This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.Welcome to The Logoff: Today Im focusing on Donald Trump saying hes imposing tariffs on products from around the world. If real and permanent two big ifs the policies represent a shift in economic policy that will have major effects on all Americans.Whats the latest? Trump today promised a 10 percent tariff on all foreign goods, with goods from many countries including some of our largest trading partners being taxed at a far higher rate. Trump also said certain foreign-made cars would face import taxes of 25 percent. Trump said the tariffs would take effect right away, though the exact timing is unclear.Is it real this time? This was Trumps most sweeping tariff announcement to date, and he announced it during a high-profile White House ceremony, suggesting these tariffs may be here to stay. That said, it was only a month ago that Trump announced tariffs on our largest trading partners, only to rescind or delay some of them days after they took effect. Can Trump do this without Congress? There will likely be legal challenges, but existing law gives the president wide authority to unilaterally impose tariffs.What do tariffs mean for you? In the short term, higher prices. Tariffs are taxes paid by importers and passed on to consumers, so, if they remain in place, you can expect to pay more for a sweeping range of goods. Economists also fear that this tariff policy could kick off a recession, particularly as other countries promise to counter with taxes on US exports.Whats the big picture? There are valid critiques of past US free trade policies particularly in how theyve hurt certain communities and segments of the labor force. But economists are skeptical Trump can bring back US manufacturing at anywhere near the scale hes promising, and theyre confident these new taxes will result in severe and widespread economic pain.And with that, its time to log off If you want a high-brow reprieve from the chaos, Voxs Unexplainable podcast has a great new episode about deep-sea microbes ancient organisms so different from the rest of the planets creatures that theyre raising questions about what it means to even be alive. (As an added bonus, Vox members can now listen ad-free!) I loved this podcast, but if youre having a just get through it kind of Wednesday, might I recommend 3 minutes and 23 seconds of tropical birds mating dances? Thanks so much for reading, and well see you back here tomorrow.See More:

Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic should be one of the easiest cases the Supreme Court will decide this year. A federal law requires every states Medicaid program to ensure that any individual eligible for medical assistance may obtain that care from a competent provider of their choice. The question in Medina is whether that statute means anything, or whether it is a paper tiger that cannot be meaningfully enforced.In fairness, the Supreme Courts rules laying out when a federal Medicaid statute can be enforced through private lawsuits are somewhat complicated, but the 2023 decision in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski clarified those rules. There is now no serious argument that that law enabling Medicaid patients to choose their providers cannot be enforced.But, while the law in Medina is clear, the politics are terrible. The specific issue in Medina is whether South Carolina can cut health providers that also provide abortions out of its Medicaid program (Medicaid funds generally cannot be spent on abortions, but they can be spent on non-abortion care provided by Planned Parenthood). And the Supreme Court has a 6-3 Republican majority. So many of the Courts Republicans seemed to spend Wednesdays argument looking for a way to get around cases like Talevski. Its far from clear whether three key justices Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were persuaded by the anti-Medicaid arguments in this case. But, at times, it sure seemed like they wanted to be persuaded.That leaves the outcome in Medina uncertain. If I absolutely had to bet on the outcome, Id predict that Roberts and Barrett, at the very least, will ultimately reaffirm what the Court said less than two years ago in Talevski which means that Planned Parenthood will win. But none of the Courts Republicans appeared to see this case as easy.Whats the legal issue in Medina?As a general rule, if someone wants to file a federal lawsuit enforcing a provision of Medicaid law, they cannot sue under the law itself. Instead, they have to file their suit under a law known as Section 1983, which permits suits against state officials who deprive someone of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.In Blessing v. Freestone (1997), however, the Court said that this statute does not permit anyone to file any lawsuit to enforce any provision of federal law. Instead, because Section 1983 refers to rights, a plaintiff must assert the violation of a federal right, not merely a violation of federal law.The test the Court uses to determine whether a particular federal law creates an enforceable right was recently reiterated in Talevski, which held that the key question is whether the provision in question is phrased in terms of the persons benefited and contains rights-creating, individual-centric language with an unmistakable focus on the benefited class.Thus, for example, a statute which says that no state shall deny a person who is wearing pants the ability to take a walk would be enforceable through private lawsuits, because this statute focuses on the people who benefit from it (people wearing pants). A similar law that says states shall not interfere with walking may not be enforceable, because it does not have the same individual-centric language demanded by Talevski.With that in mind, here is the statute at issue in Medina:A State plan for medical assistance must provide that any individual eligible for medical assistance (including drugs) may obtain such assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required (including an organization which provides such services, or arranges for their availability, on a prepayment basis), who undertakes to provide him such services.This law does everything Talevski demands. It provides a right to a specific individuals (any individual eligible for medical assistance under Medicaid), and it lays out the content of that right the right to obtain assistance from a provider of their choice. As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out early in Wednesdays oral argument, it is nearly impossible to even describe what this statute does without using the word right.A Court that intends to follow the rule laid out two years ago in Talevski, in other words, would hand down a very brief, unanimous opinion in holding that South Carolina Medicaid patients have a right to choose Planned Parenthood as their health provider.Many of the justices appeared determined to make this case more complicated than it isThough some members of the Courts right flank appeared to be probing for a way to rule against abortion providers, none of the justices proposed a coherent legal rule that would allow them to dodge Talevski. Justice Samuel Alito, for example, was unusually quiet on Wednesday, though he did speak up at one point to complain that Medicaid laws, which permit private lawsuits, are supposed to be something thats quite extraordinary.Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas asked a few questions emphasizing his belief that it should be harder to enforce federal laws that are tied to federal spending programs such as Medicaid, as opposed to laws enacted under Congresss power to regulate private actors.A few of the justices, meanwhile, fixated on a concurring opinion by Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee to a federal appeals court who complained that there is uncertainty about whether lower court judges should follow Talevski or a slightly different legal framework laid out in Blessing and Wilder v. Virginia Hospital Association (1990). According to Richardson, lower courts continue to lack the guidance inferior judges need.In fairness, Roberts and Barrett sometimes seemed incredulous that theres any real confusion about whether Talevski lays out the proper rule. Barrent asked Planned Parenthoods lawyer Nicole Saharsky if the Court could just say in its opinion that lower courts should follow Talevski, and Saharsky did not object. Roberts said that the Court could simply say that we meant it when it handed down Talevski and a related case.Kavanaugh, however, was all over the map. South Carolinas primary argument is that the Medicaid statute must use specific magic words, such as the word right, in order to authorize private lawsuits. As Kagan pointed out, the Court has never imposed such a requirement in its past cases, and she warned against changing the rules midstream because Congress could not have known that it had to use certain magic words when it wrote the Medicaid statute or any other existing law.But Kavanaugh seemed to disagree, stating at one point that he isnt averse to magic words. Kavanaughs questions indicated that he is so concerned with coming up with a clear, easy-to-apply test that he is willing to sacrifice the rights of Medicaid patients to achieve this broader goal.Still, its far from clear whether Kavanaugh can find five votes for a magic words requirement, or even whether Kavanaugh will himself vote to overrule cases like Talevski.In the end, it does appear more likely than not that Planned Parenthood will prevail. South Carolina, like any other litigant opposed to abortion, made its case before a very friendly bench of mostly Republican justices. But the state will probably still lose because its arguments are just so weak under existing law.See More:

President Donald Trump is set to unveil the details of his tariff plans at 4 pm ET on Wednesday, April 2. He has vowed to impose reciprocal tariffs on all nations that he claims disadvantage American products through trade, tax, or regulatory policy.Trump has already imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum made outside the US, all products made in Canada or Mexico, all Chinese goods, and all foreign-made cars, among other things, claiming these moves will strengthen the economy long-term while downplaying concern theyll lead to a recession. The threat of tariffs have led to massive economic uncertainty, with Trumps on-again, off-again declarations tanking stock markets and souring consumer sentiment, though some longtime critics of globalization appear optimistic. Meanwhile, many Americans are worried and confused tariffs havent been as significant to the US economy in nearly a century and theyre understandably unsure about what tariffs are, how theyll affect their wallets, why governments would implement them, and whether the presidents policy will work on its own terms.Well help you make sense of this moment. Follow here for the latest news, analysis, and explainers.

Donald Trumps popularity is slipping. His honeymoon is over, views of the economy and his stewardship of it are souring, and while inflation and prices remain the publics top priority, they see his administration as focusing on other things.Yet the area where they think Trump is most focusing his attention is also the one where hes most popular: immigration. Its what the public thinks hes handling best, and its the issue buoying his overall approval rating right now.A couple recent national polls show how resilient this dynamic is. Take the latest March CBS News/YouGov poll. It finds that an outright majority 53 percent of the American public approves of Trumps handling of immigration. They approve of his mass deportation pledge, and the numbers remain largely unchanged since last month.That majority support on immigration stands in contrast to his other ratings in that poll. Some 48 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, with 52 percent disapproving in late March. Thats down from 51 percent approval a month ago. And when it comes to inflation, specifically, just 44 percent approve, down from 46 percent last month.Those sharper marks on immigration come not only despite questions about the legality of the administrations methods, but also as news organizations reveal embarrassing and concerning revelations about who has been targeted for deportations and detentions.While this news coverage grows, and Trumps overall favorability continues to slip, its worth asking why his immigration agenda remains popular and just what might turn it negative.As the administration veers into a more authoritarian direction in its treatment of immigrants, these shifts will be crucial to track, particularly for those hoping to organize political pressure and public support.What recent polls tell usThe late March CBS News/YouGov poll of American adults conducted late last week shows basically no change from the last CBS/YouGov poll from late February. Some 53 percent of Americans approve of Trumps immigration handling in March, while 54 percent approved in February.The same when asking about the Trump administrations program to deport immigrants illegally. Among all adults, 58 percent approve essentially mirroring findings in February, when 59 percent of respondents approved.The second national survey that shows Trumps resilient immigration support is a AP-NORC poll from March. The public, this poll suggests, is split evenly: 49 percent approve of Trumps immigration approach, while 50 percent disapprove. Again, views of his handling of other issues are much more negative, but even one in five Democrats approve Trumps immigration approach, per the surveys results.The findings are revelatory, given the poll generally finds more negative views of Trump compared to other March polls conducted by other firms. Its an outlier, for example, in showing a double-digit net-negative rating for Trumps overall favorability: 56 percent disapproving and 42 percent approving.For now, theres not a clear reason for this sustained support. It might be a sign of Trumps effective messaging about the issue. From the start, this administration has embarked on a polished and digital-savvy media and advertising tour to frame their deportation efforts as a way to target immigrants who have committed crimes which happens to be the specific condition that is most popular when surveys offer respondents a variety of options for deportation policy. The administration has recorded and released social media videos, traditional TV advertising, and clips of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem tagging along with ICE agents, meeting with border agents at the southern border, and even speaking from the prison in El Salvador many deportees are being sent.In turn, this (essentially) campaigning on immigration may be amplifying the effects of polarization, since its hardcore conservatives and Republicans who care the most about immigration (both in the lead-up to the 2024 election and since Trumps inauguration). And these numbers might also just represent a deeper, wider reality for America. The American polity has generally polarized against immigration, and would prefer to see rates of immigration decline. Thats been true since the post-pandemic era spike in southern border crossings and asylum claims, and was a major 2024 campaign issue that Trump largely sees as responsible for his own election.Of course, there may also be survey-design limitations: These polls capture the vaguer idea of restrictive immigration policy that Trump came to represent, as opposed to the publics views on specific policies or scenarios. Public opinion tends to vary tremendously once you ask more specific questions about who might be targeted for deportation, how widespread those enforcement actions should be, and whether there should be conditions or more leniency given to some kinds of undocumented immigrants. And for now, its not clear yet what impact news coverage and the governments response to the most recent specific high-profile deportations will have.As news coverage, political debate, and outcry grow, (like over the role of foreign prisons and Guantnamo Bay in holding immigrants, and stories of specific, controversial cases), the public may end up polarizing against Trump. Thats what happened during late 2017 and 2018 the peak of Trump 1.0s anti-immigrant, kids-in-cages policies. It was around that time that public support for immigration of all kinds began to spike, and openness to more migration grew.Still, 2017 this is not. The public has not been this negative on immigration since the post-9/11 years, per Gallup tracking data. And Trump, again, remains more popular now than he was at this point in his first term, meaning he has room to spend political capital and advance his agenda while taking a hit in public opinion. In other words, eight years ago Trump saw how much he could get done with immigration while most of the public opposed him. This year, hes pushing to do even more, with a higher ceiling for what the public will tolerate.See More:

In God and Man at Yale, the 1951 book that made William F. Buckley famous, American conservatisms founding father argues that academic freedom is premised on a fiction.While professors claim that they are merely attempting to equip their students with the tools necessary to comprehend the world and succeed in it, they are in fact engaged in conveying a particular set of truths and values to their students meaning, at the time, liberal and socialist values. In response, Buckley argues, university trustees and administrators should banish favorable discussion of such ideas from the classroom, replacing them with a curriculum that emphasizes the eternal truths of Christianity and capitalism.In some ways, the Trump administrations aggressive approach to college campuses directly echoes Buckleys ideas. They are making transparently ideological demands of universities like Harvard and Columbia, and threatening to withhold funding if they dont comply. They have also adopted what looks a lot like a systematic policy of deporting foreign students who participate in pro-Palestinian activism.The Trump administration goes even further than Buckley in two critical respects.First, Buckley explicitly rejected government interference in the affairs of private universities the sort of thing that Trump has been doing throughout his second term. I should bitterly contest a preemption by the state of the duties and privileges of the alumni of the private institutions themselves to guide the destinies of the schools they support, Buckley wrote. Second, Trump has added a layer of ideological hypocrisy.Buckley explicitly rejected the idea of campuses as free speech zones, but the president has long claimed to be defending exactly this principle saying in 2019 that taxpayer dollars should not subsidize anti-First Amendment institutions. Indeed, the notion that there is a free speech crisis on campus that must be addressed has become a mainstream conservative position in the era of wokeness and cancel culture.Yet, Trumps current approach to universities is a dire threat to the First Amendment. The breadth of the threat became painfully clear last week, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly bragged that he was revoking visas of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students in retaliation for their political beliefs and activism.The conservative position on higher education and free speech is thus profoundly muddled. While nearly everyone on the right believes that left-liberal domination of the campus is a problem in fact, has been a problem since the 1950s there is no obvious consistent position on why this is a problem or what role the government should have in solving it.The case of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts graduate student who was snatched off the street by unidentified DHS agents, has brought these tensions into full view. Ozturk was in the United States on a valid student visa; her only apparent crime, so far as we know, was writing an op-ed critical of Israels war in Gaza in the Tufts student newspaper.Ozturks case is important not only because its an especially egregious abuse of power, but also because it provides a clear test for the various factions of the modern right.Do they truly care about free speech, or was that a convenient talking point right up until they obtained the power to create a new campus orthodoxy? Do they agree with Buckley, that the state should stay out of private university affairs, or get on board with Trumps increasingly aggressive approach? Do they really think that targeting hundreds of students like Ozturk, as Rubio suggested he was doing, could be squared with any kind of commitment to limited government and individual rights?The reactions from right-of-center publications divide into roughly four camps, aligning on a spectrum ranging from vocal approval to outright abhorrence. Yet the former was far closer to the center of gravity than the latter.The four kinds of reactions to Ozturks arrest1) The illiberal nationalists. This group endorses Ozturks arrest on the grounds that noncitizens do not have the same free speech rights as Americans and, thus, should be deported when they engage in speech the administration finds harmful.As a matter of First Amendment jurisprudence, this is largely false: The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that noncitizen residents have constitutional protections, including First Amendment rights (with only very limited exceptions). The illiberal nationalists do acknowledge this, but they argue that the court was simply wrong in conflict with the morally correct interpretation of the law.The Supreme Courts twentieth-century rulings are incorrect, Ben Crenshaw writes in American Reformer, a Christian nationalist publication. Non-citizen foreigners are under the goodwill and censure of US law, but cannot claim the full range of its benefits until they become citizens.The illiberal nationalists reject both the campus free speech argument and the Buckelyite vision of limited government. They believe the state has the right and responsibility to shape the American polity along their preferred lines, including by interfering in the management of private universities and curtailing allegedly dangerous speech.2. The whataboutists. These articles focused less on the actual question of whether it was right to deport Ozturk than the alleged sins or inconsistencies of Trumps liberal critics, on campus or otherwise.Writing at The Federalist, a staunchly pro-Trump outlet, John Daniel Davidson spends most of his word count attacking Never Trumper David French for the alleged hypocrisy of criticizing Ozturks deportations while also having worked at a publication that helped Facebook fact-check arguments about abortion during the 2020 election.French worked as a senior editor at an outlet that was paid to justify Big Tech censorship of pro-life views. Its reasonable to conclude that he doesnt care about free speech, no matter what he says about it now, Davidson writes.The weakness of Davidsons guilt-by-association move aside, his evasion of the substantive question is striking. Davidson does not weigh in on whether Ozturk specifically deserves deportation; he just speaks in generic terms about the presidents new policy of revoking the visas of foreign nationals who agitate for terrorist groups like Hamas.Ozturk didnt actually do this: Her op-ed doesnt even mention Hamas. But that doesnt matter. For the whataboutists, the key issue is always the sins of their enemies. Ozturk, academic freedom, basic civil liberties these are all merely collateral damage in the war on the left.3. The see-no-evil crowd. Evasion is also the key feature here. These people and publications simply chose not to say anything about Ozturk, despite a longstanding and preexisting interest in issues relating to campus politics, immigration, or Israel-Palestine. This was, in my research, the most common response from major right-wing outlets. Take the Daily Wire, the Ben Shapiro-founded media empire that has made the campus culture war and Israel-Palestine two of its primary foci. While the site publishes at a truly astonishing clip, the only mention of Ozturks case is a passing reference in a March 31st news roundup in which the author describes her as a Turkish national [whose] visa was revoked after the State Department found she engaged in activities in support of Hamas. That one line is the entirety of the Daily Wires coverage which, of course, amounts to no real coverage at all.Whatever the reason for this silence, it speaks volumes about their commitment to alleged free-speech principles.4. The principled objectors. I couldnt find many of these from conservatives other than people who were already Never Trumpers, but they do exist.The clearest example is a column from Jeffrey Blehar at National Review. Blehar, whose official position on the 2024 election was that Trump and Harris were equally bad, appears to be genuinely appalled by Ozturks arrest.To capriciously eject people from the country without warning merely for publishing an unpopular political opinion in a student newspaper is, no matter what Trumps defenders or special pleaders may beg, utterly abhorrent, Blehar writes. The idea that foreigners who are here on valid visas should live under fear that their every political opinion might become grounds for sudden incarceration in Louisiana or El Salvador is inhumane and close to un-American in spirit.This is, I think, the right reaction and it deserves to be commended unreservedly. That it was published in the magazine Buckley founded, the closest thing to a house organ for the pre-Trump GOP establishment, is also notable. See More:

One of the buzziest books in America right now is Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompsons bestseller on why our failure to build enough homes has contributed to soaring costs and needless political strife. And one of the most provocative movements in politics these days is pronatalism a coalition sounding the alarm on people not having enough babies. Pronatalists are gaining power in the White House (Trump recently dubbed himself the fertilization president) and the movement just wrapped up its second annual US convention in Austin, Texas. As housing supply and birth rates have become twin focal points in Americas policy conversation, a growing number of wonks are drawing connections between these two, arguing that expanding housing supply wouldnt just ease affordability it could also help boost fertility. The Institute for Family Studies a think tank which launched its own pronatalism division last summer recently published a report making this case, revealing how housing costs have become crushing for young adults. The median home now costs nine years of a young persons income, up from five years in 1969. Homeownership rates for Americans under 35 have collapsed from 50 percent to around 30 percent since 1980.Many of these young adults arent even living in their own rentals. The National Association of Home Builders found that in 2023, 19.2 percent of young adults (or 8.5 million people) lived with their parents, compared to less than 12 percent of young adults in 2000. As Robert Dietz, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders, noted last month at a conference in Washington, DC, the surge of young adults living with parents represents a failure to launch that directly impacts marriage and fertility rates.Dietzs conclusions are supported by IFS. Living with ones parents has a huge negative effect on fertility according to the think tank, meaning that as more young adults delay moving into their own homes, they also delay or forgo having children. In fact, IFS researchers find that no other factor not undesired singleness, preference for leisure, schooling, child care costs, or student debt limited ones childbearing goals more than housing costs. As a 32-year-old woman getting married in two months and still renting this all strikes a chord. Much of my reporting focuses on ways to expand the desperately needed housing supply, and I am compelled by the argument that making it easier for people to live independently would, in turn, make it easier for them to form and sustain romantic relationships.But banking too much on housing misses deeper shifts in our social fabric. Housing affordability matters enormously, but exists within a cultural landscape where attitudes toward family formation and parenthood are fundamentally changing. Fewer young adults are prioritizing committed partnerships as a life goal, with many explicitly choosing to remain single.Perhaps most significant are the widening economic, political, and cultural divides between young men and women. Between 2012 and 2023, young women became dramatically more liberal while young men drifted rightward. By 2023, over 50 percent of young women identified as liberal, up from 32 percent 11 years earlier. As women have pursued more education and focused more seriously on careers, mens earning power has declined. Meanwhile, the rising cost of living continues to reshape everyones economic future.The 2024 election revealed that among voters under 30, the gender gap between women and men who supported Kamala Harris was twice as large as in other age groups. This isnt just about voting habits; 68 percent of Harris voters believed society should dedicate more resources to helping girls, while only 35 percent of Trump voters shared that view.Disagreements over issues like whether women should have access to abortion and birth control are just far more fundamental than quibbles around zoning and sluggish permitting processes. A majority of young Democrats now say they wouldnt date someone with opposing political views with women far more likely than men to draw this line. Moreover, in the backdrop of all this is a society that has grown increasingly hostile to parents and kids. Ive written about millennial mom dread and the increasingly grim ways motherhood is depicted in America, and last week pop star Chappell Roan lit up the internet after declaring that all her friends with kids are in hell. The latest cover of the New Yorker depicts a mother hauling a baby and stroller alone down into a subway station, symbolizing the lack of accessibility and support for parents in much of society. These portrayals often overshadow the profound fulfillment many parents still find in raising children, creating a distorted picture of family life that discourages young adults from seeing parenthood as viable.Can housing policy help address these deeper problems? The IFS report makes a number of sensible recommendations: loosening zoning codes, allowing accessory dwelling units, reducing minimum lot sizes. More affordable family-friendly housing would certainly help.But we should be clear-eyed about the limits of policy interventions. A bigger home for raising children looks a lot less attractive if the surrounding community still remains hostile, and our public spaces and cultural institutions increasingly treat children as unwelcome intrusions. A recent Pew survey found 69 percent of adults say its rarely or never acceptable to bring a child into a place thats typically for adults like a bar or upscale restaurant, and complaints about kids on planes abound. Journalist Stephanie Murray has written thoughtfully about the ways in which people feel comfortable making proclamations about disliking kids. The uncomfortable truth is that we dont yet know if voluntary policy measures like more affordable housing, safer streets for pedestrians, better stroller accessibility, paid leave, and subsidized child care will be enough to reverse declining birth rates. I feel comfortable taking the bet that they would definitely help and are intrinsically worth pursuing even if not but they cant address the deeper question of whether young men and women want to build lives together in the first place.See More:

The day this article goes up, April 2, has been pegged by President Donald Trump as Liberation Day: the day his suite of tariffs will go into effect and thus, in some unspecified sense, liberate the United States.The pre-history of this disastrous set of policies, which will only make America poorer and alienate it from its closest allies, is as long and weird as youd expect from Trump. Part of the story seems to involve him losing an auction in 1988 for a piano used in Casablanca to a Japanese collector, thus confirming that Japan was an economic threat. Sure, fine, that seems par for the course with this guy.But if you want to understand why not only Trump but now large parts of both parties have reoriented themselves to support tariffs, I think the key text is not Casablanca but a 2013 paper by David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson thats almost as famous (among economists, at least). If you follow economic research at all, you know this as the China shock paper.This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter.Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week.The authors found that the surge of US manufacturing imports from China between 1991 and 2007 led to large job losses in the US manufacturing sector, losses that were concentrated in a few particular geographic locations. Areas affected saw wages fall for a surprisingly long time, and uptake of government benefit programs like unemployment and disability insurance.The DC think tank worlds understanding of this finding was sweeping: Free trade didnt work. Bipartisan advocates like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had promised that deals like permanent normal trade relations or NAFTA would be win-win propositions, when in reality they hollowed out American manufacturing. After Trump won in 2016 on a fiercely anti-trade platform, aided by support in China shock-affected states like Wisconsin and Michigan, many Democrats saw the implication as obvious: It was time to turn their backs on trade, as a matter of political survival if nothing else.If you actually read the China shock literature you will notice that the authors do not come to any conclusions remotely this broad. The conclusions they do reach, though, can help us understand why Trumps particular policy response will be so damaging.Its the shock not the ChinaReading the original China shock paper and its follow-ups, something that sticks out is how little the literature is about trade policy per se. Autor, Dorn, and Hanson are clear that the shock came not just from changing US policy toward China, but from Chinas massive increase in manufacturing productivity during this period. That means the employment losses in certain areas werent solely due to the US loosening barriers, but also to changes within China that US policy couldnt alter.The authors are equally clear that trade wasnt the sole driver of declining manufacturing employment. They estimate that the China shock was responsible for about a quarter of the decline in manufacturing jobs over the period they study. Thats significant, for sure, but also underlines how much other factors like labor-saving technologies in the sector, or consumers shifting demand toward services were behind the hollowing-out of old factory towns. Even if China had stayed poor and not become a major exporter, the US still would have rapidly lost manufacturing jobs, just not quite as many.Id be remiss if I didnt mention that many researchers have found that Chinese imports have, overall, made Americans better off. That includes Autor, Dorn, and Hanson, who concluded that the gains to consumers from cheaper goods were somewhat larger than the employment losses. That doesnt mean the concentrated hurt from the China shock was okay. Clearly the US should have done a better job of helping affected regions transition to a more competitive economy. But simply not doing the China shock, even if that had been possible, would not have made the US better off as a whole. Nor would adding tariffs now, some 15 years after the China shock ended, do any good. Follow-up work by the team on the Trump tariffs during his first term found that they reduced US employment overall by inviting foreign retaliation.Rather than a jeremiad against free trade, its better to understand the China shock literature as explaining what happens when a specific region takes a big economic hit whether due to imports or something else. Autor has compared it to the losses West Virginia suffered as the US transitioned away from coal. The forward-looking lesson is not about how we contend with manufacturing competition, Autor told an interviewer in 2021. It is not even [only] about trade per se, but about adjustment for unemployed workers and hard-hit areas. How costly it is, how slow it is, and how we can make it work better.Its not the China part thats crucial: Its the shock.Maybe dont do another shock for no reason?Trumps suite of tariffs are, obviously, not going to bring manufacturing back to the US in any meaningful way. But theyre certainly shocking. Theyve introduced massive uncertainty to international trade and to supply chains that cross borders, like the deeply integrated Michigan-Ontario auto sector. Theyve forced manufacturers and retailers that depend on imports as inputs or sales items to scramble to adjust.This exact dynamic, this kind of massive economic shift imposed with little time to prepare or adjust, is what made the China shock so painful for certain regions. The tariff shock, far from undoing the effects of the China shock, could simply replicate its worst aspects, just without the corresponding benefit in terms of economic growth and cheaper goods.The Trump team, as Paul Krugman observed during the first trade war, is acting like a motorist who runs over a pedestrian, then tries to fix the damage by backing up and runs over the victim a second time.Its not yet clear if the damage will be as economically concentrated as the China shock was. Large-scale government layoffs and contract cancellations are threatening a localized DC recession, and tariffs on Canada and Mexico would disproportionately hurt border states, but the damage of higher prices and job losses from tariffs will be felt broadly across the whole country. Since part of the reason the China shock garnered so much attention was its concentration in presidential swing states, this might make the tariff shock less politically motivating.But in just about every aspect, the tariff shock is worse than the China shock. The China shock made prices cheaper for most Americans all those cheap appliances and toys but the tariff shock will raise prices. The China shock was concentrated in the manufacturing sector, and manufacturing-heavy regions; the tariff shock will affect many sectors.Perhaps worst of all, where the China shock was largely unavoidable, the tariff shock is entirely self-inflicted. Its being chosen by US policymakers, against the interests of their constituents and allied nations. They could just as easily not do it at all. Its an act of economic national suicide the likes of which the US hasnt seen in decades.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

Today is Liberation Day, according to President Donald Trump the day he announces a slate of new tariffs. This is just the latest update to tariff policies that have already caused a good deal of whiplash since Trump took office in January. He threatened to impose tariffs on Colombia and canceled his plan to do so all in a single day. He rolled out a tariff plan for Canada and Mexico, only to postpone implementing it shortly after some tariffs went into effect. And hes been threatening both allies and adversaries with broad and aggressive tariffs for reasons ranging from cracking down on fentanyl to closing a TikTok deal.The chaotic nature of Trumps tariff policies has unnerved investors, and the stock market has plummeted since the president made it clear that hes not afraid of a trade war. It has also made tariffs look like an inherently bad idea. To be fair, Trumps tariff proposals are bad policy: They are far too broad, haphazard, and have confusing rationales.But tariffs are not fundamentally unwise. The reality is that tariffs can be, and have been, effective policy tools for promoting industrial development when theyre done in a targeted strategic way and when they are matched with other complementary policies, said Adam Hersh, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. So what would good tariff policies actually look like?When tariffs can be goodA tariff is a tax thats imposed on goods imported from other countries. Oftentimes, the cost is passed on to consumers because companies will raise their prices to offset the tax. One of the biggest reasons countries would be interested in levying a tariff is to protect domestic industries from unfair competition. Take the example of Chinese steel. China, which heavily subsidizes its steel industry, produces more than half of the worlds steel. Because demand for steel within China has not kept pace with supply, Chinese steel has become much cheaper, potentially selling at a loss in international markets. That makes it extremely difficult for steel manufacturers elsewhere to compete, which has prompted governments to respond. Last year, the Biden administration implemented tariffs aimed at curbing imports of Chinese steel in order to protect US manufacturers.Another example of unfair competition comes from countries with bad labor standards and very low wages. If, for example, Chinese products are cheaper than American products in part because of extremely low labor costs, the US shouldnt respond by lowering wages to keep local companies competitive. Instead of a race to the bottom, the US can respond by imposing tariffs on certain Chinese products. That allows American companies to pay their workers well without having to sacrifice their competitiveness in the market. Tariffs work best when they are tailored to a specific problem. We have to start by making strategic choices about, What are the industries that are important to support with public policy? Hersh said. That could be for a national security reason, it could be for an economic reason, it could be because of broader social goals like fighting the climate crisis.Other times, a country might be interested in propping up a certain sector to make the supply chain more stable. If the United States is too reliant on other countries to provide certain goods, it can be caught in a crisis when supply chains are disrupted. This was a lesson learned painfully during the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone was scrambling to source personal protective equipment (PPE), respirators, and critical medicines unavailable domestically at the necessary scale, Hersh wrote in an article with Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Tariffs, in other words, can help ensure that there isnt a monopoly over crucial imports so that supply chains arent completely disrupted in the event of war or, as we learned in 2020, a pandemic.Why Trumps tariff policy is misguidedOn his first day back in the White House, Trump announced that he would try to build a whole new agency called the External Revenue Service to collect taxes on imports. His goal is very simple: to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News in February.But while tariffs were a main source of revenue for the US government before it introduced federal income taxes in 1913, Trumps supposed plan to replace the IRS with an External Revenue Service is a terrible idea. For starters, tariffs essentially act as a flat tax on spending, which ultimately puts a higher burden on lower-income consumers. Its also impossible for tariffs to raise nearly as much money as income tax.This strategy also highlights why Trumps tariff proposals are so poorly planned: He simultaneously wants to raise a significant amount of money from tariffs while also pledging to get rid of tariffs if other countries agree to his terms. Trumps tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada, for example, were placed in part, he says, to stop fentanyl from flowing into the United States. So what would happen if those countries end up meeting Trumps demands? If Trumps plan is just to raise revenue, then clearly he wouldnt want to come to an agreement with those countries. If his plan is to curb fentanyl, then he clearly doesnt want tariffs to be a permanent source of revenue.The Trump administration has not been targeted or strategic. They have so many different rationales for why theyre pursuing tariffs, not all of them have to do with industrial revitalization, Hersh said. The broad-based approach is also expected to be seriously disruptive, spiking prices on all kinds of products all at once. Even Trump seemed to suggest that would be the case. WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!), Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform. BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.Another problem is that Trump seemingly believes that tariffs can stand on their own. But tariffs in and of themselves are not a solution. To be effective at protecting American companies and jobs, tariffs should be coupled with other policies that help spur investments.Trump has proposed repealing the CHIPS and Science Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. The law invested tens of billions of dollars in Americas semiconductor industry by subsidizing companies that want to build new manufacturing facilities in the United States and by funding research and development.If Trump is actually interested in using tariffs productively, he should start by first figuring out what his policy objectives actually are. He could also turn to his predecessor for answers. The Biden administrations approach to propping up the semiconductor industry, for example, was to impose some tariffs in addition to the CHIPS Act, using tariffs as just one tool of many to support industry growth. Trump, by contrast, wants to just rely on tariffs without committing to long-term investments. That wont deliver the same goal.Ultimately, its important to remember that just because Trumps approach to tariffs is bombastic and unpredictable, that shouldnt necessarily be a reflection on tariffs more broadly. At the end of the day, tariffs exist for a reason, and, if implemented well, they can be a beneficial tool to shore up jobs, promote better wages, and advance national interests. We cant judge the tool, Hersh said, by the craftsman that is mishandling it.See More:

After a long, expensive, and closely watched race, Wisconsin went to the polls on Tuesday, and voted in a new state Supreme Court justice.Susan Crawford, a liberal county judge backed by Democrats across the US, defeated the conservative candidate, Brad Schimel, who was backed by the national GOP.In a conversation for Voxs daily newsletter Today, Explained, I asked politics reporter Christian Paz to break down the big race and its impact. Heres what he had to say. (Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.)So, tell me about what happened in Wisconsin.Wisconsins Supreme Court has a seat thats opening up because one of the Democrats is retiring. (The states Supreme Court is technically nonpartisan, but there are liberals whom Democrats support and conservatives whom Republicans support.)Right now, Democrats currently have a one-seat ideological majority on the court, and Tuesdays race was about which party would have the majority for the foreseeable future. Tuesday night, it quickly became clear that would be the Democrats. For people living in Wisconsin, the chance to decide the ideological makeup of the court was a big deal. Nationally, though, the race became important for a few other reasons.One, this was the first major statewide race happening in a swing state, or really any state, since Trumps inauguration. Democrats did poorly in swing states in the 2024 election, so this race is seen as a test of whether Democrats can still win races.Two, were about 10 weeks into Trumps second term, so this race was viewed as a referendum on the Trump administration so far.Three, this race was also a referendum on Elon Musks power and influence. He managed to make the race in Wisconsin about himself, by spending tens of millions of dollars in support of Schimel, and by testing the limits of campaign finance rules, finding as many ways as possible to offer people money to pay attention to the race, including by giving away a million dollars to voters. Hes poured millions of dollars into canvassing, and even went to Wisconsin to hold a rally on Schimels behalf.Finally, this election gives us a new data point to try to answer a question political scientists have wrestled with for a long time: Are there two electorates? Conventional wisdom suggests the answer to that question is yes, that there are lower propensity voters who only turn out in presidential elections, and then there are higher propensity voters who are very tuned into politics who turn out in every election, be it presidential, midterm, or special. However, political polarization and the level of loyalty Donald Trump inspires has some wondering whether that still holds. Tuesdays result helps suggest that it might.This is an off-cycle race, and because of that, some political commentators saw this contest as favoring Democrats a little. Last year, Kamala Harris performed particularly well with voters who said that they followed news closely, the classic high propensity voter. Again, high propensity voters tend to reliably vote in non-presidential elections, and the thinking was, those same Harris voters might help Crawford. And it seems like they did.There are other races coming up this year, and midterms next year. Does Wisconsin tell us anything about those?We shouldnt put too much stock in one race.That said, you could argue Susan Crawfords win makes some kind of blue wave next year appear a little more likely.There are a few factors that made this a somewhat unique case for Democrats, which makes it a little difficult to draw broad conclusions. As I mentioned, the fact that this was an off-cycle election probably helped Democrats, and theres another unique factor that may have helped too. Elon Musk wasnt the only person pouring in money; wealthy Democrats did too, as did grassroots donors. Thats in part because this was the only big race going on; if youre a liberal donor or a fundraiser, where else can you send your money? That wont be the case in the midterms next year.That said, Crawfords win does buttress conventional wisdom. Political science would tell us that you cant be an unpopular president with an unpopular agenda, leading an unpopular party, and flip a seat in a statewide race like this. And Republicans did fail to flip this seat.That failure could have some implication for next years midterms. Those elections tend to favor the party out of power, with voters trying to use them to put a check on the incumbent administration. If the other races coming up this year like Virginias gubernatorial race shake out like the race in Wisconsin, Democrats may decide their best bet is to just try to ride an anti-Trump, anti-Musk, anti-status quo anger to midterm victory.The result is also a huge warning sign about the power of Elon Musk. Last year, a lot of people ridiculed his canvassing efforts on behalf of the Republicans, and his funding of external groups outside of the political party system to turn out voters. Then Trump won, and his strategy suddenly looked good. Wisconsin suggests there are limits to the idea that the worlds richest man can pour money into politics to influence minds, making voting essentially a financial transaction, and it will pay off.See More:

The boys are alt-right. At least thats what polling and voting data suggests. Men under 25 were nearly 20 percent more likely to vote for Donald Trump than women in that age group in the 2024 election, revealing a gender gap far larger than those in older generations.Democrats have been freaking out about their young men problem. Theyre starting podcasts. Theyre talking about sports. Theyre cursing more. And increasingly theyre courting Hasan Piker: a 33-year-old Twitch streamer some are calling the Joe Rogan of the left. Piker livestreams for eight hours or more nearly every day. He has millions of followers, a group that skews young and male. Piker is a self-described leftist. Hell vote Democrat as the lesser of two evils, but hes been very critical of the party, especially over its handling of Israels war in Gaza.Hes overtly political but also an entertainer. During a recent streaming session, Piker bantered about his squat form and riffed on Andy Sambergs face, before pivoting to a long interview with New York Times politics reporter Astead Herndon. The message is equal parts self-improvement and how to fight for a better world, emphasis on fight. His message to his followers and to Democrats seeking a way forward is to get more antagonistic in pushing for what they believe in. You should fight back, Piker told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram. You should be like, No, this is what I believe. Why do you not want to give health care to poor people? Like, whats wrong with you?Pikers conversation with Today, Explained ranged from his protein intake, to Lyndon B. Johnsons thoughts on race, to the warm blanket of right-wing media. Make sure you listen to the whole thing at the link below or wherever you get your podcasts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Whats your protein intake? Is there a lot of protein going on?Yes, I consume about 200, at a minimum, 220 grams of protein every day.Amazing.I mean, its alright. I eat a lot of chicken. I love chicken. So this is fine. Just straight white chicken breasts every day.Oh! How much do you feel like being kind of yoked is like part of your draw and your persona?I think it initially in leftist circles is aits a negative. People look at me and immediately assume that I am a right-wing dude. At this point its hard to say that because obviously most people know what my politics are. But if you dont know who I am from afar, you think like, Oh, thats like an alpha bro potentially right kinda guy. My demeanor also is like that too. Im just authentically myself. I do not like putting on a show. I dont even think Id be capable of lying and being inauthentic for 10 hours a day in real time especially as Im responding in real-time to both news that is happening, but also then to people who are trying to argue with me about it. Its just who I am. Theres not much I can do to change it. And I dont even want to change the way I behave.What is your read on why this male optimization, (getting, you know, really beefed up) has a left-right divide? And what is that divide about?Theres a bunch of different reasons for it, but I think, like a lot of these guys, they dont think too hard about politics and then they find themselves trapped in this right-wing bubble. And then I think that they just like to associate that with self-improvement and self-help with that in general. Self-help inherently is not like a leftist or a right-wing thing. But it does seem like a lot of the content creators that are promoting that and presenting themselves as that are definitely, at the very least, right-wing. But I think part of it is because thats just the domineering attitude in general, if you dont really think about things too much and you kind of find yourself susceptible to social conditioning. And that does have a right-wing slant, the whole commonsense narrative. Its like, Oh, this is just common sensetwo genders: commonsense.You didnt put a lot of thought into it. Thats just what you learned your entire life. So of course you kind of slot yourself into the right-wing in that regard.I guess the other reason is because self-improvement can turn into hyper-individualism very quickly, which is also another incredibly American attitude in general, but thats what it is.You try to couple self-improvement with helping others, which feels really critical in this moment where a lot of people feel lost, but that leads to them becoming more inward, introverted, even angry. How do you feel like youre fairing in that battle right now to not just improve yourself inside and out, but to be more considerate of those around you?I dont know. Im justIm a stubborn dude. Im not doing deliberate gym content specifically because I want to penetrate the alpha bro fitness space. Its just something that I have always liked to do organically. And, the content creators that I watch from this space are people that I end up collaborating with or have at least some mutual interests. It feels like were at a pretty important juncture for young men, right? And theres a lot of people telling them to regress, to be expecting women to take their last names, and to stay at home and to make lots of babies and to not ask too many questions. And then, I dont know, it feels like youre on the other side of that fight trying to tell men to grow.I dont tell people like, Women have to stay in the kitchen, or Women dont have to stay in the kitchen. Im just more like: Treat women as individuals, you know? Just like you would your sisters or your mother with respect as like a normal human being. Let them do whatever they want to do. Thats my attitude on it at least.I think that the reason why the right is so successful at capturing the attention of young men in particular is because theyre taking a lot of the worst aspects of the hopelessness that I was just talking about that everyone in the next generation is experiencing. And right-wing commentary is like a warm blanket that you can surround yourself with that says: Youre right to be angry and you should be angry at vulnerable populations. You should be angry at people who have no power over you. And then if you dominate them a little bit, then that gives you a little bit of power, right?It reminds me of the LBJ quote about telling the lowest white man that he is higher than any Black man.If you can convince the lowest white man, hes better than the best colored man. He wont notice youre picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on and hell empty his pockets for you.I think what youre getting at here is the vision that the right is selling to young men is very compelling, because it doesnt necessarily involve growth or progress. It just affirms what they already believe or maybe what their fathers and their fathers before them believed. But you seem to do something special which is you create an alternate vision for young men, for young people, what keeps you hopeful?The one area of hope that I have right now is the momentum that Ive seen from AOC and Bernie Sanders, who are going out and speaking in front of tens of thousands of people, people that may have not even voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries, right? Like people from all different walks of life both Democrats and maybe even some not Democrats coming together and being like, Yeah, everything is messed up. We need to do something about it.So theres definitely a lot of interest amongst the American working class to to change things. Some people have associated that change with Donald Trump. I find that kind of change to be worse because I think Donald Trump is further breaking the system that was broken previously prior to this.The fact that some people recognize that there must be a difference, there must be a different mechanism for change. And they find Bernie to be a vehicle for that is somewhat positive, but it entirely depends on where it goes from here. Does the Democratic Party turn around and go, Okay, we got to do that. Enough with this, you know, third-way neoliberalism.This kind of [neoliberal] attitude is ridiculous. I think its academic, its smug, its elitist, and its wrong. Its demonstrably wrong. And I think people dont want to hear it anymore.So, I hope the Democratic Party recognizes that, and then more and more people run for office and say, No, I dont want corporate donations. Im done with the billionaires and millionaires. Im done with you. Im done with the rest of the Democratic Party. Im going to be a Democrat, but Im done with the Democratic Party.Thats what Republicans did over the course of many, many years as well. They feared their base. They did not worry about the potential political repercussions of pushing for incredibly unfavorable and unpopular policies. And look where theyre at now. They got rewarded consistently time and time again. Or at least doing something.Thats the attitude that many Americans have. Theyre just like, Yeah, everything is messed up. At least this guy wants to break the system. And I dont really like the system anyway. I dont like the institutions anyway. They, what have they done for me? So lets test this out.See More:

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.Welcome to The Logoff: Today my colleague Nicole Narea and I are focusing on the Trump administrations admission that it wrongfully sent a migrant to a Salvadorian mega prison a reminder of the danger of suspending due process.Whats the latest? The administration admitted yesterday that it made an administrative error when it deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia one of more than 100 people sent in March to a Salvadorian prison that is a legal black hole with documented human rights abuses. The administration says its unable to bring Garcia back from foreign soil, despite an immigration judge ruling in 2019 that Garcia could stay in the US pending further proceedings.How did this happen? Trump invoked an 18th-century wartime powers law to deport Garcia and others who his administration accused of gang ties. A judge ordered Trump to halt those deportations mid-flight, but the administration did not. As a result, the migrants were denied due process deported before their cases were legally resolved. Is this an isolated incident? The Trump administration concluded some migrants were gang members based on criteria that included tattoos and clothing, the New York Times reported yesterday. Those criteria have resulted in multiple cases where non-gang members were quite possibly swept up.Whats the big picture? Its possible that, in time, some of these men will be proven criminals. Garcia, for example, has been accused but not convicted of ties to the gang MS-13. But thats beside the point: In a functioning justice system, we use due process to first adjudicate guilt, and then levy punishment.Thats partly why a federal judge ordered the deportation flights halted to begin with: to give the legal system time to figure out what rights these men did or didnt have. The Trump administration, however, defied that order, and now it has imposed an extreme punishment it says it cant take back all while were still trying to figure out who these men are and what they did.And with that, its time to log offI am not, by any stretch, a knower of poetry, and so Im lucky that, once long ago, I came across this poem: The Summer Day. I find it helpful on days like today, when its easy to feel exhausted or ungrateful. Its a reminder to use our time well, particularly in a last line both haunts and inspires me: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?Thanks for reading. I hope you have a good night, and well see you back here tomorrow.See More:

In mid-March, President Donald Trump invoked an almost-never-used federal law, claiming that it gives him the power to deport many immigrants at will with minimal or no legal process to determine if these deportations are lawful. The text of that statute, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, does not give presidents the power Trump claims.For the moment, at least, a lower court order blocks Trumps Alien Enemies Act proclamation; that order is still in effect, although there is ongoing litigation about whether the Trump administration defied it by sending dozens of Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador after the lower court ordered the planes carrying these immigrants to be turned around.Now Trump wants the Supreme Court to halt the lower court order and effectively allow him to resume deportations without any meaningful review, and without having to prove the immigrants targeted by his proclamation have actually done anything wrong. The case, which is known as Trump v. J.G.G., is before the Court on its shadow docket, a mix of emergency motions and other matters which the justices often decide after only cursory review of the case. A decision on the case could come any time in the next few weeks.In J.G.G., Trumps lawyers make three arguments that, when combined, would give him virtually unchecked authority to remove any noncitizen from the United States. First, Trump claims the unprecedented authority to invoke the Alien Enemies Act during peacetime, and against a nonstate actor in this case, Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang that originated in Venezuela. That law, which does give the president sweeping authority to remove foreign nationals when properly invoked, only applies during a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or during a military invasion or predatory incursion of the United States.Congress the only branch of government that can declare war has not declared war on Venezuela, and the alleged presence of civilian criminals in the United States is not a military operation. Also, the Alien Enemies Act only applies to military actions by a foreign nation or government. Tren de Aragua is not its own nation, nor does it control the government of Venezuela.Second, Trumps lawyers argue that the immigrants challenging his proclamation may only bring their case in Texas federal court, under a legal procedure known as a habeas proceeding, which typically can only be used by a single individual to challenge their own detention. That matters for two reasons. Federal cases brought in Texas appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a far-right court that routinely interprets the law in creative ways to benefit right-wing causes and the Republican Party, something likely to put anyone trying to stop a deportation at a disadvantage. Additionally, if challenges can only be brought on an individual basis, it may no longer be possible to obtain a broad court order blocking his entire proclamation.Third, even if an immigrant targeted by Trump could convince the Fifth Circuit to shield them from deportation, they are unlikely to ever get that chance. As Judge Patricia Millett, one of four lower court judges whos already heard the J.G.G. case, explains, the administrations position is that once Trumps proclamation goes into effect it can immediately resume removal flights without affording Plaintiffs notice of the grounds for their removal or any opportunity to call a lawyer, let alone to file a writ of habeas corpus or obtain any review of their legal challenges to removal.RelatedThe Trumpiest court in AmericaIf the Court were to accept this third argument, Trump would be able to deport people so quickly that, by the time a lawyer or judge learns they were deported, it will be too late to do anything about it.Trumps peacetime invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is illegalThe Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three times in American history: during the War of 1812 and during both world wars. In all three instances, Congress had formally declared war.Its likely that presidents have been reluctant to use this power in the past, even during other wars, because the authority provided by the Alien Enemies Act is extraordinarily draconian. When properly invoked, the law permits the federal government to arrest, detain, and remove all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized. So during a declared war with Germany, the president may order nearly all German citizens removed from the United States, regardless of whether those German nationals took any aggressive or criminal action whatsoever.Trump now claims that he can use this law during peacetime to target alleged members of Tren de Aragua.Even setting aside the fact that the Alien Enemies Act only applies to foreign nations or governments and Tren de Aragua is neither there appears to be no legal authority whatsoever supporting Trumps claim that this law can be used against a foreign gang engaged in ordinary criminal activity. In its brief to the justices, the Trump administration claims that Tren de Araguas alleged presence in the United States constitutes a predatory incursion under the Alien Enemies Act. But the only source Trumps lawyers cite to support this claim is a 1945 trial court decision that quotes President John Tyler (who became president in 1841) using the term predatory incursion to refer to military raids during a war between Mexico and the then-Republic of Texas.So this 1945 opinion offers no support for the proportion that a predatory incursion can be committed by civilians during peacetime. And, in any event, its notable that the only legal source Trumps lawyers could come up with is an 80-year-old decision by a single, low-ranking judge.The J.G.G. plaintiffs brief, by contrast, quotes from numerous founding era dictionaries and other historical documents that use this term exclusively to refer to a military raid, including a letter from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, which used predatory incursion to refer to a British raid on American military supplies in Virginia.Trumps proclamation, in other words, relies on a wholly novel interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act, one that posits it can be used in peacetime, despite what the text of the law says. And his lawyers did not find any support whatsoever for this new interpretation in over 200 years of American legal history.Trumps attempts to cut off judicial review are also meritlessPerhaps recognizing that its interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act is unprecedented, the Trump administration spends the bulk of its J.G.G. brief raising procedural objections to the lower courts order blocking Trumps proclamation, particularly its claim that this proclamation can only be challenged in habeas proceedings in Texas.Habeas proceedings typically must be brought in the jurisdiction where the prisoner is held. The Trump administration incarcerated the J.G.G. plaintiffs in Texas, so it claims that their suits must be brought in Texas federal court.However, habeas proceedings are a way often the only way for someone in federal prison to challenge their detention. And the plaintiffs in J.G.G. do not challenge the governments ability to detain them while a valid removal case against them proceeds. They simply challenge the Trump administrations attempt to remove them without due process under the Alien Enemies Act. And the Supreme Court has held that habeas is not the right remedy when a plaintiff does not challenge their detention.As the Court said in Skinner v. Switzer (2011), there is no case in which the Court has recognized habeas as the sole remedy, or even an available one, where the relief sought would neither terminat[e] custody, accelerat[e] the future date of release from custody, nor reduc[e] the level of custody.That decision means Trumps attempt to shunt any challenge to his proclamation into individual legal proceedings, where the individuals bringing those proceedings can be deported before they can even speak to their lawyers, should have no merit. If one of the J.G.G. plaintiffs also want to challenge their detention, that case may need to be brought in Texas, but the Trump administrations attempt to shut down a broader challenge to the Alien Enemies Act proclamation cannot be squared with Supreme Court precedent.Additionally, a different federal immigration law cuts against Trumps claim that immigrants challenging the Alien Enemies Act proclamation must be brought in individual habeas suits. The Immigration and Nationality Act generally provides that it lays out the sole and exclusive procedure for determining whether an alien may be removed from the United States. This law, moreover, gives immigrants a variety of procedural rights, such as the right to claim asylum. It does permit expedited proceedings against some immigrants, including those that commit serious felonies, but even those noncitizens are entitled to notice and a hearing before they are removed from the country. And this law undercuts the administrations argument that it can summarily deport people.Of course, any legal analysis of any Supreme Court case involving Trump must come with a caveat. This is the same Court that ruled over the summer that Trump can use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes, so there is no guarantee that these justices will follow existing law.Nevertheless, the law as it is understood now is quite clear that Trump cannot use the Alien Enemies Act to cut off due process for immigrants during peacetime.See More:

If you check in on any of New Jersey Sen. Cory Bookers social media pages today, youll probably notice that hes been talking for a while.Hes standing on the Senate floor (occasionally resting against his desk) to criticize the Trump administrations agenda and the work of Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency. Hes also showing his fellow Democrats what it looks like to do something when youre locked out of power in Washington DC.Now well past the 18th hour of a marathon address on the Senate floor, Booker is engaging in a not-quite filibuster an old congressional tradition. Usually known as a filibuster, these kinds of marathon addresses are a procedural tool. They take advantage of the Senates rules that allow for unlimited debate or speaking by a senator unless there have been special limits put in place. Senators recognized by the presiding officer can speak indefinitely, usually cannot be forced to cede the floor, or even be interruptedbut must remain standing and must speak more or less continuously, according to the Congressional Research Service.But Bookers address isnt a filibuster theres no legislation that hes trying to hold up. Instead, its a form of political theater and protest against the Trump administration. And it comes at a time when overwhelming shares of his partys membership think their elected leaders arent putting up a tough enough fight to resist Donald Trumps agenda. About two-thirds of Democratic voters would prefer their leaders stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington a March NBC News poll found. This kind of show of political force, at least, has been what top Democrats were saying when warning about Trump on the campaign trail last year.They would prefer congressional leadership use whatever tools they have available to slow down the administrations work: One recent poll, for example, even found that about three-quarters of Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters support the idea of using procedural tactics like the filibuster to prevent Republican bills from passing.Still, attention-grabbing moments like these arent guaranteed to have staying power. Its far too early to tell whether Booker is galvanizing a lasting opposition as he might have hoped, or whether this will be drowned out by another Trump story. Still, its feeding the Democratic bases hunger for (any kind of) Trump resistance as he overruns traditional checks on his power.Thats not easy to do when youre locked out of power, so Bookers gamble is yet the latest attempt of Democrats trying to figure out how to fight back.Bookers speech started on Monday evening, when he announced he would be speaking as long as he is physically able to lift the voices of Americans who are being harmed and not being heard in this moment of crisis.These are not normal times in our nation, he said. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.Since then, hes only stopped to allow the Senate chaplain to deliver a traditional prayer at noon, and to allow fellow Democratic senators to ask him questions and give him a bit of a rest. Yet he has remained standing, and only taken a couple drinks of water. Hes already entered the top rankings of the longest Senate speeches delivered. (Only one other sitting senator, Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, has delivered a longer address, when trying unsuccessfully to defund the Affordable Care Act.)This kind of show of political force, at least, has been what top Democrats were saying when warning about Trump on the campaign trail last year. Yet many in the Democratic base have felt like since Trump entered office, their leaders werent acting with that kind of urgency. Poll after poll shows that the Democratic rank and file feel adrift, leaderless, and dissatisfied.That fury intensified last month, when Democrats voted for a GOP-brokered spending bill to keep the government open. The thinking at the time was that a shutdown would do more harm than good, but many in the partys base saw it as an unforgivable cave.Bookers speech is an attempt to try something else. And whether or not it works, its something different.See More:

Vox Members now get ad-free listening on all of our podcasts. Its just one of the great benefits that come with supporting our journalism, along with unlimited reading on Vox.com, member-exclusive newsletters, and more. (Not a Vox Member yet? Join now.)If youre a Vox Member, you can access your ad-free podcasts by going to your account page and clicking on the new podcast section to get started.Need more help? More detailed instructions are below.We support Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Castbox, BeyondPod, Downcast, Player FM, and Breaker. Follow the instructions below to access your ad-free listening. Youll access your ad-free podcasts by setting up special private feeds via your Vox Membership account. (You will not find them by searching within Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast player of choice.) 1. Go to your account page and navigate to the podcasts section. (Make sure youre signed in.) 2. Click the Set Up button next to the podcast youd like to listen to without ads.3. If youre on your phone, just tap the logo for your favorite podcast player and follow your prompts to subscribe.If youre using Apple Podcasts or Spotify and have any issues, click here for further instructions.If youre on a desktop computer, you have a couple of options: Text yourself a link to add on your phone or scan a QR code to do the sameAdd directly to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music on your computerOnce youve completed the steps, your ad-free podcast will be available in that app. 4. Repeat these steps for the other podcasts you want to listen to without ads. 5. You can unsubscribe from the regular, ad-supported feed youll now get your episodes ad-free through your private feed.If you have any questions, contact our customer support team at membership@vox.com.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

