Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Ana Santos Rutschman, Professor of Law, Villanova University

Philadelphia has once again been named one of the “asthma capitals” of the U.S. – ranking No. 4 in a report released on Sept. 9, 2025, by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Allentown was ranked No. 3, Harrisburg No. 15 and Pittsburgh No. 44.

The AAFA, which is the largest patient group in the country for people with asthma and allergies, ranks cities based on “how challenging they are to live in” for people with asthma. The ranking combines data on asthma prevalence rates, visits to the ER and deaths related to asthma.

Compared with 2024 data, Allentown’s ranking has improved: It went from No. 1, a position now occupied by Detroit, to No. 3. Philadelphia is doing worse, one place higher than in 2024.

I am a health law professor and the director of the Health Innovation Lab at Villanova University, where I have researched ways to make asthma medication more affordable for patients.

Here are some steps that individuals, schools and state leaders in Pennsylvania can take to reduce asthma triggers and the cost of asthma medications in their families and communities.

The September asthma peak in Pennsylvania

The ranking was published at an especially challenging time of the year for many asthma patients.

September is known as the “asthma peak month.” The third week of September typically registers the highest number of asthma attacks, as well as asthma-related hospital and ER visits, nationwide.

Asthma triggers include fall pollen and mold levels, which start increasing in the late summer and stay high through early fall.

Also contributing to the September asthma peak is poor indoor air quality, especially in older or poorly maintained school buildings where children are exposed to concentrated amounts of allergens and irritants.

A report released in August 2025 found that Pennsylvania schools face a variety of asthma triggers, such as exposure to radon, mold and lead paint. Yet, less than 4% of schools in Pennsylvania have an indoor air quality plan. The problem is especially acute in cities like Philadelphia, where many school buildings are over 70 years old and in disrepair.

Solving a problem as complex and widespread as asthma may require taking creative steps. These include initiatives led by schools and students. For example, students in Australia led a successful initiative to improve air quality around their schools by having parents cut down on engine idling time.

Affordable asthma medications

Asthma patients often need medication to manage their symptoms. Yet, over the past 15 years that medication has become increasingly unaffordable.

Last year, some pharmaceutical companies capped the price of their asthma inhalers at US$35 each.

But not all types of inhalers are covered. And other asthma medications, such as some drugs taken orally, remain unaffordable for many patients. Asthma drugs that are not subject to a price cap or other type of price control may cost patients thousands of dollars a year.

There are resources for asthma patients and parents of children with asthma that may help them save some money when filling their prescriptions. A good starting point is GoodRx, a free online platform that allows users to search and compare medication prices across pharmacies. The website currently lists 65 different types of asthma medication and their varying prices.

What Pennsylvania lawmakers can do

Since price caps don’t apply to all types of inhalers and asthma medication, states can pass legislation that imposes such caps, instead of relying solely on industry compliance. Before there was a federal Medicare price cap on insulin, several states took this route and implemented state caps.

Some states have now begun passing similar legislation for certain types of asthma medication. Minnesota, for instance, beginning Jan. 1, 2025, capped inhalers at $25, lower than the industry cap. Pennsylvania could follow suit and even consider asthma medication besides inhalers.

Pennsylvania can also address other facets of the asthma crisis. For instance, the state could offer funding or other incentives for schools to upgrade their ventilation systems or otherwise address poor indoor air quality.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia.

Ana Santos Rutschman 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. New report ranks Philadelphia and Allentown among toughest cities in America for people with asthma – https://theconversation.com/new-report-ranks-philadelphia-and-allentown-among-toughest-cities-in-america-for-people-with-asthma-264084

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael Hales, Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Physical Education, Kennesaw State University

For athletes across all sports, few experiences are as agonizing as being forced to leave competition with a sudden muscle cramp. These painful, uncontrolled spasms – formally known as exercise-associated muscle cramps – have frustrated athletes, coaches and researchers for decades.

Scientists have traditionally attributed exercise-induced cramps to dehydration or electrolyte imbalances. However, this theory left unanswered questions. For example, many well-hydrated athletes experience cramps, while others competing in hot, humid conditions remain unaffected.

A growing body of research is challenging this explanation, pointing instead to the playing surface as a critical factor.

In my work as a sports scientist, I study how different variables affect athletic performance. Work from my team has found that specific qualities of playing surfaces can lead to early neuromuscular fatigue and unexpected muscle cramps.

Muscle cramps and playing surfaces

As muscles fatigue, the normal balance between signals in the nervous system that direct muscles to contract and relax become disrupted. Muscle spindles, which sense stretch, increase their firing rate. Meanwhile, inhibitory feedback from Golgi tendon organs – a part of the nervous system at the intersection of muscle fibers and tendons – declines.

In other words, muscles are getting mixed signals about whether to contract or relax. The result is excessive activation of motor neurons that stimulate muscle fibers into a sustained, involuntary contraction – a cramp.

Recent studies suggest that competing on surfaces with unfamiliar mechanical properties – such as stiffness and elasticity – can accelerate neuromuscular fatigue. Surfaces alter the mechanics of your muscles and joints. If your neuromuscular system is not accustomed to these demands, fatigue can prematurely set in and create the conditions for cramping.

In one study, my team and I found a 13% difference in muscle activity among runners performing on fields of varying stiffness and elasticity. Another study from my team found a 50% difference in hamstring activity among athletes performing identical drills on different types of turf.

Beyond sports-specific performance metrics, biomechanics research has long shown that altering the properties of playing surfaces changes muscle stiffness, joint loading and range of motion. These variables directly affect fatigue. Muscles crossing multiple joints such as the hamstrings appear especially vulnerable to variations in playing surfaces, given their central role in sprinting and cutting.

Preventing cramps during exercise

If playing surfaces influence fatigue, then managing how they interact with players could help prevent cramps.

Researchers have proposed developing regional databases cataloging the mechanical characteristics of competition surfaces for sports such as tennis. With this data, coaches and sports organizations could tailor training environments to mimic competitive conditions, reducing the shock of unfamiliar surfaces. It’s not necessarily the inherent properties of the surface that causes cramping, but rather how similar or different they are from what an athlete is used to.

Consider a soccer team that practices on a soft surface but competes on a more stiff surface. Without preparation, the shift in how their muscles will be used may lead to premature fatigue and cramps during competition. By incorporating drills that replicate how athletes’ muscles will be activated on competition turf could help the team better prepare for game conditions.

