We endure a digital information age in which VERY IMPASSIONED OPINIONS fly at us from all directions. We continuously sift through these opinions, legitimate news, selfies galore, AI slop, dad jokes, political attacks, and so much more. They flash into our brains from the smartphone in the palm of our hand, or maybe through a pair of Meta Glasses.
We’d all feel more confident about the fabric of civil society or the future of our democracy if the sheer quantity of information and opinion itself—ever more, ever louder—were the answer. Empowering more voices to speak up with digital tools doesn’t do much good if we stop listening to each other in the process. The rise of AI only reminds us that too much is never enough for the human marketplace.
From the ancient days of stone tablets to modern memes, the hard work never changes: curating valid news and information and placing it into proper context.
On this theme of less can be more if we channel the information flood through focus and discipline, here are three recent statistics. I think all three show how a few dispassionate facts can flex as much or more power than yet another round of spleen-venting.
These stats also do a good job of prompting an important question: Which America do we want to be, really?
40% of arrests
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is one of the most effective experts I’ve heard put the modern deportation surge by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into fuller context. His appearance this month on Bill Kristol’s “Conversations” podcast offers a prime example.
He sketches a detailed picture of the true scale of the current “mass deportation regime.” Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill lavished ICE with $75 billion—a radical escalation enabling campaign rhetoric to become reality.
The government has been purchasing warehouses—at least seven in January alone—to be converted into detention facilities holding 8,500 or more people apiece. Any one of these facilities, assuming it reaches capacity, Reichlin-Melnick said, would rank as the largest prison in the U.S.
He also tapped into recent reporting from CBS News to show the results of ICE arrests. If the intention of mass deportations is to target violent criminals, the ICE surge misses the mark. Depending on how you specify violence, only 10-20% of those arrested by ICE represent serious offenders. Another 30-40% carry nonviolent charges.
But 40% of ICE arrests? People with no criminal record whatsoever.
Which America do we want to be?
3 million pages
The New York Times has built a brilliant modern business model by recreating the comprehensive content mix once enjoyed by most daily metro newspapers: Through my Times apps I can learn to cook a fluffy breakfast omelet, listen to a books podcast, or exercise my brain with Wordle—all while still enjoying a steady drip of essential news headlines.
Among the hard work currently on the plate of Times journalists is an exhaustive deep dive into 3 million pages of the Jeffrey Epstein files—enough sheets of paper to match the height of the Empire State Building.
In a recent Times story explaining the newspaper’s approach, Dylan Freedman, projects editor of A.I. Initiatives, explained his team’s role: “As reporters come to us with questions following the release, we were a sort of strike team, rapidly prototyping bespoke software applications to help them.”
He also outlined the strengths and weaknesses of AI for journalists: “AI is really bad at news judgement—what information to include, whether it’s important. AI can be sloppy and make mistakes that are inexcusable in journalism. It’s super industrious but not super intelligent. AI outputs can amplify biases in society. And in my experience, AI is not great at producing original ideas (but decent at synthesizing or distilling them).”
In my favorite quote from the article, Freedman summed up the Epstein files as “the most detailed portrait … of an elite class of society operating outside of public scrutiny.”
3 million pages to reveal a horrific global network of perverse privilege.
Which America do we want to be?
1,575 defendants
I also must give my friends at National Public Radio plenty of credit for the ambitious public archive they published last month just ahead of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Their Jan. 6 Archive tracks all 1,575 prosecutions in a public database, and, thanks to years of reporting, provides a sleek continuous scroll of a timeline with “a front-line account of the riot.”
In the words of investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach, NPR “focused on the facts—evidence presented and evaluated in court, not just political rhetoric.”
Calling it “probably the most videotaped crime in history,” Dresibach explained how he and his colleagues reviewed thousands of videos, selecting hundreds of the most relevant for the database.
“The idea is that people can see the evidence for themselves, compare it to what the president is saying and then a lot of the other myths that are out there,” he said.
Nearly all 1,575 defendants of the Capitol attack have been pardoned. But the evidence, as NPR puts it, “vividly shows the planning for ‘revolution’ and the brutality of violence on a day that continues to shape American politics.”
Once more: Which America do we want to be, really?
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