Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Bobbi Sutherland, Associate Professor, Department of HIstory, University of Dayton

When people think of the European Middle Ages, it often brings to mind grinding poverty, superstition and darkness. But the reality of the 1,000-year period from 500 to 1500 was much more complex. This is especially true when considering the peasants, who made up about 90% of the population.

For all their hard work, peasants had a fair amount of downtime. Add up Sundays and the many holidays, and about one-third of the year was free of intensive work. Celebrations were frequent and centered around religious holidays like Easter, Pentecost and saints’ days.

But the longest and most festive of these holidays was Christmas.

As a professor of medieval history, I can assure you the popular belief that the lives of peasants were little more than misery is a misconception. They enjoyed rich social lives – maybe richer than ours – ate well, celebrated frequently and had families not unlike our own. For them, holiday festivities didn’t begin with Christmas Eve and end with New Year’s.

The party was just getting started.

Daily life in a peasant village

A peasant was not simply a low-class or poor person. Rather, a peasant was a subsistence farmer who owed their lords a portion of the food they grew. They also provided labor, which might include bridge-building or farming the lord’s land.

In return, a lord provided his peasants with protection from bandits or invaders. They also provided justice via a court system and punished people for theft, murder and other crimes. Typically, the lord lived in the village or nearby.

Peasants lived in the countryside, in villages that ranged from a few houses to several hundred. The villages had communal ovens, wells, flour mills, brewers or pubs, and blacksmiths. The houses were clustered in the center of the village along a dirt street and surrounded by farmland.

By today’s standards, a peasant’s house was small – in England, the average was around 700 square feet (65 square meters). Houses might be made of turf, wood, stone or “waddle-and-daub,” a construction very similar to lathe and plaster, with beamed roofs covered in straw. Houses had front doors, and some had back doors. Windows were covered with shutters and, rarely, glass. Aside from the fireplace, only the Sun, Moon or an oil lamp or candle provided light.

Strange sleep habits and sex without privacy

The day was dictated by seasons and sunlight. Most people rose at dawn or a bit before; men went out to their fields soon after to grow grains like wheat and barley. Women worked in the home and yard, taking care of children, animals and vegetable gardens, along with the spinning, sewing and cooking. Peasants didn’t have clocks, so a recipe might recommend cooking something for the time it took to say the Lord’s Prayer three times.

Around midday, people usually took a break and ate their largest meal – often a soup or stew. The foods they ate could include lamb and beef, along with cheese, cabbage, onions, leeks, turnips and fava beans. Fish, in particular freshwater fish, were also popular. Every meal included bread.

Beer and wine were major components of the meal. By our standards, peasants drank a lot, although the alcohol content of the beer and wine was lower than today’s versions. They often napped before returning to work. In the evening, they ate a light meal, perhaps only bread, and socialized for a while.

They went to bed within a few hours of darkness, so how long they slept depended on the season. On average, they slept about eight hours, but not consecutively. They awoke after a “first sleep” and prayed, had sex or chatted with neighbors for somewhere between half an hour and two hours, then returned to sleep for another four hours or so.

Peasants did not have privacy as we think of it; everyone often slept in one big room. Parents made love with one another as their children slept nearby. Married couples shared a bed, and one of their younger children might sleep with them, though infants had cradles. Older children likely slept two to a bed.

Dreaming of a medieval Christmas

Life certainly wasn’t easy. But the stretches of time for rest and leisure were enviable.

Today, many people start thinking about Christmas after Thanksgiving, and any sort of holiday spirit fizzles by early January.

In the Middle Ages, this would have been unheard of.

Advent – the period of anticipation and fasting that precedes Christmas – began with the Feast of St. Martin.

Back then, it took place 40 days before Christmas; today, it’s the fourth Sunday before it. During this period, Western Christians observed a fast; while less strict than the one for Lent, it restricted meat and dairy products to certain days of the week. These protocols not only symbolized absence and longing, but they also helped stretch out the food supply after the end of the harvest and before meats were fully cured.

Christmas itself was known for feasting and drunkenness – and it lasted nearly six weeks.

Dec. 25 was followed by the 12 Days of Christmas, ending with the Epiphany on Jan. 6, which commemorates the visit of the Magi to Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Gifts, often in the form of food or money, were exchanged, though this was more commonly done on New Year’s Day. Game birds, ham, mince pies and spiced wines were popular fare, with spices thought to help warm the body.

Though Christmas officially celebrates the birth of Jesus, it was clearly associated with pre-Christian celebrations that emphasized the winter solstice and the return of light and life. This meant that bonfires, yule logs and evergreen decorations were part of the festivities. According to tradition, St. Francis of Assisi created the first nativity scene in 1223.

Christmas ended slowly, with the first Monday after Epiphany being called “Plough Monday” because it marked the return to agricultural work. The full end of the season came on Feb. 2 – called Candlemas – which coincides with the older pagan holiday of Imbolc. On this day, candles were blessed for use in the coming year, and any decorations left up were thought to be at risk of becoming infested with goblins.

Many people today gripe about the stresses of the holidays: buying presents, traveling, cooking, cleaning and bouncing from one obligation to the next. There’s a short window to get it all done: Christmas Day is the only day many workplaces are required to give off.

Meanwhile, I’ll be dreaming of a medieval Christmas.

Bobbi Sutherland 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. Medieval peasants probably enjoyed their holiday festivities more than you do – https://theconversation.com/medieval-peasants-probably-enjoyed-their-holiday-festivities-more-than-you-do-241328

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Alexandria Mitchem Hansen, Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, Columbia University

Rats and other rodents and pests can make great archivists.

That’s because they forage food and build dens, storing fabric, paper, animal bones, plant remains and other materials under floorboards, behind walls and in attics, crawl spaces and wells. There, these materials might dry out and remain undisturbed for hundreds of years.

By analyzing the materials in these nests, archaeologists like me can learn more about the people who once lived nearby.

I studied a rat nest that was used by generations of rats over several decades and was found under the floorboards in the attic of the historic home at Bartram’s Garden in southwest Philadelphia. In 1728, Quaker farmer and naturalist John Bartram began to plant his garden, which is considered the oldest botanic garden in North America. I studied thousands of plants collected by rats and learned how the Bartram family used these plants for food, medicine, trade and study.

A 200-year-old nest

Rat nests are common in historic structures, particularly homes like Bartram’s that contained kitchens and buildings that were used for food storage, such as cellars.

Bartram collected plants from around eastern North America along with those sent to him by naturalists in Europe. His sons, John Jr. and William, and later his granddaughter Ann Bartram Carr, continued to expand the garden, which gained international fame during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The rat nest was discovered during historic preservation work at the Bartram home in 1977. My analysis of the materials in the nest indicates that it was formed in the late 18th and early 19th century. The materials are representative of the plants rodents would have been foraging from the Bartram home and garden.

The plants I identified weren’t restricted to those sold by the Bartram family as a part of their nursery business. Nor were they limited to plants that were traded between naturalists hoping to learn more about the flora of the American Colonies. They included crops such as wheat, buckwheat, corn, parsnips and beans grown by the family to feed themselves; herbs such as lemongrass, basil and mint used for medicine by the family; and many wild and weedy plants – for example, brambles, corn cockle, and broom and needle grasses – that were not intentionally grown by the Bartrams but were nonetheless collected by the rats on the property.

By studying the plants foraged by these rats, I learned not only about the important scientific and commercial plants in the garden, but also about the food and medicine the family were eating and using, including imported snacks such as peanuts and Brazil nuts, which were not grown in the garden but could have been purchased in Philadelphia.

Sorting 11 pounds of material

I am an archaeobotanist, which means I recover and identify plants from the past.

Over the course of almost three years, I sorted through over 11 pounds (5 kilograms) of material from the rat nest recovered from the Bartrams’ home and stored at the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials at the Penn Museum.

Because there is often a lot of material, archaeologists divide these kinds of samples using geological sieves, which are scientific screening tools that filter samples by size. This makes the material easier to sort.

Then I used a microscope to sort and identify the plants therein. Archaeobotanists find various parts of plants, including seeds, chaff, fruit pits, nutshells and cobs. The plants I identified ranged in size from whole corncobs to weed seeds smaller than half a millimeter.

To identify the species of plants, I used reference manuals, comparative collections of plant seeds and other parts, and help from the archaeobotanists at the Penn Museum. I also studied images from herbaria, which are collections of historic plants that have been preserved and archived.

In the future, I plan to focus on the weedy plants recovered from the rat nest. The majority of invasive species in the United States were originally introduced in horticultural contexts, including botanic gardens and nurseries. Data from Bartram’s Garden will help me and other scholars better understand the timing and details of this process.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Alexandria Mitchem Hansen receives funding from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the American Philosophical Society, the Explorer’s Club, the Society for Historical Archaeology, the Society for Ethnobiology, and Columbia University.

– ref. I study rat nests − here’s why rodents make great archivists – https://theconversation.com/i-study-rat-nests-heres-why-rodents-make-great-archivists-270357

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Adrian Kuenzler, Scholar-in-Residence, University of Denver; University of Hong Kong

Meta’s decision to end its professional fact-checking program sparked a wave of criticism in the tech and media world. Critics warned that dropping expert oversight could erode trust and reliability in the digital information landscape, especially when profit-driven platforms are mostly left to police themselves.

What much of this debate has overlooked, however, is that today, AI large language models are increasingly used to write up news summaries, headlines and content that catch your attention long before traditional content moderation mechanisms can step in. The issue isn’t clear-cut cases of misinformation or harmful subject matter going unflagged in the absence of content moderation. What’s missing from the discussion is how ostensibly accurate information is selected, framed and emphasized in ways that can shape public perception.

Large language models gradually influence the way people form opinions by generating the information that chatbots and virtual assistants present to people over time. These models are now also being built into news sites, social media platforms and search services, making them the primary gateway to obtain information.

Studies show that large language models do more than simply pass along information. Their responses can subtly highlight certain viewpoints while minimizing others, often without users realizing it.

Communication bias

My colleague, computer scientist Stefan Schmid, and I, a technology law and policy scholar, show in a forthcoming accepted paper in the journal Communications of the ACM that large language models exhibit communication bias. We found that they may have a tendency to highlight particular perspectives while omitting or diminishing others. Such bias can influence how users think or feel, regardless of whether the information presented is true or false.

Empirical research over the past few years has produced benchmark datasets that correlate model outputs with party positions before and during elections. They reveal variations in how current large language models deal with public content. Depending on the persona or context used in prompting large language models, current models subtly tilt toward particular positions – even when factual accuracy remains intact.

These shifts point to an emerging form of persona-based steerability – a model’s tendency to align its tone and emphasis with the perceived expectations of the user. For instance, when a user describes themselves as an environmental activist and another as a business owner, a model may answer the same question about a new climate law by emphasizing different, yet factually accurate, concerns for each of them. For example, the criticisms could be that the law does not go far enough in promoting environmental benefits and that the law imposes regulatory burdens and compliance costs.

Such alignment can easily be misread as flattery. The phenomenon is called sycophancy: Models effectively tell users what they want to hear. But while sycophancy is a symptom of user-model interaction, communication bias runs deeper. It reflects disparities in who designs and builds these systems, what datasets they draw from and which incentives drive their refinement. When a handful of developers dominate the large language model market and their systems consistently present some viewpoints more favorably than others, small differences in model behavior can scale into significant distortions in public communication.

What regulation can and can’t do

Modern society increasingly relies on large language models as the primary interface between people and information. Governments worldwide have launched policies to address concerns over AI bias. For instance, the European Union’s AI Act and the Digital Services Act attempt to impose transparency and accountability. But neither is designed to address the nuanced issue of communication bias in AI outputs.

Proponents of AI regulation often cite neutral AI as a goal, but true neutrality is often unattainable. AI systems reflect the biases embedded in their data, training and design, and attempts to regulate such bias often end up trading one flavor of bias for another.

And communication bias is not just about accuracy – it is about content generation and framing. Imagine asking an AI system a question about a contentious piece of legislation. The model’s answer is not only shaped by facts, but also by how those facts are presented, which sources are highlighted and the tone and viewpoint it adopts.

This means that the root of the bias problem is not merely in addressing biased training data or skewed outputs, but in the market structures that shape technology design in the first place. When only a few large language models have access to information, the risk of communication bias grows. Apart from regulation, then, effective bias mitigation requires safeguarding competition, user-driven accountability and regulatory openness to different ways of building and offering large language models.

Most regulations so far aim at banning harmful outputs after the technology’s deployment, or forcing companies to run audits before launch. Our analysis shows that while prelaunch checks and post-deployment oversight may catch the most glaring errors, they may be less effective at addressing subtle communication bias that emerges through user interactions.

Beyond AI regulation

It is tempting to expect that regulation can eliminate all biases in AI systems. In some instances, these policies can be helpful, but they tend to fail to address a deeper issue: the incentives that determine the technologies that communicate information to the public.

Our findings clarify that a more lasting solution lies in fostering competition, transparency and meaningful user participation, enabling consumers to play an active role in how companies design, test and deploy large language models.

