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Lori Chavez-DeRemer out as Labor secretary
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will step down from the Trump administration to take a job in the private sector, according to a statement posted Monday by White House communications director Steven Cheung.
Google Photos adds new touch-up tools for 'quick' fixes
You can use the new tools to remove blemishes, refine skin texture, brighten eyes, or whiten teeth in photos.
President Trump’s Landmark Order Advances Breakthrough Mental Health Treatments — Delivering New Hope to Veterans
This weekend, President Donald J. Trump signed a groundbreaking Executive Order accelerating research and improving access to psychedelic drugs as
New York businesses can seek Trump tariff refunds; Hochul demands White House repay consumers $1,700 per household
New York businesses can now begin applying for refunds tied to President Donald Trump's tariffs that the U.S. Supreme Court found were imposed illegally,
Stage and Screen Unifies Global Sports and Entertainment Offering, Strengthening U.S. Presence
/PRNewswire/ -- Stage and Screen, a specialist division of Corporate Traveler, has today announced a strategic realignment of its global brand structure that...
State Action to Improve Maternal & Child Health with the Rural Health Transformation Program: Virtual Convening of Milbank State Leadership Network Recap
Event Date: March 27, 2026 Introduction The Milbank State Leadership Network hosted a virtual session for state legislators and executive
Trump tells PBS News that ‘lots of bombs start going off’ if Iran ceasefire expires
The statement came during a phone call with White House correspondent Liz Landers focused on the Iran war, as a U.S. delegation is preparing for more peace talks.
Why Democrats with 2028 hopes are calling Lina Khan – and what she’s telling them about remaking the economy
Lina Khan is getting constant calls from Democrats, many of them thinking about presidential runs, to sound out problems and workshop potential solutions. That’s a shift from when she was Federal Trade Commission chair and some party leaders avoided meetings or events with her. Khan hasn’t changed so much as the world around her has. Many Americans are furious about rising costs, affordability, technological changes, and soaring profits for the rich. And President Donald Trump has maximized the levers of federal power in ways that were once considered off-limits in both parties. What Khan has in mind for the next Democrat in the White House isn’t a 1,000-page blueprint like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. It’s more of an overall strategy rooted in her specialty: excavating long-forgotten laws already on the books, then finding ways to apply them to 21st century companies.
Country singer lands major role at UFC White House card: ‘The whole world is watching’
UFC Freedom 250 is slated to take place on June 14.
Gibbs-White the 'catalyst' for Forest again
Former Nottingham Forest midfielder Andy Reid praised "catalyst" Morgan Gibbs-White for a "fantastic" second-half performance against Burnley in which he scored a hat-trick in 15 minutes. It has been him more often than not.
Dana White discusses matchmaking philosophy for Gable Steveson’s UFC debut
Gable Steveson’s first UFC appearance is shaping up to be one of the most highly anticipated debuts in recent memory.
Game #22: A’s vs. White Sox Game Thread
It’s fun to see a walk off but let’s not forget that the A’s were not only outmatched on Friday by the score of 9-2, but they also began their first trips to the plate yesterday down 5-0. Yes, they clawed back into it but this is the Chicago White Sox we’re talking about. That […]
Game Thread: White Sox (7-14) at Athletics (11-10)
Noah Schultz toes the rubber as South Siders seek series win
This is the decades-old Gmail trick I still use every day
This small change completely cleans up your inbox
5 takeaways from Texas A&M's 2026 Maroon & White Game
Here are five takeaways from Texas A&M's Maroon & White Game on Saturday afternoon.
Business groups resist anti-immigrant bills cheered by the White House
Most of the roughly 200 bills targeting immigrants in red states have stalled or died this year, with help from business and Christian groups.
White House garden tours offer an inside look at Trump’s transformations
The White House opened its gates to members of the public for the annual spring garden tours this weekend, offering DC locals and tourists a chance to roam its outdoor grounds and view the South Lawn, trees planted by former presidents, and see its historic gardens in bloom.
