Executive Functions Chat

Bob interviews Nate Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford Law AI Initiative, about artificial intelligence and democracy, with particular attention to elections. They discuss what’s driving American anxiety about AI, why Republican and Democratic users alike rate AI models as left of center, and why Persily thinks the greater danger from deepfakes is not voters who are fooled but voters who stop believing what’s true—the “liar’s dividend.” They also take up the risks of relying on chatbots for voting information, state laws requiring disclosure of AI in political ads, and why Persily, though not “an unrepentant doomer,” thinks the time to regulate AI may be running out rapidly.


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Bob Bauer interviews Tammy Patrick, Chief Executive Officer for Programs at the Election Center and former Federal Compliance Officer for the Maricopa County Elections Department, about how election officials are preparing for the midterm elections. They discuss differences between an imperfect election and an illegitimate one, the decentralized patchwork of thousands of local offices that administers the vote, the checks set up to constrain partisan officials or rogue insiders, and why federal intervention now tops the list of concerns for many officials. Tammy closes with advice for voters: make a plan, vote early, and don’t mistake a slow count for a rigged one.


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Jack and Bob discuss the legality of the three advertisements praising President Trump that have recently aired with the tag “Paid for by the U.S. Government” and were reportedly paid for with Department of Homeland Security funds. They explain why the advertisements run afoul of the annually enacted appropriations rider barring the use of public money for publicity or propaganda purposes, and examine how the Government Accountability Office’s categories of impermissible propaganda apply to each of the three ads. They also touch on the less-clear relevance of the Hatch Act, why the applicable enforcement mechanisms are unlikely to be used, and what might explain an administration with ample party funds spending public money on advertisements that leading members of its own party have criticized.


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Jack Goldsmith interviews John Coates, the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School and former general counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission, about Trump Media’s sale of early access to the president’s Truth Social posts—up to $100,000 a month for a roughly 50-millisecond head start on market-moving announcements. They discuss how the arrangement differs from the low-latency data feeds Bloomberg and Dow Jones lawfully sell, how the STOCK Act applies the insider trading laws to the president by name, and who may bear legal risk: the subscribers, the president, or both. They also take up potential enforcement by a future administration, under New York’s Martin Act, or through private suits.


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Bob Bauer discusses the Supreme Court’s order declining to stay the injunction against the Postal Service’s ballot-mail rule, issued the previous evening over a brief concurrence from Justice Kavanaugh and a longer dissent from Justices Alito and Thomas. He reads the Court’s order as a possible signal that eleventh-hour executive interventions in the electoral process would meet skepticism; notes the measure of bipartisanship in the record, including red-state election officials who told the Court the rule could not be implemented in time; and cautions that the rule’s application to the 2028 (and later) elections remains an open question.


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