Trust in AI is significantly higher in China than in the United States, according to new data from the Edelman Trust Barometer. Axios: Edelman's latest research found that 72% of people in China trust AI, compared with just 32% in the United States. Not only is trust higher in China, it's higher in much of the developing world than it is in the United States, according to Edelman's research.

Trust in AI was highest in India, at 77%, followed by Nigeria at 76%, Thailand at 73% and then China. Only six of the surveyed countries ranked lower than the U.S. in their trust in the new technology: Canada (30%), Germany (29%), the Netherlands (29%), United Kingdom (28%), Australia (25%) and Ireland (24%). Globally, 52% of men said they trusted AI vs. 46% of women, with younger people significantly more trusting of the technology than older folks. In the U.S., AI was trusted more by Democrats (38%) than Republicans (34%) or independents (23%). Higher-income respondents were also more trusting (51%) than those with middle (45%) or low (36%) incomes.

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: "Every US intelligence agency still unanimously maintains that Covid-19 was not developed as a biological weapon," CNN reported today.

But what about the possibility of an accidental leak (rather than Covid-19 originating in wild animal meat from the Wuhan Market)? "The agency has for years said it did not have enough information to determine which origin theory was more likely."

CNN notes there's suddenly been a new announcement "just days" after the CIA's new director took the reins — former lawyer turned Republican House Representative John Ratcliffe. While the market-origin theory remains a possibility according to the CIA, CNN notes that Ratcliffe himself "has long favored the theory that the pandemic originated from research being done in China and vowed in an interview published in Breitbart on Thursday that he would make the issue a Day 1 priority."

"We have low confidence in this judgement," the CIA says in the complete text of its announcement, "and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA's assessment."
After speaking to a U.S. official, CNN added these details about the assessment: It was not made based on new intelligence gathered by the US government — officials have long said such intelligence is unlikely to surface so many years later — and instead was reached after a review of existing information.

"CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible," a CIA spokesperson said in a statement Saturday.
CNN adds that "Many scientists believe the virus occurred naturally in animals and spread to humans in an outbreak at a market in Wuhan, China...."

Politico: Joe Biden spent the first half of his presidency enacting plans to steer at least $1.6 trillion to transform the economy and spur a clean-energy revolution -- only to watch those programs become afterthoughts in the 2024 election. Now the core of his domestic legacy stands unfinished, with hundreds of billions of dollars left to deploy, and imperiled as Donald Trump prepares to take office.

A wide-ranging examination of the Biden administration's spending and tax policies reveals signs that his efforts could leave a lasting mark, but also ways in which his agenda has yet to take hold -- after unleashing money for batteries, solar cells, computer chips and clean water; luring foreign-owned factories to U.S. soil; and turning some red-state Republicans into supporters of green energy projects.

Throughout 2024, POLITICO's "Biden's Billions" series has documented the halting pace, uneven progress and genuine economic impact of a spending blueprint rivaling Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. With just weeks left in Biden's term, it's not at all certain his legacy will endure in the same way. Much of it remains a work in progress.

Solar installations have surged to record levels, but the country is not adding enough zero-carbon electricity to meet Biden's climate targets. A $42 billion expansion of broadband internet service has yet to connect a single household. Bureaucratic haggling, equipment shortages and logistical challenges mean a $7.5 billion effort to install electric vehicle chargers from coast to coast has so far yielded just 47 stations in 15 states.

Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin reports: Lobby groups for Internet service providers claim that ISPs' customer service is so good already that the government shouldn't consider any new regulations to mandate improvements. They also claim ISPs face so much competition that market forces require providers to treat their customers well or lose them to competitors. Cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association told the Federal Communications Commission in a filing (PDF) that "providing high-quality products and services and a positive customer experience is a competitive necessity in today's robust communications marketplace. To attract and retain customers, NCTA's cable operator members continuously strive to ensure that the customer support they provide is effective and user-friendly. Given these strong marketplace imperatives, new regulations that would micromanage providers' customer service operations are unnecessary."

