- Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, Boise State University
There is a strange nostalgia in realizing that something once so immediate now belongs increasingly to people who know it only as the past.
In President Donald Trump’s public language, Congress rarely appears as a coequal branch of government. It appears as an obstacle, an audience, a pressure point, a rubber stamp or an afterthought.
La violence des propos de Donald Trump face à l’Iran est sans précédent. Ils répondent à un objectif politique précis. Analyse.
For years, Donald Trump’s rhetoric has relied on insult, ridicule, threat and contempt. But the scale of violence in his words during the first week of April 2026 was new – and had a purpose.
It’s difficult to measure what is lost when an opinion is never voiced and impossible to catalogue the arguments that never form because a speaker calculates the risk and decides silence is safer.
Cuando los funcionarios mienten una y otra vez, la gente no sabe en qué confiar. Y cuando esto ocurre, los ciudadanos no pueden deliberar, aprobar o disentir de manera coherente, porque ya no existe un mundo compartido.
When officials lie time and again, people don’t know what to trust. And when this happens, citizens cannot deliberate, approve or dissent coherently, because a shared world no longer exists.
Renee Good’s death was the consequence, writes a First Amendment scholar, of a kind of politics in which the state survives by making dissenters illegitimate as citizens.
Alors que le ministère de la Justice états-unien commence à divulguer les dossiers Epstein, ses nombreuses victimes méritent davantage d’attention que les hommes puissants figurant sur sa « liste des clients »
Powerful men connected to Jeffrey Epstein are named, dissected and speculated about. The survivors, unless they work hard to step forward, remain a blurred mass in the background.
Powerful men connected to Jeffrey Epstein are named, dissected and speculated about. The survivors, unless they work hard to step forward, remain a blurred mass in the background.
When websites and email systems become partisan platforms, the line blurs between state and party, diluting public trust in the idea of impartial governance.
The First Amendment is not just about the right to speak without fear of jail. It’s also about ensuring that government cannot punish speech indirectly by threatening livelihoods and institutions.
Charlie Kirk and his organization connected students and the GOP in new and effective ways. But the slain conservative spread misinformation and thrived on outrage and intimidation.
A landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling protects the press in lawsuits by public officials angry about how they’ve been covered. It’s being targeted by President Donald Trump.
Studies link public broadcasting to higher voter turnout, better factual knowledge and lower susceptibility to extremist rhetoric. Those contributions to democracy may be diminished by Congress’ cuts.
Two experts in political rhetoric explain how one candidate has used rhetorical devices like framing and ‘argumentum in terrorem’ to stoke fear and attract voters since the Orlando nightclub shooting.
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