography is not an added responsibility—it is a necessary evolution of student safety in a digital age.
Unlike many victims, both the woman targeted on X and the 13-year-old girl in Lafourche Parish reported their abuse. But for every report, how many students suffer in silence—ashamed, afraid, or unsure whether adults will take them seriously?
While platforms like X attempt to normalize or minimize the harm of deepfake nudification, educators must push back against the idea that this behavior is accessible, acceptable, or consequence-free. That message does not stay online. It reaches classrooms, school buses, and lunch tables. When perpetrators face little accountability and victims are punished for reacting, the lesson students learn is devastatingly clear.
If tech leaders will not fully account for the damage their products enable, schools must act—not through harsher punishment, but through education. Teaching AI literacy, consent, and respect is our strongest defense against a problem that is only growing. Prevention, not discipline, is how we protect children—and how we ensure no more students have to fight back just to be heard.
Julienne Louis-Anderson is a former educator, curriculum writer, and educational equity advocate. She is also a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in Partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute
Even with the full protection of the First Amendment, the free press in America is at risk. When a president works tirelessly to silence journalists, the question becomes unavoidable: What truth is he trying to keep the country from seeing? What is he covering up or trying to hide?
Democracies rarely fall in a single moment; they erode through a thousand small silences that go unchallenged. When citizens can no longer see or hear the truth — or when leaders manipulate what the public is allowed to know — the foundation of self‑government begins to crack long before the structure falls. When truth becomes negotiable, democracy becomes vulnerable — not because citizens stop caring, but because they stop receiving the information they need to act.
The framers wrote the First Amendment because they understood the danger of leaders who try to control information. They had lived under a government that censored newspapers, punished criticism, and used fear to silence dissent. So they wrote a simple, absolute command: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. They were not protecting journalists as a profession; they were protecting the people’s right to know what their government is doing.
Senator John McCain, who died in 2018 after more than three decades of service in Congress, was widely regarded as an influential figure within his party and a leader who valued bipartisan cooperation. Though he and then‑Senator Joe Biden belonged to different political parties, they worked together for years on national security, foreign policy, and veterans’ issues — a reminder that strong leaders can debate fiercely while still upholding democratic norms.
McCain had been warning about the dangers of undermining the press for years. In a 2017 interview on NBC’s Meet the Press (McCain Interview), he said that he “hated the press,” but defended it because democracy cannot survive without it. He cautioned that suppressing a free press is “how dictators get started,” emphasizing that an adversarial press — one willing to challenge leaders and expose uncomfortable truths — is essential to preserving individual liberties.
Yet today, we are watching the very scenario the framers feared. Leaders who dislike scrutiny increasingly turn to a familiar strategy: discredit the press so the public will distrust the facts. They label critical reporting as “fake,” call journalists names, question their motives, and attack their credibility. These tactics are not spontaneous; they are strategic. They are designed to weaken the institutions that hold power accountable and to convince citizens that only the leader can be trusted.
Most citizens only see the tip of the iceberg — the public statements, the press conferences, the televised moments. But journalists uncover what lies beneath: documents, decisions, contradictions, and consequences. When leaders attack the press, they are not reacting to the tip of the iceberg; they are trying to keep the public from seeing what lies below the surface.
And yet, the free press remains one of the most resilient institutions in American life. It has survived the Sedition Act, McCarthyism, and Watergate. Even under relentless pressure, journalists persist in uncovering facts that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden. That resilience is not accidental — it is the design the framers intended.
I once overheard a senior citizen speaking with a friend about the documents found at Mar‑a‑Lago. I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember the look on her face when she said, “They did not tell us that on our news.” It was a moment of quiet realization — the kind that reveals how easily citizens can be kept in the dark without ever knowing it. She wasn’t choosing silence; she was receiving only fragments of the truth.
A friend once asked me, “Why are people so upset? Why don’t they leave President Trump alone? After all, the FBI delivered the documents to him at Mar‑a‑Lago.” I had no words. I simply asked who told her that, and suggested she look deeper to find the truth. Her comment wasn’t malicious — it was the product of a news environment where people can be absolutely certain they are informed while receiving information that is incomplete or inaccurate.
This is why democracies do not collapse in silence. Citizens hear what is happening. They see what is happening. The danger is not that the public is unaware — it is that leaders work to distort, deny, or drown out what the public witnesses. When noise replaces information and denial replaces accountability, leaders can act without scrutiny. A weakened press does not just limit what citizens know — it expands what leaders can hide. Recent events continue to show how easily truth can be distorted or denied. Reporting from the Associated Press (APNews) and Reuters (Reuters.com) on Venezuela shows why independent journalism matters: without it, the public would have no window into decisions that affect national policy and global stability.
