WASHINGTON, DC, USA –– White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt answers questions from journalists on Jan. 28, 2025.
WASHINGTON — As the Trump administration increasingly welcomes vloggers and social media influencers into press briefings and the Oval Office, established outlets like the Associated Press find themselves excluded from the century-old press pool, sparking controversy about what "transparency" truly means.
Joshua Sukoff is a photojournalist from Long Island, New York. He is currently studying journalism at Northwestern University.
Writer and educator Brent McKenzie shares on the importance of civic engagement and how he went from doomscrolling to creating a project called "Idiots & Charlatans."
The kids call it doomscrolling—that endless, glazed-eyed spin through terrible headline after terrible headline. And let’s be honest: content from today’s political circus is built for it. It’s so absurd, so extreme, that you find yourself muttering, “This can’t be real.”
But that’s the trap. The worse it gets, the harder it is to look away. And somewhere along the way, outrage starts to replace action. I know—because I caught myself doing it.
The Guardian. Axios. CNN. Social media. I’d bounce between them like I was looking for an emergency exit. Twenty minutes later, I’d be furious and discouraged—but no more informed, and no closer to doing anything about it. Just more adrenaline. And a little less hope.
And I came of age when activism mattered—when organizing, speaking up, marching, and writing letters could actually change things. I still believe that. But somewhere along the way, the energy that used to go into action started going into…scrolling.
That’s when I realized I needed a new focus. I needed to do something.
So I built something that could help me focus on what really matters—and tune out the rest.
For me, that meant building a small project called Idiots & Charlatans, not as a reaction website or think piece factory but as a tool to help me stay anchored in a few big values: democracy, truth, equity, climate, justice, and free speech. I call them my non-negotiables.
At first, I didn’t know where to start. Every headline felt catastrophic, and every issue felt urgent. But then I asked myself: which battles, if lost, will be the hardest to undo? That question helped me cut through the noise.
I made a short list—my non-negotiables:
🗳️ Democracy, because once it slips, getting it back is nearly impossible.
🌍 Climate, because the clock doesn’t reset.
🧑🏽🤝🧑🏼 Equity and justice, because the rollback is real and the pain is personal.
📢 Free speech and truth, because without them, we lose the ability to fight for anything else.
When a headline touches one of those, I pay attention. When it doesn’t, I don’t. And that shift alone has made all the difference.
That’s what helped me, but the bigger question is:
What will help you?
Because this isn’t just about how we cope with the news.
It’s about how we respond to it.
Reclaim that time—the time you’d normally spend doomscrolling—and do something. Anything.
Because let’s be honest: we’re not going to doomscroll our way out of this mess.
And as older Americans—people who’ve lived through enough to know what’s at stake—we can still show others what serious civic responsibility looks like.
We don’t need more commentary. We need more courage.
We don’t need more dread. We need more doing.
So if you find yourself scrolling tonight, just ask:
What else could I be doing instead?
Brent McKenzie is a writer and educator based in the United States. He is the creator of Idiots & Charlatans, a watchdog-style website focused on democratic values and climate change. He previously taught in Brussels and has spent the majority of his professional career in educational publishing.
"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.
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.
Such laws are more common than we’d like to admit. Consider a regulation requiring truck drivers to place visibility triangles around their rigs when parked. This seemingly minor rule becomes a barrier to autonomous trucking, as there's no driver to deploy the triangles. A simple, commonsense solution, like integrating high-visibility markers into the trucks themselves, exists, yet the outdated regulation persists. Another example is the FDA's attempt to help allergy sufferers by requiring sesame labeling. Rather than simply labeling, many food producers responded by adding sesame to more foods to avoid non-compliance, a comical and wasteful regulatory backfire.
Similar legislative missteps are highly likely in the AI space. With Congress declining to impose a moratorium, state legislatures across the country are rapidly pursuing AI proposals. Hundreds of AI-related bills are pending, addressing everything from broad, catastrophic harms to specific issues such as deepfakes in elections.
The odds of any of these bills getting it "right" are uncertain. AI is a particularly challenging technology to regulate for several reasons: even its creators aren't sure how and why their models behave; early adopters are still figuring out AI’s utility and limitations; no one can predict how current regulations will influence AI's development; and we're left guessing how adversaries will approach similar regulatory questions.
Given these complexities, legislators must adopt a posture of regulatory humility. States that enact well-intentioned regulations leading to predictable negative consequences are engaging in legislative malpractice. I choose these words deliberately. Policymakers and their staff should know better, recognizing the extensive list of tools available to prevent bad laws from becoming permanent.
Malpractice occurs when a professional fails to adhere to the basic tenets of their field. Legal malpractice, for instance, involves "evil practice in a professional capacity, and the resort to methods and practices unsanctioned and prohibited by law." In medicine, doctors are held to a standard of care reflecting what a "minimally competent physician in the same field would do under similar circumstances."
