Author: Reporter

Citizen activists supporting a public vote on important issues could have to brush up on their reading, writing, and arithmetic if they want to get their initiatives on next year’s ballot in some states. A new Arkansas law will bar initiative ballot titles written above an eighth-grade reading level. And canvassers will have to verify that petition signers have either read the ballot title or had it read aloud to them. In South Dakota, sponsors will need to make sure their petition titles appears in 14-point type on the front page and 16-point font on the back, where people...

Ryan Kelley thought he had a good shot at becoming Michigan’s governor in 2022. That is, until he was charged with misdemeanors for participating in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. His campaign sputtered and he finished fourth out of five candidates in the Republican primary. Three years later, Kelley says, people ask him all the time to run for governor again. In today’s America, where Donald Trump returned to the White House and within hours pardoned some 1,500 January 6 rioters, Kelley’s two-month prison sentence for his actions that winter day in 2021 is not the...

Elon Musk may find out what happens when DOGE bites man. The billionaire SpaceX, Tesla, and X owner who catapulted his zealous embrace of President Donald Trump into a powerful position slashing government spending now risks sweeping cuts to his own bottom line after resuming the feud that led to their very public bitter split in June. Musk’s renewed heckling of Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill, which passed the Senate on July 1, threatens to put billions of dollars of his government contracts in jeopardy if Trump retaliates. The rupture of their tenuous peace has resulted...

Only 36% of Democrats say they are “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, according to a new Gallup poll, reflecting a dramatic decline in national pride that is also clear among young people. The findings are a stark illustration of how many, but not all, Americans have felt less of a sense of pride in their country over the past decade. The split between Democrats and Republicans, at 56 percentage points, is at its widest since 2001. That includes all four years of Republican President Donald Trump’s first term. Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults who are...