Our world has too much information and not enough context. Weve been hearing this a lot lately from those of you in our audience understandably so, these are chaotic times. There is simply too much news, too many push alerts, too much confusion about whats happening. Its leaving many people feeling overwhelmed and at a loss for where to even start. Worse still, we hear from people who say theyre avoiding the news altogether, at a moment when the stakes for our democracy have never been higher.We want to help solve that problem. At Vox, we have always been committed to helping you understand what truly matters and how to think about it. Thats why today, we have a couple exciting announcements for our audience. The first is that today, were rolling out a new tagline and mission statement that we think better captures what Vox can do for you in this current era of information overload. And we wanted to tell you about it because its inspired by what were hearing from our audience every day.Our new tagline is Making sense of it all. Our new mission statement is: Our world has too much noise and too little context. Vox helps you understand what matters. If this sounds like what were already doing, then thats good news for us. Its been at the core of Vox since our founding more than a decade ago, and its hopefully already reflected in the work were doing. But were making it explicit because we consider this our promise to you we wont drown you in panic-inducing headlines or an endless stream of notifications. Well sift through the noise and help you make sense of what matters and why. Well offer clarity, insight, and tools to help you live a better life. And well have some fun, too. A good example of what were trying to do is The Logoff, our new daily newsletter that tells you briefly about the one important political news story you need to know about each day. Youll start to see more story formats where we tell you about a topic in 400 words or explain it with one chart.And second, were delighted to announce a new benefit as part of the Vox Membership program: Members will be able to access ad-free versions of Vox podcasts. We know that this has been one of the most-requested perks by our Members, so were excited to be able to thank our most loyal audience members with this new podcast listening experience. Youll be able to listen to all your favorite shows, like Today, Explained, The Gray Area, Explain It to Me, and Unexplainable, with no ad breaks. If youre a Member, you can find instructions on how to access your ad-free podcasts here. (And if not, you can join here.)Vox exists for you. Our mission is to help you stay informed in a world of too much noise. Tell us how we can be useful.See More: Vox Press Room

Each year, in late spring and early summer, female sea turtles will crawl out of the ocean under moonlight to lay their eggs in the sand, often returning to the same beach on which they were born many years earlier.Sometimes when the turtles emerge to nest, researchers like Julianna Martin are watching patiently from the shadows.Julianna Martin collecting tears from a female sea turtle on a beach in Florida. Her research was carried out in accordance with UCF Marine Turtle Research Group permit MTP-171. Courtesy of Julianna MartinFor her doctoral research, Martin, a PhD student at the University of Central Florida, has been analyzing sea turtle tears. Yes, the tears of sea turtles. So on several summer nights in 2023 and 2024, shed stake out beaches and wait for the turtles to start laying eggs. At that point, the reptiles enter a sort of trance, she said, allowing scientists like her to collect samples, including tears. Martin told me she would army crawl up to the turtles on the sand and dab around their eyes with a foam swab, soaking up the goopy tears they exude. Sea turtles regularly shed tears as a way to expel excess salt from their bodies. (As far as we know, they are not sad.)Martin would then take those tears back to her lab for analysis. This odd work serves a purpose. Martin is examining sea turtle tears to see if they contain a specific kind of bacteria. Such a discovery, she said, could help unlock one of biologys biggest and most awe-inspiring mysteries: how animals navigate using Earths invisible magnetic field.The holy grail of sensory biologyAfter baby turtles hatch, they dig their way out of the sand and crawl into the ocean, where they embark on an epic journey that can take them thousands of miles across the open sea. Loggerheads that hatch in Florida, for example, swim across the Atlantic and reach islands off the coast of Portugal, before eventually returning to Floridas beaches as adults to nest. Remarkably, the turtles typically return to the same region of Florida or even to the same beach. These young turtles can guide themselves along that 10,000-mile migratory path despite never having been in the ocean before and despite traveling on their own, said Kenneth Lohmann, a biologist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies sea turtle navigation.A green sea turtle with visible tears covered in sand nesting on a beach. Getty Images/iStockphotoResearchers like Lohmann have learned that sea turtles, like many other species, seem to navigate using Earths magnetic field. Thats the subtle magnetic force generated by the planets molten metal core that surrounds Earth, not unlike the force around a bar magnet. The intensity and direction of the field vary across Earths surface, making it useful for navigation. Plus, the magnetic field is present even when other spatial cues, like light, are not. What remains a mystery, however, is how animals sense these magnetic forces. Decades of research have failed to turn up a mechanism for so-called magnetoreception or any kind of specialized organ that can sense magnetic force. As Martins adviser Robert Fitak has written, its like knowing an animal can respond to something visual but not finding any eyes. Its the last sense we effectively know nothing about, sensory biologist Eric Warrant has said about magnetoreception. The solution of this problem I would say is the greatest holy grail in sensory biology.Scientists have proposed a number of theories for how this might work. And all of them are totally bonkers. The prevailing theory is rooted in quantum mechanics, and it is extremely complicated. The theory posits that when certain light-sensitive molecules known as cryptochromes absorb light, they produce something called radical pairs two separate molecules each with one unpaired electron. Those two unpaired electrons are quantumly entangled, which essentially means that their spin states are interdependent: They either point in the same direction or opposite directions, and they ping-pong between the two. This theory suggests that Earths magnetic field influences the spin states of those radical pairs, and that, in turn, affects the outcome of chemical reactions in the body of animals. Those chemical reactions which animals can theoretically interpret, as they might, for example, smells or visuals encode information about Earths magnetic field. (If you want to dive deeper, I suggest watching this lecture or reading this paper.) Another theory suggests that animals have bits of magnetic material in their bodies, such as the mineral magnetite. According to this theory, those magnetic bits are influenced by Earths magnetic field just like a compass and animals can sense those influences to figure out where theyre going. Martin and Fitaks research is exploring this latter theory, but with an important twist. They suspect that sea turtles and other animals might rely on magnetite to sense Earths magnetic field but may not produce the magnetite themselves. Instead, they suggest, sea turtles may have a symbiotic relationship with magnetite-producing bacteria literally living compasses that sense the magnetic field and somehow communicate information back to the turtle. This isnt an outrageous idea. Magnetic bacteria more technically, magnetotactic bacteria is real, and quite common in aquatic environments around the world. Plus, theres evidence that magnetotactic bacteria help another microscopic organism, known as a protist, navigate. The question is, could they help turtles navigate, too?Magnetic bacteria is a thing Magnetotactic bacteria are extremely cool. These microscopic organisms have what are essentially built-in compass needles, said Caroline Monteil, a microbial ecologist at the French research institute CEA. The needles comprise chains of magnetic particles produced by the microbes, which you can see under a microscope (shown in images below). Remarkably, those needles align the bacteria with Earths magnetic field lines, just like a real compass needle does. As the bacteria roam about, they move in line with the direction of the planets magnetic force. Magnetotactic bacteria under a microscope. The black arrows point to chains of structures that contain tiny magnetic particles. NPJ Biofilms and MicrobiomesMagnetic sensing is useful for the bacteria, said Fitak, an assistant professor at UCF. Magnetotactic bacteria need specific levels of oxygen to survive, and those levels tend to vary with depth. Deeper levels of sediment in a stream, for example, might have less oxygen. In most of the world, the direction of the magnetic field is at least somewhat perpendicular to Earths surface meaning, up and down allowing the bacteria to move vertically through their environment to find the optimal habitat, as if theyre on a fixed track. In at least one case, magnetic bacteria team up with other organisms to help them find their way. A remarkable study published in 2019 found that microscopic organisms in the Mediterranean Sea called protists were able to sense magnetic forces because their bodies were covered in magnetic bacteria. When the authors put the north pole of a bar magnet next to a water droplet full of protists, they swam toward it. When they flipped the magnet, the protists swam away. (Different magnetic microbes are attracted to either north or south poles, often depending on where on Earth they live.)You can actually see this in the video below. Its not clear how the magnetic bacteria are actually guiding the protist, said Monteil, the studys lead author. Now, returning to the turtles: The theory that Fitak and Martin are exploring is that sea turtles, like protists, might also have magnetotactic bacteria those living compasses in their bodies, and somehow be able to read them. Some microbes in the microbiome aid in digestion. Others provide directions. Maybe. One idea, Martin says, is that the bacteria could aggregate near nerves in the turtles that provide information about their position in space. Some of those nerves are near the tear ducts, she said which is ultimately why she was army crawling on the beach to collect turtle tears. The goal, she said, is to figure out if those tears contain magnetotactic bacteria. That would be one indication that these animals might be using bacteria for navigation. Were not entirely sure how magnetotactic bacteria could be facilitating a magnetic sense, but that seemed like a good place to start, Martin said. Martin swabs a green sea turtle on a boat in Floridas Indian River Lagoon. Her research was carried out in accordance with UCF Marine Turtle Research Group permits MTP-231 and NMFS 26268. Courtesy of Julianna MartinWhile her research is still underway, Martin has yet to find evidence of magnetotactic bacteria in the tears of the 30 or so turtles shes analyzed so far. Thats disappointing, she said, but it doesnt rule out the possibility that these bacteria exist somewhere in the body of a turtle and help them navigate. There are so many other ideas about ways that magnetotactic bacteria could provide information to an organism about Earths magnetic field, she said. Theres a variety of other locations and other taxa that might be better for studying this theory. Other scientists who study animal navigation are skeptical. Its unlikely that symbiosis with magnetotactic bacteria is what enables sea turtle navigation, said Monteil. Part of the problem is that theres no known mechanism through which the bacteria would communicate with the turtle. Its also not clear what magnetotactic bacteria would get out of this relationship, if it is indeed symbiotic could sea turtles provide the conditions bacteria need to survive? Maybe. Maybe not.Whats more, Monteil said, is that magnetotactic bacteria are widespread in the environment, so even if Martin did find them in sea turtle tears, it would do little to prove the theory. Just because magnetic bacteria are present doesnt mean theyre helping the animal navigate.But then again, other theories are still entirely unproven, too and some of them are a lot weirder.I dont think it is impossible, Monteil said of sea turtles and other organisms using magnetic bacteria to navigate. Nothing is impossible. Life is amazing and has found ways to do things that we couldnt imagine centuries before.We dont know until we know.See More:

Theres so much to be said about and to be gained from the magic of nature, especially with spring upon us. So what happens when we lose the natural worlds most special places? This months cover story takes a look at the vanishing tidepools of California for answers. Youll find a piece about the wonders of gardening after a long winter, and an illustrated feature on the life of a dairy cow.Its also a time for some more interior reflection, as we look at how to think about personal risk in a risky world, what it means to quit your government job now, and even the appeal of astrology. Plus, we answer all sorts of questions like: Why do we want to smell like food? And what religious divide helps explain politics in America today?At the edge of the ocean, a dazzling ecosystem is changing fastBy Byrd PinkertonThe Democrats Michelle Obama problemBy Christian PazAsk a Book Critic: I want a book that wont stress me out before bedBy Constance GradyComing April 2Im doing good work in my government job. Should I quit anyway?By Sigal SamuelComing April 2By Katherine KelaidisComing April 2Everyone wants to smell like a doughnutBy Kyndall CunninghamComing April 3The life of a dairy cowBy Marina BolotnikovaComing April 3How to live with lifes inevitable risksBy Allie VolpeComing April 3Why are so many people into astrology?By Alex Abad-SantosComing April 4When your garden fails, the magic happensBy Natalie PatilloComing April 4See More: The Highlight

Donald Trump has said that tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary. And throughout his first months in office, the president has given Americans plenty of cause for googling that words definition.Since January 20, Trump has announced tariffs on steel and aluminum made outside the US, all products made in Canada or Mexico, all Chinese goods, and all foreign-made cars, among other things. And on April 2 a date Trump has dubbed Liberation Day he has vowed to impose reciprocal tariffs on all nations that allegedly disadvantage US products through trade, tax, or regulatory policy. The presidents prolific and haphazard tariff declarations have tanked stock markets, soured consumer sentiment, and thrilled some longtime critics of globalization. Meanwhile, theyve left some Americans concerned and confused; tariffs arguably havent been this relevant to the US economy in nearly a century. So many are understandably unsure about what tariffs are, how they affect consumers, why governments would implement them, and whether the presidents policy will work on its own terms.Heres the short answer: Tariffs are a tax on imported goods. They generally make affected consumer products more expensive. In theory, well-designed tariffs will also encourage targeted industries to produce more in the United States. And manufacturing certain goods domestically instead of importing them from abroad may have national security or economic benefits. Trumps own rationales for his tariffs are numerous and shifting: The president sees them as a tool for raising revenue, enhancing national security, and revitalizing the US economy by increasing domestic manufacturing jobs. But the presidents tariffs are so broad, high, and ever-changing that they could actually backfire.What are tariffs? How will they affect consumers? To understand what tariffs are and how they work its helpful to consider a concrete example. On April 3, Trump will impose a 25 percent tariff on all cars made outside the United States. This means businesses that import foreign-made automobiles such as car dealerships will need to pay a 25 percent tax on every foreign vehicle that they purchase.When a businesss costs rise, it typically tries to compensate by raising prices. And the president actually needs his auto tariffs to raise the prices of foreign cars: The official point of this tariff is to encourage Americans to buy more domestically produced cars, so that more auto manufacturers locate production in the US. If the tariff doesnt make foreign-made cars more expensive for US consumers, it wont give them any incentive to buy American.In practice, Trumps auto tariffs are likely to increase the prices of all cars, including American-made ones. This is for two reasons: First, US car manufacturers will need to pay tariffs on foreign-made auto parts. And second, US auto companies will face weaker competition. Previously, American carmakers couldnt raise prices without fearing that doing so would lead potential customers to purchase a German, Japanese, or South Korean car instead. Trumps tariffs make that much less of a concern. For these reasons, economists have estimated that Trumps tariffs will raise US car prices by between $4,000 and $15,000 per vehicle. These same basic dynamics apply to tariffs on other goods. Put a tariff on foreign-made washing machines, and US retailers that import such appliances will raise prices. American washing machine makers, meanwhile, will be able to charge more due to weaker competition. And this actually happened: In 2018, Trump put a tariff on washing machines, which stayed in effect until 2023. During the four years that those tariffs were in place, the cost of laundry equipment in the US rose by 34 percent, much higher than the overall inflation rate over that period.Trumps current tariffs are poised to have an even bigger impact on Americans finances. According to a recent estimate from the Yale Budget Lab, Trumps tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China alone could reduce the average US households disposable income by as much as $2,000.If tariffs hurt consumers, why would governments impose them? What are the benefits of tariffs?There is little question that tariffs are bad for consumers. But in theory, they could still serve a nations interests in at least three ways: By generating revenue. Since tariffs are a tax, they provide the government with revenue that it can use to pay down debts or finance spending. The US government actually used tariffs as its primary revenue source from the republics founding until the Civil War. But since the federal income tax was introduced in 1913, tariffs have become an increasingly marginal source of funds for the government.Donald Trump says he wants to change this. In fact, he has called for replacing income taxes with tariffs. And his administration claims that its auto tariffs will bring in $100 billion of revenue this year. By nurturing highly valuable domestic industries. Many nations have successfully used tariffs to facilitate economic development. For example, beginning in the 1960s, South Korea sought to build up its domestic car industry. But getting such an industry off the ground is difficult. In their first years of operation, South Korea carmakers had little hope of producing automobiles that were competitive with foreign ones in quality or price. By placing high tariffs on foreign-made cars, the South Korean government ensured that its domestic automakers would have a market for their less-than-stellar vehicles. Today, South Korean brands like Kia and Hyundai are globally competitive.Americas car industry is much more mature today than South Koreas was in the 1960s. But American auto manufacturers cannot make electric vehicles as efficiently as China can. Economic analysts disagree about whether it is important for America to have a globally competitive EV sector. But if we do want to nurture our electric vehicle industry, it makes some sense to put high tariffs on Chinese EVs as both Joe Biden and Trump have done. By improving national security. Some goods and commodities have military value. Relying on foreign nations for steel, ammunition, advanced semiconductors, or various other technologies could undermine a countrys national security after all, foreign nations could theoretically choke off Americas access to militarily valuable technologies in the midst of a conflict. And many of Trumps tariffs are officially intended to enhance Americas capacity to produce materials necessary for war.How have recent administrations used tariffs?The United States had used tariffs to nurture its infant industries during the 19th and early 20th centuries. But in the wake of World War II, America pursued the open exchange of goods across borders. With much of Europe and Asia in ruins, US manufacturers did not need tariffs to dominate global industry. Meanwhile, Americas foreign policy establishment feared that communism would take root in Western Europe and Japan if they did not successfully rebuild their industrial economies. Therefore, to foster healthy capitalist growth abroad while lowering prices for Americans the US pursued tariff reduction.The United States did occasionally enact new tariffs between the Second World War and Trumps first election. For example, in 1987, Ronald Reagan put a 100 percent tariff on Japanese computers, televisions, and power tools, after Japan blocked US-made semiconductors from its market. But the general direction of US trade policy between Harry Trumans presidency and Trumps first term was toward freer trade. What will be the effect of Trumps tariffs specifically? Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Trumps tariffs will generate reliable revenue, strengthen American manufacturing, or improve US national security. (And their odds of advancing Trumps more peculiar trade policy goals, such as coercing Canada into becoming the 51st state, are even slimmer.) There is a simple problem with tariffs as a revenue source: The more a tariff encourages consumers to buy domestically produced goods, the less revenue it generates. For example, if a tariff on foreign cars leads everyone to buy American vehicles, then the car tariff will cease generating revenue. Thus, for Trumps tariffs to provide a steady source of revenue, they would need to be so low that importers continue purchasing lots of foreign-made goods (and thus paying taxes on them).But Trumps tariffs in many sectors are very high, precisely because he wants Americans to purchase fewer foreign-made goods. So the presidents tariffs cant plausibly provide enough consistent revenue to offset his proposed tax cuts (let alone, to fully replace the federal income tax).Meanwhile, his tariffs could actually hurt US manufacturing for at least three reasons: First, Trumps tariffs apply to a vast number of industrial inputs, such as metals, energy, and electronics. This will raise costs for US manufacturers, forcing them to raise prices, which will render their products less appealing to foreign consumers. Further, tariffs on inputs will also give companies an incentive to locate factories in other countries, where they will not have to pay, for example, a 25 percent tax on parts and materials made in Canada or Mexico. Second, Trumps tariffs will reduce the real wages of American workers. If the average US households disposable income drops by $2,000, that family will likely spend less money on goods. This could ultimately reduce demand for US-made products. Indeed, the market research firm Cox Automotive believes that this is precisely what will happen with Trumps car tariffs. In its analysis, US car plants will likely have to cut production by 30 percent, as consumers will respond to rising prices by postponing car purchases. Third, foreign countries are retaliating against Trumps trade policies by placing tariffs on American-made goods. And that will limit the global sales of American manufacturers. This will be especially true of Americas most innovative and advanced industries, such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and medical equipment, which are more likely to sell their wares globally. Weve already seen Trumps tariffs backfire for these reasons. According to a 2019 Federal Reserve analysis, the tariffs Trump imposed during his first term reduced manufacturing employment in affected industries.Finally, the tariffs hypothetical national security benefits are dubious. Americas security likely depends more on strong international alliances than the amount of steel we produce domestically. And Trumps tariffs have antagonized Americas closest allies while undermining our nations credibility as a dealmaker: In 2018, Trump himself reached a trade agreement with the governments of Canada and Mexico. Yet he nevertheless applied 25 percent tariffs on both countries this year, in direct violation of his own trade deal. If the United States is unwilling to abide by the terms of the agreements it orchestrates, other countries have less incentive to cooperate with us. In sum, Trumps tariffs are likely to raise prices, weaken US manufacturers, and undermine Americas alliances and global influence.How long will Trumps tariffs be in effect?Its unclear how lasting Trumps tariffs will prove to be. The president has framed some of the duties such as his 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico as a potentially temporary bargaining chip in negotiations over trade and border security. But he has suggested that others will be permanent. As the costs of Trumps trade policies to US consumers and manufacturers mount, it is possible that the administration will decide its agenda is politically unsustainable. Already, the presidents tariffs are deeply unpopular, with 61 percent of voters disapproving of them in a recent CNN poll. See More:

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.Welcome to The Logoff: Today, Im focusing on Donald Trumps comments about a third presidential term and what we should make of them.What exactly did Trump say?Asked about seeking a third term, Trump told NBC: A lot of people would like me to do that. But, I mean, I basically tell them: We have a long way to go, you know. Its very early in the administration. About whether hed been presented with potential plans for a third term: Well, there are plans. There are not plans. There are, there are methods which you could do it.Asked about a specific scenario where Vice President JD Vance wins in 2028 and passes the baton back to Trump: Well, thats one. But there are others too. (He declined to name the others.)About whether he was serious: No, no, Im not joking. (Check the transcript here.)Could he do that? The Constitutions 22nd amendment says, No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice. Trump was elected in 2016 and 2024 and does not have the support he needs to change or repeal that amendment. To serve a third term, Trump would have to violate the Constitution.So is this a crisis for our democracy? If Trump said he was definitely running for a third term or took any steps in that direction, it would be a full-blown and immediate crisis a president stating his intention to remain in power regardless of a constitutional prohibition. This isnt that, but by even asserting a right to serve a third term, Trump is opening the door. That alone is concerning, and a reason to watch this topic extremely closely.And with that, its time to log offThis past fall, I set out to get rejected as often as I could. Thats the opening line to this excellent Vox piece about how to view rejection not as failure, but as a step toward success. Thats helpful advice as we pursue our goals not just for ourselves, but for our families, communities, and countries. Thanks for reading. See you back here tomorrow.See More:

The warming spring air is a welcome relief from the bitterly cold winter across much of the US, but millions of seasonal allergy sufferers are getting buried under a pollen tsunami, with sneezing, headaches, watery eyes, and stuffed sinuses sending them right back indoors. Already, Atlanta has broken its pollen count record, with 14,801 grains per cubic meter spewing from pine, oak, and birch trees. Houston also reported its highest pollen counts since 2013, when records began.RelatedGet ahead of allergy season this yearThe Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) projects that 2025 will be yet another brutal year for seasonal allergies across the country, with the worst-afflicted cities in the southern US. Your red eyes and runny noses dont deceive you seasonal allergies are getting worse, a miserable reality for nearly one in three US adults and one in four children.Why? Sneezing and sniffles are some of the sirens of climate change. In fact, because of warming, pollen is now a nearly year-round menace in some parts of the US. Pollen, the main seasonal allergy trigger, is emerging earlier in the year, in higher concentrations, and lasting longer year after year. In the springtime, the first pollen allergens are from trees, and that is starting 20 days earlier than it did 30 years ago, said Kenneth Mendez, CEO of AAFA. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are directly inducing plants to produce more pollen while extending the temperature conditions that trigger pollen production in plants. We hear all the time, Ive never had allergies before and now I suddenly feel like I have allergies, or I feel like my allergies are getting a lot worse and thats because the allergic load is that much higher because of climate change, Mendez said. For most people, seasonal allergies are an unpleasant nuisance. But with millions feeling blergh at the same time, it adds up to a huge economic burden in lost productivity. Asthma, allergic rhinitis the condition you probably know of as hay fever and related allergy conditions cost the economy billions of dollars each year in lost work days, medications, and doctors visits. There are also people for whom pollen is a more serious problem and can lead to dangerous complications or exacerbate other health issues. One study found that tree pollen allergies lead to 25,000 to 50,000 emergency room visits per year, two-thirds from people under the age of 18.Over time, as pollen counts increase, more people with a higher sensitivity threshold are finding out the hard way that these tiny grains are a hazard. Other people are also finding out that doors and windows cant protect them as some of the tiniest pollen grains seep in. If the trendlines continue, I think more people are going to feel miserable from allergies, Mendez said.How we keep making allergies worse for ourselvesThe problem for allergy sufferers is that their bodys defense mechanisms sometimes overreact to something benign. Usually, it leads to mild, easily treatable symptoms. But allergens can also trigger more serious complications like asthma attacks, causing wheezing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath. In rare cases, they can lead to anaphylaxis, a whole-body reaction where the airways can swell shut and blood pressure drops to dangerously low levels. The vast majority of pollen allergies are more annoying than dangerous, but seasonal pollen is so ubiquitous that its almost impossible to avoid, sneaking indoors through vents, window seals, on clothing, and in pet fur. Some people are more sensitive than others, but the relentless, growing exposure can add up to misery even for those with mild allergies. Pollen grains range in size from 100 down to less than 10 microns, allowing them to penetrate deep into the lungs and irritate airways. Many types of plants release pollen as part of their reproductive cycle. Generally, trees spread pollen in the spring, grasses over the summer, and ragweed in the autumn. Airborne cloud of pine pollen from male pine cones in Arizona. Wild Horizons/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesHowever, the historical pollen timing patterns have already shifted. Tree pollen is wafting off of branches earlier in the season almost every year. Some grass species have seen their pollen release days delayed by almost a month while their overall season has grown longer. As a result, grass pollen increasingly overlaps with the ragweed pollen season, which itself has been extended by more than three weeks in some parts of the country since 1995. There are two key mechanisms driving this trend, both induced by humanitys appetite for fossil fuels. Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning coal, oil, and natural gas directly induce many plant species to produce more pollen. Carbon dioxide can make plants grow bigger and faster, and produce more flowers, which leads to more pollen. More pollen leads to more seeds, which means even more plants spraying pollen the next season. Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are also warming the planet and changing the climate. In general, that means warmer, shorter winters and earlier springs, which leads to longer growing seasons for plants. These trends will continue as global average temperatures go up, making allergies a significant public health burden. Some parts of the country, such as Texas, are on track to see pollen counts almost double by 2050 compared to 2000. For many people, allergies are an added complication on top of other health and environmental conditions. Air pollution from ozone, particulates, sulfur, and nitrogen compounds can cause their own breathing problems, but when they intersect with allergies, they can make symptoms even worse. Pollution from roads can make pollen from nearby plants more potent at triggering allergic reactions. Smoke from wildfires can also exacerbate allergies. Cities may not offer much refuge. Changes to the landscape like urbanization can create a more favorable habitat for plants like ragweed. City centers also tend to warm up faster than their rural surroundings and experience higher concentrations of air pollutants, compounding the effects of allergies. These factors are especially potent in low-income and underserved communities. Pollen isnt the only allergen changing with the climate either. Rising temperatures and precipitation in some areas are increasing the number and duration of allergenic mold spores. Extreme weather further worsens the problem, as the damage and destruction create conditions for more mold. That was evident in New Orleans last year as storms like Hurricane Francine soaked the city. When these storms come through, they create so much damage over the landscape of the state. Some communities have resources to immediately move in and repair roofs and patch windows, and then we have a lot of folks that simply dont have those resources. With leaking roofs, you have mold growth indoors, said John Carlson, who leads the high-risk allergy division at the Ochsner health system in New Orleans. Because its so warm here, we can grow mold year round as long as theres moisture. High winds from storms can also whip up dust, which can then trigger asthma. Additionally, theres a phenomenon called thunderstorm asthma, where the weather conditions can rupture pollen grains into smaller, more allergenic fragments, triggering asthma attacks. Its not clear whether the overall number of people with seasonal allergies is increasing. The US may be approaching a plateau in the number of people who are susceptible to pollen, Carlson said. At the same time, there are other conditions that can present with allergy-like symptoms, and at high enough concentrations, even people without allergies will wheeze. In New Orleans, we have a ton of oak pollen I mean, just so much oak pollen in the air and you commonly have a lot of people who dont have oak pollen allergy nevertheless with itchy eyes and the sneezing from just the irritant effect of the particles, Carlson said. The good news is that there are ways to contain the worst effects of seasonal allergies. For people with a history of bothersome seasonal allergies, seeing an allergist and finding out what their specific triggers are and what medicines work is key. It may make sense to start taking medications like nose sprays or over-the-counter allergy drugs before pollen ramps up.Related4 tips for dealing with a ferocious allergy seasonWe generally say to have your medications in your system close to two weeks ahead of time because it takes some time to build up, Mendez said. For people who dont know if they have allergies but are concerned about the threat, pay attention to your symptoms and see an allergist if you do start to experience irritated eyes and airways. There are also more aggressive interventions for people with severe allergies who dont respond to other medicines like desensitization therapy, also known as allergy shots.Some of the same measures for avoiding air pollution also work for pollen. Pay attention to pollen forecasts in your local area. Avoid being outside and close doors and windows during high pollen release times, particularly in the morning. Leave your coat and shoes outside or locked away before you settle down at home. Wipe down your dog after a walk. Use a HEPA air filter in your living spaces. Over the long term, its prudent to curb emissions of heat-trapping gasses that worsen climate change and allergies. For now, keep the tissues close. See More:

There wasnt a lot of suspense going into Mondays Supreme Court argument in Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission. This Court is typically very sympathetic to Christian organizations that seek religious exemptions from the law, even as it shows less sympathy for other religious groups such as Muslims. As the name of the Catholic Charities case suggests, this case involves a Catholic organization that seeks a religious exemption from a state law in this case, Wisconsins law requiring most employers to pay taxes that fund unemployment benefits for their workers. After Mondays argument, it appears that a lopsided majority of the Court will vote to give Catholic Charities that exemption.All six of the Courts Republicans, plus Democratic Justice Elena Kaga,n seemed to favor that outcome, and the Courts decision could potentially be unanimous.That said, several of the justices, including Republicans Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, did express concerns that there must be some limit on a businesss ability to exempt itself from the law if it claims that its operations are motivated by religion. Roberts, for example, asked whether a group of people who think it is a sin to eat meat could exempt themselves from taxes if they opened a vegetarian restaurant.Similarly, Barrett noted at one point that there is a difference between a nonprofit charity and a for-profit business, suggesting that she may limit the scope of some religious exemptions to nonprofits.The question of whether this Court will set some limit on when religiously motivated organizations can claim an exemption from the law is probably more important than the specific dispute before the justices in Catholic Charities. The Catholic Church claims that it maintains its own internal unemployment benefits system that provides the same maximum weekly benefit rate as the States system. So it appears that, regardless of who prevails before the Supreme Court, Catholic Charities workers will still receive similar benefits.But the Courts decision is unlikely to be limited to the Catholic Church, meaning that workers at religious organizations that do not offer unemployment insurance could lose that benefit altogether. And, if the Courts decision is too broad, it could potentially allow for-profit businesses to thumb their nose at workplace regulations of all kinds, simply by claiming that they object to those regulations on religious grounds.It remains to be seen whether Roberts, Barrett, or some other justice will slip language into the Courts decision that will prevent for-profit companies from dodging unemployment laws, minimum wage laws, workplace safety laws, and similar regulations. If they do not, the Courts decision in Catholic Charities could have dire consequences for many American workers.Whats the specific legal dispute in Catholic Charities?Wisconsin, like every other state, taxes employers to fund benefits for workers who lose their jobs. Like most states, Wisconsins law includes an exemption for church-run nonprofits that are operated primarily for religious purposes. According to the states highest court, this exemption only applies to nonprofits that primarily engage in religious activities such as holding worship services, and not to charities that provide secular services like feeding poor people or caring for people with disabilities even if these secular services are motivated by the charitys faith.Catholic Charities, meanwhile, provides these kinds of secular services and does not proselytize its faith to the people it serves. Significantly, the Catholic Church chooses to operate Catholic Charities as a separate corporation that is distinct from the greater church itself, even though the charitable arm is controlled by church officials. This decision to separately incorporate Catholic Charities provides considerable benefits to the greater church. Most notably, it means that, if Catholic Charities is successfully sued, that lawsuit cannot touch the broader churchs assets. But the churchs decision to make Catholic Charities a separate corporate entity means that this entity is not exempt from the states unemployment law because Catholic Charities itself only provides secular services.Catholic Charities claims that this arrangement is unconstitutional, and that it should be allowed to benefit both from separate incorporation and from the states exemption for organizations operated primarily for religious purposes.Though its lawyers offered three different reasons to rule in their favor, several of the justices suggested that the simplest and most straightforward way to rule in the churchs favor would be to conclude that Wisconsin unconstitutionally discriminates against religious sects that engage in charitable work without proselytizing or otherwise engaging in the kind of religious activity that triggers Wisconsins exemption.Indeed, many of the justices pounced on a disastrous concession by Colin Roth, the lawyer defending Wisconsins regime before the Court. Justice Samuel Alito asked Roth what is the bare minimum Catholic Charities would need to do in order to secure an exemption, and Roth said that a charity which runs a soup kitchen would be exempt if it requires hungry people to say the Lords Prayer before they receive soup, but not if it runs an identical soup kitchen without this requirement.But such a distinction, Kagan warned, discriminates against the Catholic Church specifically because its religious beliefs require it to do charitable works without demanding that the beneficiaries of those works participate in Catholicism. I thought it was pretty fundamental that we dont treat some religions better than other religions, Kagan said.Without the Obama-appointed Kagans vote, its hard to imagine how Wisconsin can win this case. And all six of the Courts Republicans appeared to share Kagans concern.What will happen when the next case involves a more exploitative employer?The Courts 40-year-old decision in Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor (1985) looms large over Catholic Charities. In that case, a religious organization that was widely described as a cult owned numerous for-profit businesses, including service stations, retail clothing and grocery outlets, hog farms, roofing and electrical construction companies, a recordkeeping company, a motel, and companies engaged in the production and distribution of candy. Workers in these businesses were given no wages or cash salaries, only food, clothing, and shelter. After the federal government sued, claiming violations of minimum wage and overtime laws, the Court rejected the organizations request for a religious exemption from these laws. Among other things, the Court warned that if a religious cult is allowed to pay substandard (or nonexistent) wages, that would undoubtedly give [it] and similar organizations an advantage over their competitors and push employers who must comply with federal law out of the market.Again, the immediate consequences of a decision ruling in favor of Catholic Charities is likely to be minimal, because the Catholic Church has its own unemployment benefits program. But if Catholic Charities is entitled to a religious exemption for the reason offered by Kagan, then it is unclear why some other religious organizations cannot claim an exemption even if it does not provide unemployment benefits.Similarly, if it is unconstitutional for a state to treat religions that do not proselytize differently than religions that do, why can the state discriminate against religions that operate for-profit businesses? As Justice Barrett noted at one point, a church may very well believe that raising money to fund its operations is as essential to its religious mission as the Catholic Church believes that charitable work is to its mission.One possibility is that the Court could create a carve-out specifically for for-profit entities ruling that they cannot seek religious exemptions from the law. This is the rule the Court laid out in United States v. Lee (1982), which held that when followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.But the Court also seemed to walk away from Lee in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), which held that for-profit corporations may seek religious exemptions from federal (although not necessarily state) law.After Mondays oral argument, it seems inevitable that the Court will rule that the Catholic Church can enjoy all the benefits of separately incorporating Catholic Charities, without the costs that normally come along with that decision. If thats all the Court rules, then it is hardly the end of the world for American workers.But it will be very difficult for the Court to write a decision in favor of Catholic Charities that does not open the door to much more exploitative employers receiving exemptions from very basic laws intended to protect workers.See More:

Cast your mind far, far back, to November of 2024. Trump had just been elected. Americans were divided and unsteady. But the stock market wasnt: It was thrilled. Stocks hit all-time highs on the news, and the value of the dollar surged. The vibes were very different across the Atlantic. European stocks fell, driven by fears of Trumps tariffs, as did the value of the euro. Analysts expected European economies and markets, which had long underperformed their American counterparts, to fall even farther behind. Now, though, the vibes have flipped: American stocks are way down, growth projections are shaky, and the dollar is losing value. Meanwhile, many European stocks are up. So what happened? The answer to that question, like most these days, is Trump. Specifically the Trump administrations unprecedented level of antagonism toward Europe. In the administrations first few months, its made clear that its ambivalent about military and economic ties to Europe. The message has been, as Vice President JD Vance put it in a recent Signal chat, that the US is tired of bailing Europe out and that its time for the continent to stand alone. That message has been received, especially when it comes to military matters. In the wake of the US minimizing Russias aggression in Ukraine and casting doubts about its commitment to NATO, the European Union is now pushing all of its members to raise military budgets and issue debt to fund defense purchases.This kind of defense spending has all sorts of trickle-down stimulus effects, which are juicing Europes stock markets, and making economic experts hopeful about the EUs economic future. Take the German car industry, for instance. The symbol of European industrial greatness exporting all around the world [has] gone through some really hard times recently with high energy prices, with competition from China, with this looming trade war, Financial Times Brussels Bureau Chief Henry Foy told Today, Explained. Youre now seeing discussions about converting mothballed car factories into tank factories.Trumps recently announced 25 percent tariffs on imported cars, set to take effect April 3, may make this repurposing more likely. The CEO of Rheinmetall, Germanys largest defense company, toured a Volkswagen plant scheduled to shut down in the fall. Rheinmetall and its suppliers, workers, and partners stand to benefit heavily from increased defense spending. It has tripled in valuation since January, and is now worth more than Volkswagen. Its possible that Europes pivot to defense may end up more bark than bite. There is already some bickering about the details, especially about who picks up the tab.[But] if you can get the reinvestment right, get the orders in, make it work it could be a huge driver for the entire economy at large, Foy said. And if that happens, Trump will have made good on his promise to usher in an economic boom like no other. Itll just be a boom in Europe, instead of in America.This piece originally ran in the Today, Explained newsletter. For more stories like this, sign up here.See More:

Youve probably heard the expression money cant buy happiness. But take a look at the evidence, and youll discover an encouraging fact: Your money can buy happiness for other people.Not all efforts to improve peoples well-being are equally effective, though. The best charities out there create hundreds of times more happiness per dollar than others, according to new findings published this month by research center Happier Lives Institute in the 2025 World Happiness Report, which ranks countries by happiness each year.That means that if you donate your money to the right charities, it can buy a lot of happiness for the worlds neediest people at a stunningly low cost. For example, just $25 can meaningfully boost somebodys happiness for a year, if you give it to an effective organization like StrongMinds, which treats depression in African countries. The Happier Lives Institute figured this out by comparing the impact of different charities using a single standardized metric: the well-being year, or Wellby. Its pretty straightforward: Imagine that someone asked you, Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, on a scale from 0 to 10? Producing one Wellby for you would mean increasing your life satisfaction by one point for one year. The Happier Lives Institute is UK-based, so, for comparisons sake, it showed how some of the worlds most cost-effective charities stack up against a few charities in the UK (the last six in the chart). As you can see, money donated to the top charities in poorer countries can improve lives much more per dollar than money donated within a rich country, because a dollar goes further abroad. To give you a sense of what a few of the best buy charities do:Pure Earth is the largest nonprofit working on reducing lead contamination globally. Millions of people die prematurely every year due to lead poisoning it could be killing more people than HIV, malaria, and car accidents combined so investment in this area can go a long way. Tamaika works on treating acute malnutrition. Thats the leading cause of childhood deaths internationally but the good news is that its extremely treatable: a whopping 95 percent of the children in this program fully recover. Friendship Bench and StrongMinds both treat mental health issues like depression and anxiety in African countries. They use a community-based care model, where lightly trained laypeople picture someone like your grandmother, not a doctor conduct therapy sessions in homes or parks. This has turned out to be not only cheap to operate and easy to scale, but also incredibly effective, in part because locals find it culturally appropriate.Icddr,b teaches parents in low-income countries to play with their children in more enriching ways and to avoid maltreatment, with the end goal of improving childhood development and boosting well-being over the lifetime.NEPI (the Network for Empowerment & Progressive Initiative) is pioneering an effective way to reduce violence and criminality among young adults: It offers at-risk men behavioral therapy plus cash. The impacts on men in Liberia, for example, have been astounding. The case for making people happier not just wealthier or healthier Its only in the past few years that experts have started evaluating charities using WELLBYs as their metric. Since economists love things they can measure objectively, theyve spent the past century focusing on measuring health and wealth. The best programs have long been considered to be the ones that saved the most lives or increased GDP by the widest margin. But as its become clear that increasing wealth and health doesnt always go hand in hand with increasing happiness, a growing chorus of experts has argued that helping people is ultimately about making them happier not just wealthier or healthier and the best way to find out how happy people are is to just ask them directly. In other words, we should focus more on subjective well-being: how satisfied people are with their lives based on what they say matters most to them. That revolution in thinking has gathered steam to the point that its now featured in well-known, mainstream publications like the World Happiness Report.Some experts remain a bit skeptical about focusing on subjective well-being because it is, well, subjective. I dont really know what it means for someone to say Im a 6 out of 10 in the way that I know what it means for someone to not have a broken arm, Elie Hassenfeld, the co-founder and CEO of the charity evaluator GiveWell, told me a couple years ago. He also questioned whether a measure of subjective well-being gets at the things we really care about, things that make life worthwhile, like meaning.Its a fair question. But, according to the Happier Lives Institutes Michael Plant, it shouldnt stop us from using Wellbys. Part of the virtue of the subjective approach is that people can bring whatever matters to them into their assessments of how happy they are, he told me. So, how much meaning you have in your life could be an input into that.Plant also notes that although hes trying to highlight the organizations that give you the most bang for your charitable buck, that doesnt necessarily mean that other charities arent doing good work or arent worth funding at all. We dont have to turn ourselves into mere optimizing machines we can care about a diverse set of priorities and split our donations among a range of different charities. The point, then, is not that you should ignore needy people in your local community, but that you may also want to look beyond that once you realize that you can make a much bigger difference to those living abroad. If a friend told you they gave $200,000 to a charity, youd probably be extremely impressed that could be their life savings! Plant and his colleagues write in the World Happiness Report. However, its possible to have that sort of impact for a fraction of the cost: giving $1,000 to the best charities may do just as much good as $200,000 to a randomly selected one.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

That sneezy, itchy, watery-eyed time of year has yet again returned: its allergy season. Seasonal allergies are the bodys response to pollen from trees and grass; the immune system releases chemicals, like histamines, leukotrienes, and prostaglandins, which cause all those uncomfortable, familiar symptoms.The best way to combat the unpleasant barrage is to get ahead of them, says Russell Leftwich, a fellow at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology and an adjunct assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Since allergy season arrives at roughly the same time every year, Leftwich recommends starting your allergy relief of choice for a few days before pollen levels get too high. (The Weather Channel, AccuWeather, and IQAir provide local pollen monitoring.)If the dizzying variety of drugs at the pharmacy has you confused, here are a few things to know about the most effective types of over-the-counter allergy medications as well as non-pharmaceutical ways to keep your allergies in check.One of the best ways to alleviate allergy symptoms is to prevent pollen from getting into your body in the first place. This means keeping windows closed and wearing a mask while doing yard work, Leftwich says. If youve been outdoors for a while, change your clothes and wash your face when you get home, says Rita Kachru, the chief of allergy and immunology in the department of medicine at UCLA. Related4 tips for dealing with a ferocious allergy seasonAnother prevention method includes rinsing your nose with a saline solution: a mixture of baking soda, salt, and distilled or boiled water, Kachru says. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology recommends mixing three tablespoons of iodide-free salt with one teaspoon of baking soda in a small container. Then add one teaspoon of the salt/baking soda mixture to eight ounces of lukewarm distilled or boiled water. You can also buy nasal saline sprays at the drugstore.When to take antihistaminesWhen avoidance strategies arent totally effective, you can treat your symptoms with over-the-counter allergy medications. One of the major categories of these treatments are antihistamines, which are available in pill, tablet, eye drop, or nasal spray forms.Antihistamines help reduce itchiness and sneezing and are your first line of defense, Kachru says. The reason I always start with an antihistamine is because you may just have a day of a high pollen count, she says, and you just need a one-time antihistamine because youre sneezing and youre itchy and youre a little congested.Kachru and Leftwich suggest opting for long-acting antihistamines like loratadine (Claritin), cetirizine (Zyrtec), or fexofenadine (Allegra) over short-acting ones. People can develop a resistance to short-acting antihistamines, like diphenhydramine (Benadryl), very quickly. Plus, Benadryl often makes people sleepy. Both short- and long-acting antihistamines provide relief within 15 to 30 minutes, Kachru says. Take them at the start of the day before you are exposed to pollen.For mild nose itchiness and sneezing, an antihistamine nasal spray, like azelastine (Astepro), might work for you. A common side effect is a metallic taste in the back of the throat, Kachru says. When to try nasal steroid spraysIf youre reaching for an antihistamine three to four times a week, Kachru suggests adding a nasal steroid into the mix. Not only do nasal steroids reduce sneezing and itchiness, but theyll help with congestion, too. These include fluticasone (Flonase), budesonide (Benacort), triamcinolone (Nasacort), and mometasone (Nasonex). Nasal steroids do take a few days until you feel the full effects, Kachru says, so dont give up if you dont feel better right away.To properly administer nasal sprays, insert the tip in your nostril and point it toward your ear. A common mistake when using a nasal spray is pointing it straight up your nose. It goes up their nose, down their throat and does nothing for them, Kachru says. Or they stick it inwards into their nose, and then they get nosebleeds. So you want to always make sure that when you put it in, you point it out towards your ear, spray, sniff in, and then do the alternate nostril.While not a nasal steroid, Kachru advises against using oxymetazoline (Afrin), a nasal spray decongestant. Patients who use Afrin regularly end up having really, really severe rebound nasal congestion, she says.Leftwich advises against decongestants more broadly, as the over-the-counter decongestant medications are not very effective.After a few weeks of daily nasal spray use, you may consider stopping an antihistamine, if youre taking both. Thats usually what I tell people to do, Kachru says. Eventually just use that antihistamine as needed because the nasal spray is more effective. The protocol Kachru recommends to her patients include a daily nasal rinse and nasal steroid with an antihistamine as needed. With this line of defense, hopefully your allergy season will be a lot less miserable.See More:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz summed up the state of his party well recently, The Democratic Party is unified theyre unified in being pissed off at the Democrats.Just 44 percent of Democrats are satisfied with the job Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is doing. About 54 percent are satisfied with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. And the partys overall favorability is tanking.That rage isnt going away any time soon. The base looked ready to riot in March after Senate Democrats, led by Schumer, prevented a government shutdown by voting with Republicans to pass a stopgap funding bill. Many in the base saw the showdown as a red line a wasted opportunity for their congressional representatives to obstruct Republicans and Trump, showing their constituents that they would finally fight back.The last time a party base was this mad at its leadership, it was 2009, and movement Republicans were furious at party leaders for losing to former President Barack Obama, bailing out Wall Street, and failing to stop the Affordable Care Act. And what started out as base rage grew into a full-on interparty revolution the Tea Party reorganized the Republican Party on its own terms.But are Democrats about to face their own Tea Party moment? Is the rage that the base is feeling right now going to lead the party down the same path that Republicans went on during the Obama era?What the Tea Party rise looked likeWhile early Tea Party activists and leaders argue that they had a sharply defined set of primarily libertarian, conservative beliefs about the role and size of government, their defining characteristic was anger: at the Obama administration, and the Republican Partys inability to stop Democrats, and at Obama, personally. Their original unifying theme was an acronym Taxed Enough Already, a conservative call for less government spending, lower taxation, and strict interpretations of the Constitution. It was a loose network of local activists and groups who showed up to town halls, held protests locally and in DC, and eventually saw upstart individual candidates challenge moderate and establishment Republicans in both safe seats and swing seats.They saw two discernible spikes in power and momentum: first in the lead-up to the 2010 midterm elections, when anti-incumbent dissatisfaction boosted congressional Republicans to win 63 House seats and make gains in the Senate. The second was in the 2014 midterms, when Republicans gained even more seats in the House and won back the Senate. In that time, the Tea Party went from GOP fringe to a rival power center that continually vexed its more establishment leadership. The movement was both ideological as detailed above and tactical. Tea Party candidates wanted Republicans to take extreme measures to obstruct Obamas agenda, and they launched primary challenges to a slew of incumbent Republicans who refused to go along.Notably, the movement was defined by how decentralized it was at its start though some national organizations later formed to try to organize and wield populist furor, it was mostly a grassroots movement. That energy sustained itself over more than five years and was strong enough to oust one of the Republican Partys top leaders in 2014, when college professor Dave Brat beat GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor. The race was an upset, and is still largely considered the most emblematic Tea Party victory of the period.The populist energy we had back then had a very clear logic to it. It was Madisonian, Adam Smith, decentralization, federalism, taxed enough already, and border security, Brat told me recently. When I ran, I was kind of a pre-Trump in a way, right? I ran on those things, and its all out there on paper. It was a content-driven race. It wasnt like I was out for power.Through it all, there was at least some common thread holding the movement together: populist anger. How the Tea Party movement mirrors todays DemocratsWhat makes 2025 feel like 2009 and 2014 is the level of intra-party anger and the unifying of the party around a shorthand slogan: Do Something.The polling data, for example, does reveal some parallels between 2009, 2014, and today. Self-identified Democrats now view their party about as negatively as Republicans did from 2009 to 2015, the years of the Tea Partys dominance, according to polling analysis by the election data site Split Ticket. As that sites co-founder Lakshya Jain said in a recent post, the Democratic approval data is unlike any in recent history and it isnt a case of bitter, disaffected partisans reacting to a loss in the last election.Jain notes that this year is different from the last two times Democrat and Republican bases had to reckon with presidential losses. In 2017, for example, Democrats didnt turn away from their leaders: approval ratings of congressional Democrats rose from 2017 to 2019, as the base approved of their partys resistance to Trump and empowered a blue wave in the midterms. In 2021, meanwhile, the Republican base remained largely favorable toward congressional Republicans after Trumps loss. The numbers suggest this year might be the start of something different from Democrats.That anger is showing up online, in the press, and in-person in places like deep-blue California, Massachusetts, and Maryland, where pissed-off constituents are squaring off with elected Democrats venting to their representatives about how frustrated they are by their leaderships weak resistance to Trump and Musk. That mirrors some of the town halls and rallies that defined the populist Tea Party insurgency in 2009 and 2010, and which carried over into the second Obama term.Angry Democrats have and are continuing to mobilize. Anti-establishment figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been speaking to this frustration during rallies in five states this month. The partys establishment stand-in, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, meanwhile was confronted for his decision to stop a shutdown in interviews and eventually canceled a book tour over concern about how Democratic audiences would react.Other Democratic politicians have begun to turn their ire on fellow Democrats in Congress. Walz, on his own town hall tour, is sharply criticizing the current congressional Democratic strategy of essentially letting Trump and Republicans damage themselves and get more unpopular. What makes this moment different from the Tea PartyStill, 2025 is a very different moment of rage. Todays Democratic base anger isnt primarily ideological theres no policy, agenda, candidate, or unifying principle that is rallying Democrats against their party leaders like it did for conservative Republicans. The closest is anger at Schumer, specifically. And while anti-establishment, anti-incumbent feeling does define this discontent, its mostly around the loose idea of resisting harder, of fighting back against Trump and doing something.For example, another recent Data for Progress polling reveals two particular kinds of anger. The first is aimed at Schumer specifically for being an ineffective leader for Senate Democrats. An outright majority of Democrats think Senate Democrats to choose a new leader. And two-thirds say they should be led by someone who fights harder against Trump and the Republican agenda.The second point of anger is age and gerontocracy. Nearly 70 percent of Democrats think the party should encourage elderly leaders to retire and pass the torch to the younger generation. And more than 80 percent think it is very or somewhat important for Democrats to field younger candidates that represent a new generation of leadership.So while theres no uniformity right now in who the Democrats lead internal critics are between Sanders, Walz, AOC, and others, no clear ideological or demographic trait binds them what does is their call for a kind of generational change. This doesnt necessarily mirror the GOP Tea Party periods start, and if anything, is more reminiscent of the 2018 blue-wave energy which also didnt necessarily elect a more moderate or progressive Democratic bench.What 2018 did result in was a much more diverse and female Congress, and a version of that kind of change could replicate itself next year if younger candidates end up trying to challenge older incumbents for not being more vocal and effective in their resistance to Trump.At least at the state and local level, this kind of younger energy is emerging. Amanda Litman, the co-founder of the progressive Run for Something candidate recruitment group, told me that since the shutdown quandary, younger people have been the leading kind of prospective candidate looking to run.The people who have reached out to me personally about running for Congress, and I hear from in particular young people who know that we work with young people and first-time candidates it has been people who want to primary older Democratic incumbents. Theres people who want to jump into possibly open races, people who want to run against vulnerable Republicans, it is all of the above.Litman told me that the Tea Party comparison, while easy to make, might be missing that the party could be in for a generational turnover, as opposed to some kind of ideological or policy change candidates running with the knowledge that the Republican Party of the early 2000s through 2015 is dead and came of age politically since Trump rose to power. Youre going to see a totally different type of person running as a Democrat, Litman said.Youre going to see people who have made their careers as content creators or influencers running for Congress, non-conventional candidates jumping in, and were going to see a generational push, she said. [It will include] people whove actually run their own Instagram accounts, which is such a small thing, but its actually indicative of the entire generational shift in power.See More: Politics

