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Rand Issues Commentary to Los Angeles Times: OpenAI Says ChatGPT Is Safer for Teens. Now It Needs to Show Proof.
SANTA MONICA, California, Aug. 29 -- Rand issued the following commentary on Aug. 27, 2026, by senior policy researcher Ryan McBain to Los Angeles Times:
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OpenAI Says ChatGPT Is Safer for Teens. Now It Needs to Show Proof.
Last week, OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT for Teens, a new user experience crafted to help young people "learn, think critically, deepen understanding, and use AI with confidence." Maybe most importantly, OpenAI vowed that it would place any users its system "estimates" to be under 18 into the system "automatically."
For nearly a year, parents have been able to link
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SANTA MONICA, California, Aug. 29 -- Rand issued the following commentary on Aug. 27, 2026, by senior policy researcher Ryan McBain to Los Angeles Times:
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OpenAI Says ChatGPT Is Safer for Teens. Now It Needs to Show Proof.
Last week, OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT for Teens, a new user experience crafted to help young people "learn, think critically, deepen understanding, and use AI with confidence." Maybe most importantly, OpenAI vowed that it would place any users its system "estimates" to be under 18 into the system "automatically."
For nearly a year, parents have been able to linktheir children's ChatGPT accounts to their own, restricting features, setting quiet hours and receiving alerts in high-risk situations. Those parental controls remain available, but account linking is still voluntary: The invitation must be accepted, and either party can sever the connection.
ChatGPT for Teens sets a different default. When a user reports being age 13 to 17, or when OpenAI's system predicts that an account belongs to someone under 18, teen protections are automatically applied without waiting for a parent to activate them.
This shift matters because nearly 60% of U.S. teens now use ChatGPT, according to Pew, even though parents often have no idea what their children are discussing.
In a nationally representative survey my RAND colleagues and I conducted last year, we found that nearly 1 in 5 Americans ages 12 to 21--about 8.2 million young people--reported using an AI chatbot for mental health advice. Nearly two-thirds hadn't told anyone. A parent who never learns a conversation is occurring cannot be expected to activate safeguards around it. Automatic protections at least have a chance to reach that user.
Independent testing conducted with Common Sense Media and Stanford Medicine before the launch of ChatGPT for Teens last week illustrates what can go wrong. Widely used AI chatbots missed warning signs that emerged gradually over longer conversations; in one test, ChatGPT advised a tester posing as a teen to conceal cuts and scars from self-harm rather than directing the teen toward help. OpenAI's new protections aim to prevent such failures.
For users placed in the teen experience, these protections include tighter boundaries around conversations involving self-harm and eating disorders, graphic violence and sexual or romantic role-play. OpenAI says ChatGPT for Teens will not encourage emotional dependence nor pretend to have feelings or position itself as a substitute for human relationships. It also adds study tools, homework reminders, prompts to take breaks and warnings before a teenager uploads a potentially sensitive image.
This is an improvement over making parents find and activate a safety menu. But automatic protections for teens rests on an unforgiving premise: that OpenAI can find them. The company says its age prediction system will consider signals including the subjects an account discusses, times of day it's active, usage patterns and how long the account has existed. But in materials released during the launch, OpenAI did not publish the figure that matters most: What proportion of actual teens does it identify?
Roblox, the online gaming platform popular with children, offers a cautionary example. To use the included chat feature, players have to pass an age check--usually through an AI-powered face scan. Reports surfaced earlier this year of adults classified as children and children as adults. A Wired investigation found users had fooled the scan using avatars and even a photo of Kurt Cobain; one boy drew wrinkles and stubble in marker and was placed in the 21-plus category. The details were comical, but the consequences were not: A marker-drawn beard could become a passport into the adult category and out of the protections meant to safeguard children.
Correctly identifying teens is only the first test. The second is determining just how safe ChatGPT for Teens responses truly are. OpenAI has made a welcome start by publishing evaluations in areas including self-harm, eating disorders and sexual content. But it has released the scores without sharing its actual methods: Its report does not include the prompts, the number of cases or the detailed instructions used to judge the answers. Parents should not have to inspect those materials, but a third party should be able to determine whether such self-reported results deserve parents' confidence.
