Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Danielle Hass, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Marketing, West Virginia University

I was one of the millions of people who lost someone to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the nonstop news about the “new normal,” my grief felt invisible. I took shallow solace in my phone and turned to social media to numb me from the reality that I now lived in: a world without my dad.

One day, while mindlessly scrolling, I came across the r/Squishmallow subreddit, where a girl had posted her collection of more than 100 round plush toys. They were called Squishmallows – round stuffed animals invented in 2017 that have become one of the most popular toy lines in the world, with more than 100 million sold each year.

I was hypnotized. I expected that my dive into the Squishmallow phenomenon would be the usual two-hour rabbit hole, but spending time in that community was the first joy I’d felt in months.

After scrolling through endless photos of Squishmallow hauls, I worked up the courage to post. I asked if there was a cardinal Squishmallow, since that bird was my dad’s symbol for his own father. I was bombarded with compassion; even though cardinal Squishmallows were rare at the time, someone sent me theirs for free. That single act of generosity started my collection.

Stumbling into the Squishmallow world

But alongside kindness and joy, I encountered a darker side of the community: resellers. Finding the most coveted Squishmallows could turn into a fierce competition.

This wasn’t just my personal frustration. As a doctoral candidate in marketing, I wanted to understand how communities like this function when outsiders exploit their passion for profit. That became the focus of my dissertation — the first study to examine resellers’ psychological and emotional impact on brand communities.

That research – which my colleagues and I published in one of the field’s top journals – echoed what I had lived through as a collector: Resellers are one of the most consistent sources of pain for members of brand communities.

For example, when I heard that my local Hot Topic would be selling two Reshmas, the coveted strawberry cow Squishmallow, I, like any rational adult, found myself outside of a mall at 6:30 in the morning. When the doors finally opened at 11 a.m., I sprinted to the storefront – only to find that I had been beaten by some people who had dressed as mall employees to sneak in early. I left devastated and cowless.

Later that day, I saw the same people gloating in local Squishmallow Facebook groups, trying to resell the cow for more than 10 times the retail price. I was heartbroken and angry; I swore I’d never collect again. And I wasn’t the only one to feel that way: Across social media, you’ll find countless collectors venting about resellers.

What is a brand community?

I didn’t know it then, but I had joined my first brand community: a group of consumers who form strong, meaningful connections through their shared admiration of a product. Brand communities range from giant online hubs with more than 100,000 members to tiny local groups that host trading parties in empty lots.

You might be in a brand community without realizing it. These communities can be created by a company – like Harley-Davidson, Lego and Hot Wheels – or emerge organically from fans, like the Facebook group “Walt Disney World Tips and Tricks.”

And they aren’t just about buying and selling. They’re creative ecosystems, full of posts showing collections, inventive displays and even goodbye messages when someone “rehomes” an item to another loving collector. Community members help each other solve problems, share leads on hard-to-find items and sometimes even mail strangers a plush toy because they know it will make them smile.

But while collectors use these communities to exchange information, so do resellers.

The reseller paradox: A shared enemy can unite a community

Resellers are outsiders who buy the most sought-after items and flip them online for a profit. They scout inventory tips, track hot products and plan their shelf-clearing strategies accordingly. And they infuriate collectors like me. Nothing sours the thrill of the hunt faster than seeing a shelf cleared by someone who only wants to use your sacred collectibles for profit.

After feeling emotional pain myself, I wanted to understand why resellers bothered me so much, and what they meant for the communities that had become my lifeline. That frustration became the spark for my research. What I found surprised me.

As a collector, nothing frustrates me more than to say: According to my research, resellers paradoxically strengthen brand communities. Yes, you read that right. Resellers help communities, but not because they try to help members acquire their desired items. In fact, my findings indicate that resellers inflict heartbreak on community members – which was in line with what I saw and experienced.

Resellers help brand communities because they create a common enemy that the community can rally against. When resellers grab all the stock from a store shelf, collectors turn to each other. They vent. They strategize. They share tips on where to find certain items, offer to pick up extras for strangers and organize trades to help each other avoid inflated resale prices. Ironically, the people causing the most frustration also increase community engagement.

Brand communities are real communities

These communities reminded me that you are never truly alone in your darkest moments. Joining a niche community, whether for sneakers, trading cards, cars or even Squishmallows, can enrich your life far beyond the products themselves. It wasn’t the Squishmallows that helped me heal from loss; it was the connection that lived in threads, comments and group chats.

I even came to appreciate the “villains” of the community – resellers – for their role in bringing people together. Although I still think I deserve that strawberry cow more than they did.

Danielle Hass 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 Squishmallow collecting helped me cope with grief, make new enemies and find ‘villains’ worth studying – https://theconversation.com/how-squishmallow-collecting-helped-me-cope-with-grief-make-new-enemies-and-find-villains-worth-studying-264569

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Edward Avery-Natale, Professor of Sociology, Mercer County Community College

While New York City is commonly considered the birthplace of American punk rock, just 100 miles south of the famous CBGB club where the Ramones and other early punk bands got their start is Philadelphia, which has had its own vibrant punk rock scene since at least 1974 – and it has persisted through the present day.

I am a professor of sociology at Mercer County Community College in New Jersey, lead editor of a forthcoming edited volume titled “Being and Punk,” and author of the 2016 book “Ethics, Politics, and Anarcho-Punk Identifications: Punk and Anarchy in Philadelphia.”

I’ve been a fan of punk rock music since I was 15 years old and have been an active member of punk scenes in Philadelphia and Fargo, North Dakota. I still attend punk shows and participate in the scene whenever I can.

Though the “birth” of punk is always a contentious subject, it is fair to say that, with the Ramones forming in 1974 and releasing the “Blitzkrieg Bop” single in February 1976 in the U.S., and the Sex Pistols performing their first show in November 1975 in the U.K., punk is at least 50 years old.

Given this milestone, I believe it’s worth looking back at the heyday of the anarchist-inflected punk scene in Philly in the 1990s and 2000s, and how the political ideology and activism – encouraging opposition to capitalism, government, hierarchy and more – is still influential today.

‘Not your typical rebellion’

In Philadelphia, and especially in West Philly, a number of collectively organized squats, houses and venues hosted shows, political events and parties, along with serving as housing for punks, in the 1990s and 2000s. In some cases, the housing itself was a form of protest – squatting in abandoned buildings and living cooperatively was often seen as a political action.

There was the Cabbage Collective booking shows at the Calvary Church at 48th and Baltimore Avenue. Stalag 13 near 39th and Lancaster Avenue is where the famous Refused played one of their final shows, and The Killtime right next door is where Saves the Day played in 1999 before becoming famous. The First Unitarian Church, an actual church in Center City, still regularly puts on shows in its basement.

These largely underground venues became central to the Philadelphia punk scene, which had previously lacked midsized spaces for lesser known bands.

