"Feds" raid Ilhan Omar's home in effort to deport her. Federal agents seized the phone of Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., when they searched her Washington, D.C., home this week as part of a federal investigation into potential immigration-related crimes, and they have sent roughly a dozen subpoenas out in the case, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

The possible charges cited by federal officials included conspiracy and making false statements in immigration paperwork, one of the people said. The search came just three weeks before the midterms, within the window of time when the Justice Department has typically avoided overt actions in criminal cases that could affect an election. And the seizure of the phone of a sitting member of Congress would typically trigger a set of law enforcement protocols meant to ensure investigators aren't infringing upon the "speech or debate" clause of the U.S. Constitution, which protects members of Congress from being questioned for their legislative acts. On Friday, roughly a dozen subpoenas were sent out in the case, including to her family members, the second person familiar with the investigation told NBC News. WSJ: The Trump administration's investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) is aimed at building a case to strip her of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her, according to U.S. officials and other people familiar with the probe. ... The Trump administration has made an unprecedented effort to denaturalize U.S. citizens by proving they lied in the process of obtaining citizenship, filing dozens of lawsuits. Omar's case, if it proceeds, could become the highest-profile—and most controversial—part of that effort. The president has long called for Omar's deportation, using her as a rallying point for the GOP's anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim wings. On Monday evening, an Ohio audience Trump was speaking to chanted "deport" after he talked about Omar and other Somalis. "They cheat on everything," he said. "We're not going to stand for it." Omar, 44 years old, has long been a top target for GOP-led investigations. A welfare-fraud scandal in Minnesota—heavily tied to defendants of Somali descent—has added fuel to the fire. At the center of the immigration investigation is whether Omar or her father changed her age on her citizenship application to show she was 17 years old rather than 18, according to people familiar with the probe. If Omar was 17 at the time her father applied for citizenship, she would have qualified automatically rather than needing to pursue her own immigration process. She became a citizen in 2000. Officials at Homeland Security Investigations looked into a similar tip under the Biden administration, according to people familiar with those efforts, but they decided not to move forward because they lacked evidence of fraud. The government can't simply strip a person of their U.S. citizenship. The Justice Department must file a lawsuit in federal court and prove that the person lied in a material way to gain their citizenship. Most of the cases the Justice Department has filed this term haven't yet been decided. One thing that I find somewhat conspicuous is that in any of the reporting I have read so far, the actual authority of the agents raiding her home has not been named. It is always "feds" or "federal agents." Not that it makes a huge difference, but I would very much like to know if those are FBI, DOJ or ICE agents. Regardless, this is extremely explicit weaponization of the criminal justice system for nakedly political ends, and represents a significant development in our ongoing Constitutional crisis.

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian.

New campaign finance disclosure data shines a light on which US political campaigns are using AI tools and how much they are spending on them.

Candidates’, parties’ and committees’ spending reveals that AI is fast becoming an essential tool of politics. The candidates themselves are quiet about how they are using the technology in their own campaigns. It’s a sensitive issue that we have been tracking closely since we started writing our book, Rewiring Democracy, which examined how AI is beginning to influence politics. A September 2025 Pew survey of Americans found that more than 70% would think less of a candidate if they used AI to help write a speech.

Itemized expenditure disclosure data from the US Federal Election Commission, dating back to 2020, reveals at least $17m in disclosed spending on AI technology vendors across 523 federal candidates and campaigns. Data from four states, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington, provides a more localized picture going back to 2022.

Beginning with the AI behemoths, at least 80 federal campaigns and committees have reported spending with OpenAI since 2024. The total spending is not huge: only about $50,000 reported, skewing slightly more Republican than Democratic. The Republican National Committee is the largest overall buyer, with nearly $10,000 in reported expenses. Top individual users include the campaigns of Republicans Mike Lawler, John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, as well as the California Democrats Ro Khanna and Ted Lieu. Most of these expenses are listed as office expenses, subscriptions to ChatGPT for staff, or research tools, rather than as specific political services. The company’s policies prohibit some political uses of their ChatGPT tool.