Microsoft is giving Windows 11 File Explorer a speed boost, dark mode fix, and reducing explorer.exe crashes
Microsoft now says it's preparing a big update for File Explorer that would allow it to run faster, address 'white flashes,' and more.
Construction on Trump's White House ballroom can continue for now, US appeals court says
A U.S. appeals court is allowing construction to continue on President Donald Trump's $400 million ballroom | WWJ Newsradio 950
White House spotlights tax perks for small businesses
Restaurant co-owner Tony Minadakis explains how President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' tax perks, including no tax on tips for hospitality workers, directly help his Baltimore-based business and employees.
Another poll shows Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis staring up at JD Vance in 2028 GOP sweepstakes, each struggling with young voters
Can a Florida man win the White House in 2028?
Common cleaning sponge found to release trillions of microplastic fibers
That “magic” sponge under your sink may be hiding an environmental downside. While melamine sponges are famous for effortlessly scrubbing away stubborn stains, they slowly break down as you use them—shedding tiny plastic fibers that wash into water systems. Researchers estimate that globally, these sponges could release over a trillion microplastic fibers every month, potentially entering the food chain and affecting wildlife.
ESPN previews Texas A&M's 2026 Maroon & White Game
Ahead of Saturday's Maroon & White Game, ESPN provided its own preview of Texas A&M's final spring practice before fall practice in August.
Sharks and tuna are overheating and running out of options
Some of the ocean’s fastest and most fearsome predators—like great white sharks and tuna—are running hotter than expected, and it’s costing them dearly. New research shows these warm-bodied fish burn nearly four times more energy than cold-blooded species, forcing them to eat more while also struggling to shed excess heat. As oceans warm, this creates a dangerous “double jeopardy”: rising temperatures push them closer to overheating, while shrinking food supplies make survival even harder.
‘We just need someone who’s not crazy’: Inside the White House decision to nominate Erica Schwartz as CDC director
Over the course of 12 months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has seen a traumatic shooting, abrupt leadership changes and a shattering of its image as a globally respected public health agency.
Renowned physicist alarmed by 'unheard of' number of scientists dying or vanishing now on White House's radar
Multiple scientists linked to UFO research, nuclear labs and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have mysteriously vanished or died in recent years.
Exclusive | White House Pushes for Flavored Vapes Blocked By FDA Head
The FDA commissioner blocked new flavors like mango and blueberry despite scientific staff signoff.
ABC7 Sports Overtime with Dionne Miller: April 17, 2026
On the latest ABC7 Sports Overtime, Dionne Miller discussed the rough start to the season for the Chicago Cubs and White Sox, a Bears NFL Draft preview, big changes for the Bulls and Sky, and the Blackhawks' season ending.
White House chief of staff to meet with Anthropic CEO over its new Mythos AI model
The meeting comes after tensions have run hot between the Trump administration and the safety-conscious Anthropic, which has sought to put guardrails on the development of AI to minimize any potential risks and maximize its economic and national security benefits for the U.S.
Bridge Michigan’s Kelly House honored by MIT for science, whitefish reporting
Senior environmental reporter Kelly House and her series on declining whitefish in the Great Lakes were honored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Knight Science Journalism Program.
Prime Picks: UFC Winnipeg ‘Burns vs. Malott’
The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday will make the next stop on its 2026 world tour when it ventures into the Great White North. Ready your wagers.
Video: How JD Vance Is Being Tested as Trump’s Chief Defender
Vice President JD Vance has been tasked with defending the Iran war and President Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV. Our White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs describes how that’s put Vance in a particularly difficult position.
