In the waning days of Bulgaria’s restless election season, when the air itself feels thick with promises and half-truths, the news struck like a stone through a calm window: a journalist had been beaten. Not in a war zone, not in some distant dictatorship, but in the heart of a European Union member state, just hours before citizens were called to the polls. The victim might have been a young reporter chasing a routine story, or a veteran camera operator who has seen it all—but that morning, they were simply someone doing their job. They carried a notebook, a microphone,…

One week before the midterm election, the early-morning scroll through social media feels less like catching up on the world and more like stepping into a crowded room where everyone is shouting. In Tucson, Arizona, voters describe the online atmosphere as loud, mean, and hard to learn from. William Laney, a 61-year-old voter, put it plainly: “There’s not a lot of what I’m going to do for you, it’s a lot of you are evil, this other guy is evil.” That sense of exhaustion is shared by many who just want to make an informed decision before walking into the…