Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Boaz Atzili, Associate Professor of International Relations, American University School of International Service

After two years of devastating war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip, President Donald Trump declared an end to the war on Oct. 14, 2025. The peace plan includes a Hamas commitment to return all hostages and a withdrawal of Israeli forces.

In late October, both sides said they remained committed to peace, despite Israeli retaliation for the death of an Israeli soldier that killed 104 people, and despite the fact that the remains of 11 deceased hostages remain in Gaza.

Those setbacks aside, the new peace push is the most serious attempt so far to end the escalation of conflict that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian militants on Israelis.

But what are the circumstances and actions that helped Trump advance such an agreement, the likes of which eluded former President Joe Biden? And what enabled Trump, working with a few close advisers and with mediators like Qatar and Egypt, to overcome the reluctance of Israel and Hamas?

The answer may have much to do with how Trump countered a phenomenon that political scientists call “spoiling.”

“Spoiling” in peace negotiations is defined by political scientist Stephen Stedman as actions employed by “leaders and parties who believe that peace emerging from negotiations threatens their power, worldview, and interests, and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve it.”

In regard to the Middle East, critics have long accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of playing this spoiler card throughout the war.

Netanyahu was seen by many observers to be not interested in reaching a peace agreement because of risks to the political survival of his governing coalition. And it’s evident in attempts to postpone the investigation of the colossal failure of Israel to defend its citizens on Oct. 7, 2023.

For two years, Netanyahu engaged in this kind of spoiling by, for example, staging high-level assassinations of Hamas leaders at a timing detrimental for any negotiation’s success.

Yet, Netanyahu also employed a more sophisticated method of spoiling, one that political science scholar Ehud Eiran and I are exploring in our research.

We argue that leaders can spoil negotiations not just by resorting to violent means, or by posing hard-line positions within the negotiation room. Additionally, spoilers can work in broad daylight and make the diplomacy less likely to succeed through a careful use of rhetoric and media. This decreases their own constituencies’ and the enemy’s likelihood of accepting This decreases the likelihood of their own constituencies or the enemy accepting a compromise. It’s what we call “public spoiling.”

Spoiling in broad daylight

Netanyahu used these public spoiling tactics again and again during ceasefire negotiations.

In early May 2024, for example, when ceasefire negotiations were getting into high gear and indications mounted that Hamas may accept the deal on the table, a statement from Netanyahu attributed to “a senior diplomatic source” – known in the Israeli media to mean the prime minister himself – stated that “the IDF will enter Rafah and destroy the Hamas battalions remaining there, whether there is a temporary truce for releasing the hostages or not,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

Such declarations signaled to Hamas that Israel did not intend to keep its side of a deal. And it led the Palestinian militant organization to harden its position and further insist on a formal end of the war before all hostages were released.

In September 2024, Netanyahu used the Israeli military in another spoiler tactic after pressure mounted on him to yield to protesters’ calls for a ceasefire

After Hamas operatives murdered six Israeli hostages as soldiers approached their hiding place, the Israeli public erupted in protests against its government, blaming it for sending soldiers instead of negotiating. High-level officers in the prime minister’s office then stole a document from Israeli intelligence, allegedly written by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, forged some of it, and leaked it to the German newspaper Bild.

Netanyahu then cited the document in a speech, claiming Sinwar designed his policy to use public pressure on Netanyahu. In short, he used this false publication, leaked allegedly by his own people, to suggest that the protesters were doing Hamas’ bidding. The protests subsequently decreased dramatically, and the pressure on Netanyahu to compromise subsided.

This pattern continued into the Trump administration.

‘No daylight’

U.S. decision-makers, from the president to negotiators in the Biden and Trump administrations, were no doubt aware of these practices. So why did they allow them to continue?

The answer is complicated. What has become clear, I believe, is that at the heart of the problem stands a single phrase: “no daylight.” It’s an oft-cited position of U.S. politicians to mean that, publicly at least, Israel and the United States act as if they are in complete agreement or alignment, with no policy differences between them.

Though a longtime ally of Israel, the U.S. used to be more forceful with Israel when the latter was deemed by Washington to have crossed the line or threatened important American interests in the region. That was evident when the U.S. imposed a ceasefire in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War despite Israeli opposition. It was also clear when the U.S. prevented an Israeli response to missiles that Iraq launched at it during the Gulf War in 1991.

But in the past few decades, a perception has taken hold in U.S. foreign policy circles that pressure on Israel’s government should only be done in private and that it should never include strong public rebuke.

Thus, even when, in June 2024, the Biden administration knew full well that Netanyahu was thwarting efforts to reach a ceasefire, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken came out with a statement blaming Hamas. And when Netanyahu breached a ceasefire in March 2025 and ordered the military to return to fighting, the Trump administration blamed Hamas.

Netanyahu, with his knowledge of U.S. politics, was well aware that Washington would be unlikely to publicly blame Israel. And he took full advantage of this fact to promote his spoiling of the ceasefire negotiations in broad daylight.

No choice but to sign

So what changed in October 2025 that allowed Trump to overcome Netanyahu’s actions as a spoiler and secure a ceasefire?

In short, Trump simply decided to play the same game. He publicly announced that the deal existed and left Netanyahu no choice but to sign it to preserve the perception that there is “no daylight” between Israel and the U.S. As a former Netanyahu aid suggested, “Trump is unpredictable and will not fall in line with the Israeli position.”

Trump’s announcement of the deal, before many of the details were agreed upon, enabled the ceasefire agreement, Israel’s partial withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas’ release of the Israeli hostages.

The road to an actual end of the war, not to mention Trump’s lofty declarations of a historic peace, is still in the far distance. But the ceasefire, if it holds, is a critical step, in my view, to end this terrible chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Boaz Atzili is related to two Israeli citizens who were held hostage by Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

– ref. Trump’s ability to counter Netanyahu’s spoiler tactics in public may have been key to advancing a ceasefire in Gaza – https://theconversation.com/trumps-ability-to-counter-netanyahus-spoiler-tactics-in-public-may-have-been-key-to-advancing-a-ceasefire-in-gaza-267810

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ivis García, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University

Across Jamaica, streets are littered with torn-off roofs, splintered wood and other debris left in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. Downed power lines have left communities in the dark, and many flooded and wind-damaged homes are unlivable.

Recovering from the devastation of one of the Atlantic’s most powerful storms, which struck on Oct. 28, 2025, will take months and likely years in some areas. That work is made much harder by the isolation of being an island.

As a researcher who has extensively studied disaster recovery in Puerto Rico after Hurricane María in 2017, I know that the decisions Jamaica makes in the days and weeks following the disaster will shape its recovery for years to come. Puerto Rico’s mistakes following Maria hold some important lessons.

Why island recovery is different

Islands face obstacles that most mainland communities don’t experience. Geographic isolation compounds every problem in ways that make both the emergency response and the long-term recovery fundamentally harder.

Communities can easily be cut off by damaged roads, particularly in rugged areas like Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. Every damaged port facility, every closed airport, every blocked road multiplies isolation in both the short and long term.

