Category: The Conversation – USA

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 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 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 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 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

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Adam Annaccone, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Kinesiology, University of Texas at Arlington

When the NFL draft comes to town, the host city’s hotels, bars and restaurants fill, while its downtown gets three days of national exposure.

Detroit’s 2024 draft drew more than 775,000 fans and generated a reported US$214 million in economic impact, including $161 million in visitor spending, according to The Associated Press. Visitor spending is the money directly spent by visitors coming into the city for the event, whereas the economic impact includes the ripple effect of money circulating before, during and after the event – like restaurants buying more food from suppliers, hotels hiring extra staff, and vendors purchasing additional inventory.

Pittsburgh is set to host the 2026 NFL draft April 23-25. According to Steelers executive Dan Rooney III, the event could bring to the city 500,000 visitors and an economic impact of $200 million.

Economic impact almost always leads the news when a city lands the NFL draft. The first numbers that people tend to hear come from team officials, city leaders and local boosters who project visitors, spending and exposure.

My academic work examines emergency planning and safety in different sporting environments. The question I often ask is not how much money an event like the NFL draft brings in, but what it takes to deliver it safely?

Preparing for an event of this scale requires careful planning and real public costs.

A mass gathering with intense preparation

The NFL draft is not just a fan event. Like a marathon, a championship parade or a major outdoor concert, it is a mass gathering that must be planned as a public safety and emergency response operation.

Research shows that such large-scale events can increase demand for emergency services, strain local systems and require careful coordination across agencies far in advance.

Ahead of the 2026 draft, Pennsylvania officials have described months of preparation involving emergency management, law enforcement and transportation agencies. That means walk-throughs of event spaces, traffic planning, risk assessments, scenario-based drills and testing how agencies would communicate during a disruption or emergency. One public example came in January when Pennsylvania State Police landed a helicopter at Point State Park for training.

In my experience, large crowds in dense public spaces require more than a security presence. They require systems that can handle routine medical issues such as dehydration, falls or minor injuries, while preserving enough ambulance, emergency department and first-responder capacity to respond if a serious emergency occurs. They also require agencies to coordinate quickly when conditions change. Most of that work unfolds before the cameras arrive.

What sports medicine reveals about event preparedness

Protocols used in sports medicine can offer a clear example of what reliable preparedness looks like.

Emergency action planning in athletic training revolves around everyone knowing their jobs, knowing how to communicate and how to find equipment and transport patients. The aim is a response that is coordinated, rehearsed and dependable under pressure.

It is this system that allows the roughly 30 medical personnel on an NFL sideline to function as one unit rather than as individual responders. Scale that logic up to a city like Pittsburgh, filled with hundreds of thousands of people, and the same questions emerge: Where will care for fans be delivered? What can be treated on-site, and what requires ambulance transport? How will patients reach a local hospital when roads are closed or crowds disrupt access? And if weather, security concerns or a serious medical incident interrupts normal city flow, who communicates what, and to whom?

Detroit’s draft showed how large and complicated that operating system can become. The event covered roughly 2 million square feet (186,000 square meters), or about 46 acres – roughly the size of 35 football fields.

At that size, the draft is better understood as a temporary urban system layered onto an existing city than as a traditional fan festival. Crowds have to be directed, access points controlled, medical teams positioned and emergency routes protected. The challenge, then, is not merely attracting visitors. It becomes designing a citywide plan capable of absorbing them without overloading the systems responsible for keeping them safe.

For example, road closures and congestion are often treated as inconveniences or side effects of a major event, but they are also part of the emergency response environment. Gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people disrupt normal traffic, which can complicate emergency medical services operations. Transportation planning is therefore less about convenience than about clinical risk management because time to care depends in part on whether access routes remain usable when they are needed most.

A staffing plan can be excellent on paper, but if emergency vehicles cannot move efficiently, response times slow down. Traffic design can affect care delivery just as much as placement of medical teams and first responders does.

Hidden costs behind the headlines

Once the draft is understood as a public safety operation, the question of how much it costs looks different, too.

Pittsburgh City Council approved $1 million in funding for the 2026 NFL draft. State and local agencies have also been planning security, transportation and emergency response operations well in advance.

Ahead of the 2025 draft in Green Bay, Wisconsin state lawmakers sought $1.25 million to reimburse local law enforcement and fire departments in the Green Bay area for part of their event-related costs. After the draft had ended, Gov. Tony Evers announced that the state would give an additional $1.8 million to the city of Green Bay, the village of Ashwaubenon and Brown County to cover security and other public safety costs associated with hosting the event.

Those figures do not cancel out the economic upside of hosting the NFL draft, but they do show that significant public resources are used to make that upside possible. Staffing, overtime, EMS staging, traffic control and interagency coordination are integral to the event, not background details.

What makes the full public cost harder to pin down is that not every expense is disclosed or presented in one place. In Pittsburgh, for example, state, county and city officials have collectively earmarked at least $14 million for the official nonprofit tourism agency responsible for planning the draft, VisitPittsburgh. The nonprofit is required to provide a $5 million match.

Pennsylvania State Police said they, too, are coordinating security planning, traffic tactics, risk assessments and interagency exercises, while declining to provide an estimated cost for that work, citing security reasons. That means the public cost of hosting the draft may be visible only in part.

The headline economic impact figure is designed to measure the event’s upside. It is not a net figure that subtracts the full cost of security, emergency response and other public operations required to make the event possible.

In my view, the deeper story is not simply that the NFL draft brings money into a city; it is that an event of this scale depends on systems that are built, staffed and tested well before the first draft pick is announced. When those systems work, the headlines stay focused on visitors, spending and exposure. If they are strained by a medical emergency, security incident or breakdown in crowd flow, attention shifts immediately to the infrastructure underneath it.

The economic story matters. But without the hidden work that supports it, it cannot exist on its own.

Adam Annaccone 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 NFL draft brings economic gains – and hidden public safety costs – https://theconversation.com/the-nfl-draft-brings-economic-gains-and-hidden-public-safety-costs-277824

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Rhonda Winegar, Assistant Professor of Nursing, University of Texas at Arlington

Cancer is becoming increasingly common among young people, with cases slowly and steadily rising every year for the past decade. And what type of insurance adolescents and young adults have affects at what stage of cancer they’re diagnosed and how long they survive.

As researchers who study cancer disparities in young adults, we examine the social and systemic factors that shape who survives a cancer diagnosis. In our recent review of the scientific literature – an analysis that included nearly 470,000 Americans between the ages of 15 and 39 who had been diagnosed with cancer – we found that insurance status is one of the clearest and most consequential factors.

Young people with private health insurance lived longer than those on Medicaid or without insurance. Depending on the cancer, this survival advantage ranged from a modest 8% lower risk of death for lymphoma to a drastic 2 to 2.5 times lower risk of death for melanoma and multiple other cancer types.

Young people are especially at risk

People between the ages of 15 and 39 have especially unstable access to health coverage in the U.S.

Young people in this age group are often finishing school or starting new jobs, including positions that don’t offer benefits. They’re also aging off a parent’s insurance plan, which happens when you turn 26 under current U.S. law. This instability leaves many young people uninsured or underinsured.

The consequences of no or insufficient health coverage go beyond inconvenience. Adolescents and young adults already tend to see smaller improvements in cancer survival over time compared to children and older adults. This gap has puzzled researchers for years.

Insurance instability appears to make this gap even wider.

Insurance shapes the entire cancer experience

Health insurance does far more than cover hospital bills. It determines whether a patient can access a specialist, how quickly treatment begins and whether they are eligible to enroll in a clinical trial.

Strikingly, patients on Medicaid and uninsured patients often had similar cancer outcomes – and both did worse than those with private insurance. This suggests that simply having some form of coverage isn’t enough if that coverage doesn’t actually open doors to quality care.

One underdiscussed consequence of insurance status is access to clinical trials. These studies are often the pathway to the most advanced treatments available. Yet research has found that the type of insurance a young cancer patient has is a significant predictor of whether they enroll in a clinical trial, with higher enrollment rates for those with private insurance.

For cancers such as early stage Hodgkin lymphoma – a cancer more common in young adults – treatment decisions and access to newer approaches can vary significantly based on where and how a patient receives care, which is often tied to their insurance status.

Clarifying cause and effect

The body of research we analyzed primarily tracked patterns in existing data rather than through controlled experiments. That makes it difficult to say with certainty that insurance status directly causes differences in survival.

However, the pattern we observed was consistent across many studies. Moreover, most studies recorded insurance status only at the time of diagnosis, which misses changes that happen during treatment. Patients may lose or gain coverage in the middle of their care.

Future research that tracks insurance continuously throughout treatment, standardizes how coverage is categorized and examines specific cancer types and age subgroups in greater depth could clarify the picture further.

What can be done to help young cancer patients

The good news is that insurance is something society can change. Based on our research, a few key areas stand out.

Expanding coverage could help keep more young cancer patients insured. This might look like policies allowing young adults to stay on a parent’s plan longer, expanding Medicaid and reducing gaps in coverage after diagnosis.

Improving what Medicaid actually covers could make it easier for patients to access top cancer centers. Many doctors and cancer centers limit how many Medicaid patients they see because reimbursement rates are low.

Connecting with financial counselors, patient navigators and care coordinators could help young patients on public insurance or those who lack insurance navigate the system. This support could enable them to get timely access to the right treatments and clinical trials.

Early screening for financial barriers can prompt timely referrals to financial counseling, assistance programs or social work before patients experience treatment delays. Financial support can help patients complete treatment, make their appointments and improve their outcomes.

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. How long young cancer patients survive often depends on the insurance they have – https://theconversation.com/how-long-young-cancer-patients-survive-often-depends-on-the-insurance-they-have-278515

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Emily A. Margolis, Curator of Contemporary Spaceflight, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

While I was leading a tour of the National Air and Space Museum in January 2026, a visitor posed this insightful question: “Why has it taken so long to return to the Moon?”

After all, NASA had the know-how and technology to send humans to the lunar surface more than 50 years ago as part of the Apollo program. And, as another tour guest reminded us, computers today can do so much more than they could back then, as evidenced by the smartphones most of us carry in our pockets. Shouldn’t it be easier to get to the Moon than ever before?

The truth is that sending humans into space safely continues to be difficult, especially as missions increase in complexity.

New technologies require years of study, development and testing before they can be certified for flight. And even then, systems and materials can behave in ways that surprise and worry engineers and mission planners; look no further than Boeing’s Starliner CFT mission or the performance of the Orion heat shield on Artemis I.

Issues with Starliner’s thrusters led NASA to return the spacecraft from the International Space Station without its crew. Unanticipated chipping of the Orion heat shield resulted in years of research, culminating in NASA altering the atmospheric reentry plans for the Artemis II mission.

NASA’s programs also require sustained political will and financial support across multiple presidential administrations, Congresses and fiscal years. As a historian of human spaceflight, I have studied the space agency’s efforts to engage the broader public to convince American taxpayers that their programs hold value for the nation.

NASA is now on the eve of the first crewed flight to the Moon since the Apollo era: Artemis II. A crew of four will conduct a lunar flyby, laying the groundwork, the agency hopes, for a landing on the Artemis IV mission.

The story of NASA’s effort to return humans to the Moon is long and winding, demonstrating the complexities of turning grand ambitions into real missions.

Post-Apollo

In early 1970, with two successful Moon landings on the books, President Richard Nixon sought to reduce NASA’s budget to better align with his administration’s priorities. This decision put the space agency in a difficult position, which ultimately led to the cancellation of three planned Apollo missions to conserve funding for its plans for long-term human activity in low Earth orbit.

NASA repurposed the third stage of a Saturn V rocket to create the first U.S. space station, Skylab, which operated from 1973 to 1974. The space agency used leftover Saturn IB rockets and Apollo command and service modules to send crews to the station.

Over the next three decades, NASA developed and operated the space shuttle. The fleet of space shuttle orbiters supported satellite deployment and microgravity research on orbital missions of up to 17 days. This work was meant to enable future long-duration human missions and provide benefits to people on Earth. For example, data from protein crystal growth experiments have informed the development of medicines.

The space shuttle program facilitated the construction, maintenance and staffing of a continuously inhabited research platform in orbit, the International Space Station. The first modules launched in late 1998.

Where to next?

As the new millennium approached, the Clinton administration tasked NASA to think beyond the space station. What could robots and humans do next in space? And where could they do it? Notably, the White House expressed an interest in locations beyond low Earth orbit.

NASA, it turned out, was well positioned to meet the administration’s request. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin was already thinking about preparing proposals for the next presidential administration and had recently sponsored a human lunar return study. In 1999, he established a team to investigate new technologies, missions and destinations for the 21st century.

This work took on new significance following the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia crew in February 2003. Many people, including those in the new George W. Bush White House, wondered whether the human spaceflight program should continue – and, if so, how.

Administration discussions culminated in Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration in 2004, which directed NASA to retire the space shuttle after the completion of the space station. It called for returning humans to the Moon on a crew exploration vehicle designed for destinations beyond low Earth orbit.

It also called for continuing robotic exploration of Mars and engaging companies and international partners in space. Fifteen years earlier, President George H. W. Bush had also announced a Moon and Mars exploration program, but congressional concerns about cost kept space travelers close to home.

The Constellation program’s legacy

In December 2004, NASA began the process of finding a manufacturer for the crew exploration vehicle. By August 2006, the space agency awarded Lockheed Martin the contract to build the capsule, which it had named Orion – the same Orion planned to carry Artemis astronauts to the Moon.

Years of research, development and testing followed for Orion as well as the Ares I crew and Ares V cargo launch vehicles. Together, these technologies made up the Constellation program.

Constellation had two primary objectives: in the near term, to help transport crew to and from the space station after the space shuttle program ended; in the long term, to enable human lunar exploration.

Building systems that could work in both Earth orbit and around the Moon was supposed to save the time and cost of developing two vehicles. Similarly, adapting space shuttle program hardware could supposedly cut costs.

During the first months of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009, the administration initiated an independent review of NASA’s human spaceflight plans. The Augustine Committee, chaired by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, found that the agency’s ambitions outstripped its limited budget, leading to significant delays. The first Orion spacecraft was likely to arrive after the space station ceased operations.

The committee proposed several paths forward at the current funding level, which prioritized space shuttle and space station programs. An additional annual investment of US$3 billion would allow for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

Ultimately, the Obama administration canceled Constellation, but two of its technologies lived on, thanks to U.S. senators from states that would have been affected by cuts.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 funded Orion’s continued development, shifting responsibility for space station crew transportation to commercial vehicles. It also directed NASA to develop the space launch system, a redesigned Ares V heavy booster, to send Orion to the Moon. The technical strategy had political benefits, too, preserving jobs in numerous congressional districts by providing continuity for aerospace contractors.

In December 2014, a Delta IV heavy rocket launched the first Orion capsule on a test flight, providing engineers with data on spacecraft systems and the heat shield. By October 2015, the space launch system had completed a critical design review, the last step before manufacturing could begin.

Introducing Artemis

In December 2017, the new Trump administration issued a policy directive shifting the focus of NASA’s human spaceflight program back to the Moon. The space agency would use Orion and the space launch system in a race to meet an ambitious 2024 landing date. NASA officially named the program Artemis in May 2019.

The 25-day Artemis I mission, launched in November 2022, was a major milestone for the program. This uncrewed flight was the first flight of the space launch system and the first to integrate SLS and Orion. It laid the groundwork for Artemis II, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS.

Over more than 50 years, each new presidential administration has reassessed the place of spaceflight among its priorities, either encouraging or curtailing NASA’s efforts to return humans to the lunar surface.

Each crewed flight requires the alignment of technical expertise, political will and financial support over years if not decades. For the space fans who plan to watch the Artemis II launch, the wait for countdown may feel long. But it’s just a blink in NASA’s long journey back to the Moon.

Emily A. Margolis 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. Artemis II’s long countdown – a space historian explains why it has taken over 50 years to return to the Moon – https://theconversation.com/artemis-iis-long-countdown-a-space-historian-explains-why-it-has-taken-over-50-years-to-return-to-the-moon-274165

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Deana L. Weibel, Professor of Anthropology, Grand Valley State University

Early in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s science fiction blockbuster “Project Hail Mary,” middle school teacher Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, is tasked by an international coalition to uncover the biology of a strange microbe known as an “astrophage” that has been absorbing energy from an ever-dimming Sun.

Grace is a molecular biologist by training, but his controversial ideas and overconfident attitude have kept him out of academia. The viewer will see through flashbacks that as he’s matured, he’s developed a vital skill for solving the astrophage crisis: intellectual humility.

I’m an anthropologist who studies astronauts and space professionals to understand what space symbolizes to the people who experience it firsthand. Grace’s character in “Project Hail Mary” developed several of the traits that I’ve observed in the astronauts I’ve interviewed. These characteristics prove essential to success in high-stakes, uncertain situations. Warning: some plot points will be revealed ahead.

Grace has been chosen as one of the first to study astrophage because of his Ph.D. dissertation on whether life can exist without water, a hot take in the world of science that, along with his rude response to peer reviewers, has gotten him banned from polite science conferences. The solar microbes eating the Sun seem to live without water, so Grace is the acknowledged expert.

Unfortunately, Grace can’t see into the mysterious, opaque little organisms until a dead one becomes translucent. Finally, Grace can see inside the microbe to study it, and he believes his hypothesis about life not needing water will be proven. However, chemical analysis reveals astrophage is made up of mostly water.

In a moment that undercuts both his expertise and his expectations, Grace is wrong. Crushed, he throws a tantrum, observed by a bemused assembly of international leaders.

What actually matters isn’t that Grace is wrong but what he does next. Only after Grace overcomes his frustration and need to be right is he able to move forward, returning to the problem with curiosity rather than defensiveness and the resolve to learn enough about astrophage to make saving the world a possibility.

Admitting what you don’t know

Perhaps the real hero of the story is not Ryland Grace himself but his intellectual humility. Intellectual humility, the admission of your own limited knowledge and a willingness to learn from others, sometimes seems to be undervalued, particularly by those in leadership positions.

People who are intellectually humble will say things like, “Tell me more,” or “I wish I had thought of that.” They don’t feel threatened when admitting vulnerability.

Some people, however, do feel threatened by the thought of admitting incomplete knowledge or appearing to have limitations. Instead of confessing what they don’t know, they may claim a kind of certainty that goes beyond their true expertise, shutting down further questioning. Intellectual humility, in contrast, encourages someone to remain engaged by highlighting how much they still have to learn.

Being contradicted by the facts can produce diverse reactions. For someone without intellectual humility, not knowing can feel like failure. It can lead to defensiveness, denial or a refusal to engage. With humility, however, not knowing is more interesting than scary. The defensiveness is gone, replaced by curiosity.

When Grace realizes his expectations about astrophage aren’t supported by scientific evidence, he goes from feeling sure to feeling unsure. Reality itself hasn’t changed, but Grace’s sense of reality shifts in an important way. He realizes that there is a great deal he still needs to learn about these microbes, without assumptions blocking new knowledge. His intellectual humility gives him a path forward, a way to reset and take in new information without shutting down.

Intellectual humility as a method

Ryland Grace is willing to learn, and this serves him well throughout the movie. His intellectual humility operates as a method, guiding how he approaches problems step by step.

For instance, once he realizes, to his dismay, that astrophage is made of water, Grace acknowledges this new truth. He doesn’t like it, but he accepts it. Moving forward, he avoids making assumptions about astrophage. Instead, he tests hypotheses using simple tools that have been cobbled together from items available in a big-box store.

His partner in this experiment is Carl, played by Lionel Boyce, who is there as a sort of half-“babysitter,” half-security guard, keeping an eye on Grace but also being irresistibly pulled into his scientific orbit.

Grace’s intellectual humility transforms Carl from a minder into a partner. Even though Carl isn’t a scientist himself, when Grace has to figure out how to make the lab’s astrophage experiment replicate the conditions causing the crisis in our solar system, it is Carl who suggests a solution.

