Who Congress Should Hear From on Climate Change, Misinformation on COVID-19, and More

December 29, 2020

House Democrats have not taken the Trump administration’s actions toward environmental degradation lightly, holding 29 hearings and sending 82 letters to oversee policy actions on related topics in the 116th Congress alone. Though it’s important to have a broad set of perspectives represented in oversight hearings, Mohammed Memfis, Molly Reynolds, and Jackson Gode write that hearing witnesses are not nearly as diverse as they could be.

“Better information and a less partisan, more fact-based public debate could help lead more people to both take steps to stop the spread of the virus and to safely engage in more economic activity.” Jonathan Rothwell and Sonal Desai find that attitudes about COVID-19 and willingness to engage in disease-suppression behaviors are strongly related to politics.

Deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol poisoning took roughly 70,000 U.S. lives per year over the past decade. In a new analysis, Carol Graham and Sergio Pinto explain why restoring hope in America’s struggling communities must be a key pillar of economic policy.

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