Source: United States Senator for New Hampshire Maggie Hassan
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) released the following statement after voting against the Republican budget bill that will take health care away from tens of thousands of Granite Staters, make massive cuts to health care, and explode the national debt by trillions of dollars in order to pay for tax giveaways for corporate special interests and billionaires:
“Today, Congressional Republicans and President Trump pushed through a budget bill that will hurt Granite Staters for generations to come. This bill takes health care away from tens of thousands of Granite Staters, raises health premiums and other costs on all Americans, and saddles our children and grandchildren with trillions in debt in order to pay for tax giveaways for corporate special interests and billionaires.
“From doctors in the North Country to seniors in Nashua, I’ve heard from countless Granite Staters about the devastating impact that this bill will have on our communities. And as this bill now heads to the House, I join the majority of Granite Staters and Americans urging Congressional Republicans to reverse course.
“What families need most right now is relief from the high cost of essentials. I’ve joined many of my colleagues in putting forward bipartisan proposals to cut taxes and lower costs for hardworking families and small businesses. But instead of working with us to make life more affordable, the President and Congressional Republicans have doubled down on this bill, which will mean that more people will get sick, our economy will be weakened, and families will be hurt.”
Source: United States Senator for Hawaii Brian Schatz
U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) today voted against a Republican tax bill that will kick more than 16 million Americans off of health insurance, raise monthly health care costs across the country, and slash nutritional assistance for those in need – all in order to cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy.
“If enacted, the Republican tax bill will mean millions of people will lose health care coverage and everyone’s health care costs will go up. It’s worse than you think, but we can still stop it. The fight to kill this thing isn’t over yet. It’s up to all of us to keep doing whatever we can to make sure everyone knows just how terrible this bill really is,” said Senator Schatz. “Congress should be focused on lowering costs and improving people’s lives – this does the opposite.”
The Republican tax bill will cut coverage through Med-QUEST for more than 40,000 people in Hawai‘i, gut food assistance programs that more than 20,000 Hawai‘i families rely on, and raise the national debt by $3.3 trillion. The bill now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives for consideration.
Source: United States Senator for Hawaii Brian Schatz
U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) today voted against a Republican tax bill that will kick more than 16 million Americans off of health insurance, raise monthly health care costs across the country, and slash nutritional assistance for those in need – all in order to cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy.
“If enacted, the Republican tax bill will mean millions of people will lose health care coverage and everyone’s health care costs will go up. It’s worse than you think, but we can still stop it. The fight to kill this thing isn’t over yet. It’s up to all of us to keep doing whatever we can to make sure everyone knows just how terrible this bill really is,” said Senator Schatz. “Congress should be focused on lowering costs and improving people’s lives – this does the opposite.”
The Republican tax bill will cut coverage through Med-QUEST for more than 40,000 people in Hawai‘i, gut food assistance programs that more than 20,000 Hawai‘i families rely on, and raise the national debt by $3.3 trillion. The bill now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives for consideration.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY — Governor Gavin Newsom will announce a $750 million film and TV tax credit, boosting one of California’s hallmark industries, Los Angeles’ local economy, and thousands of industry jobs.
WHEN: Wednesday, July 2, at approximately 10:45 a.m.
LIVESTREAM: Governor’s Twitter page, Governor’s Facebook page, and the Governor’s YouTube page. This event will also be available to TV stations on the LiveU Matrix under “California Governor.”
NOTE: This in-person press event will be open to credentialed media only. Media interested in attending must RSVP by clicking here no later than 9 a.m., July 2. Location information will be provided upon confirmation.
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Jul 1, 2025
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Jun 30, 2025
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Source: United States Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF)
INDIANAPOLIS— The following seven individuals have been sentenced for their roles in a firearms theft and trafficking conspiracy:
Defendant
Charge(s)
Sentence
Zackary Doss, 27
Conspiracy to Receive, Possess, Store or Sell Stolen Firearms
Possession of a Firearm by a Felon
2.5 years imprisonment
3 years of supervised release
Dominique Ellison, 37
Possession of a Firearm by a Felon
1.5 years imprisonment
3 years of supervised release
Antonio Grant, 33
Conspiracy to Receive, Possess, Store or Sell Stolen Firearms
Possession of a Firearm by a Felon
3 years of probation
Ryan Hurt, 30
Conspiracy to Receive, Possess, Store or Sell Stolen Firearms
Possession of Stolen Firearms
4.5 years imprisonment
3 years of supervised release
Kevin Jones, Jr, 23
Conspiracy to Receive, Possess, Store or Sell Stolen Firearms
Possession or Sale of Stolen Firearms
3.5 years imprisonment
3 years of supervised release
Malyk Mendez, 32
Conspiracy to Receive, Possess, Store or Sell Stolen Firearms
1.5 years imprisonment
1 year of supervised release
Bruce Williams, 33
Conspiracy to Receive, Possess, Store or Sell Stolen Firearms
Possession of a Firearm by a Felon
9 years imprisonment
3 years of supervised release
According to court documents, Bruce Williams and Ryan Hurt—then employees at an Indianapolis shipping facility—masterminded a scheme to steal firearms and sell them for profit, utilizing accomplices Malyk Mendez and convicted felon Antonio Grant, among others. Firearms were ultimately sold to individuals including Kevin Jones, Jr., and convicted felons Dominique Ellison and Zackary Doss. Jones and Doss, in turn, then sold the firearms to numerous other individuals.
Between January and March 2022, the group made off with 240 firearms from four separate shipments headed for different states. The conspiracy began to unravel when ATF agents noticed a disturbing pattern: firearms sent through the Indianapolis terminal were missing key inventory.
A breakdown of stolen firearms, varying in make and models, is as follows:
9 mm semi-automatic handguns (174)
.38 caliber revolvers (13)
.22 caliber revolvers (2)
.45 caliber semi-automatic handguns (38)
semi-automatic rifles (5)
10mm semi-automatic handguns (8)
Williams and Hurt kept some firearms from the thefts for themselves but recruited others, including codefendants, to assist in locating buyers for the stolen guns. Williams also personally sold a substantial number of the stolen firearms.
Of the 240 firearms that were stolen, only 61 firearms have been recovered as of May 5, 2025; over three years since the thefts occurred. Five of those firearms were recovered from Williams and Hurt upon their arrests.
The other firearms recovered have been found in a wide array of criminal activity and locations; Indianapolis, Lafayette, Gary, Chicago, Florida, and Oklahoma, to name a few. The criminal activity has included felons possessing firearms, drug trafficking, domestic violence incidents, vehicle pursuits, shootings, carjackings, and homicides.
“Stolen firearms are a major source of crime guns for violent offenders and pose a serious threat to public safety,” said John E. Childress, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. “Working with our law enforcement partners, we’re committed to stopping gun traffickers, recovering stolen weapons, and keeping them out of the hands of dangerous individuals.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and IMPD investigated this case. The sentences were imposed by U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson.
Acting U.S. Attorney Childress thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Pamela S. Domash and Bradley P. Shepard, who prosecuted this case.
This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results.
HOUSTON, July 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — APA Corporation (Nasdaq: APA) today released its sustainability publications highlighting progress in environmental stewardship, social responsibility and corporate governance throughout 2024. This year, APA simplified its reporting into two complementary documents. Our Approach to Sustainability details the ongoing sustainability programs and initiatives. The 2025 Sustainability Progress Report contains progress on 2024 goals, yearly highlights, key performance data and new goals for 2025. To explore the publications, visit https://apacorp.com/sustainability.
“Our sustainability progress is tangible,” said APA CEO John J. Christmann IV. “APA has taken meaningful steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, minimize freshwater usage, and protect sensitive ecosystems. We remain committed to a strong safety culture and responsible operations. We are proud to share our 2024 highlights in the pages of our progress report.”
Highlights from the 2025 Sustainability Progress Report include:
Air – As industry partners, APA focuses on reducing emissions by setting goals, sharing knowledge, and delivering commitments. The company exceeded its goal to eliminate at least 1 million tonnes of annualized carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions between 2021 and 2024, completing over 50 global projects that eliminated 1.24 million tonnes of annualized CO2e emissions.
Water – APA aims to minimize freshwater use by recycling produced water, sourcing alternatives, and reducing overall water requirements for its operations. Ninety-seven percent of the global water use was produced water and brackish, nonfresh water.
People – As an organization, APA is committed to the health and safety of its employees, contractors and people in the communities where it operates. APA achieved or exceeded all corporate safety targets in 2024, including its lowest global Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) in company history at 0.16.
Community – In efforts to continue building a sustainable future, APA continues its work across three focus areas of community well-being, energy poverty and conservation. In 2024, APA spent 44% of its operating area’s budgets with local suppliers and contractors.
About APA
APA Corporation owns consolidated subsidiaries that explore for and produce oil and natural gas in the United States, Egypt and the United Kingdom and that explore for oil and natural gas offshore Suriname and elsewhere. APA posts announcements, operational updates, investor information and press releases on its website, www.apacorp.com.
The Justice Department announced today that it has filed a Statement of Interest in the lawsuit Equality State Policy Center v. Chuck Gray, defending Wyoming’s legitimate interest securing its voting process from fraud by requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Longstanding Supreme Court precedent recognizes that states have a significant interest in preventing fraud and safeguarding voter confidence in the election process. Wyoming’s documentary proof of citizenship law is a mechanism to enforce laws that prohibit non-citizen voting and ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots.
“It is a crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and it is important that the American people have confidence in the integrity of our elections.” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Gates of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Requiring documentary proof of citizenship is common sense and ensures that only citizens vote.”
The Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section enforces the civil provisions of federal statutes that protect the integrity of the vote, including the Voting Rights Act, National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote Act, and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) secured the largest expansion ever to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) as well as new funding for Medicaid as part of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” that passed the Senate today. Senator Hawley supported the legislation after negotiating the inclusion of these key Missouri priorities.
Senator Hawley’s RECA provision will deliver long-overdue compensation and health care for survivors of radiation-linked cancers in the St. Louis and St. Charles areas. The Senate-passed reconciliation bill will also deliver major relief for working people, such as no taxes on overtime, no taxes on tips, and a larger child tax credit for families. Following negotiations between Senate GOP Leadership and Senator Hawley, the legislation included a new $50 billion fund for rural hospitals. This means that Missouri is set to receive approximately $1 billion in new funding to support providers and Medicaid recipients over the next five years. Senator Hawley also secured the delay of any Medicaid reductions.