As Puerto Rico saw after Hurricane Maria, in the early days after a disaster, basic emergency supplies like tarps, batteries, fresh food and water and generators can become scarce.

Weeks and months later, reconstruction materials can still take a long time to arrive, extending the recovery time far beyond what most mainland communities would experience. This isn’t just a price-gouging ploy; it’s the reality of island supply chains and shipping infrastructure under stress. Isolation, limited port capacity and dependence on imports create unique vulnerabilities that slow disaster recovery, as research on Hurricane Maria’s impact on Puerto Rico has shown.

Local organizations: From response to recovery

One of the most important lessons I saw in Puerto Rico is that local nonprofits and community organizations are essential first responders in the emergency phase and then transition into recovery leaders.

These organizations know their communities intimately: who is elderly and homebound, which neighborhoods will have the greatest need, and how to navigate local conditions.

Right now, Jamaican churches, community groups and local organizations are in emergency response mode — checking on residents, distributing water and providing shelter. For example, the Jamaica Council of Churches, which has extensive disaster response experience, has started to coordinate relief efforts though its community networks.

Over the long term, my research shows that local organizations are crucial for helping families recover. They help to navigate insurance claims, organize rebuilding efforts, provide mental health support, and advocate for community needs in recovery planning, among many roles.

However, many disaster recovery funding sources favor larger, international nonprofits over local groups, even for distribution once supplies have arrived. In Puerto Rico after Hurricane María, only 10% of the nearly US$5 billion in federal contracts went to Puerto Rico-based groups, while 90% flowed to mainland contractors.

Jamaica will face similar dynamics as international funding arrives from sources such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. Ensuring the recovery funding goes through established Jamaican organizations can help the recovery.

The diaspora: Urgent help, long-term support

When institutional systems such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the government of Puerto Rico could not offer aid fast enough after Hurricane Maria, diaspora communities became crucial lifelines. Puerto Ricans in Chicago, New York and Florida organized relief efforts, raised funds and shipped supplies within days.

Months later, Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland continued providing financial support. They hosted displaced family members and advocated for federal aid. As my co-author Maura I. Toro-Morn and I document in our book “Puerto Ricans in Illinois,” diaspora communities that mobilized statewide in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria demonstrated how Puerto Ricans supported the island during crisis.

The Jamaican diaspora in London, Toronto, New York and Miami represents a massive potential resource for both immediate relief and long-term recovery.

In the hours after Melissa made landfall, these communities were already trying to reach family members and organize help. In Florida, Jamaican American student associations at several universities set up a GoFundMe page for relief efforts in Jamaica. In Connecticut, Caribbean social groups were gathering their communities to send support.

Jamaica’s government has multiple diaspora engagement platforms, such as JA Diaspora Engage, the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council and JAMPRO. But these primarily focus on economic development and investment rather than disaster response coordination. In contrast, Haiti established the Haitian Diaspora Emergency Response Unit in 2010 specifically for disaster coordination. After the 2021 earthquake, it coordinated relief efforts across more than 200 organizations, raising $1.5 million within weeks.

Jamaica could adapt its existing diaspora infrastructure to include an emergency response component. It could provide regular updates on community needs during disasters, verify trusted local partners for aid distribution, and facilitate logistics for shipping supplies over the years of recovery.

The out-migration risk: When emergencies becomes permanent

Perhaps the most devastating long-term impact of Hurricane María was massive population loss — a recovery failure that began with emergency response decisions.

Of Puerto Ricans who applied for federal assistance, approximately 50% had new addresses on the U.S. mainland. Their displacement that began as a temporary evacuation became permanent when Puerto Rico couldn’t restore viable living conditions quickly enough.

Without housing, employment or basic services for months, families had little choice but to leave. About a quarter of Puerto Rico’s schools were closed by the storm damage. I saw similar patterns in Maui, Hawaii, as it recovered from devastating wildfires in 2023. Limited lodging and high costs made it impossible for many displaced residents to stay.

Researchers estimated that of the nearly 400,000 people who left Puerto Rico in 2017 and 2018 after María, maybe 50,000 had returned by 2019.

Jamaica faces similar risks. The out-migration crisis doesn’t happen all at once – it’s a slow bleed that accelerates as emergency response transitions into prolonged recovery.

The time to prevent that pressure to leave is now. The government can help by communicating realistic timelines for service restoration and prioritizing school reopening. Every week increases the risk that temporary displacement becomes permanent emigration.

Building back better: Recovery, not just response

Disasters create opportunities to build back better, but that requires thinking about the future rather than simply recreating what existed before.

Jamaica can prioritize speed in emergency response by rebuilding the old system, or it can invest in a recovery that also builds resilience for the future. Climate change is fueling more intense and destructive hurricanes, leaving Caribbean islands at growing risk of damage.

Hurricane Maria revealed serious infrastructure vulnerabilities as the aging power grid collapsed under Category 4 winds. Puerto Rico could have rebuilt with more modern, resilient infrastructure. However, RAND Corporation research found that reconstruction largely restored the old, vulnerable centralized power system, rather than transforming it with distributed renewable energy, hardened transmission lines and microgrids that could withstand future storms.

Water systems, roads, schools and hospitals could also be rebuilt to better withstand storms and with redundancy – such as backup power sources and distributed water systems – to help the island recover faster in future hurricanes.

These improvements are expensive, and Jamaica will need international donors to help fund the recovery, not just the immediate emergency response.

The decisions made today will echo for years. Jamaica’s recovery doesn’t have to repeat Puerto Rico’s mistakes.

Ivis García receives funding from National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ford Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico, UNIDOS, Texas Appleseed, Natural Hazard Center, Chicago Community Trust, American Planning Association, and Salt Lake City Corporation.

– ref. 4 urgent lessons for Jamaica’s hurricane recovery from Puerto Rico’s struggles – and how the Jamaican diaspora could help after Melissa – https://theconversation.com/4-urgent-lessons-for-jamaicas-hurricane-recovery-from-puerto-ricos-struggles-and-how-the-jamaican-diaspora-could-help-after-melissa-268631

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ivis García, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University

Across Jamaica, streets are littered with torn-off roofs, splintered wood and other debris left in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. Downed power lines have left communities in the dark, and many flooded and wind-damaged homes are unlivable.

Recovering from the devastation of one of the Atlantic’s most powerful storms, which struck on Oct. 28, 2025, will take months and likely years in some areas. That work is made much harder by the isolation of being an island.

As a researcher who has extensively studied disaster recovery in Puerto Rico after Hurricane María in 2017, I know that the decisions Jamaica makes in the days and weeks following the disaster will shape its recovery for years to come. Puerto Rico’s mistakes hold some important lessons.

Why island recovery is different

Islands face obstacles that most mainland communities don’t experience. Geographic isolation compounds every problem in ways that make both the emergency response and the long-term recovery fundamentally harder.

Communities can easily be cut off by damaged roads, particularly in rugged areas like Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. Every damaged port facility, every closed airport, every blocked road multiplies isolation in both the short and long term.

