Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Carey Durkin Treado, Associate Teaching Professor of Economics, University of Pittsburgh

When more than 1,300 people at the U.S. State Department lost their jobs in a mass firing this summer, most headlines focused on what it meant for American diplomacy. But the layoffs are about more than embassies and foreign policy – they could also make it harder for U.S. companies to compete in global markets.

The July layoffs – part of a sweeping Trump administration reorganization effort, with more cuts still expected – eliminated the State Department’s Business and Human Rights team, which helps American businesses avoid committing human rights abuses and violating international laws.

As an economist who studies international trade, I know that BHR is an area of growing importance for both global governance and U.S. competitiveness. In addition to being an academic, I have worked at several U.S. trade agencies and the World Bank, and in 2019-20 I served as a Franklin Fellow with the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. In that role, I worked closely with the BHR team and saw how critical their expertise was in helping U.S. companies navigate shifting global human rights risks and regulations.

Losing that support puts American businesses at risk of falling behind market trends and expectations.

The rise of business and human rights policy

Global norms governing business and human rights have been evolving for more than 75 years, starting with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While that landmark document was geared toward governments, in 2011 the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises represented explicit guidance from member countries – including the United States – that companies, not just governments, are responsible for respecting human rights.

This guidance means that businesses must avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses through their operations or supply chain relationships. Potential supply chain concerns include both “upstream impacts,” such as purchasing from suppliers that use forced labor, and “downstream impacts,” such as selling products to oppressive governments.

These sorts of risks are more common than you might think. Nearly 28 million people are in forced labor globally, making products from cotton to car parts, according to the International Labour Organization. Downstream concerns have focused recently on the sale of AI and surveillance tools to authoritarian governments such as Iran. Avoiding these abuses not only reduces business risk but also helps weaken incentives for such practices.

For decades, the State Department has taken the lead within the federal government in the task of promoting U.S. human rights policies globally. Historically, its three main responsibilities in this area have included reporting on human rights conditions at the country level, providing foreign assistance to promote human rights, and engaging in diplomatic efforts to improve human rights conditions globally.

The portfolio of the BHR team fell mainly within this third area of responsibility and included providing expertise as international policies related to business and human rights continued to expand.

The rise of human rights due diligence laws

Over the past 10 years, some of the world’s largest economies have begun to enact laws that require businesses to conduct risk analyses and publicly report on their human rights impacts. These laws – known as human rights due diligence, or HRDD, laws – have been passed or proposed in the European Union, France, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Korea and Thailand.

Of particular importance is the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was adopted by the EU in July 2024 and will begin to go into effect in 2028. Its broad scope will reshape compliance for global companies across markets, industries and supply chains.

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Many global corporations will soon have to police up and down their supply chains as EU human rights ‘due diligence’ law nears enactment

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Although it is too soon to measure the full impact, many companies and industry groups have endorsed human rights due diligence laws. Industry groups and associations have published statements in support of HRDD laws, which they see as leveling the playing field for responsible business activity. A 2025 survey of 1,300 German corporate decision-makers found that most believed their country’s HRDD law gave them an edge over European competitors – and 44% said it gave them an advantage over U.S. and Chinese companies as well.

The US falls behind on sustainability

U.S.-based multinational companies are subject to the HRDD laws in the countries in which they do business. Starting in 2028, these companies will need to comply with new human rights laws if they want to participate in the EU market. Although some industry groups are in support of these laws, others, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have expressed concerns about the implementation timeline and some specific requirements.

Prior to the reorganization, the State Department worked closely with multilateral and international organizations, as well as other governments, to establish clear policy frameworks for business and human rights. By eliminating the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs, which housed the BHR team, the reorganization of the State Department has effectively eliminated this source of expertise and support for U.S. businesses operating in global markets.

In my professional experience, which stretches back to the economic boom period of the 1990s, U.S. competitiveness depends upon a clear understanding of global markets and policies. U.S. businesses must be able to work within the regulatory framework of the countries of their suppliers, partners and customers.

In addition to government regulations, U.S. corporations face pressure from their consumers and investors, who are increasingly interested in supporting corporations that can demonstrate responsible business practices. From fair-trade coffee to environmental, social and governance investment portfolios, markets are increasingly placing value on products and businesses that can demonstrate respect for human rights. Despite political controversy and backlash, market analysts continue to predict steady growth in investor demand for ESG investment opportunities, with ESG assets on track to reach $40 trillion by 2030.

In order to best position U.S. businesses to understand and navigate the emerging role of human rights issues in global markets, the U.S. government needs expertise in these issues. By jettisoning that expertise, I believe the country risks weakening its global business position.

I served as a Franklin Fellow with the U.S. Department of State during the 2019-2020 academic year.

– ref. State Department layoffs could hurt US companies’ ability to compete globally – an economist explains why – https://theconversation.com/state-department-layoffs-could-hurt-us-companies-ability-to-compete-globally-an-economist-explains-why-262988

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Nancy L. Weaver, Professor of Behavioral Science, Saint Louis University

A friend offhandedly told me recently, “It’s so easy to get my daughter to behave after her birthday – there are so many new toys to take away when she’s bad!”

While there is certainly an appeal to such a powerful parenting hack, the truth is that there’s a pretty big downside to parenting with punishments.

For about the past two decades, scientists have been discovering more and more about the growing brain. This exploration of neurobiology has led to new types of trauma treatments, a deeper understanding of the nervous system and an appreciation of how environmental and genetic factors interact to shape a child’s behavior.

As the science has become increasingly actionable, more evidence-based strategies are spilling into parenting and educational programs. Research offers some useful guideposts for how parents and caregivers can change our adult ways to foster healthy child development.

It turns out that many old-school parenting and educational approaches based on outdated behavioral models are not effective, nor are they best-practice, particularly for the most vulnerable children.

Why old-school methods fall short

I don’t come to this view lightly. I’m a behavioral scientist and a professor of public health with degrees in mathematics and biostatistics. When my children were little, I read all the parenting books and applied a somewhat academic strategy to my job of parenting. I firmly endorsed conventional recommendations from authors and pediatricians: I dutifully sent my children to their rooms to think about their choices and dug in my heels to enforce consequences.