“RECA is generational legislation for Missouri and will finally deliver justice for survivors in the St. Louis region. And when this reconciliation bill is signed into law, Missouri will also see new health care funding and big tax cuts for working families. I call on the House to quickly pass this legislation and send it to President Trump’s desk,” said Senator Hawley. “But let me be clear, I will continue to do everything in my power to reverse future cuts to Medicaid. If Republicans want to be the party of the working class, we cannot cut health insurance for working people.”
For two years, Senator Hawley has fought to secure funding for survivors of nuclear contamination in Missouri and across the country, having twice passed a RECA reauthorization bill through the Senate in July 2023 and March 2024.
Senate Republicans Rammed Through Their Extreme Tax Spending Bill, Cutting Medicaid And SNAP For Millions To Pay For More Billionaire Tax Cuts
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) released the following statement after Senate Republicans passed their extreme tax spending bill that will take away health care coverage and food assistance from millions of Americans, all to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.
“What Senate Republicans just did is truly appalling: they passed an extreme tax spending bill that’ll slash health care coverage and food assistance for Nevadans who need it most in order to pay for more tax cuts for billionaires,” said Senator Rosen. “This extreme bill will also eliminate thousands of good-paying, clean energy jobs in our state while raising costs for hardworking families. It’s a disgrace. Hardworking Nevada families won’t ever forget how Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans betrayed them to give more money to the ultra-wealthy.”
Source: United States Senator for Tennessee Bill Hagerty
July 1, 2025
WASHINGTON—Today, Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) released the following statement on President Donald Trump’s nominees to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA):
“President Trump’s nominees must be confirmed quickly so they can get to work correcting the many errors and failed policies the Biden-era TVA board put into place. With this new board, we will work to make sure the United States enters the Golden Age of American energy – one that includes nuclear — that puts us back on a path towards energy independence. I look forward to confirming these qualified nominees in short order.”
Source: United States Senator for Michigan Gary Peters
Ahead of Final Passage, Peters Delivered Speech on Senate Floor to Voice His Opposition to the Bill
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Gary Peters (MI) released the following statement after Senate Republicans passed a bill that would add more than $3 trillion to the deficit, increase our skyrocketing national debt, and take away health care and food assistance from millions of Americans, including hundreds of thousands of Michiganders, in order to cut taxes for billionaires:
“The bill that Republicans just passed will rip health care away from hundreds of thousands of Michiganders, make it harder for families across the country to afford food and pay their energy bills, and balloon our deficit by trillions of dollars. Democrats did everything in our power to stop this legislation, but President Trump and Republicans in Congress are dead set on selling out hardworking Michiganders so they can pay for a massive tax cut for billionaires. This bill is reckless, irresponsible, and an unconscionable betrayal of American families. I voted no.”
nvitamos al público a una serie de seminarios web gratuitos que incluyen conversaciones con defensores de los derechos de personas con discapacidades, expertos, e influencers que compartirán la información más reciente sobre el acceso a la educación y el empleo, desafiando las percepciones sobre las personas con discapacidades y explicando cómo eliminar las barreras.
Según la fecha, los temas son:
8 de julio: Luchando por el acceso a la educación y la equidad para los estudiantes con discapacidades
15 de julio: Trabajando por la igualdad de acceso al empleo para las personas con discapacidades
22 de julio: Hannah y Shane Burcaw, los anfitriones del canal de YouTube Squirmy y Grubs (enlace en inglés) presentarán acerca de cambiar las percepciones sobre las discapacidades
29 de julio: El camino de Oregon hacia la accesibilidad: eliminando barreras
La serie de seminarios web gratuitos será presentada por la Comisión de Discapacidades de Oregon (Oregon Disabilities Commission, ODC por sus siglas en inglés), el Departamento de Servicios Humanos de Oregon (Oregon Department of Human Services), el Centro Noroeste de ADA (Northwest ADA Center-enlace en inglés) y Disability Rights Oregon para conmemorar y celebrar el aniversario 35 de la Ley de Estadounidenses con Discapacidades (Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA por sus siglas en inglés-enlace en inglés).
“La Ley de Estadounidenses con Discapacidades fue una gran victoria en la lucha por los derechos civiles. Creó la base para más igualdad e independencia. El aniversario de la ley es una oportunidad para reflexionar sobre el progreso que hemos logrado y para renovar nuestro compromiso de lograr un Oregon más inclusivo y accesible para las personas con discapacidades,” dijo Mark King, director de ODC. “Agradecemos a nuestros coanfitriones por su colaboración en las presentaciones de la próxima serie de seminarios web. Trabajar juntos nos ayuda a seguir educando, involucrando y abogando en formas que honran el espíritu y el impacto de la ADA.”
Los seminarios web serán todos los martes de julio de las 11:30 a.m. a la 1:00 p.m. hora del Pacífico, e iniciarán el 8 de julio. Las sesiones están abiertas al público y la inscripción está abierta en la página web del evento en Zoom (enlace en inglés).
La serie será accesible para las personas con discapacidades y se traducirá al español. También se brindarán subtítulos y Lengua de Señas Americana. Para preguntas sobre la accesibilidad de la serie de seminarios web o para pedir una adaptación, comuníquese con OregonDisabilities.Commission@odhsoha.oregon.gov.
Se compartirá más información sobre la serie, incluyendo las biografías de los presentadores y folletos para compartir en la página web del evento de la ADA del Departamento de Servicios Humanos de Oregon.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Jonathan Jackson – Illinois (1st District)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CHICAGO, IL — Congressman Jonathan L. Jackson (IL-1) today issued the following statement in strong opposition to the Senate’s passage of the so-called “One Big Ugly Bill,” and pledged to vote against the legislation and do everything in his power to prevent it from becoming law:
“Today, the U.S. Senate narrowly passed the ‘One Big Ugly Bill,’ a sweeping measure that threatens the economic security, health, and dignity of working families in Chicago and across the nation. I want to make it absolutely clear: I will vote NO on this bill, and I will fight with every tool at my disposal to stop this reckless attack on our communities.
This legislation would slash $290 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), putting over 205,000 Illinoisans—including tens of thousands of my constituents in Chicago—at risk of losing the food assistance they rely on to feed their families. It would impose new work requirements on adults ages 55–64, a change that could force thousands of older Chicagoans—many of whom are already struggling to find work—off SNAP and into food insecurity. Local food pantries like Irving Park Community Food Pantry and Meals on Wheels Chicago are already stretched thin; these cuts would mean more of our neighbors going hungry, and more pressure on nonprofits that are already struggling to keep up with rising demand.
The bill also slashes nearly $700 billion from Medicaid, jeopardizing health coverage for more than 300,000 Illinois residents, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage under this bill, with low-income and working-class families bearing the brunt of these cuts.
Meanwhile, this bill delivers massive new tax breaks to the wealthiest households and corporations, while adding $2.8 trillion to the national debt. The increase in the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap overwhelmingly benefits the top 5% of earners, while ordinary Chicagoans see their benefits slashed and their cost of living rise.
In Chicago, where nearly one in five households relies on SNAP and more than 40% of children are covered by Medicaid, the impact of this bill would be devastating. Families will face impossible choices between paying for food, medicine, and rent. Our city’s most vulnerable—children, seniors, people with disabilities—will be left to fend for themselves.
I urge my colleagues in the House to reject this cruel and shortsighted legislation. Chicagoans deserve better than a bill that takes from those with the least to give to those with the most. I will stand with our families, our seniors, and our children—and I will do everything in my power to ensure this bill never becomes law.”
Congressman Jackson is also seeking cosponsors for the following amendments to the “One Big Ugly Bill” to protect families from its most damaging provisions:
Amendment to strike Section 10102, which expands SNAP work requirements to seniors ages 55 to 65.
Amendment to strike Section 10107, which would eliminate funding for all SNAP-Ed (SNAP Education) programs.
“These amendments are essential to safeguard our seniors from punitive work requirements and to preserve vital nutrition education programs that help families make healthy choices,” said Jackson. “I call on my colleagues to join me in defending the basic dignity and well-being of our constituents.”
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Jonathan Jackson – Illinois (1st District)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CHICAGO, IL — Congressman Jonathan L. Jackson (IL-1) today issued the following statement in strong opposition to the Senate’s passage of the so-called “One Big Ugly Bill,” and pledged to vote against the legislation and do everything in his power to prevent it from becoming law:
“Today, the U.S. Senate narrowly passed the ‘One Big Ugly Bill,’ a sweeping measure that threatens the economic security, health, and dignity of working families in Chicago and across the nation. I want to make it absolutely clear: I will vote NO on this bill, and I will fight with every tool at my disposal to stop this reckless attack on our communities.
This legislation would slash $290 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), putting over 205,000 Illinoisans—including tens of thousands of my constituents in Chicago—at risk of losing the food assistance they rely on to feed their families. It would impose new work requirements on adults ages 55–64, a change that could force thousands of older Chicagoans—many of whom are already struggling to find work—off SNAP and into food insecurity. Local food pantries like Irving Park Community Food Pantry and Meals on Wheels Chicago are already stretched thin; these cuts would mean more of our neighbors going hungry, and more pressure on nonprofits that are already struggling to keep up with rising demand.
The bill also slashes nearly $700 billion from Medicaid, jeopardizing health coverage for more than 300,000 Illinois residents, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage under this bill, with low-income and working-class families bearing the brunt of these cuts.
Meanwhile, this bill delivers massive new tax breaks to the wealthiest households and corporations, while adding $2.8 trillion to the national debt. The increase in the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap overwhelmingly benefits the top 5% of earners, while ordinary Chicagoans see their benefits slashed and their cost of living rise.
In Chicago, where nearly one in five households relies on SNAP and more than 40% of children are covered by Medicaid, the impact of this bill would be devastating. Families will face impossible choices between paying for food, medicine, and rent. Our city’s most vulnerable—children, seniors, people with disabilities—will be left to fend for themselves.
I urge my colleagues in the House to reject this cruel and shortsighted legislation. Chicagoans deserve better than a bill that takes from those with the least to give to those with the most. I will stand with our families, our seniors, and our children—and I will do everything in my power to ensure this bill never becomes law.”