OpenAI’s biggest competitor, Anthropic, has rapidly built a similar level of usage, but with a different split. At least 65 candidates or committees now report paying the Claude maker in 2026, up from essentially zero in previous years, with a nearly two-to-one Democrat-to-Republican ratio. However, the largest individual user is the campaign of Tom Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas, who reported more than $4,000 in spend on Anthropic software in his June filing. Other major users are the Montana independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar and Jason Knapp, who lost a Democratic House primary in Virginia, and the Democratic Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola.

Candidates use either Claude or ChatGPT, rarely both, according to the disclosures. Only about 12% of campaigns or committees using either tool reported expenditures to both vendors. The Democratic lean of Anthropic usage may reflect the company’s alleged liberal skew and clashes with the Trump administration.

In contrast, Elon Musk’s xAI caters to Republican interests and, accordingly, its meager usage comes almost entirely from the political right. Just seven federal and two state-level candidates or committees have reported paying xAI, a total of about $5,000, the majority of which was spent by the presidential campaign of RFK Jr in 2024, but also includes Republicans Dave McCormick and Thomas Massie.

More dollars go to the vendors specializing in political campaign applications of AI. For years, AmplifAI, which provides automated text messaging, essentially a new iteration on robocalling technology, was a dominant target of spending, soaking up $4.7m in campaign spending in the 2022 cycle alone. It was used heavily by Democratic candidates including Mark Kelly, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Adam Schiff. Spending on AmplifAI, now owned by the troubled media conglomerate Triller, seems to have tapered off in the years since 2022.

The new rising Democratic solution for AI-powered text messaging is Daisychain, which has so far garnered about $300,000 in reported candidate spend in the 2026 cycle—up from only about $50,000 reported in 2024. More than half of this year’s spending comes from the Senate campaign of Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

The closest equivalent on the Republican side has been Campaign Nucleus, associated with former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale. The AI-powered voter engagement tool has attracted six-figure spending from the Republican National Committee, multiple PACs aligned with Donald Trump, and five-figure investments from Mike Johnson, Kari Lake and other candidates. It is displacing the legacy Republican-serving texting vendor Prompt.io, which has retained about $375,000 in 2026 spending to date, down from more than $500,000 in the 2022 cycle. But it continues to be used: the A More Affordable California PAC sponsored by Uber has single-handedly spent more than $1m on Prompt.io in 2026. The Republican Massachusetts gubernatorial nominee Michael Minogue has been a recurring customer, as has the failed Republican California gubernatorial candidate Ché Ahn and Republican-aligned Super PAC Neighbors for a Better Colorado.

At the state level

At the state level, the AI spending is smaller but growing fast. Across the four states studied, we found a total of at least $92,000 in spending confidently attributable to modern generative AI vendors since 2022. The spending is spread across at least 108 candidates and committees. The growth has been explosive; there has already been about 10 times the amount of state-level AI spending reported in 2026 as there was in all of 2024.

Much of the state spending mirrors federal patterns. Daisychain again has the highest overall spend, and OpenAI and Claude dominate among the general-purpose AI vendors. DonorAtlas—the AI-powered prospect research tool—sticks out for its usage in these states, sitting behind only Daisychain and OpenAI and buoyed up by nearly $4,000 in spending by the California Democratic party.

Even though it has dominated so much media conversation, few candidates seem to be reporting spending on AI tools designed specifically to create synthetic audio and video, also known as “deepfakes”. We found just six federal candidates or committees reporting spending on the popular AI audio generator tool from ElevenLabs, with total spending of about $1,400 led by independent candidate for Colorado’s sixth congressional district Samir Witta. The AI image generator service Midjourney has five reported federal campaign or committee users reporting about $1,600, led by Sholdon Daniels, the Republican primary runner-up in the Texas 30th district. Combined, those two firms had less than $100 in reported spend across the four states.