Instagram illustrates a different problem: the gulf between activating a safety feature and proving it works. Meta, which on Wednesday agreed to pay $17 billion and add child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to settle claims filed by 47 states, introduced Teen Accounts in 2024, automatically placing identified teens into restrictive settings. It later announced that Instagram had 54 million active teen accounts and that 97% of users age 13 to 15 remained in the protections. Those figures measured scale and retention, not effectiveness. They also did not reveal how many teens Instagram missed, or how much harm the settings prevented.
When outside researchers later tested (PDF) 47 of Instagram's announced safety features, they judged only eight as fully functional. Reuters confirmed some of the report's findings in its own tests. For instance, a teen account could view eating disorder content by searching "skinnythighs" without the space between words. Meta disputed the report and said teens placed in its protections saw less sensitive content, unwanted contact and late-night use.
Both can be true: Meta's system may reduce those harms, but also have significant failure points. The public still does not know how much protection Instagram Teen Accounts actually provides, because the data needed to answer that question remains inside Meta. The tech industry has arrived at a convenient arrangement, where its assurances are public, but its evidence is not.
The lesson is not that automatic protections are futile. It is that even ambitious efforts can fall short, and the public needs a way to discover when they do. OpenAI says it will "measure and publish what we are learning." That promise needs a protocol and a timetable.
OpenAI needs to publish a clear evaluation plan that answers three basic questions: Does the system reliably identify teens, including those who try to evade it? Does ChatGPT for Teens respond more safely in real-world conversations, compared to before the roll-out? And does the teen experience change what its younger users actually do--for instance, curbing prolonged use or making those in distress more likely to seek human help?
These results can be reported in aggregate without exposing private conversations, but OpenAI should disclose whether outcomes differ across groups and allow independent researchers and regulators to verify them. That would allow the public to judge the product by what it accomplishes, not what it promises.
OpenAI deserves credit for moving a core set of protections from voluntary to default. Other AI companies whose products are used by teens should follow its lead by adopting comparable protections. That said, last week's launch is akin to a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a building that has yet to pass safety inspection. The question now is whether OpenAI will open its doors to independent inspectors and let the public see what they find.
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More About This Commentary
Ryan McBain is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a senior policy researcher at RAND, where he studies AI's effects on youth mental health.
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Original text here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2026/08/openai-says-chatgpt-is-safer-for-teens-now-it-needs.html
[Category: ThinkTank]
Manhattan Institute Issues Commentary to Wall Street Journal: Don't Let Terrorists Run Nonprofits
NEW YORK, Aug. 29 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary on Aug. 27, 2026, by legal policy fellow Tal Fortgang to the Wall Street Journal:
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Don't Let Terrorists Run Nonprofits
A proposed change to the Form 990 would require 501(c)3s to disclose whether their top officials have been convicted of financial or terrorism-related crimes.
The U.S. Treasury is mulling dramatic changes to our nonprofit system. It announced in April that it plans to revise the Form 990, which nonprofits file annually with the IRS, "to improve transparency, strengthen tax administration,
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NEW YORK, Aug. 29 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary on Aug. 27, 2026, by legal policy fellow Tal Fortgang to the Wall Street Journal:
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Don't Let Terrorists Run Nonprofits
A proposed change to the Form 990 would require 501(c)3s to disclose whether their top officials have been convicted of financial or terrorism-related crimes.
The U.S. Treasury is mulling dramatic changes to our nonprofit system. It announced in April that it plans to revise the Form 990, which nonprofits file annually with the IRS, "to improve transparency, strengthen tax administration,and provide clearer reporting on certain activities . . . to detect misconduct and hold wrongdoers accountable." The main condition for nonprofits' favorable tax status is scrupulous adherence to the law. Without some transparency, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed out, bad actors can hide "fraud, abuse, and extremist activity behind complicated nonprofit arrangements."
One potential measure for increased transparency has raised eyebrows. CBS News has reported that "the Trump administration is weighing a proposal to require nonprofits to disclose in their annual tax filings whether their top officials have been convicted of certain financial or terrorism-related crimes."
Though there is nothing inherently illegal about employing ex-convicts, the government wants to know if nonprofits are being run by people who have engaged in "material support to terrorists, fraud, money laundering, securities fraud, tax evasion" or similar unlawful acts.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/opinion/dont-let-terrorists-run-nonprofits-2279f7c0)
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Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His interests include law, political theory, religion, ideology, and culture, and his popular writings have appeared in City Journal, Commentary, National Affairs, National Review, and other publications.
