Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Gareth Barkin, Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies, University of Puget Sound

A friend in Indonesia recently told me about a conversation he had with ChatGPT. He had typed a question in Indonesian – Bahasa Indonesia – about how to handle a difficult family dispute. The chatbot responded fluently, in perfect Indonesian, with advice about communication strategies and conflict resolution. The grammar was flawless. The tone was appropriate. And yet something felt off.

What the AI offered was advice rooted in American cultural assumptions: prioritize your own preferences, communicate directly, and if family members don’t respect your boundaries, consider cutting them off.

The response was in Indonesian but shaped by values that centered individual autonomy over the consensus-building, social harmony and collective family dynamics that tend to matter more in Indonesian social life.

My friend was skeptical enough to notice the mismatch and mention it to me. Many users might not. That is what prompted my research, published in the International Review of Modern Sociology, into a pattern I found across major AI systems: Even when they were fluent in several languages, the language models retained their Western worldview. I call this “epistemological persistence.”

Fluency is not the same as understanding

I have studied Indonesian society, media and culture for more than 30 years. That gives me a particular vantage point on a problem that reaches well beyond Indonesia: large language models – LLMs – like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can now speak dozens of languages with remarkable fluency. That fluency creates the impression that AI understands local cultures.

Producing grammatically correct Indonesian, Arabic, Swahili or Hindi, however, does not change the underlying worldview through which these systems reason. It does not alter how they think about people, relationships, responsibility or what counts as a good outcome.

Those assumptions are shaped by training data drawn predominantly from English-language sources based in the United States. Meta’s open-weight model LLaMA 2 was trained on approximately 89.7% English-language text; LLaMA 3 includes only about 5% non-English data. Major commercial models don’t publish equivalent breakdowns but draw heavily on the same sources. Arabic, the fifth-most-spoken language globally, accounts for under 1% of content in large training datasets. Languages with tens of millions of speakers, including Bengali and Hausa, barely appear.

Beneath the surface of these multilingual conversations, English functions as a hidden intermediary. A study by researchers at the University of Oxford found that LLMs routinely conduct their core reasoning in English, even when prompted in other languages. They translate the output at the final stage. A user receives flawless text in their preferred language, but the underlying logic originates elsewhere.

What the data shows

To examine how this plays out in practice, I ran experiments with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. I asked questions in both English and Indonesian about concepts such as education, responsibility, well-being and several Indonesian terms that resist direct translation into English. These included terms such as “gotong royong,” which describes a tradition of communal mutual assistance.

Then I asked questions about education in both languages, using the word “pendidikan” in Indonesian. The answers were consistently centered on individual development, personal autonomy, critical thinking and preparation for the labor market.

What largely disappeared were the dimensions of pendidikan that Indonesian educational traditions have historically emphasized. In Indonesia education has long been focused on ethical discipline. Scholars of Indonesian education such as Christopher Bjork and Robert Hefner have documented how distinct these traditions are from models that treat education primarily as a path to individual advancement and career preparation, which is the lens through which the AI tools viewed education.

The Indonesian concept of “malu” offers a starker example. Often translated as “shame” or “embarrassment,” malu has been analyzed by anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Tom Boellstorff as something closer to a shared social awareness.

A person might feel malu when speaking out of turn in front of elders, or when a family member’s behavior reflects poorly on the household. It regulates conduct and signals awareness of one’s position within a web of relationships. It is cultivated, not merely felt. It is a form of relational awareness rather than a private psychological event.

When asked directly to define malu, the models acknowledged its social dimensions. In scenario-based questions that simply used the word without asking for a definition, however, all three fell back on the English translation of shame, consistently framing it as an individual emotional experience.

One representative response framed malu as a normal emotional reaction to be managed through self-reflection and confidence-building – a personal psychological problem rather than a social one. The relational dimensions of the concept disappeared entirely, replaced by the language of individual emotional regulation.

A distinctly American worldview travels inside the translation, largely unannounced.

Why this probably won’t change soon

Translation is far cheaper: Train one model on the vast English-language web, then use multilingual output capabilities to serve global markets. As media scholar Safiya Umoja Noble argues about algorithmic systems more broadly, what looks like a technical outcome is actually a structural one, shaped by who has the wealth and infrastructure to build these systems.

The embedded worldview isn’t a mistake; it’s what happens when knowledge production is profit-seeking.

The main exceptions are Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen. They represent a genuine alternative to the U.S.-dominated pipeline, though research shows they operate through a distinctly Chinese cultural lens. Asked about a workplace disagreement, for instance, they tend to advise silence or indirect phrasing to preserve harmony rather than the direct, private correction that Western models recommend.

Other regional efforts, such as SEA-LION for Southeast Asia and Kan-LLaMA for the Indian language Kannada, use U.S. models as their foundation. They add additional vocabulary and cultural information related to local languages. But the core logic remains tied to the original U.S. training.

Why this matters more than it might seem

One might reasonably ask whether this is simply a limitation users can work around. Decades of media scholarship demonstrate how audiences interpret foreign media through their own cultural frameworks.

For example, anthropologist Brian Larkin documented how viewers in northern Nigeria rework the narratives of Bollywood films to align with local Islamic values. Larkin found that Muslim viewers in Kano reinterpreted Bollywood films through an Islamic moral lens, reading their narratives as reinforcing local values of propriety and ethical conduct. That dynamic depends on encountering media as something with a visible origin. But to do that, you need to know where your media is coming from.

Conversational AI is different. Research at Harvard Business School finds that people increasingly use AI systems for emotional support, advice and companionship. When a culturally specific worldview is delivered through a relationship that feels attentive and empathetic, in your own language, it arrives less as a claim to be evaluated and more as a shared premise within a dialogue. It becomes difficult to notice, and harder to contest.

The concern is that these perspectives become the new normal. Certain ways of reasoning about family life, education and responsibility may come to feel natural and self-evident. Linguistic diversity among AI systems is real and growing. Cultural worldview diversity, however, has not kept pace.

Gareth Barkin 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. AI’s fluency in other languages hides a Western worldview that can mislead users − a scholar of Indonesian society explains – https://theconversation.com/ais-fluency-in-other-languages-hides-a-western-worldview-that-can-mislead-users-a-scholar-of-indonesian-society-explains-276865

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Dana Johnson, Postdoctoral Fellow in Health Disparities Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Teens in the U.S. are obtaining medication abortion pills through telehealth, and young people age 18 to 24 are ordering medication abortion at much higher rates than older adults.

Those are the key findings of a new study that my colleagues and I published in the journal JAMA Health Forum.

We examined requests for medication made to an online telemedicine service – one of the few to support people in all 50 states, without age restrictions. We compared average weekly request rates both before and after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in June 2022. Over time, we examined request rates across three age groups (15-17, 18-24 and 25-49) and by the severity of state-level abortion restrictions.

After Roe was overturned, researchers expected the number of abortions across the U.S. to fall. Intuitively, this makes sense, as most states have at least one law substantially restricting abortion services, which limits access at a clinic.

However, research from the Society of Family Planning #WeCount project shows the opposite: that the number of abortions has increased nationwide. The trend was even seen in states that ban abortion.

The main reason for this is the steep rise in medication abortion services through telehealth, which has expanded access for tens of thousands of people. As of early 2025, an estimated 1 in 4 abortions are done via telehealth. Until now, research and media attention have largely focused on this phenomenon among adults rather than among teenagers.

Why it matters

Understanding this trend among adolescents is important because minors – or teenagers under 18 – face a unique legal situation when it comes to abortion.

More than 7 million teenage girls age 13 to 17 live in a state with an abortion ban, and the legal landscape is quickly changing for teens.

In most states, adolescents seeking abortion services must navigate parental involvement laws, which require a minor to obtain consent for, or notify a parent of, their abortion. Such laws make it difficult or even impossible for many teens under 18 to obtain care, even in states like Massachusetts or Pennsylvania that have moved to protect abortion access.

In some cases, teens seek judicial bypass services, which help them avoid the parental involvement process. In addition to legal barriers, teens who seek abortion may already face stigma around teen pregnancy and sex, likely lack reliable access to a car – or may not even have a driver’s license – and probably don’t have US$600 or more on hand to pay for an abortion at a clinic.

To circumvent these barriers, minors are bypassing parental involvement requirements and requesting telehealth at higher rates in states with parental involvement laws, compared with their counterparts in more liberal abortion access states.

This is important because this trend may be evidence of the huge barrier of parental involvement laws. It may also signal that states with parental involvement laws also have additional policies restricting abortion – such as mandatory waiting periods or gestational bans – and that minors are living in an even more restrictive policy context than adults.

What still isn’t known

More research is needed to understand how and why teens are turning to online providers. Findings will help clinicians and advocates support adolescents who are ordering telehealth medication abortion online.

There are some very real legal risks involved for any teenager ordering pills online, and young people have been criminalized for taking abortion pills ordered from online sources.

Furthermore, anti-abortion prosecutors and lawmakers frequently target teens. For example, Idaho has become notorious for passing an “abortion trafficking” law, which makes it illegal to help minors access abortion.

At the federal level, attempted revisions to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone have explicitly tried to ban access for minors, and federal officials continue to spread misinformation about the safety of medication abortion for teens.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

The headline of this article has been updated to more accurately reflect the 18-24 age group that is driving this trend.

Dana Johnson receives funding from the National Institute of Health, the Society of Family Planning Research Fund, and the UW-Madison Collaborative for Reproductive Equity. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Jane’s Due Process.

Laura D. Lindberg is affiliated with Youth Reproductive Equity and Power to Decide

– ref. Teens and young adults are driving the demand for online abortion pills via telehealth – new research – https://theconversation.com/teens-and-young-adults-are-driving-the-demand-for-online-abortion-pills-via-telehealth-new-research-277943

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Dennis Murphy, Ph.D. Student of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology

Before dawn on March 1, 2026, Iranian Shahed drones struck two Amazon Web Services data centers in the United Arab Emirates. A third commercial data center in Bahrain was hit, though it is less clear whether it was deliberately targeted. Iran has also indicated that it considers commercial data centers to be targets.

This is the first time that a country has deliberately targeted commercial data centers during wartime. Data centers have been targets of espionage and cyberattacks in the past, notably when Ukrainian hackers destroyed data stored in a Russian military-affiliated data center in 2024. This, however, was a physical attack. Drones damaged buildings.

Advances in artificial intelligence have increased the importance of data centers. The U.S. military, in particular, has made great use of AI systems for decision support in its attacks on Iran and Venezuela. Given how important data centers are, Iranian forces could be targeting the infrastructure Iran’s leaders believe is supporting strikes on Iran.

It is not altogether clear that these particular data centers were used by the U.S. military. Instead, the attacks may have been part of a broader effort to punish the United Arab Emirates for its ties with the U.S.

In my experience as a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Tech studying how technology drives changes in international security, I don’t think the attacks signal any significant change in the nature of warfare. But they are forcing nations to recognize that data centers are targets of war – even if they don’t directly support military operations.

Data centers and the cloud

The United States military is increasingly incorporating advanced AI capabilities into its decision support systems. From the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to supporting military strikes against Iran, the U.S. has been using AI, especially Anthropic’s Claude, for intelligence analysis and operational support.

AI is unlocking faster ways to carry out operations in war, but the AI tools the military often uses are not located on a plane or ship. When a service member uses Claude, the computing infrastructure that powers the model and its analysis usually goes to a secure Amazon Web Services cloud that hosts secret government data and software tools.

Commercial data centers are where the cloud lives. The next time you pull up Netflix and watch your favorite shows, you are likely streaming the programming from a data center, possibly AWS. When AWS data centers go down, outages affect all sorts of entertainment, news and government functions.

With AI as a driver of economic growth, data centers are key forms of infrastructure. They ensure that AI can continue to run, as well as much of the underlying internet that governments and industry rely on. When Iran attacked the UAE’s data centers, it caused widespread disruption to the local banking system.

Commercial data centers enable most of the technology that runs the modern world, including AI systems. Disrupting them is key to disrupting the military and society of a country. Given that AWS provides and operates many of the commercial data centers where the cloud lives, it is likely that its data centers will continue to be targeted in conflict.

Going after US allies

Researchers at Just Security noted on March 12, 2026, that the United States requires cloud-computing service providers to store government and military data within the U.S. or on Department of Defense bases: “Moving such data to Amazon data centers in the Gulf region would require special authorization; we are unaware if that has been granted.”

Nevertheless, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed the strikes were against data centers supporting “the enemy’s” military and intelligence activities. And 10 days after the initial attack on the data centers, an Iranian news agency claimed that major tech company data centers and other physical assets in the region were considered “enemy technology infrastructure.”

Instead of military reasons, Iran may well have targeted the UAE to rattle the global economy and garner attention. Given the prominence of the Gulf as a major recipient of U.S. technological investment, the attack may also have been a symbolic one aimed at the heart of U.S.-Gulf cooperation. AI infrastructure such as commercial data centers is a growing part of U.S. leadership in the region, and this war could jeopardize the future of AI infrastructure in the Gulf.

Growing importance, easy targets

Though data centers are increasingly important for national security, the economy and society at large, it can be tempting to suggest these strikes represent a fundamental shift in the nature of war. While that is a possibility, it is important to remember that Iran launched thousands of missiles and drones at targets in the UAE. Though the vast majority were intercepted, the two that struck data centers are a small portion of the ones that got through to civilian targets in UAE territory, including strikes on airports and hotels.

The relative vulnerability of commercial data centers – they are large, relatively fragile and lack dedicated air defenses – suggests that the ones in the UAE may have been targets of opportunity or convenience. In other words, they were hit because they could be hit.

Nevertheless, it seems likely that as the use of AI tools and other cloud-based resources continues to grow in importance for countries around the world, commercial data centers will be targets in future conflicts.

Dennis Murphy is affiliated with Georgia Tech, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the RAND Corporation, the Notre Dame International Security Center, and the Astra Fellowship. He previously was affiliated with Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Marine Corps University, and the Cambridge University ERA Fellowship.

– ref. Why Iran targeted Amazon data centers and what that does – and doesn’t – change about warfare – https://theconversation.com/why-iran-targeted-amazon-data-centers-and-what-that-does-and-doesnt-change-about-warfare-278642

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Craig Fehrman, Adjunct instructor at the Media School, Indiana University

In April 2026, four astronauts are scheduled to fly around the Moon. As part of NASA’s Artemis II mission, they will become the first humans to do so in half a century. One crew member, pilot Victor Glover, will become the first Black astronaut to ever orbit the Moon.

Glover’s achievement is worth celebrating. But it’s also worth remembering that he belongs to a long and underappreciated history. America’s first Black explorer didn’t fly an Apollo rocket or sail with the U.S. Exploring Expedition. He traveled with Lewis and Clark, and he was known by a single name: York.

I’m a historian who spent five years writing a book about Lewis and Clark, and I found new documents that show York was one of the most important people on their expedition. Even in a party that could number as many as 45 men, York stood out – for his courage, his skill and his sacrifices that helped the famous captains reach the Pacific Ocean.

York’s life as a slave

York was born in Virginia around 1770. Growing up, he was a creative and sociable child, unusually tall with dark hair and a dark complexion – “black as a bear,” a contemporary noted.

He was also enslaved by the Clarks. William Clark, who was around the same age, was also unusually tall, though his hair was a rusty red, and sometimes the boys played together. But the playing stopped once York turned 9 or 10. That’s when he joined the adult slaves in working full time. That’s also when he began to note the differences between his life and William’s – differences that became only clearer once William started ordering him around.

In the 1780s, the Clark household headed to Kentucky. York met a Black woman there and married her. He also became William’s “body servant.”

A body servant was a slave who stayed close to his owner and prioritized his comfort, laying out his clothes and serving his meals. When Meriwether Lewis asked Clark to join his expedition, in 1803, Clark ordered York to accompany him.

Perhaps York was excited for this adventure. Perhaps he was not – it would be punishing, and he would be separated from his wife.

Either way, York didn’t have a choice.

The Corps of Discovery

York proved his worth from the start. Once they reached St. Louis, the soldiers, later known as the Corps of Discovery, rushed to raise winter quarters. Working in hail and snow, York and the others built log huts. They needed rough planks for their tables and bunks, but the carpenters had only a single whipsaw to make them. They chose two men to operate this crucial tool. One of them was York.

On May 14, 1804, the corps began ascending the Missouri River. York helped row and tow the party’s barge, which was the size of a semi-truck trailer. He carried a rifle and hunted – according to the expedition’s journals, he was only the fifth named member to bring down a buffalo. York cooked for the captains. He collected scientific specimens. He nursed the sick, including several soldiers and, later on, Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman who would also prove essential to the expedition’s success.

The soldiers were not always kind in return. During this period, officers rarely brought along enslaved body servants. York’s race probably made some of the men angry or uncomfortable. One day, someone threw so much sand in his face that it nearly blinded him. Clark claimed it was “in fun,” but he also wrote that York was “very near losing his eyes,” and no one else got cruelly sprayed with sand.

That fall, during councils with Native leaders, York played a surprising and vital role. The Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa all crowded in to see him and to touch his skin. They had never met a Black person before, and York showed off his strength and played with the Native children. Later, the Arikara said York was “the most marvelous” thing about the corps.

The next year, the expedition crossed the Rockies and the Continental Divide. York’s most important – and most overlooked – contributions came soon after. On the Columbia River and its tributaries, the party had to dig out five new canoes and then paddle them through treacherous rapids.

Lewis and Clark allowed only their best rivermen on these foaming, rock-riven waters. One of them was almost certainly York. During my research, I found an unpublished letter in which Clark praised York’s ability to “manage the boats.”

Just as important, York was a strong swimmer, a rare thing in an era when many people never learned to swim.

York’s life as an explorer

On the Columbia River, the corps survived a series of terrifying choke points – soggy hazards they referred to as the “Long Narrows” and the “Great Chute.” After that came the ocean. They had traveled together for more than 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers), and when the captains asked the men to vote on where to put their final winter quarters, they made sure to ask York, too.

It was the latest sign that his role had changed during this epic journey. But those changes began with York. In the West, he found ways to make choices and assert himself. He sent a buffalo robe to his wife in Kentucky. When Clark told him to scale back his performances for Native people, York ignored him – because he wanted to, and because he could.

York’s vote was also evidence that, like Victor Glover today, he was an official American explorer, a key member of a sprawling, federally funded mission. From 1804 to 1806, the government devoted a larger percentage of its budget to the corps than it devotes to NASA today.

Part of that money was earmarked for York. The Army gave officers who brought along their slaves a monthly ration or its cash equivalent. When the corps made it home, the government paid US$274.57 for York’s labor, a sum similar to what the privates received. But that money didn’t go to York. It went to Clark.

The hidden history of Black explorers

There have been many Black explorers in American history. Thomas Jefferson launched other expeditions besides Lewis and Clark’s, and those expeditions also included enslaved people, though their names have not survived. Isaiah Brown served on the Wheeler Survey, which mapped the West in greater detail after the Civil War. Matthew Henson accompanied Robert Peary on his Arctic expeditions, which received some federal support. More recently, NASA has depended on Black astronauts such as Guy Bluford, Mae Jemison and Jeanette Epps, among others.

York and Victor Glover are, for now, the first and most recent examples of this inspiring tradition. But their contributions go beyond that. When the captains asked York to vote on the winter quarters, they were acknowledging in some small way that he’d proven he was more than a body servant.

Of course, York had always been more than that. It just took 4,000 miles for Lewis and Clark to see it.

Craig Fehrman 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. Astronaut Victor Glover is the latest in a long line of Black American explorers − including York, the enslaved man who played a key role in the Lewis and Clark expedition – https://theconversation.com/astronaut-victor-glover-is-the-latest-in-a-long-line-of-black-american-explorers-including-york-the-enslaved-man-who-played-a-key-role-in-the-lewis-and-clark-expedition-279168

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Allison Mashell Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Civil Rights Studies, University of Notre Dame

President Donald Trump appeared on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast in February 2026, where he stated: “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Trump’s call to nationalize elections, to transfer the constitutionally mandated control of elections from local to federal authorities, drew bipartisan opposition and added to Democratic fears that the president may attempt to interfere with upcoming midterm elections.

Despite Trump’s call to “nationalize the voting,” the U.S. Constitution clearly notes that states run elections – not the federal government.

The federal government, however, has a role to play in national elections – as an observer. Federal observation ensures that Americans cast their votes on election day without reprisal.

Initially dispatched to deter voter discrimination against Black Americans after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, election observers ensured that those qualified to vote could do so without trouble.

But with its 2013 ruling in the Shelby County v. Holder case, the U.S. Supreme Court changed the federal government’s relationship to the election process. The ruling significantly weakened the federal govenment’s ability to send federal observers to the polls.

As a scholar of civil rights and voting rights, I know that federal oversight during elections has always been a valued part of the electoral process, even when subject to criticism.

Yet, this current moment, with the Trump administration’s efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2026 midterms, feels different. What I have noticed recently is how the public’s thinking has shifted about the federal oversight of elections. Where once it was largely welcomed as an ensurer of fairness and proper procedures, now it is seen as a misuse of authority.

Establishment of federal observers

The key contribution of the Voting Rights Act that Americans are typically taught about in school is its abolition of racial discrimination in voting. The measure put a stop to poll taxes and literacy tests, which had disproportionately reduced Black voter registration.

But the act also created the type of federal observation of elections that is most familiar to Americans today.

The measure allows the Department of Justice to deploy federal observers to polling stations. That deployment can happen through a court order or by requirement to places with documented histories of voter suppression. The latter was determined by a section of the Voting Rights Act that also details the guidelines for which places merit that designation.

Federal observers take notes, often beside poll monitors, and document potential unlawful practices by poll workers.

Unlike monitors, federal observers are stationed inside polling stations. They keep notes on the tallying of votes and verify those thrown out. And where the Justice Department requires the permission from respective districts to send monitors, federal observers are sent by the U.S. attorney general and do not require the same permission.

Historically, observers were also charged with registering voters at polling stations and local registrars’ offices with the specific goal of assisting disenfranchised minorities.

Perception of federal observers

Determined to maintain Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation, several Southern Democrats opposed the Voting Rights Act.

Some Americans also criticized the act as government overreach. And they castigated the U.S. attorney general in 1965 when he dispatched federal registrars to the South following the passing of the measure, and when he sent federal observers to the South for the 1966 congressional elections.

Despite this opposition to federal observers, and just months after the Voting Rights Act’s passage, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote that federal observers received “praise from registration workers and the (voter registration) applicants.”

Within a few years of the act, roughly 1 million Black Southerners had registered to vote. Over time, federal election observers began to focus less on registering voters, practically phasing out this practice by the 1980s, and serving only as observers.

The change

Over the decades, conservative politicians, as they gained more seats in Congress and state legislatures, developed new strategies – they filed lawsuits, rearranged voting districts – to circumvent what they argued was federal overreach in the election process. These changes helped them gain political influence and promoted their philosophy of states’ rights. They were successful.

The increase in conservative political influence gave way to an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. This was reflected in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder.

In that ruling, the court struck down the section in the Voting Rights Act outlining the guidelines for deciding whether a county or state needed federal oversight. With no guidelines to follow, the federal government removed most of its oversight.

After the court’s ruling, several states – Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, for example – made rapid changes to the voting process. Those included new voter ID laws, the purging of voter registration rolls and gerrymandering. These changes have resulted in further voter disenfranchisement, disproportionately effecting Black and Hispanic voters.

The Voting Rights Act guidelines had also helped determine where to send federal observers. With this section revoked, the federal government’s ability to send federal observers, in the way it had done for roughly 50 years, also disappeared.

The Justice Department sent federal observers to five states during the 2016 presidential election, compared to 23 states during the 2012 presidential election.

Since Shelby, disagreements over federal oversight persist and the role of federal observers has changed.

In 2024, the Justice Department announced it planned to send out 86 monitors on Election Day, the most federal monitors in two decades, due to concerns of possible partisan interference in elections. Some Republican-led states threatened to ban them from the polls.

To send out federal observers, the Justice Department needs a court order. But during the 2024 elections, courts determined that only four states needed federal observer oversight.

Redefining federal observers

During the Civil Rights Movement, federal election observers were the strongest line of defense to ensure fair voting.

Recently, however, the federal government’s election focus – such as attempting to require voters to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote – has shifted to what it says is voter fraud and accusations of cheating.

Still, one thing has remained certain. Federal observers are important. Their history, even now as they are less prevalent, can inform how we discuss the federal government’s role in elections.

Allison Mashell Mitchell 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. Federal election observers once played a key role in securing voting rights for all − but times have changed – https://theconversation.com/federal-election-observers-once-played-a-key-role-in-securing-voting-rights-for-all-but-times-have-changed-275991

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John J. Martin, Assistant Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University

In May 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice began sending letters to state governments demanding copies of statewide voter registration lists. The request was unprecedented: It demanded not only publicly available voter data, such as names and addresses, but also sensitive information, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers.

That data is considered highly sensitive because it can be used to commit identity theft, access financial or government records, and facilitate targeted harassment or intimidation, particularly if the data were mishandled or leaked.

Underlying these requests is the Trump administration’s stated goal of rooting out fraudulent and illegal voting. With voter data in its hands, the DOJ seeks to identify ineligible voters and mandate state election officials to remove those voters from the rolls.

States have responded in a variety of ways. Some have fully complied with the requests, some partially complied, and many outright refused to provide any voter information. For the latter states, the Trump administration has taken the fight to court and sued to get the information, claiming that federal law requires the states to hand it over.

The majority of cases are still going through the courts.

I’m an election law scholar who focuses on election administration. This battle over voter data has raised numerous questions about the Trump administration’s motives, the legality of its actions and, more generally, the role of the federal government in election administration.

The DOJ has a tough road ahead in convincing election officials and judges across the country that all of its demands in these cases are constitutionally legitimate.

Federal power grab

States have exclusive authority to govern and administer state and local elections. The federal government, on the other hand, historically has played a much more limited role in election regulation and administration. By constitutional design, Congress may regulate only the “time, place, and manner” of federal elections – in other words, the procedural elements of elections for federal offices.

And even then, states hold concurrent authority to regulate federal elections.

Nevertheless, in his second administration President Donald Trump has sought to expand the federal government’s control over elections. In February 2026 he called on Congress to “nationalize” elections. He has also made an administration priority the passage of the SAVE America Act, a bill that would mandate states to turn away any voter without documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.

Trump’s initiatives apparently stem from conspiratorial allegations that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, resulting in fraudulent and illegal voting that gave Joe Biden the presidency. And they are ultimately what animates the DOJ’s crusade for voter information from the states, with Attorney General Pam Bondi having recently stated that “accurate, well-maintained voter rolls are a requisite for the election integrity that the American people deserve.”

So far, the DOJ has sent requests to at least 48 states and the District of Columbia demanding their complete voter registration lists – information on every individual registered to vote in the given state.

In doing so, the DOJ has asked the states to sign onto an agreement under which they agree to remove within 45 days any voters that the DOJ flags as ineligible. But by signing this agreement, a state is effectively handing over the administration of its voter rolls to the federal government.

DOJ’s legal arguments

Only 12 states – Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming – have fully complied with the requests, handing over to the DOJ private information such as the driver’s license and Social Security numbers of their registered voters.

Five states, meanwhile, have provided publicly available voter information – name, address and party affiliation – to the DOJ while withholding more sensitive information. The remaining 31 states of the 48 to receive requests, along with the District of Columbia, have refused to give any voter list to the federal agency.

The DOJ has sued 29 states for refusing to hand over voter lists and has also sued the District of Columbia, sparing only Iowa, Alabama and South Carolina. Only one sued state – Oklahoma – has thus far capitulated to the DOJ.

In these lawsuits, the DOJ cites three legal sources that supposedly give the agency the right to request voter information from state officials.

First, the DOJ points to a provision of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 that requires states to “make available for public inspection” all records necessary to ensure the accuracy of their voter registration lists. As critics note, though, this provision does not require states to reveal sensitive voter information. All 50 states are, in fact, currently in compliance with the act’s mandate.

Second, the DOJ invokes the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and its requirement that all states must maintain a computerized, statewide voter registration list. Nevertheless, no provision in that law provides explicit authority to the federal government to request these registration lists from state officials.

Finally, the DOJ has argued that the states have an obligation under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to comply with the agency’s demands. Specifically, Title III of the act permits the U.S. attorney general to request for inspection “all records and papers” kept by state election officials relating to “any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting.”

While perhaps the strongest of the three arguments, that title of the Civil Rights Act goes on to require the attorney general to offer a “statement of the basis and the purpose” of their request.

In the DOJ’s requests to states, Bondi has apparently provided zero justification as to why the states must hand over sensitive voter information to the DOJ. Indeed, any stated purposes appear unrelated to the Civil Rights Act’s aims of combating racial discrimination.

What’s possible

There are further legal questions regarding whether the states could even comply with the DOJ’s proposed 45-day deadline for removing declared ineligible voters.

For example, the National Voter Registration Act forbids states from removing people from the voter rolls in certain instances without first providing notice and waiting two federal election cycles – a timeline well beyond 45 days.

In the 29 targeted states, federal courts have thus far dismissed four lawsuits in California, Georgia, Michigan and Oregon. Oklahoma, as noted above, has settled its case with the DOJ. While the remaining lawsuits have yet to fully play out, the DOJ likely faces less-than-sympathetic judges in these cases.

Even if the DOJ loses in court, though, the federal government may continue attempting to receive states’ voter information through other means.

The SAVE America Act, for instance, currently under consideration in the U.S. Senate, contains a provision that incentivizes states to submit their voter registration lists to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on a quarterly basis or otherwise subject their residents to stringent voter ID laws. Should Congress pass the act, the executive branch would have much clearer federal authority to force voter data from state election officials.

John J. 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. The Department of Justice is suing states for sensitive voter data − an election law scholar explains why federal efforts are facing resistance – https://theconversation.com/the-department-of-justice-is-suing-states-for-sensitive-voter-data-an-election-law-scholar-explains-why-federal-efforts-are-facing-resistance-278512

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Celina Su, Professor of Political Science, CUNY Graduate Center

Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield delivered her first State of the City address on March 31, 2026, at Mumford High School on the city’s northwest side.

In the speech, Sheffield touted the accomplishments of her administration’s first 90 days, which included bringing the cash assistance program RxKids to Detroit. Sheffield also announced a new initiative called Ride to Rise, which offers free bus service to the city’s K-12 students year-round.

Sheffield stressed mandates to tackle poverty, support youth development and seniors, build more single-family homes, increase homeownership and make the city a welcoming place for small businesses to grow and thrive.

That commitment to improving the lives of Detroiters, according to Sheffield, is reflected in the $US3 billion budget she introduced on March 9, 2026.

“This budget is a statement of our priorities and our values,” Sheffield said during the address.

Giving residents a say

One thing that’s missing from her budget proposal is any mention of participatory budgeting – something that Sheffield often championed during her 12 years serving on the City Council.

On the campaign trail, Sheffied said that participatory budgeting allows “residents to feel empowered and have a direct say in how their tax dollars are spent.”

I’m a professor of political science and author of a recent book called “Budget Justice” about grassroots politics. I think Sheffield had it right on the campaign trail – communities around the country want to democratize the budget process so that local governments better address their needs and increase transparency and accountability.

I gained this perspective by serving on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transition team on community organizing, mass governance and participatory budgeting.

Participatory budgeting is a democratic experiment that gives constituents, rather than elected officials, power to decide how to allocate a portion of public funds. Although Detroit often holds community engagement forums and open calls for grant funding, participatory budgeting differs because it puts the power of the purse into the people’s hands.

Cities need democracy between elections

I first encountered participatory budgeting in 2011. Leaders from the grassroots organization Community Voices Heard and others helped to bring it to New York City during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Protesters who were part of that movement questioned why banks received governmental bailouts while households struggling with predatory student debt did not. I joined the rulemaking steering committee for New York’s new participatory budgeting process and stayed involved for the next decade.

New York’s process consists of four stages each year. In the fall, residents learn about the process through public service announcements, local media, door-knocking outreach or word of mouth. They then attend neighborhood assemblies where they pitch thousands of proposals for community projects. Frequently, a simple question gets them started: “How would you spend $1 million of the city’s budget?”

Meeting face to face matters. I’ve observed dozens of these assemblies, and people are much less likely to troll others in person than they are online, when they are anonymous and fueled by keyboard courage.

Over each winter, some residents volunteer to research and curate the proposals that will end up on the ballot. They also work with city agencies to develop ideas into full-fledged proposals. In New York, these projects have ranged from curb extensions at intersections identified as dangerous by local residents to summer arts camps and conflict resolution training programs.

Each spring, residents vote for the proposals that they want implemented.

Each summer, winning projects get funded.

In New York City, voting week for 2026 participatory budgeting proposals is April 11-19.

Engagement beyond voting

In the fiscal year 2026 budget cycle, New Yorkers allocated $30 million in public funds as part of the city’s $116 billion budget.

The nonprofit Community Development Project reported that 68% of the 17,000 people who voted on participatory budget proposals at the time of the survey had never worked together on a community issue before. Roughly 1 in 4 stated that they were not eligible to vote in regular elections, primarily because of being under age 18 or holding an undocumented immigration status.

For many, participatory budgeting helped them to understand their communities in new ways. As one participant put it, “I was able to see the needs (of) the community in a way I’ve never seen before. … I didn’t know how bad of an asthma cluster there was in public housing. I don’t have kids, so I don’t know about needs at school. I don’t have any relatives who live in senior housing, so I didn’t know about the issues they faced.”

Participatory budgeting also produced ripple effects. Participants were 8.4% more likely to vote than those who had not participated in the process. The effects are even greater for those who have lower probabilities of voting, such as low-income and Black voters.

In Detroit, only 22% of voters took part in the most recent municipal election. Participatory budgeting could be a tool for increasing turnout.

No shortcuts for meaningful participation

In my experience, participants need to feel they are doing meaningful work.

Research shows that participatory budgeting works best when communities allocate significant pots of money through the process, when residents are trained and encouraged to stay engaged beyond the process, and when combined with efforts to change practices in other parts of government, too.

In Boston, the Better Budget Alliance works to make sure projects that didn’t get funded through the city’s participatory budgeting process still get included in community demands for the larger city operating budget, and vice versa.

In New York, the Mamdani administration has just announced a new Office of Mass Engagement that aims to deepen the levels of transparency, listening and follow-through in the city.

In other words, experiments such as participatory budgeting can serve as an entry point to transformational change.

That change may look like the ambitious and growing national people’s budgets movement, which brings together local residents and community groups to protest budget cuts on essential services, articulate budget priorities and democratize the budget process. Unlike participatory budgeting, the movement’s campaigns often ask questions regarding divestments – for example, from jail expansions – as well as investments. It also concerns itself with taxes and the revenue side of the budget, and how budgetary powers should be shared by the mayor, city council, agencies and residents.

A beginning in Brazil

In Brazil, where participatory budgeting first began, the process was seen as an investment in working-class residents. Brazilian cities that implemented the process collected 16% more in taxes than cities that did not implement the process. Cities with participatory budgeting were seen as more legitimate, making their residents more willing to support additional taxes. These cities also boasted of higher tax collection and compliance rates.

Participatory budgeting also helped residents to harness the popular pressure and political will to reject development projects – such as luxury hotels – that they felt reflected business interests more than public needs. Because citizens expressed interest in providing funds for prenatal health, prominent political scientists even credit participatory budgeting with lowering infant mortality.

In American cities such as New York and Detroit, participatory budgeting processes could in time take on more challenging issues, such as universal day care or social housing.

Opaque budgets and an austerity mindset lead to distrust in government, perpetuating anti-tax sentiments.

This undermines the capacity of government to get things done. Robust participatory budgeting can help residents press for what they value most and serve as a tool to help cities such as Detroit thrive.

Celina Su served on New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration transition team’s subcommittee on community organizing. She also served on the New York city-wide steering committee for participatory budgeting and advised the process for its first decade, from 2011 to 2021.

– ref. What Detroit can learn from participatory budgeting processes in NYC, Boston and Brazil – https://theconversation.com/what-detroit-can-learn-from-participatory-budgeting-processes-in-nyc-boston-and-brazil-278764

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Imtiaz Rangwala, Senior Research Scientist in Climate, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

Winter is more than just a season in the western U.S. – it is a savings account to get farms and homes through the long, dry summer ahead. As the snowpack that accumulates in the mountains through winter slowly melts in late spring and summer, it feeds into rivers and reservoirs that keep communities and ecosystems functioning.

The April 1 snowpack measurement has long been the single most important number in western water management, considered a strong proxy for how much water the mountains are holding in reserve.

But in 2026, that savings account has been woefully deficient.

Across the western United States, temperatures from November through February were among the warmest on record, with many areas 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 to 5.5 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average. March continued to break heat records. At lower elevations, the higher temperatures meant a significant part of the winter’s precipitation fell as rain rather than snow. In some places, snowfall accumulated but melted quickly during warm periods.

As a result, even regions that received near- or above-normal precipitation for the season failed to build substantial snowpack. In the northern Rockies and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, any above-average snow accumulation was largely confined to the highest elevations, while middle and lower elevations had relatively little snowpack.

This situation is a hallmark of warming winters. As global temperatures rise, the freezing line where precipitation changes from rain to snow moves up the mountains, shrinking the area capable of sustaining a seasonal snowpack.

The exceptionally warm winter of 2025–26 across much of the western U.S. delivered a powerful preview of what the regional water cycle in a warmer climate may increasingly look like: less snow and a fundamental reshaping of the hydrograph – the chart of how much water flows through streams across the year.

A flattening hydrologic pulse

The consequences of this shift for water supplies are already visible in streamflows.

In multiple river basins in the West, streamflows were above average in winter and early spring, and some locations were approaching record-high levels. Historically, that water would have remained frozen in the snowpack until late spring. Instead, precipitation arriving as rain – along with intermittent midwinter melting events – increased the runoff.

Scientists who study natural water flows, as I do, pay attention to the hydrographs of streamflows in river basins to see when the water flow in mountain streams is strongest and how long that flow is likely to continue into summer.

In recent years, rising temperatures have led to a redistribution of streamflows throughout the winter and early spring in ways that are fundamentally reshaping the hydrographs of snowmelt-dominated rivers. Rather than a single dominant peak during late spring or early summer, smaller peaks emerge in winter and early spring. At the same time, the traditional snowmelt pulse, relied on to fill reservoirs in late spring, weakens.

In effect, the hydrograph is flattening. The winter of 2025–26 illustrates this phenomenon: Higher early-season streamflows suggest the West will see less runoff later in the year when communities, farms and wildlife need it.

The Colorado River: A system on the edge

Nowhere does the convergence of record warmth, depleted snowpack and altered hydrology carry higher stakes than in the Colorado River Basin. More than 40 million people in seven states plus Mexico and 5.5 million acres of farmland depend on the river’s water, but the river’s flow is no longer meeting demand.

The April-through-July 2026 runoff into Lake Powell – the reservoir behind Glen Canyon Dam and the primary index of the Upper Colorado River Basin’s annual water budget – is currently forecast to rank among the lowest in recent decades. It has been tracking close to the grim years of 2002 and 2021, considered benchmarks of western drought.

Unless spring brings substantial late-season snowfall to the high mountains, 2026 could join those years as a marker of how thin the margin between water supply and demand has become in a river system already under sustained stress from two decades of drought and water overuse.

The low reservoir levels in the basin in 2026 and the low snowpack are adding fears of water shortages just as the seven states that rely on the Colorado River are struggling to reach a new water use agreement.

The changing rhythm of water in the West

The winter of 2025–26 highlights two emerging realities.

First, temperature is increasingly dominating precipitation in determining western water supplies. Even above-normal precipitation cannot compensate for persistent warmth when it falls as rain rather than snow and accelerates snowmelt in the mountains.

Second, the nature of the West’s streamflows is shifting in ways that complicate water management.

Rain-on-snow events can produce flooding in winter, as the Seattle area saw in late December 2025. A low snowpack also means less runoff in summer, which can exacerbate water shortages and raise the wildfire risk as landscapes dry out. Even if a year has normal precipitation, if it falls as rain or there is earlier snowmelt, then evaporation through summer, in a warmer climate, will leave less water in the system.

Snowpack declines, earlier runoff, elevated winter flows and flattened hydrographs are all consistent with long-standing projections for the western United States as global temperatures rise.

What makes the winter of 2025-26 notable is how clearly these signals appeared, even in a year without widespread precipitation deficits.

This shift highlights the need for adaptive reservoir operations – the ability to adjust water storage and release decisions in real time to capture earlier runoff and preserve water for longer dry seasons, while still maintaining space in reservoirs for flood control during wetter winters. For communities across the West, it also reinforces the growing reality that the familiar seasonal rhythm of mountain water is changing.

Imtiaz Rangwala receives funding from USGS, NOAA, NSF and USDA. He is affiliated with Boundless In Motion.

– ref. Winter’s alarmingly low snowpack offers a glimpse of the changing rhythm of water in the western US – https://theconversation.com/winters-alarmingly-low-snowpack-offers-a-glimpse-of-the-changing-rhythm-of-water-in-the-western-us-279664

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Will Rice, Associate Professor of Outdoor Recreation and Wildland Management, University of Montana

On a summer morning a couple of years ago, we went for a hike on the fabled Bright Angel Trail, one of the most popular trails in Grand Canyon National Park.

As scholars of tourism and outdoor recreation, our conversation inevitably turned to the visitor experience at the Grand Canyon and a question that has plagued the parks since their inception: Are the national parks overcrowded?

It’s not a simple question, but we believe that people have been answering it incorrectly for over a century, as many Americans have come to a decisive conclusion: Yes. Of course, some specific locations within parks can get overcrowded, and some people are more sensitive to crowding. But often people wrongly assume that a busy park means a crowded one, or that having other people around is inherently bad.

As far back as 1935, one of the founders of the American wilderness movement, Aldo Leopold, described the national parks as “over-crowded hospitals trying to cope with an epidemic of esthetic rickets.” Presidents and Congress have discussed the issue, as have most major newspapers in the nation at one time or another. Magazine headlines and research articles have decried “overcrowding” and the “parks being loved to death.” Our own research fields have fueled this obsession with crowding.

However, our analysis, as well as work by others, has found that being in public parks and natural environments with other visitors is a powerful opportunity to enhance experiences in these places rather than detract from them. We note that the assumption that nature is best experienced in solitude or only within one’s own group reflects a generally western and elitist perspective and does not align with how people often actually experience parks or the quality of their experiences in the presence of others.

Beyond crowding, toward ‘communitas’

Hiking on the Bright Angel Trail that morning in 2023, we noticed vignettes that challenge the crowding assumption. The trail was busy. It was early, and the south wall of the canyon was still blanketed in shade. Two families, one hiking up, the other hiking down, were chatting and sharing insights at a bend in the trail.

A young hiker shared her binoculars with an elderly man, focusing them on a distant, rare desert bighorn sheep. An older couple smiled as a gaggle of kids ran uphill and past them, racing to the ice cream promised to them on the canyon rim. Another hiker pointed out a California condor sailing above. Together, we marveled at its beauty.

Despite the number of people on the trail, we did not feel crowded. Rather, we felt a spontaneous sense of community and togetherness. Anthropologist Victor Turner called this feeling “communitas,” a shared experience that a person might encounter during a pilgrimage, surrounded by other travelers with a shared journey and goal.

Others have written, too, about the value of experiencing national parks in the presence of others, finding a shared sense of awe and affirmation of values. Visitor surveys conducted in the Cleveland National Forest near San Diego in summer 2025 show that the more people experience communitas, the less likely they are to feel crowded.

In fact, in 1922, more than a decade before Leopold’s lament about “over-crowded hospitals,” conservation advocate Robert Sterling Yard described the sharing of space and time as crucial elements of the national park experience. He noted that a person “sits around the evening camp fire with a California grape grower, a locomotive engineer from Massachusetts, and a banker from Michigan.” He continued: “Here the social differences so insisted upon at home just don’t exist. Perhaps for the first time, one realizes the common America – and loves it.”

It’s a matter of perspective

It is important to remember that each person has the power to shift how they react to the number of people around them in parks. Being crowded is not an objective state; it is a negative perception of social conditions. For instance, when people see visitors as different from themselves, they are more likely to feel crowded. But by recognizing that tendency and reframing the interaction, people are more likely to find communitas.

Communitas, too, is in the eye of the beholder. When people view social interactions in parks as opportunities to share in a larger collective experience, they open up the possibility of experiencing communitas.