However, recent data from the Wesleyan Media Project shows that at least 164 political ads in this cycle have included AI-generated media, supported by at least $80m in ad spending. What this illustrates is that candidate and committee disclosure reports are just the tip of the iceberg. They don’t cover spending on AI by political consultants, media firms and other vendors hired by the campaigns or by PACs, or independent committees raising and spending money aimed at boosting candidates’ campaigns. Those entities aren’t required to disclose detailed expenditure reports, and are very likely where the bulk of campaign AI usage is happening.

Since a large fraction of all spending in the campaign cycle will happen in the final weeks leading to November, much remains to be seen about the totality of how campaigns will leverage AI and what impact its use will have on voters’ decisions.

New York Progressives' Influence on the New Deal - "Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped New Yorkers to play key roles in his administration and shape the federal programs that brought economic relief and physical transformation to the entire country."[1] (previously)

• The Revolution of '28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal (begins 13:45) - "Dr. Robert Chiles discusses [2018] book on former four-term governor Al Smith."
• The Happy Warrior's Legacy - "How Al Smith's Albany became Roosevelt's Washington.

When Assemblyman Smith saw reports of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, he understood immediately what he was looking at. The fire, and the deaths weren't just an accident. They were the predictable result of an economic system that treated employees — those young immigrant women, hoping to build better lives — as inputs to a production process; with no concession to their employees' dignity or lives.

Al Smith's conscience had been formed in the immigrant Catholic parishes of lower Manhattan, in a Church that had told the world, twenty years before — in words it had itself not used in many years — that what happened that March day in Manhattan was wrong. That it was a sin.

That Church was Pope Leo XIII's Church. The words were Rerum Novarum.[2,3]

The intellectual tradition spurred by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical manifested in G.K. Chesterton's distributism, to Jacques Maritain's personalism, and Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker. These were movements of thought and conscience and direct service: enormously important, but operating at the level of ideas and personal witness.

Al Smith is not usually discussed alongside G. K. Chesterton and Dorothy Day, but he belongs in their company. Where they applied Pope Leo XIII's principles to economics and philosophy and works of mercy, Smith applied them to workmen's compensation law, factory safety codes, public housing, and the hours women and children could be required to work. From encyclical to intellectual, from intellectual to activist, from activist to legislator — each stage spoke with conviction: human dignity is not mere sentiment, but a structural demand that the state exists, in part, to enforce.

• Al Smith - "After being approached by Frances Perkins, an activist, to improve labor practices, Smith sought to improve the conditions of factory workers... Their findings led to thirty-eight new laws regulating labor in New York State, and gave each of them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class. In the process, they changed Tammany's reputation from mere corruption to progressive endeavors to help the workers."
• Heather Cox Richardson: "Frances Perkins, and all those who worked with her, transformed the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire into the heart of our nation's basic social safety net. 'There is always a large horizon... There is much to be done,' Perkins said. 'It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.'"

But she was not done. In 1919, over the fervent objections of men, Governor Smith appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the corruption that was weakening the new laws. She continued to be one of his closest advisers on labor issues. In 1929, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Smith as New York governor, he appointed Perkins to oversee the state's labor department as the Depression worsened. When President Herbert Hoover claimed that unemployment was ending, Perkins made national news when she repeatedly called him out with figures proving the opposite and said his "misleading statements" were "cruel and irresponsible." She began to work with leaders from other states to figure out how to protect workers and promote employment by working together.

In 1933, after the people had rejected Hoover's plan to let the Depression burn itself out, President-elect Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor in his administration. She accepted only on the condition that he back her goals: unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: "I remember he looked so startled, and he said, 'Well, do you think it can be done?'"

She promised to find out.

Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration's massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.

In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.