While policymaking lacks a formalized duty of care or professional conduct code, we're not entirely without guidance. A related concept, though less familiar, offers a starting point: maladministration.
Maladministration encompasses "administrative action (or inaction) based on or influenced by improper considerations or conduct," indicating when "things are going wrong, mistakes are being made, and justifiable grievances are being ignored." While typically applied to administrative agencies and politicians, as the creators of such systems, they bear responsibility for anticipating and correcting these mistakes.
Given the inherent difficulties of regulating AI, policymakers should, at a minimum, demonstrate consideration of three key tools to reduce the odds of enacting misguided regulations. These tools align with core democratic values, ensuring policy promotes the common good.
First is experimental policy design via randomized control trials (RCTs). Legislators shouldn't assume one best way to test AI models or report their training. Instead, they should build experimentation into legislation. Some labs might follow steps A, B, and C, while others follow X, Y, and Z. The legislature can then assess which provisions work best, ideally transitioning all regulated entities to superior practices or amending the law. This fosters innovation in regulatory methods.
Second are sunrise clauses. These delay enforcement until prerequisites—basic conditions of good governance—are met. Unlike a simple future effective date, a true sunrise clause imposes a checklist: Is the implementing agency staffed and funded? Have regulated entities been consulted? Do stakeholders understand compliance? In AI policy, these questions are urgent. Enforcing complex laws before infrastructure exists is inefficient and undermines legitimacy. A sunrise clause ensures laws "land" effectively, demanding competence before policy becomes an enforceable rule. This promotes transparency and accountability.
Third are sunset clauses. If sunrise clauses delay a start, sunset clauses enforce an end unless actively renewed. This is critical for fast-evolving technologies. A sunset clause builds in mandatory reassessment: "This law expires in two years unless renewed." This isn't laziness; it’s disciplined humility. AI regulation shouldn't outlive its usefulness, and sunset clauses ensure laws earn their permanence, preventing outdated assumptions from locking in.
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. While action bias is human, embedding it in law is neither excusable nor sustainable. At this early, uncertain stage of AI development, policymakers have a rare opportunity: to regulate with foresight, humility, and discipline.
Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Author of the Appleseed AI substack.
There's been an emerging pattern of the Trump administration embracing AI-generated propaganda art in official communications.
On July 10, the White House’s official social media accounts posted a mock movie poster depicting President Donald Trump as Superman, soaring through the air in the Man of Steel’s iconic tights and cape. The meme, emblazoned with the slogan, “THE SYMBOL OF HOPE. TRUTH. JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN WAY. SUPERMAN TRUMP,” was intended to capitalize on the buzz around a new Superman film. Instead, it was met with widespread ridicule; one congressman quipped that Trump is “literally Lex Luthor.” But, while easy to write off as a one-time social media gaff, the bizarre incident wasn’t an isolated one. It highlights an emerging pattern of the administration embracing AI-generated propaganda art in official communications.
A Pattern of AI-Generated Fantasies
The “Superman Trump” poster was only the latest in a series of fantastical images pushed by the Trump White House. On May 4 (Star Wars Day), the White House celebrated by sharing an AI-crafted image of a muscle-bound Trump dressed as a Jedi, brandishing a red lightsaber. In the picture, posted with a message mocking the “Radical Left,” Trump poses heroically amid bald eagles and American flags. A few weeks earlier, after the death of Pope Francis, Trump’s accounts shared an AI-generated photo of the president seated on an ornate throne in papal vestments. Trump had jokingly mused that he’d like to be the next pope, and his social media team illustrated the notion for real in a move that Catholic leaders blasted as disrespectful. Back in February, the White House even posted an image of Trump wearing a king’s crown (captioned “LONG LIVE THE KING!”) to celebrate his victory over New York City’s proposed congestion pricing toll.
Taken together, these official posts form a propaganda collage casting Trump as everything from savior of Metropolis to head of the Church. All were AI-generated or digitally altered images, churned out at the push of a button. The President, for his part, has sometimes tried to distance himself, telling reporters “[he] had nothing to do with” the pope image and that “somebody made a picture of [him] … maybe it was AI.” But the content was disseminated by his own verified White House channels. The goal is clear: to flood the internet with memeified heroics, bolstering Trump’s image in a cheap, viral way.
Why Turning the Presidency into a Meme Is Problematic
Critics argue that this embrace of AI fantasy images undermines the dignity of the presidency and erodes trust in official communication. Former Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele lambasted the pope photo, saying it “affirms how unserious and incapable [Trump] is.” Even some Trump supporters were taken aback; one commentator remarked that the White House account had become “just a slop engagement farm” chasing clicks. By trafficking in doctored images of the President as a comic-book hero or religious icon, the administration blurs the line between governance and marketing, inviting comparisons to authoritarian cults of personality. During the 1930s, dictators like Hitler and Stalin tightly controlled art and imagery to project their own ideological myths; disturbingly, Trump’s social media stunts echo a 21st-century version of that playbook.