Similarly, a basketball team accustomed to new hardwood may benefit from training sessions on worn or cushioned courts that simulate upcoming away venues.

The key is systematic exposure. Conditioning on surfaces that replicate competitive demands acclimatizes the neuromuscular system, lowering fatigue risk and potentially reducing the risk of cramps.

Toward a holistic approach to cramps

Hydration and nutrition remain essential for performance. But accounting for conditioning, footwear traction and adaptation to different playing surfaces could help sports medicine move toward a more complete solution to exercise-associated muscle cramps.

With continued research and technology development, cramps may no longer need to be a frustrating inevitability. Instead, athletes and coaches could anticipate them, adjust training to match surface demands, and take steps to prevent them before they derail performance.

The future of cramp prevention may lie in real-time monitoring. Advances in a combination of wearable biosensors to detect neuromuscular fatigue, surface testing equipment and machine learning could help predict individualized cramp risk. Coaches might then adjust practice plans, make in-game substitutions or even adapt surface conditions when possible.

By better preparing athletes for the mechanical demands of competition surfaces, teams may protect their athletes’ health and ensure top performers are available when the game is on the line.

Michael Hales 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. What causes muscle cramps during exercise? Athletes and coaches may want to look at the playing surface – https://theconversation.com/what-causes-muscle-cramps-during-exercise-athletes-and-coaches-may-want-to-look-at-the-playing-surface-262619

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sonja Fritzsche, Senior Associate Dean and Professor of German Studies, Michigan State University

In “The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI,” the futurist Ray Kurzweil imagines the point in 2045 when rapid technological progress crosses a threshold as humans merge with machines, an event he calls “the singularity.”

Although Kurzweil’s predictions may sound more like science fiction than fact-based forecasting, his brand of thinking goes well beyond the usual sci-fi crowd. It has provided inspiration for American technology industry elites for some time, chief among them Elon Musk.

With Neuralink, his company that is developing computer interfaces implanted in people’s brains, Musk says he intends to “unlock new dimensions of human potential.” This fusion of human and machine echoes Kurzweil’s singularity. Musk also cites apocalyptic scenarios and points to transformative technologies that can save humanity.

Ideas like those of Kurzweil and Musk, among others, can seem as if they are charting paths into a brave new world. But as a humanities scholar who studies utopianism and dystopianism, I’ve encountered this type of thinking in the futurist and techno-utopian art and writings of the early 20th century.

Techno-utopianism’s origins

Techno-utopianism emerged in its modern form in the 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution ushered in a set of popular ideas that combined technological progress with social reform or transformation.

Kurzweil’s singularity parallels ideas from Italian and Russian futurists amid the electrical and mechanical revolutions that took place at the turn of the 20th century. Enthralled by inventions like the telephone, automobile, airplane and rocket, those futurists found inspiration in the concept of a “New Human,” a being who they imagined would be transformed by speed, power and energy.

A century ahead of Musk, Italian futurists imagined the destruction of one world, so that it might be replaced by a new one, reflecting a common Western techno-utopian belief in a coming apocalypse that would be followed by the rebirth of a changed society.

One especially influential figure of the time was Filippo Marinetti, whose 1909 “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” offered a nationalistic vision of a modern, urban Italy. It glorified the tumultuous transformation caused by the Industrial Revolution. The document describes workers becoming one with their fiery machines. It encourages “aggressive action” coupled with an “eternal” speed designed to break things and bring about a new world order.

The overtly patriarchal text glorifies war as “hygiene” and promotes “scorn for woman.” The manifesto also calls for the destruction of museums, libraries and universities and supports the power of the rioting crowd.

Marinetti’s vision later drove him to support and even influence the early fascism of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. However, the relationship between the futurism movement and Mussolini’s increasingly anti-modern regime was an uneasy one, as Italian studies scholar Katia Pizzi wrote in “Italian Futurism and the Machine.”

Further east, the Russian revolutionaries of 1917 adopted a utopian faith in material progress and science. They combined a “belief in the ease with which culture could be destroyed” with the benefits of “spreading scientific ideas to the masses of Russia,” historian Richard Stites wrote in “Revolutionary Dreams.”

For the Russian left, an “immediate and complete remaking” of the soul was taking place. This new proletarian culture was personified in the ideal of the New Soviet Man. This “master of nature by means of machines and tools” received a polytechnical education instead of the traditional middle-class pursuit of the liberal arts, humanities scholar George Young wrote in “The Russian Cosmists.” The first Soviet People’s Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, supported these movements.

Although their political ideologies took different forms, these 20th-century futurists all focused their efforts on technological advancement as an ultimate objective. Techno-utopians were convinced that the dirt and pollution of real-world factories would automatically lead to a future of “perfect cleanliness, efficiency, quiet, and harmony,” historian Howard Segal wrote in “Technology and Utopia.”

Myths of efficiency and everyday tech

Despite the remarkable technological advances of that time, and since, the vision of those techno-utopians largely has not come to pass. In the 21st century, it can seem as if we live in a world of near-perfect efficiency and plenitude thanks to the rapid development of technology and the proliferation of global supply chains. But the toll that these systems take on the natural environment – and on the people whose labor ensures their success – presents a dramatically different picture.

Today, some of the people who espouse techno-utopian and apocalyptic visions have amassed the power to influence, if not determine, the future. At the start of 2025, through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk introduced a fast-paced, tech-driven approach to government that has led to major cutbacks in federal agencies. He’s also influenced the administration’s huge investments in artificial intelligence , a class of technological tools that public officials are only beginning to understand.

The futurists of the 20th century influenced the political sphere, but their movements were ultimately artistic and literary. By contrast, contemporary techno-futurists like Musk lead powerful multinational corporations that influence economies and cultures across the globe.

Does this make Musk’s dreams of human transformation and societal apocalypse more likely to become reality? If not, these elements of Musk’s project are likely to remain more theoretical, just as the dreams of last century’s techno-utopians did.

Sonja Fritzsche 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. Techno-utopians like Musk are treading old ground: The futurism of early 20th-century Europe – https://theconversation.com/techno-utopians-like-musk-are-treading-old-ground-the-futurism-of-early-20th-century-europe-259367

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Tom Langen, Professor of Biology, Clarkson University

When I started bird-watching as a teenager, a few years after the first Earth Day in 1970, several species that once thrived in my region were nowhere to be found.