It wasn’t until my children reached middle school and high school ages that I began to see what my approach to discipline was costing us.

Parents and educators have long espoused principles gleaned from experiments by the 20th-century researcher B.F. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist who studied how rewards and punishments could change the behavior of rats, resulting in the classic carrot and stick, reward and discipline strategies. Simply put, rats that behaved the way the researchers wanted – by pressing a lever – were given a treat, and rats that did not were given a light shock.

These midcentury, rat-based experiments shaped a parenting approach that caught on in American culture and quickly became dogma. Generations of parents learned to use rewards such as sticker charts, trinkets or toys, or an extra bedtime story to reinforce the behaviors they hoped to see more of, and to use negative reinforcement such as timeouts and loss of privileges to reduce unwanted behaviors.

But beginning in the early 2000s, many high-profile authors began to theorize that these strategies were not only ineffective but also potentially harmful.

The neuroscience of child behavior

We all have a built-in nervous system response that prepares us for “fight or flight” when we feel that our safety is threatened. When we sense danger for whatever reason, our heart beats faster, our palms sweat and our focus narrows. In these situations, our prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for rational decision-making and reasoning – is decommissioned while our body prepares to fend off the threat. It’s not until our threat response subsides that we can begin to think more clearly with our prefrontal cortex. This is particularly true for kids.

Unlike adults who have usually acquired some ability to regulate their nervous system states, a child has both an immature nervous system and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. A child may hit his friend with a toy truck because he’s unable to manage the scary feelings of being left out of the kickball game. He likely knows better, but in the face of this threat his survival brain responds with a “fight” response, and reasoning shuts down as his prefrontal cortex takes awhile to get “back online.” Because he is not yet able to verbalize his needs, caregivers need to interpret those needs by observing the behavior.

After coregulating with a calm adult – essentially syncing up with their nervous system – a young child is able to return to a calm state and then process any learning. Efforts to change a child’s behavior in a moment of stress, including by punishments and timeouts, miss an opportunity for developing emotional regulation skills and often prolong the distress.

The behaviorist models just don’t work very well for children. The growing understanding of children’s developing brains makes clear that punishing a child for a temper tantrum or for “misbehaving” by grabbing a toy from a classmate makes no more sense than lecturing a man in cardiac arrest about eating less sugar.

Curiosity is the key to connection

Scientists and parenting experts have come a long way toward understanding how brain science can inform child-raising.

While researchers may not all agree on the most effective parenting style, there is general agreement that showing curiosity about kids’ feelings, behaviors, reactions and choices can help to guide parents’ approach during stressful times. Understanding more about why a child didn’t complete their math sheet, or why a toddler threw sand at their cousin, can support real learning.

Attuning with our children by understanding their nervous system responses helps kids feel a sense of safety, which then allows them to absorb feedback. Children who feel this connection and build these skills are much less likely to throw trucks.

For instance, when your child fusses for candy in the checkout line at the grocery store, instead of taking away the afternoon trip to the park, try this instead:

• Stay grounded. A deep breath and a pause signals to your own nervous system to be calmer, which allows you to coregulate with a fussing child.

• Be available. Staying close gives your child the support they need to weather the difficult emotion. Validating a child’s experience can go a long way toward helping them reset to a more regulated state.

• Hold a boundary. By not giving in to the candy purchase, you help your child practice how to handle the emotion of anger and disappointment – called “distress tolerance” – with your support.

• Reflect on the circumstances. After everyone is calmer, you can talk about that experience and also notice the circumstances. Was your child hungry or tired, or perhaps upset about something from their day?

Parenting with the understanding of a child’s developing brain is much more effective in shaping children’s behavior and paves the way for emotional growth for everyone, as well as stronger parent-child relationships, which are enormously protective.

And that definitely feels better than taking away their birthday presents.

Nancy L. Weaver, PhD, MPH is the Founder and CEO of Support Over Silence, LLC and a Professor of Public Health at Saint Louis University. She has received funding from the NIH and the CDC among other agencies.

– ref. Parenting strategies are shifting as neuroscience brings the developing brain into clearer focus – https://theconversation.com/parenting-strategies-are-shifting-as-neuroscience-brings-the-developing-brain-into-clearer-focus-254975

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By David Higgins, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

For 30 years, vaccine recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have aligned closely with those from the American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP. But on Aug. 19, 2025, the AAP published new vaccine recommendations that diverge from those of the CDC.

The pediatrician association’s move comes on the heels of unprecedented changes made earlier this year by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, in how the government approves and issues guidance on vaccines.

The biggest difference is in the AAP’s guidance around COVID-19 vaccines for children. This new guidance comes as COVID-19 cases are once again rising across the U.S. and many parents and providers are confused by unclear guidance from federal health authorities about whether children should be vaccinated.

In a Q&A with The Conversation U.S., David Higgins, a pediatrician, preventive medicine physician and vaccine delivery researcher from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, explains the new guidance and what it means for parents. Higgins is also a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

What are the AAP’s new vaccine recommendations?

The AAP recommends that all children 6 to 23 months old receive a complete COVID-19 vaccine series, consistent with recommendations for this age group in previous years.

For children and adolescents ages 2 to 18, the AAP now advises a single dose if they are at higher risk, a change from previous years, when vaccination was recommended for all in this age group. Children at higher risk include those who have certain chronic medical conditions, who live in long-term care or group settings, who have never been vaccinated, or who live with family members at high risk.

The AAP also recommends that COVID-19 vaccines remain available for any child or adolescent whose parent wants them to be protected, regardless of risk status. In all cases, the most updated version of the vaccine should be used.

How do these recommendations differ from CDC guidance?

The difference is substantial. The CDC currently advises what it calls “shared clinical decision-making” for children ages 6 months to 17 years who are not moderately or severely immunocompromised. This means the decision is left up to individual discussions between families and their health care providers, but the vaccine is not treated as a routine recommendation. These current guidelines were made after Kennedy bypassed the agency’s normal independent review process.

That framework can be confusing for families and difficult for providers to implement. By contrast, the AAP recommendations identify the ages and conditions where the risk is highest while also supporting vaccine availability for any families who want it.

Why are they diverging?

The AAP has been publishing vaccine guidance since the 1930s, long before the CDC or the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an independent panel of experts that advises the CDC, existed.

Since 1995, the two groups have generally issued essentially identical vaccine guidance. But this year, the federal government dismissed the advisory committee’s panel of independent scientists and immunization experts, raising questions about the credibility of CDC guidance. At the same time, misinformation about vaccines continues to spread.

In response, the AAP decided to publish independent recommendations based on its own review of the latest evidence. That review showed that although the risks for healthy older children have declined compared with the early years of the pandemic, young children and those with specific conditions remain especially vulnerable. Additionally, a review of evidence by an independent expert group called the Vaccine Integrity Project, also released on Aug. 19, 2025, confirmed that there are no new safety concerns and no decline in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

COVID-19 continues to cause hospitalizations and deaths in children and remains a leading cause of serious respiratory illness.

Will parents be able to follow these recommendations?

This is still unclear. The AAP recommendations do not automatically guarantee insurance coverage.

By law, insurance plans and the federal Vaccines for Children program, which provides vaccines for eligible children who might not otherwise be vaccinated due to cost or lack of insurance, are tied to Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations. Unless insurers and policymakers act to align with the AAP recommendations, there is a risk that parents would be forced to pay the costs out of pocket.

Vaccine supply may also be an issue. Currently, only two COVID-19 vaccines are available for children under 12. Moderna’s vaccine is approved only for children with at least one high-risk condition, while Pfizer’s authorization for younger children may not be renewed. If that happens, any remaining Pfizer doses for this age group may be unusable, leaving a shortfall in available vaccines for children.

Finally, implementation may differ depending on the type of provider. Some vaccine providers, such as pharmacists, operate under policies tied strictly to CDC recommendations, which may make it harder to follow AAP’s schedule unless rules are updated.

What happens next?

Parents and providers are likely to face continued confusion, just as COVID-19 cases rise as children return to school. Much will depend on whether the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices updates its own recommendations at its upcoming meeting, expected in September, and whether pediatric COVID-19 vaccines remain available.

Until then, parents can speak with their pediatricians to understand the best protection for their children.

David Higgins volunteers as Vice President of the Colorado Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and as a board member of Immunize Colorado. He was not involved in the development or publication of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ immunization guidelines. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely his own and do not represent those of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

– ref. Pediatricians’ association recommends COVID-19 vaccines for toddlers and some older children, breaking with CDC guidance – https://theconversation.com/pediatricians-association-recommends-covid-19-vaccines-for-toddlers-and-some-older-children-breaking-with-cdc-guidance-263522

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Eve-Lyn Hinckley, Associate Professor of Biogeochemistry, University of Colorado Boulder

The wetlands found across the Rocky Mountains of Colorado just below tree line are magical places. Dripping with mosses and deep green sedges, these open expanses flanked by evergreens are a breathtaking sight for passing hikers. Moose graze there, and elk gather during their mating season.

These subalpine wetlands are also crucial for regulating the supply of clean water from the highlands to metropolitan regions downslope, including Denver.

However, new research shows the wetlands also harbor a health risk. In a new study, my research group found that just below the surface of subalpine wetland soils, the perfect conditions exist for the production of methylmercury, a potent, toxic form of the heavy metal mercury that can threaten the health of wildlife and people.

As rising temperatures thaw ice and erode the mountain rocks, and mercury pollution from power plants around the world falls with rain, this toxic form of mercury can be produced in the wetlands.

The Goldilocks problem

Methylmercury is a neurotoxin that biomagnifies and bioaccumulates, meaning it becomes more concentrated as it moves up the food chain. Predatory birds and fish high on the food chain are most susceptible to its devastating effects on the nervous and reproductive systems, as are the human populations that consume them.

In the 1950s, hundreds of people in Minamata and Niigata, Japan, died from methylmercury poisoning connected to ingesting water, fish and shellfish from near where chemical plants were discharging mercury into the water.

Mercury methylation is a fickle process. The bacteria involved require sources of inorganic mercury and energy, as well as oxygen-free conditions.

Sulfate concentrations are particularly important. Like in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” too much or too little sulfate is unsatisfactory to the methylating microbes – those creating methylmercury. Too little sulfate, and they won’t stimulate mercury methylation. Too much sulfate, and mercury gets sequestered in mineral form, minimizing its risk to living organisms.

Yet, when moderate sulfate concentrations mix with inorganic mercury and organic carbon in a low-oxygen environment, the conditions are dangerously “just right,” as Goldilocks would say, and methylmercury production is high.

New evidence of methylmercury

Prior to our study, most wetlands found to have methylmercury pollution were in lowland areas, such as the Florida Everglades, where the process is fed by sulfate runoff from agriculture fields. However, our study demonstrates that methylmercury production occurs in seemingly remote mountain locations, too.

There are a few reasons why conditions in Colorado’s subalpine wetlands are just right.

First, the soil has ample organic matter, providing a deep store of energy in the form of carbon to fuel methylation. In Colorado’s subalpine wetlands, thick soils are rich in layer upon layer of ancient organic matter that saturates with snowmelt flowing from the highest peaks.

Second, mercury pollution from industrial centers reaches the Rocky Mountains. Most of the mercury that enters subalpine wetlands has actually traveled all the way from China and India. Eventually, it falls out of the atmosphere in rain or dust, and high elevations receive more of it than low elevations.

Third – and this is the key stimulating effect for methylating bacteria – subalpine wetlands receive excess sulfate from warming alpine areas in elevations above them. As rising air temperatures drive the thawing of ice and quicker rates of mineral weathering, more sulfate than was already in the ground flows into streams to the subalpine region.

The result is that these ingredients mix in the flooded, often oxygen-free environment of the wetland soils, and bacteria have everything they need to produce methylmercury.

Our study showed that the concentrations of methylmercury are higher at the outlet than the inlet of subalpine wetlands that we studied in the Colorado Rockies, providing further evidence that wetlands can be a source of the contaminant.

