Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bill Sullivan, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Indiana University

People have long given up on the search for the Fountain of Youth, a mythical spring that could reverse aging. But for some scientists, the hunt has not ended – it’s just moved to a different place. These modern-day Ponce de Leóns are investigating whether gut microbes hold the secret to aging well.

The gut microbiome refers to the vast collection of microscopic organisms – bacteria, fungi and viruses – that largely inhabit the colon. These microbes aid in digestion and produce molecules that affect your physiology and psychology. The composition of the microbiome is influenced by a combination of factors, including genetics, diet, the environment, medications and age.

I’m a microbiology professor and author of “Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are,” which describes how the gut microbiome contributes to physical and mental health. The discovery that the gut microbiome changes with age has ignited studies to determine whether the Fountain of Youth might be right under your nose, down inside your gut.

You’re only as old as your gut microbes

People are most familiar with outward signs of aging, such as wrinkles and graying hair, but there are also microscopic changes taking place deep inside. The gut microbes of older people tend to be less diverse, with more bacteria that promote inflammation and other hallmarks of aging. Changes to the microbiome across age are so consistent that algorithms can reliably predict a person’s age based on their microbiome composition.

There are exceptions to this rule. Older adults and supercentenarians who age well have a gut microbiome that looks more like those of younger people. These findings support the idea that maintaining a youthful microbiome fosters healthy aging and longevity.

To confirm that the microbes of youth influence aging, scientists use a technique called fecal microbiota transplantation. This procedure involves obliterating a person’s current gut microbiome and replacing it with microbes harvested from a donor’s feces. Transplanting microbiota from a young mouse into an elderly mouse reverses age-associated inflammation in the gut, brain and eyes. Conversely, transplanting microbiota from an old mouse into a young one accelerates these aging parameters. Other studies suggest that microbiota from young mice alter metabolism in ways that reduce inflammation that accelerates aging.

The evidence that aging is linked with the microbiome is compelling. However, fecal transplantation is not without risk and is approved only as a last resort to treat severe C. difficile infections. These shortcomings have prompted researchers to search for safer and more refined ways to cultivate an age-friendly microbiome.

Diet and exercise may slow aging

Proper diet and exercise have long been tied to better aging and longevity. One way these lifestyle habits may be beneficial is through their influence on gut microbes.

What people eat – or fail to eat – has a demonstrable effect on their gut microbiomes. The standard American diet, enriched with ultraprocessed foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt and low in nutrients and fiber, depletes microbiome diversity within days. Moving from a non-Western country to the U.S. is also associated with loss of gut microbiome diversity, partly due to dietary changes.

Lack of fiber is a major reason the microbiome adopts a configuration associated with poor aging. Studies in roundworms, mice and rats found that fiber supplements improved overall health and extended lifespan by 20% to 35%. A 2025 study showed that increasing the amount of fiber in your diet is linked to as much as a 37% greater likelihood of healthy aging in women.

Fiber functions as a prebiotic, a nondigestible food component that nourishes the microbiome. Gut bacteria process fiber into compounds such as short-chain fatty acids that promote better aging by improving metabolic, brain and immune function while reducing chronic inflammation. Good sources of prebiotics include most fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.

Certain foods, such as yogurt and kefir, or dietary supplements contain probiotics – living microbes that may benefit the gut microbiome. Research on probiotic foods and supplements is mixed, complicated by the variation in bacterial species and dosage in these products. The health benefits that different types of probiotics may confer is still under study.

Physical activity is also linked to a youthful microbiome. Regular exercise can reshape the microbiome of older adults to resemble those seen in younger adults. One study showed that when people ages 50 to 75 underwent 24 weeks of cardiovascular and resistance exercise, their microbiomes became populated by healthier bacteria and their blood had elevated levels of aging-friendly, short-chain fatty acids.

Treatments to manipulate the microbiome

Making healthy lifestyle changes is a noninvasive way to cultivate a youthful microbiome that may slow aging. Scientists are also exploring treatments to tailor the gut microbiome for better health outcomes.

One option may be postbiotics, nonliving but active compounds that probiotic microbes produce. For example, mouse studies have found that short-chain fatty acid supplements can improve age-related heart and lung problems. Similarly, elderly mice given heat-killed bacteria from a human infant saw reduced metabolic dysfunction and inflammation, as well as improved cognitive function.

The microbiome can also be modified with drugs, particularly antibiotics. A low-dose oral antibiotic can trigger gut bacteria to release factors that may promote good health and aging by, for example, strengthening the intestinal barrier or reducing inflammation. One such antibiotic, cephaloridine, extends the lifespan of roundworms and mice by triggering gut bacteria to make colanic acid, an anti-aging compound.

