Brief #23—Corruption Blog
By Sean Gray
Donald Trump is a documented philanderer. Both of his first two marriages ended in divorce, as a result of infidelities on his part. Payments were made to pornographic actress, Stormy Daniels were made during his 2016 campaign, in exchange for her silence on the affair.
Brief #17—Corruption Blog
By Sean Gray
The Corruption Blog is a series of blog posts by Sean Gray that digs into the details of the all-encompassing corruption of the Trump administration.
Brief #16—Corruption Blog Post
By Sean Gray
Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen introduced a resolution on the House floor this week, calling for the impeachment of Attorney General William Barr.
Brief #103—Civil Rights
By Rod Maggay
On November 25, 2025, the National Association of Attorneys General, led by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, sent a letter on behalf of a bipartisan coalition of 36 state attorneys general to Congress. The letter urged Congress leaders to reject the proposed ban on state-level artificial intelligence (AI) laws. The attorneys general argue that a broad federal law would prevent individual states from addressing and responding to AI risks quickly.
Two new reports document the alarming rise of online violence against women and girls. Sex trafficking, sexualized images, and stalking and exploitation online are nothing new. But Artificial Intelligence has exacerbated the problem. Deepfakes almost exclusively target women; in fact, some of the technology used to create them, developed by mostly male teams, only works on female forms.
Commodity metals are raw metals that are globally standardized and traded in bulk. They are typically categorized as industrial (base) metals (copper, aluminum, zinc), or precious metals (gold, silver, platinum). Precious metals are valued for investment and jewelry, while base metals are essential for industrial use and manufacturing. This Brief seeks to explain the ways in which fluctuations in demand influence the pricing and availability of commodity metals. In addition to commodity metals, rare earth minerals play an important role in various technologies but are not globally standardized. We will discuss these in an upcoming brief.
Most economic and energy analysts define coal as having an impending obsolescence, regardless of government intervention. Forcing more years out of coal plants that are aging past their end of life will end up passing unnecessary costs onto consumers. A study by independent consulting firm Grid Strategies has found that the real cost of mining defunct coal facilities will end up costing end consumers up to $6 billion a year USD.
Complaints about META’s failure to protect children from the ills of social media continue to plague the company. Most recently, unauthorized images of children were used in ads for Meta’s Threads app, and a significant study of the company’s improvements in response to previous concerns criticized its efforts as largely ineffective.
On 19 July 2025, the Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi was arrested under suspicion of “facilitation of terrorist activities during the June 25, 2025, protests.” He was released on 21 July on a KSh 1m personal bond ($7,723). He was charged not for terrorism, but for possession of two tear gas canisters and a single blank 7.62 bullet. This is not the first time Mwangi was arrested by Kenyan authorities, nor the first time a Kenyan journalist or human rights activist was arrested by federal authorities for similar reasons.