Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charlotte Oliver, Extension Associate Professor, Colorado State University

Grape phylloxera, or Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, is an aphidlike insect that attacks grapevines with devastating effects. In Colorado, where wine is an estimated US$3.9 billion dollar industry, phylloxera poses a significant threat.

In 2015, several vineyards in the Grand Valley American Viticultural Area on Colorado’s Western Slope observed that groups of their vines were not thriving. The vines were yellowing and producing limited fruit. All the normal issues, such as nutritional deficiencies and irrigation problems, were investigated and nothing turned up.

So, in 2016, two Colorado State University researchers began surveying vineyards in Mesa County and found the industry’s worst nightmare – phylloxera, which had infested the roots in several local vineyards.

The pair expanded their survey and covered more than 350 vineyard acres across Mesa, Delta and Montezuma counties, where wine grapes are grown. Phylloxera was found in both Mesa and Delta counties in 18 vineyards for a total of 34 scattered acres. The phylloxera wasn’t centralized, which made controlling its spread complicated.

In response to the researchers’ findings, the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board and the Colorado Association for Viticulture and Enology began an education campaign in 2017 to minimize visitors to vineyards and help vineyards manage soil movement, the primary mode of phylloxera spread.

As the viticulture extension specialist at Colorado State University, I spend a lot of time helping Coloradans work with their grapevines. In 2024, I took over the research at Colorado State University on the phylloxera infestation that is still active nine years after it was discovered. I plan to continue tracking phylloxera’s spread and training producers on what to do when, not if, this pest appears in their vineyard.

What is phylloxera?

Phylloxera have two discrete forms during their life cycle: an above-ground, winged form called alates and a below-ground, wingless, root-feeding form called radicoles.

The above-ground form of the insect causes galls, which are lumpy swellings on the grape leaves, that generally have limited impact on the vine’s health.

However, the below-ground insects that feed on the vine’s roots cause severe damage. The roots are the vine’s main tool for foraging for nutrients and water, so when they are compromised the vine starts to suffer and eventually dies four to seven years after being infected. Sometimes phylloxera’s infestation looks like a lack of nutrition or water, so knowing what is wrong with the vines can require a lot of searching and testing. The real issue is that as the vine declines, it also stops producing a commercially viable quantity of fruit, which is 2.5-4 tons per acre. No fruit means no wine, so the vines have to be removed.

Managing the ‘wine blight’

Grapevines, like a lot of other perennial crops, including peaches and apples, are usually grafted, which is when the top of one plant and the roots of another plant are combined to make one continuous plant. Usually, the grafting is to change something about the physicality of the plant, such as making it bigger or smaller. With grapes, the main reason to graft is to protect the vine from damage from a single pest – grape phylloxera.

There are alternatives such as insecticides, but they are Band-Aids, because insecticides suppress only the pest. Grape roots, and the phylloxera on them, can go far deeper into the soil than the soil insecticide treatments, and some of the treatments to the leaves can be damaging to honeybees.

Another potential solution is using modern varieties of grapes that were bred by crossing native North American grapes with the standard European wine grape. By adding in North American grapes, the new varieties are more tolerant of the phylloxera and can handle some damage. The issue with these varieties, such as Chambourcin and Aromella, is that consumers have never heard of them, which is a major factor when people buy wine. These varieties also have more Concord grape flavors that are less common to wine drinkers outside of the East Coast of the U.S.

Globe-trotting pests

Phylloxera is native to the East Coast and Midwestern United States, but now it’s found in all grape-growing regions worldwide.

In the late 1800s, phylloxera started making its way around the world. Phylloxera can fly when it is in its above-ground life cycle, but the below-ground insects can be spread any time soil is moved. It hitched a ride to France in the early 1860s on North American grape plants that were being imported to help with powdery mildew, which is the most economically damaging fungal disease of grapes. Powdery mildew, or Erysiphe necator, can attack all growing tissues of a vine, including blooms, leaves and shoots, and control can account for approximately 37% of gross grape production cost.

Over the course of three decades after phylloxera was introduced to France, it caused approximately 2.5 million acres of vines to be replaced.

Once it crossed the Atlantic, phylloxera was flying over borders and road-tripping from vineyard to vineyard on workers’ shoes and tractors. By the beginning of the 1900s, phylloxera had spread throughout France, Portugal, Germany and then Spain and established itself as a permanent problem. The European varieties of grapes had no resistance to phylloxera, and the insects found ways to evade chemical management, making yearly insecticide applications a necessity.

While phylloxera is native to the U.S., until recently, there were several states that did not have it, including Colorado, Oregon and Washington.

Colorado’s 50-year-old wine grape industry benefited from the absence of phylloxera. Vineyards owners planted mostly self-rooted European variety vines starting around the mid-1980s. Self-rooted vines are not grafted, which means that a Chardonnay vine was Chardonnay both above and below ground.

Currently, there are areas in multiple countries such as Australia and China, and certain states such as Washington, where phylloxera is present but well contained through quarantine. However, there are concerns for the future. Computer modeling has offered ideas about the future expansion of phylloxera’s survival range on both a regional and global scale.

What does the future hold?

In a 2019 survey by the same research team, more phylloxera was found in vineyards in Delta County as well as a new vineyard outside of Denver. Currently, many Colorado vineyards are in the middle of overhauling their vineyards. The spread of phylloxera as well as the frequency of freezes has led to extensive death in vineyards across the Western Slope.

The percentage of acreage planted with nongrafted, non-European grapes has increased to 25% in recent years, according to results from statewide surveys. Approximately 30% of the replaced vineyards were with new modern varieties, and the rest were replaced with grafted European varieties.

While the European grafted vine may provide a higher-priced fruit due to market demand, the modern varieties have a lot of appeal. Since the vines are more phylloxera tolerant, they do not have to be grafted, so they can easily be recovered when a harsh fall freeze happens.

While the Colorado wine industry has accepted that phylloxera is here to stay, expanded surveys are needed to better understand how far this pest has spread, especially in the more isolated areas of the West Elks American Viticultural Area, in Delta County, the southwest corner of Colorado, in Montezuma County, and in Fremont and Pueblo counties.

Additionally, future phylloxera spread may be better estimated by studying soil texture and temperature, which has been done in models created by Washington State University. Phylloxera may be less likely to survive in certain areas of Colorado. If those areas are also suitable for grape production, it could help direct the locations of future plantings, especially of European varieties.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

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

– ref. How a devastating grape pest is reshaping vineyards across Colorado’s Western Slope – https://theconversation.com/how-a-devastating-grape-pest-is-reshaping-vineyards-across-colorados-western-slope-263088

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John M. Horack, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University

For 24 hours a day, seven days a week since November 2000, NASA and its international partners have sustained a continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit, including at least one American – a streak that will soon reach 25 years.

When viewed in the history of spaceflight, the International Space Station is perhaps one of humanity’s most amazing accomplishments, a shining example of cooperation in space among the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia. But all good things must come to an end.

In 2030, the International Space Station will be deorbited: driven into a remote area of the Pacific Ocean.

I’m an aerospace engineer who has helped build a range of hardware and experiments for the ISS. As a member of the spaceflight community for over 30 years and a 17-year member of the NASA community, it will be hard for me to see the ISS come to an end.

Since the first pieces of the International Space Station were launched in 1998, the station has been home to significant research accomplishments across domains that include materials science, biotechnology, astronomy and astrophysics, Earth science, combustion and more.