Lobby groups filed comments in response to an FCC review of customer service that was announced last month, before the presidential election. While the FCC's current Democratic leadership is interested in regulating customer service practices, the Republicans who will soon take over opposed the inquiry. USTelecom, which represents telcos such as AT&T and Verizon, said that "the competitive broadband marketplace leaves providers of broadband and other communications services no choice but to provide their customers with not only high-quality broadband, but also high-quality customer service."

"If a provider fails to efficiently resolve an issue, they risk losing not only that customer -- and not just for the one service, but potentially for all of the bundled services offered to that customer -- but also any prospective customers that come across a negative review online. Because of this, broadband providers know that their success is dependent upon providing and maintaining excellent customer service," USTelecom wrote. While the FCC Notice of Inquiry said that providers should "offer live customer service representative support by phone within a reasonable timeframe," USTelecom's filing touted the customer service abilities of AI chatbots. "AI chat agents will only get better at addressing customers' needs more quickly over time -- and if providers fail to provide the customer service and engagement options that their customers expect and fail to resolve their customers' concerns, they may soon find that the consumer is no longer a customer, having switched to another competitive offering," the lobby group said.

Meta wants to force Apple and Google to verify the ages of people downloading apps from their app stores, reports the Washington Post — and now Meta's campaign "is picking up momentum" with legislators in the U.S. Congress.

Federal and state lawmakers have recently proposed a raft of measures requiring that platforms such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram block users under a certain age from using their sites. The push has triggered fierce debate over the best way to ascertain how old users are online. Last year Meta threw its support behind legislation that would push those obligations onto app stores rather than individual app providers, like itself, as your regular host and Naomi Nix reported. While some states have considered the plan, it has not gained much traction in Washington.

That could be shifting. Two congressional Republicans are preparing a new age verification bill that places the burden on app stores, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans... The bill would be the first of its kind on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have called for expanding guardrails for children amid concerns about the risks of social media but where political divisions have bogged down talks. The measure would give parents the right to sue an app store if their child was exposed to certain content, such as lewd or sexual material, according to a copy obtained by the Tech Brief. App stores could be protected against legal claims, however, if they took steps to protect children against harms, such as verifying their ages and giving parents the ability to block app downloads.
The article points out that U.S. lawmakers "have the power to set national standards that could override state efforts if they so choose..."

Public trust in scientists is showing signs of recovery, according to a new Pew Research Center survey, though levels remain below pre-pandemic highs. The October 2024 study, which surveyed 9,593 U.S. adults, reveals that 76% of Americans have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence in scientists' commitment to public interests -- a modest increase from 73% in 2023, but still short of the 87% recorded in early 2020.

The survey -- whose results were released Thursday [PDF] -- also highlights persistent partisan differences, with 88% of Democrats expressing trust in scientists compared to 66% of Republicans. However, Republican trust increased by 5% points since 2023, marking the first uptick since the pandemic's onset. On scientists' policy engagement, Americans remain divided: 51% support scientists' active participation in policy debates concerning scientific matters, while 48% prefer they maintain focus on research and empirical findings.

Longtime Slashdot reader thephydes writes: The hearing will go ahead on November 13 at 11:30 ET (16:30 GMT). Apparently, it will "further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the U.S. government, and undisclosed findings they have yielded," according to a House statement. It's driven by two republicans, Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who say: "Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings, and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose. We can only ensure that understanding by providing consistent, systemic transparency. We look forward to hearing from expert witnesses on ways to shed more light and bring greater accountability to this issue." "Expert witnesses in the hearing will include Luis Elizondo, a decorated former counterintelligence officer who has claimed for years that the U.S. government is hiding knowledge of UAP, including materials recovered from crashed flying saucers," reports Space.com. "The House hearing will also include Tim Gallaudet, a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral who observed unidentified submersible objects, arguing that 'these underwater anomalies jeopardize US maritime security.'"

"Other speakers at the hearing include journalist Michael Shellenberger, who has also claimed the U.S. government is hiding UFO crash retrieval programs, and former NASA Associate Administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships Michael Gold, who is a member of NASA's independent UAP study team."

Major media outlets are beginning to declare former President Trump the winner of the 2024 presidential election, having secured 270 electoral votes. "He becomes the first president in more than 120 years to lose the White House, and then to come back and win it again, after President Grover Cleveland in 1892," notes The Hill. As with previous election announcements on Slashdot, this is your chance to talk about it and what it means for the future of our nation.

In a victory speech, Trump said that he was the leader of "the greatest political movement of all time." He said: "We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible," adding that he would take office with an "unprecedented and powerful mandate." President Trump has vowed a radical reshaping of American government, tasking SpaceX and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk "with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms."

UPDATE 12:30 PM PST: Vice President Kamala Harris has officially conceded the 2024 presidential election, calling former President Trump to offer her congratulations. She's expected to make a concession speech at Howard University at 4:00 PM EST. You can stream the speech here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's been just a week since US telecom regulators announced a formal inquiry into broadband data caps, and the docket is filling up with comments from users who say they shouldn't have to pay overage charges for using their Internet service. The docket has about 190 comments so far, nearly all from individual broadband customers.

Federal Communications Commission dockets are usually populated with filings from telecom companies, advocacy groups, and other organizations, but some attract comments from individual users of telecom services. The data cap docket probably won't break any records given that the FCC has fielded many millions of comments on net neutrality, but it currently tops the agency's list of most active proceedings based on the number of filings in the past 30 days. "Data caps, especially by providers in markets with no competition, are nothing more than an arbitrary money grab by greedy corporations. They limit and stifle innovation, cause undue stress, and are unnecessary," wrote Lucas Landreth.

"Data caps are as outmoded as long distance telephone fees," wrote Joseph Wilkicki. "At every turn, telecommunications companies seek to extract more revenue from customers for a service that has rapidly become essential to modern life." Pointing to taxpayer subsidies provided to ISPs, Wilkicki wrote that large telecoms "have sought every opportunity to take those funds and not provide the expected broadband rollout that we paid for."

In response to Trump-appointed FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington's coffee refill analogy, internet users "Jonathan Mnemonic" and James Carter wrote, "Coffee is not, in fact, internet service." They added: "Cafes are not able to abuse monopolistic practices based on infrastructural strangleholds. To briefly set aside the niceties: the analogy is absurd, and it is borderline offensive to the discerning layperson."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Donald Trump said Apple CEO Tim Cook called him to discuss the billions of dollars that Apple has been fined in the European Union. Trump made the statement during his appearance on the PBD Podcast -- and said that he won't let the EU "take advantage" of US companies like Apple if reelected. "Two hours ago, three hours ago, he [Cook] called me," Trump said. "He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion... Then on top of that, they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion." In March, the EU fined Apple around $2 billion after finding that Apple used its dominance to restrict music streaming apps from telling customers about cheaper subscription deals outside the App Store. The EU later won its fight to make Apple pay $14.4 billion in unpaid taxes.

"He [Cook] said something that was interesting," Trump said. "He said they're using that to run their enterprise, meaning Europe is their enterprise. "I said, 'That's a lot... But Tim, I got to get elected first, but I'm not going to let them take advantage of our companies -- that won't, you know, be happening.'" Trump has talked to several Big Tech executives over the past several months. "During an interview this week, Trump said he spoke with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to complain about all the 'bad stories' the search engine shows about him," notes The Verge. "Elon Musk recently spoke at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Trump over the summer 'a few times,' according to the former president."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Eric and Donald Trump Jr., the sons of former president Donald Trump, have pledged to "make finance great again" with a new family-run crypto endeavor called World Liberty Financial. Introduced in a meandering livestream on X Monday, the Trump family and their associates described World Liberty Financial as a crypto platform that would let users conduct transactions without a bank sitting in the middle and extracting fees -- a concept known as decentralized finance, or DeFi. While short on details, Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump both stressed repeatedly that World Liberty Financial's primary goal was to make DeFi more broadly accessible. "It's truly our job to make it understandable," said Eric Trump during the livestream. "We have to make it intuitive, we have to make it user-friendly, and we will." Former President Donald Trump joined the call as well, stressing his pro-crypto stance. "I do believe in it," said Trump of cryptocurrency generally. "It has a chance to really be something special."

