Why do local and state elections matter, and how can voters be sure that their voices are being represented in the lawmaking process? We open the third season of Democracy Decoded with an overview of democracy at the state and local level, and how we can ensure that all citizens can have their voices heard.
This episode is from the Democracy Decoded podcast as a part of The Democracy Group.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks briefly to the press as he arrives during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, on Sept. 22, 2026.
“To offend a strong man, tell him a lie. To offend a weak man, tell him the truth.”
That quote, often attributed to Marcus Aurelius, one of the great Stoics, perfectly encapsulates the very troubling and sad moment we’re in, and the very troubling and sad president we’re dealing with.
For all his bluster, Donald Trump is inarguably weak and small. His ego is easily bruised, his feelings are easily hurt. He’s been this way for a long time, and as Americans living in the Trump era, we’ve all come to see how deeply insecure, petty, and vengeful he can be.
His late-night social media rants lashing out at enemies both real and imagined; his impetuous and impolitic attacks on longtime allies who don’t roll over for him; his reckless primarying of his own party members who dare break from him, even if momentarily.
Hell, you could even say his very presidency is the result of an otherwise harmless roast by former President Barack Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner that he took too personally.
But when things are going particularly badly for him, his skin is at its paper thinnest, and it shows.
Last week, Trump announced on social media that he was banning three news outlets — MS NOW, Politico, and CNN, where I work — from covering the White House. He hasn’t said why those particular outlets were targeted, giving the impression that this might not have been all that well thought out. Imagine that.
It does coincide, however, with Trump’s steadily sinking approval numbers, which just this week hit an abysmal record low, falling below 30% according to one poll.
Believe it or not, focusing on ballrooms and buildings, invading Greenland and Canada, suing political enemies and chasing crypto deals while we’re in an ill-advised war and most Americans are stretching to afford basic necessities, has not endeared him to voters.
It’s almost as if ignoring his key promises to voters — to lower inflation, to lower the cost of goods, to never get us into another war — has turned them off.
So, stuck in a bed of his own making with nowhere to go, he’s lashing out, this time at the press, simply for covering the bad decisions he’s made and their impact on voters.
But trying to punish or sideline the press will not change the fact that he and Republicans are in deep trouble. All it does is make him look brittle, desperate and weak.
It’s also a deeply disingenuous effort. Trump has justified his tantrum by saying the press is both “purposeful” and “fully coordinated” in reporting “fiction and lies.”
There’s a legal mechanism for the thing he’s talking about, and tellingly, he isn’t using it. Because, if true, what he’s describing is the textbook definition of actual malice, the legal bar used for defamation cases.
But he’s not suing the press, because this isn’t about the law, but rather his feelings. And it’s simply not our job to protect his feelings, or only publish news that makes him feel good. We’re not his parents or his kindergarten teachers.
He can throw all the fits he wants, and there’s no doubt his continual attacks on the press have had a chilling effect, but I know one thing: ultimately, the press will win this battle.
He may wish he were president of Russia or North Korea, where the free press doesn’t exist and state media tells only positive stories about Dear Leader, but here in America, the press is protected. Here, Americans want to live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. And here, we expect our political leaders to be able to take a metaphorical punch. Especially if the “punch” in question is simply the truth.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
People wearing vests with "ICE" and "Police" on the back.
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists.
We asked Abbey Osborn, a Fall Fulcrum Fellow, to share what democracy means to her and her view of its current health.
When I think of democracy, I picture the Statue of Liberty, her torch lit, arm outstretched, for those who seek the protections offered in the Constitution—of speech, religion, and the press. By respecting these freedoms, the government holds itself accountable to the people it governs. But a democracy is not merely a static set of rules; it is a living system. And immigrants—the “huddled masses” Emma Lazarus wrote of in “The New Colossus”—have always been essential to this living system. Their choice to pursue the freedoms promised by this country helps sustain it.
As an educator, my classroom is a microcosm of this country. My students come from all corners of the globe. Some are Rohingya refugees who fled villages where their family members were killed. Some traversed the Americas, crossing the Darien Gap to reach what they hoped would be safety. They have lived experiences of not being able to practice their religion or criticize their government openly.
Last year, under President Trump’s administration, I saw my students reckon with a government that opposed their presence. Students disappeared from the classroom, citing fears of ICE stopping them on their way to school. Though they had the right to an education, no matter their legal status, they were afraid to pursue it—worried that it could mean being detained or deported.
According to the Pew Research Center, immigrants made up 15.4% of the U.S. population as of June 2025, down from 15.8% in January. The decline aligns with increased federal immigration enforcement, including the Trump administration’s December 2025 launch of “Operation Metro Surge,” which targeted undocumented immigrants in Minnesota.
Undocumented immigrants are especially vulnerable to government overreach, due to their precarious legal status. Under an administration that has repeatedly used anti-immigrant rhetoric, Operation Metro Surge is an example of what happens when the government attempts to override a population’s constitutional rights. As Tara Watson, director of the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at the Brookings Institution, warns, immigrants can become a “testing ground” for authoritarian power. A restriction of constitutional rights can spread to noncitizens and citizens alike, weakening democracy.