• HCR: "Perkins recognized that the central purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the communities of people who lived in the nation. She recognized that children, the elderly, women, and disabled Americans, all of whom contributed to society whether or not that contribution was recognized with a paycheck, were as valuable to the survival of a community as male workers and the wealthy men who employed them."

"The people are what matter to government," she said, "and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life."

A majority of Americans of both parties liked the new system, but the reworking of the government shocked those who had previously dominated the country. As soon as the Social Security Act passed, opponents set out to destroy it along with the rest of the new system. A coalition of Republican businessmen who hated both business regulation and the taxes that paid for social programs, racists who opposed the idea of equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities, and religious traditionalists—especially Southern Baptists—who opposed the recognition of women's equal rights, joined together to fight against the New Deal.[4,5]

• FDR and Al Smith: An Unlikely Political Alliance - "As other senators brushed by, Perkins raised her eyes to Roosevelt's and told him about the fifty-four-hour bill, explaining how it would improve the lives of working women and would help, in some small way, to ease the exploitation of industrial workers. The young senator did not attempt to disguise his utter lack of interest. 'No, no,' he said as he waved her way. 'More important things. Can't do it now. Can't do it now. Much more important things.' He rushed away, head in the air, leaving Frances Perkins to wonder how this man Roosevelt could be so 'absurd'—a favorite word of hers."
• Frances Perkins - "When Roosevelt tapped her as labor secretary in 1933, Perkins drew on the New York State experience as the model for new federal programs. She put every ounce of her formidable energy into weaving a safety net for a Depression-scarred society, securing a remarkable array of benefits for American workers. Frances Perkins had large ambitions—not for herself, but for the world in which she lived. Her vision found concrete expression in such landmark reforms as the Wagner Act, which gave workers the right to organize unions and bargain collectively, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established for the first time a minimum wage and a maximum workweek for men and women. Perkins also chaired the Committee on Economic Security, which developed and drafted the legislation that became the Social Security Act in 1935." (Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind the New Deal; oh and Robert F. Wagner ;)

of course, new york progressives -- like AOC and mamdani -- are lighting the way once again! also btw... The Reconstruction Papers - "The PDF is free to the public."

For nearly a century, the conservative movement's white whale was the government the New Deal and the Great Society had built. Republicans chipped away at it but feared the political ramifications of going too far. Now, Donald Trump and men in his inner circle like Russell Vought have come promising to do what their predecessors could not, and kill the beast outright. In its place they intend to leave a fascist, personalist, but otherwise greatly diminished state.[6] If they are going to shoot their shot, then liberals need to be ready to shoot ours. The Reconstruction Papers is a guide to what that shot should look like. The aim is not to go back to normal, or repair the damage, but to offer bold plans of action for political liberals who manage to retake power from the fascists, as soon as 2029.

HCR: We're Watching MAGA Collapse - "[I]n the two years between this election and the next one, we get to decide what the major issues for the American government are going to be. What do we want to see happen? Like what are our top things? And the people who best articulate those for us are going to be the people that we get behind in the 2028 election... What do we want the government to do? [I]n the long term as you're watching MAGA collapse... also think about what comes next because this is going to be so important going forward. We're not just saying what we don't want but we're also saying what we do want."

The world reconsiders America - "America is shedding its status as the default choice for foreign governments to park money, buy weapons and send students... Hungary and Poland were the only two of 10 countries polled where majorities still view the U.S. as a reliable partner. Majorities in all 10, including two with right-wing populist leaders, say they lack confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs."

Poll shows rising trust in global institutions, less comfort with US as global leader - "The poll showed that the people surveyed were not comfortable with the United ​States or China as a global leader, and 61% supported countries working together without the participation of either of the world's two largest economies."

Canada received the highest ​level of comfort for taking a leading role in world affairs at 60%, followed by Japan (58%) and Australia (55%). The European Union and Britain were closely behind, with 55% and 54%, while ‌the United ⁠Nations stood at 52%. By contrast, just 39% were comfortable with the United States taking a leading role and 37% with China. Russia was viewed even more negatively, with just 26% comfortable.

