The Conversation

As he has done since the 1980s, Grover Norquist continues to exert outsized influence over the GOP. For more than four decades, Norquist has been a relentless advocate for fiscal conservatism. He is the living embodiment of an ideological thread that stretches from Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich to current GOP leadership.

If you were to ask most people what causes cancer, the answer would probably be smoking, alcohol, the sun, hair dye or some other avoidable element. But the most important risk factor for cancer is something else: aging. That’s right, the factor most associated with cancer is unavoidable — and a condition that we will all experience.

The nearly 900-page bill that the president signed slashes incentives for wind and solar energy, batteries, electric cars and home efficiency while expanding subsidies for fossil fuels and biofuels. That will leave Americans burning more fossil fuels despite strong public and scientific support for shifting to renewable energy.

Iran is weakened and vulnerable after a 12-day war with Israel. Hezbollah, Tehran’s main ally in Lebanon, had already lost a lot of its fighters, arsenal and popular support during its own war with Israel in October 2024. Changing regional dynamics give the Lebanese state an opening to chart a more neutral orientation and extricate itself from neighboring conflicts that have long exacerbated the divided and fragile country’s chronic problems.

Research shows little connection between a shortfall of housing and rental affordability problems. Even a massive infusion of new housing would not shrink housing costs enough to solve the crisis, as rents would likely remain out of reach for many households. However, there are already subsidies in place that ensure that some renters in the U.S. pay no more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The most effective solution is to make these subsidies much more widely available.

Texas Hill Country is known for its landscapes, where shallow rivers wind among hills and through rugged valleys. That geography also makes it one of the deadliest places in the U.S. for flash flooding.

Sea turtles ingest plastic debris of a variety of shapes and sizes, which can include pre-production pellets, foam, plastic bags, sheets, fishing gear and food wrappers. Their ingestion of plastic can come with a slew of negative impacts, some of which include starvation, emaciation and damage to the gut lining. Sea turtles can also become entangled in plastic nets and rope.

Many people who explicitly endorse egalitarian ideals, such as the notion that all Americans are deserving of the rights of citizenship regardless of race, still implicitly harbor prejudices over who’s “really” American. White and Asian participants in a study responded most quickly in matching the white faces with “American,” even when they initially expressed egalitarian values. Black Americans implicitly saw Black and white faces as equally American – though they too implicitly viewed Asian faces as being less American.

Top Republicans and Democrats alike are talking about the sudden rise of 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, a state representative who won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York on June 24, 2025, in a surprising victory over more established politicians. Some establishment Democratic politicians say they are concerned about how the democratic socialist’s progressive politics could harm the broader Democratic Party and cause it to lose more centrist voters.

Having the freedom to choose your own health care provider is something many Americans take for granted. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority ruled on June 25, 2025, in a 6-3 decision that people who rely on Medicaid for their health insurance don’t have that right.

The Canadian government advanced the controversial Strong Borders Act covering a wide swath of proposed legislative changes, from intensified border security measures to more restrictive immigration and asylum policies. Embedded within the proposed legislation are significant risks to digital privacy, along with increased executive authority — also known as “warrantless” powers — without judicial or civilian oversight. In these respects, the proposed Canadian legislation could be considered more worrisome than American travel bans.

Israel, with the assistance of U.S. military hardware, bombs an adversary’s nuclear facility to set back the perceived pursuit of the ultimate weapon. We have been here before, about 44 years ago. In 1981, Israeli fighter jets supplied by Washington attacked an Iraqi nuclear research reactor being built near Baghdad by the French government. It didn’t work. Had Saddam not invaded Kuwait over a matter not related to security, it is very possible that Baghdad would have had a nuclear weapon capability by the mid-to-late 1990s.

Europe’s decision-making processes are sub-optimal. Indeed, they were built for a different age. There is no shared voice on foreign policy – the EU has been able to say far less on Gaza than individual countries like Spain or the UK, for example. This may have the practical consequence of eroding the “moral leadership” that should still be Europe’s soft advantage.

Two simple notes – E and F – have become synonymous with tension, fear and sharks, representing the primal dread of being stalked by a predator. And they largely have “Jaws” to thank. Fifty years ago, Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film – along with its spooky score composed by John Williams – convinced generations of swimmers to think twice before going in the water.

Across the United States, Latino organizers are raising their phones, not to go viral but to go on record. They livestream Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, film family separations and document protests outside detention centers. Their footage is not merely content. It is evidence, warning – and resistance.

This is not the first time Israel has advanced a broad interpretation of self-defence. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, which was under construction on the outskirts of Baghdad. It claimed a nuclear-armed Iraq would pose an unacceptable threat. The UN Security Council condemned the attack. As international law stands, unless an armed attack is imminent and unavoidable, such strikes are likely to be considered unlawful uses of force.

Large-scale protests have made Barcelona synonymous with social resistance to the negative impacts of predatory and extractive tourism, but it is far from alone: popular destinations such the Canary Islands, Málaga, and the Balearic Islands have all seen massive protests against the excesses of tourism over the last year.

The threat of domestic violence and terrorism is high in the United States – especially the danger posed by white power extremists, many of whom believe white people are being “replaced” by people of color. extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks.

Israel’s conflict with Iran represents far more than another Middle Eastern crisis – it marks the emergence of a dangerous new chapter in nuclear rivalries that has the potential to reshape global proliferation risks for decades to come. What began with Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and other targets has spiraled into the world’s first full-scale example of a “threshold war” – a new and terrifying form of conflict where a nuclear weapons power seeks to use force to prevent an enemy on the verge of nuclearization from making that jump.

