Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stewart Ulrich, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Sam Houston State University

President Donald Trump is making full use of his pardon power. This year, Trump has issued roughly 1,800 pardons, or nearly six times the number he issued during the four years of his first term. Granted, about 1,500 of them involved individuals charged for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on Congress. Still, the pace of Trump’s pardons this year have been nearly unprecedented.

That is, until you remember his predecessor. Joe Biden, at the end of his term, issued a full and sweeping pardon to his son Hunter for gun and drug charges. This was an unprecedented action by a president to pardon his own child, which had never been done before. Biden also granted pardons to several other family members on his final day in office.

Despite serving a single term, Biden holds the record for the most acts of clemency, or pardons combined with commuted sentences, of any president. It’s a record that’s not hard to imagine Trump could break.

As a political scientist who has studied pardons and other aspects of presidential power, I believe that the founders of our nation would be horrified by the contemporary use of the pardon power, which represents a far cry from the unifying act of mercy it was intended to be. While Biden issued pardons to family members, Trump has handed them out to political allies.

It remains to be seen whether this is a slight deviation from course or becomes a permanent pattern for all presidents in the future.

A clear break

There’s no question that Trump and Biden have acted within their authority in issuing pardons for federal offenses. Presidents can extend a pardon, or complete legal forgiveness of a crime, or a commutation, which is the reduction of a sentence. However, individuals pardoned for federal crimes may still face peril in state courts.

This extraordinary power may seem kinglike at first glance, but it was given to the president with a different vision in mind. The founders of the country viewed the pardon power not as a personal token for the president to hand out but as an act of mercy meant to check the other two branches.

If Congress passed a law that the president believed was poorly written, or if the courts unfairly punished someone for breaking it, the president could step in and right the wrong. This was seen by the founders as a merciful act, stemming from the tradition of old English law.

Throughout American history, we have seen presidents mostly adhere to this pattern. Both Abraham Lincoln and his successor Andrew Johnson issued pardons and amnesty to former Confederate citizens, with the aim of helping the nation come back together after secession and the Civil War. Harry Truman granted amnesty to certain World War II deserters, while Jimmy Carter granted pardons to hundreds of thousands of individuals who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War.

But toward the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, presidents have used the pardon pen increasingly for personal and political reasons. The inflection point is undoubtedly the pardon of former President Richard M. Nixon in 1974 by his former vice president and successor, Gerald Ford. This was issued a month after Nixon’s resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which involved Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign spying on his political enemies.

Ford justified his action by citing the need for national unity, saying the pardon would spare the country from a messy and dramatic public trial of a former president. Never before had a high-profile public politician received such a presidential grant, which caused Ford’s public standing to take a hit. Scholars and historians believe the act contributed to his reelection loss in 1976.

We have since seen Ford’s decision open the door to more pardons of political allies or personal friends. In 1992, George H.W. Bush pardoned officials he had served with in the Reagan administration who were tangled up in the arms-for-hostages, Iran-Contra scandal; Bill Clinton pardoned Democratic donor Marc Rich in 2001; and George W. Bush commuted the sentence of vice presidential aide Scooter Libby in 2007.

Trump’s expanded use

As it happens, Trump issued a full pardon to Libby in 2018. During his first term, Trump also pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

At the end of his first term, Trump pardoned “”) his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his friend Roger Stone among other political allies.

Trump’s second term has seen clemency for his former lawyer and friend Rudy Giuliani, as well as crypto executive Changpeng Zhao, whose ties to Trump family businesses have raised questions about the pardon.

Trump’s use of the pardon power does not seem to follow a consistent doctrine or philosophy. Some of his clemency actions seem to contradict his administration’s policy, such as dozens of pardons of drug traffickers, despite the effort to stop drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

The pace of Trump’s pardons and commutations, however, suggests little hesitation. The question looking forward, beyond his presidency, is how much of a precedent his actions, along with Biden’s, may set for their successors.

We know this from earlier expansions of the pardon’s reach, as well as other areas of presidential authority: Few presidents willingly relinquish powers accrued by their predecessors. Once chief executives have exercised a certain type of authority, their predecessors seldom give it back, ultimately increasing the power of the presidency.