Congressman Jackson is also seeking cosponsors for the following amendments to the “One Big Ugly Bill” to protect families from its most damaging provisions:
Amendment to strike Section 10102, which expands SNAP work requirements to seniors ages 55 to 65.
Amendment to strike Section 10107, which would eliminate funding for all SNAP-Ed (SNAP Education) programs.
“These amendments are essential to safeguard our seniors from punitive work requirements and to preserve vital nutrition education programs that help families make healthy choices,” said Jackson. “I call on my colleagues to join me in defending the basic dignity and well-being of our constituents.”
Source: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Note: The expiration time in the watch graphic is amended if the watch is replaced, cancelled or extended.Note: Click for Watch Status Reports. SEL2
URGENT – IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED Severe Thunderstorm Watch Number 482 NWS Storm Prediction Center Norman OK 405 PM MDT Tue Jul 1 2025
The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued a
* Severe Thunderstorm Watch for portions of Western Nebraska Western South Dakota Northeast Wyoming
* Effective this Tuesday afternoon and evening from 405 PM until 1100 PM MDT.
* Primary threats include… Scattered large hail and isolated very large hail events to 2 inches in diameter possible Isolated damaging wind gusts to 70 mph possible
SUMMARY…Isolated to widely scattered severe storm development, potentially including a couple of high-based supercells, is expected regionally through early evening, with the possibility that a loosely organized cluster could evolve later this evening.
The severe thunderstorm watch area is approximately along and 70 statute miles east and west of a line from 65 miles north of Rapid City SD to 50 miles east of Sidney NE. For a complete depiction of the watch see the associated watch outline update (WOUS64 KWNS WOU2).
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…
REMEMBER…A Severe Thunderstorm Watch means conditions are favorable for severe thunderstorms in and close to the watch area. Persons in these areas should be on the lookout for threatening weather conditions and listen for later statements and possible warnings. Severe thunderstorms can and occasionally do produce tornadoes.
&&
OTHER WATCH INFORMATION…CONTINUE…WW 481…
AVIATION…A few severe thunderstorms with hail surface and aloft to 2 inches. Extreme turbulence and surface wind gusts to 60 knots. A few cumulonimbi with maximum tops to 550. Mean storm motion vector 29025.
…Guyer
SEL2
URGENT – IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED Severe Thunderstorm Watch Number 482 NWS Storm Prediction Center Norman OK 405 PM MDT Tue Jul 1 2025
The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued a
* Severe Thunderstorm Watch for portions of Western Nebraska Western South Dakota Northeast Wyoming
* Effective this Tuesday afternoon and evening from 405 PM until 1100 PM MDT.
* Primary threats include… Scattered large hail and isolated very large hail events to 2 inches in diameter possible Isolated damaging wind gusts to 70 mph possible
SUMMARY…Isolated to widely scattered severe storm development, potentially including a couple of high-based supercells, is expected regionally through early evening, with the possibility that a loosely organized cluster could evolve later this evening.
The severe thunderstorm watch area is approximately along and 70 statute miles east and west of a line from 65 miles north of Rapid City SD to 50 miles east of Sidney NE. For a complete depiction of the watch see the associated watch outline update (WOUS64 KWNS WOU2).
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…
REMEMBER…A Severe Thunderstorm Watch means conditions are favorable for severe thunderstorms in and close to the watch area. Persons in these areas should be on the lookout for threatening weather conditions and listen for later statements and possible warnings. Severe thunderstorms can and occasionally do produce tornadoes.
&&
OTHER WATCH INFORMATION…CONTINUE…WW 481…
AVIATION…A few severe thunderstorms with hail surface and aloft to 2 inches. Extreme turbulence and surface wind gusts to 60 knots. A few cumulonimbi with maximum tops to 550. Mean storm motion vector 29025.
…Guyer
Note: The Aviation Watch (SAW) product is an approximation to the watch area. The actual watch is depicted by the shaded areas. SAW2 WW 482 SEVERE TSTM NE SD WY 012205Z – 020500Z AXIS..70 STATUTE MILES EAST AND WEST OF LINE.. 65N RAP/RAPID CITY SD/ – 50E SNY/SIDNEY NE/ ..AVIATION COORDS.. 60NM E/W /57W DPR – 43E SNY/ HAIL SURFACE AND ALOFT..2 INCHES. WIND GUSTS..60 KNOTS. MAX TOPS TO 550. MEAN STORM MOTION VECTOR 29025.
LAT…LON 44980162 41090068 41090336 44980448
THIS IS AN APPROXIMATION TO THE WATCH AREA. FOR A COMPLETE DEPICTION OF THE WATCH SEE WOUS64 KWNS FOR WOU2.
Watch 482 Status Report Message has not been issued yet.
Note: Click for Complete Product Text.Tornadoes
Probability of 2 or more tornadoes
Low (10%)
Probability of 1 or more strong (EF2-EF5) tornadoes
Low ( 65 knots
Low (10%)
Hail
Probability of 10 or more severe hail events
Mod (50%)
Probability of 1 or more hailstones > 2 inches
Mod (30%)
Combined Severe Hail/Wind
Probability of 6 or more combined severe hail/wind events
High (70%)
For each watch, probabilities for particular events inside the watch (listed above in each table) are determined by the issuing forecaster. The “Low” category contains probability values ranging from less than 2% to 20% (EF2-EF5 tornadoes), less than 5% to 20% (all other probabilities), “Moderate” from 30% to 60%, and “High” from 70% to greater than 95%. High values are bolded and lighter in color to provide awareness of an increased threat for a particular event.
The Justice Department announced today that it has filed a Statement of Interest in the lawsuit Equality State Policy Center v. Chuck Gray, defending Wyoming’s legitimate interest securing its voting process from fraud by requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Longstanding Supreme Court precedent recognizes that states have a significant interest in preventing fraud and safeguarding voter confidence in the election process. Wyoming’s documentary proof of citizenship law is a mechanism to enforce laws that prohibit non-citizen voting and ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots.
“It is a crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and it is important that the American people have confidence in the integrity of our elections.” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Gates of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Requiring documentary proof of citizenship is common sense and ensures that only citizens vote.”
The Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section enforces the civil provisions of federal statutes that protect the integrity of the vote, including the Voting Rights Act, National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote Act, and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
The Justice Department announced today that it has filed a Statement of Interest in the lawsuit Equality State Policy Center v. Chuck Gray, defending Wyoming’s legitimate interest securing its voting process from fraud by requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Longstanding Supreme Court precedent recognizes that states have a significant interest in preventing fraud and safeguarding voter confidence in the election process. Wyoming’s documentary proof of citizenship law is a mechanism to enforce laws that prohibit non-citizen voting and ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots.
“It is a crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and it is important that the American people have confidence in the integrity of our elections.” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Gates of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Requiring documentary proof of citizenship is common sense and ensures that only citizens vote.”
The Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section enforces the civil provisions of federal statutes that protect the integrity of the vote, including the Voting Rights Act, National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote Act, and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
With burgers sizzling and classic rock thumping, many Americans revel in summer cookouts – at least until that wayward cousin asks for a “pop” in soda country, or even worse, a “coke” when they actually want a Sprite.
Few American linguistic debates have bubbled quite as long and effervescently as the one over whether a generic soft drink should be called a soda, pop or coke.
The word you use generally boils down to where you’re from: Midwesterners enjoy a good pop, while soda is tops in the North and far West. Southerners, long the cultural mavericks, don’t bat an eyelash asking for coke – lowercase – before homing in on exactly the type they want: Perhaps a root beer or a Coke, uppercase.
As a linguist who studies American dialects, I’m less interested in this regional divide and far more fascinated by the unexpected history behind how a fizzy “health” drink from the early 1800s spawned the modern soft drink’s many names and iterations.
The process of carbonating water was first discovered in the late 1700s. By the early 1800s, this carbonated water had become popular as a health drink and was often referred to as “soda water.” The word “soda” likely came from “sodium,” since these drinks often contained salts, which were then believed to have healing properties.
Given its alleged curative effects for health issues such as indigestion, pharmacists sold soda water at soda fountains, innovative devices that created carbonated water to be sold by the glass. A chemistry professor, Benjamin Stillman, set up the first such device in a drugstore in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1806. Its eventual success inspired a boom of soda fountains in drugstores and health spas.
These flavored, sweetened versions gave rise to the linking of the word “soda” with a sweetened carbonated beverage, as opposed to simple, carbonated water.
Seltzer – today’s popular term for such sparkling water – was around, too. But it was used only for the naturally carbonated mineral water from the German town Nieder-Selters. Unlike Perrier, sourced similarly from a specific spring in France, seltzer made the leap to becoming a generic term for fizzy water.
So how did “soda” come to be called so many different things in different places?
It all stems from a mix of economic enterprise and linguistic ingenuity.
The popularity of “soda” in the Northeast likely reflects the soda fountain’s longer history in the region. Since a lot of Americans living in the Northeast migrated to California in the mid-to-late 1800s, the name likely traveled west with them.
As for the Midwestern preference for “pop” – well, the earliest American use of the term to refer to a sparkling beverage appeared in the 1840s in the name of a flavored version called “ginger pop.” Such ginger-flavored pop, though, was around in Britain by 1816, since a Newcastle songbook is where you can first see it used in text. The “pop” seems to be onomatopoeic for the noise made when the cork was released from the bottle before drinking.
A jingle for Faygo touts the company’s ‘red pop.’
Linguists don’t fully know why “pop” became so popular in the Midwest. But one theory links it to a Michigan bottling company, Feigenson Brothers Bottling Works – today known as Faygo Beverages – that used “pop” in the name of the sodas they marketed and sold. Another theory suggests that because bottles were more common in the region, soda drinkers were more likely to hear the “pop” sound than in the Northeast, where soda fountains reigned.
As for using coke generically, the first Coca-Cola was served in 1886 by Dr. John Pemberton, a pharmacist at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta and the founder of the company. In the 1900s, the Coca-Cola company tried to stamp out the use of “Coke” for “Coca-Cola.” But that ship had already sailed. Since Coca-Cola originated and was overwhelmingly popular in the South, its generic use grew out of the fact that people almost always asked for “Coke.”
Due to the growing popularity of soda water concoctions, eventually “soft drink” came to mean only such sweetened carbonated beverages, a linguistic testament to America’s enduring love affair with sugar and bubbles.
