Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ediberto Román, Professor of Law, Florida International University

Soon after the NFL’s announcement that Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny would headline the Super Bowl halftime show, conservative media outlets and Trump administration officials went on the attack.

Homeland Security head Kristi Noem promised that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “would be all over the Super Bowl.” President Donald Trump called the selection “absolutely ridiculous.” Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson bemoaned the fact that the rapper has “no songs in English.” Bad Bunny, conservative pundit Tomi Lahren complained, is “Not an American artist.”

Bad Bunny – born Benito A. Martínez Ocasio – is a superstar, one of the top-streaming artists in the world. And because he is Puerto Rican, he’s a U.S. citizen, too.

To be sure, Bad Bunny checks many boxes that irk conservatives. He endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024. There’s his gender-bending wardrobe. He has slammed the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies. He has declined to tour on the U.S. mainland, fearing that some of his fans could be targeted and deported by ICE. And his explicit lyrics – most of which are in Spanish – would make even the most ardent free speech warrior cringe.

And yet, as experts on issues of national identity and U.S. immigration policies, we think Lahren’s and Johnson’s insults get at the heart of why the rapper has created such a firestorm on the right. The spectacle of a Spanish-speaking rapper performing during the most-watched sporting event on American TV is a direct rebuke of the Trump administration’s efforts to paper over the country’s diversity.

The Puerto Rican colony

Bad Bunny was born in 1994 in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated U.S. territory that the country acquired after the 1898 Spanish-American War.

It is home to 3.2 million U.S. citizens by birth. If it were a state, it would be the 30th largest by population, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.

But Puerto Rico is not a state; it is a colony from a bygone era of U.S. overseas imperial expansion. Puerto Ricans do not have voting representatives in Congress, and they do not get to help elect the president of the United States. They are also divided over the island’s future. Large pluralities seek either U.S. statehood or an enhanced form of the current commonwealth status, while a smaller minority vie for independence.

But one thing is clear to all Puerto Ricans: They’re from a nonsovereign land, with a clearly defined Latin American culture – one of the oldest in the Americas. Puerto Rico may belong to the U.S. – and many Puerto Ricans embrace that special relationship – but the island itself does not sound or feel like the U.S.

The over 5.8 million Puerto Ricans that reside in the 50 states further complicate that picture. While legally they are U.S. citizens, mainstream Americans often don’t see Puerto Ricans that way. In fact, a 2017 poll found that only 54% of Americans knew that Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens.

The alien-citizen paradox

Puerto Ricans exist in what we describe as the “alien-citizen paradox”: They are U.S. citizens, but only those residing in the mainland enjoy all the rights of citizenship.

A recent congressional report stated that U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans “is not equal, permanent, irrevocable citizenship protected by the 14th Amendment … and Congress retains the right to determine the disposition of the territory.” Any U.S. citizen that moves to Puerto Rico no longer possesses the full rights of U.S. citizens of the mainland.

Bad Bunny’s selection for the Super Bowl halftime show illustrates this paradox. In addition to criticisms from public figures, there were widespread calls among MAGA influencers to deport the rapper

This is but one way Puerto Ricans, as well as other Latino citizens, are reminded of their status as “others.”

ICE apprehensions of people merely appearing to be an immigrant – a tactic that was recently given the blessing of the Supreme Court – is an example of their alienlike status.

And the bulk of the ICE raids have occurred in predominantly Latino communities in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. This has forced many Latino communities to cancel Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations.

Bad Bunny’s global reach

The xenophobic fervor against Bad Bunny has led political leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson to call for a more suitable figure for the Super Bowl, such as country music artist Lee Greenwood. Referring to Bad Bunny, Johnson said “it sounds like he’s not someone who appeals to a broader audience.”

But the facts counter that claim. The Puerto Rican artist sits atop the global music charts. He has over 80 million monthly Spotify listeners. And he has sold nearly five times more albums than Greenwood.

That global appeal has impressed the NFL, which hopes to host as many as eight international games next season. Additionally, Latinos represent the league’s fastest-growing fan base, and Mexico is its largest international market, with a reported 39.5 million fans.

The Bad Bunny Super Bowl saga may actually become an important political moment. Conservatives, in their efforts to highlight Bad Bunny’s “otherness” – despite the United States being the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world – may have unwittingly educated America on the U.S. citizenship of Puerto Ricans.

In the meantime, Puerto Ricans and the rest of the U.S. Latino community continue to wonder when they’ll be accepted as social equals.

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

– ref. The real reason conservatives are furious about Bad Bunny’s forthcoming Super Bowl performance – https://theconversation.com/the-real-reason-conservatives-are-furious-about-bad-bunnys-forthcoming-super-bowl-performance-267078

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Brandon Nabors, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Public Health, University of Mississippi

The American South has the highest HIV rates in the country, accounting for more than half of new HIV diagnoses nationwide in 2023. This is despite growing availability of a highly effective HIV prevention medication that has made it possible to live a long, healthy life with this once fatal disease.

This medication – called preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP – reduces the risk of HIV transmission by over 99% when taken as prescribed. Yet, in Southern cities such as Jackson, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee, one of the most vulnerable populations – Black men who have sex with men – are rarely using it, with fewer than 1 in 5 who are eligible taking the drug.

The Trump administration has previously frozen and proposed more cuts to HIV prevention programs in the U.S. And although the administration has restored some of the federal webpages and datasets it took down in January 2025, it is unclear what information remains missing or has changed. Communities in the South that already face the highest burden of infection will feel the greatest effects of changing public health priorities.

In my work as a public health researcher, I have spent years studying HIV prevention and the social determinants of health in the Deep South. Through interviews with health care providers and Black patients in major Southern cities, what I learned was that a powerful clash between culture and public health plays a significant role in why effective medical treatments are still failing to reach those who need it most. I call this tension the Southern paradox – where medical solutions exist but systemic forces block access.

The stories of these clinicians and patients in the South weren’t simply about a pill: They were about trust, identity, family and faith. And their words highlighted a complex web of emotions and experiences that often go unaddressed in standard health messaging.

Southern culture and sexual health

In my recent study, I interviewed 12 people in Jackson, Memphis, New Orleans and Atlanta: eight Black men who have sex with men, along with four health care providers. Three of these providers also identified as men who have sex with men.

Many participants reported that physical access to PrEP wasn’t the issue. Instead, what stood in the way was far more personal and deeply embedded in their environment.

“In church, you’re taught to love your neighbor, but there’s always an asterisk when it comes to who you love,” one participant from Jackson told me. “If you’re gay, you’re either ignored or silently judged.”