Instead of being bothered that a nonscientist knew better than he did, Grace acknowledges the solution’s value, thanks Carl and uses Carl’s idea to reach a crucial discovery, proving himself to be open to ideas and feedback from others.

When Grace’s experiments struggle, he moves forward without defensiveness and instead displays increasing curiosity. His method of intellectual humility is to admit ignorance, test variables and revise working hypotheses based on new data, staying open to suggestions from others the whole time. To borrow a phrase from a different space story, “this is the way.”

Science fiction to real space exploration

Although “Project Hail Mary” is fictional, the attitude displayed by Ryland Grace is something I have seen in ethnographic interviews with astronauts and other space professionals, including engineers, astronomers and flight surgeons. Ethnography is a method of research, usually done in the long term, that combines interviews and participant observation.

When confronted with the reality of the universe – an enormous starry void we humans are only beginning to understand – scientists and space explorers are often stunned and humbled by the extent of their own ignorance. Although there are, without a doubt, less-than-humble people building rockets or going into space, intellectual humility is often a guiding force among many successful space researchers.

In my book, “The Ultraview Effect,” I trace the way a sense of cosmic awe can provoke feelings of humility and openness, which serve as catalysts for curiosity. This pattern, which I began to notice after an astronaut told me how seeing billions of stars with his own eyes made him realize how little he actually knew, is very similar to what Grace experiences in the movie.

Being open to awe and willing to be humbled by it isn’t weakness but strength. And in his embrace of intellectual humility, Grace lives up to his name.

Deana L. Weibel has received a research award from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for upcoming archival research. She is an advisor to Cosmic Girls and a Fellow of the Explorers Club.

– ref. ‘Project Hail Mary’ demonstrates how intellectual humility can be a guiding force for scientists and astronauts – https://theconversation.com/project-hail-mary-demonstrates-how-intellectual-humility-can-be-a-guiding-force-for-scientists-and-astronauts-279404

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ann E. Carlson, Professor of Environmental Law, University of California, Los Angeles

Cars on the road today are 99% cleaner than they were in 1970. Air quality in the United States is much, much better as a result. In Los Angeles, where I live, lead levels in the air were 50 times higher in the 1970s than today, and the amount of lead in kids’ blood has plummeted.

What made that drop possible is arguably the most important environmental technology ever invented: the catalytic converter.

California has long had the authority under the federal Clean Air Act to set emissions standards for cars and trucks that are higher than the nation’s, and its early use of that authority is a major reason why catalytic converters are now standard in vehicles and people are healthier across the country.

At a time when the Trump administration is attacking California’s ability to cut air and climate pollution and revoking its Clean Air Act waivers, it’s helpful to remember just how important the state’s leadership has been in making the air Americans breathe so much healthier.

As I recount in my forthcoming book, “Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air,” California’s role in the emergence of catalytic technology is often downplayed. The passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act is typically given the credit. That law deserves accolades for its key role. So does William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But without California’s willingness in the early 1970s to push automakers to meet tough standards, the technology would have developed more slowly and the air would have remained dirtier for many more years.

Birth of the catalytic converter

Eugene Houdry invented the first catalytic converter technology in the 1950s. Years earlier, he had developed the Houdry process for catalytic cracking, which makes converting crude oil into gasoline much easier. That invention in the mid-1930s helped spur the mass adoption of cars and trucks in the U.S.

Widespread car ownership altered American life, changing where people lived, worked and vacationed. But cars also brought terrible smog as their use skyrocketed. When Houdry realized his life’s work was choking the air of Los Angeles, he decided to do something about it. By the late 1950s, Houdry had invented a rudimentary catalytic converter.

You might think that this invention, which Houdry said could make “the lung cancer curve dip,” would lead carmakers to install the technology on their new vehicles.

But that is not what happened. Instead, auto manufacturers engaged in what the government described as a yearslong conspiracy to keep emissions-limiting technology off the market, ultimately leading to an antitrust legal settlement.