For instance, Mahamed Eydarus, 25, and his mother, both U.S. citizens, were stopped by ICE agents, during Operation Metro Surge, while shoveling snow out of a parking spot. In a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Department of Homeland Security, Eydarus and other plaintiffs alleged that agents used racial profiling to detain people without reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation or probable cause for arrest. Although the U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud declined to grant an injunction against the government's actions, he found that Eydarus and his mother were stopped and detained solely because of their race or ethnicity. Eydarus was targeted due to the color of his skin–despite being a citizen.
The Trump administration’s harsh actions toward immigrants have pushed the limits of power and control. In doing so, it has weakened the central promise underlying our democracy—that this country will respect the rights of all those within its borders. My students deserve to be able to pursue their education without fear. When they cannot, that promise has been broken.
Abbey Osborn is a student at CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Abbey focuses on local democracy, public institutions, and youth civic engagement. She brings experience in community reporting and a commitment to amplifying voices often overlooked in political coverage.
Influencer and left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker is introduced during a campaign rally for Wisconsin Gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong on Aug. 2, 2026, in Milwaukee.
No one likes to think they’re being hysterical. And nothing makes hysterical people angrier than being described as such. So, let me offer my apologies in advance for what follows.
Jeremy Musighi, an independent researcher, recently released a study analyzing 14.7 million news articles published across 65 languages over the last decade. He found that, in 2024, news outlets published “more than twice as many stories about Israel as about all 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined.”
Given that many countries focus on Israel to distract from their own problems, that’s not that shocking. But Musighi also found that, “On American cable news, Israel was the most-mentioned country— ahead of Iran, Russia, Ukraine, China. On the BBC’s news channel, 1 in every 17 broadcast minutes mentioned Israel.”
One might argue that given Israel’s recent actions, it earned such coverage. But Israel gets wildly disproportionate coverage in peacetime too. In 2019, long before the war in Gaza, “1 of every 112 news articles on Earth — from all the world’s outlets minus Israel’s — was primarily about Israel. 1.8 million international articles mentioned it.”
Now, I have reservations about Musighi’s methodology, given how media outlets recycle and syndicate content. But rather than wade into the statistics, for argument’s sake let’s just cut all of his findings in half. That would still be hard to defend rationally.
Also, this says nothing of the quality of the reporting. If it was objective, the quantity wouldn’t matter much. But a sizable portion is objectively anti-Israel, often taking Hamas’ claims at face value. When Hamas shrieked that Gaza was on the brink of famine, the Western press breathlessly repeated the claim, which was utterly false.
In a recent interview on Taqarrab, an Arab-language podcast, acclaimed photo “journalist” Motaz Azaiza admitted that he refused to publish images of Hamas abuses — to protect the abusers. The New York Times’ Nick Kristoff launched weeks of coverage with the claim that Israelis train dogs to rape Palestinians. American media covered the controversy over Macklemore’s criticisms of Israel like a free speech martyr.
In fairness, a lot of coverage is driven by news, like when the United Nations condemns Israel, which it has done 187 times since 2015 — nearly six times more often than it has condemned Russia, and 17 times more often than Iran or North Korea.
Founded in 1948, modern Israel is middle-aged as countries go.
Look at a list of 195 countries in order of their founding date and Israel ranks somewhere between the 85th- and 90th-oldest (if we acknowledge biblical Israel, then it’s the fourth-oldest nation in the world). And yet many talk about Israel as if it’s a sort of recent mistake, easily remedied, like outgoing mail that hasn’t been picked up yet.
Israel is only slightly older than modern Tibet, which was, according to the Chinese government, “liberated” in 1951. Many Tibetans use the term “occupied.”
We don’t hear much about “occupied Tibet” from people fixated on the evils of occupation. Nor do we hear about China’s system of apartheid— another charge casually hurled at Israel. Nor do we hear about China’s genocidal policies toward the Muslim minority Uyghur population in Xinjiang. The charge of cultural genocide is irrefutable, but there’s also strong evidence of more literal genocide thanks to the regime’s violent and coercive reproduction policies, slashing birthrates in half.
Nor do we hear much about China’s policy of settler-colonialism in Tibet and Xinjiang, where Han Chinese are incentivized to migrate as part of the regime’s policy of “sinicization.” I think China’s pretty powerful, but criticizing Israel, according to the popular online streamer Hasan Piker (who will not condemn China), is “speaking truth to power.”
To that end, we hear a lot about Israel’s occupation, settler-colonization and genocide. We don’t have the space to contend with all of these charges, so for the sake of brevity and reasonableness let’s concede, for now, the first two. Besides, it’s the false genocide charge that fuels anti-Israel obsessions more than any other. The claim is more than 40 years old. And yet, since the founding of Israel, the Palestinian population has grown more than fivefold.
When you hear that Israeli genocide proves Israelis are the “new Nazis” keep in mind that the Holocaust killed 2 out of every 3 European Jews.
A new documentary, “Naza,” that purports to prove that Israel is committing genocide bases its claim on the fact that Israel goes to great lengths to track collateral damage. Never mind that there’s no such thing as collateral damage when you intend genocide.
It should take the average reader five minutes to read this column. When “Naza” debuted at the Venice Film Festival this month, the audience’s standing ovation lasted five times as long. That, I’m sorry to tell you, is a sign of hysteria.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
New research shows AI beats elite debaters in persuasion — not through better arguments, but by out-pacing human reading and reply speed.
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.
The most revealing result came when the researchers changed the rules of the exchange. Elite debaters had produced replies averaging 54 words after roughly 95 seconds. The AI produced about 294 words with sub-second latency. When the system was constrained to roughly human-length messages and human writing speed, its advantage over coached elite debaters fell to a statistically indistinguishable zero.
The study is a preprint, not a final verdict, and its experiments were conducted in controlled text conversations in the United Kingdom. It does not prove that any chatbot will decide an election. It does, however, identify a democratic variable that is largely missing from public debate: persuasion throughput, or the amount of argumentative material a system can deliver within a citizen's limited attention.
Our current safeguards focus on important questions. Was the message generated by a machine? Who paid for it? Was personal data used to target the recipient? Is the image or voice synthetic? Those questions address identity and targeting, but they do not address what happens after a person enters the conversation.
A chatbot can present dozens of claims before the user has inspected the first source. In the 2026 study, unconstrained AI produced about 37 fact-checkable claims per conversation; the human-paced version produced about 12. Across conditions, fact density strongly predicted persuasive impact. The advantage was not simply that the machine sounded more empathetic or more human. It could place more information on the table before its counterpart could answer.
A peer-reviewed Science article published in December 2025 points in the same direction from another angle. In experiments with 76,977 participants, 19 models and 707 political issues, post-training and prompting designed for persuasion mattered more than personalization or model scale. The same interventions that increased persuasion also reduced factual accuracy. Speed and density can therefore amplify useful information and error at the same time.
The appropriate response is not a government word limit on political speech. It is to make the tempo of machine persuasion visible and controllable. A political chatbot should display how many new factual claims it has introduced, how quickly it is producing them, and whether the user has asked for additional material. A citizen should be able to switch to a slow mode that presents one claim at a time, pauses until the evidence has been opened, and offers a neutral summary before moving on.
Sources should be attached to claims, not scattered as decorative links at the end of a long answer. The interface should separate established facts, contested interpretations, and predictions. It should also let the user request the strongest counterargument without forcing the person to leave the conversation and find an opposing system.
Political chatbots should identify the model version, the date of the governing instructions, and the organization responsible for the conversation. Campaigns, parties, advocacy groups, and platforms should preserve sample transcripts for independent audits. Those audits should measure claim accuracy, correction behavior, source diversity, and whether the system changes its standards when arguing for different sides.
These measures are viewpoint-neutral. They do not decide which position is correct or prevent a campaign from making a forceful case. They address a procedural asymmetry: one participant can generate arguments at machine speed while the other remains bound by human reading, memory, and verification.
Disclosure alone will not solve that asymmetry. A label saying that the speaker is a bot tells the citizen who is talking, but not how the interface is shaping the exchange. A clearly identified system can still overwhelm the user with a sequence of claims that arrives too quickly to compare, challenge, or remember. Transparency must therefore cover the mechanics of persuasion, not merely the identity of the persuader.
A useful standard could be tested without deciding which political arguments are permissible. Does the system count and display new factual claims? Can the user stop automatic continuation? Are sources attached to the precise claims they support? Can an independent reviewer reproduce a sample conversation under the recorded model and instructions? These are measurable design questions, and campaigns could be compared on them before an election rather than after a controversy.
The limits of the research matter. The conversations lasted a median of about 14 minutes, participants were paid, and the tested political issues were British. Real-world influence will depend on exposure, trust, repetition and whether people willingly sustain political conversations with a machine. That uncertainty is a reason to test safeguards, not a reason to ignore the mechanism.
Democratic deliberation requires more than access to an answer. It requires time to understand, compare and contest the answer. We do not need to ban machine speech to protect that space. We need to stop treating the machine's ability to set the pace as if it were a neutral feature of the interface.
A democracy in which one side can generate an argument faster than the other side can read it is not necessarily better informed. It may simply be losing control of the clock.
Roney Lima do Nascimento is a mathematics educator, AI specialist and doctoral candidate in Pure Mathematics at the University of São Paulo. He writes about model evaluation, education, democracy and institutional capacity. His work has appeared in Folha de S.Paulo, Nexo Políticas Públicas, Congresso em Foco, EUobserver, GovInsider, HEPI and Educational Leadership.
