Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Anne P. DePrince, Professor of Psychology, University of Denver

The release of information about the powerful cadre of men associated with convicted sex offender and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – known as the Epstein files – has been a long time coming.

Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in November 2025, the Justice Department must release its documents related to Epstein by Dec. 19, 2025.

But information has been trickling out for months, including more than 20,000 of Epstein’s emails released by members of Congress in November.

In the firestorm of reactions that followed, conservative media figure Megyn Kelly made comments that minimized the victimization of teenagers.

In response to her remarks, a new hashtag, #iwasfifteen, went viral, as celebrities and others took to social media to share photos of themselves as teenagers.

I’m a clinical psychologist who studies intimate violence – from child abuse to domestic violence and sexual assault. After more than two decades in this field, I wasn’t surprised to hear someone minimize the abuse of adolescents. My research and the work of other researchers across the country have shown that victims who disclose their abuse are often met with disbelief and blame.

What did surprise me was how the viral #iwasfifteen hashtag shed light on the dynamics of abuse, pointing to the vulnerabilities that traffickers exploit and the harms they cause.

Abusive tactics in sex trafficking of minors

Unlike stereotypes of teens being kidnapped out of parking lots, people who traffic minors use a range of tactics and build relationships with the teens and tweens they’re targeting. Getting young people to trust and depend on the traffickers is part of entrapping them.

One in-depth 2014 analysis revealed these strategies in action. Researchers looked at more than 40 social service case files of minors who were trafficked and interviewed social service workers.

The researchers found it was common for traffickers to use flattery or romance to entrap adolescents. Some built trust with the teens by helping them out of difficult situations. Meanwhile, the traffickers normalized sex and prostitution as they isolated their victims from their friends and family – all of which echoes the grooming described by victims of Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

The research also showed that traffickers kept tight control over the teens, using economic and emotional manipulation. They took their money, blackmailed and shamed them, and threatened harm if they were to leave. As in the Epstein case, many traffickers compelled victims to take part in the trafficking itself, such as by recruiting their friends.

The same kinds of manipulation show up in other studies nationally. A 2019 study found that across more than 1,400 cases, a third of traffickers used threats and psychological coercion to control victims.

Another research team looked across 23 studies of minors who were sex trafficked in the United States and Canada. They found that the youth, who were mostly girls, were entrapped by traffickers who pretended to love or care for them, only to manipulate and abuse them.

The tactics identified by researchers and the reports of how Epstein trapped victims on his island reveal that all the strategies used by traffickers have one thing in common: They create ever more dependence of the victim on the trafficker.

Dependence and betrayal

Adolescence is a time of rapid change – change that traffickers exploit. From the tween through the teen years, young people are forming their identities and learning about romantic relationships, all while their brains are still developing.

During this period of rapid change, they are starting to differentiate and seek autonomy. Yet they remain dependent on the adults in their lives for everything from their psychological needs, such as love, to basic physical needs, such as food and housing.

When victims of trafficking depend – financially, psychologically or physically – on the very person abusing them, it’s a betrayal trauma. In these scenarios, victims depend on the abuser, so they cannot simply leave the situation. Instead, they have to adapt psychologically.

One way to adapt is to minimize awareness of the abuse – or what psychologists call betrayal blindness. In the short term, minimizing awareness of the abuse helps the victim endure the abuse. This could be the difference between life and death for a victim whose abuser might harm them if they try to leave or report the abuse – or for a teen who doesn’t have anywhere else to turn for basic survival.

In the long term, though, betrayal traumas are linked with a host of harms that may affect how victims see themselves and the world around them. Compared with other kinds of traumas, betrayal traumas are linked to more severe psychological and physical health problems.

Betrayal trauma often leads to shame, self-blame and fear and can leave survivors alienated from and distrusting of others. Survivors may also be less likely to disclose abuse perpetrated by someone they trusted. They may even have difficulty remembering what happened to them, which can worsen self-doubt and self-blame.

Making sense of the far-reaching impacts of betrayal trauma can be difficult for survivors – and others who hear their stories later.

Myths and public opinion of victims

When sex traffickers target minors, they use strategies that give others reason to doubt victims. Most people are regularly exposed to misinformation about sexual violence and trafficking through popular media, and that misinformation plays in the perpetrators’ favor.

Researchers started documenting myths about intimate violence decades ago. Since then, research shows that erroneous views of rape, child abuse and sex trafficking persist in media – with consequences for victims.

These myths and misconceptions often seep into the conversation unnoticed, such as when even well-intentioned reporting refers to the girls trafficked by Epstein as “underaged women.” But calling tweens and teens “women” minimizes the age difference with the perpetrators. It also masks the vulnerability of children and adolescents who were victimized by adults.

Myths can include beliefs that intimate violence is rare and always physically violent, and that victims all respond the same way. Myths also tend to minimize the perpetrator’s role while shifting blame to victims for what was done to them, particularly if victims had mental health problems or used substances.

Changing the conversation

With so many myths out there, #iwasfifteen showed one way to change the usual conversation from blaming victims to exposing the ways that abusers exploit tweens and teens. Meeting myths about sex trafficking with research is crucial to putting responsibility where it belongs, on those who traffic youth and perpetrate abuse.

Research shows that the more people buy into myths, the more likely they are to blame victims or not believe them in the first place, including in sex trafficking.

And it’s not only the unsuspecting public that falls for this misinformation. When victims don’t conform to common myths, even law enforcement officers, who are trained to investigate intimate violence, are less likely to believe them.

In this way, the psychological consequences of betrayal trauma – from minimizing the abuse to psychological distress – can feed into myths that people have about intimate violence. Suddenly, it’s easier for friends, family, juries and others to blame victims or not believe them at all.

And, of course, that’s what perpetrators have often told victims all along: No one will believe you. It’s not surprising, then, that victims may take years to come forward, if ever.

Anne P. DePrince has received funding from the Department of Justice, National Institutes of Health, State of Colorado, and University of Denver. She has received honoraria for giving presentations and has been paid as a consultant. She has a book with Oxford University Press. She is an Advisory Group Member of the National Crime Victim Law Institute and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Institutional Courage.

– ref. The #iwasfifteen hashtag and ongoing Epstein coverage show how traffickers exploit the vulnerabilities of teens and tweens – https://theconversation.com/the-iwasfifteen-hashtag-and-ongoing-epstein-coverage-show-how-traffickers-exploit-the-vulnerabilities-of-teens-and-tweens-270349

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University

Active shootings represent a very small percentage of on-campus university violence.

But among those that do happen, there are patterns. And as law enforcement officials continue to investigate the Dec. 13, 2025, Brown University shooting, similarities can be seen with other active shooter cases on college campuses that scholar James Densley has studied. “They tend to happen inside a classroom, and there tends to be multiple victims,” Densley explains.

The Brown University tragedy, in which a shooter killed two students and injured nine more, marks the fourth deadly shooting at a U.S. university in 2025.

The Department of Education in Rhode Island, where Brown University is located, said on Dec. 16 that it is urging local elementary and secondary schools to review safety protocols.

Amy Lieberman, the education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Densley about how schools have been given what he describes as an “impossible mandate” to try to prevent shootings.

What is the overall trajectory of school shootings over the past few years?

K-12 school shootings appear to be trending downward, at least in the past two years. But we actually saw the largest jumps in this type of violence in the three to five years leading up to 2024, which trends closely with the broader rise in homicide and violent crime we saw in the pandemic era.

In 2025, there have been 230 school shooting incidents in the U.S. – still a staggeringly high number. This compares with 336 school shootings in 2024, 352 in 2023, 308 in 2022, and 257 in 2021.

How this relates to an increase in schools trying to institute security measures to prevent shootings is an open question. But it’s true that many schools are experimenting with certain solutions, like cameras, drones, AI threat detection, weapons scanners, panic apps and facial recognition, even if there is only weak or emerging evidence about how well they work.

Schools are treated as the front line, because the larger, structural solutions are too difficult to confront. It is much easier to blame schools after a tragedy than to actually address firearm access, grievance pathways – meaning how a person becomes a school shooter – and the other societal problems that are creating these tragedies.

How have schools responded to the rise of school shootings in recent years?

Schools are being asked to solve a societal gun violence problem that they didn’t create and they cannot control. Even the best-run school cannot eliminate all risks when causes accumulate outside of their purview. These attacks are rare but catastrophic, and they create an impossible mandate for schools because when they occur, schools are told it reflects a failure in their preparation. Educators are expected to be teachers, social workers, threat assessors and first responders. It normalizes fear and shifts the responsibility downward.

There is a growing school safety industry that markets fear as a solvable, technical problem. It promises faster ways to detect weapons, for example, but the evidence base for those products is thin, proprietary or nonexistent. One example is an AI detection software that mistook a bag of Doritos for a gun, resulting in a large police response.

Schools are pressured to buy something from these companies to show they are doing something. But some of these systems create false positives, and, more importantly, they shift attention away from human relationships. Technology alone cannot resolve grievances, replace trust and create belonging, but most schools are focused on technology as a means of prevention.

How effective are other prevention systems schools have put in place?

If a school shooter is an outsider trying to attack the building, having a single point of entry, access control or multiple locks on doors creates time and space, which are essential for delaying an attacker until law enforcement can arrive, thus mitigating casualties.

But the evidence shows that nearly all school shooters are either current or former students at the school. They are very familiar with entry and exit points, and they are potentially already inside the building before the school can act on a potential threat of violence.

So, what happens if a school locks down, but you are actually locking the shooter in a room with their potential victims? What if students are forced to hide when it would be safer to run? What if you have a door that locks only from the inside and a student or staff member uses that room to bully or sexually assault another student? We’re building schools to protect against the rare events, but we are not mitigating the more common problems they face.

Students are being asked to practice preventing their own deaths in active shooter drills and learn in environments designed around worst-case scenarios. In general, interpersonal violence and spillover of community violence, like gang-related shootings, are the most common form of school shooting. Most shootings at schools occur in parking lots or at sports events, but we do very little to prepare for those types of scenarios.

Are there any benefits, then, to schools having certain non-tech safety measures in place, like making sure every person has an ID?

Of course, you don’t want strangers walking around in a school building. The fact that someone coming to the school has to get their ID scanned and wear a badge makes perfect sense, not just to prevent shootings but to also prevent theft and assaults and other risks.

The paradox is that school shooters tend to be children already affiliated with the school, and when someone walks in already firing, checkpoints and metal detectors are useless. Historically, several mass shootings in K-12 schools have started outside of the building then moved inside. The issue is not slipping past barriers but overwhelming them in seconds with irresistible force.

Absent policy change, what is the clearest way to prevent school shootings, according to current evidence?

Evidence shows that we often see signs of a crisis or withdrawal beforehand from school attackers. And that is why school-based behavioral threat assessment and management is so important. It is really about noticing changes in behavior and having the authority to intervene early. This is not about profiling people or relying on law enforcement alone. It is about having a structured, team-based process for identifying concerning behavior, assessing risk and coordinating appropriate supports – such as counseling – to prevent harm before it occurs. So often in these cases, people had a gut feeling that something was off with a particular student, but they didn’t know what to share or who to share it with.

For decades we’ve invested far more in responding to school shootings once they occur rather than in preventing them. You can lock doors and run drills, but no school can become a fortress.

Attackers leak warning signs in advance. Real prevention is about creating human systems that get upstream of this.

James Densley has received funding from the National Institute of Justice, the Joyce Foundation, and the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation.

– ref. School shootings dropped in 2025 – but schools are still focusing too much on safety technology instead of prevention – https://theconversation.com/school-shootings-dropped-in-2025-but-schools-are-still-focusing-too-much-on-safety-technology-instead-of-prevention-272140

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Joshua Rowe Eyler, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, University of Mississippi

Grades are a standard part of the American educational system that most students and teachers take for granted.

But what if students didn’t have just one shot at acing a midterm, or even could talk with their teachers about what grade they should receive?

Alternative grading has existed in the U.S. for decades, but there are more educators trying out forms of nontraditional grading, according to Joshua Eyler, a scholar of teacher education. Amy Lieberman, education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Eyler to better understand what alternative grading looks like and why more educators are thinking creatively about assessing learning.

Why are some scholars and educators reconsidering grading practices?

For more than 80 years, students at least in seventh grade through college in the U.S. have generally earned one grade for a particular assignment, and a student’s cumulative grades are then averaged at the end of the semester. The final grade gets placed on a student’s transcript.

In some ways, all of the attention is on the grade itself.

Some educators, including me, are trying to rethink the way we grade. Traditional grading is not always an accurate – or the best – way to demonstrate mastery and learning.

Many college faculty across the U.S., as well as some K-12 teachers and districts, are currently experimenting with different approaches and models of grading – typically doing this work on their own but sometimes also in coordination with their schools.

Why is this idea now gaining steam?

Scholars have been researching grades for many decades – there are foundational papers from the early 20th century that scholars today still discuss.

More recently, alternative grading picked up steam in the past 15 to 20 years. Researchers like me have been focused on how grades affect learning.

Grades have been found to decrease students’ intrinsic motivation, and an overemphasis on grades has been shown to alter learning environments at all levels, leading to academic misconduct – meaning cheating.

Grades have also been shown to cultivate a fear of failure among students, at all ages, and inhibit them from taking intellectual risks and expressing creativity. We want students to be bold, creative thinkers and to try out new ideas.

Are there other challenges that alternative grading is trying to correct?

Grades mirror and magnify inequities that have always been a part of American educational systems.

Students who come from K-12 schools with fewer resources, for example, often do not have many textbooks. They often have few, if any, AP courses. These students can develop what researchers call “opportunity gaps.” They do not have the same educational opportunities that students at schools with more resources have.

When students from low-resourced high schools go to college, they can receive worse grades than kids who come from better-resourced schools receive – typically because of these opportunity gaps.

Some people would say that this means these students with low grades are not ready for college. In reality, the grades reflect these students’ past educational experiences – not their potential in college. Once those less-than-stellar grades appear on these students’ transcripts in their first and second years of college, it becomes really hard for students to hit milestones that they need to reach for particular majors.

If we thought about learning a bit differently, those students might have a better shot at reaching their goals.

What do alternative grading models look like in practice?

There are a lot of different grading approaches people are trying, but I would say in the past 10 to 15 years, the movement has really exploded and there is a lot of discussion about it throughout higher education.

With standards-based grading, a biology teacher, for example, would set out a certain number of content- and skill-based standards that they want students to achieve – like understanding photosynthesis. The student’s grade is based on how many of those standards they show competency in by the end of the semester.

A student could show competency in a variety of ways, like a set of exam questions, homework problems or a group project. It is not limited to one type of assessment to demonstrate learning. This grading approach acknowledges that learning is a deeply complicated process that unfolds at different rates for different students.

Other models could look like offering unlimited retakes on tests. Students may have to qualify for the retake by correcting all of the questions they got wrong on a previous exam. Or, teachers set up new assignments that draw on older standards students have previously met, so students have a second shot.

Portfolio-based grading is common in the arts and in writing programs. A student has a lot of time to turn in an assignment and then get feedback on it from their teacher – but no grade. The student eventually puts together a portfolio with the best of their assignments, and the portfolio as an entirety receives a grade.

Another method is called collaborative grading, or ungrading, where students don’t get grades throughout the semester. Instead, they get feedback from their teachers and complete self-assessments. At the end of the semester, the student and teacher collaboratively determine a grade.

What is stopping alternative grading from becoming more widespread?

There have been bursts of activity with grading reform over the past 100 years. The 1960s are a great example of such a period of activity. This is when gradeless colleges like The Evergreen State College were founded.

Social media has helped this particular recent iteration gain traction, as educators can more easily communicate with other people who are grading in different ways.

We are seeing the beginnings of a movement where individuals are trying to do something on this issue. But the issue has not yet drawn together coalitions of people who agree they want change on grading.

Alternative forms of grading have caught on in some private schools, and they have not gained traction in other private schools. The same is true with public schools. Some challenges include logistical support from administrations in K-12 and colleges, teacher buy-in and parental support – especially in K-12 settings.

There is nothing more baked into the fabric of education than the idea of grades. Talking about reforming grading shakes this foundation a little, and that is why it is important to discuss what the alternatives are.

Joshua Rowe Eyler 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. A, B, C or D – grades might not say all that much about what students are actually learning – https://theconversation.com/a-b-c-or-d-grades-might-not-say-all-that-much-about-what-students-are-actually-learning-269066

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Sujith Ramachandran, Associate Professor of Pharmacy Administration, University of Mississippi

Even when Americans have health insurance, they can have a hard time affording the drugs they’ve been prescribed.

About 1 in 5 U.S. adults skip filling a prescription due to its cost at least once a year, according to KFF, a health research organization. And 1 in 3 take steps to cut their prescription drug costs, such as splitting pills when it’s not medically necessary or switching to an over-the-counter drug instead of the one that their medical provider prescribed.

As pharmacy professors who research prescription drug access, we think it’s important for Americans to know that it is possible to get prescriptions filled more affordably, as long as you know how before you go to the pharmacy.

Cost of copays ranges widely

When you have health insurance and have to pay for a prescription drug at the pharmacy, you’re usually covering the cost of your copay. This is the amount patients or their caregivers are expected to pay after insurance covers the rest of the tab.

If you get your health insurance through Medicaid, the government program that covers low-income Americans and people with disabilities, you should not have to pay anything at all to obtain prescription drugs. If there is a copay, it should be low – probably less than US$5.

And if you’re insured through Medicare, the government program that mainly covers people who are 65 and older, or get your coverage through a private health insurance company, it’s important to understand what to expect when you visit a pharmacy.

Most private insurance companies charge US$5 to $50 for prescription drug copays. The copays are tiered based on what the drug costs. Brand-name and specialty medications have higher copays; older generics have lower copays.

Some generic drugs and vaccines may even require no copay at all. While a copay is a flat fee, it can change over the course of the year based on whether or not you have met your deductible. The deductible is the amount of money you have to pay out of pocket before your insurance starts covering your prescriptions. Before your deductible is fully paid, you may be responsible for the full cost of your medications. After you’ve met your deductible for the year, you will only be required to pay the copay.

As newer, more expensive drugs enter the market, cost-sharing at the pharmacy has increasingly shifted from a copay to coinsurance.

In contrast with a flat copay, coinsurance means your insurance company will cover a certain percentage of the drug’s cost, and you’ll pay the rest. Since the patient’s share is based on a percentage of the medication’s price, coinsurance often results in higher out-of-pocket costs than copays do.

New help for patients with Medicare coverage

Two new government programs could help make prescription drugs more affordable for millions of older Americans.

Starting in 2026, people who are insured through Medicare will pay no more than $2,100 out of pocket on prescription drugs over the year. That cap may be much lower than $2,100 due to a quirk in Medicare’s rules. Prescriptions filled after someone has paid the maximum allowable amount will cost them nothing at all.

In addition, the government launched the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan in 2025. This program, which is available to people over 65, helps spread what patients spend out of pocket on prescription drugs throughout the year, making that expense more predictable and easier to budget for.

Early data indicates that very few Americans are enrolled in the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan. Patients insured through private companies do not have similar opportunities.

Coupons and discount cards

What if you can’t afford a copay for your prescription drug?

Before giving up on ever getting it, ask the pharmacist about your options.

It may be worth trying to use a free online tool, such as RxAssist, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, or a discount card from GoodRx, which is a publicly traded company.

GoodRx cards are free. They help people compare local pharmacy prices and to locate coupons that make prescriptions more affordable.

GoodRx works by searching for the lowest available price for the prescription at various pharmacies. Other copay coupons provided by the drug manufacturer may also work similarly by lowering the cost of the medication. On some occasions, the cash price at the pharmacy may actually be cheaper than the copay, and the pharmacist should be able to help you navigate these options.

Here’s what you should know before giving GoodRx a try:

1. GoodRx collects individual data on patients, raising significant privacy concerns.

2. Some pharmacies do not accept GoodRx. You may have to visit more than one pharmacy to be able to activate its discounts.

3. These cards may make the most sense for uninsured or underinsured patients, but do not always help those who have insurance because you might not get a better price. What’s more, if you use a discount card, the amount you pay may not count toward your insurance deductible for the year.

You should weigh the caveats closely depending on your circumstance.

Prescription assistance programs

Prescription assistance programs provide another cost-saving tool for Americans.

Drugmakers, nonprofits and government agencies sponsor those programs, which help patients who are uninsured or underinsured – even if they are on Medicare – fill prescriptions either at a discount or for free.

These programs include manufacturer-specific programs as well as charitable pharmacies like Dispensary of Hope, NOVA Scripts Central and the Patient Advocate Foundation. Qualifying criteria vary for these programs, but typically you must have a low income and be a citizen or a legal U.S. resident.

The Patient Access Network Foundation and RxAssist, two nonprofits that help Americans pay their medical bills, also offer helpful tools to identify programs that could work for you.

Assistance from these programs could cut your copay or even provide a prescription drug at no cost.

Separately, the Trump administration announced in November 2025 that a new White House prescription drug pricing program will soon begin to connect consumers to companies that have agreed to sell certain prescription drugs at a big discount.

Many experts don’t expect the program, known as TrumpRx, to help people who have health insurance. Instead, it could be most likely to help those with no insurance at all. The new government program is slated to begin to roll out in 2026.

Direct-to-consumer models

Beyond coupons and assistance programs, a more radical shift is in the works: direct-to-consumer platforms and cash-payment models.

In 2025, several manufacturers offered to sell medications directly to patients on websites and patient portals at cash prices. For example, the drug manufacturer Eli Lilly is offering its popular weight-loss medication, Zepbound, on its website.

These websites have out-of-pocket costs that can run upward of $300 a month, making them too high for many, if not most, Americans to afford. And insurance companies have so far refused to cover them.

To be sure, the systems underlying these programs are still being built. We believe that the Trump administration would need to make a bigger effort to make it easier for millions of Americans to be able to afford filling their prescriptions.

Sujith Ramachandran received funding from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and provides consulting services for the National Community Pharmacists Association for work related to this topic.

Adam Pate 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. My prescription costs what?! Pharmacists offer tips that could reduce your out-of-pocket drug costs – https://theconversation.com/my-prescription-costs-what-pharmacists-offer-tips-that-could-reduce-your-out-of-pocket-drug-costs-268067

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bilal Haider, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Despite the nursery rhyme about three blind mice, mouse eyesight is surprisingly sensitive. Studying how mice see has helped researchers discover unprecedented details about how individual brain cells communicate and work together to create a mental picture of the visual world.

I am a neuroscientist who studies how brain cells drive visual perception and how these processes can fail in conditions such as autism. My lab “listens” to the electrical activity of neurons in the outermost part of the brain called the cerebral cortex, a large portion of which processes visual information. Injuries to the visual cortex can lead to blindness and other visual deficits, even when the eyes themselves are unhurt.

Understanding the activity of individual neurons – and how they work together while the brain is actively using and processing information – is a long-standing goal of neuroscience. Researchers have moved much closer to achieving this goal thanks to new technologies aimed at the mouse visual system. And these findings will help scientists better see how the visual systems of people work.

The mind in the blink of an eye

Researchers long thought that vision in mice appeared sluggish with low clarity. But it turns out visual cortex neurons in mice – just like those in humans, monkeys, cats and ferrets – require specific visual features to trigger activity and are particularly selective in alert and awake conditions.

My colleagues and I and others have found that mice are especially sensitive to visual stimuli directly in front of them. This is surprising, because mouse eyes face outward rather than forward. Forward-facing eyes, like those of cats and primates, naturally have a larger area of focus straight ahead compared to outward-facing eyes.

This finding suggests that the specialization of the visual system to highlight the frontal visual field appears to be shared between mice and humans. For mice, a visual focus on what’s straight ahead may help them be more responsive to shadows or edges in front of them, helping them avoid looming predators or better hunt and capture insects for food.

Importantly, the center of view is most affected in aging and many visual diseases in people. Since mice also rely heavily on this part of the visual field, they may be particularly useful models to study and treat visual impairment.

A thousand voices drive complicated choices

Advances in technology have greatly accelerated scientific understanding of vision and the brain. Researchers can now routinely record the activity of thousands of neurons at the same time and pair this data with real-time video of a mouse’s face, pupil and body movements. This method can show how behavior interacts with brain activity.

It’s like spending years listening to a grainy recording of a symphony with one featured soloist, but now you have a pristine recording where you can hear every single musician with a note-by-note readout of every single finger movement.

Using these improved methods, researchers like me are studying how specific types of neurons work together during complex visual behaviors. This involves analyzing how factors such as movement, alertness and the environment influence visual activity in the brain.

For example, my lab and I found that the speed of visual signaling is highly sensitive to what actions are possible in the physical environment. If a mouse rests on a disc that permits running, visual signals travel to the cortex faster than if the mouse views the same images while resting in a stationary tube – even when the mouse is totally still in both conditions.

In order to connect electrical activity to visual perception, researchers also have to ask a mouse what it thinks it sees. How have we done this?

The last decade has seen researchers debunking long-standing myths about mouse learning and behavior. Like other rodents, mice are also surprisingly clever and can learn how to “tell” researchers about the visual events they perceive through their behavior.

For example, mice can learn to release a lever to indicate they have detected that a pattern has brightened or tilted. They can rotate a Lego wheel left or right to move a visual stimulus to the center of a screen like a video game, and they can stop running on a wheel and lick a water spout when they detect the visual scene has suddenly changed.

Mice can also use visual cues to focus their visual processing to specific parts of the visual field. As a result, they can more quickly and accurately respond to visual stimuli that appear in those regions. For example, my team and I found that a faint visual image in the peripheral visual field is difficult for mice to detect. But once they do notice it – and tell us by licking a water spout – their subsequent responses are faster and more accurate.

These improvements come at a cost: If the image unexpectedly appears in a different location, the mice are slower and less likely to respond to it. These findings resemble those found in studies on spatial attention in people.

My lab has also found that particular types of inhibitory neurons – brain cells that prevent activity from spreading – strongly control the strength of visual signals. When we activated certain inhibitory neurons in the visual cortex of mice, we could effectively “erase” their perception of an image.

These kinds of experiments are also revealing that the boundaries between perception and action in the brain are much less separate than once thought. This means that visual neurons will respond differently to the same image in ways that depend on behavioral circumstances – for example, visual responses differ if the image will be successfully detected, if it appears while the mouse is moving, or if it appears when the mouse is thirsty or hydrated.

Understanding how different factors shape how cortical neurons rapidly respond to visual images will require advances in computational tools that can separate the contribution of these behavioral signals from the visual ones. Researchers also need technologies that can isolate how specific types of brain cells carry and communicate these signals.

Data clouds encircling the globe

This surge of research on the mouse visual system has led to a significant increase in the amount of data that scientists can not only gather in a single experiment but also publicly share among each other.

Major national and international research centers focused on unraveling the circuitry of the mouse visual system have been leading the charge in ushering in new optical, electrical and biological tools to measure large numbers of visual neurons in action. Moreover, they make all the data publicly available, inspiring similar efforts around the globe. This collaboration accelerates the ability of researchers to analyze data, replicate findings and make new discoveries.

Technological advances in data collection and sharing can make the culture of scientific discovery more efficient and transparent – a major data informatics goal of neuroscience in the years ahead.

If the past 10 years are anything to go by, I believe such discoveries are just the tip of the iceberg, and the mighty and not-so-blind mouse will play a leading role in the continuing quest to understand the mysteries of the human brain.

Bilal Haider receives funding from NIH and the Simons Foundation.

– ref. Gazing into the mind’s eye with mice – how neuroscientists are seeing human vision more clearly – https://theconversation.com/gazing-into-the-minds-eye-with-mice-how-neuroscientists-are-seeing-human-vision-more-clearly-268334

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sven Bilén, Professor of Engineering Design, Electrical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering, Penn State

There are about 15,000 satellites orbiting the Earth. Most of them, like the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope, reside in low Earth orbit, or LEO, which tops out at about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.

But as more and more satellites are launched into LEO – SpaceX’s Starlink internet constellation alone will eventually send many thousands more there – the region’s getting a bit crowded.

Which is why it’s fortunate there’s another orbit, even closer to Earth, that promises to help alleviate the crowding. It’s called VLEO, or very low Earth orbit, and is only 60 to 250 miles (100 to 400 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.

As an engineer and professor who is developing technologies to extend the human presence beyond Earth, I can tell you that satellites in very low Earth orbit, or VLEO, offer advantages over higher altitude satellites. Among other benefits, VLEO satellites can provide higher-resolution images, faster communications and better atmospheric science. Full disclosure: I’m also a co-founder and co-owner of Victoria Defense, which seeks to commercialize VLEO and other space directed-energy technologies.

Advantages of VLEO

The images from very low Earth orbit satellites are sharper because they simply see Earth more clearly than satellites that are higher up, sort of like how getting closer to a painting helps you see it better. This translates to higher resolution pictures for agriculture, climate science, disaster response and military surveillance purposes.

End-to-end communication is faster, which is ideal for real-time communications, like phone and internet service. Although the signals still travel the same speed, they don’t have as far to go, so latency decreases and conversations happen more smoothly.

Much weather forecasting relies on images of clouds above the Earth, so taking those pictures closer means higher resolution and more data to forecast with.

Because of these benefits, government agencies and industry are working to develop very low Earth orbit satellites.

The holdup: Atmospheric drag

You may be wondering why this region of space, so far, has been avoided for sustained satellite operations. It’s for one major reason: atmospheric drag.

Space is often thought of as a vacuum. So where exactly does space actually start? Although about 62 miles up (100 kilometers) – known as the the von Kármán line – is widely considered the starting point, there’s no hard transition where space suddenly begins. Instead, as you move away from Earth, the atmosphere thins out.

In and below very low Earth orbit, the Earth’s atmosphere is still thick enough to slow down satellites, causing those at the lowest altitudes to deorbit in weeks or even days, essentially burning up as they fall back to Earth. To counteract this atmospheric drag and to stay in orbit, the satellite must constantly propel itself forward – like how riding a bike into the wind requires continuous pedaling.

For in-space propulsion, satellites use various types of thrusters, which provide the push needed to keep from slowing down. But in VLEO, thrusters need to be on all, or nearly all, of the time. As such, conventional thrusters would quickly run out of fuel.

Fortunately, the Earth’s atmosphere in VLEO is still thick enough that atmosphere itself can be used as a fuel.

Innovative thruster technologies

That’s where my research comes in. At Penn State, in collaboration with Georgia Tech and funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, our team is developing a new propulsion system designed to work at 43 to 55 miles up (70 to 90 kilometers). Technically, these altitudes are even below very low Earth orbit – making the challenge to overcome drag even more difficult.

Our approach collects the atmosphere using a scoop, like opening your mouth wide as you pedal a bike, then uses high-power microwaves to heat the collected atmosphere. The heated gas is then expelled through a nozzle, which pushes the satellite forward. Our team calls this concept the air-breathing microwave plasma thruster. We’ve been able to demonstrate a prototype thruster in the lab inside a vacuum chamber that simulates the atmospheric pressure found at 50 miles (80 km) high.

This approach is relatively simple, but it holds potential, especially at lower altitudes where the atmosphere is thicker. Higher up, where the atmosphere is thinner, spacecraft could use different types of VLEO thrusters that others are developing to cover large altitude ranges.

Our team isn’t the only one working on thruster technology. Just one example: The U.S. Department of Defense has partnered with defense contractor Red Wire to develop Otter, a VLEO satellite with its version of atmosphere-breathing thruster technology.

Another option to keep a satellite in VLEO, which leverages a technology I’ve worked on throughout my career, is to tie a lower-orbiting satellite to a higher-orbiting satellite with a long tether. Although NASA has never flown such a system, the proposed follow-on mission to the tether satellite system missions flown in the 1990s was to drop a satellite into much lower orbit from the space shuttle, connected with a very long tether. We are currently revisiting that system to see whether it could work for VLEO in a modified form.

Other complications

Overcoming drag, though the most difficult, is not the only challenge. Very low Earth orbit satellites are exposed to very high levels of atomic oxygen, which is a highly reactive form of oxygen that quickly corrodes most substances, even plastics.

The satellite’s materials also must withstand extremely high temperatures, above 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius), because friction heats it up as it moves through the atmosphere, a phenomenon that occurs when all spacecraft reenter the atmosphere from orbit.

The potential of these satellites is driving research and investment, and proposed missions have become reality. Juniper research estimates that $220 billion will be invested in just the next three years. Soon, your internet, weather forecasts and security could be even better, fed by VLEO satellites.

Sven Bilén founder and co-owner of Victoria Defense, which seeks to commercialize VLEO and other space technologies. He receives funding from DARPA and NASA related to VLEO technologies.

– ref. The next frontier in space is closer than you think – welcome to the world of very low Earth orbit satellites – https://theconversation.com/the-next-frontier-in-space-is-closer-than-you-think-welcome-to-the-world-of-very-low-earth-orbit-satellites-258252

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joshua Kastenberg, Professor of Law, University of New Mexico

The Department of Defense in late November 2025 announced that it would investigate U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and NASA astronaut, for what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has called seditious behavior. The threat of investigation came after Kelly and five other Democrats, all with military backgrounds, released a video reminding U.S. service members they can disobey illegal orders issued by the Trump administration.

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law, or our Constitution,” the lawmakers said, without specifying the orders the U.S. service members may have received. “Know that we have your back … don’t give up the ship.”

In response to the video, President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of “seditious behavior” that could be “punishable by death.”

Sedition is a federal crime, but as a military law scholar who served as a judge in the U.S. Air Force, I believe the Democratic lawmakers articulated a correct view of military law. That is, service members subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice have a duty to not obey unlawful orders.

There are several unique features to military law that have no analog to civilian criminal law, and if Kelly were court-martialed he would be deprived of several fundamental constitutional rights.

Military justice

In a civilian criminal trial the government normally has the burden of proof on all matters. But in a court-martial, a service member who argues that an order is unlawful has the burden of proving its unlawfulness. And the Supreme Court, in its 1827 opinion in Martin v. Mott, gave this view some credence, arguing that the president, as commander in chief, should not be questioned during a national emergency.

Second, ordinary citizens are protected by a constitutional requirement that the prosecution must convince all jurors of the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A court-martial has only a two-thirds threshold to establish guilt. And the jurors – called members – are not the accused service member’s peers.

Indeed, the court-martial members are military personnel who outrank the accused service member and are picked to serve by senior commanding officers. Military judges are also uniformed officers and, like the rest of the military, are subject to the chain of command.

At times, senior officers have inserted themselves into the military justice system and tried to direct a court-martial to convict an accused service member. This has created the problem of unlawful command influence, the improper use of superior authority to interfere with the court-martial process.

Kelly is still theoretically subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and could be court-martialed because he is a military retiree. This concept of a lifetime military jurisdiction did not exist when the Constitution was instituted in 1789. It came into existence during an emergency session of Congress in 1861.

The Supreme Court has never held that lifetime jurisdiction is constitutional. But in 2022 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia did, in a 2-1 decision.

It reasoned that if the Constitution’s creators had thought such a jurisdiction were a threat to the republic, they would have prohibited it. The dissenting judge in that case pointed out the frightening possibility of a president using the Uniform Code of Military Justice to curb free speech.

Lines of defense

Kelly is different than an ordinary retiree, and this case is bigger than a single senator. That’s because it goes to the heart of what the Constitution’s framers intended by preserving liberty through a republican form of government.

In 1648, Oliver Cromwell, who had become a military dictator over England, used the army to curb the Magna Carta – a revolutionary basic rights document dating to 1215 – and the ability of Parliament to debate matters and pass laws. The Constitution is designed to prevent anything coming close to such an occurrence.

So, what would Kelly’s defense likely be, other than that he exercised free speech and gave a correct recitation of the law?

Kelly’s first defense might be that under the Constitution, the president, as commander in chief, has no power to court-martial or otherwise administratively penalize him. Doing so would diminish Congress’ authority.

In 1974, the Supreme Court determined in Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee that although the Constitution prohibits a member of Congress from holding a position in the executive branch, citizens had no standing to sue in the federal courts to prevent this from occurring. Taken literally, the clause means that no member of Congress could hold a military commission and be beholden to the commander in chief, since this would erode Congress’ independence and authority.

Kelly’s second defense could be that after the Constitution and statutory law, the military law is governed by tradition, or the military’s own past practices, which used to be referred to as “lex non scripta.”

American history is replete with retired officers criticizing presidents or even joining in hate groups that accused a president of being beholden to subversive interests. Past presidents have ignored these men.

They include George Van Horn Moseley, who sided with pro-Nazi groups and accused President Franklin Roosevelt of being a communist. Retired generals Albert Coady Wedemeyer and Bonner Fellers formed organizations that undermined Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

None of these men were court-martialed or administratively penalized.

Finally, Kelly could argue in federal court that the military has no jurisdiction over him because of the issue of unlawful command influence. One only needs to look at Hegseth’s statements in the case to see the specter of this problem in regard to Kelly.

When Congress formulated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it criminalized unlawful command influence. But as military law scholar Rachel VanLandingham has pointed out, no person has ever been prosecuted for violating the prohibition.

Kelly could argue that there are no safeguards in his case to ensure a fair hearing and that the case should move from military courts to federal courts. The federal judge assigned the case can then ponder whether siding with the administration’s claims is a step toward establishing a Cromwellian future and away from the Constitution’s protection of a republican form of government.

Of course, Congress could put a stop to any persecution of Kelly by informing the president that he is acting contrary to the Constitution and explaining to do so is a high crime or misdemeanor.

During the Vietnam War, scholar Robert Sherrill said that “military justice is to justice what military music is to music.” In the past, military justice has been able to accomplish fair trials of military members, but it is dangerously open to influence by military leaders, all the way up to the commander in chief.

If there is to be an exercise in accountability for Kelly, it could more fairly be administered through a real constitutional analysis conducted by the independent federal judicial branch – or through a congressional intervention. Without either occurring, we may as a nation find ourselves a closer step toward a Cromwellian future.

Joshua Kastenberg 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. If tried by court-martial, senator accused of ‘seditious behavior’ would be deprived of several constitutional rights – https://theconversation.com/if-tried-by-court-martial-senator-accused-of-seditious-behavior-would-be-deprived-of-several-constitutional-rights-271990

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Scott Brame, Research Assistant Professor of Earth Science, Clemson University

When Santa is done delivering presents on Christmas Eve, he must get back home to the North Pole, even if it’s snowing so hard that the reindeer can’t see the way.

He could use a compass, but then he has a challenge: He has to be able to find the right North Pole.

There are actually two North Poles – the geographic North Pole you see on maps and the magnetic North Pole that the compass relies on. They aren’t the same.

The two North Poles

The geographic North Pole, also called true north, is the point at one end of the Earth’s axis of rotation.

Try taking a tennis ball in your right hand, putting your thumb on the bottom and your middle finger on the top, and rotating the ball with the fingers of your left hand. The place where the thumb and middle finger of your right hand contact the tennis ball as it spins define the axis of rotation. The axis extends from the south pole to the north pole as it passes through the center of the ball.

Earth’s magnetic North Pole is different.

Over 1,000 years ago, explorers began using compasses, typically made with a floating cork or piece of wood with a magnetized needle in it, to find their way. The Earth has a magnetic field that acts like a giant magnet, and the compass needle aligns with it.

The magnetic North Pole is used by devices such as smartphones for navigation – and that pole moves around over time.

Why the magnetic north pole moves around

The movement of the magnetic North Pole is the result of the Earth having an active core. The inner core, starting about 3,200 miles below your feet, is solid and under such immense pressure that it cannot melt. But the outer core is molten, consisting of melted iron and nickel.

Heat from the inner core makes the molten iron and nickel in the outer core move around, much like soup in a pot on a hot stove. The movement of the iron-rich liquid induces a magnetic field that covers the entire Earth.

As the molten iron in the outer core moves around, the magnetic North Pole wanders.

For most of the past 600 years, the pole has been wandering around over northern Canada. It was moving relatively slowly, around 6 to 9 miles per year, until around 1990, when its speed increased dramatically, up to 34 miles per year.

It started moving in the general direction of the geographic North Pole about a century ago. Earth scientists cannot say exactly why other than that it reflects a change in flow within the outer core.

Getting Santa home

So, if Santa’s home is the geographic North Pole – which, incidentally, is in the ice-covered middle of the Arctic Ocean – how does he correct his compass bearing if the two North Poles are in different locations?

No matter what device he might be using – compass or smartphone – both rely on magnetic north as a reference to determine the direction he needs to move.

While modern GPS systems can tell you precisely where you are as you make your way to grandma’s house, they cannot accurately tell which direction to go without your device knowing the direction of magnetic north.

If Santa is using an old-fashioned compass, he’ll need to adjust it for the difference between true north and magnetic north. To do that, he needs to know the declination at his location – the angle between true north and magnetic north – and make the correction to his compass. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an online calculator that can help.

If you are using a smartphone, your phone has a built-in magnetometer that does the work for you. It measures the Earth’s magnetic field at your location and then uses the World Magnetic Model to correct for precise navigation.

Whatever method Santa uses, he may be relying on magnetic north to find his way to your house and back home again. Or maybe the reindeer just know the way.

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

– ref. The North Pole keeps moving – here’s how that affects Santa’s holiday travel and yours – https://theconversation.com/the-north-pole-keeps-moving-heres-how-that-affects-santas-holiday-travel-and-yours-271488

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, Boise State University

The Jeffrey Epstein story has slipped in and out of the headlines for years, but in a very particular way. Most news articles ask a specific question – which powerful men might be on “the list”?

Headlines focus on unidentified elites and who may be exposed or embarrassed, rather than on the people whose suffering made the case newsworthy in the first place: the girls and young women Epstein abused and trafficked.

Right now, the story is entering a new phase. A federal judge has authorized the Justice Department to unseal grand jury transcripts and other evidence from Epstein companion Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking case. A court in Florida has cleared the release of grand jury records from a federal investigation into Epstein himself, all under the new Epstein Files Transparency Act. Passed in November 2025, that law gives the Justice Department 30 days to release nearly all Epstein-related files. The deadline is Dec. 19.

Journalists and the public are watching to see what those documents will reveal beyond names we already know, and whether a long-rumored client list will finally materialize.

Alongside that, there has been a stream of survivor-centered reporting. Some outlets, including CNN, have regularly featured Epstein survivors and their attorneys reacting to new developments. Those segments are a reminder that another story is available, one that treats the women at the center of the case as sources of understanding, not just as evidence of someone else’s fall from grace.

These coexisting storylines reveal a deeper problem. After the #MeToo movement peaked, the public conversation about sexual violence and the news has clearly shifted. More survivors now speak publicly under their own names, and some outlets have adapted.

Yet long-standing conventions about what counts as news – conflict, scandal, elite people and dramatic turns in a case – still shape which aspects of sexual violence make it into headlines and which stay on the margins.

That tension raises a question: In a case where the law largely permits naming victims of sexual violence, and where some survivors are explicitly asking to be seen, why do journalistic practices so often withhold names or treat victims as secondary to the story?

What the law allows – and why newsrooms rarely do it

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that government generally may not punish news organizations for publishing truthful information drawn from public records, even when that information is a rape victim’s name.

When states tried in the 1970s and 1980s to penalize outlets that identified victims using names that had already appeared in court documents or police reports, the court said those punishments violated the First Amendment.

Newsrooms responded by tightening restraint, not loosening it. Under pressure from feminist activists, victim advocates and their own staff, many organizations adopted policies against identifying victims of sexual assault, especially without consent.

Journalism ethics codes now urge reporters to “minimize harm,” be cautious about naming victims of sex crimes, and consider the risk of retraumatization and stigma.

In other words, U.S. law permits what newsroom ethics codes discourage.

How anonymity became the norm and #MeToo complicated it

For much of the 20th century, rape victims were routinely named in U.S. news coverage – a reflection of unequal gender norms. Victims’ reputations were treated as public property, while men accused of sexual violence were portrayed sympathetically and in detail.

By the 1970s and 1980s, feminist movements drew attention to underreporting and intense stigma. Activists built rape crisis centers and hotlines, documented how rarely sexual assault cases led to prosecution, and argued that if a woman feared seeing her name in the paper, she might never report at all.

Lawmakers passed “rape shield laws” that limited the use of a victim’s sexual history in court. Some states went further by barring publication of victims’ names.

In response to these laws, as well as feminist pressure, most newsrooms by the 1980s moved toward a default rule of not naming victims.

More recently, the #MeToo movement added a turn. Survivors in workplaces, politics and entertainment chose to speak publicly, often under their own names, about serial abuse and institutional cover-ups. Their accounts forced newsrooms to revisit assumptions about whose voices should lead a story.

Yet #MeToo also unfolded within existing journalistic conventions. Investigations tended to focus on high-profile men, spectacular falls from power and moments of reckoning, leaving less space for the quieter, ongoing realities of recovery, legal limbo and community response.

The unintended effects of keeping survivors faceless

There are good reasons for policies against naming victims.

Survivors may face harassment, employment discrimination or danger from abusers if they are identified. For minors, there are additional concerns about long-term digital evidence. In communities where sexual violence carries intense social stigma, anonymity can be a lifeline.

But research on media framing suggests that naming patterns matter. When coverage focuses on the alleged perpetrator as a complex individual – someone with a name, a career and a backstory – while referring to “a victim” or “accusers” in the singular, audiences are more likely to empathize with the suspect and scrutinize the victim’s behavior.

In high-profile cases like Epstein’s, that dynamic intensifies. The powerful men connected to him are named, dissected and speculated about. The survivors, unless they work hard to step forward, remain a blurred mass in the background. Anonymity meant to protect actually flattens their experience. Different stories of grooming, coercion and survival get reduced to a single faceless category.

A window into what we think is ‘news’

That flattening is part of what makes the current moment in the Epstein story so revealing. The suspense is less about whether more victims will be heard and more about what being named will do to influential men. It becomes a story about whose names count as news.

Carefully anonymizing survivors while breathlessly chasing a client list of powerful men unintentionally sends a message about who matters most.

The Epstein scandal, in that framing, is not primarily about what was done to girls and young women over many years, but about who among the elite might be embarrassed, implicated or exposed.

A more survivor-centered journalistic approach would start from a different set of questions, including wondering which survivors have chosen to speak on the record and why, and how news outlets can protect anonymity, when it is asked for, but still convey a victim’s individuality.

Those questions are not only about ethics. They are about news judgment. They ask editors and reporters to consider whether the most important part of a story like Epstein’s is the next famous name to drop or the ongoing lives of the people whose abuse made that name newsworthy at all.

Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin 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. Epstein’s victims deserve more attention than his ‘client list’ – https://theconversation.com/epsteins-victims-deserve-more-attention-than-his-client-list-270244

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

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

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

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

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

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

A clear break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump’s expanded use

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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