The reason these policies are important is that, ultimately, AI will not only influence the information we seek and the daily news we read, but it will also play a crucial part in shaping the kind of society we envision for the future.

Adrian Kuenzler 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. People are getting their news from AI – and it’s altering their views – https://theconversation.com/people-are-getting-their-news-from-ai-and-its-altering-their-views-269354

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Carl Kurlander, Senior Lecturer, Film and Media Studies, University of Pittsburgh

It was like a horror movie. The invisible polio virus would strike, leaving young children on crutches, in wheelchairs or in a dreaded “iron lung” ventilator. Each summer, the fear was so great that public pools and movie theaters closed. Parents canceled birthday parties, afraid their child might be the next victim. A U.S. president paralyzed by polio called for Americans to send dimes to the White House to support the nonprofit National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his lawyer, Basil O’Connor. Celebrities from Lucille Ball to Elvis were enlisted to promote this “March of Dimes,” and mothers went door to door raising funds to conquer this dreaded disease.

Some of those funds went to 33-year-old scientist Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh, where they worked in a lab between a morgue and a darkroom to develop the world’s first successful polio vaccine.

To prove it worked, the experimental vaccine was tested on Pittsburgh schoolchildren and then 1.8 million children from around the country as part of the largest medical field trial in history. On April 12, 1955, when the Salk polio vaccine was declared “safe and effective,” church bells rang out, kids were let out of school, and headlines around the world celebrated the victory over polio.

When asked whether he was going to patent the vaccine, Salk told journalist Edward R. Murrow it belonged to the people and would be like “patenting the sun.”

I first learned about this 20 years ago when my students and I filmed the 50th anniversary celebration of the Salk polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh. I had just started teaching after working in Los Angeles as a screenwriter and TV producer, and the footage became “The Shot Felt Round the World,” a documentary that featured those we met that day.

The ‘Pittsburgh polio pioneers’

Among the people we interviewed was Ethyl “Mickey” Bailey, who worked in the lab pipetting the deadly polio virus by mouth, and Julius Youngner, the lab’s senior scientist who had worked on the Manhattan Project before coming to Pittsburgh. Within a decade, Youngner had worked on both the atomic bomb – which killed tens of thousands of people in just seconds in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and hundreds of thousands more in the aftermath of the bombings – as well as the Salk vaccine, which spared millions from the scourge of “The Great Crippler.”

Three floors above the lab, Dr. Sidney Busis performed tracheotomies on 2-year-old iron lung patients, opening their windpipes so the ventilator could help them breath. The fierce Dr. Jesse Wright, an innovator in the field of rehabilitation sciences, ran the polio ward and she was also the medical director of the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children, where the Salk vaccine was first tested on humans. Polio victims like Jimmy Sarkett and Ron Flynn volunteered themselves as guinea pigs for a vaccine they knew would never benefit them.

Many “Pittsburgh polio pioneers,” as they called the local children who were given Salk’s still-experimental vaccine, in our documentary recalled getting the shot from Dr. Salk himself. Salk also gave it to his own children, including his eldest son Peter, then 10 years old, who later worked with his father on trying to develop an AIDS vaccine.

While Jonas Salk became the most famous scientist in the world, his relationship with the University of Pittsburgh became complicated and the administration rejected his plans for an institute. As a result, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies was built in 1963 on the coastline in La Jolla, California, where it fueled San Diego’s biotech industry.

Near the end of his life, Jonas would say sometimes he would run into people who didn’t know what polio was, and he found that gratifying. But today the world is paying a high price for those who don’t remember what life was like before these events and now question the value of vaccines. The polio virus may not be visible, but it is still with us.

The final mile to eradication

On Oct. 24, 2025, as the Salk vaccine turned 70, I was invited to screen the trailer for “The Shot Felt Round the World” at a World Polio Day event on Roosevelt Island in New York City, in a building next to the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital – a legacy of the only human disease ever eradicated.

Those present included the executive director of UNICEF, the polio director from the Gates Foundation, the U.N. representative for Rotary International, and government officials from around the world who spoke about the global coalition dedicated to eradicating this disease. Since the 1980s, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has put tremendous resources into taking polio from being endemic in 125 countries to now just in two: Pakistan and Afghanistan. This group whom I like to call “The Avengers of Public Health,” continue to work relentlessly to make the world polio-free.

My greatest fear is that when polio is finally defeated, the world won’t recognize what an extraordinary achievement it is. In our film, Dr. Jonathan Salk, Jonas Salk’s youngest son, recalls his father wondering whether the model that developed the polio vaccine could be used to conquer poverty and other social problems.

Many of the polio survivors we spoke to at the 50th anniversary are no longer with us. To ensure future generations know this story, perhaps now is the time to launch a “March of Dimes” marketing techniques to engage young people from around the world to help finish the job that began in the Salk lab in Pittsburgh.

One polio survivor who is still alive is “The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola, who has spoken about contracting polio as a child. Imagine him being interviewed by his granddaughter Romy Mars, a TikTok influencer, and his daughter Sophia Coppola, the film director and actress. They could make a video that features cameos from actor and comedian Bill Murray, who played Franklin D. Roosevelt in a movie and whose sister had polio, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, who is a polio survivor, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose grandfather was crippled from polio. For such a cruel disease, polio has a strange way of bringing us together.

I pray when we finally wipe polio off the planet, a feat the Global Polio Eradication Initiative targets for 2029, the whole world will celebrate and realize the power of pulling together to defeat a common enemy.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Carl Kurlander has previously received grants from the Grable Foundation, the Pittsburgh Foundation, and the R.K. Mellon Foundation years ago for the making of the polio movie. He receives no residuals or revenues from thef ilm.

– ref. The world risks forgetting one of humanity’s greatest triumphs as polio nears global eradication − 70 years after Jonas Salk developed the vaccine in a Pittsburgh lab – https://theconversation.com/the-world-risks-forgetting-one-of-humanitys-greatest-triumphs-as-polio-nears-global-eradication-70-years-after-jonas-salk-developed-the-vaccine-in-a-pittsburgh-lab-270042

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Robert Applebaum, Senior Research Scholar in Gerontology, Miami University

Dec. 15, 2025 – the deadline for enrolling in a marketplace plan through the Affordable Care Act for 2026 – came and went without an agreement on the federal subsidies that kept ACA plans more affordable for many Americans. Despite a last-ditch attempt in the House to extend ACA subsidies, with Congress adjourning for the year on Dec. 19, it’s looking almost certain that Americans relying on ACA subsidies will face a steep increase in health care costs in 2026.

As a gerontologist who studies the U.S. health care system, I’m aware that disagreements about health care in America have a long history. The main bone of contention is whether providing health care is the responsibility of the government, or of individuals or their employers.

The ACA, passed in 2010 as the country’s first major piece of health legislation since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, represents one more chapter in that long-standing debate. That debate explains why the health law has fueled so much political divisiveness – including a standoff that spurred a record-breaking 43-day-long government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, 2025.

In my view, regardless of how Congress resolves, or doesn’t resolve, the current dispute over ACA subsidies, a durable U.S. health care policy will remain out of reach until lawmakers address the core question of who should shoulder the cost of health care.

The ACA’s roots

In the years before the ACA’s passage, some 49 million Americans – 15% of the population – lacked health insurance. This number had been rising in the wake of the 2008 recession. That’s because the majority of Americans ages 18 to 64 with health insurance receive their health benefits through their employer. In the 2008 downturn, people who lost their jobs basically lost their health care coverage.

For those who believed government had a primary role in providing health insurance for its citizens, the growing number of people lacking coverage hit a crisis point that required an intervention. Those who place responsibility on individuals and employers saw the ACA as perversion of the government’s purpose. The political parties could find no common ground – and this challenge continues.

The major goal of the ACA was to reduce the number of uninsured Americans by about 30 million people, or to about 3% of the U.S. population. It got about halfway there: Today, about 26 million Americans, or 8%, are uninsured, though this number fluctuates based on changes in the economy and federal and state policy.

Health insurance for all?

The ACA implemented an array of strategies to accomplish this goal. Some were popular, such as allowing parents to keep their kids on their family insurance until age 26. Some were unpopular, such as the mandate that everyone must have insurance.

But two strategies in particular had the biggest impact on the number of uninsured. One was expanding the Medicaid program to include workers whose income was below 138% of the poverty line. The other was providing subsidies to people with low and moderate incomes that could help them buy health insurance through the ACA marketplace, a state or federal health exchange through which consumers could choose health insurance plans.

Medicaid expansion was controversial from the start. Originally, the ACA mandated it for all states, but the Supreme Court eventually ruled that it was up to each state, not the federal government, to decide whether to do so. As of December 2025, 40 states and the District of Columbia have implemented Medicaid expansion, insuring about 20 million Americans.

Meanwhile, the marketplace subsidies, which were designed to help people who were working but could not access an employer-based health plan, were not especially contentious early on. Everyone receiving a subsidy was required to contribute to their insurance plan’s monthly premium. People earning US$18,000 or less annually, which in 2010 was 115% of the income threshold set by the federal government as poverty level, contributed 2.1% of their plan’s cost, and those earning $60,240, which was 400% of the federal poverty level, contributed 10%. People making more than that were not eligible for subsidies at all.

In 2021, legislation passed by the Biden administration to stave off the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic increased the subsidy that people could receive. The law eliminated premiums entirely for the lowest income people and reduced the cost for those earning more. And, unlike before, people making more than 400% of the federal poverty level – about 10% of marketplace enrollees – could also get a subsidy.

These pandemic-era subsidies are set to expire at the end of 2025.

Cost versus coverage

If the COVID-19-era subsidies expire, health care costs would increase substantially for most consumers, as ACA subsidies return to their original levels. So someone making $45,000 annually will now need to pay $360 a month for health insurance, increasing their payment by 74%, or $153 monthly. What’s more, these changes come on top of price hikes to insurance plans themselves, which are estimated to increase by about 18% in 2026.

With these two factors combined, many ACA marketplace users could see their health insurance cost rise more than 100%. Some proponents of extending COVID-19-era subsidies contend that the rollback will result in an estimated 6 million to 7 million people leaving the ACA marketplace and that some 5 million of these Americans could become uninsured in 2026.

Policies in the tax and spending package signed into law by President Donald Trump in July 2025 are amplifying the challenge of keeping Americans insured. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the Medicaid cuts alone, stipulated in the package, may result in more than 7 million people becoming uninsured. Combined with other policy changes outlined in the law and the rollback of the ACA subsidies, that number could hit 16 million by 2034 – essentially wiping out the majority of gains in health insurance coverage that the ACA achieved since 2010.

Subsidy downsides

These enhanced ACA subsidies are so divisive now in part because they have dramatically driven up the federal government’s health care bill. Between 2021 and 2024, the number of people receiving subsidies doubled – resulting in many more people having health insurance, but also increasing federal ACA expenditures.

In 2025, almost 22 million Americans who purchased a marketplace plan received a federal subsidy to help with the costs, up from 9.2 million in 2020 – a 137% increase.

Those who oppose the extension counter that the subsidies cost the government too much and fund high earners who don’t need government support – and that temporary emergencies, even ones as serious as a pandemic, should not result in permanent changes.

Another critique is that employers are using the ACA to reduce their responsibility for employee coverage. Under the ACA, employers with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance, but for companies with fewer employers, that requirement is optional.

In 2010, 92% of employers with 25 to 49 workers offered health insurance, but by 2025, that proportion had dropped to 64%, suggesting that companies of this size are allowing the ACA to cover their employees.

Diverging solutions

The U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world by far. The projected increase in the number of uninsured people over the next 10 years could result in even higher costs, as fewer people get preventive care and delayed health care interventions, ultimately leading to more complex medical care

Federal policy clearly shapes health insurance coverage, but state-level policies play a role too. Nationally, about 8% of people under age 65 were uninsured in 2023, yet that rate varied widely – from 3% in Massachusetts to 18.6% in Texas. States under Republican leadership on average have a higher percentage of uninsured people than do those under Democratic leadership, mirroring the political differences driving the national debate over who is responsible for shouldering the costs of health care.

With dueling ideologies come dueling solutions. For those who believe that the government is responsible for the health of its citizens, expanding health insurance coverage and financing this expansion through taxes presents a clear approach. For those who say the burden should fall on individuals, reliance on the free market drives the fix – on the premise that competition between health insurers and providers offers a more effective way to solve the cost challenges than a government intervention.

Without finding resolution on this core issue, the U.S. will likely still be embroiled in this same debate for years, if not decades, to come.

Robert Applebaum 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. As millions of Americans face a steep rise in health insurance costs, lawmakers continue a century-long battle over who should pay for health care – https://theconversation.com/as-millions-of-americans-face-a-steep-rise-in-health-insurance-costs-lawmakers-continue-a-century-long-battle-over-who-should-pay-for-health-care-271901

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Mary J. Scourboutakos, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Family and Community Medicine, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.

Since researchers first established the link between diet, cholesterol and heart disease in the 1950s, risk for heart disease has been partly assessed based on a patient’s cholesterol levels, which can be routinely measured via blood work at the doctor’s office.

However, accumulating evidence over the past two decades demonstrates that a biomarker called C-reactive protein – which signals the presence of low-grade inflammation – is a better predictor of risk for heart disease than cholesterol.

As a result, in September 2025, the American College of Cardiology published new recommendations for universal screening of C-reactive protein levels in all patients, alongside measuring cholesterol levels.

What is C-reactive protein?

C-reactive protein is created by the liver in response to infections, tissue damage, chronic inflammatory states from conditions like autoimmune diseases, and metabolic disturbances like obesity and diabetes. Essentially, it is a marker of inflammation – meaning immune system activation – in the body.

C-reactive protein can be easily measured with blood work at the doctor’s office. A low C-reactive protein level – under 1 milligram per deciliter – signifies minimal inflammation in the body, which is protective against heart disease. An elevated C-reactive protein level of greater than 3 milligrams per deciliter, signifies increased levels of inflammation and thus increased risk for heart disease. About 52% of Americans have an elevated level of C-reactive protein in their blood.

Research shows that C-reactive protein is a better predictive marker for heart attacks and strokes than “bad,” or LDL cholesterol, short for low-density lipoprotein, as well as another commonly measured genetically inherited biomarker called lipoprotein(a). One study found that C-reactive protein can predict heart disease just as well as blood pressure can.

Why does inflammation matter in heart disease?

Inflammation plays a crucial role at every stage in the development and buildup of fatty plaque in the arteries, which causes a condition called atherosclerosis that can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

From the moment a blood vessel is damaged, be it from high blood sugar or cigarette smoke, immune cells immediately infiltrate the area. Those immune cells subsequently engulf cholesterol particles that are typically floating around in the blood stream to form a fatty plaque that resides in the wall of the vessel.

This process continues for decades until eventually, one day, immune mediators rupture the cap that encloses the plaque. This triggers the formation of a blood clot that obstructs blood flow, starves the surrounding tissues of oxygen and ultimately causes a heart attack or stroke.

Hence, cholesterol is only part of the story; it is, in fact, the immune system that facilitates each step in the processes that drive heart disease.

Can diet influence C-reactive protein levels?

Lifestyle can significantly influence the amount of C-reactive protein produced by the liver.

Numerous foods and nutrients have been shown to lower C-reactive protein levels, including dietary fiber from foods like beans, vegetables, nuts and seeds, as well as berries, olive oil, green tea, chia seeds and flaxseeds.

Weight loss and exercise can also reduce C-reactive protein levels.

Does cholesterol still matter for heart disease risk?

Though cholesterol may not be the most important predictor of risk for heart disease, it does remain highly relevant.

However, it’s not just the amount of cholesterol – or more specifically the amount of bad, or LDL, cholesterol – that matters. Two people with the same cholesterol level don’t necessarily have the same risk for heart disease. This is because risk is determined more so by the number of particles that the bad cholesterol is packaged into, as opposed to the total mass of bad cholesterol that’s floating around. More particles means higher risk.

That is why a blood test known as apolipoprotein B, which measures the number of cholesterol particles, is a better predictor of risk for heart disease than measurements of total amounts of bad cholesterol.

Like cholesterol and C-reactive protein, apolipoprotein B is also influenced by lifestyle factors like exercise, weight loss and diet. Nutrients like fiber, nuts and omega-3 fatty acids are associated with a decreased number of cholesterol particles, while increased sugar intake is associated with a larger number of cholesterol particles.

Furthermore, lipoprotein(a), a protein that lives in the wall surrounding cholesterol particles, is another marker that can predict heart disease more accurately than cholesterol levels. This is because the presence of lipoprotein(a) makes cholesterol particles sticky, so to speak, and thus more likely to get trapped in an atherosclerotic plaque.

However, unlike other risk factors, lipoprotein(a) levels are purely genetic, thus not influenced by lifestyle, and need only be measured once in a lifetime.

What’s the best way to prevent heart disease?

Ultimately, heart disease is the product of many risk factors and their interactions over a lifetime.

Therefore, preventing heart disease is way more complicated than simply eating a cholesterol-free diet, as once thought.

Knowing your LDL cholesterol level alongside your C-reactive protein, apolipoprotein B and lipoprotein (a) levels paints a comprehensive picture of risk that can hopefully help motivate long-term commitment to the fundamentals of heart disease prevention. These include eating well, exercising consistently, getting adequate sleep, managing stress productively, maintaining healthy weight and, if applicable, quitting smoking.

Mary J. Scourboutakos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How C-reactive protein outpaced ‘bad’ cholesterol as leading heart disease risk marker – https://theconversation.com/how-c-reactive-protein-outpaced-bad-cholesterol-as-leading-heart-disease-risk-marker-271143

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Betty Medsger, Professor Emeritus of Journalism, San Francisco State University

Are Americans about to be led again into a war based on misrepresentations and lies? It’s happened before, most recently with the wars in Iraq and Vietnam.

President Donald Trump and his administration have presented the country’s growing military operations against Venezuela as a war against drug trafficking and terrorism. Trump has designated the government of Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro as a foreign terrorist organization, the first country to ever receive that designation.

The U.S. military has killed at least 99 crew members of small boats that Trump claims, without presenting evidence, were carrying illegal drugs destined for the U.S. The New York Times reports, however, that “Venezuela is not a drug producer, and the cocaine that transits through the country and the waters around it is generally bound for Europe.”

Trump’s administration has justified the bombing of these boats by declaring they are manned by combatants. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, told the Intercept news outlet that the administration “has offered no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence for these strikes.”

There is no war. Yet.

On Dec. 12, 2025, Trump said, “It’s going to be starting on land pretty soon” and announced four days later a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela.”

As Trump increasingly sounds like he is preparing to go to war against Venezuela, it might be helpful to examine the run-ups to the wars in Iraq and Vietnam – two wars based on lies that led, together, to the deaths of 62,744 Americans.

As an investigative journalist who has written about the vast, secret operations of the FBI and the man who ran it for decades, I am well aware of the dangerous ability the government has to deceive the public. I also covered the opposition to the Vietnam war and the release of information years later that revealed that lies were at the heart of the start of both the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

Fear used to gin up public support

Consider the run-up to the Iraq War.

Fear was the main tool used to convince the public that it was essential for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq. The manufacturing of fear was evident in a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney in August 2002 to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Cheney said, without evidence, that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was planning to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and its allies. If the U.S. did not go to war against Iraq, he said, it might experience another Pearl Harbor.

President George W. Bush chose Secretary of State Colin Powell to make the administration’s most prominent public case for going to war in Iraq in a televised speech at the United Nations. Powell was perhaps the most respected official in the Bush administration.

The White House provided Powell with a draft speech. But Powell pressed the CIA regarding what he thought were unsupported claims in the White House draft. Despite his efforts, his speech on Feb. 5, 2003, contained significant unsupported claims, including that Hussein had authorized his military to use poison gas if the U.S. invaded.

“Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world,” Powell solemnly declared that day.

He later expressed regret for making the case for war.

“I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world,” Powell later said. By then, he said, the speech was “painful” for him personally and would forever be a “blot” on his reputation.

Intelligence agencies pressed to justify war

No weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, nor was Hussein connected with al-Qaida, as the Bush administration had said it was. And Iraq did not release poison gas when the U.S. invaded the country. Early postwar assessments of how the U.S. could have invaded Iraq on the basis of serious false claims suggested it happened because the CIA and other intelligence agencies gave President Bush false or inadequate intelligence.

But as extensive official records of pre-war deliberations became available to journalists and others in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, a different explanation emerged.

John Prados, historian at the National Security Archives, discovered an explanation in hundreds of official records that meticulously document the run-up to the war.

They revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies had let themselves be used, he wrote, as “a tool of a political effort, vitiating the intelligence function … They all yielded intelligence predictions of exactly the kind the Bush administration wanted to hear … The intense focus on achieving the conditions for war instead of solving an international problem led to crucial faults in military planning and diplomatic action.”

The administration did not attempt to engage in diplomacy before deciding to go to war. There never was a serious effort, even within the administration, to consider alternatives to war.

George J. Tenet, director of the CIA at the time, later wrote that “based on conversations with colleagues, in none of the meetings can anyone remember a discussion of the central questions: Was it wise to go to war? Was it the right thing to do?”

Most journalists accepted PR at face value

A dearth of serious reporting contributed to the public being ill-informed.

Dan Kennedy, professor of journalism at Northeastern University, recently wrote that only one news organization, the Washington bureau of Knight Ridder – later known as McClatchy – exposed the Bush-Cheney “administration’s lies and falsehoods during the run-up to the disastrous war in Iraq.”

Other reporters relied on the public relations push for war being made to journalists by high-level political appointees in the military, foreign service and intelligence agencies. But Knight Ridder journalists relied on expert, longtime career officers in those agencies who were “deeply troubled by what they regarded as the administration’s deliberate misrepresentation of intelligence, ranging from overstating the case to outright fabrication.”

Lies to Congress and the public also were at the heart of the run-up to the war in Vietnam.

Of the two attacks on a destroyer that the administration of President Lyndon Johnson said required an immediate vast buildup of troops in August 1964, one was provoked by the United States and the other one never happened.

Few if any questions were asked when the House and Senate voted – with only two no votes – on the request for what would be known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution was used by Johnson and his successor, President Richard Nixon, to keep expanding the war for nearly a decade. By mid-1969, there were 543,400 American troops in Vietnam.

Truth and transparency are crucial

It may seem obvious that the most important lesson to be learned from those wars is that the president and all who contribute to decisions to go to war should tell the truth. But, as shown by the presidents who led the U.S. into wars in Iraq and Vietnam and from Trump’s daily remarks, truth is a frequent casualty.

That increases the need for Congress, the public and the press to demand to be fully informed about these decisions that will be carried out in their name, with their money and with the blood of their sons and daughters. That’s necessary to prevent a president and Congress from making decisions that lead to consequences like these:

In the Iraq War, 4,492 American military members were killed and approximately 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. In the Vietnam War, 58,252 American military members were killed, 1.1 million Vietnamese military members were killed, and a staggering 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed.

Betty Medsger 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. Deception and lies from the White House to justify a war in Venezuela? We’ve seen this movie before in run-ups to wars in Vietnam and Iraq – https://theconversation.com/deception-and-lies-from-the-white-house-to-justify-a-war-in-venezuela-weve-seen-this-movie-before-in-run-ups-to-wars-in-vietnam-and-iraq-272044

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jake Scott, Clinical Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases, Stanford University

The U.S. childhood immunization schedule, the grid of colored bars pediatricians share with parents, recommends a set of vaccines given from birth through adolescence to prevent a range of serious infections. The basic structure has been in place since 1995, when federal health officials and medical organizations first issued a unified national standard, though new vaccines have been added regularly as science advanced.

Vaccines on the childhood schedule have been tested in controlled trials involving millions of participants, and they are continuously monitored for safety after being rolled out. The schedule represents the accumulated knowledge of decades of research. It has made the diseases it targets so rare that many parents have never seen them.

But the schedule is now under scrutiny.

On Dec. 16, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adopted its first major change to the childhood immunization schedule, under Kennedy’s leadership. The agency accepted an advisory committee’s vote to drop a long-held recommendation that all newborns be vaccinated against hepatitis B, despite no new evidence that questions the vaccine’s long-standing safety record.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has cast doubt on vaccine safety for decades, has said he plans to further scrutinize the vaccines children receive.

I’m an infectious disease physician who treats vaccine-preventable diseases and reviews the clinical trial evidence behind immunization recommendations. The vaccine schedule wasn’t designed in a single stroke. It was built gradually over decades, shaped by disease outbreaks, technological breakthroughs and hard-won lessons about reducing childhood illness and death.

With federal officials now casting doubt on its foundations, it’s helpful to know how it came about.

The early years

For the first half of the 20th century, smallpox vaccination was common, required by most states for school entry. But there was no unified national schedule. The combination vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, known as the DTP vaccine, emerged in 1948, and the Salk polio vaccine arrived in 1955, but recommendations for when and how to give them varied by state, by physician and even by neighborhood.

The federal government stepped in after tragedy struck. In 1955, a manufacturing failure at Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, California, produced batches of polio vaccine containing live virus, causing paralysis in dozens of children. The incident made clear that vaccination couldn’t remain a patchwork affair. It required federal oversight.

In 1964, the U.S. surgeon general established the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, to provide expert guidance and recommendations to the CDC on vaccine use. For the first time, a single body would evaluate the evidence and issue national recommendations.

New viral vaccines

Through the 1960s, vaccines against measles (1963), mumps (1967) and rubella (1969) were licensed and eventually combined into what’s known as the MMR shot in 1971. Each addition followed a similar pattern: a disease that killed or disabled thousands of children annually, a vaccine that proved safe and effective in trials, and a recommendation that transformed a seemingly inevitable childhood illness into something preventable.

The rubella vaccine went beyond protecting the children who received it. Rubella, also called German measles, is mild in children but devastating to fetuses, causing deafness, heart defects and intellectual disabilities when pregnant women are infected.

A Rubella epidemic in 1964 and 1965 drove this point home: 12.5 million infections and 20,000 cases of congenital rubella syndrome left thousands of children deaf or blind. Vaccinating children also helped protect pregnant women by curbing the spread of infection. By 2015, rubella had been eliminated from the Americas.

Technology opens new doors

One limitation of some early bacterial vaccines was that they didn’t work well in infants. Young children’s immune systems couldn’t mount a strong response to the sugar coating on certain bacteria. In the 1980s, scientists developed a method called conjugate vaccine technology, in which sugars on bacterial pathogens are linked to proteins that the immune system – even in infants – can more easily respond to.

The first target of this innovation was a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae Type b, or Hib. Before vaccination, Hib was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in American children, causing roughly 20,000 cases of the disease annually and killing hundreds.

The Hib conjugate vaccine was licensed for use in infants in 1990, and within five years Hib disease in young children dropped by more than 99%. Most pediatricians practicing today have never seen a case.

Hepatitis B and the safety net

In 1991, the CDC added hepatitis B vaccination at birth to the schedule. Before then, around 18,000 children every year contracted the virus before their 10th birthday.

Many parents wonder why newborns need this vaccine. The answer lies in biology and the limitations of screening.

An adult who contracts hepatitis B has a 95% chance of clearing the virus. An infant infected in the first months of life has a 90% chance of developing chronic infection, and 1 in 4 will eventually die from liver failure or cancer. Infants can acquire the virus from their mothers during birth, from infected household members or through casual contact in child care settings. The virus survives on surfaces for days and is highly contagious.

Early strategies that targeted only high-risk groups failed because screening missed too many infected mothers. Even today, roughly 12% to 18% of pregnant women in the U.S. are never screened for hepatitis B. Until ACIP dropped the recommendation in early December 2025, a first dose of this vaccine at birth served as a safety net, protecting all infants regardless of whether their mothers’ infection status was accurately known.

This safety net worked: Hepatitis B infections in American children fell by 99%.

Access becomes a right

The schedule’s expansion was enabled by a crucial policy change. From 1989 to 1991, a measles outbreak swept through American cities, causing more than 55,000 cases and over 120 deaths. Investigators found that many infected children had seen doctors but never been vaccinated. Their families couldn’t afford the shots, and the system had failed to catch them.

Congress responded by creating the Vaccines for Children program in 1994, which provides free vaccines to children who are uninsured, underinsured or on Medicaid. With cost no longer a barrier, ACIP could recommend vaccines based on science rather than worrying about who could afford them.

A unified standard

For decades, different medical organizations issued their own, sometimes conflicting, recommendations. In 1995, ACIP, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians jointly released the first unified childhood immunization schedule, the ancestor of today’s familiar grid. For the first time, parents and physicians had a single national standard.

The schedule continued to evolve. ACIP recommended vaccinations for chickenpox in 1996; rotavirus in 2006, replacing an earlier version withdrawn after safety monitoring detected a rare side effect; and HPV, also in 2006.

Each addition followed the same rigorous process: evidence review, risk-benefit analysis and a public vote by the advisory committee.

More vaccines, less burden

One fact often surprises parents: Despite the increase in recommended vaccines, the number of immune-stimulating molecules in those vaccines, called antigens, has dropped dramatically since the 1980s, which means they are less demanding on a child’s immune system.

The whole-cell pertussis vaccine used in the 1980s alone contained roughly 3,000 antigens. Today’s entire schedule contains fewer than 160 antigens, thanks to advances in vaccine technology that allow precise targeting of only the components needed for protection.

What lies ahead

For decades, ACIP recommended changes to the childhood schedule only when new evidence or clear shifts in disease risk demanded it. Rolling back a long-standing recommendation with no new safety data represents a significant break from that norm.

In June 2025, Kennedy fired all 17 members of ACIP and replaced them) with his own choices, many of whom had a history of anti-vaccine views.

Given this and other unprecedented changes Kennedy has made to vaccine policy in his first year as health secretary, this is unlikely to be the last such reversal.

Kennedy, his newly appointed ACIP panel and others within HHS have pushed to align the U.S. vaccine schedule with European countries such as Denmark, which recommends fewer vaccines. But every country’s schedule reflects its specific disease burden, health care infrastructure and access to care.

Denmark’s more targeted approach works in a small, wealthy country with universal public health care, equitable access and a national registry that tracks every patient. The U.S. health care system is fragmented: Millions are uninsured, many families move between providers, and screening systems have significant gaps.

Major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have rejected the reversal on hepatitis B’s routine use at birth. More broadly, these organizations and several states, including California, New York and Illinois, have indicated they will continue following established, evidence-based guidelines if federal recommendations diverge on other vaccines in the future.

Jake Scott 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. RFK Jr. wants to scrutinize the vaccine schedule – but its safety record is already decades long – https://theconversation.com/rfk-jr-wants-to-scrutinize-the-vaccine-schedule-but-its-safety-record-is-already-decades-long-271408

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sean Foreman, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Barry University

After its first competitive mayoral election in 20 years, the city of Miami has a new mayor: former Miami-Dade County commissioner Eileen Higgins.

During the heated campaign, both national political parties were active in organizing voters and providing resources. Many high-profile politicians weighed in with endorsements and visits. Notably, Republicans President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsed Higgins’ opponent, Emilio Gonzalez. Meanwhile, Democrats Ruben Gallego – a senator from Arizona – and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg supported Higgins.

Still, Miami’s mayoralty is officially a nonpartisan position. And as the saying goes, there are no Democratic or Republican potholes; they are all of local concern.

I’m a political scientist with a particular interest in local government, and I’ve lived in the Greater Miami area for 30 years.

So what are the “potholes” confronting Miami’s new mayor?

Civility on the dais

Former Mayor Francis Suarez has a charismatic persona, but was not a forceful presence on the dais. During his tenure, City Commission meetings turned into spectacles, with shouting matches, name-calling,
and allegations of corruption.

Higgins, a bilingual, soft-spoken policy wonk, has promised to set a new tone, leading with civility and compassion. The day after the election, she reiterated that promise: “The era of commissioners yelling at one another and threatening to punch one another is going to stop.”

Affordable housing

Affordability and the cost of living were the major substantive campaign issues, with the cost of housing topping the list.

For the second year in a row, the financial services firm UBS lists Miami as the city at highest risk for a housing bubble. Another study ranked the Miami metro area as the least affordable housing market nationally.

The good news: This rise in price appears to be fueled by a strong employment market. But the shortage of housing priced for middle- and working-class families is unsustainable.

While housing supply and prices are largely determined by market forces, government officials can set conditions to promote targeted investments. Higgins has suggested forming a city-run housing trust fund, similar to Miami-Dade County. She has also proposed dedicating city-owned land to affordable housing projects and reforming the city’s permit process.

Charter reform

Charter reform issues, including moving city elections from odd to even years to align with national elections, are on the agenda. Though a court deemed the City Commission’s attempt to move this year’s election invalid, Higgins said she supports moving the election date, pledging to cut her term short to facilitate. This change would require commissioners to hold a referendum and voters to support it.

There also is a debate about changing the size of the City Commission from five to seven or nine commissioners. Higgins supported this idea, noting that other Florida cities the size of Miami have larger commissions. This charter change would also require voter approval, but needs the commission to act or for citizens to initiate the process. The mayor’s role would be to advocate for the need for greater representation of neighborhoods and government responsiveness.

Immigration enforcement

In a city where nearly 60% of the population is foreign-born, immigration issues loom large.

In June 2025, after a contentious meeting, the commission voted 3-2 to approve a 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to aid Trump’s enforcement measures.

While Higgins cannot remove the city from the agreement, she plans to minimize Miami’s involvement with immigration enforcement. “There’s no reason in the city of Miami that our police department should be in the job of federal immigration enforcement,” she told the press.

City finances

Municipal budgets have been squeezed by state policies and state Department of Government Efficiency efforts. Recent federal cuts to social service and transportation grants have exacerbated the problem.

Now, state leaders are proposing to eliminate property taxes in 2026, further straining local coffers. Public spending will need to be reduced, or revenues replaced. The mayor makes budget proposals, but it is commissioners who approve them. Higgins will need to lead through persuasion and clear explanations.

Sean Foreman 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. Miami’s new mayor faces a housing affordability crisis, city charter reform and a shrinking budget – https://theconversation.com/miamis-new-mayor-faces-a-housing-affordability-crisis-city-charter-reform-and-a-shrinking-budget-269480

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ambuj Tewari, Professor of Statistics, University of Michigan

People and institutions are grappling with the consequences of AI-written text. Teachers want to know whether students’ work reflects their own understanding; consumers want to know whether an advertisement was written by a human or a machine.

Writing rules to govern the use of AI-generated content is relatively easy. Enforcing them depends on something much harder: reliably detecting whether a piece of text was generated by artificial intelligence.

Some studies have investigated whether humans can detect AI-generated text. For example, people who themselves use AI writing tools heavily have been shown to accurately detect AI-written text. A panel of human evaluators can even outperform automated tools in a controlled setting. However, such expertise is not widespread, and individual judgment can be inconsistent. Institutions that need consistency at a large scale therefore turn to automated AI text detectors.

The problem of AI text detection

The basic workflow behind AI text detection is easy to describe. Start with a piece of text whose origin you want to determine. Then apply a detection tool, often an AI system itself, that analyzes the text and produces a score, usually expressed as a probability, indicating how likely the text is to have been AI-generated. Use the score to inform downstream decisions, such as whether to impose a penalty for violating a rule.

This simple description, however, hides a great deal of complexity. It glosses over a number of background assumptions that need to be made explicit. Do you know which AI tools might have plausibly been used to generate the text? What kind of access do you have to these tools? Can you run them yourself, or inspect their inner workings? How much text do you have? Do you have a single text or a collection of writings gathered over time? What AI detection tools can and cannot tell you depends critically on the answers to questions like these.

There is one additional detail that is especially important: Did the AI system that generated the text deliberately embed markers to make later detection easier?

These indicators are known as watermarks. Watermarked text looks like ordinary text, but the markers are embedded in subtle ways that do not reveal themselves to casual inspection. Someone with the right key can later check for the presence of these markers and verify that the text came from a watermarked AI-generated source. This approach, however, relies on cooperation from AI vendors and is not always available.

How AI text detection tools work

One obvious approach is to use AI itself to detect AI-written text. The idea is straightforward. Start by collecting a large corpus, meaning collection of writing, of examples labeled as human-written or AI-generated, then train a model to distinguish between the two. In effect, AI text detection is treated as a standard classification problem, similar in spirit to spam filtering. Once trained, the detector examines new text and predicts whether it more closely resembles the AI-generated examples or the human-written ones it has seen before.

The learned-detector approach can work even if you know little about which AI tools might have generated the text. The main requirement is that the training corpus be diverse enough to include outputs from a wide range of AI systems.

But if you do have access to the AI tools you are concerned about, a different approach becomes possible. This second strategy does not rely on collecting large labeled datasets or training a separate detector. Instead, it looks for statistical signals in the text, often in relation to how specific AI models generate language, to assess whether the text is likely to be AI-generated. For example, some methods examine the probability that an AI model assigns to a piece of text. If the model assigns an unusually high probability to the exact sequence of words, this can be a signal that the text was, in fact, generated by that model.

Finally, in the case of text that is generated by an AI system that embeds a watermark, the problem shifts from detection to verification. Using a secret key provided by the AI vendor, a verification tool can assess whether the text is consistent with having been generated by a watermarked system. This approach relies on information that is not available from the text alone, rather than on inferences drawn from the text itself.

Limitations of detection tools

Each family of tools comes with its own limitations, making it difficult to declare a clear winner. Learning-based detectors, for example, are sensitive to how closely new text resembles the data they were trained on. Their accuracy drops when the text differs substantially from the training corpus, which can quickly become outdated as new AI models are released. Continually curating fresh data and retraining detectors is costly, and detectors inevitably lag behind the systems they are meant to identify.

Statistical tests face a different set of constraints. Many rely on assumptions about how specific AI models generate text, or on access to those models’ probability distributions. When models are proprietary, frequently updated or simply unknown, these assumptions break down. As a result, methods that work well in controlled settings can become unreliable or inapplicable in the real world.

Watermarking shifts the problem from detection to verification, but it introduces its own dependencies. It relies on cooperation from AI vendors and applies only to text generated with watermarking enabled.

More broadly, AI text detection is part of an escalating arms race. Detection tools must be publicly available to be useful, but that same transparency enables evasion. As AI text generators grow more capable and evasion techniques more sophisticated, detectors are unlikely to gain a lasting upper hand.

Hard reality

The problem of AI text detection is simple to state but hard to solve reliably. Institutions with rules governing the use of AI-written text cannot rely on detection tools alone for enforcement.

As society adapts to generative AI, we are likely to refine norms around acceptable use of AI-generated text and improve detection techniques. But ultimately, we’ll have to learn to live with the fact that such tools will never be perfect.

Ambuj Tewari receives funding from NSF and NIH.

– ref. Why it’s so hard to tell if a piece of text was written by AI – even for AI – https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-hard-to-tell-if-a-piece-of-text-was-written-by-ai-even-for-ai-265181