What if citizens were called to policymaking duty the way they are called to jury duty?

All over the world, ordinary people are finding out what that’s like when they’re selected by civic lottery to participate in a citizens’ assembly, a democracy innovation that may just be the antidote to the polarization of the world we need.

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According to the OECD database, environment and other long-term policy issues are the most popular topics addressed by citizens’ assemblies, and local governments are the most frequent users of these methods.

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In citizens’ assemblies, there are teenagers and octogenarians, business people and activists, people of all genders, races and abilities, individuals who have been regulars at city council and those who have never engaged in local democracy before. Inevitably there is a wide range of political leanings, lots of passion and some trepidation.

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The challenges range from giving everyone a base of technical knowledge to effectively participate in discussions — a component often missing in public consultations — to ensuring complex accessibility needs are met, something required to address the gap in effective involvement of people with disabilities in decision-making.

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The OECD estimates that roughly half of the recommendations of deliberative processes are implemented. We’ve also found that the side benefits of citizens’ assemblies, such as increased community cohesion and a sense of hope, are substantial.

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Building trust with government may be another important outcome. Research shows trust in government is significantly higher among Canadians who feel they have a say in what the government does (79 per cent compared to 21 per cent who do not).

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Rather than fearing polarization, organizers should seek to understand how they can use it most effectively. This involves recognizing that, while collective action undertaken in pursuit of a good cause typically results in positive outcomes, not all protests have identical effects or produce equal benefits.

Central to harnessing the power of polarization is appreciating that, by its nature, it cuts both ways: the same actions that create positive polarization — drawing more active supporters into movements and convincing previously neutral or undecided observers to at least passively sympathize with the cause — will also have negative effects, turning off some people and firing up the opposition. The goal of movement participants is therefore to make sure that the beneficial results of their actions outweigh the counterproductive ones, and that they are shifting the overall spectrum of support in their favor.

So how, then, can movement participants predict how a given protest will polarize? And how can they work to improve their skills in designing effective actions?

Fig. 1 gives an example of a conversation where the user goes from 100% belief down to 40% after getting their questions explained by the AI.

Looking at the conclusions, the impact is not so big for all the interactions.

Anyway, this is a great tool. Sure, when people are doomscrolling 24/7 they’re not fact-checking. So, the intervention might not be there. Yet, I choose to remain optimistic. More recent generations might get easier access and be better than our current trend :)

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury will soon decide whether a convoy of supporters of then-President Donald Trump violently intimidated former Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis and two others on a Biden-Harris campaign bus when a so-called “Trump Train” boxed them in for more than an hour on a Texas highway days before the 2020 election.

The trial, which began on Sept. 9, resumes Monday and is expected to last another week.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that six of the Trump Train drivers violated state and federal law. Lawyers for the defendants said they did not conspire against the Democrats on the bus and that their actions are protected speech.

Here’s what else to know:

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"As young people, we’re poised to inherit a world that needs thoughtful, informed leadership more than ever. But if we’re not even willing to watch a debate, how can we expect to take on that responsibility? We owe it to ourselves — and to one another — to do better, to look beyond influencers and viral videos, and to engage deeply with the issues that truly matter. Even Taylor Swift, in her endorsement, urged us to “do your research.” If we don’t, we risk becoming not just uninformed voters, but a generation that’s lost sight of what it truly means to be part of a democracy."

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U.S.: A Project 2025 adviser mockingly asked someone to ‘track down’ victims of abortion bans — his social media post received response from 17,000 women who have suffered since end of Roe v Wade

A former Trump administration staffer, now a senior adviser in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 team, accidentally made a case for abortion rights in a failed attempt to undermine an answer by Kamala Harris during Tuesday’s presidential debate.

John McEntee, who served as Donald Trump’s director of White House personnel, is one of the founders of The Right Stuff, a right-wing dating site, and has a large following on TikTok.

His posts feature him sitting at a table, eating, across from the camera, presumably to mimic a date-like setting, while he makes a glib and offensive right-wing talking point, often misogynistic or racist.

In a post this week, which has 1.8 million views on TikTok, he says: “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v Wade was overturned?”

“Don’t hold your breath,” he adds, flippantly.

Well, he could have held his breath because the replies came in thick and fast.

The post now has more than 17,000 comments and they are almost all women sharing their stories of being turned away from emergency rooms in agony, bleeding out in parking lots, at home, in public bathrooms, and sometimes for months afterward.

