Yes, Trump’s PACs really can pay his legal fees

Donald Trump sits in a New York courtroom with Chris Kise and Alina Habba, two of his attorneys who have reportedly been paid with political action committee funds. Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty Images

Richard Briffault, Columbia University

Campaign finance data released at the end of January 2024 revealed that Save America, a political action committee founded and controlled by former President Donald Trump, spent more than US$50 million in 2023 on legal fees resulting from Trump’s multiple criminal and civil cases.

OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit tracking campaign funds, found that other Trump-aligned organizations also paid a combined $10 million in additional legal fees for Trump in 2023.

Though I have spent much of my career as a scholar of campaign finance law, I’m not certain whether that use of campaign donations is legal under federal election law. It might be; it might not be. But if it’s not, I deem it unlikely that the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, would take any action.

The rules about campaign spending

As a general rule, campaign contributions may be used only for election-related expenses. They are not for the personal use of a candidate or federal officeholder. Federal regulations define “personal use” as “any … expense of any person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s or duties as a Federal officeholder.” In other words, a candidate cannot use campaign funds to pay her daughter’s college tuition or the mortgage on her personal residence.

In several advisory opinions, the FEC has repeatedly allowed campaign funds to pay legal expenses that are connected to an election campaign or officeholder action, such as litigation to get on the ballot or defense against a criminal investigation concerning whether the candidate misused his office.

Many of Trump’s legal cases, and therefore their expenses, do relate to campaign activities – such as his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election. Others relate to his role as an officeholder or former officeholder, such as the allegedly criminal retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Even the New York state criminal case about paying hush money to former porn actress Stormy Daniels is election-related: It involves an alleged scheme to prevent potentially damaging stories about Trump’s personal life from becoming public during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Donald Trump sits in court for his arraignment on charges relating to hush money payments meant to keep some information quiet before the 2016 presidential election. Andrew Kelly-Pool/Getty Images

A separate fund

However, the civil lawsuits brought by E. Jean Carroll, in which Trump was found to have sexually abused her and then to have repeatedly defamed her, are different. They do not involve either an election or Trump’s use of office. So I would expect that his legal fees for those cases would be considered personal.

Also likely personal is the civil case in New York alleging business fraud, in which he has been ordered to pay more than $350 million in penalties.

But it appears that Save America has been paying legal fees in those cases, too. Those payments may be legal under a different provision of federal campaign law. The prohibition on personal use of campaign funds applies most clearly to the funds in the candidate’s own campaign account. But federal election law also allows a candidate to set up a separate fund, known as a “leadership PAC,” which can be used for election-related activities other than support for their own campaign.

Save America is Trump’s leadership PAC, created by the Make America Great Again PAC. Although Save America is controlled by Trump, it is technically an independent entity.

FEC regulations are relatively relaxed about payments of personal expenses by these sorts of independent groups. Third-party funds can be for the personal use of the candidate as long as the expenses would have been incurred “irrespective” of whether the candidate is running for office. If third-party funds are used to pay campaign expenses, those funds count as campaign contributions and cannot exceed the $5,000 contribution limit per campaign. But there is no limit on how much third-party funds can spend on a candidate’s personal expenses.

Even though Trump controls the leadership PAC, the FEC considers it to be a “third party.” So it can pay his personal legal expenses – though only the ones that he would have incurred even if he were not currently running for president.

It is less clear whether a leadership PAC can legally help pay the multimillion-dollar fines Trump has been assessed as a result of those trials. The logic of the FEC’s interpretation of the personal use exception would appear to permit the use of leadership PAC funds here too, but this is a truly unprecedented situation, so it is difficult to say for sure.

The question of coordination

A remaining legal issue is whether Save America has coordinated its payment of Trump’s legal expenses with Donald J. Trump for President 2024 Inc., the committee authorized to pay his 2024 presidential campaign expenses.

An expenditure coordinated with a campaign is considered to be a contribution to that campaign. Save America’s legal expense payments are wildly above the $5,000 limit on PAC contributions to a candidate’s campaign. The FEC considers an expenditure to be coordinated only if it is made in “cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee or a political party committee.”

The fact that Trump clearly benefits is not enough to establish “coordination.” Without evidence of some actual directive from or agreement with Trump or his campaign committee, it is unlikely the FEC would step in and allege Trump or one of his groups had violated the law.

Richard Briffault, Joseph P. Chamberlain Professor of Legislation, Columbia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Nonpartisan Engagement of Student Voters

by Emily Sydnor and Sarah Brackmann

Presidential nomination season is upon us. While it seems as if the selection of the major parties' presidential candidates is a foregone conclusion, American engagement with the election process is nonetheless vital for the hundreds of other federal, state, and local offices that will be filled by the victors of both the spring primaries and November general election. Yet only about half of people aged 18-29 voted in the 2020 presidential election. Higher education as a profession is poised to increase youth voter turnout this election year; not only because colleges and universities are the primary institutions structuring young adults' lives, but also because many have -- as their core purpose -- educating for the public good and transforming students into engaged community leaders.