Many Philly punks during this era mixed music subculture with social activism. As one anarcho-punk – a subgenre of punk rock that emphasizes leftist, anarchist and socialist ideals – I interviewed for my book told me:

“My mom … said, ‘I thought you were going to grow out of it. I didn’t understand it, and your dad and I were like, ‘What are we doing? She’s going out to these shows! She’s drinking beer!’ But then we’d be like, ‘She’s waking up the next morning to help deliver groceries to old people and organize feminist film screenings!’ We don’t know what to do, we don’t know how to deal with this; it’s not your typical rebellion.’”

This quote captures the complex and ambiguous rebellion at the heart of anarcho-punk. On the one hand, it is a form of rebellion, often beginning in one’s teenage years, that contains the familiar trappings of youth subcultures: drug and alcohol consumption, loud music and unusual clothing, hairstyles, tattoos and piercings.

However, unlike other forms of teenage rebellion, anarcho-punks also seek to change the world through both personal and political activities. On the personal level, and as I showed in my book, many become vegan or vegetarian and seek to avoid corporate consumerism.

“I do pride myself on trying to not buy from sweatshops, trying to keep my support of corporations to a minimum, though I’ve loosened up over the years,” another interviewee, who was also vegan, said. “You’ll drive yourself crazy if you try to avoid it entirely, unless you … go live with [British punk band] Crass on an anarcho-commune.”

Love and rage in the war against war

Philly’s punk activists of that era spread their anarchist ideals through word and deed.

Bands like R.A.M.B.O., Mischief Brew, Flag of Democracy, Dissucks, Kill the Man Who Questions, Limp Wrist, Paint it Black, Ink and Dagger, Kid Dynamite, Affirmative Action Jackson and The Great Clearing Off, The Sound of Failure, and countless others, sang about war, capitalism, racism and police violence.

For example, on its 2006 single “War-Coma,” Witch Hunt reflected on the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, laying blame on voters, government and religion:

24 years old went away to war / High expectations of what the future holds / Wore the uniform with pride a rifle at hand / Bringing democracy to a far away land / Pregnant wife at home awaiting his return / Dependent on faith, will she ever learn? / Ignore the consequences have faith in the Lord / Ignorance is bliss until reality sets in / Never wake up again

During live performances, bands would commonly discuss what the songs were about. And at merchandise tables, they sold T-shirts and records along with zines, books, patches and pins, all of which commonly contained political images or slogans.

Some bands became meta-critics of the punk scene itself, encouraging listeners to recognize that punk is about more than music.

In “Preaching to the Converted,” Kill The Man Who Questions critiqued the complaints bands would receive for becoming too preachy at shows:

“Unity” the battle cry / Youth enraged but don’t ask why / They just want it fast and loud, with nothing real to talk about / 18 hours in a dying van / Proud to be your background band.

In West Philadelphia, punks also staffed the local food cooperative and organized activist spaces – like the former A-Space on Baltimore Avenue and LAVA Zone on Lancaster Avenue where groups such as Food Not Bombs and Books Through Bars, among others, would operate. I personally organized a weekend gathering of the Northeastern Anarchist Network at LAVA in 2010.

Punks raised money for charities and showed up to local protests against capitalist globalization and countless other causes. At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 2000, black-clad punks whose faces were hidden behind masks marched in the streets along with an enormous cadre of local community organizations.

Punk not dead in Philly

Since punk’s earliest days, people have bemoaned that “punk is dead.”

In Philadelphia, I’ve seen how the anarcho-punk scene of the 1990s and 2000s has changed, but also how it continues to influence local bands and the values of punk rock broadly.

Many former and current members of the Philly anarcho-punk scene are still activists in various personal and professional ways. Among those I interviewed between 2006 and 2012 were social workers, labor organizers, teachers and professors, and school and drug counselors. For many, their professional lives were influenced by the anarchist ethics they had developed within the punk rock scene.

And many local punks showed up at the Occupy Philly camp and protests outside City Hall in 2011, and later marched in the streets during Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd and killing of Breonna Taylor in 2020. They also participated in the homeless encampment on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, also in 2020. And local punks I know continue to participate in grassroots campaigns like Decarcerate PA.

Anarchism and punk rock open up avenues for disaffected youth – in Philadelphia or anywhere else – to dream of a world without capitalism, coercive authorities, police and all forms of injustice.

In the words of R.A.M.B.O., one of the better known hardcore punk bands of the era and who released their latest Defy Extinction album in 2022: “If I can dream it, then why should I try for anything else?”

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter.

Edward Avery-Natale 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 Philly anarcho-punks blended music, noise and social justice in the 1990s and 2000s – https://theconversation.com/how-philly-anarcho-punks-blended-music-noise-and-social-justice-in-the-1990s-and-2000s-264178

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Assistant Professor of History and Interdisciplinary Studies, Kennesaw State University

On Sept. 3, 2025, Florida announced its plans to be the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates for its citizens, including those for children to attend school.

Current Florida law and the state’s Department of Health require that children who attend day care or public school be immunized for polio, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis and other communicable diseases. Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general and a professor of medicine at the University of Florida, has stated that “every last one” of these decades-old vaccine requirements “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

As experts on the history of American medicine and vaccine law and policy, we took immediate note of Ladapo’s use of the word “slavery.”

There is certainly a complicated history of race and vaccines in the United States. But, in our view, invoking slavery as a way to justify the elimination of vaccines and vaccine mandates will accelerate mistrust and present a major threat to public health, especially given existing racial health disparities. It also erases Black Americans’ key work in centuries of American public health initiatives, including vaccination campaigns.

What’s clear: Vaccines and mandates save human lives

Evidence and data show that vaccines work, as do mandates, in keeping Americans healthy. The World Health Organization reported in a landmark 2024 study that vaccines have saved more than 154 million lives globally in just the past 50 years.

In the United States, vaccines for children are one of the top public health achievements of the 20th century. Rates of eight of the most common vaccine-preventable diseases in school-age children dropped by 97% or more from pre-vaccine levels, preventing an estimated 1,129,000 deaths and resulting in direct savings of US$540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion.

History of vaccine mandates in the United States

Vaccine mandates in the United States date to the Colonial period and have a complex history. George Washington required his troops be inoculated, the predecessor of vaccination, against smallpox during the American Revolution.

To prevent outbreaks of this debilitating, disfiguring and deadly disease, state and local governments implemented smallpox inoculation and vaccination campaigns into the early 1900s. They targeted various groups, including enslaved people, immigrants, people living in tenement and other crowded housing conditions, manual laborers and others, forcibly vaccinating those who could not provide proof of prior vaccination.

Although religious exemptions were not recognized by law until the 1960s, some resisted these vaccination campaigns from the beginning, and 19th-century anti-vaccination societies urged the rollback of state laws requiring vaccination.

By the turn of the 20th century, however, the U.S. Supreme Court also began to intervene in matters of public health and vaccination. The court ultimately upheld vaccine mandates in Jacobson v. Massachusetts in 1905, in an effort to strike a balance between individual rights with the need to protect the public’s health. In Zucht v. King in 1922, the court also ruled in favor of vaccine mandates, this time for school attendance.