The Trumps aren't alone in leading World Liberty Financial. They're joined by crypto veterans Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, as well as Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor and friend of Donald Trump's. In addition to the platform itself, World Liberty Financial will come with a governance token, WLFI, which will provide owners the right to vote "on matters of the platform." Approximately 63 percent of the tokens will be sold to the public; 17 percent are set aside for user rewards, and 20 percent will be reserved for World Liberty Financial team compensation. [...] World Liberty Financial will face steep competition in a DeFi market already crowded with similar services, among them Aave, Compound, Venus Protocol, and others. "DeFi is pretty mature, especially on the over-collateralized side," says Zach Hamilton, founder of crypto startup Sarcophagus and venture partner at VC firm Venture51. But the Trumps need not necessarily do anything novel, if they can capitalize on their mammoth public platform to peddle the new venture. "[World Liberty Financial] is launching with the most free marketing that any crypto company could ever get," says Hamilton. "Trump is the king of living rent free in people's minds." "I welcome any effort to bring DeFi into the mainstream," says Brad Harrison, CEO of Venus Protocol. "But like the autopilot in a Tesla, DeFi may give the appearance of something that's simple, but the inner workings are complex. Without a solid grasp of its nuances in the hands of seasoned technologists and financial engineers, a new platform risks being more of a branding exercise than a substantive and safe contribution to the space."

To make America the "crypto capital of the planet," former U.S. President Donald Trump promised crypto-friendly policies, writes Politico, which "could have a new beneficiary: his own family." Trump has vowed to enact an array of pro-crypto policies in a bid to win votes — and campaign cash — from digital asset enthusiasts in recent months. Now, he's weaving the overtures into his pitch for his sons' forthcoming startup... It remains unclear what the Trump sons' crypto venture will look like. They have been teasing their plans to launch it for weeks, in part by positioning it as an alternative to the use of big banks.... ["Be defiant," reads the tagline on their World Liberty Financial home page — with nothing more than its name and the words "Coming soon."]

Trump's sons took over control of their father's business, the Trump Organization, after he became president in 2017, but he retained ownership of the company... It is unclear whether the crypto startup would be launched as part of the Trump Organization or as a separate entity. Either way, ethics experts and watchdogs say the crypto business could create the appearance of a conflict of interest if Trump wins back the White House this fall... From an "optics perspective, it's terrible," said Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush and later ran for Congress as a Democrat. But he said it wouldn't violate any ethics laws.

The family venture is the latest way Trump has embraced the digital asset industry, which is pouring more than $160 million into the 2024 elections as it seeks to help elect allies up and down the ballot. Trump has also marketed his own line of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which are digital images of the former president that fans can purchase for $99... Trump's NFT sales could also raise ethics concerns, said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for communications at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington....

"[P]rior conflicts and illegalities took advantage of preexisting loopholes," said Norman Eisen, an ethics lawyer who served in the Obama White House and later helped build the first impeachment case against Trump. "Here, Trump appears to be promising to create the loopholes while his family is simultaneously designing a business venture to exploit them."
The article notes that Trump promoted his son's crypto venture on X this week with audio from Trump's speech at a crypto conference in July. "He first revealed his pro-crypto leanings — after previously deriding digital currency — at a Mar-a-Lago event in May with supporters who bought his crypto-linked digital trading cards..."