We have the potential to cement students' civic habits, but instead we see the hollowing out of the civic mission of higher education. The culture wars have come to higher education. State legislation ending tenure for faculty and eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion offices also freezes dialogue on campuses and leaves administrators, faculty, and staff wary of appearing too partisan in our polarized political environment. So, how does an institution remain bipartisan (or nonpartisan) while educating students about when, where, why, and how to register and cast a ballot? Below, we share recommendations based on our experience developing and advising the student voting coalition at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

"How" and "where" are not partisan questions. It might feel like the process of voting has become yet another casualty of the battle between Democrats and Republicans, but the bottom line is that research in political science and adjacent disciplines provides many clear best practices for schools interested in developing their nonpartisan voting efforts. For example, having polling places nearby increases the likelihood that anyone will go vote, but is especially important for groups, like college students, who may not have continued or easy access to a vehicle or public transportation. One study found that people without a car are unlikely to vote when their polling place is more than half a mile away; another demonstrated that changing the location of polling places in Los Angeles County reduced voter turnout by increasing the effort participants had to put into the process. The takeaway for colleges and universities trying to improve voting efforts on campus is clear: one priority should be to work with the local government to put a polling place on campus.

When it comes to the mechanics of how students vote, we focus mainly on the process, highlighting the different avenues available for students regarding where they register and how they cast a ballot. Students can register at their home address or their campus address, but the easier we make the entire process, the more likely they are to follow through on their intention to vote. At Southwestern, this starts with a range of on-campus voter registration events (Texas does not allow online voter registration). In the month leading up to the start of Early Voting, we also encourage everyone on campus to "make a plan." Research shows that planning to vote, including identifying what format you will use, what identification you will bring, and where you will physically cast your ballot, can dramatically increase an individual's probability of voting. While we implemented our voting plan initiative using resources already available on campus, Motivote software also does some of the heavy lifting to make this process more interesting and engaging to members of the campus community.

Focus on the non-partisan "why." There are all sorts of reasons why anyone votes. Some of these reasons clearly align with partisan mobilization: representation of one's myriad identities or strong opinions about contemporary policy issues, for example. Others have nothing to do with which "team" you support, and many of these can be just as motivating as the traditional partisan arguments. A sense of civic duty inspires many people, young and old, to show up to the polls. Socialization in families, friendships, and communities that value voting as a group activity can increase the likelihood of actually casting a ballot. While it might not be the most noble of "whys," voting because it's what all your friends and neighbors do is still voting. Peer-to-peer outreach emphasizing all of these messages can be an effective way to encourage voter registration and turnout on campus while maintaining clear distance from the partisan battles shaping national political discourse.

Institutionalize your coalition. To do this work successfully, it is vital to have a coalition of committed students, faculty, and staff on campus and to partner with the great organizations working to increase student voter engagement nationwide. At Southwestern, we've embedded voter registration and voter engagement throughout the student experience, whether by registering them to vote on campus at the President's dinner for first-year students when they arrive in August or by sharing plug-and-play syllabus language with dates and important links with faculty campus-wide. Our student coalition, SU Votes!, collaborates with student organizations from the Interfraternity Council to university athletics and the Coalition for Diversity and Social Justice, an umbrella organization for student groups centered around issues of cultural and social identity. We've been fortunate that university administration, faculty, staff, and students are all supportive of our work in the last several elections, but even when they've been more hesitant, there is enough momentum among the students to keep a grassroots effort alive on campus.

This sustained momentum would not be possible, however, without the financial support and accountability efforts by our national partners. The ALL-IN Campus Democracy Challenge and Campus Vote Project's Voter Friendly Campus designation were our first steps into the world of student voter engagement. Both programs force us to develop a plan, focus on outcomes, and evaluate our efforts using concrete measures of success. The plans then serve as a touchstone for the students, teaching them skills in "SMART" goal-setting and program evaluation, and empowering them to design programming that aligns with their goals. The National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, an opt-in data initiative, has been vital to program assessment, providing us with verified student registration and voting rates. The Campus Vote Project's Democracy Fellows initiative provides financial support and a virtual community for students who are interested in leading campus voting efforts. And our engagement with these programs and others has opened doors to small grants to fund this work, which has no designated university budget line.

We won't sugarcoat it: maintaining a nonpartisan voter engagement effort on your campus is not easy. It takes time to get buy-in from the campus community, and ensuring continuity as student leaders graduate and new ones take their place can be a serious hurdle. But the investment pays off -- in the short-term sense of shared success when the campus hits a turnout milestone and the longer-term institutional cultivation of young people's civic mindset.

