By Camryn Fujita (SC’21) Former President Donald Trump and his allies have faced intense legal fallout since the certification of the 2020 election results and the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol. Last week, attorneys for Fox News petitioned a New York state court to drop the defamation suit brought against the network by voting technology company, Smartmatic. Smartmatic, the...
By Christopher Tan (PZ ‘21) Consider a brief thought experiment. An influential investor owns a number of cheap shares. They begin spreading lies about why they think these shares will rise and use their influence to sell the shares at an inflated price to others. Before they are caught and the stock’s prices fall, the investor would have profited a considerable amount of money. This is illegal...
By Sasha Rothstein (HMC ’23) Over the past two-and-a-half months, America’s 100 million active TikTok users have been launched into the deep end of fraught US-China relations. Citing national security concerns over the Chinese-owned app, the Trump administration issued multiple executive orders to ban TikTok in the absence of an acquisition by an American company. While temporarily...
Andy Liu, Mudd ‘23 Despite opposition from organized labor groups, the most expensive ballot measure in California history won by a comfortable margin last Tuesday, with voters approving Prop 22 by a 58-42 margin. Prop 22 classified rideshare and delivery drivers as contractors rather than employees. This exempted corporations such as Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, who spent over two hundred million...
By: Liz Johnson (PO ’24)One of the most heavily militarized zones in the world is the Taiwan Strait, a 110-mile wide strait that separates China and Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its own. In 1954, both Taiwan and China tacitly agreed to recognize and not cross this median line, since then it has served as an unofficial border between the two. Before 2020, this median...
Jon Burkart (PO ’24) If the past 6 months have proved anything, it’s that nothing is wholly immune to COVID-19. Institutions of higher education (IHE) are certainly no exception. On October 15th, National Student Clearinghouse reported that average undergraduate enrollment for the fall 2020 semester is down 4%, and overall enrollment is down 3% compared to last year. This trend has hit four...
By Rohan Ahammed (PO ’24) Australia made headlines at the beginning of 2020 after bushfires devastated large swathes of the country. With climate change shown to increase the risk of bushfires by at least 30%, it is no surprise that Australia often experiences the most extreme effects of global warming along its lush eastern coast. This has placed Canberra’s climate policy under...
Kenyamarie Mahone (PO ’23) After months of campaigning and punditry, Tuesday’s election brought a record breaking turn-out of nearly 160 million Americans. While much of the focus of this election season has been on the presidential race between incumbent Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, several citizen led ballot-initiatives made history this week. From education policy to...
Scotland Carter (SC ’24) The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was enacted in 1938 in response to the growing number of workplace abuses during the Great Depression. Before 1938, the federal government had not regulated workplace conditions for employees in either the public or private sectors: there was no minimum wage, overtime pay, or working protections for minors. That said, the...
Kenyamarie Mahone (PO ’23) The final Presidential debate on Thursday at Nashville’s Belmont University brought unexpected levels of professionalism from both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. After the chaos that unfolded during the first debate, it was unclear whether this one would offer any substance on either candidates’ platforms or policy goals. Fortunately, with the change in debate rules...
