Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Karen S. Acton, Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy, OISE, University of Toronto
Only nine per cent of Canadian students learn about climate change often in school, while 42 per cent say it’s rarely or never discussed in the classroom.
These are some of the concerning findings from the new 2025 national survey at the nonprofit Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF), where I serve as a research consultant. Our team surveyed over 4,200 people, including students, educators, parents and the general public.
The message is clear: Canadians want schools to do more. A strong majority of respondents (62 per cent) believe climate change should be a high priority in education. More than half (56 per cent) believe it should be taught by all teachers.
Understanding is slipping
According to the survey, 80 per cent of Canadians accept that climate change is real and impacting their lives. Most (67 per cent) believe we are in a climate emergency, yet this belief has declined from 72 per cent in 2022.
Also slipping is Canadians’ understanding of climate change, as the pass rate for the survey’s 10-question quiz dipped to 57 per cent in 2025 from 67 per cent in 2022.
Fewer respondents correctly identified human activities as the primary cause of climate change, or named greenhouse gas emissions as the predominant factor. Many still mistakenly believe the ozone hole is to blame, highlighting one of many persistent climate misconceptions.
Also concerning was the increase in Canadians who felt that the seriousness of climate change is exaggerated.
A recent report by climate communications centre Re.Climate noted a similar decline in public perception of how much of a threat climate change poses. In 2023, 44 per cent of Canadians said reducing carbon emissions was a top energy policy priority. By 2025, that number had dropped to 31 per cent.
The LSF survey highlights Canadians’ dissatisfaction with climate education. When asked to grade schools on how well they were addressing climate change issues, only four per cent gave schools an “A.” Three-quarters of Canadians gave a “C” or lower.
One dominant concern included addressing the spread of climate misinformation. Only 17 per cent of Canadians felt confident in their ability to distinguish between real and false climate news.
Misinformation is a growing barrier to public understanding and action on climate issues. For many young people, social media is a dominant source of climate information, but it’s not always a reliable one.
To address this, almost 80 per cent of respondents, and in particular 87 per cent of educators, agree that climate education in schools should focus more on critical thinking and media literacy.
Teachers willing, but under-supported
The good news is that almost half of the educators we surveyed felt confident about their ability to teach climate change. Many are incorporating more climate-related projects and lifestyle and consumer changes into the classroom.
However, many barriers remain. Most educators still spend fewer than 10 hours per year on climate topics, and 42 per cent rarely address it at all. A full 60 per cent of teachers told us they want to do more but need professional development to feel equipped.
Teachers need more time, resources and strategies to address how climate change connects to broader issues like mental health, social justice and Indigenous knowledge.
Educators are also seeking a school-wide culture that promotes climate change education, but nearly half said they lack support from their principal or school boards.
Unsurprisingly, given the global nature of climate change, the challenges voiced by educators are not unique to Canada. Surveys of teachers in England and the United States found they face similar obstacles, compounded by low teacher confidence, the complexity of the topic and leadership not supporting climate change as a priority.
Almost half of the educators surveyed felt confident about their ability to teach climate change, and many are incorporating more climate-related projects and lifestyle and consumer changes into the classroom. (Shutterstock)
Students need the opportunity
One of the most hopeful takeaways is that students want to learn more about climate change at school, beginning in the early grades. When asked what they would tell their teacher, students told us they wanted lessons that go beyond the science to include real-world solutions and personal empowerment.
They called for open classroom discussions, a clearer understanding of the impacts of climate change and concrete strategies for action.
As one student put it: “Present it to me in a way that’s relevant that I can understand, and tell me how I can personally make an impact.”
Another added: “Everyone needs to do their part or nothing will change!”
These appeals echo those from the recent Voice of 1,000 Kids survey, which found young people want adults to take the climate crisis more seriously and step up to help solve it.
The LSF survey found that 76 per cent of respondents recognize that systemic change is needed to address climate challenges, yet only 19 per cent believe government is doing a good job.
This suggests strong public demand for policy action. Canadian governments must introduce mandatory climate curriculum standards, increased funding for teacher professional learning and resources, and transformative teaching strategies to foster critical thinking and empowerment.
Almost 70 per cent of respondents said they believe young people can inspire important climate action. Supporting school-wide cultures that embrace sustainability isn’t just good teaching — it’s a pathway to broader social change.
Now more than ever, we need a reimagined education system that values climate learning as a core competency. Policymakers and education leaders must rise to meet this challenge before another generation of students graduate feeling unprepared to face the defining issue of their time.
Karen S. Acton works as a consultant for Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF).
Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has warned the country needs to maintain its nuclear-free policy as a “fundamental tenet” of its independent foreign policy in the face of gathering global storm clouds.
Writing in a new book being published next week, she says “nuclear war is an existential threat to humanity. Far from receding, the threat of use of nuclear weapons is ever present.
Writing before the US surprise attack with B-2 stealth bombers and “bunker-buster” bombs on three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, Clark says “the Middle East is a tinder box with the failure of the Iran nuclear deal and with Israel widely believed to possess nuclear weapons”.
The Doomsday Clock references the Ukraine war theatre where “use of nuclear weapons has been floated by Russia”.
Also, the arms control architecture for Europe is unravelling, leaving the continent much less secure. India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals, she says.
“North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons capacity.”
‘Serious ramifications’ Clark, who was also United Nations Development Programme administrator from 2009 to 2017, a member of The Elders group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, and is an advocate for multilateralism and nuclear disarmament, says an outright military conflict between China and the United States “would be one between two nuclear powers with serious ramifications for East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and far beyond.”
She advises New Zealand to be wary of Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States.
“There has been much speculation about a potential Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement which would see others in the region become partners in the development of advanced weaponry,” Clark says.
“This is occurring in the context of rising tensions between the United States and China.
“Many of us share the view that New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific and the development of more lethal weaponry.”
Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication July 2025. Image: Little Island Press
In the face of the “current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.
Clark says that the years 1985 – the Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 — and 1986 were critical years in the lead up to New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987.
“New Zealanders were clear – we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”
Chronicles humanitarian voyage The book Eyes of Fire chronicles the humanitarian voyage by the Greenpeace flagship to the Marshall Islands to relocate 320 Rongelap Islanders who were suffering serious community health consequences from the US nuclear tests in the 1950s.
The author, Dr David Robie, founder of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, was the only journalist on board the Rainbow Warrior in the weeks leading up to the bombing.
His book recounts the voyage and nuclear colonialism, and the transition to climate justice as the major challenge facing the Pacific, although the “Indo-Pacific” rivalries between the US, France and China mean that geopolitical tensions are recalling the Cold War era in the Pacific.
Dr Robie is also critical of Indonesian colonialism in the Melanesian region of the Pacific, arguing that a just-outcome for Jakarta-ruled West Papua and also the French territories of Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia are vital for peace and stability in the region.
On June 22, American warplanes crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped 14 massive bombs.
The attack was not in response to a provocation; it came on the heels of illegal Israeli aggression that took the lives of more than 600 Iranians.
This was a return to something familiar and well-practised: an empire bombing innocents across the orientalist abstraction called “the Middle East”.
That night, US President Donald Trump, flanked by his vice-president and two state secretaries, told the world: “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace”.
There is something chilling about how bombs are baptised with the language of diplomacy and how destruction is dressed in the garments of stability. To call that peace is not merely a misnomer; it is a criminal distortion.
But what is peace in this world, if not submission to the West? And what is diplomacy, if not the insistence that the attacked plead with their attackers?
In the 12 days that Israel’s illegal assault on Iran lasted, images of Iranian children pulled from the wreckage remained absent from the front pages of Western media. In their place were lengthy features about Israelis hiding in fortified bunkers.
Victimhood serving narrative Western media, fluent in the language of erasure, broadcasts only the victimhood that serves the war narrative.
And that is not just in its coverage of Iran. For 20 months now, the people of Gaza have been starved and incinerated. By the official count, more than 55,000 lives have been taken; realistic estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands.
Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. Most schools have been attacked and destroyed.
Leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already declared that Israel is committing genocide, and yet, most Western media would not utter that word and would add elaborate caveats when someone does dare say it live on TV.
Presenters and editors would do anything but recognise Israel’s unending violence in an active voice.
Despite detailed evidence of war crimes, the Israeli military has faced no media censure, no criticism or scrutiny. Its generals hold war meetings near civilian buildings, and yet, there are no media cries of Israelis being used as “human shields”.
Israeli army and government officials are regularly caught lying or making genocidal statements, and yet, their words are still reported as “the truth”.
Bias over Palestinian deaths A recent study found that on the BBC, Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians dying at a rate of 34 to 1 compared with Israelis. Such bias is no exception, it is the rule for Western media.
Like Palestine, Iran is described in carefully chosen language. Iran is never framed as a nation, only as a regime. Iran is not a government, but a threat — not a people, but a problem.
The word “Islamic” is affixed to it like a slur in every report. This is instrumental in quietly signalling that Muslim resistance to Western domination must be extinguished.
Iran does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel and the United States do. And yet only Iran is cast as an existential threat to world order.
Because the problem is not what Iran holds, but what it refuses to surrender. It has survived coups, sanctions, assassinations, and sabotage. It has outlived every attempt to starve, coerce, or isolate it into submission.
It is a state that, despite the violence hurled at it, has not yet been broken.
And so the myth of the threat of weapons of mass destruction becomes indispensable. It is the same myth that was used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. For three decades, American headlines have whispered that Iran is just “weeks away” from the bomb, three decades of deadlines that never arrive, of predictions that never materialise.
Fear over false ‘nuclear threat’ But fear, even when unfounded, is useful. If you can keep people afraid, you can keep them quiet. Say “nuclear threat” often enough, and no one will think to ask about the children killed in the name of “keeping the world safe”.
This is the modus operandi of Western media: a media architecture not built to illuminate truth, but to manufacture permission for violence, to dress state aggression in technical language and animated graphics, to anaesthetise the public with euphemisms.
Time Magazine does not write about the crushed bones of innocents under the rubble in Tehran or Rafah, it writes about “The New Middle East” with a cover strikingly similar to the one it used to propagandise regime change in Iraq 22 years ago.
But this is not 2003. After decades of war, and livestreamed genocide, most Americans no longer buy into the old slogans and distortions. When Israel attacked Iran, a poll showed that only 16 percent of US respondents supported the US joining the war.
After Trump ordered the air strikes, another poll confirmed this resistance to manufactured consent: only 36 percent of respondents supported the move, and only 32 percent supported continuing the bombardment
The failure to manufacture consent for war with Iran reveals a profound shift in the American consciousness. Americans remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that left hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead and an entire region in flames. They remember the lies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy and the result: the thousands of American soldiers dead and the tens of thousands maimed.
They remember the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the never-ending bloody entanglement in Iraq.
Low social justice spending At home, Americans are told there is no money for housing, healthcare, or education, but there is always money for bombs, for foreign occupations, for further militarisation. More than 700,000 Americans are homeless, more than 40 million live under the official poverty line and more than 27 million have no health insurance.
And yet, the US government maintains by far the highest defence budget in the world.
Americans know the precarity they face at home, but they are also increasingly aware of the impact US imperial adventurism has abroad. For 20 months now, they have watched a US-sponsored genocide broadcast live.
They have seen countless times on their phones bloodied Palestinian children pulled from rubble while mainstream media insists, this is Israeli “self-defence”.
The old alchemy of dehumanising victims to excuse their murder has lost its power. The digital age has shattered the monopoly on narrative that once made distant wars feel abstract and necessary. Americans are now increasingly refusing to be moved by the familiar war drumbeat.
The growing fractures in public consent have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Trump, ever the opportunist, understands that the American public has no appetite for another war.
‘Don’t drop bombs’ And so, on June 24, he took to social media to announce, “the ceasefire is in effect”, telling Israel to “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” after the Israeli army continued to attack Iran.
Trump, like so many in the US and Israeli political elites, wants to call himself a peacemaker while waging war. To leaders like him, peace has come to mean something altogether different: the unimpeded freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities while the world watches on.
But they have failed to manufacture our consent. We know what peace is, and it does not come dressed in war. It is not dropped from the sky.
Peace can only be achieved where there is freedom. And no matter how many times they strike, the people remain, from Palestine to Iran — unbroken, unbought, and unwilling to kneel to terror.
Ahmad Ibsaisis a first-generation Palestinian American and law student who writes the newsletter State of Siege.
Advocacy groups in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) disrupted the US Department of Defense’s public meeting this week, which tackled proposed military training plans on Tinian, voicing strong opposition to further militarisation in the Marianas.
Members of the Marianas for Palestine, Prutehi Guahan and Commonwealth670 burst into the public hearing at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Garapan, chanting, “No build-up! No war!” and “Free, free, Palestine!”
As the chanting echoed throughout the venue on Wednesday, the DOD continued the proceedings to gather public input on its CNMI Joint Military Training proposal.
The US plan includes live-fire ranges, a base camp, communications infrastructure, and a biosecurity facility. Officials said feedback from Tinian, Saipan and Rota communities would help shape the final environmental impact statement.
Salam Castro Younis, of Chamorro-Palestinian descent, linked the military expansion to global conflicts in Gaza and Iran.
“More militarisation isn’t the answer,” Younis said. “We don’t need to lose more land. Diplomacy and peace are the way forward – not more bombs.”
Saipan-born Chamorro activist Anufat Pangelinan echoed Younis’s sentiment, citing research connecting climate change and environmental degradation to global militarisation.
‘No part of a war’ “We don’t want to be part of a war we don’t support,” he said. “The Marianas shouldn’t be a tip of the spear – we should be a bridge for peace.”
The groups argue that CJMT could make Tinian a target, increasing regional hostility.
“We want to sustain ourselves without the looming threat of war,” Pangelinan added.
In response to public concerns from the 2015 draft EIS, the DOD scaled back its plans, reducing live-fire ranges from 14 to 2 and eliminating artillery, rocket and mortar exercises.
Mark Hashimoto, executive director of the US Marine Corps Forces Pacific, emphasised the importance of community input.
“The proposal includes live-fire ranges, a base camp, communications infrastructure and a biosecurity facility,” he said.
Hashimoto noted that military lease lands on Tinian could support quarterly exercises involving up to 1000 personnel.
Economic impact concerns Tinian residents expressed concerns about economic impacts, job opportunities, noise, environmental effects and further strain on local infrastructure.
The DOD is expected to issue a Record of Decision by spring 2026, balancing public feedback with national security and environmental considerations.
In a joint statement earlier this week, the activist groups said the people of Guam and the CNMI were “burdened by processes not meant to serve their home’s interests”.
The groups were referring to public input requirements for military plans involving the use of Guam and CNMI lands and waters for war training and testing.
“As colonies of the United States, the Mariana Islands continue to be forced into conflicts not of our people’s making,” the statement read.
“ After decades of displacement and political disenfranchisement, our communities are now in subservient positions that force an obligation to extend our lands, airspace, and waters for use in America’s never-ending cycle of war.”
They also lamented the “intense environmental degradation” and “growing housing and food insecurity” resulting from military expansion.
“Like other Pacific Islanders, we are also overrepresented disproportionately in the military and in combat,” they said.
“Meanwhile, prices on imported food, fuel, and essential goods will continue to rise with inflation and war.”
Headline: A return to Nature. – 36th Parallel Assessments
Thomas Hobbes wrote his seminal work Leviathan in 1651. In it he describes the world system as it was then as being in “a state of nature,” something that some have interpreted as anarchy. However, anarchy has order and purpose. It is not chaos. In fact, if we think of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market” we get something similar to what anarchy is in practice: the aggregate of individual acts of self-interest can lead to the optimisation of value and outcomes at the collective level. Anarchy clears; chaos does not.
For Hobbes, the state of nature was chaos. Absent a “Sovereign” (i.e. a government) that could impose order on global and domestic societies, humans were destined to lead lives the were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” This has translated into notions of “might makes right,” “survival of the fittest,” “to the victor goes the spoils” and other axioms of so-called power politics. The most elaborate of these, international relations realism, is a school of thought that is based on the belief that because the international system has no superseding Sovereign in the form of world government with comprehensive enforcement powers, and because there are no universally shared values and mores throughout the globe community that ideologically bind cultures, groups and individuals, global society exists as a state of nature where, even if there are attempts to manage the relationships between States (and other actors) via rules, norms, institutions and the like, the bottom line is that States (and other actors) have interests, not friends.
Interests are pursued in a context of power differentials. Alliances are temporary and based on the convergence of mutual interests. Values are not universal and so are inconsequential. International exchange is transactional, not altruistic. Actors with greater resources at their disposal (human, natural, intellectual) prevail over those that have less. In case of resource parity between States or other actors, balances of power become systems regulators, but these are fluid and contingent, not permanent. Geography matters in that regard, which is why geopolitics (the relationship of power to geography) is the core of international relations.
It is worth remembering this when evaluating contemporary international relations. It has been well established by now that the liberal international order of the post WW2 era has largely been dismantled in the context of increasing multipolarity in inter-State relations and the rise of the Global South within the emerging order. As I have written before, the long transition and systemic realignment in international affairs has led to norm erosion, rules violations, multinational institutional and international organizational decay or irrelevance and the rise of conflict (be it in trade, diplomacy or armed force) as the new systems regulator.
These developments have accentuated over the last decade and now have a catalyst for a full move into a new global moment–but not into a multipolar or multiplex constellation arrangement in which rising and established powers move between multilateral blocs depending on the issues involved. Instead, the move appears to be one towards a modern Hobbesian state of nature, with the precipitant being the MAGA administration of Donald Trump and its foreign policy approach.
We must be clear that it is not Trump who is the architect of this move. As mentioned in pervious posts, he is an empty vessel consumed by his own self-worth. That makes him a useful tool of far smarter people than he, people who work in the shadow of relative anonymity and who cut their teeth in rightwing think tanks and policy centres. In their view the liberal internationalist order placed too many constraints on the exercise of US power while at the same time requiring the US to over-extend itself as the “world’s policeman” and international aid donor . Bound by international conventions on the one hand and besieged by foreign rent-seekers and adversaries on the other, the US was increasingly bent under the weight of overlapped demands in which existential national interests were subsumed to a plethora of frivolous diversions (such as human rights and democracy promotion).
