Is it ethically acceptable or even strategically justifiable for politicians (regardless of party affiliation) to deliberately spread misleading, false, or deceitful information in pursuit of power, policy goals, or electoral success?

No blame game and no referencing individual politicians, keep it to baseline principles.

Should there be swift consequences or forced retractions when this happens? Does party affiliation change the ethical standard?

For context, on a scale of 1 (Never acceptable) to 10 (Very acceptable), how would you score the current baseline in your state and/or country?

Looking for thoughtful, principle-based answers with historical or philosophical insights.

Do you think Trump has an heir apparent, or is it one of those things where no one in Washington dares talk about it for fear of reminding Trump of his mortality/term limits?

I know the obvious answer is Vance, but Vance does not wield the same kind of fear and influence that Trump does. Similar with Mike Johnson, Rubio, etc.

It's not like he's put forward any of his own kids to take over after him either. In Term 1, it looked like maybe Ivanka was being groomed (phrasing) for the role, she's sorta disappeared from her spot next to him now.

I do wonder to what degree Trump's ego is like, "Why do I care what happens when I'm done," so he's not concerned with someone to take up the mantle.

Or watch as tomorrow Silicon Valley unveils a clone of Trump, like we're living in Foundation.

A lot of discussions about political influence focus on campaign donations, lobbying, and elections. That got me wondering whether there are other ways for ordinary citizens to collectively influence their communities.

Municipal bonds help finance local infrastructure and public projects, and investors receive interest payments in return. While buying a bond doesn't give someone a vote on government policy, it does provide capital for projects that voters and local governments have already approved.

If large numbers of citizens intentionally invested in municipal bonds issued by their own communities, could that be viewed as another form of civic participation alongside voting and advocacy? Could it strengthen local investment and public engagement, or would the impact of individual investors be too small to matter compared with institutional buyers?

I'm not suggesting this would replace elections or campaign finance reform. I'm curious whether encouraging broader public ownership of municipal debt could have meaningful economic or civic benefits.

I'm an Iranian, and I'm genuinely confused about something.

Why do I keep seeing people online dismissing Iranian protesters as "Mossad agents" or "CIA assets" just because they opposed the Iranian government?

From my own experience living in Iran, I saw ordinary people protesting. They were students, workers, parents, neighbors—people with different backgrounds and different political views. Whether you agree with them or not, reducing every protester to a foreign intelligence agent feels deeply unfair.

I've also noticed that whenever reports of large-scale casualties or crackdowns are discussed, many people immediately call them "fake" without engaging with the reporting or acknowledging how difficult it is to verify information during internet shutdowns and heavy censorship. Independent organizations and major international media have repeatedly documented deadly crackdowns while also noting that confirming exact casualty figures is extremely difficult because of restrictions inside Iran.

I'm not asking anyone to accept every claim without question. I'm simply asking: why is the default assumption for some people that millions of Iranians have no agency of their own, and that anyone protesting must be working for a foreign government?

I'd genuinely like to understand this perspective.

Trump is expected to give a prime-time address about election security, alleged foreign interference and his long-running claims about the 2020 election. He has teased it as “the biggest news ever,” while critics, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are urging networks not to broadcast it live if it becomes a platform for unverified election-fraud claims.

https://americareport.us/trump-election-speech-sparks-furor-before-it-even/

On one hand, he is the sitting president and a national address is newsworthy. On the other hand, the 2020 election claims have already been heavily litigated, and courts and officials found no evidence of widespread fraud that changed the result.

Should networks carry the speech live and fact-check afterward, delay it and fact-check in real time, or refuse to air it if the claims are not backed by evidence?

A few quick questions:

When you read news articles, do you consider the publishers bias?

Are you more apt to reading leftist media, or would you also read a piece from a right-wing publisher?

Are there specific topics in which knowing the publishers bias is more important to you?

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Extra questions if you have time:

Do you read news articles? (If you feel generous, Why or why not?)

How do you stay up to date?