With the average American guzzling almost 40 gallons per year, you can call it whatever you what. Just don’t call it healthy.
Valerie M. Fridland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The 1925 Scopes trial, in which a Dayton, Tennessee, teacher was charged with violating state law by teaching biological evolution, was one of the earliest and most iconic conflicts in America’s ongoing culture war.
Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” published in 1859, and subsequent scientific research made the case that humans and other animals evolved from earlier species over millions of years. Many late-19th-century American Protestants had little problem accommodating Darwin’s ideas – which became mainstream biology – with their religious commitments.
But that was not the case with all Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, who held that the Bible is inerrant – without error – and factually accurate in all that it has to say, including when it speaks on history and science.
One hundred years after the trial, and as we have documented in our scholarly work, the culture war over evolution and creationism remains strong – and yet, when it comes to creationism, much has also changed.
Holding to biblical inerrancy, these “fundamentalists” believed in the creation account detailed in chapter 1 of Genesis, in which God brought all life into being in six days. But most of these fundamentalists also accepted mainstream geology, which held that the Earth was millions of years old. Squaring a literal understanding of Genesis with an old Earth, they embraced either the “day-age theory” – that each Genesis day was actually a long period of time – or the “gap theory,” in which there was a huge gap of time before the six 24-hour days of creation.
This nascent fundamentalist movement initiated a campaign to pressure state legislatures to prohibit public schools from teaching evolution. One of these states was Tennessee, which in 1925 passed the Butler Act. This law made it illegal for public schoolteachers “to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
The American Civil Liberties Union persuaded John Thomas Scopes, a young science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, to challenge the law in court. The WCFA sprang into action, successfully persuading William Jennings Bryan – populist politician and outspoken fundamentalist – to assist the prosecution. In response, the ACLU hired famous attorney Clarence Darrow to serve on the defense team.
Inside the courtroom, the trial became a verbal duel between Bryan and Darrow regarding science and religion. But as the judge narrowed the proceedings to whether or not Scopes violated the law – a point that the defense readily admitted – it seemed clear that Scopes would be found guilty. Many of the reporters thus went home.
But the trial’s most memorable episode was yet to come. On July 20, Darrow successfully provoked Bryan to take the witness stand as a Bible expert. Due to the huge crowd and suffocating heat, the judge moved the trial outdoors.
The 3,000 or so spectators witnessed Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan, which was primarily intended to make Bryan and fundamentalism appear foolish and ignorant. Most significant, Darrow’s questions revealed that, despite Bryan’s’ assertion that he read the Bible literally, Bryan actually understood the six days of Genesis not as 24-hour days, but as six long and indeterminate periods of time.
American lawyer and politician William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn. Hulton Archive/Getty Image
The very next day, the jury found Scopes guilty and fined him US$100. Riley and the fundamentalists cheered the verdict as a triumph for the Bible and morality.
The fundamentalists and ‘The Genesis Flood’
But very soon that sense of triumph faded, partly because of news stories that portrayed fundamentalists as ignorant rural bigots. In one such example, a prominent journalist, H. L. Mencken, wrote in a Baltimore Sun column that the Scopes trial “serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land.”
The media ridicule encouraged many scholars and journalists to conclude that creationism and fundamentalism would soon disappear from American culture. But that prediction did not come to pass.
Instead, fundamentalists, including WCFA leader Riley, seemed all the more determined to redouble their efforts at the grassroots level.
But as Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan made obvious, it was not easy to square a literal reading of the Bible – including the six-day creation outlined in Genesis – with a scientific belief in an old Earth. What fundamentalists needed was a science that supported the idea of a young Earth.
“The Genesis Flood” and its version of flood geology remains ubiquitous among fundamentalists and other conservative Protestants.
Young Earth creationism
Today, opinion polls reveal that roughly one-quarter of all Americans are adherents of this newer strand of creationism, which rejects both mainstream geology as well as mainstream biology.
AiG’s tourist sites – the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky – have attracted millions of visitors since their opening in 2007 and 2016. Additional AiG sites are planned for Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Presented as a replica of Noah’s Ark, the Ark Encounter is a gigantic structure – 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, 51 feet high. It includes representations of animal cages as well as plush living quarters for the eight human beings who, according to Genesis chapters 6-8, survived the global flood. Hundreds of placards in the Ark make the case for a young Earth and a global flood that created the geological strata and formations we see today.
Besides AiG tourist sites, there is also an ever-expanding network of fundamentalist schools and homeschools that present young Earth creationism as true science. These schools use textbooks from publishers such as Abeka Books, Accelerated Christian Education and Bob Jones University Press.
The Scopes trial involved what could and could not be taught in public schools regarding creation and evolution. Today, this discussion also involves private schools, given that there are now at least 15 states that have universal private school choice programs, in which families can use taxpayer-funded education money to pay for private schooling and homeschooling.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton
The parents who brought the case had requested that their children be excused when books with LGBTQ+ characters were used in class.SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images
The Supreme Court tends to save its blockbuster orders for the last day of the term – and 2025 was no exception.
Among the important decisions handed down June 27, 2025, was Mahmoud v. Taylor – a case of particular interest to me, because I teach education law. Mahmoud, I believe, may become one of the court’s most consequential rulings on parental rights.
An interfaith coalition of Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Catholic parents in Montgomery County, Maryland – including Tamer Mahmoud, for whom the case is named – questioned the school board’s refusal to allow them to opt their young children out of lessons using picture books with LGBTQ+ characters. Ruling in favor of the parents, the court found that the board violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion by requiring their children to sit through lessons with materials inconsistent with their faiths.
Case history
The parents in Mahmoud challenged the use of certain storybooks that the board had approved for use in preschool and elementary school. “Pride Puppy!” for example – a book the schools later removed – portrays a family whose pet gets lost at a LGBTQ+ Pride parade, with each page devoted to a letter of the alphabet. The book’s “search and find” list of words directs readers to look for terms in the pictures, including “(drag) queen” and “king,” “leather” and “lip ring.” Other materials included stories about same-sex marriage, a transgender child, and nonbinary bathroom signs.
Initially, school administrators agreed to allow opt-outs for students whose parents objected to the materials. A day later, however, educators changed their minds. School officials cited concerns about absenteeism, the feasibility of accommodating opt-out requests, and a desire to avoid stigmatizing LGBTQ+ students or families.
In August 2023, a federal trial court rejected the parents’ claim that officials had violated their fundamental due process right to direct the care, custody and education of their children. The following year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed in favor of the board, finding that officials did not violate the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religious beliefs, as protected by the First Amendment.
On appeal, a 6-3 Supreme Court reversed in favor of the parents. Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the court’s opinion, was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, plus Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Supreme Court
In brief, the court held that by denying the parental requests to opt their children out of instruction inconsistent with their beliefs, school officials violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.
Alito largely grounded the court’s rationale in a dispute from 1925, Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary, and even more heavily on 1972’s Wisconsin v. Yoder. Both cases recognize the primacy of parental rights to direct the education of their children. According to Pierce’s famous dictum, “the child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
In Yoder, Amish parents – an Anabaptist Christian community that avoids using many modern technologies – objected to sending their children to school after eighth grade because this would have violated their religious beliefs. The justices unanimously agreed with the parents that their children received all of the education they needed in their communities. The justices added that requiring the children to attend high school would have violated the parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing.
Accordingly, the court acknowledged that the parental right “to guide the religious future and education of their children” was “established beyond debate.”
Similarly, in Mahmoud the court declared that “the Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion.”
Thomas agreed fully with the court, yet wrote a separate concurrence, which emphasized “an important implication of this decision for schools across the country.” Citing Yoder, Thomas contended that rather than support inclusion, the board’s policy “imposes conformity with a view that undermines parents’ religious beliefs, and thus interferes with the parents’ right to ‘direct the religious upbringing of their children.’”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, feared “the result will be chaos for this Nation’s public schools. Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools.”
Supporters of LGBTQ+ rights demonstrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor on April 22, 2025. Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images
She maintained that “simply being exposed to beliefs contrary to your own” does not violate a person’s free exercise rights. Insulating children from different ideas, she wrote, denies them of an experience that is crucial for democracy: “practice living in our multicultural society.”
Implications
After the decision was handed down, Montgomery County’s Board of Education issued a statement promising to “analyze the Supreme Court decision and develop next steps in alignment with today’s decision, and as importantly, our values.”
Mahmoud raises challenging questions about the scope or reach of how far parents can question curricular content.
On the one hand, parents should not be able to micromanage curricular content via the “heckler’s veto,” because this can lead to larger issues. Moreover, while Mahmoud concerns religious rights, what happens if parents question teachings based on another type of sincerely held belief – discussing war if they are pacifist, for example, or capitalism if they are socialists? While Mahmoud dealt with free-exercise rights, it may open the door to other types of First Amendment challenges from parents wishing to exempt their children from lessons.
On the other hand, Mahmoud highlights the need to take legitimate parental concerns into consideration. While educators typically control instruction, how can they be respectful of parents’ rights as primary caregivers of their children when conflicts arise?
Mahmoud may go a long way in defining parents’ free-exercise rights in public schools. Still, such disputes are likely far from over in America’s increasingly diverse religious culture.
Charles J. Russo 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.
“Bill Moyers? He’s spectacular!” George Clooney said – and no wonder.
I mentioned this legendary television journalist to the actor and filmmaker after Clooney emerged from the Broadway theater where he just had been portraying another news icon: Edward R. Murrow. Or as the Museum of Broadcast Communications put it in a tribute to Moyers, he was “one of the few broadcast journalists who might be said to approach the stature of Edward R. Murrow. If Murrow founded broadcast journalism, Moyers significantly extended its traditions.”
Moyers, who died at 91 on June 26, 2025, was among the most acclaimed broadcast journalists of the 20th century. He’s known for TV news shows that exposed the role of big money in politics and episodes that drew attention to unsung defenders of democracy, such as community organizer Ernesto Cortés Jr..
Despite his prominence, Moyers was the same down-to-earth guy in person as he seemed to be on the screen. In 1986, he was commanding a television audience of millions, and I was a historian at home with a preschooler, teaching the occasional college course in a dismal job market. Seeing that Moyers would be speaking at the conference on President Lyndon B. Johnson where I would be giving a paper, I wrote to him.