For these strategists, the solution to the dilemma was not to be found in any new multipolar (or even technopolar) constellation but in a dismantling of the entire edifice of international order, something that was based on an architecture of rules, institutions and norms nearly 500 years in the making. Many have mentioned Trump’s apparent mercantilist inclinations and his admiration for former US president William McKinley’s tariff policies in the late 1890s. Although that may be true, the Trump/MAGA agenda is far broader in scope than trade. In fact, the US had its greatest period of (neo-imperial) expansion during McKinley’s tenure as president (1897-1901), winning the Spanish-American War and annexing Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Philippines, so Trump’s admiration for him may well be based on notions of territorial expansionism as well.
Whatever Trump’s views of McKinley, the basic idea under-riding his foreign policy team’s approach is that in a world where the exercise of power is the ultimate arbiter of a State’s international status, the US remains the greatest Power of them all. It does not matter if the PRC or Russia challenge the US or if other emerging powers join the competition. Without the hobbling effect of its liberal obligations the US can and will dominate them all. This involves trade but also the exercise of raw (neo) imperialist ambitions in places like Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Canada. It involves sidelining the UN, NATO, EU and other international organisations where the US had to share equal votes with lesser powers who flaunted the respect and tribute that should naturally be given in recognition of the US’s superior power base.
There appears to be a belief in this approach that the US can be a new hegemon–but not Sovereign–in a unipolar world, even more so than during the post-USSR-pre 9/11 interregnum. In a new state of nature it can sit at the core of the international system, orbited by constellations of lesser Great Powers like the PRC, Russia, the EU, perhaps India, who in turn would be circled by lesser powers of various stripes. The US will not seek to police the world or waste time and resources on well-meaning but ultimately futile soft power exercises like those involving foreign aid and humanitarian assistance. Its power projection will be sharp on all dimensions, be it trade, diplomacy or in military-security affairs. It will use leverage, intimidation and varying degrees of coercion as well as persuasion (and perhaps even bribery) as diplomatic tools. It will engage the world primarily in bilateral fashion, eschewing multilateralism for others to pursue according to their own interests and power capabilities. That may suit them, but for the US multilateralism is just another obsolescent vestige of the liberal internationalist past.
Source: Northrop-Grumman.
A possible (and partial) explanation for the change in the US foreign policy approach may be the learning effect in the US of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza. Trump and his advisors may have learned that impunity has its own rewards, that no country or group of countries other than the US (if it has the will) can effectively confront a state determined to pursue its interests regardless of international law, the laws of war or institutional censorship (say, by the UN or International Criminal Court), or any other type of countervailing power. The Russians and Israelis have gotten away with their behaviour because, all rhetoric and hand-wringing aside, there is no actor or group of actors who have the will or capability to stop them. For Trump strategists, these lesser powers are pursuing their interests regardless of diplomatic niceties and international conventions, and they are prevailing precisely because of that. Other than providing military assistance to Ukraine, no one has lifted a serious finger against the Russians other than the Ukrainians themselves, and even fewer have seriously moved to confront Israel’s now evident ethnic cleansing campaign in part because the US has backed Israel unequivocally. The exercise of power in each case occurred in a norm enforcement vacuum in spite of the plethora of agencies and institutions designed to prevent such egregious violations of international standards.
Put another way: if Israel and Russia can get away with their disproportionate and indiscriminate aggression, imagine what the US can do.
If we go on to include the PRC’s successful aggressive military “diplomacy” in East/SE Asia, the use of targeted assassinations, hacking, disinformation and covert direct influence campaigns overseas by various States and assorted other unpunished violations of international conventions, then it is entirely plausible that Trump’s foreign policy brain trust sees the moment as ripe for finally breaking the shackles of liberal internationalism. Also recall that many in Trump’s inner circle subscribe to chaos or disruption theory, in which a norms-breaking “disruptor” like Trump seizes the opportunities presented by the breakdown of the status quo ante.
Before the US could hollow out liberal internationalism abroad and replace it with a modern international state of nature it had to crush liberalism at home. Using Executive Orders as a bludgeon and with a complaint Republican-dominated Congress and Republican-adjacent federal courts. the Trump administration has openly exercised increasingly authoritarian control powers with the intention of subjugating US civil society to its will. Be it in its deportation policies, rollbacks of civil rights protections, attacks on higher education, diminishing of federal government capacity and services (except in the security field), venomous scapegoating of opponents and vulnerable groups, the Trump/MAGA domestic agenda not only seeks to turn the US into a illiberal or “hard” democracy (what Spanish language scholars call a “democradura” as a play on words mixing the terms democracia and dura (hard)). It also serves notice that the US under Trump/MAGA is willing to do whatever is necessary to re-impose its supremacy in world affairs, even if it means hurting its own in order to prove the point. By its actions at home Trump’s administration demonstrates capability, intent and steadfast resolve as it establishes a reputation for ruthless pursuit of its policy agenda. Foreign interlocutors will have to take note of this and adjust accordingly. Hence, for Trump’s advisors, authoritarianism at home is the first step towards undisputed supremacy abroad.
The Trump embrace of international state of nature differs from Hobbes because it does not see the need for a superseding global governance network but instead believes that the US can dominate the world without the encumbrances of power-sharing with lesser players. In this view hegemony means domination, no more or less. It implies no attempt at playing the role of a Sovereign imposing order on a disorderly and recalcitrant community of Nation-States and non-State actors that do not share common values, much less interests.
This is the core of the current US foreign policy approach. It is not about reorganising the international order within the extant frameworks as given. It is about removing those frameworks entirely and replacing them with an America First, go it alone agenda where the US, by virtue of its unrivalled power differential relative to all other States and global actors, can maximise its self-interest in largely unconstrained fashion. Some vestiges of the old international order may remain, but they will be marginalised and crippled the longer the US project is in force.
What does not seem to be happening in Trump’s foreign policy circle are three things. First, recognition that other States and international actors may band together against the US move to unipolarity in a new state of nature and that for all its talk the US may not be able to impose unipolar dominance over them. Second, understanding that States like the PRC, Russia and other Great Powers and communities (like the EU) may resist the US move and challenge it before it can consolidate the new international status quo. Third, foreseeing that the technology titans who today are influential in the Trump administration may decide to transfer there loyalties elsewhere, especially if Trump’s ego starts becoming a hindrance to their (economic and digital) power bases. The fusion of private technology control and US State power may not be as compatible over time as presently appears to be the case, something that may not occur with States such as the PRC, India or Japan that have different corporate cultures and political structures. As the current investment in the Middle Eastern oligarchies shows, the fusion of State and private techno power may be easier to accomplish in those contexts rather than the US.
In any event, whether it be a short-term interlude or a longue durée feature of international life, a modern state of nature is now our new global reality.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on June 29, 2025.
Do all Iranians hate the regime? Hate America? Life inside the country is more complex than that Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Theobald, Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Ethics and Society, University of Notre Dame Australia From 2015 to 2018, I spent 15 months doing research work in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. As an anthropologist, I was interested in everyday life in Iran outside the capital Tehran. I was
Talks result in PNG and Bougainville signing ‘Melanesian Agreement’ RNZ Pacific The leaders of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea have signed a deal that may bring the autonomous region’s quest for independence closer. Called “Melanesian Agreement”, the deal was developed earlier this month in 10 days of discussion at the New Zealand army base at Burnham, near Christchurch. Both governments have agreed that the
Eugene Doyle: Why Asia-Pacific should be cheering for Iran and not US bomb-based statecraft ANALYSIS: By Eugene Doyle Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month. The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on June 29, 2025.
Do all Iranians hate the regime? Hate America? Life inside the country is more complex than that Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Theobald, Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Ethics and Society, University of Notre Dame Australia From 2015 to 2018, I spent 15 months doing research work in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. As an anthropologist, I was interested in everyday life in Iran outside the capital Tehran. I was
Talks result in PNG and Bougainville signing ‘Melanesian Agreement’ RNZ Pacific The leaders of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea have signed a deal that may bring the autonomous region’s quest for independence closer. Called “Melanesian Agreement”, the deal was developed earlier this month in 10 days of discussion at the New Zealand army base at Burnham, near Christchurch. Both governments have agreed that the
Eugene Doyle: Why Asia-Pacific should be cheering for Iran and not US bomb-based statecraft ANALYSIS: By Eugene Doyle Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month. The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Theobald, Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Ethics and Society, University of Notre Dame Australia
From 2015 to 2018, I spent 15 months doing researchwork in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. As an anthropologist, I was interested in everyday life in Iran outside the capital Tehran. I was also interested in understanding whether the ambitions of the 1979 Revolution lived on among “ordinary” Iranians, not just political elites.
I first lived on a university campus, where I learned Persian, and later with Iranian families. I conducted hundreds of interviews with people who had a broad spectrum of political, social and religious views. They included opponents of the Islamic Republic, supporters, and many who were in between.
What these interviews revealed to me was both the diversity of opinion and experience in Iran, and the difficulty of making uniform statements about what Iranians believe.
Measuring the depth of antipathy for the regime
When Israel’s strikes on Iran began on June 13, killing many top military commanders, many news outlets – both international and those run by the Iranian diaspora – featured images of Iranians cheering the deaths of these hated regime figures.
Friends from my fieldwork also pointed to these celebrations, while not always agreeing with them. Many feared the impact of a larger conflict between Iran and Israel.
Trying to put these sentiments in context, many analysts have pointed to a 2019 survey by the GAMAAN Institute, an independent organisation based in the Netherlands that tracks Iranian public opinion. This survey showed 79% of Iranians living in the country would vote against the Islamic Republic if a free referendum were held on its rule.
Viewing these examples as an indicator of the lack of support for the Islamic Republic is not wrong. But when used as factoids in news reports, they become detached from the complexities of life in Iran. This can discourage us from asking deeper questions about the relationships between ideology and pragmatism, support and opposition to the regime, and state and society.
A more nuanced view
The news reporting on Iran has encouraged a tendency to see the Iranian state as homogeneous, highly ideological and radically separate from the population.
But where do we draw the line between the state and the people? There is no easy answer to this.
When I lived in Iran, many of the people who took part in my research were state employees – teachers at state institutions, university lecturers, administrative workers. Many of them had strong and diverse views about the legacy of the revolution and the future of the country.
They sometimes pointed to state discourse they agreed with, for example Iran’s right to national self-determination, free from foreign influence. They also disagreed with much, such as the slogans of “death to America”.
This ambivalence was evident in one of my Persian teachers. An employee of the state, she refused to attend the annual parades celebrating the anniversary of the revolution. “We have warm feelings towards America,” she said. On the other hand, she happily attended protests, also organised by the government, in favour of Palestinian liberation.
Or take the young government worker I met in Mashhad: “We want to be independent of other countries, but not like this.”
In a narrower sense, discussions about the “state” may refer more to organisations like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij, the paramilitary force within the IRGC that has cracked down harshly on dissent in recent decades. Both are often understood as being deeply ideologically committed.
Said Golkar, a US-based Iranian academic and author, for instance, calls Iran a “captive society”. Rather than having a civil society, he believes Iranians are trapped by the feared Basij, who maintain control through their presence in many institutions like universities and schools.
Again, this view is not wrong. But even among the Basij and Revolutionary Guard, it can be difficult to gauge just how ideological and homogeneous these organisations truly are.
For a start, the IRGC relies on both ideologically selected supporters, as well as conscripts, to fill its ranks. They are also not always ideologically uniform, as the US-based anthropologist Narges Bajoghli, who worked with pro-state filmmakers in Tehran, has noted.
As part of my research, I also interviewed members of the Basij, which, unlike the IRGC proper, is a wholly volunteer organisation.
Even though ideological commitment was certainly an important factor for some of the Basij members I met, there were also pragmatic reasons to join. These included access to better jobs, scholarships and social mobility. Sometimes, factors overlapped. But participation did not always equate to a singular or sustained commitment to revolutionary values.
For example, Sāsān, a friend I made attending discussion groups in Mashhad, was quick to note that time spent in the Basij “reduced your [compulsory] military service”.
This isn’t to suggest there are not ideologically committed people in Iran. They clearly exist, and many are ready to use violence. Some of those who join these institutions for pragmatic reasons use violence, too.
Looking in between
In addition, Iran is an ethnically diverse country. It has a population of 92 million people, a bare majority of whom are Persians. Other minorities include Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Baloch, Turkmen and others.
It is also religiously diverse. While there is a sizeable, nominally Shi’a majority, there are also large Sunni communities (about 10-15% of the population) and smaller communities of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Baha’is and other religions.
Often overlooked, there are also important differences in class and social strata in Iran, too.
One of the things I noticed about state propaganda was that it flattened this diversity. James Barry, an Australian scholar of Iran, noticed a similar phenomenon.
State propaganda made it seem like there was one voice in the country. Protests could be dismissed out of hand because they did not represent the “authentic” view of Iranians. Foreign agitators supported protests. Iranians supported the Islamic Republic.
Since leaving Iran, I have followed many voices of Iranians in the diaspora. Opposition groups are loud on social media, especially the monarchists who support Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah.
In following these groups, I have noticed a similar tendency to speak as though they represent the voice of all Iranians. Iranians support the shah. Or Iranians support Maryam Rajavi, leader of a Paris-based opposition group.
Both within Iran, and in the diaspora, the regime, too, is sometimes held to be the imposition of a foreign conspiracy. This allows the Islamic Republic and the complex relations it has created to be dismissed out of hand. Once again, such a view flattens diversity.
Over the past few years, political identities and societal divisions seem to have become harder and clearer. This means there is an increasing perception among many Iranians of a gulf between the state and Iranian society. This is the case both inside Iran, and especially in the Iranian diaspora.
Decades of intermittent protests and civil disobedience across the country also show that for many, the current system no longer represents the hopes and aspirations of many people. This is especially the case for the youth, who make up a large percentage of the population.
I am not an Iranian, and I strongly believe it is up to Iranians to determine their own futures. I also do not aim to excuse the Islamic Republic – it is brutal and tyrannical. But its brutality should not let us shy away from asking complex questions.
If the regime did fall tomorrow, Iran’s diversity means there is little unanimity of opinion as to what should come next. And if a more pluralist form of politics is to emerge, it must encompass the whole of Iran’s diversity, without assuming a uniform position.
It, too, will have to wrestle with the difficult questions and sometimes ambivalent relations the Islamic Republic has created.
Simon Theobald received funding from the Australian National University during his research.
And unlike the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when national unity coalesced around the defense of Iranian sovereignty, this time the government appeared to fight without significant public support. While accurate polling from within Iran is hard to come by, the lack of pro-government rallies, the low approval numbers for the government ahead of the war and the government’s subsequent crackdown since tell their own stories.
As a researcher of different ethnic groups within the country, I know that many Iranians – especially those from historically marginalized communities – viewed the conflict with Israel not as a defense of the nation but as a reckless consequence of the government’s ideological adventurism and regional proxy campaigns. It puts the Islamic Republic in its most vulnerable position since its establishment after the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Hard and soft power diminished
It is worth taking a snapshot of just how diminished the Iranian government is following the recent series of blows.
Its soft power – once built on revolutionary legitimacy, Shiite ideological influence and anti-Western propaganda – has eroded dramatically.
For decades, the Islamic Republic relied on a powerful narrative: that it was the only government bold enough to confront the United States and Israel, defend Muslim causes globally and serve as the spiritual leader of the Islamic world. This image, projected through state media, proxy militias and religious rhetoric, helped the government justify its foreign interventions and massive military spending, particularly on nuclear development and regional militias.
But that narrative no longer resonates the way it once did. The leaders of Iran can no longer claim to inspire unity at home or fear abroad. Even among Shiite populations in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, support during the Israel-Iran confrontation was muted. Inside Iran, meanwhile, propaganda portraying Israel as the existential enemy has lost its grip, especially among the youth, who increasingly identify with human rights movements rather than government slogans.
It is also clear that Iran’s hard power is getting weaker. The loss of senior commanders and the destruction of important military infrastructure have shown that the government’s intelligence and security systems are severely compromised.
Even before Israel’s attack, a number of reports showed that Iran’s military was in its weakest state in decades. The real surprise in the recent war came not from the scale of the damage by Israeli and U.S. bombs but from how deeply Israel had penetrated the upper echelons of the Iranian military and intelligence sectors. The recent conflict amounted to a security as well as a military failure.
Externally defeated, internally adrift
As its power across the region appears diminished, so too is the Iranian government’s grip loosening internally. A 2024 survey by Iran’s Ministry of Culture revealed “discontent” among the population, with over 90% of Iranians “dissatisfied” with the country’s current position. Elections in November 2024 saw a turnout of under 40%, further underscoring Iranians’ discontent with the political process.
And reporting from inside Iran suggests many Iranians blame government policies for the war with Israel. “I place the blame on this country’s decision-makers,” one resident of Rasht told Reuters, “their policies have brought war and destruction upon us.”
The government has responded with a tactic it has used before: repression. According to government-aligned media, over 700 people were arrested during and immediately after the conflict, accused of collaborating with the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
As in past crackdowns, ethnic minority regions – particularly Kurdish areas – have been targeted.
One day after the ceasefire with Israel, the government executed three Kurdish cross-border laborers who rely on smuggling goods to survive in Iran’s underdeveloped Kurdish provinces.
These executions, which were done without a trial or legal counsel, fit a pattern of how the government uses ethnic scapegoating to stay in power. And it echoes a historic pattern: When the government feels threatened, it strikes the Kurds first.
A historical pattern of repression
Kurds are estimated to number 10-12 million in Iran, composing roughly 12% to 15% of the country’s total population – making them the third-largest ethnic group after Persians and Azeris. Iran also includes significant Baluch and Arab minorities.
When the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, many ethnic groups supported the revolution. They hoped for a more inclusive and democratic Iran than what preceded it – the brutal autocracy of the shah that had frequently targeted minorities.
Those hopes were quickly dashed. By rejecting pluralism and promoting a unifying ideology centered on Shiite Islam and Persian identity, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini marginalized non-Persian and non-Shiite groups.
Other ethnic groups were viewed with suspicion, while Shiite Azerbaijanis were mainly co-opted into the system.
Khomeini declared jihad against Kurdish resistance groups, labeling them infidels, separatists and agents of Israel and the United States.
Armed with advanced weaponry inherited from the last Pahlavi shah, the government launched a military campaign in Kurdistan province. Many Kurdish villages and towns were destroyed, and approximately 50,000 Iranian Kurds were killed between 1979 and 1988.