Most of what I remember about my early political education wrt the US and war, was spent attempting to justify most of the shit our military did. Where that wasn't applicable, we were taught to consider the feelings of individuals in the US military in unjust interventions/wars over the civilian population (i.e the Vietnam War). I'd say most of American Gen Z and even Gen Alpha has probably had a similar experience. But in the past year, that's definitely changed. Americans aren't as willing to buy classic narratives used to justify war (particular ones that posit the US as liberators or victims) and there's a growing ambivalence towards the military entirely--even active disdain at the idea of joining it despite constant US military propaganda coming out as of late. When I talk to the average American, they're more likely to sympathize and connect with the plight of Iranians and Venezuelans. Hell, I've seen more compassion towards the Cuban people now than I have in my entire life! Currently, I'm seeing older generations really reckon with their view of the US as the "good guys" of the world--20 years later, they're empathizing with people they hated or at least thought less of.

I wonder--is this just a product of resentment of the current Trump era? Will things go back to normal when this administration is over? Related to that, do you think that this is caused by factors before or beyond Trump? I know the mainstream of opinion of the War on Terror shifted to be very negative over time, and there's a really good chance that has shaped this development. I don't know, what are your thoughts?

I was watching Legal Eagle's "Supreme Court Just Legalized Racial Profiling" video (https://youtu.be/6ERPT3tZTSc?is=S5QVjErRjpnJzzr7), and realized that even though I agree with everything Legal Eagle is saying, so much of it would be superseded in the minds of many "turned-republican"s. I have a lot of family who fits that description, so I have a pretty good understanding of what how they respond; I imagine that they would say "I'm tired of slimy politicians who just make things worse for people like me while they line their pockets selling us out to their donors and enforcing the status quo. It's not about moral superiority, it's about choosing between my children and people I don't know." And a lot of people share that sentiment, even if they aren't good at communicating it, and I can't say I don't understand where they're coming from, even if I disagree with the conclusion that we're should trade some people's rights for other people's benefits.

How are we supposed to argue against that? Or, otherwise solve the problem of people using that rationale? Off the top of my head, I would try to argue that violating other people's rights leads to your future children being hurt. But I'm not sure how exactly I would do that, and the point of this post is to hear everyone's thoughts and have that discussion; this is a major problem that we're facing in America, and it can't be solved with just one person.

Americans under 40 now span Gen Z through younger Millennials, a large and internally varied cohort, but one often described as sharing a couple of traits: comparatively lower trust in political institutions than older voters, and a widespread sense that government struggles to act even on issues where there appears to be broad public agreement. That combination is interesting because frustration with a system doesn't point in a single direction. It can produce more engagement or less, work inside the existing parties, or around them. Over a five-year horizon, I can see at least four distinct channels that frustration might flow into, each implying a very different political sphere:

• Turnout: younger cohorts become a more reliable voting bloc, closing the participation gap with older voters and shifting which issues candidates feel compelled to address.
• Candidacy: a wave of younger people run for office, challenging an incumbent class that skews significantly older than the population, and reshaping primaries more than general elections.
• Realignment: weaker attachment to both major parties hardens into a durable independent or third-party drift, rather than the loose "independent" label that prior generations also adopted when young before settling into partisanship.
• Issue agenda: even without dramatic shifts in turnout or party ID, the priorities of this cohort pull the national conversation toward different questions, forcing both parties to adapt.

These aren't mutually exclusive, but they're not equally likely either, and they'd leave very different marks on the system. My question for the sub: which of these mechanisms do you think will prove most consequential over the next five years, and why? Are there structural factors: incumbency, fundraising, primary dynamics, the design of the two-party system itself, that make some of these paths far more plausible than others, regardless of what this cohort wants? And is there reason to think the pattern already visible in recent cycles is a genuine trend rather than something that fades as this group ages?

Just thinking about this after seeing the news about the potential resurgence of the “rigged 2020 election” cycle. Does Trump still really have that kind of sway, and does he still have an impassioned enough base to pull off something like J6 again?

Being in a deep red state, I can’t help but notice the absence of the MAGA flags and memorabilia that were so proudly displayed just a year and a half ago, when that stuff had been out in the open for years. I get that there’s still a non-negligible amount of support, and maybe a lot of people who were embarrassed just brought their tchotchkes inside and decided it was best not to be so open about it.

So with the coalition that voted him in seemingly hemorrhaging fast, and a lot of people feeling betrayed or embarrassed after voting for him, could an event like J6 even happen with today’s Trump the way it did in 2020?