Disclaimer: HigherEdJobs encourages free discourse and expression of issues while striving for accurate presentation to our audience. A guest opinion serves as an avenue to address and explore important topics, for authors to impart their expertise to our higher education audience and to challenge readers to consider points of view that could be outside of their comfort zone. The viewpoints, beliefs, or opinions expressed in the above piece are those of the author(s) and don't imply endorsement by HigherEdJobs.

This article is republished from HigherEdJobs^® under a Creative Commons license. 

Young people are lukewarm about Biden – and giving them more information doesn’t move the needle much

Young voters in Ann Arbor, Mich., fill out applications to cast their ballot in the midterm elections in November 2022. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

Neil O'Brian, University of Oregon and Chandler James, University of Oregon

Recent polling for the November 2024 election shows that President Joe Biden is struggling with young voters, who have traditionally supported Democrats.

A December 2023 poll showed that 49% of young people supported former President Donald Trump, while just 43% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they preferred Biden.

Biden is even struggling with young people who identify as Democrats. A Fall 2023 Harvard Kennedy School poll shows that just 62% of Democrats aged 18 to 29 years old said they would vote for Biden in 2024.

Many Democrats are increasingly anxious that young voters who supported Biden in 2020 will boycott the general election in 2024, support a third-party candidate or vote for Trump.

Polls this far from Election Day are notoriously variable and not reliable for predicting election results. Furthermore, some political pundits are asking whether young voters will return to the Biden coalition once the campaign season heats up and they learn more about the two candidates.

As scholars of public opinion and the U.S. presidency, we are deeply interested in the prospect of young voters, particularly Democrats, defecting from the Biden coalition.

An Emory University student in Atlanta walks past voting information in October 2022. Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images

Mixed evidence on young voters’ support for Biden

About 51% of young voters, aged 18 to 29 years old, identify as Democrats. This compares with 35% of these voters who identify as Republicans. In 2020, young voters in this age group made up an estimated 17% of the electorate.

In a close election, securing the youth vote will be paramount in order for Biden to win reelection.

We wanted to understand how young voters might change their election pick preferences if they learn more about different topics, such as the economy, likely to feature in this election season.

We recruited 1,418 respondents from across the country to participate in an online survey experiment in December 2023, including 860 people who identify as Democrats.

In this experiment, we exposed respondents to different messages that the Biden campaign might employ, to see if young Democrats could be persuaded back to Biden.

A quarter of the respondents saw information about how inflation and unemployment decreased during the Biden administration.

Another quarter of respondents were given information about Trump’s norm-violating behavior, such as encouraging an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

The next quarter of respondents were given information about Biden’s and Trump’s positions on abortion, and whether the U.S. should accept immigrants from the Gaza Strip.

The final group of respondents received no information about a particular topic.

In our research, which has yet to be published, we found mixed evidence that undecided young Democrats would be persuaded to vote for Biden based on any new information we shared with them.

Among the people we polled who were given no information, 66% of 18-year-old to 34-year-old Democrats said they would vote for Biden. This roughly tracks with national polling.

Would learning about the strength of the economy boost Biden’s support?

About 69% of young Democrats who read about dropping inflation and unemployment rates said they would vote for Biden, compared with 31% who said they would vote for Trump or another candidate. This reflects a modest increase in support for Biden, compared to people who had no information on this topic.

We then tested whether providing information to voters about the candidates’ policy positions would change support for Biden.

It is possible that voters are just unaware of the candidates’ positions on issues and, after getting more information, will change their views.

We found that 71% of respondents who learned about Biden’s and Trump’s policy positions on abortion and Palestinian refugees from Gaza said they would vote for Biden, compared with the 66% who did not read any new information on these topics before deciding their pick.

Finally, we gave people information about Trump’s norm-violating behavior. This actually marginally decreased support for Biden, dropping from the 66% among people who did not have any of this information given to them in the survey to 63% among people who did. This change, though, lacked what social scientists call statistical significance – meaning that we cannot say this difference is not just attributable to chance alone.

Overall, we found that giving young Democrats access to three different pieces of information generally led to small increases in whether they said they would vote for Biden or not.

Next, we asked respondents “How enthusiastic would you say you are about voting for president in next year’s election?” and how likely they are to vote in the upcoming presidential election. We found that the three different pieces of information each led to a small increase in reported vote intention among young Democrats, but didn’t, on average, increase their enthusiasm about voting. In other words, if young voters feel compelled to vote, they may do so, but without enthusiasm.

Abortion rights canvassers gather for a canvass training in Columbus, Ohio, in November 2023. Megan Jelinger/AFP via Getty Images

The power of persuasion

Taken together, these results show little movement among young Democrats. This is particularly striking when compared to older Democrats in our sample.

When presented with information about the strength of the economy, the candidates’ divergent policy positions or Trump’s norm-violating behavior, support for Biden among likely voters who were 55 years old or older and identified as Democrats increased from 73% to around 90%.

These results suggest an uphill battle for the Biden campaign to bring back young voters. Young voters, even if they identify as Democrats, are perhaps less attached to a party, or democratic institutions more generally, than older voters. This means campaign messages about democratic norms might be less persuasive among younger voters.

On the other hand, there are reasons to expect young voters might return to Biden: The economy is doing well, which tends to help incumbents.

Furthermore, partisanship, particularly in this polarizing environment, remains a powerful influence, and may still exert a pull on young Democrats over the campaign.

Democrats, after all, successfully ran on an anti-Trump campaign in the 2022 midterm elections, 2020 general election and the 2018 midterm elections.

Neil O'Brian, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon and Chandler James, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

War in Ukraine at 2 years: Destruction seen from space – via radar

Satellite radar data shows the complete destruction of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Xu et al. (2024), CC BY-NC-ND

Sylvain Barbot, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

As soldiers and citizens provide information from the front lines and affected areas of the war in Ukraine – two years old as of Feb. 24, 2024 – in quasi-real time, an active open-source intelligence community has formed to keep track of troop activity, destruction and other aspects of the war.

Remote sensing complements this approach, offering a safe means to study inaccessible or dangerous areas. For example, seismologists have documented the high pace of bombardments and firing of artillery around Kyiv during the first few months of the war.

Previously, Teng Wang, a professor at the Peking University in China, and I – both Earth scientists – studied illegal nuclear tests in North Korea with satellite data.

Putting our skills to good use once again, we, with graduate student Hang Xu, have analyzed the development of the war from space. We exclusively used open-source, freely accessible data to ensure that all our findings could be reproduced, guaranteeing transparency and neutrality.

View from above

Sensors on satellites record electromagnetic waves radiated or reflected from Earth’s surface with wavelengths ranging from hundreds of nanometers to tens of centimeters, enabling semi-continuous monitoring on a global scale, unimpeded by political boundaries and natural obstacles.

Optical images, the equivalent of photographs taken from space, help governments, researchers and journalists monitor troop movements on the front and the destruction of equipment and facilities. Although optical images are easily interpreted, they suffer from cloud cover and operate only during daylight.

To counter these issues, we used radars onboard satellites. Space-borne radar systems beam long-wavelength electromagnetic waves toward the Earth and then record the returning echos. These waves – about 0.4 to 4 inches (1 to 10 centimeters) – can penetrate clouds and smoke. Radar interferometry has already proved to be an invaluable tool to monitor widespread damage caused by natural disasters.

Satellite photography like these ‘before’ and ‘after’ images can provide a visceral sense of the destruction in the war in Ukraine. Satellite image (c) 2023 Maxar Technologies via Getty Images

Radar from space

Free and publicly available radar data for civilian applications is rare – the United States is scheduled to launch its first one in March 2024 – but the European Space Agency has made such data available since the early 1990s. Data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite radar is freely accessible via their data hub.

Two radar images formed over the same area can be used to detect changes to structures and other surfaces. Interferometry measures the difference in travel time between two radar signals, which is a measure of change in the shape or position of surfaces. Another measure of surface change is the coherence of the reflected signals – that is, the degree of similarity between two different images when comparing neighboring pixels at the same position in the two images. A large coherence implies little change and thus the preservation of a building or other structure. On the other hand, a loss of coherence in the context of a battlefield implies damage or destruction of a building or structure.

Sentinel-1 radar’s spatial resolution of 66 feet (20  meters) over a swath of 255 miles (410  kilometers) combined with 12-day updates makes its radar data ideal for monitoring urban warfare. Previous research efforts have used satellite radar data to assess damage in Kyiv and Mariupol. We used the data to analyze the evolution of damage to cities over time during several lengthy battles.

Changes in radar data during the battle of Bahkmut show increasing amounts of destruction. Red pixels imply damaged or destroyed buildings. Xu et al. (2024), CC BY-NC-ND

Measure of destruction

We flagged highly damaged areas by comparing radar coherence before and after the war, within the areas classified as artificial surfaces by the European Space Agency’s WorldCover 2021 dataset. Using this approach, we first analyzed the battle of Bakhmut, one of the longest and bloodiest of the war, which began on Oct. 8, 2022, and ended with a Russian victory on May 20, 2023.

When Hang Xu showed Teng Wang and me the data he had processed, we were puzzled. We saw a checkerboard pattern all over the city. We quickly realized the horror of the situation. The only thing that survived after the yearlong battle was the network of roads in the city. All buildings had partially or completely collapsed due to the continuous bombardment.

We then took a look at the battles of Rubizhne, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk that started in April 2022 and ended with a Russian victory on July 2, 2022. The comparatively lower destruction of Lysychansk is explained by the rapid encirclement of the city from the south instead of continued frontal assaults, as was the case in Bakhmut. The radar data reveals destruction away from the front line within cities, showing the whole extent of the devastation.

Changes in radar data during the battles of Rubizhne, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk show increasing amounts of destruction. Urban areas are shown in gray with damage in red. Xu et al. (2024), CC BY-NC-ND

Devastation in focus

Remote sensing images offer the means to safely monitor the impact of armed conflicts, particularly as high-intensity wars in urban environments proliferate. Open-access satellite instruments complement other forms of open-source intelligence by offering unimpeded access to high-resolution, unbiased information, which can help people grasp the true impact of war on the ground.

The picture is clear: The real story of war is destruction.

Sylvain Barbot, Associate Professor of Earth Sciences, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Celebrating Women Veterans: 5 meaningful ways to pay tribute

Veterans play an important role in U.S. history. Over time, the demographics of veterans have changed, but few realize the growing role of women in the armed forces. Today, women comprise 11% of the veteran population. According to the Pew Research Center, that number is expected to increase to 18% by 2048.

Fannie Griffin McClendon is one of those women. She enlisted during a tumultuous period of history that spanned World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Her more than two decades in the military included service in both the Army and Air Force.

In an oral history interview for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, she recalled her proudest memory was her time with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion during World War II. As the only all-African American, all-female unit deployed to Europe, it processed mountains of mail for U.S. servicemembers in Europe in 1945 and is credited with boosting the troops’ morale. McClendon also provided a unique perspective of life as a career military officer in an era when African American women faced bigotry and barriers.

Through the Veterans History Project, the Library of Congress collects and preserves the firsthand remembrances of U.S. military veterans like McClendon and makes them accessible for future generations to better understand veterans’ service and sacrifice. Stories are available to the public on the Library’s website and at the Washington, D.C. campus.

You can extend this work and honor women veterans in your community with simple acts of appreciation such as:

Support Women Veteran-Owned Businesses
Take your support for small businesses one step further and look for women veteran-owned businesses to support. These leaders are making waves in the business world and the nonprofit sector. If possible, provide mentorships for women veterans to help transition to civilian life.

Encourage Women Veterans to Share Their Stories
Interview the women veterans in your life and capture the details of their military experiences. Then share your documentation with the Veterans History Project, which helps preserve these stories for future generations.

Submit a 30-minute (or longer) unedited video or audio interview sharing service details and/or a collection of original photos or correspondence. Veterans, or families of deceased veterans, may also submit a minimum 20-page journal and/or unpublished memoir or 10 or more original photos or letters. Visit loc.gov/vets and click “How to Participate” for instructions.

Learn More About Women Veterans
Educate yourself, your children and those around you. Visit museums and memorials, many of which have specific displays to honor the sacrifices and triumphs of women veterans.

Advocate for and Empower Women Veterans
Support initiatives and programs that serve women veterans. Empower them to acknowledge their service and take advantage of the programs and resources available.

Say ‘Thank You’
This may be the easiest, yet most impactful, way you can support veterans, and there are many ways to do so. Shake her hand, buy her lunch or send her a card or letter. None of these take much time, but each can have a big impact.

Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, Fannie Griffin McClendon Collection, AFC2001/001/119440 and Fannie Griffin McClendon.

SOURCE:
Library of Congress Veterans History Project

Israeli siege has placed Gazans at risk of starvation − prewar policies made them vulnerable in the first place

Displaced Gazan children wait in line to receive food. Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images

Yara M. Asi, University of Central Florida

The stories of hunger emerging from war-ravaged Gaza are stark: People resorting to grinding barely edible cattle feed to make flour; desperate residents eating grass; reports of cats being hunted for food.

The numbers involved are just as despairing. The world’s major authority on food insecurity, the IPC Famine Review Committee, estimates that 90% of Gazans – some 2.08 million people – are facing acute food insecurity. Indeed, of the people facing imminent starvation in the world today, an estimated 95% are in Gaza.

As an expert in Palestinian public health, I fear the situation may not have hit its nadir. In January 2024, many of the top funders to UNRWA, the U.N.’s refugee agency that provides the bulk of services to Palestinians in Gaza, suspended donations to the agency in response to allegations that a dozen of the agency’s 30,000 employees were possibly involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas. The agency has indicated that it will no longer be able to offer services starting in March and will lose its ability to distribute food and other vital supplies during that month.

With at least 28,000 people confirmed dead and an additional 68,000 injured, Israeli bombs have already had a catastrophic human cost in Gaza – starvation could be the next tragedy to befall the territory.

Indeed, two weeks after Israel initiated a massive military campaign in the Gaza Strip, Oxfam International reported that only around 2% of the usual amount of food was being delivered to residents in the territory. At the time, Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East director, commented that “there can be no justification for using starvation as a weapon of war.” But four months later, the siege continues to restrict the distribution of adequate aid.

Putting Palestinians ‘on a diet’

Israeli bombs have destroyed homes, bakeries, food production factories and grocery stores, making it harder for people in Gaza to offset the impact of the reduced imports of food.

But food insecurity in Gaza and the mechanisms that enable it did not start with Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack.

A U.N. report from 2022 found that a year before the latest war, 65% of Gazans were food insecure, defined as lacking regular access to enough safe and nutritious food.

Multiple factors contributed to this food insecurity, not least the blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel and enabled by Egypt since 2007. All items entering the Gaza Strip, including food, become subject to Israeli inspection, delay or denial.

Basic foodstuff was allowed, but because of delays at the border, it can spoil before it enters Gaza.

A 2009 investigation by Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz found that foods as varied as cherries, kiwi, almonds, pomegranates and chocolate were prohibited entirely.

Not enough food aid to go around in Gaza. Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images

At certain points, the blockade, which Israel claims is an unavoidable security measure, has been loosened to allow import of more foods; for example, in 2010 Israel started to permit potato chips, fruit juices, Coca-Cola and cookies.

By placing restrictions on food imports, Israel seems to be trying to put pressure on Hamas by making life difficult for the people in Gaza. In the words of one Israeli government adviser in 2006, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

To enable this, the Israeli government commissioned a 2008 study to work out exactly how many calories Palestinians would need to avoid malnutrition. The report was released to the public only following a 2012 legal battle.

The blockade also increased food insecurity by preventing meaningful development of an economy in Gaza.

The U.N. cites the “excessive production and transaction costs and barriers to trade with the rest of the world” imposed by Israel as the primary cause of severe underdevelopment in the occupied territories, including Gaza. As a result, in late 2022 the unemployment rate in Gaza stood at around 50%. This, coupled with a steady increase in the cost of food, makes affording food difficult for many Gazan households, rendering them dependent on aid, which fluctuates frequently.

Hampering self-sufficency

More generally, the blockade and the multiple rounds of destruction of parts of the Gaza Strip have made food sovereignty in the territory nearly impossible.

Much of Gaza’s farmland is along the so-called “no-go zones,” which Israel had rendered inaccessible to Palestinians, who risk being shot if they attempt to access these areas.

Gaza’s fishermen are regularly shot at by Israeli gunboats if they venture farther in the Mediterranean Sea than Israel permits. Because the fish closer to the shore are smaller and less plentiful, the average income of a fisherman in Gaza has more than halved since 2017.

Meanwhile, much of the infrastructure needed for adequate food production – greenhouses, arable lands, orchards, livestock and food production facilities – have been destroyed or heavily damaged in various rounds of bombing in Gaza. And international donors have hesitated to hastily rebuild facilities when they cannot guarantee their investment will last more than a few years before being bombed again.

The latest siege has only further crippled the ability of Gaza to be food self-sufficient. By early December 2023, an estimated 22% of agricultural land had been destroyed, along with factories, farms, and water and sanitation facilities. And the full scale of the destruction may not be clear for months or years.

Meanwhile, Israel’s flooding of the tunnels under parts of the Gaza Strip with seawater risks killing remaining crops, leaving the land too salty and rendering it unstable and prone to sinkholes.

Starvation as weapon of war

Aside from the many health effects of starvation and malnutrition, especially on children, such conditions make people more vulnerable to disease – already a significant concern for those living in the overcrowded shelters where people have been forced to flee.

In response to the current hunger crisis in Gaza, Alex de Waal, author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine,” has made clear: “While it may be possible to bomb a hospital by accident, it is not possible to create a famine by accident.” He argues that the war crime of starvation does not need to include outright famine – merely the act of depriving people of food, medicine and clean water is sufficient.

The use of starvation is strictly forbidden under the Geneva Conventions, a set of statutes that govern the laws of warfare. Starvation has been condemned by United Nations Resolution 2417, which decried the use of deprivation of food and basic needs of the civilian population and compelled parties in conflict to ensure full humanitarian access.

Human Rights Watch has already accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, and as such it accuses the Israeli government of a war crime. The Israeli government in turn continues to blame Hamas for any loss of life in Gaza.

Yet untangling what Israel’s intentions may be – whether it is using starvation as a weapon of war, to force mass displacement, or if, as it claims, it is simply a byproduct of war – does little for the people on the ground in Gaza.

They require immediate intervention to stave off catastrophic outcomes. As one father in Gaza reported, “We are forced to eat one meal a day – the canned goods that we get from aid organizations. No one can afford to buy anything for his family. I see children here crying from hunger, including my own children.”

Yara M. Asi, Assistant Professor of Global Health Management and Informatics, University of Central Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Who will be picked for vice president? Let’s discuss who’s qualified for the job

Former president Donald Trump speaks as potential vice presidential hopefuls Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Tim Scott look on. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Christopher Devine, University of Dayton

The November presidential election might seem far away, but it’s time for the veepstakes – already. You know, that favorite game of pundits, politicos and political junkies who, every four years, obsess over the presidential candidates’ choice for vice president.

Of course, most states have not yet held their presidential primary or caucus. And nominations won’t be made official until the summer Democratic and Republican conventions.

But with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on track to win their party’s nominations, media headlines are already turning to the veepstakes. Who will Trump pick for vice president? Did he really ask Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his running mate? Will Biden drop Vice President Kamala Harris from the Democratic ticket?

As a political scientist who has studied veepstakes media coverage, I advise anyone following the vice presidential race to take all of this feverish speculation with a grain of salt.

You’ll hear in the speculation, for example, that vice presidents don’t really matter once in office and that the vice president pick has to be someone who can help win the election by delivering a key state or voting bloc.

But what matters most to voters, according to my research, and to the future of this country is finding someone who is well qualified to serve as vice president – and president, if necessary.

President Joe Biden holds hands with Vice President Kamala Harris at a reception for Black History Month on Feb. 6, 2024, at the White House. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

What the media get wrong

Veepstakes media coverage deserves its poor reputation as little more than an electoral parlor game. Too bad: Given the vice presidency’s importance and the media’s opportunity to educate Americans about who could be next to serve in the office, it should be so much more than that. This is the conclusion from my 2023 book, “News Media Coverage of the Vice-Presidential Selection Process: What’s Wrong with the ‘Veepstakes?’”

I used data from presidential elections from 2000 through 2020 to conduct the first systematic analysis of veepstakes media coverage. For each competitive vice presidential selection process during that time – five for Democrats, four for Republicans – I studied 10 “veepstakes guides.”

This means articles or other news features from major media outlets, such as The New York Times, CNN and Fox News, profiling numerous vice presidential contenders. Typically, these profiles break down the perceived advantages and disadvantages associated with choosing a certain candidate.

Journalists and their editors decide which criteria to consider when making those evaluations. This allows me to characterize the media’s messages about what is important when selecting a vice presidential candidate.

So, if 75% of the profiles of potential Democratic running mates in 2020 mentioned age, but only 40% mentioned political experience, I would conclude that media coverage, in general, portrayed age as a more relevant selection criterion than experience.

What does the evidence show?

Veepstakes media coverage tends to focus on whether a potential running mate can help win the election – not on who can help the president govern once in office.

From 2000-2016, for example, 73% of the vice presidential candidate profiles referenced the candidate’s home state, race, age, gender or social class as a reason to select or reject them.

Whether a candidate was qualified to serve in the White House attracted much less attention. Just half as many veepstakes profiles – approximately 38% – discussed the candidates’ political experience, working relationship with the presidential candidate or, more generally, whether they were up to the job of being vice president or president.

In fact, I found that journalists are more likely to discuss a potential running mate’s physical appearance than whether he or she is qualified to serve as vice president.

A potential vice presidential candidate’s political or professional experience gets even less media coverage in the run-up to a close election. Only when the outcome seems like a foregone conclusion do journalists spend about as much time weighing a potential running mate’s governing capacities as their electoral appeal. Choosing a well-qualified vice president is treated as a luxury that only some presidential candidates can afford.

Coverage around the 2024 GOP vice presidential pick is just heating up. But unfortunately, I think the country is likely to see the same type of veepstakes coverage in 2024 as in previous elections: fevered speculation about who can deliver an election victory, with some occasional commentary on who can serve effectively as vice president.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, seen here with former President Donald Trump in September 2023, has also been floated as a potential vice presidential pick. Scott Olson/Getty Images

How to get it right

The problem with veepstakes media coverage, generally speaking, is that it overstates the vice presidential candidate’s influence on voters and understates the importance of electing a well qualified vice president.

Vice presidents have little in the way of formal, constitutional powers. They break ties in the Senate. And in what used to be a simple ceremonial function, they also open and count the states’ electoral votes after a presidential election.

They are also first in line to take over as president, if necessary.

But over the past half-century, vice presidents have gained a great deal of informal power, too. In most administrations, they serve as top presidential advisers who play key roles in many major decisions. It is therefore important for presidential candidates to choose a running mate who can help them govern once in office.

Choosing a well-qualified running mate is also a good electoral strategy. My co-author, Kyle C. Kopko, and I demonstrate this in our 2020 book, “Do Running Mates Matter? The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections.” Voters reward presidential candidates for selecting someone with the experience necessary to serve as vice president by more favorably rating their judgment and delivering greater support at the polls.

The opposite is true when selecting a less-experienced or poorly qualified vice president in a desperate bid for votes – think Sarah Palin, in 2008. That strategy backfires.

In short, running mates mostly have an indirect effect on how people vote by influencing what they think of the presidential candidates. Rarely does the choice of a vice president have direct or targeted effects on voting. That is to say, very few people change their vote simply because they like the vice president or come from the same state or demographic group.

The media’s role

A free press is vital to democracy in the U.S. Among other things, it can serve the American people – not to mention presidential campaigns – by helping to provide relevant information about contenders for the vice presidency before they join a party ticket or get elected to office.

Informative news articles can provide answers to the most important questions: What are the potential running mate’s qualifications? What strengths will he or she bring to the White House? If elected, would the new president and vice president work well together?

My research suggests that this is the standard to which journalists and their audiences should aspire as they enter the veepstakes season. This is a consequential choice that requires serious, substantive analysis. You can pay attention to those who treat it as such – and ignore those who don’t.

