Society & Politics Archives

Opinion: American TikTok deal doesn’t address the platform’s potential for manipulation, only who profits

On Sept. 25, the Donald Trump administration in the United States again extended the TikTok ban-or-divest law, possibly for the last time. The latest extension to the law, which was passed in 2024 by the […]

Political views, not sex and violence, now drive literary censorship

Phys.org

Liberals and conservatives both oppose censorship of children’s literature—unless the writing offends their own ideology, new Cornell research finds.This post was originally published on this site

Trading on trust: How US senators may be turning lawmaking into profit

Phys.org

A landmark study of thousands of stock trades reveals consistent patterns of profit linked to lawmaking timelines—and proposes a new way forward.This post was originally published on this site

Deferred prosecution agreements in corporate crime cases show trade-offs, says research

Phys.org

Price-fixing, bribery, and fraud are leading forms of corporate crime. Since the early 2000s, deferred or non-prosecution agreements (D/NPAs) have increasingly been used in the U.S. and elsewhere to deal with some of these cases, […]

Tariffs may bring a US$50 billion monthly boost to the US government. But ordinary Americans won’t feel the benefit

Phys.org

Donald Trump’s recent state visit to the UK ended without the removal of steel tariffs, which the host nation had been hoping for. For months, the US president’s array of “liberation day” tariffs have sparked […]

Conventional anti-corruption tools often fail to address root causes—loss of US leadership could still spell trouble

Phys.org

For nearly half a century, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has made it illegal for U.S. citizens and companies to bribe foreign officials. Since 1998, that has been the case for foreign companies listed on […]

As global economy doubles, poverty persists and planetary damage deepens

Phys.org

A new study published in Nature shows that as the global economy more than doubled between 2000 and 2022, it still left billions of people without life’s essentials, while rapidly pushing Earth’s life-supporting systems further […]

Trump primary source of US disinformation in POC media, finds study

Phys.org

The call is coming from within the house: Trump was the main source and distributor of disinformation in ethnic and Indigenous press in the US, according to a new study published today by the International […]

Q&A: What happens during a government shutdown?

Phys.org

The U.S. government faces a shutdown on Oct. 1 unless Congress passes a spending bill to keep the government funded.This post was originally published on this site

Arab American students and parents see US schools very differently. Political tensions are widening the gap

Phys.org

Sixty-four percent of Arab American students say their parents don’t fully understand the U.S. school system.This post was originally published on this site

From job ads to press releases: AI-written content rises sharply across multiple sectors

Since 2022, American companies, consumers, and even the United Nations have used large language models—artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT that are trained to create text that reads like human-generated writing. In a study [...]
Childhood wealth and social status can help people get leadership roles in adulthood

Consider two teenagers searching for summer work. One is offered an opportunity to assist a project manager at their uncle’s construction company. The other submits a dozen retail applications, hoping for a call back. Who [...]
Rural Nebraskans have different priorities regarding trade policy

Rural Nebraskans continue to value protecting American jobs, creating choices for consumers and fostering political relationships with other countries as important components of U.S. trade policy, according to the 2025 Nebraska Rural Poll. Amid ongoing [...]