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For much of the 20th century, young Americans were seen as free speech’s fiercest defenders. But now, young Americans are growing more skeptical of free speech. According to a March 2025 report by The Future of Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank where I am executive director, support among 18- to 34-year-olds for allowing controversial or offensive speech has dropped sharply in recent years. In 2021, 71% of young Americans said people should be allowed to insult the U.S. flag, which is a key indicator of support for free speech, no matter how

As they fight over the specifics of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill," GOP lawmakers are expressing very different views on Medicaid. Some budget hawks in the House Freedom Caucus are calling for deep Medicaid cuts, while a group of House Republicans in swing districts are refusing to vote for any bill that defunds Medicare.In the U.S. Senate, far-right Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) is telling fellow Republicans to keep their hands off Medicare.In an op-ed published by The New York Time

Whistleblowers and leakers, many constitutional scholars argue, play an important role in safeguarding democracy. When conservative Miles Taylor was serving as chief of staff to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2018, he wrote an anonymous op-ed for The New York Times that was famously headlined "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration."Now, President Donald Trump is calling for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to

Trump is overplaying his hand.Not just by usurping the powers of Congress and ignoring Supreme Court rulings. Not just abducting people who are legally in the United States but have put their name to opinion pieces Trump doesn’t like and trucking them off to “detention” facilities. Not just using the Justice Department for personal vengeance. Not just unilaterally deciding how much tariff tax American consumers will have to pay on almost everything they buy. Polls show all these are tanking Trump’s popularity. But one thing almost all Americans are firmly against — even many loyal Trumpers — us bribery. And Trump is taking bigger and bigger bribes.Yesterday it was re

Two Democratic antitrust commissioners fighting in court for their jobs this week blasted Trump’s attempt to fire them. In a court filing, they said the move would destabilize the economy and “brush aside a century of precedent.” The Federal Trade Commission is one of two federal agencies tasked with enforcing antitrust law. In the past several years it has sued huge health care conglomerates, as well as big tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta. It a

Why are right-wingers so scared of ideas? Are their minds so weak that mere exposure to certain books will infect them with what Elon Musk calls “the woke mind virus”? They don’t want you inoculated against measles, but they’re doing their damnedest to inoculate Americans against knowledge. Novels upset them; poetry upsets them; science upsets them; history upsets them; art upsets them; questioning of authority upsets them. Universities really, really upset them — all that interrogating norms; all that challenging orthodoxy; all that critical inquiry. To that end, Donald Trump’s going to

In today’s fractured online landscape, it is harder than ever to identify harmful actors such as trolls and misinformation spreaders. Often, efforts to spot malicious accounts focus on analysing what they say. However, our latest research suggests we should be paying more attention to what they do – and how they do it. We have developed a way to identify potentially harmful online actors based solely on their behavioural patterns – the way they interact with others – rather than the content they share. We presented our results at the recent ACM Web Conference, and were awarded Best Paper. Beyond looking at what people say Traditional approaches

House Republicans late Sunday unveiled legislation that analysts said would rip Medicaid coverage from millions of low-income Americans—including children and people with disabilities—to help fund tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy. The bill text released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee is a section of the sprawling budget reconciliation package that Republicans are hoping to complete as soon as Memorial Day. The legislation includes

Something tells me US president Donald Trump would love to be a Roman emperor. The mythology of unrestrained power with sycophants doing his bidding would be seductive. But in fact, Roman emperors were heavily constrained by institutions, the economy and popular mood. Yes, some challenged and sidelined the institutions of their day – but this often sparked a powerful backlash. As someone who’s studied Ancient Rome for years, I’ve recently been asked which Roman emperor was most like Donald Trump. In some ways he’s a pastiche of several Roman leaders. Julius Caesar Of course, Julius Caesar was never an emperor. He was a military leader and politician when the Roman Republic was in its death throes. While Trump has no military experience, some have compare

There’s no more fundamental task for a school than teaching kids to read.This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.But what about kids living in poverty? Don’t schools need more money, and more staff, to be able to get good results?Well, yes and no. Poverty is certainly correlated to reading scores, and the best evidence sugge