When social media exploded in the mid-2000s, retweeting, sharing and liking posts appeared to give average citizens the power to share their opinions far and wide. The problem, according to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, is that online social networks didn’t really end up giving everyone the voice that many thought it would.

“It empowered four groups who take advantage of the viral dynamics of social media. That is the far right, the far left, trolls and Russian intelligence,” says Haidt, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

“So, these four groups have had a great time since 2009, using the new viral dynamics of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms. At the same time, the middle 80% of the country feels intimidated and attacked and discouraged and disgusted. And so, they speak up less.”

Successful democracies are generally bound together by strong institutions, shared stories, and wide social networks with “high levels of trust,” but social media weakens all three, according to Haidt.

“You go from having a merely polarized democracy, which we had in the early 2010s, to one in which the norms change to be all-out war everywhere, all the time,” he says.

“You can’t have a deliberative democracy when there is no room for deliberation. And you can’t have a liberal democracy when the illiberal left and the illiberal right dominate their respective factions.”

Samuel Abrams, a professor of politics and social sciences at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, agrees that social media has been bad for democracy.

“This stuff has been as dangerous as can be. It’s been incredibly bad for the country, and incredibly bad for free speech and dissemination of ideas and real discourse and democratic norms and civility. It’s been a disaster,” says Abrams. “It’s absolutely contributing to our polarization because you’re not getting multiple views. You’re not getting viewpoint diversity. It’s very hard to hear the other side.”

Making change

If he had to venture a guess, Haidt envisions a future America that looks a lot like a Latin American democracy — that is, “an unstable democracy built with flawed institutions that command little popular respect.”

“I think we’ll have many more constitutional crises, declining trust and increases in political violence and political ineffectiveness,” he says, “unless we make these major changes.”

The changes he’d like to see include replacing traditional partisan primaries, which tend to reward politicians who cater to the extremists in their party, with single contests that are open to all candidates regardless of political affiliation. The top four finishers advance to the general election. It’s already happening in Alaska, where residents voted in November 2020 to adopt open primaries and ranked elections.

The second step is to make social media less toxic to democracy, he says, by requiring identity verification. People could still post anonymously or with a fake name, but they’d have to show that they are a real person in a particular country.

“Right now, anyone in the world, including Russia, could just create hundreds of thousands of accounts every day, and many of them will not be taken down and they can do what they want. That’s insane,” Haidt says. “It’s insane that we allow our public square to be so full of fake people with bad motives.”

Twitter says it is working to combat fake accounts and misinformation. Last month, CEO Parag Agrawal posted that the social media platform suspends a half-million spam accounts daily and locks millions of suspected fake accounts each week. He said Twitter constantly updates its systems and rules to remove as much spam as possible and that fake accounts make up less than 5% of its users. Meanwhile, the company’s head of safety and integrity announced Twitter’s new crisis misinformation policy aimed at elevating credible information, and slowing the spread of misleading content, during crises.

Facebook removed 1.6 billion fake accounts in the first three months of 2022, according to the quarterly transparency report the company released in May. The social media company has said its goal is to remove as many fake accounts as it can, prioritizing accounts that seek to cause harm through spam or financial motivations. In its quarterly report, Facebook said it continues to refine its oversight processes.

New generation

In the meantime, Abrams has some hope for the future. Fifteen years ago, he used to see a lot of political polarization among his students in classroom discussions, he says, but noticed that started to fade away a few years ago.

“They don’t like these competing narratives. They recognize they’re there. They recognize they’re dangerous or are unhappy with them. Data shows this is true on the left and the right,” Abrams says, referring to members of Generation Z — people born between 1997 and 2012, the oldest of whom are 25 in 2022.

“They’re also the least politically partisan of any cohort we have right now in the nation. They’re overwhelmingly centrist. They’re overwhelmingly pragmatic, and they are not as interested in identity politics. So what they’re trying to do is find common ground … I think this group has come of age and woken up during [the Donald] Trump [era] and they’re like, ‘This is crazy.’ They don’t like it.”