The region was turned into a militarized zone – a status that continues today.
But instead of embracing political reform, it responded with one of the most brutal crackdowns in Iran’s history. Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious edict, ordering the execution of political prisoners, including large numbers of Kurdish dissidents.
Between late July and September 1988, thousands of political prisoners were executed – many without trial or any legal process. At least 5,000 people were killed and buried in unmarked mass graves, according to Amnesty International.
Khomeini labeled them “mohareb,” or “warriors against God,” and criticized the Revolutionary Courts for not sentencing them to death sooner. This mass execution campaign signaled the government’s resolve to eliminate all dissent, regardless of legal precedent or human rights norms.
This targeted elimination of Kurdish leadership, combined with the mass executions of political prisoners, was a deliberate strategy to decapitate any organized opposition before it could challenge the government’s survival.
A new crisis, the same strategy
The Islamic Republic appears to be using the same playbook now, but under far more fragile conditions.
Given the precarious state of the government, it is fair to ask why there are not more protests now, especially in ethnic minority regions. For many, the answer is fear over what happens next.
Meanwhile, the overall opposition remains fractured and leaderless, both along ethnic lines and in terms of goals. The main opposition groups have traditionally been reluctant to acknowledge ethnic rights, let alone include them in any vision for a future Iran. Rather, they insist on “territorial integrity” as a precondition for any dialogue, echoing the Islamic Republic’s rhetoric.
This is a key legacy of the Islamic Republic: Its propaganda has not only shaped domestic opinion but also influenced the opposition, dividing Iranians at home and abroad. And it has long mobilized the dominant ethnic group against minorities, especially Kurds, by portraying them as internal enemies.
Shukriya Bradost does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Alexander Richard Braczkowski, Research Fellow at the Centre for Planetary Health and Resilient Conservation Group, Griffith University
In the shadows of Python Cave, Uganda, a leopard leaps from a guano mound – formed by bat excrement – and sinks its teeth into a bat. But this is no ordinary bat colony. The thousands of Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) found in this cave are known carriers of one of the world’s deadliest viruses: Marburg, a close cousin of Ebola.
I am a conservation scientist with over 17 years of experience in wildlife ecology, monitoring and human-wildlife conflict. I’m the co-founder of the Kyambura Lion Project, which made this discovery.
For years, scientists studying how diseases spread from animals to humans have hypothesised that zoonotic diseases jump from a wildlife reservoir (like a bat) to an intermediate host (monkey) and potentially to us, humans.
For past Marburg outbreaks in Uganda, two spillover pathways have been identified: the first, involves humans coming into contact with a fruit bat habitat (namely caves filled with bat guano). Indeed, fruit bats are thought to have infected two tourists at Python Cave in 2007 and 2008.
The second pathway involves humans and animals eating the same fruit that bats have fed upon or made contact with. This second spillover pathway was identified by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists in 2023. They tracked bats from the cave entering cultivated gardens to feed.
But Atukwatse and the team of young Ugandan scientists (Yahaya Ssemakula, Johnson Muhereza, Orin Cornille and Winfred Nsabimana) have potentially found another pathway: predation by at least 14 species.
Such rich visual evidence of a viral interface – bats, predators and people – is virtually non-existent in the literature. Many theoretical depictions of this process exist, and there are isolated incidents of a monkey predating on a bat or wildlife feeding on bat guano, but Atukwatse’s discovery of this many different predators repeatedly feeding on a known Marburg virus reservoir is a first.
His discovery highlights two uncomfortable truths:
many potential zoonotic interfaces remain undocumented – often right under our noses
the people most likely to detect them first are those living closest to wild frontiers.
But the bigger message is this: global health institutions need to stop overlooking local scientists and start funding field-based detection systems across Africa and Asia.
If we want to detect the next outbreak early, we should be empowering more Atukwatses, not waiting for the next lab test.
Atukwatse had heard from nearby guides that a large bat cave lay close to the survey grid. That kind of site, he reasoned, could be perfect leopard territory: a place to hunt, rest or avoid the heat.
This is ecological attentiveness at its best – the field biology equivalent of a commodities trader spotting volatility in a geopolitical flashpoint.
Atukwatse had his radar on and acted on instinct, setting five camera traps at the cave’s entrance and along the surrounding animal trails. Just one week later, he got what he hoped for: three separate clips of a leopard hunting bats in broad daylight. He left the cameras in place in protective casing. He checked them every 7–10 days.
But that was just the beginning.
The scale of the discovery
When I first looked at Atukwatse’s videos, our joint excitement was around the leopard footage. We knew they were adaptable and could even eat small rodents , but no one had ever recorded them eating bats in Africa.
As more clips came in, we realised something bigger was unfolding. Blue monkeys were seen grabbing bats mid-roost. A crowned eagle and a Nile monitor fought over two bat carcasses. A fish eagle – typically a piscivore, which is a carnivorous species that primarily eats fish – was filmed clutching bats in its talons.
Over 304 trap-nights, Atukwatse’s traps recorded 261 independent predator events from at least 14 different species.
Then came the second shock: over 400 human visitors – many of them tourists – were filmed approaching the cave mouth without any protective gear. Some stood just metres from a known Marburg virus reservoir. Importantly, the Uganda Wildlife Authority has built a sanctioned viewing platform about 35 metres from the cave. However, tourists broke park rules and walked within two metres of the cave mouth.
It was only after I visited the cave myself to take stills of the team that we put this all together. Atukwatse had just found the first visual evidence, at a large scale in nature, of at least 14 predators feeding on a known wildlife virus reservoir harbouring one of Earth’s deadliest viruses.
This wasn’t the result of million-dollar pathogen surveillance. It wasn’t even the core aim of our leopard survey. This happened because a young Ugandan field scientist followed his ecological gut.
Why does the discovery matter?
For decades, disease ecologists have known that major outbreaks often originate in wildlife – swine flu, avian flu and even SARS-CoV-2 all trace back to animal hosts. But what’s often missing is direct observation of spillover interfaces – the exact moments when a virus jumps from a bat, goose, or other animal into new species like humans, livestock or other wildlife.
Atukwatse’s discovery may be the first large-scale visual record of such an interface in nature: a roost of Egyptian fruit bats known to harbour a deadly virus, actively predated upon by at least 14 species, with hundreds of humans visiting the same cave mouth unprotected.
This may be a Rosetta Stone moment for spillover ecology – shifting our understanding from hypothetical models to a real, observable interface.
These kinds of spillover sites exist in other places in nature: in a Chinese wet market where a civet meets a meat processor, or in a Gabonese village where a bat is butchered for bushmeat. The difference? Most of them go undocumented. Atukwatse just filmed one.
Alexander Richard Braczkowski is the scientific director of the Volcanoes Safaris Partnership Trust Kyambura Lion Project.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Alexander Richard Braczkowski, Research Fellow at the Centre for Planetary Health and Resilient Conservation Group, Griffith University
In the shadows of Python Cave, Uganda, a leopard leaps from a guano mound – formed by bat excrement – and sinks its teeth into a bat. But this is no ordinary bat colony. The thousands of Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) found in this cave are known carriers of one of the world’s deadliest viruses: Marburg, a close cousin of Ebola.
I am a conservation scientist with over 17 years of experience in wildlife ecology, monitoring and human-wildlife conflict. I’m the co-founder of the Kyambura Lion Project, which made this discovery.
For years, scientists studying how diseases spread from animals to humans have hypothesised that zoonotic diseases jump from a wildlife reservoir (like a bat) to an intermediate host (monkey) and potentially to us, humans.
For past Marburg outbreaks in Uganda, two spillover pathways have been identified: the first, involves humans coming into contact with a fruit bat habitat (namely caves filled with bat guano). Indeed, fruit bats are thought to have infected two tourists at Python Cave in 2007 and 2008.
The second pathway involves humans and animals eating the same fruit that bats have fed upon or made contact with. This second spillover pathway was identified by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists in 2023. They tracked bats from the cave entering cultivated gardens to feed.
But Atukwatse and the team of young Ugandan scientists (Yahaya Ssemakula, Johnson Muhereza, Orin Cornille and Winfred Nsabimana) have potentially found another pathway: predation by at least 14 species.
Such rich visual evidence of a viral interface – bats, predators and people – is virtually non-existent in the literature. Many theoretical depictions of this process exist, and there are isolated incidents of a monkey predating on a bat or wildlife feeding on bat guano, but Atukwatse’s discovery of this many different predators repeatedly feeding on a known Marburg virus reservoir is a first.
His discovery highlights two uncomfortable truths:
many potential zoonotic interfaces remain undocumented – often right under our noses
the people most likely to detect them first are those living closest to wild frontiers.
But the bigger message is this: global health institutions need to stop overlooking local scientists and start funding field-based detection systems across Africa and Asia.
If we want to detect the next outbreak early, we should be empowering more Atukwatses, not waiting for the next lab test.
Atukwatse had heard from nearby guides that a large bat cave lay close to the survey grid. That kind of site, he reasoned, could be perfect leopard territory: a place to hunt, rest or avoid the heat.
This is ecological attentiveness at its best – the field biology equivalent of a commodities trader spotting volatility in a geopolitical flashpoint.
Atukwatse had his radar on and acted on instinct, setting five camera traps at the cave’s entrance and along the surrounding animal trails. Just one week later, he got what he hoped for: three separate clips of a leopard hunting bats in broad daylight. He left the cameras in place in protective casing. He checked them every 7–10 days.
But that was just the beginning.
The scale of the discovery
When I first looked at Atukwatse’s videos, our joint excitement was around the leopard footage. We knew they were adaptable and could even eat small rodents , but no one had ever recorded them eating bats in Africa.
As more clips came in, we realised something bigger was unfolding. Blue monkeys were seen grabbing bats mid-roost. A crowned eagle and a Nile monitor fought over two bat carcasses. A fish eagle – typically a piscivore, which is a carnivorous species that primarily eats fish – was filmed clutching bats in its talons.
Over 304 trap-nights, Atukwatse’s traps recorded 261 independent predator events from at least 14 different species.
Then came the second shock: over 400 human visitors – many of them tourists – were filmed approaching the cave mouth without any protective gear. Some stood just metres from a known Marburg virus reservoir. Importantly, the Uganda Wildlife Authority has built a sanctioned viewing platform about 35 metres from the cave. However, tourists broke park rules and walked within two metres of the cave mouth.
It was only after I visited the cave myself to take stills of the team that we put this all together. Atukwatse had just found the first visual evidence, at a large scale in nature, of at least 14 predators feeding on a known wildlife virus reservoir harbouring one of Earth’s deadliest viruses.
This wasn’t the result of million-dollar pathogen surveillance. It wasn’t even the core aim of our leopard survey. This happened because a young Ugandan field scientist followed his ecological gut.
Why does the discovery matter?
For decades, disease ecologists have known that major outbreaks often originate in wildlife – swine flu, avian flu and even SARS-CoV-2 all trace back to animal hosts. But what’s often missing is direct observation of spillover interfaces – the exact moments when a virus jumps from a bat, goose, or other animal into new species like humans, livestock or other wildlife.
Atukwatse’s discovery may be the first large-scale visual record of such an interface in nature: a roost of Egyptian fruit bats known to harbour a deadly virus, actively predated upon by at least 14 species, with hundreds of humans visiting the same cave mouth unprotected.
This may be a Rosetta Stone moment for spillover ecology – shifting our understanding from hypothetical models to a real, observable interface.
These kinds of spillover sites exist in other places in nature: in a Chinese wet market where a civet meets a meat processor, or in a Gabonese village where a bat is butchered for bushmeat. The difference? Most of them go undocumented. Atukwatse just filmed one.
Alexander Richard Braczkowski is the scientific director of the Volcanoes Safaris Partnership Trust Kyambura Lion Project.
The leaders of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea have signed a deal that may bring the autonomous region’s quest for independence closer.
Called “Melanesian Agreement”, the deal was developed earlier this month in 10 days of discussion at the New Zealand army base at Burnham, near Christchurch.
Both governments have agreed that the national Parliament in PNG has a key role in the decision over the push for independence.
They recognise that the Bougainville desire for independence is legitimate, as expressed in a 2019 independence referendum result, and that this is a unique situation in PNG.
That is the agreement’s attempt to overcome pressure from other parts of PNG that are also talking about autonomy.
The parties say they are committed to maintaining a close, peaceful and enduring relationship between PNG and Bougainville.
Both sides said that to bring referendum results to the national Parliament both governments would develop a sessional order, which was a the temporary adjustment of Parliament’s rules.
Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee They said that a Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee on Bougainville, which would provide information to MPs and the general public about the Bougainville conflict and resolution, is a vital body.
The parties said they would explore the joint creation of a Melanesian framework with agreed timelines, for a pathway forwards, that may form part of the Joint Consultations Report presented to the 11th National Parliament.
Once the Bipartisan Committee completes its work, the results of the referendum and the Joint Consultation Report would be taken to the Parliament.
The parties said they would accept the decision of the national Parliament, in the first instance, regarding the referendum results, and then commit to further consultations if needed, and this would be in an agreed timeline.
In the meantime, institutional strengthening and institutional building within Bougainville would continue.
To ensure progress is made and political commitment is sustained, the monitoring of this Melanesian Agreement could include an international component, a Parliamentary component, and the Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee, all with UN support.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The leaders of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea have signed a deal that may bring the autonomous region’s quest for independence closer.
Called “Melanesian Agreement”, the deal was developed earlier this month in 10 days of discussion at the New Zealand army base at Burnham, near Christchurch.
Both governments have agreed that the national Parliament in PNG has a key role in the decision over the push for independence.
They recognise that the Bougainville desire for independence is legitimate, as expressed in a 2019 independence referendum result, and that this is a unique situation in PNG.
That is the agreement’s attempt to overcome pressure from other parts of PNG that are also talking about autonomy.
The parties say they are committed to maintaining a close, peaceful and enduring relationship between PNG and Bougainville.
Both sides said that to bring referendum results to the national Parliament both governments would develop a sessional order, which was a the temporary adjustment of Parliament’s rules.
Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee They said that a Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee on Bougainville, which would provide information to MPs and the general public about the Bougainville conflict and resolution, is a vital body.
The parties said they would explore the joint creation of a Melanesian framework with agreed timelines, for a pathway forwards, that may form part of the Joint Consultations Report presented to the 11th National Parliament.
Once the Bipartisan Committee completes its work, the results of the referendum and the Joint Consultation Report would be taken to the Parliament.
The parties said they would accept the decision of the national Parliament, in the first instance, regarding the referendum results, and then commit to further consultations if needed, and this would be in an agreed timeline.
In the meantime, institutional strengthening and institutional building within Bougainville would continue.
To ensure progress is made and political commitment is sustained, the monitoring of this Melanesian Agreement could include an international component, a Parliamentary component, and the Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee, all with UN support.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Summer is the UK’s best-loved season. It’s easy to see why, with the warmer, sunnier weather it brings. But the temperature isn’t the only reason people prefer midsummer to the dark days of winter. Many also report their mood is better during the warmer months.
But why is it that our mood changes so much through the seasons? While there are many complex reasons why the weather can have such a significant affect on our mood and wellbeing, the key answer lies in our brain – and the way almost all of our body’s systems are hardwired to respond to what’s going on around us.
Your body’s core temperature is set at 37°C. Temperature is regulated by an area of the brain known as the hypothalamus. This nerve centre receives information about temperature from all over the body and initiates actions to either cool down or warm up accordingly.
The outside temperature can also affect our biological clock – otherwise known as our circadian rhythms. These govern, among other functions, our sleep-wake cycles.
Our circadian rhythms are also regulated by the hypothalamus – more specifically, a part of it called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The fact that both temperature control and sleep-wake cycles are governed from within the same region of the brain suggests they are inextricably connected.
This connection can also partly help to explain why our moods can shift so much from winter to summer. It’s the interaction between these nervous pathways that are believed to impact mood through their effect on sleep, mood-influencing neurotransmitters, and more.
For instance, in winter, many people find their mood takes a dip – especially during the long, dark days of midwinter. Some people even develop seasonal affective disorder (Sad), a condition associated with depressive episodes that fluctuate with the comings-and-goings of the different seasons – though it’s typically more common in the winter because of the darker days and cold temperatures.
Sad can also cause sleep disturbances, lethargy and appetite changes – particularly cravings for carbohydrates. As the summer months arrive, people with winter Sad usually find their symptoms significantly improve.
There’s some evidence that Sad is linked to secretion of a hormone called melatonin – a hormone that’s also linked to our circadian rhythms. Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland, which shares nervous connections with the hypothalamus and acts to control timing and quality of sleep.
Melatonin levels typically remain relatively low during the day – but levels start to creep up in the evening, reaching their highest levels in the middle of the night. But the lower levels of daylight in the winter can cause dysfunction with melatonin levels, typically increasing it’s secretion. This probably explains why people feel sleepier and more fatigued in winter – and which may in turn trigger depression.
But it’s not just melatonin that’s linked to Sad. Other neurotransmitters which act as mood boosters (such as serotonin) appear to be affected by dark and cold days too. There also seems to be a link with geographical location – with evidence showing the condition is more common in regions furthest from the equator, where there are extremes of daylight and temperature.
Summertime sadness
When summer finally makes an appearance, the effect of sunshine and heat upon the energy-boosting neurotransmitters (such as serotonin) makes a notable difference to mood. This may be partly due to increased amounts of vitamin D – which is made in the skin, and requires sunlight exposure to reach higher levels. Vitamin D has been proven to positively affect serotonin levels.
But not everyone finds themselves pleased by summer’s hotter temperatures and longer days. Some may find they feel more miserable this season.
It’s less clear why some people get Sad in the summertime – and is probably due to a range of factors. It may be due to the heat and humidity or even feelings of self-consciousness. It could possibly even be due to sleep disruptions – since the longer days might disrupt our circadian rhythm.
Certain health conditions may also influence how we cope with the warmer temperatures. Take the menopause, where symptoms such as hot flushes may be exacerbated by the warmer weather. Those dealing with these symptoms may find it becomes even more difficult during heat waves – and this may take a toll on their mental wellbeing.
Some research does show that rising temperatures can be a precipitant for acute mental illness. One study examined a population of patients with bipolar disorder and found there was a significant peak in the number of hospital admissions in the summer months compared to patients with other psychiatric disorders. Their statistical analysis demonstrated that higher temperatures and solar radiation levels were the most significant determinants of acute episodes.