Others talk about miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, losing their ability to have children, and driving across multiple states to get treatment where it was still legal — often while hemorrhaging. Most of the stories appear to involve wanted or planned pregnancies.

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Donald Trump could rightly be seen as a Russian asset, according to a former FBI director the ex-president fired in his first term.

Andrew McCabe appeared on the One Decision podcast co-hosted by former British intelligence agency chief Sir Richard Dearlove, who asked whether he thought it possible that Trump was a Russian asset, and he said, "I do, I do," reported The Guardian.

“I don’t know that I would characterize it as [an] active, recruited, knowing asset in the way that people in the intelligence community think of that term," McCabe said. "But I do think that Donald Trump has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States, and I think his approach to interacting with Vladimir Putin, be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions

McCabe raised suspicions about Trump's attitude toward Ukraine and NATO in the face of Russian aggression and said he's had concerns about his admiration for Vladimir Putin

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“You have to have some very serious questions about, why is it that Donald Trump … has this fawning sort of admiration for Vladimir Putin in a way that no other American president, Republican or Democrat, ever has," McCabe said.

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McCabe expressed “very serious concerns about a second Trump presidency and said that Russia had long desired to interfere with U.S. democracy.

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Project 2025, the 900-page conservative playbook for the next Republican president, issues an ultimatum for California: track and report abortion data to the federal government or risk losing billions in Medicaid funding for reproductive health.

California is one of only three states that do not report abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Project 2025’s proposed federal mandate directly conflicts with the state’s strong protections for patient privacy and could dismantle the legal and ethical foundations that have made California a refuge for those seeking reproductive care.

The blueprint, crafted by Donald Trump allies and leaders in his first administration, clearly targets states with abortion protections like California, seeking the kind of data that could be used to target abortion-seekers or even criminally punish out-of-staters who come to the state for reproductive health services.

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Tuesday night’s debate devoted little time to foreign policy, but a few key moments revealed—more dramatically than half an hour of dedicated discussion might have—just how much a renewed Donald Trump presidency could weaken the United States and make the world a more dangerous place.

Many noted, after the debate, how readily Vice President Kamala Harris lured the ex-president into traps. All she had to do was push one of his buttons—to remark that the crowds at his rallies are bored, or that he inherited all of his wealth (then blew it in successive bankruptcies), or that world leaders laugh at him—and he exploded in paroxysms of fury, ranting over grievances, rambling down ratholes of conspiracy theories, thrown off course from the issues at hand.

What we were seeing was the flip side of how easily foreign heads of state, especially tyrants, manipulate Trump to their favor. All they have to do is call him “Sir” (as he often recites them doing in stories, some possibly true, most clearly fictitious), and he will eat poison right out of their hands.

“I like people who like me,” Trump has publicly said in several contexts, and the heads of every intelligence agency on Earth no doubt took careful note. “He respects me,” Trump once said of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He famously sighed that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un sent each other “love letters,” and, even now, years after the bloom faded, still beams, “He likes me.” At the recent Republican convention, he boasted—boasted—that the head of the Taliban called him “Your Excellency,” and added, “I wonder if he calls the other guy”—meaning Biden—“ ‘Your Excellency.’ I doubt it!”

[Edit typo.]

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The DC-based Heritage Foundation has long spread disinformation about elections, claiming there is widespread voter fraud despite ample evidence to the contrary. More recently, it has gained attention for its authoritarian and antidemocratic Project 2025 plan for a second Trump administration.

Ahead of this fall’s election, Heritage has been at the forefront of pushing the lie that noncitizens are registering and voting in significant numbers, laying the groundwork for election deniers to use in case the results don’t go their way.

Now its efforts to undermine trust in elections have taken a dangerous new turn — a boots-on-the-ground approach to fish for voter fraud where there is none. In July, men working with Heritage knocked on the doors of suspected noncitizens in an apartment complex outside Atlanta, asking about the residents’ citizenship status and whether they are registered to vote. The pair mispresented themselves as being with a company that assists Latinos navigate the election system and secretly videotaped their interactions.

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Earlier this year, the Heritage Foundation used its social media presence to amplify similar deceptive behavior, which led to online harassment and death threats for the leader of a nonprofit assisting asylum-seekers. In April, Anthony Rubin — the founder of Muckraker, an online media website with “very, very powerful” ties to Heritage — and his brother misrepresented themselves as staff members of an immigrants rights organization seeking to volunteer at a nonprofit providing services to asylum-seekers in Matamoros, Mexico. Rubin kept trying to get staff at the nonprofit to state they would help migrants vote for Biden. In a multi-part thread on social media, Heritage posted a snippet of a conversation between Rubin and the head of the nonprofit, in which she is misconstrued as encouraging noncitizens to vote.

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While these methods may be new to the organization, we’ve seen them before from others. [...]

Project Veritas, a right-wing activist group, long used unverified, undercover, and deceptively edited recordings to misconstrue the truth, including about supposed voter fraud. In 2020, the group published an unverified video that the campaign of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MI) had collected ballots illegally, as well as videos falsely alleging voter fraud in one Pennsylvania city. In the Pennsylvania incident, the group ended up settling a lawsuit brought by the local postmaster and publicly apologized, noting that it was not aware of any evidence of fraud in the that city during the 2020 election.

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2016, a Project Veritas member infiltrated a democratic consulting firm and secretly recorded conversations. The firm claimed the footage was then “heavily edited” to suggest that the firm conspired to incite violence at Trump rallies and promote voter fraud. In a civil lawsuit, Project Veritas was found liable for misrepresentation and violating wiretapping laws, and was required to pay $120,000 in damages.

And in 2009, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe secretly recorded conversations with staff at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACORN was a network of community-based organizations advocating for low and moderate-income families. The deceptively edited videos construed ACORN employees as advising O’Keefe on tax evasion. But the videos set off a political firestorm that led to public funding for ACORN to be cut off, effectively shuttering the organization. Later, O’Keefe faced a civil lawsuit from a former-ACORN staff member and settled for $100,000.

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As for the issue of noncitizen voting — it’s a myth. Noncitizens voting does not occur in any significant manner, and it’s already illegal under federal and state law. The Heritage Foundation’s actions are hurting our democracy, not helping it.

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New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has issued a lengthy warning in the Washington Post (9/5/24) on the dangers another Donald Trump presidency would pose to a “free and independent press.”

Sulzberger details Trump’s many efforts to suppress and undermine critical media outlets during his previous presidential tenure, as well as the more recent open declarations by Trump and his allies of their plans to continue to “come after” the press, “whether it’s criminally or civilly.”

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You might expect this to be a prelude to an announcement that the New York Times would work tirelessly to defend democracy. Instead, Sulzberger heartily defends his own miserably inadequate strategy of “neutrality”—which, in practice, is both-sidesing—making plain his greater concern for the survival of his own newspaper than the survival of US democracy.

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"As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of journalistic independence,” Sulzberger writes, “I have no interest in wading into politics.”

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Neutrality could mean, as he suggests, independent or free from the influence of the powerful in our society.

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This strategy didn’t work particularly well when Republicans and Democrats played by the same set of rules, as both parties took the same anti-equality, pro-oligarchy positions on many issues.

But it’s particularly ill-suited to the current moment, when Republicans have discarded any notion that facts, truth or democracy have any meaning. If one team ceases to play by any rules, should the ref continue to try to call roughly similar numbers of violations on each side in order to appear unbiased? It would obviously be absurd and unfair. But that’s Sulzberger’s notion of “neutrality.”

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A “full, fair and accurate picture” of the election and its stakes are exactly what the Times‘ critics are asking for. Instead, the Times offers a topsy-turvy world in which crime is still a top concern (it’s at its lowest level since the 1960s—FAIR.org, 7/25/24)); inflation has been brought down to near the Fed’s ideal rate of 2%, but it’s still “a problem for Harris” (7/23/24); the nation’s “commitment to the peaceful resolution of political difference” is primarily threatened by neither party in particular (FAIR.org, 7/16/24); and Biden’s age merits more headlines as a danger to the country than Trump’s increasing incoherence–or his refusal to commit to accepting the results of the election.

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Does Sulzberger actually think that by writing a several-thousand-word warning against Trump’s threat to press freedom, but simultaneously announcing that he will resolutely oppose “taking sides” in this election, he is somehow inoculating himself against right-wing populist hatred of the Times, and any future retribution from a Trump presidency?

The far right has learned how to exploit this central weakness of corporate media, its adherence to “balance” at all costs. Sulzberger might think he’s working to fend off Trump’s attack on an independent press corps; in fact, he’s playing right into Trump’s hands, and working to speed along his own paper’s irrelevance.

alt-text for thumbnail: text saying “blocking fascists is self-care” next to an antifascist flag on a 2d digital art wooden background

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The rapid spread of baseless claims about Haitian immigrants reveals the need for long-term accountability in political reporting.

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Liars must pay a price

Given this landscape of rampant misinformation, journalists have an important role to play — one that goes beyond fact-checking. It's time for the media to make politicians pay a real price for spreading outrageous lies.

When a politician like J.D. Vance amplifies a baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets, or when Trump asserts that schools are secretly performing gender transition surgeries, these lies shouldn't be treated as isolated incidents. They should become part of the narrative about these politicians moving forward.

Journalists have a responsibility to consistently remind the public of these lies in future coverage. Every article about Vance should mention his willingness to spread xenophobic misinformation. Every piece on Trump should reference his history of transgender fearmongering. These lies should color all future coverage of these candidates, becoming an integral part of their political identity.

By doing this, journalists are accomplishing several things at once. It holds politicians accountable for their words, creating a lasting consequence for spreading misinformation. It provides important context for readers, helping them evaluate the credibility of these figures on an ongoing basis. It may deter politicians from spreading future lies, knowing that doing so could tarnish their reputation long-term. Perhaps most importantly, it helps combat the normalization of misinformation in political discourse.

Some may argue that this approach compromises journalistic objectivity. However, consistently reporting on a politician's documented history of spreading lies isn't a form of bias — it's responsible journalism. Facts aren't partisan, and the public deserves to know when their leaders have a track record of dishonesty.

Moreover, this strategy could help break the cycle of misinformation we're currently trapped in. If politicians know that spreading lies will damage their credibility long-term, they may think twice before amplifying unverified claims for short-term political gain.

Of course, this approach requires courage from news organizations. They must be willing to withstand accusations of bias and potential loss of access to these political figures. But the alternative – allowing politicians to spread harmful lies without consequence — is far more damaging to our democratic discourse.

"In the end, we all knew what we knew before, that ABC's goal tonight was to help Kamala Harris, and ABC did help Kamala Harris," Laura Ingraham said on Fox News. That's one way of putting it. Van Jones on CNN found another.

"She whupped him," Jone said. "She just whupped him. ... Kamala Harris did something great for every parent in America. She put the bully in his place."

A certain super gigantic galactic pop star seemed to agree. Moments after the debate, Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, signing her Instagram post "Childless Cat Lady," a reference to a comment made by Trump's running mate, JD Vance.

For more details on the 4chan nature, head over to the Daily Beast for pieces like these:

• "...they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
• meandering rant on abortion rights also included multiple false claims
• recap of daily beast debate tweet/commentary

Debate Transcript: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-trump-presidential-debate-transcript/story?id=113560542

PBS (no longer live) updates: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/live-updates-trump-and-harris-debate-in-philadelphia

The first 10 minutes in the linked video shows the undercover meeting, the rest is a Q&A with one of the investigative journalists by media outlet Democracy Now.

As Donald Trump tries to distance his campaign from Project 2025, those behind the right-wing policy blueprint to remake the U.S. government continue to brag in private about their close ties to the Republican presidential nominee and how they intend to push a radical right-wing agenda in a second Trump administration.

In July, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought met with two people he believed to be relatives of a wealthy conservative donor interested in funding the effort. In fact, he was meeting with two reporters with the U.K.-based Centre for Climate Reporting as part of an undercover sting captured on video.

Over the course of two hours, Vought described Trump's disavowal of Project 2025 as mere theater and laid out plans for mass deportations, restricting abortion, gutting independent government bureaucracies, using the military against racial justice protesters and more.

The secret plans are "designed to ensure that this kind of radical agenda that the conservative movement has in the U.S. can be implemented from day one," says Lawrence Carter, founder and director of the Centre for Climate Reporting and one of the reporters who spoke with Vought. "They want to make sure that the mistakes from the first Trump administration, as they see them, where not much got done, are avoided this time around."

[Edit typo.]

alt-text: [yellow words saying “abolish cis puberty” next to a trans flag on a digital art wooden background]

How we treat puberty relates heavily to the systems of transphobia, sexism, and quite a lot of other hierarchies. How we treat it is a large component of systematic oppression and must be taken seriously.