Bacteriophages, or phages, offer yet another potential way to manipulate the microbiome for health. Phages are highly selective viruses that infect and kill specific species of bacteria. Phages have been used to treat severe infections from bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Given that phages can alter the gut microbiome of mice, researchers are studying whether they could be used to eliminate gut bacteria associated with unhealthy aging.

Aging is a natural process that can bring many rewards. Cultivating a healthy microbiome could help people enjoy their golden years more fully.

Bill Sullivan receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

– ref. Your gut microbes can be anti-aging – scientists are uncovering how to keep your microbiome youthful – https://theconversation.com/your-gut-microbes-can-be-anti-aging-scientists-are-uncovering-how-to-keep-your-microbiome-youthful-275380

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John M. Kinder, Professor of History and American Studies, Oklahoma State University

The negative public reaction to Operation Metro Surge – the violent immigration dragnet in Minnesota – was “MAGA’s Gettysburg,” wrote New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on Jan. 28.

Bouie, of course, was comparing ICE’s setbacks to the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, the battle often credited with turning the tide of the American Civil War. Fresh off a string of victories, Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, believed his men were “invincible” and launched an invasion into the North.

But Gen. George G. Meade and the Army of the Potomac won the battle of Gettysburg, and the Confederates would fight on the defensive for the rest of the war.

Since early 2026, growing numbers of commentators have turned to the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 to make sense of America’s fractured political climate.

After a masked federal agent shot and killed a 37-year-old mother of three, Renée Good, in Minneapolis, novelist Thane Rosenbaum wondered whether the city might become a “new Antietam.” The battle of Antietam, fought on Sept. 17, 1862, remains the bloodiest day in all of American history, leaving more than 3,600 soldiers dead.

Later in January 2026, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speculated that ICE violence in the Twin Cities could spark a national conflict. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” he asked an interviewer, alluding to the South Carolina harbor fortress where, in 1861, the opening shots of the Civil War were fired.

In response, defenders of Donald Trump, including CNN commentator Scott Jennings and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, compared Walz to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America. On Fox News, Washington Examiner columnist Tiana Lowe Doescher said: “News flash, Tim Walz. In this case, you’re the Confederacy,” accusing him of conspiring to defy federal immigration policy.

At a time of deepening national division, the recent spate of Civil War analogies should come as no surprise.

Unprecedented political fracture

The Civil War remains the nation’s most divisive and defining epoch. The secession of 11 states propelled a democratic nation into unprecedented political fracture. After four years of bloodshed, the Union was preserved and 4 million enslaved people were granted their freedom.

Preservation of the Union came at a heavy price. More than 700,000 people were dead, about 2% of the 1860 population, or a number roughly equivalent to the current population of the state of Maryland.

But the Civil War’s staggering death toll cannot fully explain the references to “Gettysburg” and “Jeff Davis” in media coverage of ICE operations in Minnesota and elsewhere.

As we argue in our book, “They Are Dead and Yet They Live: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America,” the impulse to connect the American Civil War to contemporary crises can be traced to the politics of memory, the ways interest groups, politicians and ordinary people shape the past to meet the needs of the present.

Likening Walz to Jefferson Davis or Minneapolis to Gettysburg or Fort Sumter are clear examples of how Americans appropriate the Civil War for our contemporary political needs.

Competing memories

In the Civil War’s aftermath, the conflict’s participants quickly crafted competing versions of the Civil War.

Some Union veterans labeled their former adversaries as traitors. Clinton Spencer, a captain in the 1st Michigan Infantry, declared, “disloyalty to the old flag was is and shall always be TREASON, deep, dark, and damnable.”

Yet the Union memory soon became subsumed by the dominance of the “Lost Cause,” an intentional and distorted narrative crafted by white Southerners. That version of the Civil War ignored slavery and celebrated Confederate soldiers in a war to defend states’ rights from federal tyranny.

By the early 1900s, Lost Cause ideology had taken root across the nation. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and other Southern apologists erected hundreds of Confederate monuments throughout the United States, and blockbuster movies like “The Birth of a Nation,” from 1915, and “Gone with the Wind,” from 1939, turned Lost Cause nostalgia into big-screen spectacle.

Over the past few decades, however, communities around the United States have made great strides to disentangle the Lost Cause from public memories of the Civil War.

After Dylann Roof massacred nine African American worshippers at Charleston’s Emmanuel AME Church in 2015, he was found to have espoused white supremacist ideas and posted a photo of the Confederate battle flag on his website. In the killings’ aftermath, cities across the South removed more than 300 Confederate flags, monuments and symbols from public view.

“The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity,” declared New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu in a 2017 speech about the removal of four Confederate statues in the city. “It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is a history we should never forget and one that we should never, ever again put on a pedestal to be revered.”

Homegrown analogy

In 1961, poet Robert Penn Warren famously observed, “Many clear and objective facts about America are best understood by reference to the Civil War.”

That remains the case today.

For many Americans, the Civil War is the prime example of the danger of allowing political division to spiral into organized violence.

Minnesota’s governor, Walz, could have used the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 or the bombing at Pearl Harbor in 1941 for his historical analogy, but the references to the start of the Spanish-American War or World War II would not have been as powerful. Using the Civil War as a reference point underscores the danger when Americans decide to abandon their shared history and values and engage in fratricidal war.

Many of the recent Civil War analogies do not hold up to scrutiny. The events going on in Minneapolis bear little to no resemblance to the years of tumult leading to the assault on Fort Sumter, and the violence on the streets of Minneapolis can hardly compare to the horrors on the fields along the Antietam Creek.

But that’s beside the point.

More than 160 years after the defeat of Confederate forces at Gettysburg, the Civil War continues to have an enduring hold on the American political consciousness – shaping the way we view the past and offering a vocabulary for understanding the political conflicts of the present.

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. From Gettysburg to Minneapolis: How the American Civil War continues to shape how we understand contemporary political conflicts and their dangers – https://theconversation.com/from-gettysburg-to-minneapolis-how-the-american-civil-war-continues-to-shape-how-we-understand-contemporary-political-conflicts-and-their-dangers-275015

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jason Zenor, Associate Professor of Mass Communication, State University of New York Oswego

In November 2025 the Trump administration announced a special park pass commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary that featured images of two presidents: George Washington and Donald Trump.

Featuring the current president – in place of the National Park Service’s usual landscape pictures – triggered both a lawsuit and a social media movement to put stickers over Trump’s face.

As a businessman, Trump has frequently emblazoned buildings and consumer products – shoelaces, an airline, an edition of the Bible, among many others – with his own name.

During his current presidential term, his administration has put his name on numerous government properties – perhaps most famously the Kennedy Center, but also money, monuments and military equipment. In January 2026, Trump floated the idea Congress would rename both New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport after him.

With Florida lawmakers considering renaming the airport near Mar-a-Lago after the president, the Trump Organization has filed an application to trademark his name for use in airports and ancillary activities, although the company said it would not charge a fee in the case of the Palm Beach airport.

As a communication professor who studies the First Amendment, I was intrigued by the federal actions and the protests they’ve triggered.

Citizens certainly have the right to protest these decisions, like any government action. The First Amendment prevents the government from making laws that abridge freedom of speech.

But does the federal government itself have freedom of speech? And can a president put his name and image wherever he wants?

Free speech for government

The answer to the first question has already been answered. In a series of rulings, the Supreme Court has upheld the government speech doctrine, which allows the government as speaker to say whatever it wants.

Moreover, if the forum is governmental, the government may even be able to compel people to express its messages – for example, with public employee speech that is part of job duties. The 2006 Supreme Court decision establishing that principle involved a deputy district attorney who’d questioned the validity of a warrant, but the rule applies to other employees, such as teachers who have to offer instruction in state-mandated curricula.

The court’s decisions in government speech cases imply that if people do not like the government speech, they should change the government with their votes.

However, some scholars and advocates argue that this relatively new constitutional doctrine gives the government too much power to drown out other viewpoints in the marketplace of ideas.

In most instances, the government cannot compel speech or force citizens to express a certain message. Compelled speech is not allowed when the government is forcing a citizen to endorse an ideological message.

For example, the Supreme Court allowed a Jehovah’s Witness to cover the words “or Die” on his license plate, which included the New Hampshire state motto, “Live Free or Die.”

The First Amendment is not absolute, and some government regulations will infringe on speech.

The federal government has strict regulations on how the American flag should be disposed of, but it cannot punish someone who is burning a flag as a form of political protest.

Government control of its own products

What happens when the government itself hosts forums for citizen speech, such as placing monuments in a park or flying flags on government property? Can the government deny certain speech based on the speaker or message?

In such cases, courts have had to decipher whether the forum was purely governmental. To do so, they examine the history of the forum in which the contested speech takes place, who controls the forum, and the public perception of who controls it.

This brings us back to the question of Trump’s name and likeness. As a constitutional matter, the Trump administration can express itself as it sees fit under the government speech doctrine. But in some cases, the administration may be bound by statute or formal contracts, as with the legal battle over the naming of the Kennedy Center, which was named by an act of Congress. The lawsuit over the National Park passes claims that the administration is violating a federal law requiring that the winning entry in a public lands photo contest be used for the passes.

Still, I believe it would be difficult to win a lawsuit claiming that the new passes are a form of compelled speech, with bearers of the pass arguing they are being forced, in effect, to endorse Trump. Most people would likely see the park passes’ artwork as being controlled by the government and therefore a form of government expression, not a form of private expression.

Can people cover up Trump?

But the Trump administration may not be able to defend its policy of declaring passes null and void if the president’s image is covered by a sticker. Citizens protesting Trump’s appearance by covering up the president’s image is protected speech, in my view. The government’s action to void the passes is likely a violation of the First Amendment.

On the face of it, placing stickers on passes would appear to violate the long-standing Interior Department rule that passes are “void if altered.” Those regulations were content neutral and incidental to any particular message or cardholder.

However, the updated policy, voiding the pass if Trump’s image is covered or marred, is more suspect. The new rules seem to be a direct response to the protesters’ political speech and, as applied, primarily aim to affect these stickers and speakers.

With an administration known for its social media savviness, it may not be convincing for officials to argue they did not know about the protest or that the policy was not a direct attempt to chill such speech.

The government will have the right to put Trump’s name and images on more government property in many cases, but most resulting political protests, in my view, will also be protected speech.

Jason Zenor 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. TrumpRx, Trump Kennedy Center, Trump National Parks passes − government free speech allows the president to name things after himself – https://theconversation.com/trumprx-trump-kennedy-center-trump-national-parks-passes-government-free-speech-allows-the-president-to-name-things-after-himself-274484

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Noah Dormady, Associate Professor of Public Policy, The Ohio State University

American families are feeling the pinch of rising electricity prices. In the past five years alone, the generation portion of the standard service residential electric bill in Columbus, Ohio, has increased by 110%. This is one data point in a national trend.

Energy affordability is quickly shaping up to be a key election issue at all levels of American politics. And more than half of U.S. adults surveyed in January 2026 reported being very concerned about the price of electricity.

Experts in the energy industry are fiercely conflicted on what, or who, is to blame. People have sought to blame geopolitical events like the war in Ukraine, dramatic changes in U.S. energy policies, power grid operators, regulators and artificial intelligence and data centers.

But new research from The Ohio State University’s Energy Markets and Policy Group, where I serve as principal investigator, provides new insights about another factor you were probably not thinking about – middlemen introduced by deregulation.

How deregulation brought middlemen instead of competition

Between the late 1990s and early 2000s, several state legislatures deregulated their electricity systems. Deregulation was originally sold as a way to replace inefficient regulation and reduce bureaucracy. People were told that competition would deliver lower prices.

Under the old system, a state regulatory commission set prices for all electricity services – generation, transmission and distribution – which were supplied by the same monopoly utility company. Each state commission was required by federal law to ensure that rates were “just and reasonable.” Under deregulation, that same commission rate-setting process still holds for transmission and distribution, but the generation part was split off.

Deregulation created competitive wholesale markets for generation, but price competition did not spread widely at the retail level. In states with active retail deregulation, there are two ways the retail generation price can be set. Consumers get to pick which one – buy from a marketer on the open market, or do nothing. Most people choose to do nothing.

Rather than introducing efficiency, this system of retail deregulation created a new complexity: middlemen marketers. In most cases, no matter which choice people make, it’s hard for them to understand how their electricity rates are set. That’s where our research comes in.

Option A: The open market

Electricity customers in deregulated retail markets can choose a company that buys the electricity on their behalf. People who live in these states may be familiar with energy salespeople who come to their homes, approach them in a convenience store, or use telemarketers.

For example, people who live in the Cincinnati area can contract with one of more than 50 suppliers to buy electricity on their behalf from the wholesale market. Their monthly bill would still come from Duke Energy, a regulated distribution utility, and would still include regulated charges for distribution and transmission set by state and federal officials. But it would also include charges from an unregulated retail supplier, for the generation part of their bill – their electric supply.

Some locations also have community choice aggregation, in which their municipality participates in the open market on their behalf unless they opt out.

Our research has found that these markets are not working as intended.

Option B: Do nothing – default service

For people who choose not to shop on the open market, by doing nothing they remain on what is called the “standard offer” or “default service.” Sometimes it is also called “provider of last resort” service because it is not meant to be the best option.

For these people, state law generally requires each distribution utility to hold auctions or use a procurement process like a request for proposals to determine which middlemen companies get to be their supplier, and of course, at what price.

People in this category still buy from middleman marketers. But rather than choosing their own middleman, they get the middleman the utility company selects for them.

Problems in the open market

People who live in states with deregulated electricity markets know that these open markets have many problems. There have been investigations into unfair trade practices, lawsuits and regulatory penalties for misleading sales practices.

Other problems include deceptive marketing, a process called “slamming” in which companies change customers’ suppliers without their knowledge, contract loopholes that increase prices, and outright fraud.

Help for consumers usually comes after problems have arisen, rather than preventing them in the first place.

Our research team sought to determine whether, and how much, electricity consumers would save money if they used the supposedly competitive open market, rather than going with the default rate. To answer this question, we developed a detailed database of every daily retail choice offer filed by every supplier in all service territories in Ohio for a decade – which meant compiling millions of records.

We found that 72.1% of the open-market offers exceeded the utility’s default rate. In some years, there was not even one single cost-saving offer for the entire year, or longer. The vast majority of these supposedly competitive electricity prices were higher than customers would get by doing nothing. Taking the time to research the market and compare prices was often not worth consumers’ time.

Importantly, the study found that suppliers in the open market were not setting their prices based on market fundamentals – like the underlying wholesale price of electricity. Instead, they were setting prices based on the results of the utility’s default supply selection. In a competitive market, that is not supposed to happen.

Is default service really competitive?

In a separate study, our team evaluated every default service auction in every utility service territory in Ohio since 2011, nearly 15 years. We found that the number of companies competing with one another in these auctions is a key determinant of the retail markup consumers have to pay.

In some of the default-option rate auctions, as few as five suppliers placed bids. In others, there were as many as 15 companies vying to provide default-option electricity. Our analysis found that in situations when the underlying costs of generating electricity were the same, default supply auctions with fewer bidders delivered significantly higher prices for consumers than auctions with more bidders.

The study included numerous statistical controls for other factors that could otherwise help explain the prices, including natural gas prices and market volatility. The number of bidders was the key factor. Having just three additional bidders could reduce consumers’ default-option rates by 18% to 23%. Nine additional bidders, the analysis found, could deliver savings of as much as 60%.

It’s important to note that Ohio’s process for setting default service rates is more robust than many other states. In some states, it is not uncommon for even fewer companies to bid. So Ohio’s situation is not actually a worst-case scenario for consumers. Rather, it’s probably better than many other states with deregulated electricity markets.

Putting it all together

The first study showed that the open market is not setting efficient retail rates and is not working as intended. Most of the offers made available to consumers are not worth their time, and the suppliers in those markets are not setting their prices based upon market fundamentals. Instead, these companies are taking their cues from the local distribution utility’s default supply auctions. That is not how deregulation was envisioned.

The second study showed that the process which sets the default supply rate is also not very competitive. Less competition means the middleman companies bidding in those auctions can bid, and win, higher prices – raising electric bills and increasing their profit margin.

Energy deregulation promised lower prices through competition. But instead, consumers got an army of middleman marketers. And, those middlemen have been taking their cues from a bidding process that often has too few participants to keep prices low.

Noah Dormady receives funding from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and the US Department of Energy (DOE).

– ref. How deregulation made electricity more expensive, not cheaper – https://theconversation.com/how-deregulation-made-electricity-more-expensive-not-cheaper-272780

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Lee Ann Rawlins Williams, Clinical Assistant Professor of Education, Health and Behavior Studies, University of North Dakota

I spoke in January 2026 with 150 high school students about career options. After explaining my own career as a professor of education, health and behavior, I asked the students a simple question: Would you want to be a teacher?

“Why in the world would I want to be a teacher?” one female student said.

“My aunt is a teacher and she works all the time … no thanks,” a male student added.

Several students said it felt like teachers were doing everything: from teaching lessons and helping students through personal struggles to managing class disruptions and constantly adjusting to whatever else the day brought. Students also mentioned hearing teachers talk openly about low pay or feeling a lack of respect from students and others.

These students’ observations align with national trends. While nearly 20% of college freshmen said in 1970 that they were interested in a teaching career, less than 5% said the same in 2020, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Many teachers report low levels of job satisfaction, and 52% polled by Pew in 2024 said they would not advise young adults to become teachers.

Teacher pay penalty

Education researchers and labor analysts have documented that teachers earn less than other people who also have college degrees.

This difference in pay is sometimes called the teacher pay penalty. This gap has widened over the past few decades.

In 2024 the teacher pay penalty reached its highest recorded level, with teachers earning roughly 73 cents for every dollar earned by other college graduates.

Average annual public teacher salaries recently have ranged from about US$53,507 in Mississippi and $53,098 in Florida to more than $95,160 in California and $95,615 in New York.

Nationwide, teachers on average earn about $72,030 per year.

National analyses show that teaching has steadily lost ground in wage competitiveness compared with other college-educated professionals over the past few decades.

Even as some states have enacted modest teacher salary increases year over year, these wide disparities persist.

Expanding expectations, rising strain

Teaching once centered primarily on academic instruction. Particularly through much of the 20th century, teachers’ roles were largely defined by planning lessons, instructing on different subjects and assessing student learning.