Apart from the local effects of methylmercury on wildlife, our discovery highlights a concern for water supplies. Over 3 million people in the Boulder-Denver metropolitan area rely on clean, fresh water from the mountains. Contamination of the source area by methylmercury may have large-scale ramifications, such as costly treatment measures, for the entire Colorado Front Range’s drinking water supply.

How to lower the risk

High-elevation ecosystems around the world are experiencing many effects that can feed the production of methylmercury.

In every state in the U.S., there is at least one mercury toxicity warning for surface waters, typically urging people not to eat fish or shellfish caught there or to limit the amount they eat. Greater production of methylmercury, and its threat to food and water sources, is now a part of our changing world.

So, what can be done to avoid the risk?

Lowering mercury deposition requires curbing industrial emissions. In 2013, over 140 nations, including the U.S., signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury, committing to regulate and monitor industrial mercury sources. Remaining committed to this agreement is critical.

Reducing the flow of sulfate from ice and rock weathering in the mountains – another key ingredient to this process – requires addressing climate change.

People, governments and industries can take many steps to slow the rise of air temperatures that are increasing ice thaw, from not driving gas-powered vehicles as much to regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories. Our new research on methylmercury shows another reason why taking steps to slow climate change are worth the effort.

Eve-Lyn Hinckley receives funding from The National Science Foundation.

– ref. Colorado’s subalpine wetlands may be producing a toxic form of mercury – that’s a concern for downstream water supplies – https://theconversation.com/colorados-subalpine-wetlands-may-be-producing-a-toxic-form-of-mercury-thats-a-concern-for-downstream-water-supplies-259008

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Sarah Webber, Associate Professor of Accounting, University of Dayton

A New York philanthropist and personal assistant to billionaires, Matthew Christopher Pietras, allegedly stole millions from his employers and donated large sums to prominent charities to maintain a facade of status, wealth and generosity.

Those schemes came to light when the Metropolitan Opera became aware that a US$10 million donation Pietras made in his own name used funds he had allegedly pilfered from a member of the Soros family which was among his employers.

The next day, May 30, 2025, Pietras was found dead. An investigation into the origin of his donations is underway.

The 40-year-old belonged to many prominent nonprofit boards, attended galas, rubbed shoulders with elite donors, and lived a lavish lifestyle filled with luxury goods and private plane travel. He often made charitable gifts under his own name, and he frequently requested public recognition for them – a practice that helped build his persona.

I research nonprofit fraud. Previously, I’ve written about the importance of researching charities before donating to make sure charitable gifts are not wasted on swindlers. The Pietras case exposes the flip side of donor fraud.

Sometimes, people give stolen funds or find other fraudulent means to pretend to give their own money to a legitimate charity. This cautionary tale can remind nonprofits of the importance of checking out any donors who make large or unusual gifts.

What happens after the fraud is exposed

If Pietras’ crimes are proven, the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan’s Frick Collection and the other charities that received money from Pietras will most likely have to issue refunds to the people he swindled. Even if the charity was acting in good faith, it should prepare to return those funds, according to laws that pertain to fraudulent transfers.

There is a narrow exception to this rule.

When a charitable nonprofit unwittingly accepts a donation made with stolen money and spends it before the theft is discovered, a court may recognize the charity as an innocent recipient.

In legal terms, this is known as the “good faith purchaser” defense.

This recognition may limit or eliminate the charity’s legal obligation to issue a refund, particularly if the money has already been spent on the charity’s mission, the organization reasonably believed the donation was legitimate, and giving it back to the victim of theft could significantly harm the charity.

But if that happens, fraudsters can’t claim a tax deduction for making that gift, and they may retroactively owe extra tax penalties.

If a charity hasn’t yet spent the fraudulently given funds, a court could require a refund – especially if victims or insurers file lawsuits to recover that money.

In most cases, if donations are proven to come from stolen funds, the charity may be legally required to return them. The fact that a donation was received in good faith doesn’t automatically allow the charity to keep the money once it is identified as stolen.

How snookered charities should respond

It is often in a charity’s best interest to be proactive about returning the stolen funds rather than awaiting a court order forcing them to do so.

The Metropolitan Opera took this route. It returned the $10 million to Gregory Soros, the youngest son of billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, that it received the day before Pietras’ scheme was discovered.

Taking that step is a good look. But charities don’t really have a choice because they cannot quickly spend any funds that are identified as potentially stolen. Once they’re stuck in this legal limbo, nonprofits must hang onto the funds and await a legal resolution .

Some similarities with Madoff scandal

I believe that the Pietras case mirrors the Bernard Madoff scandal in that both men donated to charities to burnish their social status.

Madoff, the disgraced financier who died in prison in 2021, operated a massive Ponzi scheme that deceived his clients with too-high-to-be-true returns and then depleted their savings once it collapsed.

Madoff also used stolen funds to make large charitable donations through his family foundation. His philanthropy made his fake image as an ace investor appear legitimate and it expanded his access to the wealthy people he preyed upon.

As with Madoff, Pietras’ illusion of generosity allegedly became a tool for his deception, allowing him to move comfortably among the wealthy and well connected while avoiding getting caught.

Madoff defrauded investors of an estimated $50 billion to $64 billion. The 2008 revelations about his scheme’s shocking scale shook confidence in financial and charitable institutions.

In the aftermath, numerous nonprofits that had invested their own assets with Madoff either lost significant sums or were forced to return past donations as part of legal clawback efforts to compensate victims.

When being wary is warranted

Charities must exercise due diligence before accepting a gift. This means they have a duty to investigate any unusually large donations – such as one that’s the biggest they’ve ever received.

Regardless of a gift’s size, this duty also applies when a gift seems to be larger than the donor could be reasonably expected to afford.

Charities don’t need to act like banks or lenders, which are required to verify the financial assets of clients. But they should ask questions when the circumstances require. Acting in good faith requires charitable institutions to be reasonably certain that donated funds are not stolen.

In Pietras’ case, he reportedly began by donating sums that were small enough to not raise suspicion.

Too-good-to-be-true giving

The consequences of not exercising due diligence can be costly and embarrassing.

For example, consider what happened to Florida A&M University in May 2024, when it announced a record-breaking $237 million gift from Texas entrepreneur Gregory Gerami. The donation consisted of 14 million shares in Gerami’s privately held Batterson Farms Corp.