It wasn’t until the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act that carmakers got serious about improving upon Houdry’s invention for mass market installation.

The Clean Air Act’s ambition

The 1970 Clean Air Act is a remarkable piece of legislation. Passed with only one negative vote and signed into law by President Richard Nixon, the act set wildly ambitious goals. They included a requirement that carmakers cut auto pollutants by 90% by 1975.

Congress passed this requirement knowing that the technology to cut emissions wasn’t ready for prime time. Houdry’s catalytic invention couldn’t work with leaded gasoline, and it hadn’t been tested in tough conditions, such as freezing cold or sweltering heat.

The Ford Motor Co., with Lee Iacocca as its president, told Congress in 1970, “If such (pollution cuts) are established … the technology as we know it today would not permit us to continue to produce cars after January 1, 1975.”

Congress ignored Ford’s dire warning and passed the stringent cuts.

Automakers responded with two separate tactics. The first was to gear up – alongside companies like Corning Glass and the Engelhard Company – to develop technology to meet the 90% cuts. Most of their efforts focused on improving the catalytic converter, made more plausible when Engelhard determined that catalytic converters wouldn’t corrode with unleaded gasoline. The EPA’s Ruckelshaus ordered gas stations to make unleaded gasoline available as of Jan. 1, 1975.

While the auto companies worked to meet the congressional mandate, they also pressured Congress and the courts to weaken or delay it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit obliged, ordering Ruckelshaus to extend the deadline for compliance by a year. Congress eventually extended the deadline to 1981.

But California did not let up.

A gamble that paid off

California has the authority under federal law to issue its own automobile pollution standards, as long as the standards are stronger than federal standards and the state receives a waiver from the EPA. No other state has similar power, but states can adopt California’s higher standards.

After the federal appeals court gave carmakers an extra year to comply with the federal rules, California decided it would not let car companies off the hook.

The state asked Ruckelshaus to grant a waiver for California to issue standards tough enough that carmakers would have to install catalytic technology to meet them.

Ruckelshaus faced enormous pressure to deny the waiver, with automakers arguing that the technology was neither effective nor available. But in a hint of the resolve he would later show in refusing Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Ruckelshaus gave California the go-ahead in 1973, and the state’s rules went into effect for the 1975 model year.

He reasoned that doing so would maintain “continued momentum toward installation of (catalyst) systems … while minimizing risks incident to national introduction of a new technology.” In other words, California could serve as a guinea pig for the rest of the country by adopting tough standards.

The gamble paid off. Since California was the nation’s largest auto market, companies had strong economic incentives to change their models to meet the state’s standards. Catalytic technology is now not only standard on American vehicles but also on vehicles around the world, and air quality in the U.S. is vastly improved.

With the adoption of the catalytic converter, leaded gasoline was banned and eventually phased out, and lead levels began to drop almost immediately.

Continuing California’s legacy

Catalytic converters have removed 8 billion tons of pollution from the air in the U.S. They have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and led to the removal of a deadly neurotoxin, lead, from the atmosphere.

California’s standards have spurred important technological innovations for vehicles, including new types of less-polluting gasoline and vehicles that emit no pollution at all.

But the state’s ability to set higher standards is under attack. Congress – at the behest of the Trump administration – has overturned three waivers the state was granted to cut even more pollutants and the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The Trump administration has also sued California to invalidate its mandates for automakers to sell zero-emissions vehicles.

Today, California officials are searching for alternative ways to continue to make cars and trucks cleaner. The state has set aside money to replace federal tax incentives for electric vehicles, and the Legislature is exploring creative ways to hold indirect sources of emissions, such as rail yards, ports and warehouses where vehicles are constantly running, accountable for air pollution.

But these alternatives aren’t as powerful as the authority to exceed federal standards to make the air cleaner.

Ann E. Carlson’s research was supported by UCLA. President Biden appointed her to serve as Chief Counsel and Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2021-2024.

– ref. How California’s war on smog and its ambitious car pollution rules made everyone’s air cleaner – https://theconversation.com/how-californias-war-on-smog-and-its-ambitious-car-pollution-rules-made-everyones-air-cleaner-279533