Research on government, elections, law, public and foreign policy. Coverage follows how power is used, contested, and limited.
Drones now account for most casualties on both sides, hold ground with fewer than 100 soldiers per mile, and run on Chinese components. A new policy memo argues the West is reading the lesson too slowly.
A new White House science report assembles the metascience case that American research funding has seized up: average age at first NIH grant rose from 36 to 42, drug approvals per billion dollars have fallen eightyfold since 1950, and reviewers scoring the same proposal routinely disagree. It’s a policy document, and it quotes no independent scientists.
UMass Amherst researchers trained a legal language model on 34,112 passages from six decades of dissents and found concession rates are entirely unrelated to how harsh a justice sounds.
Republican sponsorship predicted antivaccine bills regardless of statehouse control, and vaccine legislation tripled after 2019 as antivaccine measures kept reaching governors’ desks.
An Echelon/Rockefeller survey of 2,000 voters found eight in ten prefer fixing foreign aid to killing it — including the survey’s most skeptical Trump-aligned voters. What most opposition rested on, the data suggest, was a wild overestimate of the cost: people guess 20 percent; it’s one.
A Nature Human Behaviour study of 31 million American workers finds party sorting at work now rivals sorting by gender. Whether it’s workers choosing, employers screening, or minorities leaving, the data can’t say — all four look the same.
Most US police de-escalation training has never been rigorously tested on actual use of force. Of dozens of programs adopted nationwide, only two show solid evidence of reducing force.
A Hudson Institute report says America should treat rival kleptocracies as strategic targets, exposing corruption to weaken regimes from China to Venezuela.
Platforms remove fake nudes faster under copyright rules than abuse reports. A CHI 2026 study says reporting systems can deepen victims’ trauma.
A systematic review of 23 net-zero energy and transport studies finds that scientists’ policy recommendations consistently fall short. Every study rated poorly on evidence-communication standards. Many drifted into advocacy, used emotive language, and hid uncertainties. Researchers urge the same rigor for policy advice as for the science behind it.
A survey of 29,169 children across 19 European countries finds most are already on social media well before mid-teens. Only half feel safe online. Children are deeply ambivalent about age bans. Many fear losing friends, freedom and learning opportunities. Researchers argue safety-by-design, not blanket bans, best protects children’s rights.
A four-year RAND street census across Hollywood, Venice, and Skid Row finds unsheltered homelessness has stopped falling. Tent encampments have shrunk, but rough sleeping now dominates and carries higher clinical need. New evidence links tent confiscation to rising rough sleeping, suggesting LA’s encampment-focused strategy has hit its limits.