An investigation later determined that Gerami couldn’t afford to make that gift and that Florida A&M had failed to check into his finances. The university’s president and other top leaders were forced to resign in the embarrassing fallout.

Asking donors hard and even uncomfortable questions before celebrating any huge gift can help charities avoid the headaches that come with being deceived by fraudulent donations.

Thorough vetting at the outset ensures that a celebrated gift enhances the charity’s work without entangling it in future disputes or negative publicity from a fraudulent gift.

My employer, University of Dayton, is a partner organization with The Conversation.

– ref. Before celebrating big gifts, charities must watch out for fake donors – https://theconversation.com/before-celebrating-big-gifts-charities-must-watch-out-for-fake-donors-262470

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Amiran Baduashvili, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Portable air cleaners aimed at curbing indoor spread of infections are rarely tested for how well they protect people – and very few studies evaluate their potentially harmful effects. That’s the upshot of a detailed review of nearly 700 studies that we co-authored in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Many respiratory viruses, such as COVID-19 and influenza, can spread through indoor air. Technologies such as HEPA filters, ultraviolet light and special ventilation designs – collectively known as engineering infection controls – are intended to clean indoor air and prevent viruses and other disease-causing pathogens from spreading.

Along with our colleagues across three academic institutions and two government science agencies, we identified and analyzed every research study evaluating the effectiveness of these technologies published from the 1920s through 2023 – 672 of them in total.

These studies assessed performance in three main ways: Some measured whether the interventions reduced infections in people; others used animals such as guinea pigs or mice; and the rest took air samples to determine whether the devices reduced the number of small particles or microbes in the air. Only about 8% of the studies tested effectiveness on people, while over 90% tested the devices in unoccupied spaces.

We found substantial variation across different technologies. For example, 44 studies examined an air cleaning process called photocatalytic oxidation, which produces chemicals that kill microbes, but only one of those tested whether the technology prevented infections in people. Another 35 studies evaluated plasma-based technologies for killing microbes, and none involved human participants. We also found 43 studies on filters incorporating nanomaterials designed to both capture and kill microbes – again, none included human testing.

Why it matters

The COVID-19 pandemic showed just how disruptive airborne infections can be – costing millions of lives worldwide, straining health systems and shutting down schools and workplaces. Early studies showed that the COVID-19 virus was spreading through air. Logically, improving indoor air quality to clear the virus from air became a major focus as a way to keep people safe.

Finding effective ways to remove microbes from indoor air could have profound public health benefits and might help limit economic damage in future pandemics. Engineering infection controls could protect people from infection by working in the background of daily life, without any effort from people.

Companies producing portable air cleaners that incorporate microbe-killing technologies have made ambitious claims about how effectively they purify air and prevent infections. These products are already marketed to consumers for use in day care centers, schools, health care clinics and workplaces. We found that most of them have not been properly tested for efficacy. Without solid evidence from studies on people, it’s impossible to know whether these promises match reality. Our findings suggest that consumers should proceed with caution when investing in air cleaning devices.

The gap between marketing claims and evidence of effectiveness might not be surprising, but there is more at stake here. Some of these technologies generate chemicals such as ozone, formaldehyde and hydroxyl radicals to kill microbes – substances that can potentially harm people if inhaled. The safety of these products should be the baseline requirement before they are widely deployed. Yet, of the 112 studies assessing many of these pathogen-killing technologies, only 14 tested for harmful byproducts. This is a stark contrast to pharmaceutical research, where safety testing is standard practice.

What still isn’t known

Over 90% of all studies tested these technologies by looking at the air itself – for example, measuring how well experimental gases, dust particles or microbes were cleared from the air. The idea is that cleaner air should mean lower chances of infection. But when it comes to air cleaning, researchers don’t yet know how strongly these air measurements reflect actual reduction in infections for people.

Identifying the safest and most effective options will require assessing these technologies for toxic byproducts and evaluating them in real-world settings that include people. Also, standardizing how effectiveness and potential harms are measured will help inform evidence-based decisions about improving air quality in homes, schools, health care facilities and other indoor spaces.

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

Amiran Baduashvili, MD, through the University of Colorado, received funding from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health for the study discussed in this article.

Lisa Bero, through the University of Colorado, received funding from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health for the study discussed in this article.

– ref. Most air cleaning devices have not been tested on people − and little is known about their potential harms, new study finds – https://theconversation.com/most-air-cleaning-devices-have-not-been-tested-on-people-and-little-is-known-about-their-potential-harms-new-study-finds-262913

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Tamilla Triantoro, Associate Professor of Business Analytics and Information Systems, Quinnipiac University

Pick up an August 2025 issue of Vogue and you’ll come across an advertisement for the brand Guess featuring a stunning model. Yet tucked away in small print is a startling admission: She isn’t real. She was generated entirely by AI.

For decades, fashion images have been retouched. But this isn’t airbrushing a real person; it’s a “person” created from scratch, a digital composite of data points, engineered to appear as a beautiful woman.

The backlash to the Guess ad was swift. Veteran model Felicity Hayward called the move “lazy and cheap,” warning that it undermines years of work to promote diversity. After all, why hire models of different sizes, ages and ethnicities when a machine can generate a narrow, market-tested ideal of beauty on demand?

I study human-AI collaboration, and my work focuses on how AI influences decision-making, trust and human agency, all of which came into play during the Vogue controversy.

This new reality is not a cause for doom. However, now that it’s becoming much harder – if not impossible – to tell whether something is created by a human or a machine, it’s worth asking what’s gained and what’s lost from this technology. Most importantly, what does it say about what we truly value in art?

The forensic viewer and listener

In 1950, computer scientist Alan Turing wondered whether a machine could exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human.

He proposed his famous imitation game. In it, a human judges whether they’re conversing with a person or a computer. If the human can’t tell the difference, the computer passes the test.

For decades, this remained a theoretical benchmark. But with the recent explosion of powerful chatbots, the original Turing Test for conversation has arguably been passed. This breakthrough raises a new question: If AI can master conversation, can it master art?

The evidence suggests it has already passed what might be called an “aesthetic Turing Test.”

AI can generate music, images and movies so convincingly that people struggle to distinguish them from human creations.

In music, platforms like Suno and Udio can produce original songs, complete with vocals and lyrics, in any imaginable genre in seconds. Some are so good they’ve gone viral. Meanwhile, photo-realistic images are equally deceptive. In 2023, millions believed that the fabricated photo of Pope Francis in a puffer jacket was real, a stunning example of AI’s power to create convincing fiction.

Why our brains are being fooled

So why are we falling for it?

First, AI has become an expert forger of human patterns. These models are trained on gigantic libraries of human-made art. They have analyzed more paintings, songs and photographs than any person ever could. These models may not have a soul, but they have learned the mathematical recipe for what we find beautiful or catchy.

Second, AI has bridged the uncanny valley. This is the term for the creepy feeling we get when something looks almost human but not quite – like a humanoid robot or a doll with vacant eyes.

That subtle sense of wrongness has been our built-in detector for fakes. But the latest AI is so sophisticated that it has climbed out of the valley. It no longer makes the small mistakes that trigger our alarm bells.

Finally, AI does not just copy reality; it creates a perfected version of it. The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called this a simulacrum – a copy with no original.

The AI model in Vogue is the perfect example. She is not a picture of a real woman. She is a hyperreal ideal that no living person can compete with. Viewers don’t flag her as fake because she is, in a sense, more “perfect” than real.

The future of art in a synthetic world

When art is this easy to generate – and its origin this hard to verify – something precious risks being lost.

The German thinker Walter Benjamin once wrote about the “aura” of an original artwork – the sense of history and human touch that makes it special. A painting has an aura because you can see the brushstrokes; an old photograph has an aura because it captured a real moment in time.

AI-generated art has no such aura. It is infinitely reproducible, has no history, and lacks a human story. This is why, even when it is technically perfect, it can feel hollow.

When you become suspicious of a work’s origins, the act of listening to a song or viewing a photograph is no longer simply about feeling the rhythm or wondering what may have existed outside the frame. It also requires running a mental checklist, searching for the statistical ghost in the machine. And that moment of analytical doubt pulls viewers and listeners out of the work’s emotional world.

To me, the aesthetic Turing Test is not just about whether a machine can fool us; it’s a challenge that asks us to decide what we really want from art.

If a machine creates a song that brings a person to tears, does it matter that the machine felt nothing? Where does the meaning of art truly reside – in the mind of the creator or in the heart of the observer?

We have built a mirror that reflects our own creativity back at us, and now we must decide: Do we prefer perfection without humanity, or imperfection with meaning? Do we choose the flawless, disposable reflection, or the messy, fun house mirror of the human mind?

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

– ref. AI has passed the aesthetic Turing Test − and it’s changing our relationship with art – https://theconversation.com/ai-has-passed-the-aesthetic-turing-test-and-its-changing-our-relationship-with-art-262997

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University

When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign.

It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power.

It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past.

In his second term, President Donald Trump has revealed his ambitions to rewrite America’s official history to, in the words of the Organization of American Historians, “reflect a glorified narrative … while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.”

This ambition was manifested in efforts by the Department of Education to eradicate a “DEI agenda” from school curricula. It also included a high-profile assault on what detractors saw as “woke” universities, which culminated in Columbia University’s agreement to submit to a review of the faculty and curriculum of its Middle Eastern Studies department, with the aim of eradicating alleged pro-Palestinian bias.

Now, the administration has shifted its sights from formal educational institutions to one of the key sites of public history-making: the Smithsonian, a collection of 21 museums, the National Zoo and associated research centers, principally centered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

On Aug. 12, 2025, the Smithsonian’s director, Lonnie Bunch III, received a letter from the White House announcing its intent to carry out a systematic review of the institution’s holdings and exhibitions in the advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

The review’s stated aim is to ensure that museum content adequately reflects “Americanism” through a commitment to “celebrate American exceptionalism, [and] remove divisive or partisan narratives.”

On Aug. 19, 2025, Trump escalated his attack on the Smithsonian. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.”

Such ambitions may sound benign, but they are deeply Orwellian. Here’s how.

Winners write the history

Author George Orwell believed in objective, historical truth. Writing in 1946, he attributed his youthful desire to become an author in part to a “historical impulse,” or “the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail.

Truth, Orwell recognized, was best served by free speech and dialogue. Yet absolute power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out.

As Orwell wrote in “1984,” his final, dystopian novel, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Historian Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska has written about America’s bicentennial celebrations that took place in 1976. Then, she says, “Americans across the nation helped contribute to a pluralistic and inclusive commemoration … using it as a moment to question who had been left out of the legacies of the American Revolution, to tell more inclusive stories about the history of the United States.”

This was an example of the kind of productive dialogue encouraged in a free society. “By contrast,” writes Rymsza-Pawlowska, “the 250th is shaping up to be a top-down affair that advances a relatively narrow and celebratory idea of Americanism.” The newly announced Smithsonian review aims to purge counternarratives that challenge that celebratory idea.

The Ministry of Truth

The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith’s job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in “1984.”

The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South.

Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is.

The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or “thought crime,” is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present.

But it also controls the past. As the party’s protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down “memory holes,” where they are “wiped … out of existence and out of memory.”

At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole.

The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell’s Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past.

Down the memory hole

Even before the Trump administration announced its review of the Smithsonian, officials in departments across government had taken unprecedented steps to rewrite the nation’s official history, attempting to purge parts of the historical narrative down Orwellian memory holes.

Comically, those efforts included the temporary removal from government websites of information about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The plane was unwittingly caught up in a mass purge of references to “gay” and LGBTQ+ content on government websites.

Other erasures have included the deletion of content on government sites related to the life ofHarriet Tubman, the Maryland woman who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom.

Public outcry led to the restoration of most of the deleted content.

Over at the Smithsonian, which earlier in the year had been criticized by Trump for its “divisive, race-centered ideology,” staff removed a temporary placard with references to President Trump’s two impeachment trials from a display case on impeachment that formed part of the National Museum of American History exhibition on the American presidency. The references to Trump’s two impeachments were modified, with some details removed, in a newly installed placard in the updated display.

Responding to questions, the Smithsonian stated that the placard’s removal was not in response to political pressure: “The placard, which was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year-old exhibition, did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.”

Repressing thought

Orwell’s “1984” ends with an appendix on the history of “Newspeak,” Oceania’s official language, which, while it had not yet superseded “Oldspeak” or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect.

According to the appendix, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: “The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds.’ … political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.”

The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future.

If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change.

It has become a cliché that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it.

As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives.

This story is an updated version of an article originally published on June 9, 2025.

The Smithsonian is a member of The Conversation U.S.

Laura Beers 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 Orwellian echoes in Trump’s push for ‘Americanism’ at the Smithsonian – https://theconversation.com/the-orwellian-echoes-in-trumps-push-for-americanism-at-the-smithsonian-263304

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jake Rosenfeld, Professor of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis

During the 2024 election campaign, the Republican Party’s historically fraught relationship with organized labor appeared to be changing. Several influential Republicans reached out to unions, seeking to cement the loyalties of the growing ranks of working-class Americans who have been backing Donald Trump’s presidential runs and voting for other members of his party.

During Trump’s first bid for the White house, the percentage of votes in households where at least one person belongs to a union fell to its lowest level in decades. In 2021, Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator at the time, wrote a USA Today op-ed supporting a unionization drive at an Amazon facility. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, walked a United Auto Workers picket line in 2023 in solidarity with striking workers.

As the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, Trump spotlighted International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien with a prominent speaking slot at the Republican National Convention – rewarding the union for staying neutral in that campaign after endorsing Joe Biden four years earlier.

Yet O’Brien shocked many in the convention crowd by lambasting longtime GOP coalition partners such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable for hurting American workers.

Once in office, Trump continued to signal some degree of solidarity with the blue-collar voters who backed him. He chose former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Teamsters ally, to be his second-term labor secretary.

I’m a sociologist who has been researching the U.S. labor movement for over two decades. Given conservatives’ long-standing antipathy toward unions, I was curious whether the GOP’s greater engagement with labor portended any kind of change in its policies.

Fumbled at the starting line

The GOP’s various outreach efforts during the 2024 campaign led University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner, a scholar of declining labor power, to write, “Is a pro-labor Republican Party possible?”

More than six months into Trump’s second term, I would say that based on the evidence thus far the answer to Posner’s question is a resounding no.

In late March 2025, Trump issued an executive order stripping hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.

Overnight, twice as many federal employees lost their union protections as there are members of the United Auto Workers union, making the action “the largest and most aggressive single act of union-busting in U.S. history,” according to Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin.

While affected unions have challenged that action and similar subsequent ones in court, the Trump administration is moving onto other agencies. In August, over 400,000 federal employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs and Environmental Protection Agency saw their union contracts terminated and their collective bargaining rights dissolved.

Everett Kelley, the American Federation of Government Employees president, described the attacks on federal workers as a “setback for fundamental rights in America.”

Tariffs, other policies aren’t helping

The Trump administration has pitched its erratic tariff policies as a boon to U.S.manufacturing, including in the automotive industry, once the foundation of the U.S. labor movement.

In reality, U.S. car producers are struggling to keep up with rising tariff-related costs of raw materials and parts. The number of factory jobs has fallen to the lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, a supporter of targeted tariffs to buttress the domestic auto industry, criticized the administration’s trade policy in April 2025, saying, “We do not support reckless tariffs on all countries at crazy rates.”

Other administration actions cast as relief for struggling workers are unlikely to deliver as advertised. The “no tax on tips” provision in Trump’s huge tax-and-spending package excludes the nearly 40% of tipped workers whose earnings fall below the federal income tax threshold. Tipped workers make up a tiny share of the low-wage workforce.

Culinary Workers Local 226, a powerful Nevada union representing many tipped workers in Las Vegas and Reno, supported the provision. Yet it blasted the overall package, calling it a “big, horrible bill” for its windfalls to the rich instead of the working class.

Removing the watchdogs

The National Labor Relations Board is responsible for ensuring management and labor adhere to provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. Passed in 1935, that law established workers’ fundamental rights to collective bargaining. The board is responsible for conducting union elections, investigating allegations of unfair labor practices and outright abuses by employers, and enforcing court orders when employers or unions are found to have broken labor laws.

Presidents regularly use vacancies to tilt the ideological balance of the board to a more or less labor-friendly position. Trump, however, went further.

Soon after he was sworn in for a second term, Trump fired the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel along with board member Gwynne Wilcox, who was only halfway through her five-year term. Wilcox’s dismissal was unprecedented and violated the National Labor Relations Act provision on board personnel changes.

Wilcox’s removal left the body without a quorum, preventing it from responding to appeals or requests for review and allowing employers accused of violating workers’ rights to delay any settlement. The Trump administration has left those important NLRB jobs vacant for months, although it has nominated two management-friendly replacements, both of whom awaited Senate approval in mid-August.

In the meantime, the agency is unable to hear labor disputes.

Disempowering the NLRB is a long-standing Republican tactic, suggesting more continuity with past GOP attacks on labor than a new era of partnership.

Hawley standing out

To be sure, Republicans don’t all agree with one another on the importance of supporting workers and labor rights. One who has stood out so far is Hawley. The relatively pro-labor Republican senator’s stance led him to partner with Sen. Corey Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, to co-sponsor the Faster Labor Contracts Act.

This new bill would force employers to negotiate a contract in a reasonable time frame with employees once they have voted in favor of forming a union.

Hawley also joined with Democrats to reintroduce a bill that would ban dangerous work speed requirements in warehouses. Hawley said, when summarizing his efforts on behalf of working people, “It’s time we deliver for them.”

The Missouri senator is not completely alone. Sens. Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Roger Marshall of Kansas, both Republicans, have backed some labor-friendly legislation in the spring and summer of this year.

GOP leaders in Congress are not moving those bills forward so far, likely in part due to pushback from Republicans and their allies outside Congress.

And there are limits to Hawley’s labor friendliness. He voted for Trump’s tax-and-spending package, despite publicly airing his misgivings about the harm it may cause his blue-collar constituents.

Meanwhile, his past partners in the more labor-friendly wing of the GOP now occupy prominent administration posts. Yet they have largely fallen silent on union issues – except, in Rubio’s case, to oversee the firing of well over 1,000 State Department employees, many of them members of the American Foreign Service Association union.

Trump labor approach echoes Reagan’s style

Another GOP presidential administration courted segments of the labor movement to divide a key Democratic constituency, only to take actions that weakened unions.

In 1980, for example, Ronald Reagan sought and won the endorsement of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. A year later, he fired 13,000 striking members of that union.

The Teamsters union also backed Reagan – twice. It endorsed him in 1980 after he pledged during the 1980 campaign not to pursue anti-labor policies. Although he broke his promise, personal outreach from Vice President George H.W. Bush in the lead-up to the 1984 election earned him the Teamsters endorsement a second time.

What seems clear in my view is that whenever the GOP has tried to cast itself as a labor-friendly political party, it has emphasized symbolism over substance, favoring using rhetoric embracing workers who belong to unions versus taking actions to strengthen labor rights.

To support his research, Jake Rosenfeld has received funding from the Economic Policy Institute, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Urban Institute, and the National Science Foundation.

– ref. Trump administration has proven no friend to organized labor, from attacking federal unions to paralyzing the National Labor Relations Board – https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-has-proven-no-friend-to-organized-labor-from-attacking-federal-unions-to-paralyzing-the-national-labor-relations-board-263176

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charlie Hunt, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

The 2026 midterms are more than a year away, but some high-profile primary election battles in the Democratic Party are gaining national attention. Much of that attention is focused on the age of the candidates.

Thanks to Texas’ proposed mid-decade redistricting, a showdown is looming between two Democrats serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from that state: 36-year-old Rep. Greg Casar has made clear his intention to run against a colleague, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, despite Doggett’s public pressure on Casar to run in a different district. Doggett is 78 years old and has served in the House since 1994.**

An even more stark generational divide has emerged in New York’s 12th district, where 26-year-old political organizer Liam Elkind is making a similar challenge in a Democratic primary. The 18-term incumbent in that race, Rep. Jerry Nadler, will be 79 years old by next year’s midterm election. He began his political career as a New York state assemblyman in 1977 — more than 20 years before Elkind was born.

These generational matchups have become common in the Democratic Party. They have also gained significant attention, particularly since the 2018 upset of another veteran Democratic leader, Rep. Joe Crowley of New York, in a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was 28 at the time.

These challengers often criticize the seniority of older lawmakers. They say seniority is not a benefit but a hindrance to effective representation because the longtime incumbents are out of touch with the needs of their districts and the country, and that remaining in office crowds out crucial younger perspectives.

As generational challenges have become more common, they’ve also become sharper in their explicit appeals to age as a key candidate quality. And candidates like Elkind have made the argument that the stakes go beyond generational “vibes.”

A geriatric Congress can also have demonstrable effects on the policymaking that happens on Capitol Hill.

Slim majorities make age a bigger issue

Why is candidate age so prominent in the current election cycle?

One big reason is that razor-thin majorities in Congress make every seat count.

Slim margins create legislative and institutional uncertainty that has very real consequences for how Congress is run and how policy gets made.

In his candidacy announcement video, Elkind makes this point explicitly: “In the last five months, three House Democrats passed away, allowing Trump’s billionaire bill, gutting health care and food stamps for millions of people, to go through by one vote.”

Although it’s likely that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would have passed even without these vacancies, the Democratic absences undoubtedly made Speaker Mike Johnson’s job of passing the bill a little bit easier.

Elkind also notes that the last eight members of Congress who passed away in office were Democrats. In essence, Elkind is arguing that Democrats must elect more young members not just as a matter of representation but as a way of preserving power in Congress.

How do vacancies occur?

Seat vacancies caused by the early departures of members of Congress happen regularly, and in a variety of ways.

The 118th Congress, which met from Jan. 3, 2023, to Jan. 3, 2025, set a modern record with 17 vacancies, a rate unmatched going back to the 1950s. This was partly because of four member deaths, including Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.

Other high-profile vacancies in the 118th Congress were due to different causes. Some members were forced to resign or even expelled from Congress because of scandal, like GOP Rep. George Santos of New York, who was convicted in 2024 for a range of crimes and subsequently sentenced to several years in prison.

Others cut short their current term due to political defeats: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, resigned after being ousted from his leadership post in 2023. The current 119th Congress has seen additional resignations from members who took positions in the second Trump administration.

Resignation is the most common reason for departure in recent Congresses. However, at least one member – and often more than one – has died in all but one Congress in the past 70 years. The number of deaths that regularly occur among members is more than sufficient to change how the majority party functions in a closely contested Congress like this one.

And for Democrats, three member deaths in the first nine months of the current Congress is far ahead of previous years’ paces, making incumbents’ advanced age a relevant issue on the campaign trail.

How are vacancies filled?

Although U.S. Senate vacancies are often – though not always – filled through an appointment by the governor of that state, the Constitution mandates that House vacancies be filled by special elections scheduled by the governor.

These elections usually happen within a few months of the vacancy. What this means is that there are real possibilities for the size of a party’s majority to shrink, or grow, between election years, in ways that have profound impacts on policymaking. And even if a majority party shift doesn’t happen, a district could still replace a moderate departing representative with an extremist, or vice versa.

What does this mean for the 2026 midterms?

Whether younger candidates’ message will resonate with primary election voters remains an open question. Longer-serving incumbents hold major advantages like deeper campaign experience. Younger candidates traditionally lack the name recognition and donor bases that older incumbents have built up over decades.

But given the public concern over the high-profile declines of candidates for president – like former President Joe Biden – and for Congress, like Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Mitch McConnell, generational politics may be more important than ever, and help reverse this trend.

This story contains material from a previous article published on Jan. 3, 2023.

Charlie Hunt 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. In a closely divided Congress, aging lawmakers are a problem for Democrats – https://theconversation.com/in-a-closely-divided-congress-aging-lawmakers-are-a-problem-for-democrats-262914