Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Mathew Barlow, Professor of Climate Science, UMass Lowell

A severe winter storm sweeping across the central and eastern U.S. in late January 2026 threatened states from Texas to New England with crippling freezing rain, sleet and snow. Several governors issued states of emergency as forecasters warned of hazardous travel conditions, dangerous wind chills and power outages amid bitter cold expected to linger for days.

The sudden blast may come as a shock to many Americans after a mostly mild start to winter, but that warmth may be partly contributing to the ferocity of this storm.

As atmospheric and climate scientists, we conduct research that aims to improve understanding of extreme weather, including what makes it more or less likely to occur and how climate change might or might not play a role.

To understand what Americans are experiencing with this winter blast, we need to look more than 20 miles above the surface of Earth, to the stratospheric polar vortex.

What creates a severe winter storm like this?

Multiple weather factors have to come together to produce such a large and severe storm.

Winter storms typically develop where there are sharp temperature contrasts near the surface and a southward dip in the jet stream, the narrow band of fast-moving air that steers weather systems. If there is a substantial source of moisture, the storms can produce heavy rain or snow.

In late January, a strong Arctic air mass from the north was creating the temperature contrast with warmer air from the south. Multiple disturbances within the jet stream were acting together to create favorable conditions for precipitation, and the storm system was able to pull moisture from the very warm Gulf of Mexico.

Where does the polar vortex come in?

The fastest winds of the jet stream occur just below the top of the troposphere, which is the lowest level of the atmosphere and ends about seven miles above Earth’s surface. Weather systems are capped at the top of the troposphere, because the atmosphere above it becomes very stable.

The stratosphere is the next layer up, from about seven miles to about 30 miles. While the stratosphere extends high above weather systems, it can still interact with them through atmospheric waves that move up and down in the atmosphere. These waves are similar to the waves in the jet stream that cause it to dip southward, but they move vertically instead of horizontally.

You’ve probably heard the term “polar vortex” used when an area of cold Arctic air moves far enough southward to influence the United States. That term describes air circulating around the pole, but it can refer to two different circulations, one in the troposphere and one in the stratosphere.

The Northern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex is a belt of fast-moving air circulating around the North Pole. It is like a second jet stream, high above the one you may be familiar with from weather graphics, and usually less wavy and closer to the pole.

Sometimes the stratospheric polar vortex can stretch southward over the United States. When that happens, it creates ideal conditions for the up-and-down movement of waves that connect the stratosphere with severe winter weather at the surface.

The forecast for the January storm showed a close overlap between the southward stretch of the stratospheric polar vortex and the jet stream over the U.S., indicating perfect conditions for cold and snow.

The biggest swings in the jet stream are associated with the most energy. Under the right conditions, that energy can bounce off the polar vortex back down into the troposphere, exaggerating the north-south swings of the jet stream across North America and making severe winter weather more likely.

This is what was happening in late January 2026 in the central and eastern U.S.

If the climate is warming, why are we still getting severe winter storms?

Earth is unequivocally warming as human activities release greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere, and snow amounts are decreasing overall. But that does not mean severe winter weather will never happen again.

Some research suggests that even in a warming environment, cold events, while occurring less frequently, may still remain relatively severe in some locations.

One factor may be increasing disruptions to the stratospheric polar vortex, which appear to be linked to the rapid warming of the Arctic with climate change.

Additionally, a warmer ocean leads to more evaporation, and because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, that means more moisture is becoming available for storms. The process of moisture condensing into rain or snow produces energy for storms as well. However, warming can also reduce the strength of storms by reducing temperature contrasts. The opposing effects make it complicated to assess the potential change to average storm strength.

However, intense events do not necessarily change in the same way as average events. On balance, it appears that the most intense winter storms may be becoming more intense. Additionally, a warmer environment increases the likelihood that precipitation that would have fallen as snow in previous winters may now be more likely to fall as sleet and freezing rain.

There are still many questions

Scientists are constantly improving our ability to predict and respond to these severe weather events, but there are many questions still to answer.

Much of the data and research in the field relies on a foundation of work by federal employees, including government labs like the National Center for Atmospheric Research, known as NCAR, which has been targeted by the Trump administration for funding cuts. These scientists help develop the crucial models, measuring instruments and data that scientists and forecasters everywhere depend on.

Mathew Barlow has received federal funding for research on extreme events and also conducts legal consulting related to climate change..

Judah Cohen 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.

– ref. How the polar vortex and warm ocean are intensifying a major US winter storm – https://theconversation.com/how-the-polar-vortex-and-warm-ocean-are-intensifying-a-major-us-winter-storm-274243

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kelsey Norman, Fellow for the Middle East, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University

Over the past year, images of masked, heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arresting men, women and children – outside of courts, at schools and homes – have become common across the United States.

The video of an ICE agent shooting and killing Renee Nicole Good – a U.S. citizen – in Minnesota on Jan. 7, 2026, is one example of the brazen, sometimes deadly tactics that the agency employs.

Part of the reason why recent ICE tactics have shocked Americans is because most people haven’t seen them before. Historically, the country’s militarized immigration enforcement practices have played out closer to the U.S.-Mexico border. And for decades, agents with Customs and Border Protection have carried out most deportations near the border, not ICE.

From 2010-2020, nearly 80% of all deportations were initiated at or near the U.S.-Mexico border. During the COVID-19 pandemic, that number jumped to 98%, as both the Trump and Biden administrations utilized Title 42, a public health statute that allowed the government to rapidly deport recently arrived migrants.

But Trump during his second presidency has greatly shifted immigration enforcement north into the interior of the U.S. And ICE has played a central role.

As international migration and human rights scholars, we have examined recent federal immigration policy to determine why ICE has become the main agency detaining and deporting migrants as far away from the southern border as snowy Minnesota.

And we have also explored how the transition in immigration control from the southern border to more Americans’ front lawns could be shifting the public’s views on deportation tactics.

Migration as a threat

ICE is a relatively new agency. The 2002 Homeland Security Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, created the Department of Homeland Security, known as DHS, by merging the U.S. Customs Service – previously under Treasury Department control – and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, formerly under the Justice Department.

DHS has 22 agencies, including three that focus on immigration: Customs and Border Protection, ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages legal immigration and naturalization.

There is no inherent reason that immigration enforcement should fall under homeland security. But immigration was deemed a national security matter by the George W. Bush administration after 9/11.

In a 2002 presidential briefing justifying DHS’s creation, Bush said, “The changing nature of the threats facing America requires a new government structure to protect against invisible enemies that can strike with a wide variety of weapons.”

The U.S. government has viewed immigration from this national security perspective ever since.

The full impact of the deportations

The Trump administration in early 2025 set a goal of deporting 1 million people during its first year.

But with so few crossings, and thus deportations, at the U.S.-Mexico border, the administration instead has focused its efforts on the U.S. interior.

Trump’s 2025 tax and budget bill reflected this reprioritization, allocating US$170 billion over four years to immigration enforcement, compared to approximately $30 billion allocated in 2024.

Roughly $67 billion goes toward immigration enforcement at the border, including border wall construction. But the largest percentage of the bill’s immigration funding – at least $75 billion – goes toward arresting, detaining and deporting immigrants already living in the U.S.

The Trump administration did not initiate deportations from the U.S. interior. They have formed part of other administration’s policies, both Democratic and Republican.

Interior border enforcement increased under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s with the introduction of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which widened the criteria for deportations. And former President Barack Obama was referred to as the “Deporter in Chief” after his administration carried out more than 3 million deportations over his two terms, with roughly 69% of deportations occurring at the border.

But the astronomical growth of government funding toward migration control – at the border and in the U.S. – got the country to where it is today.

Between fiscal year 2003 and 2024, for example, Congress allocated approximately $24 toward immigration enforcement carried out by ICE and CBP for every $1 spent on the immigration court system that handles asylum claims.

The new money allocated under the 2025 budget bill, and the reprioritization of immigration enforcement from the border to the interior, partly explains why Americans are now seeing the long-term consequences of border militarization play out directly in their communities.

Americans may not know about the experiences of migrants who are quickly deported near the border, but it is harder to ignore recent images of people snatched up within their own neighborhoods.

Now the visible targets of border enforcement are increasingly immigrants who have built their lives in the U.S. – neighbors, friends, co-workers – as well as anyone who opposes ICE’s tactics, like Renee Good.

Changing political attitudes

In fact, the violence of Trump’s mass deportation campaign may be changing how Americans view immigration.

Just before the 2024 presidential election, a Gallup Poll found that 28% of Americans believed that immigration was the most important problem facing the nation – the highest percentage since Gallup began tracking the topic in 1981. This number dropped to 19% in December 2025, reflecting how more Americans see immigration as a routine issue that the government can manage rather than a crisis that needs to be dealt with.

This is supported in the academic literature. Migration scholars have shown that voters often support strict immigration policies in the voting booth but resist and protest when governments attempt to implement those policies in organized immigrant communities.

In 2002, for example, migration scholar Antje Ellermann documented that immigration officers reported it was more difficult to detain and deport people in Miami – because of resistance by a politicized immigrant community – compared to relatively conservative and less organized communities in San Diego.

But in both places, Republican and Democratic lawmakers were influential in intervening in individual cases to prevent deportations. This is because senior immigration officials, Ellermann noted, were influenced by media attention and pressure by members of Congress to grant relief.

Support for Trump’s handling of immigration is trending downward. Only 41% of Americans approved of Trump’s approach to immigration as of early January 2026, compared to 51% in March of last year, according to CNN polling.

This declining support for Trump’s tactics comes as Republican senators such as Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Joni Ernst of Iowa have criticized ICE and its operations in Minnesota.

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.

– ref. ICE immigration tactics are shocking more Americans as US-Mexico border operations move north – https://theconversation.com/ice-immigration-tactics-are-shocking-more-americans-as-us-mexico-border-operations-move-north-273741

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John E. Jones III, President, Dickinson College

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents continued to use aggressive and sometimes violent methods to make arrests in its mass deportation campaign, including breaking down doors in Minneapolis homes, a bombshell report from the Associated Press on Jan. 21, 2026, said that an internal ICE memo – acquired via a whistleblower – asserted that immigration officers could enter a home without a judge’s warrant. That policy, the report said, constituted “a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.”

Those limits have long been found in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002, for a primer on the Fourth Amendment, and what the changes in the ICE memo mean.

Okay, I’m going to read the Fourth Amendment – and then you’re going to explain it to us, please! Here goes:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Can you help us understand what that means?

Since the beginning of the republic, it has been uncontested that in order to invade someone’s home, you need to have a warrant that was considered, and signed off on, by a judicial officer. This mandate is right within the Fourth Amendment; it is a core protection.

In addition to that, through jurisprudence that has evolved since the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, it is settled law that it applies to everyone. That would include noncitizens as well.

What I see in this directive that ICE put out, apparently quite some time ago and somewhat secretly, is something that, to my mind, turns the Fourth Amendment on its head.

What does the Fourth Amendment aim to protect someone from?

In the context of the ICE search, it means that a person’s home, as they say, really is their castle. Historically, it was meant to remedy something that was true in England, where the colonists came from, which was that the king or those empowered by the king could invade people’s homes at will. The Fourth Amendment was meant to establish a sort of zone of privacy for people, so that their papers, their property, their persons would be safe from intrusion without cause.

So it’s essentially a protection against abuse of the government’s power.

That’s precisely what it is.

Has the accepted interpretation of the Fourth Amendment changed over the centuries?

It hasn’t. But Fourth Amendment law has evolved because the framers, for example, didn’t envision that there would be cellphones. They couldn’t understand or anticipate that there would be things like cellphones and electronic surveillance. All those modalities have come into the sphere of Fourth Amendment protection. The law has evolved in a way that actually has made Fourth Amendment protections greater and more wide-ranging, simply because of technology and other developments such as the use of automobiles and other means of transportation. So there are greater protected zones of privacy than just a person’s home.

ICE says it only needs an administrative warrant, not a judicial warrant, to enter a home and arrest someone. Can you briefly describe the difference and what it means in this situation?

It’s absolutely central to the question here. In this context, an administrative warrant is nothing more than the folks at ICE headquarters writing something up and directing their agents to go arrest somebody. That’s all. It’s a piece of paper that says ‘We want you arrested because we said so.’ At bottom that’s what an administrative warrant is, and of course it hasn’t been approved by a judge.