Misinformation now spreads at the speed of a click, while truth moves at the speed of verification. Interviewers must be prepared, ask evidence‑based questions, and challenge falsehoods in real time because the public is watching in real time.
Many Americans now rely on one‑sided news sources that reinforce what they already believe. These echo chambers create insulated audiences who rarely encounter conflicting information. The constant barrage of conflict and contradiction becomes emotionally exhausting, making disengagement feel like self‑protection. But disengagement creates a vacuum — and power always fills a vacuum.
Defending a free press does not mean pretending that all news outlets uphold the same standards. Some blur the line between fact and opinion or amplify misinformation. But the failures of some outlets do not diminish the constitutional role of a free and independent press. A democracy cannot function when citizens are misled — nor can it survive when journalists are silenced.
Leaders have a responsibility not only to govern, but to model the democratic values they swore to uphold. That begins with telling the truth — even when the truth is inconvenient or politically costly. The best rule for any leader is simple: if you do not want the public to know about it, then do not do it. Public office is not a private enterprise. Decisions made in the dark almost always betray the people who must live with the consequences.
My mother used to say, “What you do in the dark always comes out in the light.” It is a truth echoed across history, philosophy, and even scripture — Luke 12:2–3 (NIV) and Mark 4:22 (NIV) — the idea that hidden actions eventually become known.
If leaders cannot tell the truth, they should at least refuse to lie. If they cannot answer a question, they should not attack the person asking it. If they cannot be transparent, they should simply say, “No comment at this time,” rather than distort, dehumanize, or deny. Leaders honor the First Amendment and must commit to transparency, correct misinformation rather than amplify it, and respect the independence of institutions that exist to protect the public — not the powerful.
Protecting a democracy built on truth requires action from every institution and every citizen. The press must continue to investigate and publish information about government actions, even when those findings are uncomfortable or politically inconvenient. Journalists must hold leaders accountable, challenge attempts to block or suppress reporting, and uphold the highest ethical standards. Their role as watchdogs is not ceremonial — it is constitutional. They must defend their right to gather accurate information, use the courts when necessary to challenge unlawful restrictions, and explain to the public why a free press is essential to self‑government. A democracy cannot function when journalists are intimidated, sued, retaliated against, or threatened for doing their jobs. Those are the tactics of weak leaders, not democratic ones.
Citizens also carry responsibility. Democracy depends on an informed and engaged public — people who attend meetings, ask questions, write emails, make calls, and speak directly to officials when something is wrong. Citizens must research information to validate facts, support fact‑based journalism, and challenge misinformation respectfully but firmly. They must choose their news sources carefully, avoiding echo chambers that reinforce only what they already believe. They must exercise their rights to speak, record, photograph, and assemble peacefully in public forums — especially when those rights are challenged, as when ICE officers recently tried to prevent protesters from filming. And when necessary, citizens must protest peacefully, as seen in the Jimmy Kimmel case, to defend free expression and the public’s right to know.
Elected officials must model the democratic values they swore to uphold. Congress must stop covering up, repeating, or defending lies. They must stop twisting the truth to protect political allies and stop hiding behind excuses like “I haven’t read it” or “I didn’t know.” Transparency is not optional; it is the foundation of public trust. Leaders must give honest answers — or, when necessary, simply say “No comment” rather than mislead the public. Public office is not a private enterprise. Decisions made in the dark almost always betray the people who must live with the consequences.
A president must respect the First Amendment and the public’s right to know. That means telling the truth — not lying, covering up, or manipulating information. A president must stop attacking, discrediting, or dehumanizing the press, and must stop calling factual reporting “fake” simply because it is unfavorable. If a president does not want an action reported, the solution is simple: do not engage in conduct that cannot withstand public scrutiny. No president should intimidate journalists, instill fear, retaliate against them, or use lawsuits and legal threats to silence reporting — because that is what weak leaders do.
Truth is a public good — and when it is weakened, the entire civic ecosystem suffers. A nation that cannot see or hear the truth cannot remain a democracy. But a people who insist on truth — who demand transparency, challenge misinformation, and hold leaders accountable — will always have the power to protect it, and to pass it forward.
Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and national advocate for ethical leadership, government accountability, and civic renewal. She writes about democratic norms, constitutional responsibility, and the role of truth in public life.
As AI reshapes the labor market, workers must think like entrepreneurs. Explore skills gaps, apprenticeships, and policy reforms shaping the future of work.
What do a recent grad, a disenchanted employee, and a parent returning to the workforce all have in common? They’re each trying to determine which skills are in demand and how they can convince employers that they are competent in those fields. This is easier said than done.
Recent grads point to transcripts lined with As to persuade firms that they can add value. Firms, well aware of grade inflation, may scoff.
Disenchanted employees need to spend time training for the jobs of the future, perhaps by working toward a badge or credential. Firms are rightfully skeptical of those, too. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of certificates these days—it’s unclear which are meaningful.
Parents try to convince firms that they remain as skillful as ever by highlighting their earlier work. Here, again, firms may have some questions. A hiring manager may not shake the nagging feeling that extended time off the job may have caused version skills to atrophy.
In a healthy, efficient labor market, it’d be possible for these workers to signal their skills and to find firms demanding such work. The aforementioned barriers all stand in the way of such a market. The introduction of AI makes this labor matching even more difficult. Firms don’t know which skills to seek out because it’s unclear what work will be completed by humans, human-AI teams, or just AI. Workers, too, are at a loss—hoping that the skills they seek to gain align with those demanded by firms over the long run.
In this market failure—when informational asymmetries prevent workers and firms from finding one another in as cheap and timely a manner as possible—it’s tempting to call on the government to step in. The thinking goes that the government can predict which skills will define the future and can set up programs for upskilling and retraining. This logic falls by looking to the advice of many a government officials to lean into computer science. While some firms may demand some individuals with such skills, early returns from the Age of AI suggest demand is dropping.
What’s a student to do? How can someone finally leave their firm and find a better role? How can a mom or dad get back into the office and stay there?
The answer is simple and, perhaps, daunting: we’re all entrepreneurs now. We all must be attentive to market trends, adaptive to meaningful shifts in labor demand, and willing to work in novel and, at times, unpredictable environments. In short, the career ladder may be broken, but it’s been replaced by a career flywheel—studying when necessary, shadowing as a trainee, and working in flexible arrangements.
No one—including AI experts and government economists—can detail the specific set of skills that will result in high-paying work that supports families and sustains the American Dream. Everyone must be willing to take risks—diversifying, deepening, and shifting their skill sets to be as valuable in the labor market as possible.
Politicians ought not try to forecast those skills but rather sustain an entrepreneurial approach to skill development. Three proposals can help channel the necessary entrepreneurial energy without being too prescriptive.
First, emulate South Carolina’s success by encouraging firms to offer more apprenticeships. South Carolina has quietly built one of the most effective apprenticeship ecosystems in the country. Through its registered apprenticeship initiative, the state helps firms offset training costs, coordinate curriculum with community colleges, and design programs that respond to real production needs rather than abstract projections. The result is a pipeline that places people into paid roles while they learn—reducing the risk for workers and giving firms a chance to assess talent in real time.
Second, encourage the creation of skills-based evaluations by high schools and higher education institutions. Workers can better market their services—and firms can hire with more confidence—when skills are legible, portable, and comparable. Today’s degrees obscure more than they reveal. Grade inflation compresses distinctions, transcripts say little about applied competence, and employers are left guessing.
The Department of Education—and state equivalents—can help by issuing guidance that promotes competency-based transcripts, standardized skill taxonomies, and verified portfolios that document what students can actually do. It can also serve as an information clearinghouse, publishing data on which institutions and programs reliably produce particular skills and outcomes.
Third, reform—or abandon—New Deal employment laws with rigid classifications that hinder the ability of workers and firms alike to engage in creative, flexible, and mutually beneficial arrangements. The Fair Labor Standards Act, built for an economy of factory floors and fixed schedules, struggles to accommodate project-based work, part-time experimentation, and hybrid human-AI roles.
Its binary distinctions between employee and contractor, for one, discourage firms from offering flexible pathways and push workers into all-or-nothing choices. Modernizing these rules—by allowing more fractional work, clearer safe harbors, and updated definitions of hours and supervision—would expand opportunity without sacrificing baseline protections.
The future of work will not be handed down in a syllabus or codified in a regulation. It will be discovered—through trial, error, and adaptation—by people willing to build, learn, and pivot. Policy should not pretend to know which skills will win. It should instead clear the runway so more Americans can take off, test their wings, and land somewhere better.