Stewart Ulrich 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. Pardons are political, with modern presidents expanding their use – https://theconversation.com/pardons-are-political-with-modern-presidents-expanding-their-use-271373

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Niral Shah, Associate Professor of Learning Sciences & Human Development, University of Washington

In the Star Trek universe, the audience occasionally gets a glimpse inside schools on the planet Vulcan. Young children stand alone in pods surrounded by 360-degree digital screens. Adults wander among the pods but do not talk to the students. Instead, each child interacts only with a sophisticated artificial intelligence, which peppers them with questions about everything from mathematics to philosophy.

This is not the reality in today’s classrooms on Earth. For many technology leaders building modern AI, however, a vision of AI-driven personalized learning holds considerable appeal. Outspoken venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, for example, imagines that “the AI tutor will be by each child’s side every step of their development.”

Years ago, I studied computer science and interned in Silicon Valley. Later, as a public school teacher, I was often the first to bring technology into my classroom. I was dazzled by the promise of a digital future in education.

Now as a social scientist who studies how people learn, I believe K-12 schools need to question predominant visions of AI for education.

Individualized learning has its place. But decades of educational research is also clear that learning is a social endeavor at its core. Classrooms that privilege personalized AI chatbots overlook that fact.

School districts under pressure

Generative AI is coming to K-12 classrooms. Some of the largest school districts in the country, such as Houston and Miami, have signed expensive contracts to bring AI to thousands of students. Amid declining enrollment, perhaps AI offers a way for districts to both cut costs and seem cutting edge.

Pressure is also coming from both industry and the federal government. Tech companies have spent billions of dollars building generative AI and see a potential market in public schools. Republican and Democratic administrations have been enthusiastic about AI’s potential for education.

Decades ago, educators promoted the benefits of “One Laptop per Child.” Today it seems we may be on the cusp of “one chatbot per child.” What does educational research tell us about what this model could mean for children’s learning and well-being?

Learning is a social process

During much of the 20th century, learning was understood mainly as a matter of individual cognition. In contrast, the latest science on learning paints a more multidimensional picture.

Scientists now understand that seemingly individual processes – such as building new knowledge – are actually deeply rooted in social interactions with the world around us.

Neuroscience research has shown that even from a young age, people’s social relationships influence which of our genes turn on and off. This matters because gene expression affects how our brains develop and our capacity to learn.

In classrooms, this suggests that opportunities for social interaction – for instance, children listening to their classmates’ ideas and haggling over what is true and why – can support brain health and academic learning.

Research in the social sciences has long since proved the value of high-quality classroom discourse. For example, in a well-cited 1991 study involving over 1,000 middle school students across more than 50 English classrooms, researchers Martin Nystrand and Adam Gamoran found that children performed significantly better in classes “exhibiting more uptake, more authenticity of questions, more contiguity of reading, and more discussion time.”

In short, research tells us that rich learning happens when students have opportunities to interact with other people in meaningful ways.

AI in classrooms lacks research evidence

What does all of this mean for AI in education?

Introducing any new technology into a classroom, especially one as alien as generative AI, is a major change. It seems reasonable that high-stakes decisions should be based on solid research evidence.

But there’s one problem: The studies that school leaders need just aren’t there yet. No one really knows how generative AI in K-12 classrooms will affect children’s learning and social development.

Current research on generative AI’s impact on student learning is limited, inconclusive and tends to focus on older students – not K-12 children. Studies of AI use thus far have tended to focus on either learning outcomes or individual cognitive activity.

Although standardized test scores and critical thinking skills matter, they represent a small piece of the educational experience. It is also important to understand generative AI’s real-life impact on students.

For example: How does it feel to learn from a chatbot, day after day? What is the longer-term impact on children’s mental health? How does AI use affect children’s relationships with each other and with their teachers? What kinds of relationships might children form with the chatbots themselves? What will AI mean for educational inequities related to social forces such as race and disability?