This authorized use of administrative warrants to circumvent the Fourth Amendment flies in the face of their limited use prior to the ICE directive.

A judicially approved warrant, on the other hand, has by definition been reviewed by a judge. In this case, it would be either a U.S. magistrate judge or U.S. district judge. That means that it would have to be supported by probable cause to enter someone’s residence to arrest them.

So the key distinction is that there’s a neutral arbiter. In this case, a federal judge who evaluates whether or not there’s sufficient cause to – as is stated clearly in the Fourth Amendment – be empowered to enter someone’s home. An administrative warrant has no such protection. It is not much more than a piece of paper generated in a self-serving way by ICE, free of review to substantiate what is stated in it.

Have there been other kinds of situations, historically, where the government has successfully proposed working around the Fourth Amendment?

There are a few, such as consent searches and exigent circumstances where someone is in danger or evidence is about to be destroyed. But generally it’s really the opposite and cases point to greater protections. For example, in the 1960s the Supreme Court had to confront warrantless wiretapping; it was very difficult for judges in that age who were not tech-savvy to apply the Fourth Amendment to this technology, and they struggled to find a remedy when there was no actual intrusion into a structure. In the end, the court found that intrusion was not necessary and that people’s expectation of privacy included their phone conversations. This of course has been extended to various other means of technology including GPS tracking and cellphone use generally.

What’s the direction this could go in at this point?

What I fear here – and I think ICE probably knows this – is that more often than not, a person who may not have legal standing to be in the country, notwithstanding the fact that there was a Fourth Amendment violation by ICE, may ultimately be out of luck. You could say that the arrest was illegal, and you go back to square one, but at the same time you’ve apprehended the person. So I’m struggling to figure out how you remedy this.

John E. Jones III is affiliated with Keep Our Republic’s Article Three Coalition.

– ref. ‘We want you arrested because we said so’ – how ICE’s policy on raiding whatever homes it wants violates a basic constitutional right, according to a former federal judge – https://theconversation.com/we-want-you-arrested-because-we-said-so-how-ices-policy-on-raiding-whatever-homes-it-wants-violates-a-basic-constitutional-right-according-to-a-former-federal-judge-274164

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Kevin Deane, Professor of Medicine and Rheumatology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

More than 18 million people worldwide suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, including nearly 1.5 million Americans.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune, inflammatory form of arthritis, meaning a person’s immune system attacks their joints, causing substantial inflammation. This inflammation can cause pain, stiffness and swelling in the joints, and in many cases, patients report fatigue and a flu-like feeling.

If left untreated, rheumatoid arthritis can lead to damage of the joints. But even when treated, this condition can lead to significant disability. In highly active disease or advanced stages, patient may have difficulty performing daily tasks, such as preparing food, caring for children and getting dressed.

Up to now, this condition has been treated once patients have already developed symptoms. But a growing body of evidence suggests this disease can be identified earlier – and maybe even ultimately prevented.

I’m a physician specializing in rheumatoid arthritis and a researcher who has conducted a clinical trial on treatments for this condition. I believe this research is moving us toward being able to identify people who are at risk for rheumatoid arthritis before the disease fully develops, and to finding treatments that will delay or prevent it altogether. My hope is that this could lead to changes in how we manage rheumatoid arthritis in the next several years.

Finding the disease before it causes harm

Currently, when someone visits their health care provider because they are experiencing joint pain or other symptoms of an immune attack, health care providers can make a diagnosis by examining the joints for swelling. The health care provider will also run tests to find blood markers called autoantibodies, which help in confirming the diagnosis. While not all people with rheumatoid arthritis will have abnormal blood markers, the two autoantibodies that are seen in up to 80% of people with rheumatoid arthritis are rheumatoid factor and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide.

But multiple studies have now confirmed that rheumatoid arthritis has a preclinical stage of development. This is a time about three to five years or longer, prior to the onset of swollen joints when markers like rheumatoid factor and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide are detectable in the blood. The presence of these markers indicates that autoimmunity is occurring, yet the body and organs are still functioning well, and a person who is at risk of getting rheumatoid arthritis may not feel sick yet.

Now that researchers have identified this preclinical stage, health care providers can use markers such as autoantibodies and symptoms like prolonged early morning joint stiffness to identify people who are at risk for rheumatoid arthritis but do not yet have joint inflammation.