To my utter amazement, he replied and then showed up to hear my paper, on Johnson’s experiences as a young principal of the “Mexican” school in Cotulla, Texas, where he championed his students but also forged links to segregationists. Cotulla was “seminal” to LBJ’s development, Moyers said. In 1993, he recommended me for a grant that helped me finish a book: “LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power.
A few years later, he asked me to head up a project researching the documents related to his time in Johnson’s administration. His memoir of the Johnson years never materialized. Instead, I edited the bestselling ”Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times.“
Part of what always impressed me about Moyers was his belief that what matters is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality.
‘Amazing Grace’
Moyers didn’t just dwell on politics and policy as a journalist. He also delved into the meaning of creativity and the life of the mind. Many of his most moving interviews spotlighted scientists, novelists and other exceptional people.
He was also arguably among the best reporters on the religion beat. Even if it wasn’t always the main focus of his work or what comes to mind for those familiar with his legacy, still, he was a lifelong spiritual seeker.
He once told me that his favorite of the many programs that he produced was the PBS documentary ”Amazing Grace.“ It featured inspiring renditions of this popular Christian hymn as performed by country legend Johnny Cash, folk icon Judy Collins, opera diva Jessye Norman and other musical geniuses. As they share with Moyers their personal connections to this song of redemption, he draws viewers into the stirring saga of its creator, John Newton: a slave trader who became an abolitionist through “amazing grace.”
Bill Moyers interviews Judy Collins about singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ following the production of his PBS special about the hymn.
Life’s ultimate questions
This appreciation of the ineffable clearly informed Moyers’ blockbuster TV series exploring life’s ultimate questions, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.”
To my surprise, Moyers knew about this Trappist monk, telling me, “I always wished that I could have interviewed Merton,” who died in 1968.
It turned out that Moyers had been introduced to Merton by Sargent Shriver, founding director of the Peace Corps, where Moyers was a founding organizer and the deputy director.
Mentored by LBJ
Moyers characterized his Peace Corps years as the most rewarding of his life. When Johnson, his mentor, became president, he asked Moyers to join the White House staff. Moyers turned down the offer, so Johnson made it a presidential command.
The wunderkind – Moyers was 29 years old in 1963, when Johnson was sworn in after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination – coordinated the White House task forces that created the largest number of legislative proposals in American history. Among the programs and landmark reforms established and passed during the Johnson administration were Medicare andMedicaid, a landmark immigration law, the Freedom of Information Act, the Public Broadcasting Act and two historic civil rights laws.
Johnson’s war on poverty, in addition, introduced several path-breaking programs, such as Head Start.
Moyers served as one of Johnson’s speechwriters and was a top official in Johnson’s 1964 presidential campaign. The following year, the Johnson administration began escalating U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and Johnson named a new press secretary: Bill Moyers. Again, the young man tried to decline, but the president prevailed.
As Moyers had feared, he could not serve two masters – journalists and his boss – especially as the administration’s Vietnam War policies became increasingly unpopular.
Moyers left the Johnson administration in 1967, turning to journalism. He became the publisher of Newsday, a Long Island, New York, newspaper, before becoming a producer and commentator at CBS News. His commentaries reached tens of millions of viewers, but the network refused to provide a regular time slot for his documentaries. He had previously worked at PBS. In 1987, he decamped there for good.
Moyers’ programs won many journalism awards, including over 30 Emmys, along with the Lifetime Emmy for news and documentary productions.
He helped millions of Americans appreciate the world around them. As he reflected in 2023, in one of the last interviews he gave, to PBS journalist Judy Woodruff at the Library of Congress: “Everything is linked, and if you can find that nerve that connects us to other things and other places and other ideas – and television should be doing it all the time – we’d be a better democracy.”
Judy Woodruff interviews Bill Moyers about his life’s work in government and the media, including his contributions to the launch of PBS, at the Library of Congress.
“It takes time, commitment” to dig below the surface and discover the deeper meaning of people’s lives, Moyers noted. He sought to understand, for example, why so many folks in his own hometown of Marshall, Texas, have become much more suspicious – resentful, even – of outsiders than when he gave these folks voice in his poignant, prize-winning 1984 program Marshall, Texas; Marshall, Texas.
In this era of growing threats to democracy, what can a young person do who aspires to follow in Bill Moyers’ footsteps – whether in journalism or public life?
Woodruff asked Moyers that question, to which he responded: “You can’t quit. You can’t get out of the boat! Find a place that gives you a sense of being, gives you a sense of mission, gives you a sense of participation.”
Today, with the future of journalism – and of democracy itself – at stake, I think it would help everyone to take to heart the insights of this late, great American journalist.
Julie Leininger Pycior edited the book “Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times.” She also was hired by Moyers to direct the 18-month “LBJ Years” research project.
In addtion, she served as an unpaid, informal historical adviser for some of his public television programs.
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old woman from Georgia who had been declared brain-dead in February 2025, spent 16 weeks on life support while doctors worked to keep her body functioning well enough to support her developing fetus. On June 13, 2025, her premature baby, named Chance, was born via cesarean section at 25 weeks.
Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she suffered multiple blood clots in her brain. Her story gained public attention when her mother criticized doctors’ decision to keep her on a ventilator without the family’s consent. Smith’s mother has said that doctors told the family the decision was made to align with Georgia’s LIFE Act, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and bolsters the legal standing of fetal personhood. A statement released by the hospital also cites Georgia’s abortion law.
“I’m not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy,” Smith’s mother told a local television station. “But I’m saying we should have had a choice.”
The LIFE Act is one of several state laws that have passed across the U.S. since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision invalidated constitutional protections for abortion. Although Georgia’s attorney general denied that the LIFE Act applied to Smith, there’s little doubt that it invites ethical and legal uncertainty when a woman dies while pregnant.
Smith’s case has swiftly become the focus of a reproductive rights political firestorm characterized by two opposing viewpoints. For some, it reflects demeaning governmental overreach that quashes women’s bodily autonomy. For others it illustrates the righteous sacrifice of motherhood.
In my work as a gender and technology studies scholar, I have cataloged and studied postmortem pregnancies like Smith’s since 2016. In my view, Smith’s story doesn’t fit straightforwardly into abortion politics. Instead, it points to the need for a more nuanced ethical approach that does not frame a mother and child as adversaries in a medical, legal or political context.
Birth after death
For centuries, Catholic dogma and Western legal precedent have mandated immediate cesarean section when a pregnant woman died after quickening, the point when fetal movement becomes discernible. But technological advances now make it possible sometimes for a fetus to continue gestating in place when the mother is brain-dead, or “dead by neurological criteria”– a widely accepted definition of death that first emerged in the 1950s.
The first brain death during pregnancy in which the fetus was delivered after time on life support, more accurately called organ support, occurred in 1981. The process is extraordinarily intensive and invasive, because the loss of brain function impedes many physiological processes. Health teams, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, must stabilize the bodies of “functionally decapitated” pregnant women to buy more time for fetal development. This requires vital organ support, ventilation, nutritional supplements, antibiotics and constant monitoring. Outcomes are highly uncertain.
Adriana Smith’s baby was delivered by cesarian section on June 13, 2025.
Smith’s 112-day stint on organ support ranks third in length for a postmortem pregnancy, with the longest being 123 days. Hers is also the earliest ever gestational age from which the procedure has been attempted. Because time on organ support can vary widely, and because there is no established minimum fetal age considered too early to intervene, a fetus could theoretically be deemed viable at any point in pregnancy.
Postmortem pregnancy as gender-based violence
Over the past 50 years, critics of postmortem pregnancy have argued that it constitutes gender-based violence and violates bodily integrity in ways that organ donation does not. Some have compared it with Nazi pronatalist policies. Others have attributed the practice to systemic sexism and racism in medicine. Postmortem pregnancy can also compound intimate partner violence by giving brain-dead women’s murderers decision-making authority when they are the fetus’s next of kin.
From the perspective of reproductive rights advocates, postmortem pregnancy is the bottom of a slippery slope down which anti-abortion sentiment has led America. It obliterates women’s autonomy, pitting living and dead women against doctors, legislators and sometimes their own families, and weaponizing their own fetuses against them.
A medical perspective on rights
Viewed through a medical lens, however, postmortem pregnancy is not violent or violating, but an act of repair. Although care teams have responsibilities to both mother and fetus, a pregnant woman’s brain death means she cannot be physically harmed and her rights cannot be violated to the same degree as a fetus with the potential for life.
This response does not necessarily stem from conscious sexism or anti-abortion sentiment, but from reverence for vulnerable patients. If physicians declare a pregnant woman brain-dead, patienthood often automatically transfers to the fetus needing rescue. No matter its age and despite its survival being dependent on machines, just like its mother, the fetus is entirely animate. Who or what counts as a legal person with privileges and protections might be a political or philosophical determination, but life is a matter of biological fact and within the doctors’ purview.
Even the Supreme Court recognized this entangled duality in their 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade, which established both constitutional protections for abortion and a governmental obligation to protect fetal life. Whether a fetus is considered a legal person or not, they wrote, pregnant women and fetuses “cannot be isolated in their privacy” – meaning that reproductive rights issues must strike a balance, however tenuous, between maternal and fetal interests. To declare postmortem pregnancy unequivocally violent or a loss of the “right to choose” fails to recognize the complexity of choice in a highly politicized medical landscape.
Second, maternal-fetal competition muddles the right course of action. In the U.S., competent patients are not compelled to engage in medical care they would rather avoid, even if it kills them, or to stay on life support to preserve organs for donation. But when a fetus is treated as an independent patient, exceptions could be made to those medical standards if the fetus’s interests override the mother’s.
For example, pregnancy disrupts standard determination of death. To protect the fetus, care teams increasingly skip a necessary diagnostic for brain death called apnea testing, which involves momentarily removing the ventilator to test the respiratory centers of the brain stem. In these cases, maternal brain death cannot be confirmed until after delivery. Multiple instances of vaginal deliveries after brain death also remain unexplained, given that the brain coordinates mechanisms of vaginal labor. All in all, it’s not always clear women in these cases are entirely dead.
Ultimately, women like Adriana Smith and their fetuses are inseparable and persist in a technologically defined state of in-betweenness. I’d argue that postmortem pregnancies, therefore, need new bioethical standards that center women’s beliefs about their bodies and a dignified death. This might involve recognizing pregnancy’s unique ambiguities in advance directives, questioning default treatment pathways that may require harm be done to one in order to save another, or considering multiple definitions of clinical and legal death.
In my view, it is possible to adapt our ethical standards in a way that honors all beings in these exceptional circumstances, without privileging either “choice” or “life,” mother or fetus.
This research was supported by a grant from The Institute for Citizens and Scholars.
Yelp’s Black-owned tag was designed to help business owners like Don Studvent attract more customers. His restaurant closed in 2018 after nine years in business.AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
When the online review platform Yelp added a “Black-owned” tag in 2020, it boosted the visibility of Black-owned restaurants in Detroit. It also caused their ratings to drop, according to our recent study.
Both local and nonlocal reviewers who showed awareness of a restaurant’s Black ownership rated restaurants 3.03 stars on average. Those who did not acknowledge Black ownership gave a rating of 3.78 stars on average. The tag seems to have caused the average rating to drop by attracting more reviewers who were aware of Black ownership.
Why it matters
Technology companies often introduce new features and tools to influence user behavior and make their platforms more usable.
Although Yelp intended to support Black communities with the Black-owned tag, the design intervention was harmful to Black restaurant owners in Detroit because Yelp failed to consider platform and community-based factors that significantly shape user interactions.
Yelp’s user base is predominantly white, educated and affluent. Making Detroit’s Black-owned restaurants more visible to Yelp users may have amplified cross-cultural interactions and frictions. For example, non-Black users sometimes mentioned “slower” and “rude” service as justifications for lower ratings. Close readings of these reviews hinted at intercultural and communicative clashes.
Even if Black-owned restaurants businesses didn’t select the tag, they appeared in searches for “Black-owned restaurants,” in 2022 when we conducted the study and as recently as 2025. Businesses can remove the “Black-owned” tag, but Yelp doesn’t provide a way for them to opt out of search results.
How we did our work
To examine the local impacts of Yelp’s Black-owned tag, we collected over 250,000 Yelp reviews of Black- and non-Black-owned restaurants in Detroit and Los Angeles.
We identified Black-owned restaurants through community-sourced lists for Detroit and Los Angeles and then generated a random sample for the non-Black-owned restaurants.
We then identified reviews that explicitly noted “Black ownership” for closer analysis.
Detroit’s Black-owned businesses saw a greater loss in business compared with “ownership-unreported” restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. This means they also potentially had more to gain from the new tag.
We found the awareness of Black ownership on Yelp significantly increased following Yelp’s addition of the Black-owned tag in June 2020. A year after the tag was added, reviews in Detroit mentioned Black ownership 4.3% more often than a year before it was rolled out.
Detroit Black-owned restaurants also saw a small temporary spike in their number of reviews, largely around the time Yelp added the Black-owned tag. At the same time, the restaurants’ average star ratings dropped from 3.91 to 3.88. In contrast, non-Black-owned restaurants’ ratings stayed relatively steady at 3.90.
This metric is an aggregate of all Detroit restaurants’ Yelp reviews over their entire existence, so a .03-star rating change is small but significant.
Adding obstacles in digital platforms serves to reproduce and amplify inequalities these businesses already face, rather than alleviate them. For example, Black-owned businesses have a harder time getting loans and are relatively underrepresented in Michigan as a whole.
These findings may seem surprising given that Detroit is a majority Black city. However, Black users on Yelp are a minority. Keeping in mind the skewed user base of Yelp, we hypothesize the lower reviews for businesses featuring a Black-owned tag reflect existing racial and digital divides in the city.
Generally, our study provides additional evidence that digital interventions are not “one-size-fits-all,” nor is digital visibility inherently positive for all businesses.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
_This article was updated to clarify how labels are added to profiles.
This research was supported by a research grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
Matthew Bui 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.
Cameron Moy 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 Mike Shriberg, Professor of Practice & Engagement, School for Environment & Sustainability, University of Michigan
Invasive Asian carp are spreading up the Mississippi River system and already clog the Illinois River.AP Photo/John Flesher
In his second term, President Donald Trump has not taken many actions that draw near-universal praise from across the political spectrum. But there is at least one of these political anomalies, and it illustrates the broad appeal of environmental protection and conservation projects – particularly when it concerns an ecosystem of vital importance to millions of Americans.
In May 2025, Trump issued a presidential memorandum supporting the construction of a physical barrier that is key to keeping invasive carp out of the Great Lakes. These fish have made their way up the Mississippi River system and could have dire ecological consequences if they enter the Great Lakes.
It was not a given that Trump would back this project, which had long been supported by environmental and conservation organizations. But two very different strategies from two Democratic governors – both potential presidential candidates in 2028 – reflected the importance of the Great Lakes to America.
Perhaps nothing alarms Great Lakes ecologists more than the potential for invasive carp from Asia to establish a breeding population in the Great Lakes. These fish were intentionally introduced in the U.S. Southeast by private fish farm and wastewater treatment operators as a means to control algae in aquaculture and sewage treatment ponds. Sometime in the 1990s, the fish escaped from those ponds and moved rapidly up the Mississippi River system, including into the Illinois River, which connects to the Great Lakes.
Invasive carp are generally not eaten in the U.S. and are not desirable for sportfishing. In fact, silver carp have a propensity to jump up to 10 feet out of the water when startled by a boat motor. That can make parts of the Illinois River, which is packed with the invasive fish, almost impossible to fish or even maneuver a boat.
Look out! Silver carp fly out of the water, obstructing boats and hitting people trying to enjoy a river in Indiana.
The Brandon Road Lock and Dam solution
Originally, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River were not connected to each other. But in 1900, the city of Chicago connected them to avoid sending its sewage into Lake Michigan, from which the city draws its drinking water.
The most complete way to block the carp from invading the Great Lakes would be to undo that connection – but that would recreate sewage and flooding issues for Chicago, or require other expensive infrastructure upgrades. The more practical, short-term alternative is to modify the historic Brandon Road Lock and Dam in Joliet, Illinois, by adding several obstacles that together would block the carp from swimming farther upriver toward the Great Lakes.
The barrier, estimated to cost US$1.15 billion, was authorized by Congress in 2020 and 2022 after many years of intense planning and negotiations. For the first phase of construction, the project received $226 million in federal money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to complement $114 million in state funding – $64 million from Michigan and $50 million from Illinois.
On the first day of Trump’s second term, however, he paused a wide swath of federal funding, including funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And that’s when two different political strategies emerged.
A brief documentary explains the construction of a connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basin.
Trump’s support for the project was a rare moment of political unity and an extremely unusual example of leading Democrats being on the same page as Trump. I attribute this surprising outcome to two key factors.
First, the Great Lakes region holds disproportionate power in presidential elections. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have backed the eventual winner in every presidential race for the past 20 years. This swing state power has been used by advocates and state political leaders to drive funding for Great Lakes protection for many years.
Second, Great Lakes are the uniting force in the region. According to polling from the International Joint Commission, the binational body charged with overseeing waterways that cross the U.S.-Canada border, there is “nearly unanimous support (96%) for the importance of government investment in Great Lakes protections” from residents of the region.
And perhaps the governors have identified a new area for unity in a divided United States: Conservation and environmental issues have broad public support, particularly when they involve iconic natural resources, shared values and popular outdoor pursuits such as fishing and boating. Even when political strategies diverge, the results can bring bipartisan satisfaction.
Mike Shriberg was previously the Great Lakes Regional Executive Director of the National Wildlife Federation, which entailed being a co-chair (and, for part of the time, Director) of the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition.
Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a series of raids throughout Los Angeles and Southern California in early June 2025, sparking protests in downtown Los Angeles and other cities, including New York, Chicago and Austin, Texas.
Some demonstrators expressed growing frustration with ICE by showcasing the Mexican flag, which has become the defining symbol of the protests in Los Angeles.
The use of the flag has also become the subject of intense debate in the media.
Research published in 2010 found that even though the public was more likely to be bothered by protesters waving the Mexican flag than the U.S. flag, that difference was largely absent once you divided the public into subgroups, including white people, Latinos and immigrants.
To reexamine public attitudes toward protesters waving the Mexican flag, we conducted an online survey experiment among 10,145 U.S. adults in 2016.
We found that even though much of the public continued to be less bothered by the American flag than the Mexican flag, there were also important and perhaps surprising differences in protest attitudes between white Americans and other racial and ethnic groups.
A demonstrator holds a Mexican flag in front of law enforcement during a protest on June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Wally Skalij
More or less bothered
In the study, we randomly divided respondents into two groups: a treatment group and a control group. Respondents in the treatment group were shown an image of protesters waving a Mexican flag. Respondents in the control group were shown an image of protesters waving the U.S. flag. After viewing the image, respondents were then asked about the extent to which they supported or were bothered by the protests.
Overall, 41% of the respondents said they were bothered by protesters waving the Mexican flag, and 28% said protesters waving the U.S. flag bothered them.
Our results show important differences in opinion between racial and ethnic groups.
White respondents were more likely than any other racial and ethnic group to say they were bothered by protesters waving Mexican flags. Sixty-nine percent of white respondents said they were bothered, 31 percentage points more than the average of nonwhite respondents.
However, 51% of white respondents were also bothered by the image of protesters waving U.S. flags. By contrast, just 20% of Latinos, 33% of Black Americans and 34% of Asian Americans said they were bothered by protesters waving U.S. flags.
Put differently, large majorities of nonwhite respondents were supportive of showing U.S. flags at protests despite their more positive views toward Mexican flags.
What explains racial differences?
When taking a deeper look at what causes Americans to feel bothered about protesters waving Mexican flags, some clear patterns emerge.
On average, older Americans were more likely to be bothered relative to younger Americans. This was particularly true for Americans over 40 years of age compared with millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z respondents, born between 1997 and 2012.
However, there are some nuances when examining age groups and whether they had attended a protest, march or rally in the previous year.
Our findings suggest that older Americans who had not engaged in protests were most likely to be bothered when they saw images of protesters waving Mexican flags. Millennials and Gen Z respondents who participated in a protest were least likely to be bothered.
Given that this issue intersects nationality, race, ethnicity, gender and citizenship status, it’s logical that these factors explained why Americans supported or opposed the use of Mexican flags at immigration protests.
