All Else

Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, different governmental and nongovernmental organizations and political interest groups have engaged in what can best be described as “map wars.” Maps of the region use the naming of places, the position of borders and the inclusion or omission of certain territories to present contrasting geopolitical visions. To this day, Israel or the Palestinian territories may fall off some maps, depending on the politics of their makers.

USAID is a government agency that, for more than 63 years, has led the United States’ foreign aid work on disaster recovery, poverty reduction and democratic reforms in many developing and middle-income countries. A yearlong pause in USAID’s work on health, food and agriculture in the world’s poorest countries would raise malaria deaths by 40%. It would also result in an increase of between 28% and 32% in tuberculosis cases, among other negative effects.

In halting its Spanish-language communications, the White House is ignoring the demographic reality of the U.S. and rejecting a long-standing tradition in American government of making key civic information accessible to the public. These changes, while mostly symbolic, signal the Trump administration’s unwelcoming stance toward Spanish specifically and multilingualism in general.

The resumption of death by firing squad is part of a morbid search for “better” execution methods. It comes amid concern over botched lethal injection attempts and a scarcity of the drugs needed to carry out such executions. In 2020, the first Trump administration expanded how federal execution can be carried out to include ghoulish methods such as hanging, the electric chair, gas chamber and, indeed, the firing squad.

The world is lurching ever closer to a full-blown trade war as the U.S., China, Europe, Canada, and Mexico talk tariffs and retaliation. It’s important to first understand what a tariff actually is and does before we can determine whether new trade barriers are good or bad.

Toxic masculinity is a version of masculinity that discourages empathy, expresses strength through dominance, normalizes violence against women and associates leadership with white patriarchy. Trump’s reaction to Zelenskyy in the Oval Office illustrates how these inclinations stymie the president’s purported dealmaking abilities, undermine democratic values and make the world a more dangerous place.

The reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris has recalled debate over the €200 million contribution of France’s Bernard Arnault, the CEO of the LVMH luxury group, to its restoration. From founding the Louis Vuitton Foundation in 2014 to regular multi-million-euro donations, Arnault’s patronage has become almost synonymous with the LVMH brand. But what drives these expenditures? What do Arnault and his luxury empire stand to gain? And what risks are they taking?

Some clichés are like planets, their gravitational pull too strong for all but the most propulsive acts of creativity. Middle age is one of these. The changes often associated with being in your 40s and 50s – gray hairs, career doldrums, time’s squeaky-wheeled chariot drawing near – can seem as inevitable as aging itself.

Biomedical research in the U.S. is world-class in part because of a long-standing partnership between universities and the federal government. On Feb. 7, the U.S. National Institutes of Health issued a policy that could weaken the position of the United States as a global leader in scientific innovation by slashing funds to the infrastructure that allows universities and other institutions to conduct research in the first place.

Article 2 does not grant the president unlimited power. While almost all modern presidents flex their muscles in the initial stages of their administration, the first weeks of the second Trump presidency have seen a rapid-fire, often dizzying array of executive actions that have sparked heated, even virulent, disputes among politicians, the media and citizens about how much power the president of the United States should have.

In his short yet prolific life, Dunbar used folk dialect to give voice and dignity to the experience of Black Americans at the turn of the 20th century. He was the first Black American to make a living as a writer and was seminal in the start of the New Negro Movement and Harlem Renaissance. Dunbar also penned one of the most iconic phrases in Black literature – “I know why the caged bird sings” – his poem “Sympathy.”