As Puerto Rico saw after Hurricane Maria, in the early days after a disaster, basic emergency supplies like tarps, batteries, fresh food and water and generators can become scarce.

Weeks and months later, reconstruction materials can still take a long time to arrive, extending the recovery time far beyond what most mainland communities would experience. This isn’t just a price-gouging ploy; it’s the reality of island supply chains and shipping infrastructure under stress.

Research on Hurricane Maria’s impact on Puerto Rico has shown how an island’s isolation, limited port capacity and dependence on imports create unique vulnerabilities that slow disaster recovery.

Local organizations: From response to recovery

One of the most important lessons I saw in Puerto Rico is that local nonprofits and community organizations are essential first responders in the emergency phase and then transition into recovery leaders.

These organizations know their communities intimately: who is elderly and homebound, which neighborhoods will have the greatest need, and how to navigate local conditions.

Right now, Jamaican churches, community groups and local organizations are in emergency response mode — checking on residents, distributing water and providing shelter. For example, the Jamaica Council of Churches, which has extensive disaster response experience, has started to coordinate relief efforts though its community networks.

Over the long term, my research shows that local organizations are crucial for helping families recover. They help to navigate insurance claims, organize rebuilding efforts, provide mental health support, and advocate for community needs in recovery planning, among many roles.

However, many disaster recovery funding sources favor larger, international nonprofits over local groups, even for distribution once supplies have arrived. In Puerto Rico after Hurricane María, only 10% of the nearly US$5 billion in federal contracts went to Puerto Rico-based groups, while 90% flowed to mainland contractors.

Jamaica will face similar dynamics as international funding arrives from sources such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. Ensuring the recovery funding goes through established Jamaican organizations can help the recovery.

The diaspora: Urgent help, long-term support

When institutional systems such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the government of Puerto Rico could not offer aid fast enough after Hurricane Maria, diaspora communities became crucial lifelines. Puerto Ricans in Chicago, New York and Florida organized relief efforts, raised funds and shipped supplies within days.

Months later, Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland continued providing financial support. They hosted displaced family members and advocated for federal aid. As my co-author Maura I. Toro-Morn and I document in our book “Puerto Ricans in Illinois,” diaspora communities that mobilized statewide in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria demonstrated how Puerto Ricans supported the island during crisis.

The Jamaican diaspora in London, Toronto, New York and Miami represents a massive potential resource for both immediate relief and long-term recovery.

In the hours after Melissa made landfall, these communities were already trying to reach family members and organize help. In Florida, Jamaican American student associations at several universities set up a GoFundMe page for relief efforts in Jamaica. In Connecticut, Caribbean social groups were gathering their communities to send support.

Jamaica’s government has multiple diaspora engagement platforms, such as JA Diaspora Engage, the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council and JAMPRO. But these primarily focus on economic development and investment rather than disaster response coordination. In contrast, Haiti established the Haitian Diaspora Emergency Response Unit in 2010 specifically for disaster coordination. After the 2021 earthquake, it coordinated relief efforts across more than 200 organizations, raising $1.5 million within weeks.

Jamaica could adapt its existing diaspora infrastructure to include an emergency response component. It could provide regular updates on community needs during disasters, verify trusted local partners for aid distribution, and facilitate logistics for shipping supplies over the years of recovery.

The out-migration risk: When emergencies becomes permanent

Perhaps the most devastating long-term impact of Hurricane María was massive population loss — a recovery failure that began with emergency response decisions.

Of Puerto Ricans who applied for federal assistance, approximately 50% had new addresses on the U.S. mainland. Their displacement that began as a temporary evacuation became permanent when Puerto Rico couldn’t restore viable living conditions quickly enough.

Without housing, employment or basic services for months, families had little choice but to leave. About a quarter of Puerto Rico’s schools were closed by the storm damage. I saw similar patterns in Maui, Hawaii, as it recovered from devastating wildfires in 2023. Limited lodging and high costs made it impossible for many displaced residents to stay.

Researchers estimated that of the nearly 400,000 people who left Puerto Rico in 2017 and 2018 after María, maybe 50,000 had returned by 2019.

Jamaica faces similar risks. The out-migration crisis doesn’t happen all at once – it’s a slow bleed that accelerates as emergency response transitions into prolonged recovery.

The time to prevent that pressure to leave is now. The government can help by communicating realistic timelines for service restoration and prioritizing school reopening. Every week increases the risk that temporary displacement becomes permanent emigration.

Building back better: Recovery, not just response

Disasters create opportunities to build back better, but that requires thinking about the future rather than simply recreating what existed before.

Jamaica can prioritize speed in emergency response by rebuilding the old system, or it can invest in a recovery that also builds resilience for the future. Climate change is fueling more intense and destructive hurricanes, leaving Caribbean islands at growing risk of damage.

Hurricane Maria revealed serious infrastructure vulnerabilities as the aging power grid collapsed under Category 4 winds. Puerto Rico could have rebuilt with more modern, resilient infrastructure. However, RAND Corporation research found that reconstruction largely restored the old, vulnerable centralized power system, rather than transforming it with distributed renewable energy, hardened transmission lines and microgrids that could withstand future storms.

Water systems, roads, schools and hospitals could also be rebuilt to better withstand storms and with redundancy – such as backup power sources and distributed water systems – to help the island recover faster in future hurricanes.

These improvements are expensive, and Jamaica will need international donors to help fund the recovery, not just the immediate emergency response.

The decisions made today will echo for years. Jamaica’s recovery doesn’t have to repeat Puerto Rico’s mistakes.

Ivis García receives funding from National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ford Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico, UNIDOS, Texas Appleseed, Natural Hazard Center, Chicago Community Trust, American Planning Association, and Salt Lake City Corporation.

– ref. 4 urgent lessons for Jamaica from Puerto Rico’s troubled hurricane recovery – and how the Jamaican diaspora could help after Melissa – https://theconversation.com/4-urgent-lessons-for-jamaica-from-puerto-ricos-troubled-hurricane-recovery-and-how-the-jamaican-diaspora-could-help-after-melissa-268631

Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Patterson Soule, Lecturer of Economics, University of Richmond

After the U.S. census is conducted every 10 years, each state must redraw its congressional districts to account for any loss or gain of congressional seats and to maintain an equal population in each district.

But in 2025, breaking from standard practice, President Donald Trump has asked Republican states to redraw their districts mid-decade to provide a greater Republican advantage in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.

Not to be outdone, the Democrats have responded by starting a redistricting effort in California to offset the Republican gains in Texas. Californians will decide whether to approve those changes in a ballot measure on Nov. 4, 2025.

As other states join the fray, this battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives has escalated to what the media has called a “Redistricting War.” In this war, the control of the House may be determined more by how each party is able to redistrict states they control and less by how citizens vote.

The media and politicians focus on which party is winning or losing seats. But are the citizens winning or losing in this conflict?

Studies have shown that districts contorted for political purposes make it more difficult for constituents to know who their representatives are, reduces representative-citizen interactions and lowers voter participation in elections.