More broadly, I think now is the time to ask: What is the purpose of K-12 education? What do we, as a society, actually want children to learn?

Of course, every child should learn how to write essays and do basic arithmetic. But beyond academic outcomes, I believe schools can also teach students how to become thoughtful citizens in their communities.

To prepare young people to grapple with complex societal issues, the National Academy of Education has called for classrooms where students learn to engage in civic discourse across subject areas. That kind of learning happens best through messy discussions with people who don’t think alike.

To be clear, not everything in a classroom needs to involve discussions among classmates. And research does indicate that individualized instruction can also enhance social forms of learning.

So I don’t want to rule out the possibility that classroom-based generative AI might augment learning or the quality of students’ social interactions. However, the tech industry’s deep investments in individualized forms of AI – as well as the disappointing history of technology in classrooms – should give schools pause.

Good teaching blends social and individual processes. My concern about personalized AI tutors is how they might crowd out already infrequent opportunities for social interaction, further isolating children in classrooms.

Center children’s learning and development

Education is a relational enterprise. Technology may play a role, but as students spend more and more class time on laptops and tablets, I don’t think screens should displace the human-to-human interactions at the heart of education.

I see the beneficial application of any new technology in the classroom – AI or otherwise – as a way to build upon the social fabric of human learning. At its best it facilitates, rather than impedes, children’s development as people. As schools consider how and whether to use generative AI, the years of research on how children learn offer a way to move forward.

Niral Shah 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. The ‘one chatbot per child’ model for AI in classrooms conflicts with what research shows: Learning is a social process – https://theconversation.com/the-one-chatbot-per-child-model-for-ai-in-classrooms-conflicts-with-what-research-shows-learning-is-a-social-process-269885

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Fred D. Ledley, Director, Center for Integration of Science and Industry, Bentley University

As a young medical student in 1975, I walked into a basement lab at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, to interview for a summer job.

It turned out to be the start of a lifelong affiliation – first as a trainee, then as a grantee running a university laboratory and finally, now, as a researcher of economics and public policy studying the agency’s impact on health care and on the national economy.

On that initial visit 50 years ago, I got my first direct experience with the NIH’s mission: to tap the enormous potential of basic science to improve human health and medical care. And over the long arc of my career, I watched the agency enact this mission in ways that brought enormous value to the country. NIH funding trained a legion of biomedical scientists, produced countless therapies that underpin much of modern medicine and catalyzed the launch of the biotechnology industry.

But widespread federal grant terminations and disruptions to federal funding in 2025 have left scientists who depend on NIH support reeling. And a 40% cut to the NIH budget for 2026 proposed by the White House threatens the agency’s future.

The origins and growth of the NIH

The NIH was founded through the Ransdell Act of 1930, which converted the former Hygienic Laboratory of the Marine Hospital Services into the seeds of a new government institution. That laboratory had been established in 1887 to develop public health measures, diagnostics and vaccines for controlling diseases prevalent in the U.S. at the time, such as cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, plague and diphtheria. With the act’s passage, the Hygienic Laboratory was reimagined as the National Institute of Health.

Sen. Joseph Ransdell of Louisiana envisioned the NIH as an agency with a broader mandate for translating scientific advances to improve human health. In arguing in 1929 for the creation of the new institute, he read into the Congressional Record an editorial from The New York Times that highlighted rapid advances in chemistry, physiology and physics.

The editorial lamented that “never in the whole history of the world had efforts to improve health conditions been behind the advance in other sciences.” Pointing to millions of Americans suffering from sickness leading to economic losses “into billions,” it argued for the need for a medical sciences institute coordinating “a national effort to prevent diseases that are or may be preventable.”

In 1945, a report called Science – The Endless Frontier, by Vannevar Bush, highlighted the government’s central role in supporting science that harnessed nuclear energy, implemented radar and developed penicillin – all important elements of the United States’ success in World War II. Bush argued that these wartime successes presented a model for growing the American economy, preventing and curing disease and projecting American power.

