Brandice Canes-Wrone
Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, professor of political science at Stanford University, and founding director of Hoover’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, whose research focuses on representation, accountability, elections, campaign finance, congressional behavior, and political economy.
News Deserts Are Weakening Local Accountability and Shared Civic Facts
Hoover Institution panelists argued that the collapse of local journalism is weakening American democracy not just by shrinking newsrooms, but by reducing the number of reporters physically present to observe public institutions and supply shared facts. Neil Chase, Elizabeth Green and Vicki Liviakis described a replacement system built from specialized nonprofit outlets, local television, collaborations, community documenters and technology, while warning that legal threats, harassment, funding gaps and uneven philanthropic support are making local accountability reporting harder to sustain.
The Declaration of Independence Became America’s Unity Document Over Two Centuries
In a Hoover Institution book launch for National Treasure, historian Michael Auslin argues that the Declaration of Independence began as a wartime instrument and diplomatic necessity before Americans made it a sacred national text. Auslin’s central claim is that the document’s afterlife — as parchment, symbol, commercial object, equality claim and constitutional touchstone — shows it was not only about liberty and equality, but also about creating “one people” out of divided colonies.