Awards season is a highly anticipated time for fans of Hollywood. The difficult task of hosting an award show is burdened with the pressure to perform, most notably in front of peers of the arts rather than the average American. The pressure to produce a watchable show filled with jokes and intriguing monologues can lead the host to make cheap shots at the crowd or topics known to gather controversy in an effort to alleviate stress.
Read MoreDonald Trump’s legal team is having quite a time. The former President is facing 91 felony charges in cases across the country, appealing a verdict which ordered him to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her, and may have his properties seized if he cannot pay his $454 million debt from a New York fraud case. Ask any legal expert or lay person, and they will tell you that Trump’s chances of winning some of these cases are low. But there is one legal battle, also before the Supreme Court, that is likely to be decided in Donald Trump’s favor, Vidal v. Elster.
Read MoreDid you know that according to the Pew Research Center in 2022, there are only about twenty-four moderate Democrats or Republicans serving in Congress? Fifty years ago, that number was over six times higher. Despite this decrease in the number of moderate officials, a Gallup poll found that the percentage of moderate voters is relatively high at thirty-seven percent. These polls indicate a significant disparity between the number of moderate government officials currently serving in Congress and the proportion of voters they represent.
Read MoreWhen’s the last time you read a book?
If your answer is “Not recently,” then you aren’t alone.
There’s a variety of data suggesting that national literacy is on the decline. As of late 2023, ACT test scores, which factor in reading comprehension skills, fell to their lowest in thirty years. In fact, based on the ACT’s reading score system, aimed at anticipating first-year college success, the average student is not on track to succeed in their higher academic pursuits.
Read MorePro-Palestinian students, protesters, and organizations have faced an enormous wave of censorship since October 7th. Pro-Palestinian groups have been barred from college campuses, pro-Palestinian students have been blacklisted and had job offers rescinded, and university presidents have lost their jobs for defending pro-Palestinian students’ First Amendment rights. In a radical shift away from their purported belief in freedom of speech — and their fight to expose all Americans, particularly college students, to views that may be deemed controversial, offensive, or outright harmful — many on the American political Right have embarked on an aggressive campaign to silence pro-Palestinian speech.
Read MoreThe long legal debate over affirmative action has finally come to a close. In June 2023, the Supreme Court banned the use of race-conscious admissions programs within universities. While the debate over the legality of affirmative action has come to an end, a Pandora’s box of political uncertainties has been opened for the college-hopeful class of 2028. Without much guidance from the Supreme Court’s decision, the closing of the legal battle now marks the beginning of a political battle over how to implement and navigate a new college admissions policy.
Read MoreWhen watching the news, many Americans look on their screen at the elected official representing them and see the same type of politician: someone who is of a much older generation. Even as the country has become increasingly diverse and seen significant changes in ideology and values, Baby Boomer leaders have stood the test of time. Our country has failed to usher new generations into office to lead the way into this new era, especially in the higher positions where long-time incumbents have dominated the polls.
Read MoreAs I worked as a camp counselor this summer, I was ready for all of the surprises– from pulling ticks out from between my kid's toes to telling them to stop starting fires, my days were filled with spontaneity and almost nothing phased me. What truly caught me off-guard, however, were the girls in my camp, as they were the funniest group of kids I’ve ever met.
Read MoreVirtually every child in America goes to school. Approximately 9% of these children attend a private school. These are schools that are not bound by state regulations and are privately funded, usually by charging tuition. They are generally considered better than their public counterparts: a Gallup poll found that in 2017, 71% of its respondents felt that independent private schools and 63% felt that parochial schools (basically religious private schools) do an excellent or good job educating children, compared with 44% for public schools.
Read MoreBeginning on April 13, 2022, exploited migrants have been sent on buses to sanctuary cities throughout the country. Migrant busing refers to when political officials transport migrants seeking refuge in the United States by bus to different parts of the country. The busing program that Texas Governor Greg Abbott created has inspired many Republican governors to do the same to their migrant populations, effectively creating a displacement crisis across the United States.
Read MoreIn late summer of 1977, the United States launched the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, each of which carried a copy of a 12-inch gold-plated record that contained a time capsule from the planet Earth—sounds, images, and a message from then-President Jimmy Carter. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first manmade object to reach interstellar space. The record it carries is the first message that humanity sent off into the universe in search of extraterrestrial life. Scientists estimate that the Golden Records may survive for over five billion years—likely far longer than the human species itself. That means that when humanity is long extinct, all that remains of our legacy may be the words of an oft-overlooked one-term president.