The NIH became central to this model. Its budget increased substantially during and just after World War II, with postwar adoption of Bush’s plan, and again after 1957 when the nation redoubled its commitment to science following Russia’s launch of Sputnik and the start of the space race. The National Cancer Act of 1971, which established the separate National Cancer Institute, reaffirmed the nation’s commitment to government-funded research. This new institute’s funding provided much of the seed capital for the emergence of biotechnology.

In the 1980s, the Stevenson-Wydler and Bayh-Dole acts created a clear pathway for developing commercial products from federally funded research that would provide public benefits and economic stimulus. These federal laws made it a requirement to pursue patenting and licensing of NIH-funded research to industry.

How one project’s evolution reflects the NIH’s mission

Today, the NIH represents the backbone of efforts to improve health and health care, supporting each step in the process from preliminary discovery to clinical advance. These steps correspond to the stages of an individual scientist’s path.

I experienced this progression in my own career. After establishing my first independent laboratory with a grant for early-stage researchers, then called a First Independent Research Support and Transition grant, a Research Project grant, widely known as an R01, funded my lab’s work identifying genes that cause inherited metabolic diseases in newborns. RO1 grants are the main mechanism that academic biomedical scientists in the U.S. rely on to support innovative research.

Later, an NIH Program Project grant enabled us to investigate how the genes we had identified could be used to treat children. A General Clinical Research Center grant supported the hospital facilities necessary for clinical research and paid for patient care. Other grants supported our medical students and fellows as they embarked on their own careers as well as applications of our research to areas such as child health, reproductive biology and gastroenterology.

As our research on gene therapy progressed, NIH Small Business grants contributed to our founding a company that raised US$200 million in investments and partnerships and created hundreds of new jobs in Houston. Grants to small businesses continue to play a crucial role in helping universities commercialize discoveries.

Is the NIH effective?

For the past decade, I have led a research center focused on characterizing the process of developing new drugs. Our work, which is not funded by the NIH, shows that an established foundation of basic research on the biology underlying health and disease is necessary for successful drug development – and that most of this research is performed in public institutions.

We have found that NIH funding supported basic or applied research related to about 99% of newly approved medicines, clinical trials for 62% of these drugs and patents governing about 10% of these products.

Studies also show that this NIH funding saves industry almost $3 billion per drug in development costs. Over the past decade, there has been $800 billion in new investment in biotechnology. The U.S. biopharmaceutical industry directly supports more than 1 million jobs.

Medicines enabled by NIH funding have been crucial for increasing life expectancy and health – dramatically decreasing deaths due to heart disease and stroke, improving cancer outcomes, controlling HIV infection, improving the management of immunological diseases and easing the burden of psychiatric conditions.

The Trump administration is currently questioning the role of science in maintaining the nation’s health, economy and global posture. Yet the NIH stands as a testimony to the vision articulated by its early architects.

At its heart is the conviction that science is good for society, that persistent investment in basic research is essential to technological advances that serve the public interest, and that our nation’s health and economy benefit from developments in biology.

Fred D. Ledley’s research has been supported by grants to Bentley University from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, National Pharmaceutical Council, West Health, and the National Biomedical Research Foundation.

– ref. How the NIH became the backbone of American medical research and a major driver of innovation and economic growth – https://theconversation.com/how-the-nih-became-the-backbone-of-american-medical-research-and-a-major-driver-of-innovation-and-economic-growth-257403

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Valerie Morkevicius, Associate Professor, Political Science, Colgate University

Efforts to end the war in Ukraine have grabbed global attention, fueled by debates over U.S. President Donald Trump’s 28-point plan – which many analysts see as favoring Russia – and European attempts to craft a counterproposal.

We’ve been here before. Failed attempts to end the conflict date back to the beginning, soon after Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea and parts of the Donbas. After Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, peace discussions started up again within days, and they have continued in fits and starts since.

Prospects for a lasting peace remain dubious. One reason, I believe, is that the proposals pay little attention to the relationship between peace and justice – a flaw shared by previous plans.

Is peace worth having if it’s unjust? Is justice worth pursuing if it prolongs war? Those are questions as troubling as they are old. “Peace is the effect of justice,” as St. Thomas Aquinas argued in the 13th century. Ceasefires built on coercion or exhaustion inevitably fail because they do not resolve the conflict’s causes.