Another study has also suggested a link between increased temperatures and risk of suicidal behaviour.
The body’s natural responses to heat also feeds into the biological stress response. The mechanisms by which the body cools down, such as sweating and promoting blood flow to the skin, can cause dehydration and skin flushing. This may make people feel of frustrated and irritable, have trouble concentrating and may even impact the quality of sleep.
The interplay between temperature, sunlight, the body’s circadian clock and mood is a complex and intriguing conundrum – and one which is as unique as each person. While some of us are hard-wired to be sunchasers, others eagerly look forward to the dark days of winter. But in a world where climate change is a definite reality, we need to better understand how a warming world is going to affect our wellbeing.
Dan Baumgardt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
After eight years of renovations, the Waldorf Astoria in New York has reopened and is welcoming new guests. The Waldorf – as most people know it – introduced room service, velvet ropes, red-velvet cake and Thousand Island dressing. It gave its name to a salad, a chain of lunchrooms, as well as a now obscure form of democracy.
In 1907, the novelist Henry James said the Waldorf embodied what he called the “hotel spirit”: it was a place where everyone was equal – as long as they could afford the price of admission. To James, hotels defined America’s emerging culture and ideals. He said this new “spirit” was one of opportunity; of a new elite that was accessible not only by lineage, but by money.
As the historian and journalist David Freeland wrote, the Waldorf generally made room for all who were “able and ready to pay” and who displayed a willingness to “conduct themselves properly”. The Waldorf ethos was developed by its first maître d’, Oscar Tschirky – known simply as “Oscar of the Waldorf” because people struggled to pronounce his name. “Our innovations were startling and sensational”, Tschirky said in his ghost-written autobiography in 1943, “but they were always genteel”.
Those early innovations included the invention of the “presidential suite”, which saw the hotel become an unlikely early force for American feminism when it became a hub of high-level talks between suffragists and President Woodrow Wilson.
The Waldorf, then, is an American institution – or, at least, it used to be.
It is now in the hands of Chinese owners and has been shunned by presidents since Barack Obama, worried over potential security risks. The brand itself has been watered down as there are currently 32 “Waldorf Astorias” dotted around the globe.
The story of the Waldorf encapsulates modern America’s crisis of the establishment. Few places better personify the creation of the US version of the establishment (much more about money than breeding or class). And in the past decade, the hotel’s position, like the US establishment more generally, has come under assault by a rival hotel owner, Donald Trump.
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Trump has his own ideas about how to use these modern palaces to project power – and his innovations are anything but genteel. So what can the beginnings of this former American institution tell us about America today? As a researcher of political and democratic institutions, I have been examining the role of hotels in the story of American democracy. And this particular story begins with a Swiss-born waiter.
Oscar of the Waldorf
Tschirky was born in the Swiss Alpine village of Le Locle in 1866. He and his mother boarded the steamer La France in 1883, bound for New York. In his book, he recalled his mother’s announcement:
Yes, Oscar, we’re going to go to America and live with your brother in that great land of plenty where we can have everything we’ve always wanted.
That night, according to his book, was “the beginning of Oscar’s career as beloved servitor and counsellor to the great and near great of this world”.
Although it would be ten years after arriving in New York, that Tschirky would join the Waldorf (which was just about to open) as maître d’. His contract and salary commenced on January 1 1893, ahead of the grand opening of the Fifth Avenue hotel in March. He would occupy his post for the next half-century as “host to the world”.
Tschirky would remain in place as the hotel expanded in 1897 when John Jacob Astor IV built and connected the larger, taller Astoria Hotel next door. Then in 1931 the hotel was forced to relocate when its Fifth Avenue location was razed for the Empire State Building. The “new” Waldorf Astoria New York reopened on Park Avenue with the addition of its famous towers, making it the tallest hotel in the world at the time.
Tschirky was born just one year after the end of the American Civil War. It was an America of Jim Crow laws and segregation. He would live to see women’s suffrage, but not the civil rights reforms of the mid-1960s.
In this turbulent context, it appears that Tschirky did his best to keep the Waldorf out of politics. He stuck to the advice given by the Waldorf’s manager, George Boldt (himself a German immigrant) who told him that it was “not up to the hotel to settle international affairs”.
Tschirky came to understand, realise, and represent the “hotel spirit” of a new America as he presided over the establishment of hotels as American palaces: not only for visitors, but for the new American aristocracy.
A presidential palace
The Waldorf famously hosted every US president from Grover Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt. In spring 1897, Cleveland was at the Waldorf with members of his former cabinet, who wanted him as Democratic candidate in the 1900 election. This was the first reported instance of “Waldorf democracy” – in this case, the term was used to identify this new group within (and in some respects differentiate it from) “the democracy”, that was the Democrats.
President Grover Cleveland (sitting on the far left) and his cabinet, between 1895 and 1896. Shutterstock/Everett Collection
This politics was not embraced by all. As reported in The Ohio Democrat, Congressman Edward W. Carmack of Tennessee dismissed it as “the walled-off Democracy, because they are by themselves, representing nobody, and unable to influence a vote”.
Nevertheless, political elites liked the luxury that the Waldorf offered. Presidential suites were established during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency (1913-21). In the Waldorf, this famous suite emulates the furniture of the White House and still contains several presidential souvenirs, (including John F. Kennedy’s rocking chair).
The hotel was also popular among the famous “Four Hundred of the Gilded Age” – the highest echelons of New York society. The group was originally led by Caroline Schermerhorn Astor. The Astors’ ancestral family home, the town of Walldorf, in western Germany, had even given the hotel its name. According to Tschirky’s book, the Waldorf’s grand ballroom was:
… where Teddy Roosevelt had dined, where presidents McKinley, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover had spoken historic words to the nation, where princes of royal blood had been welcomed, where the great people in every walk of life had been honored.
The Waldorf proved a suitable palace for US presidents and their entourages and Tschirky, a suitable “servant”. When interviewed by Washington DC’s Evening Star, Tschirky “wouldn’t talk about presidents except to say that Franklin D. Roosevelt calls him, ‘my neighbor across the Hudson’”.
But Tschirky, “for all his celebrity acquaintances, never forgot that he was, in the end, a servant”, as Freeland wrote. The Waldorf likewise applied the term to its staff.
Exclusivity, exclusion and ‘democracy’
The world famous hotelier Conrad Hilton, who acquired the Waldorf in 1949, recalled in his autobiography, Be My Guest:
Originally the Waldorf was said to purvey exclusiveness to the exclusive. Later [the writer and artist] Oliver Herford announced that it ‘brought exclusiveness to the masses’. But that exclusiveness remained whether the hotel catered to a convention of three thousand or a tête-à-tête between crowned heads.
The Waldorf ethos projected “taste” and imbued it in others. Tschirky “subtly schooled Americans in fine European dining”. In 1956 – six years after Tschirky’s death – the New York Times recalled that, alongside Boldt, he undertook to teach people how to spend their money. The Waldorf embodied good taste by enforcing it, for example in its expectation of “proper conduct”.
But with exclusivity comes exclusion. Hence, the hotel’s introduction of the velvet rope. According to the Waldorf’s luxury suite specialists, this was done “to create order … the fact that it created a sense of stature and separation was secondary”.
Tschirky’s statement that “all who pay their bills are on an equal footing” reflects one of his “rules for success”:
… be as courteous to the man in a five dollar room as to the occupant of the royal suite. It is an old rule, but it never changes.
We can see from this mindset how the hotel was seen to possess, as American Studies scholar Annabella Fick put it, “a democratic quality … even though it is also elitist. In that, it invokes the democratic understanding of early America, which also differentiated between land-owning gentry and the mob”.
This was not the only differentiation. Just two years after the Waldorf opened, the 1895 New York State Equal Rights Law (commonly known as the Malby Law) – which aimed to abolish racial discrimination in public places – had aroused Boldt’s indignation. According to Freeland, Boldt described the law to reporters as “an outrage, as it prevents us from making any selection of our patrons. A man who runs a first-class hotel must respect the wishes of his guests as to the sort of people that he entertains, and the law should not dictate to him.”
In his paradoxical desire for the freedom to discriminate and persecute as he wished – and on behalf of his customers, real or imagined – Boldt illustrated the exclusion inherent in exclusivity. Boldt’s statement also presaged a system of informal segregation, in which Black Americans were allowed in the Waldorf (and elsewhere), but were certainly not welcome.
Despite this the Waldorf was at the heart of a fundamental shift in American culture which “invited” ordinary Americans access beyond the velvet rope – as long as they could afford it. As James McCarthy and John Rutherford said in their 1931 book, Peacock Alley: “The average man and woman … frowned upon grand display – chiefly because the average person knew it was beyond his or her own horizon of enjoyment. The arrival of the Waldorf, however, was an invitation to the public to taste of this grandeur.”
And it wasn’t just the paying customers. During its 30th anniversary in 1923, the Waldorf elevated its staff – its servants – to the level of guests. Reporters for the Birmingham Age-Herald noted: “Practically the entire staff of the hotel were guests … the affair reached the topnotch of Waldorf democracy, for the waiters and financiers, telephone girls and captains of industry, coat-room clerks and merchant princes sat side by side and swapped reminiscences with each other.” The article continues:
Oscar sat [at] the head of his own table as guest of honor. For a brief time Oscar was no longer the solicitous host … For an hour or two Oscar was himself the guest, and the entire kitchen menage of the Waldorf-Astoria was kept hopping filling his wants and those of his fellow guests.
Oscar and his wife Louise, in the Birmingham Age-Herald above ‘Father Knickerbocker’ – a personification of New York City (hence The Knicks) – celebrating the Waldorf at 30. Library of Congress
But being a guest was a temporary experience.
The “Waldorf democracy” described during this event – of people from every walk of life and status mixing and socialising – was very different to that of the Cleveland entourage. It was not party-political, but institutional.
Democracy meant different things, at different times, within the Waldorf; just like in the broader US. The Waldorf, in turn, began to change, and perhaps even lose its meaning within the US by the time of Obama’s presidency.
Chinese ownership
The Waldorf lost its status as presidential palace in 2014. It was bought for $1.95bn by a Chinese company that was later seized by the Chinese government. Security concerns a year later prompted President Obama to stay at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel instead.
Obama’s choice of where to stay – and where not to stay – was widely discussed in the media. The decision was seen to “break with decades of tradition”. ABC News recognised and portrayed it as the end of an era, bidding “Goodbye to the Waldorf Astoria, welcome to the Lotte New York Palace Hotel”. This new era was also framed in geopolitical terms, for example by the New York Times:
With Chinese spies rummaging through White House emails, President Obama has decided not to risk making their spying any easier: He will break with tradition and abandon the Waldorf Astoria … Mr. Obama and other officials will instead take up residence a few blocks away at the Lotte New York Palace.
The same article also pointed out that “hotels have long represented a weak link in security for travelling officials and others”. In fact, Nikita Khrushchev had once got stuck in an elevator at the Waldorf, and “probably thought it was an attempt to assassinate him”.
Covering up an assassination as an “elevator accident” is probably not what Hilton had in mind when he envisaged his hotels as “a means of combating communism”. On the contrary – as Professor Mairi Maclean, a researcher of business elites, put it – Hilton envisaged hotels as a means of “facilitating world peace through international trade and travel”.
Women’s suffrage
It may not have brought about world peace, but the Waldorf did play a part in certain moments of US history because it was always seen as a key arena to lobby rulers, most notably in 1916. Women’s suffrage in America was still four years away. On one side of the debate (and the Waldorf itself) were two hundred suffragists, occupying the East Room. On the other was Woodrow Wilson, occupying the Presidential Suite.
Tschirky recalled being “appointed diplomatic courier … and delegated to carry the first communiqué of the morning … In the midst of it all I stood my ground, swearing myself an ice cold neutral”.
Though neutral on the question of suffrage, Tschirky was willing to reduce boundaries within the hotel, especially if it was good for business. Even as the hotel was being built, Tschirky remembered that “there was not, in all America, such a thing as a motor car, a radio … Nor were cocktails ever seen in private homes; or divorces tolerated in society; nor did women smoke, or wear dresses above their ankles”.
Then in 1907 a notice was put up in the Waldorf: “Women would be served in the hotel restaurants at any time, with or without male escorts.” Freeland noted Tschirky’s simple confirmation that: “We will serve women. What else can you do in a hotel?”
Crowd of women’s suffrage supporters demonstrating with signs reading, ‘Wilson Against Women’, in Chicago on October 20, 1916. Wilson withheld his support for Votes of Women until 1918. Shutterstock/Everett Collection
A few years later, discussing women’s right to smoke in the dining rooms, Tschirky said: “We do not regulate the public taste. Public taste does and should regulate us.”
During the Waldorf’s 30th anniversary in 1923, newspapers such as El Imparcial celebrated it as “a civic asset of unique importance. And to its other accolades must be added that of contributing effectively to the progress of feminism. It was a memorable day in the women’s rights movement when The Waldorf Astoria granted female access to the Peacock Alley.”
Nevertheless, even the naming of Peacock Alley – a corridor in the hotel that became an important place of congregation, especially for women – was a recognition of exclusivity. It was where people gathered to parade themselves. As the recollection goes in Tschirky’s memoirs: “The Waldorf Hotel was a triumphant picture of the Best People at their best”.
Trump
With their ostentatious decor and gilded interiors, Trump’s hotels could be seen as the modern incarnation of Peacock Alley.
But the tenets of politeness, respect and decorum that Tschirky set down seem like echoes from another age when compared to a recent AI video showing Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sitting shirtless at a pool with drinks at an imaginary “Trump Gaza hotel”. The video appears to have been a spoof, but that didn’t stop the president from sharing it on Truth Social, his own social media platform, and Instagram.
Like Hilton (who was immortalised in Mad Men, demanding a Hilton on the moon) hotels have always been a part of Trump’s brand. Trump recalled, in How to Get Rich, that his “first big deal, in 1974, involved the old Commodore Hotel site near Grand Central Station” on 42nd Street.
The former Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, opened in 2016, was described as “the epicenter of the president’s business interests in [the capital]”. It was also “a popular choice for lobbyists and Republican Congress members during Trump’s presidency”.
“The Trump Organization sold the hotel’s lease to CGI in 2022, when the hotel was reflagged as a Waldorf Astoria”, though Trump’s firm is rumoured to be in talks to reacquire it.
Another similarity between Hilton and Trump is their use of hotels as symbols for the nation. Each hotel of Hilton’s was envisaged as a “Little America”, “to show the countries most exposed to communism the other side of the coin”.
It had all of the ingredients of greatness, but it had been neglected and left to deteriorate for many many decades … It had the foundation of success. All of the elements were here. Our job is to restore our former glory, honor its heritage, but also imagine a brand new and exciting vision for the future.
Forbes commented that this event “could’ve easily been mistaken for a Trump rally”, for example in his statement that “my theme today is five words: ‘under budget and ahead of schedule’ … We don’t hear those words too often in government – but you will!”
Similarly, in an interview with the New York Post, Trump’s son Eric Trump used familiar Maga rhetoric: “Our family has saved the hotel once. If asked, we would save it again”.
What would Tschirky have made of all this? As a political neutral he would have decried Trump’s frequent hotel plugs during political campaigns. No doubt his behaviour would have seemed crass.
Perhaps this reflects two different eras of hotels and their intended functions. Grand hotels such as the Waldorf were shaped by European colonialism, by immigrants like Tschirky and Boldt. But as historian Annabel Wharton describes, the Hiltons “were constructed not, as in the nineteenth century, to meet an established need, but to create one. They suggest that this pressure was not produced simply by the desire for profit, but from a remarkable political commitment to the system that promoted profit-making”. I think we can read Trump’s hotels, and now his politics, in the same way.
The hotel spirit has entered a new phase with Trump’s proposals to “own, level, and develop” the Gaza Strip and create a “Riviera of the Middle East” – riding roughshod over the democratic will of Palestinians in Gaza who dismissed Trump’s vision.
Less than two decades after opening, Tschirky remarked that “many of the great events, financial, diplomatic, political, had had their inception within [the Waldorf’s] stone walls”. For him, it was “an international crossroad where men from all lands came to exchange goods and ideas” and to plan the changes in the world which he would later see come to pass.
Tschirky saw hotels as the most democratic places on Earth. But the “hotel spirit” he espoused – that uniquely American narrative within which he “became a citizen almost overnight” (a feat that seems vanishingly unlikely today) – seems to have been consigned to the past.
“I know that better times will come again”, he says in the preface to his book, “but in terms of the past, I think I have seen the best. New York has changed. America has changed.”
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Alex Prior does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month.
The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and isolate Iran. Regime change or pariah status are both acceptable outcomes for the US-Israeli dyad.
The good news for my region is that Iran’s resilience pushes back what could be a looming calamity: the US pivot to Asia and a heightened risk of a war on China.
There are three major pillars to the Eurasian order that is going through a slow, painful and violent birth. Iran is the weakest. If Iran falls, war in our region — intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely.
Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs.
“Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.
That could change, particularly for the Australians, in the kind of unfamiliar flash-boom Israelis experienced this month following their attack on Iran. And here’s why.
US chooses war to re-shape Middle East Back in 2001, as many will recall, retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, was visiting buddies in the Pentagon. He learnt something he wasn’t supposed to: the Bush administration had made plans in the febrile post 9/11 environment to attack seven Muslim countries.
In the firing line were: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, Gaddafi’s Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the biggest prize of all — the Islamic Republic of Iran.
One would have to say that the project, pursued by successive presidents, both Democrat and Republican, has been a great success — if you discount the fact that a couple of million human beings, most of them civilians, many of them women and children, nearly all of them innocents, were slaughtered, starved to death or otherwise disposed of.
With the exception of Iran, those countries have endured chaos and civil strife for long painful years. A triumph of American bomb-based statecraft.
Now — with Muammar Gaddafi raped and murdered (“We came, we saw, he died”, Hillary Clinton chuckled on camera the same day), Saddam Hussein hanged, Hezbollah decapitated, Assad in Moscow, the genocide in full swing in Palestine — the US and Israel were finally able to turn their guns — or, rather, bombs — on the great prize: Iran.
