The Conversation

Politicians who lie can gain a strategic advantage. If you can successfully embellish the truth or construct a new reality, this often tends to be more interesting and engaging than the complicated truth. The truth may be a bit dull and uninspiring; the lie can be whatever you want it to be. You know what your audience wants to hear. When it comes to lying in politics, Donald Trump is in a class of his own. According to the Washington Post, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims in his four years as president.

Is “Arab-Israeli conflict” an accurate reflection, given that the active participants are no longer just Arabs and Israelis? Should we retire that term for good now that the conflict has widened, drawing in the United States and Iran – and potentially Turkey and others in the coming years?

Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election not only failed, but some of them also rested on a misreading of the U.S. Constitution. Trump claimed that the Constitution allowed state legislatures to directly choose a slate of electors without a popular vote. He was wrong. There was a safeguard already in place – and it remains today, defending against this approach being used to subvert the 2024 presidential election. It’s the 14th Amendment.

Politicians and others often use the word “childless” as an umbrella term for people who do not have children. This doesn’t capture some important nuances. Large-scale demographic data show that there are many types of nonparents – and each has its own set of political priorities.

Donald Trump’s administration made multiple attempts to weaken the nutritional quality of school meals despite evidence supporting their benefits for students. For example, they rolled back expectations that kids would be served more whole grains and stalled efforts to decrease sodium levels. Project 2025, a package of policy proposals authored by people closely tied to Trump’s 2024 presidential bid – but that the campaign has sought to disavow – calls for cuts in federal spending that helps fund universal free school meal programs.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social post about overseas voters in late September and Republican efforts to undermine those voters are factually wrong and politically dangerous. There are lawsuits in several states designed to disenfranchise American citizens abroad. These are citizens who may have gone to enormous lengths to carry out their duties by asking for and sending in election ballots, often at substantial personal expense and faced with substantial barriers.

Though crime and criminal justice policy are central issues in many elections, that’s not true in 2024. Surveys show that relatively few American voters rank crime as their most important concern. Yet both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris say they take those problems seriously.

Some groups that aren’t churches or associations of churches want to be designated that way to avoid the scrutiny being a charitable organization otherwise requires. At the same time, some other groups that should qualify as churches may have difficulty doing so because of the IRS’ outdated test for that status.

A March 2024 survey by independent pollster PRRI found that 68% of voters will take LGBTQ rights into consideration at the polls. Fully 30% stated that they would vote only for a candidate who shares their views on the issue. It is no coincidence, then, that LGBTQ rights issues feature prominently in the party platforms.

After Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, much of the media coverage zeroed in on Walz’s Midwestern roots, with some pundits using the phrase “Minnesota nice” to describe his appeal. Minnesota nice, whether represented in policies or in being kind to neighbors, is a worthy ideal. But looking at the experiences of Vietnamese refugees in Minnesota, the trope of Minnesota nice has a more complex history – especially when it comes to nonwhite people.

Ernest Hemingway, then a resident of Key West, provided an eyewitness account of the catastrophic storm that leveled Upper Matecumbe Key and Lower Matecumbe Key and took the lives of more than 400 people, many of them World War I veterans. Then, as now, the aftermath of a natural disaster included political finger-pointing.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sinwar’s killing – long a major objective of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – would signal the “beginning of the end” of the war. But he made clear the war is not over. Benny Gantz, a former defence minister and member of the war cabinet, said the IDF would continue to operate in Gaza “for years to come,” while Netanyahu wants to demolish Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Politicians’ warnings of decline persist because they invoke fear for the country’s security, anxiety about another country gaining more power and anger about the United States’ various problems. While Trump’s messages of American carnage are dramatic, exchanges of this sort are not uncommon in U.S. politics.

For those trying to come to terms with a particularly tumultuous election year full of deep divisions, ideological invective and personal insults, guidance can come from Will Rogers, a historical figure whose insights into American politics still prove useful.

The 2024 Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots organisation created by survivors of the two US atomic bombs that were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Colorado and Washington have more than a decade of experience writing and enforcing laws to control the marijuana marketplace. They provide models and lessons on how to regulate recreational marijuana. With the reclassification, 26 states where cannabis is currently illegal will need to decide whether they want to take action to stop the sale of cannabis in their state or figure out how to regulate the newly legal drug.

Evacuating might seem like the obvious move when a major hurricane is bearing down on your region, but that choice is not always as easy as it may seem. Evacuating from a hurricane requires money, planning, the ability to leave and, importantly, a belief that evacuating is better than staying put. Evacuating requires transportation, money, a place to stay, the ability to take off work days ahead of a storm and other resources that many people do not have.

Far from being a burden, as critics claim, immigrants play pivotal roles in driving innovation, enhancing productivity and fostering economic growth in their adopted countries. They also elevate their adopted and origin countries’ standings in global value chains, contributing to economic resilience.

When modern Americans call themselves patriots, they are evoking a sentiment that is 250 years old. The Continental Association made the terms of so-called “Patriot” behavior clear: A supporter of American rights would give up British imports, promote American-made goods and forgo undue profits in business.

Hank Greenberg might be the best baseball player you’ve never heard of. Greenberg led the American League in home runs four times, played in five All-Star Games, twice won the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. Greenberg was also Jewish, and he is often called America’s first Jewish sports superstar. As Greenberg wrote in his autobiography, that was not an easy honor to bear. Greenberg played during a time of rising antisemitism, and the cruel taunts he suffered from players and fans lasted throughout his career.

Donald Trump is using the language of intelligence, or intellectual impairment, as a weapon against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Trump’s language is what is called “ableist,” meaning that it assumes people with disabilities are somehow less valuable than those without. The language becomes even more horrific when race is brought in.

Israel is now set to repeat its Gaza operations in Lebanon, with a view to reordering the Middle East in its own interests. But has it bitten off more than it can chew? Israel has been here before. It invaded Lebanon as far as the capital Beirut in 1982, in an attempt to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organisation. 1982 was also the year Hezbollah was formed with the help of the recently established Islamic government in Iran.

A new filing by special counsel Jack Smith in the case he has brought against Donald Trump for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election provides greater detail and support for Smith’s argument that Trump, while president, committed illegal acts to reverse his 2020 election loss. Those acts, argues Smith, were taken by Trump as a candidate for reelection and therefore are not covered by a 2024 Supreme Court opinion related to the case that says presidents’ official actions are immune from prosecution when they exercise their core constitutional powers.

We need to once and for all dispose of the West and the East as a clash of civilizations. Militaries and militias should not have to race to eliminate either side. They should instead realize that their fate is as intertwined as their past, and that only dialogue can solve conflict. Wars have always required these types of false dichotomies: Christian and Muslim, civilization and barbarism, West and East.

The debate between vice presidential nominees Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance showcased two candidates with competing views of women’s and men’s autonomy. Throughout the debate, Vance subtly suggested that authority and autonomy are the purview of men, reinforcing how patriarchy is shaping the Republican strategy.

Some 90% of all internationally traded products are carried by ships at some point. The availability of labor is essential in each link of the supply chain. That includes the workers who make sure that your tinned fish and handy tools smoothly journey from their point of origin to where they’ll wind up, whether it’s a supermarket, hardware store or your front door.

Hezbollah, which means “party of God” in Arabic, was born during the Lebanese Civil War after Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Hezbollah is primarily an Iranian-backed militia. It exists to serve the Iranian regime and expand its ideology in the region, as set out in the group’s 1985 manifesto.

Democrats have been losing rural voters across the U.S. since the 1960s. But the party has hemorrhaged these voters since 2000. The Democratic Party’s collapse in rural America has fueled support for Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement.