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Original text here: https://manhattan.institute/article/dont-let-terrorists-run-nonprofits
[Category: ThinkTank]
Hudson Institute Issues Commentary to First Breakfast: Getting Creative About the Munitions Crisis
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary on Aug. 28, 2026, by distinguished fellow Mike Gallagher and senior fellow Nadia Schadlow to First Breakfast:
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Getting Creative About the Munitions Crisis
First Breakfast asked several experts, "If you had free reign to fix America's munitions bottleneck, what would you propose?" Below are responses from Mike Gallagher and Nadia Schadlow.
Mike Gallagher: Stop Lighting Money on Fire
The Pentagon is rightly rushing to
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WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary on Aug. 28, 2026, by distinguished fellow Mike Gallagher and senior fellow Nadia Schadlow to First Breakfast:
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Getting Creative About the Munitions Crisis
First Breakfast asked several experts, "If you had free reign to fix America's munitions bottleneck, what would you propose?" Below are responses from Mike Gallagher and Nadia Schadlow.
Mike Gallagher: Stop Lighting Money on Fire
The Pentagon is rightly rushing tospend every single one of its Congressionally appropriated dollars before the end of the fiscal year. If it succeeds, it will avoid a self-inflicted problem that has had a disastrous impact on our deterrent posture.
In the last decade, the Pentagon has lost more than $125 billion because of an outdated budgeting process that requires any unspent, Congressionally appropriated dollars to be returned to the Treasury. In other words, billions of budgeted dollars have been allowed to simply vanish instead of being used to replenish munitions stockpiles, procure new technology, or invest into our defense industrial base.
The FIRES Act I introduced as a member of Congress fixes that.
Rather than let this appropriated but unspent money disappear, the FIRES Act puts these dollars into a special fund that the Secretary of War could use to fund Congressionally mandated priorities. This could go a long way toward supporting priorities that may prove decisive in a Pacific conflict. The first of these: Deputy Secretary Feinberg's efforts to ramp munitions production via multi-year purchases. The second: scaling the manufacturing and deployment of autonomous capabilities that can turn China's coastal waters into a hellscape. The third: funding advanced energetics such as CL-20 in existing systems to extend both their range and destructive power.
The Pentagon has rightly identified munitions production and autonomy as key to preventing or winning war in the Pacific. But funding it sufficiently and in time remains a challenge. The FIRES Act gives the Secretary of War the flexibility and authority needed to fund enduring priorities at the speed of relevance, making us safer without budgeting another dime of taxpayer dollars.
Nadia Schadlow: It's Not Easy, But It's Not Rocket Science
In the category of "kind of simple" (recognizing that simple and the Pentagon are something of an oxymoron), there are some basic steps that could help avoid repeating past mistakes. Start by taking stock of recent efforts to support new entrants and expand capacity in the energetics space: What was funded? What actually got built? What new capacity came online? What worked, what didn't, and why? This is not a "gotcha" exercise. It is a way to learn from recent investments and inform the next round.
For example, in 2024 the Department of Defense awarded $192.5 million to seven companies under the Defense Production Act to expand domestic production of 22 chemicals used in defense systems, including critical energetic precursors and other materials such as oxidizers and magnesium. What resulted? Which projects delivered the capacity they promised? Which did not? And why?
Read in First Breakfast (https://www.firstbreakfast.com/p/getting-creative-about-the-munitions?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1936818&post_id=212885210&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=870mf&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email).
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Mike Gallagher is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute. He is also head of defense at Palantir Technologies.
Nadia Schadlow is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. She conducts research and analysis on a range of issues at the intersection of strategy, national security, and technology.
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Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/getting-creative-about-munitions-crisis-mike-gallagher-nadia-schadlow
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Will a Fake $30,000 Nosebleed Land Us All on Peggycare?
MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Aug. 29 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary on Aug. 28, 2026, by policy fellow Matt Dean:
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Will a fake $30,000 nosebleed land us all on Peggycare?
A recent Peggy Flanagan stump speech turned to health care costs.
"My friend Tom is an ER doctor who worries he is going to kick someone into bankruptcy every time he treats someone in the ER..He's like... 'someone just paid $30,000 when I treated their nosebleed.' right? That's too much."