• 'Hostile act': Trump threatens EU with tariffs over Canada associate-membership proposal - "Canada is already the only non-European country in the EU's SAFE instrument — an initiative that provides Canadian firms with preferential access to defense procurement — and has a free-trade agreement with the bloc, eliminating tariffs on roughly 99% of goods, though that deal still requires ratification by 10 EU states." (Canada to seek EU Associate Membership)
• EU single market needs 'fifth freedom' to reverse loss of economic dynamism - "Encompassing research, knowledge and talent, as well as an 'approve once, sell everywhere' regime, to help close the widening gap with US and Chinese innovation led growth... The proposed 'fifth freedom' is a nod to the EU single market's foundations' 'four freedoms': movement of goods, services, people and capital."

How Trump's war on EVs derailed America's auto-factory revival - "A wave of manufacturing investment promised to revive struggling heartland towns and build a U.S. supply chain for electric vehicles and batteries. But policy changes since Trump's return to office have upended the boom, costing thousands of jobs." Trump Has Made More Trades Than All of Congress Combined - "Most Americans support a ban on lawmaker stock trading. Trump is in favor of a prohibition that doesn't apply to him." Trump considered dangerous, corrupt by majority in new poll - "A slight majority of registered voters describe President Trump as corrupt and dangerous, a recent poll found, while just 14% say he isn't divisive."

"Corrupt" (53%) and "dangerous" (51%) led the list of descriptors voters applied to Trump in the Sept. 11-14 The Economist-YouGov poll of 1,461 U.S. registered voters.

• Those words were followed by "out-of-touch" (47%), "cruel" (46%) and "bold" (45%).
• Just 18% said they'd use the word "steady" to describe the president.

Democrats are testing an anti-corruption midterm message as Americans' perceptions of government corruption hit a 20-year high, per Gallup's trend, and polls show Americans believe the president has inappropriately profited from cryptocurrency while in office.

• The results broke sharply by party — 91% of Democrats and 62% of independents said Trump was corrupt, compared with 10% of Republicans.
• Republicans weren't universally positive: Less than half (49%) said they'd use the word "honest" to describe the president. Just 10% said it didn't describe him, while 41% had no opinion.
• Similarly, 38% of Republicans said he was steady, while 53% said they had no opinion.

also btw...

• Baal out: Top diplomat's worry about pagan god elicits eye rolls - "The second-most powerful man at the State Department put the brakes on a U.S. international exhibit featuring a bull statue because he worried it might look like Baal, a pagan god some associate with Satanic child sacrifice."
• FBI's Patel defends change in 'bestiality' hiring practice as lawmakers seek answers - "Why would you even get ​into bestiality?"

• Texas nominees' racist, vulgar remarks receive mixed GOP reaction - "Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized."
• Texas Republican's post on Asian Americans at UT Austin sparks accusations of racism - "Hate is one of the easiest means of organizing."

• US billionaires line up to bankroll Republicans' election push - "Ultra-wealthy overwhelmingly back Donald Trump's party over Democrats as money floods into midterms race."
• U.S. Senate Race in Michigan: Full Debate - "While Rogers declined the invite for the debate, El-Sayed showed up."

What's the first thing you do when you get into office should you become a senator? El-Sayed: Work to get money out of politics to end Citizens United. Corporations are not people. Their money is not speech. They should not be able to buy politicians. We need to end that. And then it's working to pass the PRO Act to make sure that we can organize unions in every sector of American life. And finally getting Medicare for All done. So we free people from medical risk.

• Russian businessman financed Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding celebrations - "Umar Kremlev paid for two nights of celebration after the wedding, Donald Trump Jr. and his wife confirm."
• What we know about the Putin ally who allegedly funded Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding - "According to a ProPublica investigation, Umar Kremlev's deep ties to Vladimir Putin allegedly created a personal financial link between President Trump's oldest child and prominent Russians while the U.S. attempts to broker peace with Ukraine."