Nearly all participants described the South as a place deeply shaped by conservative values, especially those rooted in religion and traditional family structures. The Black church emerged as both a protective factor and a challenge. While offering vital community support, it also often reinforced stigma around homosexuality and discouraged open conversations about sexual health.

One participant from New Orleans shared that he heard about PrEP from his health care provider and his friends, while another from Atlanta recalled learning about PrEP during his annual physical. Despite repeatedly being exposed to information about PrEP, both described hesitation about starting treatment. One worried about potential stigma if others discovered he was taking it, while the other questioned whether he “really needed” it. Ultimately, neither had started PrEP.

In many of these communities, sex education in schools is still focused on abstinence and often excludes LGBTQ+ topics entirely. “You grow up not hearing anything about gay sex or HIV,” one man from Memphis said. “So, when you get older, it’s like starting from scratch.”

Even decisions around condom use were heavily shaped by cultural norms. Men described relying on partner trust, age or perceived cleanliness rather than research-based ways to reduce the risk of HIV.

This absence of comprehensive, inclusive sex education leaves many vulnerable to misinformation and, ultimately, to preventable infections.

Trust is the real barrier

One of the most striking findings from these conversations was the deep mistrust that many Black men who have sex with men feel toward the health care system.

“It’s hard to find affirming care for people in the queer community,” said one Memphis-based health provider. Others talked about fears of being “outed” through their insurance, especially if they were still on a family health plan.

A Jackson-based participant confided, “Some people avoid taking [PrEP] because for each prescription you are required to be evaluated. Some people don’t want the follow-up or the screening.” Another noted how fear of both outright and subtle judgment during medical appointments made it easier to avoid health care altogether.

Systemic racism compounds these concerns. For many Black men, historical and ongoing experiences of discrimination, including rushed visits, lack of empathy, misdiagnoses and even being denied care altogether have built a lasting sense of caution.

Even when resources like PrEP are available, these treatments often feel inaccessible to Black men because they do not trust the system offering them.

Social networks step in

Thankfully, these conversations also uncovered moments of hope.

Many participants learned about PrEP from peers. “We talk about it regularly,” said one participant in Jackson. “I have friends who work in public health, along with friends who are taking the medication.”

In the South, where community ties often serve as critical safety nets, these social networks can sometimes provide more trusted health information than clinics or campaigns. Informal conversations in group chats, at house parties or during community gatherings often serve as powerful platforms for health promotion.

One provider in Atlanta said he intentionally shared his own experiences with PrEP to reduce stigma. “I have a little soreness,” he said with a smile, referring to a recent injection. “Then I tell everyone, ‘Yup, I just got mine.’ The casualness of that comment made a difference: It made PrEP feel normal, relatable, something for ‘us,’ not something done to ‘them.’”

These social exchanges, rooted in trust and shared experience, frequently did more to shift attitudes than traditional public health campaigns. As one participant put it, “I trust my friends more than those ads. If they’re taking it and it works for them, that means something to me.”

Making PrEP culturally relevant

What these conversations show is that for PrEP to work in the South, access to treatment is only part of the equation. Building trust, cultural affirmation and community-led education are equally critical.

Public health messages that go beyond medical facts and address the emotional, spiritual and social dimensions of health are more likely to build lasting engagement with HIV prevention. This includes investing in Black, LGBTQ+-affirming health care providers who reflect the communities they serve. It also means integrating discussions of sexual health into everyday conversations at barbershops, churches and community centers, not just in clinics.

Public health officials and clinicians can explore alternative treatment delivery methods that address privacy concerns, such as telehealth PrEP programs, discreet mail-order services and community-based distribution points. These can make PrEP easier to access and reduce the stigma associated with clinic visits.

Most importantly, valuing the knowledge already circulating within communities and supporting peer educators as legitimate public health messengers can strengthen credibility, normalize PrEP and empower people to take charge of their health.

In the battle against HIV in the South, culture is not just a barrier. It can also be the solution. I believe that when care is offered in a way that honors people’s identities, experiences and values, it becomes not just accessible but empowering.

Brandon Nabors 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. HIV rates are highest in the American South, despite effective treatments – a clash between culture and public health – https://theconversation.com/hiv-rates-are-highest-in-the-american-south-despite-effective-treatments-a-clash-between-culture-and-public-health-257434

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By James R. Elliott, Professor of Sociology, Rice University

Dangerous flooding has damaged neighborhoods in almost every state in 2025, leaving homes a muddy mess. In several hard-hit areas, it wasn’t the first time homeowners found themselves tearing out wet wallboard and piling waterlogged carpet by the curb.

Wanting to rebuild after flooding is a common response. But for some people, the best way to stay in their community, adapt to the changing climate and recover from disasters is to do what humans have done for millennia: move.

Researchers expect millions of Americans to relocate from properties facing increasing risks of flood, fire and other kinds of disasters in the years ahead.

What people do with those high-risk properties can make their community more resilient or leave it vulnerable to more damage in future storms.

We study flood resilience and have been mapping the results of government buyout programs across the U.S. that purchase damaged homes after disasters to turn them into open space.

Our new national maps of who relocates and where they go after a flood shows that most Americans who move from buyout areas stay local. However, we also found that the majority of them give up their home to someone else, either selling it or leaving a rental home, rather than taking a government buyout offer. That transfers the risk to a new resident, leaving the community still facing future costly risks.

FEMA’s buyout program at risk

Government buyout programs can help communities recover after disasters by purchasing high-risk homes and demolishing them. The parcel is then converted to a natural flood plain, park or site for new infrastructure to mitigate future flood damage for nearby areas.

FEMA has been funding such efforts for decades through its property buyout program. It has invested nearly US$4 billion to purchase and raze approximately 45,000 flood-prone homes nationwide, most of them since 2001.

Those investments pay off: Research shows the program avoids an estimated $4 to $6 in future disaster recovery spending for every $1 invested. In return, homeowners receive a predisaster price for their home, minus any money they might receive from a related flood insurance payout on the property.

But this assistance is now in jeopardy as the Trump administration cuts FEMA staff and funding and the president talks about dismantling the agency. From March to September, governors submitted 42 applications for funding from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which includes buyouts – all were denied or left pending as of mid-September.

Our recommendation after studying this program is to mend it, not end it. If done right, buyouts can help maintain local ties and help communities build more sustainable futures together.

Buyouts vs. selling homes in damaged areas

Our team at Rice University’s Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience developed an interactive mapping tool to show where buyout participants and neighbors living within a half-mile of them moved after FEMA initiates a buyout program in their area.