In addition
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MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Aug. 29 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary on Aug. 28, 2026, by policy fellow Matt Dean:
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Will a fake $30,000 nosebleed land us all on Peggycare?
A recent Peggy Flanagan stump speech turned to health care costs.
"My friend Tom is an ER doctor who worries he is going to kick someone into bankruptcy every time he treats someone in the ER..He's like... 'someone just paid $30,000 when I treated their nosebleed.' right? That's too much."
In additionto the tissue in the poor patient's nostrils, there is a lot to unpack in this one clip by Minnesota's DFL candidate for U.S. Senate.
Right off the bat, you should know that in her recent successful primary victory against Congresswoman Angie Craig, Flanagan chose the Democratic Socialists of America's "Medicare for All" plank, while Craig adopted a more moderate "fix what's broke" approach. The Minnesota Star Tribune highlighted that as the defining difference between the two, noting "Flanagan's stated goal is replacing the current system." The Minnesota Democrats who overwhelmingly supported Flanagan likely knew this. But what would Peggycare really mean?
Peggycare would outlaw all private insurance. Period. If you like your plan, tough. If you like your doctor, too bad. If the Indian Health Service works well for you? Sorry. No Medicaid either. No cash pay. No Cadillac plan your union traded pay increases to keep. No Mayo Clinic.
There is no "public option" in Peggycare to opt out of the top-down, Soviet-style program. That seems drastic, and those pushing it (like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan) are not trying to hide that fact. They are running on it.
But let's look at why the Minnesota lieutenant governor thinks we need Peggycare in the first place. Remember our friend Dr. Tom told her he's having insomnia because he may have bankrupted some poor fellow (let's call him Carl) because Tom sent Carl a $30,000 bill to stop a nosebleed.
Her first question should have been, "Holy crap, Dr. Tom, why did it cost $30,000 for an ER visit for a nosebleed?" Carl probably should have done what his grandma would have told him to do and shoved tissue up his nose and sat in a recliner for twenty minutes until it stopped. But he went to the ER, and if Dr. Tom followed the advice of the National Academy of Otolaryngology, he would have shoved tissue up Carl's nose, had him sit in a recliner, and sent him home with a bill for $1,473.29--or $1,048.22 with no tissue stuck up his nose. That works more than 95% of the time, and the other five percent need to be admitted to the hospital.
I do not believe the lieutenant governor made up this story. She heard it from Dr. Tom or someone else. But Peggy did not think of questioning the $30,000 bill. She either lacks common sense or the curiosity to do so, but that's what a good senator does. "How do you know that?" is the absolute best question a legislator should learn how to ask, because every bit of information that reaches them is tilted and meant for them to act on behalf of someone or something, and much of that information is just plain false.
You cannot scrap a $4 trillion portion of the economy upon which we all rely on for health care, based on a story you overheard at Starbies.
We have the greatest health care in the world, but the way we pay for it is crazy and unfair. The truth is that Dr. Tom has no flipping idea what he is billing anyone for anything in the ER. He writes notes and codes procedures and those codes are translated into different prices for different patients. Dr. Tom may not know that the cost paid by his Medicare patients only covers about 82% of the cost of care, while a patient paying cash may pay 140% of cost and someone on job-provided health insurance may pay somewhere in between.
Rather than instituting socialized medicine with no way out, let's try to make billing more transparent and get rid of the fraud that is bankrupting hospitals and families.
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/will-a-fake-30000-nosebleed-land-us-all-on-peggycare/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: What Dolly's Death Illustrates About Early Literacy Philanthropy
MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Aug. 29 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary on Aug. 28, 2026, by policy fellow Josiah Padley:
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What Dolly's death illustrates about early literacy philanthropy
Beloved singer Dolly Parton passed away earlier this week at 80 years old. Her legacy as country crooner may be a highlight of American culture, but her philanthropic work may prove to be more impactful.
Dolly started the Imagination Library in 1995, inspired by her father's inability to
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MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Aug. 29 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary on Aug. 28, 2026, by policy fellow Josiah Padley:
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What Dolly's death illustrates about early literacy philanthropy
Beloved singer Dolly Parton passed away earlier this week at 80 years old. Her legacy as country crooner may be a highlight of American culture, but her philanthropic work may prove to be more impactful.