Should Americans be bracing for bloodshed if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election? A political scientist who studies American politics can easily imagine a repeat of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection – or worse – following this November’s presidential election.

Lebanese families have been fleeing the country’s south in the thousands amid escalating tensions and an Israeli bombardment that has so far killed hundreds. Their fear, echoed by many onlookers, is that Israel will accompany the airstrikes with something that has the potential to have far worse consequences: a ground invasion of south Lebanon.

If world agricultural authorities don’t get their act together soon enough, your morning orange juice may disappear from the supermarket shelves – for good. This is how critical the situation has become in the citrus growing world. In Brazil, production has fallen by more than 20%, 60% in Guadeloupe and and plummeted by more than 90% in Florida.

Human prenatal genome editing has not happened yet – as far as we know. Prenatal genome editing isn’t the same as editing ex vivo embryos, like the Chinese scientist did, because prenatal editing involves editing the DNA of a fetus visible inside a pregnant person’s womb – without the intent to affect future descendants. But the societal implications of this technology are still vast. And researchers can already start exploring the ethics by engaging communities well ahead of time.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the most famous figures of his time, not only in his native Prussia but throughout the world. In addition to being a leading geographer, climatologist, ecologist and oceanographer, he attached great importance to the dissemination of knowledge to society as a whole.

All parties surely know the likely destructive consequences of such an eventuality for themselves: Israel has the military power to devastate Beirut and other parts of Lebanon as it did in Gaza, while even a weakened Hezbollah could fire thousands of missiles at Israeli strategic sites, from the airport to central Tel Aviv, water supply lines and electricity hubs, and offshore gas rigs.

Summer 2024 was officially the Northern Hemisphere’s hottest on record. In the United States, fierce heat waves seemed to hit somewhere almost every day. Here’s how heat domes, the jet stream and climate change influence summer heat waves and the record-hot summer of 2024.

The Mediterranean’s drying out 5.5 million years ago, known as the Messinian salinity crisis, is the biggest extinction event suffered by the Earth since the meteorite that wiped out the flightless dinosaurs and ended the Mesozoic era 65 million years ago. No one knows yet how long it will take for marine life to recover from the kind of global-scale change that is currently underway.

The acts that apparently led Israel to strike Hezbollah are also illegal under international law. Hezbollah, a nonstate armed group supported by Iran, has no right to use violence of any kind, let alone missile strikes targeting civilians in northern Israel. But under law, hiding explosives in everyday objects makes them booby traps – and in almost every case, using a booby trap designed to kill is a crime.

In contrast to foraging and hunting – behaviors with clearly defined goals – play is undirected. When a pony frolics in a field, a dog wrestles with a stick or chimpanzees chase each other, they act with no goal in mind. But an animal at play is far more likely to innovate – and some of its innovations may in time be adapted into new ways to forage and hunt.

Most discussions of retirement focus on the financial aspects of leaving the workforce: “How to save enough for retirement” or “How do you know if you have enough money for retirement?” This might not be the biggest problem that potential retirees face. The deeper issues of meaning, relevance and identity that retirement can bring to the fore are more significant to some workers.

Critics of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, commonly referred to by the acronym DEI, are increasingly using boycotts and bans to fight against their use. People often argue that this anti-DEI backlash is motivated by race-neutral concerns – for example, that DEI practices are irrelevant to work performance or are too political. But research suggests that conservative critiques of DEI often boil down to one thing: anti-Black racism.

Research shows that celebrity political endorsements don’t matter enough to determine an election’s results. Political campaigns seek them out because they still do matter and for many different reasons. Celebrities can easily get media attention, act as campaign surrogates, expand the voter base and make campaign contributions. All these things can help a candidate win.

When Harris triggered Trump’s insecurity by questioning his popularity and political prowess, his responses were narcissistic, racist and occasionally unhinged from reality. Trump’s performance in the debate against Harris demonstrates not only that white male insecurity is a strategic liability but also a threat to democracy.