This summer, we urge you to enter America’s national parks with perhaps a different perspective. Experience the collective awe of watching Old Faithful erupt with a few hundred of your fellow pilgrims in Yellowstone National Park. Find wonderment in sharing a sunrise from Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park or sunset from Olmstead Point in Yosemite National Park. Seek the power that comes from seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, together.

Most importantly, be the person who points out that condor, gives a neighboring camper that extra hot dog, or takes that photo for another family. Find your communitas, help others to do the same and, together, consider the grandeur of the shared experience of America’s national parks.

Will Rice receives funding from the National Park Service and USDA Forest Service.

Bing Pan receives funding from National Park Service, Department of Interior, USA.

– ref. You’re not going to be alone in national parks this summer – enjoy the company – https://theconversation.com/youre-not-going-to-be-alone-in-national-parks-this-summer-enjoy-the-company-278749

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University – Newark

When Michael Jackson died in 2009, left everything he owned to a family trust – an estate planning technique for giving away property that allows for privacy. The trust benefits Jackson’s three children and his mother, but nearly two decades later, Jackson’s estate, now worth an estimated US$2 billion, still hasn’t been fully distributed to the trust.

The most recent of many legal skirmishes to come to the public’s attention involves Paris Jackson, Michael Jackson’s daughter. She is asking a court to take a closer look at how the pop icon’s estate is being handled by its executors – the people responsible for managing it.

Paris Jackson has accused executors John Branca and John McClain of paying themselves and the estate’s lawyers too much, and for leaving $464 million owned by the estate uninvested. If that’s true, it would mean there is less money than there should be left over for her and her father’s other heirs. Branca is an entertainment lawyer, and McClain is a music executive.

Both were selected by Michael Jackson and named as executors in his will. They have repeatedly disputed Paris Jackson’s allegations and asserted that Paris has received at least $65 million in payouts from the estate.

Paris Jackson also has accused Branca of misusing his position as producer of “Michael,” an upcoming Michael Jackson biopic reportedly financed by Jackson’s estate, to cast an A-list celebrity – Miles Teller – to play the role of Branca himself in the film. According to Paris, the casting choice was costly and unlikely to increase box office revenue.

Paris Jackson has also stated that the $150 million film is a “botched production.” The executors have responded by arguing that the application of their expertise to other productions about the singer has already provided a huge payoff to the estate. The executors also recently won a court battle against Paris Jackson that ended with a judge ordering her to pay their attorney’s fees in a related dispute.

As law professors who study the transfer of property after death, we find that when disputes over inherited wealth become national news, they are often difficult to understand because this type of legal process is obscure and most people never interact directly with the probate court system.

This case illustrates what happens to property after death, even if the dispute is unusual due to the unique assets involved.

What happens to property after death

When someone dies, whether or not they’re a celebrity, any property they owned usually goes through a legal process called probate.

Probate is a court process that’s designed to notify everyone who may have an interest in the estate and to make sure that all property the dead person owned is handled properly. The court oversees the collection of assets, the payment of debts and taxes, and the distribution of any remaining assets to heirs.

This process can be completed in roughly one year for typical estates that do not contain unusual assets or erupt into litigation. But when the estate is large, complicated or disputed, probate can last for years or decades.

One of us, Reid Weisbord, co-authored a study of probate cases in San Francisco and found that the average estate remains open for a year and a half, and hotly contested and complex cases tended to linger in the system for two years or longer.

In one of the most extreme examples, resolving probate disputes over the estate of actress and model Marilyn Monroe took more than 40 years after her 1962 death.

Who manages the estate

When people draft their wills, they typically name one or more executors.

Most people who do that choose a child, grandchild, spouse or sibling to serve in that role. On occasion, people choose a lawyer or other professional to serve as executor. That’s what happened in Jackson’s case.

Being an executor for the man who revolutionized pop music after a successful run as a child star is even more complex than it would be for most huge estates because it includes music rights, business interests and licensing agreements that continue to earn money.

Like other executors in this situation, the men handling Jackson’s estate have hired lawyers, accountants and other professionals to assist them. The cost of paying for those professional services comes out of the estate. In this case, Paris Jackson is complaining that the compensation paid to executors of her father’s estate has been excessive. According to her legal complaint, they were paid more than $148 million through the end of 2021, a number that “dwarfs any amount distributed to Paris or her siblings.”

Common causes of probate disputes

To be sure, the Jackson case is an extreme example of probate battles. But about 1 in 9 estates are legally disputed for a wide range of reasons that include:

• Challenges to the validity of a will, often based on claims like undue influence or diminished mental capacity.

• Fights over who should serve as executor.

• Disputes about how much executors and lawyers should be paid.

• Disagreements about how to interpret unclear language in a will.

A role with fiduciary duty

Executors have many important responsibilities. They must find and protect the dead person’s property, pay their estate’s debts, file tax returns, manage investments and eventually distribute property to the estate’s heirs.

The law says executors must act in the best interests of the estate and its beneficiaries. This is called a fiduciary duty, meaning they must act carefully and honestly.

In real life, it’s hard for executors to be completely neutral.

If the estate hires executors who do not stand to inherit anything from it, they usually expect to be paid for their work. Managing an estate, especially a large one, can take years and require specialized skills.

If the executor is also a beneficiary, meaning they are named in the will or an associated trust, the situation can be even more complicated because they have a personal financial stake in the outcome. Even if they act in good faith, heirs and other people named in the will may question their decisions.

This kind of conflict of interest is often unavoidable, but it is one reason why disputes over fees and decision-making are so common.

What makes this fight different

Disputes over executor pay are not unusual. But this case stands out because of the type of spending being challenged.

Jackson’s estate is not just collecting his assets and then distributing them. It is actively managing a complex portfolio of intellectual property rights that includes movies, music deals, publicity rights and other business ventures.

That raises a question that can be hard to answer: Are some expenditures from the estate benefiting those managing the estate rather than those who inherit from it?

Paying top lawyers or investing in a film could increase the estate’s value. But Jackson’s relatives may see those same decisions as unnecessary or excessive.

Paris Jackson’s latest legal challenge reflects this tension. Executors get broad power to run an estate, especially one that operates like a business. But they must still justify their decisions to the people who will inherit the estate’s assets once it has settled. That’s why the choice of executor is so important.

As this dispute moves forward, the court will continue to supervise the process, which is helpful when the parties cannot agree on how to settle an estate. In the end, the case highlights a basic truth about probate: Even after death, managing wealth can be complicated, slow and deeply contested.

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. Why Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris, won’t stop ‘til she gets enough from his estate – https://theconversation.com/why-michael-jacksons-daughter-paris-wont-stop-til-she-gets-enough-from-his-estate-279510