Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Conor Harrison, Associate Professor of Economic Geography, University of South Carolina

As fall turns to winter and temperatures begin to drop, millions of people across the U.S. will struggle to pay their rising energy bills. The government shutdown is making matters even worse: Several states have pushed back the start of their winter energy assistance because their federally allocated funds have yet to show up.

A 2023 national survey found that nearly 1 in 4 Americans were unable to pay their full energy bill for at least one month, and nearly 1 in 4 reported that they kept their homes at unsafe temperatures to save money. By 2025, updated polling indicated nearly 3 in 4 Americans are worried about rising energy costs.

Conservative estimates suggest that utilities shut off power to over 3 million U.S. households each year because the residents cannot pay their bills.

This problem of high energy prices isn’t lost on the Trump administration.

On the first day of his second term in 2025, President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency by executive order, saying that “high energy prices … devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed incomes.”

Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright raised concerns about utility disconnections and outlined a mission to “shrink that number, with the target of zero.”

Yet, the administration’s 2026 budget proposal zeroed out funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, the federal program that administers funding to help low-income households pay their utility bills. While there appears to be continued bipartisan support for LIHEAP in Congress, on April 1, 2025, the administration laid off the entire staff of the LIHEAP office. These layoffs hinder the ability of the federal government to release LIHEAP funds, even when the government reopens.

Many people already struggle to cobble together enough help from various sources to pay their energy bills. As researchers who study energy insecurity, we believe gutting the federal office responsible for administering energy bill assistance will make it even harder for Americans to make ends meet.

The high stakes of energy affordability

We work with communities in South Carolina and Tennessee where many residents struggle to heat and cool their homes.

We see how high energy prices force people to make dangerous trade-offs. Low-income households often find themselves choosing whether to buy necessities, pay for child care or pay their utility bills.

One elderly person we spoke with for our research, Sarah, explained that she routinely forgoes buying medications in order to pay her utility bill.

Unfortunately, these stories are increasingly common, especially in low-income communities and communities of color.

Shrinking resources for assistance

LIHEAP, created in 1981, provides funding to states as block grants to help low-income families pay their utility bills. In fiscal year 2023, the program distributed US$6.1 billion in energy assistance, helping some 5.9 million households avoid losing power connections.

The program’s small staff played critical roles in disbursing this money, providing implementation guidelines, monitoring state-level fund management and tracking and evaluating program effectiveness.

It is unlikely that other sources of funding can fill in the gaps if states do not receive LIHEAP funds from the federal government. The program’s funding has never been high enough to meet the need. In 2020, LIHEAP provided assistance to just 16% of eligible households.
Our research has found that, in practice, many households rely on a range of local nonprofits, faith-based organizations and informal networks of family and friends to help them pay their bills and keep the heat on in winter.

For example, a research participant named Deborah reported that when faced with a utility shut-off, she “drove from church to church to church” in search of assistance. United Way in South Carolina received over 16,000 calls from people seeking help to pay their utility bills in 2023.

These charitable services are an important lifeline for many, especially in the communities we study in the South. However, research has shown that faith-based programs do not have the reach of public programs.

Without LIHEAP, the limited funds provided by nonprofits and the personal connections that people patch together will be stretched even thinner, especially as other charitable services, such as food banks, also face funding cuts.

What’s ahead

Although Congress has chosen to fund LIHEAP for 2026, the government shutdown threatens the program’s ability to reach families in time for the cold months ahead. While summer heat is on the rise, cold-related deaths have been trending up as well. Cold snaps in early 2024 and again in 2025 left several people dead from hypothermia. These are preventable deaths that continued LIHEAP assistance could help avoid.

These threats to LIHEAP—especially coming alongside uncertainty about federal food assistance—put the goal of energy affordability for all Americans – and Americans’ lives – in jeopardy. Until more affordable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, can be scaled up, an expansion of federal assistance programs is needed, not a contraction.

Increasing the reach and funding of LIHEAP is one option. Making home weatherization programs more effective is another.

Governments could also require utilities to forgive past-due bills, implement percent of income payment plans, and end utility shut-offs. About two dozen states currently have rules to prevent shut-offs during the worst summer heat.

For now, the cuts mean more pressure on nonprofits, faith-based organizations and informal networks. Looking ahead to another winter of freezing temperatures, we can only hope that delays to LIHEAP payments and cuts to LIHEAP staff don’t foreshadow a growing yet preventable death toll.

Etienne Toussaint, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, and Ann Eisenberg, a law professor at West Virginia University, contributed to this article.

This is an update to an article originally published May 13, 2025.

Conor Harrison receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Elena Louder received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation related to this research.

Nikki Luke receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She previously worked at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Shelley Welton receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

– ref. Trump was already cutting low-income energy assistance – the shutdown is making things worse as cold weather arrives – https://theconversation.com/trump-was-already-cutting-low-income-energy-assistance-the-shutdown-is-making-things-worse-as-cold-weather-arrives-269342

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andor J. Kiss, Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics, Miami University

James Dewey Watson was an American molecular biologist most known for co-winning the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering the structure of DNA and its significance in transferring information in living systems. The importance of this discovery cannot be overstated. It unlocked how genes work and gave birth to the fields of molecular biology and evolutionary phylogenetics. It has inspired and influenced my career as a scientist and as director of a bioinformatics and functional genomics research center.

Watson was also an outspoken and controversial figure who transformed the way science was communicated. He was the first high-profile Nobel laureate to give the general public a shockingly personal and unfiltered glimpse into the cutthroat and competitive world of scientific research. Watson died on Nov. 6, 2025 at age 97.

Watson’s pursuit of the gene

Watson attended the University of Chicago at age 15, initially intending to become an ornithologist. After reading Erwin Schrödinger’s book of collected public lectures on the chemistry and physics of how cells operate, “What is Life?,” he became interested in finding out what genes are made of – the biggest question in biology at the time.

Chromosomes – a mixture of protein and DNA – were known to be the molecules of heredity. But most scientists were convinced that proteins, with 20 different building blocks, were the likely candidate as opposed to DNA with only four building blocks. When the 1944 Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment demonstrated that DNA was the carrier molecule of inheritance, the focus immediately shifted to understanding DNA.

Watson completed his doctorate in zoology at Indiana University in 1950, followed by a year in Copenhagen studying viruses. He met biophysicist Maurice Wilkins at a conference in 1951. During Wilkins’ talk on the molecular structure of DNA, Watson saw preliminary X-ray photographs of DNA. This prompted him to follow Wilkins to the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge to pursue work into uncovering the structure of DNA. Here, Watson met physicist-turned-biologist Francis Crick and developed an immediate bond with him over their shared research interests.

Soon, Watson and Crick published their seminal findings on the structure of DNA in the journal Nature in 1953. Two other papers were also published in the same journal issue on the structure of DNA, one co-authored by Wilkins and the other co-authored by chemist and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin.

Franklin took the X-ray photographs of DNA crystals that contained the data necessary for solving the structure of DNA. Her work, taken together with the work of the Cavendish Laboratory members, led to the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins.

The prize and the controversy

Although they were aware that Franklin’s essential X-ray photographs circulated in an internal Cavendish Laboratory summary report, neither Watson nor Crick acknowledged her contributions in their now famous 1953 Nature paper. In 1968, Watson published a book recounting the events surrounding the discovery of the DNA structure as he experienced them, wherein he minimizes Franklin’s contributions and refers to her in sexist language. In the book’s epilogue, he does acknowledge Franklin’s contributions but stops short of providing full credit for her role in the discovery.

Some historians have argued that part of the justification for not formally recognizing Franklin was that her work had not been published at the time and was “common knowledge” in the Cavendish Laboratory because researchers working on the DNA problem routinely shared data with one another. However, the co-opting of Franklin’s data and its incorporation in a formal publication without attribution or permission is now largely viewed as a well-known example of poor behavior both in science and in the treatment of female colleagues by their male counterparts in professional settings.

In the decades since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins, some have recast Rosalind Franklin as a feminist icon. Whether or not she would have endorsed this is uncertain, as it is unclear how she would have felt about being left out of a Nobel Prize and written about disparagingly in Watson’s account of events. What has become clear is that her contribution was critical and essential, and she is now widely regarded as an equal contributor to the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Future of science collaboration

How have attitudes and behaviors towards junior colleagues and collaborators changed in the years since Watson and Crick were recognized for the Nobel Prize?

In many cases, universities, research institutions, funding agencies and peer-reviewed journals have implemented formal policies to transparently identify and credit the work and contributions of all researchers involved in a project. While these policies don’t always work, the scientific environment has changed for the better to be more inclusive. This evolution may be due to recognizing that a single individual is rarely able to tackle and solve complex scientific problems by themselves. And when problems occur, there are more formal mechanisms for people to seek mitigation.

Frameworks for sorting disputes can be found in author guidelines from journals, professional associations and institutions. There is also a journal called Accountability in Research that is “devoted to the examination and critical analysis of practices and systems for promoting integrity in the conduct of research.” Guidance for scientists, institutions and grant-funding agencies on how to structure author attribution and accountability represents a significant advancement in fairness and ethical procedures and standards.

I’ve had both positive and negative experiences in my own career. These range from being included on papers when I was an undergraduate to being written out of grants to having my contributions left in while I was dropped from authorship without my knowledge. It is important to note that most of my negative experiences occurred early in my career, likely because senior collaborators felt they could get away with it.

It’s also likely that these negative experiences occur less often now that I am upfront and explicit with my expectations regarding co-authorship at the outset of a collaboration. I am prepared and can afford to turn down collaborations.

I suspect this mirrors experiences that others have had, and is very likely amplified for people from groups that are underrepresented in science. Unfortunately, poor behavior, including sexual harassment, is still happening in the field. Suffice it to say, science as a community still has a long way to go – as does society at large.

After co-discovering the structure of DNA, James Watson went on to study viruses at Harvard University and helm Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, reviving and substantially expanding its physical space, staff and worldwide reputation. When the Human Genome Project was in its infancy, Watson was an obvious choice to lead and drive it forward, later stepping aside after a protracted battle over whether the human genome and genes themselves could be patented – Watson was firmly against gene patents.

Despite all the immense good Watson did during his lifetime, his legacy is tarnished by his long history of racist and sexist public comments as well as his ongoing disparagement of Rosalind Franklin both personally and professionally. And it is regrettable that he and Crick chose not to acknowledge all those who contributed to their great discovery at the critical points.

Andor J. Kiss 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. James Watson exemplified the best and worst of science – from monumental discoveries to sexism and cutthroat competition – https://theconversation.com/james-watson-exemplified-the-best-and-worst-of-science-from-monumental-discoveries-to-sexism-and-cutthroat-competition-204614

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Laurie A. Garrow, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Major airports across the United States were subject to a 4% reduction in flights on Nov. 7, 2025, as the government shutdown began to affect travelers.

The move by the Federal Aviation Administration is intended to ease pressure on air traffic controllers, many of whom have been working for weeks without pay after the government shut down on Oct. 1. While nonessential employees were furloughed, workers deemed essential, such as air traffic controllers, have continued to do their jobs.

But what does that mean for the many Americans who take to the skies every day? To find out, The Conversation U.S. spoke with Laurie A. Garrow, a civil aviation expert at Georgia Tech.

What do we know about the FAA’s plans so far?

The first thing to note is that things can change fast. But as of this morning, 4% of flights are being canceled across 40 “high-volume” airports. The list is publicly available, but it includes most of the big hubs across the United States, such as Atlanta, New York’s airports, Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles International and Dallas/Fort Worth.

The plan is to ramp this up to 10% by Nov. 14 should the shutdown extend that long.

The FAA, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the airlines are working together on the details of which flights and routes are affected – and this will no doubt be monitored as the days go on.

But they are trying to make the cancellations in a way that cause the least disruption to customers.

So we are looking at cuts to domestic, not international, flights – flights across the Atlantic, Pacific and to Latin America are not, for now at least, subject to cuts.

The 4% of cancellations we are seeing are really targeting the high-frequency routes. This should help mitigate the impact. For example, typically American Airlines flies nine flights a day from Miami to Orlando, but they are planning to fly eight this weekend.

And carriers are looking at reducing regional flights. For example, my mom lives near Erie, Pennsylvania, where American Airlines flies three daily flights to their hub in Charlotte – I would expect that to go down to two, or one.

But the FAA was clear that it wasn’t going to cut flights to markets entirely, just reduce them.

What will this mean for existing flights?

For starters, you are going to see more passengers on them. It is fortunate that we are in the lull before Thanksgiving. This isn’t like the summer. There is more slack in the system – so there are extra seats available. If one flight gets canceled on a busy route, it will at this stage be fairly easy to accommodate on another flight.

And I expect customers will be asked to get to airports a little earlier than they would normally.

But people should expect more delays on existing flights. This is because of the way we maintain safety in the air transportation system. Air traffic control can only safely watch a certain number of flights. So when you have someone not at work, or a reduction in number of controllers, you will need to reduce the number of airplanes in the sky. You can’t ask a controller to watch, say, 20 flights when they usually watch 10. So what you do is put in more ground delay programs to limit the number of aircraft coming into or out of an airport. This causes delays but is necessary in peak periods.

What impact will this have on airlines?

At 4%, probably not too much of an impact. When you look at the list of airports affected, it is balanced from the point of view that many are large hubs and the pain is being shared across all U.S. carriers.

As for the impact on other types of businesses, at the moment it is mainly the industries that air transportation supports. According to the International Air Transport Association, the air transport sector in the U.S. – covering airlines, airports and tourism enabled by aviation –contributes about US$1.3 trillion, or about 4.7%, to GDP and supports about 7.6 million jobs. If these wider sectors are severely affected, it could create a longer-term impact on the economy.

And if this continues into the holiday season?

That is when it will get painful for the carriers. If we are looking at reduction of 10% going into the holiday season with additional delays, then that is when the real pain will be felt.

Will this affect how Americans choose to travel?

Air travel is what I call an emotional mode of transport – we use it for the events that are most significant in our life, such as big family meet-ups, holidays and major face-to-face business deals. So this may affect how people choose to travel going into the holiday season if it is more difficult to get people back to their families in time.

Robert Isom, CEO of American Airlines, said on Nov. 7 that they are seeing an impact on bookings, with people postponing and rescheduling travel.

I certainly think for people looking at a 500- to 600-mile trip, the option of traveling by car is looking more appealing right now.

Will passengers be compensated for canceled flights?

Typically, compensation depends on whether the delay or cancellation was within the airline’s control. The U.S. Department of Transportation has created a dashboard showing “what services U.S. airlines provide to mitigate passenger inconveniences when the cause of a cancellation or delay was due to circumstances within the airline’s control.”

However, delays and cancellations caused by ATC staffing shortages are not considered to be within the airline’s control, and it is up to each airline to decide if and how they will compensate passengers.

As of Nov. 7, many airlines had announced they were allowing customers to change their flights or request a refund without penalty, including nonrefundable fares such as basic economy.

After all, it is in their interest, too, that people continue to fly.

Typically, major carriers offer more services for delayed and canceled flights within their control than low-cost carriers.

Is there any precedent for this? What happened then?

There is no real precedent for what we are seeing: a 4% to 10% reduction across the board due to a government shutdown. But we have seen major disruptions, such as after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and during the pandemic, when COVID-19 ran through flight attendants and pilots before the holidays – that caused flight cancellations and delays.

Historically, when we have seen something like this, we have seen consumer behavior change for a short period. After 9/11, when U.S. travelers had the hassle of increased security, there was a shift to more automobile travel for those 500- to 600-mile journeys.

What advice would you give would-be flyers now?

First off, download the app for the airport and airline carrier so you get up-to-date, reliable information. And if you can book for a day earlier than you normally would for a major event, do so – it provides a buffer in case your flight is delayed or canceled.

And try to avoid connections at all costs. The fewer legs, the fewer things can go wrong.

Also, don’t check bags if you can. There is nothing worse than getting to an airport, finding your flight is canceled, and then having to wait for your luggage to get returned.

Laurie A. Garrow is Past President of AGIFORS, a non-profit organization dedicated to using advanced analytics to improve airline planning and operations.

– ref. What to know as hundreds of flights are grounded across the US – an air travel expert explains – https://theconversation.com/what-to-know-as-hundreds-of-flights-are-grounded-across-the-us-an-air-travel-expert-explains-269265

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Matthew W. Kreuter, Kahn Family Professor of Public Health, Washington University in St. Louis

Between January and mid-October 2025, calls to local 211 helplines from people seeking food pantries in their community held steady at nearly 1,000 calls per day.

But as the government shutdown entered its fourth week in late October, states began to warn residents that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, sometimes known as food stamps, would likely be affected. Nearly 42 million Americans receive SNAP benefits each month.

Over the next several days, calls to 211 from people seeking food pantries doubled to over 2,200 per day. Then on Oct. 26, the Trump administration announced that SNAP benefits would not be arriving as scheduled in November. The next day, food pantry calls skyrocketed to 3,324. The following day, calls reached 3,870. By Wednesday, it was 4,214.

We are public health scientists specializing in health communication and unmet social needs. We and our colleagues have been working closely with the 211 network of helplines across the U.S. for 18 years.

Excluding disasters, sudden surges of this magnitude in requests for food or any other need are rare at 211s, and can signal both public worry and need, as happened in the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is 211?

Like 911 for emergencies, 211 is a national three-digit dialing code, launched in 2000, that connects callers to information specialists at the nearest local 211 helpline. Those specialists listen to callers’ needs and provide them with referrals to health and social service providers near them that may be able to help.

Every call to 211 is classified by the need of the caller, such as shelter, rent, utilities or food – each of which has its own code.

Callers are disproportionately women, most of whom have children or teens living in their homes. Most don’t make enough money to make ends meet. They call 211 seeking help paying rent or utility bills, getting food to feed their family, or securing household necessities like a winter coat for a child, or a mattress.

The hotline does not solve these problems for callers, but 211 information specialists use the most current local information available to refer callers to service agencies that are most likely to have resources to help.

The 211 network is the closest thing the U.S. has to a real-time surveillance system of the needs of low-income Americans.

There are roughly 200 state and local 211s in the U.S., and on an average day they will collectively field between 35,000 and 40,000 requests for help. Each request is coded using a taxonomy of over 10,000 need types, is time- and date-stamped, and is linked to the caller’s ZIP code. In addition to phone calls received by their helplines, 211s increasingly track requests they receive online, through their websites. The national network of 211s covers all 50 states and 99% of the U.S. population.

It’s encouraging to us that with each passing year of giving talks and lectures about 211, more and more audience members raise their hands when asked if they’ve ever heard of 211. But it’s far from 100%. If you are one of those with your hand down, here’s what you need to know.

Gaining local insights

Our team aims to deploy the latest methods from data science, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to detect trends in critical needs sooner and at a more localized level, increasing the speed and efficiency of getting needed help to local community members.

Our research has described the needs of callers who reach out to 211, community capacity to respond to callers’ needs, the ability of 211 to detect rapid changes in community needs, and the benefits of integrating health referrals into 211s.

When we saw food requests rising sharply in late October, we reached out to local leaders at 211 call centers to get insights into what they were hearing from callers.

Robin Pokojski, vice president of 211 and community partnerships at United Way of Greater St. Louis, reported that with all the uncertainty around SNAP benefits, callers were initially “anticipating” a need for food pantries. Tiffany Olson, who directs essential services at Crisis Connections and its 211 call center in Washington state, shared that even callers who rely heavily on their SNAP benefits sometimes need to use food banks as a supplement.

Those callers know that pivoting to rely solely on food banks probably won’t be enough to meet their food needs in full. They realize that food pantries and food banks will be more heavily burdened if SNAP benefits are unavailable.

Increasing the impact of 211 data

The trove of daily data on the needs of U.S. callers to 211 at the ZIP code level is unparalleled. Yet for years it was virtually invisible to anyone who didn’t work at a 211 hotline.

Even for people who work and volunteer within the 211 system, formal reporting on caller needs within a community was minimal, such as a one-page annual summary.

That changed in 2013.

Working with 211s across the country, our team created 211 Counts, a collection of user-friendly, public-facing data dashboards for local 211s across the U.S.

The dashboards allow users to explore the top needs in their community, see which neighborhoods are affected most and understand how needs are changing over time. The data can be sorted by legislative districts, school districts and counties to make the findings more relevant to different audiences.

Data on 211 requests are updated each night. Now in its 12th year, 211 Counts includes data on over 90 million requests from 211 callers in all or parts of 44 states. The local dashboards have been visited millions of times.

211 as an early-warning system

This is not the first time data collected through 211 hotlines has detected early signs of trouble for some Americans. Just weeks ago, we found that calls from people seeking assistance making car payments have been increasing steadily for five months, with daily calls peaking in October, at nearly twice the rate of May 2025.

Before that, 211s were months ahead of news reporting in seeing public distress associated with the 2022 baby formula shortage, the 2016 Flint water crisis and the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis.

When requests for major needs like food increase three- to fourfold overnight, every local 211 is likely to register this abrupt change.

But when less frequent needs, such as car payment assistance, creep up slowly, with an extra call here and there over several months, it’s unlikely that any local 211 hotline would notice.

That’s when the advantages of big data are greatest. By combining caller needs from 211s across the country, patterns emerge that would otherwise be missed. New data science tools are rapidly improving the speed and accuracy of detecting slight changes. When community and national leaders are made aware of potential rising threats, those threats can be tracked more closely and responses prepared.

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that each data point is a hungry child or a worried parent.

Hotlines and food banks and food pantries need support in this moment to feed people. But most local safety net systems struggle to meet their community’s needs all the time. Data that documents the magnitude of need won’t fix the scarcity of local assistance, but it can help guide communities in allocating limited resources.

Matthew W. Kreuter receives funding from NIH.

Rachel Garg receives funding from NIH and NSF. She has previously received research support from Health Communication Impact, LLC to produce 211 data reports for United Way Worldwide.

– ref. National 211 hotline calls for food assistance quadrupled in a matter of days, a magnitude typically seen during disasters – https://theconversation.com/national-211-hotline-calls-for-food-assistance-quadrupled-in-a-matter-of-days-a-magnitude-typically-seen-during-disasters-269057

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Tracy Roof, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has helped low-income Americans buy groceries for decades with few disruptions.

But on Nov. 1, 2025, the federal government halted the flow of funds to states to distribute as SNAP benefits. The Trump administration blames this unprecedented disruption on the federal government shutdown, which began a month earlier. Following multiple court orders, federal officials said they plan to distribute at least a portion of the US$8 billion that’s supposed to flow monthly to the states to cover the costs of the program’s benefits. On Nov. 6, another judge ordered the distribution of all SNAP funds that were due in November.

Although the program costs billions, the benefits that families and individuals can receive from it are modest. The most a person living on their own can get is $298 a month, but many people receive far less. The average benefit is an estimated $6.17 daily – which falls below some estimates of the minimum cost of eating a nutritious diet in the United States.

The Conversation U.S. asked Tracy Roof, a political scientist who has researched the history of government nutrition programs, to explain who SNAP helps, how enrollment varies from state to state and what the program costs to run.

How many Americans are enrolled in SNAP?

The number of people getting SNAP benefits soared during the Great Recession, a big downturn that began in December 2007 and had long-lasting effects on the economy.

Because of high unemployment and poverty rates, more people were eligible for SNAP during those years. Many states, eager to bring dollars into their economies from federally funded SNAP benefits, made unprecedented efforts to enroll eligible families. SNAP enrollment peaked in 2013 at roughly 15% of Americans. The number of the program’s participants fell as the economy recovered, but never returned to pre-recession levels because a greater share of eligible families continued to enroll in the program after the economic crisis than before.

When the COVID-19 pandemic upended the U.S. economy in 2020, the number of people with SNAP benefits soared again. President Donald Trump has blamed high enrollment in SNAP on the Biden administration “haphazardly” handing benefits “to anyone for the asking.”

That assertion is misleading. While the Biden White House increased benefits, it did not expand who was eligible for SNAP. In fact, President Joe Biden agreed to apply work requirements and time limits to more SNAP recipients. Moreover, states, not the federal government, are primarily responsible for determining eligibility and enrolling people in SNAP. The number of people who received SNAP benefits during Biden’s presidency never exceeded 43 million – the peak reached in September 2020 during the first Trump administration.

The number of people using SNAP benefits to buy groceries has not fallen substantially because the number of people in poverty and the cost of living, including what Americans pay for food, have both increased since 2020.

How much does the program cost the federal government?

In inflation-adjusted 2024 dollars, spending peaked at $128 billion in 2021 and fell to $100 billion in 2024 – nearing pre-pandemic levels.

The program’s spending had previously increased significantly during the Great Recession because SNAP enrollment rose and benefits were temporarily increased. Spending declined as the economy gradually recovered.

While the number of people on SNAP during the pandemic and its aftermath never reached the peak of the Great Recession, the level of spending did reach much higher levels. This was because of three steps taken to increase benefits by more sizable amounts than during the Great Recession.

1. The Families First Act, which Trump signed into law in March 2020, offered “emergency allotments” that increased monthly benefits for many households receiving SNAP. Biden extended emergency benefits to all households enrolled in the program in April 2021, driving spending even higher. Budget legislation that Congress passed in December 2022 ended the emergency benefits in February 2023.

2. Biden signed two pieces of legislation in 2021 that temporarily increased the maximum SNAP benefit by 15% through September 2021 – the height of the pandemic’s effects on the economy.

3. The Biden administration adjusted the basis for calculating monthly benefits in October 2021, just as the temporary increase was expiring. That change permanently increased benefits.

Most households getting SNAP benefits include children and older people

Nearly 60% of Americans enrolled in SNAP are either children under 18 or adults who are 60 or older.

About 1 in 5 non-elderly adults with SNAP benefits have a disability.

Less than 10% of all the people receiving SNAP benefits are able-bodied adults without children who are between the ages of 19 and 49.

Around 55% of all families with children that receive SNAP benefits include at least one employed adult.

Enrollment ranges widely from state to state

In some states, 1 in 5 people receive SNAP benefits. In others, it’s 1 in 20.

The share of a state’s population getting SNAP is determined both by its poverty rate and its policies. Those policies can affect who is eligible and the share of eligible families and individuals who enroll in the program.

Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of people on SNAP, five are also in the top 10 for the percentage of the population in poverty: New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Nevada.

According to 2022 data, nine of those 10 states have enrolled nearly all families who are eligible for SNAP benefits: New Mexico, Louisiana, Oregon, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

States vary widely in terms of the percentage of eligible families who obtain SNAP benefits. In the bottom quarter of states, fewer than 81% of eligible residents in 2022 were getting benefits. The percentage in Arkansas was the lowest: 59%.

States with the highest enrollment numbers tend to make it easier for their residents to get SNAP benefits by minimizing red tape and engaging in more outreach to eligible families. They also adopt policies that allow some people to qualify for SNAP at higher incomes or with more assets.

Americans of all races and ethnic backgrounds rely on SNAP

A little over 35% of people who get SNAP benefits are white, more than any other racial or ethnic group. Around 26% are Black and 16% are Hispanic.

Although more white people are enrolled in SNAP, Census data shows that greater percentages of Black and Hispanic people get these benefits: 24.4% of Black people and 17.2% of Hispanic people compared with 9.7% of white people. This is because these groups are disproportionately poor.

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for SNAP. Only 4.4% of SNAP recipients in the 2023 fiscal year were immigrants who were not citizens but legally present in the U.S., such as refugees.

The “big” tax-and-spending package Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, however, ended SNAP eligibility for most of those immigrants.

Tracy Roof 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. Who gets SNAP benefits to buy groceries and what the government pays for the program – in 5 charts – https://theconversation.com/who-gets-snap-benefits-to-buy-groceries-and-what-the-government-pays-for-the-program-in-5-charts-269032

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Halie Kampman, Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Geography, Penn State

In communities across Pennsylvania, local officials are deciding how to spend over US$2 billion dollars from the state’s opioid settlement agreements.

For many, the task is proving promising yet challenging – and raises questions about how to best navigate complex local needs.

Pennsylvania will receive the money over 18 years from lawsuits filed by state attorneys general against opioid manufacturers and distributors. About 70% of these funds will be distributed to county governments, with the remaining funds going to the state legislature and the groups that leveraged the lawsuits.

The amount provided to each county is proportional to the opioid-related harms experienced by the county. Each county government is responsible for developing its own funding strategy for substance use programs, which can focus on things such as prevention, treatment, recovery or harm reduction.

Our research team at Penn State interviewed 72 county officials, health professionals and service providers across six counties in Pennsylvania to understand their early experiences with these funds.

We summarized our findings in a recent article for the peer-reviewed Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy journal. We found that stakeholders view the settlement funds not simply as extra money but as an opportunity to heal – and to test how well local communities can make their own choices about spending.

‘Bags of money’ but limited guidance

Pennsylvania’s distribution strategy was designed to give local governments flexibility. A document called Exhibit E lists the ways that counties can spend the settlement money.

This collaborative document was written as part of the settlement to outline shared guidelines that apply to all the states receiving funds. It lists everything from the types of approved substance use treatments to what qualifies as prevention. In practice, Exhibit E provides diverse opportunities for spending but has also created widespread uncertainty among recipients about which strategies to prioritize.

Some interviewees felt overwhelmed by the logistics of their funding decisions. They understood that the general purpose of the money is to support communities harmed by opioid overprescription. But they lacked clarity on how much time they had to spend it, what the reporting requirements are, and what counts as an eligible activity. For example, some wanted to use the funds to pay administrators for new prevention programs, but administration isn’t included in Exhibit E.

As one local elected official in southeastern Pennsylvania put it, “There’s been a whole lot of stuff that we don’t know – more than we do know. And now we’re running with bags of money through the community and (we’re) not sure how we can spend it, or if we can spend it.”

Many county officials worried about spending the funds too slowly, or on activities that could end up being ineligible or ineffective. Service providers sometimes didn’t know who in their county had the authority to decide where the money went. While they may have wanted to provide recommendations or input, they were unsure how.

A chance to experiment and innovate

Even amid confusion, most of the people we interviewed saw the settlement funding as a unique opportunity.

Exhibit E’s broad guidelines allow for experimentation, and many expressed interest in supporting local needs and implementing projects that they had wanted for a long time. This included things like expanding peer recovery support programs or establishing family support services.

“The guidelines are so varied that it gives those local communities opportunities to look at the menu and find out from community members, ‘How can we help resolve this problem together?’” one local drug and alcohol department employee told us. “It’s a collaborative that really helps the community as a whole get well as a whole. I am a real believer in ‘It takes a village.’”

Several participants emphasized that the flexibility in Exhibit E creates room to revise plans as needs evolve or change. Counties can change their funding priorities each year to adapt.

Several counties have already started issuing small grants to grassroots organizations, recognizing that those closest to people harmed by the opioid crisis often know best what kinds of interventions might work.

One county employee involved in distributing funds in her county shared that her team was “willing to try anything, really, within the bounds.”

“And if it doesn’t work, we can back off,” she added. “But I feel like you don’t know until you try it.”

A moral responsibility to get it right

Although our study focused on policy implementation, participants often framed their responsibilities in moral terms.

Many said they felt a strong obligation to use the funds wisely, given the scale of loss their communities have endured. The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 4,719 overdose deaths in the state in 2023, and 83% were opioid-related. That number dropped to 3,336 in 2024, mirroring national trends.

One elected official described the funds as “the only hope we can provide families that have lost loved ones to this crisis,” emphasizing that he felt a “real obligation” to make the funds count.

Others echoed that careful, transparent decision-making is part of a broader recovery effort. Beyond abiding by funding guidelines, they felt it was also important to be honest and transparent to community members.

“We don’t want to come out with ‘Pennsylvania wasted its money, or (this) county wasted its money,’” said an addictions researcher.

Still others cautioned that the settlement funds alone cannot repair the full scope of harms caused by the opioid crisis, warning against viewing the settlements as a cure-all.

“There’s not really a monetary value that you can put on these things,” a person who works in the substance use sector told us. “I’m glad that this money’s available, but ultimately for me … it’s a little too late. You know? All my friends are already dead.”

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

Glenn Sterner receives funding from the Pennsylvania Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust, Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, Pennsylvania Department of Health, Independence Blue Cross Foundation, Montgomery County Government in Pennsylvania, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Institute of Justice, and National Science Foundation.

Brian King, Halie Kampman, Kristina P. Brant, and Maya Weinberg 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. Pennsylvania counties face tough choices on spending $2B opioid settlement funds – https://theconversation.com/pennsylvania-counties-face-tough-choices-on-spending-2b-opioid-settlement-funds-267725

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nicole M. Bennett, Ph.D. Candidate in Geography and Assistant Director at the Center for Refugee Studies, Indiana University

When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published a request for information for private-sector contractors to launch a round-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will be paid to comb through “Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc.,” turning public posts into enforcement leads that feed directly into ICE’s databases.

The request for information reads like something out of a cyber thriller: dozens of analysts working in shifts, strict deadlines measured in minutes, a tiered system of prioritizing high-risk individuals, and the latest software keeping constant watch.

I am a researcher who studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies and the U.S. federal government. I believe that the ICE request for information also signals a concerning if logical next step in a longer trend, one that moves the U.S. border from the physical world into the digital.

A new structure of surveillance

ICE already searches social media using a service called SocialNet that monitors most major online platforms. The agency has also contracted with Zignal Labs for its AI-powered social media monitoring system.

The Customs and Border Protection agency also searches social media posts on the devices of some travelers at ports of entry, and the U.S. State Department reviews social media posts when foreigners seek visas to enter the United States.

What would change isn’t only the scale of monitoring but its structure. Instead of government agents gathering evidence case by case, ICE is building a public-private surveillance loop that transforms everyday online activity into potential evidence.

Private contractors would be tasked with scraping publicly available data to collecting messages, including posts and other media and data. The contractors would be able to correlate those findings with data in commercial datasets from brokers such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR along with government-owned databases. Analysts would be required to produce dossiers for ICE field offices within tight deadlines – sometimes just 30 minutes for a high-priority case.

Those files don’t exist in isolation. They feed directly into Palantir Technologies’ Investigative Case Management system, the digital backbone of modern immigration enforcement. There, this social media data would join a growing web of license plate scans, utility records, property data and biometrics, creating what is effectively a searchable portrait of a person’s life.

Who gets caught in the net?

Officially, ICE says its data collection would focus on people who are already linked to ongoing cases or potential threats. In practice, the net is far wider.

The danger here is that when one person is flagged, their friends, relatives, fellow organizers or any of their acquaintances can also become subjects of scrutiny. Previous contracts for facial recognition tools and location tracking have shown how easily these systems expand beyond their original scope. What starts as enforcement can turn into surveillance of entire communities.