Kevin Frazier is a Senior Fellow at the Abundance Institute, directs the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law, and is an Affiliated Research Fellow at the Cato Institute.
In some ways, the second Trump presidency has been as expected–from border security to reducing the size and scope of the federal government.
In other ways, the president has not delivered on a key promise to the MAGA base. Rather than waging a war against Silicon Valley’s influence in American politics, the administration has, by and large, done what Big Tech wants–despite its long history of anti-Trumpism in the most liberal corners of San Francisco. Not only are federal agencies working in sync with Amazon, OpenAI, and Palantir, but the president has carved out key alliances with Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, and other AI evangelists to promote AI dominance at all costs.
Amid deep public skepticism about Trump’s Silicon Valley allies, no one could have predicted how aggressively Big Tech would plant itself inside the administration. A wide range of CEOs with clear self-interest in the AI revolution curry favor at the White House, and top officials all too gladly return the favor. Former Trump staffers are even using the administration as a stepping stone to cushy tech jobs.
If President Trump himself wants to put America First, then he should not allow Xi Jinping access to America’s greatest technology. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang can now profit off the sales of powerful chips to the CCP – America’s greatest adversary. President Trump has long noted that China isn’t an “ally or friend.”
The MAGA base's response has been clear. Steve Bannon railed against the decision. Nikki Haley – former United Nations Ambassador – stated that the decision would “[cost] America more than [it gains] financially.” One by one, Republican senators and House members have begrudgingly implied that they are not happy with this policy.
The president’s decision to sign an executive order threatening states for enacting AI safety laws – a decision that Republican governors and policy experts alike have opposed for months – continues to have ripple effects. While dozens of states have enacted regulations to address AI risk, the future of these safeguards is now unclear.
The executive order undermines the core tenets of federalism, penalizes responsible innovation, and endangers states’ ability to govern according to their own priorities. States are supposed to be the laboratories of democracy, but the federal government wants to prevent that from being the case.
There’s no doubt that Big Tech’s man in the administration, AI czar David Sacks, has been lobbying the president hard. Sacks stands to gain personally from these policies. By pressuring local leaders through political intimidation, Sacks is determined to prevent states from governing as they see fit. He is also weakening the United States’ capacity to dominate global AI development, not to mention disregarding the Founding Fathers’ vision of a limited federal government.
AI is already the most pressing issue of our time, and while it will benefit some, it will also reshape our nation’s economy and society until they are unrecognizable. There will be some good, but a lot of bad, as the American people know all too well.
When Washington, D.C. appears to be more motivated by the whims of David Sacks and Jensen Huang than by protecting our country’s future, the president’s base will only continue to turn away. Recent Fox News polling shows that Americans want the president to proceed much more cautiously on AI. Meanwhile, blue- and white-collar workers fear that AI will eliminate their jobs, let alone recent graduates struggling to enter the workforce.
At the same time, parents worry about how their children are being influenced by AI chatbots, which have contributed to horrible cases of youth suicide. These issues aren’t partisan. New technology is part of a shared national anxiety about whether AI is serving the public interest – or whether the public is now serving the interests of a small, extraordinarily wealthy elite.
President Trump can prove to his conservative base that he still has the instincts to protect Americans and stand up to foreign adversaries. But he can only prevail if he gets rid of the Silicon Valley voices that are influencing his administration.
Trump is a shrewd political operator who understands his base. Now is the time to listen to the MAGA movement, not AI accelerationists with conflicts of interest and ulterior motives.
The most critical approach that President Trump can take right now is to back off of targeting state laws. Republican legislatures in red states, including Florida and Texas, have been taking the lead on enacting sensible AI policies, and the Trump administration should not impede their ability to keep their constituents safe.
President Trump must also go against Sacks’ urging by putting a stop to the sale of advanced AI chips to China and committing to the AI OVERWATCH Act if it passes through both chambers of Congress – a piece of legislation that cements Congress’s power to provide oversight over AI chip sales. Finally, Trump must work transparently with Congress to develop a federal framework that actually works for America, rather than one that gives Big Tech unlimited power.
It’s clear that President Trump wants to address AI with the urgency it demands. However, he needs people around him who can ensure that American AI policy stays on the right track.
His base is watching closely: Will his administration truly put America First and deal a blow to the CCP in the process? We all hope so.
Brendan Steinhauser is the CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, a nonprofit organization that seeks to educate policymakers and the public about the implications of advanced AI.
S4 E13. Broken News