Dolly started the Imagination Library in 1995, inspired by her father's inability toread and write. The nonprofit sends books to children aged 0 to 5, free of charge. The Imagination Library originated in America, but now also sends over three million books each month to children in Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the UK. Partnerships with states and charitable organizations has allowed the Imagination Library to broaden the program's reach.
The donations fill a real need. As I've written previously, recent studies show that pleasure reading in the United States is declining. Worryingly, a large number of parents also report that they don't regularly read to their children.
They should. Literacy starts in a child's early years. Studies show that family reading lays a strong (and irreplaceable) early literacy foundation, as young children's brains develop favorably through storytime. The American Library Association reports that 3- to 5-year-olds who had been read to for at least three times per week are two times more likely to recognize all letters, two times more likely to have word-sight recognition, and two times more likely to understand words in context. Parents who don't read to their children are doing them a significant disservice.
A shaky literary foundation is difficult to fix. Unfortunately, Minnesota is still playing catchup. Minnesota's students have declined in reading state tests over the past decade. In fact, more than half (54 percent) of Minnesota third graders couldn't read at grade level in 2025. That inability to read has real consequences for children's academic and personal futures, and negatively impacts the future of Minnesota.
Solutions are in the works, but Minnesota hasn't seen results yet. Minnesota passed the READ Act in 2023, a piece of legislation designed to overhaul early literacy teacher training and ground classrooms in the science of literacy. My colleague Catrin Wigfall has pointed out that the READ Act, while well intentioned, needs to be expanded for reforms to be effective.
Yet, parents and philanthropists worried about young Minnesotans' reading ability don't have to wait around for the state legislature to fix kindergarten classrooms. For most children, literacy begins much earlier with a simple bedtime story.
Many states have partnered directly with the Imagination Library to bring the program to more students in their state. Minnesota could consider a similar partnership. However, given Minnesota's weariness of seemingly endless headlines of fraud, and lawmakers' worries that direct appropriations from the legislature worsen the issue, it might not be the political moment for such a partnership.
It's time for private philanthropists to step in. Those who hold political inclinations towards limited government must agree that such a society needs auxiliary institutions that assist social needs. For conservatives to build the world they desire, they must support philanthropic institutions as a natural part of a healthy civic lifestyle. The Imagination Library is such an institution. It proves how wealth can be put to real use, for real needs, in incredibly simple, tangible ways.
Plus, Minnesota philanthropists don't necessarily need to partner with the Imagination Library to make an impact on Minnesota children. Dolly was inspired by the struggles of her illiterate father. Philanthropic solutions to Minnesota issues can be similarly heartfelt and particular.
Dolly's heart for others will live on in the Imagination Library, offering both an example and a challenge. How will Minnesotans imitate her work?
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/what-dollys-death-illustrates-about-early-literacy-philanthropy/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Fraud in Minnesota Higher Education
MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Aug. 29 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary on Aug. 27, 2026, by policy fellow Catrin Wigfall:
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The fraud in Minnesota higher education
While not part of the supernatural world, "ghost" students in higher education are an issue that needs to be exorcised from Minnesota's college and university system.
Reporting by KSTP found that the threat of these "ghost" students -- criminal actors who use stolen or fake identities to enroll in online courses
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MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Aug. 29 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary on Aug. 27, 2026, by policy fellow Catrin Wigfall:
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The fraud in Minnesota higher education
While not part of the supernatural world, "ghost" students in higher education are an issue that needs to be exorcised from Minnesota's college and university system.
Reporting by KSTP found that the threat of these "ghost" students -- criminal actors who use stolen or fake identities to enroll in online coursesat colleges and universities to steal federal financial aid -- has "become so prevalent at Minnesota's largest community college that administrators now say nearly a third of all applications to the school are potentially fraudulent."
Normandale Community College in Bloomington has processed about 29,000 fraudulent or potentially fraudulent applications over the last few years, according to Dara Hagen, vice president of Student Affairs. "We were seeing probably 42 percent of our applications or so being fraudulent, and now we're down to about 31 percent." The college told KSTP that those applications were "flagged for further review before any student aid was disbursed."