A woman carrying a flag with details of the United States and Mexican flags walks past members of the United States Marine Corps on June 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images
For example, racial minorities who have a stronger sense of ethnic or racial identity were more likely to be supportive of protesters waving Mexican and U.S. flags. In other words, group identity is a strong predictor of support for protests in general, regardless of what flag is being flown.
However, minorities who lack a sense of ethnic pride and identity were most likely to be upset when they saw others expressing their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.
The reality is that recent immigration protests across the country are the first time many of the Latino youth who are citizens have participated in these types of protests. Anyone under age 22 would not have memory of, or been alive during, the last large pro-immigrant protests in 2006.
The Mexican flag represents more than nationalistic pride. It represents their parents’ heritage, hard work and their binational experience as Americans engaged in politics.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kassem Fawaz, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Many apps and social media platforms collect detailed information about you as you use them, and sometimes even when you’re not using them.Malte Mueller/fStop via Getty images
You wake up in the morning and, first thing, you open your weather app. You close that pesky ad that opens first and check the forecast. You like your weather app, which shows hourly weather forecasts for your location. And the app is free!
But do you know why it’s free? Look at the app’s privacy settings. You help keep it free by allowing it to collect your information, including:
What devices you use and their IP and Media Access Control addresses.
Information you provide when signing up, such as your name, email address and home address.
App settings, such as whether you choose Celsius or Fahrenheit.
Your interactions with the app, including what content you view and what ads you click.
Inferences based on your interactions with the app.
Your location at a given time, including, depending on your settings, continuous tracking.
What websites or apps that you interact with after you use the weather app.
Information you give to ad vendors.
Information gleaned by analytics vendors that analyze and optimize the app.
This type of data collection is standard fare. The app company can use this to customize ads and content. The more customized and personalized an ad is, the more money it generates for the app owner. The owner might also sell your data to other companies.
Many apps, including the weather channel app, send you targeted advertising and sell your personal data by default. Jack West, CC BY-ND
You might also check a social media account like Instagram. The subtle price that you pay is, again, your data. Many “free” mobile apps gather information about you as you interact with them.
As an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a doctoral student in computer science, we follow the ways software collects information about people. Your data allows companies to learn about your habits and exploit them.
It’s no secret that social media and mobile applications collect information about you. Meta’s business model depends on it. The company, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is worth US$1.48 trillion. Just under 98% of its profits come from advertising, which leverages user data from more than 7 billion monthly users.
Before mobile phones gained apps and social media became ubiquitous, companies conducted large-scale demographic surveys to assess how well a product performed and to get information about the best places to sell it. They used the information to create coarsely targeted ads that they placed on billboards, print ads and TV spots.
Mobile apps and social media platforms now let companies gather much more fine-grained information about people at a lower cost. Through apps and social media, people willingly trade personal information for convenience. In 2007 – a year after the introduction of targeted ads – Facebook made over $153 million, triple the previous year’s revenue. In the past 17 years, that number has increased by more than 1,000 times.
Five ways to leave your data
App and social media companies collect your data in many ways. Meta is a representative case. The company’s privacy policy highlights five ways it gathers your data:
First, it collects the profile information you fill in. Second, it collects the actions you take on its social media platforms. Third, it collects the people you follow and friend. Fourth, it keeps track of each phone, tablet and computer you use to access its platforms. And fifth, it collects information about how you interact with apps that corporate partners connect to its platforms. Many apps and social media platforms follow similar privacy practices.
Your data and activity
When you create an account on an app or social media platform, you provide the company that owns it with information like your age, birth date, identified sex, location and workplace. In the early years of Facebook, selling profile information to advertisers was that company’s main source of revenue. This information is valuable because it allows advertisers to target specific demographics like age, identified gender and location.
And once you start using an app or social media platform, the company behind it can collect data about how you use the app or social media. Social media keeps you engaged as you interact with other people’s posts by liking, commenting or sharing them. Meanwhile, the social media company gains information about what content you view and how you communicate with other people.
Advertisers can find out how much time you spent reading a Facebook post or that you spent a few more seconds on a particular TikTok video. This activity information tells advertisers about your interests. Modern algorithms can quickly pick up subtleties and automatically change the content to engage you in a sponsored post, a targeted advertisement or general content.
Your devices and applications
Companies can also note what devices, including mobile phones, tablets and computers, you use to access their apps and social media platforms. This shows advertisers your brand loyalty, how old your devices are and how much they’re worth.
Because mobile devices travel with you, they have access to information about where you’re going, what you’re doing and who you’re near. In a lawsuit against Kochava Inc., the Federal Trade Commission called out the company for selling customer geolocation data in August 2022, shortly after Roe v Wade was overruled. The company’s customers, including people who had abortions after the ruling was overturned, often didn’t know that data tracking their movements was being collected, according to the commission. The FTC alleged that the data could be used to identify households.
Information that apps can gain from your mobile devices includes anything you have given an app permission to have, such as your location, who you have in your contact list or photos in your gallery.
If you give an app permission to see where you are while the app is running, for instance, the platform can access your location anytime the app is running. Providing access to contacts may provide an app with the phone numbers, names and emails of all the people that you know.
Cross-application data collection
Companies can also gain information about what you do across different apps by acquiring information collected by other apps and platforms.
The settings on an Android phone show that Meta uses information it collects about you to target ads it shows you in its apps – and also in other apps and on other platforms – by default. Jack West, CC BY-ND
This is common with social media companies. This allows companies to, for example, show you ads based on what you like or recently looked at on other apps. If you’ve searched for something on Amazon and then noticed an ad for it on Instagram, it’s probably because Amazon shared that information with Instagram.
Companies, including Google, Meta, X, TikTok and Snapchat, can build detailed user profiles based on collected information from all the apps and social media platforms you use. They use the profiles to show you ads and posts that match your interests to keep you engaged. They also sell the profile information to advertisers.
Meanwhile, researchers have found that Meta and Yandex, a Russian search engine, have overcome controls in mobile operating system software that ordinarily keep people’s web-browsing data anonymous. Each company puts code on its webpages that used local IPs to pass a person’s browsing history, which is supposed to remain private, to mobile apps installed on that person’s phone, de-anonymizing the data. Yandex has been conducting this tracking since 2017, while Meta began in September 2024, according to the researchers.
What you can do about it
If you use apps that collect your data in some way, including those that give you directions, track your workouts or help you contact someone, or if you use social media platforms, your privacy is at risk.
Aside from entirely abandoning modern technology, there are several steps you can take to limit access – at least in part – to your private information.
Read the privacy policy of each app or social media platform you use. Although privacy policy documents can be long, tedious and sometimes hard to read, they explain how social media platforms collect, process, store and share your data.
Check a policy by making sure it can answer three questions: what data does the app collect, how does it collect the data, and what is the data used for. If you can’t answer all three questions by reading the policy, or if any of the answers don’t sit well with you, consider skipping the app until there’s a change in its data practices.
Remove unnecessary permissions from mobile apps to limit the amount of information that applications can gather from you.
Be aware of the privacy settings that might be offered by the apps or social media platforms you use, including any setting that allows your personal data to affect your experience or shares information about you with other users or applications.
These privacy settings can give you some control. We recommend that you disable “off-app activity” and “personalization” settings. “Off-app activity” allows an app to record which other apps are installed on your phone and what you do on them. Personalization settings allow an app to use your data to tailor what it shows you, including advertisements.
Review and update these settings regularly because permissions sometimes change when apps or your phone update. App updates may also add new features that can collect your data. Phone updates may also give apps new ways to collect your data or add new ways to preserve your privacy.
Use private browser windows or reputable virtual private networks software, commonly referred to as VPNs, when using apps that connect to the internet and social media platforms. Private browsers don’t store any account information, which limits the information that can be collected. VPNs change the IP address of your machine so that apps and platforms can’t discover your location.
Finally, ask yourself whether you really need every app that’s on your phone. And when using social media, consider how much information you want to reveal about yourself in liking and commenting on posts, sharing updates about your life, revealing locations you visited and following celebrities you like.
This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it.
Kassem Fawaz receives funding from the National Science Foundation. In the past, his research group has received unrestricted gifts from Meta and Google.
Jack West 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 Anna Erickson, Professor of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
An image from Iranian television shows centrifuges lining a hall at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2021.IRIB via APPEAR
When U.S. forces attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 21, 2025, the main target was metal tubes in laboratories deep underground. The tubes are centrifuges that produce highly enriched uranium needed to build nuclear weapons.
Inside of a centrifuge, a rotor spins in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 revolutions per minute, 10 times faster than a Corvette engine’s crankshaft. High speeds are needed to separate lighter uranium-235 from heavier uranium-238 for further collection and processing. Producing this level of force means the rotor itself must be well balanced and strong and rely on high-speed magnetic bearings to reduce friction.
Over the years, Iran has produced thousands of centrifuges. They work together to enrich uranium to dangerous levels – close to weapons-grade uranium. Most of them are deployed in three enrichment sites: Natanz, the country’s main enrichment facility, Fordow and Isfahan. Inside of these facilities, the centrifuges are arranged into cascades – series of machines connected to each other. This way, each machine yields slightly more enriched uranium, feeding the gas produced into its neighbor to maximize production efficiency.
As a nuclear engineer who works on nuclear nonproliferation, I track centrifuge technology, including the Iranian enrichment facilities targeted by the U.S. and Israel. A typical cascade deployed in Iran is composed of 164 centrifuges, working in series to produce enriched uranium. The Natanz facility was designed to hold over 50,000 centrifuges.
Iran’s early intentions to field centrifuges on a very large scale were clear. At the peak of the program in the early 2010s it deployed over 19,000 units. Iran later scaled down the number of its centrifuges in part due to international agreements such as the since scrapped Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in 2015.
Legacy of enrichment
Iran has a long history of enriching uranium.
In the late 1990s, it acquired a Pakistani centrifuge design known as P-1. The blueprints and some components were supplied via the A.Q. Khan black market network – the mastermind of the Pakistani program and a serious source of nuclear proliferation globally. Today, the P-1 design is known as IR-1. IR-1 centrifuges use aluminum and a high-strength alloy, known as maraging steel.
About one-third of the centrifuges that were deployed at the sites of the recent strike on June 21 are IR-1. Each one produces on the order of 0.8 separative work units, which is the unit for measuring the amount of energy and effort needed to separate uranium-235 molecules from the rest of the uranium gas. To put this in perspective, one centrifuge would yield about 0.2 ounces (6 grams) of 60%-enriched uranium-235 per year.