At midnight one day in spring 2023, a team of animal rights investigators decked out in biosecurity gear snuck onto a massive chicken farm on Marylands Eastern Shore, an hour and a half drive from Baltimore. The operation was raising some 75,000 birds for Mountaire Farms, the nations fourth-largest chicken company.When the investigator Joseph Allman entered one of the facilitys sprawling barns, he found chickens packed wall to wall, including three dead, decaying birds. The place smelled awful and noxious, he said, and as he waded through the barns blanket of chickens, Allman found plenty more dead animals. Right outside the barn, Allman told me recently, there was a massive pile of manure completely littered with dead bodies and body parts.Over the following year, the investigators returned to the farm and also visited another operation in the area raising birds for Mountaire, where they found similar conditions. In January, Sherstin Rosenberg a veterinarian who reviewed the footage wrote that there were multiple birds unable to reach food or water due to severe limb deformity and disease, or because they are stuck on their backs and unable to get up. Several dead birds, the footage showed, had been left to decompose for days to weeks, according to Rosenberg. The investigators also obtained a trove of inspection documents from two Mountaire Farms slaughterhouses through a Freedom of Information Act request, which revealed instances of birds being scalded alive, buried alive, suffocated to death, amputated, diseased, and contaminated with feces. Bonnie Klapper, a former assistant US attorney, reviewed the investigators footage and wrote an opinion in January arguing that the conditions documented constitute criminal animal cruelty under Maryland state law. The activists have sent Klappers opinion and Rosenbergs veterinary analysis to a number of county and state authorities requesting an investigation into the company and charges for animal cruelty. They havent received much interest. Mountaire alleges that early one morning in mid-February, Allman and his colleague Adam Durand posed as AT&T contractors to gain access to a Mountaire slaughterhouse in Delaware. They were later arrested for criminal impersonation a charge which was soon dropped and trespassing, to which they agreed to a plea deal to remove the charge from their records in exchange for one year of no contact with Mountaire, Allman told me. Mountaire sued the two in early March for trespassing. This lawsuit isnt about protecting their business its about silencing whistleblowers, Allman wrote to me in response to the lawsuit. Durand declined to comment on the lawsuit.Mountaire Farms declined an interview request for this story, but emailed a statement to Vox. The company said it requires its contract farmers to follow sound poultry management practices that conform to practices of good animal husbandry and animal welfare. Mountaire declined to comment further on the allegations lodged by Allman and his fellow investigators. One of the many dead chickens Allman and his fellow investigators found. Joseph AllmanA chicken on their back unable to get up. Many chickens have difficulty walking due to industry breeding practices, and some die of dehydration or starvation if they cant reach food or water. Joseph AllmanHowever grisly the investigation into Mountaires operations was, theyre far from unusual. At US chicken factory farms, overcrowded, unhygienic conditions are so common that 6 percent of the nations 9 billion chickens raised for meat chickens that have been bred to be unhealthily large die on the farm each year before they can even be trucked to the slaughterhouse. That adds up to more than half a billion unnecessary deaths. The alleged conditions on Mountaires chicken facilities show one of the major ills of the factory farming system in the US, one shared by other companies in the industry: an almost willful disregard for the welfare of the animals they raise. But Mountaire also demonstrates to a greater extent than any other poultry company a less widely known way in which the factory farming systems tentacles work their way into American life: the industrys ties to a right-wing, deregulatory political agenda.While Republican politicians and meat companies have long been intertwined almost 80 percent of the industrys political contributions in the 2024 election cycle went to Republicans Mountaire and its wealthy but little-known CEO Ronald Cameron show just how deep those ties can go. Cameron, who at times has been a top donor to President Donald Trump, far outspends others in the poultry industry in an apparent effort to bend US politics toward his hard-right beliefs, and seemingly to protect and expand a poultry empire that produces roughly 1 out of every 13 chickens consumed in America today, even if relatively few people have ever heard of it.How Mountaire Farms has fueled a right-wing business and political agendaIn 2016, Cameron and his wife gave millions to Trump-aligned PACs, which made him one of the biggest donors to Trump. Across the 2020 and 2024 election cycles, Cameron gave another $4.7 million.Cameron has also contributed to several current and former House Freedom Caucus members and far-right Senate candidates, as well as over $14 million to political action committees (PACs) linked to the Koch Brothers and over $2 million to PACs operated by the Club for Growth. All told, Cameron has given around $75 million to candidates, PACs, and state parties since 2014 over 99 percent of it to Republicans making him one of the 50 biggest political contributors in recent election cycles. While the direction of Camerons dollars isnt unusual in the meat industry, the scale of giving dwarfs that of his competitors. Since 1990, the largest chicken companies have given through their employees anything from tens of thousands to a few million dollars each, with similar spending in direct lobbying. (Mountaire, it should be noted, doesnt spend on lobbying at all.) The only company that comes close is Tyson Foods, which has spent $35 million on lobbying since 1998 and whose employees have given approximately $7.7 million to political candidates and organizations since 1990. However, Tyson Foods is a much bigger company than Mountaire, with 20 times the annual revenue. Its a top producer of beef and pork, too.All the while, according to Glassdoor salary reporting, Mountaire Farms frontline slaughterhouse employees make minimum wage or slightly above it to perform one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Mountaire workers have accused the company of retaliation, discrimination, denial of bathroom breaks, union-busting, wage-fixing, and exposure to harmful chemicals. In 2020, an employee interviewed by the New Yorker called the work slavery. Mountaire did not respond to Vox for a request for comment about allegations made by its employees. An aerial photo, taken by drone, above a wastewater treatment operation at a Mountaire Farms slaughterhouse in Delaware. Joseph AllmanThe company has also been accused of creating severe environmental pollution. In 2021, Mountaire agreed to a historic $205 million deal to settle a lawsuit alleging that one of its slaughterhouses had contaminated the drinking water and air quality of nearby residents. While Mountaire does not believe that it caused any damage to any of the plaintiffs, it chose to settle the case in order to achieve a final resolution and to allow construction of a new wastewater treatment plant to proceed, the company said in a statement at the time.Environmental pollution is a consistent problem for the meat industry, and Camerons political generosity has coincided with beneficial political action for Mountaire on exactly that subject.In Maryland, where corporations are restricted from giving political candidates large sums of money, Mountaire funneled $250,000 into the Republican Governors Association days before the 2014 election, which it spent on ads to elect Republican Maryland governor Larry Hogan. On inauguration day, Hogan rescinded regulations pertaining to how much animal manure can be spread onto crop fields as fertilizer a notorious source of water pollution on Marylands Eastern Shore, where Allman and his colleagues investigated Mountaire chicken operations. Weeks later, Hogan proposed a watered-down version with a loophole for the poultry industry. A spokesperson for Hogan told the Wall Street Journal that Hogan had no knowledge of [Mountaires] involvement with the Republican Governors Association.In the middle of April 2020, Trump picked Cameron to serve as an economic adviser to the White House on its strategy to reopen parts of the economy in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Two weeks later, Trump signed an executive order mandating that slaughterhouses remain open to their extent possible, even as they became Covid hot spots including Mountaire slaughterhouses.That same day, the Department of Labor issued a statement that essentially immunized meat companies from being held accountable if they didnt adhere to the US Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Covid-19 guidelines so long as they had at least demonstrated a good faith effort to do so. Around the same time, the US Department of Agriculture permitted 15 slaughterhouses including one of Mountaires to speed up their slaughter lines from 140 birds per minute to 175.Why the meat industry gives so much to RepublicansMountaire may stand out in the size of its contributions to right-wing politicians and groups, but the broader meat and dairy industry gives overwhelmingly to Republicans. The industrys political favoritism can be explained in part by geography; animal agriculture is concentrated in rural states where politicians are much more likely to be Republican. But it can also be explained in part by ideology; Congressional Republicans tend to prefer deregulation, which benefits meat, dairy, and egg companies.Cameron and his company along with his competitors benefit from deregulation at each link in the supply chain that Congress and regulatory agencies could change but dont. Poultry farms are exempt from numerous animal welfare laws and are largely exempt from key environmental laws. The Department of Labor, across Republican and Democrat administrations, has failed to keep slaughterhouse abuses in check. A lot of the farmers that raise chickens for big poultry companies get screwed over, too. But while Republicans may financially benefit disproportionately from the industrys largesse, Democrats tend to be anything but tough on the meat industry. While conservatives have consistently pushed more aggressive, pro-agribusiness policies, food policy expert Nathan Rosenberg and journalist Bryce Wilson Stucki wrote in a 2017 story for The Counter, liberals have often responded with pro-agribusiness policies of their own, even when that meant undermining their own natural allies: small and mid-sized farmers, farm workers, rural minority populations, and the small, independent businesses they support. I saw that reality myself when I wrote last year about the cozy relationship between the meat industry and Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harriss VP pick.Alexandra Paul, who led the investigation into Mountaire Farms, rescues a chicken. Joseph AllmanLeah, a rescued chicken, steps onto grass for the first time. Alexandra Paul, who led the investigation into Mountaire Farms, described the experience of witnessing Leahs first steps as magical. Joseph AllmanTheres no clear path to breaking the meat industrys grip over American politics on the horizon, but there is something anyone can do starting today to push back against the kinds of horrific allegations made against Mountaire and other poultry giants: Eat less chicken. In 2022, the US raised and slaughtered a record-breaking 9.2 billion of them 24 per person after accounting for poultry exports. Chicken may be branded as a healthier, more sustainable alternative to beef and pork, but its mass production and consumption whether from Mountaire or its competitors relies on unimaginable human and animal suffering.Were up against a really big system that seems really entrenched right now, said Durand, one of the activists, and we are just trying to do whatever we can to disrupt that.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

Over the past decade, the synthetic drug fentanyl has devastated the United States, killing more than a quarter of a million Americans, making it, according to some officials, the deadliest drug in US history. And over the past two months, even amid signs that the fentanyl crisis is starting to wane, the drug has also taken on an unexpectedly prominent role in American national security and economic policy. The initial justification for the off-again, on-again tariffs on Canada and Mexico as well as tariffs on China, which are in effect cited what the White House said was these countries failure at stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country. President Donald Trump agreed to delay the tariffs on Mexico and Canada after they promised steps to address the crisis, but they are once again scheduled to take effect this week. The administration is also reportedly preparing an executive order that would designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, potentially paving the way for military action against drug cartels in Mexico. Trump talked repeatedly about the possibility of using military force on Mexican soil during his campaign and has already designated several cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. In recent congressional testimony, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard cited fentanyl as a top threat to US national security. Whether or not threatening tariffs and military action will actually stop fentanyl from entering the United States, Trump is correct about one thing: fentanyl is a global issue, and it takes a complex global shadow economy involving labs in China and cartels in Mexico to get these deadly chemicals onto US streets. He made the fentanyl epidemic a major issue during his campaign, and anecdotally at least, his tough message seems to have resonated with families and communities affected by the drug. But now that hes in office, critics say his policies are unlikely to keep Americans from dying from fentanyl use, and in some cases, may be counterproductive and that fentanyl is being used as a cover to provide a security rationale for Trumps trade and immigration policies. The fentanyl crisis, briefly explainedFentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid, meaning it is created in a lab from precursor chemicals, rather than being derived from a plant like traditional opium. It comes in a wide number of chemical variants. It was originally created by Belgian chemists in 1959 as an alternative to morphine, the dominant painkiller at the time. Fentanyl works faster, is more powerful, and less likely to cause nausea. It quickly caught on as an operating room anesthetic for surgery, and is still widely used for legitimate medical purposes today. It is also extremely addictive, and its recreational use was placed under international control in the mid-1960s. Fentanyl first turned up as a street drug in California in the late 1970s, where it was misleadingly marketed by dealers as a purer form of heroin called China white.But illegal fentanyl use in the United States didnt really take off until decades later, on the heels of the larger American opioid crisis in the 1990s, when doctors began prescribing larger and larger quantities of newly available opioids like oxycontin for pain management. Many people who first became addicted to prescription painkillers later turned to illegal drugs like heroin, which Mexican cartels began bringing into the US in vastly larger quantities in the late 2000s. Then, around 2012, fentanyl, far more powerful than heroin, began arriving in the United States. At first, it was shipped to dealers through the mail from chemical factories in China. Mexican cartels, sensing a business opportunity, quickly got into the fentanyl trade themselves. Overdose deaths quickly skyrocketed. By 2016, it was the deadliest drug in the United States. Only a few milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal, and the fact that dealers often mix it with other drugs, like heroin, is part of what makes it so deadly: Users often dont know how much fentanyl theyre taking, or that theyre taking it at all. The opioid epidemic, exacerbated by the Covid pandemic and fentanyl overdose deaths, reached a peak of more than 73,000 deaths in 2022. Overdose deaths have declined since then, which experts attribute to a number of factors: the waning impact of the pandemic, more awareness of fentanyls dangers, and the increasing availability of test strips that can detect the presence of fentanyl in a dose of another drug, and naloxone, a medication used to treat overdoses which is now carried routinely by first responders and available over the counter. The decline is relative, however. Overdoses involving synthetic opioids mainly fentanyl are the leading cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45.Stop 1: China China has the worlds largest chemical industry, accounting for nearly half of global production, the vast majority of it entirely legal. In the shadows of this industry are the facilities creating the ingredients for most of Americas fentanyl. Fentanyl comes in a vast number of varieties, and while many of these were tightly controlled in China, chemists could easily make their product technically legal with just a minor molecular variation, staying one step ahead of regulators. In the early days of the fentanyl crisis, Chinese manufacturers would then ship finished fentanyl by mail, either directly to the United States or to Mexican cartels who would facilitate its distribution. In 2019, after years of diplomatic pressure from both the Obama and Trump administrations, the Chinese government agreed to declare all varieties of fentanyl a controlled substance. After that, Chinese manufacturers and trafficking networks simply shifted to the production and sale of the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl. With these chemicals, the final drug is relatively easy for an amateur chemist to produce. The problem from a law enforcement perspective is that many of these chemicals are dual use; they have legitimate industrial or medical uses, making them harder to control. China is not known for a lax approach to drugs. Its one of the few countries in the world that executes drug traffickers and dealers including four Canadian citizens just last month and has opposed measures at the United Nations calling for a shift toward less punitive drug policies.US officials, noting the discrepancy between these hardline policies and Beijings relatively hands-off approach to fentanyl production, have accused China of deliberately turning a blind eye to these exports, or even deliberately encouraging them. During his first term, Trump accused China of sending their garbage and killing our people, calling it almost a form of warfare. A House of Representatives subcommittee report last year accused the Chinese government of directly subsidizing the production of fentanyl through various tax incentives. Theres some historical irony to the charge, which the Chinese government strongly denies, that it is deliberately flooding the West with opiates. In the 19th century, Britain fought a war against China to open the countrys markets after the Qing dynasty sought to combat a growing addiction problem by banning imports of opium from British India. The opium wars began what is often called the century of humiliation that, according to the official narrative, ended with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) coming to power. A number of US commentators have accused the CCP of waging a reverse opium war today.Most experts say its impossible to prove that China is deliberately exporting fentanyl to the US as a matter of government policy. Are China and the Communist Party doing all that they can to stop the production and shipping of fentanyl precursor material for illegal use? Theyre probably not, said David Luckey, a senior international and defense researcher at the RAND Corporation. I will also say that China is a large nation. They have the largest chemical production in the world. So regulating something as large as Chinese chemical production is a very difficult thing.Theres more evidence to show that China cooperates with the US when it feels its in its interest to do so and is willing to use that cooperation to gain leverage on other issues, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow and expert on transnational crime at the Brookings Institution. For instance, anti-drug cooperation was suspended after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosis controversial visit to Taiwan in 2022, then resumed following a high-level summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping the following year. (In return, the US lifted sanctions on a controversial Chinese lab.)This transactional approach is a very different proposition than to allege that China is purposely trying to kill US people, said Felbab-Brown though as long as Chinese companies continue producing these chemicals and shipping them across the Pacific, the end result may be largely the same. Stop 2: Mexico Next, the precursor chemicals, often misleadingly labeled, often arrive by ship at Mexicos Pacific ports of Manzanillo and Lzaro Crdenas. (While some fentanyl consumed in the US is produced domestically from precursor chemicals, far more is produced in Mexico.) Fentanyl distribution is primarily controlled by two cartels, the Sinaloa cartel, formerly led by the notorious drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, and the more recently founded Jalisco New Generation Cartel. These organizations dominated the supply of heroin and other drugs into the US, but the appeal of synthetic compounds like fentanyl was obvious to them from the start. Their business is not any one drug. Their business is money, said Cecilia Farfan-Mendez, a professor and expert on organized crime in Mexico at UC San Diego. Unlike heroin, cocaine, or marijuana, fentanyl doesnt require crop fields that are vulnerable to the weather or being spotted by authorities. It can be produced in rudimentary facilities in the center of towns. Theyre very rustic labs, said Mike Vigil, former director of the US Drug Enforcement Administrations international operations. They consist of utensils that you would find in a normal kitchen, and they use metal tubs to mix the chemicals. They dont care about quality control.Compared with other drugs, fentanyls potency means smugglers can make huge profits from much smaller and much harder to detect quantities. Luckey estimated that around three pickup truckloads of pure fentanyl could supply the US market for about a year. Eventually I think theyre going to phase out plant-based drugs and going to nothing but synthetic drugs, said Vigil. It costs them pennies to manufacture a dosage unit of fentanyl, which can then be sold here in the United States, depending on the area, from anywhere from $5 to $20 or $30 a tablet.Cooperation on fentanyl between the US and Mexican governments has been rocky in recent years. Some US officials have blamed this on corruption in Mexico. Like China, the Mexican government can also, at times, leverage anti-drug cooperation to influence the US on other issues. For instance, US-Mexico drug policy cooperation reached a nadir after the US arrest of a former Mexican defense minister accused of drug trafficking in 2020. Mexicos previous president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who came into office promising a controversial hugs not bullets approach to the cartels, claimed inaccurately that no fentanyl was produced in Mexico and said Americas drug crisis was the result of social decay. Felbab-Brown says Lopez Obrador was able to leverage cooperation on stopping migration across the Mexico-US border to avoid pressure from the US on other issues, including fentanyl. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took office in October, and even before Trumps tariff threats, there were indications she was taking a harder line against the cartels than her predecessor. Fentanyl has been a source of friction between the US, Mexico, and China since the drug emerged as a major threat during the Obama administration. Canada, the other target of Trumps tariff threats, is another story. Canada is dealing with an opioid crisis of its own the second worst in the world after the United States with more than 49,000 overdose deaths between 2016 and 2024. It has also seen a recent expansion of organized crime and money laundering groups linked to the drug trade. Canadian authorities have taken down a number of massive fentanyl labs in rural areas in recent years, including one in British Columbia last year that contained enough fentanyl and precursor chemicals to produce more than 95.5 million potentially lethal doses enough to kill every Canadian twice over.But theres little evidence that Canada is a significant source of the fentanyl entering the US: In 2024, it was estimated at less than 0.2 percent of the total. In fact, authorities have seized more fentanyl crossing from the US into Canada than vice versa. Some officials and cartel sources say the real amount of fentanyl slipping south over the border is probably a lot higher. The US-Canada border is longer and less defended than the US-Mexico border, so more drugs may be crossing undetected. But for the moment, theres little material evidence that Canada is a major source of American fentanyl even though the Trump administration has used this supposed threat to justify aggressive economic policy.How Trump wants to address the crisis Experts who spoke with Vox said that putting an end to the fentanyl crisis will require a three-pronged approach aimed at supply, demand, and harm reduction. Trumps approach favors one of the prongs over the other two.The administration is putting almost all its focus on the supply side, said Felbab-Brown. She added that while historically, the US has put a huge amount of pressure on countries like Bolivia and Colombia to eradicate drugs, the level of punitiveness were seeing now with China, Mexico, and Canada is unprecedented.Vigil, the former DEA agent, is skeptical that the aggressive approach to foreign governments will have the desired impact, and said it could even make collaboration more difficult. Starting a trade war and bashing the heads of China, Canada, and Mexico over the head instead of using diplomacy is not going to work. Its going to have a deleterious effect, he said. Trump has also blamed undocumented immigrants and migrants for bringing drugs, misery, and death across the border UC San Diegos Mendez says the link the administration has drawn between undocumented migration and drug smuggling is also misleading. The people who actually bring [fentanyl] in are US citizens, she said. It makes sense from a business perspective. You want people who have a legal way of entry into the US. Youre not going to put it in the hands of migrants or asylum seekers. Given the tiny amounts of fentanyl needed to supply the nations drug markets, stopping all the fentanyl from entering the US is a daunting prospect. Even if the Chinese government were perfectly cooperative and were somehow able to shut down all the chemical supplies, its likely another source could emerge to replace it. India, which also has a large chemical industry and similar regulatory issues, has already emerged as a potential alternative. In any case, Vigil added, youre not going to stop the supply unless you stop the demand. On that front, some of the Trump administrations early moves have not been encouraging. Transactions between chemical producers and fentanyl traffickers are often conducted on the dark web, and law enforcement and media reports have highlighted the increasing role cryptocurrencies have played in these transactions. Rather than crack down, Trump has moved to aggressively deregulate cryptocurrencies. As one of his first executive actions, he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, creator of the infamous dark web drug marketplace Silk Road. Felbab-Brown, of Brookings, raised concerns that cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data collection operations could make it harder to get accurate information about overdoses and fatalities, and that cuts to Medicaid could make it harder for opioid users to seek treatment. Trumps secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a well-known skeptic of using medication to treat addiction and has proposed building a network of farms or camps where people experiencing addiction can be sent to recover methods many experts are skeptical will work for a drug as powerfully addictive as fentanyl. The good news is that the years-long wave of deaths from fentanyl appears now to be receding. But theres no guarantee this trend is permanent, no matter who occupies the White House.The landscape of synthetic drugs is changing so quickly that its difficult for nations and their law enforcement efforts to keep up, and so we need to take some sort of revolutionary approach, because if we only continue in attempts at evolving our response, were never going to get there, said Luckey.If Americas experience of opioids in the 21st century has taught us anything, its that the crisis can always mutate into a new and deadlier form. See More:

Vox reader Brian Diederich asks: Why and how do so many collegiate basketball teams both mens and womens now have so many international student-athletes?If youve turned on March Madness this year, youve witnessed the most international players ever in college basketballs signature competition. Across both the mens and womens brackets, 264 athletes 15 percent of all NCAA players in the tournaments hailed from outside of the US. They are a cross-section of humanity, representing 45 countries in the womens tournament and 52 in the mens. The number of overall international college basketball players more than doubled from 2010 to 2025. It is a trend across sports: 25,000 of all US college athletes were born in another country.Forty years ago, US schools put little thought into recruiting players from Africa or Europe. A handful of players started to come to the US to play college ball in the 1980s, as the NBA was becoming more popular and thinking more globally. But international players were almost exclusively identified by word of mouth, recommendations from a friend of a friend. Sometimes, the US coaches wouldnt even see any game tape before signing a player to a scholarship; in 1984, Dutch player Rik Smits got a scholarship offer from Marist University based on nothing but his height (74); he says the coach never even saw him play.But today, the NBA and NCAA have built out an international pipeline for players, while the internet has made it easier than ever to scout from abroad. A lot has changed.What has driven more international recruitment in college basketball?NBA legend Hakeem Olajuwon, who came to the US in 1980 to play NCAA basketball, is a pivotal figure in this evolution. Then a relatively unknown Nigerian teenager, he was offered a chance to try out for the University of Houstons team because a coach had heard from an acquaintance that Olajuwon was a promising prospect. After his star college career and a successful transition to the pros, Olajuwon had set the blueprint. Olajuwon became one of the NBAs best players in the 80s and 90s, winning an NBA MVP and two championships. His rise was paralleled by Jamaicas Patrick Ewing, who moved from Kingston to play high school basketball in the US before attending Georgetown and then going on to make the New York Knicks one of the consistently best in the league. Smits played for 12 seasons and made one All-Star team. Their success, and the next generation of players who followed, pushed the NBA and, with it, college basketball on the path to globalization. By the turn of the century, even elite prep schools were starting to recruit international players.A recruiting arms race got underway in the 80s and 90s, and then an NCAA rule change in 2010 made it easier for more international players to come to the US.Basketball is typically one of the most popular and most profitable athletic programs that a university will have, second only to football if the school has a football team and for some schools, like Duke, basketball still maintains primacy. The pressure to compete is intense. If youre at the University of North Carolina and you see your top rival, the Blue Devils, recruiting abroad, you are going to start doing the same thing. International recruitment went from happenstance in the 80s to an indispensable recruitment tactic that teams across the NCAA used to keep up.In 2001, the NBA and NCAA doubled down on the strategy and set up a formal pipeline, the Basketball Without Borders program, to get promising international players in front of American scouts. The NBA has more recently set up academic training camps that teach basketball skills while also offering more general education classes to prepare participants for a US college experience.The program proved to be a success. One of Basketball Without Borderss graduates is Joel Embiid, a Cameroonian player who came to basketball as a teenager, played as a Kansas Jayhawk, and won an MVP at the professional level in 2023.Technology helped revolutionize basketball recruiting. In 1984, Rik Smitss Marist coach had to hope that somebody had recorded Smits playing on some grainy VHS tape and then physically get his hands on that tape. Without that, he had nothing to go on but height. Today, player highlights from all over the world are uploaded to YouTube where American coaches can view them easily at any time, and players can even build hype on social media to get attention from recruiters.Those recruiters are offering players not only the chance to come to the US for an education theyre also offering a financial opportunity. How has money in college sports affected international recruitment?Money is changing everything about what it means to be a college athlete including for international players. An opportunity to make money for themselves and not just for the schools is steering even more foreign basketballers to US colleges. NCAA athletes can now earn money through endorsements and other activities thanks to the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rule that took effect in 2021. In the 90s and early 2000s, as international recruitment was spreading, playing college basketball wasnt necessarily the smart move for the most elite foreign players. They could instead play in the expanding overseas professional leagues, earn a salary, and then enter the NBA draft without ever attending a US school. And that path was well trod: Luka Doni, the subject of a media frenzy after his trade to the Los Angeles Lakers, played in the EuroLeague and leapt to the NBA in 2018 three years before the NIL provision took effect.But today, you can make real money playing college basketball in America and earn a salary that rivals those of foreign professional leagues. International players do have to jump through some extra hoops, as students on an immigration visa earning money raises legal questions, but athletes and their sponsoring institutions are quickly becoming savvy about how to navigate that issue.The potential to make money while in school might even convince some players to stay in the college game longer instead of jumping to the NBA as quickly as possible. Michigan center Vladislav Goldin, who was born in Russia, helped lead the Wolverines to their Sweet 16 berth last weekend, but he almost wasnt there at all: Hed declared for the NBA draft in spring 2024, but changed his mind and transferred from Florida International University to the U of M, a more prestigious program with more earning opportunities. A decade or two ago, that would have been unthinkable. But the business of college basketball has changed and so have the players.This story was also featured in the Explain It to Me newsletter. Sign up here. 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Its been a big week for the group chat. On Monday, the Atlantics editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a story revealing that National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidentally added him to a Signal thread where top Trump cabinet members were discussing upcoming military strikes in Yemen. First, the Trump administration denied that top Trump officials shared war plans in the chat. Then, on Wednesday, the Atlantic published more screenshots of the conversation titled Houthi PC small group in which US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailed the precise timing and coordination of American fighter jet take-offs for the strike. Now, a federal watchdog group is suing members of the administration in the group chat for violating the Federal Records Act. Messier still, the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit is already a Trump administration enemy, thanks to his ruling that they must stop deporting some Venezuelan migrants. The whole security breach has thrown the White House into a state of simultaneous denial and disarray. As the fallout from the now-infamous Signal chat continues to unfold, Sean Rameswaram sought a different type of lesson from this weeks news: a lesson on texting. For Today, Explained, co-host Rameswaram spoke with Washington Post internet culture reporter Tatum Hunter about the dos and donts of texting in the modern age, and the messaging etiquette lessons we could all learn from the Signal group chat fiasco. Click the link below to hear the whole conversation. The following is a transcript edited for length and clarity.Tatum, you are brave enough to tell people how to text?Well, I think that our lives play out increasingly online. Today when you say something like internet culture, thats just culture a lot of the time, right? You talk about texting etiquette like, yeah, thats just how we communicate. The internet trickles down into our lives and changes our relationships, and this is contentious for people. Should we start with the dos or should we start with the donts?Lets start with the donts because I think thats spicier.Okay, great. For the haters, well start with the donts. Three big donts. One dont is: Dont use group texts for something that they werent created for.Everybody has that group text from a bachelorette party in like, 2018 that people will still pop into to share photos of their kids. Those have to die once youre done with the reason that you created them. If you have a group chat with your parents because youre related, that can keep going forever, because youll always be related. But if you have a group chat to plan a project or a trip or do introductions, that needs to be laid to rest once that planning is over. Another dont is: Dont get all offended when people have a different texting style than you. OhI see this come up all the time. I write for an audience thats a little bit older and people get really ruffled when others dont use, for example, proper capitalization, punctuation. And then you can flip the script and youll see younger folks getting frustrated and making fun of the way their bosses or relatives text when theyre spelling things out, using ridiculous acronyms, using the Gen X ellipsis, where youre like not sure if theyre mad at you because theyre putting ellipses into text messages where they dont belong. Every generation has its quirks with the way that it is typing out messages. And I think were past the point where were going to argue about, Should we be spelling everything right? Should this be formal? Should this be informal? You have to let everyone live.Number three? You said you had three big ones.Oh my gosh, I have so many donts. I have more donts than I have dos. I guess thats what etiquette is. If we all did everything right, we wouldnt need it. But: Dont be a wet blanket. Obviously, texting is going to be shorter, drier than sending a voice note, than having a phone call. But you want to be matching peoples energy, especially if you use texting to stay in touch. Dont be that guy whos sending okay, or thumbs up.Can I tell you about one of my pet peeves when it comes to this particular dont?Yes!When you send someone you love something great you saw online an article, a meme, a joke, a photo, and they go: seen it. Im like, if you saw it, then why didnt you send it to me? Or if you saw it, just gimme the reaction you had when you saw it. Seen it is not useful to me. I dont care that you planted your flag on this meme before I did.Also, the goal was a discussion. Imagine if you were with somebody and you were like, Hey, I just saw a news story about these high-level government people leaking their Signal chat and someone was like, Heard it. Like, No, I get that, its news. I wanna talk about it. Memes are kind of the same.Yes and, yes and. Okay, I have one more dont: No scary mysteries. Dont send a text, like, Hey, can we talk?Oh, I hate that too. My parents do that. Call me as soon as you can. And I call and its like, Hey, so do you want to eat tacos orWhere the urgency is just not matched to the content. You should say why youre reaching out.Okay, weve done a lot of dont. Lets do a little do.One really nice thing to do when youre texting is to tell people what you want from them. Maybe one person wants to be in touch a lot and the other doesnt. Maybe one person wants to talk about more serious, heavy emotional stuff over text, and the other persons really uncomfortable with that. But exactly like your in-person relationships, people cant read your mind. You have to tell them what you want. You know, what youre reminding me of is the voice memos, or as I call them sometimes, voice memoirs. They can be really short and punchy and hilarious... But sometimes theyre like eight minutes long. And youre just like, this is like work now. You just sent me a whole podcast I have to add to my queue. Maybe we should establish at some point in the texting whether we want those or not, maybe?Absolutely. And again, just like any other thing in your friendships and relationships, it might require some compromise. So maybe for the person whos less texty, that means youre shooting an emoji, a thumbs up, a one-sentence thing saying, saw it, care about you, Ill get back to this. Right? Thats a nice compromise. Or maybe if youre the person who you know tends to get offended by this, you draw some boundary, like, Hey, if you cant respond to me on time, maybe we should stick to phone calls. Right? Its not embarrassing, I think, to talk about your texting life as if it matters, because it does!I like that. Be bold. Okay, any more dos that you really want to share with the people out there?Do stay grounded in reality. Remember the world we live in, and remember that if youre in, you know, an encrypted Signal chat or if youre in your private iMessage group with your best friends that doesnt mean that you have carte blanche to say stuff that you would never want the world to see. Mm.Weve seen again and again and again how screenshots of messages its not sacred. It can get out.There was some analysis and chattering after those screenshots leaked from the Signal chat about, you know, how Vance had signaled that he might have a different opinion than Trump on a matter of foreign policy. Now he has to show up to work and be like, Hi Donald. So its important to remember that nothing is private, nothing is sacred once you have written it in a text.Were going to see where the blowback for this group chat getting out ends up, with someone losing their job, with a federal inquiry, who knows. Whats clear is it wont soon be forgotten. Do you think its for the best that we all had a moment to just reflect on the group chat?Theres an optimist inside of me who likes to believe that this will be good for society, that were all reflecting on the group chat. However, now Ive lived too long, right? So, Bezoss text leak were like, oh man, well never forget this. Biden leaves his Venmo public. Vance leaves his blog public. Venmo transactions from Matt Gaetz. Most recently we saw that Mike Waltz of Signal Chat fame left his Venmo friends list public. People find it and they analyze it. And it happens again and again and again to politicians, to celebrities, to CEOs. So now Im starting to lose faith. How many high-profile embarrassing instances of our digital footprints getting out of our own control will it take before everybody pumps the brakes? Because its a hard-learned lesson to just kind of remember that digital stuff is forever, even in the safest of places.I have to say in light of this weeks news, Tatum, we are skipping a huge dont, which is: Dont add people to a group chat against their will.(Laughs] I need to add another bullet point to this guide and say, dont add the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic.See More:

All nine of the Supreme Court justices are lawyers. All of them have friends and law school classmates in private practice. All of them sit at the apex of a legal system that depends on lawyers to brief judges on the matters those judges must decide. Many of them were themselves litigators at large law firms, where their livelihood depended on their ability to advocate for their clients without fear of personal reprisals. So its hard to imagine a presidential action that is more likely to antagonize the justices President Donald Trump needs to uphold his agenda, not to mention every other federal judge who isnt already in the tank for MAGA, than a series of executive orders Trump has recently issued. These actions aim to punish law firms that previously represented Democrats or clients opposed to Trump. The lawyers targeted by these orders are the justices friends, classmates, and colleagues. It would likely be easy for, say, Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Brett Kavanaugh to empathize with law partners who do the exact same work they once did.The striking thing about all the law firm executive orders is that they barely even attempt to justify Trumps decision with a legitimate explanation for why these orders are lawful.The order targeting law firm Perkins Coie attacks the firm for representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in its second sentence. The order targeting WilmerHale accuses it of engaging in obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends, as if Democrats do not have the same right to hire lawyers who advocate on their behalf that everyone else does. The order targeting Jenner & Block justifies that attack because the firm once hired Andrew Weissmann, a prominent television legal commentator who, in the executive orders words, engaged in partisan prosecution as part of Robert Muellers entirely unjustified investigation into Trump. Weissmann left Jenner in 2021.The sanctions laid out in these orders, moreover, are extraordinary. They attempt to bar the firms attorneys and staff from federal buildings, preventing lawyers representing criminal defendants from engaging in plea bargaining with federal prosecutors and potentially preventing lawyers who practice before federal agencies from appearing before those agencies at all. They also seek to strip security clearances from the firms lawyers, and to strip federal contracts from companies that employ the targeted law firms.Its hard to think of a precedent for this kind of sweeping attack on a business that did some work for a presidents political opponents. During the second Bush administration, a political appointee in the Defense Department criticized lawyers who represent Guantanamo Bay detainees and suggested that their firms clients should look elsewhere for legal representation. But that official apologized shortly thereafter. And he resigned his position three weeks after his widely criticized comments.Bush himself did not attempt anything even resembling the sanctions Trump now seeks to impose on law firms.As Perkins Coie argues in a lawsuit challenging the order against that firm, these sanctions are an existential threat to the firms Trump is targeting. Perkins says that it has nearly 1,000 active matters that require its lawyers to interact with more than 90 federal agencies, and it fears it cant continue many of those representations if it isnt even allowed into the building to meet with government officials. Similarly, the firm says many of its biggest clients, including its 15 biggest clients, have or compete for government contracts that could be cancelled unless those clients fire the firm.Trump, in other words, is claiming the power to exterminate multi-billion dollar businesses, with over a thousand lawyers and as many support staff, to punish them for things as innocuous as representing a Democrat in 2016.Its hard to count all the ways these orders violate the Constitution. Perkins, in its lawsuit, alleges violations of the First Amendment right to free speech and free association, due process violations because it was given no hearing or notice of the sanctions against it, separation of powers violations because no statute authorizes Trump to sanction law firms in this way, and violations of their clients right to choose their own counsel among other things. The Trump administration has not yet filed a brief laying out its response to these arguments, but in a hearing, one of its lawyers claimed that the Constitution gives the president inherent authority to find that there are certain individuals or certain companies that are not trustworthy with the nations secrets.Normally, when a litigant wants the courts to permit something that obviously violates existing law, they try to raise the issue in a case that paints them in a sympathetic light. But Trump has chosen to fight this fight on the most unfavorable ground imaginable:There may be a perverse logic to Trumps decision to fight on such unfavorable terrain. If he wins the right to punish law firms for representing a prominent Democrat a decade ago, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will stop him from doing anything at all in the future. Most lawyers will be too scared of retaliation to even bring lawsuits challenging Trumps actions. Already, one of the firms targeted by Trump, Paul Weiss, appears to have caved to him by agreeing to do $40 million worth of free legal work on causes supported by Trumps White House. (Like Perkins, Wilmer and Jenner sued to block the orders targeting them.)And, of course, if Trumps endgame is to openly defy the courts, an obviously unconstitutional executive order targeting law firms that are in the business of suing the government is a good way to bring about that endgame quickly.These stunning executive orders dare the courts to either make themselves irrelevant, or to trigger what could be the final showdown over the rule of law.The anti-Thurgood Marshall strategyIf you want to understand how litigants normally proceed when they want to convince the courts to make audacious changes to the law, consider Sweatt v. Painter (1950), a case brought by future Justice Thurgood Marshall a few years before he successfully convinced the justices to declare public school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).Marshalls goal was to convince the justices that, as they eventually concluded in Brown, separate education facilities are inherently unequal, even if a state attempted to equalize the resources provided to segregated Black and white schools. Before he brought the much more difficult challenge to K-12 segregation, however, Marshall chose a more favorable ground to fight for integrated educational facilities: law schools.In Sweatt, a Black man was denied admission to the University of Texas Law School solely because of his race. Rather than integrate UT, Texas opened a new law school for aspiring Black lawyers, and argued that this facility solved the constitutional problem because now Black law students could receive a similar education to the one they would receive at the states flagship university.But the justices, all of whom were lawyers, understood the subtle hierarchies of the legal profession in which where you go to law school can determine the entire trajectory of your career all too well to be fooled by this arrangement. As the Courts unanimous decision explained, the University of Texas Law School possesses to a far greater degree those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school qualities like a reputation for excellence, and an alumni network full of successful lawyers eager to lend a hand to UTs graduates. Marshall, in other words, understood that, by appealing to the professional sensibilities of the justices, he could make them see that the concept of separate but equal is at odds with itself. And once those justices took the easy step of empathizing with law students denied access to an elite school, it was much easier to get them to see themselves in grade school students shunted into an inferior elementary school.Trump has done the exact opposite of what Marshall did in Sweatt. And that means that the same empathy that Marshalls clients benefitted from in Sweatt and Brown is likely to cut against Trump.Not only that, but the justices who will ultimately hear this case are likely to have unique sympathy for lawyers attacked by a politician seeking to discredit them, because many of them experienced just that in their confirmation hearings.When Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court, for example, one of the few controversies surrounding his nomination was whether the positions he took as a lawyer representing a client could be attributed to him personally. Roberts had been a judge for only about two years when he was nominated for the Supreme Court, so his judicial record was quite thin, and some Democrats and their allies hoped to point to his work as a lawyer to discredit him. Among other things, they pointed to a brief Roberts signed as a Justice Department lawyer, which argued that Roe v. Wade should be overruled.The White House and Senate Republicans defense of Roberts at the time was that a lawyers job is to represent their clients interests, even if they do not agree with the client. So it is unfair to attribute a former clients views to their lawyer. And this was an excellent defense! The Constitution gives everyone a right to hire legal counsel to represent them before the courts. This entire system breaks down if lawyers who represent unpopular clients or positions face professional sanction for doing so.The point is that the most powerful judge in the country, like numerous other judges whove had their careers probed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, has a very personal stake in the question of whether lawyers can be punished because the wrong elected officials dont like their clients. That does not mean that the author of the Courts unconscionable Trump immunity decision will suddenly have an epiphany and turn against Donald Trump. But if Trumps goal is to turn Roberts (and numerous other judges) against him, attacking lawyers who stand in very similar shoes to the ones Roberts wore 20 years ago is a pretty good way to do it.See More: