Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Advik D. Vira, Graduate Student in Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology

The Earth and the Moon may look very different today, but they formed under similar conditions in space. In fact, a dominant hypothesis says that the early Earth was hit by a Mars-sized object, and it was this giant impact that spun off material to form the Moon. But unlike Earth, the Moon lacks plate tectonics and an atmosphere capable of reshaping its surface and recycling elements such as oxygen over billions of years.

As a result, the Moon preserves a record of the geological conditions that helped shape it and can give scientists insight into the world we live in today. Rocks that were formed during early volcanic activity on the Moon offer a window into events that occurred nearly 4 billion years ago. By uncovering the conditions under which the Moon’s rocks formed, scientists move closer to understanding the origins of our own planet.

In a study published March 2026 in the journal Nature Communications, our team of physicists and geoscientists investigated ilmenite, a mineral composed of iron, titanium and oxygen, in a Moon rock crystallized from an ancient lunar magma. We used cutting-edge electron microscopy to probe the chemical signature of titanium in this ilmenite, finding that about 15% of the titanium carries less of an electrical charge than expected.

Implications of trivalent titanium

In ilmenite, an atom of titanium typically loses four electrons when bonding with oxygen, resulting in a positive charge of 4+, known as the atom’s oxidation number. From the sample we studied, a rock collected during the Apollo 17 mission, we found that some of the titanium in ilmenite actually has a charge of only 3+, referred to as trivalent titanium. Our measurement of trivalent titanium confirms what geologists had long suspected: that some titanium in lunar ilmenite exists in a lower charge state.

Trivalent titanium occurs only when the amount of oxygen available for chemical reactions is low. Thus, the abundance of trivalent titanium in ilmenite could tell us about the relative availability of oxygen in the Moon’s interior when the rock formed, around 3.8 billion years ago.

A link to the Moon’s early chemistry

Since it is the ilmenite, not the study, that contained trivalent titanium, I would recast the previous sentence as follows: “Our team has closely studied only one Moon rock so far, but from published studies we have identified more than 500 analyses of lunar ilmenite that could contain trivalent titanium. Studying these samples could reveal new details about how the Moon’s chemistry varies across different locations and time periods.

While our work highlights a link based on prior studies, the relationship between trivalent titanium in ilmenite and oxygen availability has not yet been quantified with targeted experimental data.

By conducting experiments that explore that link, ilmenite could reveal more details about the Moon’s interior. We also expect this relationship to apply to other planets and asteroids that don’t contain much chemically available oxygen, relative to Earth.

What’s next?

These methods can be used to study many Moon rocks collected during the Apollo missions over 50 years ago, as well as future samples from upcoming Artemis missions, or rocks collected from the far side of the Moon, returned in 2024 by China’s Chang’e-6 mission.

One of our team members plans to use their new experimental lab to explore how oxygen availability in magma affects the abundance of trivalent titanium in ilmenite. With experiments like this that build off our findings, we could potentially use ilmenite to reconstruct the history of ancient magmas from the Moon.

We believe future studies of lunar rocks using advanced scientific methods are essential for revealing the chemical conditions present on the ancient Moon. They could offer clues not only to its own history but also to the earliest chapters of Earth’s past – records that have since been erased from Earth.

Advik D. Vira receives funding from the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) under cooperative agreement number NNH22ZDA020C (CLEVER, Grant number: 80NSSC23M022).

Emily First receives funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation (grant # 2023-4485) and from a Macalester College faculty start-up fund.

– ref. New study measures titanium in Apollo rock to uncover Moon’s early chemistry – https://theconversation.com/new-study-measures-titanium-in-apollo-rock-to-uncover-moons-early-chemistry-278721

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ezgi Canpolat, Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University

The oil-dependent world is in crisis. Ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz – through which more than a quarter of global seaborne oil trade and a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas flow – is at a virtual standstill. Oil prices have climbed, briefly topping US$119 a barrel.

The largest release of oil from countries’ strategic reserves in history is under way, in an effort to ease prices. But even so, billions of people are dealing with surging energy prices and spiking food and fertilizer costs. Governments are scrambling for alternatives, too. To reduce energy demand, Sri Lanka has declared every Wednesday a holiday for public officials, Myanmar is limiting private vehicle use to every other day, and Bangladeshi colleges have canceled classes.

Leaders of South Korea and the European Commission have used the current energy crisis to call for accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels and toward homegrown renewable sources. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres put it plainly in a March 10, 2026, social media post: “There are no price spikes for sunlight and no embargoes on the wind.”

I grew up in a coal-mining town in Turkey. I now study energy transitions across the Middle East and North Africa in a research project I co-lead at Harvard University. I have seen that a country’s desire to increase renewable energy is not the same as a plan to do so.

The very region embroiled in this war reveals that there is not a linear shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources. Rather, there are distinct trajectories, driven by energy dependence, fiscal pressures, governance and stability. Disruption at the Strait of Hormuz does not mean the same thing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as it does in Ankara, Turkey, or Baghdad, Iraq.

The petrostates hedging both sides

For Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, this crisis is a warning dressed as a windfall.

Oil prices have surged, which in theory means higher revenues. But the very infrastructure that produces and delivers that wealth is under direct attack. Iran has targeted oil refineries and shipment centers across the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz closure is simultaneously choking off their ability to get product to market, exposing how vulnerable the infrastructure of fossil fuel wealth can be.

All three countries have also committed to boosting renewable energy production. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the government aims for renewable energy sources to account for 50% of electricity generation by 2030, up from just 3% at the end of 2023.

Saudi Arabia’s biggest group of clean energy companies has pledged to spend $17 billion on solar and wind – across all their projects, spread out over several years.

But those efforts sit alongside vastly larger investments in fossil fuel production. In 2025 alone, the country’s nationally owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, spent $52.2 billion building new oil and gas infrastructure.

This is not a contradiction. It is a strategy built on the assumption that the world will keep buying fossil fuels for decades to come. The current crisis reinforces that assumption, but it also exposes its vulnerability: As war drives up oil prices, every oil-importing country is feeling the cost of continuing oil dependence. And every stranded export proves the energy transition can’t wait.

Price shock and necessity

Energy-importing countries such as Jordan, Morocco and Turkey are investing in renewable energy for a different reason: Fossil fuel dependence is bankrupting them.

Turkey imports over 70% of its fossil fuels, including virtually all of its natural gas, 17% of which comes from Iran. Natural gas accounts for less than a fifth of electricity generation, but it is the backbone of the country’s heating and industrial sectors and a major concern if supply falters. Turkey’s energy import bill is climbing at a time when the economy is already under strain from rising borrowing costs and weakening currency value.

Jordan, which historically has imported over 90% of its energy, faces similar pressure.

But these countries would be in far worse positions had they not already been investing in alternatives.

More than half of Turkey’s installed electricity capacity now comes from renewable energy sources. Morocco built one of the world’s largest concentrated solar facilities, and renewable sources now supply 25% of the country’s electricity. Similarly, Jordan has gone from virtually no renewable electricity to renewable sources providing more than a quarter of its power in roughly a decade.

The current war has vindicated their investments in renewable energy – though the vindication has limits. The same crisis that proves the value of renewable energy investment also raises inflation, tightens credit and strains the very public finances these countries need to keep building.

Every kilowatt-hour generated by a Turkish wind turbine or a Moroccan solar panel is one that does not depend on a tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz. But the financial pressure means building the next renewable generating project just got harder.

Crisis upon crisis

Then there are countries where this war lands on top of existing emergencies.

Iraq, the second-largest oil producer in the region and in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, depends on Iranian gas imports to generate much of its electricity – a supply line now directly threatened by the war. Oil exports through the southern port of Basra, on the Persian Gulf, fund roughly 90% of Iraq’s government revenue. If those revenues are disrupted, the government may be unable to function. Iraq already suffers chronic electricity shortages and has virtually no renewable energy capacity to fall back on.

In Yemen, Libya and Syria, energy infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by years of conflict. These countries import fuel at global prices to run generators and keep hospitals lit. Every dollar added to the price of oil makes that harder. For them, this war is not pointing out reasons to shift to renewable sources: It is threatening energy access itself.

An international challenge

In November 2026, the U.N.’s annual climate summit comes to the region at the center of this crisis, with Turkey as host.

The war in the Middle East has made a powerful case for the economic, political and humanitarian benefits of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. But it has also exposed something the global conversation consistently misses: Different countries are heading in different directions, based on their own circumstances, many of which predate this war.

Understanding those paths matters because it reveals what countries’ promises cannot: where the real barriers are, where the incentives already exist, and where support would make a difference – before the next disruption hits. In my view, this war has helped win the argument about whether to shift to renewable energy, but it has also highlighted a harder question: What does it actually take to build those sources, country by country?

Ezgi Canpolat received funding from The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University for the research referenced in this article. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein are entirely those of the author and should not be attributed to any institution with which the author is or has been affiliated.

– ref. War in the Middle East made the case for renewables – what’s happening in each country tells a harder story – https://theconversation.com/war-in-the-middle-east-made-the-case-for-renewables-whats-happening-in-each-country-tells-a-harder-story-278759

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Mireya Mayor, Director of Exploration and Science Communication, Florida International University

Primatologist Birutė Galdikas died on March 24, 2026, and an era of science that began in the forests of Tanzania, Rwanda and Borneo studying humanity’s closest living relatives more than half a century ago is coming quietly to a close. Her passing marks more than the loss of a scientist – it’s the end of one of the most extraordinary chapters in modern science.

For more than half a century, primatology had three central figures: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Galdikas — often called Leakey’s Angels, after their mentor — who transformed how we understand primates and, in many ways, how we understand ourselves.

They were sent into the field by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, who believed that if we understood other primates, we might better understand human evolution and human nature. It was a radical idea at the time, not only scientifically but culturally. Leakey did not send large research teams or established professors. Instead, three young women went into forests, often alone, for years at a time.

What they discovered changed science and the public imagination.

Seeing chimpanzees and apes as individuals

Before the scientists’ work, primates were often described as creatures of instinct, their behavior explained largely through simple drives for food and reproduction. After their work, people began to talk about individuals with personalities, alliances, rivalries, friendships and grief.

Goodall, Fossey and Galdikas showed that chimpanzees make tools and wage political struggles, that gorillas live in complex family groups, and that orangutans raise their young with a patience and investment that rivals that of humans. The line between humans and other primates did not disappear, but it became harder to draw cleanly.

They also changed who could be a scientist.

Three women living for years in remote forests in the 1960s and ‘70s was not normal. By succeeding, they quietly expanded the boundaries of who could lead expeditions, run field sites, publish major research and become the public face of science. Many primatologists of my generation entered a field that these women forced open.

Each of these extraordinary women shaped my life in different ways. I never met Fossey, who died in Rwanda in 1985. But watching “Gorillas in the Mist,” a movie about her work, changed the course of my life and sent me toward primatology instead of law school. Years later, as a young primatologist studying lemurs, I met Goodall at a conference; she later wrote the foreword to my book and became a mentor and friend as I navigated my own path in conservation science. I met Galdikas, a scientist at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, professionally and immediately recognized a kindred spirit – another woman who had devoted her life to the study and protection of humans’ closest animal relatives.

With their deaths – Goodall died in 2025 – it falls to those of us who were inspired by them to continue and evolve their work at a time when it has never been more difficult or more important.

But the field today’s primatologists inherited is not the same one they began.

The next generation and primates’ struggle for survival

The first generation of field primatologists went into forests full of animals to discover how primates lived. They were explorers as much as scientists, and their work had the feel of discovery in the classic sense – new behaviors, new social structures, new understandings of intelligence and culture in animals.

Their research helped reshape anthropology, psychology and evolutionary biology. They helped answer one of the oldest questions humans ask about themselves: What makes us different from other species?

By the time my generation began working in the field, many of those questions had already been answered. We knew primates used tools, formed political alliances, reconciled after fights and mourned their dead. We knew they had personalities and social strategies.

The question was no longer whether primates were like us, but whether they would survive us.

This is the quiet shift that defines modern primatology. My generation now goes into forests that are smaller, more fragmented and quieter, and the work is increasingly focused on making sure those animals are still there at all.

I have spent much of my career studying lemurs in Madagascar, where this shift is impossible to ignore. Lemurs are among the most endangered group of mammals on Earth, with more than 90% of species threatened with extinction. In many parts of Madagascar, forests now exist only as isolated fragments surrounded by agriculture and human settlement. Some lemur populations survive in forest patches so small that a single fire or logging operation could eliminate them entirely.

Conservation begins with caring

These primates that captured the world’s attention are also the species most like us. They have long childhoods, complex societies, intelligence, and emotional lives that feel familiar to us. Their similarity is what made people care. And that caring, in many cases, is what has kept them from disappearing entirely.

The great achievement of Leakey’s Angels was not only what they discovered, but that they made the world care about primates.

Before the three scientists’ work, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans were largely abstract animals to most people – zoo exhibits, textbook illustrations, evolutionary symbols. After their work, these creatures became individuals with names, families, histories and personalities. Each of the women’s work was celebrated in films and books, including the Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary “Born to Be Wild 3D” that followed Galdikas’ orangutan rescues.

Conservation begins with caring, and caring begins with stories. They gave the world those stories.

But caring is no longer enough. We are now in an era where the most important breakthroughs in primatology may not be new discoveries about behavior, but new ways to protect habitats, connect fragmented forests, preserve genetic diversity and help humans and primates survive on the same increasingly crowded landscapes.

The work has shifted from observation to intervention, from discovery to responsibility.

Every generation of scientists inherits a different world. The generation of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birutė Galdikas inherited a world full of primates we did not yet understand. My generation has inherited a world where we understand primates very well, but are in danger of losing them anyway.

The forests are quieter now than when these three young women went into them more than half a century ago. The responsibility, however, has only grown louder.

The central question of primatology is no longer what makes us human. It is whether a species intelligent enough to understand extinction will choose to prevent it in our closest living relatives.

Mireya Mayor 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. Birutė Galdikas: The last of the ‘angels’ in primatology’s most extraordinary chapter – https://theconversation.com/birute-galdikas-the-last-of-the-angels-in-primatologys-most-extraordinary-chapter-279398

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jess Reia, Assistant Professor of Data Science, University of Virginia

For decades, cars dictated urban planning in the United States.

Few could have predicted that they would one day also double as nodes for surveillance.

In thousands of towns and cities across the U.S., automatic license plate readers have been installed at major intersections, bridges and highway off-ramps.

These camera-based systems capture the license plate data of passing vehicles, along with images of the vehicle and time stamps. More recently, these systems are using artificial intelligence to create a vast, searchable database that can be integrated with other law enforcement data repositories.

As a scholar of technology policy and data governance, I see the expansion of automatic license plate readers as a source of deep concern. It’s happening as government authorities are seeking ways to target immigrant and transgender communities, are already using AI to monitor protests, and are considering deploying AI systems for mass surveillance.

Eyes on the road

Using cameras to track license plates dates to the 1970s, when the U.K. was embroiled in a long-simmering conflict with the Irish Republican Army.

The Met, London’s police force, developed a system that used closed-circuit television cameras to monitor and record the license plates of vehicles entering and exiting major roads.

The system and its successors were seen as useful crime fighting tools. Over the next two decades, they expanded to other cities in the U.K. and around the world. In 1998, U.S. Customs and Border Protection implemented this technology. By the 21st century, it had started appearing in cities across the U.S.

There are different ways for a jurisdiction to implement these systems, but local governments usually sign contracts with private companies that provide the hardware and service.

These companies often entice authorities with free trials of surveillance equipment and promises of free access to their data in ways that bypass local oversight laws.

AI thrown into the mix

Recently, AI has been incorporated into these camera systems, significantly increasing their reach.

The vehicle information that’s captured is typically stored in the cloud, creating a massive web of data repositories. If a camera collects information from a suspect’s car or truck – say, one also listed in the National Crime Information Center – AI can flag it and send an instant alert to local law enforcement.

In fact, that’s a selling point of Flock Safety, one of the biggest providers of automatic license plate readers. The company uses infrared cameras to capture images of vehicles. AI then analyzes the data to identify subjects and quickly alert local authorities.

On the surface, automatic license plate readers seem like a logical way to fight crime. More information about the whereabouts of suspects can potentially help law enforcement. And why worry about cameras if you’re following the law?

But there are few peer-reviewed studies on their effectiveness. Those that exist find little evidence that they’ve led to reductions in violent crime rates, though they seem to be helpful in solving some crimes, like car thefts.

Furthermore, installation and maintenance are costly.

For example, Johnson City, Tennessee, signed a 10-year, US$8 million contract with Flock in 2025. Richmond, Virginia, paid over $1 million to the company between October 2024 and November 2025 and recently extended its contract, despite opposition from some residents.

The Conversation reached out to Flock for comment and did not hear back.

Erosion of civil liberties in plain sight

The technology seems to highlight the pitfalls of what scholars call “technosolutionism,” the belief that complex issues like crime, poverty and climate change can be solved by technology.

Even more disquieting, to me, is the fact that these camera systems have created a mass location tracking infrastructure knitted together by artificial intelligence.

The U.S. doesn’t have a federal law like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation that meaningfully limits the collection, retention, sale or sharing of location and mobility data.

As a result, data gathered through surveillance infrastructure in the U.S. can circulate with limited transparency or accountability.

License plate readers can easily be accessed or repurposed beyond their original goals of managing traffic, meting out fines or catching fugitives. All it takes is a shift in enforcement priorities – or a new definition of what counts as a crime – for the original purpose of these cameras to recede from view.

Civil liberties groups and digital rights organizations have been sounding the alarm about these cameras for over a decade.

In 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report titled “You are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used To Record Americans’ Movements.” And the Electronic Frontier Foundation has decried them as “street-level surveillance.”

A counter-camera movement emerges

The promise of these cameras was simple: more data, less crime.

But what followed has been murkier: more data, and a significant expansion of power over the public.

Without robust legal safeguards, this data can possibly be used to target political opposition, facilitate discriminatory policing or chill constitutionally protected activities.

This has already happened during the current administration’s aggressive deportation efforts. Automatic license plate reader databases were shared with federal immigration agencies to monitor immigrant communities. Recently, Customs and Border Protection was granted access to over 80,000 Flock cameras, which have also been used to surveil protests.

Then there’s reproductive health care. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, there were fears that people traveling across state lines to get an abortion could potentially be identified through automatic license plate reader databases. In Texas, authorities accessed Flock’s surveillance data as part of an abortion investigation in 2025.

Flock told NPR in February 2026 that cities control how this information is shared: “Each Flock customer has sole authority over if, when, and with whom information is shared.” The company noted that it has made efforts to “strengthen sharing controls, oversight and audit capabilities within the system.” But NPR also reported that many city officials around the U.S. didn’t realize how widely the data was being shared.

In response, some states have sought to regulate the technology.

Washington state lawmakers are deliberating the Driver Privacy Act. The legislation would prohibit agencies from using the surveillance technology for immigration investigations and enforcement, and from collecting data around certain health care facilities. Protests would also be shielded from surveillance.

Meanwhile, grassroots initiatives such as DeFlock have also emerged.

DeFlock’s online platform documents the spread of automatic license plate reader networks in order to help communities resist their deployment. The movement frames these systems not merely as traffic technologies, but also as linchpins of an expanding government data dragnet – one that demands stronger democratic oversight and community consent.

Jess Reia receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. They are affiliated with the UVA Digital Technology for Democracy Lab.

– ref. Cameras have quietly appeared in thousands of US cities – now, their integration with AI is sounding alarms – https://theconversation.com/cameras-have-quietly-appeared-in-thousands-of-us-cities-now-their-integration-with-ai-is-sounding-alarms-276928

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Adam Kadlac, Teaching Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest University

If you’ve ever expressed even a passing desire to visit Walt Disney World, you may have had friends who raised their eyebrows, groaned or even sneered.

The heart of their criticism isn’t just that they think Disney is for kids, or that it’s so expensive. It’s what I call the “authenticity objection” – the belief that there’s something fundamentally inferior about visits to theme parks like the Magic Kingdom because they occur in a wholly manufactured environment. The artificial mountains and rivers, the rides that provide nothing more than mindless distraction, the people dressed up as fictional characters …

It’s all so fake.

While people sometimes express this view in jest, others believe the fake environment borders on a cultural abomination. One online forum explicitly cites the manufactured nature of Disney World as a reason not to go, noting that the “smiling staff, the piped-in music, the perfect landscaping” can feel “creepy and overly controlled.”

Journalist EJ Dickson, herself a Disney fan, admits that visitors to Disney parks “willingly spend thousands of dollars on an authentic emotional experience that they know, at least on some level, isn’t really authentic at all.” And a representative Trip Advisor review dismisses Disney World as “a hot, commercialized, fake experience.”

If you’re anti-consumption and dislike warm weather, those criticisms of Disney World are fair enough: The weather in Florida is warm, and Disney is certainly trying to make money.

But as a philosopher who recently published a book, “The Magic Kingdom and the Meaning of Life,” I find criticisms of the parks as fake a bit more difficult to understand.

Disney isn’t shy about what it is

Marketing professors George Newman and Rosanna Smith note that philosophers have tended to think about authenticity through the lens of whether “entities are what they are purported to be.”

Apply that standard to Disney World: Does it represent itself as something other than a Disney-themed amusement park?

There are legitimate reasons to complain about the authenticity of some experiences. If you buy a ticket to a Van Gogh exhibition, you could rightfully complain if you discovered that only reproductions had been on display. The fact that you hadn’t been able to tell the difference while viewing the paintings wouldn’t matter – you hadn’t received the authentic experience of seeing Van Gogh’s original works.

By contrast, Disney attractions don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are.

When people at Disney’s Hollywood Studios ride Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, they know they are not actually on a runaway train being incompetently driven by a talking dog named Goofy. If Disney had marketed the attraction as something else – say, an Amtrak trip for kids – perhaps there would be grounds for complaining about its fakeness.

That clearly isn’t the expectation of anyone who waits in line for the experience. Riding the Runaway Railway might not be how you prefer to spend time, but there’s nothing fake about what it purports to be.

Who are you to judge?

If the initial form of the authenticity objection is relatively easy to handle, another concern lurks in the vicinity: the idea that Disney fans are somehow fake, due to their willingness to turn themselves over to the trappings of an artificial world.

The precise nature of this concern is a bit difficult to characterize. But it involves the belief that people who spend a lot of time in manufactured environments tend to delude themselves in ways that evade understanding and engaging with their true selves. Terms like “existential authenticity” or “self-authenticity” seem to capture what’s at stake.

Media scholar Idil Galip has pointed to the fact that the parks are highly “engineered and focus-grouped; there’s a whole lot of work that goes into selling this sort of experience.” This can, at a certain point, signal “a break from regular society or real life.”

This supposed connection between the fake world of Disney and the corruption of one’s authentic self is on full display in descriptions of so-called Disney Adults.

Dickson characterizes this view in her Rolling Stone article about Disney Adults: “Being a Disney fan in adulthood is to profess to being nothing less than an uncritical bubblehead ensconced in one’s own privilege, suspended in a state of permanent adolescence … refusing to acknowledge the grim reality that dreams really don’t come true.”

But I would strongly push back on the idea that a love of Disney World renders people fake or inauthentic in any meaningful way.

As journalist and blogger A.J. Wolfe argues in her 2025 book, “Disney Adults,” even the most passionate Disney devotees resist simple categorization. None of them, she explains, seem to be running from their true selves or even trying, in the slightest, to live in an imaginary world.

For example, Wolfe profiles Lady Chappelle, a British tattoo artist who relocated to San Diego, where she exclusively inks Disney-themed tattoos. Then there’s Brandon, a Hollywood drag queen who designed a Carousel of Progress-themed kitchen in honor of the attraction that now resides at Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.

These people are representative of pretty much all Disney Adults: They’re passionate about Disney, but they’re also passionate about tattooing and drag and myriad other pursuits.

For Disney Adults, Wolfe writes, an affection for Disney mostly adds “extra color and brightness – maybe definition, motivation, or inspiration if you’re lucky – to the complex and evolving masterpiece that is [their] life.”

And if that complexity applies to the most committed Disney fans, it’s that much harder to cast casual visitors in such a negative light.

The virtues of the Magic Kingdom

If theme parks aren’t your thing, that’s perfectly fine. You can have a wonderful life without setting foot in Epcot or the Animal Kingdom.

But as I point out in “The Magic Kingdom and the Meaning of Life,” Disney World has a number of virtues that its critics often miss.

I think it’s as good a place as any for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to come together and create valuable memories. When I ride Tiana’s Bayou Adventure with my wife and our intellectually disabled daughter, there is a little something for everyone: just enough thrill and storytelling for the adults, while not being overwhelming for my daughter. It’s a combination that can be difficult to find in many other places.

Moreover, because we are transported out of our daily routines, the parks can also present surprising opportunities for reflection. For example, I’ve thought a lot about cultural expectations around happiness while at Disney. Should I try to maximize my pleasure during this short trip? Or simply take each day as it comes? I’ve learned to embrace the latter.

I’ve also come to appreciate the value of anticipatory pleasure, which is the positive feeling you get from looking forward to something before it happens. This happened while reflecting on all the time people spend standing in line at theme parks.

Yes, there are many people who simply want to use the worlds of Disney – theme park, films or otherwise – to escape the grind of everyday life. But is seeking such an escape a greater threat to authenticity than checking out by playing video games, watching sports, reading smutty novels or using drugs and alcohol?

Is it possible for people to lose themselves in fantasy? Of course – just as it’s possible for anyone to lose themselves in their careers, relationships or hobbies. But in an age of curated social media accounts, influencer marketing and political doublespeak, the manufactured worlds of Disney might offer more authenticity than you would think.

Adam Kadlac 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 do some people treat the Magic Kingdom and Disney adults like cultural abominations? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-people-treat-the-magic-kingdom-and-disney-adults-like-cultural-abominations-273191

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Candace Lukasik, Assistant Professor of Religion, Mississippi State University

Two months ago, Terez Metry arrived at a Department of Homeland Security office in Nashville with her husband, a U.S. citizen, expecting a routine step in beginning her green card application. The couple had prepared documents for a Form I-130 petition and anticipated an interview about their marriage.

But the appointment took a different turn. Instead of leaving together, immigration officers detained Metry and transferred her to an immigration detention facility in Alabama.

Metry’s family had fled Egypt during the Arab Spring – the 2011 wave of uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa – and came to the United States when she was a teenager. Their asylum claim was denied, and Metry was unaware that a removal order had been issued when she was 13. She is now 28.

Metry is a Coptic Christian. Copts belong to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world and make up about 10% of Egypt’s population.

A majority of Coptic Christians live in Egypt. They face discrimination and periodic violence; they are often described in political, religious, and advocacy discourse as a persecuted minority. This framing has generated concern among many American Christians and spurred political mobilization on their behalf.

Yet, as Metry’s case reveals, such concern does not translate into preferential treatment: When these Christians arrive in the U.S., they are subject to the same immigration system that detains and deports other migrants.

I am an anthropologist of religion who has spent more than a decade studying Coptic Orthodox Christian migration between Egypt and the U.S. Between 2016 and 2022, I conducted fieldwork and interviews with Coptic migrants for my book, “Martyrs and Migrants.” I spoke with diversity visa applicants in rural Upper Egypt, asylum-seekers in New York courtrooms, and working-class communities in Nashville, Tennessee.

Across these sites, my research shows how two realities – the narrative of Christian persecution abroad and the suspicion surrounding migrants in the U.S. – collide in the lives of Copts themselves.

The global politics of persecution

Over the past two decades, attacks on churches and episodes of sectarian violence in Egypt have drawn international attention. These concerns intensified after the Arab Spring uprisings and escalated with the rise of militant organizations such as the Islamic State group.

In 2015, Islamic State group militants executed 21 Christian migrant workers – 20 Egyptian Copts and one Ghanaian man – on a beach in Libya. Images of their deaths quickly became potent symbols of Christian suffering across global media and church networks.

While Coptic Christians have long faced discrimination and intermittent violence in Egypt, attacks during this period intensified in both scale and public visibility.

In 2017 alone, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for two bombings of churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday as well as the mass shooting of pilgrims traveling to a monastery in southern Egypt. Accounts of the victims circulated widely online and received international news coverage.

In the U.S., evangelical leaders, advocacy organizations and some politicians often talk about the “persecuted church” – a framework that became especially influential in American religious freedom activism from the 1990s onward. Churches, nonprofits and policy advocates highlighted violence against Christians abroad through media campaigns, prayer initiatives and political lobbying, presenting it as a global crisis requiring American attention.

At a 2017 summit in Washington, D.C., for example, evangelical leader Franklin Graham described violence against Christians in the Middle East and Africa as a “Christian genocide,” urging believers to recognize the scale of the threat and respond collectively.

In my research attending international religious freedom conferences in Washington D.C., I found that stories like these helped many American Christians feel a strong sense of connection to Christians in the Middle East, whose suffering was often understood as part of a broader global struggle facing Christianity.

Yet this powerful narrative sits uneasily alongside how Middle Eastern Christians are treated in the U.S., where they may encounter not protection but the everyday suspicions faced by migrants from the region.

When Coptic Christian migrate

In Egypt, Copts live as a religious minority in a Muslim-majority society, where they have long faced restrictions on building and repairing churches – often requiring state permits that are difficult to obtain. Additionally, they are underrepresented in state institutions such as the military, judiciary and senior government positions; they also face periodic episodes of sectarian violence.

Moving to the U.S., a country where Christianity is the majority religion, might seem like a natural refuge.

But migration often reveals a different reality.

In 2019, for example, Romany Erian Melek Hetta, a Coptic Christian asylum-seeker, visited the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. According to media reports, while waiting for a friend outside the museum, security officers questioned him about his identity and later reported him to the FBI as a possible security threat. This triggered a counterterrorism investigation.

Cases like this echo patterns I encountered in my ethnographic research among Coptic migrants in the New York–New Jersey area, who frequently described being perceived as suspicious or potentially threatening in everyday encounters. Some altered their dress, names or public presentation to avoid being mistaken for Muslim or Arab. As one priest in my fieldwork recalled of the period after 9/11, “We had the wrong complexion … You felt like you were a target and it wasn’t your fault.”

In everyday life in the U.S., Coptic migrants like Hetta are often seen simply as people from the Middle East. As scholars of post-9/11 racialization have shown, people taken to be Arab or Middle Eastern were widely cast as potential security threats, regardless of their religious identity.

For example, Magdy Beshara was the Coptic owner of the St. George’s Shell gas station in Bayville, New Jersey. Shortly after 9/11, the FBI came to the family’s home in the middle of the night, asking Beshara whether Marwan al-Shehhi, one of the 9/11 hijackers, had worked at the gas station.

For my book I interviewed Beshara’s stepson, who described the aftermath of the initial FBI raid: “People would drive by and say ‘We’re going to kill you terrorists’ and throw a big liquor bottle at me and my sister.”

Under the USA Patriot Act – a law passed after 9/11 that expanded the federal government’s surveillance and search powers – agents confiscated items from the family’s gas station and home. According to Beshara’s stepson, their mail was opened, their phones were tapped and they were followed to school by federal agents. The family also reported receiving death threats and said that when they asked local police to intervene, their requests were not acted upon.

Beshara’s stepson told me the experience forced him to draw a distinction. “It made me feel weird to say out loud, but I always thought to myself, ‘I’m not a Muslim, I’m a Christian.’ I felt like I was putting them down to say, ‘Hey, look, I’m the good guy.’ I felt like we had to do anything to defend ourselves.”

At school, he was bullied and physically assaulted on dozens of occasions. At one point in the months following the raid, an unknown assailant set the family’s house on fire while he and his little sister were sleeping. All of this took place even after the FBI notified Beshara that he was no longer a subject of investigation, since al-Shehhi, in fact, did not work at the gas station.

Even though Beshara was a Christian, that did not shield him from suspicion or discrimination. Government surveillance tied to counterterrorism and prejudice from neighbors continued to shape how he was seen.

Between persecution and suspicion

These dynamics become especially visible in moments of enforcement, where the gap between political rhetoric and immigration policy comes into sharp relief.

In 2017, federal immigration raids detained Iraqi nationals across the U.S., many of them Chaldean Christians – an Eastern Catholic community from Iraq with ancient roots in Mesopotamia.

These arrests prompted a class action lawsuit on behalf of those detained in the Detroit area, which was later expanded to include roughly 1,400 Iraqi nationals nationwide with final deportation orders.

Such cases unfold even as American Christians continue to say Middle Eastern Christians are uniquely deserving of protection – a disconnect between advocacy for “persecuted Christians” abroad and the realities of immigration enforcement at home.

In my own work as an expert witness for Coptic asylum-seekers, I have observed similar patterns across a detention system stretching from New Jersey to Louisiana. Some migrants are released while their cases proceed; others remain in prolonged legal limbo.

What I have found is that in practice, the line between “persecuted Christian” and “suspect migrant” is not just blurred – it is continually being redrawn by the state and reproduced in everyday encounters.

Candace Lukasik received funding from the Social Science Research Council, the American Academy of Religion, the Louisville Institute, and the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University.

– ref. American politicians talk about persecuted Christians abroad – but here’s what happens when those Christians migrate to the US – https://theconversation.com/american-politicians-talk-about-persecuted-christians-abroad-but-heres-what-happens-when-those-christians-migrate-to-the-us-276186

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Carolina Rossini, Professor of Practice and Director for Program, Public Interest Technology Initiative, UMass Amherst

Within 48 hours, the legal landscape governing social media and children shifted in ways that will take years to fully understand and verify.

On March 24, 2026, a Santa Fe jury ordered Meta to pay US$375 million for violating New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. The next day, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube negligent in the design of their platforms, awarding almost $6 million in damages to a single plaintiff.

The dollar figures are drawing headlines, but a $375 million penalty against a company worth $1.5 trillion is a rounding error. The award is less than 2% of Meta’s $22.8 billion net income in 2025. Meta’s stock rose 5% on the day of the New Mexico verdict, indicating how the market assessed the effect of the penalty on the company.

Fines without structural change are more akin to licensing fees than accountability. As a technology policy and law scholar, I believe the question of whether these verdicts will produce real changes to the products that millions of children use every day is more consequential than the jury awards.

The answer is not yet, and not automatically. A financial penalty does not rewrite a single line of code, remove an algorithm or place a safety engineer in a role that was eliminated to protect a quarterly earnings report. Meta and Google have signaled they will appeal, with First Amendment challenges to the product-design theory the likely central battleground.

The companies’ lawyers are likely to argue, with some justification, that the science linking the design of platforms to mental health harm remains contested, and that the companies have already implemented safety measures. In the meantime, Instagram, Facebook anf YouTube will continue to operate exactly as they did before the verdicts.

Consumer protection

Most coverage framing the New Mexico verdict casts it as a child safety case. It is that, but it also presents a more technically significant dimension: a consumer protection claim grounded in allegations of corporate deception. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez did not sue Meta for what users posted, but instead sued Meta for its false statements about its own platform safety, employing a novel legal approach.

For three decades, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has shielded internet platforms from liability for content generated by their users. Courts have interpreted Section 230 immunity broadly, and many earlier attempts to hold platforms accountable for child harm have foundered on it.

The New Mexico complaint, filed in December 2023, was drafted with explicit awareness of this obstacle. It asked a single question: Did Meta knowingly lie to New Mexico consumers about the safety of its products?

The jury’s answer was yes, on all counts, and its verdict rested on three distinct legal theories under New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act.

The first was straightforward deception: Meta’s public statements, ranging from CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony claiming research about the platform’s addictiveness was inconclusive to parental guidance materials that omitted known risks of grooming and sexual exploitation, qualify as representations made in connection with a commercial transaction.

Users pay for Meta’s platforms not with money but with their data, which Meta then converts into advertising revenue. New Mexico successfully argued that this data-for-services exchange constitutes commerce under the state’s consumer protection statute, and that misrepresentations made within it are actionable regardless of Section 230.

The second theory was unfair practice, or conduct offensive to public policy, even if not technically deceptive. Here, the evidence centered on what Meta’s own engineers and executives knew and then ignored.

Internal documents showed repeated warnings. These alarm bells centered around child sexual abuse material proliferating on the platforms, about algorithms that amplified harmful content because it generated engagement, and about age verification systems that were essentially cosmetic. The company overrode those warnings for commercial reasons.

The jury was shown a specific sequence: Meta executives requested staffing to address platform harms, Zuckerberg declined, and the company continued to publicly represent its safety efforts as adequate.

The third theory was unconscionability: taking advantage of consumers who lacked the capacity to protect themselves. Children are the clearest possible case. Children cannot evaluate terms of service, cannot negotiate platform architecture, and cannot assess the neurological implications of engagement-maximizing design. Meta had comprehensive internal research documenting these vulnerabilities and chose to ignore rather than mitigate them.

Bellwether on addictiveness

The Los Angeles case, which concluded on March 25, tested a different theory. It was a personal injury trial rather than a government enforcement action.

The plaintiff, identified in court as KGM, is a 20-year-old woman who began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9. Her lawyers argued that the platforms’ deliberate design choices such as infinite scroll, autoplay video and engagement-based recommendation algorithms were the causes of her addiction, depression and self-harm.

The jury found both Meta and YouTube negligent in the design of their platforms and found that each company’s negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to KGM. Meta bears 70% of the liability; YouTube 30%. The individual $3 million compensatory award is modest. The punitive damages phase, still to come, will be calculated against each company’s net worth and is likely to produce a very different number.

Beyond the general precedent, this case matters because it is a bellwether. It was selected from a consolidated group of hundreds of similar lawsuits to test whether a product-design theory of liability could survive a jury trial, and it did. That finding has immediate and concrete implications: Each of those plaintiffs now litigates on a stronger footing, and if the damages awarded to KGM are even partially scaled across similar cases, the total financial exposure for Meta and YouTube moves from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

More importantly, the bellwether verdict signals to every other plaintiff, attorney and state attorney general that this legal pathway is viable, and to every platform that the courtroom is no longer a safe harbor. The legal strategy established that negligence claims against platform design are viable in California courts.

Public nuisance

Beginning May 4, 2026, Judge Bryan Biedscheid in the New Mexico case is scheduled to hear the public nuisance count without a jury in a bench trial. Public nuisance is a legal doctrine traditionally used to address conditions that harm the general public. This doctrine has been used in concern over contaminated water, lead paint in housing stock and opioid distribution networks.

New Mexico is arguing that Meta’s platform architecture constitutes exactly such a condition. If the judge agrees, the remedy is not a fine. Instead, it is an abatement: a court order requiring Meta to eliminate the harmful condition.

Attorney General Torrez has already been explicit about what he will ask for: real age verification, not a checkbox asking users to confirm they are old enough; algorithm changes; and an independent monitor with authority to oversee compliance. These are structural demands on how the platform operates.

This is where drawing a parallel with Big Tobacco is apt. The tobacco litigation of the 1990s ultimately produced not just financial settlements but the Master Settlement Agreement, which imposed permanent restrictions on marketing practices and funded public health programs for decades. The public nuisance theory in the New Mexico case is designed to produce an analogous structural outcome for social media.

Precedent for tidal wave of cases

The significant effects of two verdicts are about evidence and precedent. For the first time, a jury has examined Meta’s internal documents – emails from engineers warning about self-harm, the rejected safety proposals and Zuckerberg’s personal decisions to prioritize engagement over protection – and returned a verdict that those documents mean precisely what they appear to say.

That finding, and the legal theories that produced it, is now part of the foundation on which 40-plus pending state attorney general cases, thousands of individual lawsuits and a federal trial later this year are likely to be built.

The abatement phase, beginning May 4, may prove more consequential than the dollar amounts. If the judge in the New Mexico case – or any judge in a subsequent case – orders real age verification, algorithm changes and an independent monitor, that would be a true structural change.

I was staff at organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the Harvard Berkman Klein Center, which were funded by various foundations and companies. Refer to their websites for disclosures. I was a staff member in the connectivity policy team at Facebook (2016-2018). I am an advisory board member of non-profits, including Internet Lab (Brazil) and Derechos Digitales (Chile). I am a senior advisor (without any honorarium) at the Datasphere Initiative and Portulans Institute. More details at https://www.carolinarossini.net/bio

– ref. Two verdicts in two days: How American courts are rewriting the rules for Big Tech and children – https://theconversation.com/two-verdicts-in-two-days-how-american-courts-are-rewriting-the-rules-for-big-tech-and-children-279401

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Alex Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University – Newark

There is a pall over the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement. Donald Trump overpromised. His public support has fallen. Some “America First” die-hards now openly criticize him.

Amid war, economic challenges, democratic backsliding, the Epstein files and Americans shot dead in the street by government agents, Trump’s support is softening and his vow to bring a “golden age of America” is looking more like a political winter for Trump and his MAGA movement.

This is my big takeaway from this year’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. The event, organized by the American Conservative Union, launched with an international summit on March 25, 2026, and runs through March 28 in Grapevine, Texas.

Don’t get me wrong. The attendees are decked out in red, white and blue MAGA merch: sequined “Trump” purses and jackets, USA flag bags, ties and headbands, and, of course, iconic red MAGA caps. As always, they chant “USA,” even if not as often or as loudly as before.

Starting with the first talk by Rev. Franklin Graham, speakers here are still singing Trump’s praises. They underscore what they regard as major Trump 2.0 accomplishments: combating illegal immigration, cutting taxes, a budding economic boom, deregulation, U.S. gas and oil output surging, administrative state winnowing, pro-Christian policies and pulling the plug on the “woke” agenda.

These issues are foregrounded in sessions with titles like “Walls Work,” “Don’t Let Woke Marxists Raise Your Children,” “MAGA vs. Mullah Madness,” “Commies Go Home” and “Cancelling Satan.” In between, pro-Trump advertisements checklist Trump’s accomplishments.

This rose-tinted view is to be expected. After all, CPAC – a cross between a political rally, networking mixer and MAGA Comic-Con – is all about galvanizing the conservative base. Beneath the surface, however, MAGA is churning.

Major grievances

An anthropologist of American political culture and author of the book “It Can Happen Here,” I have been studying MAGA for years and attending CPAC since 2023. Attendees at last year’s CPAC, held a month after Trump’s inauguration, were jubilant, with nonstop talk of “the comeback kid” and “the golden age.”

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Read more:
I went to CPAC as an anthropologist to see how Trump supporters are feeling − for them, a ‘golden age’ has begun

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Why is the mood at this year’s CPAC more subdued?

Enthusiasm for Trump is dampened because some of his supporters feel he has betrayed America First principles, failed to fulfill key campaign promises and been unable to supercharge the economy. Here are their major grievances:

‘America First’ vs. ‘Israel First’

“America First” is the guiding principle of MAGA. It encompasses border security, prioritizing the U.S. economy and ensuring rights such as free speech. It also means avoiding unnecessary wars.

This is why Trump’s support of the June 2025 “12-day war” on Iran led Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other MAGA influencers, who have tens of millions of followers, to criticize Trump. The conflict, they contend, served Israel’s interest – their phrase is “Israel First” – not those of the U.S.

Their criticisms became even more pronounced after the U.S. again began bombing Iran on Feb. 28, 2026. The criticism is part of a growing MAGA fissure with pro-Israel stalwarts such as conservative activists Mark Levin, Laura Loomer and Ben Shapiro, who support U.S. intervention in the Middle East. Things got so bad that after Levin called his fellow conservative media personality Megyn Kelly “unhinged, lewd and petulant,” she dubbed him “Micropenis Mark.”

But the MAGA unease with the war extends well beyond the “America First” influencers.

It includes figures from the fringe far right such as provocateur Nick Fuentes, center-right “brocaster” Joe Rogan, and even the Trump administration itself – as illustrated by an intelligence officer whose resignation stated, “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Notably, none of the main Trump critics have been scheduled to speak at this year’s CPAC. Some now call it “TPAC,” or the Trump Political Action Conference.

The Epstein files

MAGA also has a strong populist and anti-elite streak of conspiracy thinking.

Large numbers of Trump supporters, for example, believe there is an elite plot to what they call “replace” the white population with nonwhites through mass immigration. Many also bought into the QAnon conspiracy theory, which centers on the idea that Trump is fighting Satanic, deep state elites who are running a child sex trafficking operation.

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to take down political, deep state and global elites. He also promised to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, which QAnon conspiracists and others believe prove elite debauchery, including pedophilia.

Trump didn’t deliver. He backtracked and stonewalled on the release of the Epstein files, raising MAGA suspicion that Trump himself is implicated or is protecting elites. Remarkably, one recent poll found that roughly half of Americans, including a quarter of Republicans, believe the Iran war was partly meant to distract from the Epstein files.

Economy and immigration

Trump is also facing headwinds on the bread-and-butter issues of the 2024 election: the economy and immigration.

At CPAC, speakers have repeatedly given him kudos for shutting down the border. Acknowledging the MAGA in-fighting, conservative commentator Benny Johnson said he wanted to “white pill” – or buck up – the audience by reminding them that Trump had stopped an “invasion” and brought “criminal alien border crossings down to zero.”

As a photo of Trump’s bloodied face after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, was displayed, Johnson claimed, “Our God saved President’s Trump’s life for this moment.”

But fewer Republicans approve of his handling of immigration compared with a year ago. Like many Americans, a growing number have misgivings about the strong-arm tactics used by government immigration enforcement agents in places such as Minnesota.

For many, the economy remains a serious worry. A recent poll, conducted before the Iran war, found that the vast majority of Americans, including large numbers of Republicans, are concerned about inflation, jobs and the cost of living. Health care, including the lost Obamacare subsidies, is also a source of consternation.

Few people believe the economy is “booming” – let alone that a “golden age” has arrived – as Trump and his allies often proclaim. The war with Iran, which has led to stock market declines and gas pump hikes, has only added to the unease.

MAGA ‘shattered’?

Amid the recent MAGA in-fighting about the Iran war, conservative podcaster Tim Pool proclaimed, “The MAGA coalition is shattered.”

Not exactly. Despite the many challenges Trump is facing, the vast majority of his MAGA base voters still support him – including almost 90% backing his war with Iran.

But Trump’s support has eased in several ways. First, even his hardcore supporters worry about the economy, and they want him to declare victory and exit the war. And second, Trump has lost support on the edges. Many people in the key groups with which he made crucial inroads in the last election – such as young men and nonwhite voters – have turned from him. The same is true for independents and other Trump voters who don’t identify as MAGA.

Trumpism isn’t dead, as the MAGA-merched crowds here at CPAC make clear. But Trump is struggling through a political winter that could signal the early stages of his MAGA movement’s decline.

Alex Hinton receives funding from Alex Hinton receives funding from the Rutgers-Newark Sheila Y. Oliver Center for Politics and Race in America, Rutgers Research Council, and Henry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

– ref. I went to CPAC and found Trump supporters unhappy about Iran, Epstein files and the economy, even while the fans at the MAGA conference celebrate his immigration policies – https://theconversation.com/i-went-to-cpac-and-found-trump-supporters-unhappy-about-iran-epstein-files-and-the-economy-even-while-the-fans-at-the-maga-conference-celebrate-his-immigration-policies-278856

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jacob A Tennessen, Research Scientist in Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard University

The fight against infectious disease is a race against evolution. Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Viruses adapt to spread more quickly. Diseases transmitted by insects present another evolutionary front: Insects themselves can evolve resistance to the poisons that people use to kill them.

In particular, the mosquito-borne disease malaria kills over 600,000 people annually. Since World War II, people have battled malaria with insecticides – chemical weapons intended to kill Anopheles mosquitoes infected with the Plasmodium parasites that cause the disease.

However, mosquitoes are quickly evolving counterstrategies that make these insecticides ineffective, putting millions of people at greater risk of deadly infection. My colleagues and I have newly published research showing how.

Insecticide resistance threatens public health

As an evolutionary geneticist, I study natural selection – the basis for adaptive evolution. Genetic variants that best promote survival can replace less advantageous versions, causing species to change. Anopheles mosquitoes are frustratingly adept at evolving.

In the mid-1990s, most African Anopheles were susceptible to pyrethroids, a popular type of insecticide originally derived from chrysanthemums. Anopheles control relies on two pyrethroid-based methods: insecticide-treated bed nets to protect sleepers, and indoor residual spraying of insecticide against the walls of homes. These two methods alone likely prevented over a half-billion cases of malaria between 2000 and 2015.

However, mosquitoes today from Ghana to Malawi are often able to survive insecticide concentrations 10 times the previously lethal dose. Along with Anopheles control efforts, agriculture also inadvertently exposes mosquitoes to pyrethroids and contributes to insecticide resistance.

In some African locales, Anopheles is already showing resistance to all four main classes of insecticide used for malaria control.

Adaptation in Latin American mosquitoes

Anopheles mosquitoes and the malaria-causing Plasmodium also occur outside Africa, where insecticide resistance is less well-researched.

In much of South America, the main malaria vector is Anopheles darlingi. This mosquito species has diverged evolutionarily from the African vectors so extensively that it might be a different genus, Nyssorhynchus. Along with colleagues from eight countries, I analyzed over 1,000 Anopheles darlingi genomes to understand its genetic diversity, including any recent changes due to human activity. My collaborators collected these mosquitoes at 16 locations ranging from the Atlantic coast of Brazil to the Pacific side of the Andes in Colombia.

We found that, like its African counterparts, Anopheles darlingi shows extremely high genetic diversity – more than 20 times that of humans – indicating that very large populations of this insect exist. A species with such a vast gene pool is well poised to adapt to new challenges. The right mutation giving it the advantage it needs is more likely to pop up when there are so many individuals. And once that mutation starts to spread, it’s protected by numbers since it won’t be wiped out if a few mosquitoes die by chance.

In contrast, bald eagles in the contiguous U.S. were never able to evolve resistance against the insecticide DDT and approached extinction. Evolution is more efficient among millions of insects than mere thousands of birds. And indeed, we saw signals of adaptive evolution in the resistance-related genes of Anopheles darlingi occurring over the past few decades.

Mosquitoes evolve to detoxify poisons

Insecticides like pyrethroids and DDT share the same molecular target: channels in nerve cells that can open and close. When open, the nerve cell stimulates other cells. These insecticides force the channels to remain open and continuously fire, causing paralysis and death. However, insects can evolve resistance by changing the shape of the channel itself.

Earlier genetic scans performed by other researchers had not detected this type of resistance in Anopheles darlingi, and neither did ours. Instead, we found that resistance is evolving in another way: a group of genes encoding enzymes that break down toxic compounds. High activity of these enzymes, called P450, frequently underlies resistance to insecticides in other mosquitoes. The same cluster of P450 genes has changed independently at least seven times across South America since insecticide use began in the mid-20th century.

In French Guiana, a different set of P450 genes exhibits a similar evolutionary pattern, cementing the clear connection between these enzymes and adaptation. Moreover, when we exposed mosquitoes to pyrethroids in sealed bottles, differences among the P450 genes of individual mosquitoes were linked to the length of time they stayed alive.

Insecticide-heavy campaigns against malaria have been only sporadic in South America and may not be the main driver behind this evolution. Instead, it’s possible that mosquitoes are being exposed indirectly to agricultural insecticides. Intriguingly, we saw the strongest signs of evolution in places where farming is prevalent.

Toward more sophisticated vector control

Despite new vaccines and other recent advances against malaria, mosquito control remains essential for reducing disease.

Some countries are launching trials of gene drives to control malaria, which involve forcing a genetic modification into a mosquito population to reduce their numbers or their tolerance for Plasmodium. Such prospects are exciting, though the relentless adaptability of mosquitoes could be an obstacle.

I and others are revising methods to efficiently test for emerging insecticide resistance. Genome-scale sequencing remains important to detect new or unexpected evolutionary responses. The risk of adaptation is highest under a continuous, strong selection pressure, so minimizing, switching and staggering pesticides can help thwart resistance.

Success in the fight against evolving resistance will require a coordinated effort of monitoring, and reacting accordingly. Unlike evolution, humans can think ahead.

Jacob A Tennessen receives funding from the National Institutes of Health via Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Broad Institute.

– ref. Mosquitoes carrying malaria are evolving more quickly than insecticides can kill them – researchers pinpoint how – https://theconversation.com/mosquitoes-carrying-malaria-are-evolving-more-quickly-than-insecticides-can-kill-them-researchers-pinpoint-how-275391

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Lisa Schirch, Professor of the Practice of Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

The organizers of the estimated 3,000 “No Kings” protests, rallies and other events planned for March 28, 2026, say they expect that the protests will be the largest such mass mobilization in U.S. history.

As scholars of peace studies and social movements, we investigate how ordinary people press their governments to change their policies.

An estimated 7 million Americans took part in the 2,100 “No Kings” protests on Oct. 18, 2025, breaking all previous records. But research that we and other scholars have conducted indicates that massive turnouts at protests may not be enough to achieve the goals of a protest movement, such as bringing about changes in government policies.

We believe that protest movements can be more effective when they place more emphasis on boycotts of corporations that support a government’s agenda than on increasing the size and scope of these protests.

That’s because history suggests that boycotts are uniquely suited to expand public participation and reach the scale necessary for political change. Boycotts attract first-time activists with simple “buy this, not that” instructions. They offer easy ways for people to feel heard with little investment of time, money or risk.

Rise of the ‘No Kings’ movement

The “No Kings” movement has been holding nonviolent protests across the U.S. since June 2025 to express mass opposition to the Trump administration’s policies.

Its organizers include a range of nonprofits. They include those supporting civil rights, such as the American Civil Liberties Union; LGBTQ+ rights, like the Human Rights Campaign; progressive political groups, including Indivisible and MoveOn; and unions, such as the American Federation of Teachers.

The protests’ organizers are harnessing growing public opposition to President Donald Trump’s second administration. Gallup’s final presidential poll, for example, conducted in December 2025, found that only about 1 in 3 Americans approved of his performance.

In March 2026, Fox News found that 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s immigration enforcement effort, and a CBS poll found that 6 in 10 oppose the U.S. war with Iran.

The “No Kings” movement from the start has objected to harsh federal immigration enforcement tactics, including the rapid growth in the number of immigrants being detained and deported. The March 28 protests will also make the widespread opposition to the costly Iran war more visible.

“No Kings” organizers cite other reasons for their protests, such as the White House’s threats to intervene in elections, health care spending cuts and the cessation of many environmental protections.

Opposition to Trump is spreading

The “No Kings” protests have spread to more parts of the United States than ever before.

Protests have taken place in every state – in large cities like Dallas, Philadelphia and Phoenix, as well as thousands of smaller towns like Corydon, Indiana, and Hamilton, Montana. The protests even drew thousands of people in some GOP strongholds.

Researchers find that only a small part of the population needs to protest, boycott or strike to create strong pressure. If 3.5% of a population participates in nonviolent protests or boycotts, it can lead to policy changes.

In the United States, 3.5% of the population translates to nearly 12 million people. The “No Kings” movement would need to nearly double in size from its October 2025 levels to reach this threshold.

Boycotts could help reach this tipping point.

How boycotts work

Economic boycotts have a long history as a tool of collective protest as people withdraw their labor, purchases or cooperation to pressure powerful institutions.

Boycotts are a form of mass noncooperation that enables more people to resist without taking time off from work, engaging in confrontation or risking arrest. While demonstrations signal dissent, boycotts change incentives for business leaders. When boycotts cause companies to lose customers and profits slump, they can become unexpected allies in public opposition.

For example, after mass protests against federal immigration raids in Minneapolis, many of the biggest corporations operating in the state released an announcement that called on the government to de-escalate to reduce tensions in the area.

Public support for boycotts

Several consumer boycotts are underway in the U.S., with many taking aim at the Trump administration’s policies.

Boycott leaders focus on major companies, such as Target, Walmart, Amazon and Home Depot, that have donated to the White House ballroom construction project and other causes Trump is personally spearheading,

People’s Union USA, a movement seeking to leverage the power of U.S. consumers, organized what it called a nationwide “economic blackout” on Feb. 28. The organizers urged Americans to avoid spending any money for 24 hours to protest corporate influence over U.S. policies. It’s unclear how effective that boycott was.

Where corporate boycotts have worked

In the 1980s, consumer boycotts of white-owned businesses in South Africa reduced profits and drew global attention to the government’s support of apartheid, a discriminatory system that denied rights to the country’s Black majority. As business suffered, white business leaders pressed for reforms, contributing to the end of apartheid and South Africa’s multiracial elections in 1994.

In the U.S., different boycotts from both the right and the left have compelled Target to change its policies in recent years. Right-wing boycotts demanding the removal of LGBTQ+ Pride merchandise in 2023 caused Target to curtail its embrace of diversity practices.

After Trump’s 2025 executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Target faced left-wing boycotts for ending its Racial Equity Action and Change program. The company’s sales fell and its stock declined by 33% in the first three quarters of 2025.

In March 2026, boycott leaders declared victory, saying that the boycotts led to Target’s weak financial performance.

Following the growing wave of consumer boycotts, several media companies have also faced pressure from the public.

In September 2025, Disney suspended late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, whose program airs on ABC, after Kimmel suggested that right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was killed by a fellow conservative. The comedian accused Trump supporters of using his death to “score political points.” Disney owns ABC.

Kimmel’s suspension triggered a rapid public backlash. Three million viewers called for a Disney boycott to disrupt the company’s streaming revenue. Facing mounting risks to its reputation and bottom line, Disney reversed course and put Kimmel back on the air. In December 2025, it renewed his contract for the following year.

The episode illustrated how organized consumer pressure can counter attempts at political intimidation when boycott campaigns focus on a company’s core economic interests.

Uncoordinated boycotts can fail

To be sure, many boycotts fail to meet their goals even when they do succeed at raising awareness.

Their economic impact depends on how many people take part, sustained participation, and clear demands. Boycotts lacking adequate coordination and clear aims are likely to fail, especially when different groups target different companies.

The No Kings protests will no doubt continue to reflect mounting public frustration. But to be effective at their goal of reining in many of Trump’s policies and actions, we believe that this vast movement will likely require a larger, focused boycott that can hurt the revenue and reputation of companies that have financially backed the president or provided support for his policies.

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. Millions are protesting – but boycotts might be key to changing government policies – https://theconversation.com/millions-are-protesting-but-boycotts-might-be-key-to-changing-government-policies-276256