Iran’s missiles have checked US-Israel for time being Things did not go to plan. Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman pointed out this week that for the first time Israel got a taste of the medicine it likes to dispense to its neighbours.
Iran’s missiles successfully turned the much-vaunted Iron Dome into an Iron Sieve and, perhaps momentarily, has achieved deterrence. If Iran falls, the US will be able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden only salivated over — a serious pivot to Asia.
Could great power rivalry turn Asia-Pacific into powderkeg? For us in Asia-Pacific a major US pivot to Asia will mean soaring defence budgets to support militarisation, aggressive containment of China, provocative naval deployments, more sanctions, muscling smaller states, increased numbers of bases, new missile systems, info wars, threats and the ratcheting up rhetoric — all of which will bring us ever-closer to the powderkeg.
Sounds utterly mad? Sounds devoid of rationality? Lacking commonsense? Welcome to our world — bellum Americanum — as we gormlessly march flame in hand towards the tinderbox. War is not written in the stars, we can change tack and rediscover diplomacy, restraint, and peaceful coexistence. Or is that too much to ask?
Back in the days of George W Bush, radical American thinkers like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld created the Project for a New American Century and developed the policy, adopted by succeeding presidents, that promotes “the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces”.
It reconfirmed the neoconservative American dogma that no power should be allowed to rise in any region to become a regional hegemon; anything and everything necessary should be done to ensure continued American primacy, including the resort to war.
What has changed since those days are two crucial, epoch-making events: the re-emergence of Russia as a great power, albeit the weakest of the three, and the emergence of China as a genuine peer competitor to the USA. Professor John Mearsheimer’s insights are well worth studying on this topic.
The three pillars of multipolarity A new world order really is being born. As geopolitical thinkers like Professor Glenn Diesen point out, it will, if it is not killed in the cradle, replace the US unipolar world order that has existed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Many countries are involved in its birthing, including major players like India and Brazil and all the countries that are part of BRICS. Three countries, however, are central to the project: Iran, Russia and, most importantly, China. All three are in the crosshairs of the Western empire.
If Iran, Russia and China survive as independent entities, they will partially fulfill Halford MacKinder’s early 20th century heartland theory that whoever dominates Eurasia will rule the world. I don’t think MacKinder, however, foresaw cooperative multipolarity on the Eurasian landmass — which is one of the goals of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) – as an option.
That, increasingly, appears to be the most likely trajectory with multiple powerful states that will not accept domination, be that from China or the US. That alone should give us cause for hope.
Drunk on power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has launched war after war and brought us to the current abandonment of economic sanity (the sanctions-and-tariff global pandemic) and diplomatic normalcy (kill any peace negotiators you see) — and an anything-goes foreign policy (including massive crimes against humanity).
We have also reached — thanks in large part to these same policies — what a former US national security advisor warned must be avoided at all costs. Back in the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski said, “The most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran.”
Belligerent and devoid of sound strategy, the Biden and Trump administrations have achieved just that.
Can Asia-Pacific avoid being dragged into an American war on China? Turning to our region, New Zealand and Australia’s governments cleave to yesterday: a white-dominated world led by the USA. We have shown ourselves indifferent to massacres, ethnic cleansing and wars of aggression launched by our team.
To avoid war — or a permanent fear of looming war — in our own backyards, we need to encourage sanity and diplomacy; we need to stay close to the US but step away from the military alliances they are forming, such as AUKUS which is aimed squarely at China.
Above all, our defence and foreign affairs elites need to grow new neural pathways and start to think with vision and not place ourselves on the losing side of history. Independent foreign policy settings based around peace, defence not aggression, diplomacy not militarisation, would take us in the right direction.
Personally I look forward to the day the US and its increasingly belligerent vassals are pushed back into the ranks of ordinary humanity. I fear the US far more than I do China.
Despite the reflexive adherence to the US that our leaders are stuck on, we should not, if we value our lives and our cultures, allow ourselves to be part of this mad, doomed project.
The US empire is heading into a blood-drenched sunset; their project will fail and the 500-year empire of the White West will end — starting and finishing with genocide.
Every day I atheistically pray that leaders or a movement will emerge to guide our antipodean countries out of the clutches of a violent and increasingly incoherent USA.
America is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Tomorrow gives birth to a world that we should look forward to and do the little we can to help shape.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on June 28, 2025.
Israeli soldiers ‘ordered’ to fire at Gaza aid seekers – 70 killed across Strip Israeli soldiers have said that they were ordered to open fire at unarmed Palestinian civilians desperately seeking aid at designated distribution sites in Gaza, a report in the Ha’aretz newspaper has revealed. The report came as 70 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip — mostly at aid sites belonging to the widely condemned Gaza
RFK Junior is stoking fears about vaccine safety. Here’s why he’s wrong – and the impact it could have Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Leask, Professor, School of Public Health, University of Sydney The United States used to be a leader in vaccine research, development and policymaking. Now US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr is undermining the country’s vaccine program at the highest level and supercharging vaccine skepticism.
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The sentencing of Cassius Turvey’s killers shows courts still struggle to deal with racism Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people. The brutal homicide of 15-year-old Noongar Yamatji boy, Cassius Turvey, by a group of white men revealed the racial schisms in
Celebrities, blue jeans and couture: how Anna Wintour changed fashion over 37 years at Vogue Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jye Marshall, Lecturer, Fashion Design, School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology After 37 years at the helm, fashion industry heavyweight Anna Wintour is stepping down from her position as editor-in-chief of American Vogue. It’s not a retirement, though, as Wintour will maintain a leadership
Antoinette Lattouf win against ABC a victory for all truth-tellers By Isaac Nellist of Green Left Magazine Australian-Lebanese journalist and commentator Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case win against the public broadcaster ABC in the Federal Court on Wednesday is a victory for all those who seek to tell the truth. It is a breath of fresh air, after almost two years of lies and uncritical
Caitlin Johnstone: The fictional mental illness that only affects enemies of the Western empire Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. – COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone Within the storytelling of Western politics and punditry there exists a fictional type of mental illness which only affects people the US empire doesn’t like. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, its crazy lunatic government will flip out and nuke us all.
Do all Iranians hate the regime? Hate America? Life inside the country is much more complex and nuanced Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Theobald, Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Ethics and Society, University of Notre Dame Australia From 2015 to 2018, I spent 15 months doing research work in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. As an anthropologist, I was interested in everyday life in Iran outside the capital Tehran. I was
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on June 28, 2025.
Israeli soldiers ‘ordered’ to fire at Gaza aid seekers – 70 killed across Strip Israeli soldiers have said that they were ordered to open fire at unarmed Palestinian civilians desperately seeking aid at designated distribution sites in Gaza, a report in the Ha’aretz newspaper has revealed. The report came as 70 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip — mostly at aid sites belonging to the widely condemned Gaza
RFK Junior is stoking fears about vaccine safety. Here’s why he’s wrong – and the impact it could have Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Leask, Professor, School of Public Health, University of Sydney The United States used to be a leader in vaccine research, development and policymaking. Now US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr is undermining the country’s vaccine program at the highest level and supercharging vaccine skepticism.
The ‘Godfather of Human Rights’ Ken Roth on genocide, Trump and standing up for democracy By Richard Larsen, RNZ News producer — 30′ with Guyon Espiner The former head of Human Rights Watch — and son of a Holocaust survivor — says Israel’s military campaign in Gaza will likely meet the legal definition of genocide, citing large-scale killings, the targeting of civilians, and the words of senior Israeli officials. Speaking
The sentencing of Cassius Turvey’s killers shows courts still struggle to deal with racism Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people. The brutal homicide of 15-year-old Noongar Yamatji boy, Cassius Turvey, by a group of white men revealed the racial schisms in
Celebrities, blue jeans and couture: how Anna Wintour changed fashion over 37 years at Vogue Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jye Marshall, Lecturer, Fashion Design, School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology After 37 years at the helm, fashion industry heavyweight Anna Wintour is stepping down from her position as editor-in-chief of American Vogue. It’s not a retirement, though, as Wintour will maintain a leadership
Antoinette Lattouf win against ABC a victory for all truth-tellers By Isaac Nellist of Green Left Magazine Australian-Lebanese journalist and commentator Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case win against the public broadcaster ABC in the Federal Court on Wednesday is a victory for all those who seek to tell the truth. It is a breath of fresh air, after almost two years of lies and uncritical
Caitlin Johnstone: The fictional mental illness that only affects enemies of the Western empire Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. – COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone Within the storytelling of Western politics and punditry there exists a fictional type of mental illness which only affects people the US empire doesn’t like. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, its crazy lunatic government will flip out and nuke us all.
Do all Iranians hate the regime? Hate America? Life inside the country is much more complex and nuanced Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Theobald, Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Ethics and Society, University of Notre Dame Australia From 2015 to 2018, I spent 15 months doing research work in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. As an anthropologist, I was interested in everyday life in Iran outside the capital Tehran. I was
From 2015 to 2018, I spent 15 months doing researchwork in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. As an anthropologist, I was interested in everyday life in Iran outside the capital Tehran. I was also interested in understanding whether the ambitions of the 1979 Revolution lived on among “ordinary” Iranians, not just political elites.
I first lived on a university campus, where I learned Persian, and later with Iranian families. I conducted hundreds of interviews with people who had a broad spectrum of political, social and religious views. They included opponents of the Islamic Republic, supporters, and many who were in between.
What these interviews revealed to me was both the diversity of opinion and experience in Iran, and the difficulty of making uniform statements about what Iranians believe.
Measuring the depth of antipathy for the regime
When Israel’s strikes on Iran began on June 13, killing many top military commanders, many news outlets – both international and those run by the Iranian diaspora – featured images of Iranians cheering the deaths of these hated regime figures.
Friends from my fieldwork also pointed to these celebrations, while not always agreeing with them. Many feared the impact of a larger conflict between Iran and Israel.
Trying to put these sentiments in context, many analysts have pointed to a 2019 survey by the GAMAAN Institute, an independent organisation based in the Netherlands that tracks Iranian public opinion. This survey showed 79% of Iranians living in the country would vote against the Islamic Republic if a free referendum were held on its rule.
Viewing these examples as an indicator of the lack of support for the Islamic Republic is not wrong. But when used as factoids in news reports, they become detached from the complexities of life in Iran. This can discourage us from asking deeper questions about the relationships between ideology and pragmatism, support and opposition to the regime, and state and society.
A more nuanced view
The news reporting on Iran has encouraged a tendency to see the Iranian state as homogeneous, highly ideological and radically separate from the population.
But where do we draw the line between the state and the people? There is no easy answer to this.
When I lived in Iran, many of the people who took part in my research were state employees – teachers at state institutions, university lecturers, administrative workers. Many of them had strong and diverse views about the legacy of the revolution and the future of the country.
They sometimes pointed to state discourse they agreed with, for example Iran’s right to national self-determination, free from foreign influence. They also disagreed with much, such as the slogans of “death to America”.
This ambivalence was evident in one of my Persian teachers. An employee of the state, she refused to attend the annual parades celebrating the anniversary of the revolution. “We have warm feelings towards America,” she said. On the other hand, she happily attended protests, also organised by the government, in favour of Palestinian liberation.
Or take the young government worker I met in Mashhad: “We want to be independent of other countries, but not like this.”
In a narrower sense, discussions about the “state” may refer more to organisations like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij, the paramilitary force within the IRGC that has cracked down harshly on dissent in recent decades. Both are often understood as being deeply ideologically committed.
Said Golkar, a US-based Iranian academic and author, for instance, calls Iran a “captive society”. Rather than having a civil society, he believes Iranians are trapped by the feared Basij, who maintain control through their presence in many institutions like universities and schools.
Again, this view is not wrong. But even among the Basij and Revolutionary Guard, it can be difficult to gauge just how ideological and homogeneous these organisations truly are.
For a start, the IRGC relies on both ideologically selected supporters, as well as conscripts, to fill its ranks. They are also not always ideologically uniform, as the US-based anthropologist Narges Bajoghli, who worked with pro-state filmmakers in Tehran, has noted.
As part of my research, I also interviewed members of the Basij, which, unlike the IRGC proper, is a wholly volunteer organisation.
Even though ideological commitment was certainly an important factor for some of the Basij members I met, there were also pragmatic reasons to join. These included access to better jobs, scholarships and social mobility. Sometimes, factors overlapped. But participation did not always equate to a singular or sustained commitment to revolutionary values.
For example, Sāsān, a friend I made attending discussion groups in Mashhad, was quick to note that time spent in the Basij “reduced your [compulsory] military service”.
This isn’t to suggest there are not ideologically committed people in Iran. They clearly exist, and many are ready to use violence. Some of those who join these institutions for pragmatic reasons use violence, too.
Looking in between
In addition, Iran is an ethnically diverse country. It has a population of 92 million people, a bare majority of whom are Persians. Other minorities include Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Baloch, Turkmen and others.
It is also religiously diverse. While there is a sizeable, nominally Shi’a majority, there are also large Sunni communities (about 10-15% of the population) and smaller communities of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Baha’is and other religions.
Often overlooked, there are also important differences in class and social strata in Iran, too.
One of the things I noticed about state propaganda was that it flattened this diversity. James Barry, an Australian scholar of Iran, noticed a similar phenomenon.
State propaganda made it seem like there was one voice in the country. Protests could be dismissed out of hand because they did not represent the “authentic” view of Iranians. Foreign agitators supported protests. Iranians supported the Islamic Republic.
Since leaving Iran, I have followed many voices of Iranians in the diaspora. Opposition groups are loud on social media, especially the monarchists who support Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah.
In following these groups, I have noticed a similar tendency to speak as though they represent the voice of all Iranians. Iranians support the shah. Or Iranians support Maryam Rajavi, leader of a Paris-based opposition group.
Both within Iran, and in the diaspora, the regime, too, is sometimes held to be the imposition of a foreign conspiracy. This allows the Islamic Republic and the complex relations it has created to be dismissed out of hand. Once again, such a view flattens diversity.
Over the past few years, political identities and societal divisions seem to have become harder and clearer. This means there is an increasing perception among many Iranians of a gulf between the state and Iranian society. This is the case both inside Iran, and especially in the Iranian diaspora.
Decades of intermittent protests and civil disobedience across the country also show that for many, the current system no longer represents the hopes and aspirations of many people. This is especially the case for the youth, who make up a large percentage of the population.
I am not an Iranian, and I strongly believe it is up to Iranians to determine their own futures. I also do not aim to excuse the Islamic Republic – it is brutal and tyrannical. But its brutality should not let us shy away from asking complex questions.
If the regime did fall tomorrow, Iran’s diversity means there is little unanimity of opinion as to what should come next. And if a more pluralist form of politics is to emerge, it must encompass the whole of Iran’s diversity, without assuming a uniform position.
It, too, will have to wrestle with the difficult questions and sometimes ambivalent relations the Islamic Republic has created.
Simon Theobald received funding from the Australian National University during his research.
Israeli soldiers have said that they were ordered to open fire at unarmed Palestinian civilians desperately seeking aid at designated distribution sites in Gaza, a report in the Ha’aretz newspaper has revealed.
The report came as 70 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip — mostly at aid sites belonging to the widely condemned Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — in the last 24 hours.
Soldiers said that instead of using crowd control measures, they shot at crowds of civilians to prevent them from approaching certain areas.
One soldier, who was not named in the report, described the distribution site as a “killing field,” adding that “where I was, between one and five people were killed every day”.
The soldier said that they targeted the crowds as if they were “an attacking force,” instead of using other non-lethal weapons to organise and disperse crowds.
“We communicate with them through fire,” he continued, noting that heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and mortars were used on people, including the elderly, women and children.
The increased attacks, particularly those targeting aid-seekers, come as Gaza’s government Media Office said at least 549 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces while trying to get their hands on emergency aid in the last four weeks.
‘Evil of moral army’ Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara described what was happening in Gaza was more than the genocode.
“It is the evil of the most moral army in the world,” he said.
Israeli forces continued their attacks across the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing at least three Palestinians in an attack on Khan Younis, in the south, while also heavily bombing residential buildings east of Jabalia in the north.
Medical sources also said a Palestinian fisherman was killed, and others wounded, by Israeli naval gunfire off the al-Shati refugee camp, while he was working.
Gaza’s Ministry of Interior responded to the attacks with a statement, accusing Israel of “seeking to spread chaos and destabilise the Gaza Strip”.
Malnutrition soars Gazans have continued to desperately seek aid provided by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, despite the hundreds of people killed at its sites, as malnutrition soars in the territory.
Two infants have died this week due to malnutrition and the ongoing blockade on Gaza.
“It’s a killing field” claims a headline in Ha’aretz newspaper. Image: Ha’aretz screenshot APR
For weeks now, health officials in the enclave have raised the alarm over the critical shortage of baby formula, but aid continued to be obstructed.
The two infants were buried on Thursday evening, after they were pronounced dead at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Medical staff said the cause of death was a lack of basic nutrition and access to essential medical care.
One of the infants, identified as Nidal, was only five months old, while the other, Kinda, was only 10 days old.
Mohammed al-Hams, Kinda’s father, told local media that children are dying due to severe malnutrition, sarcastically labelling them “the achievements of Netanyahu and his war”.
“Not a second goes by without a funeral prayer being held in the Gaza Strip,” he continued.
Malnutrition ‘catastrophic’ On Wednesday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said the humanitarian situation in Gaza had reached “catastrophic” levels, noting that there had been a sharp increase in malnutrition among children, particularly in infants.
According to Palestinian official figures, at least 242 people have died in Gaza due to food and medicine shortages, with the majority of them being elderly and children.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,700 Palestinians since October 2023. The war has levelled entire neighbourhoods, and has been called a genocide by leading rights groups, including Amnesty International.
In Auckland last night, visiting Palestinian journalist, author, academic and community advocate Dr Yousef Aljamal spoke about “The unheard voices of Palestinian child prisoners”.
Dr Aljamal, who edited If I Must Die, a compilation of poetry and prose by Refaat Alareer, the poet who was assassinated by the Israelis in 6 December 2023, also described the humanitarian crisis as a “catastrophe” and called for urgent sanctions and political pressure on Israel by governments, including New Zealand.