Some, like the passenger pigeon, were extinct. Others had retreated to more remote, wild areas of North America. In many cases, humans had destroyed their habitat by cutting down forests, draining wetlands and converting grasslands to agriculture. Pesticides such as DDT, air and water pollution, and the shooting of birds added to the drop in numbers.

Birds are still declining across the continent. A recent study of 529 species found their numbers fell nearly 30% from 1970 to 2017. In 2025, nearly one-third of all North American bird species are declining; 112 bird species that have lost over half their population in the past 50 years.

Yet, half a century after I started birding, I am starting to see a few long-missing species reappear as I ride my bike from my home through the village and surrounding farmland in rural New York.

What has brought these species back while others are disappearing?

In some cases, like the bald eagle, state wildlife officials have reintroduced the birds. But others have returned on their own as habitat protection and restoration, the elimination of certain pesticides, and a shift away from shooting raptors and other large birds made the region less threatening for them.

As a wildlife biologist, I believe their return is a testament to conservation and the positive effect of reversing harms to the natural environment. Here are three examples.

Merlin: Pesticides’ collateral damage

The merlin is a falcon, a little smaller than a pigeon, that eats other birds.

Until the 1970s, merlins primarily bred in the vast coniferous forests of the far north. But in the early 1970s, they began nesting in Saskatoon, in Saskatchewan, Canada. Twenty years later, the city had 30 nests. Soon, merlins were breeding in towns across Canada’s prairie provinces, then spreading east into the cities and towns of eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S.

In Ontario, merlin populations have increased 3.5% per year over the past half-century, an explosive rate of increase.

Where I live in the Saint Lawrence Valley of New York, nearly every village has a pair nesting in an old crow nest at the top of a tall Norway spruce tree today. The loud ki-ki-kee of a territorial pair becomes a familiar sound when they’re in the area.

Why did merlin populations grow and spread so rapidly?

Exposure to the pesticide DDT in the 1960s weakened the shells of eggs laid by merlins and other raptors, and fewer of their chicks survived. Their numbers plummeted as a result. When the U.S. and Canada began restricting DDT in the early 1970s – and other pesticides – it was possible for merlins to successfully breed once again in areas with extensive agriculture.

The indiscriminate shooting of birds of prey like the merlin has also declined. In the late 1800s, with farmers upset about losing poultry to raptors, Pennsylvania offered 50-cent bounties for the heads of merlins and other hawks and owls, and paid $90,000 over two years. People gathered at migratory passages, such as Hawk Mountain, to shoot birds of prey.

Ending bounty programs and enforcing laws prohibiting shooting helped stop this. More importantly, people became aware of the ecological value and beauty of raptors and turned against killing them. Today, Hawk Mountain is a site for bird-watching rather than bird-shooting.

Merlins may have also gotten some help from a large increase in urban-breeding crows. Merlins do not build their own nests but instead move into old crow nests. And it appears that merlins have adapted to the presence of humans, as well.

Pileated woodpecker: The need for big trees

Another bird that has dramatically increased in population and range is the pileated woodpecker. These black-and-white woodpeckers, recognizable for their bright red crest, are large – about the size of a crow.

The two other large woodpecker species in North America – the ivory-billed and imperial woodpeckers – are likely extinct today.

In the early 20th century the pileated woodpecker appeared to be on the same trajectory, as forest clearing took away their habitat. These woodpeckers rely on large dead or dying trees where they can excavate nesting cavities and feed on carpenter ants and wood-boring beetle larvae.

The regrowth of forest in eastern North America boosted their population – as did protection from shooting.

They now forage in large trees in suburban yards, visit bird feeders, nest in parks with substantial tree cover, and are not shy around people.

Their return is good for other species, too. The pileated woodpecker is a keystone species: Several birds and mammals benefit from the large tree cavities that the woodpeckers excavate.

Sandhill crane: A Clean Water Act success story

It’s not every day that you see a 4-foot-tall (1.2-meter) bird in rural New York, but it’s happening more often. Sandhill cranes were once almost extinct in the eastern U.S. Today, they’re making a comeback.

These large waterbirds disappeared across much of their breeding range in the early 20th century as wetlands were drained for agriculture. They were also shot to prevent crop damage and heavily hunted for meat and were referred to as “ribeye of the sky.”

By the 1930s, there were only about three dozen pairs in the eastern half of the U.S., mainly in remote marshes of northern Wisconsin. Laws such as the Clean Water Act, and programs that protect and restore wetlands and grasslands, such as the USDA Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, have played an important part in this species’ recovery.

Hunting regulations and migratory bird treaties have also been key. Probably because of reduced shooting, cranes now tolerate the presence of people. They’re spotted foraging on golf courses and even breeding in suburban wetlands near Chicago.

Today, over 90,000 sandhill cranes exist in the U.S., and they can be found breeding across the Great Lakes states, New England and eastern Canada. They aren’t beloved everywhere, however – in some areas, the cranes cause crop damage in cornfields.

Lessons for the recovery of other species

Other bird species that are now breeding in my area, but weren’t in 1970, include the Canada goose, turkey, trumpeter swan, great egret, bald eagle, osprey, peregrine falcon and raven.

All have benefited from habitat protection and restoration, less shooting of birds and, in the case of the raptors, bans of certain pesticides such as DDT.

While other bird species are declining, these recoveries show that when habitat is restored and protected, when people remove harmful substances from the environment and address harms caused by human infrastructure such as lights at night and reflective windows, some species that are currently rare and found only in remote places may return to the places we live.

Tom Langen 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 surprising recovery of once-rare birds – https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-recovery-of-once-rare-birds-263595

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jeremy J. Michalek, Professor of Engineering & Public Policy, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University

When Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, it was the largest climate bill in U.S. history, with major incentives for electric vehicle production and adoption. In its wake, investment in the U.S. electric vehicle industry accelerated. But in 2025, President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated most of the incentives, and U.S. investment collapsed.

Hitting the brakes on electric vehicles will clearly mean less progress in reducing transportation emissions and less strategic U.S. leadership in a key technology of the future. But in a new study, my colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University and I find that fewer electric vehicles will also mean less investment to clean up the electricity sector.

How we got here

U.S. electric vehicle adoption lags behind the rest of the world – especially China, which has invested heavily and strategically to dominate electric vehicle markets and supply chains and to leapfrog the historical dominance of American, European and Japanese manufacturers of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.