Vaccine mandates expanded by the middle of the 20th century to include vaccines for many dangerous childhood diseases, such as polio, measles, rubella and pertussis. When Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine became available, families waited in long lines for hours to receive it, hoping to prevent their children from having to experience paralysis or life in an iron lung.

Scientific studies in the 1970s demonstrated that state declines in measles cases were correlated with enforcement of school vaccine mandates. The federal Childhood Immunization Initiative launched in the late 1970s helped educate the public on the importance of vaccines and encouraged enforcement. All states had mandatory vaccine requirements for public school entry by 1980, and data over the past several decades continues to demonstrate the importance of these laws for public health.

Most parents also continue to support school mandates. A survey conducted in July and August 2025 by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 81% of parents support laws requiring vaccines for school.

Black Americans’ long fight for public health equity

Despite the proven success of vaccines and the importance of vaccine mandates in maintaining high vaccination rates, there is a vocal anti-vaccine minority in the U.S. that has gained traction since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Misinformation proliferates both online and off. Some of the misinformation originates in the historical realities of vaccines and social policy in the United States.

When Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, invoked the term “slavery” to refer to vaccine mandates, he may have been referring to the history of racism in the medical field, such as the U.S. Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. The study, which started in 1932 and spanned four decades, involved hundreds of Black men who were recruited without their knowledge or consent so that researchers could study the effects of untreated syphilis. Investigators misled the participants about the nature of the study and actively withheld treatment – including penicillin, which became the standard therapy in the late 1940s – in order to study the effects of untreated syphilis on the men’s bodies.

Today, the study is remembered as one of the most egregious instances of racism and unethical experimentation in American medicine. Its participants had enrolled in the study because it was advertised as a chance to receive expert medical care but, instead, were subjected to lies and painful “treatments.”

Despite these experiences in the medical system, Black Americans have long advocated for better health care, connecting it to the larger struggle for racial equality.

Vaccination is no exception. Despite the fact that they were often the subject of forced innoculation, enslaved people helped to lead the first American public health initiatives around epidemic disease. Historians’ research on smallpox and slavery, for example, has found that inoculation was widely accepted and practiced by West Africans by the early 1700s, and that enslaved people brought the practice to the Colonies.

Although his role is often downplayed, an African man known as Onesimus introduced his enslaver Cotton Mather to inoculation.

Throughout the next century, enslaved people often continued to inoculate each other to prevent smallpox outbreaks, and enslaved and free people of African descent played critical roles in keeping their own communities as healthy as possible in the face of violence, racism and brutality. The modern Civil Rights Movement explicitly drew on this history and centered health equity for Black Americans as one of its key tenets, including working to provide access to vaccines for preventable diseases.

In our view, Ladapo’s reference to vaccines as “slavery” ignores this important and nuanced history, especially Black Americans’ role in the history of preventing communicable disease with vaccines.

Lessons to learn from Tuskegee

Ladapo’s word choice also runs the risk of perpetuating the rightful mistrust that continues to exist in communities of color about vaccines and the American health system more broadly. Studies show that lingering effects of Tuskegee and other instances of medical racism have had real consequences for the health and vaccination rates of Black Americans.

A large body of evidence shows the existence of persistent health disparities for Black people in the United States compared with their white counterparts, leading to shorter lifespans, higher rates of maternal and infant mortality and higher rates of communicable and chronic diseases, with worse outcomes.

Eliminating vaccine mandates in Florida and expanding exemptions in other states will continue to widen these already existing disparities that stem from past public health wrongs.

There is an opportunity here, however, for health officials, not just in Florida but across the nation, to work together to learn from the past in making American public health better for everyone.

Rather than weakening vaccine mandates, national, state and local public health guidance can focus on expanding access and communicating trustworthy information about vaccines for all Americans. Policymakers can acknowledge the complicated history of vaccines, public health and race, while also recognizing how advancements in science and medicine have given us the opportunity to eradicate many of these diseases in the United States today.

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. Vaccine mandates misinformation: 2 experts explain the true role of slavery and racism in the history of public health policy – and the growing threat ignorance poses today – https://theconversation.com/vaccine-mandates-misinformation-2-experts-explain-the-true-role-of-slavery-and-racism-in-the-history-of-public-health-policy-and-the-growing-threat-ignorance-poses-today-265175

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Wayne Unger, Associate Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has sparked a wave of political commentary.

There were the respectful and sincere comments condemning the killing. Former President Barack Obama said, “What happened was a tragedy and … I mourn for him and his family.” And former Vice President Mike Pence said, “I’m heartsick about what happened to him.”

But Kirk’s killing also elicited what many saw as inappropriate comments. MSNBC terminated commentator Matthew Dowd after he said, “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” American Airlines grounded pilots accused of celebrating Kirk’s death.

Perhaps the most notable reaction to remarks seen as controversial about the Kirk killing hit ABC comedian Jimmy Kimmel. His network suspended him indefinitely after comments that he made about the alleged shooter in Kirk’s death.

Countless defenders of Kimmel quickly responded to his indefinite suspension as an attack on the First Amendment. MSNBC host Chris Hayes posted the following on X: “This is the most straightforward attack on free speech from state actors I’ve ever seen in my life and it’s not even close.”

But is it?

Free speech? It depends

The First Amendment limits government officials from infringing one’s right to free speech and expression.

For example, the government cannot force someone to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the American flag, because the First Amendment, as one Supreme Court justice wrote, “includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.”

And government cannot limit speech that it finds disagreeable while permitting other speech that it favors.

However, the First Amendment does not apply to private employers. With the exception of the 13th Amendment, which generally prohibits slavery, the Constitution applies only to government and those acting on its behalf.

So, as a general rule, employers are free to discipline employees for their speech – even the employees’ speech outside of the workplace. In this way, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham correctly said on X, “Free speech doesn’t prevent you from being fired if you’re stupid and have poor judgment.”

This is why Amy Cooper’s employer, an investment firm, was free to terminate her following her 2020 verbal dispute in New York’s Central Park with a bird-watcher over her unleashed dog. She called the police, falsely claiming that the bird-watcher, a Black man, was threatening her life. The incident, captured on video, went viral and Cooper was fired, with her employer saying, “We do not condone racism of any kind.”

This is also why ABC was able to fire Roseanne Barr from the revival of her show, “Roseanne,” after she posted a tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a Black woman who had been a top aide to President Obama, that many viewed as racist.

But as a scholar of constitutional law, I believe Kimmel’s situation is not as straightforward.

Threat complicates things

Neither Cooper’s employer nor Barr’s employer faced any government pressure to terminate them.

Kimmel’s indefinite suspension followed a vague threat from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr. As complaints about Kimmel’s statement exploded in conservative media, Carr suggested in a podcast interview that Kimmel’s statements could lead to the FCC revoking ABC affiliate stations’ licenses.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said.

But the Supreme Court has been crystal clear. Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.

In a 2024 case, National Rifle Association v. Vullo, a unanimous Supreme Court plainly said that the government’s threat of invoking legal sanctions and other coercion to suppress speech it doesn’t like violates the First Amendment. That principle is so profound and fundamental that it got support from every member of an often bitterly divided court.