Soldiers admit Israeli army is targeting aid seekers Video: Al Jazeera
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Meg Leta Jones, Associate Professor of Technology Law & Policy, Georgetown University
The Supreme Court greenlights states’ efforts to block kids from online porn by requiring age verification.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision on June 27, 2025, that will reshape how states protect children online. In a case assessing a Texas law requiring age verification to access porn sites, the court created a new legal path that makes it easier for states to craft laws regulating what kids see and do on the internet.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled in Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton that Texas’ law obligating porn sites to block access to underage users is constitutional. The law requires pornographic websites to verify users’ ages – for example by making users scan and upload their driver’s license – before granting access to content that is deemed obscene for minors but not adults.
The majority on the court rejected both the porn industry’s argument for strict scrutiny – the toughest legal test that requires the government to prove a law is absolutely necessary – and Texas’ argument for mere rational basis review, which requires only a rational connection between the law’s legitimate aims and its actions. Instead, Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion established intermediate scrutiny, a middle ground that requires laws to serve important government interests without being overly burdensome, as the appropriate standard.
The court’s reasoning hinged on characterizing the law as only “incidentally” burdening adults’ First Amendment rights. Since minors have no constitutional right to access pornography, the state can require age verification to prevent that unprotected activity. Any burden on adults is, according to the ruling, merely a side effect of this legitimate regulation.
The court also pointed to dramatic technological changes since earlier similar laws were struck down in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, only 2 in 5 households had internet access, mostly through slow dial-up connections on desktop computers. Today, 95% of teens carry smartphones with constant internet access to massive libraries of content. Porn site Pornhub alone published over 150 years of new material in 2019. The court argued that earlier decisions “could not have conceived of these developments,” making age verification more necessary than judges could have imagined decades ago.
More importantly for future legislation, the court embraced an “ordinary and appropriate means” doctrine: When states have authority to govern an area, they may use traditional methods to exercise that power. Since age verification is common for alcohol and tobacco, tattoos and piercings, firearms, driver’s licenses and voting, the court held that it’s similarly appropriate for regulating minors’ access to sexual content.
The key takeaway: When states are trying to keep kids away from certain types of content that kids have no legal right to see anyway, requiring age verification is an ordinary and appropriate way to enforce that boundary.
Implications for other laws
This decision could resolve a fundamental enforcement problem in child privacy laws. Current laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act protect children only when companies have actual knowledge a user is under 13. But platforms routinely avoid this requirement by not asking users’ ages or letting them enter whatever age they want. Without age verification, there’s no actual knowledge and thus no privacy protections.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning changes this dynamic. Since the court emphasized that children lack the same constitutional rights as adults regarding certain protections, states may now be able to require age verification before data collection. California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code and similar state privacy laws would gain substantially more regulatory power under this framework.
Meanwhile, social media platforms could face more restrictions. Several states have tried to limit how social media platforms interact with minors. Florida recently banned kids under 14 from having social media accounts entirely, while other states have targeted specific features such as endless scrolling or push notifications designed to keep kids hooked.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning could protect laws that require age verification before kids can use certain platform features, such as direct messaging with strangers or livestreaming. However, laws that try to block kids from seeing general social media content would still face tough legal challenges, since that content is typically protected speech for everyone.
The decision also supports state laws regulating how minors interact with app stores and gaming platforms. Minors generally can’t enter binding contracts without parental consent in the physical world, so states could require the same online. Proposed legislation such as the App Store Accountability Act would require parental approval before kids can download apps or agree to terms of service. States have also considered restrictions on “loot boxes” – digital gambling-like features – and surprise in-app purchases that can result in massive charges to parents.
Since states already require an ID to buy lottery tickets or enter casinos, requiring age verification before kids can spend money on digital gambling mechanics follows the court’s logic.
What comes next?
But this decision doesn’t give states free rein to regulate the internet. The court’s reasoning applies to content that children have no legal right to access in the first place, specifically sexually explicit material. For most online content such as news, educational materials, general entertainment and political discussions, both adults and kids have constitutional rights to access.
Laws trying to age-gate this protected content would still likely face the strict scrutiny’s standard and be struck down, but what online content and experiences underage users are constitutionally entitled to is not settled. Many advocates worry that while the “obscene for minors” standard in this case appears legally narrow, states will try to expand it or use similar reasoning to classify LGBTQ+-related educational content, health resources or community support materials as inherently sexual and inappropriate for minors.
The court also emphasized that even under this more permissive standard, laws still have to be reasonable. Age verification requirements that are overly burdensome, sweep too broadly or create serious privacy problems could still be ruled unconstitutional. The court’s decision in this case gives state lawmakers much more room to effectively regulate how online platforms interact with children, but I believe successful laws will need to be carefully written.
For parents worried about their kids’ online safety, this could mean more tools and protections. For tech companies, it likely means more compliance requirements and age verification systems. And for the broader internet, it represents a significant shift toward treating online spaces more like physical ones, where people have long accepted that some doors require showing ID to enter.
Meg Leta Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Meg Leta Jones, Associate Professor of Technology Law & Policy, Georgetown University
The Supreme Court greenlights states’ efforts to block kids from online porn by requiring age verification.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision on June 27, 2025, that will reshape how states protect children online. In a case assessing a Texas law requiring age verification to access porn sites, the court created a new legal path that makes it easier for states to craft laws regulating what kids see and do on the internet.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled in Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton that Texas’ law obligating porn sites to block access to underage users is constitutional. The law requires pornographic websites to verify users’ ages – for example by making users scan and upload their driver’s license – before granting access to content that is deemed obscene for minors but not adults.
The majority on the court rejected both the porn industry’s argument for strict scrutiny – the toughest legal test that requires the government to prove a law is absolutely necessary – and Texas’ argument for mere rational basis review, which requires only a rational connection between the law’s legitimate aims and its actions. Instead, Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion established intermediate scrutiny, a middle ground that requires laws to serve important government interests without being overly burdensome, as the appropriate standard.
The court’s reasoning hinged on characterizing the law as only “incidentally” burdening adults’ First Amendment rights. Since minors have no constitutional right to access pornography, the state can require age verification to prevent that unprotected activity. Any burden on adults is, according to the ruling, merely a side effect of this legitimate regulation.
The court also pointed to dramatic technological changes since earlier similar laws were struck down in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, only 2 in 5 households had internet access, mostly through slow dial-up connections on desktop computers. Today, 95% of teens carry smartphones with constant internet access to massive libraries of content. Porn site Pornhub alone published over 150 years of new material in 2019. The court argued that earlier decisions “could not have conceived of these developments,” making age verification more necessary than judges could have imagined decades ago.
More importantly for future legislation, the court embraced an “ordinary and appropriate means” doctrine: When states have authority to govern an area, they may use traditional methods to exercise that power. Since age verification is common for alcohol and tobacco, tattoos and piercings, firearms, driver’s licenses and voting, the court held that it’s similarly appropriate for regulating minors’ access to sexual content.
The key takeaway: When states are trying to keep kids away from certain types of content that kids have no legal right to see anyway, requiring age verification is an ordinary and appropriate way to enforce that boundary.
Implications for other laws
This decision could resolve a fundamental enforcement problem in child privacy laws. Current laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act protect children only when companies have actual knowledge a user is under 13. But platforms routinely avoid this requirement by not asking users’ ages or letting them enter whatever age they want. Without age verification, there’s no actual knowledge and thus no privacy protections.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning changes this dynamic. Since the court emphasized that children lack the same constitutional rights as adults regarding certain protections, states may now be able to require age verification before data collection. California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code and similar state privacy laws would gain substantially more regulatory power under this framework.
Meanwhile, social media platforms could face more restrictions. Several states have tried to limit how social media platforms interact with minors. Florida recently banned kids under 14 from having social media accounts entirely, while other states have targeted specific features such as endless scrolling or push notifications designed to keep kids hooked.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning could protect laws that require age verification before kids can use certain platform features, such as direct messaging with strangers or livestreaming. However, laws that try to block kids from seeing general social media content would still face tough legal challenges, since that content is typically protected speech for everyone.
The decision also supports state laws regulating how minors interact with app stores and gaming platforms. Minors generally can’t enter binding contracts without parental consent in the physical world, so states could require the same online. Proposed legislation such as the App Store Accountability Act would require parental approval before kids can download apps or agree to terms of service. States have also considered restrictions on “loot boxes” – digital gambling-like features – and surprise in-app purchases that can result in massive charges to parents.
Since states already require an ID to buy lottery tickets or enter casinos, requiring age verification before kids can spend money on digital gambling mechanics follows the court’s logic.
What comes next?
But this decision doesn’t give states free rein to regulate the internet. The court’s reasoning applies to content that children have no legal right to access in the first place, specifically sexually explicit material. For most online content such as news, educational materials, general entertainment and political discussions, both adults and kids have constitutional rights to access.
Laws trying to age-gate this protected content would still likely face the strict scrutiny’s standard and be struck down, but what online content and experiences underage users are constitutionally entitled to is not settled. Many advocates worry that while the “obscene for minors” standard in this case appears legally narrow, states will try to expand it or use similar reasoning to classify LGBTQ+-related educational content, health resources or community support materials as inherently sexual and inappropriate for minors.
The court also emphasized that even under this more permissive standard, laws still have to be reasonable. Age verification requirements that are overly burdensome, sweep too broadly or create serious privacy problems could still be ruled unconstitutional. The court’s decision in this case gives state lawmakers much more room to effectively regulate how online platforms interact with children, but I believe successful laws will need to be carefully written.
For parents worried about their kids’ online safety, this could mean more tools and protections. For tech companies, it likely means more compliance requirements and age verification systems. And for the broader internet, it represents a significant shift toward treating online spaces more like physical ones, where people have long accepted that some doors require showing ID to enter.
Meg Leta Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Meg Leta Jones, Associate Professor of Technology Law & Policy, Georgetown University
The Supreme Court greenlights states’ efforts to block kids from online porn by requiring age verification.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision on June 27, 2025, that will reshape how states protect children online. In a case assessing a Texas law requiring age verification to access porn sites, the court created a new legal path that makes it easier for states to craft laws regulating what kids see and do on the internet.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled in Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton that Texas’ law obligating porn sites to block access to underage users is constitutional. The law requires pornographic websites to verify users’ ages – for example by making users scan and upload their driver’s license – before granting access to content that is deemed obscene for minors but not adults.
The majority on the court rejected both the porn industry’s argument for strict scrutiny – the toughest legal test that requires the government to prove a law is absolutely necessary – and Texas’ argument for mere rational basis review, which requires only a rational connection between the law’s legitimate aims and its actions. Instead, Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion established intermediate scrutiny, a middle ground that requires laws to serve important government interests without being overly burdensome, as the appropriate standard.
The court’s reasoning hinged on characterizing the law as only “incidentally” burdening adults’ First Amendment rights. Since minors have no constitutional right to access pornography, the state can require age verification to prevent that unprotected activity. Any burden on adults is, according to the ruling, merely a side effect of this legitimate regulation.
The court also pointed to dramatic technological changes since earlier similar laws were struck down in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, only 2 in 5 households had internet access, mostly through slow dial-up connections on desktop computers. Today, 95% of teens carry smartphones with constant internet access to massive libraries of content. Porn site Pornhub alone published over 150 years of new material in 2019. The court argued that earlier decisions “could not have conceived of these developments,” making age verification more necessary than judges could have imagined decades ago.
More importantly for future legislation, the court embraced an “ordinary and appropriate means” doctrine: When states have authority to govern an area, they may use traditional methods to exercise that power. Since age verification is common for alcohol and tobacco, tattoos and piercings, firearms, driver’s licenses and voting, the court held that it’s similarly appropriate for regulating minors’ access to sexual content.
The key takeaway: When states are trying to keep kids away from certain types of content that kids have no legal right to see anyway, requiring age verification is an ordinary and appropriate way to enforce that boundary.
Implications for other laws
This decision could resolve a fundamental enforcement problem in child privacy laws. Current laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act protect children only when companies have actual knowledge a user is under 13. But platforms routinely avoid this requirement by not asking users’ ages or letting them enter whatever age they want. Without age verification, there’s no actual knowledge and thus no privacy protections.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning changes this dynamic. Since the court emphasized that children lack the same constitutional rights as adults regarding certain protections, states may now be able to require age verification before data collection. California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code and similar state privacy laws would gain substantially more regulatory power under this framework.
Meanwhile, social media platforms could face more restrictions. Several states have tried to limit how social media platforms interact with minors. Florida recently banned kids under 14 from having social media accounts entirely, while other states have targeted specific features such as endless scrolling or push notifications designed to keep kids hooked.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning could protect laws that require age verification before kids can use certain platform features, such as direct messaging with strangers or livestreaming. However, laws that try to block kids from seeing general social media content would still face tough legal challenges, since that content is typically protected speech for everyone.
The decision also supports state laws regulating how minors interact with app stores and gaming platforms. Minors generally can’t enter binding contracts without parental consent in the physical world, so states could require the same online. Proposed legislation such as the App Store Accountability Act would require parental approval before kids can download apps or agree to terms of service. States have also considered restrictions on “loot boxes” – digital gambling-like features – and surprise in-app purchases that can result in massive charges to parents.
Since states already require an ID to buy lottery tickets or enter casinos, requiring age verification before kids can spend money on digital gambling mechanics follows the court’s logic.
What comes next?
But this decision doesn’t give states free rein to regulate the internet. The court’s reasoning applies to content that children have no legal right to access in the first place, specifically sexually explicit material. For most online content such as news, educational materials, general entertainment and political discussions, both adults and kids have constitutional rights to access.
Laws trying to age-gate this protected content would still likely face the strict scrutiny’s standard and be struck down, but what online content and experiences underage users are constitutionally entitled to is not settled. Many advocates worry that while the “obscene for minors” standard in this case appears legally narrow, states will try to expand it or use similar reasoning to classify LGBTQ+-related educational content, health resources or community support materials as inherently sexual and inappropriate for minors.
The court also emphasized that even under this more permissive standard, laws still have to be reasonable. Age verification requirements that are overly burdensome, sweep too broadly or create serious privacy problems could still be ruled unconstitutional. The court’s decision in this case gives state lawmakers much more room to effectively regulate how online platforms interact with children, but I believe successful laws will need to be carefully written.
For parents worried about their kids’ online safety, this could mean more tools and protections. For tech companies, it likely means more compliance requirements and age verification systems. And for the broader internet, it represents a significant shift toward treating online spaces more like physical ones, where people have long accepted that some doors require showing ID to enter.
Meg Leta Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Meg Leta Jones, Associate Professor of Technology Law & Policy, Georgetown University
The Supreme Court greenlights states’ efforts to block kids from online porn by requiring age verification.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision on June 27, 2025, that will reshape how states protect children online. In a case assessing a Texas law requiring age verification to access porn sites, the court created a new legal path that makes it easier for states to craft laws regulating what kids see and do on the internet.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled in Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton that Texas’ law obligating porn sites to block access to underage users is constitutional. The law requires pornographic websites to verify users’ ages – for example by making users scan and upload their driver’s license – before granting access to content that is deemed obscene for minors but not adults.
The majority on the court rejected both the porn industry’s argument for strict scrutiny – the toughest legal test that requires the government to prove a law is absolutely necessary – and Texas’ argument for mere rational basis review, which requires only a rational connection between the law’s legitimate aims and its actions. Instead, Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion established intermediate scrutiny, a middle ground that requires laws to serve important government interests without being overly burdensome, as the appropriate standard.
The court’s reasoning hinged on characterizing the law as only “incidentally” burdening adults’ First Amendment rights. Since minors have no constitutional right to access pornography, the state can require age verification to prevent that unprotected activity. Any burden on adults is, according to the ruling, merely a side effect of this legitimate regulation.
The court also pointed to dramatic technological changes since earlier similar laws were struck down in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, only 2 in 5 households had internet access, mostly through slow dial-up connections on desktop computers. Today, 95% of teens carry smartphones with constant internet access to massive libraries of content. Porn site Pornhub alone published over 150 years of new material in 2019. The court argued that earlier decisions “could not have conceived of these developments,” making age verification more necessary than judges could have imagined decades ago.
More importantly for future legislation, the court embraced an “ordinary and appropriate means” doctrine: When states have authority to govern an area, they may use traditional methods to exercise that power. Since age verification is common for alcohol and tobacco, tattoos and piercings, firearms, driver’s licenses and voting, the court held that it’s similarly appropriate for regulating minors’ access to sexual content.
The key takeaway: When states are trying to keep kids away from certain types of content that kids have no legal right to see anyway, requiring age verification is an ordinary and appropriate way to enforce that boundary.
Implications for other laws
This decision could resolve a fundamental enforcement problem in child privacy laws. Current laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act protect children only when companies have actual knowledge a user is under 13. But platforms routinely avoid this requirement by not asking users’ ages or letting them enter whatever age they want. Without age verification, there’s no actual knowledge and thus no privacy protections.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning changes this dynamic. Since the court emphasized that children lack the same constitutional rights as adults regarding certain protections, states may now be able to require age verification before data collection. California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code and similar state privacy laws would gain substantially more regulatory power under this framework.
Meanwhile, social media platforms could face more restrictions. Several states have tried to limit how social media platforms interact with minors. Florida recently banned kids under 14 from having social media accounts entirely, while other states have targeted specific features such as endless scrolling or push notifications designed to keep kids hooked.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning could protect laws that require age verification before kids can use certain platform features, such as direct messaging with strangers or livestreaming. However, laws that try to block kids from seeing general social media content would still face tough legal challenges, since that content is typically protected speech for everyone.
The decision also supports state laws regulating how minors interact with app stores and gaming platforms. Minors generally can’t enter binding contracts without parental consent in the physical world, so states could require the same online. Proposed legislation such as the App Store Accountability Act would require parental approval before kids can download apps or agree to terms of service. States have also considered restrictions on “loot boxes” – digital gambling-like features – and surprise in-app purchases that can result in massive charges to parents.
Since states already require an ID to buy lottery tickets or enter casinos, requiring age verification before kids can spend money on digital gambling mechanics follows the court’s logic.
What comes next?
But this decision doesn’t give states free rein to regulate the internet. The court’s reasoning applies to content that children have no legal right to access in the first place, specifically sexually explicit material. For most online content such as news, educational materials, general entertainment and political discussions, both adults and kids have constitutional rights to access.
