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accountability
US Voters Are Hungry for a Country With Consequences for Corruption at the Top
A new poll finds that large majorities of voters believe corruption is a big problem across politics and government and back bold reform.
Jun 03, 2026
I’ve written that corruption is the sleeper issue of 2026. Well, it’s awake. And the issue may be bigger than I realized.
That’s the implication of a new national poll released Tuesday by the Brennan Center. The survey was conducted in late April and early May, just before the president’s attempt to create a $1.8 billion slush fund to funnel taxpayer money to his political allies.
The results are striking. More than 9 in 10 voters believe corruption is a big problem across politics and government. Large majorities view corruption as endemic and deeply embedded in government institutions, from the Supreme Court to Congress to the presidency. They are dejected about the fact that scandals continuously go without consequences and shocking revelations fail to produce reform.
Margins are overwhelming among Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
Vast majorities believe this corruption is part of why government doesn’t respond to major issues, including concerns like affordability and housing.
Most importantly, voters back bold reform. Eighty-three percent want a law that bars presidents from having conflicts of interest and holds them to stronger ethical standards. Eighty-one percent want a new federal ethics enforcer. Seventy-nine percent want a constitutional amendment that restores limits on money in elections, and other anti-corruption measures received similar levels of support.
It’s hard to find a set of proposals with a wider bipartisan appeal.
Yet there are notes here that should jar complacency. Listen carefully to voters. They define corruption broadly. Vast majorities see the spectacle of politicians catering to the interests of billionaires and big corporations as corrupt, not surprisingly. But to most Americans, wasting taxpayer dollars and even failing to respond to constituent needs are also forms of corruption.
Vast majorities believe this corruption is part of why government doesn’t respond to major issues, including concerns like affordability and housing. How do we connect these arcane government rules to people’s economic well-being? Voters are already doing so.
There are warning signs aplenty for politicians from both parties. Other polls have shown that voters think neither Democratic nor Republican politicians are better than the other on the issue.
Policymakers should understand that the public’s conception of what has gone wrong goes far deeper than super PACs or White House ballrooms or even slush funds. To them, it is a system that is fundamentally misfiring. A government that is not performing. And there is a willingness to name names and assign blame.
In some ways, these results are ominous. We often note that the 2024 election was the first time since the 1800s where the incumbent party lost the White House three times in a row (2016, 2020, 2024). This survey shows a deeply disquieted electorate, scornful of the political system and furious at its flaws. That environment created the conditions for President Donald Trump’s populist nationalism to emerge in 2016. It hasn’t gone away.
Yet this is also the kindling that can fuel new approaches, sharper critiques, and stronger solutions. If polls are to be believed, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) has turned his political fortunes through a relentless and often stirring stump-speech focus on corruption.
The breadth of public unhappiness suggests a deeper moral critique. Even now, amid wrenching technological change and evaporating standards, people seem focused on an underlying core of personal responsibility.
My old boss, President Bill Clinton, often talked this way, especially when he was running for president in 1992. “The American dream that we were all raised on is a simple but powerful one,” he would say. “If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you.”
More recently, that ethos was given voice in Hungary by its new president, Péter Magyar. Running against the authoritarian kleptocrat Viktor Orbán, Magyar vowed that Hungary would no longer be “a country without consequences.” He pledged to oversee not just new policies but a thorough effort to clean house and to hold accountable those who had stolen from the people.
The new Brennan Center research suggests that voters here, too, are ready for a country with consequences. That will help shape the next political era—if we are ready to make it happen.
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Bearing Witness in the Age of Generative AI
Pushing back against the assault on verifiable reality is a crucial undertaking in the pursuit of justice.
May 31, 2026
The advent of generative AI has made it even harder to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t, and also easy to claim what is real is fake. This threatens to undermine the very idea of "evidence," which traditionally has been used to enforce accountability, by fracturing shared, verifiable reality.
