Florida & Beyond, and All Opinions

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.