Aquinas is a major figure in the just war tradition, the focus of my research. This area of ethics helps weigh when war is justified – and also how it should end.

Today, the insight that peace and justice are inseparable grounds what international law terms “transitional justice.” By focusing on victims and assuring accountability for past wrongs, this approach seeks to disrupt recurring cycles of violence.

Past agreements and proposals aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine failed because in the rush to stop the fighting, they ignored questions of justice. The literature on transitional justice, by contrast, encourages negotiators to attend to four interdependent principles: truth, justice, reparations and safeguards against future recurrence.

1. Truth

Truth is essential for peace. As St. Augustine, one of the earliest Christian just-war thinkers, put it in the fourth century, “false justice” arises when the pursuit of truth is abandoned.

Durable peace agreements require all sides to cooperate with international efforts to document war crimes and human rights violations, such as the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. This is no small task. So far, Ukraine has granted access to outside investigators, but Russia has refused, even when it has accused Ukraine of war crimes.

But reconciliation requires a complete accounting of the harms done. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of apartheid, explained that “forgiveness depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth.”

Truth-telling also prevents false narratives from creating “justifications” for renewed fighting. Thus, peace in Ukraine will require a global effort to combat disinformation legitimizing Russia’s aggression and obscuring its war crimes.

2. Justice

Justice demands holding perpetrators to account. If, as Aquinas argued, a just war is “one that avenges wrongs” or seeks “to restore what [has been] seized unjustly,” ignoring these concerns when ending a war would itself be unjust.

Treating collaborators with fairness requires nuance. In some cases, pardoning individuals who acted under duress – and even willing but nonviolent collaborators who fully disclose their actions – can support postwar reconciliation. Especially in areas once occupied by enemy forces, frank confessions can help rebuild social trust.

However, amnesty for war crimes and crimes against humanity is impermissible because pardons deny victims justice and may embolden future perpetrators. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for six Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, the Council of Europe has established a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine, which would prosecute senior Russian officials who ordered the illegal invasion.

Realistically, neither forum can try those responsible without either Russia’s defeat or Putin’s removal from power. But in the interim, other countries can continue to support Ukrainian courts handling war crimes cases.

Justice also requires holding one’s own side accountable, even if the other side will not reciprocate. Allegations of war crimes by Ukrainian soldiers are far rarer, but Ukrainian courts must also prosecute these. Fair trials for all combatants are essential, lest, as Aquinas cautions, judgments seek “to sate … hatred under cover of correction.”

3. Reparations

Reparations aim to make survivors whole again. This principle, too, has roots in classical just war thinking. The 16th-century theologian Francisco de Vitoria, for example, argued that reparations within the bounds of “equity and humanity” could help redress losses and restore justice.

The World Bank estimates that direct damage in Ukraine is over US$176 billion; in total, rebuilding will cost three times that. The Council of Europe has recommended using frozen Russian assets to fund reconstruction efforts, as have some American scholars . The illegality of Russia’s invasion means that such countermeasures are likely permissible under international law.

Apologies can also serve as reparations, but Russia is unlikely to proffer any – partly because domestic political pressures mean Putin cannot afford to look like he has lost.

Commemorative events and memorials also validate victims’ suffering. The international community can support Ukrainians in their efforts to meaningfully memorialize the war.

4. Deterrence

Peace lasts when the parties trust that the violence won’t reoccur.

However, Russia has repeatedly broken its treaties with Ukraine. That includes the first agreements meant to bring the conflict to an end, back in 2014.

That summer, Russian-backed separatists downed a Malaysian Airways flight, spurring the international community to seek a quick resolution. The hastily drafted Minsk agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015, established a ceasefire monitoring mission and required the removal of foreign military units. They also demanded Ukrainian constitutional reforms – ostensibly to secure more autonomy for the country’s largely Russian-speaking east.

The Minsk agreements temporarily froze the conflict, but relative quiet didn’t mean peace. Ceasefire violations were perpetual. Russian-supported militias were not disbanded, and Russia continued to send mercenaries and military forces to the Donbas. Human rights violations proliferated in Russian-occupied areas. And in February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Given this history, a durable peace would require that Russia accept constraints on its power. The various peace proposals put forth since 2022, however, have demanded security concessions only from Kyiv, requiring Ukraine to abandon hopes for NATO membership and restricting the size of its military.

Russia is unlikely to agree to caps on its military. Deterrence, then, could take the form of credible commitments from other countries to enforce whatever peace agreement emerges.

Ukraine’s vulnerability to future Russian aggression means it will need binding promises from its partners. Russia will not sign a treaty that permits Ukraine to join NATO, which Moscow claims would be a threat. Other possible safeguards for Ukrainian sovereignty include a proposed international peacekeeping force or an alternative set of security alliances.

Lasting peace

Ultimately, a durable peace requires considering both sides’ legitimate security and justice claims if, as Vitoria wrote in 1539, “they are prepared to negotiate genuinely and fairly.”

Therein lies the catch. Transnational justice can be hijacked, with aggressors trying to portray themselves as victims. Separating fact from fiction, and genuine concerns from manufactured pretext, is essential at the negotiating table.

A quick end to the war is tempting, but a hasty peace is a fragile one. A durable peace, rather than yet another ceasefire, requires attention to justice – even if that takes more time to achieve.

Valerie Morkevicius 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. Getting peace right: Why justice needs to be baked into ceasefire agreements – including Ukraine’s – https://theconversation.com/getting-peace-right-why-justice-needs-to-be-baked-into-ceasefire-agreements-including-ukraines-270638

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ali Besharat, Professor of Marketing, University of Denver

The holiday season sparks a significant increase in consumer spending. This year, Black Friday alone saw consumers shell out a record US$11.8 billion. It’s the time of year when many Americans make purchases to decorate for the holidays — lights, ornaments and Christmas trees.

If you bought a Christmas tree in Denver this year, you may have noticed a pretty steep price tag. It turns out that all festive products are getting more expensive, and that includes Christmas trees, both freshly cut and artificial.

I study the psychology of consumption at the University of Denver. I’ve always been curious about how people make financial decisions under certain circumstances, including around the holidays. Christmas trees are an interesting case study.

What’s driving the increase

The cost of real Christmas trees is directly impacted by a long production cycle and transportation costs, particularly for landlocked markets like Denver.

Christmas trees take 7 to 10 years to grow. Currently, supply is tight, pushing tree prices up, which is a direct and delayed consequence of reduced planting rates that followed the Great Recession – which began in late 2007. This planting deficit effectively drove up wholesale prices and doubled the average price of pre-cut trees over the past decade after adjusting for inflation.

Raising tiny tree seedlings to a marketable size is a fraught business. Growers are exposed to a decade of weather, labor and pest risks, which increases the financial uncertainty of any planting season. This long lead time has made the supply unpredictable, putting constant pressure on Christmas tree wholesale prices.

For Denver retailers, transportation adds disproportionately to the final cost, since most Christmas trees in Denver are brought in from the Pacific Northwest and North Carolina using long-haul freight.

A retailer in Denver must also cover local operational overhead, such as labor costs, storage and the rental of temporary sales lots, which increases prices by about 10% on average based on wholesale Christmas tree prices. This is especially true for large trees, those taller than 9 feet (2.74 meters), as they do not grow in Colorado. Having said that, there are Christmas tree growers in Colorado, and the Douglas Fir is native to Colorado and grows naturally throughout its mountains.

Psychology of Christmas tree purchase decisions

The choice between a pre-cut Christmas tree and an artificial one is classic behavioral economics, which is the combination of economics and psychology to understand how and why people behave the way they do in the real world. It involves a trade-off between two readily available choices.

One option offers an emotional appeal, while the second choice may have to do more with cost savings and perceived environmental impact.