There is also a deeper danger in normalizing AI-generated false images. While a buff Trump Jedi might seem like harmless fun, the ease of producing realistic fake visuals opens the door to more insidious disinformation. “The ability to easily and inexpensively generate false supporting imagery is new and dangerous for voters,” warns Darrell West, a Brookings Institution scholar. Such content can portray people in a false light and fuel false narratives that mislead the public. In fact, Trump’s allies have already used AI to fabricate scenes of opponents (for example, fake photos of Kamala Harris at a communist rally) to sway opinions. When the White House itself spreads AI-created manipulations, it further normalizes deception and erodes the public’s ability to discern truth. At a time when society is grappling with the “deepfake” phenomenon, the President’s meme campaign sends a troubling signal that facts and images are malleable if they serve a political narrative.
A Better Alternative: Supporting Real Art and Truth
Rather than relying on AI gimmicks to burnish its message, the government could take a more principled and productive approach by investing in authentic artistry and honest communication. There is historical precedent for positive leadership in this realm. During the Great Depression, the U.S. government (under FDR) launched the Works Progress Administration (WPA) arts programs, hiring over 10,000 artists to create public murals, posters, photographs, and more. These federal art projects not only kept artists employed during hard times but also enriched American culture and community life. Importantly, the New Deal administration valued art’s role in democracy—fostering a genuine national identity through creativity—as a democratic counterpoint to the propaganda machines of totalitarian regimes. The artwork produced under the WPA wasn’t about deifying a single leader; it was about reflecting the people’s stories and uplifting citizens with truthful, resonant art.
That lesson feels urgent today. Government leaders should champion human creativity and factual integrity in their messaging, not turn their social media into a circus of AI-manufactured self-portraits. Imagine if, instead of churning out “Superman Trump” memes, the administration commissioned talented young illustrators, designers, or satirists to contribute to public campaigns. Not only would this lend a personal, authentic touch far more meaningful than a generic algorithm’s output, but it would also support working artists at a time when AI threatens many creative jobs. In an era of rampant synthetic media, authenticity has real currency. By choosing real art over artificial imagery, the White House could still be creative and engaging without descending into farce or misleading theatrics. Ultimately, a presidency that respects truth and artistry would do far more to inspire the public than one that plays make-believe on the internet.
Bennett Gillespie is a student at Duke University and a council member of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. He is also an intern with the Fulcrum.
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. To learn about the many NextGen initiatives we are leading, click HERE.
I used to enjoy doing my schoolwork in my college newspaper’s office. There is a series of tall library shelves filled with dusty books held together by loose binding that contain every article printed since our inception in the 1930s.
The book covers have lost the sharpness of their hues over time, and the thin old papers inside are yellow and torn, but inside those books lie almost 100 years of articles that tell the stories and history of the college town, Isla Vista, and UC Santa Barbara, as written by student journalists at the Daily Nexus.
One day, as I started perusing the books, the tall dusty bookshelves transformed into a historical archive of their own right. There are thousands of stories in those books that show how students from the Black Student Union protested on campus to create the Black Studies Department in 1968, how anti-Vietnam War protests led to the burning of a Bank of America building in Isla Vista, how people from the unincorporated town of Isla Vista galvanized to create a local government after being reliant on county representatives for decades. At that moment, as I was reading these stories, I realized how all local newspapers hold the history of their community within their pages.
Washington Post's Alan Barth once wrote, 'Journalism is the first rough draft of history.' I understood what he meant in that moment with much more clarity.
But if journalism does serve as the first rough draft of history, biased coverage of marginalized communities doesn't just harm those communities today — it distorts the historical record that future generations inherit. It is then the responsibility of journalists to regularly consider how they immortalize the communities they report on, ensuring that all people’s stories are preserved in their local archives with dignity and humanity.
Journalism is by no means an industry unfamiliar with biased coverage of communities of color. In the wake of the racial reckoning after George Floyd’s murder, several journalism outlets, including the L.A. Times and the Baltimore Sun, released editorials taking accountability for systemic bias in their coverage of communities of color.
Both the L.A. Times and the Baltimore Sun offered examples of moments in the past and present where their coverage propelled harmful misrepresentations in stories that included Black, Indigenous, Latino, or Asian communities. The L.A. Times wrote that during the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, when “sailors on leave from wartime” attacked Mexican Americans in L.A. wearing the Zoot Suit, the Times “blamed the victims instead of their assailants.”
“When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt suggested that the rioting might have grown out of racial discrimination toward Mexican Americans, The Times vehemently denied that was possible, asserting in an editorial, ‘We like Mexicans and we think they like us,’” the editorial stated.