Laws trying to age-gate this protected content would still likely face the strict scrutiny’s standard and be struck down, but what online content and experiences underage users are constitutionally entitled to is not settled. Many advocates worry that while the “obscene for minors” standard in this case appears legally narrow, states will try to expand it or use similar reasoning to classify LGBTQ+-related educational content, health resources or community support materials as inherently sexual and inappropriate for minors.
The court also emphasized that even under this more permissive standard, laws still have to be reasonable. Age verification requirements that are overly burdensome, sweep too broadly or create serious privacy problems could still be ruled unconstitutional. The court’s decision in this case gives state lawmakers much more room to effectively regulate how online platforms interact with children, but I believe successful laws will need to be carefully written.
For parents worried about their kids’ online safety, this could mean more tools and protections. For tech companies, it likely means more compliance requirements and age verification systems. And for the broader internet, it represents a significant shift toward treating online spaces more like physical ones, where people have long accepted that some doors require showing ID to enter.
Meg Leta Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Meg Leta Jones, Associate Professor of Technology Law & Policy, Georgetown University
The Supreme Court greenlights states’ efforts to block kids from online porn by requiring age verification.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision on June 27, 2025, that will reshape how states protect children online. In a case assessing a Texas law requiring age verification to access porn sites, the court created a new legal path that makes it easier for states to craft laws regulating what kids see and do on the internet.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled in Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton that Texas’ law obligating porn sites to block access to underage users is constitutional. The law requires pornographic websites to verify users’ ages – for example by making users scan and upload their driver’s license – before granting access to content that is deemed obscene for minors but not adults.
The majority on the court rejected both the porn industry’s argument for strict scrutiny – the toughest legal test that requires the government to prove a law is absolutely necessary – and Texas’ argument for mere rational basis review, which requires only a rational connection between the law’s legitimate aims and its actions. Instead, Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion established intermediate scrutiny, a middle ground that requires laws to serve important government interests without being overly burdensome, as the appropriate standard.
The court’s reasoning hinged on characterizing the law as only “incidentally” burdening adults’ First Amendment rights. Since minors have no constitutional right to access pornography, the state can require age verification to prevent that unprotected activity. Any burden on adults is, according to the ruling, merely a side effect of this legitimate regulation.
The court also pointed to dramatic technological changes since earlier similar laws were struck down in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, only 2 in 5 households had internet access, mostly through slow dial-up connections on desktop computers. Today, 95% of teens carry smartphones with constant internet access to massive libraries of content. Porn site Pornhub alone published over 150 years of new material in 2019. The court argued that earlier decisions “could not have conceived of these developments,” making age verification more necessary than judges could have imagined decades ago.
More importantly for future legislation, the court embraced an “ordinary and appropriate means” doctrine: When states have authority to govern an area, they may use traditional methods to exercise that power. Since age verification is common for alcohol and tobacco, tattoos and piercings, firearms, driver’s licenses and voting, the court held that it’s similarly appropriate for regulating minors’ access to sexual content.
The key takeaway: When states are trying to keep kids away from certain types of content that kids have no legal right to see anyway, requiring age verification is an ordinary and appropriate way to enforce that boundary.
Implications for other laws
This decision could resolve a fundamental enforcement problem in child privacy laws. Current laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act protect children only when companies have actual knowledge a user is under 13. But platforms routinely avoid this requirement by not asking users’ ages or letting them enter whatever age they want. Without age verification, there’s no actual knowledge and thus no privacy protections.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning changes this dynamic. Since the court emphasized that children lack the same constitutional rights as adults regarding certain protections, states may now be able to require age verification before data collection. California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code and similar state privacy laws would gain substantially more regulatory power under this framework.
Meanwhile, social media platforms could face more restrictions. Several states have tried to limit how social media platforms interact with minors. Florida recently banned kids under 14 from having social media accounts entirely, while other states have targeted specific features such as endless scrolling or push notifications designed to keep kids hooked.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning could protect laws that require age verification before kids can use certain platform features, such as direct messaging with strangers or livestreaming. However, laws that try to block kids from seeing general social media content would still face tough legal challenges, since that content is typically protected speech for everyone.
The decision also supports state laws regulating how minors interact with app stores and gaming platforms. Minors generally can’t enter binding contracts without parental consent in the physical world, so states could require the same online. Proposed legislation such as the App Store Accountability Act would require parental approval before kids can download apps or agree to terms of service. States have also considered restrictions on “loot boxes” – digital gambling-like features – and surprise in-app purchases that can result in massive charges to parents.
Since states already require an ID to buy lottery tickets or enter casinos, requiring age verification before kids can spend money on digital gambling mechanics follows the court’s logic.
What comes next?
But this decision doesn’t give states free rein to regulate the internet. The court’s reasoning applies to content that children have no legal right to access in the first place, specifically sexually explicit material. For most online content such as news, educational materials, general entertainment and political discussions, both adults and kids have constitutional rights to access.
Laws trying to age-gate this protected content would still likely face the strict scrutiny’s standard and be struck down, but what online content and experiences underage users are constitutionally entitled to is not settled. Many advocates worry that while the “obscene for minors” standard in this case appears legally narrow, states will try to expand it or use similar reasoning to classify LGBTQ+-related educational content, health resources or community support materials as inherently sexual and inappropriate for minors.
The court also emphasized that even under this more permissive standard, laws still have to be reasonable. Age verification requirements that are overly burdensome, sweep too broadly or create serious privacy problems could still be ruled unconstitutional. The court’s decision in this case gives state lawmakers much more room to effectively regulate how online platforms interact with children, but I believe successful laws will need to be carefully written.
For parents worried about their kids’ online safety, this could mean more tools and protections. For tech companies, it likely means more compliance requirements and age verification systems. And for the broader internet, it represents a significant shift toward treating online spaces more like physical ones, where people have long accepted that some doors require showing ID to enter.
Meg Leta Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The United States used to be a leader in vaccine research, development and policymaking. Now US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr is undermining the country’s vaccine program at the highest level and supercharging vaccine skepticism.
On Wednesday, RFK Jr announced the US would stop funding the global vaccine alliance, Gavi, because he claimed that “when the science was inconvenient today, Gavi ignored the science”. RFK Jr questioned the safety of COVID vaccines for pregnant women, as well as the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine.
On Thursday, when the new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met, the person who first drew RFK Jr into vaccine scepticism, Lyn Redwood, shared disproved claims about a chemical called thimerosal in flu vaccines being harmful.
The undermining of regulation, advisory processes and funding changes will have global impacts, as debunked claims are given new levels of apparent legitimacy. Some of these impacts will be slow and insidious.
So what should we make of these latest claims and funding cuts?
Thiomersal is a distraction
Thiomersal (thimerosal in the the US) is a safe and effective preservative that prevents bacterial and fungal contamination of the vaccine contained in a multi-dose vial. It’s a salt that contains a tiny amount of mercury in a safe form.
Thiomersal is no longer used as a preservative in any vaccines routinely given in Australia. But it’s still used in the Q fever vaccine.
Other countries use multi-dose vials with thiomersal when single-dose vials are too expensive.
In the US, just 4% of adult influenza vaccines contain thiomersal. So focusing on removing vaccines containing thimerosal is a distraction for the committee.
COVID vaccines in pregnancy prevent severe illness
On Wednesday, RFK criticised Gavi’s encouragement of pregnant women to receive COVID-19 vaccines.
A COVID-19 infection before and during pregnancy can increase the risk of miscarriage two- to four-fold, even if it’s only a mild infection.
Conversely, there is good evidence vaccination during pregnancy is safe and can reduce the chance of hospitalisation of pregnant people and of infants by passing antibodies through the placenta.
In Australia, pregnant people who have never received a primary COVID-19 vaccine are recommended to have one. However, they are not generally recommended to have booster unless they have underlying risk conditions or prefer to have one. This is due to population immunity.
COVID-19 vaccine advice should adapt to changes in disease risk and vaccine benefit. It doesn’t mean previous decisions were wrong, nor that vaccine boosters are unsafe.
RFK’s criticism of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy may influence choices individuals make in other countries, even when unvaccinated pregnant women are encouraged to consider vaccination.
The diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine is safe
RFK Jr also questioned the safety of the combined diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP) vaccine as he announced the withdrawal of US funding support for Gavi.
In the early 2000s, three community-based observational studies reported a possible association between increased chance of death in infants and use of the DTP vaccine.
A few subsequent studies also reported associations, with higher risk in girls, prompting a World Health Organization (WHO) review of safety.
Real world studies are complicated and the data can be difficult to interpret correctly. Often, the very factors that influence whether someone gets vaccinated can also be associated with other health risks.
When the WHO committee reviewed all the studies on DTP safety in 2014, it did not indicate serious adverse events. It concluded there was substantial evidence against these claims.
What will de-funding Gavi mean for vaccination rates?
Gavi, the vaccine alliance, supports vaccine purchasing in low-income countries.
The US has historically accounted for 13% of all donor funds.
However, RFK Jr said Gavi needed to re-earn the public trust and “consider the best science available” before the US would contribute funding again.
Gavi predicted in March that the impact of US funding cuts could result in one million deaths through missed vaccines.
Could something like this happen in Australia?
Australia is fortunate to be buffered from these impacts.
Our vaccine advisory body, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, has people with deep expertise in vaccination. We have robust decision processes that weigh evidence critically and make careful recommendations to government.
Our governments remain committed to vaccination. The federal government released the National Immunisation Strategy in mid-June with a comprehensive plan to continue to strengthen our program.
The federal government also announced A$386 million to support the work of Gavi from 2026 to 2030.
All of this keeps our vaccine policies strong, preventing disease and increasing life expectancy here and overseas.
But to mitigate the possible influence of the US in Australia, our governments, health professionals and the public need to be ready to rapidly tackle the misinformation, distortions and half-truths RFK Jr cleverly packages – with quality information.
Julie Leask receives research funding from NHMRC, WHO, US CDC, NSW Ministry of Health. She received funding from Sanofi for travel to an overseas meeting in 2024. She has consulting fees from RTI International and the Task Force for Global Health.
Catherine Bennett has received honoraria for contributing to independent advisory panels for Moderna and AstraZeneca, and has received NHMRC, VicHealth and MRFF funding for unrelated projects. She was the health lead on the Independent Inquiry into the Australian Government COVID-19 Response .
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Cassandra Burke Robertson, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics, Case Western Reserve University
A journalist runs out of the U.S. Supreme Court building carrying a ruling on the last day of the court’s term on June 27, 2025, in Washington, D.C.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
When presidents have tried to make big changes through executive orders, they have often hit a roadblock: A single federal judge, whether located in Seattle or Miami or anywhere in between, could stop these policies across the entire country.
But on June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court significantly limited this judicial power. In Trump v. CASA Inc., a 6-3 majority ruled that federal courts likely lack the authority to issue “universal injunctions” that block government policies nationwide. The ruling means that going forward federal judges can generally only block policies from being enforced against the specific plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit, not against everyone in the country.
The ruling emerged from a case challenging President Trump’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship. While three federal courts had blocked the policy nationwide, the Supreme Court allowed it to proceed against anyone who isn’t a named plaintiff in the lawsuits. This creates a legal environment where the same government policy can be simultaneously blocked for some people but enforced against others.
Crucially, the court based its decision on interpreting the Judiciary Act of 1789 – not the Constitution – meaning Congress could restore this judicial power simply by passing new legislation.
But what exactly are these injunctions, and why do they matter to everyday Americans?
Immediate, irreparable harm
When the government creates a policy that might violate the Constitution or federal law, affected people can sue in federal court to stop it. While these lawsuits work their way through the courts – a process that often takes years – judges can issue what are called “preliminary injunctions” to temporarily pause the policy if they determine it might cause immediate, irreparable harm.
A “nationwide” injunction – sometimes called a “universal” injunction – goes further by stopping the policy for everyone across the country, not just for the people who filed the lawsuit.
Importantly, these injunctions are designed to be temporary. They merely preserve the status quo until courts can fully examine the case’s merits. But in practice, litigation proceeds so slowly that executive actions blocked by the courts often expire when successor administrations abandon the policies.
Legislation introduced by GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley would ban judges from issuing most nationwide injunctions. Sen. Chuck Grassley office
More executive orders, more injunctions
Nationwide injunctions aren’t new, but several things have made them more contentious recently.
Second, lawyers who want to challenge these orders got better at “judge shopping” – filing cases in districts where they’re likely to get judges who agree with their client’s views.
Third, with growing political division, both parties used these injunctions more aggressively whenever the other party controls the White House.
Affecting real people
These legal fights have tangible consequences for millions of Americans.
Take DACA, the common name for the program formally called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which protects about 500,000 young immigrants from deportation. For more than 10 years, these young immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” have faced constant uncertainty.
That’s because, when President Barack Obama created DACA in 2012 and sought to expand it via executive order in 2015, a Texas judge blocked the expansion with a nationwide injunction. When Trump tried to end DACA, judges in California, New York and Washington, D.C. blocked that move. The program, and the legal challenges to it, continued under President Joe Biden. Now, the second Trump administration faces continued legal challenges over the constitutionality of the DACA program.
More recently, judges have used nationwide injunctions to block several Trump policies. Three courts stopped the president’s attempt to deny citizenship to babies born to mothers who lack legal permanent residency in the United States – the cases that led the Supreme Court to limit the reach of injunctions. Judges have also temporarily blocked Trump’s efforts to ban transgender people from serving in the military and to freeze some federal funding for a variety of programs.
Nationwide injunctions have also blocked congressional legislation.
In early 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect, but the Trump administration announced it simply wouldn’t enforce it – showing how these legal battles can become political power struggles.
A polarized Congress rarely passes major legislation anymore, so presidents – including Donald Trump – have relied on executive orders to get things done. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
A ruling that Congress could change
The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA was notably narrow in its legal reasoning. The court explicitly stated that its ruling “rests solely on the statutory authority that federal courts possess under the Judiciary Act of 1789” and that it expressed “no view on the Government’s argument that Article III forecloses universal relief.”
This distinction matters enormously. Because the court based its decision on interpreting a congressional statute rather than the Constitution itself, Congress has the power to overturn the ruling simply by passing new legislation that authorizes federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
The Supreme Court’s majority opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, emphasized that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts” under the Judiciary Act of 1789. The court found these injunctions lack sufficient historical precedent in traditional equity practice.
However, the three dissenting justices strongly disagreed. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, focused on the importance of birthright citizenship, explaining that “every court to evaluate the Order has deemed it patently unconstitutional.”
As a result, the dissent argues, “the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone.”
Legislative solutions on the table
Congress was already considering legislation to limit judges’ ability to grant nationwide injunctions.
Another way to address the concerns about a single judge blocking government action would be to require a three-judge panel to hear cases involving nationwide injunctions, requiring at least two of them to agree. This is similar to how courts handled major civil rights cases in the 1950s and 1960s.
My research on this topic suggests that three judges working together would be less likely to make partisan decisions, while still being able to protect constitutional rights when necessary. Today’s technology also makes it easier for judges in different locations to work together than it was decades ago.
What comes next
With the Supreme Court limiting judges’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions based on an old statute, the ball is now in Congress’ court. Lawmakers could choose to restore this judicial power with new legislation, further restrict it, or leave the current limitations in place.
Until Congress acts, the legal landscape has fundamentally shifted.
Future challenges to presidential actions may require either cumbersome class action lawsuits or a patchwork of individual cases – potentially leaving many Americans without immediate protection from policies that courts determine violate the Constitution. But unlike a constitutional ruling, this outcome isn’t permanent: Congress holds the key to change it.
Cassandra Burke Robertson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The UK government has published a ten-year strategy outlining how it aims to boost productivity and innovation across eight key sectors of the economy. From the future of AI to energy security and net zero, it’s a broad and ambitious plan. Our experts assess what it tells us about how the UK economy – and the jobs it offers – could look in future.
Nuclear placed firmly in the centre of the UK’s low-carbon future
Doug Specht, Reader in Cultural Geography and Communication, University of Westminster
For clean energy and industrial growth, the strategy presents an ambitious and comprehensive vision. And it seeks to establish the UK as a global leader in clean energy manufacturing and innovation. A key strength lies in its substantial investment commitments, however this includes £14.2 billion for the controversial Sizewell C nuclear power station and more than £2.5 billion for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) programme.
Nuclear energy remains controversial – nevertheless, the strategy firmly places it as a central pillar for low-carbon, reliable energy and national security.
The strategy also targets high-growth sectors, prioritises regional development and introduces support schemes and regulatory reforms to tackle high electricity costs for industry, and slow grid connections. Yet despite these potential strengths, there are notable challenges. Implementation risks are significant, given the ten-year timeframe and potential shifts in political priorities.
And regional disparities and social inequalities may not be fully addressed, as the focus is on high-potential city regions. Some areas could be left behind. Skills shortages in engineering and digital sectors persist, and there is not enough detail on reskilling and lifelong learning. The importance of supply chain resilience, especially for the critical minerals needed for the green transition is acknowledged but not fully assured.
Overall, the strategy is ambitious and well-structured. But a reliance on nuclear rather than true renewables is seeking a quick win with high risks and high costs. A more radical and inclusive plan that expanded green infrastructure, and provided details of resilient growth across all regions and sectors, would have been welcomed.
An innovation boost for the UK’s world-leading creative industries
Bernard Hay, Head of Policy at the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, Newcastle University
The plan for the creative industries is a significant step forward for this critical sector. With multiple new commitments announced on areas ranging from scale-up finance and AI to skills, exports and freelance support, there is a lot to welcome for the sector. After all, it already accounts for over 5% of the UK’s annual gross value added (or GVA – which measures the value of goods and services) and 14% of its services exports.
One key aspect is boosting creative industries’ research and development (R&D), which is a driver of innovation, productivity and growth. This includes £100 million for the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s clusters programme, which supports location-based, creative R&D partnerships between universities and industry.
And by the end of the year, HMRC will publish clarification on what types of activity are eligible for R&D tax relief, to include arts activities that meet certain criteria. This is a nuanced change, but together with the other plans, it could have a catalytic effect on innovation in the sector.
Supporting regional creative economies is a golden thread running through this plan. A new £4 billion group capital initiative from the British Business Bank, announced earlier in the spending review, will be an important source of scale-up finance for small and medium-sized creative businesses that face barriers in accessing capital.