Buyers of real trees are driven by pleasure, satisfaction and emotional fulfillment. Often, buyers of fresh-cut trees are driven by nostalgia and a desire to inhale the powerful scent. Depending on the qualities of the tree, like how long it keeps its needles, how stiff the branches are and how rare it is, Denver customers often spend between $50 and $870 annually on fresh-cut Christmas trees.

On the flip side, artificial tree buyers prioritize the ease of buying a tree at the store and then bringing it out of storage each year. These customers seek convenience, low maintenance and the ability to control how the tree looks from a product that can cost between $250 to $700 initially. Being a durable good, artificial trees are typically replaced only once every five years.

In 2025, however, the decision to buy an artificial tree may feel less rational. Retailers are raising prices by 10% to 15% due to tariffs.

The financial and environmental superiority of the artificial tree is dependent on how long a consumer plans to keep and use it.

The financial break-even point is reached only when the artificial tree is reused for at least five years. The environmental break-even point is higher — around 10 years — due to the carbon emissions from manufacturing and global shipping of artificial trees. Their carbon footprint can be up to 10 times greater than a properly disposed-of real tree.

Behavioral changes in consumption

What about a third option that may appeal to Coloradans’ love of the outdoors?
Choose-and-cut businesses invite customers to visit a farm to select their tree and cut it down themselves. The tree is no longer just something you buy — it is the center of an experience you share.

Advocates go so far as to argue that the outdoor farm environment acts as a therapeutic escape from the stressful holiday season.

For the grower, this model is a highly effective form of agritourism, which makes use of the farm environment to boost revenue. It dramatically enhances profitability by transferring the high cost of harvesting labor – which can run from $15,000 to $50,000 annually – directly to the customer as a labor of love. The purchase of a tree may be the main point of the visit, but growers can improve their bottom lines through the sale of profitable goods and services like wreaths, hot chocolate, food and carriage rides. Motivated consumers are willing to pay more for the experience and the opportunity to recreate a meaningful ritual.

If this option excites you, there are a couple of spots where you can cut your own tree in Colorado, including at the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests. Most of these places, however, require a permit to chop down a tree.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Ali Besharat 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. Christmas trees are more expensive than ever in Colorado — what gives? – https://theconversation.com/christmas-trees-are-more-expensive-than-ever-in-colorado-what-gives-271472

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Kate Kenny, Professor of Business and Society, University of Galway

Across the world, governments are tightening controls on speech, expanding surveillance and rolling back rights once thought to be secure.

From anti-protest laws and curbs on workers’ rights to the growing criminalization of leaks and dissent, the trend is chilling: People who speak out about government wrongdoing are increasingly vulnerable, and the legal systems that once claimed to protect them are now used to punish them.

We are researchers who study whistleblowing, which is when employees disclose information in the public interest about wrongdoing they have witnessed at work. Our new book draws on firsthand accounts from whistleblowers in national security, intelligence and government in the U.S., Australia and the U.K., among other countries. Their experiences show the limits of legal protections, but also the power of networks, solidarity and collective resistance in the face of institutional secrecy.

In this moment of democratic backsliding, whistleblowers show that civil disobedience – breaking the law to uphold the public good – remains an essential principle of political and moral life. They also show how legal reform and support networks designed to protect whistleblowers are critical for protecting accountability and democracy itself.

The limits of legal protections

The whistleblowers featured in the book, including former CIA officer John Kiriakou and Craig Murray, the former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan, learned the hard way that legal protections can end precisely where power begins. Both revealed grave human rights abuses – torture, kidnapping, imprisonment and complicity in war crimes – and both were prosecuted rather than protected.

Their stories underline a paradox: Even as new whistleblower protection laws have proliferated in many countries, prosecutions of national security and intelligence whistleblowers are on the rise. In national security contexts, where no public interest defense is permitted, laws meant to protect whistleblowers have become another weapon of “lawfare” – used to silence, bankrupt and criminalize.

For example, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the U.S. torture program in 2007. The Bush administration initially declined to prosecute him, but this changed under the Obama administration, which imprisoned Kiriakou in 2013 for 30 months. Kiriakou’s refusal to participate in the CIA program of “enhanced interrogation” of terrorism suspects, which included waterboarding, and his later decision to publicly confirm the CIA’s use of torture were acts of conscience. Yet it was he, not the torturers, who went to prison as a result of his disclosures.

