Source: The Conversation – USA – By Trevin Corsiglia, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature and Thought, Washington University in St. Louis
Though Walt Whitman insisted to friends that the moth was real – and landed on his finger spontaneously – it was a cardboard prop.Library of Congress
When I read and study Walt Whitman’s poetry, I often imagine what he would’ve done if he had a smartphone and an Instagram account.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, the poet collected an “abundance of photographs” of himself, as Whitman scholar Ed Folsom points out. And like many people today who snap and post thousands of selfies, Whitman, who lived during the birth of commercial photography, used portraits to craft a version of the self that wasn’t necessarily grounded in reality.
One of those portraits, taken by photographer Curtis Taylor, was commissioned by Whitman in the 1870s.
In it, the poet is seated nonchalantly, with a moth or butterfly appearing to have landed on his outstretched finger. According to at least two of his friends, Philadelphia attorney Thomas Donaldson and nurse Elizabeth Keller, this was Whitman’s favorite photograph.
Though he told his friends that the winged insect happened to land on his finger during the shoot, it turned out to be a cardboard prop.
Feigned spontaneity
The scene with the butterfly reflects one of the main themes of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” his best-known collection of poems: The universe is naturally drawn to the poet.
“To me the converging objects of the world perpetually flow,” he insists in “Song of Myself.”
“I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,” Whitman adds. “They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.”
Whitman told Horace Traubel, the poet’s close friend and earliest biographer, that “[y]es – that was an actual moth, the picture is substantially literal.” Likewise, he told historian William Roscoe Thayer: “I’ve always had the knack of attracting birds and butterflies and other wild critters.”
Of course, historians now know that the butterfly was, in fact, a cutout, which currently resides at the Library of Congress.
The cardboard prop used by Walt Whitman in the portrait. Library of Congress
So what was Whitman doing? Why would he lie? I can’t get inside his head, but I suspect he wanted to impress his audience, to verify that the protagonist of “Leaves of Grass,” the one with “instant conductors,” was not a fictional creation.
Today’s selfies often give the impression of having been taken on the spot. In reality, many of them are a carefully calculated creative act.
Whitman does exactly this, presenting a designed photo as if it were a happy accident.
Too much me
As Whitman biographer Justin Kaplan notes, no other writer at the time “was so systematically recorded or so concerned with the strategic uses of his pictures and their projective meanings for himself and the public.”
Walt Whitman in an 1854 photograph likely taken by Gabriel Harrison. Wikimedia Commons
Other researchers have taken a less rosy view of the selfie, warning that snapping too many can be a sign of low self-esteem and can, paradoxically, lead to identity confusion, particularly if they’re taken to seek external validation.
Whitman spent his life searching for what he termed the “Me myself” or the “real Me.” Photography provided him another medium, besides poetry, to carry on this search. But it seems to have ultimately failed him.
Having collected these images, he would then obsessively chew over what they all added up to, ultimately finding that he was far more lost than found in this sea of portraits.
I wonder if – to use today’s parlance – Whitman “scrolled” his way into a crisis of self-identity, overwhelmed by the sheer number of photos he possessed and the various, contradictory selves they represented.
“I meet new Walt Whitmans every day,” he once said. “There are a dozen of me afloat. I don’t know which Walt Whitman I am.”
Trevin Corsiglia 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.
Yet missing from much of the debate is a crucial question: What are the tangible costs and benefits of DEI? Who benefits, who doesn’t, and what are the broader effects on society and the economy?
As a sociologist, I believe any productive conversation about DEI should be rooted in evidence, not ideology. So let’s look at the research.
Who gains from DEI?
In the corporate world, DEI initiatives are intended to promote diversity, and research consistently shows that diversity is good for business. Companies with more diverse teams tend to perform better across several key metrics, including revenue, profitability and worker satisfaction.
A focus on diversity can also offer profit opportunities for businesses seeking new markets. Two-thirds of American consumers consider diversity when making their shopping choices, a 2021 survey found. So-called “inclusive consumers” tend to be female, younger and more ethnically and racially diverse. Ignoring their values can be costly: When Target backed away from its DEI efforts, the resulting backlash contributed to a sales decline.
But DEI goes beyond corporate policy. At its core, it’s about expanding access to opportunities for groups historically excluded from full participation in American life. From this broader perspective, many 20th-century reforms can be seen as part of the DEI arc.
Consider higher education. Many elite U.S. universities refused to admit women until well into the 1960s and 1970s. Columbia, the last Ivy League university to go co-ed, started admitting women in 1982. Since the advent of affirmative action, women haven’t just closed the gender gap in higher education – they outpace men in college completion across all racial groups. DEI policies have particularly benefited women, especially white women, by expanding workforce access.
Many Ivy League universities didn’t admit women until surprisingly recently.
Similarly, the push to desegregate American universities was followed by an explosion in the number of Black college students – a number that has increased by 125% since the 1970s, twice the national rate. With college gates open to more people than ever, overall enrollment at U.S. colleges has quadrupled since 1965. While there are many reasons for this, expanding opportunity no doubt plays a role. And a better-educated population has had significant implications for productivity and economic growth.
While DEI generates returns for many businesses and institutions, it does come with costs. In 2020, corporate America spent an estimated US$7.5 billion on DEI programs. And in 2023, the federal government spent more than $100 million on DEI, including $38.7 million by the Department of Health and Human Services and another $86.5 million by the Department of Defense.
The government will no doubt be spending less on DEI in 2025. One of President Donald Trump’s first acts in his second term was to sign an executive order banning DEI practices in federal agencies – one of several anti-DEI executive orders currently facing legal challenges. More than 30 states have also introduced or enacted bills to limit or entirely restrict DEI in recent years. Central to many of these policies is the belief that diversity lowers standards, replacing meritocracy with mediocrity.
But a large body of research disputes this claim. For example, a 2023 McKinsey & Company report found that companies with higher levels of gender and ethnic diversity will likely financially outperform those with the least diversity by at least 39%. Similarly, concerns that DEI in science and technology education leads to lowering standards aren’t backed up by scholarship. Instead, scholars are increasingly pointing out that disparities in performance are linked to built-in biases in courses themselves.
That said, legal concerns about DEI are rising. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Department of Justice have recently warned employers that some DEI programs may violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Anecdotal evidence suggests that reverse discrimination claims, particularly from white men, are increasing, and legal experts expect the Supreme Court to lower the burden of proof needed by complainants for such cases.
The issue remains legally unsettled. But while the cases work their way through the courts, women and people of color will continue to shoulder much of the unpaid volunteer work that powers corporate DEI initiatives. This pattern raises important equity concerns within DEI itself.
At the same time, in spite of DEI initiatives, women and people of color are most likely to be underemployed and living in poverty regardless of how much education they attain. The gender wage gap remains stark: In 2023, women working full time earned a median weekly salary of $1,005 compared with $1,202 for men − just 83.6% of what men earned. Over a 40-year career, that adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost earnings. For Black and Latina women, the disparities are even worse, with one source estimating lifetime losses at $976,800 and $1.2 million, respectively.
Racism, too, carries an economic toll. A 2020 analysis from Citi found that systemic racism has cost the U.S. economy $16 trillion since 2000. The same analysis found that addressing these disparities could have boosted Black wages by $2.7 trillion, added up to $113 billion in lifetime earnings through higher college enrollment, and generated $13 trillion in business revenue, creating 6.1 million jobs annually.
In a moment of backlash and uncertainty, I believe DEI remains a vital if imperfect tool in the American experiment of inclusion. Rather than abandon it, the challenge now, from my perspective, is how to refine it: grounding efforts not in slogans or fear, but in fairness and evidence.
Rodney Coates 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.
Given their abundance in American backyards, gardens and highway corridors these days, it may be surprising to learn that white-tailed deer were nearly extinct about a century ago. While they currently number somewhere in the range of 30 million to 35 million, at the turn of the 20th century, there were as few as 300,000 whitetails across the entire continent: just 1% of the current population.
This near-disappearance of deer was much discussed at the time. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau had written that no deer had been hunted near Concord, Massachusetts, for a generation. In his famous “Walden,” he reported that:
“One man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here.”
But what happened to white-tailed deer? What drove them nearly to extinction, and then what brought them back from the brink?
As a historical ecologist and environmental archaeologist, I have made it my job to answer these questions. Over the past decade, I’ve studied white-tailed deer bones from archaeological sites across the eastern United States, as well as historical records and ecological data, to help piece together the story of this species.
Precolonial rise of deer populations
White-tailed deer have been hunted from the earliest migrations of people into North America, over 15,000 years ago. The species was far from the most important food resource at that time, though.
Archaeological evidence suggests that white-tailed deer abundance only began to increase after the extinction of megafauna species like mammoths and mastodons opened up ecological niches for deer to fill. Deer bones become very common in archaeological sites from about 6,000 years ago onward, reflecting the economic and cultural importance of the species for Indigenous peoples.
Despite being so frequently hunted, deer populations do not seem to have appreciably declined due to Indigenous hunting prior to AD 1600. Unlike elk or sturgeon, whose numbers were reduced by Indigenous hunters and fishers, white-tailed deer seem to have been resilient to human predation. While archaeologists have found some evidence for human-caused declines in certain parts of North America, other cases are more ambiguous, and deer certainly remained abundant throughout the past several millennia.
Human use of fire could partly explain why white-tailed deer may have been resilient to hunting. Indigenous peoples across North America have long used controlled burning to promote ecosystem health, disturbing old vegetation to promote new growth. Deer love this sort of successional vegetation for food and cover, and thus thrive in previously burned habitats. Indigenous people may have therefore facilitated deer population growth, counteracting any harmful hunting pressure.
More research is needed, but even though some hunting pressure is evident, the general picture from the precolonial era is that deer seem to have been doing just fine for thousands of years. Ecologists estimate that there were roughly 30 million white-tailed deer in North America on the eve of European colonization – about the same number as today.
Elic Weitzel and volunteers excavate for deer bones at a 17th-century colonial site in Connecticut. Scott Brady
Colonial-era fall of deer numbers
To better understand how deer populations changed in the colonial era, I recently analyzed deer bones from two archaeological sites in what is now Connecticut. My analysis suggests that hunting pressure on white-tailed deer increased almost as soon as European colonists arrived.
At one site dated to the 11th to 14th centuries – before European colonization – I found that only about 7% to 10% of the deer killed were juveniles.
Hunters generally don’t take juvenile deer if they’re frequently encountering adults, since adult deer tend to be larger, offering more meat and bigger hides. Additionally, hunting increases mortality on a deer herd but doesn’t directly affect fertility, so deer populations experiencing hunting pressure end up with juvenile-skewed age structures. For these reasons, this low percentage of juvenile deer prior to European colonization indicates minimal hunting pressure on local herds.
However, at a nearby site occupied during the 17th century – just after European colonization – between 22% and 31% of the deer hunted were juveniles, suggesting a substantial increase in hunting pressure.
Researchers can tell from the size and development of a deer’s bones its stage of life. Here is a fawn’s mandible with teeth. Elic Weitzel
This elevated hunting pressure likely resulted from the transformation of deer into a commodity for the first time. Venison, antlers and deerskins may have long been exchanged within Indigenous trade networks, but things changed drastically in the 17th century. European colonists integrated North America into a trans-Atlantic mercantile capitalist economic system with no precedent in Indigenous society. This applied new pressures to the continent’s natural resources.
Deer – particularly their skins – were commodified and sold in markets in the colonies initially and, by the 18th century, in Europe as well. Deer were now being exploited by traders, merchants and manufacturers desiring profit, not simply hunters desiring meat or leather. It was the resulting hunting pressure that drove the species toward its extinction.
20th-century rebound of white-tailed deer
Thanks to the rise of the conservation movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, white-tailed deer survived their brush with extinction.
Concerned citizens and outdoorsmen feared for the fate of deer and other wildlife, and pushed for new legislative protections.
The Lacey Act of 1900, for example, banned interstate transport of poached game and – in combination with state-level protections – helped end commercial deer hunting by effectively de-commodifying the species. Aided by conservation-oriented hunting practices and reintroductions of deer from surviving populations to areas where they had been extirpated, white-tailed deer rebounded.
The story of white-tailed deer underscores an important fact: Humans are not inherently damaging to the environment. Hunting from the 17th through 19th centuries threatened the existence of white-tailed deer, but precolonial Indigenous hunting and environmental management appear to have been relatively sustainable, and modern regulatory governance in the 20th century forestalled and reversed their looming extinction.
Elic Weitzel received funding from the National Science Foundation (award #2128707) to support this research.
La Virgen de la Puerta behind a glass window at the pinnacle of the church.Caitlin Cipolla-McCulloch
Leo XIV, the first pope born in the United States, is also claimed by the Peruvian people whom he served for over two decades as one of their own.
Then known as Robert Francis Prevost, he lived and worked in the cities of Trujillo and Chiclayo in northern Peru. In Chiclayo he served as bishop from 2015-2023. Trujillo is a few hours south of Chiclayo, where the pope lived for a decade.
His ministry there is particularly exciting to me because I also lived in northern Peru, during a service year with the Marianist Family between my undergraduate experience at the University of Dayton and my first year of full-time ministry. The Marianist Family was founded in response to specific needs in postrevolutionary French society. Composed of lay people and vowed religious sisters, brothers and priests, it emphasizes devotion to Mary and a communal lifestyle as a distinctive way of living out one’s Roman Catholicism.
About a two-hour bus ride away from Trujillo lies the mountainous town of Otuzco, where I lived with other members of the Marianist Family – a place that would later become a significant focus of my research as a lay Marianist and Mariologist. An image of Mary – La Virgen de la Puerta – now housed in a shrine church, has been venerated and revered in the community for over 300 years.
The shrine church of La Virgen de la Puerta.
The majority of those who maintain a devotional relationship with this image, both local or from the surrounding villages, are part of the Catholic religious majority in Peru. But some other Peruvians – including non- Catholics, some members of the LGBTQ+ community, and others who are marginalized, such as former prisoners and migrants – also revere her. Many of the devotees do not live near Otuzco but maintain a spiritual relationship with La Virgen de la Puerta.
The founding of Otuzco
The Augustinians – the religious congregation of brothers and priests that Leo XIV is a member of – settled in Otuzco in 1560.
As part of the founding of the town, the Augustinian Fathers placed the town under the protection of Mary, the mother of Jesus. They acquired a Spanish image, a statue of Mary made mostly of wood, and selected Dec. 15 to celebrate her locally. This tradition has continued since 1664, about 100 years after the Augustinian Fathers settled in Otuzco.
A Virgen de la Puerta procession in the evening in the streets of Otuzco. Caitlin Cipolla-McCulloch
During one particular threat to their safety, around 1670, they took this image into the streets in procession to protect their town. They placed this image of Mary above the door of the church in the center of town and called the image “Nuestra Señora de la Puerta” – transliterated into English: “Our Lady of the Door.”
Contemporary pilgrimage in Otuzco
In modern times, the fiesta of La Virgen de la Puerta is lavishly celebrated in the town of Otuzco, where thousands of faithful descend upon the mountain community for the multiday fiesta patronal, a festive celebration that honors the patron saint to whom a site is dedicated or entrusted.
The fiesta patronal of La Virgen de la Puerta begins annually on Dec. 14, with the principal day observed on Dec. 15, and concludes on Dec. 16.
During the days of the fiesta, the road between Trujillo and Otuzco is transformed into a pilgrimage route. The purpose of the journey can vary from pilgrim to pilgrim, yet it often reflects a deeply personal act of devotion.
Some pilgrims arrive from Otuzco, Trujillo and neighboring villages, while others travel long distances – in Peru or from abroad – to honor La Virgen de la Puerta. Some pilgrims journey the roughly 50 miles (over 80 kilometers) between Trujillo and Otuzco on foot.
I personally made this journey with a group of fellow pilgrims, the very people I was living among and ministering with during my service year in Peru. My pilgrimage involved a backpack with basic medical supplies for the group. After an overnight walk to Otuzco in camping pants, a T-shirt, hat and sneakers, I arrived before the image of Mary with quarter-size blisters on my feet.
La Virgen de la Puerta procession through the streets of Otuzco. Caitlin Cipolla-McCulloch
Some pilgrims, unlike me, mark the final kilometers of their journey by advancing to the shrine through the streets on their knees.
Devotion outside Otuzco
In addition to the thousands who descend on the town of Otuzco each year for the celebration, there are those who are deeply devoted to La Virgen de la Puerta but do not or cannot make the journey to the shrine. Their celebrations take place at times at a great distance from Otuzco.