How today’s AI trainers could be tomorrow’s displaced workers
A fast-growing AI startup is betting it can transform—and potentially replace—large swaths of white-collar work by turning professionals into trainers for the very systems that could one day displace them, Bloomberg writes. Mercor, now valued at $10 billion, recruits doctors, lawyers, consultants and other experts to break down their jobs into step-by-step tasks, feeding that […]
Whole Hog Politics: A Supreme Court vacancy could remake Senate midterms
[Watch Whole Hog Politics live: Join us today at 9 a.m. ET at TheHill.com as Chris Stirewalt and host Bill Sammon break down this week’s political news and answer questions from a live online audie…
White House probing disappearances, deaths of US scientists: 'Pretty serious stuff'
The White House says it will look into the disappearances and deaths of several U.S. government employees who had access to highly classified nuclear and space information.
Judge allows 'national security' work to proceed at White House ballroom construction site
President Donald Trump railed against a federal judge's decision on Thursday that continues to block above-ground construction of a $400 million White House ballroom, allowing only below-ground work on a bunker and other “national security facilities” at the site.
UFC White House fight week schedule, event start time revealed
The UFC has a number of events planned ahead of the White House card
NFIB President Brad Close in Washington Times: Small Business Deduction Is A Big Win For Main Street
WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 16, 2026) – In a new op-ed in The Washington Times, NFIB President Brad Close shares how Main Street is benefiting from the 20% Small Business Deduction being made permanent by the White House and Congress. Close describes how the deduction allows Main Street to keep more of
The Case for Pull Funding at the National Institutes of Health
The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal, released earlier this month, would cut the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding by ~$5 billion. This is a meaningful cut, though far smaller than the roughly $18 billion reduction proposed for 2026, which Congress ultimately rejected in favor of a modest increase. Whether Congress holds the line again remains uncertain.
Scrutiny of Hegseth mounts as Democrats attempt to rein in Trump administration over Iran war
House Democrats file impeachment articles against Trump’s defense secretary as Senate Democrats fail to pass measures to check White House power over Iran war
White House sidesteps vaccine skeptics in potential CDC leadership reset
A new team could mark a shift away from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unpopular vaccine agenda ahead of the midterms.
Iran war has some Republicans worried their chances of keeping the House are slipping away
The White House had long circled Tax Day as the unofficial start to a critical midterm campaign meant to highlight how much money the administration was putting back in voters’ pockets.
Vance tells Pope Leo to ‘be careful’, Homan says ‘leave politics alone’
Senior Trump administration officials escalated criticism of the Vatican on Tuesday, with Vice President Vance warning Pope Leo XIV to “be careful” when speaking about theology and White House Bord…
White House looking into growing list of ‘missing scientists’
Theories have circulated online after about ten scientists disappeared or died since 2024
Mike White's Prep Talk: 10 questions with Hopewell's James Armstrong, three-sport standout and future major-college QB
James Armstrong has this belief that playing sports gives him peace. Well, then Armstrong lives in almost total peace. If high school sports were on a...
Baylor Scott & White Health Plan to exit Texas Medicaid managed care in 2026, end individual marketplace plans
Baylor Scott & White Health Plan (BSWHP) says it plans to leave the Texas Medicaid Managed Care Program and stop offering individual marketplace coverage in 2026.
Baylor Scott & White Health Plan will no longer carry Medicaid and marketplace insurance plans
South Africa names new US ambassador amid tense Trump ties
South Africa has appointed a prominent Afrikaner politician, Roelf Meyer, to the ambassadorial role in Washington. This comes amid allegations from the Trump administration of a "white genocide" in the country.
At Guilford College, sports are more than a game
Guilford Professor Michael White teaches students to build careers not on wins, but on the experiences that endure.
Trump Increased Tax Refunds, but a Political Challenge Still Looms
While last year’s tax law has raised the average I.R.S. refund, the boost is less than the White House expected — and may not have much impact on voters.
Sport, Culture and Brand: Juventus Brought Black&White to Chengdu
Following the success of the Youth Carnival event in Shanghai, Juventus returned to China, bringing its colours to Chengdu from 10 to 12 April 2026. The three-day initiative was dedicated to sport, cu...