Changing a resident’s congressional district will sever any existing relationship or understanding of who their current representative is and how to seek help or share policy concerns. This forces residents to navigate unfamiliar political terrain as they figure out their new district, who is running, and what the candidates stand for. This added complexity discourages residents from voting.

More importantly, it diminishes their faith in the democratic process.

Staggering scale of changes

Just how big are the changes already enacted in Texas and proposed in California?

The University of Richmond Spatial Analysis Laboratory, which co-author Kyle Redican directs, has analyzed the impact of the mid-decade redistricting changes. The number of redistricting casualties – residents reassigned to a new congressional district – caused by these mid-decade changes in Texas and California is nearly 20 million. That’s about 6% of the overall U.S. population.

The scale of the changes is staggering: 10.4 million Texas residents, about 36% of the state’s population, and 9.2 million California residents, about 23% of the state’s population, will find themselves in new, unfamiliar congressional districts.

Only one district in Texas, of 38 total districts, and eight districts in California, of 52 total districts, remain untouched, making this a pervasive upheaval, not a surgical adjustment.

Most dramatically, nine districts in California and eight districts in Texas will have more than 50% new residents, fundamentally changing the overall composition of those districts.

The 41st District in California will have 100% new residents, while the 9th District in Texas will have 97% new residents, essentially becoming entirely different constituencies.

Making a change of this size mid-decade, as opposed to once every decade, will be highly disruptive and represent a major tear in the fabric of representative democracy.

Lawmakers picking their voters

So who exactly is being moved? The demographic patterns reveal the calculated nature of these partisan manipulations.

In Texas, Black and Hispanic residents are disproportionately shuffled into new districts compared to white residents.

Minorities constitute 67.1% of Texans who have been moved into a new district, while minorities constitute only 56.4% of Texans who get to remain in their same district. By moving more minorities out of a district and into another reliably Republican district, partisan mapmakers are able to reduce the likely Democratic voter share in that district and swing it to be a Republican-leaning district.

California follows the opposite playbook: White residents are disproportionately moved.

There, 41.2% of those moved into a new district are white, while only 32.7% of those who get to remain in their same district are white. In this case, California is moving likely Republican voters into another reliably Democratic district, which reduces the Republican voter share in the original district and swings it to be a Democratic-leaning district.

In either case, legislators are making deliberate decisions about which residents to move to achieve a political goal.

Yet fundamental to a representative democracy is a simple principle: The people choose their representatives. It’s not that representatives choose their constituents. The founders envisioned the House of Representatives as the people’s house, representing and accountable to the voters.

In the current mid-decade redistricting, the legislators are handpicking their constituencies.

Mocking the fundamental idea

Does the redistricting battle ever end?

If mid-decade redistricting becomes an accepted way to win elections, each time a party wins control of a state legislature and governorship they will have the incentive to redistrict. Each of these future redistrictings will continue to negatively affect citizens’ participation in the representative process and mock the fundamental idea that citizens should choose their representatives.

It’s entirely possible that redistricting could happen every two years – though that is an extreme outcome of this competition.

Texas and California have fired the opening shots in the redistricting arms race. Other states – Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia – are joining the fight, each time diminishing the public trust in our democratic process.

Today, it’s 20 million Americans caught in the crossfire. Tomorrow, it could be 100 million as this conflict spreads from state to state. With tit-for-tat redistricting offsetting gains in seats, who is really winning?

For sure, we know who is losing – the people and representative democracy.

Spatial Analysis Lab intern Ryan Poulsen worked on the block data processing for this story.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Voters lose when maps get redrawn before every election instead of once a decade − a trend started in Texas, moving to California and likely spreading across the country – https://theconversation.com/voters-lose-when-maps-get-redrawn-before-every-election-instead-of-once-a-decade-a-trend-started-in-texas-moving-to-california-and-likely-spreading-across-the-country-268181

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By C. Michael White, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy Practice, University of Connecticut

If you take cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, you may have noticed a flurry of news coverage since late October 2025 about an extensive recall of thousands of bottles of atorvastatin, the generic version of Lipitor.

Both generic atorvastatin and brand-name Lipitor contain the same active ingredient, atorvastatin calcium, and are considered bioequivalent by the Food and Drug Administration. This medication is the No. 1-selling drug in the U.S., with over 115 million prescriptions going to more than 29 million Americans.

I am a clinical pharmacologist and pharmacist who has assessed the manufacturing quality of prescription, over-the-counter and illicit drugs, as well as dietary supplements.

This atorvastatin recall is large, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of patients. But it’s only the latest in a series of concerning manufacturing issues that have come to light since 2019.

What pills are being recalled, and why?

Ascend Laboratories, based in New Jersey, originally issued the recall for about 142,000 bottles of its generic atorvastatin on Sept. 19. Each bottle contained 90, 500 or 1,000 tablets, enough to fill prescriptions for three, 17 or 33 patients, respectively, for one month.

About three weeks later, on Oct. 10, the FDA quantified the risk of using these poor-quality tablets and gave the recall a Class II status, which means that the medication could cause “temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences.”

Manufacturers must conduct quality tests on random samples of tablets from every batch they make. These tests make sure the pills contain the correct dosage of the active ingredient, are made to the proper physical specifications and are not contaminated with heavy metals or microbes. If the samples test “out of specification” for any feature, the company must conduct further testing and destroy defective batches, losing the cost of manufacturing them.

In this case, sample pills failed to dissolve properly when they were tested. Batches manufactured from November 2024 through September 2025 all had this defect.

As with other drugs, when you swallow atorvastatin, it must dissolve before the active ingredient can be absorbed by the body. It then goes to the liver, where it reduces the blood concentrations of low-density lipoproteins – also called LDL, or “bad cholesterol.”

If the drug doesn’t dissolve properly, the amount absorbed by the body is substantially reduced.

Lowering LDL with atorvastatin has been shown to reduce cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes after a few years by 22%. When almost 30,000 people in a 2021 study stopped taking their atorvastatin or other statin for six months, the risk of cardiovascular events, deaths and emergency room visits increased between 12% to 15%.

So, while patients wouldn’t immediately feel a difference if their atorvastatin tablets didn’t dissolve properly, their risk of cardiovascular events would significantly rise.

What should patients on generic atorvastatin do?

First, don’t stop taking the medication without talking with your pharmacist or prescriber. Even if you have the recalled pills, taking them is still better than not taking the medicine at all.

You can determine whether your medication came from Ascend Laboratories by looking at your prescription label.

Search for the abbreviations MFG or MFR, which stand for “manufacturing” or “manufacturer.” If it says “MFG Ascend” or “MFR Ascend,” that means that Ascend Laboratories supplied the medication.

The first five letters of a National Drug Code, abbreviated as NDC on the prescription label, also reveal the manufacturer or distributor. Ascend products have the number 67877.

If Ascend Laboratories is the distributor, a pharmacist can cross-reference your prescription number to obtain the lot number and compare it with the posted lot numbers on the FDA website for recalled atorvastatin. If your product has been recalled, your pharmacy may have other generic versions of atorvastatin in stock that are not part of this recall.

Alternatively, the pharmacist can get a new prescription from your health care provider for another generic statin drug, such as rosuvastatin, which works similarly.

A pattern of lapses for overseas manufacturers

While the defective atorvastatin is distributed by a U.S. company, it is actually manufactured by Alkem Laboratories in India.

In fact, many aspects of pharmaceutical drug manufacturing are now occurring overseas, primarily in China and India. This has limited the FDA’s ability to provide the oversight required for drugs sold in the U.S.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the FDA performed routine surveillance inspections of U.S. manufacturing plants every three years, but seldom conducted them overseas. In the wake of several high-profile manufacturing quality lapses, including at the Indian generic drug giant Ranbaxy Laboratories, Congress established a funding mechanism and the FDA established a universal standard for inspecting both U.S. and overseas manufacturers every five years.

However, the U.S. fell behind with international inspections after COVID-19 shut down international travel, and it has yet to catch up. Additionally, overseas manufacturers generally get warning of an upcoming inspection, making the process potentially less rigorous than in the U.S.

A lack of inspections for eye drop manufacturers, especially in India, led to massive recalls in 2023 after a wave of rare eye infections caused some people to lose their eyesight. The problem was traced to widespread unsanitary manufacturing conditions and improper testing for sterility at overseas facilities.

In 2024, eight deaths and multiple hospitalizations led an Indian manufacturer, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, to recall 47 million potassium chloride extended-release capsules that did not dissolve properly. In February 2025, inspectors found that the company had falsified quality results.

The FDA recently started laboratory spot testing of prescription and over-the-counter drugs arriving in the U.S. to compensate for these limitations. Outside laboratories such as Valisure also do independent testing. Independent testing has caught several dangerous products, but due to limited resources, only a few products can be tested each year.

In 2023, Alkem Laboratories, which manufactured the currently recalled atorvastatin, had to recall 58,000 bottles of the blood pressure drug metoprolol XL because the pills also did not properly dissolve. Spot testing also led to widespread recalls after FDA and Valisure laboratories found cancer-causing chemicals called nitrosamines in some blood pressure, diabetes and indigestion drugs tested between 2019 and 2020, as well as benzene in numerous sunscreen and antibacterial gel products tested between 2020 and early 2025.

Raising consumer vigilance

With these growing gaps in oversight, it’s reasonable to be mindful of changes in how a particular medication affects you. If your prescription drug suddenly stops working, it might be because that particular batch of the medication was not manufactured properly. Alerting the FDA about sudden loss of drug effectiveness could help the agency more quickly identify manufacturing issues.

In 2024, the FDA started sharing the inspection burden with other regulatory agencies like the European Medicines Agency for the European Union. Such coordinated efforts could lead to less duplication and a bump in inspections of overseas manufacturers.

In the meantime, however, consumers are largely at the mercy of spotty inspections and testing, and rarely hear about problems unless poorly manufactured drugs cause widespread adverse events.

C. Michael White 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. Atorvastatin recall may affect hundreds of thousands of patients – and reflects FDA’s troubles inspecting medicines manufactured overseas – https://theconversation.com/atorvastatin-recall-may-affect-hundreds-of-thousands-of-patients-and-reflects-fdas-troubles-inspecting-medicines-manufactured-overseas-268364

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Eli Alshanetsky, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Temple University

The latest generation of artificial intelligence models is sharper and smoother, producing polished text with fewer errors and hallucinations. As a philosophy professor, I have a growing fear: When a polished essay no longer shows that a student did the thinking, the grade above it becomes hollow – and so does the diploma.

The problem doesn’t stop in the classroom. In fields such as law, medicine and journalism, trust depends on knowing that human judgment guided the work. A patient, for instance, expects a doctor’s prescription to reflect an expert’s thought and training.

AI products can now be used to support people’s decisions. But even when AI’s role in doing that type of work is small, you can’t be sure whether the professional drove the process or merely wrote a few prompts to do the job. What dissolves in this situation is accountability – the sense that institutions and individuals can answer for what they certify. And this comes at a time when public trust in civic institutions is already fraying.

I see education as the proving ground for a new challenge: learning to work with AI while preserving the integrity and visibility of human thinking. Crack the problem here, and a blueprint could emerge for other fields where trust depends on knowing that decisions still come from people. In my own classes, we’re testing an authorship protocol to ensure student writing stays connected to their thinking, even with AI in the loop.

When learning breaks down

The core exchange between teacher and student is under strain. A recent MIT study found that students using large language models to help with essays felt less ownership of their work and did worse on key writing‑related measures.

Students still want to learn, but many feel defeated. They may ask: “Why think through it myself when AI can just tell me?” Teachers worry their feedback no longer lands. As one Columbia University sophomore told The New Yorker after turning in her AI-assisted essay: “If they don’t like it, it wasn’t me who wrote it, you know?”

Universities are scrambling. Some instructors are trying to make assignments “AI-proof,” switching to personal reflections or requiring students to include their prompts and process. Over the past two years, I’ve tried versions of these in my own classes, even asking students to invent new formats. But AI can mimic almost any task or style.

Understandably, others now call for a return to what are being dubbed “medieval standards”: in-class test-taking with “blue books” and oral exams. Yet those mostly reward speed under pressure, not reflection. And if students use AI outside class for assignments, teachers will simply lower the bar for quality, much as they did when smartphones and social media began to erode sustained reading and attention.

Many institutions resort to sweeping bans or hand the problem to ed-tech firms, whose detectors log every keystroke and replay drafts like movies. Teachers sift through forensic timelines; students feel surveilled. Too useful to ban, AI slips underground like contraband.

The challenge isn’t that AI makes strong arguments available; books and peers do that, too. What’s different is that AI seeps into the environment, constantly whispering suggestions into the student’s ear. Whether the student merely echoes these or works them into their own reasoning is crucial, but teachers cannot assess that after the fact. A strong paper may hide dependence, while a weak one may reflect real struggle.

Meanwhile, other signatures of a students’ reasoning – awkward phrasings that improve over the course of a paper, the quality of citations, general fluency of the writing – are obscured by AI as well.

Restoring the link between process and product

Though many would happily skip the effort of thinking for themselves, it’s what makes learning durable and prepares students to become responsible professionals and leaders. Even if handing control to AI were desirable, it can’t be held accountable, and its makers don’t want that role. The only option as I see it is to protect the link between a student’s reasoning and the work that builds it.

Imagine a classroom platform where teachers set the rules for each assignment, choosing how AI can be used. A philosophy essay might run in AI-free mode – students write in a window that disables copy-paste and external AI calls but still lets them save drafts. A coding project might allow AI assistance but pause before submission to ask the student brief questions about how their code works. When the work is sent to the teacher, the system issues a secure receipt – a digital tag, like a sealed exam envelope – confirming that it was produced under those specified conditions.

This isn’t detection: no algorithm scanning for AI markers. And it isn’t surveillance: no keystroke logging or draft spying. The assignment’s AI terms are built into the submission process. Work that doesn’t meet those conditions simply won’t go through, like when a platform rejects an unsupported file type.