Electric vehicles are much simpler to engineer, and this opened a window for China to bet big on EVs with investment, incentives and experimentation. As battery prices dropped dramatically, electric cars became real competition for gasoline cars – especially for the massive Chinese market, where buyers don’t have strong prior preferences for gasoline. China now dominates the supply chain for battery materials, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese, as well as the rare earth minerals used in electric motors.

In 2022, the U.S. took action to change this trend when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act. The law encouraged EV adoption by lowering costs to manufacturers and consumers. But it also encouraged automakers to find ways to build EVs without Chinese materials by making the largest incentives conditional on avoiding China entirely.

After the law passed, investment soared across hundreds of new battery manufacturing and material processing facilities in the U.S.

But in 2025, Congress passed and Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which eliminated most of the incentives. U.S. investment in EV-related production has collapsed.

Electric vehicles are cleaner

As a scholar of electric vehicle technology, economics, environment and policy, I have conducted numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies characterizing benefits and costs of electric vehicles over their life cycle, from production through use and end of life. When charged with clean electricity, electric vehicles are one of the few technologies in existence that can provide transportation with near-zero emissions.

With today’s electricity grid, EV emissions can vary, depending on the mix of electricity generators used in the region where they are charged, driving conditions such as weather or traffic, the specific vehicles being compared, and even the timing of charging. But EVs are generally better for the climate over their life cycle today than most gasoline vehicles, even if the most efficient gas-electric hybrids are still cleaner in some locations. EVs become cleaner as the electricity grid becomes cleaner, and, importantly, it turns out that EVs can even help make the electricity grid cleaner.

This matters because transportation and electricity together make up the majority of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the passenger cars and light trucks that we all drive produce the majority of our transportation emissions.

In its efforts to prevent the government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, the Trump administration is now claiming that emissions from cars and trucks are “not meaningful” contributors to climate change. But in reality, a technology that cleans up both transportation and electricity at the same time is a big deal.

An opportunity for cleaner electricity

Our research has found that turning away from electric vehicles does more than miss a chance to curb transportation emissions – it also misses an opportunity to make the nation’s electricity supply cleaner.

In our paper, my co-authors Lily Hanig, Corey Harper and Destenie Nock and I looked at potential scenarios for electric vehicle adoption across the U.S. from now until 2050. We considered situations ranging from cases with no government policies supporting electric vehicles to cases with enough electric vehicle adoption to be on track with road maps targeting overall net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

In each of these scenarios, we calculated how the nation’s power grid and electricity generators would respond to electric vehicle charging load.

We found that when there are more electric vehicles charging, more power plants would need to be built – and because of cost competitiveness, most of those new power plants would be solar, wind, battery storage and natural gas plants, depending on the region.

Once wind and solar plants are built, they are cheaper to operate than fossil fuel plants, because utilities don’t need to buy more fuel to burn to make more electricity. That cost advantage means wind and solar energy gets used first, so it can displace fossil-fuel generation even when EVs aren’t charging.

A virtuous – or vicious – cycle

Our analysis reveals that what’s good for climate in the transportation sector – eliminating emissions from vehicle tailpipes – is also good for climate in the power sector, supporting more investment in clean power and displacing more fossil fuel-powered generation.

As a result, encouraging electric vehicle adoption is even better for the climate than many people expected because EV charging can actually cause lower-emitting power plants to be built.

Gasoline vehicles can’t last forever. The cheap oil will eventually run out. And EV batteries have gotten so cheap, with ranges now comparable to gas cars, that the global transition is already well underway. Even in the U.S., consumers are adopting more EVs as the technology improves and offers consumers more for less. The U.S. government can’t single-handedly stop this transition – it can only decide how much to lead, lag or resist. Rolling back electric vehicle incentives now means higher emissions, less clean energy investment and weaker U.S. competitiveness in a crucial industry of the future.

Our findings show that slowing electric vehicle adoption doesn’t just affect emissions from transportation. It also misses opportunities to help build a cleaner power sector, potentially locking the U.S. into higher emissions from its top two highest-emitting sectors – power generation and transportation – while the window to avoid the worst effects of climate change is closing.

Jeremy J. Michalek currently receives funding from Toyota Research Institute and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to study electric vehicle battery recycling and reuse and from the Technology Competitiveness and Industrial Policy Center to study global supply of critical battery materials. He has received funding from a diverse group of sources in the past, such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Electric Power Research Institute, Ford Motor Company, Toyota Motor Corporation, the Center for Applied Environmental Law and Policy, and other organizations. He has consulted for the US Environmental Protection Agency. The views expressed here are his own.

– ref. Trump reversed policies supporting electric vehicles − it will affect the road to clean electricity, too – https://theconversation.com/trump-reversed-policies-supporting-electric-vehicles-it-will-affect-the-road-to-clean-electricity-too-264721

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Claire B. Wofford, Associate Professor of Political Science, College of Charleston

President Donald Trump’s penchant to act first, ask later was on full display recently when he became the first president in American history to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board.

Trump’s axing of federal employees is nothing new – thousands have been terminated, including the heads of agencies that, like the Federal Reserve, are designed to be insulated from presidential control.

But in removing Lisa Cook, Trump has entered into a morass of legal questions and challenged long-standing beliefs about the power of the president to control the U.S. economy.

Trump’s action, if upheld by courts, would upend the Fed’s century-long practice of formulating the nation’s monetary policy free from political pressure. It also could affect the budget of every American household, with the cost of goods and services influenced by political ideology more than financial expertise.

As a scholar of the American courts, I believe that, depending upon how courts resolve the case, it could also mark a significant shift in the ability of the judicial branch to check executive power.

This agency is different

The dispute with Cook reached the public on Aug. 20, 2025, when Trump-appointed director of the Federal Finance Housing Agency Bill Pulte announced on social media that he had made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice about potential mortgage fraud by Cook. The DOJ subsequently opened an official investigation.

After Pulte’s announcement, Trump posted, “Cook must resign, now!!!” She refused and was officially fired by Trump five days later.

Cook then filed suit in federal court on Aug. 28, asking U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb to issue an emergency order blocking her removal. The litigation is ongoing.

Among the multitude of cases about Trump’s ability to fire employees of federal agencies, this one is different – because the agency is different.