Read More“If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”
DeSantis is just one among several conservative voices who assert that Big Tech is controlling the media to unfairly suppress conservative viewpoints, pushing the national narrative towards a hidden, progressive agenda. This wave of fear has prompted two prominent conservative states to draft laws aimed at regulating Big Tech’s power to moderate content. However, these laws have sparked a wave of legal challenges from angry tech companies, prompting important questions about our country’s freedoms of speech, press, and expression.
Read MoreOn Jan. 23 2023, Jaahnavi Kandula, a graduate student at Northeastern University in Seattle, was struck and killed by a police officer going 74 mph in a 25 mph zone. Jaahnavi’s family mourned for months, aggrieved by the loss of her happy presence and the fact that she was so close to achieving her dreams, only months away from graduation. Then, shocking new footage emerged. In the video, taken the day after the accident, Officer Daniel Auderer, the vice president of the police union, is seen driving around while chatting on the phone with Mike Solan, the union’s president. They’re talking about the case, and Auderer is nauseatingly flippant about the situation.
Read MoreAmerican law has long recognized the role of negligence in criminal proceedings. Determining guilt in the case of malicious action is straightforward enough—if a person acted with intent to do harm, they ought to be held responsible. But the justice system accepts that cases of inaction can be just as fatal. A person does not need to hold the knife to be held liable; the simple failure to act when there is known risk that apathy will lead to harm—take, for example, failure to feed a child—is enough to establish guilt. In the eyes of the law, death that can be easily prevented—yet is not—is just as immoral.
Read MoreAfter waking up this morning, you probably went on your phone and began to scroll through your feed, coming across a TikTok of Kanye singing “Hey There Delilah”, a drawing of Spiderman in the style of Warhol, and then read a fascinating article from the Onion to make sure you start your day informed. Maybe the algorithm was feeling nostalgic, so it decided to serve you some Key of Awesome clips. The specifics might be different for you, but one thing is clear, parody is everywhere, and more often than not, it is based on another’s creative works.
Read MoreIn the lead-up to last year’s elections, many political strategists and pundits predicted Republican wins across the country, based on the trend in U.S. politics wherein the president’s party performs poorly in midterm elections. The GOP sought to fragment the existing trifecta consisting of a Democratic House, Senate, and White House in an effort to stall President Biden’s legislative agenda—and to an extent, they were successful. Republicans gained control of the House after four years of Democratic control.
Read MoreWhen overenthusiastic patriots get into online scraps and start comparing countries like PTA moms comparing kids, the mark they often point to at the top of America’s report card is free expression. Since its founding, the United States has maintained a vigorous discourse around the topic of free expression, with many decades of oft-controversial First Amendment jurisprudence under its belt. A 2015 Pew Research study found that Americans are the most supportive in the world of free expression (in theory); however, the United States receives a perennially middling score in each year’s World Press Freedom Index—this year, it ranked 45th.
Read MoreFrom the mechanical pencils we write with to the energy we use to power our homes, every facet of human civilization impacts our natural world significantly. Since the 20th century, humans have consumed more resources per year than civilizations have for centuries. Environmentally, humans are cutting down entire forests, polluting oceans with plastics, and drilling oil out of the ground. The consequences include rising sea levels, abrupt changes in weather patterns, more intense ‘natural’ disasters, and mass extinction of thousands of animal species.
Read MoreThere has been another massive leak of classified government documents, and this time it's from a junior officer in the Massachusetts Air National Guard. At 21 years old, Jack Douglas Teixeira has single-handedly become the center of a vast Pentagon data leak that has cost the United States significant damage to its national security and international reputation. Teixeira was a cyber transport systems specialist and was given Top Secret clearance as well as sensitive compartmentalized access, otherwise known as SCI, to highly classified documents. Some of these documents were released on the social messaging platform Discord, where they would eventually spread around the world.
Read MoreThe introduction of anti-trans bills are on the rise in state legislatures across America right now. This year alone, there have been 528 anti-trans bills proposed in nearly all 50 states, which is a devastating record for the United States that is only increasing as the year goes on. This extreme increase in anti-trans legislation at the state level is a result of the damage the Trump administration was able to cause in its four years of holding power.
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