The maps were created using individual data, down to the address level, from 2007 to 2017, across more than 550 counties where FEMA’s buyout program operated nationally.

Zoomed out, they show just how many places the program has helped across the U.S., from coastal cities to inland towns. And, when zoomed in, they reveal the buyout locations and destinations of more than 70,000 residents who moved following FEMA-funded buyouts in their area.

The maps also show which people relocated by accepting a federal buyout and which ones relocated on their own. Nationwide, we see the vast majority of movers, about 14 out of every 15, are not participants in the federal buyout program. They are neighbors who relocated through conventional real estate transactions.

This distinction matters, because it implies that most Americans are retreating from climate-stressed areas by transferring their home’s risk to someone else, not by accepting buyouts that would take the property out of circulation.

Selling may be good for homeowners who can find buyers, but it doesn’t make the community more resilient.

Lessons for future buyout programs

Our interactive map offers some good news and insights for buyout programs going forward.

Regardless of how they occur, we find that moves from buyout areas average just 5 to 10 miles from old to new home. This means most people are maintaining local ties, even as they relocate to adapt to rising climate risks.

Nearly all of the moves also end in safer homes with minimal to minor risk of future flooding. We checked using address-level flood factors from the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit source of flood risk ratings that are now integrated into some online real estate websites.

But many homes in risky areas are still being resold or rented to new residents, leaving communities facing a game of climate roulette.

How long that can continue will vary by neighborhood. Rising insurance costs, intensifying storms and growing awareness of flood risks are already dampening home sales in some communities − and thus opportunities to simply hand over one’s risk to someone else and move on.

The U.S. can create safer communities by expanding federal, state and local voluntary buyout programs. These programs allow communities to reduce future flood damage and collectively plan for safer uses of the vacated lands that emerge.

Giving residents longer periods of time to participate after the damage could also help make the programs more attractive. This would provide property owners more flexibility in deciding when to sell and demolish their property, while still taking risky property off the market rather than handing the risk to new residents.

James R. Elliott has received funding from the National Science Foundation.

Debolina Banerjee 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. FEMA buyouts vs. risky real estate: New maps reveal post-flood migration patterns across the US – https://theconversation.com/fema-buyouts-vs-risky-real-estate-new-maps-reveal-post-flood-migration-patterns-across-the-us-262211

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Tom Duszynski, Clinical Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Indiana University

Imagine a city street at dusk, silent save for the rising sound of a collective guttural moan. Suddenly, a horde of ragged, bloodied creatures appear, their feet shuffling along the pavement, their hollow eyes locked on fleeing figures ahead.

A classic movie monster, the zombie surged in popularity in the 21st century during a time of global anxiety – the Great Recession, the specter of climate change, the lingering trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The zombie apocalypse became a way for people to explore the terrifying concept of societal collapse, a step removed from real threats such as nuclear war or global financial disaster.

As a public health epidemiologist and an amateur zombie historian, I couldn’t help but notice the striking parallels between what epidemiologists do to stop infectious disease outbreaks and what horror movie heroes do to stop zombies. The key questions posed in any zombie narrative – how did this start, how many are infected, how to contain it – are the identical questions that epidemiologists ask during a real infectious disease outbreak or pandemic.

In 2011, in fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a zombie apocalypse preparedness guide that explained how readying oneself for a zombie apocalypse can prepare people for any large-scale disaster. The zombie is more than just a monster; it is a powerful, public health teaching tool.

Zombies in ancient history

The idea of the reanimated dead has been part of human history for millennia, showing up across cultures and long before modern germ theory or epidemiology existed. These creatures were often a way for societies to understand and explain the natural world and disease transmission in the absence of scientific knowledge.

The oldest written reference to creatures similar to modern zombies is found in “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” which was etched on stone tablets sometime between 2000 and 1100 B.C.E. Enraged after Gilgamesh rejects her marriage proposal, the goddess Ishtar tells him, “I shall bring up the dead to consume the living, I shall the make the dead outnumber the living.” This ancient terror – the dead overwhelming the living – has a direct parallel to the concept of an out-of-control epidemic in which the sick quickly overwhelm the healthy. Hollywood has readily adopted this concept in many zombie movies.

The origins of the flesh-eating corpse on screen date back to George Romero’s 1968 classic “The Night of the Living Dead.” You won’t hear the word “zombie” in Romero’s film, however – in the script, he called the creatures “flesh eaters.” Similarly, in Danny Boyle’s 2002 film “28 Days Later,” the terrifying creatures were called the “infected.” Both these terms, “flesh eaters” and “infected,” directly echo public health concerns – specifically, the spread of disease via a bacteria or virus and the need for quarantine to contain the afflicted.

The roots of the word zombie arefor the Haitian variety. thought to stretch back to West Africa and to words such as “nzambi,” which means “creator” in African Kongo, or “ndzumbi,” which means “corpse” in the Mitsogo language of Gabon. However, it was in Haitian Vodou, a religion that draws from the West African spiritual traditions among people who were enslaved on Haiti’s plantations, that the concept took its most terrifying form.

According to Vodou, when a person experiences an unnatural, early death, priests can capture and co-opt their soul. Slave owners capitalized on this belief to prevent suicide among the enslaved. To become a zombie – dead yet still a slave – was the ultimate nightmare. This cultural concept speaks not just to disease but to societal trauma and the public health crisis of forced labor.

Zombie-like creatures around the world

Across the globe, other reanimated corpses crop up in local folklore, often reflecting fears of improper burial, violent death or moral wickedness. Many tales about these eerie creatures don’t just convey how to avoid becoming one of them, but also detail how to stop or prevent them from taking over. This focus on prevention and control is at the heart of public health.

During the expansion of China’s Qing dynasty, which took place between 1644 and 1911, a creature known as the jiangshi, or “hopping zombie,” emerged amid widespread unrest and integration of non-Chinese minorities. The jiangshi were corpses suffering from rigor mortis and decomposition, reanimated when a soul couldn’t leave after a violent death. Instead of staggering, these mythological creatures would hop, and their method of attack was to steal a person’s lifeforce, or qi.

Fear of a lonely, restless afterlife led families who lost a loved one far from home to hire a Taoist priest to retrieve the body for proper burial with ancestors.

In Scandinavia, the draugr – meaning “again walker” or “ghost” – was a creature bent on revenge. According to lore, draugrs typically emerged from mean-spirited people or improperly buried corpses. Like zombies, they could turn regular people into draugrs by infecting them. They would attack their victims by devouring flesh, drinking blood or driving victims insane. Draugrs’ contagious nature is a model for disease transmission. What’s more, their seasonal activity – they most often appear at night in winter months – is similar to seasonal trends in infectious disease transmission.

In medieval times, meanwhile, legend had it that creatures called revenants – corpses that came out of their graves – stalked northern and western Europe. According to 12th-century English historian William of Newburgh, these creatures emerged from the lingering life force of people who had committed evil deeds during their lives or who experienced a sudden death. Clerics fueled people’s fears of becoming a revenant by claiming these creatures were created by Satan. The recommended but gruesome prevention method for this fate was to capture and dismember these creatures and to burn the body parts, especially the head.

Archaeological evidence from a medieval village in England suggests that communities heeded this advice. Archaeologists excavated the village’s burial grounds, and among human remains from the 11th to 13th centuries they found broken and burned bones with knife marks. They show how a community may have taken extreme measures to control a perceived contagion or threat to public safety, mirroring a modern-day quarantine or eradication protocols.

Perhaps the most striking similarity between these historical monsters and Hollywood zombies is that so many of them are created by an infectious agent of some kind. After an outbreak occurs, control is difficult to regain, underscoring the necessity of a rapid public health response.

Tom Duszynski 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. Zombies, jiangshi, draugrs, revenants − monster lore is filled with metaphors for public health – https://theconversation.com/zombies-jiangshi-draugrs-revenants-monster-lore-is-filled-with-metaphors-for-public-health-261448

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, Boise State University

For decades, federal shutdowns have mostly been budget fights. The 2025 one has become bigger than that: It’s turned into a messaging war.

Official government communications, including website banners, out-of-office email replies and autogenerated responses that denounce “Senate Democrats,” “the Radical Left” or “Democrats’ $1.5 trillion wishlist” for closing the government, mark a sharp break from past practice.

These messages are more than rhetorical escalation. Many may violate the Hatch Act, the 1939 statute that limits partisan political activity by federal employees and agencies. They also represent new tests for how far a White House can push the bounds of campaign-style messaging while also claiming to govern.

In any democracy, power lies not only in who writes the laws or signs the budgets but in who shapes the story. Communication is not an afterthought or byproduct of governance. It is one of its essential instruments. Political narrative helps citizens understand who’s responsible, who’s acting in good faith and who’s to blame.

The 2025 shutdown has turned that truth into strategy. Federal communication systems – agency websites, automated emails and public information portals – are being used to persuade rather than inform. It’s a move that is both politically risky and legally perilous.

Serve the public, not a party

The Hatch Act was passed during the Great Depression, after years of concern that federal agencies were being used improperly as political machines. Its goal was simple: to ensure that public servants worked for the American people, not for the party in power.

At its core, the Hatch Act prohibits executive branch federal employees – except for the president and vice president – from engaging in partisan political activity as part of their official duties or under their official authority. Government workers may not use their positions or public resources to influence elections, coerce individual behavior or engage in political advocacy.

The law requires federal agencies to avoid the partisan fray and focus on serving the public rather than political agendas.

The Office of Special Counsel, which enforces the law, has been clear on this point. “The purpose of the Act,” says an Office of Special Counsel guide written for federal employees, “is to maintain a federal workforce that is free from partisan political influence or coersion.” Government communication can inform, but it cannot campaign.

Yet the shutdown has already produced multiple potential violations:

• The Department of Education, according to a lawsuit, altered employees’ email auto-responses – without consent – to say things like “the Democrats have shut the government down.” Such changes do more than convey impartial information. They compel employees to align themselves with institutionally imposed scripts.

• Likewise, agencies including Health and Human Services and the Small Business Administration reportedly distributed or directed staff to adopt partisan out-of-office auto-replies assigning blame to Democrats.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development posted a banner on its official website stating that the “Radical Left are going to shut down the government.”

Taken individually, each incident might provoke a Hatch Act complaint. Collectively, they amount to a systematic campaign to transform nonpartisan federal agencies into partisan political messengers.

Why this is unprecedented

What sets the 2025 messaging apart isn’t just its volume – it’s the scale, the coordination and the brazenness of its political targeting.

In past shutdowns, partisan spin lived mostly in press conferences and campaign talking points. Agencies themselves, even under pressure, stayed neutral.

This time, the administration is using the machinery of government to deliver partisan blame.

The timing and similarity of messages across departments seems coordinated. Housing and Urban Development posted a banner blaming Democrats the day before the shutdown began. Within hours, other agencies followed using nearly identical language.

More troubling are the reported changes to federal employees’ auto-replies without their consent.

These missives forced career civil servants, many of them furloughed, to become unwilling messengers for partisan ends. Federal agencies and their workers are supposed to serve everyone, not only those who support the party in power.

And because the watchdogs who could enforce the legal boundary are also sidelined – the Office of Special Counsel is furloughed – complaints have nowhere to go, at least for now. They simply land in unattended email inboxes.

Legal challenges and limits

Whether shutdown communications truly violate the Hatch Act – or related laws – is not yet clear. The administration could argue that it’s not campaigning but merely explaining why services are suspended. As a scholar of political communication and American democracy, I believe that defense weakens when official messages explicitly assign partisan blame or name a political party.

And not every political statement is a Hatch Act violation. The law allows employees to express views off duty or in private contexts, so long as they use their own phones and computers.

Even if the Office of Special Counsel later finds violations, harm will likely persist. Once messages are posted or auto-replies sent, their effects can’t always be undone. And because ethics officials are furloughed, too, accountability will be delayed, if it comes at all.

Some employees are likely to claim their speech rights were violated by being forced to send partisan messages. This is an argument already at the heart of the lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees against the Education Department.

Why this matters

Federal agencies exist to administer laws impartially and to do so on behalf of the people.

When the government uses its own infrastructure for partisan messaging, the very neutrality on which democratic governance depends erodes. It dilutes public trust in the idea of a neutral state.

The damage also extends into the future. If the current administration succeeds in turning its administrative machinery into a political weapon, without consequence, a precedent will be created. Future presidents may be tempted to follow suit, making acceptable the use of taxpayer-funded systems as campaign tools.

And because enforcement bodies such as the Office of Special Counsel also are sidelined during a shutdown, accountability has to wait. That creates an asymmetry of power: One side gets to amplify its message through government channels in real time, while its opponents must wait for the system to restart just to file a complaint. By the time they can, the moment will have passed and the political narrative is likely to have already hardened.

Crises demand explanation, even blame. Citizens expect their leaders to tell them what went wrong. But they also expect honesty and fairness in how that story is told. The administration’s messaging strategy during this shutdown tests whether government communication remains a public service or becomes another instrument of political power.

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

– ref. When government websites become campaign tools: Blaming the shutdown on Democrats has legal and political risks – https://theconversation.com/when-government-websites-become-campaign-tools-blaming-the-shutdown-on-democrats-has-legal-and-political-risks-267086

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Uwe Bergmann, Professor of Ultrafast X-Ray Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison

X-ray beams aren’t used just by doctors to see inside your body and tell whether you have a broken bone. More powerful beams made up of very short flashes of X-rays can help scientists peer into the structure of individual atoms and molecules and differentiate types of elements.

But getting an X-ray laser beam that delivers super short flashes to capture the fastest processes in nature isn’t easy – it’s a whole science in itself.

Radio waves, microwaves, the visible light you can see, ultraviolet light and X-rays are all exactly the same phenomenon: electromagnetic waves of energy moving through space. What differentiates them is their wavelength. Waves in the X-ray range have short wavelengths, while radio waves and microwaves are much longer. Different wavelengths of light are useful for different things – X-rays help doctors take snapshots of your body, while microwaves can heat up your lunch.

Optical lasers are devices that emit parallel, or collimated, beams of light. They send out a beam where all the waves have the same wavelength – the red light you get from a laser pointer is one example – and oscillate in synchronicity.

Over the past 15 years, scientists have built X-ray free-electron lasers, which instead of emitting beams of visible light emit X-rays. They are housed in large facilities where electrons travel through a long accelerator – depending on the facility, between a few hundred meters and 1,700 yards – and after passing through a series of thousands of magnets they generate extremely short and powerful X-ray pulses.

The pulses are used kind of like flash photography, where the flash – the X-ray pulse – is short enough to capture the fast movement of an object. Researchers have used them as cameras to study how atoms and molecules move and change inside materials or cells.

But while these X-ray free-electron laser pulses are very short and powerful, they’re not the shortest pulses that scientists can make with lasers. By using more advanced technology and taking advantage of the properties some materials have, researchers can create even shorter pulses: in the attosecond region.

One attosecond is one-billionth of a billionth of a second. An attosecond is to one second about what one second is to the 14 billion-year age of the universe. The fastest processes in atoms and molecules happen at the attosecond scale: For instance, it takes electrons attoseconds to move around inside a molecule.

We’re physicists who work with X-ray free-electron lasers. We study what happens when we put different types of materials in the X-ray free-electron pulses’ path. In a new experiment we put copper and manganese samples in the path of highly focused X-ray free-electron laser pulses. We knew the interactions between these elements and the X-ray free-electron laser pulses would generate new X-ray laser pulses.

Originally, we wanted to find out how different chemical forms of the element manganese – for example, manganese-II and manganese-VII – would create small changes in the wavelengths of these newly generated X-ray laser pulses.

But along the way, we found some unexpected results that made the newly generated X-ray laser pulses act strangely. At first, we did not understand why, but when we eventually figured it out, we realized that we had discovered two unique laser phenomena, and that these effects had helped us generate X-ray laser pulses that where much shorter than we’d expected – shorter than the fastest X-ray pulses ever previously generated.

Filamentation – irregular spurts

We found that our new X-ray laser pulses weren’t always shooting out in the forward direction, as we expected. When we increased the intensity of the X-ray free-electron laser pulses, the resulting new X-ray laser pulses spurted out irregularly, in slightly different directions.

For optical lasers, these irregular spurts – or filamentation – result from the index of refraction changing in the laser material. But we didn’t expect to see this effect for X-rays, since materials – including the manganese and copper we used – don’t refract X-rays very much.

However, the high intensity X-ray free-electron laser pulses we used generated the fluctuations at the quantum level in our materials that led to these irregular spurts.

Rabi cycling – a broad spectrum of light

Even more surprising than the filamentation effects we saw was the fact that the X-ray pulses we generated contained a variety of different wavelengths that were more spread out than what we expected to see with the materials we used.

Seventy years ago – five years before the first optical laser was built – physicists Stanley Autler and Charles Townes discovered a strange phenomenon in microwaves known as Rabi cycling. And the spread of wavelengths we saw looked just like Rabi cycling.

Autler and Townes knew that when light hit an atom, the atom would absorb its energy by exciting an electron from one energy level to a higher one. The hole left by that missing electron is filled by an electron that’s coming down from a higher energy level in the atom and releasing – or emitting – this energy difference as light.

What Autler and Townes found was that when the microwaves are very intense, the strong electric field can split each of these energy levels into two distinct levels, called doublets, which have slightly different energies.

These doublets are separated by an energy, or a frequency, known as the Rabi frequency. The Rabi frequency depends on the intensity of the new light. The stronger it is, the larger is the energy separation.

In Autler and Townes’ discovery of Rabi cycling, they used microwaves. The energy splitting was so small that the Rabi frequency was very low, at radio wave frequencies.

In this new study we used X-rays, which have 100 million times shorter wavelengths than microwaves and 100 million times more energy. This meant the resulting new X-ray laser pulses were split into different X-ray wavelengths corresponding to Rabi frequencies in the extreme ultraviolet region. Ultraviolet light has a frequency 100 million times higher than radio waves.

This Rabi cycling effect allowed us to generate the shortest high-energy X-ray pulses to date, clocking in at 60-100 attoseconds.

Future directions and applications

While the pulses that X-ray free-electron lasers currently generate allow researchers to observe atomic bonds forming, rearranging and breaking, they are not fast enough to look inside the electron cloud that generates such bonds. Using these new attosecond X-ray laser pulses could allow scientists to study the fastest processes in materials at the atomic-length scale and to discern different elements.

In the future, we also hope to use much shorter X-ray free-electron laser pulses to better generate these attosecond X-ray pulses. We are even hoping to generate pulses below 60 attoseconds by using heavier materials with shorter lifespans, such as tungsten or hafnium. These new X-ray pulses are fast enough to eventually enable scientists to answer questions such as how exactly an electron cloud moves around and what a chemical bond actually is.

Uwe Bergmann receives funding from the Department of Energy and has previously worked at SLAC and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Thomas Linker receives funding from the Department of Energy and works at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

– ref. Our team of physicists inadvertently generated the shortest X-ray pulses ever observed – https://theconversation.com/our-team-of-physicists-inadvertently-generated-the-shortest-x-ray-pulses-ever-observed-258776

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Professor of Law, George Washington University

Police are getting a boost from artificial intelligence, with algorithms now able to draft police reports in minutes. The technology promises to make police reports more accurate and comprehensive, as well as save officers time.

The idea is simple: Take the audio transcript from a body camera worn by a police officer and use the predictive text capabilities of large language models to write a formal police report that could become the basis of a criminal prosecution. Mirroring other fields that have allowed ChatGPT-like systems to write on behalf of people, police can now get an AI assist to automate much dreaded paperwork.

The catch is that instead of writing the first draft of your college English paper, this document can determine someone’s liberty in court. An error, omission or hallucination can risk the integrity of a prosecution or, worse, justify a false arrest. While police officers must sign off on the final version, the bulk of the text, structure and formatting is AI-generated.

Who – or what – wrote it

Up until October 2025, only Utah had required that police even admit they were using an AI assistant to draft their reports. On Oct. 10, that changed when California became the second state to require transparent notice that AI was used to draft a police report.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 524 into law, requiring all AI-assisted police reports to be marked as being written with the help of AI. The law also requires law enforcement agencies to maintain an audit trail that identifies the person who used AI to create a report and any video and audio footage used in creating the report. It also requires agencies to retain the first draft created with AI for as long as the official report is retained, and prohibits a draft created with AI from constituting an officer’s official statement.

The law is a significant milestone in the regulation of AI in policing, but its passage also signifies that AI is going to become a major part of the criminal justice system.

If you are sitting behind bars based on a police report, you might have some questions. The first question that Utah and California now answer is “Did AI write this?” Basic transparency that an algorithm helped write an arrest report might seem the minimum a state could do before locking someone up. And, even though leading police technology companies like Axon recommend such disclaimers be included in their reports, they are not required.

Police departments in Lafayette, Indiana and Fort Collins, Colorado, were intentionally turning off the transparency defaults on the AI report generators, according to an investigative news report. Similarly, police chiefs using Axon’s Draft One products did not even know which reports were drafted by AI and which were not because the officers were just cutting and pasting the AI narrative into reports they indicated they wrote themselves. The practice bypassed all AI disclaimers and audit trails.

Many questions

Transparency is only the first step. Understanding the risks of relying on AI for police reports is the second.

Technological questions arise about how the AI models were trained and the possible biases baked into a reliance on past police reports. Transcription questions arise about errors, omissions and mistranslations because police stops take place in chaotic, loud and frequently emotional contexts amid a host of languages.

Finally, trial questions arise about how an attorney is supposed to cross-examine an AI-generated document, or whether the audit logs need to be retained for expert analysis or turned over to the defense.

Risks and consequences

The significance of the California law is not simply that the public needs to be aware of AI risks, but that California is embracing AI risk in policing. I believe it’s likely that people will lose their liberty based on a document that was largely generated by AI and without the hard questions satisfactorily answered.

Worse, in a criminal justice system that relies on plea bargaining for more than 95% of cases and is overwhelmingly dominated by misdemeanor offenses, there may never be a chance to check whether the AI report accurately captured the scene. In fact, in many of those lower-level cases, the police report will be the basis of charging decisions, pretrial detention, motions, plea bargains, sentencing and even probation revocations.

I believe that a criminal legal system that relies so heavily on police reports has a responsibility to ensure that police departments are embracing not just transparency but justice. At a minimum, this means more states following Utah and California to pass laws regulating the technology, and police departments following the best practices recommended by the technology companies.

But even that may not be enough without critical assessments by courts, legal experts and defense lawyers. The future of AI policing is just starting, but the risks are already here.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson 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. Concerns about AI-written police reports spur states to regulate the emerging practice – https://theconversation.com/concerns-about-ai-written-police-reports-spur-states-to-regulate-the-emerging-practice-267410

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Randy Stein, Associate Professor of Marketing, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Why do some people endorse claims that can easily be disproved? It’s one thing to believe false information, but another to actively stick with something that’s obviously wrong.

Our new research, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, suggests that some people consider it a “win” to lean in to known falsehoods.

We are social psychologists who study political psychology and how people reason about reality. During the pandemic, we surveyed 5,535 people across eight countries to investigate why people believed COVID-19 misinformation, like false claims that 5G networks cause the virus.

The strongest predictor of whether someone believed in COVID-19-related misinformation and risks related to the vaccine was whether they viewed COVID-19 prevention efforts in terms of symbolic strength and weakness. In other words, this group focused on whether an action would make them appear to fend off or “give in” to untoward influence.

This factor outweighed how people felt about COVID-19 in general, their thinking style and even their political beliefs.

Our survey measured it on a scale of how much people agreed with sentences including “Following coronavirus prevention guidelines means you have backed down” and “Continuous coronavirus coverage in the media is a sign we are losing.” Our interpretation is that people who responded positively to these statements would feel they “win” by endorsing misinformation – doing so can show “the enemy” that it will not gain any ground over people’s views.

When meaning is symbolic, not factual

Rather than consider issues in light of actual facts, we suggest people with this mindset prioritize being independent from outside influence. It means you can justify espousing pretty much anything – the easier a statement is to disprove, the more of a power move it is to say it, as it symbolizes how far you’re willing to go.

When people think symbolically this way, the literal issue – here, fighting COVID-19 – is secondary to a psychological war over people’s minds. In the minds of those who think they’re engaged in them, psychological wars are waged over opinions and attitudes, and are won via control of belief and messaging. The U.S. government at various times has used the concept of psychological war to try to limit the influence of foreign powers, pushing people to think that literal battles are less important than psychological independence.

By that same token, vaccination, masking or other COVID-19 prevention efforts could be seen as a symbolic risk that could “weaken” one psychologically even if they provide literal physical benefits. If this seems like an extreme stance, it is – the majority of participants in our studies did not hold this mindset. But those who did were especially likely to also believe in misinformation.

In an additional study we ran that focused on attitudes around cryptocurrency, we measured whether people saw crypto investment in terms of signaling independence from traditional finance. These participants, who, like those in our COVID-19 study, prioritized a symbolic show of strength, were more likely to believe in other kinds of misinformation and conspiracies, too, such as that the government is concealing evidence of alien contact.

In all of our studies, this mindset was also strongly associated with authoritarian attitudes, including beliefs that some groups should dominate others and support for autocratic government. These links help explain why strongman leaders often use misinformation symbolically to impress and control a population.

Why people endorse misinformation

Our findings highlight the limits of countering misinformation directly, because for some people, literal truth is not the point.

For example, President Donald Trump incorrectly claimed in August 2025 that crime in Washington D.C. was at an all-time high, generating countless fact-checks of his premise and think pieces about his dissociation from reality.

But we believe that to someone with a symbolic mindset, debunkers merely demonstrate that they’re the ones reacting, and are therefore weak. The correct information is easily available, but is irrelevant to someone who prioritizes a symbolic show of strength. What matters is signaling one isn’t listening and won’t be swayed.

In fact, for symbolic thinkers, nearly any statement should be justifiable. The more outlandish or easily disproved something is, the more powerful one might seem when standing by it. Being an edgelord – a contrarian online provocateur – or outright lying can, in their own odd way, appear “authentic.”

Some people may also view their favorite dissembler’s claims as provocative trolling, but, given the link between this mindset and authoritarianism, they want those far-fetched claims acted on anyway. The deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, for example, can be the desired end goal, even if the offered justification is a transparent farce.

Is this really 5-D chess?

It is possible that symbolic, but not exactly true, beliefs have some downstream benefit, such as serving as negotiation tactics, loyalty tests, or a fake-it-till-you-make-it long game that somehow, eventually, becomes a reality. Political theorist Murray Edelman, known for his work on political symbolism, noted that politicians often prefer scoring symbolic points over delivering results – it’s easier. Leaders can offer symbolism when they have little tangible to provide.

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

– ref. Winning with misinformation: New research identifies link between endorsing easily disproven claims and prioritizing symbolic strength – https://theconversation.com/winning-with-misinformation-new-research-identifies-link-between-endorsing-easily-disproven-claims-and-prioritizing-symbolic-strength-265652

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Christine Keiner, Chair, Department of Science, Technology, and Society, Rochester Institute of Technology

If you visit the Erie Canal today, you’ll find a tranquil waterway and trail that pass through charming towns and forests, a place where hikers, cyclists, kayakers, bird-watchers and other visitors seek to enjoy nature and escape the pressures of modern life.

However, relaxation and scenic beauty had nothing to do with the origins of this waterway.

When the Erie Canal opened 200 years ago, on Oct. 26, 1825, the route was dotted with decaying trees left by construction that had cut through more than 360 miles of forests and fields, and life quickly sped up.

Mules on the towpath along the canal could pull a heavy barge at a clip of 4 miles per hour – far faster than the job of dragging wagons over primitive roads. Boats rushed goods and people between the Great Lakes heartland and the port of New York City in days rather than weeks. Freight costs fell by 90%.

As many books have proclaimed, the Erie Canal’s opening in 1825 solidified New York’s reputation as the Empire State. It also transformed the surrounding environment and forever changed the ecology of the Hudson River and the lower Great Lakes.

For environmental historians like me, the canal’s bicentennial provides an opportunity to reflect upon its complex legacies, including the evolution of U.S. efforts to balance economic progress and ecological costs.

Human and natural communities ruptured

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Indigenous nations that the French called the Iroquois, engaged in canoe-based trade throughout the Great Lakes and Hudson River valley for centuries. In the 1700s, that began to change as American colonists took the land through brutal warfare, inequitable treaties and exploitative policies.

That Haudenosaunee dispossession made the Erie Canal possible.

After the Revolutionary War, commercial enthusiasm for a direct waterborne route to the West intensified. Canal supporters identified the break in the Appalachian Mountains at the junction of the Mohawk River and the Hudson as a propitious place to dig a channel to Lake Erie.

Yet cutting a 363-mile-long waterway through New York’s uneven terrain posed formidable challenges. Because the landscape rises 571 feet between Albany and Buffalo, a canal would require multiple locks to raise and lower boats.

Federal officials refused to finance such “internal improvements.” But New York politician DeWitt Clinton was determined to complete the project, even if it meant using only state funds. Critics mocked the $7 million megaproject, worth around US$170 million today, calling it “DeWitt’s Ditch” and “Clinton’s Folly.” In 1817, however, thousands of men began digging the 4-foot-deep channel using hand shovels and pickaxes.

The construction work produced engineering breakthroughs, such as hydraulic cement made from local materials and locks that lifted the canal’s water level about 60 feet at Lockport, yet it obliterated acres of wetlands and forests.

After riding a canal boat between Utica and Syracuse, the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne described the surroundings in 1835 as “now decayed and death-struck.”

However, most canalgoers viewed the waterway as a beacon of progress. As a trade artery, it made New York City the nation’s financial center. As a people mover, it fueled religious revivals, social reform movements and the growth of Great Lakes cities.

The Erie Canal’s socioeconomic benefits came with more environmental costs: The passageway enabled organisms from faraway places to reach lakes and rivers that had been isolated since the end of the last ice age.

An invasive species expressway

On Oct. 26, 1825, Gov. Clinton led a flotilla aboard the Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City that culminated in a grandiose ceremony.

To symbolize the global connections made possible by the new canal, participants poured water from Lake Erie and rivers around the world into the Atlantic at Sandy Hook, a sand spit off New Jersey at the entrance to New York Harbor. Observers at the time described the ritual of “commingling the waters of the Lakes with the Ocean” in matrimonial terms.

Clinton was an accomplished naturalist who had researched the canal route’s geology, birds and fish. He even predicted that the waterway would “bring the western fishes into the eastern waters.”

Biologists today would consider the “Wedding of the Waters” event a biosecurity risk.

The Erie Canal and its adjacent feeder rivers and reservoirs likely enabled two voracious nonnative species, the Atlantic sea lamprey and alewife, to enter the Great Lakes ecosystem. By preying on lake trout and other highly valued native fish, these invaders devastated the lakes’ commercial fisheries. The harvest dropped by a stunning 98% from the previous average by the early 1960s.

Tracing their origins is tricky, but historical, ecological and genetic data suggest that sea lampreys and alewives entered Lake Ontario via the Erie Canal during the 1860s. Later improvements to the Welland Canal in Canada enabled them to reach the upper Great Lakes by the 1930s.

Protecting the $5 billion Great Lakes fishery from these invasive organisms requires constant work and consistent funding. In particular, applying pesticides and other techniques to control lamprey populations costs around $20 million per year.

The invasive species that has inflicted the most environmental and economic harm on the Great Lakes is the zebra mussel. Zebra mussels traveled from Eurasia via the ballast water of transoceanic ships using the St. Lawrence Seaway during the 1980s. The Erie Canal then became a “mussel expressway” to the Hudson River.

The hungry invading mussels caused a nearly tenfold reduction of phytoplankton, the primary food of many species of the Hudson River ecosystem. This competition for food, along with pollution and habitat degradation, led to the disappearance of two common species of the Hudson’s native pearly mussels.

Today, the Erie Canal remains vulnerable to invasive plants, such as water chestnut and hydrilla, and invasive animals such as round goby. Boaters, kayakers and anglers can help reduce bioinvasions by cleaning, draining and drying their equipment after each use to avoid carrying invasive species to new locations.

A recreational treasure

During the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, the Erie Canal sparked a utilitarian sense of environmental concern. Timber cutting in the Adirondack Mountains was causing so much erosion that the eastern canal’s feeder rivers were filling up with silt.

To protect these waterways, New York created Adirondack Park in 1892. Covering 6 million acres, the park balances forest preservation, recreation and commercial use on a unique mix of public and private lands.

Erie Canal shipping declined during the 20th century with the opening of the deeper and wider St. Lawrence Seaway and competition from rail and highways. The canal still supports commerce, but the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor now provides an additional economic engine.

In 2024, 3.84 million people used the Erie Canalway Trail for cycling, hiking, kayaking, sightseeing and other adventures. The tourists and day-trippers who enjoy the historic landscape generate over $300 million annually.

Over the past 200 years, the Erie Canal has both shaped, and been shaped by, ecological forces and changing socioeconomic priorities. As New York reimagines the canal for its third century, the artificial river’s environmental history provides important insights for designing technological systems that respect human communities and work with nature rather than against it.

Christine Keiner 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. Erie Canal’s 200th anniversary: How a technological marvel for trade changed the environment forever – https://theconversation.com/erie-canals-200th-anniversary-how-a-technological-marvel-for-trade-changed-the-environment-forever-263320

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Andrew Muhammad, Professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics, University of Tennessee

Lumber, especially softwood lumber like pine and spruce, is critical to U.S. home construction. Its availability and price directly affect housing costs and broader economic activity in the building sector. The U.S. imports about 40% of the softwood lumber the nation uses each year, more than 80% of that from Canada.

President Donald Trump says that the U.S. has the capacity to meet 95% of softwood lumber demand and directed federal officials to update policies and regulatory guidelines to expand domestic timber harvesting and curb the arrival of foreign lumber.

On Sept. 29, 2025, he announced new tariffs on imported timber and wood products, including an additional 10% tariff on Canadian lumber. Those were added to 35% tariffs imposed on Canadian lumber in August. It was the latest phase in a long-standing dispute over the supply of lumber to builders in the U.S., which dates back to the 1980s, when U.S. producers began arguing that Canadian companies were benefiting from unfair subsidies from their government. Starting on Oct. 15, Canadian softwood lumber imports could face tariffs exceeding 45%.

As researchers studying the forestry sector and international trade, we recognize that the U.S. has ample forest resources. But replacing imports with domestic lumber isn’t as simple as it sounds.

There are differences in tree species and quality, and U.S. lumber often comes at a higher cost, even with tariffs on imports. Challenges like limited labor and manufacturing capacity require long-term investments, which temporary tariffs and uncertain trade policies often fail to encourage. In addition, the amount of lumber imported tends to mirror the boom-and-bust cycles of housing construction, a dynamic that tariffs alone are unlikely to change.

Trump’s moves

To boost U.S. logging, in March, Trump issued an executive order telling the departments of Interior and Agriculture to ease what he called “heavy-handed” regulations on timber harvesting. The executive order and a follow-up memo from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins do not spell out specifics, but officials say more details are in the works that will simplify the timber harvesting process, with the goal of boosting domestic timber production by 25%.

That same month, Trump ordered the Commerce Department to assess how imports of timber, lumber and related wood products affect U.S. national security.

While that assessment was underway, in July, the Commerce Department published findings from a trade review of 2023 Canadian lumber imports. That inquiry alleged that Canadian companies were selling lumber to the U.S. at unfairly low prices, potentially leaving U.S. producers with lower sales or depressed prices. That finding was cited as the basis for the 35% August tariff announcement.

In its national security investigation initiated in March, the Commerce Department concluded that an overreliance on imported wood products means “the United States may be unable to meet demands for wood products that are crucial to the national defense and critical infrastructure.” The September tariff announcement is based on those findings.

Canadian lumber in the US market

In 1991, the U.S. imported 11.5 billion board feet (27 million cubic meters) of Canadian lumber. Those imports rose to a high of 22 billion board feet (52 million cubic meters) by 2005.

But as housing construction declined – especially during the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009 – imports dropped sharply, to less than 8.4 billion board feet (20 million cubic meters) in 2009. The current volume has not recovered to prerecession levels, rising only to 12 billion board feet (28 million cubic meters) in 2024.

The value of Canadian lumber has also fluctuated. Historically, prices for Canadian lumber have averaged about US$330 per thousand board feet ($140 per cubic meter). During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, import prices soared to almost $800 per thousand board feet ($340 per cubic meter). But since peaking in 2021 and 2022, prices have dropped significantly to $436 per thousand board feet ($185 per cubic meter) by 2024.

In total, in 2024, the U.S. imported more than $11 billion in forest and wood products from Canada. Softwood lumber accounted for almost half of that.

Lumber and housing

As personal income rises and populations grow, people seek to build new homes. As new home construction – called “housing starts” in economic data – increases, so does demand for softwood lumber to build those homes. And when housing starts slow, so does lumber demand.

For instance, housing starts fell during the Great Recession. They declined from a January 2006 peak of 2.3 million to less than 500,000 in January 2009 – a decrease of nearly 80%. In that same period, imports of Canadian lumber fell by more than 60%. Domestic softwood lumber production fell by more than 40%.

Both domestic and imported lumber prices can directly influence the overall cost of building homes, which in turn affects housing affordability. That said, lumber used for framing usually accounts for less than 10% of the total cost to build a new home. The effects of tariffs on new home construction may be significantly less than other factors, such as rising labor costs.

A matter of choice

The U.S. has a lot of potential lumber available. Especially in the South, the inventory of harvestable lumber has grown significantly over many years.

However, the types of wood available in the U.S. are not always the same as what’s available from Canadian imports. For framing, contractors may prefer spruce, northern pines and fir, naturally abundant in Canada, because they are lighter and less likely to warp than southern yellow pine, which is abundant in the southern U.S. Southern yellow pine is more commonly used to make utility poles and preservative-treated lumber for outdoor construction projects, such as decks.

Lumber from Idaho, eastern Oregon and eastern Washington, however, does share characteristics with Canadian species and could take the place of at least some Canadian lumber.

As the Trump administration seeks to boost domestic lumber, buyers will be looking not only at where their lumber came from, but what it costs and what type of lumber is best for what they need to accomplish.

Andrew Muhammad received funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to research timber demand in Vietnam.

Adam Taylor 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. Why higher tariffs on Canadian lumber may not be enough to stimulate long-term investments in US forestry – https://theconversation.com/why-higher-tariffs-on-canadian-lumber-may-not-be-enough-to-stimulate-long-term-investments-in-us-forestry-265713