• Somaliland's president puts everything on the table for Trump - "The breakaway territory is offering Washington access to its port, minerals and potentially military facilities in exchange for recognition."

• The public wants a say in AI development - "Democratic and Republican voters agree that the American public should decide the future of AI development, not billionaires in Silicon Valley, according to new polling shared first with Semafor." (Behind the curtain: It's not too late)
• Scoop: Trump pollster gives GOP a data center survival guide - "This converts the candidate from a defender of technology companies into the person imposing rules on them."
• First, "validate" voters' concerns about higher utility bills, the power grid and water use.
• Second, "draw the line" by vowing not to support projects that force families to subsidize them or allow tech companies to harm surrounding communities.
• Finally, argue that projects should move forward only if companies provide their own power, protect ratepayers and safeguard local water.

• US admission of orbital weapons seen as landmark moment in race with China, Russia - "The U.S. acknowledgment this week that the Pentagon is operating weapons in Earth's orbit marks a landmark moment in space militarization aimed at ​deterring what U.S. officials describe as aggressive orbital activities from China and Russia, officials and analysts said."
• China warns US space weapons could fuel arms race - "China urged the United States to halt its military build-up in outer space after Washington acknowledged it ​has weapons deployed in orbit, while Chinese state media ‌warned the move could fuel a global arms race."

• China imposes new restrictions on overseas travel - "To stop cutting-edge technology and top-flight researchers from leaving, taking a step closer to a regime that had characterized a more closed-off China of decades past."
• Why Seeing China as a Normal Rising Power Misses the Point - "China isn't authoritarian but totalitarian. In an ordinary authoritarian state, however brutal, some independent institutions survive—be they a church, a temple, a nongovernmental organization—so long as they stay out of politics. A totalitarian party allows none of it. Every organization must be controlled by the party."

--- *EK-FF: Why I Can't Stop Thinking About 'The End of History'

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian.

There are plenty of signs that AI will make all of our experiences of the US midterm elections worse. Voters have anxiety about AI’s impacts on the country. Politicos are using AI deepfakes to spread lies. The White House is posting slopaganda.

Meanwhile, candidates are missing a real opportunity to use AI to make campaigning better. The technology can help candidates listen more deeply to voters’ concerns, engage constituents more inclusively, and formulate policy platforms that are more responsive to our input. There are vanishingly few examples of this in US politics, but groups in Japan, Scotland and the US’s own academic and private institutions show how that could change.

The problem with American campaigns’ current use of AI is that it’s not very different from the web ads of 30 years ago, or television ads before that: they are all about inundating voters with the candidate’s message. This one-to-many broadcasting is an uninspiring way to campaign, but not the only way. AI can help candidates connect one-to-one with as many people as possible. Or it can facilitate many-to-many connections, engaging voters in deliberation about issues at scale.

One of the most promising applications of AI being developed by pro-democracy innovators around the world is broad listening. These tools can collect public input in a format much richer than checkboxes on a survey form.

For example, the newly founded Japanese political party Team Mirai has built a foundation for eliciting public input from voters at scale, in depth, and across the breadth of legislative policy issues. It has developed an AI interviewer to cultivate constituent input on policy. Through extended conversations with this chatbot, voters explore and share their perspectives on specific policy issues. And the party has scaled this across a wide array of policy issues by integrating this functionality with an AI-powered portal for exploring bills.

Team Mirai describes itself as a “utility party”, developing tools for any Japanese political party to use to connect with voters. You might question whether Americans would willingly talk to a political AI. So far, Japanese voters have exchanged more than 300,000 messages across 16,000 AI interviews. Team Mirai grew adoption by providing a real incentive to engage: that talking to their AI interviewer does more than just posting on a platform such as Twitter/X or, equivalently, shouting into a void. Users see evidence that the party is actually listening and might take action on their behalf.