Created by Congress in 1913 after a series of banking panics, the Federal Reserve is charged with managing the nation’s economy. It acts as the national bank, monitors the health of other financial institutions, and, most critically, develops monetary policy, which includes setting interest rates, the primary tool with which it manages inflation and ensures long-term economic growth and stability.

Precisely because of the Fed’s power, presidents have often tried to influence it. Sharp criticism of its members is nothing new. Trump has an ongoing and very public fight with the chair of the Fed board, Jerome Powell, about interest rates.

But a president actually firing a board member is something else entirely.

Supreme Court warning

The Fed is just one of dozens of what are termed “independent agencies.” These are part of the executive branch but designed by Congress to operate insulated from the president’s preferences and pressure. Over time, precisely because it is so powerful, the Fed’s ability to act free from the president has become particularly sacrosanct.

The primary mechanisms through which Congress ensures agency independence are “removal provisions,” statutory directives that define when and why the president can fire agency leadership. The Federal Reserve Act, the law that creates the Fed and sets out its structure and mission, provides that members of the board, called “Governors,” serve 14-year terms, “unless sooner removed for cause by the President.”

“For cause” may sound familiar because its appearance in a different law also recently triggered litigation. That happened when Trump removed the heads of two other independent agencies, Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board. The Supreme Court decided in April that the restriction on the president’s ability to fire those two independent agency heads violated Article 2 of the Constitution.

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Read more:
Supreme Court ignores precedent instead of overruling it in allowing president to fire officials whom Congress tried to make independent

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In that same opinion, however, the court took pains to specify that its ruling did not apply to the Federal Reserve Board. Calling the Fed a “uniquely structured, quasi-private agency” with a “distinct historical tradition,” the majority signaled to Trump that booting members off the Federal Reserve Board was a no-go.

When he fired Cook, Trump flouted this directive. A legal battle was inevitable.

What’s behind the case

The case is complex and involves questions about whether Cook’s termination violates a congressional statute and the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Notably, the parties are not arguing about the constitutionality of the removal provision itself, as they were in the Wilcox case. Instead, the dispute centers primarily around the meaning of “for cause” – that is, what reasons can legally justify firing a board governor. Unlike other statutes, which use additional terms such as “inefficiency, neglect or malfeasance of duty while in office,” the Federal Reserve Act provides no further guidance.

Trump argues that the – alleged – mortgage fraud is sufficient “cause” to remove Cook, particularly from an agency charged with managing the nation’s finances. Cook claims that mere allegations about private conduct before she was appointed to the board cannot justify her termination, particularly when those allegations appear to be a pretext for a political disagreement.

But lurking in the background of this seemingly picayune fight over a single word in a 111-year-old statute are fundamental questions about separation of powers, checks and balances, and which branch of government determines the law.

‘Say what the law is’

Trump’s fuller argument is actually quite bold.

As he is doing in other lawsuits, the president is asserting that he – and he alone – gets to determine the meaning of “cause.” The term, his lawyers write, is “capacious” and its meaning is entirely vested by Congress in the president. No court can second-guess his judgment.

The claim is striking and seems to fly in the face of the country’s system of checks and balances. In addition, if the branch of government charged with carrying out the law – the executive branch – also gets to define it, separation of powers also appears to be left by the wayside.

Cook counters that judicial review of termination decisions is critical.

If courts abandon their responsibility here, she argues, they will obliterate the independence of the Federal Reserve and subject the national economy to the short-term whims of a president rather than the long-term vision of economic experts.

And given the clear and continued acquiescence of Congress to this president’s broad assertions of power, they would also remove what, at least until the next presidential election, may be the last remaining check on executive power.

The case will likely reach the Supreme Court this fall, and the outcome is hard to predict. Trump has benefited from a string of victories there issued by a conservative majority that believes strongly in executive power and judicial deference to the president.

At the same time, it will be difficult to ignore the sentiments about the independence of the Fed that those same conservative justices expressed in the Wilcox case and the potential economic consequences a ruling for Trump might generate.

The court’s ultimate decision may actually depend upon what role it wants to play in the country’s fraying democratic system. The legendary Chief Justice John Marshall famously wrote in 1803 that it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary department to say what the law is,” a sentiment inscribed on the marble wall of the Supreme Court building in D.C.

This case provides the opportunity to see whether the maxim still holds true.

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

– ref. How Trump’s dismissal of a Fed governor could redefine presidential power – if courts agree that he alone can interpret vague laws – https://theconversation.com/how-trumps-dismissal-of-a-fed-governor-could-redefine-presidential-power-if-courts-agree-that-he-alone-can-interpret-vague-laws-264566

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Héctor M. Varela Rios, Assistant Professor of Theology, Villanova University

Picture this: Puerto Rican flags, referred to as “la monoestrellada” – the “one-starred” – everywhere you look. The smell of alcapurrias – if you can find them! – and other savory fritters wafting through the air. The rhythms of salsa or Bad Bunny’s trap reggaetón blasting out of speakers. Almost everybody speaking some version of “españinglés,” or Spanglish.

Philadelphia’s annual Puerto Rican Day Parade is chaotic, loud and hard not to love.

On Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025, Boricuas from across the city will converge on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to celebrate their heritage and traditions with music, dance, floats, food and general revelry. Boricuas is how Puerto Ricans often refer to themselves, as the island was called Borikén by the Indigenous Taínos before the Spaniards arrived in 1493.

I am Puerto Rican, island-born and raised. I currently live in Philadelphia and teach theology and Latin American studies at Villanova University. I call myself a “diasporican” in contrast to what I would call “islandricans,” or Puerto Ricans who live on the island.

For me and many other diasporicans, being Puerto Rican embodies mixed feelings, or ambivalence, about identity and history. For example, I am both Boricua and Latino, de allá y de aquí. I grew up colonized yet now live in the colonizing country. I think in two languages. I eat arroz, habichuelas y carne guisada and also hamburgers. I like Guns N’ Roses and Calle 13. I perform my Puerto-Ricanness in myriad ways.

Puerto Rican identity is complicated

Parades are public demonstrations of community identity.

In the Puerto Rican Day Parade, symbols and traditions are used to communicate what being Puerto Rican is and means, be it islander or diasporic, historical or contemporary, and traditional or alternative. But these symbols and traditions are open to interpretation.

Waving la monoestrellada can mean pride in Puerto Rican culture and history. Or value and respect for the island as a U.S. territory. Or even a call for independence from the U.S. Meanwhile, parade dancers perform Indigenous, Spanish and Afro Caribbean dances for what is ostensibly a singular ethnicity.

Being Puerto Rican means different things to different people while being strictly policed by those same people.

For example, Boricuas are often bilingual, yet their proficiency in Spanish and English can be used to measure just how Puerto Rican they are. On the one hand, Spanish is the most common language spoken at home for islandricans, yet English is more prevalent among diasporicans. On the other hand, speaking Spanish with a gringo accent could mark you as an outsider on the island, while not speaking English at all could be seen as backward in the diaspora.

It’s complicated.

The power of ‘arraigo’

Cultural anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla captured this ambivalence in her July 20, 2025, op-ed in the Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Día.

Bonilla discusses Bad Bunny’s 30-date concert residency in Puerto Rico. Bad Bunny chose the island for his shows, adjusted dates and pricing to favor islandricans, and art-directed the concert to highlight Puerto Rican history and culture.

“[The concert] is not simply an unprecedented artistic achievement; it is also a political statement,” Bonilla writes. “Arraigo (rootedness) is not what binds [Puerto Ricans], but what empowers us.” Another version of the op-ed was published in English in The New York Times on Aug. 3, 2025.

According to Bonilla, Bad Bunny’s concert series can be interpreted as “a gesture of love” – love for Puerto Rico, no matter where you are, and for all Puerto Ricans, no matter how they are.

Empowerment in spite of mixed feelings

Puerto Ricans have been a vibrant presence in Philadelphia for more than a century.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, a little over half of all Latinos in the city are Puerto Rican. Indeed, Philly is home to the second-largest Puerto Rican community outside Puerto Rico, after New York City. Philly diasporicans certainly are a proud local bastion of Latin identity, and the parade is an outpouring of civic love via flags, music, dance and food.

And yet, diasporican arraigo also demonstrates precarity. Just look at poverty, violence and health and housing inequities that have long afflicted Fairhill and West Kensington, two adjacent and heavily Puerto Rican neighborhoods in North Philadelphia.

In a world marked by migration and disparate allegiances to empire, identity must also embrace uncertainty. Islandrican becomes diasporican, vice versa and back again. Cultural traditions shift, and the relationship to political power doesn’t stay still.

Historically, the U.S.’s treatment of Puerto Ricans both on the island and in the diaspora has fluctuated. On the one hand, it has been significantly helpful, as when island economic conditions improved through U.S. intervention after World War II, although those improvements came at a significant cost to local farming. On the other hand, it has been outright abusive, as when researchers unethically tested birth control pills on the island in the 1950s, or when the federal government undertook a slow and mismanaged response after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017.

The parade, then, demonstrates a rootedness that is complex and plural, entangled with shifting identities and complicated histories. It is a gesture of a love that straddles comfort and grief. Is not love like that always, with mixed feelings?

As a recent diasporican, I am still working through how to best express my love for my community and the city. I am a proud Boricua, arraigado (rooted) in the island and in Philly. And you will find me among the throngs attending the 2025 parade, wearing my one-starred beret, eating an alcapurria and dancing salsa quite awfully.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia.

Héctor M. Varela Rios 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. Philly’s Puerto Rican Day Parade embodies strength of the mainland’s second-largest Boricua community – https://theconversation.com/phillys-puerto-rican-day-parade-embodies-strength-of-the-mainlands-second-largest-boricua-community-261993

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Robert A. Strong, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Washington and Lee University; Senior Fellow, Miller Center, University of Virginia

The United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the country’s founding document, in 2026. Twenty years later, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of President George Washington’s Farewell Address, which was published on Sept. 19, 1796.

The two documents are the bookends of the American Revolution. That revolution began with the inspirational language of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote much of the Declaration of Independence; it ended with somber warnings from Washington, the nation’s first president.

After chairing the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and serving eight years as president, Washington announced in a newspaper essay that he would not seek another term and would return to his home in Mount Vernon. The essay was later known as the “Farewell Address.”

Washington began his essay by observing that “choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene” while “patriotism does not forbid it.” The new nation would be fine without his continued service.

But Washington’s confidence in the general health of the union was tempered by his worries about dangers that lay ahead – worries that seem startlingly contemporary and relevant 229 years later.

Focus on the domestic

Washington’s Farewell Address is famous for the admonitions “to steer clear of permanent alliances” and to resist the temptation to “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition.”

Important as those warnings are, they are not the main topic of Washington’s message.

During the four decades that I have taught the Farewell Address in classes on American government, I have urged my students to set aside the familiar issues of foreign policy and isolationism and to read the address for what it says about the domestic challenges confronting America.

Those challenges included partisanship, parochialism, excessive public debt, ambitious leaders who could come to power playing off our differences, and a poorly informed public who might sacrifice their own liberties to find relief from divisive politics.

Washington’s address lacks Jefferson’s idealism about equality and inalienable rights. Instead, it offers the realistic assessment that Americans are sometimes foolish and make costly political mistakes.

Rule by ‘ambitious, and unprincipled men’

Partisanship is the primary problem for the American republic, according to Washington.

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration,” he wrote. Partisanship “agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection” and can open “the door to foreign influence and corruption.”

Though political parties, Washington observes, “may now and then answer popular ends,” they can also become “potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Washington’s fear that partisanship could lead to destruction of the Constitution and to the rule of “ambitious, and unprincipled men” was so important to him that he felt compelled to repeat the warning more than once in the Farewell Address.

Politicians’ ‘elevation on the ruins of public liberty’

The second time Washington takes it up, he says that “the disorders and miseries” of partisanship may “gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual.”

Sooner or later, he writes, “the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.”

So why not outlaw parties and rein in the dangers of partisanship?

Washington observes that this is not possible. The spirit of party “is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.”

Americans naturally collect themselves into groups, factions, interests and parties because that’s what human beings do. It’s easier to be connected to local communities, states or regions of the country than to a large and diverse nation; even though that large and diverse nation is, by Washington’s assessment, essential to the security and success of all.

The central problem in American politics is not a matter of devious leaders, foreign intrigue or sectional rivalries — things that will always exist.

The problem, Washington warned, lies with the people.

Excesses of partisanship

By their nature, people divide themselves into groups and then, if not careful, find those divisions used and abused by individual leaders, foreign interests and “artful and enterprising” minorities.

Political parties are dangerous, but can’t be eliminated. According to some people, Washington observes, the competition between parties might serve as a check on the powers of government.