In addition to teaching core subjects, many teachers are now often expected to help support students’ social and emotional development, address complex behavioral challenges, respond to crises that spill into classrooms, such as students physically fighting, and manage substantial paperwork and administrative tasks.

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified many of these responsibilities, as teachers navigated remote instruction and students’ heightened mental health needs.

At the same time, concerns about school safety, including the reality of school shootings and other kinds of violence, have added another layer to teachers’ emotional strain and required vigilance.

Teachers are far more likely than other college-educated professionals to report frequent job-related stress and burnout.

Job available

Approximately 50% of all public school leaders reported in October 2024 that they feel their school is understaffed. And 20% of public school leaders reported teacher vacancies during that same time period.

In January 2022, shortly after the pandemic, more than 20% of public schools reported at least 5% of their teaching positions were vacant that month. Approximately 51% of schools reported that resignations were the cause of these vacancies.

A 2025 national teacher shortage overview estimates that roughly 1 in 8 teaching positions nationwide are either unfilled or staffed by someone not fully certified for the assignment, meaning a teacher working outside their licensed subject area or grade level, for example.

When positions are filled this way, the classroom will still have a teacher present, but not necessarily one formally prepared to teach a specific subject or group of students. This can result in greater reliance on substitutes or increased class sizes for remaining staff.

When teaching became women’s work

History helps explain why teaching looks – and pays – the way it does today.

In the early 1800s, teaching was a predominantly male profession.

But as the U.S. industrialized in the late 1800s and early 1900s, higher-paying jobs in business and manufacturing drew many men away from classrooms.

For many women at the time, teaching offered one of the few respectable professional careers available. It provided steady income and a measure of independence when many other professions were closed to them.

Labor force participation for women expanded significantly during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, as legal and social barriers began to fall. Yet the pay and public standing of teaching does not seem to have risen at the same pace.

By the early 1900s, women made up about 70% of teachers. In 2024, 77% of teachers were women.

Nationwide, the gender wage gap has narrowed in the past few decades. Still, women in the U.S. earn an average 85% of what men make.

Who will teach the next generation?

Each year, more than 80,000 new teachers step into classrooms. But the overall pipeline has narrowed since the early 2010s, with enrollment at teacher preparation programs declining sharply and only partially rebounding in recent years.

Today’s students are coming of age in a landscape where teaching competes with many other college-degree professions that may offer higher pay, more predictable hours or clearer career advancement.

College students are often weighing financial security, mental health and long-term sustainability as they imagine their future.

Research consistently shows that compensation, working conditions and professional support play a central role in job retention. When those elements erode, so too does workforce stability.

Stability is the key as students are evaluating teaching – not as a calling, but as a potential career within a competitive labor market.

Lee Ann Rawlins Williams 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. I asked students whether they’d want to be teachers? They quickly responded, ‘Why would I?’ – https://theconversation.com/i-asked-students-whether-theyd-want-to-be-teachers-they-quickly-responded-why-would-i-275904

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Paula de la Cruz-Fernández, Cultural Digital Collections Manager, University of Florida

Immigration to the U.S. is often framed as a problem to be managed, controlled or punished. Immigrants are often derided for crossing the border without authorization or “taking jobs” from U.S. citizens.

This rhetoric has intensified when Donald Trump has been in the White House. Trump and officials in his administrations have repeatedly characterized immigrants as a drain on national resources.

But research on immigrants tells a different story.

I’m a historian of business and culture who examines how enterprises shape and are shaped by the societies and historical contexts in which they operate. Since 2021 I have led the Gainesville Business History Project, a research initiative at the University of Florida that studies the long-term patterns of the town’s business history.

Nearby history

Our project takes a nearby history approach that recognizes that businesses around us, even small ones, are part of the historical record that we consumers also actively shape. Our team of 10 researchers has conducted in-depth interviews with more than 40 business owners and entrepreneurs in Florida.

About 22% to 23% of the state’s residents – roughly 5 million people – are foreign born. This is much higher than the nationwide average of 14%.

In 2023, foreign-born Florida residents made up almost 50% of the workforce employed in pillars of the state’s economy, including agriculture, tourism and construction.

In 2025, one study found that 267,700 of these Florida immigrants – about 5% – were entrepreneurs.

Our interviews uncovered many stories that show how immigrant-founded businesses can grow into familiar institutions that define a place’s identity. These stories illustrate some of the ways immigrants contribute to their communities.

La Aurora Latin Market

The story of La Aurora, a Latin grocery store that has operated for nearly 25 years in Gainesville, demonstrates how businesses are culturally embedded within the community and how immigrant-owned businesses often are tied to long-term local networks.

Aurora Ynigo crossed the Mexico-U.S. border in the early 1990s. She went straight to Miami, where she met her husband, Peter. In the late 1990s they moved from Miami to Gainesville for Peter’s job. At the time there was limited access to Hispanic products in the university town with about 180,000 residents. So in 1999 the family decided to open a Latin store that Aurora would manage.

For years the couple and their parents would create a weekly shopping list, which included many items requested by clients and friends who had immigrated to Gainesville from Peru, Cuba or Colombia. Then they would drive 400 miles to Miami, where they would look for the items all over the city, especially in supermarkets there such as Sedano’s and Presidente. They would then drive back to Gainesville with fresh food in big coolers to fill the racks at their location on University Avenue.

After 27 years in business, La Aurora Latin Market on University Avenue has its own butcher counter, fresh produce and other items from across Latin America and the Caribbean. It also makes fresh-baked Latin American breads, pastries and cakes. And it has become a place where the Spanish-speaking community – a demographic that has grown considerably in the past 10 years – can reliably find familiar products.

Mary’s Cafe & Coin Laundry

For more than four decades, Mary’s Café and Laundry has operated along Miami’s now-central and busy 27th Avenue.

The business has remained in the same family across three generations. It traces back to Eumelia Morales Fernández, who immigrated to Miami from the town of Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1970. Like many immigrant women, she first worked as a seamstress. She then got a job in a shoe factory before buying a small supermarket with her husband on 32nd Avenue in Miami in 1988.

After purchasing the building where the cafe and laundromat still stand, they installed washing machines and dryers and opened a small cafeteria alongside the laundromat. They named the business Mary’s Cafe, after Eumelia’s daughter, who later ran the business before passing it on to her own daughter, Vicky, who currently manages it.

Mary created the menu, which has changed little since the cafe first opened. The cafe has its own kitchen for tostadas and pastelitos, serving coladas and cortaditos daily at this central Miami location. Everything continues to be made in-house.

The building also houses another small retail space, which is currently a watch repair business run by another member of the family. Before that, the space was home to a Chinese takeout owned by another Cuban family.

I was able to interview both Eumelia and Vicky. Vicky told me she has not changed much in the way she coordinates work and supplies at Mary’s. The biggest change she’s had to make is learning to use social media to promote the business.

16th Avenue Diner

Gilberto Argoytia Miranda owns the 16th Avenue Diner. The diner is an icon of Gainesville’s southern cuisine and has been in operation for more than 50 years.

Argoytia Miranda is the diner’s eighth owner – he purchased it in 2021. He had experience in the sector from when he lived in Mexico City, where he had operated food trucks since 2010.

He knew he wanted to be in the restaurant industry, but he didn’t immediately open a Mexican restaurant, despite the limited number of them in Gainesville. Instead, he studied the local market by working for various restaurants, including delivering food via DoorDash. This experience allowed him and his family to gain a deeper understanding of the Gainesville food scene.

The diner had to maintain its soul, as Argoytia Miranda calls it, for the regular clientele to keep coming. He and his family didn’t want to replace an eatery that carried local meaning and tradition. In fact, he recognizes this continuity as an asset, because the place remains recognizable.

Argoytia Miranda rarely changes the menu, because he understands that’s what people have liked for years. He does not see the need to reinvent the core of the restaurant, its Southern-style cooking and the Americana atmosphere.

Little by little, he told me in 2025, he intends to experiment with adding more Latino flavor to the menu. But new dishes will become part of the official offering only if customers enjoy them.

Paula de la Cruz-Fernández 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. Florida’s immigrant entrepreneurs are creating jobs and prosperity in their communities – https://theconversation.com/floridas-immigrant-entrepreneurs-are-creating-jobs-and-prosperity-in-their-communities-273183

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Nicole L. Novak, Research Assistant Professor of Community and Behavioral Health, University of Iowa

The Trump administration announced on Feb. 12, 2026, that it is ending Operation Metro Surge, its deployment of more than 3,000 federal immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding metro area. Federal officials say some agents will remain in the area and have vowed that similar immigration sweeps are coming soon to other U.S. cities.

As public health researchers who have been documenting the health impacts of immigration enforcement for over 10 years, we see these immigration sweeps as public health emergencies.

Even before the Trump administration’s recent expansion of immigration enforcement, research has long shown that intensive immigration enforcement operations affect people’s use of health care, ability to access resources to stay healthy, and their mental health and social relationships. Notably, these findings all come from before the Trump administration’s most recent expansion of immigration enforcement. It is fair to assume that the impacts of these current operations will be even greater.

To some extent – particularly in Minneapolis, where mutual aid networks are especially strong – community response can mitigate some of these impacts. One of us (Nicole), as a resident of Minneapolis, witnessed both the unfolding crisis and a powerful community-driven public health response.