We all see this comparison a lot in todays discourse and one thing really strikes me about the USA today as being fundamentally different from the fascist regimes of the 20th century. Back then all of those regimes created a state-controlled economy. Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler, all turned certain large corporations into state-controlled corporations and there's no shortage of examples there.

Today we have the opposite. The Trump admin is removing regulations and giving more control to the biggest corporations in the country. (DOGE being a prime example of this) Rather than dismantling big business they are using big business to dismantle the government and I'd argue are more of a corporate-feudalist government than traditional fascist. If Trump wanted to, I don't think he'd be able to dismantle companies like google, or amazon.

I guess it boils down to who has more power, the Trump admin or the Billionaires as a whole?

There are a lot of political issues discussed every day, but I feel many of them lose important context once they become headlines.

Whether it's Congress, the Supreme Court, foreign policy, immigration, healthcare, or the economy—which issue do you think is the most misunderstood by the general public, and why?

I'm genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives.

Should the Democrats press tha administration on the true numbers of KIAs and WIAs, and the amount of equipment destroyed? Or would that backfire? Clearly the administration has been less than honestly transparent about these issues, and the US media seems to be engaged in a suppression of news. In past wars, we had live reports from the frontlines, but I've seen zip on this one. According to most reliable sources, the numbers of KIAs and WIAs are 14 and 414. I've not seen any WIA reports in the mainstream media. However, some reporters and observers have noted cases of numbers of WIAs being inexplicably reduced from time to time, and the criteria for reporting casualties subject to change.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran-war-oprep.htm

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wounded-soldiers-families-accuse-army-downplaying-war-injuries/

What are the implications of this lack of information presented to the public? Is downplaying the number of injjuries and the extent of those injuries being disrespectful of the fighting forces?

Could it be a useful angle in the November elections?

First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) held that corporations have First Amendment protections to spend money advocating for or against ballot initiatives, even when the issue does not directly affect their business interests. Many legal scholars view the decision as an important precursor to later campaign finance cases, including Citizens United v. FEC. If the Supreme Court were to overturn Bellotti, what practical and legal effects do you think it would have? Would it significantly change corporate involvement in ballot initiatives or campaign finance more broadly, or would other constitutional precedents continue to protect most forms of corporate political speech? Please focus on the likely legal, political, and policy implications rather than whether you personally support or oppose such a change. How might it affect campaign finance, ballot measures, corporate political activity?

I'm currently in a college course that delves into the history and practices of the Supreme Court. It is strongly reaffirming my opinion that very few processes exist in the USA political system because they work. An overwhelming amount of our legal and political processes operate the way they do because someone did it that way once hundreds of years ago and everyone from then on simply followed suit. There is no institution in place to study the efficacy of these processes, and no one seems to be concerned with the question 'but why, though?'

Do you feel as though our political processes make sense? Or do you agree that they rely too heavily on precidents set 200+ years ago?

*Example: In 1882 Justice Horace Gray hired a court clerk selected by his brother, a Harvard Law professor. To this day, Supreme Court Justices still utilize clerks, and they are still sourced from elite law schools by means of professors/deans."

A recurring feature of modern lawmaking is the bundling of unpopular provisions with popular ones inside large omnibus packages. This has a specific effect on accountability: when a member casts an up-or-down vote on a package of dozens of provisions, that vote can't be cleanly mapped to any single position. A constituent or watchdog trying to "score" the vote against public preferences runs into the fact that the member can always explain it by pointing to some other provision in the bill, they voted for the package despite X, or because of Y. The individual position becomes effectively unfalsifiable.

There are two competing readings of why this happens:

The necessity reading is that bundling is how deals get done. Assembling a majority in a polarized legislature often means stapling together provisions that couldn't pass on their own, and omnibus packaging is the mechanism that lets otherwise-deadlocked coalitions clear something. On this view, the accountability cost is a byproduct of compromise, not the goal.

The accountability-shield reading is that the opacity is a feature, not a bug, that packaging lets members support things their constituents would punish while retaining plausible deniability, and that the difficulty of scoring votes is precisely what makes the tactic attractive.