The Baltimore Sun wrote about their history of taking law enforcement’s word over that of Baltimore residents for decades, even as “the city of Baltimore adopted a ‘zero tolerance’ style of policing in the late ’90s.” Later, the Department of Justice found that their policy led to repeated violations of constitutional and statutory rights.
“Shortly after the diary release, in 1991, the vicious beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers was recorded on video and broadcast across the country, and white Americans could no longer deny that Black people were being mistreated by law enforcement,” their article stated. “Yet, The Sun would continue to take the word of local law enforcement over Baltimore residents in its reporting for decades to come, largely without question.”
A key function of journalism is to hold authorities accountable and question their actions. It was a mission of journalism; the Sun acknowledged that it had failed to deliver in the context of police brutality in Baltimore.
Journalism is often primary source material for historians, and thus, the bias that colors our work seeps into how the past is later reconstructed and remembered.
As a history major at UC Santa Barbara, I conducted research using magazine articles and advertisements from the 70s to understand how henna came into the U.S. beauty industry. My research revealed that amid the second-wave feminism movement, many women were rejecting cosmetic products in response to the idea of freeing women’s sexuality from the male gaze.
There was a cultural rejection of what was considered synthetic, artificial, and to please a man, and an embrace of what was considered natural, authentic, and for oneself. Cosmetic companies looking to cater to this demographic took advantage of the messaging from the movement and started promoting products they could advertise as for the “natural” woman. This is when henna began emerging as a popular hair dye in the U.S.
While conducting this research, I was struck by how fashion articles and cosmetic advertisements in magazines could help elucidate such a niche topic decades later. I wondered if one day, the articles I write might be examined by later historians to gain a better understanding of the times in which we live today.
Reflecting on the history we learned in high school, some chapters also highlighted the aforementioned issues in journalism, including misrepresentation and underrepresentation. Until college, none of my classes taught me about the Stonewall Riots or Black history outside the context of slavery and the Civil War.
In my own early-career experiences, I have found that some people in communities of color are distrustful of the media and resistant to being interviewed or included in stories. And I knew that harmful coverage from media outlets I was working for was why people were distrustful of me to begin with. Other times, it was because some communities felt journalists were only interested in their stories when there was crime or violence, and that their lives and stories were otherwise largely ignored. And finally, sometimes, people just don’t trust “the media.”
Perhaps I hadn’t considered the true magnitude of the problem. It wasn’t simply a history of biased coverage. It was a historical archive in which several communities of color had been relegated to stereotypes or were left unheard by the people who claimed to serve them. At one point, people lose faith.
That leaves those of us who write the first rough drafts of history, those of us who chronicle the present, to understand the past we inherit and the magnitude of its impact. Within my scope, I’ve attempted to approach reporting by understanding my audience and building relationships with key community voices and groups from the outset of every reporting position. I think about how to reach out to the everyday communities my outlet serves, the advocates and experts that govern my niche, whether that is immigration or education, and the lawmakers that govern and represent the communities my outlet serves.
The effort of establishing relationships early on allows people to get to know me as a reporter. It enables me to prove to them the type of journalist I am, rather than demanding their trust when a story I’m working on requires their perspective. It’s not the solution to a systemic problem, but it ensures I try my best on a personal scale, not just to expect people to be amenable to journalists, but rather to earn the trust they deserve.
Building relationships can be a long-term endeavor, and the trust it elicits can help tell stories that rectify the distorted narratives often perpetuated by newspapers for many communities. It’s a small step but an important one.
On a grander scale, news outlets can also revisit their previous coverage and consider follow-up stories — or the gaps in history left by underrepresentation or misrepresentation — to reframe the stories that define communities in newspaper archives.
Mark Danner’s “The Massacre at El Mozote” revisited a period of the Cold War in El Salvador where the Salvadoran military, backed by the U.S. army, killed hundreds in the name of anticommunism. Until Danner’s work surfaced in 1993, the U.S. government had largely succeeded in discrediting the very idea that the U.S. had partaken in the massacre.
Or perhaps take 'Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls' by Angela Sterritt, which combines memoir with investigative journalism to tell the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across Canada. Part of the story includes those who went missing along British Columbia's Highway of Tears since the 1970s, examining how insufficient police investigation created a cycle of desensitization and dehumanization of Indigenous women.
And as Sterrit’s work demonstrates, our life experiences can inform stories that bridge the gaps in historical coverage of certain communities. Such efforts serve as a poignant reminder that the ink that writes history is never permanently dry. However, it requires those of us who produce primary sources for future historians to consider the longer-term implications of how we create a permanent record of the people we report on.
Atmika Iyer is a graduate student in Northwestern Medill’s Politics, Policy, and Foreign Affairs reporting program. Atmika is also a journalism intern with the Fulcrum.
To read more of Atmika's work, click HERE.
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