It is also welcome to see the government both increasing creative industries investment in several city-regions and supporting places to join up and work together through “creative corridors”. Coupled with the ongoing devolution of powers and funding in England, the next decade provides a huge opportunity for local policy innovation. This includes sharing and scaling proven strategies in growing regional creative economies.
An effective industrial strategy relies on high-quality data and analysis to support it. This is especially true when dealing with a rapidly evolving part of the economy such as the creative industries. The new plan includes commitments to strengthen the evidence base, including by increasing access to official statistics. This is good news not only for researchers, but for the whole sector.
The Lowry in Salford is part of a creative cluster in the north-west of England. Debu55y/Shutterstock
Advanced manufacturing: promising plans, but persistent problems
Michael Lewis, Professor of Operations and Supply Management, University of Bath
The government plans to invest £4.3 billion in advanced manufacturing. This covers research-driven production in sectors including automotive, aerospace and advanced materials (engineered substances that are especially useful in these industries). Some firms may also get energy cost relief through green levy exemptions.
A long-term plan is overdue, but the challenges are huge. Automotive production is targeted to rise substantially, but the sector will still depend heavily on a range of critical imports. The aerospace sector will start 40,000 apprenticeships by 2035, yet further education funding remains below 2010 levels. Much of the promised investment appears to be the repackaging of existing funding.
Most importantly, how to deliver these changes remains unclear. There are good ideas, like £99 million to expand the relatively successful Made Smarter Adoption programme to help small and medium-sized enterprises employ digital technology. But when helping small firms adopt basic digital tools counts as policy success, it shows how far UK manufacturing has fallen behind competitors. Likewise, when you need a new “connections accelerator service” just to help companies connect to the grid, it shows the scale of basic infrastructure problems that undermine grander ambitions.
Overall, the strategy marks real progress. However, without clear delivery plans, it reads more like a wish list than an action plan. This explains why industry reactions have been cautiously optimistic at best.
A chance to take the lead in the global AI race
Kamran Mahroof, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Analytics and Programme Leader for the MSc in the Applied Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, University of Bradford
From a digital and technologies perspective, the industrial strategy appears to signal a strong commitment to anchoring the nation at the forefront of the global AI race. The proposed Sovereign AI Unit shows an intent to ensure national control and access to critical AI infrastructure, computational power and expertise.
This is pivotal, not only for research and development, but also for national security and economic resilience in an increasingly AI-driven world. It points to a recognition that relying solely on external providers for cutting-edge AI capabilities carries inherent risks.
Besides, some of the world’s most innovative AI businesses are based in the UK. British companies are pushing the limits of what is feasible, from Synthesia’s advances in synthetic media to DeepMind’s developments in machine learning. In sectors including public safety, insurance and defence, smaller firms like Faculty, Tractable and Mind Foundry are also having a significant impact.
Complementing this, the AI Growth Zones are designed to act as regional magnets for investment and innovation, particularly in the realm of data centres and high-density computational facilities. By streamlining planning and providing preferential access to energy, these zones could accelerate the development of the physical infrastructure needed.
This decentralised approach has received more than 200 bids already from local authorities. It also has the potential to spread the economic benefits of AI beyond established tech hubs, encouraging new regional powerhouses and creating high-skilled jobs right across the UK.
Taken as a whole, these projects show a deliberate effort to develop core competencies and draw in private-sector funding. This puts the UK in a position to benefit from AI’s potential. This effort to develop national AI capabilities is not a new idea – it echoes the US AI executive order and the EU’s AI Act.
However, given the dominance of global tech giants, the UK needs to define “sovereignty” in practice and decide whether it is willing to provide large-scale funding. At a time when debates continue around the UK’s defence budget — a field now deeply intertwined with AI – more transparency is needed on how these ambitions will be funded.
Growth plans for financial services – and moves to share the benefits beyond London
Sarah Hall, 1931 Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge
One of the most striking elements of the new plan is that it places financial services much more centrally compared to previous approaches.
There are good reasons for doing this. Financial services are a vital component of the UK economy, contributing close to 9% of economic output in 2023. Clearly then, an industrial strategy without one of the most important economic sectors would make little sense.
There is also a welcome emphasis on the ways in which financial services can grow, not only as a sector in its own right, but also to be better integrated in supporting the growth of other parts of the economy. Some important policy moves have already been announced, such as changes to pension funds aimed at increasing their investment in large infrastructure projects.
In order to meet these ambitions, the strategy is right to note that financial services need to be supported, not only in London but also across the many clusters around the UK. These include, for example, Edinburgh, Manchester and Bristol.
There will be more details in the sector plan, released alongside Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Mansion House speech on July 15. At that point, we will be able to assess the measures intended to grapple with two longstanding issues for UK financial services. That is, how does the government bridge the gap between finance and the “real” economy (goods and non-financial services)? And how does it bridge the gap between London and the rest of the UK?
Michael A. Lewis receives funding from AHRC, EPSRC and ESRC.
Bernard Hay is Head of Policy at the Creative PEC, a partnership between Newcastle University and the Royal Society of Arts, which is funded by the UKRI via Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Sarah Hall receives funding from an ESRC Fellowship grant.
Doug Specht and Kamran Mahroof do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The UK government has published a ten-year strategy outlining how it aims to boost productivity and innovation across eight key sectors of the economy. From the future of AI to energy security and net zero, it’s a broad and ambitious plan. Our experts assess what it tells us about how the UK economy – and the jobs it offers – could look in future.
Nuclear placed firmly in the centre of the UK’s low-carbon future
Doug Specht, Reader in Cultural Geography and Communication, University of Westminster
For clean energy and industrial growth, the strategy presents an ambitious and comprehensive vision. And it seeks to establish the UK as a global leader in clean energy manufacturing and innovation. A key strength lies in its substantial investment commitments, however this includes £14.2 billion for the controversial Sizewell C nuclear power station and more than £2.5 billion for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) programme.
Nuclear energy remains controversial – nevertheless, the strategy firmly places it as a central pillar for low-carbon, reliable energy and national security.
The strategy also targets high-growth sectors, prioritises regional development and introduces support schemes and regulatory reforms to tackle high electricity costs for industry, and slow grid connections. Yet despite these potential strengths, there are notable challenges. Implementation risks are significant, given the ten-year timeframe and potential shifts in political priorities.
And regional disparities and social inequalities may not be fully addressed, as the focus is on high-potential city regions. Some areas could be left behind. Skills shortages in engineering and digital sectors persist, and there is not enough detail on reskilling and lifelong learning. The importance of supply chain resilience, especially for the critical minerals needed for the green transition is acknowledged but not fully assured.
Overall, the strategy is ambitious and well-structured. But a reliance on nuclear rather than true renewables is seeking a quick win with high risks and high costs. A more radical and inclusive plan that expanded green infrastructure, and provided details of resilient growth across all regions and sectors, would have been welcomed.
An innovation boost for the UK’s world-leading creative industries
Bernard Hay, Head of Policy at the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, Newcastle University
The plan for the creative industries is a significant step forward for this critical sector. With multiple new commitments announced on areas ranging from scale-up finance and AI to skills, exports and freelance support, there is a lot to welcome for the sector. After all, it already accounts for over 5% of the UK’s annual gross value added (or GVA – which measures the value of goods and services) and 14% of its services exports.
One key aspect is boosting creative industries’ research and development (R&D), which is a driver of innovation, productivity and growth. This includes £100 million for the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s clusters programme, which supports location-based, creative R&D partnerships between universities and industry.
And by the end of the year, HMRC will publish clarification on what types of activity are eligible for R&D tax relief, to include arts activities that meet certain criteria. This is a nuanced change, but together with the other plans, it could have a catalytic effect on innovation in the sector.
Supporting regional creative economies is a golden thread running through this plan. A new £4 billion group capital initiative from the British Business Bank, announced earlier in the spending review, will be an important source of scale-up finance for small and medium-sized creative businesses that face barriers in accessing capital.
It is also welcome to see the government both increasing creative industries investment in several city-regions and supporting places to join up and work together through “creative corridors”. Coupled with the ongoing devolution of powers and funding in England, the next decade provides a huge opportunity for local policy innovation. This includes sharing and scaling proven strategies in growing regional creative economies.
An effective industrial strategy relies on high-quality data and analysis to support it. This is especially true when dealing with a rapidly evolving part of the economy such as the creative industries. The new plan includes commitments to strengthen the evidence base, including by increasing access to official statistics. This is good news not only for researchers, but for the whole sector.
The Lowry in Salford is part of a creative cluster in the north-west of England. Debu55y/Shutterstock
Advanced manufacturing: promising plans, but persistent problems
Michael Lewis, Professor of Operations and Supply Management, University of Bath
The government plans to invest £4.3 billion in advanced manufacturing. This covers research-driven production in sectors including automotive, aerospace and advanced materials (engineered substances that are especially useful in these industries). Some firms may also get energy cost relief through green levy exemptions.
A long-term plan is overdue, but the challenges are huge. Automotive production is targeted to rise substantially, but the sector will still depend heavily on a range of critical imports. The aerospace sector will start 40,000 apprenticeships by 2035, yet further education funding remains below 2010 levels. Much of the promised investment appears to be the repackaging of existing funding.
Most importantly, how to deliver these changes remains unclear. There are good ideas, like £99 million to expand the relatively successful Made Smarter Adoption programme to help small and medium-sized enterprises employ digital technology. But when helping small firms adopt basic digital tools counts as policy success, it shows how far UK manufacturing has fallen behind competitors. Likewise, when you need a new “connections accelerator service” just to help companies connect to the grid, it shows the scale of basic infrastructure problems that undermine grander ambitions.
Overall, the strategy marks real progress. However, without clear delivery plans, it reads more like a wish list than an action plan. This explains why industry reactions have been cautiously optimistic at best.
A chance to take the lead in the global AI race
Kamran Mahroof, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Analytics and Programme Leader for the MSc in the Applied Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, University of Bradford
From a digital and technologies perspective, the industrial strategy appears to signal a strong commitment to anchoring the nation at the forefront of the global AI race. The proposed Sovereign AI Unit shows an intent to ensure national control and access to critical AI infrastructure, computational power and expertise.
This is pivotal, not only for research and development, but also for national security and economic resilience in an increasingly AI-driven world. It points to a recognition that relying solely on external providers for cutting-edge AI capabilities carries inherent risks.
Besides, some of the world’s most innovative AI businesses are based in the UK. British companies are pushing the limits of what is feasible, from Synthesia’s advances in synthetic media to DeepMind’s developments in machine learning. In sectors including public safety, insurance and defence, smaller firms like Faculty, Tractable and Mind Foundry are also having a significant impact.
Complementing this, the AI Growth Zones are designed to act as regional magnets for investment and innovation, particularly in the realm of data centres and high-density computational facilities. By streamlining planning and providing preferential access to energy, these zones could accelerate the development of the physical infrastructure needed.
This decentralised approach has received more than 200 bids already from local authorities. It also has the potential to spread the economic benefits of AI beyond established tech hubs, encouraging new regional powerhouses and creating high-skilled jobs right across the UK.
Taken as a whole, these projects show a deliberate effort to develop core competencies and draw in private-sector funding. This puts the UK in a position to benefit from AI’s potential. This effort to develop national AI capabilities is not a new idea – it echoes the US AI executive order and the EU’s AI Act.
However, given the dominance of global tech giants, the UK needs to define “sovereignty” in practice and decide whether it is willing to provide large-scale funding. At a time when debates continue around the UK’s defence budget — a field now deeply intertwined with AI – more transparency is needed on how these ambitions will be funded.
Growth plans for financial services – and moves to share the benefits beyond London
Sarah Hall, 1931 Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge
One of the most striking elements of the new plan is that it places financial services much more centrally compared to previous approaches.
There are good reasons for doing this. Financial services are a vital component of the UK economy, contributing close to 9% of economic output in 2023. Clearly then, an industrial strategy without one of the most important economic sectors would make little sense.
There is also a welcome emphasis on the ways in which financial services can grow, not only as a sector in its own right, but also to be better integrated in supporting the growth of other parts of the economy. Some important policy moves have already been announced, such as changes to pension funds aimed at increasing their investment in large infrastructure projects.
In order to meet these ambitions, the strategy is right to note that financial services need to be supported, not only in London but also across the many clusters around the UK. These include, for example, Edinburgh, Manchester and Bristol.
There will be more details in the sector plan, released alongside Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Mansion House speech on July 15. At that point, we will be able to assess the measures intended to grapple with two longstanding issues for UK financial services. That is, how does the government bridge the gap between finance and the “real” economy (goods and non-financial services)? And how does it bridge the gap between London and the rest of the UK?
Michael A. Lewis receives funding from AHRC, EPSRC and ESRC.
Bernard Hay is Head of Policy at the Creative PEC, a partnership between Newcastle University and the Royal Society of Arts, which is funded by the UKRI via Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Sarah Hall receives funding from an ESRC Fellowship grant.
Doug Specht and Kamran Mahroof do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Bärnthaler, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Ecological Economics, University of Leeds
Green energy sites like Flevoland in the Netherlands will be part of the EU’s industrial future.fokke baarssen/Shutterstock
Industrial policy is back – it’s currently central to the agendas of both the EU and the UK. This resurgence comes amid a polycrisis marked by climate breakdown, social inequality, energy insecurity and geopolitical instability. And it reflects a wider shift. Governments across G20 countries are stepping in more actively to shape their economies, moving away from the idea that markets should be left to run themselves.
This is an important development. But current frameworks for industrial policy risk deepening the crises they are meant to solve.
In our research with Sebastian Mang of the New Economics Foundation, we have found that in the case of the EU, its industrial policy framework is riddled with contradictions.
It seeks resilience, yet fails to strengthen essential public services that underpin stability. It aims for strategic autonomy, yet reinforces resource dependencies. And while it gestures towards sustainability, it remains tethered to private-sector strategies that delay the phase-out of harmful industries.
Eroding foundations
EU industrial policy aims to strengthen the resilience of the bloc’s single market by preventing supply chain disruptions. It rightly views Europe’s economy as an interconnected ecosystem, where shocks in one sector ripple across others. But it fails to prioritise the foundational sectors that sustain everyday life. These include essential services such as food, utilities, housing, healthcare and public transport.
Two core issues drive this failure. First, deregulation in the single market has often extended to essential services, pushing providers to operate like private businesses. For example, liberalisation of the energy sector has contributed to volatile prices and energy poverty. And EU competition law and state aid rules have historically constrained social housing provision.
Yet social resilience — the capacity of communities to withstand and recover from crises — and, by extension market resilience, rely on these essential services. But affordable housing, universal healthcare and affordable energy for households are often not prioritised.
Second, EU industrial policy lacks a clear definition of which sectors are “critical” and why. This results in inconsistent lists of priority industries and technologies, while foundational sectors like energy and housing often remain overlooked.
These blind spots have real consequences. Around 40% of Europe’s workforce is employed in foundational sectors. These sectors are where low-income households spend about two-thirds of their income. Yet they often remain precarious and undervalued, leaving Europe more exposed to economic shocks.
To build real resilience, industrial policy must reassert public control over essential services and recognise them as priorities. This means redefining what counts as “critical”, supporting jobs in foundational sectors and accelerating public investment. This investment could be enabled through measures such as reforming the fiscal rules and with joint borrowing by member states.
The scramble for resources
Europe is pushing for strategic autonomy (the capacity of the bloc to act in strategically important areas, without being dependent on non-member countries). The aim is to reduce reliance on imports in key industries such as green technology.
But to make this happen, the EU should put reducing demand for resources and energy at the centre of its industrial policy. Instead, however, its Critical Raw Materials Act foresees skyrocketing consumption of rare earths, lithium and other inputs.
This strategy is self-defeating. It increases the likelihood of European aggression towards the rest of the world and ultimately threatens long-term security and peace for all. These tensions are already surfacing. Export restrictions on things such as nickel, cobalt and rare earth minerals are multiplying. In an era of geopolitical ruptures, these tendencies are likely to intensify.
At the same time, resource conflicts are also escalating within Europe itself. Tensions are emerging in countries including Serbia, Portugal and Greece over lithium and copper, and the environmental and social costs of mining them. And indigenous communities such as the Sámi in northern Europe face threats to their land and rights.
This is not to argue against increasing the extraction of raw materials within Europe. However, without an absolute reduction in energy and material use, these contradictions will deepen. To avoid these problems, the EU must centre industrial policy on reducing unnecessary demand. Some key moves could include investing in public transport instead of subsidising cars, prioritising retrofitting over new building, ending planned obsolescence and backing agro-ecology over industrial farming.
Investing in public rather than private transport will help European nations reduce their demand on energy and materials. The Global Guy/Shutterstock
Research shows that this kind of strategy could significantly lower Europe’s energy use. It could also drastically cut reliance on critical imports and contribute to achieving energy independence by 2050. This is all without compromising basic quality of life.
If Europe wants peace and security, demand reduction is a rational approach that must be at the heart of the EU’s industrial strategy. This should be adopted alongside strengthening ties of cooperation and integration with the rest of Eurasia and the global south, rather than ramping up antagonism towards these neighbours.
Green transition
The EU’s vision of “competitive sustainability” rests on the belief that market incentives and the private sector can drive the green transition. Yet despite decades of efficiency improvements, high-income countries have not decoupled material use and emissions from economic growth at the speed and scale required.
The EU remains reliant on derisking – using public subsidies, guarantees and looser regulations to make green investments attractive to private finance. But as this approach leaves both the pace and direction of change to private capital, it slows the phase-out of harmful industries.
What’s missing is more effective economic planning to restore public control over decarbonisation. Achieving this means building on existing mechanisms capable of delivering change — such as public credit guidance. This sets rules to limit the flow of finance from commercial banks to damaging sectors while directing investment toward sustainable ones.
China offers an example whereby the central bank has used public credit guidance to shift finance to cleaner sectors. The European Central Bank also experimented with credit guidance between 2022 and 2023, introducing climate scores for companies. And post-war France used planned credit to modernise infrastructure over two decades.
Europe and the UK are rearming, climate shocks are intensifying and global power dynamics are shifting. This moment demands a new industrial strategy — one that prioritises foundational sectors and creates fiscal space to build resilience. Reducing demand must be a prerequisite for security, peace and strategic autonomy. And reviving economic planning tools, such as public credit guidance, can accelerate the green transition.
Without these shifts, Europe and the UK face an increasingly unstable future. Industrial policy must change because the stakes are existential.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