On the reform side, there's an actual track record worth looking at. Roughly 43 state constitutions contain some form of single-subject rule requiring a bill to address only one subject, while Congress and the U.S. Constitution have no such rule. Their stated purpose is exactly the problem described here, preventing legislators from attaching an unpopular rider to a more popular bill, and curbing logrolling. So the "obvious fix" already exists at scale, but the evidence on whether it works is mixed rather than encouraging. Courts have struggled for over a century to define what counts as a single "subject," producing vague and inconsistent tests, and comprehensive studies have concluded that most states give their single-subject rules relatively little weight. In some states the rule is treated as effectively dormant, and courts tend to defer heavily to legislatures on what qualifies as one subject. There's also a counter-critique worth putting on the table: because "single subject" is so indeterminate, the rule hands judges substantial discretion, and single-subject challenges have been used to strike down popular ballot initiatives, meaning the same tool can cut against majority preferences rather than protect them.

Some questions I'm genuinely unsure about:

• Is bundling better understood as an unavoidable feature of coalition-building, or as a chosen tactic to blur accountability, and how would you even distinguish the two empirically?
• If single-subject rules are this widely adopted yet this inconsistently enforced, is the failure in the rule itself or in judicial reluctance to enforce it?
• Would a federal single-subject rule meaningfully change congressional behavior, or would it just relocate the discretion from legislators to courts?
• Are there mechanisms that improve vote-level accountability without the definitional problem, germaneness rules, separate-vote requirements, stronger roll-call transparency?

I don't think people in MAGA or DSA could rationally discuss the differences between capitalism, socialism, populism, communism, etc.

Are we stuck with wings in both parties who will find words that go viral (I'm surprised we don't have affordabilism as a new ism du jour), but lack the depth to build governing coalitions or workable policies?

A pardon covers offenses against the United States. A pardon does not cover offenses committed against individual states in the United States nor does it cover offenses committed against foreign jurisdictions.

If Mexico or another country, like Colombia after today's ICE killing, pursues charges against an American government official who was covered by the likely Trump pardon, do you think a future president should extradited the American government official to face charges?

This is quite a crazy hypothetical, and even though it's entirely legally possible, I doubt we'd ever see it, but I'm curious what other opinions on this are.

I attend a more competitive institution in the east coast that does have a history of protest, yet there's relatively little action decrying the ongoing war. Professors and students at my uni have brought it up as well; my friends at other schools around the country have voiced similar sentiments. Is it due to the increased surveillance? Is there more punishment nowadays for freedom of speech compared to back then? I know the comparison isn't exact at all - they have vastly different impacts on the American polity, but the war is still unpopular and irrational (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/most-americans-say-the-iran-war-is-bad-for-america/). Want to know if I'm just in a bubble and resistance is actually sweeping across American higher ed or if anyone has insights.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement aka ICE remains as one of the most polarizing federal agencies in the United States. Some people argue that its records of human rights violations, detentions, and agressive methods of deportation makes it beyond repair. Other argue that even though ICE is causing all this, removing ICE can create a huge law enforcement vaccum.

Where do you guys stand on this issue and how would a realistic solution look like?

The Rules Committee has gotten special attention lately for how they have actually managed to lose votes on rules, which is exceptionally rare in history. The discharge petitions are becoming much more widespread and the speaker is seen as drastically weak. Can you think of any time in recent memory like this?

Regardless, we can take some inspiration from some other places for better solutions. Some state legislatures have some options. And some legislatures abroad have better ideas too.

I in particular like the way Scotland does it. They have a Bureau with one member from each party with at least 5/129 of the members (which is 4%), and other groups that together have 5 members also can join. The speaker (presiding officer there) is also a member without a vote except to break ties. They propose an agenda in general with the list of bills to be considered for the week, or more like the next six meeting days which is about a third of a month, but this list can be amended from the floor on the spot if desired when any 10 members ask. They had 108 sitting days in the last full year, and of them, the rules of the parliament require they give 2 sitting half days to the agenda desired by what is basically a jury, 16 of them to the parties which are not part of the majority, and 12 of them to what committees have preferred rather than the leadership of the majority parties. This is about 14% of the time.

Note that this is just an agenda to put bills and resolutions on the agenda, not anything further. The way the Rules Committee in the House of Representatives further constrains things does not apply. You can only close debate with a specific motion asking to do so. You don't restrict amendments either to bills or resolutions that way either, they just get made and then the time for the underlying bill or motion assigned by the agenda is exhausted and then they will vote on all the amendments.