Among them are members of the LGBTQ+ community, who to this day remain marginalized in broader Peruvian and Catholic culture. Although members of the LGBTQ+ community reside throughout Peru, the neighborhood of Cerro El Pino in Lima has historically been the site of a festive celebration in honor of La Virgen de la Puerta, which many community members observe.
Differing communities come with differing needs to La Virgen de la Puerta. The LGBTQ+ community in this particular neighborhood believes she has protected them throughout their history. During the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, when over 10% of the male population in Lima was infected by HIV, members of this community sought the protection of La Virgen de la Puerta for their physical health. Although some people died from AIDS, others continued to participate in the rituals of the fiesta to honor her protection over time, even amid their suffering. They wore special costumes, sang and performed the dances that have been part of the fiesta patronal for over 300 years.
Francisco Rodríguez Torres is a Peruvian photographer who lives in the capital city, Lima, but has roots in the northern region where the image of La Virgen de la Puerta is located. He is one of those who has documented the activities of the fiesta patronal both in Otuzco and in Lima in his text La Mamita de Otuzco.
He writes both about the local faithful as well as those who venerate the image from a distance. In his Spanish language text, he has documented that La Virgen de la Puerta is considered a mother by groups who find themselves on the margins of society. These groups include those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, the poor, former prisoners and migrants. They “hope to find in her gaze a consolation,” he explains.
Devotees bring their special petitions before La Virgen de la Puerta: They ask for her support in making decisions and for their everyday needs. Some even pray for miraculous healing.
Echoing this sentiment of finding hope in La Virgen de la Puerta, Pope Francis, during his apostolic journey to Peru, crowned La Virgen de la Puerta and gave her the title of Mother of Mercy and Hope. In his address during a special prayer service in Trujillo on Jan. 20, 2018, Francis recounted that La Virgen de la Puerta has defended and protected all of her children throughout history.
Leo, following the example of Francis, has focused on the importance of dialogue and peace. In his first message from the balcony upon being announced pope he said that members of the Catholic Church must build “bridges, dialogue, always open to receive like this square with its open arms, all, all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”
I believe that La Virgen de la Puerta – a source of mercy and hope for all her devotees, regardless of whether they have been historically marginalized or excluded – offers an example to the world community of the greater unity with one another that Leo XIV is seeking to prioritize.
Caitlin Cipolla-McCulloch 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 Liliana Tenney, Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Cliff and Cara Blauvelt, owners of Odie B’s sandwich shops in Denver, have created a recovery-friendly workplace thanks in part to a program from the Colorado School of Public Health.Courtesy of BehindTheApronMedia
At Odie B’s, a sandwich shop in Denver, recovery from drug and alcohol use is part of daily operations.
“Seventy percent of our staff is active in recovery,” Cliff Blauvelt, co-owner of Odie B’s, said in a video testimonial. “We try to provide a safe space where people can feel comfortable.”
Blauvelt has struggled with alcohol use for more than 20 years. He co-owns Odie B’s with his wife, Cara Blauvelt.
One employee, Molly, said working at Odie B’s helped her focus on sobriety and reconnect with her sense of purpose.
“I was burned out, I was working a lot of hours. … I started dry January, and after a few months I realized I needed to quit drinking,” she said in the same video testimonial. “Cara definitely helped with my sobriety journey, just reminding me one day at a time, and now, I have been sober for going on two years.”
Staffers at Odie B’s, a sandwich shop in Denver, participated in Colorado’s Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative and were interviewed about the experience.
Colorado is one of more than 30 states that have launched recovery-friendly workplace programs in recent years. They’re part of a growing effort to reframe how employers address addiction, mental health and recovery for the well-being of their employees and businesses.
Since 2021, our team has developed and delivered recovery and mental health training to more than 8,000 Colorado employees. They represent more than 100 businesses in industries ranging from local government to construction companies and health care providers. Our training sessions focus on equipping individuals with an understanding of mental health and substance use disorders, explaining how to combat stigma, and outlining how to navigate accommodations in the workplace.
The toll of addiction
Substance use is not just a personal issue; it’s a public health and workforce challenge.
In high-risk industries, such as construction and mining, where physically demanding work, long hours and job insecurity are common, workers have some of the highest rates of nonmedical opioid use. These workers are thus at a high risk of developing substance use disorders.
The economic impact of substance use is significant. Colorado has lost more than 360 million work hours to opioid use over the past decade, according to the American Action Forum, a nonprofit that conducts economic analyses. That’s the equivalent of 173,000 full-time jobs for one year.
Employers save an average of $8,500 per year for each employee in recovery, according to the National Safety Council. These savings come from lower health care costs, reduced absenteeism and decreased turnover. In other words, when employers retain and support workers through recovery rather than lose them to untreated substance use, they see measurable benefits.
A shifting policy landscape
In 2024, Colorado lawmakers passed a bill for supporting recovery and addressing the opioid epidemic. The legislation provided funding to establish the Recovery Friendly Workplaces Initiative and the voluntary employer participation and certification program.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signs legislation into law. The Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative received state funding as part of a 2024 bill aimed at addressing the state’s opioid epidemic. Aaron Ontiveroz/Getty Images
In early 2025, funding for the initiative was removed from the state budget due to a broader fiscal shortfall. The funding cut disrupted many of our planned activities, and we are currently relying on interim support from counties and state offices.
Looking ahead
Small businesses remain a priority for our team, despite recent funding cuts. Many lack human resources departments or formal wellness programs but are nonetheless deeply committed to helping their employees succeed.
Sarah Deering, vice president of Absolute Caulking & Waterproofing of Colorado, joined the Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative. Courtesy of the Center for Health, Work and Environment
A Colorado Recovery Friendly Workplace Initative participant, Absolute Caulking & Waterproofing of Colorado, employs 39 people. Absolute has championed recovery-friendly policies as something the business values.
“This partnership saves us time and resources, which is invaluable for our small, family-owned business,” said Sarah Deering, vice president of the company.
The road ahead presents challenges, including limited funding, the societal stigma around recovery and all of the complexities of recovery itself. But we continue to follow the scientific evidence. Our research team is evaluating the outcomes of our programs to better understand their impact and hopefully inform future policy recommendations. We are committed to the belief that work can and should be a place of healing.
Liliana Tenney receives funding from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Olivia Zarella receives funding from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Others are saying they oppose the House’s cost-cutting provisions for Medicaid, the government’s health insurance program for people who are low income or have disabilities.
Despite the calls from U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and a few other Republican senators to protect Medicaid, as a scholar of American social policy I’m expecting to see the Senate embrace the introduction of work requirements for many adults under 65 who get health insurance through the program.
The House version calls for the states, which administer Medicaid within their borders and help pay for the program, to adopt work requirements by the end of 2026. The effect of this policy, animated by the conviction that coverage is too generous and too easy to obtain, will be to deny Medicaid eligibility to millions of those currently covered – leaving them without access to basic health services, including preventive care and the management of ongoing conditions such as asthma or diabetes.
Ending welfare
The notion that people who get government benefits should prove that they deserve them, ideally through paid labor, is now centuries old. This conviction underlay the Victorian workhouses in 19th-century England that Charles Dickens critiqued through his novels.
U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., put it bluntly earlier this month: Medicaid is “subsidizing capable adults who choose not to work,” he said.
This idea also animated the development of the American welfare state, from its origins in the 1930s organized around the goals of maintaining civil order and compelling paid labor. Enforcing work obligations ensured the ready availability of low-wage labor and supported the growing assumption that only paid labor could redeem the lives and aspirations of the poor.
“We started offering hope and opportunity along with the welfare check,” Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson argued in the early 1990s, “and expecting certain responsibilities in return.”
This concept also was at the heart of the U.S. government’s bid to end “welfare as we know it.”
In 1996, the Democratic Clinton administration replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC, a long-standing entitlement to cash assistance for low-income families, with Temporary Aid for Needy Families, known commonly as TANF. The TANF program, as its name indicates, was limited to short-term support, with the expectation that most people getting these benefits would soon gain long-term employment.
Since 1996, Republicans serving at the state and federal levels of government have pressed to extend this principle to other programs that help low-income people. They’ve insisted, as President Donald Trump put it halfway through his first term, that unconditional benefits have “delayed economic independence, perpetuated poverty, and weakened family bonds.”
Work requirements have consistently failed as a spur to employment. The transition from the AFDC to TANF required low-income families to meet work requirements, new administrative burdens and punitive sanctions.
The new work expectations, rolled out in 1997, were not accompanied by supporting policies, especially the child care subsidies that many low-income parents with young children require to hold a job. They were also at odds with the very low-paying and unstable jobs available to those transitioning from welfare.
Scholars found that TANF did less to lift families out of poverty than it did to shuffle its burden, helping the nearly poor at the expense of the very poor.
The program took an especially large toll on low-income Black women, as work requirements exposed recipients to long-standing patterns of racial and gender discrimination in private labor markets.
Restricting access to SNAP
Work requirements tied to other government programs have similar track records.
As happens with TANF, most people with SNAP benefits who have to comply with SNAP work requirements are already working to the degree their personal circumstances and local labor markets allow.
The requirements don’t encourage SNAP recipients to work more hours; they simply lead people to be overwhelmed by red tape and stop renewing their SNAP benefits.
Failing in Arkansas
The logic of work requirements collapses entirely when extended to Medicaid.
The first Trump administration granted 13 such waivers for what it saw as “meritorious innovations,” building “on the human dignity that comes with training, employment and independence.”
The House passed the budget bill on May 22, 2025. It includes steep cuts to Medicaid and imposes work requirements for eligibility.
“We found no evidence that the policy succeeded in its stated goal of promoting work,” as one research team concluded, “and instead found substantial evidence of harm to health care coverage and access.”
The Biden administration slowed down the implementation of these waivers by directing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to suspend or stem any state programs that eroded coverage. Meanwhile, state courts consistently ruled against the use of Medicaid work requirements.
The waiver process is meant to allow state experiments to further the statutory objectives of the Medicaid program, which is to furnish “medical assistance on behalf of families with dependent children and of aged, blind, or disabled individuals, whose income and resources are insufficient to meet the costs of necessary medical services.”
“The text of the statute includes one primary purpose,” the D.C. Circuit ruled in 2020, “which is providing health care coverage without any restriction geared to healthy outcomes, financial independence or transition to commercial coverage.”
Changing Medicaid in all states
The House spending bill includes a work requirement that would require all able-bodied, childless adults under 65 to demonstrate that they had worked, volunteered or participated in job training for 80 hours in the month before enrollment.
It would also allow states to extend such work requirements to six months and apply the new requirements not just to Medicaid recipients but to people who get subsidized health insurance through an Affordable Care Act exchange.
If passed in some form by the Senate, the House spending bill would transform the landscape of Medicaid work requirements, pushing an estimated 4.8 million Americans into the ranks of the uninsured.
Colin Gordon 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 Alex Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University – Newark
President Donald Trump says there is a genocide of white people taking place in South Africa, meaning that Black South Africans are deliberately attempting to kill white farmers because of their race.
This comes after Trump, in January, suspended admitting people, most of whom are not white, from other countries through the United States’ refugee program. The U.S. had previously given refugee status – a legal right to remain and work in the country – to tens of thousands of people each year who were fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries.
During a May 21 White House meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump highlighted white genocide in South Africa, saying, “We have thousands of stories talking about it.” Ramaphosa denied that a white genocide is happening in his country. Trump then had a staffer dim the lights and play a video that, among other inflammatory content, showed white crosses along a road.
“These are burial sites,” Trump said. “Over a thousand white farmers.”
Fact-checkers pointed out that while crime rates in South Africa are high in general, there is no evidence of white genocide there. The crosses in the video Trump showed did not mark mass graves of white farmers. They were part of a 2020 tribute to two white farmers murdered by armed men who stormed their house that year.
As someone who has studied genocide and far-right extremists for years, I think it is necessary to understand what white genocide is and how it developed into a central issue in U.S. immigration debates starting in Trump’s first term.
A group of South Africans who were granted admission to the U.S. as refugees arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on May 12, 2025. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
The origins of white genocide
As I detail in my 2021 book “It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US,” white genocide is a far-right extremist conspiracy theory claiming that allegedly bad people, often Jews, are carrying out a dangerous plot to destroy the white race. While this idea circulates worldwide, it has distinctly American roots.
This conspiracy dates back to the 1800s and the rise of nativism, a xenophobic belief held by some white Protestant Americans that certain immigrants, especially German and Irish Catholics, were dangerous and threatened to disrupt American traditions, culture and economic security.
Nativist fears have continued to influence U.S. politics and culture.
The American lawyer Madison Grant, for example, made nativist arguments in his 1916 book “The Passing of the Great Race,” which warned of immigrants’ threat to Americans and “race suicide.” Adolf Hitler once called Grant’s book his bible.
Nativism has also influenced white power extremists, who believe in white superiority and dominance. They began using the specific term “white genocide” after the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, which they perceived as eroding white people’s power.
The growth in this term’s popularity among some right-wing extremists also coincided with Congress approving the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. This act significantly increased the number of immigrants the U.S. legally accepted into the country each year and also allowed more non-European – and nonwhite – immigrants to settle in America.
In the 1970s, William Pierce, an American former physics professor turned neo-Nazi, wrote a book called “The Turner Diaries.” The book, which the FBI has called the “bible of the racist right,” is about how a fictional extremist group, “The Order,” overthrows a U.S. government that gives power to nonwhite citizens and is controlled by Jews. The order proceeds to kill nonwhite people and Jews, as well as “race traitors” who don’t support their cause.
The book inspired a 1980s group of violent neo-Nazis who also called themselves The Order, based off the fictitious group in Pierce’s book. Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people, was modeled on a scene from “The Turner Diaries,” which depicts the extremist group’s bombing of the FBI headquarters.
In 1988, David Lane, a former member of The Order, crystallized the idea of white genocide in a short essay, “The White Genocide Manifesto.” The manifesto asserts that there is a “Zionist conspiracy to mix, overrun and exterminate the White race.”
Jews do this, Lane claims, through “control of the media … industry, finance, law and politics” and by promoting antiwhite policies such as desegregation. To prevent white genocide, Lane calls for the establishment of a white homeland in North America – by violence, if necessary.
White genocide’s entry into the mainstream
Research shows that 61% of Trump voters believe “a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views.”
This belief is often known as replacement theory, a variant of the idea of white genocide.
Many of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists believed that white Americans were being replaced. So, too, did the far-right protesters who chanted, “You will not replace us!” at the extremist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
There are also instances of such white power extremist views leading to violent acts. One example is the mass shooting of 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Another is the El Paso Walmart shooting that resulted in 23 murdered Latino victims in 2019.
Right-wing populists such as Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk have helped fuel replacement theories by contending that Democrats are trying to replace white voters with nonwhite immigrants.
Neo-Nazis and white supremacists march leading up to the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017. Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Concern for white farmers isn’t actually about South Africa
I believe that Trump’s recent focus on alleged white genocide in South Africa has little to do with South Africa. It is all about American politics and advancing some of Trump’s goals, such as reducing immigration into the U.S.
First, by suggesting white genocide is taking place in South Africa, Trump amplifies his supporters’ fears that they, too, could soon be outnumbered by nonwhite people – in this case, immigrants.
Replacement theory claims also help justify Trump’s goal of deporting immigrants living illegally in the U.S., as well as stopping refugee admissions from many countries, by highlighting the supposed dangers nonwhite immigrants pose to Americans, both in terms of potential threats to their physical safety and job prospects and security.
This recent example is not the first time Trump has made white genocide claims to advance his agenda. Based on his track record, it is likely he will do so again.
Alex Hinton receives receives funding from the Rutgers-Newark Sheila Y. Oliver Center for Politics and Race in America, Rutgers Research Council, and Henry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mark Finlayson, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Florida International University
The human proclivity for storytelling makes disinformation difficult to combat.Westend61 via Getty Images
It is not often that cold, hard facts determine what people care most about and what they believe. Instead, it is the power and familiarity of a well-told story that reigns supreme. Whether it’s a heartfelt anecdote, a personal testimony or a meme echoing familiar cultural narratives, stories tend to stick with us, move us and shape our beliefs.
This characteristic of storytelling is precisely what can make it so dangerous when wielded by the wrong hands. For decades, foreign adversaries have used narrative tactics in efforts to manipulate public opinion in the United States. Social media platforms have brought new complexity and amplification to these campaigns. The phenomenon garnered ample public scrutiny after evidence emerged of Russian entities exerting influence over election-related material on Facebook in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
While artificial intelligence is exacerbating the problem, it is at the same time becoming one of the most powerful defenses against such manipulations. Researchers have been using machine learning techniques to analyze disinformation content.
In July 2024, the Department of Justice disrupted a Kremlin-backed operation that used nearly a thousand fake social media accounts to spread false narratives. These weren’t isolated incidents. They were part of an organized campaign, powered in part by AI.
Disinformation differs crucially from misinformation. While misinformation is simply false or inaccurate information – getting facts wrong – disinformation is intentionally fabricated and shared specifically to mislead and manipulate. A recent illustration of this came in October 2024, when a video purporting to show a Pennsylvania election worker tearing up mail-in ballots marked for Donald Trump swept platforms such as X and Facebook.
Within days, the FBI traced the clip to a Russian influence outfit, but not before it racked up millions of views. This example vividly demonstrates how foreign influence campaigns artificially manufacture and amplify fabricated stories to manipulate U.S. politics and stoke divisions among Americans.
Humans are wired to process the world through stories. From childhood, we grow up hearing stories, telling them and using them to make sense of complex information. Narratives don’t just help people remember – they help us feel. They foster emotional connections and shape our interpretations of social and political events.
Stories have profound effects on human beliefs and behavior.
This makes them especially powerful tools for persuasion – and, consequently, for spreading disinformation. A compelling narrative can override skepticism and sway opinion more effectively than a flood of statistics. For example, a story about rescuing a sea turtle with a plastic straw in its nose often does more to raise concern about plastic pollution than volumes of environmental data.
Usernames, cultural context and narrative time
Using AI tools to piece together a picture of the narrator of a story, the timeline for how they tell it and cultural details specific to where the story takes place can help identify when a story doesn’t add up.
Narratives are not confined to the content users share – they also extend to the personas users construct to tell them. Even a social media handle can carry persuasive signals. We have developed a system that analyzes usernames to infer demographic and identity traits such as name, gender, location, sentiment and even personality, when such cues are embedded in the handle. This work, presented in 2024 at the International Conference on Web and Social Media, highlights how even a brief string of characters can signal how users want to be perceived by their audience.
For example, a user attempting to appear as a credible journalist might choose a handle like @JamesBurnsNYT rather than something more casual like @JimB_NYC. Both may suggest a male user from New York, but one carries the weight of institutional credibility. Disinformation campaigns often exploit these perceptions by crafting handles that mimic authentic voices or affiliations.
Although a handle alone cannot confirm whether an account is genuine, it plays an important role in assessing overall authenticity. By interpreting usernames as part of the broader narrative an account presents, AI systems can better evaluate whether an identity is manufactured to gain trust, blend into a target community or amplify persuasive content. This kind of semantic interpretation contributes to a more holistic approach to disinformation detection – one that considers not just what is said but who appears to be saying it and why.
Also, stories don’t always unfold chronologically. A social media thread might open with a shocking event, flash back to earlier moments and skip over key details in between.
Humans handle this effortlessly – we’re used to fragmented storytelling. But for AI, determining a sequence of events based on a narrative account remains a major challenge.
Our lab is also developing methods for timeline extraction, teaching AI to identify events, understand their sequence and map how they relate to one another, even when a story is told in nonlinear fashion.
Objects and symbols often carry different meanings in different cultures, and without cultural awareness, AI systems risk misinterpreting the narratives they analyze. Foreign adversaries can exploit cultural nuances to craft messages that resonate more deeply with specific audiences, enhancing the persuasive power of disinformation.
Consider the following sentence: “The woman in the white dress was filled with joy.” In a Western context, the phrase evokes a happy image. But in parts of Asia, where white symbolizes mourning or death, it could feel unsettling or even offensive.
In order to use AI to detect disinformation that weaponizes symbols, sentiments and storytelling within targeted communities, it’s critical to give AI this sort of cultural literacy. In our research, we’ve found that training AI on diverse cultural narratives improves its sensitivity to such distinctions.
Who benefits from narrative-aware AI?
Narrative-aware AI tools can help intelligence analysts quickly identify orchestrated influence campaigns or emotionally charged storylines that are spreading unusually fast. They might use AI tools to process large volumes of social media posts in order to map persuasive narrative arcs, identify near-identical storylines and flag coordinated timing of social media activity. Intelligence services could then use countermeasures in real time.
In addition, crisis-response agencies could swiftly identify harmful narratives, such as false emergency claims during natural disasters. Social media platforms could use these tools to efficiently route high-risk content for human review without unnecessary censorship. Researchers and educators could also benefit by tracking how a story evolves across communities, making narrative analysis more rigorous and shareable.
Ordinary users can also benefit from these technologies. The AI tools could flag social media posts in real time as possible disinformation, allowing readers to be skeptical of suspect stories, thus counteracting falsehoods before they take root.
As AI takes on a greater role in monitoring and interpreting online content, its ability to understand storytelling beyond just traditional semantic analysis has become essential. To this end, we are building systems to uncover hidden patterns, decode cultural signals and trace narrative timelines to reveal how disinformation takes hold.
Mark Finlayson receives funding from US Department of Defense and the US National Science Foundation for his work on narrative understanding and influence operations in the military context.
Azwad Anjum Islam receives funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
You’ve probably heard the claim that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. It’s usually framed as a feel-good reason to turn your frown upside down – less effort, more joy. But anatomically, the numbers don’t quite add up.
We’ve all seen it – the smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes. From awkward family photos to strained workplace pleasantries, our brains often detect that something is off long before we consciously realise why.
But what is it about a smile that makes it feel sincere — or fake? The answer lies in a surprising blend of facial anatomy, neurology and emotional authenticity.
Not all smiles are created equal, and anatomically speaking, there are at least two distinct kinds: the Duchenne smile, which reflects genuine happiness, and the non-Duchenne smile, which tends to be more social or strategic.
Named after 19th-century French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne, the Duchenne smile activates two key muscle groups. The first group is associated with the corners of the mouth – where, for example, the risorius (from the Latin to smile) draws the corners outward and the zygomaticus major muscle lifts them.
The second, and most telling, muscle is the orbicularis oculi, which tightens the muscles around the eyes, producing the familiar “crow’s feet” and the gentle narrowing we associate with warmth and delight.
Fake or polite smiles, on the other hand, usually involve only the mouth muscles. The eyes remain wide or indifferent, and the smile appears more mechanical than meaningful – a kind of emotional camouflage.
Both real and fake smiles depend on cranial nerve VII, also known as the facial nerve, which sends signals from the brain to the muscles of facial expression. However, there’s a key neurological difference: Duchenne smiles tend to be generated by the limbic system, the brain’s emotional core – particularly the amygdala, an almond-shaped group of neurons that processes emotional salience.
Non-Duchenne smiles, by contrast, are often under more conscious cortical control, originating in the motor cortex. This divide means that authentic, emotionally driven smiles are involuntary.
You can’t easily will your orbicularis oculi to contract convincingly unless you’re genuinely feeling the emotion behind the expression. Even professional actors must tap into real memories or method techniques to produce them convincingly.
Why our brains notice the difference
Humans are remarkably good at detecting emotional authenticity. Studies show that even infants as young as ten months can distinguish between real and fake smiles.
Evolutionarily, this ability may have helped us assess trustworthiness, recognise true allies and avoid deception. The fusiform gyrus, a part of the brain involved in facial recognition, works closely with the superior temporal sulcus to decode expressions — helping us gauge intention as much as emotion.
In modern life, our sensitivity to facial nuance continues to matter. Politicians, customer service workers and public figures frequently rely on the social smile to navigate complex interpersonal expectations. But observers – consciously or not – often pick up on these micro-discrepancies.
Fake smiles aren’t necessarily malicious. In fact, they serve important social functions: smoothing awkward interactions, signalling politeness, defusing conflict and showing deference. They are a vital part of what sociologists call “emotional labour” – managing one’s expressions to meet societal or professional expectations.
But this kind of smiling, when sustained for long periods, can be emotionally exhausting. Studies of emotional labour suggest that being required to smile without genuine feeling – especially in service roles – is associated with increased stress, burnout and even cardiovascular strain.
As we move further into the age of AI, synthetic faces – from chatbots to virtual assistants – are being programmed to replicate human expressions. Yet the challenge remains: how do you fake authenticity? Engineers can program a smile, but without the micro-contractions around the eyes, many of these expressions still seem disingenuous. Our own anatomy sets the gold standard.
So next time you’re trying to decode someone’s expression, don’t just look at the mouth. Watch the eyes. The orbicularis oculi rarely lies.
Michelle Spear 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.
Journalists have been targeted, detained and tortured by the Israeli military in Gaza — and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has now taken a new approach towards bringing justice these crimes.
The Paris-based global media freedom NGO has submitted multiple formal requests to the International Criminal Court (ICC) asking that Palestinian journalists who are victims of Israeli war crimes in Gaza be allowed to participate as such in international judicial proceedings.
If granted this status, these journalists would be able to present the ICC with the direct and personal harm they have suffered at the hands of Israeli forces, reports RSF.
RSF has filed four complaints with the ICC concerning war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza and recently joined director Sepideh Farsi at the Cannes Film Festival to pay tribute to Fatma Hassoun, a photojournalist killed by the Israeli army after it was revealed she was featured in the documentary film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.
After filing the four complaints with the ICC concerning war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza since October 2023, RSF is resolutely continuing its efforts to bring the issue before international justice.
The NGO has submitted several victim participation forms to the ICC so that Gazan journalists can participate in the legal process as recognised victims, not just as witnesses.
Being officially recognised as victims is a first step toward justice, truth, and reparations — and it is an essential step toward protecting press freedom and journalistic integrity in conflict zones.
Nearly 200 journalists killed Since October 2023, Israeli armed forces have killed nearly 200 journalists in Gaza — the Gaza Media Office says more than 215 journalists have been killed — at least 44 of whom were targeted because of their work, according to RSF data.
Not only are foreign journalists barred from entering the blockaded Palestinian territory, but local reporters have watched their homes and newsrooms be destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and have been constantly displaced amid a devastating humanitarian crisis.
“The right of victims to participate in the ICC investigation is a crucial mechanism that will finally allow for the recognition of the immense harm suffered by Palestinian journalists working in Gaza, who are the target of an unprecedented and systematic crackdown,” said Clémence Witt, a lawyer at the Paris and Barcelona Bars, and Jeanne Sulzer, a lawyer at the Paris Bar and member of the ICC’s list of counsel.
Jonathan Dagher, head of the RSF Middle East desk, said: “It is time for justice for Gaza’s journalists to be served. The Israeli army’s ongoing crimes against them must end.
“RSF will tirelessly continue demanding justice and reparations. This new process in the ICC investigation is an integral part of this combat, and allowing journalists to participate as victims is essential to moving forward.
“They should be able to testify to the extreme violence targeting Gaza’s press. This is a new step toward holding the Israeli military and its leaders accountable for the crimes committed with impunity on Palestinian territory.”
The civil war in Sudan between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which began in April 2023, has had an impact on its neighbours. One of the most keenly affected countries is South Sudan, which became an independent state in 2011 and went on to endure its own civil war. This ended in 2018 with a tenuous peace agreement.
The impact of the Sudanese war on South Sudan, however, isn’t a straightforward spillover catastrophe. The picture is more nuanced, and this is most clearly seen in South Sudan’s oil economy. Jan Pospisil, who has studied the dynamics in Sudan and South Sudan, explains.
What is the current status of oil exports from South Sudan through Sudan?
Landlocked South Sudan is reliant on its neighbour to the north to transport oil from its fields to the international market. Crude oil is transported via pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Soon after, the Sudanese army formally notified South Sudan that it would have to halt exports. Following hectic negotiations, the South Sudanese government released a statement that the stoppage could be prevented.
This back and forth has reopened the pressing question of the impact of Sudan’s war on South Sudan’s economy and, in particular, the role of crude oil.
However, South Sudan’s 2024-25 budget suggests a high reliance on non-oil revenue.
In fact, government oil revenues for 2024-25 are based on a volume of only around 16,000 barrels per day. This is the share of total production of about 130,000 barrels per day controlled by South Sudan. Attempts to increase production to pre-war levels of up to 400,000 barrels failed. The substantial drop in production is explained by a decline in the quality of South Sudan’s oil wells, especially in Paloch in the north-east’s Upper Nile State, and Unity State in the north-central region.
South Sudan additionally lacks the operational capacity to extract the oil it has in the ground.
The 2024-25 budget projects a hefty fiscal deficit. The revenues projected will cover only about half of total planned state spending. Oil and non-oil revenues – which mainly include tax income from international NGOs and businesses – each account for about half of the revenue that’s expected to come in.
Oil income has to account for debt (capital and interest) repayments on loans, as well as pipeline transport fees paid to Sudan. This means that even the optimistically assessed net contributions of oil revenue would only pay for 16% of planned government spending. South Sudan remains with a hefty deficit.
What are the challenges South Sudan is facing in growing oil revenues?
First, Petronas, a Malaysian multinational oil and gas company, withdrew from South Sudan in August 2024 after three decades.
It left behind substantial challenges, including an arbitration process worth more US$1 billion. This followed the government preventing Petronas from selling its shares to the British-Nigerian group Savannah Energy.
As a short-term solution, South Sudan de facto nationalised Petronas’ shares. It did this by transferring the shares to the state’s oil and gas company, Nile Petroleum Corporation (NilePet). This was perhaps in the hope of increasing revenue in the short term.
However, NilePet hasn’t been able to replace Petronas’ production logistics. This has resulted in huge challenges in restoring production to levels before the 2024 pipeline disruptions.
A second factor is the sale of oil forward. The then finance minister said in 2022 that most of the oil production had been sold in advance until 2027. He later retracted the statement, saying instead that some oil advances were merely “spread up to 2027”. While this walk-back attempted to soften the political fallout, it reinforced wider uncertainty about how much control NilePet actually retains over the revenues formally under its authority.
Given the limited relevance of oil revenues for the official South Sudanese budget, why the major concern about disruptions?
There are three reasons.
First, NilePet plays a structural role in South Sudan’s informal and often dubious hard currency circulation, which international observers would call large-scale corruption. NilePet’s accounts rarely appear in any official financial accounts and are often channelled off-budget. NilePet functions as a black box within the public finance system where real money flows can only rarely be traced. Recent intentions by the president to structurally reform the company might implicitly confirm this.
Second, there are indirect oil revenues that are important to the country’s security apparatus. This includes protection rents which come from protecting South Sudanese oil fields. This revenue never hits the budget. It pays the National Security Service either directly as salaries, or is reinvested in the considerable conglomerate of companies owned by the security service to multiply profits. Losing this revenue could destabilise the country because the funds are used to pay the salaries of the best-trained and best-equipped security service in the country.
Third, South Sudan’s ability to attract new loans depends on the repayment of existing ones. These repayments largely depend on oil production. As the 2024-24 budget shows, South Sudan desperately needs new loans to keep even core state functions operational. Yet, funding from multilateral agencies has dwindled to small-scale loans from the African Development Bank. The International Monetary Fund has currently ended all its funding programmes.
These factors show that the flow of oil to Port Sudan is significant to the availability of hard currency in South Sudan’s economy. But this is in more indirect ways than the outdated claim of an 80% budgetary dependency would suggest.
The war in Sudan has a significant yet multifaceted impact on South Sudan’s economic health. But Juba’s biggest challenges are internal.
South Sudan’s economy over the last six years has been mainly dependent on international loans coming in – a flow which has now dried up, resulting in a severe economic crisis unprecedented in the young country’s history.
Jan Pospisil receives funding from the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), funded by UK International Development from the UK government. However, the views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies. Any use of this work should acknowledge the authors and the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform.
Two statements from world leaders this week bear closer examination. On May 27, the US president Donald Trump took to his Truth Social social media channel to proclaim that if it wasn’t for him, “lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia”. The following day the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced that his country would assist Ukraine in developing long-range missiles to deploy against targets inside Russia. Both statements are quite extraordinary.
Even by Trump’s own standards, the public declaration by a sitting US president that he is protecting the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is unprecedented. Putin is under indictment for war crimes and has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine for more than three years after having illegally annexed Crimea over a decade ago. There can now be no doubt left that the US has become an unreliable ally for Ukraine and its European partners.
This is the context in which Merz’s announcement of increasing defence cooperation with Ukraine becomes significant. While Trump continues to chase an impossible deal with Putin – even after threatening to abandon his mediation efforts less than ten days ago – Germany has doubled down on Ukraine’s defence.
Not only that, but as the EU’s largest and Nato’s second-largest economy, Germany is now also aiming to turn its Bundeswehr (the German army, navy and air force) into the “strongest conventional army in Europe”. Its most senior military officer and chief of defence, Carsten Breuer, has published plans for a rapid and wide-ranging expansion of defence capabilities.
Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.
Germany is finally beginning to pull its weight in European defence and security policy. This is absolutely critical to the credibility of the EU in the face of the threat from Russia. Berlin has the financial muscle and the technological and industrial potential to make Europe more of a peer to the US when it comes to defence spending and burden sharing. This will be important to salvage what remains of Nato in light of a highly probable American down-scaling – if not complete abandonment – of its past security commitments to the alliance.
After decades of failing to develop either a grand strategy to deal with Russia or the hard power capabilities that need to underpin it, achieving either will take some time. But it is important to acknowledge that some critical first steps have been taken by the new German government.
Facing a growing threat
For Germany, and much of the rest of Europe, the investment in more defence capabilities does not simply require producing more ammunition or procuring more advanced defence systems. These are important – but what is also needed is a significant investment in developing manpower. This means either finding more volunteers or reintroducing conscription, which is now no longer a taboo in Germany.
Sending a whole new brigade to Lithuania, in its first international deployment since the second world war, is an important signal to Nato allies about Germany’s commitment to the alliance. It is also a clear signal to Russia that Germany finally is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to containing the threat from Russia. It’s a threat which has grown significantly since the beginning of the Kremlin’s full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The three years of Russia’s war against its neighbour have also highlighted the threat that Russia poses beyond Ukraine’s borders. The war against Ukraine has exposed European vulnerabilities and its dependence on the US. And it has taught military planners important lessons about what a future confrontation with Russia might look like. This is why Germany’s military planners have identified air defence systems, precision strike capabilities, drones, and electronic and cyber warfare assets as procurement priorities.
Beyond Germany, the signs have have been that Europe more broadly is beginning to learn to stand on its own feet when it comes to its security. For the continent, the challenge is threefold. It needs to beef up its defence spending in light of the ongoing war against Ukraine and Russian threats to expand it further. Europe also needs to come to terms with the dismantling of the transatlantic alliance by Trump. And, finally, there is a populist surge that threatens the very foundations of European democracy and risks undermining efforts to stand up to both Trump and Putin. This has been given extra fuel by the alignment of Trump’s “America-first” Maga movement with Putin’s Russia.
Major challenges ahead
These are enduring challenges with no quick fixes. The first test of this apparent new-found European mettle will be the war in Ukraine. Giving Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles against targets in Russia is not a new development. Such a move was first taken by the then US president, Joe Biden, in November 2024 when he authorised Ukraine to launch limited strikes into Russia using US-made long-range missiles, followed by similar authorisations from London and Paris at the time, but not Berlin.
Now, as then, how effective this will be depends not only on how many actual missiles Ukraine has but also on whether US intelligence sharing will continue. This is crucial for targeting. What’s more, effectiveness will also be difficult to measure. In a best-case scenario, Ukraine will now be able to stave off Russia’s reportedly impending summer offensive.
Trump, meanwhile, remains all talk when it comes to putting any pressure on Russia. By contrast, the Europeans, for once, are much more action orientated, which is another indication of the increasing rift across the Atlantic.
This does not mean an end to transatlantic relations and pragmatic cooperation, as demonstrated by the meeting between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, with his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, which happened almost simultaneously with Trump’s and Merz’s statements.
What it does mean, however, is that Europe’s security now entirely depends on whether key players on the continent can muster the will to mobilise the resources required to defend the continent against an aggressive foe to the east. Berlin and other European capitals seem to have recognised at long last that this needs to happen. Now they need to demonstrate that they can follow through with swift and decisive action.
Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.
A United States court has blocked the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs that US President Donald Trump imposed on imported goods from around 90 nations. This puts implementation of Trump’s current trade policy in disarray.
The Court of International Trade ruled the emergency authority Trump used to impose the tariffs could not override the role of Congress, which has the right to regulate commerce with other countries.
Tariffs imposed via other legislative processes – such as those dealing with cars, steel and aluminium – continue to stand. But the broad-based “reciprocal” tariffs will need to be removed within ten days of the court’s ruling. Trump administration officials have already filed plans to appeal.
The ruling calls into question trade negotiations underway with more than 18 different nations, which are trying to lower these tariffs. Do these countries continue to negotiate or do they wait for the judicial process to play out?
The Trump administration still has other mechanisms through which it can impose tariffs, but these have limits on the amount that can be imposed, or entail processes which can take months or years. This undermines Trump’s preferred method of negotiation: throwing out large threats and backing down once a concession is reached.
The lawsuits argued the national emergencies cited in imposing the tariffs – the trade deficit and the fentanyl crisis – were not an emergency and not directly addressed by the tariff remedy. The court agreed, and said by imposing tariffs Trump had overstepped his authority.
The ruling said the executive orders used were “declared to be invalid as contrary to law”.
The act states the president is entitled to take economic action in the face of “an unusual and extraordinary threat”. It’s mainly been used to impose sanctions on terrorist groups or freeze assets from Russia. There’s nothing in the act that refers to tariffs.
The decision means all the reciprocal tariffs – including the 10% tariffs on most countries, the 50% tariffs Trump was talking about putting on the EU, and some of the Chinese tariffs – are ruled by the court to be illegal. They must be removed within 10 days.
The ruling was based on two separate lawsuits. One was brought by a group of small businesses that argued tariffs materially hurt their business. The other was brought by 12 individual states, arguing the tariffs would materially impact their ability to provide public goods.
Some industry tariffs will remain in place
The ruling does not apply to tariffs applied under Section 201, known as safeguard tariffs. They are intended to protect industries from imports allegedly being sold in the US market at unfair prices or through unfair means. Tariffs on solar panels and washing machines were brought under this regulation.
Also excluded are Section 232 tariffs, which are applied for national security reasons. Those are the steel and aluminium tariffs, the automobile and auto parts tariffs. Trump has declared all those as national security issues, so those tariffs will remain.
Most of the tariffs against China are also excluded under Section 301. Those are put in place for unfair trade practices, such as intellectual property theft or forced technology transfer. They are meant to pressure countries to change their policies.
Other trade investigations are still underway
In addition, there are current investigations related to copper and the pharmaceuticals sector, which will continue. These investigations are part of a more traditional trade process and may lead to future tariffs, including on Australia.
The Trump administration is still weighing possible sector-specific tariffs on pharmaceuticals. Planar/Shutterstock
Now for the appeals
The Trump administration has already filed its intention to appeal to the federal appeals court. This process will take some time. In the meantime, there are at least five other legal challenges to tariffs pending in the courts.
If the appeals court provides a ruling the Trump administration or opponents don’t like, they can appeal to the Supreme Court.
Alternatively, the White House could direct customs officials to ignore the court and continue to collect tariffs.
The Trump administration has ignored court orders in the past, particularly on immigration rulings. So it remains to be seen if customs officials will release goods without the tariffs being paid in ten days’ time.
The administration is unlikely to lie down on this. In addition to its appeal process, officials complained about “unelected judges” and “judicial overreach” and may contest the whole process. The only thing that continues to be a certainty is that uncertainty will drive global markets for the foreseeable future.
Susan Stone 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.
British prosecutors have this week charged social media influencer Andrew Tate with a string of serious sexual offences, including rape and human trafficking, alleged to have been committed in the United Kingdom between 2012 and 2015.
This comes in the wake of an ongoing case in Romania. There, Tate and his brother Tristan face similar charges of coercing and exploiting women through what is sometimes described as the “loverboy method” of manipulation that is used to control and monetise women through webcam performances.
A self-described misogynist, Tate is a widespread figure of notoriety for his views on women and his role in the internet “manosphere”. He has millions of followers globally, including ten million on X alone.
This latest round of prosecutions will likely further entrench the loyalty of those followers: boys and young men who will see their leader as the victim of a corrupt system.
Who is Andrew Tate?
Tate is a British-American social media influencer and former kickboxer. He gained international notoriety for his violently misogynistic videos and pronouncements.
He’s built a massive, loyal social media following through a brand that is part provocateur, part self-help guru and part conspiracy theorist.
His rhetoric emphasises an aspirational masculinity geared towards extreme wealth and a physically fit body, combined with resentment towards women and so-called “feminised” societies. He has, for example, stated that women should “bear responsibility” for sexual assault.
Tate is a leading ideological figurehead of what is often called the “manosphere” – a loose network of online communities and content creators who promote regressive ideas about masculinity, gender roles and male identity.
Tate offers a template for many boys and young men to make sense of their place in the world, playing up ideas that boys are disenfranchised by social, economic, or cultural change.
This is part of an emotional hook that provides belonging and clarity in a world his followers are told is stacked against them.
Tate’s content involves both overt and, more often, insidious celebration of harmful gender norms and misogynistic ideologies.
Research has found boys’ exposure to this content has contributed to a resurgence of a sense of male supremacy in classrooms. This then increases sexism and hostility towards women teachers and girl peers.
Reinforcing the narrative
Given this context, it is unlikely the new charges will erode his popularity.
To be clear, he is not universally admired. In fact, the majority of boys reject what he stands for.
However, for the significant minority who comprise his hardcore followers, these new charges will likely be used to reinforce a persecution narrative.
In this way, Tate has paved the way for more violent and extreme misogyny to become standard, not rare.
This was exactly the pattern when the Romanian charges first emerged. His followers flooded platforms with hashtags like #FreeTopG, reframing his arrest as proof that he was “telling the truth” and being punished for it.
Figures like US President Donald Trump provide a relevant comparison. Trump has faced multiple criminal indictments and was found liable in a civil trial for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll.
Yet, his popularity among his base has held firm.
For many of his supporters, these legal challenges are not signs of wrongdoing, but evidence their champion is being unfairly targeted by corrupt institutions.
Tate is similar in that his hypermasculine posturing and anti-establishment bravado ensures his audience see him the same way.
Prompting more loyalty
Given their previous responses, we can already predict how the Tate brothers will respond this time. They will deny the charges, of course, but more importantly, they will use the moment to deepen their mythos.
We might expect to see talk of “the matrix” of shadowy elites, and the weaponisation of justice systems to silence truth-telling men.
They will insist the charges are not about what they did, but about who they are: disruptors of a weak, feminised society. This victim-persecutor framing is central to their appeal and will remain so as this unfolds.
Their followers will, then, likely respond with greater loyalty. For those already steeped in online misogyny and disillusionment, legal accusations such as these don’t raise doubt, but instead confirm the story they already buy into.
This makes combating Tate’s influence a complex challenge. Simply “calling it out” is not enough.
As our research shows, Tate’s brand thrives not in spite of controversy, but because of it.
This is why we need a more strategic, long-term approach to address the harms Tate and other such figureheads represent.
We need robust gender education in schools, stronger commitments to critical media literacy, and the elevation of alternative role models who can speak to the same emotional terrain without reinforcing misogyny.
A key lesson here is that, for the manosphere’s key figures, being charged or even found guilty of crimes (should that occur) might not signal their downfall or diminish their relevance.
Steven Roberts receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Australian Research Council and the Australian Government. He is a Board Director at Respect Victoria, but this article is written wholly separate from and does not represent that role.
Stephanie Wescott receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety.
Menopause is something nearly every woman will go through. As fertility ends, levels of oestrogen and progesterone drop significantly – changes that can deeply affect physical health, emotional wellbeing and everyday life.
For many, the effects of this hormonal shift are more than frustrating – they can be life altering. Symptoms like brain fog, hot flushes, night sweats, headaches, insomnia, fatigue, joint pain, low libido, anxiety, depression and even bone loss from osteoporosis are all common.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has helped many women manage these symptoms – but one key hormone is often overlooked in both treatment and conversation: testosterone.
Testosterone is typically viewed as a “male hormone,” but it plays a crucial role in women’s health too. In fact, women have higher levels of testosterone than either oestrogen or progesterone for most of their adult lives. And like the other sex hormones, testosterone also declines with age – with consequences that are only now being fully explored.
The testosterone gap
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is now widely used to replace oestrogen and progesterone during and after menopause. These treatments – available as tablets, patches, gels and implants – are regulated, evidence-based and increasingly accessible through the NHS.
But when it comes to testosterone, the situation is entirely different.
Currently, there are no testosterone products licensed for use by women in the UK or Europe. The only exception is in Australia, where a testosterone cream specifically designed for women is available. Europe once had its own option – a transdermal patch called Intrinsa, designed and approved by regulators based on clinical evidence to treat low libido in women with surgically induced menopause. But the manufacturer withdrew product in 2012, citing “commercial considerations” in their letter to the European Medicines Agency, the agency in charge of the evaluation and supervision of pharmaceutical products in Europe.
Since then, women across Europe have been left without an approved option.
In the absence of licensed treatments, some clinicians – mainly in private practice – are prescribing testosterone “off label”, often using products developed for men. These are typically gels or creams with dosages several times higher than most women need. While doctors may advise on how to adjust the dose, this kind of improvisation comes with risks: inaccurate dosing, inconsistent absorption and a lack of long-term safety data.
Some women report significant improvements – not just in libido, but also in brain fog, mood, joint pain and energy levels. However, the only proven clinical benefit of testosterone in women is in improving sexual desire for those with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) following surgical menopause.
While there is increasing consensus that testosterone can play a role in supporting women’s health, the current situation presents two serious problems:
Safety and regulation: without licensed products, standardised dosing guidelines, or long-term safety data, off-label use puts both patients and clinicians in uncertain territory.
Access and inequality: testosterone therapy is rarely available through the NHS and is often only accessible through private clinics, creating a two-tier system. Those who can pay hundreds of pounds for consultations and prescriptions can access care, while others are left behind.
Innovation
There are signs of change. For example, I founded Medherant, a University of Warwick spin-out company that is currently developing a testosterone patch designed specifically for women. It’s in clinical trials and, if approved, could become the first licensed testosterone product for women in the UK in over a decade. It’s a much-needed step – and one that could pave the way for further innovation and broader access.
But the urgency remains. Millions of women are currently going without effective, evidence-based care. In the meantime, off-label prescribing should used with care and use based on the best available science – not hype or anecdote – and delivered through transparent, regulated healthcare channels.
Women deserve more than workarounds. They deserve treatments that are developed for their bodies, rigorously tested, approved by regulators and accessible to all – not just the few who can afford private care.
When half the population is affected, this isn’t a niche issue. It’s a priority.
David Haddleton works for and owns shares in Medherant Ltd
On June 3, South Koreans will head to the polls to choose the country’s new president. The election may draw to a close one of the most chaotic and contentious periods in the country’s post-1987 democratic era.
South Korea has been embroiled in a political crisis since December, when former President Yoon Suk Yeol disastrously declared martial law.
Yoon ordered security forces to block lawmakers from entering the National Assembly, leading to a dramatic late night confrontation. His unconstitutional decree was overturned after just six hours.
The fall-out was equally dramatic: Yoon was impeached and removed from office in a drawn-out process that was not finally resolved until April.
This period coincided with massive street demonstrations both opposing and supporting Yoon, a far-right assault on a courthouse and a physical stand-off between investigators and Yoon’s personal security team.
The country, meanwhile, has cycled through three short-lived caretaker leaders.
With weak economic growth and high costs of living, in addition to an equally challenging security environment, South Korea is in desperate need of bold and effective leadership.
Who are the candidates?
The Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung is the clear frontrunner to be the next president, after finishing a close second in the previous 2022 election.
Recent polling put the veteran left-leaning politician at around 49% support as the race entered the final week.
This is a double-digit lead over his main conservative opponent, Kim Moon-soo, polling at 35%. Another conservative candidate, Lee Jun-seok, is polling at 11%. Notably, for the first time since 2007, there are no female candidates standing to be president.
The high levels of support for Lee Jae-myung suggest a widespread desire among the public to repudiate Yoon’s martial law declaration.
Kim, the labour minister in Yoon’s administration, has apologised for December’s declaration. But his opponents have continued to question him about it.
Kim’s challenge has been to build a coalition of moderates and mainstream conservatives who firmly opposed the martial law declaration, while also winning support from those who believe far-right conspiracy theories around election fraud. Yoon, the former president, is continuing to promote these narratives.
Lee’s compelling background
Lee Jae-myung’s personal story has uplifting parallels with South Korea’s own history of economic and political development.
Lee was born into poverty; the exact date of his birth is not known. He worked in factories from a very young age and permanently injured his left arm in an industrial accident when he was still a child.
Lee went on to earn a scholarship to study law and, by the late 1980s, had established himself as a labour lawyer and activist.
This activist image was highlighted when he live-streamed himself dramatically scaling a fence to enter the National Assembly and vote down Yoon’s martial law declaration in December. He has previously compared himself to populist, progressive US Senator Bernie Sanders.
More recently, however, he has moderated his political rhetoric and policy platform to appeal to centrists and even some conservative voters.
This shift may also help shield Lee from the “red-baiting” claims left-leaning South Korean candidates typically face from conservative opponents that they are “communists”, “pro-China”, or “pro-North Korea”.
But Lee is also plagued by legal troubles, including corruption charges linked to a land development project. These charges, frequently highlighted by his opponents, risk derailing his administration if he wins the election.
What are the main issues?
Some international commentators have focused on how the next president will handle North Korea. South Koreans, however, are more interested in the candidates’ plans to fix the country’s troubled economy.
There has also been a vigorous debate over South Korea’s future energy policy. Kim favours expanding nuclear energy production to around 60% of the country’s energy mix. Lee has voiced safety concerns about nuclear power, arguing “the era of building more reactors should come to an end”.
Additionally, questions remain over potential constitutional reform to end South Korea’s so-called “imperial presidency” system, which has been blamed for centralising too much power in the hands of the president.
The system dates back to the rewriting of the constitution following mass protests in 1987. This established direct presidential elections and a single, five-year term.
Both Lee and Kim support changing this to a four-year, two-term presidential system, similar to the United States.
Big challenges lie ahead
On the international stage, the new leader will face an uphill battle negotiating with US President Donald Trump over his punitive tariffs. Trump imposed 25% tariffs on South Korean goods in April, but lowered them temporarily to 10% until early July.
Before his impeachment, Yoon was widely reported to be practising his golf skills to attempt to find common ground with Trump, much as former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did.
The new leader will also face massive challenges bringing South Korean society together in the current climate. Political polarisation and the spread of disinformation worsened under Yoon’s presidency – and these trends will be hard to reverse.
Alexander M. Hynd 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.
Until now, the CDC has recommended that everyone ages 6 months and older get a yearly COVID-19 vaccine.Asiaselects via Getty Images
On May 27, 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer include the COVID-19 vaccine on the list of immunizations it recommends for healthy children and pregnant women.
In the video announcing the plan to remove the vaccine from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and healthy pregnant women, Kennedy spoke alongside National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. The trio cited a lack of evidence to support vaccinating healthy children. They did not explain the reason for the change to the vaccine schedule for pregnant people, who have previously been considered at high-risk for severe COVID-19.
Similarly, in the FDA announcement made a week prior, Makary and the agency’s head of vaccines, Vinay Prasad, said that public health trends now support limiting vaccines to people at high risk of serious illness instead of a universal COVID-19 vaccination strategy.
Was this a controversial decision or a clear consensus?
Many public health experts and professional health care associations have raised concerns about Kennedy’s latest announcement, saying it contradicts studies showing that COVID-19 vaccination benefits pregnant people and children. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, considered the premier professional organization for that medical specialty, reinforced the importance of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, especially to protect infants after birth. Likewise, the American Academy of Pediatrics pointed to the data on hospitalizations of children with COVID-19 during the 2024-to-2025 respiratory virus season as evidence for the importance of vaccination.
Kennedy’s announcement on children and pregnant women comes roughly a month ahead of a planned meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of vaccine experts that offers guidance to the CDC on vaccine policy. The meeting was set to review guidance for the 2025-to-2026 COVID-19 vaccines. It’s not typical for the CDC to alter its recommendations without input from the committee.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has removed COVID-19 vaccines from the vaccine schedule for healthy children and pregnant people.
The advisory committee was expected to recommend a risk-based approach for the COVID-19 vaccine, but it was also expected to recommend allowing low-risk people to get annual COVID-19 vaccines if they want to. The CDC’s and FDA’s new policies on the vaccine will likely make it difficult for healthy people to get the vaccine.
What conditions count as risk factors?
The CDC lists several medical conditions and other factors that increase peoples’ risk for severe COVID-19. These conditions include cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, chronic kidney disease and some lung conditions like COPD and asthma. Pregnancy is also on the list.
The article authored by Makary and Prasad describing the FDA’s new stance on the vaccine also contain a lengthy list of risk factors and notes that about 100 million to 200 million people will fall into this category and will thus be eligible to get the vaccine. Pregnancy is included. Reversing the recommendation for vaccinating healthy pregnant women thus contradicts the new framework described by the FDA.
Importantly, a 2024 analysis of 120 studies including a total of 168,444 pregnant women with COVID-19 infections did not find enough evidence to suggest the infections are a direct cause of early pregnancy loss. Nonetheless, the authors did state that COVID-19 vaccination remains a crucial preventive measure for pregnant women to reduce the overall risk of serious complications in pregnancy due to infection.
High-risk children age 6 months and older who have conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19 are still eligible for the vaccine. Existing vaccines already on the market will remain available, but it is unclear how long they will stay authorized and how the change in vaccine policy will affect childhood vaccination overall.
Will low-risk people be able to get a COVID-19 shot?
Not automatically. Kennedy’s announcement does not broadly address healthy adults, but under the new FDA framework, healthy adults who wish to receive the fall COVID-19 vaccine will likely face obstacles. Health care providers can administer vaccines “off-label”, but insurance coverage is widely based on FDA recommendations. The new, narrower FDA approval will likely reduce both access to COVID-19 vaccines for the general public and insurance coverage for COVID-19 vaccines.
Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance providers are required to fully cover the cost of any vaccine endorsed by the CDC. Kennedy’s announcement will likely limit insurance coverage for COVID-19 vaccination.
Overall, the move to focus on individual risks and benefits may overlook broader public health benefits. Communities with higher vaccination rates have fewer opportunities to spread the virus.
Libby Richards has received funding from the American Nurses Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute.
When I despairingly contemplate the horrors and cruelty that Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to, I sometimes try to put this in the context of where I live.
I live on the Kāpiti Coast in the lower North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Geographically it is around the same size as Gaza. Both have coastlines running their full lengths. But, whereas the population of Gaza is a cramped two million, Kāpiti’s is a mere 56,000.
The Gaza Strip . . . 2 million people living in a cramped outdoor prison about the same size as Kāpiti. Map: politicalbytes.blog
I find it incomprehensible to visualise what it would be like if what is presently happening in Gaza occurred here.
The only similarities between them are coastlines and land mass. One is an outdoor prison while the other’s outdoors is peaceful.
New Zealand and Palestine state recognition Currently Palestine has observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. In May last year, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of Palestine being granted full membership of the United Nations.
To its credit, New Zealand was among 143 countries that supported the resolution. Nine, including the United States as the strongest backer of Israeli genocide outside Israel, voted against.
However, despite this massive majority, such is the undemocratic structure of the UN that it only requires US opposition in the Security Council to veto the democratic vote.
Notwithstanding New Zealand’s support for Palestine broadening its role in the General Assembly and its support for the two-state solution, the government does not officially recognise Palestine.
While its position on recognition is consistent with that of the genocide-supporting United States, it is inconsistent with the over 75 percent of UN member states who, in March 2025, recognised Palestine as a sovereign state (by 147 of the 193 member states).
NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon . . . his government should “correct this obscenity” of not recognising Palestinians’ right to have a sovereign nation. Image: RNZ/politicalbytes.blog/
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s government does have the opportunity to correct this obscenity as Palestine recognition will soon be voted on again by the General Assembly.
In this context it is helpful to put the Hamas-led attack on Israel in its full historical perspective and to consider the reasons justifying the Israeli genocide that followed.
7 October 2023 and genocide justification The origin of the horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the associated increased persecution, including killings, of Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank (of the River Jordan) was not the attack by Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups on 7 October 2023.
This attack was on a small Israeli town less than 2 km north of the border. An estimated 1,195 Israelis and visitors were killed.
The genocidal response of the Israeli government that followed this attack can only be justified by three factors:
The Judaism or ancient Jewishness of Palestine in Biblical times overrides the much larger Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine prior to formation of Israel in 1948;
The right of Israelis to self-determination overrides the right of Palestinians to self-determination; and
The value of Israeli lives overrides the value Palestinian lives.
The first factor is the key. The second and third factors are consequential. In order to better appreciate their context, it is first necessary to understand the Nakba.
Understanding the Nakba Rather than the October 2023 attack, the origin of the subsequent genocide goes back more than 70 years to the collective trauma of Palestinians caused by what they call the Nakba (the Disaster).
The foundation year of the Nakba was in 1948, but this was a central feature of the ethnic cleansing that was kicked off between 1947 and 1949.
During this period Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.
The Nakba – the Palestinian collective trauma in 1948 that started ethnic cleansing by Zionist paramilitary forces. Image: David Robie/APR
During the Nakba in 1948, approximately half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people, were expelled from their homes or forced to flee. Initially this was through Zionist paramilitaries.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in May this repression was picked up by its military. Massacres, biological warfare (by poisoning village wells) and either complete destruction or depopulation of Palestinian-majority towns, villages, and urban neighbourhoods (which were then given Hebrew names) followed
By the end of the Nakba, 78 percent of the total land area of the former Mandatory Palestine was controlled by Israel.
Genocide to speed up ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing was unsuccessfully pursued, with the support of the United Kingdom and France, in the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. More successful was the Six Day War of 1967, which included the military and political occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Throughout this period ethnic cleansing was not characterised by genocide. That is, it was not the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying them.
Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians began in May 1948 and has accelerated to genocide in 2023. Image: politicalbytes.blog
In fact, the acceptance of a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine) under the ill-fated Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995 put a temporary constraint on the expansion of ethnic cleansing.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel, along with South Africa the same year (until 1994), has been an apartheid state. I discussed this in an earlier Political Bytes post (15 March 2025), When apartheid met Zionism.
However, while sharing the racism, discrimination, brutal violence, repression and massacres inherent in apartheid, it was not characterised by genocide in South Africa; nor was it in Israel for most of its existence until the current escalation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Following 7 October 2023, genocide has become the dominant tool in the ethnic cleansing tool kit. More recently this has included accelerating starvation and the bombing of tents of Gaza Palestinians.
The magnitude of this genocide is discussed further below.
The Biblical claim Zionism is a movement that sought to establish a Jewish nation in Palestine. It was established as a political organisation as late as 1897. It was only some time after this that Zionism became the most influential ideology among Jews generally.
Despite its prevalence, however, there are many Jews who oppose Zionism and play leading roles in the international protests against the genocide in Gaza.
Zionist ideology is based on a view of Palestine in the time of Jesus Christ. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Based on Zionist ideology, the justification for replacing Mandate Palestine with the state of Israel rests on a Biblical argument for the right of Jews to retake their “homeland”. This justification goes back to the time of that charismatic carpenter and prophet Jesus Christ.
The population of Palestine in Jesus’ day was about 500,000 to 600,000 (a little bigger than both greater Wellington and similar to that of Jerusalem today). About 18,000 of these residents were clergy, priests and Levites (a distinct male group within Jewish communities).
Jerusalem itself in biblical times, with a population of 55,000, was a diverse city and pilgrimage centre. It was also home to numerous Diaspora Jewish communities.
In fact, during the 7th century BC at least eight nations were settled within Palestine. In addition to Judaeans, they included Arameans, Samaritans, Phoenicians and Philistines.
A breakdown based on religious faiths (Jews, Christians and Muslims) provides a useful insight into how Palestine has evolved since the time of Jesus. Jews were the majority until the 4th century AD.
By the fifth century they had been supplanted by Christians and then from the 12th century to 1947 Muslims were the largest group. As earlier as the 12th century Arabic had become the dominant language. It should be noted that many Christians were Arabs.
Adding to this evolving diversity of ethnicity is the fact that during this time Palestine had been ruled by four empires — Roman, Persian, Ottoman and British.
Prior to 1948 the population of the region known as Mandate Palestine approximately corresponded to the combined Israel and Palestine today. Throughout its history it has varied in both size and ethnic composition.
The Ottoman census of 1878 provides an indicative demographic profile of its three districts that approximated what became Mandatory Palestine after the end of World War 1.
Group
Population
Percentage
Muslim citizens
403,795
86–87%
Christian citizens
43,659
9%
Jewish citizens
15,011
3%
Jewish (foreign-born)
Est. 5–10,000
1–2%
Total
Up to 472,465
100.0%
In 1882, the Ottoman Empire revealed that the estimated 24,000 Jews in Palestine represented just 0.3 percent of the world’s Jewish population.
The self-determination claim Based on religion the estimated population of Palestine in 1922 was 78 percent Muslim, 11 percent Jewish, and 10 percent Christian.
By 1945 this composition had changed to 58 percent Muslim, 33 percent Jewish and 8 percent Christian. The reason for this shift was the success of the Zionist campaigning for Jews to migrate to Palestine which was accelerated by the Jewish holocaust.
By 15 May 1948, the total population of the state of Israel was 805,900, of which 649,600 (80.6 percent) were Jews with Palestinians being 156,000 (19.4 percent). This turnaround was primarily due to the devastating impact of the Nakba.
Today Israel’s population is over 9.5 million of which over 77 percent are Jewish and more than 20 percent are Palestinian. The latter’s absolute growth is attributable to Israel’s subsequent geographic expansion, particularly in 1967, and a higher birth rate.
Palestine today (parts of West Bank under Israeli occupation). Map: politicalbytes.blog
The current population of the Palestinian Territories, including Gaza, is more than 5.5 million. Compare this with the following brief sample of much smaller self-determination countries — Slovenia (2.2 million), Timor-Leste (1.4 million), and Tonga (104,000).
The population size of the Palestinian Territories is more than half that of Israel. Closer to home it is a little higher than New Zealand.
The only reason why Palestinians continue to be denied the right to self-determination is the Zionist ideological claim linked to the biblical time of Jesus Christ and its consequential strategy of ethnic cleansing.
If it was not for the opposition of the United States, then this right would not have been denied. It has been this opposition that has enabled Israel’s strategy.
Comparative value of Palestinian lives The use of genocide as the latest means of achieving ethnic cleansing highlights how Palestinian lives are valued compared with Israeli lives.
While not of the same magnitude appropriated comparisons have been made with the horrific ethnic cleansing of Jews through the means of the holocaust by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Per capita the scale of the magnitude gap is reduced considerably.
Since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (and confirmed by the World Health Organisation) more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed. Of those killed over 16,500 were children. Compare this with less than 2000 Israelis killed.
Further, at least 310 UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) team members have been killed along with over 200 journalists and media workers. Add to this around 1400 healthcare workers including doctors and nurses.
What also can’t be forgotten is the increasing Israeli ethnic cleansing on the occupied West Bank. Around 950 Palestinians, including around 200 children, have also been killed during this same period.
Time for New Zealand to recognise Palestine The above discussion is in the context of the three justifications for supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians strategy that goes back to 1948 and which, since October 2023, is being accelerated by genocide.
First, it requires the conviction that the theology of Judaism in Palestine in the biblical times following the birth of Jesus Christ trumps both the significantly changing demography from the 5th century at least to the mid-20th century and the numerical predominance of Arabs in Mandate Palestine;
Second, and consequentially, it requires the conviction that while Israelis are entitled to self-determination, Palestinians are not; and
Finally, it requires that Israeli lives are much more valuable than Palestinian lives. In fact, the latter have no value at all.
Unless the government, including Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, shares these convictions (especially the “here and now” second and third) then it should do the right thing first by unequivocally saying so, and then by recognising the right of Palestine to be an independent state.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
United States President Donald Trump was “not happy” with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, this week.
For three consecutive nights, from Friday to Sunday, Russia launched about 900 drones and scores of missiles at Ukraine. At least 18 people were killed, including three children.
“We’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, after Putin ordered the largest air assault on Ukraine’s civilians in its three-year war.
Following up on his remarks, Trump posted on social media that Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY!”
Putin is not crazy. He is a tactician with a long-term goal: to make Russia a great power again and secure his place in the history books as the re-builder of Russia’s imperial might.
Trump announced after a phone call with Putin on May 19 that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start negotiations” towards a ceasefire.
With his latest air campaign on Ukraine, however, Putin is threatening to destroy the goodwill he’s built up in Washington, where Trump has been consistently soft on Russia and tough on his allies.
So, what is Putin’s strategy? Why is he launching these massive air bombardments on Ukrainian civilians now?
Putin sees weakness in the West
One theory is these attacks are somehow preparations for a major offensive. That makes little sense.
Attacking military facilities, weapons depots or even frontline troops are useful preparations for an impending attack. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, meanwhile, is a sign of either desperation or impatience.
The US also sent bombers to Japan in the final stages of the war because the American public became tired of seeing their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers die on Pacific islands they had never heard of. The war had dragged on forever by this point, and there seemed no end in sight.
Is Putin desperate or impatient? Likely the latter.
From the perspective of the Kremlin, Russia’s strategic situation is as good as it has been for years.
The US is trying to destroy itself through trade wars and boorish diplomacy. Trump clearly dislikes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and hopes the war will somehow end if he just demands it.
Europe is continuing to back Ukraine. However, for the time being, it still needs US support because its entire security structure is built around NATO and US strength, both economic and military.
What Putin sees when he surveys the international scene is weakness. In his thinking, such weakness needs to be exploited – now is the time to hurt Ukraine as much as possible, and hope it will crack. Analysts call this a “cognitive warfare effort”.
Indiscriminate air war on civilians is the only means Putin currently has to pressure Ukraine. His army has been advancing, but painfully slowly. There is no breakthrough in sight, even once the spring muds dry and the summer fighting season starts in earnest.
Russia has gradually advanced in Ukraine throughout 2024, but with no perceivable change in the overall situation. Putin does not command precision weapons or super spies, which he could use to take out Ukraine’s leadership.
All he can do is rain death on women, children and the elderly from relatively cheap, unsophisticated weapons, such as drones. He now has these in large supply, thanks to ramping up military production at home.
Bombing campaigns do not end wars
A strategic air war on civilians seldom works, however.
Japan’s surrender in 1945 is an exception, but it is misleading in many ways. The Americans had flattened Japan’s cities for a while already, just not using their new atomic weapons. Japan had already lost the war and the real question was if there would be a bloody US invasion or surrender.
And as the US dropped its two nuclear bombs in August of that year, the Red Army joined the fight, racing across Manchuria to help occupy Japanese territories.
In Germany, the British-American bombings from 1942 onwards certainly had an effect on war production, as they killed workers and destroyed factories. But they did not incapacitate the German army and certainly did not break morale.
Instead, the bombings led to embitterment and a closing of ranks around the regime. German society fought to the last moment. It did so not just despite, but because of the air war. The German army was eventually defeated by the ground troops of the Red Army, who took Berlin in an incredibly bloody fight.
Other historical failures are even more spectacular. The US air force dropped 864,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam during an air campaign of more than 300,000 sorties lasting from 1965 to late 1968. The North Vietnamese lost maybe 29,000 people (dead and wounded), more than half of them civilians. The Americans and their South Vietnamese allies still lost the war.
Putin’s air war will likely follow the historical pattern: it has further embittered the Ukrainians, who know very well that what comes from the east is not liberation.
Another summer of fighting lies ahead. Ukraine’s friends in the democratic world need to urgently redouble their efforts to support Ukraine. The misguided hopes that Putin would somehow “make a deal” lie under the rubble his drones leave behind in Ukraine’s cities.
Mark Edele receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nitin Deckha, Lecturer in Justice Studies, Early Childhood Studies, Community and Social Services and Electives, University of Guelph-Humber
The concern over the loss and transformation of work by generative AI is well-founded and widely documented.(Shutterstock)
These aren’t abstract concerns. Beyond the psychologist’s chair, the concern over the loss and transformation of work by generative AI is well-founded and widely documented by academic research studies and reports. As AI becomes more capable and embedded in daily routines, anxieties surrounding it are likely to intensify.
While the report notes that long-term productivity gains from these technologies remain uncertain, it found that certain jobs are being impacted more than others. Roles where generative AI can mimic human capacities — like data entry, administration, legal and executive secretaries, claim adjusters and examiners, and graphic designers — are declining the fastest.
Roles where generative AI can mimic human capacities, like administration, are most at risk of job loss. (Shutterstock)
The report also noted a gendered impact: in high-income countries, 9.6 per cent of jobs held by women are at high risk of automation, compared to just 3.5 per cent of jobs held by men.
The impact on clerical jobs noted by the WEF is supported by ILO’s data as well. Joining these roles are what the ILO describes as “highly digitized cognitive jobs in media, software, and finance-related” fields.
The significant exposure of jobs such as securities and finance dealers and brokers, software developers, financial advisers, authors and writers, translators, interpreters and journalists underscores the encroachment of generative AI onto all sorts of “thinking” and creative work.
It is no wonder psychologists like Alvord suggest some humans are questioning what role they will have in the future world of work.
Although workplace trends like remote work, flexible hours and employees re-evaluating their job expectations were already underway before the pandemic, COVID-19 accelerated these shifts.
According to futurists at Policy Horizons Canada, there are a number of “game changers” transforming the future of work. Disruptive technologies like generative AI and automation are just one driver.
Another major force is the fraying of the social contract between employers and employees. This shift speaks to larger currents of anxiety, fear and employee disengagement and low morale. Put simply, employers and employees are no longer investing in each other as much as before.
With the erosion of benefits, the rise of the gig economy and the increasing cost of living, employees were already feeling vulnerable and anxious about their work before the launch of ChatGPT in 2023.
How can we cope with AI anxiety?
As with any form of anxiety, it’s important to acknowledge your feelings and take steps to avoid becoming overwhelmed.
Psychologists suggest several specific strategies for managing anxiety about generative AI. These include: trying out AI tools to figure out how and where they can be useful; taking breaks from technology to restore and revitalize; building new skills; and pursuing activities that activate human creativity and imagination.
One of the most effective responses to anxiety about AI is focusing on developing our own human capacities. (Shutterstock)
We identified 10 skills that were most frequently identified as key for the future of work: collaboration, communication, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, cross-cultural competency, decision-making and judgment, learning/willingness to learn, problem-solving and social intelligence/perceptiveness.
For those concerned about remaining employable in the face of AI disruption, focusing on these skills is a practical starting point, as they are likely to remain in demand as workplaces evolve.
Importantly, all these skills are “human” skills, meaning not digital or technological. In this context, perhaps one of the most effective responses to anxiety about AI is focusing on developing our own human capacities.
Of these, the second — complementing or augmenting human work — might be the best path forward. Rather than viewing generative AI solely as a threat, it can be seen as a tool that enhances human abilities.
Exploring how our own cognitive and creative capacities could be augmented through “collaborative intelligence” with generative AI, might be a useful antidote to being anxious about it.
Such collaboration may also catalyze our re-imagining of our relationship to work and enhance our sense of purpose in a rapidly changing world.
Nitin Deckha 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel O’Brien, Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex
As someone attuned to the distinct styles of auteur filmmakers, I came to Wes Anderson’s latest offering The Phoenician Scheme intrigued, feeling a mix of distance and familiarity.
My appreciation for other auteur directors like Stanley Kubrick, Spike Lee and Alfred Hitchcock may have sometimes inadvertently pushed Anderson’s work to the periphery of my viewing habits, but The Phoenician Scheme (his 13th directorial film) provides an opportunity to reassess that omission.
The cinematic trademarks were all there: deadpan performances, meticulous symmetry, whip-pan camera work (when the camera whips round so fast, everything blurs), ice-cream colour palettes and trains, frequently present in some form throughout Anderson’s
filmography.
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
And a Bill Murray cameo? Of course – along with other minor roles from Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade, Riz Ahmed and Benedict Cumberbatch (as well as many others), all appearing briefly across the film’s brisk 90-minute runtime – a fairly typical length for an Anderson feature.
Although I found The Phoenician Scheme a fairly enjoyable film and one that ardent fans will surely embrace, my issue was perhaps precisely within the formulaic nature of this work. This sense of familiarity makes the viewing simultaneously comfortable, but also a little predictable.
Aside from a genuinely unexpected explosion in the film’s opening moments, there was little that caught me off guard, making it difficult to gauge just how memorable The Phoenician Scheme will be in the long run. It entertains but rarely surprises and despite the litany of cameos, each one is fairly unmemorable. In fact, while writing this, I’ve only just remembered that Willem Dafoe is in a scene or two as well.
It’s not that anyone is necessarily giving a bad performance but rather each iteration of wry whimsy results in a kind of stylistic uniformity that renders them indistinct from one another. By contrast, the film’s three leading roles benefit from sustained screen time, allowing for a little more nuance.
Benicio del Toro leads the cast as Zsa-Zsa Korda, a rich and morally ambiguous industrialist, set within the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Phoenicia during the 1950s. Korda is on the point of political and personal ruin. His life is constantly in danger with ongoing visual and verbal gags from the beginning about his nonchalance towards assassination.
Korda faces execution threats from shadowy agencies and members of his own board to the extent that his suspiciousness has become a comfortable characteristic. Newcomer Mia Threapleton (daughter of Kate Winslet) stars as Liesl Korda, his estranged daughter who has spent years in quiet devotion as a nun in a remote convent.
Her sudden appointment as her father’s heir thrusts her back into a world she had long abandoned, continuing Anderson’s other fascination with fractured, complex familial dynamics, as the rest of her siblings look on. Michael Cera portrays Bjorn Lund, a docile yet quietly astute tutor with a fascination for insects, who is brought in to help Liesl adjust to her new responsibilities.
Without revealing too much, Lund turns out to be more than he initially seems, giving Cera the chance to slip back into that awkward, mock-cool persona –reminiscent of his Twin Peaks: The Return role, in which he channels a Marlon Brando–style rebel straight out of The Wild One.
In typical Anderson style, visual gags (here in the form of props) propel the film along, from Lund’s bugs to Liesl’s jewel-encrusted rosary and Korda’s weapons, which include grenades that he politely offers to other diplomats as a formal greeting.
The visually rich and symmetrical arrangement of characters, against a static or sideways moving camera reminded me of how much Anderson is inspired by Peter Greenaway’s work, particularly The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989).
Anderson draws on this auteur aesthetically and thematically but also through absurdity. While Greenaway’s films take inspiration from canvas painting, the closing credit sequence of The Phoenician Scheme also features well known artworks, serving as inspiration for the content.
The visuals, which are rich throughout, are also interestingly compacted to a 1.50 aspect ratio, making the frame of the screen quite box like. This is perhaps also relevant to the structure of the film in which most of the events and visitations of external characters are pre-organised into a range of numbered shoeboxes, which is afforded a lengthy sequence, with plenty of overview shots of the boxes neatly arranged.
Each section of the film that follows pertains to a certain box. Viewers are reminded as to which box they are in through a range of title cards which divides the film into a series of vignettes, not unlike Anderson’s chapter structure in The Royal Tenenbaums.
This earlier film is perhaps his better-known one about the estrangement and reconnection of dysfunctional family members. This trait can also be found in The Darjeeling Limited aboard a train, or in a submarine in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The Phoenician Scheme echoes these familiar tropes (domestic dysfunction wrapped in whimsical packaging) aboard a number of private plane journeys (with a token train scene in the middle).
While it may feel like a familiar journey aboard a new vessel, that familiarity will probably be either the reason you enjoy the ride – or the very thing that makes it feel like an exhausting commute, one where you’re tempted to pull the emergency cord.
While there is much to enjoy, I doubt The Phoenician Scheme will be remembered as one of Anderson’s most essential works. At times, it teeters on the edge of parodying its own auteur style. Despite this I found it compelling enough to spark a renewed interest in his earlier films.
And any work that can reignite curiosity, even while treading familiar ground, is worth your time, even if it’s only for a chance to play cameo bingo.
Daniel O’Brien 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Luiz, Professor of International Management and Strategy, University of Sussex
There are no longer any golden arches logos in Russia, but is the firm hoping for a return?forden/Shutterstock
Even as the war in Ukraine grinds on, some multinational companies are quietly positioning themselves for a thaw in relations with Russia.
Many of those who rushed to divest from the country, selling off assets after the full-scale invasion in 2022, may now be reassessing their options. It’s also becoming clear that some of these companies never completely left to begin with.
What is apparent is that divestment was, in many cases, provisional rather than permanent – with firms embedding “buy-back” clauses in their sales contracts, or structuring their exits in ways that would make future re-entry simple.
This should not come as a surprise. Our research into foreign divestment from apartheid-era South Africa shows this is a well-trodden business path.
In South Africa, sanctions inadvertently strengthened local white business elites aligned with the ruling regime. Multinationals sold their assets under pressure – often at discounts, often to the local companies of politically connected elites – and later bought them back at a premium.
Today, the same dynamic could be playing out in Russia.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, more than 1,600 multinational enterprises announced they were pulling out of the country. However, reports last year suggested that 2,175 foreign companies, including some who had announced they were pulling out, remained in Russia – and were becoming increasingly open about their operations.
One CEO stated that investors did not “morally care” about doing business in Russia, and that if they pulled out, rivals would simply take their place.
Even for those companies that did leave, many of these exits were more symbolic than substantial. Research has shown that even companies that claimed to have fully divested left behind options to return.
Carmaker Nissan, for example, appears to have sold its Russian subsidiary to state-owned NAMI in 2022 with a six-year buy-back clause. In a statement at the time, the company said the terms allowed it “the option to buy back the entity and its operations within the next six years”.
And fast-food giant McDonald’s can reportedly reacquire its Russian business within 15 years. A statement from McDonald’s in 2022 said that, for the first time in its history, it was “de-Arching” a major market – but suggested it hoped to return eventually.
Such arrangements, often quietly written into exit contracts, allow multinationals to comply with sanctions in the short term – while keeping the door open for a future comeback.
In many cases, the operations have continued seamlessly under new ownership. While the brand names may have changed in Russia, the staff and product designs remain almost identical. And sometimes, the foreign supply chains and intellectual property are still in play too.
Who profits?
The South African precedent is instructive. During the 1980s, foreign companies divested under pressure from shareholders, activists and governments over apartheid. But very few truly left. Most sold their operations to local elites – powerful business groups aligned with the ruling regime. They then continued to supply products, license trademarks and support operations through quiet back channels.
The intention of sanctions is to weaken the sanctioned state. However, our study shows that the economic value created by foreign multinationals in South Africa did not disappear.
The aim of sanctions against Russia is to weaken the economic position of the Kremlin. E.O./Shutterstock
In Russia, foreign companies have sold assets at big discounts to Russian oligarchs and state-linked entities since 2022. In some cases, the buyers were longstanding local partners or franchisees. In others, they were entities unknown to consumers but which were thought to have close ties to the Kremlin.
The consequences are predictable. Rather than weakening the regime’s economic base, sanctions may have consolidated it. As in South Africa, the departure of foreign firms appears to have strengthened domestic elites and allowed them to accumulate new assets and market power.
Some companies that left Russia are reported to be reconsidering their decisions. Negotiations are taking place behind the scenes about how to ree-stablish operations should conditions shift. Their re-entry may be smoothed by structures – buy-back clauses, licensing deals or local partnerships – that firms put in place on their way out.
This strategy mirrors what we found in South Africa. In the 1990s, once apartheid ended, foreign multinationals returned in large numbers. But they didn’t start from scratch. They repurchased their former assets, often at a much higher price, from the local elites.
In short, in the case of South Africa at least, the period of supposed withdrawal was often one of careful preparation for re-entry. Meanwhile, our study also found that South African conglomerates used their windfalls to fund international expansion and entrench their power in the new economy.
Unintended results
Sanctions remain a key tool of international diplomacy. But our research shows their effectiveness depends heavily on how firms implement them – and who ends up with the assets that are divested. If those assets are consistently transferred to politically connected insiders, the long-term outcome may be to reinforce the very regimes the sanctions were intended to pressure.
Sanctions policy should not just consider whether firms have divested, but how and to whom. Without that, even the most well-intentioned measures may end up producing unintended results.
This means that governments should go beyond imposing sanctions and develop mechanisms to ensure transparency, monitoring and accountability in how corporate exits are structured.
South African sanctions are generally seen as having played a useful role in ending apartheid. But as unemployment and inequality continue to plague the country along old institutional lines, the South African experience offers a clear historical warning. If sanctions are meant to promote accountability and change, it’s vital to pay close attention to what happens after the headlines fade.
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.
For many people, “plastic pollution” calls to mind pictures of turtles and other marine life drowning in single-use plastic bottles and discarded fishing nets. My own research looks at how the same story is playing out on land.
Plastics are increasingly found in small mammals, insects and the soil. But how it moves through these ecosystems – and the damage it might be doing – is still poorly understood.
My own research into this started during my masters degree. I wanted to find out if plastic pollution was affecting UK mammals – and the results were startling.
Colleagues and I first looked at the faeces of a range of small UK mammals. We then used a special machine that detects infrared light to identify different types of plastic.
We found plastics in the faeces of European hedgehogs, wood mice, field vole, and brown rats. Of the 189 hedgehog samples, 19% contained plastics. In one sample alone I was shocked to find a total of 12 pink and clear fibres of polyester. This is the UK’s most popular wild mammal, and no one knew they were ingesting plastic.
Where the microplastics came from
As part of my ongoing PhD, the next step was figuring out how this plastic was getting into the hedgehogs in the first place. Hedgehogs feed on invertebrates like beetles, snails, slugs, earthworms, caterpillars and woodlice. We wanted to see if those creatures could themselves be contaminated by plastic.
We collected over 2,000 invertebrates and soil samples from 51 sites in Sussex, England. The sites covered farmland, grassland and suburban areas.
To trace how plastic might move through the food web, we sampled creatures at various different points in the food web (known as “trophic levels”). This meant plant-eaters, like peacock butterfly caterpillars, and earthworms and other animals that feed on dead plants. We sampled omnivores who will eat all sorts, like the red-footed soldier beetle, and carnivores like ladybirds and ground beetles, who eat other animals and are found higher up the food web.
After we had grouped the invertebrates by both species and location, we had 530 samples to analyse. We recently published our results in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
Overall, plastic showed up in 12% of the invertebrate samples. Earthworms had the highest rate at 29%, followed by snails & slugs at 24%. Interestingly, the types of plastic found in carnivores didn’t match those in herbivores and dead plant-eaters. That suggests the carnivores are not just getting it from eating contaminated prey – they might also be picking up plastic as they move through the soil or even from airborne particles that land on their next meal.
Earthworms are particularly plastic pollution-prone. VaskePro / shutterstock
We also found the first evidence of plastic in species of caterpillar like the peacock, powder blue and red admiral butterflies, and in beetles such as ladybirds.
The most common plastic we found was polyester, probably from clothing and furniture. Other common plastics were those used in single-use packaging, agricultural materials (such as fleece, mulch film, greenhouse films and silage wrap), and even paint.
So, does it matter if a few slugs or worms are ingesting plastic? Absolutely.
Invertebrates play important roles within their ecosystems. Earthworms, for example, add air to the soil and help cycle nutrients. Therefore, when they consume plastic, it affects the animals that prey on them, the soil they live in, and even the food we grow.
In fact, plants grown in plastic-contaminated soil have been shown to take microplastics into their cells. This can stunt their growth and limit the water they can retain, and ultimately reduce our ability to grow the food we need.
Insect-eating birds like swifts,thrushes and blackbirds are also ingesting similar plastic, likely from their prey. This can stunt their growth, damage organs, and make them less fertile.
It is too easy to place the responsibility solely on individuals to avoid single-use packaging, recycle more, and avoid synthetic materials. These things make a difference, of course, but big polluters must be held accountable. That means fast fashion companies, drinks giants, supermarket chains and the agriculture sector, which all produce a huge amount of plastic waste and have failed to take responsibility for the damage this causes.
If we want to protect ecosystems from plastic – on land as well as at sea – we need more than personal action. We need serious accountability, better waste management, and real investment in truly sustainable alternatives.
Emily Thrift 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Folahanmi Aina, Lecturer in Political Economy of Violence, Conflict and Development, SOAS, University of London
Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap), one of the most powerful global affiliates of the Islamic State jihadist organisation, is in the middle of its largest offensive against the Nigerian military in years.
The group has overrun security positions in Borno state, a region of north-east Nigeria, a dozen times in the past few months. Borno state has been the epicentre of a conflict between the Nigerian army and jihadist insurgents for 15 years. The UN Development Programme said in 2021 that the violence had killed more than 35,000 people there directly.
The latest offensive began in March with a string of attacks. This included an improvised explosive device planted underneath a commercial vehicle in Biu, a town in southern Borno state, which killed four people and injured four others.
Iswap then launched several more attacks the following month, including an operation on a Nigerian army barracks in Yamtage town. It claimed to have killed three soldiers. The group sustained its campaign into May, with the launch of one of its most sophisticated attacks in recent memory.
On May 12, suspected Iswap militants stormed the town of Marte, capturing several soldiers and forcing others to retreat. A coordinated dual strike on nearby Rann and Dikwa towns followed hours later. The insurgents now have a strong presence in Marte, which holds immense strategic value due to its access to Lake Chad smuggling corridors.
Iswap, which was originally formed in 2015 as an offshoot of Boko Haram and has around 5,000 fighters, appears to be adapting to the Nigerian army’s military strategy. Since 2019, the Nigerian army has consolidated its forces in a heavily fortified “super camp” in key towns and cities in the north-east, from which they can respond to reported insurgent activity.
However, Iswap militants have launched several attacks on some of these camps by using tactics such as nighttime raids. They have also targeted bridges and roads between the camps, as well as launching attacks on nearby positions as a diversion, to prevent reinforcements from reaching targeted bases.
There are several factors that could explain Iswap’s resurgence. The first is that there have been strategic shifts on the ground, including a lull in fighting between Iswap and rival faction Boko Haram over territorial control.
Niger also withdrew its troops from the region’s counter-terrorism joint task force in March. The security vacuum created by this withdrawal may have further emboldened Iswap to carry out its offensive.
Nigeria and Niger share a long border, so the reduction in military patrols could have led to an increase in the number of weapons and militants supplied to Iswap from its regional network.
The second factor is that the authorities have relied too heavily on responding militarily to the threat posed by Boko Haram and Iswap. The joint task force has launched several major offensives against the two groups in recent years, helping to contain the insurgency. This has led to the return of refugees to some parts of the Lake Chad basin.
But the reliance on military offensives has only prolonged the conflict, allowing the terrorist groups to evolve. Iswap, for instance, is now using sophisticated weaponry including armed drones to stage attacks.
A recent assault on a military base in Wajikoro in north-eastern Borno state began with the use of four drones armed with grenades. The group had previously used drones almost entirely to conduct surveillance and gather intelligence.
Dismantling and ultimately defeating terrorist groups such as Iswap in the region will require addressing the root causes and drivers of insecurity. These include poverty, inequality, unemployment, poor governance and weak institutions. Poverty rates in north-eastern Nigeria are estimated at over 70%, almost double the rate in the rest of the country.
The third factor that could explain Iswap’s resurgence is that it has been using technology effectively to expand its appeal, particularly among young people, and drive recruitment.
It has intensified its presence on social media, using TikTok to post videos justifying killings, lecture young audiences about extremist ideologies and spreading jihadist propaganda. It is also deploying AI tools to edit videos and written communications.
At the same time, it is making use of new satellite-based internet services such as Starlink to record footage of prayers and sermons. Starlink launched in 2019 with the aim of providing high-speed broadband internet to people all over the world, especially in remote areas.
Another factor is that Iswap has expanded its sources of funding. The group collects tax revenue from local populations in areas where it has a strong presence, with farmers in some parts of Borno state reportedly paying about ₦10,000 (£5) per hectare.
But Iswap is also allegedly tapping into Nigeria’s fast-growing cryptocurrency markets and earns considerable revenue from black market operations. The groups’s ability to rely on multiple revenue sources has ensured its supremacy over other terrorist groups in the region, while enabling it to plan and execute more sophisticated attacks.
The growing strength of Iswap will undoubtedly have dire consequences for peace and security in Nigeria. It could help coordinate Islamic State’s activity in west Africa, giving it a stronger foothold in the region.
Emphasis should be placed on addressing the root causes of the insurgency in Nigeria, as well as implementing tighter measures to constrain Iswap’s sources of funding.
Folahanmi Aina 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.
In May 2025, a post asking “[Am I the asshole] for telling my husband’s affair partner’s fiancé about their relationship?” quickly received 6,200 upvotes and more than 900 comments on Reddit. This popularity earned the post a spot on Reddit’s front page of trending posts. The problem? It was (very likely) written by artificial intelligence (AI).
The post contained some telltale signs of AI, such as using stock phrases (“[my husband’s] family is furious”) and excessive quotation marks, and sketching an unrealistic scenario designed to generate outrage rather than reflect a genuine dilemma.
While this post has since been removed by the forum’s moderators, Reddit users have repeatedly expressed their frustration with the proliferation of this kind of content.
High-engagement, AI-generated posts on Reddit are an example of what is known as “AI slop” – cheap, low-quality AI-generated content, created and shared by anyone from low-level influencers to coordinated political influence operations.
Estimates suggest that over half of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are written by AI. In response to that report, Adam Walkiewicz, a director of product at LinkedIn, told Wired it has “robust defenses in place to proactively identify low-quality and exact or near-exact duplicate content. When we detect such content, we take action to ensure it is not broadly promoted.”
But AI-generated low-quality news sites are popping up all over the place, and AI images are also flooding social media platforms such as Facebook. You may have come across images like “shrimp Jesus” in your own feeds.
Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.
AI-generated content is cheap. A report by the Nato StratCom Center of Excellence from 2023 found that for a mere €10 (about £8), you can buy tens of thousands of fake views and likes, and hundreds of AI-generated comments, on almost all major social media platforms.
While much of it is seemingly innocent entertainment, one study from 2024 found that about a quarter of all internet traffic is made up of “bad bots”. These bots, which seek to spread disinformation, scalp event tickets or steal personal data, are also becoming much better at masking as humans.
In short, the world is dealing with the “enshittification” of the web: online services have become gradually worse over time as tech companies prioritise profits over user experience. AI-generated content is just one aspect of this.
From Reddit posts that enrage readers to tearjerking cat videos, this content is extremely attention-grabbing and thus lucrative for both slop-creators and platforms.
This is known as engagement bait – a tactic to get people to like, comment and share, regardless of the quality of the post. And you don’t need to seek out the content to be exposed to it.
One study explored how engagement bait, such as images of cute babies wrapped in cabbage, is recommended to social media users even when they do not follow any AI-slop pages or accounts. These pages, which often link to low-quality sources and promote real or made-up products, may be designed to boost their follower base in order to sell the account later for profit.
Meta (Facebook’s parent company) said in April that it is cracking down on “spammy” content that tries to “game the Facebook algorithm to increase views”, but did not specify AI-generated content. Meta has used its own AI-generated profiles on Facebook, but has since removed some of these accounts.
What the risks are
This may all have serious consequences for democracy and political communication. AI can cheaply and efficiently create misinformation about elections that is indiscernible from human-generated content. Ahead of the 2024 US presidential elections, researchers identified a large influence campaign designed to advocate for Republican issues and attack political adversaries.
And before you think it’s only Republicans doing it, think again: these bots are as biased as humans of all perspectives. A report by Rutgers University found that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum rely on bots to promote their preferred candidates.
Researchers aren’t innocent either: scientists at the University of Zurich were recently caught using AI-powered bots to post on Reddit as part of a research project on whether inauthentic comments can change people’s minds. But they failed to disclose that these comments were fake to Reddit moderators.
Reddit is now considering taking legal action against the university. The company’s chief legal officer said: “What this University of Zurich team did is deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level.”
Political operatives, including from authoritarian countries such as Russia, China and Iran, invest considerable sums in AI-driven operations to influence elections around the democratic world.
How effective these operations are is up for debate. One study found that Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 US elections through social media were a dud, while another found it predicted polling figures for Trump. Regardless, these campaigns are becoming much more sophisticated and well-organised.
And even seemingly apolitical AI-generated content can have consequences. The sheer volume of it makes accessing real news and human-generated content difficult.
What’s to be done?
Malign AI content is proving to be extremely hard to spot by humans and computers alike. Computer scientists recently identified a bot network of about 1,100 fake X accounts posting machine-generated content (mostly about cryptocurrency) and interacting with each other through likes and retweets. Problematically, the Botometer (a tool they developed to detect bots) failed to identify these accounts as fake.
The use of AI is relatively easy to spot if you know what to look for, particularly when content is formulaic or unapologetically fake. But it’s much harder when it comes to short-form content (for example, Instagram comments) or high-quality fake images. And the technology used to create AI slop is quickly improving.
As close observers of AI trends and the spread of misinformation, we would love to end on a positive note and offer practical remedies to spot AI slop or reduce its potency. But in reality, many people are simply jumping ship.
Dissatisfied with the amount of AI slop, social media users are escaping traditional platforms and joining invite-only online communities. This may lead to further fracturing of our public sphere and exacerbate polarisation, as the communities we seek out are often comprised of like-minded individuals.
As this sorting intensifies, social media risks devolving into mindless entertainment, produced and consumed mostly by bots who interact with other bots while us humans spectate. Of course, platforms don’t want to lose users, but they might push as much AI slop as the public can tolerate.
Some research also shows promise in helping people to better identify deepfakes, but research is in its early stages.
Overall, we are just starting to realise the scale of the problem. Soberingly, if humans drown in AI slop, so does AI: AI models trained on the “enshittified” internet are likely to produce garbage.
Jon Roozenbeek has received funding from the UK Cabinet Office, the US State Department, the ESRC, Google, the American Psychological Association, the US Centers for Disease Control, EU Horizon 2020, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and the Alfred Landecker Foundation.
Sander van der Linden has received funding from the UK Cabinet Office, Google, the American Psychological Association, the US Centers for Disease Control, EU Horizon 2020, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and the Alfred Landecker Foundation.
Yara Kyrychenko receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is supported by the Alan Turing Institute’s Enrichment Scheme.
President Donald Trump delivers the commencement address at West Point on May 24, 2025.AP Photo/Adam Gray
President Donald Trump’s speech at the graduation of the class of 2025 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point included segments that were clearly scripted and portions that were obviously not.
During the unscripted portions, Trump, who wore a bright red “Make America Great Again” campaign hat during his entire appearance on May 24, 2025, delivered remarks that hit many of his frequent partisan political talking points. That included attacking presidential predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, describing immigrants to the U.S. as “criminals” and trumpeting other policy accomplishments in his first and second terms.
That level of partisanship in a military setting – on the campus of the nation’s first military academy, and before an audience of cadets and their families, many of whom are veterans – is unusual in the United States.
The Conversation U.S. has published several articles discussing the importance to democracy of keeping the military and partisan politics separate. Here are two highlights from that coverage.
1. Cadets focus on the Constitution
During the West Point ceremony, the graduates themselves took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And all of them had studied the significance of that oath, including in classes like those taught by Joseph G. Amoroso and Lee Robinson, active-duty Army officers who graduated from West Point and later served as professors there.
As Amoroso and Robinson wrote, those classes teach cadets that, like all military personnel, they serve the Constitution and the American people, not a particular person or political party:
“(O)ur oath forms the basis of a nonpartisan ethic. In the U.S., unlike in many other countries, the oath implies military leaders should be trusted for their expertise and judgment, not for their loyalty to an individual or political party. We emphasize to cadets the rules and professional expectations associated with this profound responsibility.”
Retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Samuel C. Mahaney, who teaches history, national security and constitutional law at Missouri University of Science and Technology, observed:
“(S)ince the days of George Washington, the military has been dedicated to serving the nation, not a specific person or political agenda. … (N)onpartisanship is central to the military’s primary mission of defending the country.”
Mahaney wrote that if Trump’s actions during his second term meant a change from the centuries of precedent, “military personnel at all levels would face a crucial question: Would they stand up for the military’s independent role in maintaining the integrity and stability of American democracy or follow the president’s orders – even if those orders crossed a line that made them illegal or unconstitutional?”
When world leaders engage, the assumption is always that they engage on issues based on verified facts, which their administrative staff are supposed to prepare. Under this assumption, we thought the meeting at the White House on 21 May between South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and US president Donald Trump would follow this pattern.
Issues of agriculture, farming and land (and rural crime) were central to the discussions. What is clear to us as agricultural economists is that the skewed views expressed by Trump about these issues originate in South Africa. This includes Trump’s statement: “But Blacks are not farmers.”
In our work as agricultural economists, we have, in many pieces and books (our latest titled The Uncomfortable Truth about South Africa’s Agriculture), tried to present South Africans with the real facts about the political economy policy reforms and structural dimensions of South African agriculture.
Writing on these matters was necessary given that official data – agricultural census 2017, as well as the official land audit of 2017 – all provide an incomplete picture of the real state and structure of South African agriculture. The reason is that the agricultural census, which is supposed to provide a comprehensive and inclusive assessment of the size and structure of the primary agricultural sector, and the land audit, which was supposed to record the ownership of all land in South Africa, are incomplete in their coverage.
The incomplete and inaccurate official data provides fertile ground for radical statements by the left and the right – and novices on social media. This is why South Africa has to deal with falsehoods coming from the US. These include Trump’s statement that black people are not farmers in South Africa.
South Africa is to blame for providing inaccurate data to feed these false narratives.
The facts presented here should allow a more nuanced interpretation of South Africa’s farm structure. Firstly, there are more black farmers in South Africa than white farmers. And not all white commercial farm operations are “large-scale”, and not all black farmers are “small-scale”, “subsistence” or “emerging”. Most farm operations can be classified as micro, or small in scale.
This is important so that one doesn’t view South Africa’s agriculture as mainly white farmers. Indeed, we are a country of two agricultures with black farmers mainly at small scale and accounting for roughly 10% of the commercial agricultural output. Still, this doesn’t mean they are not active in the sector. They mainly still require support to expand and increase output, but they are active.
The facts
In the wake of the circus in the Oval Office, we were amazed by the total silence of the many farmers’ organisations in South Africa. We have not seen one coming out to reject all of Trump’s claims. The only thing we can deduce from this is that these falsehoods suit the political position of some farmer organisations. But at what cost? Will many of their members be harmed by trade sanctions or tariffs against South Africa? The US is an important market for South Africa’s agriculture, accounting for 4% of the US$13.7 billion exports in 2024.
When Ramaphosa highlighted the fact that crime, and rural crime in particular, has an impact on all South Africans and that more black people than white people are being killed, Trump’s response was disturbing, to say the least: “But Blacks are not farmers”. This requires an immediate fact check.
We returned to the text from our chapter in the Handbook on the South African Economy we jointly prepared in 2021. In the extract below, we discuss the real numbers of farmers in South Africa and try to provide a sensible racial classification of farmers to denounce Trump’s silly statement.
As highlighted earlier, the two latest agricultural censuses (2007 and 2017) are incomplete as they restricted the sample frame to farm businesses registered to pay value added tax. Only firms with a turnover of one million rands (US$55,500) qualify for VAT registration.
We were able to expand the findings from the censuses with numbers from the 2011 population census and the 2016 community survey to better understand the total number of commercial farming units in South Africa. The Community Survey 2016 is a large-scale survey that happened between Censuses 2011 and 2021. The main objective was to provide population and household statistics at municipal level to government and the private sector, to support planning and decision-making.
Data from the 2011 population census (extracted from three agricultural questions included in the census) shows that 2,879,638 households out of South Africa’s total population, or 19.9% of all households, were active in agriculture for subsistence or commercial purposes.
Only 2% of these active households reported an annual income derived from agriculture above R307,000 (US$17,000). This translates into 57,592 households that can be considered commercial farmers, with agriculture as the main or only source of household income. This corresponds in some way with the 40,122 farming businesses that are registered for VAT as noted in the 2017 agricultural census report.
If we use the numbers from the agricultural census it is evident almost 90% of all VAT-registered commercial farming businesses could be classified as micro or small-scale enterprises. If the farm businesses excluded from the census are accounted for under the assumption that they are too small for VAT registration, then the fact still stands that the vast majority of all farm enterprises in South Africa are small family farms.
There are, however, 2,610 large farms (with turnover exceeding R22.5 million (US$1.2 million per annum) which are responsible for 67% of farm income and employed more than half the agricultural labour force of 757,000 farm workers in 2017.
Another way to get to farm numbers is to use the 2016 Community Survey. Using the shares as shown in Table 2, we estimate there are 242,221 commercial farming households in South Africa, of which only 43,891 (18%) are white commercial farmers. (This is very much in line with the VAT registered farmers but also acknowledging the fact that many white farm businesses are not necessarily registered for VAT.)
Let’s consider only the agricultural households with agriculture as their main source of income, surveyed in the 2016 community survey. We end up with a total of 132,700 households, of whom 93,000 (70%) are black farmers. This reality is something that policy makers and farm organisations find very difficult to deal with and it seems that Trump also found this too good to be true.
We have tried here in a long winded way to deal with farm numbers and how to get to a race classification of farmers in South Africa. In the end we trust that we have managed to show that there are more black farmers in South Africa than white farmers. Their share in total output is smaller than that of their white counterparts. The National Agricultural Marketing Council puts black farmers’ share of agricultural production as roughly 10%. But these numbers are also incomplete and largely an undercount.
It will always be challenging to get to the real number of black farmers’ share of agricultural output as nobody would ever know whether the potato or the cabbage on the shelf came from a farm owned by a black farmer or a white person but operated by a black farmer, for example. As South Africans know, the labour on farms, in pack houses, distribution systems and retail are all black. So, the sweat and hard work of black South African workers are integral to the food supply chain in South Africa.
Let’s get these facts straight and promote them honestly.
Wandile Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) and a member of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC).
Johann Kirsten 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.
Educators in a study agreed that the scarcity of dedicated resources, time, attention and training on bias affected their ability to assess their students’ development as accurately as they would like. (Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency/EDUimages), CC BY-NC-SA
Teachers’ perceptions and judgments of student skills are key to measuring children’s academic progress. But educators’ own biases can distort these perceptions and judgments.
Our team at the Offord Centre for Child Studies set out to understand more about how educators perceive the system for assessing kindergarten children’s development, in the context of children’s race, gender and family socioeconomic status.
In Ontario, kindergarten features five full days of play-based learning every week. Classes are led by a team of one teacher and one early childhood educator (ECE). Teachers have knowledge of the curriculum and are responsible for student learning and reporting to parents. ECEs have knowledge of early childhood development and plan age-appropriate activities to support development.
As part of our study, we conducted a series of four focus groups with kindergarten educators (five kindergarten teachers and one designated early childhood educator) from a school board in Ontario.
To be eligible to participate, educators had to have previously participated in cultural responsiveness initiatives and administered a teacher-completed developmental health checklist for kindergarten students at least once. All participants in our focus group were female, taught schools in urban neighbourhoods and five of the six were racialized.
In Ontario, kindergarten features five full days of play-based learning every week. (Shutterstock)
Educators discussed how their feelings and potential biases might creep into their assessments, and the strategies they use to limit this bias. Specifically, we asked about their use of the standard tool for assessing child development in kindergarten: The Early Development Instrument (EDI).
The EDI asks teachers to evaluate children in five areas of development: physical health and well-being; social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive development; and communication skills and general knowledge.
Race-related data are not routinely collected with the EDI (such as asking teachers to report how a child’s family identifies a child’s race, or in reporting their own race), even though, as some researchers and educators have noted, race-related data could be used to inform provision of supports.
Several key themes emerged from our discussions with educators. First, educators admitted that the social identities and demographic characteristics of the students in their classrooms could impact how they interpret kindergarteners’ skills and behaviours.
They explained that being exposed to a wide variety of students would increase their own awareness of children’s and their families’ identities, shaped by factors like race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status and language, and help broaden their perceptions. For example, this would allow them to have a greater understanding of the range of behaviours children display.
Second, educators addressed the consequences of racial and gender biases in schools, some of them reflecting systemic racism. Educators acknowledged these systemic biases could impact their internal expectations of students, and potentially their reactions and interpretation of student behaviour.
Recognizing the potential for such unfairness, educators also identified deliberate strategies they use to minimize the impact of individual and systemic biases on their assessment.
They told us they pause and think critically about what may influence their perceptions of students, reframe how they might be looking at certain situations (that is, taking an “asset-based” approach, focusing on the students’ strengths) or check in with colleagues to be sure they’re being equitable.
The educators we interviewed revealed many personal feelings come up as they complete assessments and interact with students. For example, educators noted that it can be hard to separate assessing a child from their history with the child, or that they felt they were judging the child’s family.
In addition to the acknowledgement that biases and preconceived expectations could colour their assessments, they also acknowledged that these feelings, whether positive or negative, can make it difficult to assess their pupils objectively.
Similar to exposure to a diverse group of students, having knowledge of the whole child and building trusting and reciprocal relationships with families are other ways educators can reduce the impact of bias. For example, if their family is going through hard times, it could be expected that the child might be sad or worried.
Regarding the specific characteristics of the EDI, educators explained it was sometimes difficult to choose the most accurate responses to each item on a checklist when there were only two or three options.
Educators said they often wished they could explain their responses more.
Finally, educators agreed that the scarcity of dedicated resources, time, attention and training on bias affected their ability to assess their students’ development as accurately as they would like.
Policy improvements needed
While our study used the example of the EDI to elicit the discussion on assessment being influenced by student identities, the issues mentioned by educators go beyond this specific tool.
In our study, educators were not only aware of this influence; they used strategies to overcome it. These educators acknowledge that their expertise in evaluating children’s skills and behaviours can improve with better knowledge of and relationships with individual children and their families, by collaborating with colleagues and by having more time and training.
Our results suggest that policy improvements are necessary to make sure all educators have access to better strategies and opportunities to reduce unintended identity bias and provide more accurate assessments.
Given that the educators in this study had already participated in cultural responsiveness initiatives, further research could examine how interventions mitigate occurrences of particular biases and their potential adverse effects on students.
This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Council Partnership Engagement Grant.
United States President Donald Trump was “not happy” with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, this week.
For three consecutive nights, from Friday to Sunday, Russia launched about 900 drones and scores of missiles at Ukraine. At least 18 people were killed, including three children.
“We’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, after Putin ordered the largest air assault on Ukraine’s civilians in its three-year war.
Following up on his remarks, Trump posted on social media that Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY!”
Putin is not crazy. He is a tactician with a long-term goal: to make Russia a great power again and secure his place in the history books as the re-builder of Russia’s imperial might.
Trump announced after a phone call with Putin on May 19 that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start negotiations” towards a ceasefire.
With his latest air campaign on Ukraine, however, Putin is threatening to destroy the goodwill he’s built up in Washington, where Trump has been consistently soft on Russia and tough on his allies.
So, what is Putin’s strategy? Why is he launching these massive air bombardments on Ukrainian civilians now?
Putin sees weakness in the West
One theory is these attacks are somehow preparations for a major offensive. That makes little sense.
Attacking military facilities, weapons depots or even frontline troops are useful preparations for an impending attack. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, meanwhile, is a sign of either desperation or impatience.
The US also sent bombers to Japan in the final stages of the war because the American public became tired of seeing their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers die on Pacific islands they had never heard of. The war had dragged on forever by this point, and there seemed no end in sight.
Is Putin desperate or impatient? Likely the latter.
From the perspective of the Kremlin, Russia’s strategic situation is as good as it has been for years.
The US is trying to destroy itself through trade wars and boorish diplomacy. Trump clearly dislikes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and hopes the war will somehow end if he just demands it.
Europe is continuing to back Ukraine. However, for the time being, it still needs US support because its entire security structure is built around NATO and US strength, both economic and military.
What Putin sees when he surveys the international scene is weakness. In his thinking, such weakness needs to be exploited – now is the time to hurt Ukraine as much as possible, and hope it will crack. Analysts call this a “cognitive warfare effort”.
Indiscriminate air war on civilians is the only means Putin currently has to pressure Ukraine. His army has been advancing, but painfully slowly. There is no breakthrough in sight, even once the spring muds dry and the summer fighting season starts in earnest.
Russia has gradually advanced in Ukraine throughout 2024, but with no perceivable change in the overall situation. Putin does not command precision weapons or super spies, which he could use to take out Ukraine’s leadership.
All he can do is rain death on women, children and the elderly from relatively cheap, unsophisticated weapons, such as drones. He now has these in large supply, thanks to ramping up military production at home.
Bombing campaigns do not end wars
A strategic air war on civilians seldom works, however.
Japan’s surrender in 1945 is an exception, but it is misleading in many ways. The Americans had flattened Japan’s cities for a while already, just not using their new atomic weapons. Japan had already lost the war and the real question was if there would be a bloody US invasion or surrender.
And as the US dropped its two nuclear bombs in August of that year, the Red Army joined the fight, racing across Manchuria to help occupy Japanese territories.
In Germany, the British-American bombings from 1942 onwards certainly had an effect on war production, as they killed workers and destroyed factories. But they did not incapacitate the German army and certainly did not break morale.
Instead, the bombings led to embitterment and a closing of ranks around the regime. German society fought to the last moment. It did so not just despite, but because of the air war. The German army was eventually defeated by the ground troops of the Red Army, who took Berlin in an incredibly bloody fight.
Other historical failures are even more spectacular. The US air force dropped 864,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam during an air campaign of more than 300,000 sorties lasting from 1965 to late 1968. The North Vietnamese lost maybe 29,000 people (dead and wounded), more than half of them civilians. The Americans and their South Vietnamese allies still lost the war.
Putin’s air war will likely follow the historical pattern: it has further embittered the Ukrainians, who know very well that what comes from the east is not liberation.
Another summer of fighting lies ahead. Ukraine’s friends in the democratic world need to urgently redouble their efforts to support Ukraine. The misguided hopes that Putin would somehow “make a deal” lie under the rubble his drones leave behind in Ukraine’s cities.
Mark Edele receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
A marine heatwave has been building in the ocean surrounding the UK during an exceptionally warm and dry spring. In other words, the sea surface temperature has been within the top 10% of records for each day of the year since at least the beginning of 2025.
How can we know the temperature of the sea surface over such a large area? Throughout April and May 2025, scientists have been able to map and monitor the seas surrounding the UK via satellites, buoys and other floating devices, plus computer models that simulate the ocean’s physical and chemical properties.
Infrared detectors mounted on pole-orbiting satellites can infer the temperature of the top layer of the ocean and have been doing so continuously since the late 1970s. These sensors cannot “see” through clouds, which is why other sources of data are essential.
These datasets are now 45 years old, which is long enough to create a baseline assessment of the climate during that time. This is important to properly contextualise any departures from the long-term average. Without it, scientists would not know how severe and widespread a marine heatwave truly is.
Thanks to a research station that has been collecting ocean temperatures in the western English Channel for over a century, we know that this part of the sea south of Devon is 2.7°C warmer than the 120-year average, which makes it a category II (“strong”) marine heatwave within the four-category scheme.
The importance of long-term monitoring
Marine heatwaves are different to what we expect in a meteorological heatwave. Since 2023, the waters around the UK have been regularly experiencing marine heatwave conditions, because the data shows that the sea temperature has been in the top 10% of records: but most of us would admit that a sea temperature of 10°C in early March doesn’t exactly conjure up the impression of a heatwave.
The search for better definitions of a marine heatwave continues among scientists, particularly as long-term baseline temperatures continue to warm and the top 10% of warm temperatures shifts upwards. Datasets gathered over several decades in the same place are valuable to this effort.
For example, the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the Marine Biological Association have been monitoring conditions in the western English Channel for over a century. One of the longest running surveys in the world is situated 20 miles south of Plymouth.
Station E1 was originally founded by the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas in 1902, as part of the English (hence the “E”) effort in ocean observation.
What sets E1 apart is the near continuous nature of its recording since then, the frequency of its data collection (monthly in winter, fortnightly in summer) and its sampling throughout the entire water column (80 metres deep), not just at the surface. This enables scientists to observe the seasonal progression of water mixing and layer formation in that location.
The 123-year old dataset shows that sea surface temperatures have increased markedly within the past 40 years, at a rate of around 0.6°C a decade. Warm anomalies have been increasingly common, and cold anomalies increasingly rare.
Marine heatwave conditions have become increasingly frequent, particularly since 2010. The data also shows that at a depth of 50 metres – well below the top layer of the ocean – temperatures have also increased markedly. The ongoing marine heatwave is not just a surface phenomenon.
Fishers are catching octopus in large numbers off Devon and Cornwall due to the warm sea temperatures. Captured by Aixa/Shutterstock
What caused this heatwave?
The marine heatwave of spring 2025 has resulted from a combination of factors. It boils down to the fact that more energy is being put into the ocean during the day than is being lost at night.
March 2025 was the sunniest March on record (since 1910), with UK Met Office statistics showing there were around 185 hours of sunshine. April set new records for UK solar power generation, with a peak of 12.2 gigawatts (GW) being produced on April 1 out of a possible solar generating capacity of 18 GW.
May continued that trend, with long periods of clear skies under areas of the atmosphere with persistent high pressure. High-pressure areas are also associated with relatively low winds, which restricts the mixing of the warm surface with cooler deep water.
During the spring, rapidly lengthening days mean the time for energy in (day) outweighs energy out (night). It has also been notable that the spring phytoplankton bloom was very early this year (during early March). This is when tiny plant cells at the seawater surface burst into life, like plants on land. The bloom finished relatively early and the surface waters cleared earlier.
The conditions during May at E1 resembled those we would ordinarily associate with midsummer, with the phytoplankton bloom sitting deeper in the water. The clearer water at the surface allowed sunlight to penetrate deeper.
It is evident from our century-plus of measurements that marine heatwaves are happening more frequently and that there appears to be an almost continuous marine heatwave state emerging around the UK.
The intensity of a marine heatwave is generally tied to persistent high-pressure areas remaining static over the UK, but it is still unclear whether or not this is an emerging climate pattern, or just an episode within the general patterns of change within UK seas.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