"Trump is also facing new questions about what he would do with his stake in the parent company of the social media service Truth Social," the article adds. (Although this week the stock hit a new low. After losing 50% of its value in six weeks, it's dropped below $20 per share for the first time since it started publicly trading...)

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret for not being more vocal about "government pressure" to censor COVID-19-related content. He also acknowledged that Meta shouldn't have demoted a New York Post story about President Biden's family before the 2020 election. The Hill reports: Zuckerberg said senior Biden administration officials "repeatedly pressured" Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to "censor" content in 2021. "I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken," he wrote to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). "Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction -- and we're ready to push back if something like this happens again," Zuckerberg added.

The Meta CEO also said the company "shouldn't have demoted" a New York Post story about corruption allegations involving President Biden's family ahead of the 2020 election while waiting for fact-checkers to review it. The social media company has since updated its policies and processes, including no longer demoting content in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers, he noted. Zuckerberg also said in Monday's letter that he does not plan to make contributions to local jurisdictions to support election infrastructure this cycle, like he did during the 2020 election.

The contributions, which were "designed to be non-partisan," were accused of being unfairly distributed between left-leaning and right-leaning areas and labeled "Zuckerbucks" by Republicans. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other," Zuckerberg said. "My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another -- or to even appear to be playing a role." House Judiciary Republicans touted the letter as a "big win for free speech," writing on X: "Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. Biden-Harris Admin 'pressured' Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story."

"Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won't spend money this election cycle. That's right, no more Zuck-bucks. Huge win for election integrity," it added.

"Some corporate landlords collude with each other to set artificially high rental prices, often using algorithms and price-fixing software to do it."

That's a U.S. presidential candidate, speaking yesterday in North Carolina to warn that the practice "is anticompetitive, and it drives up costs. I will fight for a law that cracks down on these practices."

Ironically, it's a problem caused by technology that's impacting some of America's major tech-industry cities. Investopedia reports: Harris proposed a slate of policies aimed at curbing the high cost of housing, which many economists have traced to a long-standing shortage. The affordability situation for both renters and first-time buyers took a turn for the worse starting in 2020 when home prices and rents rose sharply. Harris's plan called for the construction of 3 million new houses to close the gap between how many homes exist in the country, and how many are needed, with the aim of evening out supply and demand and putting downward pressure on prices. This would be accomplished by offering tax incentives to builders for constructing starter homes, by funding local construction, and by cutting bureaucratic red tape that slows down construction projects. Harris would also help buyers out directly, through the first-time buyer credit.

For renters, Harris said she would crack down on companies that own many apartments, who she said have "colluded" to raise rents using pricing algorithms. She also called for a law blocking large investors from buying houses to rent out, a practice she said was driving up prices by competing with individual private buyers. Harris's focus on corporate crackdowns extended to the food business, where she called for a "federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries," without going into specifics about what exact behavior the ban would target.
Investopedia reminds readers that the executive branch is just one of three branches of the U.S. government: Should Harris win the 2024 election and become president, her ideas are still not guaranteed to be implemented, since many would require the support of Congress. Lawmakers are currently divided with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Democrats in control of the Senate.

Over the weekend, former President Donald Trump's campaign said that it had been hacked, with internal documents reportedly obtained illegally by foreign sources to interfere with the 2024 election. While the Trump campaign claimed that Iran was responsible, it is unclear who exactly was behind the incident. The FBI said it was aware of the allegations and confirmed Monday that it is "investigating this matter." The Hill reports: U.S. agencies have thus far failed to comment on the claims that Iran was responsible for the hack, even as recent intelligence community reports have noted growing Iranian efforts to influence the U.S. election. "This is something we've raised for some time, raised concerns that Iranian cyber actors have been seeking to influence elections around the world including those happening in the United States," John Kirby, the White House's national security communications adviser, told reporters Monday. "These latest attempts to interfere in U.S. elections is nothing new for the Iranian regime, which from our vantage point has attempted to undermine democracies for many years now."