But these public health harms will take months or years to reverse, and they provide a troubling preview of what could happen in other cities.

Accessing health care

One of the most immediate public health impacts of intensive immigration enforcement is that it makes people hesitant to seek health care, especially if they belong to a nationality or racial group that is being targeted for immigration arrests. For example, studies of Hispanic adults have shown that they are less likely to get an annual checkup or visit their doctor – even if they are U.S. citizens – if they live in a region with more intensive immigration enforcement.

Research has also shown that Medicaid enrollment declines when federal immigration enforcement rises, even among qualifying U.S. citizens.

There is no question that Operation Metro Surge has deterred immigrant patients and their families in Minnesota from seeking medical care. According to one family medicine doctor, primary care visits are down more than 50%. Doctors and health care workers are reporting that patients are delaying needed care, potentially worsening chronic conditions, such as diabetes. Others report that pregnant women are missing prenatal visits and are requesting home births, even in cases where their health conditions would typically require a hospital birth.

Accessing food and housing

Immigration crackdowns also affect public health by restricting people’s access to the resources they need to stay healthy.

For example, income and employment are major predictors of health. But research suggests that overall employment and hourly wages fall in counties that begin collaborating with federal immigration enforcement – partly because people spend less money at stores, restaurants and other local businesses.

This phenomenon is playing out in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where thousands of immigrant families are staying home to avoid encounters with immigration enforcement. In January 2026, immigrant-owned businesses reported reduced traffic, with as many as 80% temporarily closing in some neighborhoods.

Many of public health’s most cost-effective, hard-won programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program, are designed to preserve people’s health even in times of economic scarcity. But enrollment in these programs drops when fear of immigration enforcement intensifies. The same is true for housing, another foundation of public health. Research shows that evictions, missed rent or mortgage payments, and foreclosure rates increase when immigration crackdowns expand.

It is too soon to know the impact on evictions in Minneapolis, but early reports from tenant advocacy organizations indicate that they have seen an 82% increase in requests for help compared to early 2025.

Stress, hypervigilance and mental health

Among the most harmful and enduring impacts of immigration enforcement are the effects on mental health. Our research and that of others shows that people who encounter or have to protect themselves from immigration officials – staying inside to avoid immigration officials, seeing immigration officials in their neighborhood, knowing someone who was deported or being deported themselves – are at higher risk of psychological distress or poor overall health.

Especially for children who witnessed or experienced the arrest, detention or deportation of a family member, these effects can be severe, including separation anxiety and behavioral issues in the short term, as well as long-term risks of anxiety and depression.

Perhaps most painfully, experiencing family separations, missing work or avoiding public space leaves people socially isolated, resulting in fewer emotional resources to cope with these stresses as well as risks to health.

In Minnesota, many immigrant families are not only experiencing the social isolation of staying home from school and work but are also avoiding spaces that may have provided solace and support, such as places of worship. Church attendance has reportedly dropped by half in some congregations, and mosque attendance may be down too.

How communities are responding

Amid these challenges, everyday Minnesotans – health care workers, neighbors, faith communities – have taken steps to bridge these gaps.

Trusted neighbors and community organizations ensure that people have rides to doctor visits. Some health care providers are expanding telehealth and home visits to make sure patients receive necessary care. Health care staff and unions are putting pressure on hospitals and health systems to implement policies that limit ICE’s access to patient areas.

Meanwhile, community members are delivering food and necessities to those who are sheltering in place or have lost income. Mutual aid campaigns are raising money to help with rent, organizers successfully campaigned for the city of Minneapolis to expand rental assistance, and more than 60 local organizations are petitioning the governor to enact a statewide eviction moratorium.

Mental health stressors and social isolation are more challenging to address, but some local mental health providers are expanding their reach, while teachers, neighbors and people of faith try to maintain connections with those who are sheltering at home.

This far-reaching response echoes what we have observed in our own research with other communities that have experienced immigration raids: ordinary people, with immigrant families at the forefront, essentially launching an informal disaster response, providing sanctuary and resources.

Public health research has long shown that connected communities are healthy communities, and these ties play a critical role in long-term recovery from public health crises.

But immigration court cases drag on for months and years, as do long-term mental health impacts. Ruptured trust with government takes time to rebuild. That means that as ICE expands its presence across the U.S., the fallout may last for a long time to come.

Nicole L. Novak has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Mid-Iowa Health Foundation. She is a volunteer with the Prairielands Freedom Fund and UNIDOS MN.

William D. Lopez 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. When ICE sweeps a community, public health pays a price – and recovery will likely take years – https://theconversation.com/when-ice-sweeps-a-community-public-health-pays-a-price-and-recovery-will-likely-take-years-274810