White Sox fall flat in Noah Schultz’s debut
A weak South Side offense and rough bullpen submit to 8-5 loss
NBA play-in tournament: Coby White's 3-pointer, late LaMelo Ball layup propel Hornets in OT thriller past Heat
NBA play-in: Coby White 3, late LaMelo Ball layup propel Hornets in OT thriller past Heat
White sent the game to OT with a 3 as Kon Knueppel watched from the bench. Then LaMelo Ball redeemed himself with a game-winning layup in the final seconds.
White House favors Erica Schwartz, former deputy surgeon general, to lead CDC
Schwartz would be Trump’s third nominee to lead the CDC. She left government in 2021, after the Biden administration passed her over for acting U.S. surgeon general.
BSW's insurance wing is dropping Medicaid, marketplace health plans
Baylor Scott & White Health Plan will soon drop its Medicaid and individual marketplace plans, impacting 225,000 Texans.
Planting the Seed: Growing Tomorrow's Health Care Workforce One Field Trip at a Time
In a converted Save-A-Lot in the Binghampton neighborhood of Memphis, schoolchildren pull on white lab coats and more as they get to work.
Charlotte's Black developers describe challenges
Three prominent Black Charlotte real estate developers spoke at the weekly Sarah Stevenson Tuesday Forum, sharing insights on why they remain outliers in an industry that they said remains dominated by white males.
OPINION | More than a vote: discovering my place in politics
In high school, I viewed politics as one of the most mind-numbing subjects imaginable. From my perspective, Congress was dominated by wealthy, older white men and my single vote felt insignificant, as though it could never truly represent me. Politics seemed distant, unrelatable and ultimately pointless. In 2024, however, Congress reached a record high of...
More than a vote: discovering my place in politics
In high school, I viewed politics as one of the most mind-numbing subjects imaginable. From my perspective, Congress was dominated by wealthy, older white men and my single vote felt insignificant, as though it could never truly represent me. Politics seemed distant, unrelatable and ultimately pointless. In 2024, however, Congress reached a record high of...
Former Pence adviser Olivia Troye runs for Congress as a Democrat
Troye, who resigned from the White House in 2020 and became a vocal critic of President Trump, will run in Virginia's redrawn 7th Congressional District, which is Democratic-friendly.
UFC White House adds historic $1 million fighter bonus
If the stakes at the UFC White House weren't already high enough, fighters will now get the chance to collect a $1 million bonus when the event rolls around on June 14. Upon the announcement of the event, there was excitement in the air with many predicting who they believed would feature on the ...
‘Yellowstone’s Jefferson White to Guest Star on ‘Boston Blue’
See him with Donnie Wahlberg and Sonequa Martin-Green.
The U.S. is short 10 million houses. A new White House report lays out a blueprint to fix that
President Donald Trump has taken some steps to make it easier to build houses, but he's been slow to embrace other measures.
NASA science faces 'very serious threat' from new White House budget, experts say
"This is the least transparent NASA budget request I've ever seen — and I've literally looked through every single one since 1960."
THE WEEK OF APRIL 13, 2026
- Science groups criticize proposed budget cuts - Congress to hold budget hearings - White House abandons indirect costs case
White Sox deal Lenyn Sosa to Toronto
The infielder is shipped out for a lottery ticket and loose change
White House says it’s boosting affordability through physician reforms
A new report distills the Trump administration’s strategy as officials jockey to shape health care messages ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Northwestern Medicine provides guidance for improving Black maternal health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than 80% of deaths related to pregnancy are preventable, and Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.
‘Wheel of Fortune’: Vanna White Parties With Her Kids at Coachella
The longtime co-host, 69, shares two adult children, Nikko and Gigi, with her ex-husband.
Here's what Delta's new business class suite will look like
Delta has replaced its classic red, white, and blue business class with a refreshed new look. Here's what customers can expect in the future suites.