A typical uranium-based weapon requires 55 pounds (25 kilograms) of 90%-enriched uranium. To get to weapons-grade level, a single centrifuge would produce only 0.14 ounces (4 grams) per year. It requires more work to go higher in enrichment. While capable of doing the job, the IR-1 is quite inefficient.
The author explains the uranium enrichment process to CBS News.
More and better centrifuges
Small yields mean that over 6,000 centrifuges would need to work together for a year to get enough material for one weapon such as a nuclear warhead. Or the efficiency of the centrifuges would have to be improved. Iran did both.
Before the strike by U.S. forces, Iran was operating close to 7,000 IR-1 centrifuges. In addition, Iran designed, built and operated more efficient centrifuges such as the IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6 designs. Comparing the IR-1 with the latest designs is like comparing a golf cart with the latest electric vehicles in terms of range and payload.
Iran’s latest centrifuge designs contain carbon fiber composites with exceptional strength and durability and low weight. This is a recipe for producing light and compact centrifuges that are easier to conceal from inspections. According to the international nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, before the strike Iran was operating 6,500 IR-2m centrifuges, close to 4,000 IR-4 centrifuges and over 3,000 IR-6 centrifuges.
With each new generation, the separative work unit efficiency increased significantly. IR-6 centrifuges, with their carbon fiber rotors, can achieve up to 10 separative work units per year. That’s about 2.8 ounces (80 grams) of 60%-enriched uranium-235 per year. The International Atomic Energy Agency verified that the IR-6 cascades have been actively used to ramp up production of 60%-enriched uranium.
The most recent and advanced centrifuges developed by Iran, known as IR-9, can achieve 50 separative work units per year. This cuts down the time needed to produce highly enriched uranium for weapon purposes from months to weeks. The other aspect of IR-9 advanced centrifuges is their compactness. They are easier to conceal from inspections or move underground, and they require less energy to operate.
Advanced centrifuges such as the IR-9 drive up the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation significantly. Fortunately, the International Atomic Energy Agency reports that only one exists in testing laboratories, and there is no evidence Iran has deployed them widely. However, it’s possible more are concealed.
Bombs or talks?
Uranium enrichment of 60% is far beyond the needs of any civilian use. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran stockpiled about 880 pounds (400 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium before the attack, and it might have escaped intact. That’s enough to make 10 weapons. The newer centrifuges – IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6 – would need a bit over eight months to produce that much.
It’s not clear what the U.S. attack has accomplished, but destroying the facilities targeted in the attack and hindering Iran’s ability to continue enriching uranium might be a way to slow Iran’s move toward producing nuclear weapons. However, based on my work and research on preventing nuclear proliferation, I believe a more reliable means of preventing Iran from achieving its nuclear aims would be for diplomacy and cooperation to prevail.
Anna Erickson receives funding from Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) related to nuclear nonproliferation technologies. She has previously served on the Board of Directors of the American Nuclear Society.
Can a monkey, a pigeon or a fish reason like a person? It’s a question scientists have been testing in increasingly creative ways – and what we’ve found so far paints a more complicated picture than you’d think.
Imagine you’re filling out a March Madness bracket. You hear that Team A beat Team B, and Team B beat Team C – so you assume Team A is probably better than Team C. That’s a kind of logical reasoning known as transitive inference. It’s so automatic that you barely notice you’re doing it.
It turns out humans are not the only ones who can make these kinds of mental leaps. In labs around the world, researchers have tested many animals, from primates to birds to insects, on tasks designed to probe transitive inference, and most pass with flying colors.
As a scientist focused on animal learning and behavior, I work with pigeons to understand how they make sense of relationships, patterns and rules. In other words, I study the minds of animals that will never fill out a March Madness bracket – but might still be able to guess the winner.
Logic test without words
The basic idea is simple: If an animal learns that A is better than B, and B is better than C, can it figure out that A is better than C – even though it’s never seen A and C together?
In the lab, researchers test this by giving animals randomly paired images, one pair at a time, and rewarding them with food for picking the correct one. For example, animals learn that a photo of hands (A) is correct when paired with a classroom (B), a classroom (B) is correct when paired with bushes (C), bushes (C) are correct when paired with a highway (D), and a highway (D) is correct when paired with a sunset (E). We don’t know whether they “understand” what’s in the picture, and it is not particularly important for the experiment that they do.
In a transitive inference task, subjects learn a series of rewarded pairs – such as A+ vs. B–, B+ vs. C– – and are later tested on novel pairings, like B vs. D, to see whether they infer an overall ranking. Olga Lazareva, CC BY-ND
One possible explanation is that the animals that learn all the tasks create a mental ranking of these images: A > B > C > D > E. We test this idea by giving them new pairs they’ve never seen before, such as classroom (B) vs. highway (D). If they consistently pick the higher-ranked item, they’ve inferred the underlying order.
What’s fascinating is how many species succeed at this task. Monkeys, rats, pigeons – even fish and wasps – have all demonstrated transitive inference in one form or another.
The twist: Not all tasks are easy
But not all types of reasoning come so easily. There’s another kind of rule called transitivity that is different from transitive inference, despite the similar name. Instead of asking which picture is better, transitivity is about equivalence.
In this task, animals are shown a set of three pictures and asked which one goes with the center image. For example, if white triangle (A1) is shown, choosing red square (B1) earns a reward, while choosing blue square (B2) does not. Later, when red square (B1) is shown, choosing white cross (C1) earns a reward while choosing white circle (C2) does not. Now comes the test: white triangle (A1) is shown with white cross (C1) and white circle (C2) as choices. If they pick white cross (C1), then they’ve demonstrated transitivity.
In a transitivity task, subjects learn matching rules across overlapping sets – such as A1 matches B1, B1 matches C1 – and are tested on new combinations, such as A1 with C1 or C2, to assess whether they infer the relationship between A1 and C1. Olga Lazareva, CC BY-ND
The change may seem small, but species that succeed in those first transitive inference tasks often stumble in this task. In fact, they tend to treat the white triangle and the white cross as completely separate things, despite their common relationship with the red square. In my recently published review of research using the two tasks, I concluded that more evidence is needed to determine whether these tests tap into the same cognitive ability.
Small differences, big consequences
Why does the difference between transitive inference and transitivity matter? At first glance, they may seem like two versions of the same ability – logical reasoning. But when animals succeed at one and struggle with the other, it raises an important question: Are these tasks measuring the same kind of thinking?
The apparent difference between the two tasks isn’t just a quirk of animal behavior. Psychology researchers apply these tasks to humans in order to draw conclusions about how people reason.
For example, say you’re trying to pick a new almond milk. You know that Brand A is creamier than Brand B, and your friend told you that Brand C is even waterier than Brand B. Based on that, because you like a thicker milk, you might assume Brand A is better than Brand C, an example of transitive inference.
But now imagine the store labels both Brand A and Brand C as “barista blends.” Even without tasting them, you might treat them as functionally equivalent, because they belong to the same category. That’s more like transitivity, where items are grouped based on shared relationships. In this case, “barista blend” signals the brands share similar quality.
Researchers often treat these types of reasoning as measuring the same ability. But if they rely on different mental processes, they might not be interchangeable. In other words, the way scientists ask their questions may shape the answer – and that has big implications for how they interpret success in animals and in people.
This difference could affect how researchers interpret decision-making not only in the lab, but also in everyday choices and in clinical settings. Tasks like these are sometimes used in research on autism, brain injury or age-related cognitive decline.
If two tasks look similar on the surface, then choosing the wrong one might lead to inaccurate conclusions about someone’s cognitive abilities. That’s why ongoing work in my lab is exploring whether the same distinction between these logical processes holds true for people.
Just like a March Madness bracket doesn’t always predict the winner, a reasoning task doesn’t always show how someone got to the right answer. That’s the puzzle researchers are still working on – figuring out whether different tasks really tap into the same kind of thinking or just look like they do. It’s what keeps scientists like me in the lab, asking questions, running experiments and trying to understand what it really means to reason – no matter who’s doing the thinking.
Olga Lazareva 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: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Glenn Ivey – Maryland (4th District)
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies and Representative Steny Hoyer, Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, along with Governor Wes Moore, Senator Angela Alsobrooks and Representatives Glenn Ivey, Kweisi Mfume, Jamie Raskin, Sarah Elfreth, and Johnny Olszewski (all D-Md.), and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha N. Braveboy released the following statement regarding the Administration’s attempt to reprogram funding intended for the new FBI Headquarters in Greenbelt, Md.
“The FBI deserves a headquarters that meets their security and mission needs – and following an extensive, thorough, and transparent process, Greenbelt, Maryland, was selected as the site that best meets those requirements. Not only was this decision final, the Congress appropriated funds specifically for the purpose of the new, consolidated campus to be built in Maryland. Now the Administration is attempting to redirect those funds – both undermining Congressional intent and dealing a blow to the men and women of the FBI – since we know that a headquarters located within the District would not satisfy their security needs. Simply moving down the street would ignore the real threats the Bureau faces and further jeopardize the safety of those protecting our communities. That’s why we will be fighting back against this proposal with every tool we have.”
Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Glenn Ivey – Maryland (4th District)
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies and Representative Steny Hoyer, Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, along with Governor Wes Moore, Senator Angela Alsobrooks and Representatives Glenn Ivey, Kweisi Mfume, Jamie Raskin, Sarah Elfreth, and Johnny Olszewski (all D-Md.), and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha N. Braveboy released the following statement regarding the Administration’s attempt to reprogram funding intended for the new FBI Headquarters in Greenbelt, Md.
“The FBI deserves a headquarters that meets their security and mission needs – and following an extensive, thorough, and transparent process, Greenbelt, Maryland, was selected as the site that best meets those requirements. Not only was this decision final, the Congress appropriated funds specifically for the purpose of the new, consolidated campus to be built in Maryland. Now the Administration is attempting to redirect those funds – both undermining Congressional intent and dealing a blow to the men and women of the FBI – since we know that a headquarters located within the District would not satisfy their security needs. Simply moving down the street would ignore the real threats the Bureau faces and further jeopardize the safety of those protecting our communities. That’s why we will be fighting back against this proposal with every tool we have.”