What ICE says and what history shows

ICE frames the project as modernization: a way to identify a target’s location by identifying aliases and detecting patterns that traditional methods might miss. Planning documents say contractors cannot create fake profiles and must store all analysis on ICE servers.

But history suggests these kinds of guardrails often fail. Investigations have revealed how informal data-sharing between local police and federal agents allowed ICE to access systems it wasn’t authorized to use. The agency has repeatedly purchased massive datasets from brokers to sidestep warrant requirements. And despite a White House freeze on spyware procurement, ICE quietly revived a contract with Paragon’s Graphite tool, software reportedly capable of infiltrating encrypted apps such as WhatsApp and Signal.

Meanwhile, ICE’s vendor ecosystem keeps expanding: Clearview AI for face matching, ShadowDragon’s SocialNet for mapping networks, Babel Street’s location history service Locate X, and LexisNexis for looking up people. ICE is also purchasing tools from surveillance firm PenLink that combine location data with social media data. Together, these platforms make continuous, automated monitoring not only possible but routine.

Lessons from abroad

The United States isn’t alone in government monitoring of social media. In the United Kingdom, a new police unit tasked with scanning online discussions about immigration and civil unrest has drawn criticism for blurring the line between public safety and political policing.

Across the globe, spyware scandals have shown how lawful access tools that were initially justified for counterterrorism were later used against journalists and activists. Once these systems exist, mission creep, also known as function creep, becomes the rule rather than the exception.

The social cost of being watched

Around-the-clock surveillance doesn’t just gather information – it also changes behavior.

Research found that visits to Wikipedia articles on terrorism dropped sharply immediately after revelations about the National Security Agency’s global surveillance in June 2013.

For immigrants and activists, the stakes are higher. A post about a protest or a joke can be reinterpreted as “intelligence.” Knowing that federal contractors may be watching in real time encourages self-censorship and discourages civic participation. In this environment, the digital self, an identity composed of biometric markers, algorithmic classifications, risk scores and digital traces, becomes a risk that follows you across platforms and databases.

What’s new and why it matters now

What is genuinely new is the privatization of interpretation. ICE isn’t just collecting more data, it is outsourcing judgment to private contractors. Private analysts, aided by artificial intelligence, are likely to decide what online behavior signals danger and what doesn’t. That decision-making happens rapidly and across large numbers of people, for the most part beyond public oversight.

At the same time, the consolidation of data means social media content can now sit beside location and biometric information inside Palantir’s hub. Enforcement increasingly happens through data correlations, raising questions about due process.

ICE’s request for information is likely to evolve into a full procurement contract within months, and recent litigation from the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center against the Department of Homeland Security suggests that the oversight is likely to lag far behind the technology. ICE’s plan to maintain permanent watch floors, open indoor spaces equipped with video and computer monitors, that are staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year signals that this likely isn’t a temporary experiment and instead is a new operational norm.

What accountability looks like

Transparency starts with public disclosure of the algorithms and scoring systems ICE uses. Advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union argue that law enforcement agencies should meet the same warrant standards online that they do in physical spaces. The Brennan Center for Justice and the ACLU argue that there should be independent oversight of surveillance systems for accuracy and bias. And several U.S. senators have introduced legislation to limit bulk purchases from data brokers.

Without checks like these, I believe that the boundary between border control and everyday life is likely to keep dissolving. As the digital border expands, it risks ensnaring anyone whose online presence becomes legible to the system.

Nicole M. Bennett is affiliated with the Center for Refugee Studies at Indiana University.

– ref. Always watching: How ICE’s plan to monitor social media 24/7 threatens privacy and civic participation – https://theconversation.com/always-watching-how-ices-plan-to-monitor-social-media-24-7-threatens-privacy-and-civic-participation-268175

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jennifer Selin, Associate Professor of Law, Arizona State University

Adelita Grijalva won a special election in Arizona on Sept. 23, 2025, becoming the newest member of Congress and the state’s first Latina representative.

Yet, despite the Arizona secretary of state’s formal certification of Grijalva, a Democrat, as the winner of that election, Rep.-elect Grijalva has not been sworn into office.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who by law is responsible for making that happen, claims the government shutdown means Grijalva must wait until the federal government resumes normal operations.

In response, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit on Oct. 21 alleging that Johnson has denied the state its representation in Congress.

No one disputes that Grijalva is the next member of the House of Representatives for the 7th District of Arizona. And the House hasn’t conducted business since Sept. 19, when Johnson gaveled it out of session.

So why does it matter whether Grijalva is sworn in now or later?

The lawsuit filed by Mayes claims Johnson is using his power to “strengthen his hand” in the ongoing budget battle that has shut down the federal government. Additionally, Grijalva has pledged to provide the last necessary signature to force a vote on a bipartisan measure demanding that the Trump administration release government files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But as a law scholar who analyzes government institutions, I recognize that the speaker historically has had power to determine when the oath is administered. And courts have been reluctant to weigh in the speaker’s use of that power.

The speaker’s historical power

The framers of the Constitution were divided on whether to require members of Congress to take an oath of office. Representing a political compromise on the issue, the Constitution requires all Senate and House members to take an oath to support the Constitution before assuming office. But the framers left the substance and administration of the oath up to Congress.

Congress put the speaker of the House in charge of administering the oath to incoming House members and first specified its text in 1789. The Oath Act required members of Congress to “solemnly swear or affirm” support of the Constitution.

Historically, the speaker administered the oath to new House members state by state. This meant that each state’s newly elected representatives stood alone in front of Congress. However, in 1929, House Speaker Nicolas Longworth changed tradition so that all new members were sworn in at the same time.

Longworth did so after Oscar DePriest – the first African American to serve in Congress in the 20th century – won an election in Illinois to replace Rep. Martin B. Madden, who had died of a heart attack. Longworth acted in response to speculation that Southern Democrats would attempt to prevent a Black lawmaker from joining the House. Rather than swearing in members state by state, Longworth swore in all members at once so DePriest was not stopped from taking the oath of office.

Since that time, the speaker has administered the oath of office to all newly elected members of the House as a collective unit.

How things work now

Under current law, the speaker must administer the oath of office to all House members prior to them taking their seats.

Here’s how this has worked over the past few decades:

After the House elects a speaker, the member with the longest continuous service in the House – called the dean of the House – administers the oath to the speaker. Then the speaker administers the oath to the rest of the members all together as a mark of a new Congress.

The idea is that despite partisan differences, every legislator commits in front of the others to uphold the Constitution.

But occasionally, either because of illness, a special election or other circumstances, a newly elected member of Congress can’t take the oath with everyone else. When that happens, that person is sworn in at a later date.

On Sept. 9, 2025, for example, Democrat James Walkinshaw won a special election to succeed the late Gerry Connolly, who died in office while representing Virginia’s 11th congressional district. Johnson swore Walkinshaw in the next day.

While the speaker has the responsibility for administering the oath, the House may adopt a resolution to designate a judge or House member selected by the speaker to do the job for him.

In 1999, for example, Speaker Dennis Hastert designated retired California Judge Ellen Sickles James to administer the oath to Rep.-elect George Miller.

Regardless of who swears into office a member of Congress who could not attend the collective ceremony, the administration of the oath has traditionally occurred on days in which the House is session. But it does not have to be that way.