In my lab at Temple University, we’re piloting this approach by using the authorship protocol I’ve developed. In the main authorship check mode, an AI assistant poses brief, conversational questions that draw students back into their thinking: “Could you restate your main point more clearly?” or “Is there a better example that shows the same idea?” Their short, in-the-moment responses and edits allow the system to measure how well their reasoning and final draft align.

The prompts adapt in real time to each student’s writing, with the intent of making the cost of cheating higher than the effort of thinking. The goal isn’t to grade or replace teachers but to reconnect the work students turn in with the reasoning that produced it. For teachers, this restores confidence that their feedback lands on a student’s actual reasoning. For students, it builds metacognitive awareness, helping them see when they’re genuinely thinking and when they’re merely offloading.

I believe teachers and researchers should be able to design their own authorship checks, each issuing a secure tag that certifies the work passed through their chosen process, one that institutions can then decide to trust and adopt.

How humans and intelligent machines interact

There are related efforts underway outside education. In publishing, certification efforts already experiment with “human-written” stamps. Yet without reliable verification, such labels collapse into marketing claims. What needs to be verified isn’t keystrokes but how people engage with their work.

That shifts the question to cognitive authorship: not whether or how much AI was used, but how its integration affects ownership and reflection. As one doctor recently observed, learning how to deploy AI in the medical field will require a science of its own. The same holds for any field that depends on human judgment.

I see this protocol acting as an interaction layer with verification tags that travel with the work wherever it goes, like email moving between providers. It would complement technical standards for verifying digital identity and content provenance that already exist. The key difference is existing protocols certify the artifact, not the human judgment behind it.

Without giving professions control over how AI is used and ensuring the place of human judgment in AI-assisted work, AI technology risks dissolving the trust on which professions and civic institutions depend. AI is not just a tool; it is a cognitive environment reshaping how we think. To inhabit this environment on our own terms, we must build open systems that keep human judgment at the center.

Eli Alshanetsky 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. Where does human thinking end and AI begin? An AI authorship protocol aims to show the difference – https://theconversation.com/where-does-human-thinking-end-and-ai-begin-an-ai-authorship-protocol-aims-to-show-the-difference-266132

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Tyler J. Woodward, Graduate Research Assistant, University of Iowa

A newly discovered protein from Earth’s toughest animal is inspiring breakthrough therapies for cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Tardigrades, often called water bears or moss piglets, are microscopic creatures that can survive just about anything: boiling heat, freezing cold and crushing pressure. In fact, tardigrades are the only known animal to survive in outer space. They can also endure radiation levels up to 2,000 times higher than what human cells can tolerate. Naturally, scientists have long wondered: How do they do it?

In 2016, researchers uncovered one of the tardigrade’s secrets: a gene with a sequence unlike any other known to exist in nature that makes a protein found only in tardigrades. When they introduced this protein into human cells, those cells also became more resistant to radiation. The protein was named damage suppressor, or Dsup, because it helps protect DNA – the blueprint for life – from damage.

Since then, researchers around the world have been trying to figure out exactly how Dsup works. As a biochemist studying Dsup, my goal is to uncover how this protein functions and one day use these insights to design new therapies that protect human cells from DNA damage.

How Dsup protects tardigrade DNA

Scientists have proposed several explanations for Dsup’s remarkable ability to protect DNA from radiation. However, these models have varying levels of experimental support, and no single explanation has gained broad consensus from the field.

In my recent work, I found that Dsup interacts strongly with DNA. It clings tightly to DNA – not just at one spot of the molecule but along its entirety. Dsup doesn’t have a fixed shape. Instead, it behaves more like a spaghetti noodle in water, constantly shifting, bending and adopting many different shapes. When it binds to DNA, it causes the strands to slightly unwind, like a zipper being loosened. This gentle unwinding may make DNA less susceptible to damage when exposed to radiation.

Some scientists instead believe Dsup acts like a shield. In this model, Dsup coats and physically blocks radiation from striking DNA. Others think it boosts the cell’s repair machinery, fixing damage before it causes detrimental effects.

In fact, it’s possible many of these models could be true at the same time. Since Dsup protects against many types of radiation – as well as the toxic byproducts created from radiation damage – it’s likely this mysterious protein has multiple functions.

Understanding Dsup could one day help people better protect their own cells – bringing a bit of the tardigrade’s extraordinary resilience to human health.

Using Dsup to advance medicine

Scientists are exploring whether Dsup could be used in medicine, especially in diseases where DNA damage plays a major role.

Because nearly all cancers involve DNA damage, some researchers think Dsup – or treatments inspired by it – could one day help prevent cells from turning cancerous. It might also protect healthy tissue during cancer treatments such as radiation or chemotherapy, which work by damaging DNA but often harm healthy cells in the process.

Dsup’s potential in human health extends much further. For instance, during heart attacks or strokes, organ tissues experience bursts of oxidative stress – chemical reactions that lead to extensive DNA damage. This oxidative stress can worsen disease severity and long-term outcomes for patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases. If Dsup can protect DNA during these stressful events, it might be able to reduce the cellular damage they cause.

Early animal studies are already showing promising results, demonstrating that mammals can produce Dsup, eliciting similar effects. In one study, scientists used an injection of mRNA – similar to the technology behind COVID-19 mRNA vaccines – to deliver the genetic instructions to produce Dsup in mice. When the mice were later exposed to high doses of radiation, those producing Dsup had far less DNA damage than untreated mice, suggesting real protective power in living organisms.

Dsup in agriculture, space and more

Beyond medicine, Dsup could make an impact in agriculture, space exploration and even data storage.

When researchers engineered rice and tobacco plants to produce Dsup, the plants became more resistant to radiation – an exciting sign for Dsup’s potential to mitigate crop damage.

In space biology, Dsup could help astronauts withstand the intense cosmic radiation that limits long-term missions.

And in a futuristic twist, some scientists are investigating how creatures like tardigrades could be used for ultrastable data storage. Current digital media is susceptible to damage from environmental conditions such as high temperatures or high levels of radiation. Digital media could be converted into a DNA sequence and genetically engineered into the tardigrade genome. Dsup could then aid in protecting the data from extreme conditions.

What’s next for Dsup?

Since its discovery nearly a decade ago, the scientific community has been excited about the potential technological advancements that Dsup could enable. However, significant research is still required to fully understand exactly how this mysterious protein functions in living organisms. Several scientific groups around the world are actively studying the unique properties of this protein.

Despite the work ahead, the story of Dsup demonstrates how scientists can learn lessons from tiny animals such as tardigrades. By studying the molecular mysteries of these remarkably resilient creatures, researchers are creating breakthrough tools to combat human disease and advance biotechnology.