Systemwide, Minnesota State -- which includes Normandale and 32 other colleges and universities -- flagged 2,696 fraudulent or potentially fraudulent financial aid applications for the 2025-26 school year. That's down from the 7,700+ suspicious applications flagged the year before, but it's still a lot of fraud.
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Jacob Rosenbacher, age 32, has experienced this firsthand. His name and personal information were used to enroll at Normandale and obtain a federal student loan of about $9,000. The Chicago resident told KSTP that he had never heard of Normandale or Bloomington, Minn.
"My credit dropped 168 points overnight.
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And what Normandale, in my view, didn't do is they didn't check my identity against anything. That's all they would have had to do. They would have had to just Google me."
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Rosenbacher says a form letter the college sent to his ghost student at the end of the semester should have been seen as a red flag.
The "academic and financial aid warning notification" noted that the student using Rosenbacher's identity had a GPA of "0.0" but added, "We believe you can do this, and we are here to help you succeed."
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The 0.0 GPA wasn't an immediate red flag for administrators. "We do have students who end up stopping out that are real students," Hagen told KSTP. "And so, at some point there will be outreach." In Rosenbacher's situation, the fraud wasn't discovered until after the federal student aid was accessed
Enrollment fraud has become a nationwide problem, with community colleges particularly susceptible. Open enrollment and online courses can make it easier for fake students to get accepted undetected.
During the 2025 special legislative session, Minnesota lawmakers mandated a working group to tighten up the application process, which my colleague Josiah Padley covered here. They approved $3 million in one-time funding for identity verification across the Minnesota State system.
This money, as of KSTP's reporting, is still being allocated toward a vendor and pilot program. The working group has also produced an Enrollment Fraud User Guide for all 33 state colleges and recommended becoming a standing legislative committee that would issue an annual fraud report.
But what about the money that has already been lost? U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has claimed that 1,834 ghost students in Minnesota received $12.5 million in taxpayer-funded aid.
That's real money that was taken through a real gap in the system, and not every institution has had the same problem.
As my colleague Josiah Padley documents here, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities told legislators in February that it wasn't seeing meaningful fraud. One reason is that the U manually verifies every applicant's final high school transcript. It also charges an application fee to discourage bot-driven submissions.
Minnesota's private colleges told legislators much the same thing. Schools that had seen fraud attempts had seen only "low levels" of it. Their admissions processes for in-person residential programs don't give remote fraudsters much to work with.
With $3 million in new funding, the Minnesota legislature and Minnesota State owe taxpayers a public accounting of how many ghost students have been caught, how much they have cost so far, and whether the new identity-verification system will get community colleges closer to what the U and private colleges have already managed on their own -- without the added dollars.
Taxpayers shouldn't have to guess whether the new money is working.
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/the-fraud-in-minnesota-higher-education/
[Category: ThinkTank]
America First Policy Institute: What Lawmakers Can Learn From Victims of Human Trafficking
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following commentary on Aug. 28, 2026, by Andrew Pavoncello, senior policy advisor for homeland security, immigration, and anti-human trafficking policy:
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What Lawmakers Can Learn from Victims of Human Trafficking
Human trafficking continues to plague our nation. While the extent of the crisis is not fully known, it is estimated that over 1 million trafficking victims are living in modern slavery in America. The figure includes both domestically trafficked individuals and those trafficked into the country. To tackle this
... Show Full Article
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following commentary on Aug. 28, 2026, by Andrew Pavoncello, senior policy advisor for homeland security, immigration, and anti-human trafficking policy:
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What Lawmakers Can Learn from Victims of Human Trafficking
Human trafficking continues to plague our nation. While the extent of the crisis is not fully known, it is estimated that over 1 million trafficking victims are living in modern slavery in America. The figure includes both domestically trafficked individuals and those trafficked into the country. To tackle thisburgeoning crisis, much more must be done to increase penalties for commercial sex buyers and facilitators to stop the organized criminal syndicates that reap hundreds of billions of dollars per year worldwide by exploiting our most vulnerable people.