The law is ambiguous on when the oath is administered.

And House speakers have not always acted swiftly. In spring 2021, for instance, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi waited 25 days before administering the oath to Republican Rep.-elect Julia Letlow. That’s because the House did not have a session scheduled immediately following Letlow’s election.

Johnson has referred to this particular delay as the “Pelosi precedent,” setting a standard practice of the speaker waiting to administer the oath until Congress is in session.

Why does it matter?

The delay in administering Grijalva the oath is the longest in modern history.

While Grijalva waits, she does not have access to the resources typically provided to members of the House to help them perform their jobs, including an operating budget for her offices or even the ability to log in to key databases.

This means Grijalva is limited in her ability to represent her over 800,000 constituents.

She describes her current situation as “having the title but none of the job.”

Grijalva, Arizona Attorney General Mayes and congressional Democrats accuse the speaker of playing politics. But history and the law suggest that may be Johnson’s prerogative until the government reopens.

Jennifer Selin 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. House speaker’s refusal to seat Arizona representative is supported by history and law – https://theconversation.com/house-speakers-refusal-to-seat-arizona-representative-is-supported-by-history-and-law-268455

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Angie Chuang, Associate Professor of Journalism, University of Colorado Boulder

The headlines documenting President Donald Trump’s plan to send federal troops to San Francisco followed a familiar arc. “Trump claims ‘unquestioned power’ in vow to send troops to San Francisco,” The Guardian reported on Oct. 20, 2025. The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle blared: “S.F. threatens to sue if Trump brings in National Guard.” Then, on Oct. 23, “Trump reverses his decision to send troops to San Francisco,” as ABC News put it, after Trump posted that conversations with the city’s mayor and tech moguls had swayed him.

It was another example of how Trump’s shifting policy positions, racially inflammatory statements and threats frequently fuel a flurry of headlines, reflecting what some psychologists are calling “media saturation overload” or “Trump stress disorder.”

This barrage of information may seem like overcommunication from a hyperactive administration. But it is much more than that.

Scholars have found that the constant, often conflicting and at times false information coming out of the White House and shared via social media posts and the conventional news media causes members of the public to see truth and fact as relative and makes them more likely to dismiss those who disagree with them as untruthful. This leaves doubt about what’s real and what isn’t.

This citizen paralysis creates what philosopher Hannah Arendt described in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” as a general public “for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exist.” When lies are truth and truth is derided as lies, Arendt wrote, ordinary people lose their bearings and can be manipulated for totalitarian objectives.

Meanwhile, many journalists have openly acknowledged fatigue with the pace and nature of the Trump administrations’ news cycles, amid frequent newsroom layoffs, mergers and closures.

I am a longtime journalist and now scholar of journalism and race, trained to see the methods and aims behind political leaders’ press operations. And as I show in my forthcoming book, the Trump administration’s rhetorical strategies echo the playbooks of authoritarian and white supremacist organizations such as the Third Reich and some factions of the modern alt-right movement. They are intended to narrow the scope of who belongs as an American.

Headlines at ‘muzzle velocity’

The Trump administration’s rhetorical strategies include claiming victim status while often laying blame on immigrants or other scapegoats in ways that I believe betray racist intent. At the same time it has overwhelmed journalists and the public with breaking news.

This strategy was laid out by Steve Bannon, an influential Trump supporter and strategist in his first administration, during a 2019 PBS “Frontline” interview, when he described the media as “the opposition party.”

“They’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time,” he said. “All we have to do is flood the zone. … Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never – will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

Bannon has long been associated with the alt-right, a movement known for rhetorical tactics that minimize and obfuscate its true aims.

A strategy forged in Trump’s first term

As I detail in my book, “American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Representations of Identity and Belonging,” Trump and his key advisers have been developing, refining and ramping up their news media manipulation for a long time.

An early example of this is the way the administration used these tactics through Trump’s public responses to the fatal violence at the August 2017 Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The two-day rally was organized by a white nationalist blogger and attended by members of neo-Nazi, white supremacist and far-right militias protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park. They marched with tiki torches, flew Confederate and Nazi flags and chanted antisemitic and racist slogans.

Amid violent clashes with counterprotesters on the second day, a neo-Nazi sympathizer drove into a crowd, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring many others.

My study of television news coverage of Unite the Right found that the majority of news reports focused on the contradictory and inflammatory statements that Trump made about the antisemitic and racist protesters. Trump’s Aug. 15, 2017, press conference remark about blame on both sides after what happened garnered the most news media attention: “I think there is blame on both sides,” he said. “You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides.”

Exploiting chaos

The uncertainty surrounding what he meant created a cycle of news stories implying and denying that he sympathizes with white supremacists.

This is-he-or-isn’t-he intrigue spurred a surge of what fits the description of Bannon’s “muzzle-velocity” news headlines: “Trump declares ‘racism is evil’ amid pressure over Charlottesville” followed closely by “Trump defends White-nationalist protesters” and “Why Trump can’t get his story straight on Charlottesville.”

With the focus on Trump’s comments and what he might have really meant, the news media ultimately missed covering at the time the long-term threat posed by these white supremacist and other extremist groups.

Echoing a playbook from the past

Scholars have identified the fascist roots of these “post-truth” strategies: strongmen leaders uninterested in establishing leadership through honesty and transparency.

A recent scholarly analysis of Trump’s leadership concludes that the second-term president is overwhelming the public into “organized despair” by pitting races against each other while targeting minority groups as scapegoats, a tactic that hearkens back to 1930s Germany.

A 2019 analysis of Trump’s narrative style describes how he presents himself as a “strongman” fighting invisible forces of censorship and suppression. It also points out that this was part of the appeal of fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler.

Researchers of Nazi propaganda identified key tactics in the German press such as name-calling and lumping together groups seen as opposition – communists, liberals and Jews – until public understanding of those groups blur into phrases like “enemies of Germany.” The messaging was constant and immersive, carried in local and national newspapers, radio, film and posters.

A key part of Trump’s rhetorical strategy is using race without directly referring to it. For example, Trump has described cities with large nonwhite populations such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago as “out of control” or “dirty,” contrary to actual crime statistics. He’s also questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity, suggesting she “happened to turn Black.” And referring to Black football players who had been protesting systemic racism by kneeling during the national anthem, Trump said, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now,” which many observers interpreted as racist because he was insulting people of color for the act of protesting racism.

This racial coding has been used by white supremacist groups to mask their true intent. They also use less overt labels such as “alt-right” or “pro-white” as a “rhetorical bridge” to the mainstream public.

In the case of the NFL protesters, the plausible deniability became an actual denial. Trump perfected this move when, during a 2020 debate with Joe Biden, he said, “Proud Boys – stand back and stand by,” referencing another group accused of thinly veiled racism.

Drowning in headlines

I believe that the endgame for this strategy is authoritarian power that greatly narrows the scope of who truly belongs and has rights in this country as an American.

This media saturation – drowning the public with a thousand Trump-generated headlines – allows his administration to keep dominating and controlling national attention.