Haidt holds a different view of Gen Z, characterizing them as “depressed, anxious and fragile.” Either way, he says that as long as the system remains the same, it doesn’t matter if young people are increasingly interested in building consensus.

“As long as a small number of people can intimidate the majority, as long as a small number of people can intimidate the moderates on their side, things will not moderate, even if the average person gets more moderate,” Haidt says. “As long as social media is the way it is, our country is going to fail.”
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A Philadelphia school teacher, an Arizona teenager, and a Chicago police officer were among hundreds of people struck down by bullets over the weekend, part of a relentless wave of shootings that has pushed gun violence to the forefront of U.S. politics. 

More than 124 people were killed and 325 wounded in 300-plus shootings documented in the United States since Friday, according to GunViolenceArchive.org, a Washington D.C. non-profit that tracks shootings. 

The rash of violence over the weekend came on the heels of a series of deadly mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, Buffalo, New York, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, that re-ignited a national debate over tighter restrictions on gun ownership, which gun rights advocates fiercely oppose. 

After the weekend shootings, a number of big-city mayors voiced frustration over the impact of the violence on their communities. 

“I’m tired of standing in front of you talking about guns and bodies,” Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly told a news conference on Sunday, hours after two people were killed and 14 wounded in a shooting at a nightclub in his city. 

“The surge in gun violence that we’ve seen across the nation and here in Philadelphia makes me not just heartbroken, but angry,” Mayor Jim Kenney said on Sunday, the day after three people were killed and 12 injured when gunshots were fired into a crowded bar in the city’s South Street district. 

The Philadelphia shooting late Saturday night grew out of a confrontation between two men who exchanged words as they passed each other on the street, sparking a brawl that escalated quickly into gunfire involving at least four weapons, authorities said on Monday. 

Two suspects, one of them shot in the hand when he opened fire into the melee, were taken into custody on Monday, according to Joanne Pescatore, an assistant city district attorney. 

Kris Minners, a second-grade resident advisor at Philadelphia’s Girard College, a private boarding school, was among the victims who lost their life in the shooting, according to a Pennsylvania teachers union. 

“We see lives senselessly lost and those injured in yet another horrendous, brazen and despicable act of gun violence,” said Kenney. 

On Monday, in response to the gun violence, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed 10 gun control bills into law. Read full story.   

Lawmakers in Washington D.C. are also looking at several gun control measures, but any new federal gun legislation faces steep hurdles from Republicans, particularly in the Senate. Read full story.

“Change must happen now,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said in a Tweet after a 14-year-old girl was killed and eight others wounded in a shooting at a strip mall on Saturday.   

The weekend also saw police officers shot in Baltimore and Chicago. On Sunday afternoon, on Chicago’s South Side, a policeman was wounded during a traffic stop, becoming the second officer injured by gunfire in the area in the last four days. 

“How many officers and residents must be victims of gun violence before we act?” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement after the shooting. 
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The Biden administration announced Monday that it would waive tariffs on solar panels imported to the United States from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam for 24 months, reducing uncertainty for the U.S. solar energy companies that had been spooked by a Commerce Department investigation launched in March. 

The announcement came as part of a package of measures to accelerate clean energy product development in the U.S. In addition to the waiver, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to upgrade the electrical grid and speed up investment in the domestic manufacturing of solar panels, building insulation, heat pumps and clean energy fuels. 

“The stakes could not be higher,” a document released by the White House said. “Failing to take these actions would deny consumers access to cost-cutting clean energy options, add risks to our power grid, and stall domestic clean energy construction projects that are critical to tackling the climate crisis.” 

Solar development roadblock 

In March, the Commerce Department announced it was investigating a complaint filed by a small solar panel manufacturer in California against competitors in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. 

The company, Auxin Solar, charged that manufacturers in those countries were using Chinese-made components to assemble solar panels for sale in the U.S.  

In 2011, the U.S. charged China with “dumping” solar panels in the U.S. market, a term for selling them at below cost. The Chinese imports were suffocating U.S. manufacturers, who could not profitably compete against the artificially low prices. As a result, the U.S. imposed tariffs of as much as 250% on Chinese-made solar panels. 

Auxin Solar’s complaint was that many of the solar panels coming from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam were really Chinese products with a misleading country of origin certification.   

When the Commerce Department investigation was announced, U.S. solar projects were immediately thrown into disarray, with many halting altogether. The fear that tariffs might suddenly more than triple the cost of solar panels changed the potential costs of new projects. In addition, the fear that the government might impose retroactive tariffs made U.S. importers even more reluctant to bring them into the country.    

A temporary reprieve 

The administration’s announcement on Monday includes language making it clear that the tariff waiver is meant to be a temporary “bridge” that will allow the solar power industry to continue to use imported panels of questionable origin until domestic production can be brought up to speed. 

The White House said that President Biden is “reinforcing his commitment to safeguarding the integrity and independence of all ongoing trade investigations by career officials at the Department of Commerce and recognizing the vital role these processes play in strengthening our economy.” 

That language did not satisfy some in the industry who are trying to compete with low-cost imports. 

‘Deeply disappointed’ 

In a statement emailed to VOA, Auxin Solar CEO Mamun Rashid criticized the Biden administration for “interfering” with the Commerce Department’s investigation.   

“By taking this unprecedented — and potentially illegal — action, he has opened the door wide for Chinese-funded special interests to defeat the fair application of U.S. trade law,” Rashid said. “Since filing this case, Auxin has been well under way to scaling up. If the President will follow through on his stated intent to support the U.S. domestic industry — including grants to scale and produce upstream inputs like cells and wafers — Auxin is ready, willing, and able to meet that challenge.” 

Arizona-based First Solar, one of the largest manufacturers of solar panels in the U.S., was sharply critical of the administration’s decision. 

“First Solar is deeply disappointed in today’s announcement, which only benefits China’s state-subsidized solar industry,” Samantha Sloan, the company’s vice president of global policy, said in a statement. 

“Today’s proclamation directly undermines American solar manufacturing by giving unfettered access to China’s state-subsidized solar companies for the next two years. This sends the message that companies can circumvent American laws and that the US government will let them get away with it as long as they’re backed by deep-pocketed political pressure campaigns.”    

Sloan also criticized the decision to use the Defense Production Act to increase domestic solar manufacturing, calling it “an ineffective use of taxpayer dollars.” 

Trade groups pleased 

Companies in the business of installing solar power projects greeted the administration’s decision warmly, however. 

“President Biden’s proclamation today to use the full power of executive authority to jumpstart the domestic solar industry is a bold act of leadership,” Heather Zichal, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, an industry trade group, said in a statement.    

“The President’s announcement will rejuvenate the construction and domestic manufacturing of solar power by restoring predictability and business certainty that the Department of Commerce’s flawed inquiry has disrupted,” Zichal said.  

In another statement, Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, another trade group, said, “While the Department of Commerce investigation will continue as required by statute, and we remain confident that a review of the facts will result in a negative determination, the president’s action is a much-needed reprieve from this industry-crushing probe.”  

“Today’s actions protect existing solar jobs, will lead to increased employment in the solar industry and foster a robust solar manufacturing base here at home,” Hopper said. “During the two-year tariff suspension window, the U.S. solar industry can return to rapid deployment while the Defense Production Act helps grow American solar manufacturing
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At a lunch for Tony Award nominees last month, veteran theater producer Ron Simons looked around and smiled. It seemed appropriate that the gathering was held at The Rainbow Room. 

“I can guarantee you I have not seen this many people of color represented across all categories of the Tony Awards,” he recalled. “It was a diverse room. I was so uplifted and impressed by that.” 

For the first full season since the death of George Floyd reignited a conversation about race and representation in America, Broadway responded with one of its most diverse Tony slates yet. 

Multiple Black artists were nominated in every single performance category, including three of five featured actors in a musical, four of six featured actresses in a play, two of seven leading actors in a play and three of five leading actresses in a play. There are 16 Black performance nods out of 33 slots — a very healthy 48%. 

By comparison, at the 2016 Tonys — the breakout season that included the diverse “Hamilton,” “Eclipsed” and “The Color Purple” revival — 14 of the 40 acting nominees for plays and musicals or 35% were actors of color. 

“Let’s hope that the diversity that we saw in the season continues to be the norm for Broadway, that this isn’t just an anomaly or a blip in reaction to what we’ve been through, but just a reset,” said Lynn Nottage, the first writer to be nominated for both a play (“Clyde’s”) and musical (“MJ”) in a single season. 

The new crop of nominees also boasts more women and people of color in design categories, such as first-time nominees Palmer Hefferan for sound design of a play (“The Skin of Our Teeth”), Yi Zhao for lighting design of a play (“The Skin of Our Teeth”) and Sarafina Bush for costume design of a play (“for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf”). 

Other firsts this season included L Morgan Lee of “A Strange Loop” becoming the first out trans performer to be nominated for a Tony. Adam Rigg, scenic designer of “The Skin of Our Teeth,” became the first out agender (does not identify with a particular gender) designer nominated, and Toby Marlow, “Six” co-creator is the first out nonbinary composer-lyricist nominated. 

Eleven performers — including Jaquel Spivey from “A Strange Loop,” Myles Frost in “MJ” and Kara Young from “Clyde’s” — received a nod for their Broadway debut performances and 10 designers received nominations for their Broadway debuts, as did creators such as “A Strange Loop” playwright Michael R. Jackson and “Paradise Square” co-book writer Christina Anderson. 

“I’m very, very excited about all the new voices we’re hearing, all the new new writers who are represented on Broadway for the first time,” said A.J. Shively, an actor nominated for “Paradise Square.” “I really hope that trend continues.” 

Perhaps nowhere is the diversity more apparent than in the oldest play currently on Broadway. “Macbeth,” directed by Sam Gold, has a Black Lady Macbeth in Ruth Negga, a woman taking on a traditional male role (Amber Gray plays Banquo), a non-binary actor (Asia Kate Dillon) and disability representation (Michael Patrick Thornton). 

“If all the world’s a stage, our stage certainly is the world. I’m really proud to be up there with all the actors,” says Thornton, who uses his wheelchair as a cunning asset to play the savvy nobleman Lennox. 

But while representation was seen across Broadway this season so was an invisible virus that didn’t care. The various mutations of COVID-19 sickened actors in waves and starved many box offices of critical funds. Skittish theater-goers who returned often had an appetite for only established, comfort shows. 

Several of the Black-led productions came up short, including “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” “Chicken and Biscuits,” and “Pass Over.” They debuted in the fall, just as Broadway was slowly restarting and audiences were most fearful. “Thoughts of a Colored Man” closed early because it didn’t have enough healthy actors, at one point enlisting the playwright himself to get onstage and play a role. 

One of the most painful blows was a revival of Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls,” which struggled to find an audience. The cast of seven Black women included deaf actor Alexandria Wailes and, until recently, a pregnant Kenita R. Miller. It earned strong notices and a whopping seven Tony nominations. But it will close this week. 

“In past seasons, had there been a play with seven Tony nominations and this bevy of glowing reviews, the show would have gone on for quite a while,” says Simons, the lead producer. “There’s an audience for this show. That’s not the problem. The problem is getting the audience into the theater to see the show.” 

Despite a glut in inventory and not enough consumers, there were clear game-changers, like “A Strange Loop,” a musical about a gay Black playwright, that captured a leading 11 nominations, besting establishment options like a Hugh Jackman-led “The Music Man.” Broadway veterans agree that extraordinary storytelling was available for those hardy souls who bought tickets. 

“I’m really proud to be a part of one of the voices of Broadway this year,” said Anna D. Shapiro, who directed Tracy Letts’ Tony-nominated play “The Minutes,” which exposes delusions at the dark heart of American history. ” I am so impressed by the vitality and the dynamism.” 

Broadway data often suggest improvements one year, then a drop off the next. Take the 2013-14 season, which was rich with roles for African Americans, including “A Raisin in the Sun” starring Denzel Washington, Audra McDonald channeling Billie Holiday in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” and the dance show “After Midnight.” 

There were also African Americans in nontraditional roles, like James Monroe Iglehart as the Genie in “Aladdin,” Nikki M. James and Kyle Scatliffe in “Les Miserables,” and Norm Lewis becoming the first Black Phantom on Broadway in “The Phantom of the Opera.” 

That season, Black actors represented 21% of all roles. But the next season, the number fell to 9%. 

Camille A. Brown, who this season together with Lileana Blain-Cruz became only the second and third Black women to be nominated for best direction of a play, has weathered the ups and downs. 

“My thing is, let’s see what the next year and the year after that and the year after that look like?” she says. “I think the landscape was definitely a challenge, especially after George Floyd and the events that happened after that. But this is only the first season out after all of that stuff happened. So let’s see if it keeps going and keeps evolving and keeps progressing.” 

Simons is optimistic the gains this year will last and celebrates that, at the very least, a group of diverse actors got their Broadway credits this season. He predicts more Tony winners of color than ever before. 

“Even though the box office hurt all of our feelings, it really is a celebration because never have we seen this kind of diversity happen on Broadway,” he says. “It is a rare year and it is a rare year for both the good and the bad.” 
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Tales of Afghanistan’s former president and his senior advisers fleeing the country in helicopters laden with millions of U.S. dollars, as Taliban fighters closed in on Kabul, appear to be overblown, according to an interim report by American investigators.

Russia’s embassy in Kabul first floated the allegations of the Afghan cash heist August 16, a day after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and senior aides departed, telling the RIA news agency that the ex-president left the country with four cars and a helicopter full of cash, worth an estimated $169 million.

The charges were then echoed by Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan. But in a statement less than a month later Ghani denied the accusations, labeling them as “completely and categorically false.”

Now, interim findings from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) finds the truth is likely somewhere in between.

“Although SIGAR found that some cash was taken from the grounds of the palace and loaded onto these helicopters, evidence indicates that this number did not exceed $1 million and may have been closer in value to $500,000,” John Sopko, the special inspector general, wrote in a letter to top U.S. lawmakers.

“Most of this money was believed to have come from several Afghan government operating budgets normally managed at the [presidential] palace,” Sopko added, noting another $5 million also reportedly went missing after being left behind.

“The origins and purpose of this money are disputed, but it was supposedly divided by members of the Presidential Protective Service after the helicopters departed but before the Taliban captured the palace,” Sopko wrote.

SIGAR’s interim report, published Tuesday, was compiled without any input or explanation from Ghani, who has so far not responded to a series of questions.

Former Afghan officials

More than 30 other former Afghan officials, many in key offices, did talk however, telling the U.S. investigators that luggage was minimal on at least three of the helicopters used to flee the Presidential Palace.

Only a suitcase belonging to Presidential Protective Service chief, General Qahar Kochai, and a backpack belonging to Deputy National Security Adviser Rafi Fazil, contained cash, they said, with SIGAR estimating that the bags contained a total of about $440,000 worth of money.

The rest of the cash was held by the officials themselves.

“Everyone had $5,000 to $10,000 in their pockets,” a former senior Afghan official told SIGAR. “No one had millions.”

The admission contradicts earlier assertions by some former senior Afghan officials, like ex-National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib, who when asked by CBS News in December 2021 about the allegations of cash being taken from Kabul, said, “absolutely not … we just took ourselves.”

This past February, though, Mohib told VOA he was cooperating with the SIGAR investigation.

“I also gave [SIGAR] my bank accounts and details of all my assets,” he said at the time.

Despite such initial discrepancies, SIGAR investigators found little to back up the Russian claims that the fleeing Afghan officials made off with a sum of $169 million.

“This amount of cash would have been difficult to conceal,” the SIGAR report said, explaining that much money would have weighed nearly 2 tons.

“According to both SIGAR interviews and press reports, the helicopters were already overloaded with passengers and fuel and could not have taken off with significant additional weight,” the report added. “That these helicopters were allegedly armored for presidential travel would have reduced their payload capacity even further.”

Additionally, the SIGAR report said the Afghan ambassador to Tajikistan who publicly backed the Russian claims, Zahir Aghbar, refused to talk to investigators or provide any evidence.

The estimated $500,000 in cash did not last long.

Senior Afghan officials told SIGAR that $120,000 was used to charter a flight from Uzbekistan, where four helicopters with a total of 54 passengers landed after running out of fuel, to Abu Dhabi.

After arriving in Abu Dhabi, the remaining cash was reportedly divided among the 54 Afghans, most of whom spent weeks at the St. Regis Hotel.

“Some was sent to family members of PPS [Presidential Protective Service] guards still in Afghanistan, some was sent to senior staff still in Afghanistan, some was given to senior staff for commercial airfare to third countries where they had citizenship, and the rest was distributed among the group as they departed the St. Regis,” the report said.

Questions remain

Although SIGAR is confident in its findings that Ghani and other top aides did not smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars out of Afghanistan as they fled the country, questions remain about other money that reportedly disappeared.

SIGAR, citing multiple and sometimes contradictory accounts of various eyewitnesses, said it could not draw a “definitive conclusion” about the fate of the $5 million that reportedly was left at the Presidential Palace in Kabul.

One former senior official told SIGAR the money was divided into three to four bags and loaded into cars belonging to Ghani’s motorcade.

Another official, who was unaware of allegations the cars carried bags of cash, said he was told the motorcade was then sent to pick up former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which the official described as bizarre.

Yet other officials differed on the origins of the $5 million, with some saying it was Ghani’s personal money while others suggested it may have been provided by the United Arab Emirates for Ghani’s 2019 reelection campaign.

Similarly, investigators have unresolved questions about the fate of the former Afghan government’s operating budget of the National Directorate of Security, which reportedly had as much as $70 million in cash in the months before the Taliban takeover.

One official told SIGAR much of the money was being spent right up until the end.

“We used a lot of money to send and buy weapons,” the official said. “The governors told us to push the people to help them protect different areas. … We carried a lot of money to different people, like tribal leaders.”

But other officials told SIGAR the money may well have been stolen by corrupt officials.
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The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday will unveil a new strategy aimed at boosting international tourism hit hard by COVID-19 and government travel restrictions by streamlining the entry process and promoting more diverse destinations.

The “National Travel and Tourism Strategy” sets a goal of 90 million international visitors by 2027 who will spend an estimated $279 billion annually, topping pre-pandemic levels, the department told Reuters.

“There are a lot of industries that are well past COVID – travel and tourism is not,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in an interview.

The federal government must do more to support the resurgence of travel and tourism to ensure the industry rebuilds to be “more resilient, sustainable and equitable,” according to the draft strategy document seen by Reuters.

In 2019, the United States had 79.4 million international visitors, a figure that plummeted to 19.2 million in 2020 as the pandemic hit and rose to just 22.1 million in 2021.

International visitors spent $239.4 billion in 2019, but just $81 billion in 2019, the Commerce Department said.

Before COVID, tourism supported 9.5 million U.S. jobs and generated $1.9 trillion in economic output.

One of the strategy’s goals is to modernize entry procedures for visitors to enter and travel within the United States.

“We need to streamline the entry process,” Raimondo said. “It’s cumbersome and very paper-based and we want to move to a more digital process.”

Other goals include promoting more diverse U.S. tourism experiences beyond coastal states, reducing tourism’s contributions to climate change and building a sector that is resilient to natural disasters, public health threats and the impacts of climate change.

One reason tourism fell so sharply was the United States lagged many other countries in lifting COVID border restrictions that barred much of the world from entering. The U.S. rules were not eased until November 2021.

The United States still requires foreign nationals to be vaccinated against COVID and nearly all international air passengers to test negative before travel. U.S. airlines say nearly all other countries they serve are not requiring testing.

Raimondo acknowledged testing is a “barrier” to tourism and that the United States is an “outlier” but did not forecast when those rules might be relaxed.

“I hear a lot about it from industry and I have been expressing that to the administration,” Raimondo said.
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