To better understand the issue, on June 26, 2026, the America Combats Trafficking (ACT) initiative at the America First Policy Institute hosted a listening session with former victims of trafficking at the local jail in Chesterfield County, VA. This session, convened by AFPI Senior Fellow and former Acting Director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tony Pham and Senior Policy Advisor Andrew Pavoncello, included participants from law enforcement, social workers, and five female victims of human trafficking. Three of the victims are still incarcerated for illicit substance use, among other crimes, which permeated the time they were trafficked, but participate in a substance abuse recovery program conducted at the jail. That recovery program, called Helping Addicts Recover Progressively (HARP), was established in March of 2016 by Sheriff Karl Leonard. HARP is a peer-to-peer counseling, therapy, and medical program that helps inmates overcome substance abuse.
Addiction often serves as the instrument that traffickers use to control their victims, establishing dependency by keeping them financially and psychologically reliant on them. The Department of State has acknowledged this connection, stating that "the role of substance use disorder in human trafficking is powerful and pervasive; addiction can increase a person's vulnerability to being trafficked."
Unfortunately, correctional facilities frequently fail to recognize the connection between drug abuse and trafficking. In our listening session, we heard that many women enter the criminal justice system for committing prostitution-related offenses, drug crimes, or other non-violent crimes without being fully vetted and identified as trafficking victims.
Programs like HARP, however, provide standardized screening procedures that incorporate the services of mental health experts and Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE). These professional services are the first step in earlier detection and intervention. While initially focusing on substance abuse, the process does more than help inmates get clean and sober; it also identifies mental health and other underlying issues that plague their addiction.
When victims are identified as trafficking victims, it shifts the focus from being portrayed as perpetrators of the crimes they were coerced into committing to the trauma they endured. All five victims said that implementing these standardized screening procedures across all correctional facilities would significantly increase the likelihood that others might be identified as trafficking victims. Victims and substance abusers who establish rapport with law enforcement, medical, and mental health professionals in these spaces reduce recidivism after their release. The national average of repeat offenders is 70 percent, while the HARP program's recidivism rate is just 18 percent.
Preventing recidivism, however, also requires imposing consequences for those who purchase the sex services of trafficking victims or are otherwise complicit in trafficking. Ironically, these purchasers often receive lighter penalties than trafficking victims, or they avoid charges completely. One of the victims lamented that there was no ability for her to escape because her trafficker rented the whole motel and used it for trafficking operations. "Drugs were kept up front. He had his drug runners in a few rooms in the back. They would watch the parking lot. It's only one way in, one way out."
Reintegrating into society can also be more difficult for trafficking victims if they have criminal records that impede them from employment, housing, and financial stability. Recently, President Trump signed the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, which authorizes courts, under certain circumstances, to expunge arrest records and criminal convictions for victims who have committed either non-violent or violent federal crimes (if the victim of the crime is not a minor) as a direct result of being a victim of human trafficking.
Continuous post-incarceration care is also critical for individuals recovering from addiction and trafficking-related trauma. More than 80 percent of survivors return to commercial sex work due to lapses in support programs. According to the State Department, some traffickers recruit directly from detox and addiction treatment facilities, making recovery that much harder. Providing and maintaining uninterrupted access to treatment facilities and secured, effective emergency housing during reentry into society reduces recidivism and decreases the likelihood that traffickers can manipulate and recruit their victims again.
Our insight into these victims' experiences confirms that addiction should not be viewed as a comorbid condition, but as a tool that traffickers, who most often are their drug dealers, use to manipulate, groom, and retain victims. We asked our participants if they had one thing to say to lawmakers, what would it be? One victim responded: "What I'd like them to know is that drug use and the trafficking go hand in hand. If you look at my record, it all has to do with each other."
The experiences of the victims participating in HARP, although heart-wrenching, powerfully illustrate that recovering from trafficking is not fully achieved by being rescued. Rather, lawmakers should consider implementing a new screening and tracking protocol at the correctional facilities, like gang screening that identifies trafficking patterns, maps connections to organized crime and cartels, and better equips investigators to pursue the traffickers responsible. The discussion highlighted that the continuity of health care services, stable and safe housing, trauma-informed services, and in-house correctional programs like HARP are vital to preserving human dignity by making the intersection of substance abuse and trafficking a lesson learned from our past.
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Andrew Pavoncello serves as a senior policy advisor for homeland security, immigration, and anti-human trafficking policy at AFPI. He has more than a decade of experience in public-private partnerships and strategic alliances, building national coalitions, and engaging stakeholders across government and industry.
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Original text here: https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/what-lawmakers-can-learn-from-victims-of-human-trafficking
[Category: ThinkTank]