Tyler J. Woodward receives support through the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

– ref. Water bears survive cosmic radiation with one DNA-protecting protein – learning how could boost human resilience, too – https://theconversation.com/water-bears-survive-cosmic-radiation-with-one-dna-protecting-protein-learning-how-could-boost-human-resilience-too-268057

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Carl F. Weems, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Iowa State University

Opening my social media feed, I’m often confronted with a jarring contrast: intense, diametrically opposed perspectives from different friends. The comments can be laced with insult, character attack and invective.

I’m certainly not the only one noticing this kind of vitriolic polarization. Recent polling suggests a majority of Americans believe that the country cannot overcome its current divisions.

As a professor of human development and family studies, I’ve researched and written about traumatic and adverse childhood experiences and existential anxiety for over 20 years. Scrolling through my feed, I was struck by the recognition that both sides had something in common: a profound sense of existential fear.

While political polarization has many potential causes, existential anxiety is one that has received less attention.

What is existential anxiety?

Philosophers have written about the concept of existential anxiety for centuries. My own empirical research is based on the writings of the mid-20th century philosopher Paul Tillich, who outlines three facets of this fundamental human fear:

• Fate and death – fears of nonexistence and uncertainty about one’s ultimate destiny.
• Emptiness and meaninglessness – fears about life’s deeper purpose or ultimate concern.
• Guilt and condemnation – fears of moral failure or threats to one’s ethical self.

Existential anxiety is humanity’s inherent confrontation with mortality, moral responsibility and search for meaning.

My colleagues and I have found that these fears are very common – between 75% and 86% of participants in our research endorsing at least one concern. Higher levels of existential anxiety are associated with indicators of poor mental health, such as symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation. Existential anxiety levels are also elevated among those who have experienced a life-threatening event. For instance, after surviving a natural disaster, up to 94% of research participants reported at least one dimension of this fear.

Importantly, our research suggests that existential anxiety is associated with aggression. In one study of teens, we found that more extreme existential anxiety as measured with the existential anxiety questionnaire was associated with two kinds of aggression: proactive and reactive. Proactive aggression is goal driven, deliberate and unprovoked, while reactive aggression comes in response to a real or perceived provocation or threat.

Underlying theme in existential anxiety

Existential fears have their roots in things that pretty much everyone worries about, at least from time to time. But what specifically triggers this anxiety can be different depending on your worldview.

For instance, as I scroll social media, I see friends expressing anxiety about fundamental safety issues, the fate of the nation, cultural erosion and the loss of traditional values. These concerns are mirrored by other friends’ posts expressing concern that the environment is being destroyed, democracy is failing and equality is lost.

Though the content of these expressions can be ideologically opposed, each reflects deeper concerns about societal fate, death or the end of a meaningful way of life. Unspoken but underlying is the fear that the “other side” represents a real and impending threat to one’s very existence.

Though the triggering circumstances can differ based on personal beliefs, both sides’ perspectives reflect existential concerns about meaning, moral direction and survival.

But existential anxiety isn’t just the likely root of some of this distress. Research suggests that underlying fear can increase aggression. Left unchecked, fears may spiral into potential violence.

Where do we go?

The good news is that while core existential fears may never fully abate, you can identify them, alleviate them and possibly even channel them toward adaptive action.

The techniques of cognitive behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy provide a path toward finding common ground and preventing existential fears from escalating into violence.

Core to these techniques is recognizing and facing the fear. They both help participants overcome common tendencies such as seeing only one side of the evidence or catastrophizing that things are much worse than they really are. Acceptance and commitment therapy, for example, teaches participants how to cultivate psychological flexibility, learn to tolerate uncomfortable thoughts or emotions, and practice acting in alignment with one’s core values. Together, these skills foster positive action as opposed to destructive reaction.

As disturbing as my social media feed can be, I’ve also seen real-world instances of people figuring out how to connect across a divide. For instance, one poster appreciated another’s comment for helping her realize the existential value his perspective represented to him. Following that exchange, the second poster acknowledged he’d been seeing only one side. In other words, they each recognized the other person’s existential fear – accepting it as such helped them de-escalate the confrontation and move forward more constructively.

The critical point is that people on all sides of every issue yearn for safety, purpose and belonging. Recognizing that the core existential concerns we all share underlie polarized fears might be an important step toward bridging divides and reducing the risk of fear-driven aggression.

Carl F. Weems receives or has received funding from the state of Iowa, Youth Shelter Services of Iowa, Environmental Protection Agency, US National Science Foundation, and US National Institutes of Health. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, a member of the Iowa Academy of Education, and American Association for the Advancement of Science.

– ref. What both sides of America’s polarized divide share: Deep anxieties about the meaning of life and existence itself – https://theconversation.com/what-both-sides-of-americas-polarized-divide-share-deep-anxieties-about-the-meaning-of-life-and-existence-itself-266551

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Canton Winer, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Northern Illinois University

When I asked Manisha to describe her gender identity, she gave a simple answer: “Meh.”

“I don’t have a gender identity,” Manisha explained. “I get that other people look at me and see a woman but, for myself, there’s a blank space where my gender ‘should’ be. My gender is ‘none.’”

Manisha’s response didn’t shock me. In my work as a sociologist, I had been interviewing asexual individuals – people who experience low to no sexual attraction – across the United States for months from 2020 to 2021. Like Manisha, more than a third of the 77 people I talked to were uncomfortable with defining themselves through the lens of gender. Gender was, as I came to describe it, detached from their sense of self.

This finding comes at a tumultuous time in the politics of gender. On the one hand, transgender and queer social movements have sought to expand people’s ability to break out of the gender binary of man or woman. On the other, the Trump administration has aggressively worked to reassert the gender binary by law.

In my recently published research, I draw on interviews with 30 asexual people who, like Manisha, felt uncomfortable adopting any gender identity. These individuals said they felt that gender was irrelevant, unimportant, pointless and, overall, not a helpful framework for understanding and defining themselves.

These feelings of not identifying with gender highlight an unexpected belief shared by conservative politicians and by many within transgender and queer communities: the assumption that everyone has a gender identity.

Gender detachment

During this research, I spoke with asexual people from a variety of backgrounds across the U.S., ranging from ages 18 to 50. When I began, I planned on comparing the gendered experiences of three groups: asexual men, asexual women and nonbinary asexuals. I quickly had to abandon that plan as I repeatedly encountered interviewees who did not fit into any gender category.

Ollia was the first person who struck me as impossible to assign a gender to. “My gender is like an empty lot: There may have been a building there at some point, but it’s long since fallen away, and there’s no need to rebuild it,” they explained. “The space is better for being left empty.”

Many struggled to explain this sense that they did not truly have a gender identity. “There really isn’t a specific term that can be used to describe how uninterested I am in the concept of gender as a whole,” said a respondent named Faye.

Faced with a language vacuum, I eventually coined a term to describe these distant and skeptical relationships with gender: gender detachment.

Compulsory gender

Gender detachment might sound similar to being agender – that is, not having a gender. Researchers often see agender as a subset of nonbinary. However, most respondents drew a distinction between gender detachment and being agender or nonbinary.

For example, when I initially asked Brandy about their gender identity, they said they were agender. When I asked how accurate that label felt, however, Brandy explained that the term ultimately felt incorrect.