At this point, predicting future rheumatoid arthritis is still in the research stage, although the field is working toward established ways to test for risk for rheumatoid arthritis as a routine part of health care. This is akin to how cardiovascular disease risk is assessed through measuring cholesterol levels.

Ongoing research

Because of advances in the ability to predict who may get rheumatoid arthritis in the future, researchers are now working on identifying treatments that can delay or prevent the full-blown condition from developing.

In particular, trials have been performed in people who tested positive for anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide, or who have other risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis. These risk factors include joint pain and subclinical joint inflammation, which is when an imaging study, like magnetic resonance imaging, sees joint inflammation that can’t be seen by a clinician examining the joints.

To date, almost all of these trials have used immune drugs that are commonly used to treat full-blown rheumatoid arthritis, such as methotrexate, hydroxychloroquine and rituximab. Researchers have been testing whether a short course of any of these drugs could lead to a lasting reset of the immune system and prevent rheumatoid arthritis from developing.

While there is not yet an approved drug for rheumatoid arthritis prevention, these studies offer hope that researchers are on track to find the right drug – as well as the right dosage and duration of that drug.

Researching the preclinical stage of rheumatoid arthritis

Some challenges remain to be addressed before preventive treatments become the norm in clinical care.

First, researchers need to better understand the biology of the preclinical stage of disease. Until recently, most studies have focused on patients with full-blown arthritis and generally ignored people at risk for developing the disease.

But now, researchers can use blood markers like anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies to identify those who are at risk much more easily. And a growing number of studies of people with this marker are informing how scientists understand the biology of rheumatoid arthritis development.

In particular, it is now apparent that the preclinical stage is marked by multiple circulating immune system abnormalities in cells, autoantibodies and inflammation. The hope is that researchers will find interventions that effectively target the immune system abnormalities driving the development of rheumatoid arthritis before the patient’s joints begin to swell.

Researchers are also finding that the abnormalities in the immune system during the preclinical stage may be coming from sites in the body other than the joints. An emerging idea called the mucosal origins hypothesis posits that the early autoimmunity of rheumatoid arthritis is caused by inflammation at mucosal surfaces of the body, such as the gums, the lungs and the gut. According to this theory, the joints are involved only later as the disease progresses.

More research is needed, but the mucosal origins hypothesis may help explain why periodontal disease, emphysema or other forms of lung disease and exposure to tobacco or forest fire smoke are risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis. It would also explain why certain bacteria have been associated with the disease. Future trials targeting interventions to a mucosal process could help researchers better understand the nature of this disease.

Making predictions

But while biomarkers like the anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies are strongly predictive for future rheumatoid arthritis, one difficulty remains: Some people who test positive for them never develop the full-blown disease.

Studies have shown that about 20% to 30% of people who are positive for anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies develop rheumatoid arthritis within two to five years, although the presence of combinations of risk factors can identify people who have a greater than 50% risk for developing the condition within one year.

This makes it difficult to find participants for clinical trials for rheumatoid arthritis prevention. If you can’t predict who will get the disease, it’s hard to know whether you’re preventing it.

So far, researchers have tried to recruit people who have already come to their health care provider with early joint symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis but still no swollen joints. That has worked well, but there are likely far more people at risk for rheumatoid arthritis who have not yet sought care. Since health care providers are not yet testing everyone for blood markers for rheumatoid arthritis, researchers will need larger, international networks that can test for risk factors like autoantibodies to identify candidates for participation in prevention trials.

More needs to be done, but it’s exciting to see the field advancing toward the point where prevention may be part of routine clinical care for rheumatoid arthritis.

Dr. Deane has received grant funding from the Arthritis Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Boehringer Ingelheim, Gilead and ThermoFisher, and has had consulting/advisory board participation with Werfen, Boehringer Ingelheim, AllInBio, and Lilly. Dr. Deane also part of task forces for prediction of rheumatoid arthritis that are sponsored by the American College of Rheumatology and the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology.

– ref. Rheumatoid arthritis has no cure – but researchers are homing in on preventing it – https://theconversation.com/rheumatoid-arthritis-has-no-cure-but-researchers-are-homing-in-on-preventing-it-268472