Christopher Devine, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Early polls can offer some insight into candidates’ weak points – but are extremely imprecise

Voters cast their ballots in the race for governor in Kentucky on Nov. 7, 2023. Michael Swensen/Getty Images

W. Joseph Campbell, American University School of Communication

Preelection polls have been inescapable early in the 2024 election year, setting storylines, as they invariably do, for journalists and pundits about the race for the presidency.

At the same time, the polls have delivered reminders that they can be less than precise indicators of outcomes — as was evident in January’s Republican caucus in Iowa and primary in New Hampshire.

In those contests, former President Donald Trump slightly underperformed his estimated polling numbers, while rivals Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in Iowa and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in New Hampshire outperformed poll-based expectations.

Although Trump won both states handily, the outcomes signaled anew that polls, however ubiquitous, are best treated warily. That’s a point I emphasize in the soon-to-be-released, updated edition of “Lost in a Gallup,” my book about polling misfires in U.S. presidential elections.

Imprecision in election polling has long been recognized. As Archibald Crossley, a pioneer of modern survey research, pointed out in the early 1970s:

“If election results completely agree with those of a preelection poll, it is a coincidence.”

Members of a voting adjudication board review ballots in Phoenix on Nov. 9, 2023, after a midterm election days before in Arizona. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Contradictory polls

The early-in-2024 polls assessing a presumptive rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden have broadly signaled a close race, while on occasion presenting whiplash-inducing, contradictory indications.

Whiplash results can stem from differences in how pollsters conduct their surveys and how they analyze and statistically adjust their findings.

A striking example of whiplash effects came recently in surveys released within a day of each other. CNN, in a matchup poll released Feb. 1, 2024, estimated that Trump led Biden by 4 percentage points.

The day before, however, a Quinnipiac University poll reported that Biden was ahead of Trump by 6 points.

It deserves mention that neither CNN nor Quinnipiac distinguished itself in polling the presidential race four years ago. CNN’s final preelection survey in 2020 placed Biden ahead by 12 points; Quinnipiac’s final poll had Biden leading by 11 points.

Such results encouraged notions that Biden was headed for a landslide victory. His popular-vote margin in 2020 was 4.5 points, in what overall was the worst performance by polls since 1980.

Why pay any attention to polls?

The gap in the recent CNN and Quinnipiac poll results gives rise to an important question: Why, at such an early moment in the campaign, should voters pay any attention to preelection surveys?

Conventional wisdom, after all, has it that polls conducted many months before votes are cast possess scant predictive value, given that much can influence the direction and outcome of long-running presidential campaigns.

When considered collectively, however, polls can offer intriguing insights about a developing race, some of which are apparent only in hindsight.

On Feb. 29, 2020 — to choose a random date for purposes of illustration — the average of poll results compiled by the RealClearPolitics website showed Biden leading Trump by 5.4 percentage points. That spread deviated by less than a percentage point from Biden’s winning margin in November 2020.

At the end of February four years earlier, the RealClearPolitics polling average indicated that Hillary Clinton was leading Trump by 2.8 points. She won the popular vote by 2.1 points, while losing decisively in the Electoral College.

On Feb. 29, 2012, Barack Obama led Republican contender Mitt Romney by 4 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Obama was reelected that year by 3.9 points.

It’s not as if Leap Day is some sort of magical moment of polling prophesy, however. Obama was ahead of Republican rival John McCain by 4.3 percentage points on Feb. 29, 2008, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Obama defeated McCain by 7.3 points in the November election.

So it’s prudent not to over-interpret survey results reported early in the campaign, however accurate they may prove to be.

Television screens air the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in September 2020. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

Will the polls get it right in 2024?

Polls conducted months before an election can be valuable in identifying trends in voter preferences, and in sending signals about where trouble lurks — as they have for Biden in key battleground states, where the Electoral College may be decided in 2024.

According to polling conducted last month for Bloomberg media, Biden trailed Trump in states that typically are competitive, such as Arizona and Georgia, and was tied in Wisconsin.

Outcomes in those and other swing states in November could determine who wins the presidency — much as they did in 2020. Biden carried Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, but a well-distributed shift of 43,000 votes would have given Trump victory in those states, producing a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College.

The election was that close.

It’s certainly “a live issue” whether the polls will get it right in 2024, as an academic journal article noted not long ago.

The pressure is on pollsters to avoid a recurrence of the misfire in 2020, when overall they understated Trump’s support. To that end, many of them have tweaked or altered their methodologies following the 2020 polling embarrassment.

As I write in “Lost in a Gallup,” discrepancies between polling results and presidential election outcomes can have unsettling effects.

Frustration, dismay and cynicism about polling have all accompanied notable failures in taking the measure of the most-watched of all U.S. political campaigns.

W. Joseph Campbell, Professor Emeritus of Communication, American University School of Communication

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.