A report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released last month noted Iranian efforts designed to "fuel distrust in U.S. political institutions and increase social discord." "The IC has observed Tehran working to influence the presidential election, probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid an outcome they perceive would increase tensions with the United States. Tehran relies on vast webs of online personas and propaganda mills to spread disinformation," the report states, including being particularly active on exacerbating tensions over the Israel-Gaza conflict.

CNN reports: Former President Donald Trump's campaign said Saturday in a statement that it had been hacked.

Politico reported earlier Saturday that it had received emails from an anonymous account with documents from inside Trump's campaign operation. "These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to CNN.

Cheung pointed to a recent report published by Microsoft that said Iranian operatives had ramped up their attempts to influence and monitor the US presidential election by creating fake news outlets targeting liberal and conservative voters and by trying to hack an unnamed presidential campaign... Still, it's not clear whether Iran was responsible for the hack. CNN has reached out to the Iranian mission to the United Nations for comment...

Politico reported it had received emails that contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and a [271-page] research dossier the campaign had put together on Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The dossier included what the Trump campaign identified as Vance's potential vulnerabilities...

In 2016, days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee server.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The death of the US government's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is starting to result in disconnection of Internet service for Americans with low incomes. On Friday, Charter Communications reported a net loss of 154,000 Internet subscribers that it said was mostly driven by customers canceling after losing the federal discount. About 100,000 of those subscribers were reportedly getting the discount, which in some cases made Internet service free to the consumer. The $30 monthly broadband discounts provided by the ACP ended in May after Congress failed to allocate more funding. The Biden administration requested (PDF) $6 billion to fund the ACP through December 2024, but Republicans called the program "wasteful."

Republican lawmakers' main complaint was that most of the ACP money went to households that already had broadband before the subsidy was created. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel warned that killing the discounts would reduce Internet access, saying (PDF) an FCC survey found that 77 percent of participating households would change their plan or drop Internet service entirely once the discounts expired. Charter's Q2 2024 earnings report provides some of the first evidence of users dropping Internet service after losing the discount. "Second quarter residential Internet customers decreased by 154,000, largely driven by the end of the FCC's Affordable Connectivity Program subsidies in the second quarter, compared to an increase of 70,000 during the second quarter of 2023," Charter said.

Across all ISPs, there were 23 million US households enrolled in the ACP. Research released in January 2024 found that Charter was serving over 4 million ACP recipients and that up to 300,000 of those Charter customers would be "at risk" of dropping Internet service if the discounts expired. Given that ACP recipients must meet low-income eligibility requirements, losing the discounts could put a strain on their overall finances even if they choose to keep paying for Internet service. [...] Light Reading reported that Charter attributed about 100,000 of the 154,000 customer losses to the ACP shutdown. Charter said it retained most of its ACP subscribers so far, but that low-income households might not be able to continue paying for Internet service without a new subsidy for much longer.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the most striking things about the explosion of renewable power that's happening in the U.S. is that much of it is going on in states governed by politicians who don't believe in the problem wind and solar are meant to address. Acceptance of the evidence for climate change tends to be lowest among Republicans, yet many of the states where renewable power has boomed -- wind in Wyoming and Iowa, solar in Texas -- are governed by Republicans. That's partly because, up until about 2020, there was a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of expanding wind and solar power, with support above 75 percent among both parties. Since then, however, support among Republicans has dropped dramatically, approaching 50 percent, according to polling data released this week. [...] One striking thing about the new polling data, gathered by the Pew Research Center, is how dramatically it skews with age. When given a choice between expanding fossil fuel production or expanding renewable power, Republicans under the age of 30 favored renewables by a 2-to-1 margin. Republicans over 30, in contrast, favored fossil fuels by margins that increased with age, topping out at a three-to-one margin in favor of fossil fuels among those in the 65-and-over age group. The decline in support occurred in those over 50 starting in 2020; support held steady among younger groups until 2024, when the 30-49 age group started moving in favor of fossil fuels.