Agamon Health Announces New Automated Chart Prep Capability
/PRNewswire/ -- Agamon Health, an AI-powered healthcare technology company focused on automating operational workflows in oncology, announces commercial...
The Iran war may be on pause but the political fallout is not
The political consequences for President Trump and congressional Republicans are far from over.
After Charlie Kirk’s Death, a Fight for the Youth Vote
A fledgling Democratic group and the far-right white nationalist Nick Fuentes seek to make gains on college campuses that have recently been dominated by Turning Point USA.
What Does Artificial Intelligence Really Mean for Global Politics?
As AI increasingly plays a central role in conflict and war, experts discuss its long-term impact on global politics.
Fantasy sports apps see increased usage by college students
In the past decade, the line between fantasy sports and sports betting has been blurred, propelling online sportsbooks and sportsbetting culture into the mainstream. Now, an increasing number of college students are latching on. Since the 1992 passing of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, shortened to PASPA, athletic leagues and lawmakers have fought...
UFC adds former title challenger to the White House card
Despite arguably being one of the best six-fight lineups in the company's history, the UFC White House card suffered backlash from fans for not living up to the lofty expectations placed on its shoulders. To combat the noise, Dana White decided to add more firepower to the June 14 event. The ...
‘Chilling effect’ of Trump science cuts – even if reversed again
Congress likely to once more block plans to cut billions from agency budgets, but experts fear they will have long-term impact anyway
Science Pub: Investigating the Lithium Rush
Lithium has been described as “white gold,” the next oil, or a kind of savior from climate change. Consumers are
South San's Guerrero, Alamo Heights' Hart lead Team White to victories
South San's Adam Guerrero and Alamo Heights' Berkley Hart lead Team White to victories in the San Antonio Sports All-Star basketball games.
Mauricio Dubon back in center for Braves-Guardians finale
With Michael Harris Jr. on the paternity list and Eli White day-to-day with plantar fasciitis, Mauricio Dubon will make his second straight start in center field for Sunday night’s finale of the Braves-Guardians series in Atlanta. Dubon will hit eighth in the lineup followed by Jorge Mateo, who will make his second straight start at […]
White Sox reportedly calling up top pitching prospect Noah Schultz
Golfers battle Trump takeover of public golf courses as one becomes White House East Wing dumping ground
You can grab a refurbished 2021 Kindle Paperwhite starting at just $49.99
How pristine you want it is up to you.
Jon Jones may ‘feel the fire’ to return after UFC 327 but Dana White definitely does not
Jon Jones continues to flip flop on whether or not he intends to retire from the sport, which doesn’t surprise UFC CEO Dana White one bit. White spent the last couple of years glazing Jon Jones as the GOAT of MMA, but that all ended after “Bones” retired in June 2025, reneging on a reported […]
Pulling Reports, Playing Politics
The CIA’s retraction of intelligence reports should raise concerns about politicization and the Trump administration’s embrace of white supremacist rhetoric.
Michigan group spotlights Black Maternal Health Week and the risks Black women face giving birth
Black women are 3 to 4 times more likely than their white counterparts to die of childbirth-related complications. The disparity is unchanged even when factoring in education and income.
White Sox Minor League Update: April 11, 2026
Bham walks it off to bring home the only win in the system
Trump wants to paint a White House office building with ‘magic paint.’ Experts advise against it
President Donald Trump privately advocated for painting an ornate federal office building next to the White House with a “magic paint with silicate,” CNN has learned. But ahead of a key vote on exterior changes to the sprawling Gilded Age structure, a panel of experts is warning the so-called magic paint could be incompatible with the Eisenhower Executive Office Building’s granite exterior.
Federal judges say White House ballroom construction can continue, for now
President Donald Trump has claimed that a building pause poses a risk to national security.
Appeals court says Trump White House ballroom construction can proceed for now
A federal appeals court said Saturday that President Donald Trump can move ahead for another week with construction of a massive new White House ballroom while judges consider the project.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
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