Astronauts performing research inside the space station and payload experiments attached to the station’s exterior have generated many publications in peer-reviewed science journals. Some of them have advanced our understanding of thunderstorms, led to improvements in the crystallization processes of key cancer-fighting drugs, detailed how to grow artificial retinas in space, explored the processing of ultrapure optical fibers and explained how to sequence DNA in orbit.

In total, more than 4,000 experiments have been conducted aboard the ISS, resulting in more than 4,400 research publications dedicated to advancing and improving life on Earth and helping forge a path for future space exploration activities.

The ISS has proven the value of conducting research in the unique environment of spaceflight – which has very low gravity, a vacuum, extreme temperature cycles and radiation – to advance scientists’ understanding of a wide range of important physical, chemical and biological processes.

Keeping a presence in orbit

But in the wake of the station’s retirement, NASA and its international partners are not abandoning their outpost in low-Earth orbit. Instead, they are looking for alternatives to continue to take advantage of low Earth orbit’s promise as a unique research laboratory and to extend the continuous, 25-year human presence some 250 miles (402 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.

In December 2021, NASA announced three awards to help develop privately owned, commercially operated space stations in low-Earth orbit.

For years, NASA has successfully sent supplies to the International Space Station using commercial partners, and the agency recently began similar business arrangements with SpaceX and Boeing for transporting crew aboard the Dragon and Starliner spacecraft, respectively.

Based on the success of these programs, NASA invested more than US$400 million to stimulate the development of commercial space stations and hopefully launch and activate them before the ISS is decommissioned.

Dawn of commercial space stations

In September 2025, NASA issued a draft announcement for Phase 2 partnership proposals for commercial space stations. Companies that are selected will receive funding to support critical design reviews and demonstrate stations with four people in orbit for at least 30 days.

NASA will then move forward with formal design acceptance and certification to ensure that these stations meet NASA’s stringent safety requirements. The outcome will allow NASA to purchase missions and other services aboard these stations on a commercial basis – similar to how NASA gets cargo and crew to the ISS today.

Which of these teams will be successful, and on what timescale, remains to be seen.

While these stations are being built, Chinese astronauts will continue to live and work aboard their Tiangong space station, a three-person, permanently crewed facility orbiting approximately 250 miles (402 km) above the Earth’s surface. Consequently, if the ISS’s occupied streak comes to an end, China and Tiangong will take over as the longest continually inhabited space station in operation: It’s been occupied for approximately four years and counting.

In the meantime, enjoy the view

It will be several years before any of these new commercial space stations circle the Earth at around 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour) and several years before the ISS is deorbited in 2030.

So while you have a chance, take a look up and enjoy the view. On most nights when the ISS flies over, it is simply magnificent: a brilliant blue-white point of light, usually the brightest object in the sky, silently executing a graceful arc across the sky.

Our ancestors could hardly have imagined that one day, one of the brightest objects in the night sky would have been conceived by the human mind and built by human hands.

John M. Horack receives extramural research funding from NASA, Voyager Technologies, and other spaceflight-related sources, as part of his work as a Professor at The Ohio State University.

– ref. NASA will say goodbye to the International Space Station in 2030 − and welcome in the age of commercial space stations – https://theconversation.com/nasa-will-say-goodbye-to-the-international-space-station-in-2030-and-welcome-in-the-age-of-commercial-space-stations-264936

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Paul Draus, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan-Dearborn

Watching the space between two nations shrink became a regular pastime for Detroiters over the past decade as the segments of the Gordie Howe International Bridge gradually grew, extending meter by meter from Ontario on one side and Michigan on the other.

The gap finally closed in July 2024 with the two halves coming together in a long-awaited kiss.

The official grand opening of the bridge was originally scheduled for fall of 2025, but it seems now likely to be delayed into 2026.

I’m a sociologist who has worked alongside neighborhood revitalization projects in Detroit for the past 15 years. I’ve observed the bridge project – and the many tensions around it – from the perspective of adjacent communities of Delray and Mexicantown, communities that are largely hometo low-income Latino, Black and white residents.

The costs and benefits of this binational behemoth are complex and intertwined.

Clearing a chokehold

Boosters on both sides of the border have spoken frequently of the bridge’s expected benefits.

Detroit and Windsor would finally be free of the perpetual chokehold produced by the privately owned Ambassador Bridge.

Auto parts will flow more freely over the border, according to the Cross-Border Institute at the University of Windsor. And the Detroit Greenways Coalition is celebrating that its advocacy led to the inclusion of free pedestrian and bike lanes.

People living close to the existing bridge will gain some relief from truck traffic and pollution. But this burden won’t simply disappear – it will be shifted nearby, where others will have to cope with increased traffic flowing over six lanes 24 hours a day.

A political football

The costs and benefits of the bridge were contested from the beginning.

In the early days, the debate concentrated on who would own the bridge and who would pay for it.

Once just a concept known by the acronym DRIC, or Detroit River International Crossing, the project became real under former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. In July 2018, representatives from both Ottawa and Washington broke ground on the bridge situated in an area of Detroit empty enough to contain its significant footprint and bear its weight without fear of sinkholes from underground salt mines.

“Every Michigander should thank every Canadian,” said Snyder at the time, alluding to the agreement that Canadian taxpayers alone would pay for the bridge’s construction in exchange for collecting all the tolls.

The bridge’s designers attempted to honor the cultural and natural history of the region. It was named after the legendary Canadian hockey player who was also a longtime stalwart for the Detroit Red Wings. The bridge’s towers are adorned with murals by First Nations artists.

But serious questions remain.

Today the debates center on whether the Trump administration’s increased tariffs and trade conflicts with Canada could negatively affect the value of the bridge – and if it will ever pay for itself. Even before President Donald Trump took office for the second time, truck traffic on the Ambassador Bridge was down, falling 8% from 2014 to 2024.

One bridge was always a bad idea, (nearly) everyone agreed

Residents and politicians have long agreed that having a single, privately owned bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor was a bad idea. This felt especially apparent after the 9/11 terrorist attacks laid bare the possibility of suddenly losing critical infrastructure.

For many years, travelers’ only other connection between Canada and Detroit has been a tunnel that runs underneath the Detroit River. However, the tunnel doesn’t offer direct access to interstate highways, making it less suitable for commercial trucks.

Adding another bridge makes it harder to disrupt trade and transport.

But the project has had one stalwart critic. Matty Moroun, the trucking billionaire who purchased the Ambassador Bridge in 1979, ferociously protected his asset against potential competition. He actively sought to thwart the construction, launching numerous lawsuits against the state of Michigan and the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, the entity managing construction of the new bridge.

Those lawsuits continued even after Moroun’s death in 2020, as his heirs asserted significant damages to the value of their property.

Was enough done for nearby homeowners?

Others have criticized the attempts to compensate the residents of Delray, a once-vibrant neighborhood that has been impacted by industrialization since the 1960s.

Benefits negotiated for residents and homeowners affected by the construction have not increased as the project’s costs ballooned and the timeline to complete it stretched out.

The cost of the Gordie Howe bridge is now estimated at around $6.4 billion Canadian – or about $US4.7 billion. That is $700 million more than the original projected cost. The project is at least 10 months behind schedule.

Simone Sagovac, director of the SW Detroit Community Benefit Coalition, said they did not anticipate the immense scale of the development and its continued effects on the community.

“That scale affected health and quality of life significantly every day, with years of continuous industrial dust causing sinus problems, headaches, and increasing asthma, and then there will be thousands of daily truck impacts to come,” Sagovac wrote to me in an email.

A baseline health impact assessment, issued in 2019 by University of Michigan researchers working closely with the coalition, expressed concern about the heightened airborne pollution that would likely activate asthma, especially in children. Matching the findings of so many other epidemiological studies, the assessment found that residents living within 500 feet (152 meters) of a truck route reported a significantly higher likelihood of experiencing asthma or allergies affecting their breathing.

Sagovac wrote that the project took 250 homes, 43 businesses and five churches by eminent domain, and “saw the closing of more after.” One hundred families left the neighborhood via a home swap program funded as a result of the benefits agreement administered by a local nonprofit. Two hundred and seventy families remain, but most businesses have left the area over decades of decline.

The families that remain are often long-term residents wanting or needing a cheap place to live and willing to put up with dust, noise and smells from nearby factories and a sewage treatment plant.

“They constantly face illegal dumping and other unanswered crimes, and will face the worst diesel emissions exposure and other trucking and industry impacts,” Sagovac wrote.

Heather Grondin, chief relations officer of the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, wrote in an emailed statement
that they have taken steps to minimize impacts from construction and that they regularly meet with the community to hear concerns.

“Construction traffic is using designated haul routes to minimize community impacts, traffic congestion and wear and tear on existing infrastructure while maximizing public and construction safety,” Grondin wrote.

According to Grondin, cars will be forced to follow a “no idling” rule on the American side to minimize pollution. Other aspects of the Community Benefits Plan included $20,000 in free repairs for 100 homes, planting hundreds of trees and investing in programs addressing food insecurity and the needs of young people and seniors, Grondin wrote.

An updated Health Impacted Assessment is expected to be released later in 2025.

History lost

Lloyd Baldwin, a historian for the Michigan Department of Transportation, was tasked with evaluating whether local landmarks like the legendary Kovacs Bar needed to be preserved.

“Kovacs Bar was one among many working-class bars in the Delray neighborhood but stands out for its roughly eight-decade association as a gathering place for the neighborhood and downriver Hungarian-American community,” Baldwin wrote in one such report.

The bar was nonetheless demolished in November 2017.

This was not MDOT’s only loss. While the agency made some sincere efforts to leverage other benefits for residents who remained, dynamic factors at many levels were out of the agency’s control.

For one thing, the numerous lawsuits filed by the bridge company over parcels of contested land limited MDOT’s ability to talk openly to the public about the land acquisition process.

In the period of legal limbo, Baldwin said, “the neighborhood imploded.”

Baldwin gave the example of the Berwalt Manor Apartments, built in the 1920s and located on Campbell Street near the bridge entrance. MDOT committed to preserve the historic building and proposed to mitigate the environmental impacts on mostly low-income residents by paying for new windows and HVAC units once the bridge was built.

But the speed of development outstripped the pace of community compensation. The building passed through probate court in 2018 and has since changed hands multiple times, so it is now unclear whether there are any low-income residents left to benefit from upgrades.

Benefits yet to be measured

On the brighter side, environmentalists have pointed to the expansion and connection of bicycle trails and bird migration corridors as long-term benefits of the Gordie Howe bridge.

On the Canadian side, the bridge construction falls largely outside of Windsor’s residential neighborhoods, so it caused less disruption. As part of the project,bike lanes, enhanced landscaping, and gathering spaces were added to an approach road called Sandwich Street.

Cross-border tourism spurred on by a proposed system of greenways called the “Great Lakes Way” may provide new opportunities for people and money to flow across the Detroit River, improving the quality of life for communities that remain.

But if the trade war between the Trump administration and Canada continues, observers may question whether the bridge is a graceful gift of infrastructure to two nations or one of the world’s longest and skinniest white elephants.

Paul Draus is affiliated with the Downriver Delta CDC and Friends of the Rouge. The Fort Street Bridge Park, a project that Draus is affiliated with, received a donation for a public sculpture from the Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority in 2020.

– ref. Detroit’s Gordie Howe bridge is poised to open as truck traffic between US-Canada slows – and low-income residents decide whether to stay or go – https://theconversation.com/detroits-gordie-howe-bridge-is-poised-to-open-as-truck-traffic-between-us-canada-slows-and-low-income-residents-decide-whether-to-stay-or-go-260280

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jennifer L. Steele, Professor of Education, American University

As an education researcher who has studied the economic returns of higher education, I know that college degrees remain cost-effective investments for most students.

But college tuition has risen at roughly twice the rate of inflation during the past two decades, and federal student debt climbed 500% to US$1.6 trillion during that same period.

The Biden administration sought to address this problem with plans that accelerated student loan forgiveness for lower-income borrowers with small balances, allowing debt cancellation after 10 years of repayment, instead of 20 or 25.

However, the courts blocked those efforts, and the Trump administration has taken a sharply different approach.

Guided by evidence that higher borrowing limits contribute to tuition increases, the tax breaks and spending cuts bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in July 2025 brings changes to the federal financial aid system that prospective higher education students should understand.

The Pell Grant – a need-based higher education grant from the U.S. Department of Education that, unlike a loan, does not need to be repaid – lies at the heart of the federal financial aid system.

While the Trump administration is slightly expanding people’s eligibility for Pell Grants, the new policies also aim to reduce the national student loan spiral by reducing limits on how much some students can borrow for their educations.

Rising college costs and government involvement

The average annual cost of tuition, fees, room and board for a student at a four-year college in the U.S. in the 2022-23 school year was $30,884, according to the latest available Department of Education data.

But the cost of tuition alone varies dramatically between in-state rates for public colleges, which receive state funding, and private nonprofit colleges, which do not.

While the average annual tuition was $9,750 per year for in-state students at public four-year colleges in 2022-23, it reached $38,421 at private nonprofit colleges, even if a student lived at home and did not pay for room and board.

These prices are roughly two to 200 times those of 42 other countries across six continents that have high-quality education data – not including seven countries, including Sweden and Saudi Arabia, that essentially have free tuition.

While many countries around the world subsidize tuition directly, the U.S. government focuses assistance toward individual students based on their financial need.

It does this through a combination of federal grants, loans and subsidies for campus jobs, all administered by the Department of Education.

In 2019-20, about 40% of the nation’s 17 million undergraduates received federal grants – mostly Pell Grants, according to the latest federal data.

Meanwhile, 34% of undergraduates and 39% of the country’s 3 million graduate students received federal loans during this same time period.

Roughly 5% of undergraduates received subsidized on-campus jobs through federal work study in the 2019-20 school year.

Changes ahead for Pell Grants

The U.S. government first awarded Pell Grants to students in 1973. They are designed to make college affordable for families, as determined by their income, family size and savings.

Historically, Pell Grants have focused just on undergraduates.

In 2022-23, about 75% of Pell funds went to students from families earning less than $40,000 per year.

Still, a family of four earning as much as $92,000 a year in 2024 would also qualify for a small Pell Grant in some circumstances.

A version of the Trump administration’s budget proposal for October 2025 through September 2026 called for reducing the maximum federal Pell Grant award to $5,710 a year from $7,395.

This caused some observers to worry that the Trump administration would try to scale back federal Pell Grants, which offer $740 to $7,395 per year to students in the 2025-26 school year.