For example, in Iran authorities attempted to dismiss protest footage as edited or artificially manufactured after AI was used to enhance long-distance footage of someone confronting the military, effectively turning this doubt into a propaganda weapon. Doubt was also a feature in the aftermath of the recent bombing of a girls' school which killed 168 people—mostly children—in Minab, Iran. And in the midst of an already distorted information ecosystem, methods developed to detect AI fakes are now being weaponized to falsely discredit authentic evidence.
This affirms that the emergence of generative AI is not simply a technological issue, but is creating a visual evidence problem. The consequences are already being felt not only by those chronicling and exposing injustice.
Historically, visual media has been an important tool to document injustice. In South Africa, for instance, a generation of photographers used the camera to challenge the prevailing power structures of apartheid. By exposing the apartheid’s injustices and delegitimizing the system, as well as documenting resistance and everyday life, photographers had a huge impact on the liberation struggle in South Africa. So much so, that the camera would be “seen as an instrument of insurrection” by the apartheid regime, resulting in a ban on foreign journalists and documentary photography.
What would have happened if the apartheid regime had claimed that photographs like Nzima’s were faked or AI generated? Would this have created doubt for the audiences who saw it, impacting international support for South Africa’s liberation struggle?
Although they were not the sole targets of apartheid repression, those photographing or filming were often targeted by the regime. Security forces regularly exposed films, confiscated equipment, conducted raids, and banned publications, as well as people. For example, photographer Sam Nzima was harassed by police and placed under house arrest for months following the publication of his iconic photo of the dying 13-year-old Hector Pieterson who was shot by police during the youth uprising on June 16, 1976. The photo not only fueled the liberation movement within South Africa, but also galvanized stronger international condemnation of apartheid. Apartheid Minister Stoffel Botha even referred to those documenting what was unfolding in the country as "media terrorists."
While there have been attempts to deny or downplay apartheid, including from the now late last apartheid president F. W. de Klerk, systemic denial has not been possible owing to the evidence available. This underscores the role of documentation in defending truth, even if incomplete.
What would have happened if the apartheid regime had claimed that photographs like Nzima’s were faked or AI generated? Would this have created doubt for the audiences who saw it, impacting international support for South Africa’s liberation struggle? Today these questions are not rhetorical, owing to the emergence of generative AI.
To be sure for most of the world, the saying, “The camera never lies” has never been true. Visual media was vital to the Nazi regime's propaganda efforts. Before that, it played “a critical role in propagating colonialist myths about Africa,” with colonial states using photographic imagery to cement white supremacy. It would also become a tool for apartheid in South Africa, used to not only legitimize and validate itself, but to also attempt to shape global perceptions of what was happening in the country.
But the story did not end there. Visual media would also become a tool for liberation movements in South Africa and beyond, because documentation impacts how the world is perceived, meaning is made, and reality is verified.
For example, Human Rights Watch recently used geolocated images to verify the Israeli military’s unlawful use of white phosphorus, a highly reactive chemical which ignites when exposed to oxygen, in residential areas in Lebanon. This offers a pathway for accountability in the future. Similarly, the Syrian Archive, which tracks and preserves videos of war crimes in Syria, has used documentation to pursue accountability for the deadly use of chemical weapons in the country.
Documentation is critical in the pursuit of justice, as well as the need to preserve the past to confirm reality. Not only for these worthy ideals, but also so that those who are left to pick up the pieces know that their experiences of injustices are documented, even in the face of denial and propaganda aimed at persuading people otherwise.
Of course the risks and harms are heightened in conflict situations, which does not need to be inevitable. For example, Meta’s Oversight Board recently called for new rules on how deceptive AI content is managed by the platform to enable users to distinguish between what is real and fake. This follows Meta’s failure to appropriately designate an AI-generated video that purported to show significant damage caused by Iranian soldiers in Haifa, Israel. While the board’s recommendations are not binding, should Meta fail to urgently implement these, it will be yet another example of a platform knowing how to address harms but failing to do so. This must change.
To this end, pushing back against the assault on verifiable reality is a crucial undertaking. This includes protecting people's ability to safely document and preserve their documentation; accessible and effective detection tools, alongside transparency for AI-generated content; and democratic policies, laws, and regulations that center human rights considerations.
As history has repeatedly shown us, secrecy is a shield that protects injustice and emboldens bad actors. So, bearing witness, exposing truth, and insisting on justice remains as important now as it was for South Africa’s liberation movement and beyond— even in the age of generative AI.
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Big Oil is the New Big Tobacco; It’s Time They Paid for the Damage
Massachusetts must pass a Climate Superfund Act to hold big polluters accountable and keep our communities safe from climate harm.
May 29, 2026
Early in my career as a primary care physician, I found myself steering my car through driving rain around downed power lines and fallen tree branches for a shift in urgent care. I was already nervous about my new role. Having a hurricane didn’t help. I remember feeling overwhelmed and inadequate when I had to refer a patient to the already overburdened ER. The deep wound a roof shingle had carved in their scalp was too much for me. Hurricane Bob was a Category 3 hurricane and it took 18 people’s lives and caused today’s equivalent of ~$3.5 billion in damages. The fear, the injuries, and the losses all fell on the local community.
That was decades ago. Nowadays—from Texas floods, to Western wildfires, to deadly heatwaves across the Midwest and Northeast—communities across the country are paying the price. Severe storms are more frequent because of climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. Extreme weather events are causing traumatic injuries, post-traumatic stress disorders, medication shortages, and death. Heatwaves are more frequent and more dangerous, causing heart attacks, asthma attacks, kidney failure, and death. Floods are ravaging our towns, roads, bridges, and farms, overwhelming local businesses and thinly stretched municipal budgets. Public health and infrastructure costs from these crises are mounting. And fossil fuel air pollution—accounting for ~95% of total air pollution in the state—currently kills over 2,700 residents each year in Massachusetts through heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, and chronic lung illness.
Meanwhile, the petrochemical corporations—who’ve knowingly fueled the climate crisis and spent tens of millions of dollars to sow disinformation—got off scot-free.
As a doctor, I can treat people for asthma from air pollution and dehydration from heatwaves, but if the root cause is not addressed, countless more will suffer. The enormity of this threat to public health led me to retire from primary care and join with those fighting for clean energy. We urgently need to stop burning fossil fuels, but we must also invest in resilience and adaptation projects, to safeguard Massachusetts communities against the climate harms they are already experiencing—from the flooding and erosion threatening residents and businesses in Boston and along the coast, to the droughts facing farmers in Western Mass, to the record-shattering heatwaves hitting the entire state this month.
In my medical practice, if I discovered a treatment I prescribed was harming my patients, I’d be ethically bound to speak out. It’s abundantly clear that the fossil fuel industry follows a different ethic.
Passing the state Climate Superfund Act is one step we must take, following in the footsteps of our Vermont and New York neighbors and coalition partners in the nationwide movement to hold big polluters accountable and keep our communities safe from climate harm. Passing a superfund in Massachusetts would allow us to build resiliency in our communities using funds from Big Oil’s checkbook. This act would require the biggest polluters to pay, based on their historical emissions, for projects across the Commonwealth—upgrading stormwater drains, protecting our coasts, installing energy-efficient cooling for seniors who swelter without AC, and offering preventive healthcare programs to treat those sickened by climate change. We desperately need these measures, and this gives us a fair way to pay for them. If you made a mess, you need to clean it up.
In my medical practice, if I discovered a treatment I prescribed was harming my patients, I’d be ethically bound to speak out. It’s abundantly clear that the fossil fuel industry follows a different ethic. Big Oil has known for more than 60 years about the harms their products were causing, but instead of putting people over profits, they have spent tens of millions to cover it up and lie to the public about the damage they were creating.
We can no longer afford to be complacent. It’s time for the Massachusetts legislature to stop “studying” this problem and start protecting its people with this legislation that the majority of its residents support. It’s financially and morally imperative that we pass the Climate Superfund Act. It’s time to make polluters pay for the health of our Commonwealth.
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