“Within certain limits,” Washington acknowledges, “this is probably true.” But even if the battles between political parties sometimes have a useful purpose, Washington worried about the excesses of partisanship.

Partisanship is like “a fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.”

Where is America today? Warmed by the fires of partisanship or consumed by the bursting of flames? George Washington suggested that provocative question more than two centuries ago on Sept. 19, 1796. It’s still worth asking.

Robert A. Strong 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. George Washington’s worries are coming true – https://theconversation.com/george-washingtons-worries-are-coming-true-263240

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Courtney Schultz, Professor of Forest and Natural Resource Policy, Colorado State University

The western United States is facing another destructive wildfire season, with more acres burned in Colorado alone in 2025 than in the past four years combined. If global warming continues on its current trajectory, the amount of forest area burned each year could double or even triple by midcentury.

In other words, more fire is coming, more often.

As U.S. forests burn, Congress and federal agencies are asking an important question: What role should federal land management play in reducing fire risk?

About two-thirds of forest land in the western U.S. is publicly owned, with the majority of it managed by federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. These public lands are treasured for recreation, wildlife habitat, timber production and open space. They are also where many of today’s largest fires burn.

Historically, lightning- and human-ignited fires kept forests less dense and reduced forest litter and undergrowth that can easily burn. While some controlled burning continues today, the violent displacement of Native people, criminalization of Indigenous fire stewardship and more than a century of federal fire suppression have largely removed fire as a critical ecological process in fire-prone forests, leaving fuel to accumulate.

When those forests burn today, the result is often hotter and more severe fires that elude any attempt at control. And rising global temperatures are raising the risk.

Several of the current federal proposals for managing fire risk focus on increasing timber harvesting on federal lands as a solution. They also propose speeding up approvals for those projects by limiting environmental reviews and public oversight.

As experts in fire science and policy, we see some useful ideas in the proposed solutions, but also reasons for concern.

While cutting trees can help reduce the severity of future fires, it has to include thinning in the right places to make a difference. Without oversight and public involvement, increasing logging could skip areas with low-value trees that need thinning and miss opportunities for more effective fire risk-reduction work.

Harvesting timber to reduce fire risk

President Donald Trump cited wildfire risk in his March 2025 executive order calling for “an immediate expansion of American timber production.” And the U.S. Forest Service followed with a commitment to increase timber sales on federal land by 25% over the next four years.

Trump, federal officials and members of Congress who are advancing legislation such as the Fix Our Forests Act have also called for speeding up approval of timber-harvesting projects by reducing public comment periods on proposals, limiting environmental analyses of the plans and curtailing the ability of groups to sue to block or change the projects in court.

These proposals are often framed as pragmatic solutions to clear the way for action to reduce fire risk faster. The urgency is real, and this argument can seem intuitive. No one wants burdensome processes to stand in the way of reducing wildfire damage. But it’s important to take a hard look at the problem and real solutions.

Environmental reviews aren’t the problem

Research shows that environmental reviews are rarely the main barrier to forest projects aimed at reducing fire risk.

The bigger obstacles are the shrinking of the federal forest workforce over the past two decades, the low commercial value of the small trees and brush that need to be removed, and the lack of contractors, processing facilities and markets for low-value wood.

Data from the U.S. Forest Service supports these conclusions.

Between 2005 and 2018, over 82% of the U.S. Forest Service’s land management projects were approved using categorical exclusions. Categorical exclusions allow agencies to skip environmental assessments and are the fastest and least burdensome form of National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, review, with limited analysis or opportunity for public involvement.

Less than 1% of the projects were challenged in court, and most of those challenges targeted the largest and most complex projects, where public oversight and analysis are critical to getting it right on the ground, such as large mining operations or forest management projects that would cover hundreds of thousands of acres.

An analysis of the bulk of U.S. Forest Service land management projects between 2009 and 2021 found that complying with NEPA took between 7% and 21% of the projects’ timelines, often shorter than the timelines for issuing contracts.

Some degree of planning, intergovernmental coordination and public involvement must happen before starting a fuel-reduction project to know where the work is appropriate and necessary.

Why reviews and public oversight matter

What would be lost if environmental-analysis and public-involvement requirements were curtailed?

Oversight helps ensure that projects happen where they are needed to reduce fire risk. Without that, political and economic pressures can lead to more forest thinning in locations where there are mills and valuable timber – rather than in the areas where wildfire risk is higher but the trees aren’t as valuable.

Environmental review and public comment are among the few tools communities have to shape fire-mitigation projects.

These processes also ensure that the work doesn’t stop at federal boundaries. And they help partners, such as community organizations, state agencies and local fire departments, plan and work together.

Oversight doesn’t just protect the environment — it enables funding and partnerships, safeguards communities and builds shared ownership of adapting to fire.

Solutions that work

So, what can Congress and the federal government do to reduce fire risk to communities? The answer starts with investing in forest management and projects that can reduce fire risk.

Joint projects involving communities and state, tribal and local agencies, like those under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, build partnerships to reduce fire risk across large landscapes and lower the risk of fire spreading to homes and federal wildlands. The Good Neighbor Authority, created in 2001, enables federal agencies to contract with states, counties and tribes to provide forest management work on federal lands.

Yet federal funding for state, tribal and private forest management is on the chopping block. Wildfire risk and the capacity to address the challenge are going in opposite directions.

The Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, a bipartisan group of fire professionals, scientists, tribes, land managers and local officials, recently released recommendations for improving fire management that call for greater funding and collaboration at all levels to reduce the fire risk. The report emphasizes the importance of proactive solutions driven by local communities, shared decision-making and better use of prescribed fire. Achieving these goals will require sustained collaboration across jurisdictions and sectors, with communities engaged as full partners in the process.

Forest and fire management are complex jobs. It is reasonable to yearn for quick solutions to the wildfire crisis, but it’s important that any fixes lead to lasting progress. Deregulation and disinvestment may ultimately exacerbate wildfire risk.

Courtney Schultz received funding from the US Forest Service, Joint Fire Science Program, and National Science Foundation for her research on US forest policy

Forrest Fleischman received funding from the US National Science Foundation and the US Forest Service for his research on national forest policy.

Tony Cheng receives funding appropriated through the Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act administered by the from the US Forest Service and the National Science Foundation for applied research on forest and wildfire resiliency. In addition to his university faculty appointment, he is a senior fellow with the Pinchot Institute for Conservation.

