Federal government

Of all of the recent headlines about U.S. government dysfunction, election denialism, and voter dissatisfaction, one in particular worries Ford School political scientist Jenna Bednar. The New York Times reported in October 2022, “Voters See...

Two second year master’s students, Joe Mancina (MPP ‘24) and Gerardo Méndez Gutiérrez (MPP’24), have been selected from a competitive pool of applicants for the Ford School’s prestigious 2024 Riecker Fellowship. They will spend the winter semester...

Barry Rabe, San Francisco Chronicle: "The idea was to give the federal government more power to make sure energy moved smoothly around the country. Now you have the law pulled out to look at the question of gas bans, which I’m sure was not...

A professor who was arrested under the Trump administration's China Initiative began his trial this week. Ann Chih Lin, associate professor of public policy and director of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, explained how the...

The trial for the men who planned to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer is beginning soon.  Javed Ali, associate professor of practice, provided some insight into the trial and potential witnesses.  “Hard to know what a judge is thinking, but it...

In the latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, many parents found themselves at home watching their children, rather than working, due to daycare closures. Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics, explained how child care closures...

A recent survey found that 1 in 4 Americans think violence against the government is sometimes okay. Christian Davenport, professor of political science and public policy, said he wasn't surprised, but that using polls exclusively didn't convince...

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed governments to roll out higher surveillance systems without pushback from citizens. Such emergencies “can be moments where governments roll out new invasive forms of data collection and it just becomes...

This week, Betsey Stevenson spoke to NPR and PBS about the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, from supply chains around the world, to a changing workforce, and U.S. government debt. "COVID's affecting the entire world. There are entire...

During the COVID-19 quarantine, Hong Kong mandated that all local residents and foreigners remain in designated zones at all times. Government officials were faced with a technical challenge to ensure citizen compliance without invading privacy, all...

“When something goes wrong in a federal program, it makes the news,” says Janet Weiss. Sometimes, that is the only picture that people see of such programs.That reality and the “crucial stake” that the public, Congress, and executive branch each...

The Obama administration has announced plans for a $2 billion initiative to test new approaches to fight poverty in the U.S., citing Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin’s recently published book about Americans living on $2 a day.White House officials say...

"Remember the Problems with Mortgage Defaults? They're Coming Back with Student Loans," writes Professor Susan Dynarski in The Upshot, The New York Times' curated blog on politics, policy, and economics. "The parallels with the mortgage crisis are...

"Attorney General Greg Abbot, perhaps the most likely person to be the next governor of Texas, routinely says, 'I wake up in the morning, I sue the federal government and then I go home,'" Barry Rabe told Sally Herships during a May 6 interview for...

Justin Wolfers was quoted in a Today.com article looking at growing public concern surrounding national debt and political dysfunction in America. The article points to a January Gallop poll in which 20 percent of respondents said they view the...