English references

This paper analyses General Social Survey (United States) data and provides evidence that the advent of Facebook and other social media platforms has widened the gap in scepticism towards science between low-educated Americans and their more highly educated counterparts. The same trend holds true when considering distrust in medicine, the press and television. Overall, the results suggest that education may serve as a protective factor against the influence of fake news, disinformation and misinformation. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis shows that the increase in distrust is particularly pronounced among young people. Further analyses reveal that political affiliation plays a role in shaping attitudes towards science and that the likelihood of voting for the Republican Party has increased among low-educated individuals. A comprehensive set of robustness and placebo tests supports the reliability of these findings.

Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. But now it’s time to call it what it is

Some experts tee up public comment on EPA report calling fossil fuel concerns overblown, as others fast-track review

Exclusive: Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new contentA major US government website supporting public education on climate science looks likely to be shuttered after almost all of its staff were fired, the Guardian has learned.

Fifteen years ago, smack in the middle of Barack Obama's first term, amid the rapid rise of social media and a slow recovery from the Great Recession, a professor at the University of Connecticut issued a stark warning: the United States was heading into a decade of growing political instability.

Legal residents of the United States sent to foreign prisons without due process. Students detained after voicing their opinions. Federal judges threatened with impeachment for ruling against the administration’s priorities. In the Opinion video above, Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley, all professors at Yale and experts in authoritarianism, explain why America is especially vulnerable to a democratic backsliding — and why they are leaving the United States to take up positions at the University of Toronto.

In thinking about the war being waged against life on Earth by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their minions, I keep bumping into a horrible suspicion. Could it be that this is not just about delivering the world to oligarchs and corporations – not just about wringing as much profit from living systems as they can? Could it be that they want to see the destruction of the habitable planet?

Growing food is a precarious business, and losing access to key information makes it worse.

intimidation from President Donald Trump’s administration and urged Americans to prepare to “possibly sacrifice” in support of democratic values. In a speech Thursday night at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, Obama also accused Trump’s government of working to destroy the international order created after World War II.

The U.S. military is canceling more than 90 studies, including some that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed as climate change "crap." Military and intelligence officials have over the past decade identified potential security threats from climate change that include natural disasters in densely populated coastal areas and damage to American military bases worldwide.

We must learn from the past. We cannot remain silent in the face of authoritarian attacks on our peers, even if they have not yet come for us.

Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways.

J.D. Vance's keynote address at the second National Conservatism Conference, 11/02/21.

US government stripping funds from domestic and overseas research amid warnings for health and public safety

Are you a federal scientist who took the recent buyout or have been fired? Contact us. Other story tips welcome.

The problem of waste that really needs fixing is not the public employees but the private contractors—and Elon Musk is one of them.

That’s now how separation of powers works under the U.S. Constitution.

DOGE is gutting federal agencies to install AI across the government. Democracy is on the line, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Eryk Salvaggio.

The USDA has begun removing references to climate change on its webpages and sites, including the U.S. Forest Service website.

Members reportedly sought access to IT systems at agency that Project 2025 has called ‘harmful to US prosperity’