– ref. Boosting timber harvesting in national forests while cutting public oversight won’t solve America’s wildfire problem – https://theconversation.com/boosting-timber-harvesting-in-national-forests-while-cutting-public-oversight-wont-solve-americas-wildfire-problem-264097

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Deborah Widiss, Professor of Law and John F. Kimberling Chair, Indiana University

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump and his administration have waged a war on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including those of private businesses across the country.

Trump fired the first shot on Jan. 21, 2025 – his first full day back in office – when he signed an executive order that denounced DEI as “immoral” and “illegal discrimination.” The order claimed that, under such policies, “hardworking Americans” were being “shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.”

A week later, Trump dismissed two Democratic commissioners of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that helps enforce workplace antidiscrimination laws. Because these officials were forced out years before their terms expired, their firing was arguably illegal. But it allowed Trump to dramatically shift the commission’s focus.

Andrea Lucas, named by Trump to be the agency’s acting chair, quickly announced a commitment to what she described as “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination.”

Since then, there’s been a steady drumbeat of anti-DEI statements from the administration and its supporters. But these proclamations fail to explain what is illegal about so-called “illegal DEI.” As professors and workplace law experts, we recognize that companies may have trouble distinguishing political rhetoric from legal obligations. That’s why we recently co-founded The Legal DEI Project, a free resource providing clear information on DEI policies and practices and the law.

Chilling effect

The Trump administration’s statements about DEI are generally broad in scope and short on details, leading to an overall chilling effect on private businesses.

For example, one of Trump’s executive orders suggests, without evidence, that corporations and other large employers have replaced a commitment to “hard work” with an “unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.” It then instructs federal agencies to compile lists of the businesses and other institutions they believe are the “most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” and pursue compliance investigations against them.

Some employers have responded to this threat by aggressively slashing their programs and personnel dedicated to ensuring fairness at work. That reaction is understandable. But it is also deeply mistaken, as many tried-and-true practices that effectively reduce workplace discrimination are getting caught in a dragnet of anti-DEI fever.

Employers who act rashly by simply abandoning all efforts related to diversity and inclusion may actually increase rather than decrease their risk of being sued by workers who believe they have experienced discrimination – the overwhelming majority of whom are members of racial minority groups rather than white workers.

Employers could also miss out on the benefits that can flow from diverse workforces, such as higher profits, innovation and creativity.

DEI isn’t illegal, but discrimination is

DEI is a generic, umbrella term used to describe organizational efforts to treat all people fairly. While such initiatives have been around for decades, the DEI label became common only in the past decade as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements highlighted pervasive discrimination and inequality in U.S. society.

The term, however, has no legal meaning. DEI is instead a collection of aspirational objectives used as corporate or institutional branding, which Trump has turned into a straw man by repeatedly condemning what he alleges is “illegal DEI.”

Workplaces are governed by antidiscrimination laws. Those laws prohibit employers from making hiring or other personnel decisions based on workers’ protected characteristics such as race, sex or religion, just as they did before DEI programs became popular.

This means that employers generally cannot implement preferences for, or limit opportunities to, employees based on these traits. If DEI programs include improper preferences, those preferences were illegal before Trump took office. They should be discontinued.

Importantly, U.S. employment law requires employers to do more than just punish individual employees who make biased decisions or harass co-workers. Employers must also, at a minimum, take proactive steps to prevent harassment and reasonably accommodate workers with qualifying disabilities, pregnancy-related limitations and religious needs.

Employers must also make sure that workplace policies, such as how duties are assigned and how pay is set, are fair and unbiased.

Congress, not the president, creates laws

Multiple laws enacted by Congress, from the 1964 Civil Rights Act to the 2022 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and decades of court decisions interpreting those laws, have established the rules that govern the workplace today. The Trump administration has no authority to single-handedly change these laws – or the regulations implementing them – just by issuing executive orders.

What those orders primarily do is set presidential agendas. Presidents use them to direct some actions of the federal government and its contractors, but executive orders do not directly apply to most private companies, nonprofits or other nongovernmental employers.

Although the EEOC may follow Trump’s directives, it cannot change or ignore federal laws. In fact, recent EEOC actions – such as spontaneously demanding information from law firms about their diversity initiatives – that arguably exceed its authority are being challenged in court.

Employees, not the government, file most complaints

When employers attempt to conform to the Trump administration’s political goals by removing any guardrails they’ve put in place to prevent discrimination, they put themselves at greater legal risk. That is because most discrimination lawsuits are brought by employees, not the federal government.

On average, individual employees file 60,000 to 90,000 EEOC charges annually and tens of thousands of lawsuits arising from those charges in federal and state court. By comparison, the EEOC has brought fewer than 150 cases annually in recent years.

While the EEOC’s attack on DEI programs may encourage more white workers to file discrimination claims, the data shows that most actionable discrimination continues to be experienced by women and members of racial minority groups, not by white people.

And that problem is likely to be exacerbated by employers dismantling their DEI programs.

Not a zero-sum game

Just as employing a diverse workforce is perfectly legal, so too is taking action to value diverse perspectives and leadership.

Adopting inclusive recruitment strategies, structuring decision-making practices to be more objective, and assessing job descriptions to focus on tasks and qualifications can all help reduce the influence of racial, gender, religious or other biases in hiring and promotion. Offering training and mentoring, providing support to meet the needs of all workers, and creating environments that promote excellence and belonging can ensure equal access to opportunities for all employees.

Adopting such human resource practices also makes good business sense. When properly executed, they reduce the risk of workplace discrimination lawsuits and liability by flagging any potential discrimination and allowing employers to proactively address it.

Antidiscrimination law has always required employers to judge all workers fairly and on the basis of their merit. Making changes that aim to reduce bias against some employees is not an act of discrimination against white men or others who do not belong to a group that has historically experienced discrimination.

Those changes instead help employers comply with antidiscrimination laws – the same laws that have governed U.S. workplaces for over 60 years and continue to do so today.

Deborah Widiss serves on advisory boards for the Indiana Community Action Poverty Institute.

Rachel Arnow Richman receives funding from the University of Florida for academic research purposes.

Stephanie Bornstein and Tristin Green 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. Complying with Trump administration’s attack on DEI could get employers into legal trouble – https://theconversation.com/complying-with-trump-administrations-attack-on-dei-could-get-employers-into-legal-trouble-262915