A threat to revoke broadcast licenses would almost certainly be seen in a court of law as a government action tantamount to coercion. And Carr’s public comments undoubtedly connect that threat to Kimmel’s disfavored comments.

If the FCC had indeed moved to strip ABC affiliates of their licenses to broadcast because of what Kimmel said, ABC and its parent company, Disney, could have sued the FCC to block the license revocations on First Amendment grounds, citing the NRA v. Vullo case.

But the network seemingly caved to the coercive threat instead of fighting for Kimmel. This is why so many are decrying the Kimmel suspension as an attack on free speech and the First Amendment – even though they might not fully understand the law they’re citing.

Wayne Unger 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 Jimmy Kimmel’s First Amendment rights weren’t violated – but ABC’s would be protected if it stood up to the FCC and Trump – https://theconversation.com/why-jimmy-kimmels-first-amendment-rights-werent-violated-but-abcs-would-be-protected-if-it-stood-up-to-the-fcc-and-trump-265703

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

Before the United States began vaccinating all infants at birth with the hepatitis B vaccine in 1991, around 18,000 children every year contracted the virus before their 10th birthday – about half of them at birth. About 90% of that subset developed a chronic infection.

In the U.S., 1 in 4 children chronically infected with hepatitis B will die prematurely from cirrhosis or liver cancer.

Today, fewer than 1,000 U.S. children or adolescents contract the virus every year – a 95% drop. Fewer than 20 babies are reported infected at birth.

I am a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist who studies vaccine delivery and policy. Vaccinating babies for hepatitis B at birth remains one of the clearest, most evidence-based ways to keep American children free of this lifelong, deadly infection.

On Sept. 18, 2025, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an independent panel of experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, debated changing the recommendation. According to the proposed language of the vote, infants whose mothers test positive for hepatitis B would still receive the vaccine at birth. Infants whose mothers do not test positive for hepatitis B would get the vaccine at 1 month of age, though parents would have the choice for them to receive it earlier. On Sept. 19, however, the committee tabled the vote, delaying it to the next committee meeting, scheduled for Oct. 22-23.

Although such a proposed change sounds small, it is not based on any new evidence. It would undo more than three decades of a prevention strategy that has nearly eliminated early childhood hepatitis B in the U.S.

While the committee regularly reviews vaccine guidance, nothing is business as usual about this meeting. In June 2025, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disbanded the entire committee and handpicked new members. The committee has long-standing procedures to evaluate the evidence supporting the risks and benefits of a given vaccine, as well as other parameters of its use. But in this case, these procedures are not being followed.

Why the CDC adopted universal hepatitis B shots

Hepatitis B is a virus that infects liver cells, causing inflammation and damage. In adults, it is spread through blood and bodily fluids, which can happen through unprotected sex, contaminated needles or contact with open cuts or sores of someone who is carrying it.

The hepatitis B vaccine has been available since the early 1980s. Before 1991, public health guidance recommended giving newborns and young children the hepatitis B vaccine only if they were at high risk of being infected – for example, if they were born to a mother infected with hepatitis B or living in a household with someone known to have hepatitis B.

That targeted plan failed. Tens of thousands of children were still infected each year.

Some newborns were exposed when their mothers weren’t properly screened or if their mothers got infected late in pregnancy. Children also became infected through household contacts or in child care settings by exposures as ordinary as shared toothbrushes or a bite that breaks the skin. Because hepatitis B can survive for a week on household surfaces, and many carriers are unaware they are infected, even babies and toddlers of uninfected mothers remained at risk.

Recognizing these gaps, in 1991 the CDC recommended hepatitis B vaccination for every child starting at birth, regardless of maternal risk.

Vaccinating at birth

The greatest danger for infants contracting hepatitis B is at birth, when contact with a mother’s blood can transmit the virus. Without preventive treatment or vaccination, 70% to 90% of infants born to infected mothers will become infected themselves, and 90% of those infections will become chronic. The infection in these children silently damages their liver, potentially leading to liver cancer and death.

About 80% of parents choose to follow the CDC’s guidance and vaccinate their babies at birth. If the CDC’s recommendations change to delaying the first dose to 1 month old, it would leave babies unprotected during this most vulnerable window, when infection is most likely to lead to chronic infection and silently damage the liver.

The hepatitis B vaccines used in the U.S. have an outstanding safety record. The only confirmed risk is an allergic reaction called anaphylaxis that occurs in roughly 1 in 600,000 doses, and no child has died from such a reaction. Extensive studies show no link to other serious conditions.

The current recommendations are designed to protect every child, including those who slip through gaps in maternal screening or encounter the virus in everyday life. A reversion to the ineffective risk-based approach threatens to erode this critical safety net.

David Higgins is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and volunteer board member for Immunize Colorado.

– ref. Hepatitis B shot for newborns has nearly eliminated childhood infections with this virus in the US – https://theconversation.com/hepatitis-b-shot-for-newborns-has-nearly-eliminated-childhood-infections-with-this-virus-in-the-us-265560

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Julia R. Azari, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Marquette University

In a classic work on the modern presidency originally published in 1960, political scientist Richard Neustadt wrote that the American public “expects the man in the White House to do something about everything.”

These expectations, Neustadt argued, far exceeded the president’s ability to actually control outcomes.

More recently, political journalist John Dickerson, author of “The Hardest Job in the World,” noted that presidents typically have people demanding that they pay attention to about 250 problems at one time. But, quoting a productivity expert, Dickerson points out that priorities are like arms: “If you have more than two, you’re either crazy or lying.” The implication: Presidents have to shed 248 of those pressing concerns.

I study the American presidency. The research in the field, including my own, suggests that typically the politics of presidential attention is driven by two considerations.

The first comes down to delegation: As Barack Obama was fond of saying, no easy problem gets to the president’s desk. Presidents typically focus on the problems that no one else – not state or local governments, the bureaucracy or Cabinet secretaries – can deal with.

The other consideration is whether the issue is a winning one. Neustadt emphasizes this in his study of presidential power: Presidents enhance their reputations by winning conflicts, not losing them.

There are also plenty of examples of presidents wading into highly conflicted areas and alienating supporters or suffering policy defeats, including George W. Bush’s unsuccessful attempts to tackle the “third rail” of Social Security reform, and Bill Clinton’s failed efforts to enact health care reform.

As a result, presidents are typically expected to be focused on national security, economic management and other key issues that have to be handled at the national level. They are expected to only sparingly wage battles of will with leaders outside government – in the arts, business or education – and with state-level politicians who lie outside the president’s direct control.

Amid the many other ways he’s departed from American political tradition, President Donald Trump has turned these assumptions upside down. That has important implications for how Americans understand the scope and reach of presidential power.

Like most aspects of American politics, the presidency has become more defined by partisan politics over time. Trump has taken this evolution to a new level, rejecting the traditional role of statesman or a spokesperson for the whole nation.

Instead, he has adopted the role of partisan political warrior – and that means he is using the power of his office in areas and in ways previously considered off-limits to the president.

Hosting, decorating and critiquing clothing ads

Recently, President Trump reported that he might host the Kennedy Center Honors in December. He also reportedly had a strong hand in choosing the center’s honorees, a task normally undertaken over months and with public input.

He’s also been heavily involved in the redecoration of the White House, waged war on wind turbines and posted online about the controversy over actress Sydney Sweeney’s ad for American Eagle jeans.

His administration has issued detailed demands of numerous universities, wading directly into curriculum, personnel policies and the frequent target of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. While much of this effort has gone through the Department of Education, the president himself has issued executive orders and posted online about specific universities.

Traditionally, presidents have been especially hesitant to dive into areas where education intersected with difficult cultural conflicts. One of the most significant examples is the way that presidents reacted, from the 1950s through the 1970s, to Supreme Court orders mandating school desegregation.

To put it bluntly, presidents did not want to face the political dilemmas associated with enforcing the court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

As I note in my book “Backlash Presidents,” presidents are rarely eager to upend the racial status quo, even when they recognize its injustice.

Dwight Eisenhower, who was president when the Supreme Court issued the Brown decision, felt the decision placed new strain on the federal government to get involved in social relations and local issues. The feeling was bipartisan; Eisenhower’s presidential successor, Democrat John F. Kennedy, didn’t want to take a lead role in enforcing desegregation either.

Both, at different times, did eventually use federal force and power to uphold the law. Eisenhower mobilized the National Guard to protect Black students integrating a Little Rock, Arkansas, high school in 1957, and Kennedy in 1963 took similar action to protect Black students integrating schools in Alabama.

But federalism, which divides powers between national and state government, provided presidents with a strategically useful barrier to any further presidential action, allowing the two presidents to say that they were treading carefully because education was up to the states.

Obviously, this was a different time and context – the Department of Education didn’t exist yet, so there was not a clearly defined federal role in public education. But it represents an example of how presidents have typically looked to use structures such as federalism to leave tough issues to others and avoid political fallout.

It’s personal with Trump

Focusing attention on foreign policy and national security is less likely to stoke opposition. Those are areas where presidents have more latitude and can expand their power even more.

Presidents have traditionally not engaged in direct conflict with individual governors, industry leaders or university presidents if they can help it. They’ve engaged in policy battles, but generally not personal ones.

Trump’s approach has been very different.

With Department of Justice investigations and public criticism, his administration has targeted specific law firms and individuals whom Trump dislikes. The president has issued executive orders about the “forced use” of paper straws.

Is Trump’s attention on the personal a problem for the nation?

Presidents have been challenged for being too focused on minor issues and details, including Jimmy Carter, whose attention to things such as the schedule of the White House tennis courts drew scorn from critics.

Some presidents have been criticized as too quick to delegate to others, as was Ronald Reagan, who was seen as inattentive to important details. George W. Bush likewise was knocked for delegating too much, especially in crucial areas of foreign policy and intelligence.

Diving deeply into partisan politics

But Trump’s shifting of presidential priorities signals a much deeper political change.

First, some of these actions have also been directly related to cultural conflict – the fights with universities over DEI polices, commenting on the Sydney Sweeney ad.

Trump is hardly the first president to elevate a hot-button cultural issue for political gain – George W. Bush famously promoted a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage leading into his 2004 reelection campaign.

But presidents have traditionally seen more costs than benefits associated with campus speech issues or race questions that could be handled elsewhere.

A February 2025 article in The Root, whose motto is “Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude,” points to “five ridiculously petty actions” from the administration. All are related to race or LGBTQ symbols or visuals, such as the removal of references to LGBTQ Americans from government websites and the removal of a Spanish-language version of the White House website.

Another related aspect of the logic behind this shift in presidential attention is that the political constraints that limited past administrations, such as fear of alienating voters or stirring controversy, do not seem to concern this one. It suggests that the president and his team are not worried about the opinions of people who might disagree with their cultural stances.

This change also represents a departure from the more traditional statesmanship version of the presidency. The Trump administration and the president who heads it have chosen to dive deeply into, rather than rise above, politics.

Julia R. Azari has received (in the past) funding from the Truman Library Institute, the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

– ref. The president as partisan warrior: Trump’s rejection of traditional presidential statesmanship – https://theconversation.com/the-president-as-partisan-warrior-trumps-rejection-of-traditional-presidential-statesmanship-262867

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Graham Wright, Associate Research Scientist, Maurice & Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University

It’s been nearly two years since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the subsequent start of the Israel-Hamas war – and still, antisemitism shows no sign of abating as one of the thorniest issues at American colleges and universities.

University administrators have responded in various ways to Jewish students’ reports of harassment and discrimination during and after pro-Palestinian protests in 2024 and 2025.

Some schools, such as Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, have banned student organizations associated with the protests, expelled student protesters and instituted anti-bias training programs on antisemitism.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, launched a task force to combat antisemitism at 10 universities, including Harvard and Columbia. It has also withheld federal funding from a range of universities on the grounds of their alleged inaction over antisemitism.

These efforts have often been as controversial as the problem they’re trying to solve.

Critics have accused university administrators of violating academic freedom and penalizing legitimate political protests.

And federal judges have pushed back against – and in some cases blocked – the Trump administration from withholding federal funding to schools, echoing calls from commentators and many American Jews that concerns about antisemitism are merely a pretext for punishing political opponents.

Since the Oct. 7 attack occurred, my team at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University has been trying to understand how antisemitism looks and is changing on campuses.

Our findings show antisemitic ideas are not necessarily widespread among university students or faculty in the U.S. But that doesn’t mean antisemitism is not a serious problem, since just a few students or faculty members with extreme views can shape an entire campus’s climate.

Studying antisemitism on campus

We first surveyed about 2,000 Jewish college students in December 2023 at about 50 schools with large Jewish populations.

We surveyed those same Jewish students again in the spring of 2024, while also conducting in-depth interviews with students and Jewish campus professionals about their experiences with antisemitism on campus.

During this same time period, we also conducted a survey of over 4,000 mostly non-Jewish students at these same schools.

In the spring of 2025, we conducted a survey of over 2,000 faculty members at 146 research-intensive universities, often called R1.

Here are some of our most important findings.

1. Antisemitism isn’t just about harassment

Our December 2023 survey found that the majority of Jewish students said there was a hostile environment toward Jews on their campus. This hostility was much more prevalent at some schools than others.

Students reported personal experiences of antisemitic harassment – especially on social media. But they also said they feel shunned or excluded from campus life. Jewish students at schools with higher reported levels of hostility were also less likely to say that they fully “belong” on their campus.

In our 2024 interviews, Jewish students reported being told by peers that they could no longer be friends due to their – real or perceived – support for Israel. They also said that their non-Jewish peers were actively avoiding them.

As one Jewish student put it, “No one wants to have a conversation with Jews right now.”

The majority of Jewish students who identify as politically liberal were especially likely to feel alienated and isolated. They were also especially likely to feel estranged from other liberals on campus.

Jewish students we interviewed also reported being shunned by friends who were critical of Israel, regardless of their own views on the actions of the Israeli government.

Multiple other studies have found that non-Jewish students reported they would not want to be friends with anyone who supports Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

2. Some Israel comments cross the line

Our research also shows that when it comes to debates about what is or is not antisemitic, Jewish students see a clear distinction between criticizing the actions of Israel’s government and denying Israel’s right to exist.

When we spoke to Jewish students in 2023 and 2024, we found the vast majority felt that denying Israel’s right to exist was antisemitic. But there was no similar consensus around other statements, such as accusing Israel of committing genocide.

3. Small groups drive antisemitism on campus

Our research also found that about 34% of non-Jewish undergraduates, and about 10% of non-Jewish faculty held views about Jews or Israel that most Jewish students find antisemitic.

About half the people in these groups expressed hostile views about Israel, such as denying that it has a right to exist and refusing to be friends with anyone who thinks differently.

The other half were less likely to express these extreme views on Israel but tended to agree with explicitly anti-Jewish statements such as “Jews in America have too much power.”

In contrast, two-thirds of non-Jewish students and about 90% of non-Jewish faculty did not hold views that Jewish students tend to see as antisemitic, even if they expressed deep criticism of Israel’s government.

4. Israel debates are relatively rare in class

Despite frequent news headlines about classroom discussions or protests related to the Israeli-Hamas war, 76% of faculty said that in the 2024-25 academic year the issue simply never came up in their class.

Other contentious topics such as climate change or racism in America were much more likely to be taught about or discussed in the classroom.

Responding to antisemitism

In our interviews, many Jewish undergraduates said they wanted their campus administrators to do more to address antisemitism. But some said that heavy-handed actions such as banning pro-Palestinian groups sometimes made things worse by further inflaming campus tensions and prompting criticism that Jewish students were receiving special treatment.

Similar concerns have been raised about the federal government’s approach, which, in the name of fighting antisemitism, has been focused on punishing entire schools and researchers in a wide variety of disciplines that have nothing to do with Jews or Israel, by withholding billions in federal funding.

The government has also initiated civil rights investigations and revoked visas for international students at some schools.

This approach, in my opinion, has the potential to alienate potential allies on and off campus, including faculty and students who oppose antisemitism in all its forms but are being harmed all the same by federal actions. Penalizing people in the name of helping Jewish students could also reinforce antisemitic stereotypes about oppressive Jewish power.

I think that healing Jewish students’ feelings of isolation and ostracism requires building, or rebuilding, social connections across ideological and religious lines. If university administrators, or the federal government, really want to help Jewish students, they should focus on bringing students together rather than driving them apart.

Graham Wright works for the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University

– ref. Antisemitism on campus is a real problem − but headlines and government-proposed solutions don’t match the experience of most Jewish students – https://theconversation.com/antisemitism-on-campus-is-a-real-problem-but-headlines-and-government-proposed-solutions-dont-match-the-experience-of-most-jewish-students-265041

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Arie Perliger, Director of Security Studies and Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass Lowell

When people think about online misogyny, they probably envision forums and video game chat rooms filled with young men using lewd language, promoting sexist stereotypes and longing for the good old days when women “knew” their place. Arguably the most popular anti-feminist content today, though, is produced by women: tradwives.

The term “tradwife” is an abbreviation of “traditional wife” – often portrayed on these platforms as a white, married, stay-at-home mother. Since the mid-2000s, tradwives have developed a substantial online presence and following, introducing their lifestyle and views to masses of women.

Many viewers are introduced to tradwife content through videos on cooking or decorating – posts that could appeal to a wide audience. But at the core of the tradwives movement are more divisive beliefs: that women are meant to “submit” to their husband’s leadership, for example, or are not meant to work outside the home.

We define misogyny as hatred, prejudice or hostility directed toward women as a group. Many tradwives argue that their lifestyle empowers women to fulfill their true role. Yet some content in the tradwife landscape is indeed rooted in misogynistic beliefs that women are, in some ways, less capable than men. And much more “trad” content is directly opposed to feminist ideas, such the importance of women’s economic independence and sexual freedom.

A growing number of academics and news reports have highlighted tradwives’ growing cultural influence. There’s been less attention, however, on one of the most prominent features distinguishing them from other misogynist online movements: the role of religious beliefs.

As researchers of extremism, we have been working on a new book about the contemporary landscape of misogyny, examining movements such as “incels” and “men’s rights” activists, as well as chauvinist far-right groups such as the Proud Boys.

As part of our research, we analyzed hundreds of tradwife social media posts, videos and blogs. We assert that tradwife culture is not just aiming to restore “traditional” gender roles. It is also an important force in formulating a new model of womanhood: one that incorporates strong religious identity, a specific feminine aesthetic, and far-right ideas.

Filtered femininity

Tradwives create content that fuses what they call “traditional” and “feminine” lifestyles. Specifically, they tend to emphasize the importance of a wife’s submissiveness to her husband, immersion in conservative Christian values, and support for causes such as anti-abortion advocacy. Yet “tradwife’ content spans a broad spectrum: Some influencers focus on relatively apolitical topics like baking and parenting, while others combine those with more ideologically charged content.

In addition, tradwives stress self-sufficient homemaking skills, such as eating homemade and unprocessed food. At times, that emphasis on “wholesomeness” or living “naturally” includes skepticism about mainstream health care, as well as touting “naturopathic” or alternative medicine.

One of the main reasons so many viewers are attracted to the tradlife content is their nostalgic and calming aesthetic, including a focus on cottage-core content: quaint scenes that evoke life on the prairie, capitalizing on viewers’ nostalgia and desire for escapism.

This type of soft-living content is inviting and relaxing. Loose wavy hair, fresh homemade cooking and a farmhouse aesthetic bring to mind “Little House on the Prairie” and help viewers forget the crises of the world outside. We can’t help but feel like we are in the influencer’s kitchen, smelling freshly baked bread and hearing the laughter of children frolicking about.

Yet nothing about tradlife content is effortless. The filters and glamour of Instagram never reflect the hours influencers spend setting up their homes, testing recipes, buying filming equipment and fixing up their appearance for these videos, as shown in countless “get ready with me” videos.

Nevertheless, tradwives often glorify the idea of women’s helplessness,. Some encourage women to focus on what tradwives call “pink jobs,” such as homemaking or child-rearing tasks, not physically demanding “blue jobs,” such as house repairs or extensive landscaping.

In tradwives’ narrative, women aren’t “wired” or “made” to be in the workforce or to be the breadwinner. It is not only too demanding, some of these influencers argue, but actually against nature and God’s intentions to try to “have it all.”

Faith and submission

Most tradwife influencers who talk about faith are Christians of one denomination or another, including Catholics and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. During analysis for our forthcoming book, we analyzed language in a sample of 23 videos from the seven most popular influencers and found that “God” was the fourth-most popular term – following “women,” “life” and “husband.”

For many influencers, religious piety is a crucial component of their views on gender and convincing viewers to embrace them – particularly their belief that a wife’s fundamental role is to let God and her husband lead the way. Thus, while they don’t necessarily see men and women as unequal, they believe men and women have different roles and different abilities.

Insisting that God is on their side also enhances influencers’ sense of community with their followers, making some platforms almost seem like a parish. They will emphasize specific biblical verses supporting the norms they advocate – such as Titus 2:5, which they interpret as advising women to stay at home; and Genesis 1:28, in which God commands humans to “be fruitful, and multiply.”

“Womanhood is not a man-made idea constructed from ancient traditions and cultural trends,” the sisters behind the YouTube channel “Girl Defined” write in their book, “Made to be She: Reclaiming God’s Plan for Fearless Femininity.” “It’s a God-designed reality that He established from the beginning of time.”

Political voice

Some tradwife influencers focus on household management and religious content, while others are bolder in their political commentary – from simple TikToks to hours of live-streamed podcasts with guest speakers discussing hot-button issues. One frequent theme is opposition to abortion, especially since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The LGBTQ+ rights debate and related questions about how to define a woman have also become a focus for many tradwives, who argue only God can assign gender, and that it is synonymous with biological sex.

In some cases, tradwives’ advocacy extends to white nationalism and nativism. For example, some tradwives will justify the virtue of a large family by alluding to the importance of maintaining a white, Christian majority in the United States.

Modern anxiety

Much of tradwives’ messaging revolves around cultural flash points, problems that underscore anxiety about modern womanhood: challenges in forming stable relationships, providing nutritious meals, and building a career while trying to raise a family. One popular video on the Girls Defined channel, less than a minute long, warns viewers about birth control, Planned Parenthood, feminism and mood stabilizers. “Women, through all the years of feminism, through all the years of freedom, women are more depressed, more anxious, hurting more than ever,” one of the sisters says, “and what we are being told to do is not working.”

These challenges are presented as inevitable consequences of abandoning divinely ordained feminine roles – positioning religious tradwives’ messages as not merely personal opinions, but sacred truths. Any effort to counter misogynist messaging on these platforms, we argue, cannot just rely on facts, but exposing followers to other visions of what it means to be a religious woman.

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. Sourdough and submission in the name of God: How tradwife content fuses femininity with anti-feminist ideas – https://theconversation.com/sourdough-and-submission-in-the-name-of-god-how-tradwife-content-fuses-femininity-with-anti-feminist-ideas-263096

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Brian Downing, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Mississippi

It is a sad fact of online life that users search for information about suicide. In the earliest days of the internet, bulletin boards featured suicide discussion groups. To this day, Google hosts archives of these groups, as do other services.

Google and others can host and display this content under the protective cloak of U.S. immunity from liability for the dangerous advice third parties might give about suicide. That’s because the speech is the third party’s, not Google’s.

But what if ChatGPT, informed by the very same online suicide materials, gives you suicide advice in a chatbot conversation? I’m a technology law scholar and a former lawyer and engineering director at Google, and I see AI chatbots shifting Big Tech’s position in the legal landscape. Families of suicide victims are testing out chatbot liability arguments in court right now, with some early successes.

Who is responsible when a chatbot speaks?

When people search for information online, whether about suicide, music or recipes, search engines show results from websites, and websites host information from authors of content. This chain, search to web host to user speech, continued as the dominant way people got their questions answered until very recently.

This pipeline was roughly the model of internet activity when Congress passed the Communications Decency Act in 1996. Section 230 of the act created immunity for the first two links in the chain, search and web hosts, from the user speech they show. Only the last link in the chain, the user, faced liability for their speech.

Chatbots collapse these old distinctions. Now, ChatGPT and similar bots can search, collect website information and speak out the results – literally, in the case of humanlike voice bots. In some instances, the bot will show its work like a search engine would, noting the website that is the source of its great recipe for miso chicken.

When chatbots appear to be just a friendlier form of good old search engines, their companies can make plausible arguments that the old immunity regime applies. Chatbots can be the old search-web-speaker model in a new wrapper.

But in other instances, it acts like a trusted friend, asking you about your day and offering help with your emotional needs. Search engines under the old model did not act as life guides. Chatbots are often used this way. Users often do not even want the bot to show its hand with web links. Throwing in citations while ChatGPT tells you to have a great day would be, well, awkward.

The more that modern chatbots depart from the old structures of the web, the further away they move from the immunity the old web players have long enjoyed. When a chatbot acts as your personal confidant, pulling from its virtual brain ideas on how it might help you achieve your stated goals, it is not a stretch to treat it as the responsible speaker for the information it provides.

Courts are responding in kind, particularly when the bot’s vast, helpful brain is directed toward aiding your desire to learn about suicide.

Chatbot suicide cases

Current lawsuits involving chatbots and suicide victims show that the door of liability is opening for ChatGPT and other bots. A case involving Google’s Character.AI bots is a prime example.

Character.AI allows users to chat with characters created by users, from anime figures to a prototypical grandmother. Users could even have virtual phone calls with some characters, talking to a supportive virtual nanna as if it were their own. In one case in Florida, a character in the “Game of Thrones” Daenerys Targaryen persona allegedly asked the young victim to “come home” to the bot in heaven before the teen shot himself. The family of the victim sued Google.

The family of the victim did not frame Google’s role in traditional technology terms. Rather than describing Google’s liability in the context of websites or search functions, the plaintiff framed Google’s liability in terms of products and manufacturing akin to a defective parts maker. The district court gave this framing credence despite Google’s vehement argument that it is merely an internet service, and thus the old internet rules should apply.

The court also rejected arguments that the bot’s statements were protected First Amendment speech that users have a right to hear.

Though the case is ongoing, Google failed to get the quick dismissal that tech platforms have long counted on under the old rules. Now, there is a follow-on suit for a different Character.AI bot in Colorado, and ChatGPT faces a case in San Francisco, all with product and manufacture framings like the Florida case.

Hurdles for plaintiffs to overcome

Though the door to liability for chatbot providers is now open, other issues could keep families of victims from recovering any damages from the bot providers. Even if ChatGPT and its competitors are not immune from lawsuits and courts buy into the product liability system for chatbots, lack of immunity does not equal victory for plaintiffs.

Product liability cases require the plaintiff to show that the defendant caused the harm at issue. This is particularly difficult in suicide cases, as courts tend to find that, regardless of what came before, the only person responsible for suicide is the victim. Whether it’s an angry argument with a significant other leading to a cry of “why don’t you just kill yourself,” or a gun design making self-harm easier, courts tend to find that only the victim is to blame for their own death, not the people and devices the victim interacted with along the way.

But without the protection of immunity that digital platforms have enjoyed for decades, tech defendants face much higher costs to get the same victory they used to receive automatically. In the end, the story of the chatbot suicide cases may be more settlements on secret, but lucrative, terms to the victims’ families.

Meanwhile, bot providers are likely to place more content warnings and trigger bot shutdowns more readily when users enter territory that the bot is set to consider dangerous. The result could be a safer, but less dynamic and useful, world of bot “products.”

I worked for Google for 16 years, and thus received compensation from them to protect against external liability.

– ref. Suicide-by-chatbot puts Big Tech in the product liability hot seat – https://theconversation.com/suicide-by-chatbot-puts-big-tech-in-the-product-liability-hot-seat-265550

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Aditi Verma, Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan

You might imagine nuclear power plants as behemoth facilities spanning hundreds of acres. Nuclear microreactors, by contrast, could sit on land the size of a football field and power a whole town.

However, after decades of fraught relationships between the nuclear industry and communities in many parts of the U.S., building these tiny reactors requires reckoning with the complex history of nuclear technology and rebuilding public trust.

Microreactor technology for use in towns or cities hasn’t been developed yet, but many researchers have been building the case for its use.

For example, this technology could benefit college campuses, remote communities in Alaska primarily powered by oil and diesel, tech companies looking for reliable electricity for AI data centers, companies in need of high-temperature heat for manufacturing and industrial processes, mining operations that need a clean energy source and even military bases in search of a secure source of energy.

I’m a nuclear engineer who has been exploring nuclear microreactors’ potential. My research and teaching focuses on some of the questions that would come with placing miniature nuclear reactors close to where people live.

Microreactors: A history

Nuclear microreactors as a technology are both new and old. In the 1940s and ’50s, the American military and government began developing small reactors and nuclear batteries to power submarines and spacecraft.

After developing these small-scale reactors and batteries for various missions, the nuclear industry’s focus shifted to power reactors. They began to rapidly scale up their designs from producing tens of megawatts to the gigawatt-scale systems common around the world today.

These historical reactors were small because scientists were still learning about the physics and engineering underlying these systems. Today, engineers are deliberately designing microreactors to be small.

Microreactors aren’t to be confused with small modular reactors – these are often scaled-down, modularized versions of large reactors. Small, modular reactors can be built as single units or in clusters to achieve the same capacity as a full-size reactor. Microreactors would be smaller than these, with a power capacity under 20 megawatts.

Manufacturing and cost

Because they’re small, microreactors wouldn’t require a massive, multiyear construction project like large nuclear power reactors. Several units could be assembled in a factory each year and shipped off to their final destinations in a truck or on a barge.

Large reactors are not inherently flawed – in many ways, they remain the more economic nuclear energy option. However, electric utility companies have recently hesitated to invest in large reactors because of the multibillion-dollar nature of these projects.

Microreactors require a different but equally significant kind of investment. Though individual units will have a significantly lower price tag, building a factory to produce these microreactors is a massive undertaking. Reactor companies are waiting for their order books to fill up before investing in factories.

It’s a catch-22. Without orders, technology developers are unlikely to build microreactor factories. And future users of these new reactors are unlikely to place orders until this new style of production has been tested and the initial units built.

Future users are also waiting to see what the microreactors will actually cost. Reactor developers have put forward many cost estimates, but in the past, estimates for nuclear reactors haven’t always been reliable. Developers likely won’t know the true numbers until the reactors are actually built.

Initial “first of a kind” units will undoubtedly cost significantly more than later units. As manufacturers learn the best production processes, they’ll be able to make more reactors for less.

In this paradoxical situation in which developers are waiting for orders and users are waiting to see the economics of initial reactors, government funding for building demonstration projects could help usher microreactor technology from early designs to the market.

First movers such as national laboratories, universities, data centers and military bases that are willing to buy these initial reactors also have a role to play in validating the economic feasibility of these new reactors.

Today’s microreactors

In a nuclear reactor, the combination of nuclear fuel and coolant – which is the substance used to both cool the fuel and transport the heat generated by it – used in its design determines what situations it will work best in. Many nonwater coolants can allow reactors to operate at lower pressures, which is a little more safe.

The microreactors being developed today are based on a wide range of reactor technologies and make use of many different combinations of nuclear fuels and coolants.

Some reactors, such as the submarine propulsion reactors, are small, pressurized water reactors – the same basic technology used in most large-scale nuclear power plants. Others use configurations that resemble the small reactors in spacecraft. Still others make use of nuclear fuel and coolant combinations previously attempted in much larger reactors, such as high-temperature gas reactors, sodium fast reactors and even molten salt reactors.

Though encompassing a range of technologies, microreactors are all significantly simpler than the large reactors in use today. In many cases, they have few to no moving parts.

Microreactors, by virtue of being significantly simpler, are going to be more knowable. Because they’re easier to study and understand, simpler reactor systems have fewer points of failure and safety concerns.

Complex systems, such as the large nuclear power reactors, can be fundamentally unknowable, with unexpected entanglements of “unknown unknowns” creating instabilities, safety concerns and potential for failure. Large reactors operate safely today because we have learned about these unknown unknowns over decades of operation. Microreactors, because of their simplicity, will fundamentally be safer and more predictable than the large reactors were when they were first built.

Siting microreactors

Although the Department of Energy oversees microreactor demonstration projects, commercial deployment of microreactors requires approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which could take several years and may ultimately determine how soon commercial reactors can be built. Several designs are now approaching or in the early stages of review.

To keep people safe, large reactors have designated emergency planning zones – usually 10 and 50 miles around – which require different degrees of planning and protection to enter. The 10-mile zone has specific shelters and evacuation plans in place, while people in the 50-mile zone may need to take precautions about what they eat and drink in the event of a catastrophic accident but will not need to evacuate.

Because microreactors are smaller and simpler, developers and regulators may significantly reduce their emergency planning zones. The zones could extend only to the facility’s site boundary, or perhaps a few hundred meters beyond it.

A reduced emergency planning zone could mean that microreactors could be built in towns and cities, or embedded in remote communities. They might one day become as ubiquitous as the solar panels and windmills you see when driving through the countryside. And like the submarine reactors that can power a small underwater community of 100, one microreactor could power a rural town.

But even if siting a nuclear microreactor near a town is technically feasible, would the community accept it?

Public engagement

My lab’s ongoing research suggests that the answer to this question is contingent on how technology developers engage with the communities that may host a microreactor. If they attempt to unilaterally decide, announce and defend their decision to build a microreactor without input, communities will likely push back.

However, if developers work with communities to understand their hopes, concerns and priorities, they will likely find that many people are receptive to hyperlocal nuclear energy facilities.

My team’s initial findings suggest that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach for designing these facilities. Each community will have its own set of preferences that developers will need to navigate alongside the engineering questions.

In our discussions with community members in southeast Michigan, my research team has seen interest in designing these small energy facilities as a feature of the community that’s easily accessible to local residents. Community members designing hypothetical microreactor facilities with us have proposed shared spaces, recreational facilities, onsite visitor centers or science museums, and public art projects. Instead of hiding these facilities out of sight, they want these places to be inviting and beautiful.

Aditi Verma receives research funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.
She is a board member for the Good Energy Collective and serves on various expert working groups of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency.

– ref. Nuclear in your backyard? Tiny reactors could one day power towns and campuses – but community input will be key – https://theconversation.com/nuclear-in-your-backyard-tiny-reactors-could-one-day-power-towns-and-campuses-but-community-input-will-be-key-261225