But the media-consuming public can use the tools they have to encourage news outlets to better inform the public by identifying the media saturation strategy and reporting on why leaders are using it.

Otherwise, if news consumers let the headline overload do what it’s intended to do, and become overwhelmed and paralyzed, they become pawns in what I consider a ploy to make America less egalitarian and less democratic.

Angie Chuang is affiliated with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the Boulder Faculty Assembly.

– ref. Overwhelm the public with muzzle-velocity headlines: A strategy rooted in racism and authoritarianism – https://theconversation.com/overwhelm-the-public-with-muzzle-velocity-headlines-a-strategy-rooted-in-racism-and-authoritarianism-267491

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Michal Kowalewski, Thompson Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology, University of Florida

During a day at the beach, it’s common to see people walking up and down the shore collecting seashells.

As a paleontologist and marine ecologist, we look at shells a bit differently than the average beachcomber. Most people dig up shells in the sand and see beautiful color patterns or unusual shapes. But we tend to focus on how old these shells are and what they tell us about the habitat they come from.

You may be surprised to learn that the translucent spiral shell you plucked from the sand belonged to a snail that lived long before Columbus sailed to the New World. And that unassuming clamshell you might nonchalantly toss away belonged to a mollusk that filtered seawater when pharaohs ruled Egypt.

In recent decades, scientists have used methods such as radiocarbon dating to assess the age of shells, along with bones and other skeletal remains, scattered around Earth’s surface.

Increasingly, paleontologists and conservation biologists like us are turning to these remains as potential treasure troves of information about what various habitats were like before humans entered the picture. The insights we glean from this approach, known as conservation paleobiology, can result in more effective conservation, restoration and management strategies aimed at the protection or recovery of many essential habitats.

This approach has proved, among other things, that cows reshaped shellfish communities on the California shelf, caribou used the same calving grounds for millennia, and Caribbean sharks were much more diverse in the past.

Over the past decade, we have applied conservation paleobiology to Florida’s Nature Coast, home to an extensive and intricate patchwork of seagrass meadows and sand. Prior to our studies, scientists’ understanding of those meadows was largely uninformed by historical data.

Why seagrass matters

It may not be obvious at first glance why we should be interested in the past history of seagrass meadows.

But these meadows are among the most important structural habitats on our planet. Myriad species, including sea turtles and manatees, forage, shelter or reproduce in those habitats, making seagrasses major hot spots of biodiversity.

Beyond these benefits, seagrasses offer extremely valuable services. They oxygenate ocean waters, draw down carbon dioxide and stabilize bottom sediments. And critically for Florida’s coastline, seagrass can dampen wave energy, which helps to protect shorelines and coastal communities from the punishing effects of tropical storms and hurricanes.

By providing all these services, seagrasses fuel a tremendous economic engine that generates global revenue in excess of US$6 trillion annually, according to an analysis published in the journal Nature Reviews Biodiversity in February 2025.

Unfortunately, seagrass meadows are in decline globally, vanishing rapidly due to broad-scale environmental changes and an onslaught of local human impacts. Efforts are underway all over the world to protect seagrasses that still exist and restore those that have been lost.

Shells in Florida’s seagrass meadows

The challenge inherent to our research is that seagrasses don’t have a hard skeleton, so they are very rarely found in the fossil record.

Fortunately, we found that the shells of mollusks that prefer to dwell in seagrass are a reliable proxy for the grass itself. In general, the quality of ecological data provided by fossil shellfish is outstanding.

When living and dead organisms are alike, we can infer that local ecosystems have not changed notably despite human activities. Conversely, when live and dead mollusk species differ, it usually is a sign that a habitat has been heavily altered by humans.

Location, location, location

In our initial study, our team examined about a 40-mile (65-kilometer) swath of nearshore habitats in an area just north of the Suwannee River.

We found that seagrass meadows often span only a few acres, forming a regional patchwork of vegetated and open-sand habitats. We also observed that distinct sets of mollusk species inhabit meadows and open sands today. This was not surprising, as many previous studies have shown that different mollusks live in seagrass and open-sand habitats.

Next, we looked at the shells of dead mollusks found in surface sediments in the area. Using radiocarbon dating, we showed that about half of these shells belonged to mollusks that lived prior to the Industrial Revolution. Many shells dated back to previous millennia.

If these small patches of seagrass meadows were waxing, waning or shifting location over the recent centuries, then we would expect each spot on the seafloor to harbor a mix of dead shells representing species from both habitats. However, we found that the species of dead mollusks in seagrass patches were remarkably similar to those that live there now. The same was the case for the mollusks from open sands.

This suggests that this mosaic of seagrass patches and open-sand bottoms has been remarkably stable for hundreds of years. We do not know why the seagrass consistently thrived for centuries in specific spots within a seemingly uniform environment. But whatever the reason, this habitat is not a mosaic of meadows in constant flux, but rather, a seascape that has remained the same for a long time.

This is an important find for conservation efforts. It means that it may be unwise to assume that we can compensate for seagrass losses by simply planting new meadows in open-sand habitats.

Broadening the scope

In our newest study, we broadened our scope to compare living mollusks and dead mollusks across multiple estuaries along the Nature Coast, a 93-mile (150-kilometer) stretch of Florida’s Gulf Coast.

As with our first study, this broader study revealed many remarkable similarities between the mollusks that live there now and the mollusks from previous centuries and millennia, documented by shells.

We found that the mollusks that are common today and those that were common in the past represent virtually the same suite of species, and their relative abundance stayed steady, too.

Even more remarkably, both the live mollusks and shells from previous centuries document the same changes in dominant mollusk species between the southern and northern regions of the study area.

Today, mollusks are not the same everywhere along the Nature Coast. This reflects the fact that coastal waters are increasingly nutritious in the north. Consequently, seagrass is taller and denser moving north, and the suites of mollusk species that live in them change as well.

The shells of dead mollusks tell the same story. This indicates that not much has changed along this stretch of the Gulf Coast since preindustrial times.

Highlighting what’s working

Knowing that seagrass meadows in this area have maintained their ecological character and integrity for centuries or longer is a powerful argument for their continued protection.

Understandably, most conservation paleobiology studies have focused on threatened species, degraded habitats or imperiled systems, such as reef sharks, oyster beds or freshwater mussels. As a result, these studies generally document population collapse, biodiversity loss, habitat shrinking and overall ecosystem decline.

But we believe it is equally important for investigators in our field to study systems that are believed to be stable and resilient. In this case, the unspoiled status of the Nature Coast seagrass meadows makes them a much-needed benchmark to assess the state of other seagrass systems that have been altered by human activities. This can offer insights into which conservation efforts are working and how best to restore and maintain similar habitats elsewhere.

Michal Kowalewski receives funding from the US National Science Foundation, University of Florida Foundation and the Felburn Foundation, Florida.

Thomas K. Frazer receives funding from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Department of Transportation, and South Florida Water Management District and The Ocean Conservancy.

– ref. Seashells from centuries ago show that seagrass meadows on Florida’s Nature Coast are thriving – https://theconversation.com/seashells-from-centuries-ago-show-that-seagrass-meadows-on-floridas-nature-coast-are-thriving-264170