Instead, the budget bill shores up overall Pell Grant funding and holds grant amounts level with those of previous years. It also creates a new type of Pell Grant to support workers seeking short-term retraining in a particular industry.

The budget bill also introduces another new grant called the Workforce Pell Grant. Starting July 1, 2026, this program will make small Pell Grants available for students pursuing career training programs of eight to 15 weeks toward recognized credentials in “in-demand industry sectors or occupations,” even if students already have bachelor’s degrees.

Controversially, a new House of Representatives appropriations bill proposes to rename the Workforce Pell Grants as
“Trump Grants.”

But whether or not Congress approves the renaming, the grants will for the first time make Pell funds available to people who need short-term training to stay current in the labor market.

This is particularly important as long-term unemployment rises among the college-educated, driven by federal layoffs as well as the growth of artificial intelligence.

The role played by federal student loans

Despite some of their advantages, Pell Grants cover only about a quarter of the total cost of college attendance. As a result, 83% of Pell Grant recipients also receive other forms of aid – mostly through federal direct loans, which must be repaid.

The average undergraduate direct loan borrower graduated with about $26,000 in federal debt in 2019-20.

Assuming the 6.08% interest rate on federal loans at that time, it would have cost a graduate $290 a month to repay the loans under the standard 10-year payment plan.

Even so, about 10% of student loan borrowers default, meaning they stop paying on their loans entirely.

Loan default rates are higher among students who attended less-selective colleges and those who did not finish their degrees.

Under existing rules that are not changing under the Trump administration, undergraduates will still be able to borrow up to roughly $10,000 per year in federal direct loans, depending on how far along they are in school.

Graduate students, meanwhile, will still be able to borrow up to $20,500 per year.

New limits for part-time and graduate students

One important change following the Trump budget bill’s passage is that the Department of Education will pro-rate, or reduce, Pell Grant limits for students enrolled part time.

This means tuition at some higher-priced colleges may become unaffordable for part-time students.

This change will force some students to choose between enrolling part time in a low-tuition program or full time in a higher-tuition program.

The other change to federal borrowing limits pertains to graduate students.

The budget bill lowers the lifetime borrowing limit for graduate study from $138,500 to $100,000.

For students pursuing professional degrees such as law and medicine, the limit rises to $200,000.

But the law does away with a program for graduate students called PLUS Loans that now serves about 11% of graduate students, including about 40% of students seeking professional doctorates.

These changes may make it more expensive for graduate students to receive a degree, which could steer them toward lower-priced programs.

The effect for prospective students

As prospective students weigh their options, they should remember that most facets of federal financial aid remain unchanged.

Key changes aim at limiting high debt levels, specifically for part-time and graduate students and those attending high-tuition colleges when lower-priced institutions are readily available.

These changes may reroute some students from private to in-state colleges and from part-time to full-time study. Faced with increased price competition, some colleges may feel pressure to scale back costs through cuts to programs, services and amenities. For prospective students, such moves could reduce colleges’ luxuries but improve their affordability in the long run.

Jennifer L. Steele 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. Trump isn’t cutting Pell Grants, after all − but other changes could complicate financial aid for some students – https://theconversation.com/trump-isnt-cutting-pell-grants-after-all-but-other-changes-could-complicate-financial-aid-for-some-students-265136

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

Congress faces a deadline of Oct. 1 to adopt a spending measure to keep the federal government open. Various reporters will be interviewing serious people saying serious things in the basement corridors of the U.S. Capitol. There will also be political posturing, misrepresentation and either braggadocio or evasion. Politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed congressional expert Charlie Hunt, a political scientist at Boise State University, about the now-perennial drama over spending in Congress and what’s very different about this year’s conflict.

In the past, how did Congress pass budgets so that government could keep operating?

Typically, you would get an actual passage of a full budget for a year. But in the last 20 or 30 years or so, since we’ve become a more polarized country with a polarized Congress, we have a lot of what are called continuing resolutions, or CRs.They’re stopgap measures – not the full budget – and don’t tend to make a lot of changes on a lot of the spending priorities that Congress has.

Continuing resolutions usually just extend current levels of spending for a short time so that the two parties can continue negotiating. But as negotiations over long-term budgets have tended to fail more and more, these CR’s are becoming more common, and Congress almost never passes a full budget on a yearly basis at this point.

What’s the role of the president here?

The president has the power to veto any piece of legislation, and that includes the federal budget. Essentially, what majorities in Congress need when they are going into a budget fight is either the president’s implicit sign-off on whatever they pass, or they need enough votes to override the president’s veto.

Congress and the presidency right now are both held by Republicans, they’re in pretty deep alignment, so that’s not as much of a concern this time. It’s really just what Trump wants that needs to be a part of this legislation, and if there’s something in it that he really doesn’t like, then Congress needs to go back to the drawing board and the Republicans need to find out a way to get that into the bill.

What is driving each party in these negotiations?

Two different things are at work here. One is that Congress, as I mentioned, is really polarized. The two parties are farther apart from each other than they used to be. So the average Democrat and the average Republican aren’t going to agree as much on policy priorities and funding priorities than they did, say, in the 1980s or 1970s or before that.

The other thing is that Congress in recent decades has been more closely divided than they have been in the recent past, say, the last century. In both chambers, House and Senate, it’s very rare for one party or the other to have some massive majority. You need a majority of 60 in the Senate to have a chance at passing most legislation, for example, and this big a majority hasn’t happened since 2009. That’s something President Obama enjoyed with the Democrats for just a short period of time.

Since then, there have been very closely divided chambers in Congress, and that means that you need, at least in the Senate, some bipartisanship in order to pass that 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster. That’s what’s really gumming up the works right now. Democrats don’t feel like they’re being included in negotiations, and so they’re not likely to agree to a Republican-only budget in the Senate.

What is different about the 2025 budget fight than previous ones?

A lot of the dynamics are still the same. You still have partisan fighting. And you still have some divides within the two parties that I think are worth mentioning. One example: There was a Senate vote just the other day on one of these budget resolutions, and a couple of Republicans voted with the Democrats. So for some of these more deficit-hawk Republicans, that concern is still playing a role.

What’s new this time around is this element of rescissions. This is a tool that’s been available since the 1970s in which presidents ask Congress to rescind spending that they had allocated. This is what happened earlier this year with the rescissions on public broadcasting – NPR and PBS – that got a lot of attention, as well as on USAID. Trump said he wanted to cut funding for public broadcasting – the GOP in the Senate and House voted to let him. They didn’t need 60 votes in the Senate for a rescission, either. Just a majority for this move.

So in this case, Democrats are looking at this and thinking, “Why should we negotiate, if you’re just going to rescind that later on without our consent?” That’s a major element that’s changed. While it’s a power that has been in place for a while, Trump and the Republicans have been really willing to wield that.

Do you see this rescission power being exercised with every budget or continuing resolution that Congress passes?

This is a pretty serious breach of what we call Congress’ “power of the purse.” That spending power is set out in Article 1 of the Constitution. It is a key power, maybe their most important power and point of leverage they have in going back and forth with the president and making sure the executive branch doesn’t accrue too much power.

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Read more:
Congress, not the president, decides on government spending − a constitutional law professor explains how the ‘power of the purse’ works

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But if this rescission authority is going to be used in this way going forward, where basically any spending priority that the president doesn’t want or doesn’t want to fund is going to be subject to rescission, then Congress doesn’t really have the power of the purse, right? They have a president who is going to veto anything that doesn’t live up to their expectations, or they can just sign it and then ask for these rescissions later.

The key thing here is that President Trump currently has in Congress a set of Republicans in both the House and the Senate who are willing to do virtually anything he wants and are subject to a lot of the political pressures in their districts that put him in office in the first place. So if they don’t go along with rescissions, they’re going to face the wrath of their Republican voters in their district.

That’s one thing that’s really changed in the last 30 years that I think gives the president a lot more authority in these matters, and makes rescission such a powerful tool that did not exist before.

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

– ref. Facing a shutdown, budget negotiations are much harder because Congress has given Trump power to cut spending through ‘rescission’ – https://theconversation.com/facing-a-shutdown-budget-negotiations-are-much-harder-because-congress-has-given-trump-power-to-cut-spending-through-rescission-265827

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kristina Mani, Professor of Politics, Oberlin College and Conservatory

In his second term as president, Donald Trump has deployed U.S. military forces in rarely used roles in domestic law enforcement.

Besides sending military troops to Los Angeles to counter protests over immigration raids, Trump sent the National Guard to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., claiming crime in the city is “out of control.”

As a political scientist who studies civil-military relations, I recognize the fundamental problems of militarizing domestic law enforcement, which the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits.

Militarizing law enforcement risks using excessive force against civilians by troops trained for warfare. And it undermines a constitutional principle, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that limits the coercive power of the state against its citizens.

A more menacing problem, however, is politicizing the military through association with partisan politics. That erodes public trust in the armed forces.

With continued militarization of law enforcement, the United States is entering largely uncharted waters.

But in other countries, including Chile and Argentina, this is familiar territory. There, established democracies broke down in the 1970s into military dictatorships.

In the years before these breakdowns, the militaries in both countries were broadly opposed to meddling in politics.

However, civilian elites could not resolve their own governance failures. They exacerbated civil unrest and economic instability and successfully encouraged the military to intervene.

Trump administration tactics

Three Trump administration tactics mirror those of officials in Chile and Argentina who politicized their militaries.

The first is priming the public to focus on exaggerated threats to society. Trump administration officials have sought to “liberate” Los Angeles. They have touted arrests of the “… Worst of the Worst Criminal Illegal Aliens” in Los Angeles.

Priming the public this way establishes a danger so great that ordinary – civilian – resources are an insufficient response. Military resources become the solution.

Emblematic of this tactic is Trump’s executive order deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C. He falsely declared a “crime emergency” in the capital so great as to “undermine critical functions of Government and thus the well-being of the entire Nation.”

The D.C. deployment has opened the door to Guard deployments in other cities. Deployment to multiple cities has the potential to normalize the presence of troops in communities nationwide.

Latin American conditions in the 1970s were far more dire. Yet there, too, rather than find political solutions, elected leaders sounded alarms and looked to the military.

The months before Chile’s coup in 1973 were marked by rationing, strikes and street protests.

That led the opposition-dominated lower house of Congress to pass a resolution calling on the military to “put an end to” the government of President Salvador Allende, whom they lacked sufficient votes to constitutionally impeach.

Although Congress and Allende had months to work for compromise solutions to the nation’s problems, both remained intransigent. With the resolution, Congress handed the military a blank check to intervene. The military took over just three weeks later.

Using the military as backup

A second tactic is to place military forces in prominent missions as backup for nonmilitary personnel. The expectation is that they will reinforce each other seamlessly.

The Trump administration’s deployment of Marines in Los Angeles required that they protect federal immigration agents without engaging in law enforcement. In practice, however, lines may not be so clear.

Military troops may be tasked into law enforcement support operations where they directly confront civilians. This happened in Los Angeles, where Marines detained a civilian who had entered an unauthorized zone. Such detention is by law the job of local law enforcement.

Yet more worrisome is when federal troops back up operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE, created after 9/11 to support domestic anti-terrorism efforts and enforce federal immigration laws, has broad territorial jurisdiction. It also has greater enforcement power and fewer use-of-force limitations than police. Its most striking methods – masked agents, arrests without court warrants – have brought comparisons to Nazi Germany’s Gestapo secret police.

At least 19 states have authorized National Guard deployments to collaborate with ICE in targeting illegal immigration. All this raises the question of what ICE methods military troops may absorb through the collaboration.

Argentina reflects a worst-case scenario of how the military can absorb practices from nonmilitary agents that erode its professionalism.

In the two years before the 1976 coup, the army was prepared to counter two guerrilla groups – Montoneros and ERP – that orchestrated bombings and attacked police and military installations. Yet senior officers were deeply divided over any collaboration with the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, a paramilitary group created by the civilian government that eliminated the government’s rivals.

The military repeatedly resisted the government’s requests to work with the AAA, considering it a loose cannon and competitor aligned with the police. As political violence escalated, public support for the military to take the lead in counterinsurgency grew.

The growing crisis galvanized an interventionist sector in the military, enabling the 1976 coup. Once in power, it adopted the AAA’s horrific methods, including enforced disappearance and clandestine murder. In short, the military eliminated the group and adopted its death squad methods.

Demanding political litmus tests

The third tactic may be the most debilitating within the military itself. It involves publicly shaming and firing military personnel for allegedly being woke.

The Trump administration seeks to eradicate wokeness from the military. Firings initially targeted officers at the highest ranks. Yet any misstep that can be deemed political – such as contradicting the president’s claims with intelligence assessments – appears to qualify for removal.

Yet while seeking to eliminate diversity, the tactic is likely to encourage a culture of institutional policing and concealment. This erodes military norms of merit-based promotion and professional trust.

In both Chile and Argentina, it was professedly apolitical officers who led the coups of the 1970s. Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet and Argentina’s Gens. Jorge Rafael Videla and Roberto Viola had established reputations as officers opposed to intervention.

Yet while their appearance of being apolitical facilitated promotion to the highest ranks, it was no guarantee of moderation.

On the eve of the coup in Chile, the CIA reported uncertainty that Pinochet would “actively support” other leaders of the coup in the military.

Yet two months later, Pinochet had not only taken charge but was plotting to eliminate rival officers by arrest and even assassination. He also created a specialized intelligence agency to carry out political repression.

Similarly, Argentina’s Videla and Viola were long viewed as moderates. The CIA reported that Argentine officials and business leaders preferred Videla lead the coup, believing his moderate stance would leave political parties and labor organizations “unchanged.”

Yet after coups brought them to power, they endorsed repression and presided over the shuttering of all representative institutions. Systematic repression through extrajudicial executions and thousands of enforced “disappearances” followed.

The dangers of a partisan military

To be sure, none of these tactics destine the United States to democratic breakdown or military takeover. But Americans ignore the partisan use of the armed forces at their peril.

Fortunately, for Argentina and Chile there was a pathway out of dictatorship. But it took decades of concerted work by democratic leaders and citizens to restore full rule of law and rebuild democratic institutions.

To this day, their armed forces remain tainted by the weight of their misrule and repression some 50 years ago. This is not a path that other democracies can afford to take.

Kristina Mani 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. Politicizing federal troops in US mirrors use of military in Latin America in the 1970s and ’80s – https://theconversation.com/politicizing-federal-troops-in-us-mirrors-use-of-military-in-latin-america-in-the-1970s-and-80s-263874

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Betty Medsger, Professor Emeritus of Journalism, San Francisco State University

As a candidate last year, Donald Trump promised retribution against his perceived enemies. As president, he is doing that.

At the Department of Justice, a “Weaponization Working Group” has a long list of Trump’s perceived enemies to investigate. At the FBI, director Kash Patel has conducted a political purge, firing the highest officials at the bureau and thousands of FBI agents who investigated alleged crimes by Trump as well as investigated participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots.

It marks the first time since J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year reign as FBI director that the FBI has targeted massive numbers of people perceived to be political enemies.

Trump’s recent fury showed how much he expects top officials in federal law enforcement to carry out his retribution.

He was enraged when Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, decided there was insufficient evidence to charge two people Trump regards as enemies: former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“I want him out,” Trump angrily told reporters on Sept. 19, 2025. Siebert resigned, although Trump claimed he had fired him.

Trump’s most recent demands for retribution came soon after top adviser Stephen Miller’s vow to prosecute leftists in the “vast domestic terror movement” – that the administration blames, without evidence, for Charlie Kirk’s assassination – using “every resource we have.”

As the director of the FBI, Patel will likely be in charge of the investigations of perceived enemies generated by the Department of Justice and the White House. He already has sacrificed the bureau’s independence, making it essentially an arm of the White House.

This isn’t the first time an FBI director has been driven by a desire to suppress the rights of people perceived to be political enemies. Hoover, director until his death in 1972, operated a secret FBI within the FBI that he used to destroy people and organizations whose political opinions he opposed.

A burglary’s revelations

Hoover’s secret FBI was revealed, beginning in 1971, when a group of people called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office and removed files.

This group suspected Hoover’s FBI was illegally suppressing dissent. Given Hoover’s enormous power, they thought it was unlikely any government agency would investigate the FBI. They decided documentary evidence was needed to convince the public that suppression of dissent – what they considered a crime against democracy – was taking place.

In my book “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,” I describe how these eight people decided to risk imprisonment and break into the FBI’s office in Media, Pennsylvania.

The files they stole and made public confirmed the FBI was suppressing dissent. But they revealed much more: Hoover’s secret FBI and the startling crimes he had committed. These secret operations had become so extensive that they eventually diminished the bureau’s capacity to carry out its core mission: law enforcement.

Hoover, one of the most admired and powerful officials in the country, had secretly conducted a wide array of operations directed against people whose political opinions he opposed.

The files revealed that agents were instructed to “enhance paranoia” and make activists think there was an FBI agent “behind every mailbox.” Questioning Vietnam war policy could cause anyone, even a U.S. senator, Democrat J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, to be placed under FBI surveillance.

It was the revelation of Hoover’s worst operations, COINTELPRO – what Hoover called The Counter Intelligence Program – that made Americans demand investigation and reform of the FBI. Until the mid-1970s, there had never been oversight of the FBI and little coverage of the FBI by journalists, except for laudatory stories.

‘Almost beyond belief’

The COINTELPRO operations ranged from crude to cruel to murderous.

Antiwar activists were given oranges injected with powerful laxatives. Agents hired prostitutes known to have venereal disease to infect campus antiwar leaders.

Many of the COINTELPRO operations were almost beyond belief:

· The project conducted against the entire University of California system lasted more than 30 years. Hundreds of agents and informants were assigned in 1960 to spy on each of Berkeley’s 5,365 faculty members by reading their mail, observing them and searching for derogatory information – “illicit love affairs, homosexuality, sexual perversion, excessive drinking, other instances of conduct reflecting mental instability.”

· An informant trained to give perjured testimony led to the murder conviction of Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He served 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. He was exonerated in 1997 when a judge found that the FBI concealed evidence that would have proved Pratt’s innocence.

· The bureau spied for years on Martin Luther King Jr. After it was announced King would receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Hoover approved a particularly sinister plan that was designed to cause King to commit suicide.

· What one historian called Hoover’s “savage hatred” of Black people led to the FBI’s worst operation, a collaboration with the Chicago police that resulted in the killing of Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton, shot dead by police as he slept. An FBI informant had been hired to ingratiate himself with Hampton. He came to know Hampton and the apartment very well. He drew a map of the apartment for the police on which he located “Fred’s bed.” After the killing, Hoover thanked the informant for his role in this successful operation. Enclosed in his letter was a cash bonus.

· Actress Jean Seberg was the victim of a 1970 COINTELPRO operation. In a memo, Hoover wrote that she had donated to the Panthers and “should be neutralized.” Seberg was pregnant, and the plot, approved personally by Hoover – as many COINTELPRO plots were – called for the FBI to tell a gossip columnist that a Black Panther was the father. Agents gave the false rumor to a Los Angeles Times gossip columnist. Without using Seberg’s name, the columnist’s story made it unmistakable that she was writing about Seberg. Three days later, Seberg gave birth prematurely to a stillborn white baby girl. Every year on the anniversary of her dead baby’s birth, Seberg attempted suicide. She succeeded in August 1979.

There was wide public interest in these revelations about COINTELPRO, many of which emerged in 1975 during hearings conducted by the Church Committee, the Senate committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat.

At this first-ever congressional investigation of the FBI and other intelligence agencies, former FBI officials testified under oath about bureau policies under Hoover.

One of them, William Sullivan, who had helped carry out the plots against King, was asked whether officials considered the legal and ethical issues involved in their operations. He responded:

“Never once did I hear anybody, including myself, raise the questions: ‘Is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful? Is it legal? Is it ethical or moral?’ We never gave any thought to that line of questioning because we were just pragmatic. The one thing we were concerned about: will this course of action work, will it get us what we want.”

Ethical? Legal?

The future of the new FBI under Patel and Trump is unclear, especially in light of the president’s known tolerance for lawlessness, even violence. His gifts of clemency and pardons to Jan. 6 rioters are evidence of that.

As for Patel, fired FBI Officials stated in their recent lawsuit over those dismissals that Patel had told one of them it was “likely illegal” to fire agents because of the cases they had worked on, but that he was powerless to resist Trump’s demands.

The recent statements from both Trump and top aide Miller suggest the FBI’s independence, and broader constitutional requirements that the administration remain faithful to the law, are meaningless to them. They suggest that, like Hoover, they would criminalize dissent.

What will happen at the FBI after the internal purge ends? Will retribution fever wane? Will Patel refocus on the bureau’s chief mission, law enforcement? And will the questions asked in Congress in 1975, as the bureau was being forced to reject Hoover’s worst practices, be asked now: Is what we are doing ethical? Is it legal?

Betty Medsger 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. Trump’s use of FBI to target ‘enemies’ echoes FBI’s dark history of mass surveillance, dirty tricks and perversion of justice under J. Edgar Hoover – https://theconversation.com/trumps-use-of-fbi-to-target-enemies-echoes-fbis-dark-history-of-mass-surveillance-dirty-tricks-and-perversion-of-justice-under-j-edgar-hoover-265364

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Chris Lituma, Assistant Professor of Wildlife and Fisheries Resources, West Virginia University

Waking up to the dawn chorus of birds – one of the natural world’s greatest symphonies – is a joy like no other. It is not surprising that bird-watching has become an increasingly popular hobby.

A simple way to start bird-watching is to buy a feeder, a pair of binoculars and a field guide, and begin watching birds from your window.

However, one of the most rewarding ways to identify birds is to listen to them and learn to recognize their songs.

As an ornithologist and educator, I often introduce students to the intricacies of bird songs, and I have developed some tricks that can make birding by ear less daunting.

Learning to listen

Learning bird songs is the difference between “hearing” and “listening.”

Listening requires full attention and limiting distractions. It means using your ears to pick up different patterns in the sounds that birds make. Every person has the capacity to listen and learn patterns in sound.

If I were to sing “da-da-da-DUM” most people would immediately recognize it as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Alternatively, if I were to play the first few notes or beats of your favorite song, I’m certain you would know what it was and who sang it.

The ability to recognize bird songs uses the same part of the brain you use to recognize songs on the radio – the supratemporal, or auditory, cortex, an area just above the ears where your brain processes language and sound.

When you’re birding by ear, you use the same skills as when you’re recognizing music; listening to sounds, patterns, changes in pitch, in tone and in volume, but in nature rather than in music.

You can do this.

To begin learning to recognize bird songs, select two to three common bird songs that you hear frequently around your neighborhood.

Sometimes there are mnemonics that you can use to help remember the songs. For instance, the tufted titmouse says “peter, peter, peter” over and over. Sometimes it sings it fast, sometimes slow, but always “peter, peter, peter.” Whereas the Carolina wren says, “tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle”.

Songbirds aren’t the only birds with helpful mnemonics. Next time you hear a hooting sound, if it sounds like “who cooks for you, who cooks for you all,” that’s a barred owl.

Why and how songbirds sing

Watching the actual bird sing its song is one of the best ways to learn the bird and song together. Find a tufted titmouse and watch it sing “peter, peter, peter,” and you will remember it forever.

Try going out into the woods with your binoculars and following unfamiliar sounds.

Many species make unique sounds as they sing, chirp, hoot, screech or whistle. They vocalize like this for a variety of reasons – to attract a mate, defend a territory, alert other birds to threats, or to locate other individuals to form flocks or groups.

Songbirds, such as the tufted titmouse and northern cardinal, are the group that ornithologists associate most with complex songs. They tend to have multiple notes and patterns that change in pitch and speed, rather than simple one-note or two-note calls.

These birds have a unique voice box called the syrinx, which translates to “double flute” in Greek and allows them to create two sounds at once.

Birds learn their songs in multiple ways.

Songbirds are born with an innate “template,” which tells them the basics for the song to sing. But they also learn from listening to adults. Studies have found regional dialects of birds’ songs and evidence that some birds learn songs from their parents while still in the shell. Sometimes they learn songs from neighbors, who usually end up becoming competitors for territory.

Human activities can affect birdsong

Human behaviors can also affect how birds sing.

Studies have found that, in some instances, background noise can weaken territorial responses in males. And light pollution in suburban areas can prolong singing by up to an hour.

In 1962, scientist and conservationist Rachel Carson wrote the book “Silent Spring” after noticing how quiet the spring had become when the bird migration would normally be underway. The pesticide DDT had weakened egg shells, triggering a sharp decline in many bird populations. Many scholars and historians identify this book as leading to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Richard M. Nixon in 1970.

Getting started birding by ear

As you start learning bird songs, technology can come in handy. There are now dedicated apps, such as Cornell University’s Merlin, that can help you recognize bird songs as you are listening to them.

However, human abilities still outperform this technology, so use apps as a learning tool, not a crutch.

As humans, we have long depended on our ability to communicate with each other. I think we relate to birds because they are such vocal creatures too.

Learning their songs is a lifelong endeavor. Once you start tuning into the natural world, you’ll realize that there is something new waiting to be discovered.

Chris Lituma 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. Birding by ear: How to learn the songs of nature’s symphony with some simple techniques – https://theconversation.com/birding-by-ear-how-to-learn-the-songs-of-natures-symphony-with-some-simple-techniques-260874

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Chunrong Jia, Professor of Environmental Health, University of Memphis

Even before an Elon Musk-owned artificial intelligence company opened a data center in southwest Memphis, Tennessee, air pollution was so bad that residents of a nearby neighborhood were far more likely to get cancer from industrial air pollution than average Americans. Our analysis found that air pollution got only slightly worse as a result of the data center.

The xAI Supercluster began operations on Sept. 1, 2024, powered by natural gas turbines that began operating before the company applied for the required air pollution permits. As environmental health researchers at the University of Memphis, we were immediately concerned about the potential for the turbines to pollute the air even more and decided to investigate.

Combustion from natural gas turbines releases a complex mixture of pollutants, including fine and coarse particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and hazardous chemicals such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes. Each of these compounds has been linked to serious health consequences, such as respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, neurological effects, cancers and elevated mortality rates.

Southwest Memphis is home to predominantly Black people with low incomes. Local residents were concerned that the new data center would worsen long-standing problems of industrial pollution in their community, which includes levels of fine particulate matter, sometimes known as PM2.5, that have long been at or near the level the U.S. government says is the maximum allowable concentration.

There were, and still are, no permanent air-quality monitors operating in the neighborhoods of southwest Memphis that are closest to the xAI data center. So we developed an approach that combined several types of measurements and calculations to determine what air pollution was like in the area before the data center opened, and what, if anything, changed after it was up and running.

Examining multiple pictures

We focused on two neighborhoods: the Boxtown Subdivision, located 2½ miles (4 km) east of xAI, which is the community closest to the facility, and the Riverview Subdivision, 6.8 miles (11 km) northeast, a known air pollution hot spot near multiple industrial and traffic emissions sources.

To create a picture of local air quality, we looked at three elements. Using company-provided technical details about the turbines and information about how many were running at any one time, we examined how emissions move through the air in the local area. We looked at satellite data showing fine-particle pollution both before and after the turbines began operating. And we looked at data on current air pollution levels in Boxtown using a third-party company’s monitors on the ground.

The company reported to county health officials that the turbines would emit different amounts of 11 different pollutants, including 30 tons of sulfur dioxide and 94 tons per year of carbon monoxide. Using a computer model recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, we calculated how that pollution would spread across the neighborhoods.

Our calculations found that the xAI turbines would contribute minimally to ambient air pollution in both neighborhoods. We also calculated that concentrations of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide would remain well below national standards.

Fine particulate matter

The modeling estimated that fine particulate matter would increase about 1% – though that increase would come on top of a level of fine particulate matter pollution that was already higher than the national limit.

We released our initial findings, based on the computer modeling of company-reported emissions, in March 2025. Since then, our findings have been confirmed by additional research involving direct measurements of air quality in the area.

To examine whether the xAI turbines had, in fact, increased fine particulate matter concentrations, we compared satellite measurements from before and after Sept. 1, 2024. The comparison showed no significant changes.

In addition, an independent accredited lab conducted a two-day monitoring campaign in June 2025. Its findings confirmed that our model’s predictions for fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde aligned closely with observed concentrations.

Limitations remained, however: The lab’s monitoring techniques were not sensitive enough to detect trace levels of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes or sulfur dioxide. That makes it impossible to directly compare our model and real-world data for those pollutants.

A long-standing concern

Our analysis offers evidence that at least as of when we did our work, xAI’s natural gas turbines had not measurably degraded air quality in the surrounding neighborhoods. That said, any changes to the equipment used to generate power would likely change the data center’s emissions. And all our analyses assumed regular, normal turbine operations: Malfunctions or accidents can lead to emissions of excessive quantities of air pollutants until they are fixed or resolved.

Our findings confirmed that fine particulate matter has long been, and remains, a concern in the area. If we had access to sustained, community-based monitoring data, we could more clearly examine pollution levels and their public health effects in the community. We believe this type of monitoring by regulatory agencies and public health groups would be beneficial to the people of southwest Memphis, whether or not there is an xAI data center operating there.

Through our work, we aim to not only clarify the air pollution effects of a specific facility, but also highlight the importance of sustained scientific engagement in communities disproportionately affected by industrial emissions. By understanding and documenting the environmental health challenges faced by the residents of southwest Memphis, we hope to contribute to their ultimate mitigation.

Chunrong Jia received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Institutes of Health, and JPB Foundation.

Abu Mohammed Naser Titu receives funding from the National Institute of Health.

Namuun Batbaatar 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. Air quality analysis reveals minimal changes after xAI data center opens in pollution-burdened Memphis neighborhood – https://theconversation.com/air-quality-analysis-reveals-minimal-changes-after-xai-data-center-opens-in-pollution-burdened-memphis-neighborhood-265152

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Tammi Walker, Associate Professor of Law and Psychology, University of Arizona

Most Americans assume that schools are legally required to protect students from sexual harassment and assault under Title IX – the federal law enacted in 1972 that bans sexual discrimination in education.

I am a law professor and researcher who has spent more than a decade examining the disconnect between what Title IX promises on paper and what students expect it to deliver in practice. What’s happening now isn’t just another policy shift – it’s a dismantling of protections many assume still exist.

Title IX’s 37 words

The main text of Title IX is just 37 words and reads: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

This legal text doesn’t define sex or discrimination, or explain what kinds of behavior the act covers. For decades, the Department of Education filled in those gaps by writing detailed rules, providing guidance to schools and investigating when schools failed to comply.

In 2020, the Trump administration adopted much narrower rules. Colleges and universities have to act only when top officials – such as deans or Title IX coordinators – receive a report, and even then, their responses only have to avoid being “clearly unreasonable.”

In 2024, the Biden administration tried to widen those protections by requiring schools to step in whenever employees other than doctors and therapists learned of possible harassment, and to do so promptly and effectively. But in January 2025, a federal court blocked those rules before they could take effect.

Today those less protective 2020 rules remain in place, and the agency responsible for enforcing them is being dismantled.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Education to close. Legally, an executive order cannot abolish the department outright. That would require an act of Congress.

But the order has still reshaped the agency in practice by cutting staff and shuttering offices. The Office for Civil Rights, which handles Title IX and other discrimination complaints in schools, was especially hard hit. About 260 employees were laid off, and seven of its 12 regional offices were closed, even though more than 6,000 investigations were unresolved as of January.

A federal judge has since ordered those employees to be reinstated, with staff scheduled to return in phases through November 2025. It is not clear how these and other changes are going to affect how the office functions.

A system under strain

Beyond the headlines about layoffs, the deeper question is what happens when students turn to Title IX for protection.

The Heritage Foundation’s long-term vision provides a clue: Project 2025 proposes to move the Office of Civil Rights into the Department of Justice and limit its role to litigation of intentional discrimination cases.

While Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 on the campaign trail, his Cabinet includes authors of this policy blueprint. And in less than a year, the administration has moved forward with nearly half of Project 2025’s goals, including over 40% of the policies aimed at the Department of Education.

If the Department of Education can no longer resolve discrimination complaints within the agency, students will be left to pursue their claims directly in federal court. But the numbers show why that path cannot absorb the caseload.

In 2024, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights received 22,687 discrimination complaints, including nearly 12,000 related to Title IX. By comparison, federal courts in 2024 nationwide heard fewer than 1,000 education-related civil rights cases.

Federal courts are understaffed, and even if federal judges had the capacity to absorb 20 times more cases, most students simply cannot afford that path. Lawsuits demand lawyers, months of preparation and often years before any resolution.

The Office for Civil Rights offers something fundamentally different from going to court. It provides low-cost investigations, mediation that could resolve cases in weeks instead of years. Its settlements address not just individual harm but institutional failures.

Some cases drag on, but students do not need lawyers, and the OCR often secures broader reforms through negotiated settlements – from campuswide training programs to complete overhauls of complaint procedures.

The office also published policy guidance and answered more than 11,000 public inquiries in 2024, providing clarity for schools and students alike. These tools didn’t eliminate the backlog, but they showed that the OCR could deliver meaningful results without the cost and delay of court.

But this system is exactly what’s at risk if Project 2025’s vision becomes reality. If the OCR loses its authority to resolve complaints, students will lose the only clear path to quick, affordable results and reliable information.

What this means for students

For schools and their students, that shift away from federal agencies would be dramatic. It would mean no more negotiated agreements, no more policy guidance, and no administrative investigations into systemic issues. Courts would decide what Title IX means, forcing students to file expensive lawsuits that drag on for years and require much stronger evidence of discrimination than the Office of Civil Rights ever demanded.

The administration has offered an alternative: “return our students to the states,” as President Donald Trump put it on March 20, 2025, when he signed the executive order outlining his plan to close the Department of Education.

But states cannot fill the enforcement gap left by eliminating the Office for Civil Rights’ role in resolving complaints and guiding schools. The OCR had the infrastructure to investigate cases, mediate disputes and issue clear policy guidance – capacities that most states simply do not have.

State laws addressing sexual discrimination in education vary dramatically – some provide strong protections, while others offer only limited coverage or lack enforcement mechanisms altogether. Kansas, for example, has antidiscrimination laws that do not explicitly cover education, leaving it unclear whether any state agency can investigate student complaints.

And in half the country, LGBTQ+ students still lack explicit statutory protection. In practice, that means a student’s rights depend less on Title IX itself than on where they happen to go to school.

The problems run deeper than just inadequate alternatives. Even under the current system, protections are already narrow: Schools must act only if complaints reach officials with the power to make institutional changes. A report to a trusted coach, professor or resident assistant may lead nowhere. When schools do respond, the standard is remarkably low – acknowledging a complaint or opening a limited investigation often satisfies legal requirements.

These narrow protections are becoming even less reliable as transparency erodes. The Department of Education stopped updating its public list of investigations in January 2025 and only resumed in June, after months of silence. As of August 2025, just 10 resolutions involving sexual discrimination at colleges had been posted – and half predated Trump’s second inauguration. Without accurate information, students have little insight into whether schools are being held accountable at all.

The narrowing scope of federal protection

Title IX was written to ensure equal educational opportunity regardless of sex. But weak regulations, enforcement delays and shrinking federal oversight are steadily eroding that promise.

For students, the reality is stark: telling the wrong person about a complaint may trigger no response; minimal efforts by schools often satisfy legal requirements; and the federal agency once charged with oversight is being sidelined. If a litigation-only model takes hold, most students will have no realistic path to relief unless they can hire a lawyer and withstand years of court proceedings.

As I further explain in a new law review article – No Department, No Enforcement – Title IX remains law, but without meaningful enforcement it risks becoming a guarantee in name only. For students, that means rights promised but rarely delivered.

Tammi Walker previously received funding from the National Science Foundation.

– ref. Title IX’s effectiveness in addressing campus sexual assault is at risk − a law professor explains why – https://theconversation.com/title-ixs-effectiveness-in-addressing-campus-sexual-assault-is-at-risk-a-law-professor-explains-why-258125