The pattern is familiar. From Chelsea Manning in 2010 to Edward Snowden in 2013 and Daniel Hale in 2016, prosecutions under the U.S. Espionage Act and equivalent statutes elsewhere signal a broader shift: Making the powerful transparent is redefined as treason. The prosecution of national security whistleblowers who reveal crimes of the state continues to be an ongoing problem, as highlighted by more recent cases, including Reality Winner and David McBride.

When the law is used to enforce secrecy and punish dissent, the moral terrain shifts. Civil disobedience becomes not only justified but necessary. Human rights lawyers have commented that whistleblowers and journalists who work with them are being subjected to increasingly harsh treatment by the state, including imprisonment and on occasion torture.

From traditional media to networked whistleblowing

Historically, whistleblowers relied on the press to act as an intermediary between them and the public, as well as a protector because of the publicity they offer. But as investigative journalism has been hollowed out – starved of resources and constrained by political and corporate pressure – this model has faltered.

As journalist Andrew Fowler, one of our book’s contributors, wrote, “It may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources.” Across the globe, attacks by governments on journalists criticizing strongman leaders become more brazen.

In 2010, Manning blew the whistle on U.S war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many major outlets turned Manning away before WikiLeaks provided the infrastructure to publish what mainstream media would not. Her disclosures raised the public’s awareness of government complicity in war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Such stories also reveal how reluctant mainstream journalism can be when confronted with power.

More recently, in 2016 McBride blew the whistle on members of the Australian SAS who murdered civilians in Afghanistan. He was sentenced to prison in 2024 and is currently serving a sentence of five years and eight months for his disclosures of war crimes.

This decline in formal protections has given rise to an ecology of “networked whistleblowing”: decentralized alliances of whistleblowers, activists and independent journalists using encrypted tools to share information and protect sources. While these networks can offer safety in numbers, they also carry risks – of being co-opted or exploited by those in power, and of being framed collectively as enemies of the state for their attempts to hold the powerful to account.

Yet they also represent a profound reimagining of public accountability in a digital age where secrecy is structural and systemic, demonstrating the force of people working together.

As the traditional institutions of democracy falter, our research shows these alternative infrastructures embody a new form of democratic practice: horizontal, distributed and defiant.

New alliances supporting whistleblowers

The whistleblowers whose stories appear in our book did more than expose wrongdoing. They built communities of care and resistance – new institutions to protect truth-telling itself.

Each of them, after suffering retaliation and exclusion, turned outward: campaigning for reform, mentoring others and building cross-sector alliances. Their transformation from individual insiders to collective activists reveals a crucial insight: Legal reform alone isn’t enough. What sustains truth-telling isn’t the promise of protection from above but solidarity from below.

Strengthening and supporting these alliances would help preserve freedom of expression and the right to know. That means supporting cross-border networks of journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders who can collectively safeguard disclosure when national laws fail. It also means recognizing whistleblowing as a public good.

At a time when many democracies are retreating from openness, these whistleblowers remind us that law and justice are not the same thing. When laws entrench secrecy or punish dissent, we believe breaking them can be an act of civic virtue. Civil disobedience can renew democratic life by holding power to account.

Kiriakou’s conclusion in his chapter resonates beyond the intelligence world: “We all have to fight. It’s the only way we are going to change anything.” His words recall a longer lineage of civil disobedience – from suffragettes to anti-war protesters to environmental activists – each confronting systems that refused to hear them until they broke the rules.

The cases in our new book illustrate how quickly law can be used to enforce secrecy rather than accountability during periods of democratic backsliding. They also highlight the practical conditions that make truth-telling possible – including collective support that extends beyond any one country’s legal system.

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 civil disobedience to networked whistleblowing: What national security truth-tellers reveal in an age of crackdowns – https://theconversation.com/from-civil-disobedience-to-networked-whistleblowing-what-national-security-truth-tellers-reveal-in-an-age-of-crackdowns-269488