The Congressional Stalemate Over Guns and Immigration Isn’t Going Away

The dim odds that Congress will respond to the Parkland school massacre with meaningful gun control and the flickering prospects it will pass immigration reform both reflect the same obstacle: the widening trench between the forces of transformation and restoration in American politics. The convergence of the two policy debates […] Read more »

No Missing Link: Knowledge Predicts Acceptance of Evolution in the United States

Americans have a fraught relationship with evolutionary theory. Despite widespread acceptance of this theory in the scientific community (Funk and Rainie 2015), public-opinion surveys have demonstrated that 38% of Americans identify as creationists (Swift 2017) and 52% disagree that human beings developed from earlier species of animals (National Science Board […] Read more »

Avoiding the Echo Chamber about Echo Chambers: Why selective exposure to like-minded political news is less prevalent than you think

With critics decrying the “echo chambers,” “filter bubbles,” and “information cocoons” created by the rise of online news and social media, you’d think that the entire American public was consuming a near-exclusive diet of politically pleasing news. … However, these claims are vastly overstated. A deep dive into the academic […] Read more »