There are some other options too. North Dakota's calendar gives little power to the speaker to just make things up. The committees must report a bill within a certain period, 60 days if I remember, of being given a bill or else it is automatically on the calendar for them all to consider unless they give an extension from the whole house and then basically everything on the calendar must be voted on to decide whether to proceed with them or not. They cannot close debate or amendments unless specific motions are passed by everyone to do this, not as a package. Nebraska even has a secret ballot for the speaker and committee chairs, with a runoff ballot if nobody happens to have a majority, and an executive committee elected by the legislature also by secret ballot determines precise details of consideration, and a floor motion can also bring things up.

It's really hard formatting this topic to rescind my personal opinion, but I am genuinely interested to see if there's strong counter positions to the argument: There is an information war being fought against American political discourse, with the following three mains points:

1. Is most internet and political forum traffic botted?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jun/6/internet-traffic-ai-agents-bots-surpasses-people/

1. Do Intelligence agencies run most protest organizations and political forums?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/30/lincoln-project-glenn-youngkin-virginia-event

https://nypost.com/2026/06/16/us-news/splc-employee-who-paid-neo-nazi-lover-1-2-million-unmasked/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/27/proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-fbi-informant

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/roblox-reddit-and-discord-users-compelled-to-use-biometric-id-system-backed-by-palantir-co-founder-peter-thiel/

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fjeffrey-epstein-linked-to-4chan-founder-creation-of-pol-in-v0-5yovevqjbmgg1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1080%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dc90f4d1039b3cbbc05e09bb5017b0b5a925c6bbb

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00832976.pdf

1. Are Democrats and Republicans are controlled by special interest groups?

https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/

https://www.aol.com/articles/exclusive-democrat-donors-flood-cash-140845916.html

https://www.jns.org/u.s.-news/orourke-trump-turning-israel-into-partisan-issue

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/08/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-republican-foreign-policy-510258

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/91000-bailout-calls-85000-against-to-feinstein/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/speaker-johnson-says-he-misspoke-about-trump-being-an-fbi-informant-in-the-epstein-case

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/dark-money-hit-record-high-19-billion-2024-federal-races

https://theintercept.com/2024/10/24/aipac-spending-congress-elections-israel/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/billionaires-dark-money-fuel-questions-ahead-of-2026-midterms/

https://www.newsfromtheperimeter.com/home/2023/1/3/virgin-islands-ag-who-vowed-to-expose-espteins-vip-friends-terminated-while-biden-visits-islands

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb0lodibEew

Like stated in the OP, these articles mostly "support," a conclusion, but that conclusion cannot be verified. For instance, the Federal government doesn't even acknowledge that Epstein was an intelligence servant, so I simultaneously could face criticism for "preaching basics," while talking about things that aren't even acknowledged to exist.

So if I wanted to argue that "Most of American politics are fake as part of an information war," what portion jumps out as the most attackable portion?

Lindsay Graham, an influential Republican, just passed away very suddenly and Mitch McConnell is seeming to be not too far behind him. What kind of implications could this have overall on the GOP’s power structure losing both these men?

The standard structural diagnosis goes roughly like this: parties emphasize differences because that's how they win primaries, media amplify conflict because conflict holds attention, and policy drifts toward concentrated interests because concentrated interests are the ones organized enough to spend. No bad intentions required, just incentives pointing away from delivery.

It's a tidy account. It's also rarely tested against the simpler alternative: voters just don't punish non-delivery. If a member can vote against a policy that 75% of their own party supports and still win re-election comfortably, you don't need capture to explain the outcome. You only need slack.

Those two stories make different predictions, and I'm curious which ones people think are actually decisive:

• Electoral penalty. Under "no punishment," defecting from supermajority-supported policy should carry no measurable vote cost. Under structural capture, defection should track donor concentration better than it tracks district opinion.
• Salience. Under "no punishment," a well-covered, high-salience defection should get punished; attention is the missing ingredient. Under capture, raising salience shouldn't change much.
• Null cases. Under capture, we'd expect delivery on a popular policy where organized money is absent or split. Do we actually see that?

What would you add, and what result would make you drop the structural account?