Democrats, by contrast, break in favor of renewables by 75 points, with little difference across age groups and no indication of significant change over time. They're also twice as likely to think a solar farm will help the local economy than Republicans are. Similar differences were apparent when Pew asked about policies meant to encourage the sale of electric vehicles, with 83 percent of Republicans opposed to having half of cars sold be electric in 2032. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of Democrats favored this policy. There's also a rural/urban divide apparent (consistent with Republicans getting more support from rural voters). Forty percent of urban residents felt that a solar farm would improve the local economy; only 25 percent of rural residents agreed. Rural residents were also more likely to say solar farms made the landscape unattractive and take up too much space. (Suburban participants were consistently in between rural and urban participants.) What's behind these changes? The single biggest factor appears to be negative partisanship combined with the election of Joe Biden. Among Republicans, support for every single form of power started to change in 2020 -- fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear. Among Democrats, that's largely untrue. Their high level of support for renewable power and aversion to fossil fuels remained largely unchanged. The lone exception is nuclear power, where support rose among both Democrats and Republicans (the Biden administration has adopted a number of pro-nuclear policies).

A super PAC called Fairshake, funded primarily by top cryptocurrency companies, achieved several wins in congressional primaries and plans to spend over $100 million to support pro-crypto candidates in the general elections. CNBC reports: Fairshake and its two affiliated political action committees, one for Republicans, one for Democrats, quietly racked up half a dozen other wins Tuesday as the candidates they backed glided to victory, although none of the races were competitive. They included Rep. John Curtis, who won the Republican nomination for Utah's open Senate seat. Created last year as part of a joint effort between more than a dozen crypto firms, Fairshake PAC has emerged as one of the top-spending PACs in the 2024 election cycle. Fairshake and its two affiliated PACs have put more than $37 million so far into advertisements in primary races, according to AdImpact. Despite a broad mission to defend the entire $2.2 trillion crypto market, Fairshake is funded by a very small set of donors.

Of the $160 million in total contributions Fairshake has raised since it was founded, around $155 million -- or 94% -- can be traced back to just four companies: Ripple, Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase and Jump Crypto. But it's not just money that the crypto industry plans to deploy this fall. The nonprofit Stand With Crypto says it has collected more than 1.1 million email addresses of crypto "advocates" it hopes to engage all the way to the ballot box. The strength of the crypto groups is getting noticed on Capitol Hill, especially among lawmakers who are facing tough elections in 2025, where a few thousand voters, or a hefty donation, could make a difference in not only a race but in which party controls each chamber. [...]

In the coming months, the group doesn't plan to spend on the presidential race, but rather the House and Senate, according to a Fairshake spokesperson. Both of those chambers are in play for 2025. Fairshake has yet to start spending in the general election cycle, but several officials in the industry said they are keeping an eye on states such as Ohio and Montana, where Democratic incumbents who are bearish on crypto face challengers who have embraced the technology. [...] Ads funded by Fairshake deliver messages that are typically less about a candidates' support for or opposition to crypto, and more about broader issues that resound with voters, such as fairness and integrity.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) signed two bills into law on Thursday that aim to protect kids and teens from social media harms, making it the latest state to take action as federal proposals still await votes. From a report: One of the bills, the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, will require parental consent for social media companies to use "addictive feeds" powered by recommendation algorithms on kids and teens under 18. The other, the New York Child Data Protection Act, would limit data collection on minors without consent and restrict the sale of such information but does not require age verification. That law will take effect in a year.

States across the country have taken the lead on enacting legislation to protect kids on the internet -- and it's one area where both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree. While the approaches differ somewhat by party, policymakers on both sides have signaled urgent interest in similar regulations to protect kids on the internet. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), for example, signed into law in March a bill requiring parents' consent for kids under 16 to hold social media accounts. And in May, Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) signed a broad privacy bill into law, as well as the Maryland Kids Code banning the use of features meant to keep minors on social media for extended periods, like autoplay or spammy notifications.