Youve surely heard First They Came, German pastor Martin Niemllers famous poem about the road to Nazi Germany. Its one of those texts quoted so often that it can feel clich. First they came for the communists / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a communist the poem begins, listing off other targeted groups before its widely referenced conclusion: Then they came for the JewsAnd I did not speak outBecause I was not a JewThen they came for meAnd there was no one leftTo speak out for meYet despite its overexposure, theres a subtlety to Niemllers poem thats not often appreciated something beyond the abstract your rights depend on protecting others message. He is describing a specific strategy that Nazis used to dismantle German democracy.There is a reason why the Nazis targeted the groups on Niemllers list: German politics made them particularly easy to demonize. They were either vulnerable minorities (Jews) or politically controversial with the German mainstream (communists, socialists, trade unionists).After rising to power, Nazis pitched power grabs as efforts to address the alleged threat posed by menaces like Judeo-Bolshevism, harnessing the powers of bigotry and political polarization to get ordinary Germans on board with the demolition of their democracy.Whats happening in America right now has chilling echoes of this old tactic. When engaging in unlawful or boundary-pushing behavior, the Trump administration has typically gone after targets who are either highly polarizing or unpopular. The idea is to politicize basic civil liberties questions to turn a defense of the rule of law into either a defense of widely hated groups or else an ordinary matter of partisan politics.The administrations first known deportation of a green card holder targeted a pro-Palestinian college activist at Columbia University, the site of some of the most radical anti-Israel activity. For this reason, Columbia was also the first university it targeted for a funding cutoff. Trump has also targeted an even more unpopular cohort: The first group of American residents sent to do hard labor in a Salvadoran prison was a group of people his administration claimed without providing evidence were Tren de Aragua gang members.Trump is counting on the twin powers of demonization and polarization to justify their various efforts to expand executive authority and assail civil liberties. They want to make the conversation less about the principle whether what Trump is doing is legal or a threat to free speech and more a referendum on whether the targeted group is good or bad.There is every indication this pattern will continue. And if we as a society fail to understand how the Trump strategy works, or where it leads, the damage to democracy could be catastrophic.How Trumps strategy worksTo see this Trump strategy in action, watch White House aide Stephen Millers recent interview with CNNs Kasie Hunt. During the interview, Hunt repeatedly presses Miller on whether the administration violated a court order by sending alleged Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador. Miller refuses to engage on that key issue of democratic principle. Instead, he repeatedly tries to reframe the debate around the necessity of confronting the gang, arguing that insisting on legal niceties means handing the country over to marauders.How are you going to expel illegal alien invaders from our country, who are raping [and] murdering little girls, if each and every deportation has to be adjudicated by a district court judge? Miller argues. That means you have no country. It means you have no sovereignty. It means you have no future.This, of course, is not a legal argument. If anything, it sounds like a parody of a political argument: Oh, so you oppose sending people to be tortured in a Salvadoran prison camp without due process? Guess you must support Tren de Aragua killing little girls.But as absurd as this sounds, its proven to be a powerful form of logic and not just in extreme cases like Nazi Germany. In the years after 9/11, the Bush administration and its allies used similar arguments to discredit critics of its policies who have since been vindicated by events. Observers who warned of the threat to civil liberties from warrantless spying and Guantanamo Bay were dismissed as terrorist sympathizers. Iraq war skeptics were labeled Saddam apologists. This youre with us or against us kind of moral blackmail worked on many, both at home and abroad.The crucial role of partisan polarizationOf course, this kind of thing worked in the Bush era because there was so much hurt and anger among ordinary Americans in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. As much as many Americans may dislike Tren de Aragua or pro-Palestine campus protesters, theres nothing like the level of public hysteria that we saw in the wake of one of the countrys greatest disasters.Which is why the Trump administrations rhetorical strategy also taps into another kind of dividing logic the all-powerful force of partisan polarization. The Trump administrations rhetoric doesnt just attempt to link their opponents in general to gang members and terrorists. They also attempt to link judges and other nonpartisan authorities to Democrats. At a Wednesday press briefing, for example, press secretary Karoline Leavitt referred to the judge who weighed in on the legality of the El Salvador deportations as a Democrat activist.The idea here is to assimilate a question of basic legal principles into a familiar partisan script Democrats vs. Republicans. And by invoking the polarizing power of partisan politics, they portray what is really a fundamental clash over the rule of law as yet another spat between the two parties.Theres substantial evidence that this approach could really work to legitimize Trumps policies.Eminent Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has written several essays in the New York Review of Books that document what he calls troubling similarities between interwar Germany and America today. One of Brownings key points is that the rise of Nazism was, in large part, a cautionary tale about hyperpolarization. The German center-right elite hated the left parties so much that they preferred Hitler, who was extreme even to their tastes and were willing to hand him exceptional powers to crack down on civil liberties in service of crushing socialism and communism.While Browning focuses his ire on conservative elites he compares Sen. Mitch McConnell to Paul von Hindenburg, the German president who made Hitler chancellor social science tells us that polarization can have a similar effect on ordinary voters.In a 2020 paper, political scientists Matthew Graham and Milan Svolik published a paper testing the effect of polarization on citizens views on democracy. Using unusually high-quality data, Svolik and Graham were able to show that vanishingly few Americans roughly 3.45 percent were willing to vote against a candidate from their preferred party even if that candidate engaged in clear anti-democratic behavior. This, they argue, is a function of polarization. When you hate the other side enough, the policy stakes of elections feel really high and voters are willing to overlook even egregious abuses of power.In sharply divided societies, voters put partisan ends above democratic principles, they write. This analysis was critically important to understanding why Trump could win in 2024 even after the stain of January 6. Today, it helps us understand how Trumps rhetorical strategies hope to numb Americans and especially fellow Republicans to an assault on their fundamental liberties.See More: Politics

If youve read the news lately, youve probably heard that Americans may be in the middle of a sex recession. But at least one demographic of people are having the best sex of their lives: Gen X women. At least thats the argument writer Mireille Silcoff makes in her most recent piece in the New York Times magazine. In it, she explores her own middle-aged sexual awakening. I was trying to explain a moment that I was really seeing everywhere, she told Vox. Between her own life, her friends experiences, and the portrayals in pop culture that were popping up everywhere, she sensed a trend emerging. There seems to be something new in the air having to do with 50-year-old women, their bodies, sex, and relationships.So what is in the air right now? And whats behind these later-in-life sexual revelations? We talked to Silfcoff to find out exactly whats going on here in this weeks episode of Explain It to Me, Voxs weekly call-in show. Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to Explain It to Me on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If youd like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.What prompted you to write about this in the first place?I split up from my ex in my late 40s, after a very long relationship of 21 years. When I came out of it, I just thought that what lay ahead of me would be a pretty spinster-ish existence. I was really, really sick for a long time in my adulthood, and my marriage was very long and there were two children. I just felt like, Well, who is going to want this bag of problems? Now Im 50. Life is going to be orange pekoe tea, Masterpiece Theater, taking care of my kids, and hopefully remobilizing my writing, and thats it. And then instead what happened was I had a lot of wonderful new relationships with a lot of wonderful men and the kind of sex that I dont think I had even had in my 20s: a total new world of openness, exploration, interest, comfort in myself, self-knowledge and even, I daresay, wisdom. It felt revelatory. And at first, I felt like this was my weird, cool story. But then, as stuff started coming out of the culture, some of my other friends divorced and had similar situations to mine, I realized that what I had been doing or what I had experienced post-marriage was really part of a much larger cultural story that might ring true for many women in America and beyond today. What do you think the factors are in this mid-life sexual revitalization? The women who are middle-aged now are for the most part Gen X. Youre starting to get some millennial middle-aged people as well. And Gen X women had a really interesting formative experience when it comes to sex in the 90s. Divorce is also happening later than ever. Divorce and sexual exploration for women is a very old story: You get divorced and suddenly find a little piece of yourself sexually. I feel like thats kind of a big part of the story as well. So women having a bit of this sexual rediscovery later and finding when theyre 47 or 55 that desire is still there, that sexual function is still there, that thanks to the amazing strides that Gen Z and millennials have made opening up whats acceptable sexually acceptance is still there. So Gen X women are more comfortable in their bodies. They may be more into figuring out kinks and things like that. Why do you think this is happening with Gen X women in particular? Why is this generation so different from boomers? Boomers were constricted by a lot of societal norms that were, for lack of a better way of putting it, very mid-century. There was an open attitude toward sex, and free love was a boomer construct. But what happened with all of that stuff is that when all of those ideas really came to roost in the late 80s and the early 90s when women were suddenly working but men were still the bosses it created a tough situation for the people who inherited that very open sexual culture.I see Gen X as being a generation of women who really were plunked into an extremely sexualized landscape and were needing to fend for themselves. There wasnt a lot of support for how to navigate bosses who were sexually predatory. There werent a lot of roadmaps for how to have sex or how to be a sexual person. That was both good and bad, because, for instance, many women didnt experience orgasms because they just couldnt figure out how and their male partners couldnt figure out how so it just didnt happen. I feel like that wouldnt happen now. Youve got things like OMG Yes, which is a website where you can find out how to have a female orgasm. Its a much more open environment now in order to find out about sex. But at the same time among the younger generations, there is a bit of a cliff thats happened with sexual frequency. I want to talk about that a little bit. There are so many conversations right now about how young people are having less and less sex. It seems like theres a backlash to sex positivity. Do you think millennials and Gen Z women take these sexual freedoms for granted?You do take it for granted, as you should. The parents create the situation, and the young people take it for granted. I think that the culture has basically conspired in every way imaginable against intimacy, against having an open and easy sexuality, against relationships. I dont think its a coincidence that you really see the sexual drop off starting to happen in the same years that the iPhone was introduced. Its in the same years that social media really got going. The culture has basically conspired in every way imaginable against intimacy, against having an open and easy sexuality, against relationships.People go out less, they hang out less. They do things together less in weird spaces where things can get weird. There was a lot more natural weirdness back in the day. And natural weirdness can lead to intimate moments which can lead to sex. I just feel like theres a certain cleanliness of experience in the culture right now where people are so afraid to intermingle in those old ways. It has had a big effect on peoples ability to hook up or have casual sex or go from one boyfriend to another to another until you find one that you like. In some ways, I think its wonderful for middle-aged people who already had that socialization. What do you hope for middle-aged women moving forward? Especially when it comes to sex, desire, and relationships?Now is the time for them to seize the moment, to see that we are living in an era where a number of factors have come together in a perfect storm to create a truly interesting, generative, wonderful, and joyful possibility for women to be sexual at the age of 50. I want women to know that it is fleeting because things dont last forever. What I would love to see is women who are able to indulge in this moment, whether they are married, whether theyre not married. If youre not married, go out there and have confidence that there are people that want you, that there are people that are interested in you. And for women who arent into having sex, or who cant have a very active sex life at the age of 50 to still bask in the glory of the fact that for the first time in, I would say, all of humanity, the middle-aged female body has grown important. See More:

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Voxs member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today.In the middle of the Caribbean Sea, over 1,000 rhesus macaques live on an island that measures less than a tenth of a mile across. Descendants of a monkey colony imported from India 86 years ago sunbathe, climb trees, and wade in the ocean on Puerto Ricos Isla de los Monos.The island serves as a 38-acre open-air laboratory, with these semi-wild macaques as subjects. The monkeys offer a tantalizing opportunity for scientists hoping to observe animal behavior as close to the wild as they can get, while also having ready access to the monkeys brains, bodies, and genes. That often means killing them.One morning in 2021, researchers transported a monkey, like thousands before him, to a laboratory at the Caribbean Primate Research Center (CPRC) at the University of Puerto Rico less than 50 miles away. We watched him die, former research assistant Alyssa told me in a video call last summer. And then we did what we always do, which is take him apart. (Vox has changed her name to protect her from retaliation.) Killing and dissecting monkeys up to seven per day, she remembers was part of the labs standard protocol. During the culling season in the fall, hundreds of monkeys are killed to control the population of the tiny island. Rather than let their bodies go to waste, Alyssas team dissected them, meticulously preserving their muscles, organs, and brains for studies attempting to connect the monkeys social lives to their anatomy and genetics. Alyssa joined the lab in 2021, after graduating college. Before accepting the job, the labs principal investigator called her, asking whether she was comfortable with blood. She said yes she wasnt squeamish, and had no trouble dissecting frogs and lamb hearts in school. It didnt raise any flags for me at all, she said. Alyssas soon-to-be boss then described perfusion, a euthanasia procedure where, in their lab, a deeply anesthetized monkey is strapped to a table and pumped with saline and preservatives while their blood is pumped out. This preserves the animals tissue for study after death. But, Alyssa said, he left out that the researchers would be witnessing living animals die in front of them, no matter whether it was old, whether it was an infant She paused. We dissected infants. Every day, Alyssa watched at least one monkey die on an operating table, before she would immediately start cutting into it. Her job was to carefully separate all of the organs and tissues and store them in a freezer, preserving them until other scientists could analyze them. She wore a specially fitted mask to avoid breathing in bone dust while sawing through skulls. How I reported thisFrom day one of my Future Perfect fellowship exactly one year after my last day working with monkeys as a PhD student I knew I wanted to write this story. I was sure I wasnt alone in my post-animal research angst, but I wanted to find others willing to share their experiences with me.I ended up speaking with nearly a dozen people, these interviews capturing all of my own unspoken feelings: that its impossible to explain what one sees in these facilities, but dissociating from it is impossible, too.Over the next several months, I weaved pieces of these conversations together with my reporting on mental health in academia and animal testing regulation. The nuance of this piece was tricky, and my goal throughout was to highlight flaws in the academic system without undermining the value and necessity of the research itself.I worked with a team of editors, fact-checkers, and lawyers to get there. (The first draft of this piece was nearly twice as long as what youre reading now!)As she settled into her new routine, she realized just how difficult her day-to-day life would be to explain to outsiders. The thing that was so crazy to me, Alyssa said, was no one else will know what has happened here. She vented about the monkeys on her daily calls to her boyfriend some 1,600 miles away back home. But he couldnt handle story after story of relentless, visceral gore, so Alyssa turned to her therapist. After crying over the phone, she waited for the calm reassurance shed come to expect. Instead, her therapist told Alyssa that she was really worried for her mental health. I surprised myself with how alone I was feeling, she remembered.The night terrors began when she came back home. Culling season was over, but Alyssa woke up to panic attacks for months. Shed flinch whenever someone approached her from behind at work or surprised her in public. Symptoms piled up for months before a psychiatrist named what she was experiencing: post-traumatic stress disorder. A multimedia artist as well as a scientist, Alyssa started creating art inspired by the necropsies seared into her memory anything to make the images visible to the outside world. During our video call, she reached out of frame and pulled out a life-sized crochet replica of a macaques gastrointestinal system. In the necropsy lab, Alyssa cut each monkeys gastrointestinal tract from rectum to esophagus, picked it up with triple-gloved hands, and weighed it part of their standard protocol for collecting and preserving tissues after dissection. An adult macaques intestines can be over a dozen feet long, and weigh a good deal more than a ball of yarn. To make the plush guts feel as hefty as she remembered, I put beads inside them, she said, so when you lift it up, it would feel like what you would do every day. I made three: a big, a medium, and an infant-sized. Alyssa said, holding the tiniest replica, a fuzzy marble-filled snake, to the camera. I was obsessed with describing to other people what we had seen in that place.One of Alyssas crochet gastrointestinal tracts, photographed by her.Alyssas experience is anything but rare. Animal research, while largely hidden from public view, is widespread across the life sciences. Animals are used in everything from safety testing for medicines, cosmetics, and pesticides to exploring open-ended questions about how the mind and body work. The drugs we take, the products we use, and the medical breakthroughs we celebrate have been made possible in large part by lab animals and the people who, in the name of science, kill them. RelatedAnimal testing, explainedWhile its difficult to find the exact number of scientists, veterinarians, and animal caretakers working in research facilities, we know that somewhere around 100 million animals mice, rats, dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys, fish, and birds, among others are used for research and testing worldwide each year. While the Government Accountability Office reported in 2024 that NIH spends about $5.5 billion annually to support animal research, other estimates by activist groups like PETA are significantly higher.Animal research is traumatic obviously for the animals unlucky enough to be involved, but also for many of the humans tasked with harming them. Yet from day one, institutions teach animal researchers that expressing discomfort is akin to weakness, or tantamount to dismissing the value of science altogether. To compete for increasingly rare tenure-track jobs, graduate students and postdocs have no choice but to learn to suppress their emotions and get the work done. Principal investigators, senior scientists who direct animal research labs, often dont care whether inserting electrodes into a conscious, chronically ill monkeys brain makes you squeamish. If you cant handle the heat, they say, get out of the kitchen. The costs have always been out there, bioethicist and former animal researcher John Gluck said. Theyve just been completely ignored. I would know. I spent thousands of hours immersed in the world of researching monkeys (known in the scientific community as NHPs, or nonhuman primates), attempting to study how the brain weighs options during decision-making. In 2023, I graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a PhD in neuroscience, questionable data, zero academic publications, and an intense combination of guilt, rage, and burnout that Im only just beginning to process. Its not clear exactly how many researchers suffer mental health consequences from their work, and its impossible to disentangle the psychological side effects of harming animals from those of trying to survive in an unforgiving, underpaid, and poorly regulated workplace. I do know that many people I know who worked in an animal research facility, myself included, left feeling broken. Everybody that I know has horror stories, Alyssa agreed.In an emailed statement, CPRC told Vox that it is deeply committed to supporting our researchers mental health and well-being, and that its researchers are encouraged to seek mental health resources. As an organization, we remain steadfast in our commitment to upholding the highest ethical, safety, and compliance standards. Our operations align with all applicable federal and institutional guidelines. We actively foster a professional, respectful, and collaborative environment where researchers can openly discuss challenges and seek support, the statement said. Academic institutions have long avoided talking openly about the trauma of animal research. In part, theyre afraid that acknowledging it might invite scrutiny from animal rights activists and undermine the publics already damaged trust in science. The reality is that its easier to downplay the emotional toll of animal testing than to confront the ethical and logistical challenges of dealing with it, given just how central it is to biomedical research. Now, as the Trump administration wages an unprecedented war on scientific institutions, this might feel like a particularly sensitive time to air uncomfortable conversations about painful aspects of science out in the open. But the scientific community can no longer avoid hard conversations about the psychological costs borne by young scientists. If universities and funding agencies admit that theres a problem, they can take meaningful steps like providing better mental health resources and investing in non-animal research methods to improve conditions for everyone.But if young researchers are left to suffer in silence, it is science itself that will suffer, as bright, empathetic minds turn away from some of the most important questions in research or worse, leave the field altogether.Why do we still experiment on animals?The practice of experimenting on animals is as old as biological science itself. To understand a machine, you have to take it apart and figure out how the pieces fit together. Living bodies are biological machines to understand how bodies grow, get sick, and recover, scientists have to take them apart.In the earliest days of Western science, dissection of both animals and human cadavers laid the groundwork for modern surgery and medicine. Today, scientists have many more tools at their disposal, enabling them to make specific cells in a mouses brain glow under a microscope or to remote-control a living fruit fly. What hasnt changed is that most of the time, animals are killed when an experiment ends whether by relatively hands-off methods like gas chambers, or wincingly hands-on methods like snapping their necks, which goes by the more clinical term cervical dislocation.For all its ethical problems, animal research has yielded medical breakthroughs that we take for granted today. Without lab animals, we wouldnt have polio vaccines, PrEP (an HIV-prevention medication that slashes sexual transmission risk by 99 percent), or deep brain stimulation for Parkinsons disease. But animals often make poor substitutes for humans. Much of biomedical science ends up stranded in what researchers call the valley of death: the huge divide between promising preclinical studies, many of which involve testing on animals, and genuine breakthroughs in human medicine. Over 90 percent of preclinical trials for cancer drugs, for example, dont translate to successful clinical trials, because treatments that seem to work in mice fail in humans. Complex socio-psychological conditions like depression are especially challenging to model in caged animals that cant have natural much less human-like experiences. Even monkeys, our close genetic relatives, are stressed and often behave abnormally when caged in a lab, making them poor proxies for uncaged humans.Some newer tools, like AI models and 3D-printed human tissues, are beginning to replace animals in some studies, But not all animal-based methods have alternatives. AI, for example, has to be trained on real-world data to accurately reflect real-world biology. If that data doesnt exist yet, scientists need to collect it usually from the body of a lab animal. And many of medicines most urgent, complex problems, like cancer, affect the whole body in ways that are hard to predict without invasively experimenting on a living organism.New initiatives like NIHs Complement Animal Research in Experimentation Program, which has funded the development of new human-based biomedical tools, may encourage some researchers to pivot away from animal testing. But funding agencies in the US and elsewhere are only just beginning to incentivize scientists to develop alternatives. Meanwhile, funding agencies and research institutions are striving to prove the legitimacy of animal research to the public even as the Trump administration seeks to defund science. Animal researchers know that their work is heavily scrutinized by animal rights activists, who are looking for vulnerabilities to galvanize the public around. Americans are divided on animal research, but the vast majority say it should be phased out in favor of non-animal methods. One postdoctoral researcher I spoke with, who works with mice, told me that a lab on her campus lost NIH funding following a PETA campaign, which also drove hate mail and threats against the scientists who worked there. These experiences breed defensiveness and close researchers off from engaging with critics. Our interactions with [animal rights] groups are often at conferences, with people protesting outside and yelling at you, she said. It just propagates that negative interaction. So young animal researchers with misgivings are told to keep quiet. When I was in grad school, senior scientists told me that publicly expressing discomfort or even sharing day-to-day details of my work would only enrage animal rights activists and potentially fuel further distrust in science. But this silence comes at a cost, stifling innovation and entrenching outdated methods. Were highly leveraged by the system to keep doing what weve always done, said Garet Lahvis, former graduate program director of behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health and Science University. (Lahvis previously wrote about experimenting on caged primates for Vox.) Turning against a tried-and-true method would require a scientist to invalidate their existing body of work, or at least acknowledge that it was unethical, ineffective, or inefficient. So, many dont.Check out Animal testing, explained.Here, I walked through what experimenting on animals actually looks like, why scientists do it, and who is looking out for the welfare of the animals. I also spoke with some researchers who are developing new animal-free tools for biomedical research, and discussed what it will take to replace animals entirely.Over the past few decades, meanwhile, the grant application process has become increasingly competitive, driving scientists to do whatever it takes to make their project proposals sound appealing to potential funders. A 2023 survey of biomedical researchers found that reviewers of grants and peer-reviewed publications generally remain biased in favor of projects with animal-based methods, creating an incentive for scientists to use animals. Lisa Jones-Engel, a former senior scientist at the University of Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) and current senior science adviser at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), recalled serving on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, an ethics oversight panel responsible for reviewing and approving the universitys animal research proposals. She went line by line through each protocol to find ethical breaches worth addressing, but was constantly shut down by her colleagues, who she suspected were more interested in quickly pushing proposals through the pipeline than protecting animal welfare. We encourage responsibility and accountability for ensuring ethical and responsible animal care, science, and human welfare, WaNPRC told Vox in an email. The university did not comment on Jones-Engels experience, but emphasized that researchers are encouraged to report ethical concerns to their principal adviser, department chair, or anonymously, if necessary. I spent 17 years at the university, and it nearly killed me, Jones-Engel told me. I thought that I could single-handedly bring about change just by laying the science out in front of my scientific colleagues. It turns out that I wasnt able to do that.Why would anyone sign up for this?Madeline Krasno grew up loving animals, and hoped to follow in Jane Goodalls footsteps as a primatologist. In 2011, the then-20-year-old applied to be a student caretaker at the Harlow Primate Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, she and one other undergraduate were responsible for weekend feeding, medication, and cleaning the rooms of over 500 monkeys. She believed what she was told: Those monkeys were contributing to important biomedical studies, helping scientists make necessary public health breakthroughs. At least, she recalled, Thats what you tell yourself to make this okay. To boost their chances of getting into competitive graduate programs, many undergrads and recent college graduates eagerly accept entry-level, relatively low-paid jobs like these.Day one at a primate research center in the US can shock even the most hardened scientist. As a neuroscience PhD student, I spent a lot of time in my labs monkey housing room, which always smelled like stale urine and honey. Netflix shows played for a few hours a day on a wall-mounted TV as veterinarian-approved enrichment for the animals, who lived in pairs in metal cages smaller than my full-size bed.A laboratory monkey interacting with an employee at the National Primate Research Center of Thailand. AFP via Getty ImagesSome research groups, like mine, introduce new trainees to these spaces right away to gauge whether they have the stomach for it. Others dont expose trainees to the most disturbing aspects of their work until theyve proven themselves trustworthy. Former research assistant Mayo Asada wasnt invited into her neurobiology labs back rooms, where surgeries take place, for the first month that she worked at the California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis (CNPRC) in 2021. The first time Asada saw her labs monkeys, it was necropsy day. She watched a handler bring a young male monkey into a sterile examination room, holding his hand to keep him calm. The monkey was anesthetized and pumped with saline, like the monkeys in Alyssas lab. As blood left the unconscious monkey, Asada watched as people began removing parts of his body. We know that you werent expecting to see this, Asada was told.I wasnt sure if he was conscious, or how aware he was of what was happening, Asada remembers, referring to the monkey. I was hoping by then that he was in an altered state. Asada paused. I honestly dont remember the rest. I just remember the pieces being separated onto different tables.Despite her shock and discomfort, Asada stuck around. Biomedical careers, especially in academia, often hinge on your superiors opinions. If your well-connected adviser likes you, their glowing letter of recommendation can open doors to prestigious jobs. If they dont, those doors slam shut. The vibe she remembered from superiors in her lab, Asada said, was: Dont mess with us. We will ruin your career.UC Davis told Vox in a statement that it offers free mental health counseling services to employees and students, and that harassment, discrimination, bullying, and other abusive conduct violates university policy. Anyone experiencing or witnessing such conduct is encouraged to report it: we take such reports very seriously and reports are investigated and addressed according to applicable policies and procedures. Many early-career researchers believe that the knowledge they gain from their experiments will justify the harm they will cause. After all, breakthrough treatments like gene therapy and organ transplantation were refined in lab animals before humans. I spent years convincing myself that by recording the brain activity of monkeys, I could uncover crucial information about mental health that would someday revolutionize how we treat depression. Eventually, the emotional labor of justifying the work outweighed my belief in its purpose. Monkey research makes up a small share of all animal research but working with much more widely used rodent species can still be harrowing, if to a lesser degree than for scientists experimenting on our primate cousins. On the subreddit r/labrats, an anonymous forum for over 650,000 biologists, many posts feature variations on the same existential crisis: reckoning with the intense pressure to harm animals, whether for the sake of public health or professional advancement.One recent post asked how people get past the initial ick of killing mice. Many users replied, quite simply, that you dont. In the comments, researchers describe a wide range of coping mechanisms: Sing to the animals. Thank each mouse before putting them in the carbon dioxide chamber. Practice until you can perform injections as painlessly as possible. Or, one user wrote, just do it until youre numb to it.While hosing down cages, Krasno blasted Adeles then-new album 21 through noise-canceling headphones to drown out the screeching monkeys around her. Now, she cant listen to Rolling in the Deep without being transported back to those rooms, and the guilt she felt in her complacency. Im just trying to do what I can for them, she remembered, but also to, like, get the fuck out.In an email statement, UW-Madison shared that it offers confidential counseling and crisis support to students and employees, and leads workshops on identifying and responding to stress related to caring for people and animals. How academia creates a culture of silence As an animal researcher, my life was dictated by animal care. Several times a week, I performed a standard procedure to keep the window into each monkeys brain a small hole cut through their skull open and infection-free. While listening to an episode of This American Life or All Songs Considered, Id fix a monkeys head in place, lift a plastic covering off his exposed skull opening, and gently swab and suction new wisps of tissue growth from the leathery membrane covering his brain. Picture a gloved dental hygienist, sticking a metal pick and a suction doodad in your mouth, casually chitchatting while youre stuck staring at the ceiling. Over time, I learned to dissociate enough to pretend I was just one of those hygienists. But intentionally separating your mind and body is exhausting work. After five years of drowning out screeches and whirring medical tools with podcasts and noise-canceling headphones, I couldnt feel anything anymore. I spent those years lying about my job on dates, omitting details from my closest friends, and filtering myself in calls with my therapist. At first, I told myself that they wouldnt understand. Eventually, as my experiments failed over and over, it stopped making sense to me, too.We are the mad scientists. We are like the people in horror films, torturing them. Its crazy what we do to handle it.Almost every researcher I spoke with had a similar experience. Andrew a former graduate student, whose name has been changed to protect him from harassment left his position at a major US primate research center in 2022, after spending two years studying infectious diseases in juvenile monkeys. A long-time animal lover, he was initially horrified by the deaths and dissections required to investigate the effects of viral infections on developing brains and bodies. To get through his masters degree, he dissociated. We are the mad scientists. We are like the people in horror films, torturing them. Its crazy what we do to handle it, he told me last summer. In the end, the forced apathy crushed what enthusiasm he once had for academic research. It felt like I was chewed up and spit out.For some researchers, the numbness, anxiety, and distress linger long after the work is done. At CNPRC, Asada turned to alcohol to self-medicate. I dont like drinking, but I would drink myself to sleep every night, she said. What prompted me to leave was realizing that no one that worked there was okay. (UC Davis, in a statement, said students can access support through Student Health and Counseling Services, and employees through the Academic and Staff Assistance Program.)Academic science has a well-documented mental health problem. A 2018 survey of about 2,300 early-career science researchers across 26 countries reported that 41 percent had moderate to severe anxiety, and 39 percent had moderate to severe depression often correlated with reports of poor work-life balance and bad relationships with advisers. One study of about 200 Korean scientists found that animal researchers had significantly higher anxiety scores than non-animal researchers. Since then, the problem has only gotten worse depression is so common in academia that researchers across fields accept it as part of the job. In Sweden where the population ranks far above that of the US in overall happiness researchers followed over 20,000 PhD students in the course of their studies, and found that for students in the natural sciences, use of psychiatric medication steadily climbed year after year, nearly doubling by the time they graduated. In other words, if 13 out of 100 people started their biology PhD program with a prescription for antidepressants, 26 were likely to graduate with one.Nor does it help that the scientific enterprise runs a bit like a feudal system, with powerful professors at the top, and postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and research assistants at the bottom. The only real way to advance is through having a well-connected mentor at a prestigious, highly-resourced university. But that means anything that might alienate that senior scientist like questioning the labs animal care protocols or experimental techniques could place your job or even your scientific future at risk. So much of science relies on senior research leaders, who dont have to get their hands dirty anymore, convincing their junior colleagues they have no other options than to do work so violent and disturbing that it makes many of them suicidal, a pseudonymous X account, run by a graduate student in the sciences who works with non-animal models, posted last August.The limits of compassion fatigueWhat limited peer-reviewed research has been done on the mental health effects of lab animal care usually surveys of veterinarians and animal care technicians focuses on the concept of compassion fatigue, a form of burnout brought on by providing care in exhausting, traumatic environments. Institutions know that early-career scientists struggling with their mental health, even brilliant ones, are likely to leave academia. Academic departments with doctoral training programs also know that losing students looks bad on grant applications, leading reviewers to question their stability and leadership. Some universities are trying to respond to the crisis. Dare 2 Care, a program at the University of Washington, aims to remedy compassion fatigue by suggesting that workers do things like connect with peers, place heart-shaped stickers indicating planned euthanasia dates on mouse cages, and express gratitude to lab animals for their sacrifice. Giving workers the chance to emotionally prepare for the end of a study when animals like mice are usually killed fosters a sense of closure and reduces emotional distress, WaNPRC told Vox in an email. But these animals are not choosing to be sacrificed, said Krasno. Compassion fatigue training, she suspects, is more of a Band-Aid than a solution, with the primary goal of boosting staff retention by reframing an employees unease as a personal issue to be managed, rather than an inevitable consequence of their work. one study reported that over three-quarters of animal care workers surveyed felt that institutional compassion fatigue programs didnt help them manage their symptoms. WaNPRC pointed me to another report, which found that only 24 percent of surveyed animal care workers said compassion fatigue support programming helped improve their symptoms.What institutions ask of tech staff is hurting these people, said Jones-Engel, who worked with lab primates for 17 years before becoming a scientist at PETA. Theyre the ones that have to look in the eyes of the monkeys every day. They have to pull that mouse box out and see there were three cannibalized pups in there. Compared to care staff, none of the young scientists grad students, postdocs, and research assistants I spoke with felt that compassion fatigue was the best way to characterize their experience. Its a subtle but crucial difference: While care workers face burnout from tending to unhappy animals in bleak spaces, researchers have to view the animals as tools to be used and the researchers are the ones using them. Researchers are worn down by the pressure to treat animals as data points. A sick or uncooperative animal can derail months of work, jeopardizing their ability to graduate, publish papers, or compete for scarce academic jobs. Killing living things that youve intentionally distanced yourself from while convincing yourself that it serves some greater utilitarian purpose is part of the job. And then youre just supposed to go home and eat dinner and exist in your life, and not feel the impact of repeatedly taking someones life, said Krasno. Its a highly traumatic field, but somehow, animal researchers get forgotten.How do we fix this? However entrenched animal research feels right now, the world of biomedical research is on the brink of massive change. Within decades, invasive research on lab animals could be obsolete, as new technology allows scientists to test cancer treatments on tissues grown from a patients own cells, or create detailed maps of Alzheimers disease in human brains. Everyone recognizes that the goal is to eventually try to replace animals, Naomi Charalambakis, the then-associate director of science policy at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the largest biomedical coalition in the US, told Scientific American last year. The financial incentive to replace animal testing, too, is clear and compelling. Like keeping humans alive in prison, keeping animals alive in labs is incredibly expensive. Lab monkeys, which are in short supply, are especially costly, now selling for tens of thousands of dollars each. At this point, Jones-Engel believes its all but inevitable that animal testing will be phased out. Its just a matter of when. Its not just that the writings on the wall, she said. The writing is like, plastered. Its a giant neon sign saying Were done.But the push to phase out animal testing depends on more than just greater efficiency it calls for a reckoning with a legacy of harm. For the scientific community to truly evolve, it will need to confront its history and acknowledge the possibility of change. Helping animal researchers understand and grapple with their own experiences is a crucial first step.It may be tempting to dismiss people who experiment on animals as villains who dont deserve empathy or institutional support. Considering the well-being of those who cause harm for a living might feel incongruous, like imagining a peer support group for executioners. But new animal researchers often dont know what theyre getting themselves into, and sometimes even choose to work in these labs because they love animals. Many institutions know this, so they require first-year grad students to complete several lab rotations, or trial runs where trainees typically spend two to three months in a handful of research groups, before committing to the team theyll work with for the next few years. But not all programs offer such rotations, including programs where students could end up working with animals. They should. It is also crucial that institutions have trustworthy systems in place for reporting workplace safety and animal welfare violations without fear of punishment, and with the option of anonymity. And lab workers also need to have faith that when they report violations, their campuss Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), an internal body that oversees each universitys animal research, will take them seriously. Right now, though, these panels are strongly biased toward approving animal experiments. To signal a genuine commitment to animal welfare, institutions should rebalance IACUCs to include a greater percentage of members who arent affiliated with the universitys scientific research.At bare minimum, institutions need to acknowledge the trauma they expose workers to and provide adequate mental health care for researchers. Simple measures like furnishing warm, naturally lit spaces for personal time and conversation during breaks and protecting that break time can make room for vulnerability in an otherwise sterile environment. University counselors should be trained to help animal researchers navigate complex feelings of guilt, grief, and anxiety, without pressure to reconcile those feelings with any particular ethical stance. In parallel, senior scientists many of whom were hired for their science chops, not their empathetic leadership should be taught compassionate mentorship, and how to respond to challenging situations with empathy and tact. Principal investigators dont get enough training as it is on how to mentor and train others, said Jocelyn Breton, a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University and soon-to-be neuroscience professor at Smith College. Breton has mentored many first-time animal researchers in the decade since she started working with mice and rats. Its really hard, she tells her students, and it doesnt get easier. Her current lab has a dedicated meeting every semester to discuss animal ethics and hold space for people to bring up concerns, and she checks in with her trainees frequently. Before exposing new students to animal death, she briefs them on what to expect. Afterward, she checks in, shares her own emotional experience, and gives students the freedom to set their own boundaries. Students have passed out watching perfusions, she told me, and some trainees quit. Creating a space where trainees feel comfortable choosing to leave is the point. You have to strive to have an ethical identity John Gluck, a research professor at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University who built his career on animal research, credits this kind of openness to dialogue with changing his mind about the use of animals in science. As a graduate student in the 1960s, before animal welfare laws were established in the US, he worked in psychologist Harry Harlows infamous monkey lab at UW Madison, where Madeline Krasno cleaned cages decades later. Gluck remembers researchers performing brain surgery with their bare hands and relatively limited experience. Animal welfare was an afterthought. After our video call, John Gluck emailed me a list of suggestions for other academics, particularly principal investigators of animal research labs, who are ready to start exploring their ambivalence about animal testing. Here are his suggestions, edited for length: Keep a private journal of moments when questions concerning the validity of animal testing emerge.Sit in on relevant philosophy and ethics talks. If you have not yet served on an IACUC, consider getting an appointment. Remain mostly quiet as you take in the process, and consider: Is it a process that screens questionable science, and protects experimental animals from misuse? Make time to meet with students and caregivers working with the animals in your studies. Have open conversations about their concerns, and reflect on your own comfort and openness during these conversations.Engage individuals from animal welfare groups and listen to their point of view. Freely observe the animals associated with your research, with no particular focus. Learn about the natural behavior of animals commonly used in your research.With Harlows help, Gluck landed a tenure-track faculty job at the University of New Mexico, where he launched a monkey lab in Harlows image exactly as he was expected to. In 1977, two years after philosopher Peter Singers Animal Liberation was published, his lab was attacked by animal rights activists, who released all of the monkeys living there. Gluck was incensed.For years, my fury blocked the self-reflection that is expected of any scientist who harms vulnerable animals for presumed human benefit, Gluck wrote in a 2011 letter to the scientific journal Nature. I dismissed even reasonable ethical questions directed at me and my work.But over time, Gluck told me, conversations with students and veterinarians slowly opened his mind. Gluck took leave from his faculty job to immerse himself in a bioethics fellowship that ultimately convinced him to leave animal research behind. What can I say? You just cant keep publishing mistakes, he said.Scientists, including a younger Gluck, often dismiss animal welfare activists. He remembers one major scientist responding to protests by saying, Id have them all put in a psychiatric facility. In conversations Ive had with supporters of animal research, Ive sensed a similar disdain, even fear, toward people working for organizations like PETA. But Gluck says that animal researchers need to give them more credit, or at least actually talk to them: Were not listening.I asked him what advice he would give to other scientists considering shifting their research model. You have to strive to have an ethical identity, he said. Otherwise, what are you doing? You might as well be working in a bowling alley.Not every scientist will, or needs to, make the same radical shift as Gluck did. But there is power in openness, and in loosening ones grip on the way things have always been. And soon, scientists may be forced to confront the consequences of both the status quo and the sudden upheaval of their institutions by the Trump administration. The future of biomedical research will depend on rebuilding and sustaining a thoughtful, empathetic workforce and on our ability to ensure that discovery doesnt come at the expense of those who make it possible. Correction, March 6, 2025: A previous version of this story misstated the NIHs funding going toward research projects involving animals. The Government Accountability Office reported NIH funding at about $5.5 billion annually; other estimates are higher.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:

If you know the name of a case the Supreme Court will hear on March 31, Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, you can probably guess who will prevail. The Courts Republican majority almost always rules in favor of Christian litigants who seek an exemption from a federal or state law, which is what Catholic Charities is looking for in this case. (Notably, the Courts Republicans have not always shown the same sympathy for Muslims with religious liberty claims.)But, while the outcome in Catholic Charities seems unlikely to be a surprise, the stakes in the case are still quite high. Catholic Charities seeks an exemption from Wisconsins law requiring nearly all employers to pay taxes that fund unemployment benefits. If the Court grants this exemption, the justices could give many employers a broad new power to evade laws governing the workplace.Like every state, Wisconsin taxes employers to fund benefits for workers who lose their jobs. Like most states, Wisconsins unemployment benefits law also contains an exemption for church-run nonprofits that are operated primarily for religious purposes. The states supreme court recently clarified that this exemption only applies to nonprofit employers that primarily engage in religious activities such as holding worship services or providing religious education. It does not apply to employers like Catholic Charities, which provide secular services like feeding the poor or helping disabled people find jobs even if the employer is motivated by religious faith to provide these secular services.Catholic Charities, however, claims that it has a First Amendment right to an exemption, arguing, among other things, that Wisconsins limited exemption for some religious nonprofits and not others discriminates against Catholics.None of its arguments are persuasive, at least under the Supreme Courts existing decisions. But precedent plays hardly any role in how this Court decides religion cases. The Republican justices routinely vote to overrule, or simply to ignore, religion cases that they disagree with. The Courts very first major decision after Justice Amy Coney Barretts appointment gave Republicans a supermajority on the Court effectively overruled a decision governing worship services during the Covid-19 pandemic that was only a few months old.Realistically, in other words, the Court will likely decide Catholic Charities based on the justices personal preferences, rather than by following the doctrine of stare decisis, which says that courts should typically follow their own precedents.That said, it remains to be seen how far this Court might go in its ruling. It could choose to distinguish Catholic Charities which is a legitimate charity that does genuinely admirable work from employers who claim religious exemptions only to hurt their own employees. But if it chooses to be expansive, it could overrule a line of precedents that protect workers from exploitative employers who claim a religious justification for that exploitation.Religious liberty doesnt mean religious organizations get civil societys benefits and none of its costsIn order to understand the Catholic Charities case, its helpful to first understand the legal concept of a corporation. Corporations are entities that are typically easy to form under any states law, and which are considered to be entirely separate from their owners or creators. Forming a corporation brings several benefits, but the most important is limited liability. If a corporation is sued, it can potentially be liable for all of its assets, but the owners or controllers of that corporation are not on the hook for anything else.Corporations can also create their own corporations, thus protecting some of their assets from lawsuits.Think of it this way: Imagine that Jos owns two businesses, one of which sells auto parts, and another that fixes cars. If these businesses are incorporated, that means that Joss personal assets (such as his house) are protected if one of his businesses are sued. Moreover, if both businesses are incorporated as two separate entities, a lawsuit against one business cannot touch the other one. So if, say, the auto parts company sells a defective part, that company could potentially be put out of business by a lawsuit. But the car repair company will remain untouched.Catholic Charities is a corporation that is controlled by the Roman Catholic Church. According to its lawyers, the president of Catholic Charities in Superior, Wisconsin, is a Catholic bishop, who also appoints its board of directors. The Catholic Church gains significant benefits from this arrangement, because it means that a lawsuit against Catholic Charities cannot touch the churchs broader assets.Under Wisconsin law, however, the churchs decision to separately incorporate Catholic Charities also has a cost. Wisconsin exempts employers that engage in religious activity such as worship services from its unemployment regime, but it does not give this exemption to charitable corporations that only engage in secular activity. Because Catholic Charities is a separate legal entity from the church itself, and because it does not engage in any of the religious activity that would exempt it from paying unemployment taxes, it does not get an exemption.Presumably, the church was aware of all of these consequences when it chose to separately incorporate Catholic Charities. The Catholic Church has very good legal counsel, and its lawyers would have advised it of both the benefits of separate incorporation (limited liability) and the price of that benefit (no unemployment exemption). Notably, Catholic Charities has paid unemployment taxes since 1972.But Catholic Charities now claims that this decades-old arrangement is unfair and unconstitutional. According to its brief, the Diocese of Superior operates Petitioners as separately incorporated ministries that carry out Christs command to help the needy, but if Catholic Charities were not separately incorporated, it would be exempt. That very well may be true, but if Catholic Charities were not separately incorporated, it also would not benefit from limited liability.That brief alleges three separate constitutional violations it claims that Wisconsin discriminates against religious groups with more complex polities (that is, with more complex corporate structures), and it also raises two claims that both boil down to an allegation that Wisconsin is too involved with the churchs internal affairs because its law treats Catholic Charities differently if that entity were not separately incorporated.The discrimination claim is weak, because the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination against entities with complex corporate structures, it prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion. Wisconsin law treats Catholics no differently than anyone else. If a Muslim, Hindu, Protestant, Jewish, or nonreligious charity also provides exclusively secular services, it also does not receive an exemption from the states unemployment law.Similarly, Wisconsin law does not entangle the state in the churchs internal affairs, or otherwise dictate how the church must structure itself and its subordinate entities. It merely offers the church a bargain that it is free to turn down the church may have limited liability, but only if it accepts the consequences of separate incorporation.A decision for Catholic Charities could have disastrous consequences for workersRealistically, the immediate consequences of a decision for Catholic Charities would be virtually nonexistent. The church maintains its own internal program that pays unemployment benefits to laid off workers, and it claims that this benefit program provides the same maximum weekly benefit rate as the States system. So it appears that, no matter who prevails before the Supreme Court, unemployed former employees of Catholic Charities will still receive similar benefits.But other religious employers may not offer benefits to their unemployed workers. If Catholic Charities prevail in this case, that victory would likely extend to all organizations which, like Catholic Charities, engage in secular charitable work motivated by religious belief. So workers in other organizations could be left with nothing.Historically, the Supreme Court was reluctant to allow religious employers to seek exemptions from laws that protect their workers, and for a very good reason abandoning this reluctance risks creating the situation the Court tried to ward off in Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor (1985).Tony Alamo was often described in news reports as a cult leader. He was convicted of sexual abuse against girls he considered to be his wives. One of his victims may have been as young as nine. Witnesses at his trial, according to the New York Times, testified that Alamo had made all decisions for his followers: who got married; what children were taught in school; who got clothes; and who was allowed to eat.The Alamo Foundation case involved an organization which was nominally a religious nonprofit. But, as the Supreme Court explained, it operated a number of commercial businesses, which include 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. Tony was the president of this foundation, and its workers received no cash salaries or wages although they were given food, clothing, and shelter.The federal government sued the foundation, alleging violations of federal minimum wage, overtime, and record keeping laws. And the Supreme Court rejected the foundations claim that it was entitled to a religious exemption from these laws. Had the Court ruled otherwise, it could have allowed people like Tony Alamo to exploit their workers with little recourse to federal or state law.The Alamo Foundation opinion warned, moreover, that permitting the foundation to pay substandard wages would undoubtedly give [it] and similar organizations an advantage over their competitors. Cult leaders with vulnerable followers would potentially push responsible employers out of the market, because employers who remained bound by law would no longer be able to compete.Indeed, the Supreme Court used to be so concerned about religious companies gaining an unfair competitive advantage that, in United States v. Lee (1982), it announced a blanket rule 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. Religious entities were sometimes entitled to legal exemptions under Lee, but they had to follow the same workplace and business regulations as anyone else.Its important to be clear that the Catholic Church bears little resemblance to the Alamo cult, and Catholic Charities certainly does not exploit its workers in the same way that the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation was accused of doing. But the Court paints with a broad brush when it hands down constitutional decisions, and the Constitution does not permit discrimination among religious faiths. So, if the Catholic Church is allowed to exempt itself from workplace regulations, the same rule will also extend to other religious employers who may be far more exploitative. Should Catholic Charities prevail, religious workers can only pray that the Court writes a cautious opinion that doesnt abandon the concerns which drove its decision in Alamo Foundation.See More:

All across the world, people are having fewer children. The birth rate is declining quickly in countries ranging from the United States to Finland to Mexico and Turkey.Fertility data used to be a fairly esoteric concern. Not anymore. Vice President JD Vance talks about it regularly, Elon Musk calls it civilizations greatest threat. Theres even a convention for pronatalists, Natalcon, taking place later this month in Texas. While worry about the falling birth rate has become a right-wing shibboleth, some Democrats are also leaning into pro-family rhetoric.Why birth rates are declining is hotly debated. Some point to the increase in womens education and income, others to the cost of childcare and housing. Kings College London social scientist Alice Evans has another theory.What has happened everywhere, all at once, is that we see a rise of singles, Evans told Today, Explained co-host Noel King, and it precisely correlates with the decline in fertility.King talked to Evans for a recent episode of Today, Explained. Click the link below to hear the whole thing The following is a transcript edited for length and clarity.Give me your name. Tell me what you do and your area of expertise.My name is Alice Evans and Im a senior lecturer of international development at Kings College London, and my research focuses on gender[and the birth rate]. My research has taken me from Mexican villages to the Atlas Mountains to Uzbek towns, through Korean universities. And by talking, learning from young men, older men, and women across the world, Ive started to think: Why is fertility collapsing? Whats going on? And my interviews have really helped me understand this massive global problem. So birth rates are going down all across the world. What are the leading theories as to why this is happening?Theres the right wing, the left wing, and then theres the Alice Evans take.Okay!I think the conservative right in the US will blame childless cat ladies, right? So theyll say that, yes, women are over-educated, theyre living with their cats and theyre very, very selfish.Correct. But heres the thing: That theory has two major omissions, because the collapse in fertility is happening at vastly different political economies. I mean, in Tunisia and Turkey, female labor force participation is very low, around 30 percent, and yet their fertility is only 1.5 (children per woman) so even in places where women arent even getting jobs, theyre not having kids. India is an extremely patriarchal casteist society, but in Tamil Nadu, in the south, its got exactly the same fertility rate as England and Wales. Thats 1.4. So its not just about these over-educated women pursuing their careers. Also, theres also a class-based variation. The US right tends to blame these overeducated women in Sweden and in Finland, the rate of childlessness is actually among the most disadvantaged people. Theyre least likely to have children.I wonder if JD Vance knows any of this.He should call me up!All right, so thats on the right, and then we heard earlier the theory on the left. Theres one theory that you often hear is that its just become too expensive. Women would like to have more children, but they cant afford to. Theres not enough support. People arent making enough money, etc.Absolutely. So many people across the world experience economic difficulties, and so these could be like very high house prices in New York, making it much more expensive to have an apartment with an extra room. Or the very expensive cost of childcare. You know, when I was in San Francisco, people would say, [childcare] might be $30,000! Super, super expensive, and thats prohibitively difficult for many families. Now those difficulties are real, and governments should take those economic concerns seriously. And Im all here supporting more affordable housing, greater access to safer, accessible childcare. However, I dont think that explanation is a full story, because it wont explain why its happening everywhere, all at once, even at very, very different levels of income. So that brings us to the Alice Evans theory.Yes, exactly. So what has happened everywhere, all at once, is that we see a rise of singles Now, previously, from the 1960s onward American couples had fewer children, but now whats happening is theyre not even forming those couples. So in America, for example, over half of 18- to 34-year-olds are neither in a steady relationship nor living with a partner. Furthermore, most single Americans dont feel much pressure to find a partner. Half say theyre not even looking. Are we sure that sexy singles are to blame? Because for many years, people have had kids without being married or without living with someone, without being in relationships. Oh, thats a great point, but thats actually going down too now. In America, its always been the least educated who are less likely to marry and thats where theres been the steepest decline in fertility.All right, so Im assuming you looked into why more people are staying single and also saying, I want to be single. Whats going on?So heres the thing, I think, historically, people would have married for one of three reasons. Very crudely: love, money, or respect.Hmm.In conservative societies where singledom is totally stigmatized, then you have to marry for respectability. In India where its so important, lots of aunties and uncles might be pestering people, you know, when are you getting married? When are you getting married? For my grandparents, it was just the done thing to get married. But now, as society liberalizes, you know, Miley Cyrus championing flowers, I can buy myself flowers, theres more permissibility. So thats one thing. Theres also economic convergence. As women earn their own incomes, they can increasingly be more independent. So compatibility increasingly depends on love, whether people really enjoy each others company. But of course, there are lots of frictions. People might be manipulative, deceitful, unfaithful, and if there are lots of frictions, they may call it quits. So that might be one aspect of it, economic convergence between men and womens earnings, and cultural liberalization, making singledom more permissible. On top of that, I think the big change that we see across the world, all at very different levels of income, is the massive improvement in hyper-engaging online entertainment: TikTok, video games, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Bridgerton, Netflix. You can browse Blackpinks livestream, or go on PornHub anything you like! All these technological advances enable instant access to the worlds most charismatic, charming content. Or maybe you prefer to do sports bets and gambling. And so why venture out when everything is at your fingertips, from Netflix to Zoom meetings? And so we see tracing the data over time that there is growing isolation, young people are spending much more time alone. In recent surveys, 65 percent of young American men say no one knows me well.Awww.And 28 percent of Gen Z didnt socialize with anyone they didnt live with in the past week. So we just see this global trend, and it is absolutely global. So for example, last year, I was in Mexico and lots of different Mexican little towns, and mothers would say the biggest problem here is that our teenage sons are spending all their time in their bedroom. And Ill hear the same stories in little Indian villages, in Bangladeshi villages, all these people being hooked on hyper-engaging media.Are there any countries that buck the trend?Well, yes, actually. I was in Uzbekistan for a month last year, and there, theres been an increase in fertility. When Im in Uzbekistan, people will typically ask me four questions, and the answer should always be yes. Do you like Uzbekistan? Do you like Uzbek food? Are you married? Do you have children?Hah! And that tells you a lot about peoples priorities: a strong and a national pride, and also this strong onus that women should be married and have children. So thats one option. You [can also] just pump up the status of marriage and fertility. In Georgia, their Orthodox Patriarch similarly bumped up the status of children and fertility [by promising to personally baptize any baby born to parents who already have at least two children]. In Hungary, they tried to give people cheaper mortgages if they promised theyd be married and have children. But what Im saying about the Alice Evans theory of the collapsing fertility is that these pronatal incentives of saying $2,000, $5,000 to have an extra child, theyre simply too small if the prior constraint is that most people are increasingly single. Most governments are putting the cart before the horse, by focusing on couples, rather than realizing this prior constraint. If Im right, that the problem is technology, this hyper-engaging media, distracting us, and driving this digital solitude, which ultimately prevents people from forming couples, then we need to think: Well, we have various options. Could we regulate technology in some way? Could we introduce further restrictions? Or what can we do in schools to ensure that were fostering social skills? Because just as we see declining maths and English reading skills across the OECD, simultaneously, my interviews suggest that if people arent spending time socializing, then theyre not necessarily developing the capacity to bond and charm and woo. You know, if youre not mixing and mingling, then you get a little bit anxious if you go out into a crowd of unknown strangers.This is such a good point. And so the question becomes: What do we do that doesnt simultaneously make us feel like we are losing personal civil liberties? The government could take my phone and send me to speed dating, but that would feel like a real invasion. And, you know, personal freedoms, people feel pretty strongly about those, so in terms of how we should change the conversation around what went wrong here, what is going wrong here, and what we should do about it whats your best idea?So my message for the world, based on my globally comparative research, is: lets focus on the core problem, and thats the rise of singles. Now, how can we address that? First and foremost, we need to understand and tackle the problem. Lets have a range of pilot initiatives to build community groups, to build local clubs and societies, to support communities so that people can mix and mingle and fall in love. Im a great advocate for romantic love, for sharing our life stories, for empathizing and understanding with each other, thats quintessentially what makes us human. So if we put that problem front and center and start working on that tricky conundrum, then maybe we can, you know, address loneliness and boost up fertility. 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:

An earlier version of this story appeared in Kids Today, Voxs newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.A Vox reader asks, Why do children often have imaginary friends?Sometime in the doldrums of Covid lockdown, when day care was closed and social life felt like a distant memory, I caught my then-toddler trying to feed milk to a photograph of a bat.Big Bat, as he became known, is a Mexican free-tailed bat who appears on page 121 of Endangered, a book of wildlife photos that a grandparent gave to us. For a period of several months in 2020, my older kid (at that time, my only kid) asked to see this photo several times a day. He greeted Big Bat, talked to him, and, at least once, offered him a refreshing beverage. During an isolated time, Big Bat was his friend.I thought of Big Bat again this week, when I talked to Tracy Gleason, a psychology professor at Wellesley College who studies imaginary friends or, as she and other experts sometimes call them, imaginary companions. While adults often think of these companions as invisible entities children talk to (which explains their prevalence in horror movies), in fact, an imaginary friend can often be an object that the child animates and personifies and treats as real, Gleason said. That object can be a stuffed animal, a doll, or something more unusual. I heard about a kid once who was very close friends with one of those little cans of tomato paste, Gleason told me.Odd as that may sound, imaginary friends are extremely common. In one study published in 2004, 65 percent of kids reported having had at least one imaginary friend by age 7. As to why kids have imaginary companions, Gleason says they can be a way for children to work through the complexities of social life in a safe, low-stakes context after all, your imaginary friend cant get mad at you (unless you want them to). But theres another, simpler reason kids play with imaginary companions, Naomi Aguiar, who has done research and co-authored a book on the phenomenon, told me.The primary role that imaginary friends serve in a lot of kids lives is just for fun and entertainment, she said. Kids do it because its fun.Imaginary friends are most common in early childhood, but middle-schoolers and even adults can have them too, Gleason said.These companions can take a variety of forms in the 2004 study, which looked at 100 6- and 7-year olds, 57 percent of imaginary friends were human, 41 percent were animals, and one was a human capable of transforming herself into any animal the child wanted.In a study published in 2017 by Aguiar and other researchers, one 9-year-old reported being friends with an invisible Siberian tiger who had power swipes but also needed comfort during rainy nights. Another child had a stuffed pony named Pony, described as a secret agent with X-ray vision who was really good at everything. A third kid was friends with an invisible milk carton whom she described as very kind and kind of like a conscience.I learned a lot about Milk and Milk learned a lot about me, the child said of their relationship.Imaginary friends (yes, even milk cartons) can be a way for kids to get their minds around the confusion of social relationships, experts say. Friendships can be especially scary, because theyre voluntary and open-ended, Gleason said. While your parents will always be your parents, your friend does not have to be your friend. Friendships also have different rules and dynamics from family relationships, and those rules may not be clearly defined. You can imagine why somebody might want an imaginary version of that to practice, Gleason said, so that even if things go awry, its all fine.Indeed, imaginary friends sometimes fight or refuse to play with their real-life kid counterparts. One 9-year-old girl in Aguiars study described a tiny invisible boy who was usually kind and generous but would sometimes pull her hair. Another kid had a gorilla friend who sometimes disagreed about whether they should go to the park. When an imaginary friend is a little difficult, thats the child trying to figure out, what does it mean when somebody doesnt want to play with you? Gleason said. What does it mean when somebody is mean to you? How do you respond?Theres no reason to be concerned if your child has an imaginary friend, experts say. Often, those friendships are just a really fun way to play.Imaginary friendships are developmentally normal, experts say while these friendships used to be seen as a sign of loneliness or other problems, experts now say kids who have imaginary friends are no more likely to have mental health troubles than kids who dont have such friendships.Kids who have gone through trauma sometimes do use imaginary companions to cope. Children who have been sexually abused, in particular, sometimes invent friends who serve as guardians or protectors, Aguiar said. One study found that Japanese children played with their personified objects more during the pandemic than they had beforehand, suggesting an increased role for these imaginary companions during times of isolation (no word on the role of Big Bats).But overall, theres no reason to be concerned if your child has an imaginary friend, experts say. Often, those friendships are just a really fun way to play.Christine Nguyen, a California mom of two, told me her younger daughter, now 12, has been friends with Hammie since the age of four. Hammie is a stuffed hamster who is rude and vulgar (hes been known to eat poop crumbs) but also wildly wealthy Nguyens daughter once made a video of him bouncing on a bed of play money. Hammie takes risks and lives large. He has gone sky-diving, and at one point got a BBL. Hammie also screams at people on car trips and sometimes has to be exiled to the dashboard.Nguyen says her daughter has always been a mischievous person, and she likes to test boundaries, and I feel like Hammie was a way to test boundaries even more.Kids dont have a lot of autonomy as theyre growing up, Aguiar pointed out. Theres a lot of having to do things in certain ways at certain times.But with an imaginary friend, you have total creative license to create whatever you want for yourself, Aguiar said. An imaginary relationship is one of the few areas of life in which kids have total freedom to do whatever they want.This story was also featured in the Explain It to Me newsletter. Sign up here. For more from Explain It to Me, check out the podcast.See More:

There are many lawsuits challenging allegedly illegal actions by the Trump administration 132 of them as of March 21, according to the legal news site Just Security. Thats a lot to keep track of.Two issues raised by some of these suits stand out, however, as Trumps most blatant violations of the Constitution, and therefore as matters to pay particular attention to. One is the question of whether Trump can simply cancel federal spending that is mandated by an act of Congress, an issue known as impoundment. As future Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in a 1969 Justice Department memo, it is in our view extremely difficult to formulate a constitutional theory to justify a refusal by the President to comply with a congressional directive to spend.The other issue is birthright citizenship. The Constitution is absolutely clear that anyone born in the United States and subject to its laws is a citizen, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. As one Reagan-appointed judge said of Trumps attempt to strip citizenship from some Americans born in this country, Ive been on the bench for over four decades, I cant remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is.The current Supreme Court is not just very far to the right, it is alarmingly partisan. The Courts spent the last several years settling old grievances, overruling decades-old cases that the Republican Party has long found objectionable. It even ruled that Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, is allowed to use his official powers to commit crimes. So it is reasonable to worry that a majority of the justices will simply do whatever a Republican administration wants them to do.This is why the birthright citizenship and impoundment cases are such important bellwethers. No competent lawyer, and certainly no reasonable judge, could conclude that Trumps actions in either case are lawful. There is no serious debate about what the Constitution says about either issue. If the Court rules in favor of Trump in either case, its hard to imagine the justices offering any meaningful pushback to anything Trump wants to do.Fortunately, there are early signs that this wont happen. On the impoundment issue, the Supreme Court recently rejected the Trump administrations request to block a lower court order compelling the administration to make approximately $2 billion in payments to foreign aid organizations. The vote was 5-4, and the Courts decision likely turned on a careless mistake by Trumps lawyers. Still, even a small defeat for Trump indicates that most of the justices arent so eager to bail out the leader of the Republican Party that they will jump on the first opportunity to do so.Similarly, three cases raising the birthright citizenship issue recently landed on the Courts shadow docket emergency motions and similar matters decided, often very rapidly, outside of the Courts normal schedule. So far, the Courts only issued brief orders indicating that the justices wont even start to consider the case until April 4 at the earliest, more than three weeks after the Trump administration asked them to intervene. Thats not a definitive sign that birthright citizenship is safe, but the fact that the Court decided to wait three weeks before looking at lower court orders that protected birthright citizenship suggests that most of the justices dont take the Trump administrations arguments very seriously. If they had, they likely would have heard the cases sooner in the foreign aid case where four justices sided with Trump, for example, the plaintiffs were given just two days to respond to the Justice Departments arguments.The legal arguments for impoundment are really, really badTrump has claimed sweeping authority to cancel spending appropriated by Congress, including dismantling entire agencies like the US Agency for International Development (USAID). He also issued an executive order purporting to strip citizenship from many children born to undocumented mothers, or to parents who are temporarily present in the United States. Thus far, the courts have treated both of these actions with skepticism as they should because they are clearly unconstitutional.Rehnquists dismissive response to impoundment speaks for itself. Theres simply nothing in the Constitution that supports the argument that the president can impound funds that Congress commands him to spend. Indeed, the only language in the Constitution that seems to speak to this issue cuts against Trump. Among other things, the Constitution says that the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. So the president has a duty to faithfully execute any law providing for federal spending.Its worth noting, moreover, that at least two of the Courts Republicans have previously expressed skepticism about impoundment. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 2013 opinion that even the President does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress. And Roberts wrote in a 1985 White House memo on impoundment that no area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse. (Though it is worth noting that Roberts also suggested, in an attachment to that memo, that the president may have greater authority over spending relating to foreign policy.)The legal arguments against birthright citizenship are even worseThe case for birthright citizenship is even more straightforward. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. Someone is subject to US jurisdiction if the federal government can enforce its laws against that person. Undocumented immigrants and their children are obviously subject to US law, otherwise they could not be arrested or deported.As the Supreme Court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the subject to the jurisdiction exception to birthright citizenship is narrow and primarily applies to the children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign state, who have diplomatic immunity from US law, as well as children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation.At least three courts have issued orders blocking Trumps attack on birthright citizenship. In a brief asking the Supreme Court to narrow these orders, the Trump administration claims that the word jurisdiction actually means allegiance. So someone is not a citizen if they dont owe primary allegiance to the United States rather than to an alien power.But there are two reasons to doubt that even the Trump administration agrees with this argument. One is that Trumps executive order only purports to strip citizenship from some children born to foreign nationals a child of two lawful permanent residents, for example, remains a citizen. But if the Fourteenth Amendment doesnt apply to anyone who owes primary allegiance to an alien power, that would mean that all children of foreign nationals should be stripped of their citizenship. The Constitution makes no distinctions based on whether a childs parents are legally present in the United States, nor does it draw lines based on whether those parents are temporary or permanent residents.The second reason is that, in its brief to the justices, the administration does not even ask the Court to fully reinstate Trumps birthright citizenship order. Instead, it asks the Court to narrow the lower courts decisions so that they only apply to the plaintiffs in the specific lawsuits challenging that order. If Trumps lawyers thought they had a winning argument, they almost certainly would have asked the justices to consider the merits of this case.The question of whether lower court judges may issue what are known as nationwide injunctions, orders that suspend a federal policy in its entirety rather than permitting the plaintiffs in an individual case to ignore that policy, has lingered for quite some time. Its these orders that are blocking Trumps attack on birthright citizenship. Trumps Justice Department pushed the Court to limit these nationwide injunctions during his first term, as did the Biden administration. But the Court has thus far allowed at least some of these broad orders to stand.While there are strong arguments against these nationwide injunctions, the Court has resisted efforts to limit them for years. It would be quite aberrant for the justices to suddenly decide to strip lower courts of their power to issue these nationwide orders in the birthright citizenship cases, where Trumps arguments on the merits are frivolous.In any event, the only outward sign the justices have given regarding their views on birthright citizenship suggests that Trump is going to lose. When the Justice Department asks the justices to stay a lower courts decision, one of the justices typically asks the other party in the case to respond to that request by a short deadline sometimes as little as a few days, and rarely more than a week. In this case, however, the Court gave the plaintiffs arguing in favor of birthright citizenship three full weeks to respond. So long as the Court does nothing, the lower court orders blocking Trumps attack on birthright citizenship remain in effect. And the justices are unlikely to do anything until they read the plaintiffs response. So, by stringing this case out for an additional three weeks, the justices ensured that Trumps executive order wouldnt go into effect any time soon.All of which suggests that the Supreme Court appears unlikely to back Trump on his two most clear-cut violations of the Constitution. That does not mean that this Court will act as a meaningful check on many of Trumps other illegal actions. But it does suggest that at least some members of the Courts Republican majority will occasionally say no to the leader of their political party.See More:

If youre anything like me a policy dork who spends too much time on X youve been unable to escape discussion of a new book called Abundance. Written by the Atlantics Derek Thompson and the New York Timess Ezra Klein (also a co-founder of Vox), Abundance is one of those policy books with one big idea that everyone has to have an opinion on whether theyve read it or not. In Abundance, Thompson and Kleins big idea is that American politics and life for the past 50-plus years has been warped by an ideology of scarcity that has artificially reduced the supply of vital goods like housing and energy through a growing thicket of government restrictions and regulations. They argue for embracing a politics of abundance that encourages building and innovation and unlocks American prosperity, aiming for a future of more rather than less for everyone.Thompson and Klein are self-identified liberals, and their book is mainly meant to diagnose what they see has gone wrong with Democratic governance in recent decades, as progressives have consciously adopted policies that aim to put limits on growth. They point to the examples of Democratic cities like San Francisco or New York, where regulations have made it virtually impossible to build new living spaces, putting the cost of housing out of reach for more and more people. Even on issues that Democrats care deeply about, like climate change, their policies have inadvertently had the effect of slowing progress by making it difficult to build out the vast amount of clean energy needed to reduce carbon emissions without hurting the economy. RelatedThe result was that even as technological progress continued, we stopped feeling it and we stopped appreciating it a consistent theme of this newsletter. Instead, bit by bit, and often with the best intentions, we put countless invisible brakes on development, with the net result that we reduced the supply and raised the price of the goods that we needed for a good life. And once we lost the ability to build physically, we lost the ability to build a better future. Abundance isnt just for DemocratsGiven how much of Abundance focuses on where Democrats went wrong, the book has ignited debate among progressives. If you want to read more about that but dont want to get lost in endless post threads or three-hour-long podcasts, my Vox colleague Eric Levitz has a great piece on the arguments and why Democrats should heed the message of Abundance.But its a mistake to think of Abundance as a book that has meaning only for readers who vote blue. At its heart is a message that matters for Americans of all political backgrounds: we dont have to fight endlessly over who gets what piece of a shrinking pie. For far too long weve let ourselves be convinced that we have to treat American life as a zero-sum game, but we can change the rules. We can embrace policies that actively grow that pie policies that make housing more affordable in the places people want to live, that give us energy to power a high-tech economy without burning up the planet, that bring us better health care at lower costs. Thompson and Klein recognize that Americans will never agree on everything, that there are issues where there are simply fundamental differences between the right and the left. But theyre right to argue that most Americans want a better life for themselves and their children, and that a politics focused on improving material progress in the areas that matter housing, education, energy is one that can appeal to almost everyone. As Thompson wrote in the Atlantic this week, abundance can combine the progressive virtue of care for the working class and a traditionally conservative celebration of national greatness.If we can do that, we might just be able to break the polarization that has gridlocked progress and turned American politics into a winner-takes-all death match.Im sure not everyone who reads Abundance will agree with every page. Diagnosing the mistakes that have held back progress is a lot easier than creating a political movement that can unlock it. But I do believe there is a hunger in this country for a vision of the future that isnt inherently fearful, that recaptures something of the optimism that was once synonymous with America. That gives me hope at a moment when we desperately need it.A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!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:

Put the Nobel Peace Prize on hold for just a bit. President Donald Trump came into office promising a swift end to two wars in Gaza and Ukraine. He has taken a radically different approach to both conflicts than Joe Biden, and in some cases produced results. What he has not done is end either war. In fact, this week, resolution to both conflicts seemed farther off than ever. The fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which came into effect shortly before Trump took office, shattered after Israel launched airstrikes that killed more than 400 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and resumed large-scale ground operations. Hamas has also resumed firing rockets into central Israel, and the situation is rapidly sliding back into full-scale war. Also this week, during a phone call with Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin effectively rejected a proposed 30-day ceasefire which Ukraine had earlier, under US pressure, agreed to. Russia and Ukraine did agree to a mutual halt in attacks on each others energy infrastructure, but this has not stopped mass drone attacks from both sides, including a Russian attack on a hospital that took place just hours after the pause was announced. The two sides will hold talks via US intermediaries in Saudi Arabia next week, and the Trump team is reportedly hoping to rapidly move toward a full ceasefire, but stark differences remain between the two sides negotiating positions. So, barring a miracle at the negotiating table, the war in Ukraine doesnt seem any closer to a resolution now than it did in January. The war in Gaza seems farther from one. What does this tell us? First, an obvious but important point: Ending wars is harder than starting them. Hamas and Israel still have essentially incompatible demands for a final ceasefire. Putin has given no indication, either in his public statements or in US intelligence assessments, that he is interested in ending the war with anything other than complete Ukrainian capitulation. It would be unrealistic to expect any American administration to end two intractable foreign wars in its first two months. If Trump is being held to that standard, its only because he himself suggested during his campaign that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, a promise he said this week may have been a little bit sarcastic. It also shows the limits to Trumps unpredictable style of diplomacy.The state of affairs in Gaza and Ukraine, briefly explainedOn Gaza, Trump started strong in January, when the incoming presidents team worked with the outgoing Biden administration to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Both Biden administration officials and regional governments credited Trumps Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, with applying the kind of pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to compromise that had been missing from the Biden teams approach for months. But that deal was just phase one of a ceasefire, intended to last six weeks, during which Israel and Hamas were supposed to negotiate a permanent end to hostilities. Phase one saw the release of 33 Israeli hostages and nearly 1,800 Palestinian prisoners, but it expired at the beginning of March with no deal in sight.Fundamentally, Israel is still unwilling to agree to any permanent settlement that leaves Hamas in place, and is also unwilling to countenance the Palestinian Authority taking over governance of the strip, as the Biden administration wanted. Hamas is unwilling to disarm, unlikely to give up the remaining hostages that are its main remaining source of leverage, and probably wont be swayed by the prospect of more Palestinian civilians being killed. Trump, of course, had other ideas of how to resolve the conflict, suggesting that the US should take ownership of Gaza, clean out its civilian population, and redevelop it as a beachfront resort. And so the ceasefire has now been effectively taken off life support. Restarting the war has allowed Netanyahu to reconstitute his right-wing government, avoiding early elections. For the moment at least, he has the full support of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, a brief respite in the suffering of the people of Gaza has ended and hope is dimming for the remaining hostages. A Palestinian family cooks food on the roof of a partially demolished building in Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip, on March 17, 2025. Saeed Jaras/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty ImagesIn Ukraine, its now been about five weeks since Trump upended US policy by opening direct negotiations with Russia without Ukraine present which was followed closely by the televised public dressing down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, and the US halting weapons deliveries and intelligence cooperation with Ukraine. It appeared to many as if the US was not just changing its approach to the conflict, but changing sides.In the end, however, its unclear how much actually changed after a month of drama. The war is raging as fiercely as ever, and after a brief pause, the US has resumed weapons deliveries. Recent events may ultimately have had a bigger effect on US relations with Europe than they did on the course of the war: NATO allies are questioning the alliances long-sacrosanct security guarantees, and heads of state everywhere are forced to question whether they really want to visit the White House if it entails a risk of getting the kind of treatment Trump and Vice President JD Vance dished out to Zelenskyy. Arguably, the Ukrainians gained a rhetorical victory by agreeing to a ceasefire that the Russians then rejected. It could also conceivably bolster the case of the more Ukraine-sympathetic members of the administration. Before presenting the deal to Moscow, Secretary of State Macro Rubio had said that the ball is now in Russias court and that, If they say no, well unfortunately know what the impediment to peace is here.But for now, there are few signs the White House is preparing to exert any pressure on Russia to accept a broader ceasefire, and in fact may be preparing more concessions on Ukraines behalf. In stark contrast to his treatment of Zelenskyy, Trump has said nothing but positive things about his interactions with Putin. Witkoff, the New York real estate developer turned all-purpose diplomat who is now Trumps point man on both the Middle East and Ukraine, is defending Russias drone strikes by saying they came before the pause went into effect and promising potential US-Russia energy cooperation. Trumps break stuff diplomacyTrumps willingness to break norms and radically shift policy can sometimes produce diplomatic results. His threats to pull US troops out of Syria reportedly gave the US military leverage to negotiate a deal between Kurdish forces in Syria and the countrys new government, forestalling, at least for the time being, a new deadly conflict that many feared after the fall of the Assad regime. Trump has been criticized for speaking directly to Putin over Ukraine and more recently, having his envoy negotiate directly with Hamas over a US citizen held hostage. (There was a time when Republicans attacked presidential candidate Barack Obama for saying hed be willing to talk directly to US adversaries without preconditions.) Still, when it comes to Ukraine, theres a case to be made that Trump and his officials are merely publicly acknowledging what the Biden team privately acknowledged: that Ukraine is unlikely to be able to retake all its territory by military means, even with US support. When Trump began talks with Russia in February, Samuel Charap, a RAND Corporation analyst and former State Department official who has advocated negotiations to end the war, told me that he credited the Trump team with having demonstrated the political will to restore bilateral channels with Russia, but added, my concern is just that theyre diving into this quite hastily without a coordinated plan about what to do about the war.Likewise on Gaza, the Trump administration took office with a ceasefire in place that they could claim some credit for but now appears to have given up on it. There is a certain advantage to being totally untethered from normal conventions like the Trump administration is. You can just go in and try new things and break stuff and maybe some of it is a good idea, Ilan Goldenberg, a Mideast specialist who served in the Biden administration and on the Kamala Harris campaign, wrote recently, discussing the blow-up over direct talks between the US and Hamas. On the other hand, rigor, knowledge, and preparation also matter a great deal if you want to negotiate complex deals.The two attitudes combined in January, he said, to reach the initial Gaza ceasefire. Ultimately, the limit of Trumps approach may be how disconnected from reality it often is. Trumps AI-constructed fever dreams of a Gaza beach resort have distracted from work on developing an actual workable plan for Gazas future and legitimized the most extreme aims of Israels annexationist right. Some Trump officials, including National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, suggested Trumps nonsensical vision was a pressure tactic to induce regional governments to come up with their own solutions. But when Arab governments did exactly that, presenting their own (admittedly flawed) Gaza reconstruction plan in early March, the White House immediately rejected it, sticking with Trumps vision of a Levantine riviera cleansed of Palestinians. As with Greenland and Canada, it does appear Trump is serious about this.On Ukraine, Trumps views of the conflict appear heavily influenced by Russia itself, or at least its sympathizers in the US, including his inaccurate comments suggesting that it was Ukraine that started the war and that Zelenskyy is a highly unpopular dictator. More recently, he claimed that Ukrainian troops are completely surrounded in Russias Kursk province and at risk of being massacred. This jibes with Putins own claims about the situation in Kursk, but not US intelligence assessments. (Ukrainian forces in Kursk are steadily losing ground but are not encircled.)More fundamentally, he consistently claims that Putin is interested in ending the war and that its only a matter of Ukraine ceding territory, despite little evidence that this is the case. Trumps unpredictable approach and willingness to break the unwritten rules of international diplomacy can sometimes help get adversaries talking. But its hard to get actual results without engaging with the reality of the situation. See More:

Late in Hulus new series Good American Family comes a moment of irony thats become all too familiar in true crime docudramas. The fictionalized Natalia Grace Barnett at this point in the story a teen, being played by the 27-year-old Imogen Faith Reid glowingly reads supportive comments from random internet strangers. I feel so bad I doubted you, Natalia, one comment reads, But I guess thats what the media wanted. Ah, yes: the ancient narrative that the media made a complicated situation worse, being proffered by a piece of media thats currently making it worse.Good American Family dramatizes the twisted saga of Natalia Grace, a Ukraine-born adoptee who was born in 2003, 1989, or somewhere in between, according to a litany of contradicting stories and court records. The new series interminable eight episodes rehash the saga many Americans first learned about in 2019, when her second set of adoptive parents, Michael and Kristine Barnett, gained media attention for adopting and then abandoning her in the US when they moved to Canada without her. The Barnetts publicly claimed that their daughter was an evil, murderous 20-something con artist pretending to be a little girl. Yes, its the plot of the movie Orphan, but in real life. (To be clear, Natalia Graces tale did not inspire the 2009 movie, as she was adopted in 2010, but may well have been inspired by it.) The Barnetts behavior resulted in ultimately unsuccessful criminal charges of neglect. Though the messy details of this back and forth are recounted for viewers, including the accompanying media spectacle, the Hulu series ultimately does little to justify itself, either as entertainment or as a further examination of an abuse victim whose entire life has been lived under a magnifying glass as a result of her abuse.Heres what to know about the saga of Natalia and why the Hulu docuseries probably isnt the last time youll be hearing her name, even though it probably should be.Natalia was 6 or 7 or maybe 8 or 9 when she was adopted in 2010By their own telling, Indiana residents Kristine and Michael Barnett and their three sons were an all-American family: Kristine would go on to author a much-lauded book about raising her son Jacob, who is a high-functioning child prodigy. The memoir, The Spark, was so popular it was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in 2013 but while it details Kristine Barnetts miraculous job parenting her sons, it reportedly contains no mention whatsoever of the little girl she adopted alongside them.The Barnetts adopted Natalia in 2010. According to Michael Barnett, they were only given 24 hours by a shady adoption agency to make a decision about adopting her, and were provided very little information about Natalias background and medical history. What we know is that Natalias birth mother had been born in Latvia and was living in Ukraine at the time of Natalias birth, which was listed on Natalias birth certificate as September 4, 2003. She placed Natalia in an orphanage. In 2008, at the age of 5, she was brought to the US by Dyan and Gary Ciccone, a New Hampshire couple with ties to an area adoption agency focused on Russian adoptees. What happened is unclear, but Natalias unsuccessful placement underscores the often murky and dysfunctional process of adoption, especially international adoptions, which can exploit children. Imogen Faith Reid, Ellen Pompeo, and Mark Duplass in Good American Family. Disney/Ser BaffoThe Barnetts immediately ran into problems with the adoption. They claimed that Natalia, who was born with dwarfism, was showing signs of puberty, including menstruation and pubic hair, despite being only 6 or 7 according to her official birth certificate. They also claimed that Natalia had tried repeatedly to kill them, including by placing thumbtacks on the stairs, pouring Pine Sol into coffee, wielding knives, and allegedly pulling Kristine Barnett into an electric fence. According to Michael Barnett, their response to these incidents included begging the police to arrest their 7-year-old; police declined. Child services were alerted to the situation, however, and began investigating the couples treatment of their daughter. During the same period, the Barnetts had Natalia seen by various medical experts, apparently in attempts to determine her real age. Medical providers in the Barnetts lives have since come forward to allege that they told the Barnetts Natalia was a child.To this day, its not fully clear whether the Barnetts actually believed their own lie about Natalia being an adult, or whether they just made it up as an excuse to be rid of her. Kristine Barnett has fallen back on the medical advice she claims she was given by experts, while Michael Barnett has emphasized the court rulings concerning her age; the new Hulu docuseries depicts him as being manipulated by Kristines own narcissism, though not without culpability. In 2012, the Barnetts successfully petitioned a probate court to change Natalias official birth year from 2003 to 1989, which made her legally 22 years old instead of 8. According to court documents, the change was made based on age estimates provided by a primary care physician and a social worker, without holding an evidentiary hearing or providing Natalia with her own legal representative in the matter. This also meant that the child services case was closed, since Natalia was now legally an adult. Around the time of this ruling, Natalia spent nine weeks in a mental hospital. She also spent time at a halfway house. The Barnetts rented two subsequent apartments for her, including one in Lafayette, Indiana a decision made, according to court testimony from a state police detective, Because Kristine said Lafayette is a white-trash town and nobody is going to care or worry about [Natalia]. The Barnetts also appeared to disbelieve that the physical disabilities associated with Natalias medical condition were real; though she had used a walker since she was a child, the apartment they rented for her was on the second floor of a house with no easy street access. After relocating Natalia to this isolated, inaccessible house in Lafayette, the Barnetts moved to Canada with their sons in 2013, leaving her behind. Natalia never saw Kristine Barnett again. The couple divorced in 2014 but their entanglement with Natalia was only just beginning. The courts perpetuate a wrong and then fail to redress itFollowing her abandonment by the Barnetts in 2013, Natalia was taken in by Cynthia and Antwon Mans and their children. (Some reports say the Mans have 10 children, others say five.) Over the next decade, Natalia and others tried repeatedly to have her age change reversed in the courts, only for the courts to reaffirm that she was an adult. Natalia was legally considered an adult for most of her childhood. At one point, per court records, the Mans attempted to gain legal guardianship over Natalia, only for Michael Barnett to block their efforts because, he claimed, Natalia was an adult. All I was told was, Youre 22 now, Natalia later told IDs multi-season docuseries about the saga, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace. Whenever somebody asks you what your age is, you say youre 22 and you tried to murder your family. I was taught to lie.Prosecutors soon became interested in Natalias case. Confusion over Natalias actual age began to dominate the investigation into the Barnetts behavior, which was serious enough that they were each charged separately in 2019 with criminal counts related to both child neglect and neglect of a dependent [adult]. The child neglect charges were ultimately dismissed due to the outstanding quandary of her age. In 2023, a DNA lab conducted testing that seemed to conclusively put the matter of Natalias age to rest: she was likely around two years older than the age indicated by her birth certificate at the time of her adoption, born around 2001. At the time of her adoption, she would have been 8 or 9, and at the time of her abandonment in Lafayette, she would have been 11 or 12 not 23, as the court system legally claimed.But because the original court ruling still stood, in 2020, prosecutors had to drop all charges related to child neglect. At Michael Barnetts 2022 trial for neglect of a dependent adult, Natalia testified against her adopted father. She alleged that she had fallen repeatedly while attempting to navigate her inaccessible apartment, and that the Barnetts had left her to fend for herself without teaching her how to access her disability payments or perform basic tasks like laundry or food preparation. Michael Barnetts lawyer, however, was able to successfully allege that at 23 the only age Natalia was legally permitted to acknowledge under the court ruling she should have been able to do all of those tasks as a functioning adult. Defense attorneys also implied that the Mans family were manipulating and exploiting Natalia allegations of stealing benefits that would linger after the trial. Jurors ultimately found Michael Barnett not guilty on the neglect charge, and the pending charges against Kristine Barnett were subsequently dropped. From there, despite the mudslinging, it seemed as though things were finally resolved between Natalia and the Barnetts. By that point, however, the Barnetts, Natalia, and the Mans were something more than a set of dysfunctional squabbling families they were all reality stars. From one messy situation to anotherIn late 2019, the news of criminal charges laid against the Barnetts began to make headlines, and the lives of all involved irrevocably changed. Tabloid media quickly labeled Natalia a Psycho dwarf, and Natalia and the Mans family went on Dr. Phil and all of this was within weeks of the story coming to light. Then came IDs multi-season docuseries, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, which began airing in 2023 shortly after the court proceedings. By that point, Natalia was living with the Mans family, who the docuseries framed as her saviors. The Mans, who claimed Natalia had never been dangerous at all, formally adopted her in 2023 when she was around 21 in a splashy event that made up part of the shows second season.The pressure to provide TV drama may have been too much for the Mans family, however. Despite caring for Natalia for nearly a decade without issues, they abruptly dramatically leaned into the Natalia is evil theme, with Antwon Mans calling the shows producers to allege that her behavior had been disturbing and selfish. The ID producers, naturally, revealed this development as a shocking twist and a season-ending cliffhanger. In the documentarys third season, Natalia accused the Mans family of physical and emotional abuse. To the Hollywood Reporter, ID president Jason Sarlanis described the docuseries decision to delve into Natalias time with the Mans as do[ing] right by our audience whether anyone considered doing right by Natalia and her new family dynamic was less clear. In 2023, Natalia left the Mans familys Nashville residence and moved in with yet another family: The DePauls, a family of little people who reportedly wanted to adopt Natalia all the way back in 2009, prior to her adoption by the Barnetts. The ID series filmed them helping Natalia dramatically escape from the Mans in the middle of the night, into a new wholesome life with a family who hopefully could finally understand her. A happy ending? Yes and no. While theres little left to say about Natalias story at this point, its clearly going to keep going in the public eye. In January 2025, People placed now 23-year-old Natalia on the cover, with the lurid headline Victim or Villain? even though years of reporting within its own pages make the answer abundantly clear. Hulus Good American Family similarly plays with blaming a disabled child for her own abuse. On top of that, the show drags out over eight episodes and features a parade of flat, dull characters. Ellen Pompeo as Kristine is especially one-note, narcissistic and brittle with little nuance, while Mark Duplass as Michael goes through a histrionic and unbelievable series of emotional swings as he wrestles with who to believe. The Mans are depicted as well-meaning grifters who rescue Natalia but arent without their own issues.Though it ultimately fully accepts the framing that the Barnetts emotionally and physically abused and gaslit Natalia to a heartbreaking degree, it also initially perpetuates the idea that Natalias behavior is alarming and disturbing. Above all, casting 27-year-old Reid to play a child 20 years younger at the time the series starts does more to confuse the narrative than clarify it. While the narrative depicts Natalia as finding closure, its hard not to see the show leaving the door open for another season, just as ID has done again and again. Whats more, Nicole DePaul recently alleged on Facebook that the docudrama had not compensated Natalia in any way for the use of her story though they were, she claimed, compensating Kristine Barnett, perhaps in the hopes of staving off a lawsuit. (Hulu did not respond for comment.) This wouldnt be the first time that a high-profile true crime docudrama has been castigated for exploiting victims. But instead of learning any lessons from those other cases, or even from Natalias own story, it seems were destined to repeat these same mistakes in the quest for drama with diminishing returns.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 powerful private institutions caving to Donald Trumps demands and a law firm demonstrating another way forward. Whats the latest? Donald Trump took back an executive order attacking Paul, Weiss one of the countrys largest law firms after it agreed to do $40 million worth of free legal work on causes favored by the Trump administration. Trumps order had pulled the firms security clearances and tried to terminate its federal contracts because it had sued January 6 rioters and because a former partner had worked on a Trump prosecution case. Is this normal? No but it is part of a trend of powerful private sector institutions bowing to Trumps threats to their business. Columbia University just gave in to Trumps demands after he threatened $400 million in federal funding. And colleges across the country are taking similar steps to protect their own funding. What other choice do they have? To fight. Perkins Coie, another firm whose security clearances Trump targeted, sued. And, last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing Trumps order, finding it likely violates the firms First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights. (In response, the Trump administration today tried to get the judge kicked off the case.) Whats the big picture? These are powerful institutions with vast resources. Yes, theyre still less powerful than the federal government, and yes, they have plenty to lose. (The Times reports that Paul, Weiss considered its own legal challenge but deemed the financial risk too high.) But we all have even more to lose if the rule of law is replaced by a system in which the president can use the federal government to pursue personal vendettas and enforce compliance with his agenda.And with that, its time to log off... I really enjoyed this (very short) piece about a Dutch initiative that helps people enjoy something soothing online in this case, watching fish swim and also engage in a small act of environmentalism. You can read about the fish doorbell here. Thanks for all the book recommendations, and Ill see you back here on Monday. Have a good weekend!See More:

Disneys new live-action Snow White, dogged by controversy after controversy, must have been cursed at birth by a wicked fairy (oops, wait, wrong fairy tale).It has to be disconcerting for the studio. The original animated film was such a massive success when it was first released in 1937 that it more or less invented the genre of not just the Disney princess movie, but also the Disney feature-length animated movie, and all the copies thereof that followed. Some of the tropes it innovated are still fundamental to what we think an animated movie should look like, for no better reason than the fact that Snow White did them nearly 90 years ago.Currently, the live-action Snow White is mixed up in at least half a dozen more controversies than Disney would care to have associated with its most reliable moneymaker. A brief overview: Rachel Zegler, who plays Snow White in the new live-action film, has said that the original film was unfeminist, criticized Donald Trump and his supporters and then had to apologize for it, and spoken out in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza War, all of which enraged conservative audiences. Outright racist commenters were also upset that Zegler, who has Colombian heritage, would be playing a character traditionally known for the pallor of her skin. Meanwhile, Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen, has been vocally supportive of her native Israel in the midst of the war. Finally, actors with dwarfism have taken issue with the movie for its depiction of dwarves. In response, Disney has tamped down its marketing machine, restricting press on the red carpet, sending its leading ladies to exclusively friendly outlets, and offering a reduced window for ticket sales compared to previous live-action releases. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that, for Hollywood insiders, Disneys attitude screams, We need to get this thing over with. We have zero faith.The controversy offers a strange, queasy fate for Snow White, one of Disneys most foundational films. In defining the genre, it also shaped childhood for generations of Americans. The Walt Disney Corporation might be the house that Mickey Mouse built, but he did it on Snow Whites dime. How Snow White went from Disneys Folly to Disneys greatest successSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs advertisement, 1937.From the outside, Snow White had all the makings of a boondoggle. No one had ever made a feature-length animated film before it, and looking at the silly, squishy, fluorescent cartoons of the era, it was hard to imagine why anyone would want to sit through one that lasted over an hour. Cartoons are good for a giggle, but who wants one that stretches on forever? Still, Walt Disney was determined to make an animated feature that would be easy to sit through, that would have genuine artistic merit. Getting the medium to that point would prove to be expensive.Throughout the 1930s, Disney turned his animation studio into what was essentially a laboratory for how to make a great animated film. He had long considered his Silly Symphony shorts to be the artistic cousin to the slapstick Mickey Mouse shorts, and now he was taking them more seriously than ever. He poured money into figure drawing lessons for his animators, into classes on the art of the great European fairy tale illustrators, into studies on how the play of light should look in animation. He paid for huge and expensive leaps forward in technology, most notoriously the creation of a multi-plane camera that allowed for new levels of depth and perspective within a single frame. Walt Disney was determined to make an animated feature that would be easy to sit through, that would have genuine artistic merit.In the end, Snow White cost $1.5 million in 1937 dollars, about $34 million today. Newspapers of the time called Snow White Disneys folly. Instead, when Snow White made it to theaters, it became a smash hit. Audiences reportedly burst into tears when they saw Snow White lying in the glass coffin, surrounded by weeping dwarves. The premiere was greeted with a standing ovation. Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet director who invented montage, declared it the greatest film ever made. It grossed $66 million at the box office, becoming briefly the highest-grossing sound picture ever until Gone with the Wind premiered two years later. Before Snow White, no one had ever managed to make animation so naturalistic and expressive. The animation in short films up until that point had been silly, vaudeville-inflected; mostly featuring animals because humans were too hard to draw in an appealing way mostly with static and unchanging expressions, on flat, simplistic backgrounds. But Snow White took place in a deep, rich, painterly world, and Snow White herself was a charming, beautiful human figure who could blush and laugh and cry in ways that made the audience blush and laugh and cry right back at her. It was an entirely new effect, one to which people responded powerfully. One surprising thingIn the 1937 Snow White, not all the human characters were as naturalistic as Walt Disney would have liked. The Princes role was minimized as much as possible because Disney felt they could never quite get his face right. Watch it again and youll see what he meant. But Snow White also had commercial appeal in a way that seemed to flummox Disney, and that took him a while to figure out how to duplicate. He continued developing Snow Whites animation style over his next two features, 1940s Pinocchio and Fantasia, both of which arguably surpassed Snow White in artistic accomplishment but also failed to make money. The massive success of Snow White bought Disney enough credit that he could keep taking out loans to finance his ever-more-expensive films, but after Fantasia, the company was near bankruptcy. Disney made Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942) on the cheap, abandoning the expensive oil painting look of his first three films for a more stylized, pencil-stroke-heavy animation style that could be churned out quickly. The company kept floating through World War II on the strength of a series of military propaganda films, but it wouldnt achieve a true box office smash again until 1950, when it released Cinderella, a movie that followed carefully in the footsteps of Snow White. In a world where the two highest-grossing Disney films were Snow White and Cinderella, the matter became settled: A successful Disney movie would look like Snow White. Even today, after Pixar, after fully rendered animation, after Frozen, it still does. How Disney learned the Snow White formulaA Snow White character acts in Mickeys Soundsational Parade at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, on Friday, May 24, 2013. Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesDisney occasionally messes with the formula, but the great classics of the studio tend to follow this basic template set by Snow White 90 years ago. Snow White was a musical because commercial films in 1937 were musicals. In todays Hollywood, musicals arent commercial guarantees, but we still think of music as being fundamental to the Disney formula. Snow White begins the movie by wishing for her prince to come and the prince singing back to her now Disney movies tend to give their protagonist an I want song and the lovers a duet. Snow White doesnt have a villain song, but the Evil Queen is so fabulously campy that songs like Poor Unfortunate Souls are a natural extension of the legacy she began. Not all Disney animated movies are about princesses or even based on fairy tales, but in unprofitable periods, Disney generally turns to a princess to turn things around. The Little Mermaid in 1989 rocketed the studio out of its so-called dark age and into the Disney Renaissance, and after a slump in the 2000s, Disney leaned hard into the princess formula with The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, and Frozen. Disney fairy tales tend to be gently bowdlerized and made sentimental (Snow White didnt wake up because of true loves kiss until Disney got their hands on her), and to this day, the studio loves adding a didactic moral lesson to their tales, like the lesson in Snow White that love conquers all. Snow White had cute animal sidekicks as well as comic magical ones; both would become a staple of Disney storytelling going forward. Snow Whites blue and yellow and red gown would become her signature outfit, an increasingly important piece of Disneys visual iconography and of the princesses that followed. Snow White even innovated the classic Disney strategy of keeping the heros hands clean by having the villain die accidentally, falling from a great height in the middle of a crescendo of evil laughter. What Disney left behind following Snow White were some of its most stylized elements. At moments, the animation plays with the jagged, aggressive lines of German Expressionism: When Snow White runs into the wild forest, the trees loom out of the darkness and the eyes of wild animals flash at her in lurid, vicious cuts. Disney would continue to play with this aesthetic in Pinocchio and Fantasia, which is part of why they are largely considered to be his scariest films, but later animated features would smooth out such frightening scenes into gentler, less thrilling action sequences. Disney would also abandon the part of Snow White that plays most strangely for modern audiences. As critic Caroline Siede has written, Snow White is constructed like a classical opera or a ballet, with static, unchanging characters. You might think of Snow White as a figure like Pamina, the ingenue in The Magic Flute: shes at the center of the plot, but all she does is fall in love over the course of a single duet, and she never really changes after that. Her funny magic sidekick and villainous mother figure steal the show. In later films, Disney would embrace a more cinematic style of storytelling, with characters who want more than true love and who have to overcome some internal flaw in order to get what they want. The first Snow White was like nothing that anyone had ever seen before. The new Snow White is a cinematic cliche.The new live-action Snow White plays as an uncanny attempt to retroactively apply this formula to Disneys oldest and strongest story. In the new film, Snow White wants to protect her kingdom from the selfish Evil Queen, but to save the day, she has to overcome her fear and self-doubt. She still sings Waiting on a Wish by the wishing well, but now she sings about how much she wants to be brave. All the updates are so generic that in the end, the whole thing reads as storytelling by committee. Yet as Disney attempts to update its storytelling, it leaves behind the part of Snow White that had those first audiences sobbing in their seats: that ravishing, painterly, glorious hand-drawn animation. The first Snow White was like nothing that anyone had ever seen before. The new Snow White is a cinematic clich.Snow White invented a genre and a new art form. It was shockingly original, so much so that you could use it to derive the formula for dozens of movies to come. But as Disney tries to lean into Snow Whites legacy, it leans more and more into formula, into a refusal to take risks and make new things. In the end, Disney may have taken the wrong lessons from its greatest success. See More:

In the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the media did not exactly cover itself in glory. To quote myself from an early February 2020 piece, when the virus had already been spreading for more than a month in China and the US already had confirmed cases: In the last week or so, new cases of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus have soared so have news articles scolding us for worrying about it. Dont worry about the coronavirus. Worry about the flu, BuzzFeed argued. The flu poses the bigger and more pressing peril, the Washington Post said. Why should we be afraid of something that has not killed people here in this country? an epidemiologist argued in the LA Times. Other outlets have agreed. An ex-White House health adviser has told Americans to stop panicking and being hysterical.My article made the case that maybe it was slightly reasonable to worry about the coronavirus. But of course, I got some crucial stuff wrong, too. I wrote: Similarly, theres a conspiracy theory circulating that the virus escaped from a Wuhan research lab. (Not true.) And theres a different conspiracy theory that it was engineered by Bill Gates (who funds a research group that has done pandemic-control exercises about a hypothetical deadly coronavirus). (Also not true.) Internet trolls have spread false claims that drinking bleach protects against coronavirus. (Please dont do this.)Two of those conspiracy theories were in fact absurd, but one was correct: the virus absolutely may have escaped from a Wuhan research lab. Well probably never know, but we know for sure that many of the scientists publicly asserting that this was a wild conspiracy theory privately worried that it was true. But my article isnt the main thing that people think of when I ask them how they feel Vox handled the early coronavirus crisis. Instead, almost everyone I talk to remembers another article that Recode (at that time a vertical of Vox) ran a week later. The piece was headlined No handshakes, please: The tech industry is terrified of the coronavirus, and while it doesnt actually contain any blatant factual inaccuracies, the tone is very clear: Only a paranoid tech bro would be worrying about the coronavirus. Data from the CDC suggests that the flu is a greater threat to Americans than the coronavirus. Yet unlike the flu, the coronavirus is new and not well understood, which makes it especially scary to the public, including Silicon Valleys elite, the article argues. But of course, even at that early moment in the pandemic, it was entirely correct to be more nervous about the novel coronavirus which had a much wider range of possible outcomes than a known health threat like the flu.Almost no one I talk to here in the Bay Area about Voxs performance on Covid-19 remembers my article pushing back on dismissiveness and warning people should take Covid more seriously. Almost all of them remember the contempt they felt that the Recode article was encouraging toward them. The lesson here for the media and for anyone who works in public communication is that its much easier to lose trust than to gain it.Moving forward without ever looking backA few weeks later, Europe was hit hard with the first catastrophic Covid surges hospitals overwhelmed, bodies piling up, patients struggling to breathe in hallways and the media started taking Covid seriously. In a sense, this is exactly what is supposed to happen people saw new information and changed their minds. But the fact that there was an abrupt swerve was rarely acknowledged. When a journalist writes a piece that contains a clear factual inaccuracy requiring a correction, its a pretty big deal. Ive had to issue corrections, and quite a few people are involved: my boss has to spend a fair bit of time working with me on the wording, and their boss has to sign off. Corrections are a high priority in the media people will drop lots of other work to get a correction to a piece up. Journalists feel real pressure not to get things factually wrong, and to fix them when they do. A reporter having written several pieces that needed serious corrections is the kind of thing that will absolutely show up negatively on a performance review.But theres no clear mechanism for similar reflection when a piece doesnt necessarily get the facts wrong, but just frames them wrongly. Thats a problem, because framing can do just as much to misinform readers as facts. The price of ignoring getting it wrongIn the case of the Covid pandemic, early coverage that dismissed peoples fears and suggested they were irrational probably delayed our collective response and lastingly decreased the credibility of the media and public health communicators when they later needed to muster a serious response. A lot of the fault here lies with public health officials, many of whom initially downplayed the threat and called the lab origin theory a conspiracy. But too often the media tended to treat these proclamations without the skeptical questioning that was warranted, especially given the uncertainty. And while Ive chosen to highlight the early February spats over whether Covid was less concerning than the flu, this pattern repeated itself over and over again. 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 initial justification for lockdowns was that we just needed a few weeks to slow the spread so our first responders werent overwhelmed; but then those lockdowns persisted, without clear acknowledgment that the plan had changed. On masks, the line went from masks dont help much and should be reserved for first responders and doctors (the contradiction here rarely acknowledged) to masks are crucial.Outdoor gatherings were always much safer than indoor ones (and I said so here in Vox from early on), but a lot of public health officials criticized outdoor gatherings up until the Black Lives Matter protests, at which point they largely said such events were fine. Every one of these changes happened without much reflection on why we had previously got it wrong. Every one of them spent credibility that was desperately needed with the American people. Every one meant treating people, frankly, like they werent very smart, and in the long run did incalculable damage to public trust.So why hasnt there been more of a reckoning? The primary reason is that there are incredibly powerful incentives for everyone involved not to participate in one. With something as new and as fast moving as Covid, it was almost inevitable that everybody would get something radically wrong. When we open up the Pandoras box of recriminations and accountability, our mistakes loom much larger than our correct calls. The sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, one of the better pandemic commentators, wrote earlier this week about how we were lied to about the possibility of a Covid lab leak. She was met by near universal, seething hostility from Twitter, which blamed her for all of the New York Timess bad coverage of everything related to the whole pandemic. A better way to cover uncertaintyIm expecting a similar overwhelmingly negative response to this piece, in which I admit a mistake initially dismissing the lab leak theory that everyone had probably forgotten about. Ours is a media environment that doesnt encourage acknowledging your errors; its much safer to memory hole them. With Covid, this has been made worse by the fact that there are still major disagreements over key questions about our response. I think that masks work to prevent the spread of disease, though I also think we made the wrong tradeoff in requiring kids to wear masks and generally refused to acknowledge what a major sacrifice they were for many people who just hated the feeling on their faces. But thats not satisfying to someone who thinks that all masking policy was a mistake and that a true Covid admission of errors would mean admitting that masks didnt work, period. I think the vaccines were great, so my takeaways on the lessons from Covid wont be convincing to the half of the country that thinks the vaccines were terrible. Given all that, its not shocking that there hasnt been a real Covid reckoning. But I think that has been very, very damaging. Every single one of us lived through a devastating period during the pandemic. Many of us buried loved ones. Many worked to exhaustion in overcrowded hospitals. Many were asked to make sacrifices that they feel were later treated with contempt and indifference. It was a massive, collective world-altering event and now that its over we barely talk about it, because talking about it would mean reckoning with it and no one in power wants to reckon with it. So Covids long-term effects will reverberate through the country: lower trust in institutions, an absolute unwillingness to think seriously about preventing the next pandemic, failing schools, and rising isolation. And all that will unfold without any real clarity on how we got here and how we can make sure it never happens again.A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!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:

The conservative philosopher GK Chesterton is known for a parable about two lawmakers who encounter a fence. One, brash and overeager, announces that he cant see the point of the fence so it should be removed. The other, who Chesterton labels the more intelligent type of reformer, scolds his companion, warning him that they should only remove the fence once they know why it was put there.The point is that, before anything is changed, decision-makers should at least know why the thing that they are changing exists, lest they discover its true purpose after its removal ends in disaster.Never has Chestertons wisdom been so apparent than the first months of Donald Trumps second term, which, among other things, have seen a broadly worded freeze on domestic spending, a similar pause on foreign aid, and an indiscriminate effort to push as many federal workers out of their jobs as possible. All of these initiatives have had unintended consequences, from defunding a prison full of ISIS fighters to leaving the agency meant to safeguard nuclear material in dire straits.Some of these decisions were rapidly reversed, but not all of them. And even a temporary error by the government can have catastrophic effects, because the government unlike the business world does the kind of work that must be done right every single time.Every Social Security recipient must receive their check on time, lest they be unable to make their rent or buy food. Every hospital must be reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid, lest they shut down and leave entire swaths of the country without care. The country still reels from a single terrorist attack that our intelligence and national security communities failed to stop a quarter century ago. Perhaps its not surprising that change is happening so rapidly right now, because there is no meaningful political movement in the United States advocating for a more methodical, conservative approach. We need leaders who believe that change should come only after careful deliberation, and that major changes call for even greater deliberation and planning.The Republican Party, long the home of American conservatism, is now entirely under the sway of impatient reactionaries. The GOP isnt just the party of Trump; its the party that made a notorious booster of quack medical theories health secretary, and that chose a Fox News host accused of substance abuse and sexual assault to lead the Pentagon both with near-total support from Republican senators.Democrats, meanwhile, often feel trapped into a role as the sole remaining defenders of institutions, and they chafe against that role. As Neera Tanden, recently President Joe Bidens domestic policy adviser and now the leader of the Center for American Progress, told Politico, its incumbent on us not to be defenders of the status quo.Its not surprising that neither major party wants to be the voice of this status quo. Americans are discontent according to Gallup, the last time a majority of the country were satisfied with the way things are going in the US, George W. Bush was still in his first term. And I am not making the case for stagnation. We dont need to settle for broken systems; we just need to make sure we dont make them worse in the name of fixing them. But as we observe the chaos of Trumps second presidency, where US trade policy can shift wildly over the course of any given day, its clear that something is out of balance. There is no one or, at least, no one in a position of power pushing for thoughtful consideration before half-baked ideas are implemented. America needs conservative voices. Not the politicians who align themselves with the so-called conservative movement, but policymakers who are conservative in a more traditional sense. That means we need leaders who believe that change should come only after careful deliberation, and that major changes call for even greater deliberation and planning.America needs lawmakers who instinctively kick the tires on new policies before they will vote for them. It needs a predictable legal system that allows businesses and ordinary Americans to plan for the future. It needs a president who at least asks why the United States provides foreign aid before he blithely cancels all of it. It needs leaders who are reluctant to mess with a good thing.The blessings Americans enjoy today liberal democracy, well-regulated capitalism, a welfare state, and global institutions that have successfully prevented great power conflict and nuclear war are, to borrow from Edmund Burke, an inheritance from our forefathers. We sacrifice them at our peril, especially if we welcome chaos and uncertainty as their replacements.The pre-Trump status quo was better than anything else that anyone has ever come up withDemocrats are temperamentally ill-suited toward conservatism. It was a Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who fought a conservative Supreme Court to bring the modern-day welfare and regulatory states into existence. It was another Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the legislation breaking the back of Jim Crow. Democrats were Americas dominant party when the United States became the worlds dominant nation, and they played an outsized role in building the international order that has successfully prevented nuclear war.Today, large numbers of Democrats expect their party to continue in this tradition, expanding the welfare and regulatory state and extending freedom and prosperity to groups that have historically faced discrimination. Barack Obama, the most successful Democratic president of the last half-century, lends his name to Obamacare, the most significant expansion of federal public benefits in decades. In 2020, the last year the party held a presidential primary, nearly a quarter of Democrats chose Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a self-described socialist.These voices pushing for shared prosperity are as essential to a just and stable society as voices of caution, and it is important to remember that the affluence modern-day Americans take for granted would not be possible without reformers like Roosevelt or Johnson. But the admittedly quite rapid reforms of the New Deal era grew out of a unique economic catastrophe that simply does not exist today. And Johnsons civil rights laws were the culmination of over a century of struggle that included a Civil War. The United States in 2025 does not face the same kind of moral or economic emergency that justifies throwing caution to the wind.If Democrats are unaccustomed to thinking as conservatives, they also have a great deal to lose from the kind of smash-and-grab politics that now offers itself as an alternative to Americas liberal democratic status quo. And so do the rest of the American people.Americans prospered under the business regulations and gradually expanding welfare state that began under Roosevelt, just as theyve prospered under the racial, gender, and other forms of legal equality wrestled into law by Johnson. The United States is the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world so powerful, in fact, that weve held back the full might of the Russian empire by spending a tiny percentage of our defense budget on Ukraine.The entire globe faced economic turmoil and widespread inflation during the years following the Covid-19 pandemic. But no nation weathered this storm better than the United States of America. Casting aside the most successful policies on the globe is a risky business, as is abandoning the most successful ideological approach to governance in human history. Liberalism, democracy, regulated capitalism, and an economic safety net are all worth defending on the merits. Those who would abandon this status quo must show that they have somehow discovered a better way of governing a nation than the most successful system ever derived.Even the most even-keeled Republicans abandoned conservatismRather than attempt to meet this burden, the Republican Party offers only a change in temperament, abandoning the deliberative process that has historically driven the federal government under both Democratic and Republican administrations in favor of ever-shifting calls for swift and disruptive change.Trump is the embodiment of impulsive change over deliberation and caution, and he heads a party thats been eager for such a leader for quite some time. Before MAGA, there was the slash-and-burn fiscal policies captured by the Ryan Budget, an agenda widely supported by Washington Republicans. Named for former House Speaker Paul Ryan, this budget tried to gut Medicaid and food stamps, kill Obamacare, and, at least in its early forms, repeal Medicare and replace it with a voucher that lost value every year.Before the Ryan Budget, there was the Tea Party, a movement that launched the careers of politicians like Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY), whove argued that a wide range of laws from the ban on child labor to the prohibition on whites-only lunch counters are unconstitutional. Tea Party Republicans also sought to constitutionalize a fiscal policy that was even more draconian than Ryans vision. Many of this eras Republicans even claimed that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional.Disruption, destruction, and a gleeful desire to bring about avulsive change have been the lynchpins of Republican politics for nearly two decades. This is true even in the one branch of government that is supposed to be a bastion of conservatism, because its nine members are the stewards of a fixed Constitution.At first glance, Chief Justice John Roberts is as unlike Trump as a man can be. His first marriage is decades-old and ongoing. He presides over Court hearings with an almost-weaponized professionalism. Hes long persuaded opinion writers to pen fawning profiles claiming that hes worked to persuade his colleagues to put institutional legitimacy above partisanship.But Roberts is also the driving force behind the Courts decisions holding that America has been so successful in eliminating racism, that it must dismantle the very laws that defeated Jim Crow the equivalent, in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs words, of throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet. He also authored Trump v. United States (2024), which gives Trump broad immunity from prosecution for crimes he commits using his official presidential powers. Indeed, Roberts went so far as to declare, at a time when Trump was a presidential candidate threatening retribution against his perceived enemies, that, if elected, Trump may order the Justice Department to target anyone he chooses, even if he does so for an improper purpose. Trump v. United States is one of the most reckless opinions in the Courts history, preemptively giving Trump permission to commit some of the most authoritarian acts he touted as a candidate.It fell to Justice Sonia Sotomayor to offer, in dissent, a Chesteronian warning that Robertss single-minded fixation on the Presidents need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint. There is still conservatism to be found on the Supreme Court, its just that it comes almost exclusively from the Courts Democrats.All of this has happened, moreover, despite the fact that Roberts is the most moderate member of the Courts Republican majority, and he is one of the most even-tempered politicians in the country. And yet even his career is marked by the same Trumpian disinhibition that drives the Republican Party. Americans who support liberal democracy need time to regroup and recover Its hard not to envy Germany in this benighted moment in American history. Like the United States, Germany recently had an election. And, like the United States, that election was fueled by the same anti-incumbent sentiment that plagued in-power political parties throughout the globe during the post-pandemic era. But the German system, unlike ours, permits more than two parties to thrive. So, while the incumbent Social Democratic Party took a beating and the far right made gains in the German election, the big winner was the Christian Democratic Union, a normal center-right party that governed Germany as recently as 2021.The absence of a conservative party in the United States has forced Democrats to do double duty, defending the system that we have while simultaneously pushing for progressive change. Thats left them unable to do either job well. The Democratic Partys popularity is at historic lows.What America needs right now is not more stagnation or quick fixes it is more careful deliberation.If the US election had played out like Germanys, electing a conservative government that doesnt threaten constitutional democracy or global stability, the American left could have spent its time out of power making long term plans for the future, as it has done in the past. Democrats spent most of Bushs second term designing the legislation that became Obamacare, and building political support for it. Now, by contrast, neither major American party is well-positioned to offer similar solutions. The GOP has become little more than a vehicle for Trump and his inner circles personal grievances. And the Democratic Party has been stuck in anti-Trump crisis mode for so long that its policy infrastructure has atrophied. Democrat-aligned organizations produced hundreds of rapid response pieces clapping back at Trumps outrage of the day during his first term, but there was no Project 2021 to match Republicans Project 2025. Now, many top Democrats mistrust those very organizations, which house the policy experts who are supposed to come up with the partys long-term plans when it is out of power. Some mistrust their own staff.The fact that Americas traditional conservative party has been replaced by reactionary chaosmongers, in other words, does not simply create crises in the present. It is a tax on the future. Endless crises prevent liberal institutions from doing the difficult, deliberative work of coming up with sophisticated solutions to the United States real problems.What America needs right now is not more stagnation or quick fixes it is more careful deliberation. If there is a better system than the liberal democratic capitalism that has dominated the United States since the 1960s, then we should embrace it. But we should do so carefully, cautiously, and only after our lawmakers understand why our current system exists and which parts of it are worth retaining.Government should not move as quickly as Twitter. If it does, we are likely to wake up in a world that is far worse than the one that Americans thrived in for nearly a century.See More:

If you have any say, you might want to avoid scheduling your next surgery on a Friday.The most comprehensive analysis of what happens to patients who have surgery on Fridays versus Mondays, published this month in JAMA by more than a dozen US and Canadian researchers, is unequivocal: The people who underwent all kinds of procedures before the weekend suffered on average more short-term, medium-term, and long-term complications than people who went under the knife after the weekend was over.The study was based in Ontario and included more than 450,000 patients who received one of the 25 most common surgeries between 2007 and 2019. Canadas universal health care program allowed the researchers to more easily track patients over time and it eliminated finances as a variable in how patients fared. Previous studies have generally found the same effects across different types of health systems: One UK-based study had reported better outcomes for Monday surgeries after 30 days. A paper looking at Dutch patients detected higher mortality rates after one month for patients who had Friday surgeries compared to Monday. This appears to be a phenomenon no matter the country, as prior US-based research also attests.The new study covered all surgery specialties including orthopedic surgery, vascular surgery, and obstetrics and followed patients outcomes at 30 days, 90 days and one year. The study tracked whether patients died, were readmitted to the hospital, or experienced any other complications, like an infection, for example, during their hospital stay.People who received pre-weekend surgeries defined as a Friday or a Thursday before a long weekend were overall about 5 percent more likely to experience one of those complications within a year of their surgery than people who got post-weekend procedures (on Monday or the Tuesday after a long weekend). The effect was stronger for heart and vascular surgeries; it was negligible for obstetric and plastic surgeries.There could be a few things going on here, according to the researchers analysis.Researchers found Friday surgeries were more likely to be performed by junior surgeons when compared to Monday surgeries. This difference in expertise may play a role in the observed differences in outcomes, they wrote, based on a statistical analysis that controlled for other factors. There could also be fewer senior colleagues on the hospital campus for the junior physicians to consult with, the authors said. In addition, the weekend doctors and nurses may be less familiar with the patients case, raising the risk that complications will be caught later and therefore lead to worse outcomes.It is common for hospitals to have fewer doctors and nurses working the weekends and those who do work tend to be less experienced, which could likewise help explain the studys findings, said Betty Rumbur, a nursing professor at the University of Rhode Island.The combination of fewer staff and less experienced staff certainly can contribute to poor patient outcomes, she said. The findings should motivate hospital executives to rethink how they are staffing their wards on Fridays and over the weekend, to avoid complications that put surgery patients in danger. Of course, this is also useful information for any of us who need elective surgery at any point in the future. When were able to plan ahead for a procedure whether a vasectomy carefully timed to coincide with March Madness or a knee replacement or whatever its worth trying to find a time slot earlier in the week.See More:

Its now well established that for decades, major oil companies knew that burning fossil fuels would cause global warming, and yet did everything in their power to obstruct climate policy. They intensively lobbied policymakers, ran advertising campaigns, and funded think tanks to cast doubt on climate science.According to two new papers recently published in the journals Environmental Research Letters and Climate Policy, another industry knew of its role in climate change decades ago and engaged in similar tactics: the US beef industry.The story begins in February 1989, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a workshop for a report on how to reduce livestock methane emissions. Experts at the time knew that cattle produce significant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that accelerates climate change at a much faster pace than carbon dioxide. (Today, almost one-third of methane stems from beef and dairy cattle). This story was first featured in the Processing Meat newsletterSign up here for Future Perfects biweekly newsletter from Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more.Have questions or comments on this newsletter? Email us at futureperfect@vox.com!There was also increasing awareness among scientists and environmentalists about livestocks impact on other environmental issues, like water pollution and biodiversity loss. A representative from the nations largest and oldest beef industry group the National Cattlemens Association (NCA) attended the EPA workshop, and soon after, an arm of the organization began crafting a plan to defend itself against what they anticipated would be growing attacks over beefs role in global warming and other environmental ills. The Cattlemens plan an internal 17-page memo titled Strategic Plan on the Environment went unnoticed for decades until two University of Miami researchers, Jennifer Jacquet and Loredana Loy, recently unearthed the document in the NCAs archives. Notably, the beef industry plan had barely a mention about addressing cattle pollution. Instead, it centered around how the public and policymakers would perceive that pollution. Public relations activity directed toward key influencers is a fundamental thrust of this plan, one part reads. Other goals of the plan: to positively influence legislation and regulations, and commission experts to write papers in response to critics as part of its crisis management strategy. They hired one such expert to address the EPAs report, which came out in August 1989 and called livestock one of the larger sources of methane.A cattle feedlot near Lubbock, Texas. Richard Hamilton Smith /Design Pics Editorial/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesIn 1996, the National Cattlemens Association merged with another group to become the National Cattlemens Beef Association. The organization didnt respond to an interview request for this story.Looking back now, the plan seems to be the blueprint for how the beef industry, and the broader animal agriculture sector, would go on to respond to climate scientists and critics for the next 35 years.That blueprint has been incredibly successful. Despite a vast body of domestic and international research detailing the immense environmental impact of meat and dairy production, the industry remains largely unregulated, while surveys show that the public still greatly underestimates meats toll on the planet. Although per capita US beef consumption has moderately declined since the 1990s, overall meat consumption is higher than ever and is projected to rise over the next decade. While these delay-and-obstruct tactics largely mirror those of the fossil fuel industry, theres one way the two sectors radically differ in their public relations wars: what role they say consumers should play to combat climate change. What polluting industries want you to do or not do on a heating planetOver the past decade, many environmentalists have become critical of focusing on individual actions such as purchasing a hybrid vehicle, using efficient light bulbs, or flying less as meaningful solutions to climate change. Critics argue that putting the responsibility of fighting climate change on individuals has been a tactic purposefully employed by fossil fuel companies to help them evade accountability.Thats largely true. BP popularized the personal carbon footprint calculator while Chevron which, to be clear, is an energy company has run ads encouraging its customers to use less energy. A 2021 analysis of ExxonMobils communications concluded that the company is fixated on individual responsibility. But when it came to the meat industry, Jacquet and Loy found the opposite: It really doesnt want people to take the individual action of eating less meat.Rather than embrace notions of individual responsibility, the animal agriculture industry hired scientists, pressured the media, and formed business coalitions to obstruct initiatives that encourage people to eat less meat, the two researchers wrote in the Climate Policy paper. Economist Jeremy Rifkin speaking at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for FordOne of the earliest examples of such obstruction occurred in the early 1990s, when economist and activist Jeremy Rifkin published the book Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture. Rifkin paired the book launch with a large coalitional campaign featuring advertisements, mass protests at McDonalds locations, and a book tour, all aimed at persuading people in 16 countries to cut their beef consumption in half and replace it with plant-based foods.A beef industry publication considered Rifkins actions a declaration of war and the industry organized a determined counterattack, according to the Chicago Tribune. That counterattack included an advertising campaign telling people not to blame environmental problems on cows and the formation of an alliance of 13 industry groups to push back against activists like Rifkin, which included tactics like handing out hamburgers at one of his events. Around this time, the Beef Industry Council launched the infamous but influential Beef. Its Whats for Dinner marketing campaign with a budget of $96 million in todays dollars. It was effective: According to a 1992 story in the Washington Post, people screamed at Rifkin on call-in radio shows, his publisher received angry letters and phone calls, and his book tour was canceled early on because people called event hosts to either disparage him or pose as his publicist to cancel. Rifkin chalked it up in part to aggrieved cattle ranchers, a claim that the National Cattlemens Association fiercely denied at the time. This back-and-forth fight over the American diet has continued ever since:Meatless Monday: The Meatless Monday campaign rose to prominence in the 2000s with celebrity support, featuring dozens of large university cafeterias and school districts ditching meat on Mondays, all of which angered the livestock sector. Meat industry lobbyists sent Baltimore City Public Schools cease and desist letters for participating in the program, and an industry-funded academic at UC Davis named Frank Mitloehner called it a public policy tool to defeat animal agriculture. According to Jacquet, he also downplayed Meatless Mondays potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions. (Disclosure: From 2012 to 2013, I worked at the Humane Society of the US on its Meatless Monday initiative.)US Dietary Guidelines: In 2015, an advisory committee of government-commissioned nutrition experts recommended that the government modify the US dietary guidelines to encourage Americans to reduce meat consumption to make their diets more sustainable. In response, industry trade groups aggressively lobbied Congress and launched a petition that decried the committee experts as nutrition despots. Ultimately, the committees recommendation didnt make it into the final dietary guidelines. The EAT-Lancet report: In 2019, a landmark report published by nutrition and environmental experts recommended that people in high-income countries significantly cut back on meat for personal and planetary health. Mitloehner, the UC Davis academic, coordinated a massive #yes2meat counter-campaign that spawned millions of tweets.So why do fossil fuel companies and livestock producers seemingly have such a different take on personal responsibility? Jacquet says much of it comes down to the simple fact that consumers have relatively little flexibility in reducing fossil fuel use, so messages that encourage people to make lifestyle changes pose little actual threat to fossil fuel companies bottom line.Individuals are locked into a fossil fuel energy system, Jacquet said. But food is not like that, she added. You really do have a lot of flexibility in your diet, and you make those decisions three times a day. These are really dynamic decision spaces, and thats a threat to the meat industry. To state the obvious, individual dietary change alone is insufficient to reform the cruel, polluting factory farm system. But it is a start. To pass even modest regulatory reforms, policymakers will first need to see public support, and one way the public can show it is by eating less meat. Not only is it considered one of, if not the most effective individual actions to reduce carbon footprints, but dietary change also has cascading positive effects. Animal agriculture is arguably the leading source of US water pollution, a major air polluter, and far and away the main cause of animal suffering around 25 land animals are factory-farmed each year to sustain the average Americans diet.According to agricultural economists Jayson Lusk and F. Bailey Norwood, eating less meat, milk, and eggs does affect how many animals are raised for food. Its not on a 1:1 basis, but if more people reduce their animal consumption, theyd collectively send a signal to the industry to raise fewer animals. It may be hard to see the consequences of our decisions, the two wrote in their 2011 book Compassion, by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare, but let there be no doubt, each purchase decision matters.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:

Amid the countrys reckoning with loneliness and isolation has come a startling truth: Americans are spending far more time alone and, according to a new finding from the 2025 World Happiness Report, were also dining alone, too. The finding, released this week, relies on data from the American Time Use Survey and shows that in 2023 about one in four Americans ate all of their meals alone the previous day, an increase of 53 percent since 2003. The analysis also found that eating meals solo, including at home or out at a restaurant, has become more common in all age groups, but most pronounced among those under 35. The extent to which one shares meals, says Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Oxford and co-editor of the World Happiness Report, is an extraordinary proxy for measuring peoples social connections and their social capital. It underpins peoples social support. It drives prosocial behaviors, and all of that, in turn, leads it to be a very strong indicator predictor for peoples life satisfaction.Economic factors, like high income and employment status, are often used as indicators of happiness. But researchers found the ritual of sharing meals to be an even more effective indicator of general well-being than job status and salary. That surprised us as a research team, De Neve says.The most obvious driver of solo dining is the rise of solo living. The share of single-person households in the US has steadily increased since the 1940s, when just under 8 percent of homes were occupied by one individual. By 2020, that number had grown to 27 percent. But even those who cohabitate choose to eat their meals alone. In 2023, about 18 percent of Americans who lived with others ate all of their meals alone the day prior, the report found, compared to 12 percent in 2003 a 50 percent increase.Because more young people under 35 are dining alone a 180 percent increase over the last two decades De Neve suspects the trend is reflective of changing norms: College students choosing to scroll social media on their phones while in the dining hall or young adults opting out of lunch with their colleagues. As social media and smartphones became more entrenched in the 2010s, the less often people shared meals with others. (De Neve has no explanation for the spike in solo dining in 2011.)Research shows that those who eat with others are happier, more satisfied with life, more trusting, have more friends, and are more engaged in their communities.The finding also points to increasingly individualistic habits. Solitary pursuits branded as self-care may have led to increased isolation. The top reason cited by those who considered eating alone in restaurants in 2024 was to get more me time, according to consumer research polling from OpenTable and Kayak. The rise of solo dining has implications beyond the table. Research shows that those who eat with others are happier, more satisfied with life, more trusting, have more friends, and are more engaged in their communities. Increased social isolation meanwhile can lead to feelings of loneliness, which, in turn, can lead to cardiovascular health risks and increased feelings of depression, risk, and anxiety.On a broader scale, loneliness and solitary tendencies breed distrust, which has profound consequences for the state of civil society. The simple act of sharing a meal with a colleague or friend can help bridge divides and increase well-being.Its something very basic, but it underpins so much, De Neve says. You learn about others. You learn about their politics. You get more sense for how other people think. It reduces that political polarization a bit.See More:

Last summer, I quit Spotify, and wrote about it with the rather unsubtle headline Why I quit Spotify. My reasons remain sound: The software had become clunky, the ads relentless, and the Sabrina Carpenter songs too inescapable. I wanted to find a better music streaming service. It gives me no pleasure to report that a few weeks ago, I rejoined.The algorithm got me. I dont just mean that it got me, the way the TikTok algorithm glues you to the screen. Spotifys algorithm got me the way an old friend gets me and my weird affection for yacht rock or ongoing obsession with French touch music from the mid-Aughts. It took a few months of digging through the proverbial crates of Apple Music for me to realize that Spotify has something other streaming services could never get: 15 years of my music listening habits and artificially intelligent software to reinforce those habits.This is why algorithms tend to be viewed as villains these days. Theyre the technology behind TikToks For You page, which keeps feeding you weird videos you cant stop watching, and Amazon recommendations that appear to know what prescription youre taking. Facebooks algorithms, meanwhile, have been radicalizing Americans for at least a decade, and Instagrams algorithmic feed is wrecking the mental health of an entire generation. The implications of Spotifys algorithms, you could argue, are quaint by comparison.Spotifys algorithm got me the way an old friend gets me and my weird affection for yacht rock.Quitting and unquitting Spotify made me realize something, though. As central as algorithmic feeds are to how you consume information, you have more control over how those algorithms shape your tastes and behavior than you might think. If an algorithm works for you as Spotifys does for me dont feel bad about submitting to its effortless and convenient offerings.Lean-forward listeningMusic has always been important to me, and over the years, it started to feel like I had to gamify Spotify to find songs that I truly loved. When Spotify launched in 2011, it was basically a massive library of all the music, but over the years, it introduced more and more algorithmic recommendations and playlists that promised to match my taste. It still took work to find the good stuff.This work is what has now made Spotifys algorithms irreplaceable to me. It has a decade-and-a-half of my listening history, and over the years, Ive learned its quirks and tinkered with it to meet my needs. I spent months trying to replicate this experience on Apple Music, but its algorithms struggled to surprise me. RelatedWhy I quit SpotifyAll music streaming algorithms operate on two basic principles: content-based filtering and collaborative filtering. The content-based filtering tries to identify specific aspects of a song itself, including the artist, genre, mood, and so forth, to queue up the next song. Collaborative filtering refers to recommendations made based on other people who listen to a certain song and what else they listen to. If two people listen to the same five songs, theres a good chance theyll both like this sixth song. Its all math, and sometimes there are anomalies that will delight you.Some of the serendipity that you get is sort of error turned into virtue, Glenn McDonald, a former data alchemist at Spotify and creator of Every Noise at Once, told me. So youre surprised, and sometimes those surprises are pleasant.Its not just that Spotifys recommendations tend to be pleasant because it has a lot of data about me. Its that Spotify has the listening history of 675 million people, whose interests may overlap with mine in countless different ways. Over the years, Ive developed a set of habits that help me hone those recommendations things like making playlists, rejecting recommendations I dont like, exploring artists catalogs, and maybe most importantly, digging through other peoples playlists. This is what I call lean-forward listening. While its easy enough to click on Discover Weekly every Monday, lean back and listen to the whole thing like a radio show, and then move on to the next playlist, the more effort you put into curating your experience, the better the algorithms will work next time. At the very least, youll find your way onto a playlist that algorithms didnt create.How to resist algorithmic ruleLike them or not, algorithmic recommendations arent going anywhere. Companies like Spotify like them because when they work algorithms keep people hooked on their products. Companies like Amazon like them because algorithmic recommendations enable them to steer peoples behavior. The right product recommendation could lead someone to buy something they didnt otherwise plan on buying. (Weve all done it.)This status quo seems dystopian in a lot of ways. Algorithmic recommendations were all the rage a couple of decades ago, when personalization felt convenient rather than creepy. Netflix deserves a lot of credit for this, since it pioneered the concept of giving you customized movie recommendations in the late 1990s. But by the early 2010s, it was getting hard to tell the difference between personalized recommendations and targeted ads. Now, practically everything you see online is personalized to a degree, from the front page of the New York Times to the list of restaurants in your favorite food delivery app. You can probably learn to live with it when youre talking about music on Spotify or burrito restaurants on DoorDash. The stakes are a little bit higher when it comes to recommending things like products on Amazon, and even higher when it comes to recommending things like content on Facebook, said Meredith Broussard, a data journalism professor at New York University. Because, as we all know, disinformation and misinformation are very, very popular, but not good.The role algorithms, which are designed to boost engagement, play in spreading misinformation is a book-length topic. For now, Ill just reiterate that you dont have to lean back and let Facebook, Google, or X flood you with algorithmically generated information. You can learn more about how these platforms use algorithms and steer them to your advantage. If youre sick of the algorithm on X feeding you right-wing propaganda, try Bluesky, which lets you pick different algorithms for your feed. And if Netflix or any other streaming service has gotten stale, try nuking your view history and starting over. Spotify offers a list of details about how it recommends content and how you can make tweaks. And Amazon has a tool thats designed to improve your recommendations. (I have tried all of these things, including the Amazon tool, which is very tedious but still possibly helpful.)Things get a little tougher on big platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, whose algorithms tend toward the black box end of the spectrum. Still, knowing how algorithms work and playing an active role in making them work better for you can improve your experience on almost any platform. Algorithms are only in charge if you let them be.In some cases, you might like it when the algorithms in charge. This is how I generally feel on Spotify, although Im constantly correcting it and guiding it. This is also how I generally feel on Amazon, where I try to buy only the basics. I quit Instagram a while ago when I decided the algorithm was in charge a little too much. If I get bored one day, I might try it again.A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. Sign up here so you dont miss the next one!See More:

For half a century, conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F. Kennedy have flourished. President Donald Trump himself has dabbled in these theories, once claiming that Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs father was involved in the former presidents murder. Now, Trump has officially declassified the remaining JFK files. And so far, the documents appear to be disorganized and hard to sift through, with some being entirely illegible because of a combination of age and bad photocopying. Some of the new insights include details on how the CIA wiretapped phones in Mexico City to surveil communications between the Soviets and Cubans. Despite being given access to everything that the government knows about the events that led to the killing of a US president, the public might not necessarily get the salacious answers they were looking for. But the move is undoubtedly a good one, regardless of whether the remaining files will uncover anything meaningful. Not only can people no longer accuse the government of continuing to hide evidence of some sort of cover-up, but finally releasing these files helps set expectations for the government to be more transparent in the future. The public release of the JFK files is a reminder of how the government routinely fails when it comes to adequately communicating with the public. Its tendency to overclassify documents whether theyre hiding mundane or explosive details of government operations only gives conspiracy theories oxygen to thrive by creating an information vacuum.It wasnt always this wayThough it might seem like the government has always been secretive, this wasnt always the case. According to the historian Matthew Connelly, author of The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About Americas Top Secrets, the tendency to keep more and more government records secret started after World War II. For more than a century and a half after its founding, our government was remarkably transparent, he said in an interview with Columbia Magazine in 2022. In previous wars, the government set up security agencies that kept sensitive information from public view, he said, but those agencies and their practices were usually dismantled after wars ended. That changed after World War II, when the government left its wartime practices intact. The result was a sprawling security state that started keeping more and more secrets as time went on.The amount of information that the government keeps secret is staggering. Today, more than 50 million documents are classified each year.This tendency to overclassify documents has gotten so extreme that there have been efforts to address it. Early in his presidency, Barack Obama signed an executive order creating the National Declassification Center to coordinate declassification plans across government agencies. The executive order also set deadlines for documents to be declassified unless they receive special permission. Still, these efforts are not enough and, experts still believe an excessive number of files are classified. One expert told the New York Times that only about 5 to 10 percent of the 50 million files merit classification.Theyre hard, if not impossible, to keep track of. Documents get lost. And its evidence that government agencies tend to err on the side of classifying something, even when its not really warranted.The downsides of classificationClassification for indefinite or long periods of time has the potential to mask a lot of wrongdoing and protect government officials from accountability. While it makes sense to keep some information classified, the government often overplays its hand, as with the Kennedy files. Time after time, it refuses to declassify documents pertaining to historical events that happened decades ago. In some cases, many of the people involved in the event in question have long been dead.This ultimately leads to more distrust. When you analyze what information tends to get classified, and what takes the longest time to be revealed, you cant help but conclude that we paid a price for all that secrecy, Connelly said. Far from keeping us safe, the secret activities of government officials, the incredible risks they took, put us all in danger.In 1975, the federal government revealed that the CIA conducted mind-control studies starting in the 1950s, experimenting on human subjects with drugs and psychological torture. The experiments came to be known as Project MKUltra, and documents that detailed the program were eventually declassified, though some have been lost to history.Then, in 1991, the federal government acknowledged, for the first time, that it conducted experiments during World War II to test mustard gas and other chemical weapons on Americans enlisted in the US military. And in 1993, the government declassified documents related to the secret program. According to a later investigation by NPR, the government specifically tested troops based on race, singling out Black people, Japanese Americans, and Puerto Ricans to see how they would react to mustard gas compared to white people, who were also subjected to these experiments.Obviously, the biggest problem with these unethical experiments is that they were allowed to happen in the first place. But when the government engages in these kinds of clandestine experiments and also keeps them secret for many decades, it only leads to further distrust in government. After all, efforts to keep those programs secret give people reason to believe that there is plenty more that the government is covering up, even when a classified report is relatively benign.Keeping so many records under wraps doesnt just fuel conspiracy theories; it also prevents us from keeping an accurate historical record. All that secrecy, Connelly said, has made it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, even to reconstruct the history of what really happened.What to expect from the JFK filesIn 1992, driven by public speculation about Kennedys assassination, Congress passed a law requiring that all files related to the assassination be released within 25 years, unless they posed national security threats. And after vowing to make these files public during his first term, Trump released some of the documents but delayed others, citing (surprise!) national security concerns. (The batch of documents that was released in 2017 included memos like the Soviet Unions reaction to the killing.)Now, historians and experts are rummaging through the newly released files to see if they can find anything to add to the historical record. Its unlikely that theyll turn up any earth-shattering revelations about the assassination itself. Ninety-nine percent of the documents had already been public, and some of the remaining ones might be duplicates or have already been at least partially released.But in the future, if the government is really concerned about conspiracy theories and what people think about its role in certain historical events, then it ought to stop keeping so many needless secrets.See More:

When a Democrat contemplates their nations biggest problems today, minimum lot sizes in suburban housing codes probably dont rank very high on the list. After all, the US president is a reality star turned insurrectionist, whos ordering investigations of his political enemies, subverting court orders, gutting entire federal agencies, and fomenting a global trade war. To many liberals, this may not feel like a moment for turning inward and sweating the details of blue Americas permitting regulations.But a new book asks Democrats to do precisely that. In Abundance, journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson catalog American liberalisms failures to deliver material plenty the housing shortages that plague blue cities, the green infrastructure that Congressional Democrats funded but then failed to actually build, the high-speed rail system that California promised but never delivered. Klein and Thompson argue that these disappointments have a common source: Since the 1970s, American liberals have been more concerned with obstructing harmful economic development than promoting the beneficial kind. Democrats have prioritized process over outcomes and favored stasis over growth, most notably through their support for zoning restrictions, stringent environmental laws, and attaching costly conditions to public infrastructure spending. To revitalize American progressivism, they sketch an abundance agenda: a series of regulatory reforms and public investment programs aimed at facilitating higher rates of housing development, infrastructure construction, and technological progress. Klein and Thompson speak for a broader faction of abundance liberals, which encompasses the Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) movement, various pro-innovation think tanks, and scores of commentators. In addition to Abundance, the faction has recently produced two other books outlining its critique of American liberalisms evolution since the 1970s, Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman and Stuck by Yoni Appelbaum.It is surely true that blue states governance failures are not this moments most pressing crisis. But Democratic areas inability to avert cost-of-living crises or to build infrastructure on time and budget is a political liability for the party. Such mismanagement has not only called liberals competence into question, but also chased millions of people out of large blue states and into red ones over the past 10 years. California and New York have been shrinking while Florida and Texas have been growing trends that will make it much harder for Democrats to win the Electoral College or Congress after the 2030 census. Disempowering an increasingly authoritarian GOP should be Democrats top priority in 2025. But bringing abundant housing, energy, and infrastructure to blue states is conducive to that task. This makes Klein and Thompsons analysis politically relevant. Nevertheless, not everyone on the left buys what theyre selling. And Abundance has some real flaws. In their concern with winning over progressive skeptics, Klein and Thompson sometimes elide the genuine tradeoffs between their vision and progressive ideology. For example, while they lament the stifling impact of various environmental regulations on housing and clean energy construction, theyre cagey about precisely how, and how much, they want to change such laws. Rather than stating plainly that theyre willing to reduce regulatory obstacles to fossil fuel infrastructure for the sake of abetting the build-out of renewables a position Klein has endorsed in his New York Times column they argue that going into details about how environmental laws should be amended would be beside the point, since no individual law would solve all the problems they identify and What is needed here is a change in political culture, not just legislation. Such slipperiness may make Abundance more palatable to progressives, but also invites distrust. This said, much of the lefts criticism of abundance liberalism is off-base and unfair. One especially prominent charge is that the abundance agenda entails a retreat from the progressive movements commitments to economic justice and equality. In this account, Klein and Thompson want Democrats to stop catering to the particular needs of poor and working-class Americans through expansions of social welfare programs or labor regulations and start concentrating on maximizing economic growth. The New Yorkers Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes that the abundance movement views stagnation as a national emergency that requires liberals to sideline their quest for a Scandinavian-style social democracy. And he fears that the pursuit of Klein and Thompsons vision could yield a less equitable society.Wallace-Wells nevertheless endorses some aspects of the abundance agenda. Other critics are less measured. Dylan Gyauch-Lewis argues in the American Prospect that abundance liberals prize growth above all, and that their ideology is merely a repackaging of free-market dogma.Likewise, the Bafflers Alex Bronzini-Vender derides the abundance agenda as a Koch-funded initiative aimed at reversing the Democratic Partys skepticism of neoliberal orthodoxy.These criticisms are off-base in more ways than one. First, its simply not true that Klein and Thompson call on liberals to abandon welfare state expansion or to pursue growth at all costs. They explicitly state that redistribution is important their argument isnt that expanding the safety net is undesirable, but rather, that doing so is insufficient for maximizing ordinary Americans living standards. Further, Abundance argues that the federal government should play a larger role in managing the economy, so as to accelerate the development of socially valuable technologies and steer economic growth in an ecologically friendly direction. To say that Klein, Thompson, and other abundance liberals are free market dogmatists because they oppose some regulations is a bit like saying Joe Manchin is a Stalinist because he opposes Medicare cuts. But those who critique the abundance agenda on egalitarian grounds are making a more fundamental analytical error: Combating regulatory obstacles to housing construction, infrastructure, and energy production is not just compatible with prioritizing the interests of working-class Americans; it is synonymous with that task. An economic system biased toward scarcity and stagnation is one that serves the already comfortable better than the disadvantaged. The lefts suspicions of abundance liberalism are understandable. On a variety of fronts, Klein and Thompson call for paring back rules and regulations that are coded as progressive, in the name of abetting faster economic development. The left is used to denouncing this general proposition.Yet abundance liberals are not calling on Democrats to forsake genuinely progressive restrictions on production, such as the Clean Air Act or minimum wage, for the sake of maximizing GDP. Rather, they are imploring their party to judge regulations on the basis of results rather than vibes. Rules that ostensibly subordinate free markets to the public good but actually undermine ordinary Americans living standards are not worth defending.Why Democrats should make priority-setting a prioritySuch regulations fall into a few broad categories.One consists of seemingly progressive but ultimately counterproductive mandates appended to public spending. In recent decades, liberals have gotten accustomed to using government-funded projects as vehicles for delivering wins (however minor or symbolic) to their coalitions myriad stakeholders. Yet as Democratic legislators multiply the number of different causes a discrete project is supposed to serve, they often undermine their policys core purpose.San Franciscos approach to public housing is one of Abundances signature examples of this phenomenon. The Golden Gate City suffers from one of the highest homelessness rates in the United States. Increasing the supply of publicly subsidized housing should therefore be one of its governments priorities.Yet the citys public housing policy is not designed to maximize the number of affordable homes in San Francisco but rather, to build some affordable homes, while promoting small businesses, signaling concern for disabled people, improving the aesthetic quality of the citys architecture, increasing employment among local construction workers, and furthering a wide array of other liberal causes.The rules that San Francisco has attached to its affordable housing program may sound progressive on their face. The city reserves publicly subsidized housing contracts for small builders, in a bid to combat the power of big developers. It also requires public housing projects to pass a review by the Mayors Office of Disability and the San Francisco Arts Commission, hire locally, buy power from the citys public utility, and meet a panoply of other criteria. But each of these provisions increases the costs of construction. Prohibiting large contractors from building affordable homes leads to delays, as there are only so many small construction companies in the Bay Area and each has limited capacity, by definition. Ensuring that housing is accessible for the disabled is surely vital. Yet all housing projects in the United States must already be compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act; mandating an additional review by the San Francisco Mayors Office just adds a redundant layer of bureaucratic processing. And while pretty buildings are preferable to the alternative, when thousands of San Franciscans are going unhoused, architectural aesthetics should take a backseat to rapidly growing the affordable housing stock. Taken together, these little rules add tens of millions of dollars to the price of every affordable housing project in the city. The typical publicly subsidized apartment building in San Francisco takes more than 6 years to build and costs more than $600,000 per unit. By contrast, a private philanthropy in the city recently erected 145 studio apartments for the chronically homeless in three years, at a cost of just $400,000 per unit. This efficiency is derived largely from the fact that privately funded housing projects dont need to comply with as many requirements as public projects do. Saying that San Francisco should cut red tape in its affordable housing program may sound like a conservative sentiment. But in its actual effects, that red tape is reducing the supply of affordable housing while reinforcing the impression that the government cannot build things as competently as the private sector. These do not seem like progressive outcomes.The progressive case for a freer housing marketAbundance liberals tell a similar story about zoning restrictions. American municipalities in general and Democratic ones in particular heavily restrict the types of housing that the private sector can build. It is illegal to construct anything but a detached single-family home on roughly 75 percent of Americas residential land. Local laws add various other cost-increasing limitations on housing development, from large minimum lot sizes to parking mandates to design requirements. The progressive case against restrictive zoning is straightforward: Affluent suburbs use single-family zoning to keep out working-class families, who might be able to afford an apartment in their municipalities but cant shoulder the expense of a large house with a yard.More broadly, making it illegal to build multi-family housing in most of the country ensures scarcity. According to some estimates, America has 4.5 million fewer homes than its people require. This shortage increases the value of our nations existing housing stock which is good for homeowners and landlords but bad for renters. A policy that benefits those who own property at the expense of those who dont is regressive by any definition.Many progressives have accepted the force of this argument. But some further to the left still disdain the push to liberalize zoning laws. And their aversion to that project is not difficult to understand. The idea that one of Americas biggest economic problems can be mitigated by loosening restrictions on free enterprise is ideologically unpalatable for many.Bronzini-Venders essay in the Baffler well illustrates many leftists allergy to this argument. In it, he argues that abundance liberals are selling the public a fiction: Unleashing homebuilders from zoning regulations would increase Americans living standards, since the private sector would supply more goods at lower costsif only it could.He suggests this simply is not plausible and betrays a deep misunderstanding of capitalist production: Firms do not want prices to fall as that would erode their profit margins, so they will choke off production long before it starts substantially increasing affordability. There are a few problems with this reasoning. The first is empirical. Capitalist production has, in fact, routinely yielded more goods at lower costs. Since 2000, the prices of durable consumer goods in the US have fallen by roughly 25 percent.And in the realm of housing specifically, zoning reforms have led to increased production and greater affordability. In Minneapolis, the lifting of various zoning restrictions in 2018 was followed by a surge in housing construction and a decline in the citys median rent: Adjusted for local earnings, a home in Minneapolis was 20 percent cheaper in 2023 than it had been in 2017. In New Zealand, the city of Aucklands experiment with zoning liberalization yielded similar results.The second problem with Bronzini-Venders argument is theoretical. It assumes that the only way capitalist competition can yield lower prices is by forcing companies to accept lower profit margins. And since developers do not want their profits to fall, he reasons that they will tacitly collude to limit housing production, irrespective of zoning laws.This is not a sound economic analysis. If you reduce how much it costs to produce a unit of housing by legalizing apartment buildings or eliminating expensive regulatory requirements then developers can charge lower prices while keeping their margins constant. Further, firms can outcompete each other on price without forfeiting profitability if they increase their productivity. Durable goods have not become cheaper over the past quarter century because manufacturers and retailers have become more altruistic or less profitable, but rather because theyve increased the amount of stuff they can supply per worker hour. (Some of this productivity increase is the result of outsourcing production to low-wage countries, but much of it is from innovations in production and logistics.)One surprising thingThe National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires the federal government to draft statements analyzing the environmental impacts of its decisions. When the law was first enacted, these statements were as short as 10 pages. Today, the average one is 600 pages long.As Klein and Thompson note, between 1935 and 1970, construction productivity steadily rose in the US. But over the past half-century, it has actually fallen. Zoning reform could plausibly reverse that trend by making it easier to mass produce sections of housing in factories, a process known as modular construction; as is, in order to conform with housing regulations, builders typically need to construct homes almost entirely onsite. Mere deregulation will not ensure universal housing affordability. It will never be profitable to provide housing to low-income people, in the absence of public subsidies. And the private sector is liable to underproduce housing for middle-income people as well. The government can help fill in these gaps by creating public developers, which build market-rate housing and then reinvest their proceeds into new construction (the left flank of the abundance movement has been popularizing the public developer model for years now). Nevertheless, the private sector could produce far more housing than it does, were it not for regulatory restrictions. A freer housing market would therefore make America richer and more equal. This fact may make some progressives uncomfortable. But defending our favorite ideological abstractions should not take precedence over improving peoples lives.Not all environmental regulations are worth defendingMost controversially, abundance liberals argue that some environmental regulations are undermining shared prosperity, trust in government, and the green transition.Their complaint is not with environmental laws that directly constrain pollution, such as the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act. The issue lies primarily with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its state-level equivalents. NEPA does not actually ban any pollutant or set any specific constraints on industrial production. Rather, the law mandates a process: Federal bureaucracies need to consider the environmental impact of their decisions, and draft statements outlining those impacts. As Dunkelman explains, the law was intended merely to encourage government agencies to contemplate ecological concerns before greenlighting various projects, not to reduce their autonomy over such decisions. But activist lawyers took an expansive interpretation of the statute: In their view, if the governments environmental impact statement underestimated the ecological implications of a given project, then private citizens and community groups could sue to block that project in court. And a series of judicial rulings enshrined this interpretation of the law. Many states proceeded to draft their own versions of NEPA, some of which applied its requirements to private projects as well as public ones. The effect was to render economic development of all kinds slower and more expensive. To ward off litigation, governments were forced to make their environmental impact statements lengthy and exhaustive: When the law was first enacted, those statements were as short as 10 pages. In 2022, the average one ran 600 pages long and took four and a half years to complete. And once completed, those statements still need to make it through a legal gauntlet before the ground on a given project can actually be broken. All this has made building infrastructure in the US radically more expensive. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the cost of building a mile of interstate highway in America tripled. Mass transit was similarly impacted. It cost New York $2.6 billion to construct each mile of its Second Avenue Subway. By contrast, at around the same time, social democratic Copenhagen built a rail line for just $323 million per mile, and Paris built one for $320 million per mile.NEPA and its state-level equivalents also inhibit housing construction: In Berkeley, California, locals delayed the building of new undergraduate dorms through a three-year-long lawsuit, in which they argued that the project violated the California Environmental Quality Act, since enabling more college students to live in Berkeley would increase noise pollution. This state of affairs undermines trust in the public sectors competence, while making infrastructure and housing more expensive, raising tax burdens, and slowing economic growth.The Democratic Partys complacency about these outcomes bespeaks an insensitivity to working-class priorities and interests. According to some leftwing narratives, Democrats took an ideological turn in the 1970s, one that led them to sacrifice the interests of blue-collar Americans to the pursuit of growth at all costs. But on some policy fronts, this gets the story backward. Democrats became less committed to economic growth in the seventies, largely because they started prioritizing educated middle-class peoples ideological and quality-of-life concerns over the material interests of working people. The environmental movement of the 1970s was overwhelmingly comprised of economically comfortable college graduates, many of whom regarded economic growth as undesirable and unsustainable, a position rejected by the vast majority of working-class voters. As political scientist Ronald Inglehart showed, blue-collar Americans were much less likely than their more affluent compatriots to prioritize environmental concerns over economic ones. And working-class voters priorities were well-founded: The costs of a regulatory system biased toward stasis and scarcity are more burdensome for those who do not yet enjoy material security than for those who do. As civil rights icon and trade unionist Bayard Rustin lamented in 1976, the vanguard of the environmental movement, themselves members largely of the upper classes, have often sought policies that are clearly detrimental, and in some casesthe growth controversy being the most significant exampledestructive to the needs of those less better off.Many of the environmental movements achievements were laudable, and greatly improved and extended the lives of ordinary Americans. And the harms of NEPA arent all attributable to earnest environmentalists: Well-heeled interests have exploited the law to obstruct all manner of economic development. Yet refusing to pare back the scope of NEPA and similar laws in light of such abuse was a choice one that constrained economic opportunity and diminished the federal governments capacity to build public works.What makes NEPA and its ilk particularly perverse in the present moment, however, is that they are making Americas greatest ecological challenge climate change more difficult to meet. The reason for this is simple: Building a clean energy economy requires constructing gargantuan amounts of new infrastructure (vast solar installations, wind farms, transmission lines, and geothermal plants, among other things). Maintaining a carbon economy, by contrast, requires building scarcely any, since the existing energy system is built around the needs and capacities of fossil fuels. A regulatory regime that favors the status quo is therefore one that favors fossil fuels. As of 2021, NEPA reviews were holding up twice as many green projects as carbon energy ones. According to an analysis cited by Klein and Thompson, 95 percent of energy projects that are looking to connect to the grid but which are as yet obstructed by permitting consist of solar, battery storage, or wind power.The abundance agenda is a starting pointPro-growth deregulatory policies are not sufficient for achieving shared prosperity. Indeed, such proposals arent even adequate for realizing Klein and Thompsons vision for abundance, which also entails increasing government funding for technological development, among other things. But loosening some regulatory restrictions on housing and infrastructure development would directly advance many progressive economic goals while indirectly making it easier to expand the social welfare state. After all, higher economic growth translates into higher government revenues, which can then be redistributed to the economically disadvantaged. The abundance agenda is also compatible with increasing workers bargaining power through sectoral bargaining (even as there exist some genuine conflicts between the narrow interests of discrete unions and the achievement of material plenty). Abundance is directed at a progressive audience and aimed at winning an argument internal to blue America. In the current moment, this may strike some readers as myopic. Even if all progressives decided tomorrow to prioritize making it easier for the federal government to do big things, Elon Musk would still be gutting its capacity to execute its most basic functions. Even if permitting issues werent stymying the green transition, Donald Trump would be. And Klein and Thompson do not fully grapple with the challenge that the GOPs radicalization poses to their ambitions. Much of the abundance agenda is aimed at increasing the administrative states power, at the expense of the judiciarys. This strikes me as indispensable for realizing liberalisms long-term goals. But today, it would entail giving Trump and Musk an even freer hand to reshape government to their reactionary whims.Nevertheless, abundance liberalism remains relevant. The MAGA movement is not the reason why New York cant build enough housing, California cant build high-speed rail, and Massachusetts cant build a transmission line between its cities and Quebecs hydropower plants. Democrats have full control of government in some of Americas largest and wealthiest states. They have the power to prove that they can deliver rising living standards and falling costs for ordinary people. There are many reasons why blue states have had such limited success on these fronts. But one is that progressives have not mounted a unified front against zoning restrictions that help landlords gouge tenants, environmental laws that enable rich NIMBYs to block renewable energy, and liberal policies that seek to advance so many disparate priorities that they end up achieving none. With any luck, Abundance will bring us a little closer to such a consensus.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 purge of Democrats from an agency responsible for policing corporate America, another attempt to eliminate lawful checks on the presidents authority.Whats the latest? Trump fired the only two Democrats on the five-member board that runs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), one of the agencies responsible for enforcing laws that protect consumers and check corporate power. Both of the commissioners say they plan to sue over the firings, arguing they are illegal.So, are the firings illegal? The president can only lawfully fire FTC commissioners who serve seven-year terms for incompetence or malfeasance. Thats according to the statute that created the FTC, as well as a 1935 Supreme Court ruling that held President Franklin Roosevelt broke the law when he fired a Republican commissioner for opposing his agenda.Trumps team isnt claiming either malfeasance or incompetence, instead telling the commissioners they were fired because their service is inconsistent with [the] administrations priorities. But Trump has issued an executive order asserting the president can fire any executive branch appointee at will. That legal question is likely headed for the Supreme Court.What do the FTC firings mean for you? The FTCs setup is meant to tilt power toward the party in power, as the president picks the boards chair. But its also supposed to reflect bipartisan priorities, as no more than three commissioners are supposed to come from either party. Unless Trumps firings are overturned, the board will solely reflect Republican priorities, which Democratic critics say will mean a lax, pro-corporate approach to enforcement of consumer protections.Whats the big picture? Since taking office, Trump has continually pushed to remove checks on his authority. In this case, Republicans had control of the agency, but not total control and that (lawful) limit on Trumps power was more than this administration could live with.And with that, its time to log offOur friends at Voxs The Gray Area podcast are running a particularly apt episode today titled How to live in uncertain times. Im excited to listen on my commute home, and if you want to join me, its available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, and elsewhere. If podcasts arent your thing, a partial transcript is available here. Thanks for reading The Logoff, and Ill see you back here tomorrow.See More:

Humanitys battle against tuberculosis has been one of slow and imperfect progress. The disease no longer kills one in seven people in the US, as it did in the 19th century. But look elsewhere and its burden is still terrible: TB killed more than 1.2 million people in 2023, likely making it once again the deadliest infection on Earth, after it was briefly supplanted by Covid-19 during the pandemic.And as John Green, the YA author, YouTuber, and author of the new book Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, told me in an interview: That number is about to go up.As part of its evisceration of US international aid, the Trump administration is ending funding for its global TB programs. The US is the worlds largest single funder of tuberculosis treatment, and the spending cuts quickly interrupted medical care for TB victims. And any delay in treatment can lead to worse outcomes for patients and makes it more likely the bacteria will evolve to resist antibiotics. All of this is a direct result of the decisions made by the US government, Green told me. Allowing tuberculosis to spread unchecked throughout the world is bad news for all humans.There may be as many as 10 million additional TB cases by 2030 because of the cuts, depending on how deep they ultimately are, according to one initial estimate. An additional 2.2 million people could die in that worst-case scenario.Its difficult to know whats happening on the ground, as ongoing lawsuits try force aid funding to resume and the Trump administration itself has given conflicting information at times. One TB program director told The Guardian last week their funding had still not resumed despite receiving a reassurance from the administration that it would.The funding freeze is not only a threat to people in the developing world who live with tuberculosis as an ever-present threat, Green told me it also poses a risk to the US itself. Right now, Kansas has 68 active TB cases, one of the largest US outbreaks in recent history. One estimate from the Center for Global Development finds that US TB cases will rise in parallel with cases in the rest of the world. That wont just increase health care costs it will increase the risk that TB will become more drug-resistant and therefore deadlier to people around the world, including in the US.I spoke with Green about the history of one of humanitys oldest infectious diseases, the threat posed by the Trump administrations cuts, and what concerned people can do in response. Our conversation is below, edited for clarity and length.What is the state of tuberculosis right now? Why do people in the US and other wealthy countries often think of it as a disease of the past, a problem that has been solved?I used to think of it as a disease of the past as well. I thought of TB primarily as the disease that killed John Keats, and then we figured out a solution to it, so now its not a threat anymore. But in fact, tuberculosis is still the worlds deadliest infectious disease. It kills over 1.2 million people per year. That number is about to go up. It sickens about 10 million people per year. Around a quarter of all living humans have experienced a TB infection.Now, the vast majority of those people will never become sick. Theyll have what we call latent TB, where these clumps of white blood cells form what are called tubercles to surround the bacteria and keep it in check. But in about 10 percent of people who experience a TB infection, they will become sick. We understand some of the risk factors for developing active TB disease. They include malnutrition, other health problems like diabetes, or HIV infection. But we dont fully understand why some people develop active TB and others dont. You call the disease weird in your book. What is weird about TB? The weirdest thing about TB is the cell wall that the bacteria builds. It builds this really thick, fatty cell wall. That takes a long time to build, so TB has an extremely slow growth rate compared to other bacteria; in some cases, hundreds of times slower. That means that it sickens us slower because it takes a long time to overwhelm the bodys defenses. This is one of the reasons why tuberculosis used to be a narratively convenient disease, a disease that was the subject of so many books. It was a narratively compelling disease because it tends to take a life slowly over the course of months or years, rather than all at once like a disease like cholera or the black plague.Classically, we understood death as something that occurred very early on in life because about half of people died before the age of 5, or something that occurred late in adulthood, in your 50s or after. Tuberculosis killed so many people in their 20s and 30s that it was called the robber of youth. But it also killed people early in childhood and late in adulthood. It killed indiscriminately. To some extent, it still does. I mean, 218,000 kids are going to die of tuberculosis this year. Whats so frustrating to me is that all of those deaths are unnecessary because weve had a cure since the 1950s.This disease has been with us forever. It was even glamorized to an extent in earlier generations. But then there was a transition when it became more stigmatized it became associated with being dirty and poor. How did that happen?Until 1882, at least in Northern Europe and the United States, it was generally believed that tuberculosis was an inherited genetic condition. But in 1882, the German doctor Robert Koch proved that tuberculosis was in fact caused by bacteria. The moment it became an infectious disease is really the moment that our imagining of the disease changed radically.Instead of being a disease of wealth and civilization, it became a disease of poverty. The implications of this were huge because it meant that we could control tuberculosis by trying to control the bacteria that caused TB. But it also meant that we wanted much more control over the lives of people living with tuberculosis.We started to understand them very differently. We started to see people with tuberculosis as a threat to the social order.At the same time, by the middle of the 20th century, we developed vaccines and cures. How did our perception of TB continued to change and how did race increasingly factor into it?TB had long been understood by Europeans as a racialized disease. It was widely believed in Europe and in the US among white doctors that only white people could get consumption because it was a disease of civilization. To acknowledge that consumption was common among people of color and colonized people would have been to undermine the entire project of colonialism itself.After we understood the disease as infectious, it became racialized in a different way, where it came to be argued that people of color were uncommonly susceptible to tuberculosis. Instead of believing that it was impossible for them to get tuberculosis, people started to argue that their susceptibility to tuberculosis was owing to some factor inherent to race. Now, we knew this was hogwash from the beginning. There were lots of doctors, including African American doctors and researchers, pushing back against this notion. They argued, correctly, that the actual cause of tuberculosis was crowded living and working conditions, poor pay, malnutrition all the stuff that today we know does cause tuberculosis. But the racialization of the disease was so profound that its still shaping who lives and dies of tuberculosis. Today, how does tuberculosis look in the United States versus a place like Sierra Leone, which you cover extensively in your book?Starting in the 1940s, we began to develop treatments for tuberculosis that were very powerful. We created combinations of multiple antibiotics that, given over the course of several months or even years, could cure tuberculosis. This disease that had always been one of the leading human killers suddenly became curable.Unfortunately, we did a really poor job of distributing this cure to the places where it was most needed. As a result, weve seen the development of extensive drug resistance for tuberculosis, and weve seen a huge amount of ongoing suffering from the disease. The Ugandan HIV researcher Dr. Peter Mugyenyi said of HIV drugs in the year 2000: Where are the drugs? The drugs are where the disease is not. And where is the disease? The disease is where the drugs are not. And thats very much the case with tuberculosis as well.If you or I got tuberculosis tomorrow, even if we had a complex drug-resistant case, we would get access to the best personalized, tailored treatments of antibiotic cocktails we would need in order to cure our TB. But for someone like my friend Henry living in Sierra Leone, when he got really sick in 2019 and 2020, those drugs werent available to him.So even though his TB was very curable, his life was at risk not ultimately because of a lack of technology, but because of failure to get the technology to the places where its most needed. In the book you called TB both a form and an expression of injustice. It seems to me that TB is one very striking example of a pattern of injustice that applies across a lot of diseases.Yeah. I think its really important to acknowledge that tuberculosis is not the only disease of injustice. Hepatitis is a disease of injustice. Malaria, HIV, cancer are diseases of injustice. When my brother got cancer, one of the first things he said to me was that there was a 94 percent cure rate if you have access to treatment, and about a 5 percent cure rate if you dont.Its very hard to grapple with the fact that the real cause of a huge percentage of human death is injustice the failures of human-built systems.There are many deaths that we simply dont have the technology or the tools to prevent. But there are many, many, many, many deaths that we do have the technologies and tools to prevent. Its important to understand that as a justice problem, as an equity problem, as a failure to appropriately apportion the resources that we as a human species have developed.It breaks my heart. Its devastating. Im often asked whether I think people are good. Like, at the end of this book, do I think people are good? And I cant answer that question. What I can say is I think people are capable of extraordinary generosity and compassion and sacrifice. When people are proximal to suffering, they show an extraordinary capacity for giving. And when people are not proximal to suffering, when people dont let themselves become close to the suffering of others, they can act monstrously.There has been imperfect progress on global health, but progress nonetheless. But now the US government is pulling back from the global health commitments that have helped make that progress possible. What does this mean for TB specifically?The United States has long been the most generous donor when it comes to fighting TB, and now essentially all tuberculosis-related funding has been cut. Thats catastrophic on a number of levels. To my Republican friends and congressional representatives, I try to compare it to the 2008 financial crisis when the capital markets just froze, and it was very hard to get them to start working again.In many communities, thats whats happening as a result of this sudden, chaotic, very unpredictable, haphazardly rolled out funding freeze. Hundreds of thousands of people have seen their treatment interrupted, and we know thats a catastrophe, not only for those individuals, many of whom will die, perhaps most of whom tragically will die, but also because it means that they will develop drug resistance.Even a couple of weeks without getting access to your medication means a skyrocketing chance of drug resistance. Even if theyre able to get back on treatment, the relatively inexpensive treatment that worked before may no longer work. That means more cases of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis circulating in communities. Its also a threat to the United States. We have 10,000 cases of active tuberculosis in the US every year. We have a tuberculosis outbreak right now in Kansas. Tuberculosis anywhere is a threat to people everywhere and allowing tuberculosis to spread unchecked throughout the world is bad news for all humans. Its bad news for human health. Weve made so much progress in human health during my lifetime. The year I graduated from high school, 12 million children died under the age of 5. Last year, fewer than 5 million did. Its easy to feel like that progress is inevitable or natural or somehow it was always going to happen. But it wasnt always going to happen. It happened because millions of people worked together to make it happen, because we decided collectively to value childrens lives more and to work hard to protect them. Now what were seeing is the first regression of my lifetime when it comes to overall human health. Were seeing it in the United States where life expectancy has been going down. Were about to see it globally where tuberculosis cases, by one estimate, will increase by 30 percent over the next couple of years, leading to 13 million people getting sick every year instead of 10 million and leading to hundreds of thousands more people dying. All of this is a direct result of the decisions made by the US government. I feel like its hard for people to understand the feedback loop thats potentially in play here that can put our health at risk because diseases are spreading elsewhere. I think its also hard for us to take the long view.Im curious where you think that failure comes from? And have you seen anything thats sort of effective in overcoming that? I think we have to bridge the empathy gap. Theres always an empathy gap between every person, right? I dont know what its like to be you. I dont know about your joys and sorrows. And even when I do, I can only kind of situate them in my own experience. I can only relate to it through my own eyes because those are the only eyes I get to see through for the whole time that Im here.And so theres always an empathy gap, but that empathy gap grows or shrinks based on how close you allow yourself to be to the suffering and joy of others. And so you know when my uncle gets sick, Im going to respond to that very differently than if I hear through the grapevine that someone elses uncle is sick. And for me, the empathy gap is also a social justice gap.The further the rich world feels from someones life, the less likely the rich world is to intervene. So for me, its about shrinking that empathy gap everywhere we can so that we understand that the lives of other people, even other people whose lives may feel distant from ours are just as real and just as important as ours, that their joy and grief and longing and loss is as real and profound as ours is.I try to do that in the book by telling Henrys story because you can talk all day about what a great investment tuberculosis response is, and it is a great long-term financial investment. You can talk all day about how many people are dying of TB every year. All that just boils down to statistics. And the statistics dont decrease the empathy gap, at least for me. And so I wanted to tell a human story at a human scale because I feel like thats what really changes our perspective.What options are available to people like Vox readers, who want to contribute in some small way to making these problems better? It sounds meaningless and everybody says it, but its true. When you reach out to your congressional representatives insofar as youre lucky enough to have some say in your governance, it really matters. What funding weve been able to claw back for USAID is a result of people reaching out to their senators and representatives and those senators and representatives in turn reaching out to Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio and saying, This is ridiculous. This cant happen.Its really, really important that people in power hear that it is unacceptable for the United States to walk away from its long-term commitments to global health and human health, and that its unacceptable for the United States to break its promises. They need to hear its also bad for America. Its bad for farmers who provide food aid. Its bad for overall human health in the United States. Were seeing our own numbers of tuberculosis cases go up every year, and that will accelerate now.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:

I have, like I suspect many readers, been in quite a bad mood for the last two months. My go-to joke explaining why which I feel like should land with readers of this newsletter has become: I didnt realize quite how much my overall optimism about the state of the world depended on the fact that Lindsey Graham likes foreign aid.To unpack that a bit: For many years, the US spent tens of billions annually on foreign aid, including billions on vaccinations, preventive gear, and treatments for cheap-to-treat killers like HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. It did that not because a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals have been in power continuously for decades, but because a critical mass of conservative Republicans like Graham (and former President George W. Bush, and former House foreign affairs chair Michael McCaul, etc.) genuinely supported foreign aid, often out of sincere moral conviction. Aid actually grew dramatically under Bush, and remained roughly constant through President Barack Obamas time in office and during Donald Trumps first term.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.This, obviously, has not been the story of foreign aid under Trumps second term. Already, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, acting as the US Agency for International Developments (USAID) interim head, has canceled programs amounting to at least a third of USAIDs annual spending. Some areas were hit even harder: Efforts to improve maternal and child health are in for an 83 percent cut, and pandemic prevention is getting a 90 percent cut. (On Wednesday, a federal judge said that the Trump administrations efforts to close USAID were likely unconstitutional and ordered the government to reinstate USAID systems, though its anyones guess how meaningful that ruling will prove to be.)Despite Elon Musks lies that the cuts in funding havent killed anyone, the lack of funds at HIV clinics caused by Musk, Rubio, and Trump has already led to children dying. Journalist Nick Kristof has some of the names of the dead. Working with the Center for Global Development, he estimates that more than 1.6 million could die within a year without HIV aid and prevention from the US.Graham, to his credit, has been pushing back, particularly in defense of PEPFAR, the USs wildly successful anti-HIV program. So has McCaul. It just hasnt mattered: The administration has seized control of spending from Congress, particularly on foreign aid matters, and so the bipartisan coalition that kept aid programs alive for decades has been largely helpless. Graham liking foreign aid has proved to be a less important positive for the world than I had thought.This is an example of a broader, alarming trend in American politics that has been slowly unfolding over the past 10 or 15 years. At least going back to the 1980s, there was a kind of informal, cross-party consensus in the US around a set of policies that opened the US economy, and sometimes government coffers, to the world. It was an era of elite cosmopolitanism, and that era feels like it is coming, or has come, to a close.The globalist golden yearsThere were, of course, important and significant differences between the parties on a huge variety of issues during the period Im talking about (lets say 1986 to 2016, roughly, though Im not wedded to either specific year). But on many international economic questions, there was broad consensus.Both parties championed free trade. Ronald Reagan negotiated a tariff-reduction pact with Canada, and instead of reversing course, Bill Clinton followed that up with NAFTA and the creation of the World Trade Organization; Bush and Obama followed up with trade deals of their own. Both parties championed immigration. In 1986, Reagan signed a law providing amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and both Bush and Obama supported bipartisan congressional efforts to give legal status to those who came after that year. The foreign aid part of the consensus is more recent. In the 1990s, USAID was hollowed out in terms of both staff and funding, both due to the end of the Cold War (removing a geopolitical reason for it to operate in countries at risk of Communist takeover) and due to a sustained assault from Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jesse Helms (R-NC), a dedicated foreign aid opponent and outspoken racist. But foreign aid got a surprise second act under George W. Bush, who not only created and poured billions into PEPFAR, but also launched the Presidents Malaria Initiative (which became one of the worlds leading anti-malaria funders) and made the US the first country to donate to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a major multilateral funder. Obama and Joe Biden supported these efforts, and they survived budget cut proposals during the first Trump term due to bipartisan congressional support.Despite the slightly different chronologies, I think lumping these three areas of bipartisan consensus trade, immigration, and aid together makes sense. All of them involve American openness to foreign countries. All of them have benefited from bootleggers and Baptists coalitions combining moralists and baser economic interests.Some activists supported migration on moral grounds, but the US Chamber of Commerce was arguably the biggest booster; reducing trade barriers obviously helped businesses importing tariffed goods or exporting to tariffing nations, but many architects of trade liberalization felt a moral duty to use trade to help poorer countries like Mexico and China to grow; foreign aid serves a national security purpose in boosting US soft power, but Bushs main motive in reviving it, and the main motive of most pro-aid activists I know, was a sense of moral duty.All three issues, then, reflected a kind of light noblesse oblige on the part of US political elites. They were willing to take significant actions to help people born abroad, either staying there trying to survive (aid), staying there and trying to work (trade), or coming to the US (immigration). Their willingness was not purely due to altruism. There were economic and geopolitical motives at work too. But the positive effects on billions of foreign-born people were real nonetheless.Why the consensus fell apartIf this elite cosmopolitanism was able to support large-scale immigration, low trade barriers, and generous foreign aid for decades, why has it not been able to stop the Trump administration from devastating all three?Its not because the public suddenly changed its mind. While the Biden term was a period of historic anti-immigrant backlash, the consensus started fraying in Obamas second and Trumps first terms, when anti-immigrant sentiment was, perhaps surprisingly, at a low ebb. In June 2016, only 38 percent of voters said that immigration should be decreased, compared to 65 percent in 1993 and 55 percent in 2024.But while restrictionists were a minority in 2016, they became a much louder and more influential one. The mass refugee flows from the Syrian civil war meant that the topic had higher salience in the US and especially in Europe. Most importantly, Trump broke basically every social taboo about discussing the topic during his primary run, and not only didnt suffer but won the nomination as a result. It wasnt a majority position Trump would lose the popular vote after all but it was clearly more potent than previously thought.The 2016 race also scrambled the politics of trade. Bernie Sanderss stronger-than-expected challenge to Hillary Clinton led her to come out against Obamas Trans-Pacific Partnership, an anti-China trade pact that she passionately advocated for as secretary of state; she clearly saw in the strength of Sanders, and Trump, evidence that trade restrictionism had become a political imperative. Clintons eventual loss due to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania led to a folk understanding among professional Democrats that not passing protectionist measures to help Rust Belt states would be electoral suicide. This never made any sense; the shock of competition from China and elsewhere did hurt these places, but its long since over and no policy measures could ever bring manufacturing employment in Detroit back to where it was in 1970. But this conclusion meant that both parties were running away from open trade simultaneously, and as a result, the US as a whole has retreated from free trade over the last decade.It is also possible, as political scientist Margaret Peters has argued, that immigration support has suffered precisely because trade was liberalized in the 1990s and 00s. Historically, nativist forces have been kept at bay because of business lobbies supporting immigration, but the ability to offshore manufacturing to foreign countries provided an alternative for businesses to bringing in foreign laborers to the US. Peters argues that this effect, not just of trade deals but of things like standardized shipping containers, has undermined support for immigration over time by taking business lobbyists off the board. There go the bootleggers.The saddest case, though, is foreign aid. Why did this tiny portion of the federal budget come in for such a beating this year? I dont really have deep structural answers. Foreign aid has never been very popular, and voters routinely overestimate how much the US spends on it. It has always survived on elite, not popular, support, and was in a vulnerable position should someone like Elon Musk go after it. The declining religiosity of American conservatism also weakened the evangelical forces who so strongly supported PEPFAR under Bush.As for why Musk had such a vendetta against foreign aid, the best explanation is that he fell under the influence of rabidly anti-USAID conspiracy theorist Mike Benz. He wouldnt be the first dubious source who Musk decided against all reason to trust absolutely.Put all together, though, and the picture looks bleak for anyone who thinks the US can play an important role in making the lives of people around the world, not just here at home, better. In three different domains, the fragile coalitions supporting that vision have cracked and been beaten back. Im not throwing in the towel just yet. But the game is going very badly.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 and over again, the Trump administration has claimed to be fighting antisemitism while wielding power against its domestic enemies. Yet, at the same time, theres been a troubling surge in antisemitism among MAGA influencers and even some Trump administration staff.Concern for the safety of the Jewish community has been the stated motivation for two of Donald Trumps most recent aggressive moves cutting $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University and attempting to deport one of its graduate students, green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil, in retaliation for his pro-Palestinian activism.Columbia has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment, the Trump administration wrote in a March 13 letter to the university. The administration is threatening to expand this funding cutoff, investigating over 60 universities and colleges on suspicion of tolerating or encouraging antisemitism.On the other hand, the first two months of the Trump administration have been marked by continued antisemetic rhetoric and gestures from the presidents allies. Elon Musk did two apparent Nazi salutes at Trumps inauguration a gesture top adviser Steve Bannon later repeated (Musk and Bannon deny performing the gesture intentionally). The Trump administration gave a Pentagon spokesperson job to a woman with a long history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories. Just last Friday, the head of the Trump Department of Justices antisemitism task force an attorney named Leo Terrell approvingly retweeted a post about Judaism by an infamous white nationalist.Top MAGA podcasters like Joe Rogan and Theo Von have hosted prominent right-wingers like Candace Owens, who has a long track record of embracing antisemitic ideas, and Ian Carroll, who has blamed Israel for 9/11 (and spread many other antisemitic conspiracy theories), for friendly chats. Both Rogan and Tucker Carlson, arguably the two biggest media stars on the Trumpy right, have taped episodes with Hitler apologist Darryl Cooper. Its gotten so bad that even Christopher Rufo, one of the movements leading lights, recently admitted that the right has an antisemitic influencer problem, warning his comrades that they are being infected by a poison that must be rejected for the good of the movement.So is the Trump administration friendly to Jews, as they claim, or threatening to us? The answer is that it depends on what kind of Jew you are or, perhaps, where you live. The MAGA rights approach can best be described as pro-Israel antisemitism: a simultaneous embrace of the Jewish state and attack on American Jews place in American life.Over the years, pro-Israel antisemitism has quietly become an essential part of the MAGA movement. And its rise augurs nothing good for American Jews.The European roots of pro-Israel antisemitism I first encountered the term pro-Israel antisemitism in a 2021 paper by Jelena Suboti, a political scientist at Georgia State University. Suboti is interested in what she calls the populist international the web of far-right populist parties in Western democracies ranging from Frances National Rally to PiS in Poland. Subotis focus on the European far-right is important, as they are the originators of the pro-Israel antisemitism thats now made its way to America.On a continent deeply shaped by the legacy of the Holocaust, far-right parties needed a shield against charges that they were neo-Nazis in sheeps clothing. At the same time, they recognized that hostility to Jews remains a powerful force among subsections of the European population, particularly amid a section of their own base.So parties like Germanys AfD and Hungarys Fidesz developed an insidious three-step maneuver:Boldly and loudly champion Israel and its right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to create pro-Jewish bona fides.Position hostility to Islam and Muslim immigration to Europe as a defense of European Jews, chiefly by blaming antisemitic violence on immigrants and their children.Deploy antisemitic dog whistles like minimizing the scale of the Holocaust or lacing speeches with Jewish stereotypes that signal to domestic antisemites that the far-right retains its historic commitments.The central role of pro-Israel rhetoric in this three-step has produced what Suboti calls a decoupling of what was once seen as tightly linked issues: support for Israel abroad and Jews domestically. One striking example of this decoupling is Germanys AfD, the deeply anti-Muslim far-right party that placed second in Germanys national elections in February. The party has long taken a strongly pro-Israel position: After October 7, for example, it called on the German government to cut off funding to Palestinians. Its top figure, Alice Weidel, blasted a deeply vested antisemitism within the leftish [anti-Israel] movement in a January interview with Musk. Yet the party has direct links to white nationalists and neo-Nazis, to the point where it has been put under surveillance by German intelligence.Bjrn Hcke, a Weidel ally and the leader of the partys extremist wing, has been fined twice for using a Nazi slogan in his speeches. Another AfD parliamentarian claimed a German Jewish organization was using Islam to bring about multicultural relations. Jews in Germany are increasingly scared: The International Auschwitz Committee, a Berlin-based anti-hate group founded by Holocaust survivors, has warned that the AfD repeatedly trigger disconcerting memories in the survivors of the German concentration and extermination camps with their speeches and performances.This is how pro-Israel antisemitism works in practice. The far-right partys top leadership takes staunchly pro-Israel and anti-Muslim positions, using both to frame itself as a defender of Jewish interests. At the same time, they deploy antisemitic dog whistles and permit the spread of poisonous antisemitism throughout the party rank-and-file. The result is the mainstreaming of right-wing antisemitism by a party that claims to be standing up for Israel and the Jewish people.This is exactly the pattern that weve seen in the GOP under Trump with an added twist.Trump and the replacement of Judaism with IsraelIn his personal rhetoric, Trump draws a clear distinction between the American Jews who support him (good) and the liberal American Jews who oppose him (bad). This is often explicitly linked to Israel: The good conservative Jews understand that Trump is good for Israel, while the bad liberal Jews dont care about their own people.I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty [to Israel], Trump said in 2019.Trump has even gone so far as to excommunicate Jews he dislikes.[Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer is a Palestinian as far as Im concerned. Hes become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. Hes not Jewish anymore. Hes a Palestinian, Trump said.There is, of course, obvious racial bigotry in using Palestinian as a slur. But its also a clear example of pro-Israel antisemitism at work. Because Trump seems to believe hes more pro-Israel than Schumer, he acts as if he has the right to weigh in on the validity of Schumers Jewishness. This depends, at least implicitly, on the notion that Jewishness is defined by the degree to which one identifies with a) Israel and b) the current far-right government of Prime Minister Netanyahu.Chuck Schumer is, by all accounts, a pro-Israel member of Congress. His hostility to Netanyahu Schumer called on the prime minister to resign last year is rooted in his belief that Netanyahus far-right politics endanger Israels security in the long term. Hes not alone in this view: A November poll found that roughly two-thirds of American Jews disapprove of Netanyahus performance as prime minister.Yet none of this matters to Trump. He behaves as if American Jews are worthy of respect if and only if they support him personally. Equating true or loyal Judaism with a hardline vision of support for Israel gives him license to disparage and even diminish the vast bulk of American Jews who support neither him nor Netanyahu. Invoking Israel serves as a rhetorical shield for comments that would be obviously antisemitic calling American Jews disloyal or not Jewish in any other context.Understanding the way that Trump replaces Judaism with Israel also helps explain why his actions that purportedly defend Jews do nothing of the sort.Think about the two headline examples of Trumps action on antisemitism: stripping funding from Columbia and detaining Khalil. Only one of Trumps nine demands for Columbia getting its money back even mentions antisemitism; no one has presented evidence that Khalil himself either engaged in antisemitism or provided material support for antisemitic terrorist groups.Rather, Trumps actions focus on defending Israel. He wants to punish Columbia for failing to curtail anti-Israel demonstrations, and deport Khalil for leading them. What is billed as an attempt to fight antisemitism is, in fact, an attempt to shield Israel from criticism and deepen the Trump administrations powers to curtail left-wing speech more broadly.The rise of anti-Semitism on campus since October 7, 2023, is real. But the Republican campaign to use it as a justification to extend political control over universities has nothing to do with protecting Jews, and everything to do with undermining liberal democracy, The Atlantics Jonathan Chait writes.Trump is getting away with itThe rise of pro-Israel antisemitism poses a significant challenge for American Jews not only because its dangerous, but because our institutions arent built to confront it.Leading Jewish advocacy groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have long advocated simultaneously for anti-hate and pro-Israel causes. This fits the attitude of most American Jews, who are both politically liberal and broadly speaking pro-Israel.As a result, these mainstream organizations have tried to separate out what is (in their view) the good and the bad of Trumps approach. They have condemned Trumps comments about Schumer being Palestinian and called out antisemitism among Trump appointees and allies. However, theyve also supported his threats against American universities, and even spoken approvingly of Khalils deportation.In doing so, they are not only betraying American Jewrys historic commitments to civil liberties and free speech. They are unintentionally helping the MAGA movement launder antisemitism into the mainstream.Pro-Israel antisemitism works by creating credibility: a perception that the far-right party in question cannot be antisemitic because it is standing up for the interests of Jewish Israelis. This is the go-to maneuver for Trumps allies including prominent Republican Jews who have dismissed his extensive record of antisemitic comments by citing his support for Israel.But partisan actors inherently have less credibility than Jewish advocacy groups. By lending their imprimatur to Trumps policies, suggesting that he is doing good work against antisemitism by cracking down on pro-Palestinian speech, they are bolstering his credibility against charges of antisemitism. In effect, they are directly undermining the power of their own critiques on other issues. And if they think that praising Trump will cause him to listen when they ask him to condemn someone like Joe Rogan, theyre fooling themselves.Their mistake is understandable. There really is an antisemitism problem on the pro-Palestinian left, including among activist groups that have organized campus protests. I get why Jewish advocacy groups would want to applaud an administration that they perceive as taking this seriously.But the problem is that they are dealing with people who have welcomed antisemites into their coalition and show little interest in purging them. Its become so commonplace among the right-wing social media and podcast set that prominent conservatives, like Rufo and Meghan McCain, are being forced to recognize the problems severity. Ironically, you can now find a call from Rufo for the GOP to build an establishment capable ofenforcing boundaries of decency the very thing the MAGA movement tore down during its conquest of the Republican party.Treating the Trump movement and its allies as honest brokers on campus issues gives exactly the reputational shield they need to get away with it. Moreover, it gives a Jewish imprimatur to repressing speech that the GOP deems as anti-Israel which they could easily deploy against Jews they dont like.Mainstream Jewish organizations need to take notes from some of the smaller center-left peers, whose ideological positioning has liberated them to call out Trumps faux concern for Jewish welfare. Until their centrist peers come to the same realization, they will be unintentionally facilitating the rise of Europes new antisemitism at home.See More:

The Trump administration has shuttered a number of federal agencies, and ordered another tranche closed last Friday.Among them was Voice of America a news outlet founded to help the Allies fight the Nazis that still publishes and broadcasts today. Or did, until Saturday, when its employees found themselves unable to go to work. The media remarked on the loss of Voice of America, but it didnt quite cause the stir that firings at USAID or the Department of Education did, and thats perhaps because it does not broadcast inside the US. Americans can visit its website for news, but cant hear it on the radio or see it on television. However, as Gabrielle Berbey who, along with her colleagues at Today, Explained reported on the death of Voice of America explains, the outlets shuttering provides a helpful way to understand the Trump administrations approach to governance. I spoke with Gabrielle about this, and more our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.What is Voice of America? Why is it important? Voice of America is the largest and oldest US international broadcaster; it was established in 1942 to fight Nazi propaganda via shortwave radio. By the time World War II ended, Voice of America or VOA had 3,200 programs around the world in 40 languages. Its operated since then, with a mission to continue combating authoritarian propaganda and to spread US values throughout the world. Today, its a part of United States Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, which also includes other US media you may be familiar with, like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Mart. And though most USAGM outlets started on the radio, today they broadcast on television and publish online as well. USAGM has offices and journalists all around the world, reporting from and for places that otherwise might not have access to media beyond state-sponsored media, or that may not have much media infrastructure at all, places like China, Iran, and Afghanistan. And in many places, USAGM outlets are the main and sometimes only voice combating the state-sponsored media narrative.Interestingly, VOA does not actually broadcast in the US, which is why I think many people, especially people who are younger, dont know what VOA is. But its played an important role for the past 80 years and this is the first time its gone radio silent. Why did it go radio silent?On Friday, the Trump administration issued an executive order that essentially put the employees of several agencies on administrative leave. As a result of that order, everyone who works at VOA and Radio Mart were put on administrative leave, and outlets like Radio Free Europe lost funding. And that effectively shut those outlets down. Why did Trump do that?The Trump administration was very critical of USAGM and a Voice of America even in its first term. This term, Trump selected Kari Lake who was the former, failed GOP gubernatorial and Senate candidate for Arizona, a fierce Trump loyalist, and former media professional herself to run Voice of America and serve as a special adviser to USGM. She went in reportedly really wanting to lead VOA, and to enact sweeping reforms to the organization. That wasnt necessarily seen as a bad thing. Some sources I spoke to for this story even some former VOA journalists said theres valid criticism that the VOA produces US propaganda, and some questioned whether essentially combating propaganda with propaganda, was the right use of US soft power. So there was some openness to changes.But there were also concerns. A VOA journalist Steve Herman, who was the White House bureau chief was put on leave, and another involuntarily reassigned. So the reforms seemed like they might be drastic, but I dont know if people expected a complete shutdown. For a time, it seemed like there might be a divide in the Trump administration. On one side, Trump adviser Elon Musk and special UN envoy Richard Grenell were tweeting how we dont need Voice of America anymore, and how it should be shut down. And on the other side was Lake, who responded to these tweets by defending USAGM and arguing that there was a place for Voice of America.In the end, Lake backed the decision to shutter the outlets the termination notices of some of the grants had her signature even if she previously said that she was interested in saving it. Theres probably a mix of reasons why USAGM and VOA were targeted. One, the Trump administration is trying to make sweeping cuts through federal agencies, and weve seen agencies like the Department of Education and USAID targeted that dont align, or supposedly dont align, with the administrations worldview. And you could put USAGM in that category it has been criticized by Trump-aligned figures as putting out fake news. There could also be a foreign policy element to it as well; weve seen Trump try to make some big resets on that front.Some of the USs adversaries have cheered the demise of USAGM, right? Has that changed the Trump administrations stance at all?I dont know that weve seen many minds being changed in the Trump administration, but yes, we have seen the Kremlin and Russian propaganda rejoicing that Trump had gutted Radio Free Asia, Radio Liberty, and Voice of America. Chinese state media called Voice of America a dirty rag that the Trump administration was getting rid of. That response reflects the fact that USAGM outlets really were a way for the United States to insert its narrative into those countries, often in a way that was critical, or designed to make people question, the state-sponsored narrative.Without these outlets, the US has lost a way to combat disinformation. And some people are losing access to news. I talked to one former VOA journalist during my reporting who remembered listening to VOA from Poland in the 1960s when he was a kid. He said that he would get American music and American news on VOA and that it would be his only source of information from the outside world. And thats still the case for some people, even today USAGM reached some consumers in poorer and more rural areas that lack media infrastructure altogether; this was their source of news. Broadly, what can we learn about the Trump administration from these cuts?The Trump administration is really looking for ways to make long-held far-right beliefs policy. With VOA and USAGM, theres a cultural element, where theres this culture war against the so-called mainstream media. USAGMs outlets are a part of that media, and while the Trump administration can only do so much to independent outlets it doesnt like like restricting White House access it can shut down VOA.But thats just one piece of a larger puzzle. Theres the push for government efficiency and cutting waste that we talked about a little before and its easy to see things you dont like (aka fake news) as waste to cut.And theres also a big foreign policy realignment happening. Theres this idea of America First that we need to pull back on the world stage and focus on the homefront, that taxpayer money shouldnt go to other countries, it should only be used domestically. We saw that with shutting down USAID, and we see that here.So this is really emblematic of the larger vision for the realignment of the government the Trump administration seems to have.This piece originally ran in the Today, Explained newsletter. For more stories like this, sign up here.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 were focusing on a new development in Ukraine that gives us more insight into Donald Trumps approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin.Whats the latest? Putin and Ukraines Volodymyr Zelenskyy are each supporting a 30-day pause in attacks on energy and infrastructure, such as power plants and refineries. The planned pause follows a lengthy phone call between Trump and Putin earlier today.Putin did not agree to a full ceasefire, which Trump has proposed and which Ukraine had assented to earlier. Russia put out a post-call statement suggesting that it would only agree if foreign countries cut off military and intelligence aid to Ukraine a demand Trump has not agreed to.What hasnt changed? Fighting along the front lines, and presumably also drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, will continue. The US will also continue providing weapons and intelligence to Ukraine, after briefly suspending both earlier this month.Whats the big picture for Ukraine? The optimistic take on what happened today is that the two sides are talking via the US and that this could be the basis for a broader ceasefire. On the other hand, recent statements from Russian officials suggest theyre still pushing for a demilitarized and subservient Ukraine. And Putin may be doing just enough to keep Trump happy while continuing to press his advantage on the battlefield.What did we learn about Trump? Trump didnt totally sell Ukraine out, which seemed like a real possibility just a few weeks ago. On the other hand, he also doesnt seem to put pressure on Russia to agree to a real ceasefire, as he did with Ukraine. Trumps own statement about the call makes it seem like he was satisfied with the result, despite Putins unwillingness to back down. And with that, its time to log off...Part of the lure of social media is the promise of external validation, and so I really appreciated this piece from my Vox colleague Allie Volpe. It explains why were hard-wired to seek validation and how we can avoid being trapped by that need. I particularly loved this line: What is far more nourishing than the sugar high of validation is an internal process of recognizing your own worthiness.Its easier said than done, but, for me at least, its a good aspiration. Thanks so much for reading, and well see you back here tomorrow.See More:

Its been 12 years since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published her last novel, Americanah, to overwhelming acclaim. In the time since, shes delivered a viral TED talk on feminism, been sampled by Beyonc, been denounced by students for anti-trans speech, and denounced those students in turn for cancel culture. Now, at last, Adichie has finally released a new novel: Dream Count. Sometimes its hard to read Dream Count cleanly. It feels as though you have to scrub away the cultural silt that has accumulated over its authors image to meet the text in good faith. In places, it reads as though Adichie feels the same way. She keeps having her characters go on bitter tangents about the piety and hypocrisy of American liberals, or recite ex-tempore speeches on Feminism 101. (Dear men, I understand that you dont like abortion, but the best way to reduce abortion is if you take responsibility for where your male bodily fluids go.) In other places, though, Dream Count reminds you of what made Adichie such a phenomenon in the first place: Those precise sentences; that biting satire; all those vivid, complicated women. Dream Count is built around four Nigerian-born women, all living in or having recently departed from America, in spring 2020 as lockdown descends. Each narrates a section of the novel, the two extroverts in first person and the introverts in third person, as one by one they consider the men in their lives who have loved them and betrayed them. Theyre thinking about their body counts, says one character toward the end of the novel. No, going back over ones love life is a dream count, returns another. One craves a deep connection, another a partnership, a third stability; one flourishes on her own but worries that she is missing the chance for something more. All were betrayed by men who at their worst behaved like animals and at their best were simply not enough to build a life around. Instead, as the novel goes on, they find theyve built their lives around each other. Dream Count is not a perfect novel, but it offers you the kind of fully textured polyphonic female friendship that only Adichie can render so beautifully and precisely. As we make our way through the end of Womens History Month, here are three other recent books that offer us portraits of women in complicated, visceral detail. On the shelfThree Days in June by Anne TylerThree Days in June is a slim novel of enormous warmth and sweetness, featuring one of the prickly, closed-off women Anne Tyler writes so well. Gail, a 61-year-old assistant headmistress at a private girls school, finds herself getting pushed out of her job with the explanation that she lacks people skills. Gail is outraged: No one, she tells us, had ever said such a thing about her before, or at least Not in so many words. But Gails ex-boss has a point. Gail nitpicks grammar, clothes, the way other people chew their food. She cuts her own hair so she doesnt have to make small talk with the stylist. She doesnt particularly enjoy most people and isnt particularly good at dealing with them. Never mind: Gail doesnt have the time to spend too long mourning her lost job. Her daughter is getting married the next day, and Gails ex-husband and his cat show up on her doorstep looking for lodging for the wedding. Before long, so does the bride, who suspects the groom of infidelity. Sour, crotchety Gail has to keep things together, which she does with mingled affection and annoyance for everyone around her. The results will melt your heart.No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce by Haley MlotekHaley Mlotek began dating her future husband when she was 16 years old, she tells us in this tender, shivery, shadowy memoir-cum-cultural history. They stayed together, surprised as anyone else that things seemed to keep working out for them, for 12 years, and eventually got married for immigration purposes. A year after their wedding, they divorced. Mlotek never tells us directly what led to her divorce, or of what the end looked like. Instead, she circles around abstractions of events, while her descriptions of how it all felt land with shocking emotional intensity. I could tell you about our last night, she writes of the end of the marriage, but mostly I think about how the night passed no matter what we did to hold still.Mlotek seeds details of her own divorce through a larger cultural history of the divorce plot. Feverishly, she explores memoirs, novels, movies, looking at how the divorce plot mirrors and subverts three centuries of marriage plots. The bibliography Mlotek builds can feel generic in comparison to the specificity of her own experiences, but occasionally she hits gold as with her long analysis of The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd, a 1970s documentary about a couple who filmed their wedding, wedding night, and subsequent divorce, and then watch and discuss the whole thing on public access television. I have looked for guidance everywhere but real life, Mlotek tells us. I want you to ask if Ive read Anna Karenina. I do not want you to ask what I would do for love. Shes nonetheless at her most compelling when shes implying the answer to the second question.Woodworking by Emily St. JamesIf youve been reading Vox for a while, you might recognize Emily St. Jamess name. Shes an institution here. She founded Voxs culture section (and hired yours truly) and, as our critic-at-large, wrote some of the most insightful cultural criticism youre likely to find anywhere. Now, shes written her first novel, Woodworking. I am obviously biased (all the more so because the book contains a character named Constance; Emily tells me there is no relation), but I think youll love it. In the 1980s, woodworking was trans slang for going deep, deep stealth: transitioning, getting bottom surgery, and cutting off contact with anyone who ever knew you pre-transition, so that no one could ever say you were anything but cis. You simply fade into the woodwork. In this snappy, propulsive novel, woodworking remains far, far out of reach for Erica, one of the books two narrators. Shes a 35-year-old English teacher in small-town South Dakota in 2016, and she has only recently allowed herself to realize that she is trans. Erica is also more than half convinced that its too late for her to do anything about it. She has already gone through puberty, and already built a whole life as a man. If she transitions, Erica tells herself, she will lose her job and her life, and she will never even be able to pass, let alone woodwork, so whats the point?Woodworking remains an aspiration for teenage Abigail, our second narrator and the only other trans person Erica knows of in Mitchell, South Dakota. Having already fled her anti-trans parents, Abigail is biding her time until she can afford to pay for bottom surgery, cut off her beloved sister, move to a city, and woodwork. When Abigail realizes that her dorky English teacher is trans and closeted, she is disgusted to find that shes the only one in a position to guide said teacher through those early, fumbling days of transitioning. She buys Erica nail polish, shows her how to put it on, and convinces her to wear the polish to school. Erica wonders if she is a lesbian because shes still attracted to her ex-wife; Abigail assures her that she is the most lesbian. St. James writes with a breezy charm, especially in dialogue, but the playfulness of her voice belies the darkness running under this novel. Abigail tells her story in a defensive first person that occasionally lifts right out of her body; Erica, meanwhile, has dissociated into the third person as she tells her story, redacting her dead name with a hazy gray bar. These characters are living during the election of 2016, and they can tell that right-wing animus against them is mounting. They dont know just how dark things will get eight years later. Off the shelfThe Great Gatsby turns 100 this year! I wrote about why its lasted so long, and why we keep reading it wrong. At VQR, Will Boast surveys a literary history of indigestion. Editor Sean deLone and novelist Lincoln Michel explore the numbers showing that the latest generation of writers doesnt appear to be publishing all that much. Amanda Fortini wonders why so many writers and artists are obsessed with the color blue. Would you start the day by memorizing a poem?A version of this story was also published in the Next Page newsletter. Sign up here so you dont miss the next one!See More:

President Donald Trump has invoked an 18th-century wartime law to carry out a large-scale deportation operation. As he promised on the campaign trail, Trump used the Alien Enemies Act to send hundreds of people with alleged Venezuelan gang ties to El Salvador, ignoring a court order blocking their deportations. The law, passed in 1798 as part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, allows the president to detain and deport noncitizens from countries at war with or invading the US.Before now, the law had only been used three times in history during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II all of which involved official congressional declarations of war. Trumps attempt to invoke the law without any such declaration is unprecedented and, according to legal experts, an illegal abuse of power. President Trump is now invoking wartime powers during a time of peace to justify rounding up potentially millions of people, said Amy Fettig, acting co-executive director of the civil rights group Fair and Just Prosecution. This blatantly unconstitutional and unlawful power grab reveals the Trump administrations mass deportation agenda for what it is an authoritarian turn in our nations history and a time when the rule of law is under direct threat.To justify his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, Trump has claimed that international criminal gangs, including the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua, are invading the US. That represents not only a break with the laws past use, but a decision that ignores the now widely acknowledged role the law played in enabling Japanese internment during World War II. Heres how the law has been used historically.The War of 1812President James Madison first used the law to target British citizens in the US during the three-year War of 1812. A directive from the Madison administration designated British citizens as alien enemies and ordered them to report to local authorities and undertake additional duties. If they resisted, they could be deported under the Alien Enemies Act, though its not clear how many were ultimately impacted.In the war, the nascent US, armed with only a small fleet of ships, challenged British interference in American maritime trade, ultimately achieving a draw on the battlefield.World War I When the US entered World War I in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson imposed a host of restrictions on male German citizens living in the US and, later, on German Austrians and on women from both countries. Those restrictions included a bar on firearms ownership, mandatory registration with the government or law enforcement, and a requirement that Germans apply for permits to live and work in designated restricted zones or to leave the country.Under the Alien Enemies Act, Wilson also ordered the arrest and detention of Germans who demonstrated reasonable cause to believe to be aiding or about to aid the enemy or who violated any presidential regulations. Over 10,000 people were arrested under the law. Though most of those affected were eventually paroled, many of them experienced job loss as a result. World War IIThe last and perhaps most significant time the Alien Enemies Act was invoked was during World War II. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the law to authorize the arrest, detention, and deportation of civilians of primarily Japanese, but also German and Italian, descent. Though his administration initially only targeted individuals believed to present a threat to US national security, the policy eventually extended to Japanese immigrants and US citizens of Japanese descent broadly.Some 120,000 of them were sent to concentration camps. They endured inhumane conditions: Many forced to live in livestock pens, without enough food or adequate sanitation. The camps were only emptied out after the war ended in 1946. The US government later apologized for their internment and provided reparations to those of Japanese descent.However, despite the Alien Enemies Acts role in that stain on American history, the law remained on the books. President Harry Truman invoked it shortly after the war against a German citizen. A divided Supreme Court allowed him to do so in a 1948 case known as Ludecke v. Watkins, wary of overriding the president on the issue of whether the war was truly over. After surviving that court challenge, the law was never repealed despite legal experts warnings about how it could be abused, ready for Trump to pluck out of obscurity.See More:

Israel effectively ended the ceasefire in Gaza on Tuesday morning after launching major airstrikes that killed over 400 Palestinians and resuming a war that has devastated the enclave. Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 62,000 Palestinians, decimated Gazas health care infrastructure, and displaced some 90 percent of the population. Its a staggering human toll that Israel and its allies have justified with one simple refrain: Israel has a right to defend itself.Its a familiar line thats been repeated for decades. George Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all said it during their time in the White House. Former President Joe Biden said it in the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel in 2023, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took at least 250 people hostage. Since then, American politicians from governors to mayors to members of Congress have all turned to that phrase to reiterate their support for Israel.Inside this storyBut its important to break down what this right actually means, because preventing this kind of catastrophe in Gaza from happening again requires an interrogation of the legal justifications that have led to this outcome.So heres the problem with politicians so often invoking Israels right to defend itself when trying to justify the states lack of restraint or defend it against accusations of genocide: In the occupied territories, which include the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israels right to self-defense might not even exist at least not from a legal standpoint.Under international law, any recognized sovereign state has the right to defend itself against an armed attack from another country. Ukraine, for example, has a widely recognized right to defend itself against Russias invasion. Israel has that same right except whats different about October 7 is that Israel was not invaded or attacked by another sovereign country. Hamass attacks, and other instances of armed rebellion by Palestinians, have come from territories that Israel controls. Because of that, some legal experts argue that Israel cannot reflexively invoke a right to self-defense, at least as understood in a legal context. This interpretation of international law isnt a fringe legal viewpoint. Over the decades, its been repeated by practitioners and scholars and even reiterated in an advisory opinion at the International Court of Justice in 2004. Some argue that, morally, Israel had no choice but to act with force to deliver some form of accountability for October 7. But moral arguments only go so far: After all, what could morally justify killing tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children? And morals, in any case, do not govern the world; laws do. International law does not, of course, require that Israel sit idly by after an event like October 7. Israel can respond with proportionate force like using law enforcement to repel an attack and restore order. But launching a war and definitively claiming that it is an act of self-defense rests on shaky legal ground.On the surface, this might seem like a tedious semantic exercise. Whether Israel can claim self-defense doesnt materially change how it might continue to conduct itself in Gaza and the West Bank, nor would it suddenly make all of Israels actions during this war legal. (Whatever legal right Israel might invoke to use force, it cannot be given carte blanche.) But a better understanding of what Israels right to defend itself actually means would help clarify whether Israels war was indeed an act of self-defense or an act of aggression. And if its the latter, then that ought to make Israels allies rethink the kind of blanket political support they often provide Israel during times like these.Israels claim of self-defense relies on murky legal argumentsThere are two main legal frameworks for considering the right to self-defense.First, the Charter of the United Nations, the founding document of the UN and a legally binding treaty for member states. Second, international humanitarian law, which establishes the rules of conduct around armed conflict. Though some form of international humanitarian law has existed for centuries, todays version is rooted in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 as well as other binding treaties. Entities like the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court are responsible for adjudicating it. Israels right to defend itself is a reference to Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, which states that, Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations. While armed attack is not explicitly defined, the phrase has historically been interpreted to mean an attack from another state. That charter is what Israel and its allies have invoked since it was attacked on October 7 to defend its actions in Gaza. The problem, however, is that since 1967, Israel has been occupying Palestinian territories the longest military occupation in modern history and has been in routine violation of international humanitarian law. In fact, just last summer, the ICJ deemed the Israeli occupation to be illegal in its entirety. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the ruling a decision of lies, and falsely asserted that the legality of Israeli settlements cannot be disputed. Other Israeli politicians called the decision antisemitic.) Every state that suffers an attack or a serious threat of an attack has the right to defend its territory and its citizens using force, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, told me in October. But in the case of Israel, there was no right to self-defense on October 7 simply because Israel was not attacked by another state. In other words, since the attack came from an armed group within a territory that Israel not only controls but is widely recognized as illegally occupying, it cannot claim the right to self-defense. Albanese caught flak for similar comments she made early on in the war, but there is legal precedent to back her point. In 2004, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion on the wall Israel was constructing around the West Bank, arguing that the barrier was illegal. (While advisory opinions are nonbinding, they are respected as authoritative interpretations of international law, and are often cited in legal proceedings.)The court argued that because the wall would defend against threats from an area that Israel already controls, Israel was not acting, as it had claimed, in self-defense. Israel could not in any event invoke those resolutions in support of its claim to be exercising a right of self-defense, the ICJ wrote.In the context of that advisory opinion, any action thats taken to further solidify or perpetuate Israels military grip on Palestinians can be seen as an extension of the occupation, not an act of self-defense. In South Africa v. Israel the case brought before the ICJ last year accusing Israel of committing genocide South Africas legal team reiterated that line of reasoning. What Israel is doing in Gaza, it is doing in territory under its own control, South Africas lawyers said. Its actions are enforcing its occupation. The law on self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter has no application.Even though the attacks on Israel come from within territories that are under its control, the situation is not akin to a civil war. It is still an international conflict: Israel is illegally occupying foreign territory and must abide by international humanitarian law, not its own domestic laws or any rules governing civil wars.Ultimately, as the occupying power, Israel is responsible for winding down and eventually ending its occupation, not further entrenching it. The State of Israel is under an obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible, the president of the ICJ wrote when delivering the courts advisory opinion that determined the occupation is illegal. But over the decades, Israel has only dug in deeper, continuing to build illegal settlements on occupied territory, blockading Gaza, and imposing military rule on Palestinians that violates their human rights. Thats what makes Israel an aggressor under international law, both before and after October 7. And so long as Israel is an aggressor, then it cannot claim the right to self-defense. By maintaining an occupation that deeply, irreversibly violates the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, it constitutes a permanent and enduring form of aggression, Albanese said. Israels argument, explainedSome experts argue that Israels justification for the war does fit into an international legal framework. One argument is that October 7 amounts to an armed attack what Article 51 of the UN Charter says would trigger a states right to self-defense. Prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, the prevailing interpretation of the UN Charter was that only states can carry out armed attacks. In that sense, Hamas, which much of the international community considers a non-state actor, could not trigger Israels right to self-defense. The United States, however, challenged that view when it invoked its right to self-defense after 9/11 and launched the war on terror, which specifically targeted non-state actors. In a journal article published by the US Army War College, Eric A. Heinze, an international studies professor at the University of Oklahoma, makes the case for why Israel could invoke self-defense in the aftermath of October 7. One of his arguments includes the point that the scale of the attack on October 7, with the number of civilian casualties, would constitute an armed attack and make a military response justifiable. In the case of the Israel-Hamas conflict, there seems to be little doubt that the October 7 attacks met and exceeded the levels of violence required to rise to the level of an armed attack under Article 51, Heinze wrote.But whether October 7 amounts to an armed attack or not is beside the point. Theres no doubt that in terms of the definition of armed attack, per se, what took place on the seventh of October amounts to an armed attack, Ardi Imseis, an international law professor at Queens University and former UN official, said in October. The question is not that, though. The question is whether or not it qualifies as an armed attack that allows a state, subject to said attack, to invoke a right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.The answer to that question is a resounding no, Imseis says, because the ICJ as the principal judicial arm of the United Nations already determined, in its 2004 opinion on the wall, that the claim of self-defense does not apply within territory that is under Israeli control.In other words, the key distinction here is not the armed attack part, but the fact that Israel unlawfully occupies Gaza. Thats also what makes this situation fundamentally different from the US invoking a right to self-defense in response to actions by al-Qaeda after 9/11: al-Qaeda was not attacking its occupier.This leads to the second part of the rationale behind Israels argument: the common refrain that Gaza hasnt been under occupation since Israel withdrew its settlements and military from the strip in 2005. Therefore, legal reasoning like the 2004 advisory opinion on the separation wall doesnt apply, the argument goes, because Israel doesnt control that territory. That characterization, however, is widely rejected by human rights groups and the international community; even the US State Department includes the Gaza Strip in its definition of the occupied Palestinian territories, alongside the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Most recently, in its advisory opinion that declared that the occupation is illegal, the ICJ reaffirmed that Gaza is, from a legal standpoint, under occupation.While the Israeli military no longer had a daily presence in the enclave after 2005, Israel still controlled Gazas borders, airspace, and territorial waters. As a result, Israel has largely been the one deciding which goods and basic necessities could flow in and out of Gaza. The kinds of goods Israel banned from entering Gaza through the years have included wedding dresses, diapers, baby bottles, paper, and pasta. Even Palestinian fishermen were only able to access very limited parts of the sea.Put another way, while Israel does have legal recourse against threats emanating from the Palestinian territories, Israel lost its right to invoke self-defense when it started its military occupation nearly 58 years ago. The only way for Israel to ensure the security of its territory and its citizens, Albanese said, is to stop abusing another people, to stop occupying the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The problem, however, is that the occupation has no end in sight.So how can Israel legally respond?After an attack like October 7, there are various legal avenues that Israel can pursue. But whatever actions it takes, Israel must abide by Occupation Law, a branch of international humanitarian law, which defines how to address attacks that come from the occupied territories. The basic answer to the question of how Israel is legally allowed to respond is through law enforcement. A proportional police crackdown on perpetrators of violence, for example, might be justified if it doesnt violate peoples rights; an overwhelming show of military force is not. While theres no objective measure for what would constitute a proportional response, international humanitarian law lays out some guidelines. It explicitly prohibits military force that would be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. That means that Israel must limit the damage it inflicts solely to legitimate military objectives. As an occupying power, Israel could have used necessary and proportionate force to repel the attack. But thats where they have to stop, Imseis said. For any use of force to be lawful under international law, it must be necessary and proportionate in relation to the force being used against it, he added.Israel might argue that it has been acting with proportionate force because it was not just stopping the attacks of October 7, but any potential future attacks by Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups. But this argument is complicated by Israels obligations as the occupying power. As Israel is charged with ensuring the welfare of the people it occupies, it cannot wage a war under the guise of stopping future attacks. Thats why Israel and its allies argue that this war is against a single entity in this case, Hamas rather than the Palestinians more broadly.Its hard, though, for Israel to claim that its war on Gaza has been an act of self-defense, or a war against only Hamas let alone a proportionate response to October 7. In just over a year, Israel has used mass starvation as a weapon of war, imposing famine conditions across the Gaza Strip. It has brought Gazas health care infrastructure to the brink of collapse and created conditions for the spread of preventable diseases. And it has killed more than 150 journalists. This kind of harsh collective punishment was even articulated by Israeli officials at the onset of the war.What we know for certain, and this is beyond doubt, is that the measure, character, quality of the use of force used by Israel to respond to the seventh of October even arguing that they had a right to self-defense under [Article] 51 went well beyond anything reasonably proportionate or necessary to repel that attack, Imseis said.All of this means that even if Israel could claim that it initiated the war out of self-defense, the actions of the war itself could not be considered legal. Whatever the possible legal justifications for the use of force, all sides must always comply with the law of armed conflict and know that war crimes are never justified, Clive Baldwin, a senior legal adviser for the legal and policy office of Human Rights Watch, said in October. No matter what the other side has done, reprisals are not justified either.There is also an inconvenient truth for Israel and its allies when they argue that the principles of self-defense ought to give Israel license to wage this kind of war in Gaza. The other side of that coin is that Palestinians, as an occupied people, have a right to resist under international law, which includes armed resistance as various legal scholars have argued and as the UN General Assembly has articulated in a resolution. Of course, Palestinian militants do not have the right to commit war crimes, such as killing innocent civilians or taking hostages, when carrying out an attack. But it does mean that the rationale behind an armed attack, depending on intent and action, can be rooted in the law.Why defining self-defense mattersThere are two main reasons why its important to challenge the reflexive talking point used to justify use of force against Palestinians that Israel has a right to defend itself. And its especially important now because, as the latest assault on Gaza has shown, a ceasefire is no guarantee that Israel will rein in its belligerence.The first is that Israels allies, particularly the United States, ought to have pushed the country to abide by the principles of international humanitarian law not simply invoking the UN Charter and leaving it at that and limited their support to include a proportional law enforcement response. The blank check that the Biden administration gave the Israeli government in the aftermath of October 7, under the guise of supporting self-defense, enabled Israels worst impulses giving it ample resources to wage a horrific war that has resulted in one of the defining humanitarian catastrophes of the century. The second is that allowing Israels claim of self-defense to go unchecked essentially absolves it of its role as an aggressor by ignoring the fact that Israel is administering an unlawful, brutal military occupation one that various leading human rights organizations have deemed an apartheid regime. Under almost every possible scenario in which we analyze Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip under international humanitarian law, Israel fails, Ata Hindi, an international law scholar and professor at Tulane University Law School, said in October. So they remove themselves from the law, he added, by using self-defense as an umbrella term that justifies all of its actions.Accepting that Israel has been acting in self-defense rather than as an occupier expanding its military control means that Israels allies are willing to flout international law whenever its convenient to do so. And since last year, Israel has shown how dangerous that is, committing atrocities and human rights violations while ignoring injunctions imposed by the worlds highest court. That kind of hypocrisy a selective approach to determining which laws ought to apply to Israel and which it should conveniently dismiss is bound to have global consequences. It undermines the legitimacy of the international legal system, emboldening Israel and other states to continue violating laws with impunity. Russia, for example, has already pointed to the United States unequivocal support for Israels war as evidence of the Wests lack of respect for the rules-based order. So the next time a politician says Israel has a right to defend itself, ask yourself: Is this what self-defense actually looks like? Update, March 18, 10:35 am: This story, originally published March 14, has been updated to reflect Israels March 18 attacks on Gaza and end of the ceasefire.See More:

Elon Musk has opinions on how a lot of the worlds countries should be run. He has weighed in on elections in Germany on behalf of a far-right party, sparred with the government of his native South Africa, and called for the removal of the president of Ukraine, not to mention the two-month siege he has waged against Americas federal bureaucracy. But one country tends to get a pass from the worlds richest man. He is, in his own words, kind of pro-China. The self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist has not applied that position to Chinas draconian censorship regime, and Musk has defended the Chinese governments positions on a range of other issues. From a business perspective, this makes sense. China is vital to Musks car company Tesla as both a producer of vehicles and as a consumer market. Musk is also hardly unusual among major global tech CEOs in defending China. Musks comments on China arent out of the norm for the CEO of a major Western business, said Isaac Stone Fish, CEO of Strategy Risks, a consultancy focused on the risks of doing business in China. The distinction is that [Apple CEO] Tim Cook is not on Twitter talking about how awful USAID is or meddling in European politics. Musks business interests in China and overall pro-Beijing attitudes also stand out among his new colleagues in the Trump administration. Trumps foreign policy team is generally united in its hawkish views on China. Trump himself has accused Beijing in the past of a policy to rape our country and blamed it for the Covid pandemic, along with a host of other ills.As the US and China appear to be hurtling headlong into a trade war, and even as Trump seeks a meeting with Chinas Xi Jinping in hopes of hammering out a new trade deal, Musks ties to China and the potential leverage they could offer Beijing in future negotiations are getting more notice in both countries. During the recent quasi-infomercial on the White House lawn, during which Trump purchased a Tesla and made a sales pitch for the slumping company, the president made clear that the profits of Musks companies will be a priority for the administration. This raises questions about whether the interests of those companies will come into play as the administration shapes its policies toward its fellow superpower. China and Tesla need each otherThe symbiotic relationship between Tesla and China almost cant be overstated. In 2019, the company opened its Shanghai gigafactory with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from Chinese banks. It was the companys first factory outside the US, as well as the first wholly foreign-owned car company in China, where automakers typically enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies. It is now Teslas largest factory, producing half of the companys cars globally last year. Musk has praised workers at his Chinese factory for burning the 3 am oilwhereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all. The remark came at a time when the factory was literally having workers sleep in the factory due to Covid restrictions.Tesla has also benefited from selling cars in Chinas fast-growing electric vehicle market: Sales in China rose 8.8 percent in 2024, a year in which the companys global sales fell for the first time. (Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.)Its their second most important market and the only market thats continuing to grow, said Tu Le, an expert on the Chinese car market and director of the market research firm Sino Auto Insights. Along the way, Musk has developed relationships with senior Chinese leaders, notably Premier Li Qiang, Chinas No. 2 official, who reportedly offered him a Chinese green card during a meeting in 2019. Thanks to his real-life Tony Stark image, Musk has become something of a pop culture figure in China, as, perhaps more surprisingly, has his mother.Elon Musk books displayed during the Shanghai Book Fair 2024 in Shanghai, China. Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesThe relationship between the Chinese government and Tesla has been mutually beneficial, Le told Vox. The companys investment in China came at a time when the Chinese government was trying to spur the creation of a local market for electric vehicles. That effort worked phenomenally well: more than half of cars sold in China now come with the distinctive green license plates marking them as EVs, and China accounted for more than 60 percent of EV sales globally last year. This has also led to an explosion of new domestic Chinese EV producers, including Teslas primary competitor BYD, a company which Musk once literally laughed at but which now outsells Tesla globally. Tesla retains some cachet as a premium brand, Le says, but even in China, its sales are starting to slip. Musk is currently pushing to win approval from Chinese regulators for Teslas full self-driving technology. The company is currently hampered by rules which prevent data from Chinese drivers from being taken out of the country, which Musk says has forced them to use publicly available videos of Chinese streets to train their vehicles. Tesla last month rolled out a partial self-driving mode on its Chinese models, though it costs almost $9,000, while BYD is offering similar technology for free on its vehicles. China is the linchpin to Teslas overall long-term strategy, said Le.Musks China ties are deeper than TeslaMusks activities in China had attracted controversy even before he took on his new political role. In 2022, Tesla was blasted by human rights groups and lawmakers for opening a showroom in Chinas Xinjiang region, where the governments treatment of ethnic Uyghur Muslims had been described as a genocide by both the Trump and Biden administrations. The critics included then-senator, now Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sponsor of that years Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, who described the showroom on Twitter as an example of Nationless corporations helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up genocide and slave labor.Musks China ties have also raised security concerns, given that another of his companies, SpaceX, is a major US military contractor and Musk himself has top secret security clearance. In 2022, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) pushed for closed-door intelligence briefings on Capitol Hill to determine whether SpaceX had any links to the Chinese government, telling the Wall Street Journal, I am a fan of Elon Musk and SpaceX, but anyone would be concerned if there are financial entanglements with China.Several companies with links to Musks businesses have also been targeted by the US government. In January, the Pentagon added Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL), the worlds largest producer of lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, and a major Tesla supplier, to its list of Chinese military companies that produce both civilian and military goods. US firms are not prohibited from doing business with companies on this list, but the list is intended to raise reputational and compliance costs. Another company on the list, the Chinese internet giant Tencent, at one point owned a 5 percent stake in Tesla, though according to media reports, it has since divested its holdings. Tencent is the parent company of WeChat, which was once often referred to as Chinas Twitter, but has since become an all-encompassing app used for a wide variety of payments and communication. Musk has cited WeChat as a model for the everything app he would like to build X into. The true extent of Musks links to Chinese companies may not be fully known. The Financial Times reported that Chinese investors have been funneling tens of millions of dollars into Musks non-public companies, like SpaceX, Neuralink, and xAI, using opaque ownership structures that shield investors identities. Chinas man on the inside?Why does any of this matter? Musks influence may already be helping to shape US policy toward China. At the end of last year, he publicly opposed a bipartisan spending bill that included measures to regulate US investments in China. A stopgap bill was eventually passed without the provision, with Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) accusing House Republicans of caving because Elon had a problem.Experts say Chinese leaders are hoping to leverage their connections to the DOGE boss to influence the administrations policies. Chinese Vice President Han Zheng met with Musk on the eve of Trumps inauguration. TikTok CEO Shou Chew has also been in communication with Musk, viewing him as a conduit to the White House as the company tries to navigate concerns about its Chinese parent company ByteDance. In February, the Financial Times reported that Chinese officials were considering using Teslas question for approval for self-driving as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with the Trump administration. They absolutely see him as an asset to them in any kind of negotiations, a way to bypass Rubio, a way to bypass [national security adviser Michael] Waltz, a way to bypass those whom they see to be less friendly to them on their issues, and theyre going to use him as a conduit, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), ranking member of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told Vox at a recent event in Washington. (The White Houses National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.)The committees chair, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) didnt criticize Musk directly but agreed that theyre going to use every bit of leverage they can.On paper, a national security team that includes Rubio and Waltz reporting to Trump seems like a China hawks dream. And in some respects, such as Rubios push to keep Chinese economic interests out of the Panama Canal, it has been. Chinese officials are reportedly concerned that the Trump administration will use tariffs to pressure other developing countries to reduce their ties with Beijing.But in many respects, the administration has been less hawkish than many expected. Its true that Trump has slapped 20 percent tariffs on Chinese goods, ostensibly over Chinas role in the global fentanyl trade, though these are less than the 60 percent tariffs he proposed on the campaign trail, or the 25 percent tariffs he has now slapped on Mexico and Canada. (Canada and European countries have earned Trumps ire more than China, at least so far.) Trump also backed off a move to close a tax loophole used by Chinese fast fashion brands like Temu and Shein to ship to the United States, and despite having once called for the banning of TikTok, his administration appears to be in no hurry to enforce the ban on the app passed by Congress last year. Trumps foreign aid cuts have dealt a blow to dozens of nonprofits monitoring corruption and human rights abuses in China, as well as Tibets government in exile. Statements by Trump and some of his senior officials, as well as the administrations treatment of Ukraine, have cast doubt on whether the administration would intervene to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. Musk has said in the past that it would make sense for Taiwan to be a special administrative zone within China. In an interview in Taipei last fall, Taiwans deputy minister of digital affairs told Vox his government was seeking alternative satellite services to SpaceX because Musk could cut the service [over] his personal opinion, so we dont think this was a trustable partner.Musk has spoken out against tariffs in the past, and Tesla has warned it could be exposed to retaliatory tariffs from other governments, but because Tesla has built relatively self-sufficient supply chains within both the US and China, the measures announced by Trump so far may hurt Musks competitors more than they hurt him.Still, if US-China trade relations deteriorate further, not to mention the sort of decoupling Rubio advocated as a senator, its hard to imagine Musks bottom line wont be affected, or that he wont have something to say about it. I cannot imagine the Trump administration actually being fully hawkish on China, until Musk greatly recedes from the scene, said Stone Fish. The administrations China policy, on both the economic and national security fronts, is still somewhat of a work in progress, and the hawks may still have their way, as they often did during Trumps first term. A test may come in June when, according to reports, a Trump-Xi summit is in the works, perhaps paving the way for formal trade talks. If hes not in the room, Chinese leaders are likely hoping Musk will at least be nearby. See More: