Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Arizona legislators block bill to purge vote-by-mail list

Arizona Capitol building

The Arizona legislature is the first in a swing state to dispose of legislation that would make it harder to vote.

Jon Hicks/Getty Images

Legislators in Arizona narrowly rejected a proposal that would have removed 200,000 people from the list of voters who automatically receive a mail-in ballot for every election.

The Republican-backed bill would have purged voters from the list if they had skipped multiple elections, but would not have canceled their registration. Democrats, who stopped the bill in a Senate committee with the help of a single Republican vote, argued such a purge would make it harder for people to vote, particularly people of color and low-income voters.

When legislatures opened their 2021 sessions, lawmakers in three dozen states introduced more than 500 bills aimed at changing voting laws. Arizona is the first swing state to dispose of legislation aimed at tightening the rules.


About half of the impacted voters would have been independents, along with 64,000 Democrats and 47,000 Republicans, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told The Associated Press. President Biden captured Arizona by 10,500 votes, becoming the first Democrat to win the state in 24 years.

More than 3 million Arizonans are on the Permanent Early Voting List. They automatically receive a mail-in ballot ahead of every election. People are only removed from the list if they request removal, their registration is canceled or they become inactive. Progressive groups are celebrating the legislation's defeat.

"This reckless bill was a blatant attempt to suppress votes — and it should never have made it to the floor of the Arizona Senate," said Brett Edkins, political director of Stand Up America, which ran a grassroots campaign against the measure. "The Republican lawmakers who championed it, and peddled lies to push it through the legislature, should be ashamed of themselves."

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job
woman wearing academic cap and dress selective focus photography
Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job

A college education used to be considered, along with homeownership, one of the key pillars of the American Dream. Is that still the case? Recent experiences of college graduates seeking employment raise questions about whether a university diploma remains the best pathway to pursuing happiness, as it once was.

Consider the case of recent grad Lohanny Santo, whose TikTok video went viral with over 3.6 million “likes” as she broke down in tears and vented her frustration over her inability to find even a minimum wage job. That was despite her dual degrees from Pace University and her ability to speak three languages. John York, a 24-year-old with a master’s degree in math from New York University, writes that “it feels like I am screaming into the void with each application I am filling out.”

Keep ReadingShow less