Team Mirai party members have directly cited AI interviews from constituents during legislative committee hearings, published a synthesis of that input back for voters, and even amended their policy platform based on user input. The party has rapidly risen to win 12 seats in the Diet, and is explicitly following in the footsteps of the civic hackers in Taiwan’s “gov zero” movement, who won political influence in their fight for transparency.

Other civic technologists are developing AI tools for scaling many-to-many conversations. CrownShy, a company funded in part by the Scottish government, is building a platform to bring the Platonic ideal of the town hall debate into the digital age. Their Comhairle tool integrates AI interviewing tools like the ones described above with software for synthesizing diverse viewpoints, holding virtual assemblies, and sharing video testimonials to help legislatures—or campaigners—organize digital consultations of their constituents en masse.

One thing the AI-powered software of Team Mirai and CrownShy have in common is that they are open-source, meant for anyone to use. Even though they are projects funded by political parties—the upstart party in Japan and the ruling party in Scotland—they are built to make democratic processes better, not necessarily for partisan political advantage.

For interested candidates, there is a wealth of tools available, many of them US-grown. The Stanford-affiliated deliberation.io uses AI to facilitate structured dialogues among thousands of participants and has been piloted for public listening sessions by the city of Washington DC. The MIT-affiliated Cortico project provides tools that surface under-heard community perspectives from recorded conversations, and is now organizing listening sessions at libraries across the country. The US non-profit-built Talk to the City uses AI to analyze large datasets of stakeholder input. The US startup Remesh has a commercial offering that uses AI to generate recommendations from dialogue, which has been tested in policy development scenarios.

There is a long and proud tradition of this sort of “civic technology” in the United States. Two decades ago, the spirit of innovation to develop software for better politics and civic engagement was so strong in organizations like Code for America and the Obama 2008 campaign that Congress funded a new executive agency to bring these ideas to government: the US Digital Service. (The Trump administration repurposed the USDS to become the US Doge Service in 2025.)

One signal that candidates and political parties may start adopting these kinds of tools came this spring from Higher Ground Labs. The Democratic-aligned campaign tech investment firm launched a new fund targeting, in part, “AI-Native Campaign Systems” and “community-Led Messaging Platforms that surface authentic, bottom-up insights from real conversations”.

AI is a multifaceted issue that deserves to be on the table in the midterms. So far, the powerful force of polarization in US politics seems to be separating the parties into the AI skeptics versus the AI boosters. We urge both voters and politicians to separate the technology of AI from its profiteers. We want big tech money out of politics, holding the AI companies accountable for the harm their models cause, taxing their revenues, and maybe even nationalizing them if the AI bubble bursts.

But we also think congressional candidates in the US midterms seeking authentic connection with voters, and seeking to differentiate themselves from their opponents, should be looking to use AI responsibly in their campaigning. The broad listening and deliberation tools pioneered by others around the world could make US politics more transparent, responsive and community-driven. The impact of AI on campaigning doesn’t have to be all bad.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says she wants Canada to become the bloc's 1st associate member. "This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength," she said. "In short, we want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible." von der Leyen said during her State of the Union address. Canadian PM Mark Carney is set to deliver a speech to the EU Parliament on Thursday.

"We're not looking to become a member of the European Union," Carney said Sunday evening on the red carpet of the Toronto International Film Festival. "What we are looking — and will begin discussions for — [is] a unique alliance with the European Union. We share the same values, we have the same priorities and we have very complementary strengths."

Nathan E. Sanders and I are writing a series of essays on real-world examples of democratic technologies for The Renovator. I haven’t been posting the full text on the blog because they’re a bit long, but here are links.

Part 1 is about the Japanese digital democracy party, Team Mirai.

Part 2 is about the Swiss Public AI model, Apertus.

Part 3 is about the civic technologists of Open Knowledge Brazil.

And the new one, Part 4, is about civic AI in Scotland.