“A lot of people see gender as a spectrum from pink to purple to blue … and I’m a splotch of green on the frame,” Brandy explained. “I just don’t see myself in that spectrum. While agender and nonbinary are handy terms, they still work within a gendered framework I don’t place myself in.”

Brandy quietly pointed out something I found profound: The assumption that everyone has a gender is so omnipresent that even the sense that you do not have a gender has been turned into a gender identity – agender.

In other words, gender detachment poses a significant challenge to how people often think about gender – namely, the assumption that everyone has a gender identity. Gender detachment isn’t just about not identifying as a man or a woman; it’s about not identifying with gender at all.

Sociologists broadly agree that gender is a social construct, meaning its definition, norms, behaviors and roles are created and shaped by society, not by biology. This perspective implicitly understands gender categories to also be concepts created and shaped by cultural norms.

Western societies generally assume that everyone does – and should – have a gender identity. But what people who experience gender detachment show is that the very system of gender categorization is itself a social construct: an idea based on cultural norms rather than in empirical reality. I call this assumption compulsory gender.

Resisting compulsory categorization

Gender detachment represents a way people are resisting gender as a compulsory system of categorization.

Asexual people are uniquely positioned to question conventions surrounding gender. Asexuality upends the belief that everyone experiences sexual attraction – an assumption often called compulsory sexuality. It made sense to me that as asexual people begin questioning the universality of sexuality, some might also being to question the universality of gender. As compulsory sexuality crumbles, so does compulsory gender.

Sociologists often reinforce compulsory gender in how they measure and ask questions about gender. Indeed, that was initially the case for my own study. In each interview, I asked respondents about their gender identity. Almost all gave one. It was only when I asked them about their feelings about gender that I realized the identity they gave me did not feel entirely accurate to them. Rather, they felt detached from gender overall. My findings suggest that going beyond simply asking respondents to report their gender could help researchers better understand how people feel about the very concept of having a gender identity.

One way of understanding the current gender tug-of-war in U.S. culture is as a struggle over what gender identities people are allowed to claim. One camp seeks to expand how many gender identities are available and allow people to choose what resonates most with them. The other camp seeks to obligate people to identify solely within a gender binary of man or woman.

My findings on gender detachment suggest that despite their consequential differences, both camps reinforce compulsory gender by assuming gender is a universal element of who people are.

Canton Winer 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 gender is like an empty lot’ − the people who reject man, woman and any other gender label – https://theconversation.com/my-gender-is-like-an-empty-lot-the-people-who-reject-man-woman-and-any-other-gender-label-267286

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mariel Borowitz, Associate Professor of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology

Interest in the Moon has been high – just in the past two years there have been 12 attempts to send missions to the Moon, nearly half of which private companies undertook. With so much activity, it’s important to start thinking about coordination and safety.

To some, this concern may seem premature. About 10 to 20 missions are headed to the Moon in the next few years – far short of the thousands of satellites operating in Earth’s orbit. And the area around the Moon, referred to as cislunar space, is very large. Earth’s orbital area is often considered to extend from near Earth out to geostationary orbit, where a spacecraft orbits at a speed that makes it appear stationary from the Earth’s surface.

Cislunar space extends from geostationary orbit out to the Moon – an area with a volume 2,000 times larger than Earth’s orbital area. This size discrepancy seems to suggest crowding around the Moon may not be an immediate concern.

However, missions tend to choose from a select set of stable orbits around the Moon, so the vastness of cislunar space may be misleading when thinking about whether missions will intersect. Also, most government sensors that track spacecraft aren’t capable of consistently detecting and monitoring objects so far away from Earth, partly due to the glare from the Moon itself.

That uncertainty, combined with the high cost of lunar missions, makes operators more likely to move their spacecraft to avoid a collision, even when the probability of a collision is quite low.

As an interdisciplinary team combining space policy and astrodynamics expertise, we’ve been studying how companies and space agencies could manage traffic in lunar orbit without unnecessary maneuvers. Our research, published in March 2025 in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, shows that due to the popularity of certain orbits and the uncertainties regarding each spacecraft’s location, potential collisions become an issue surprisingly quickly.

Our simulations show that with only 50 satellites in lunar orbit, each of those satellites will need to maneuver four times a year on average to avoid a potential crash – a significant cost in terms of fuel as well as potential disruption to mission objectives. Lunar orbit could easily reach that number of satellites within a decade if activity continues to increase.

Maneuvering satellites

Countries’ reports on their current operations in lunar orbit seem to support our finding that congestion around the Moon is quickly becoming a significant issue. In 2023, the Indian Space Research Organization reported it had maneuvered its Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft three times in four years, even though only six spacecraft orbited the Moon in that time.

Better monitoring and coordination between different space agencies could prevent congestion and keep countries from having to regularly move their spacecraft.

Monitoring cislunar space is not just important for safety – it can also help support national security. Multiple countries have weapons that can destroy satellites, and some in the space community are concerned that space weapons could be placed in cislunar space to escape detection. The U.S. Space Force is considering the potential security dimensions of cislunar space.

The U.S. currently has significant gaps in its ability to monitor this region, and Mariel’s research suggests that developing this capability – referred to as cislunar space domain awareness – should be a priority for national security. Improved monitoring would help the U.S. military observe activity in cislunar space, gather intelligence and assess potential threats.

Solutions in progress

Several research programs are experimenting in this area. The Air Force Research Laboratory is funding a program called Oracle that is developing multiple systems to improve the U.S. ability to monitor cislunar space.

The first Oracle satellite is expected to launch in 2027. It will be located at a Lagrange point, which is a spot between the Earth and the Moon where the gravitational pull of each object keeps the spacecraft in a stable position. From there, it can detect objects in cislunar space that sensors on Earth cannot see.

Improving monitoring is only one part of the solution. Entities sending missions to the Moon, including governments and companies, will need to share the locations of their operational missions and coordinate to avoid predicted collisions.

A NASA program dedicated to tracking and assessing lunar traffic is helping to facilitate this effort. The program compares individual operators’ information about their spacecraft’s current and future planned location to identify potential close approaches. In the future, this type of coordination could improve safety, when combined with sensor observations from systems like Oracle.

Countries and companies planning missions to the Moon could also try to coordinate before they launch their systems, so no missions end up operating too close together.

The Outer Space Treaty, a set of basic principles developed early in the space age, requires that countries avoid harmfully interfering with other countries’ activities, but the treaty doesn’t outline how to do this.

The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space formed a team in February 2025 that hopes to address these and other coordination issues on the Moon.

With government and commercial missions to the Moon increasing, and NASA’s next human mission to the Moon planned for early 2026, countries will need to work together to protect everyone’s interest in the Moon.

Mariel Borowitz has previously received funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation.

Brian Gunter has current or prior funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation.

– ref. With more Moon missions on the horizon, avoiding crowding and collisions will be a growing challenge – https://theconversation.com/with-more-moon-missions-on-the-horizon-avoiding-crowding-and-collisions-will-be-a-growing-challenge-261344