Democratic leaders and a lone Republican senator decried the treatment of U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California and called for an investigation after he was removed from a press conference with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Political polarization and a shift in American political decorum may have contributed to the shocking moment of an American senator being forcibly removed from a press conference.

Saturday’s military parade will occur amid bleak times for the U.S. military, as it experiences a multiyear decline in recruitment numbers. In the face of a pandemic and a strong civilian job market, the Army, Air Force and Navy all missed their recruitment goals in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, the Army missed its quota by 25%.

Getting federal approval for permits to build bridges, wind farms, highways and other major infrastructure projects has long been a complicated and time-consuming process. Despite growing calls from both parties for Congress and federal agencies to reform that process, there had been few significant revisions – until now. In one fell swoop, the U.S. Supreme Court has changed a big part of the game.

When most people think of how governments stifle free speech, they think of censorship. That’s when a government directly blocks or suppresses speech. In the past, the federal government has censored speech in various ways. It has tried to block news outlets from publishing certain stories. It has punished political dissenters. It has banned sales of “obscene” books. Today, however, the federal government rarely tries to censor speech so crudely. It has less blatant but very effective ways to suppress dissent.

Adolf Hitler turned his birthdays into massive national events with military parades, mass rallies and highly estheticized scenes of domestic cheer. These displays blurred dominance and intimacy, fatherliness and force — an approach revived today in the digital era, where curated imagery and social media entangle leadership with affective spectacle.

Responding to street protests in Los Angeles against federal immigration enforcement raids, the president has ordered 2,000 soldiers from the California National Guard into the city on June 7 to protect agents carrying out the raids, and authorized the Pentagon to dispatch regular U.S. troops “as necessary” to support the California National Guard. The actions chillingly echo those that led up to the Kent State shootings. Some active-duty units, as well as National Guard troops, are trained today to respond to riots and violent protests – but their primary mission is still to fight, kill, and win wars. It is not policing.

About 1 in 4 U.S. children – nearly 19 million – have at least one parent with substance use disorder. This includes parents who misuse alcohol, marijuana, prescription opioids or illegal drugs. Our estimate reflects an increase of over 2 million children since 2020 and an increase of 10 million from an earlier estimate using data from 2009 to 2014.

Diversity training is more effective when it’s personalized, according to my new research in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Psychology. This personalized approach worked especially well for one particular group: the “skeptics.” When skeptics received training tailored to them, they responded more positively – and expressed a stronger desire to support their organizations’ diversity efforts – than those who received the same training as everyone else.

Five factors often decides whether local newspapers survive: Newspapers follow the money, not community needs. Newspapers don’t adequately serve diverse communities. Population growth doesn’t always save newspapers. Left or right? Local papers die either way.

Poland’s presidential election runoff will be a bitter pill for pro-European Union democrats to swallow. Nawrocki’s win has given anti-liberal, anti-EU forces across the continent a shot in the arm. It’s bad news for the EU, Ukraine and women. Meanwhile, Poland now has a bigger army than the United Kingdom, France and Germany. And living standards, adjusted for purchasing power, are about to eclipse Japan’s.

By reasserting the importance of Columbus, the president took a stand against the toppling and vandalism of statues of Columbus. In this case, his act of retribution for his supporters focused on the holiday, which he could declare more easily than returning icons of a fallen man to empty pedestals. His statement invoked the politics of grievance – a sense of resentment or injustice fueled by perceived discrimination – that have characterized his actions for years.

Single-stream recycling makes participating in recycling easy, but behind the scenes, complex sorting systems and contamination mean a large percentage of that material never gets a second life. Reports in recent years have found 15% to 25% of all the materials picked up from recycle bins ends up in landfills instead.

Nationalism is typically seen as the preserve of right-wing politics, and it has long been a cornerstone of authoritarian and fascist governments around the world. In democratic countries the term “nationalism” is linked to national chauvinism – a belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own nation and its citizens – but the picture is more complex than it first seems.

Americans’ electricity bills tend to tick up each year in line with inflation. But upgrades to electric wires, reinforcing and protecting power lines from severe weather, and changing fuel costs – among other factors – are sending rates soaring. High electricity consumption from data centers and other sources of rising demand will likely cause further increases in the near future. U.S. electricity demand rose 3% in 2024 and is expected to rise even more rapidly in the coming years.

Loneliness and isolation are indeed social problems that warrant serious attention, especially since chronic states of loneliness are linked with poor outcomes such as depression and a shortened lifespan. But there is another side to this story, one that deserves a closer look. For some people, the shift toward aloneness represents a desire for what researchers call “positive solitude,” a state that is associated with well-being, not loneliness.

The surge of so-called 287(g) agreements between federal immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) and local police agencies sets a dangerous precedent for local policing, where forging relationships and building the trust of immigrants is a proven and effective tactic in combating crime. In my view, the expansion of 287(g) will erode that trust and makes entire communities – not just immigrants – less safe.

In 1918, as World War I intensified overseas, the U.S. government embarked on a radical experiment: It quietly became the nation’s largest housing developer, designing and constructing 100,000 houses in more than 80 new communities across 26 states in just two years. These weren’t hastily erected barracks or rows of identical homes. They were thoughtfully designed neighborhoods, complete with parks, schools, shops and sewer systems. Few Americans are aware that such an ambitious and comprehensive public housing effort ever took place. Many of the homes are still standing today.

A global reserve currency is one that is extensively held by foreign Central Banks. Since the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement this position has been occupied by the US dollar and it still holds true – according to IMF data from late 2024, the dollar represented 54% of global official reserves, while the euro came in a distant second at 19%. That’s not set in stone.