Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Cynthia Chris, Professor of Media Studies, City University of New York

There is a long and storied history of nonhuman actors, from Luke, the dog of silent star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, to the collies cast in the role of Lassie in film and on television. Bart the Bear racked up over 20 film and TV credits in the 1980s and 1990s, while countless horses have supported period dramas that now saturate streaming services.

But business has not been as good as it used to be for the animal trainers who specialize in renting creatures of all kinds to film and TV productions.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it’s a trend that’s been building for at least 25 years, and it’s largely due to a mix of activism and technological advances, which I’ve observed in my studies of animals on screen.

Fewer roles to go around

Hollywood’s adoption of visual effects – also referred to as computer generated imagery, or CGI – has had an outsized role in putting many animal actors out of work. Ever since “Jurassic Park” (1993) dared to comingle CGI dinosaurs with human actors, more and more digital animals have appeared alongside humans on screen.

Other factors have accelerated the trend.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 Hollywood actors and writers strikes and a recent dip in the number of new TV series being greenlit have meant fewer productions and fewer roles to go around, whether they’re written for humans or animals.

But even before these recent events, there were calls for Hollywood to radically reduce its dependence on animal actors.

In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter – the same trade magazine that recently lamented a downturn in animal rentals – published an exposé cataloging incidents in which animals died, were injured or were put at grievous risk on sets. These productions nonetheless went on to carry the famous “No Animals Were Harmed” credit awarded by the American Humane Association, despite the fact that, well, animals were harmed. American Humane maintained that the incidents were tragic but not the result of negligence.

In 2016, PETA released the results of undercover investigations documenting substandard living conditions and untreated medical conditions at Birds & Animals Unlimited, which operates animal training facilities for film and television. In 2024, the organization detailed neglect of animals in the care of Atlanta Film Animals. Both companies denied the allegations.

There are, of course, any number of ways to minimize or avoid using actual animals in film and TV altogether.

“The Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and its sequels have used motion-capture, with humans performing the movements of characters later rendered as chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans.

For Ang Lee’s 2012 production “Life of Pi,” visual effects artists created thousands of virtual animals, while director Darren Aronofsky opted for completely digital animals, supplemented by some practical props, in 2014’s “Noah.”

Bucking high-tech trends, the 2025 horror film “Primate” went old school without reverting to real animals, deploying a movement artist in a costume and prosthetics to play a murderously rabid chimp.

Can CGI numb viewers to animal violence?

What do digital animals, these bestial avatars, make possible?

Undoubtedly, there are trainers who care deeply for their charges and uphold best practices in animal husbandry. But it stands to reason that the fewer captive animals, the better, and recent advances in AI have made visual effects and CGI even more realistic and easier to model.

However, substituting flesh-and-blood animals with those made of pixels seems to have created a canvas for unfettered abuse. Consider the brutal violence of the “Planet of the Apes” reboots, which include hand-to-hand combat, branding and a torturous crucifixion scene.

In the past, the fact that the animals on set were real sometimes curbed filmmakers’ most savage impulses; violence was implied or took place off-screen in family fare like “The Yearling” (1946) and “Old Yeller” (1957). At the same time, camera tricks and props have been used to create scenes of animal cruelty in many films, from “American Psycho” (2000) to “John Wick” (2014).

While the effects of violent media on viewers are notoriously hard to study, some evidence suggests that some audiences can become desensitized to the real-world consequences of unhealthy and violent content. It’s easy to see how this desensitization could extend to watching cruelty toward animals on screen.

Viewers can still sniff out the virtual

A hybrid approach to portraying animals on screen seems to have taken hold, using what one scholar has called – in a reference to on-screen dogs – “composite canine performances.”

The team behind the 2025 version of “Superman,” for example, sought to create a realistic dog, right down to each scruffy patch of fur. But they needed it to defy gravity and other laws of physics. So they incorporated just enough live animal in preproduction to animate a mostly CGI creature, with director James Gunn’s own dog serving as the “model,” or “reference,” for the superdog, Krypto.

This technique recalls the methods of Disney animators who were stumped by the challenge of creating the characters for “Bambi” (1942). So they studied animal anatomy, photographed deer in the wild and sketched animals brought into the studio in order to better capture their movements on paper.

But when it comes to live-action films grounded in everyday life, there’s still work on set for real animals. For one, it’s still usually cheaper to deploy the real thing. Moreover, most of the virtual animals on screen simply don’t look realistic enough to allow for the full suspension of disbelief that makes cinema magic.

That’s why in the 2025 adaptation of Helen MacDonald’s memoir, “H Is for Hawk,” filmmakers reportedly employed five goshawks to portray Mabel, the bird adopted by Helen (Claire Foy). And it’s why Academy Award-nominee “Marty Supreme” featured an entire menagerie of live animals, including a horse, a camel, an armadillo, a dog, a rabbit and even a ping-pong playing sea lion. Yes, the sea lion in the scene was real, but the ball wasn’t.

Future opportunities for trainers and their charges appear to rest on just how good visual effects can get. For some animal activists – not to mention the animals that have no say in their work – that day can’t come soon enough.

Moviegoers and animal advocates, meanwhile, might hope for a middle ground: a future in which only ethically treated animals continue to get to appear on the screen.

Cynthia Chris 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. Do animals have a future on Hollywood sets? – https://theconversation.com/do-animals-have-a-future-on-hollywood-sets-273877

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Barret Michalec, Research Associate Professor of Nursing and Health Innovation, Arizona State University

“Humble” is not a word my colleagues would use to describe me, especially early in my career.

In fact, when word got around that I was researching humility, I suspect more than a few choked on their coffee.

And even though I have spent over a decade exploring the concept as an attribute and as a practice, it wasn’t until I recently reflected on my own professional challenges that I truly understood how to embrace humility.

I want to share my journey, but first it is important to understand what humility is – and isn’t. It’s been extolled as a virtue for centuries, but it’s often mischaracterized.

In today’s culture, it can be mistaken as a humblebrag, which disguises a boast as modesty – for example, “I really hate talking about myself, but people keep asking how I managed to run a marathon while working full time.” Or it can resemble impostor phenomenon, the persistent experience of feeling intellectually or professionally fraudulent despite clear evidence of competence or success.

But research shows that humble people hold accurate views of their own abilities and achievements. They openly acknowledge their mistakes and limitations and are receptive to new ideas. Overall, they recognize their places within a larger whole and genuinely appreciate the value of others.

Humility doesn’t always earn praise. Sometimes the humble may be seen as meek, subservient or self-abasing.

For instance, many people praised former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s empathetic, self-effacing leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an openness and deference to experts. But some critics dismissed it as weak or soft. These negative views show the various ways people “see” humility.

Generally, though, when humility is understood as grounded self-awareness rather than self-erasure, it’s viewed as something worth cultivating and practicing. We see openness, curiosity, acknowledgment of others and a lack of ego in fictional characters like Ted Lasso, hero of the same-titled Apple TV series; Samwise Gamgee in the “Lord of the Rings” books; and Jean-Luc Picard, commander of the USS Enterprise in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Humility is also evident in public figures, such as former President Jimmy Carter, children’s television host Fred Rogers, and Nelson Mandela, the Black nationalist who served as the first Black president of South Africa.

I’m a sociologist with a focus on medical education and health care providers. At Arizona State University’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, I explore issues including causes of burnout, elements of team-based care and opportunities for emphasizing the human side of health care. In recent years, my work has focused on humility.

From my research and my own experience, I’ve learned that true humility isn’t self-erasure. It’s a sense of security and confidence that your value doesn’t depend on recognition and that you are just one member of a larger system with a multitude of contributors. By removing the need to dominate, humility fosters openness to collaboration, innovation and an awareness of how the systems around us work.

Still, in a world of Instagram likes and LinkedIn accolades, humility can be the virtue everyone seems to admire but few practice It’s the one we say we want – until it requires us to confront the parts of ourselves that crave affirmation.

Climbing the professional ladder

I tend to stand out in a crowd. I’m 6-foot-4, with close-cropped hair, a heavy beard and tattoos. I also push myself to stand out professionally.

Starting in graduate school, I was determined to make my voice heard and sought after. I pursued nearly every opportunity, committee and position that came my way. No role was too small for me to accept.

I strived to present my work in top-tier journals and at conferences, and I cold-called prominent scholars to propose working together. And I constantly shared my findings and thoughts on social media.

Like many workplaces, the academic world has a set of defined success metrics, such as publications, citations of your work, grant funding and teaching evaluations from students. School culture and leadership influence what each college or university considers more or less valuable among those measures. To advance and get promoted, particularly to get tenure, it’s important to learn at an early stage what one’s department, college or university truly prioritizes.

I wanted to get tenure but also to be seen as an active citizen of academia – energetic, outspoken and unafraid to push boundaries. When my department chair described me as having my hair on fire, I took it as a compliment. I called it “making positive noise.”

Initially, the system rewarded that noise. I earned tenure at the University of Delaware and received departmental, college and national awards. I also was appointed to serve as associate dean and to direct a new research center. I felt validated, visible and valuable.

The sociology department at the University of Delaware had a typical academic culture that’s often summarized as “publish or perish.” The most important measures of scholars’ work were writing, publishing their work in respected journals and having other researchers cite those studies. Securing external funding from government, private companies or foundations was valued but was not as high a priority as publishing.

A new beginning that felt like an end

In 2020 I received a new opportunity at Arizona State University, a much larger school that branded itself as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship. I was offered the chance to direct the Center for Advancing Interprofessional Practice, Education and Research and to step into the shoes of a leader I deeply admired. I arrived expecting to be a big fish in a bigger pond.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I showed up imagining there’d be a bit of buzz around my arrival given my time at the University of Delaware. But reality didn’t match the script: no greeting, office or nameplate marked my place when I arrived.

Early conversations with administrators weren’t about my research or teaching visions – the things that I thought set me apart. Instead, I felt they tended to focus on how much external funding I could raise from foundations and government agencies. My new colleagues often spoke in a shorthand of grant-based acronyms when referring to what projects they were working on, a “language” I was woefully unfamiliar with.

To make matters worse, I arrived during COVID-19, with classes either canceled or taught online and faculty members working mainly from home. The hallway chatter, open doors and spontaneous collaboration that I was accustomed to were absent. I began to feel alienated and disoriented as a scholar.

Even after ASU resumed in-person classes in the fall of 2021, I felt like the silence and distance lingered. No students waited for office hours. I struggled to make connections with my colleagues. I eagerly proposed collaborations when really everyone was just trying to find their footing in this new era of education.

My proposals for new classes and curricular programs hit up against institutional barriers I was unaware of. At one point, a college administrator asked, “How do we get you on other people’s grants?” – a question that I took to imply that they felt my research wasn’t strong enough.

It appeared that my colleagues in Edson College were accustomed to these values and spoke the language. I was a stranger in a strange land. Although I was producing some of my best work, measured in terms of publications and citations, I felt no one seemed interested. I had come from an environment where I felt known and valued to one where I seemed to be a nobody.

I felt as though I needed to staple my resume to my forehead and parade around the hallways asserting, like Ron Burgundy in the movie “Anchorman,” “I’m not quite sure how to put this, but … I’m kind of a big deal. People know me.”

The impact of feeling unseen

For people who have built careers by being highly engaged and visible, suddenly feeling unseen can be devastating. In any profession, a fear that you don’t belong at your workplace can be debilitating and make you question your own value.

I sought advice from peers and college leaders, and even hired a professional coach. Things only worsened. Curricular proposals were stalled or turned down. My center was shuttered in a restructuring, although it was meeting its goals and earning international recognition.

At first, I blamed ASU and Edson College for my feelings of disconnection. I thought the leadership structure and style was dysfunctional; that many colleagues were cold, unfriendly and conformist; and that the college’s stated values were inauthentic.

This series of what I came to call “unacknowledgments” sent me into a personal and professional tailspin. Negativity and self-doubt consumed me, and I truly worried that my career was over. Had I been blackballed? Why did it feel as though no one cared?

When the noise turns inward

I had spent years studying empathy – the ability to understand and feel what someone else is feeling – and how to cultivate it among health care professionals and students in order to support more patient-centered care. To that end, at the University of Delaware I had developed a program designed to foster empathy across health professions. It aimed to help students see one another as collaborators, build shared respect and recognize their collective role on the same health care delivery team.

But when I further analyzed the program’s outcomes from my office at ASU, I realized that empathy wasn’t enough. It could help students feel with others, but it didn’t necessarily help them see themselves, or others, differently.

I realized that what I really wanted the students to develop was humility. This step would require them to recognize their limits, accept that they were fallible, see themselves as part of a larger team and value others’ contributions.

That realization changed my research trajectory – and eventually, my professional life.

Research becomes a mirror

Initially, I approached humility solely as a scholar. I examined the history of the concept and gaps in existing research on it, and I analyzed how humility was connected to uncertainty and the impostor phenomenon. I explored how humility could enhance team-based care and developed a new way to define humility among health care professionals in order to promote more collaboration and patient-centeredness.

As my own professional world began to unravel, and as I dived deeper into the concept of humility through my research, something unexpected happened. I realized that humility wasn’t just an idea to study – it was becoming a mirror that made me rethink my own perspective.

Slowly, I began to see how pride and insecurity were entwined in my reactions to my new setting at ASU. I realized that my need to be noticed, and my insistence that others validate my worth, represented my own kind of arrogance.

Perhaps my ambition had been less about contributing and more about gaining external validation. I had lost the selfless wonder and awe that drive scholarly inquiry and curiosity. And now I had to confront what remained when the spotlight dimmed.

Humility, I began to understand, wasn’t just an abstract concept to explore “out there” among others. I needed to hone it internally by thinking beyond myself. By decentering my ego, I realized that I could nurture and sustain curiosity in its own right.

In short, I needed to practice what I was preaching. It wasn’t an easy lesson. I assume that cultivating humility never is.

To that end, I felt that it was essential to develop a program to help build humility “muscles.” In 2024 I developed HIIT for Humility, an online training package for individuals or groups, modeled after the fitness concept of high-intensity interval training. This program provides evidence-based strategies to help users start building “habits of humility,” such as acknowledgment of others and self-awareness.

Just as physical exercise requires consistency to produce results, so does the cultivation of humility. Leaning into HIIT for Humility workouts gradually eased my sense of alienation and defensiveness. I became more appreciative of others, less quick to judge and better able to listen to others’ perspectives. In doing so, I started to feel more confident and secure.

While I still took pride in my work, I began to see that my contributions were not the only ones that mattered. I also found that I could stretch into unfamiliar but necessary tasks, such as working harder to win federal and foundation grants and seeing the value of my colleagues’ contributions to science.

Why am I here?

Only a few years into this process, I can see that ASU and Edson College have unintentionally taught me humility by signaling, often quietly, which contributions are deemed essential and which forms of success carry the most weight. Navigating stalled proposals, shifting priorities and structural reorganizations have required me to recalibrate my ego, expectations and identity.

Not being seen as a “big fish” and being expected to persist without consistent recognition have required me to understand my work as part of a larger system with differing values and, at times, challenging constraints. Shifting to ASU forced me to rethink my identity as a professor and to reevaluate my sense of purpose from the inside out.

A colleague of mine often asks students who he feels are coasting along, “Why are you here?” Lately, I’ve taken that question personally. What is the point of being a professor – writing papers, submitting grant proposals, teaching courses? Why did I choose this path in the first place?

When I feel unseen, unheard or unappreciated, pondering why I’m here helps ground me. For anyone who is struggling to feel visible or valued at work, I strongly recommend considering this simple question.

Over time, I’ve stopped needing to be the big fish in the pond and measuring my worth in titles and awards. I now see that my responsibility as a scholar, teacher and human being is to stay curious, listen more deeply and make space for others’ voices.

Embracing humility, and consistently using my humility muscles, have helped me realize that I’m here to be part of the creative energy of academia, do the work and cultivate curiosity in my students, my peers and myself.

Barret Michalec 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. ‘Learning to be humble meant taming my need to stand out from the group’ – a humility scholar explains how he became more grounded – https://theconversation.com/learning-to-be-humble-meant-taming-my-need-to-stand-out-from-the-group-a-humility-scholar-explains-how-he-became-more-grounded-273402

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Virginia Raguin, Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emerita, College of the Holy Cross

Michelangelo’s fresco of “The Last Judgment,” covering the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, is being restored. The work, which started on Feb. 1, 2026, is expected to continue for three months.

The Sistine Chapel is one of the great masterpieces of Renaissance art. As the setting where the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church meets to elect a new pope, it was decorated by the most prestigious painters of the day. In 1480, Pope Sixtus IV commissioned Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino and Cosimo Rosselli to paint the walls. On the south are six scenes of the “Life of Moses,” and across on the north are six scenes of the “Life of Christ.”

In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling. The theme is the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The images show God creating the world through the story of Noah, who was directed by God to shelter humans and animals on an ark during the great flood. The ceiling’s most famous scene may be “God Creating Adam,” where Adam reaches out his arm to the outstretched arm of God the Father, but their fingers fail to meet.

At the sides, the artist juxtaposed the male Hebrew prophets and the female Greek and Roman sybils who were inspired by the gods to foretell the future. It was completed in 1512; then in 1536, Michelangelo was asked to create a painting for the wall behind the altar. For this immense work of 590 square feet (about square meters), filled with 391 figures, he labored until 1541. He was then nearly 67 years old.

As an art historian, I have been aware how, from the beginning, Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment” sparked controversy for its bold and heroic portrayal of the male nude.

Many layers of meaning

Michelangelo liked to consider himself primarily a sculptor, expressing himself in variations of the nude male body. Most famous may be the Old Testament figure of David about to slay Goliath, originally made for the Cathedral of Florence.

The artist’s ceiling for the Sistine Chapel had included 20 nude males as supporting figures above the prophets and sibyls. Originally, Michelangelo’s Christ of “The Last Judgment” was entirely nude. A later painter was hired to provide drapery over the loins of Christ and other figures.

“The Last Judgment” scene also contains multiple references to pagan gods and mythology. The image of Christ is inspired by early Christian images showing Christ beardless and youthful, similar to the pagan god of light, Apollo.

At the bottom of the composition is the figure of Charon, a personage from Greek mythology who rowed souls over the river Styx to enter the pagan underworld. Minos, the judge of the underworld, is on the extreme right.

Giorgio Vasari, a fellow artist and historian who knew Michelangelo personally, later recounted the criticism by a senior Vatican official, Biagio da Cesena. The official stated that it was disgraceful that nude figures were exposed so shamefully and that the painting seemed more fit for public baths and taverns.

Michelangelo’s response was to place the face of Biagio on Minos, the judge of the underworld, and give him donkey’s ears, symbolizing stupidity.

Michelangelo included a reference to his own life in a detail connected to the Apostle Bartholomew, who is located to the lower right of Christ. The apostle was believed to have met his martyrdom by being flayed alive. In his right hand, he holds a knife and, in his left, his flayed skin whose face is a distorted portrait of the artist.

Michelangelo thus placed himself among the blessed in heaven, but also made it into a joke.

Thought-provoking imagery

The Last Judgment is a common theme in Christian art. Michelangelo, however, pushes beyond simple illustration to include pagan myths as well as to challenge traditional depiction of a calm, bearded judge. He uses dramatic imagery to provoke deeper thought: After all, how does anyone on Earth know what the saints do in heaven?

In these decisions, Michelangelo displayed his sense of self-confidence to introduce new ideas and his goal to engage the viewer in new ways.

A digital reproduction of the painting will be displayed on a screen for visitors to the Sistine Chapel during this period of restoration. Behind the screen, technicians from the Vatican Museums’ Restoration Laboratory will work to restore the masterpiece.

Virginia Raguin 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 Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ endures – https://theconversation.com/why-michelangelos-last-judgment-endures-275323

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Ana Santos Rutschman, Professor of Law, Villanova University

The Food and Drug Administration’s decision, made public on Feb. 10, 2026, to not review an application to approve Moderna’s proposed mRNA-based flu vaccine set off a firestorm of criticism from public health experts.

But just a week later, on Feb. 18, the FDA backtracked on its decision, saying that it will indeed review the vaccine, potentially in time for its approval for the 2025-26 flu season. The decision sent Moderna’s stocks soaring in a rebound from the earlier decision.

Even before the FDA’s decision to reject the application, Moderna and other drugmakers were beginning to pare back investments in vaccines due to concerns about the approval process. As a law professor who studies vaccine policy, I believe the FDA’s abrupt shift is unlikely to assuage those concerns.

What happens now that the FDA is willing to review the application?

The FDA said it will review the vaccine for use by people age 50 to 64 under the standard review pathaway, which is how it evaluates most drugs.

In declining the application originally, the FDA claimed that Moderna did not conduct an “adequate and well-controlled” study because it had not compared patients receiving its vaccine with patients receiving what the agency claimed to be “the best-available standard of care.” The agency’s decision to review it now is effectively a reversal of that position, which was not based on any legal standard .

For people age 65 and older, the FDA said it will now review the vaccine through a long-standing program called “accelerated approval,” which is used to more quickly review drugs that “treat serious conditions” and “fill an unmet medical need,” and that show promise.

Under this faster process, the law allows the FDA to consider different data than under a standard approval. Instead of looking at final results, a company can submit results that use a proxy measurement to reflect that a drug is likely to achieve its clinical goal.

This means that if the FDA approves Moderna’s vaccine for this older age group, the company will have to conduct additional studies on it afterward. What’s unusual, though, is that the agency typically suggests the use of the accelerated approval pathway much earlier in the process, not after a company submits its application.

Is the agency’s reversal likely to calm vaccine manufacturers?

Federal health officials under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including at the FDA, have taken many steps over the past year that disrupt long-standing public health practices relating to vaccine access and approval. They have expressed particular skepticism toward mRNA-based vaccines, which were developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kennedy and other health officials have raised concerns about safety while providing no credible data on health risks, and have defunded research on their development.

With so many areas in vaccine law and policy in turmoil, incentives for vaccine manufacturers to bring vaccines to market are shrinking. Recent changes in the FDA’s approach, including proposals on new standards for testing vaccines that many vaccine experts have called impossible to achieve, have raised major concerns.

Already, multiple vaccine manufacturers, including Moderna, have announced plans to scale back their investment in vaccine research and cut jobs.

By agreeing to review Moderna’s application for people age 50 to 64, the FDA is seemingly softening its stance on vaccines. But the agency’s unpredictable decisions – including the highly unusual way it invoked accelerated approval for Moderna’s vaccine – might not be enough to assuage manufacturers’ worries about the current state of regulatory uncertainty.

This article includes portions of a previous article originally published on Feb. 12, 2026.

Ana Santos Rutschman 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. FDA’s abrupt flip-flop on Moderna’s mRNA flu shot highlights growing risks to drug-makers of investing in vaccines – https://theconversation.com/fdas-abrupt-flip-flop-on-modernas-mrna-flu-shot-highlights-growing-risks-to-drug-makers-of-investing-in-vaccines-276331

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Nathalie Vriend, Associate Professor of Thermo Fluid Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

A deadly avalanche buried a group of backcountry skiers and guides near Lake Tahoe in California’s Sierra Nevada as an intense storm brought heavy, wet snow to the region on Feb. 17, 2026. Six of the skiers were rescued, but eight others didn’t survive and another was missing. The region had been under an avalanche warning that was rated high, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center.

Avalanche deaths are rare inside the boundaries of ski resorts, but the risk rises in the backcountry – 30 backcountry avalanche deaths were reported in the U.S. during the 2022-23 season, 14 the following year, and 19 in 2024-25. Nathalie Vriend, a skier and physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies avalanches, explains what happens in an avalanche and techniques for surviving one.

What causes avalanches?

The behavior of an avalanche depends on the structure of the snowpack, but that’s only one ingredient. An avalanche requires all the wrong conditions at the wrong time.

The angle of the mountain slope is important. Slopes between 25 and 40 degrees run the greatest risk of avalanches. Those are also ideal for skiing, of course. If the slope is less than 25 degrees, there might be little slips, but the snow won’t pick up speed. If it’s over 40 degrees, the snow typically cannot accumulate, clearing away the avalanche risk.

Then there needs to be a trigger. A snowpack may be seemingly stable until a snowmobile or skier disturbs it enough that the snow starts to move. Strong winds or rock falls may also cause an avalanche. Blowing snow can create wind loading and build up into cornices, creating an overhang that can eventually fall and trigger an avalanche below.

What happens inside the snowpack during an avalanche?

Mountain snowpack isn’t uniform. Because it builds up over time, it is a snapshot of recent weather conditions and has both stable and weak layers.

When snow falls, it’s a fluffy crystal structure. But when the temperature rises and the snow starts to melt and then refreezes, it turns more granular.

That granular, icier snow is a weak layer. When a new snowfall dumps on top of it, the grains in the weak layer can shear, creating a surface for an avalanche to slide on. The weight of new snowpack can cause the entire face of a mountain to fall away almost instantaneously. As the avalanche picks up speed, more snow and debris are incorporated in the avalanche and it can become really big and violent.

In my lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder, I study small-scale laboratory avalanches. We use a technique called photoelasticity and create thin avalanches to reveal what’s going on inside the avalanche. We track photoelastic particles with a high-speed camera and can observe that particles bounce and collide really fast, within 1/1,000th of a second.

In a real avalanche, those violent collisions create a lot of heat through friction, which causes more melting. As the avalanche comes to a rest, this liquid can quickly refreeze again, locking the snowpack in place like concrete. People say “swim to the surface” in an avalanche, but you may not know whether the surface is up or down. If the avalanche is still moving and the granules haven’t frozen solid again, you might be able to move slightly, but it is really hard.

What can skiers do if they’re in an avalanche?

I’ve done fieldwork on real snow avalanches triggered intentionally in Switzerland. We were in a bunker in a valley, and they dropped explosives at the top of the mountain. Using radar, we could look inside the avalanche as it came toward us. It was easily going more than 110 miles per hour (50 meters per second).

Even if the avalanche is small, you can’t outski or outrun it easily. The big danger is when the snow is deep – you could be buried under several feet of snow. Basically, as the avalanche slows down, new snow keeps piling on top of you. People report this as being trapped in concrete without an ability to even move a limb. It must be a very frightening experience.

Backcountry skiers carry tools that can increase their chances of survival. Your best bet, though, is your peers – particularly in the backcountry, where emergency crews will take hours to arrive.

There are a few things you can do. First, carry a transceiver, which transmits a signal identifying your location. When you are caught in an avalanche, you are transmitting a signal. Your friends can switch their transceivers to the “receiving” mode and try to locate your beacon. It’s also important to have an avalanche probe and a shovel in the backcountry for when your friends do locate your position: The snow is like concrete, and it will be hard to extract you.

Avalanche air bags can also help – James Bond used an elaborate concept of one in “The World Is Not Enough.” With modern avalanche air bags, you pull a toggle on your back, and the air bag inflates behind your head, turning you into a bigger particle. Bigger particles tend to stay at the surface, making you easier to locate.

How is avalanche risk changing as winter temperatures rise?

It’s an important question, and it’s not as simple as warming temperatures mean less snow, so fewer avalanches. Instead, if mountains have more variation in temperatures, they may have more melting and refreezing phases during the winter, creating weaker snowpacks compared with historical records.

The historical conditions that communities have grown up around can change. In 2017, there was a big avalanche in Italy that took out an entire hotel. It was in an area where people didn’t expect an avalanche, based on historical data.

There are computer models that can calculate where avalanches are likely to occur. But when temperatures, snowfall and precipitation patterns change, you may not be able to truly understand cause and effect on natural hazards like snow avalanches.

This article, originally published Jan. 11, 2024, has been updated with a backcountry avalanche near Lake Tahoe.

Nathalie Vriend receives funding from the Moore Foundation, and in the past from the Royal Society and NERC among others.

– ref. Tahoe avalanche: What causes snow slopes to collapse? A physicist and skier explains, with tips for surviving – https://theconversation.com/tahoe-avalanche-what-causes-snow-slopes-to-collapse-a-physicist-and-skier-explains-with-tips-for-surviving-276361

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bert Johnson, Professor of Political Science, Middlebury College

Jesse Jackson’s two campaigns for president, in 1984 and 1988, were unsuccessful but historic. The civil rights activist and organizer, who died on Feb. 17, 2026, helped pave the way for Barack Obama’s election a generation later as the nation’s first – and so far only – African American president.

Jackson’s campaigns energized a multiracial coalition that not only provided support for other late-20th-century Democratic politicians, including President Bill Clinton, but helped create an organizing template – a so-called Rainbow Coalition combining Black, Latino, working-class white and young voters – that continues to resonate in progressive politics today.

Vermont, where I teach political science, did not look like fertile ground for Jackson when he first ran for president. Then, as now, Vermont was one of the most homogeneous, predominantly white states in the country. But if Jackson seemed like an awkward fit for a mostly rural, lily-white state, he nonetheless saw possibilities there.

He campaigned in Vermont twice in 1984, buoyantly declaring in Montpelier, the state capital, “If I win Vermont, the nation will never be the same again.”

He did not win Vermont, taking just 8% of the Democratic primary vote in 1984 but tripling his share to 26% in 1988. Appealing to voters in small, rural New England precincts was a remarkable achievement for a candidate identified with Chicago and civil rights campaigns in the South.

Jackson’s presidential ambitions coincided with a pivotal moment in Vermont politics: The state’s voting patterns were shifting left, with new residents arriving and changing the state’s culture and economy. In 1970, nearly 70% of Vermonters had been born there. By 1990, that figure had dropped by 10 percentage points.

The Vermont Rainbow Coalition, which was formed to support Jackson’s first campaign, organized a crucial constituency in a fluid time, establishing patterns that would persist for decades.

Setting the standard in Vermont

Jackson created a “People’s Platform” that would sound familiar to today’s progressives, calling for higher taxes on businesses, higher minimum wages and single-payer, universal health care.

In light of Jackson’s efforts, Vermont activists saw the potential for a durable statewide organization. Rather than disband the Vermont Rainbow Coalition after the 1984 primary, they kept the group going, endorsing candidates in campaigns for the legislature and statewide office in each of the next three election cycles. The coalition also endorsed Bernie Sanders’ failed bid for Congress in 1988.

Sanders served eight years as mayor of Burlington as an “independent socialist,” cultivating a core collection of local allies known as the Progressive Coalition who sought to wrest power away from establishment members of the city’s Board of Aldermen.

In 1992, the Vermont Rainbow Coalition merged with Burlington’s Progressive Coalition to form the statewide Progressive Coalition.

The Jackson-Sanders lineage

Sanders eventually went on to win election to the House as an independent in 1990, serving in the chamber until winning his Senate seat, also as an independent, in 2006. His presidential runs in 2016 and 2020 made him a prominent national figure and a leader among progressives.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unseated a member of the House Democratic leadership in a stunning 2018 primary upset in New York, had been a Sanders campaign organizer and remains his close ally. On Jan. 1, 2026, Sanders swore in Zohran Mamdani – like Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic socialist – as mayor of New York City.

Sanders had endorsed Jackson for president in 1988. Years later, Jackson returned the favor.

Sanders paid tribute to Jackson at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. “Jesse Jackson is one of the very most significant political leaders in this country in the last 100 years,” Sanders said. “Jesse’s contribution to modern history is not just bringing us together – it is bringing us together around a progressive agenda.”

Not just Vermont

In Vermont, Jackson performed surprisingly well in unlikely places – taking nearly 20% of the 1984 primary vote in working-class Bakersfield and Belvidere, for example.

Today’s Vermont Progressive Party, which emerged out of the old Vermont Progressive Coalition, is one of the most successful third parties in the nation, winning official “major party” status in the state shortly after its official founding in 2000. The party has elected candidates to the state legislature, city councils and even a few statewide offices, including that of lieutenant governor.

Vermont was not alone in experiencing the catalyzing effect of Jackson’s presidential runs. Jackson had a significant mobilizing impact on Black voters nationwide. In Washington state, the Washington Rainbow Coalition started in Seattle and spread across the state between 1984 and 1996. New Jersey and Pennsylvania had their own successful and independent Rainbow Coalitions. In 2003, the Rainbow Coalition Party of Massachusetts joined the Green Party to become the Green Rainbow Party.

In my own research, I’ve investigated the durability of the “Jackson effect” in Vermont. There is no better test of what differentiates the Vermont Progressive Party from the state’s Democratic Party than the 2016 Democratic primary race for lieutenant governor, which pitted progressive David Zuckerman against two prominent, mainstream Democrats.

Zuckerman beat the Democrats most handily in towns that had voted the most heavily for Jesse Jackson in 1984, an effect that persisted even when controlling for population, partisanship and liberalism.

Many people would point to Sanders as the catalyst for Vermont’s continuing progressive movement. But Sanders and the progressives owe much to Jackson.

Bert Johnson 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 Jesse Jackson set the stage for Bernie Sanders and today’s progressives – https://theconversation.com/how-jesse-jackson-set-the-stage-for-bernie-sanders-and-todays-progressives-276249

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bill Sullivan, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Indiana University

People have long given up on the search for the Fountain of Youth, a mythical spring that could reverse aging. But for some scientists, the hunt has not ended – it’s just moved to a different place. These modern-day Ponce de Leóns are investigating whether gut microbes hold the secret to aging well.

The gut microbiome refers to the vast collection of microscopic organisms – bacteria, fungi and viruses – that largely inhabit the colon. These microbes aid in digestion and produce molecules that affect your physiology and psychology. The composition of the microbiome is influenced by a combination of factors, including genetics, diet, the environment, medications and age.

I’m a microbiology professor and author of “Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are,” which describes how the gut microbiome contributes to physical and mental health. The discovery that the gut microbiome changes with age has ignited studies to determine whether the Fountain of Youth might be right under your nose, down inside your gut.

You’re only as old as your gut microbes

People are most familiar with outward signs of aging, such as wrinkles and graying hair, but there are also microscopic changes taking place deep inside. The gut microbes of older people tend to be less diverse, with more bacteria that promote inflammation and other hallmarks of aging. Changes to the microbiome across age are so consistent that algorithms can reliably predict a person’s age based on their microbiome composition.

There are exceptions to this rule. Older adults and supercentenarians who age well have a gut microbiome that looks more like those of younger people. These findings support the idea that maintaining a youthful microbiome fosters healthy aging and longevity.

To confirm that the microbes of youth influence aging, scientists use a technique called fecal microbiota transplantation. This procedure involves obliterating a person’s current gut microbiome and replacing it with microbes harvested from a donor’s feces. Transplanting microbiota from a young mouse into an elderly mouse reverses age-associated inflammation in the gut, brain and eyes. Conversely, transplanting microbiota from an old mouse into a young one accelerates these aging parameters. Other studies suggest that microbiota from young mice alter metabolism in ways that reduce inflammation that accelerates aging.

The evidence that aging is linked with the microbiome is compelling. However, fecal transplantation is not without risk and is approved only as a last resort to treat severe C. difficile infections. These shortcomings have prompted researchers to search for safer and more refined ways to cultivate an age-friendly microbiome.

Diet and exercise may slow aging

Proper diet and exercise have long been tied to better aging and longevity. One way these lifestyle habits may be beneficial is through their influence on gut microbes.

What people eat – or fail to eat – has a demonstrable effect on their gut microbiomes. The standard American diet, enriched with ultraprocessed foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt and low in nutrients and fiber, depletes microbiome diversity within days. Moving from a non-Western country to the U.S. is also associated with loss of gut microbiome diversity, partly due to dietary changes.

Lack of fiber is a major reason the microbiome adopts a configuration associated with poor aging. Studies in roundworms, mice and rats found that fiber supplements improved overall health and extended lifespan by 20% to 35%. A 2025 study showed that increasing the amount of fiber in your diet is linked to as much as a 37% greater likelihood of healthy aging in women.

Fiber functions as a prebiotic, a nondigestible food component that nourishes the microbiome. Gut bacteria process fiber into compounds such as short-chain fatty acids that promote better aging by improving metabolic, brain and immune function while reducing chronic inflammation. Good sources of prebiotics include most fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.

Certain foods, such as yogurt and kefir, or dietary supplements contain probiotics – living microbes that may benefit the gut microbiome. Research on probiotic foods and supplements is mixed, complicated by the variation in bacterial species and dosage in these products. The health benefits that different types of probiotics may confer is still under study.

Physical activity is also linked to a youthful microbiome. Regular exercise can reshape the microbiome of older adults to resemble those seen in younger adults. One study showed that when people ages 50 to 75 underwent 24 weeks of cardiovascular and resistance exercise, their microbiomes became populated by healthier bacteria and their blood had elevated levels of aging-friendly, short-chain fatty acids.

Treatments to manipulate the microbiome

Making healthy lifestyle changes is a noninvasive way to cultivate a youthful microbiome that may slow aging. Scientists are also exploring treatments to tailor the gut microbiome for better health outcomes.

One option may be postbiotics, nonliving but active compounds that probiotic microbes produce. For example, mouse studies have found that short-chain fatty acid supplements can improve age-related heart and lung problems. Similarly, elderly mice given heat-killed bacteria from a human infant saw reduced metabolic dysfunction and inflammation, as well as improved cognitive function.

The microbiome can also be modified with drugs, particularly antibiotics. A low-dose oral antibiotic can trigger gut bacteria to release factors that may promote good health and aging by, for example, strengthening the intestinal barrier or reducing inflammation. One such antibiotic, cephaloridine, extends the lifespan of roundworms and mice by triggering gut bacteria to make colanic acid, an anti-aging compound.

Bacteriophages, or phages, offer yet another potential way to manipulate the microbiome for health. Phages are highly selective viruses that infect and kill specific species of bacteria. Phages have been used to treat severe infections from bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Given that phages can alter the gut microbiome of mice, researchers are studying whether they could be used to eliminate gut bacteria associated with unhealthy aging.

Aging is a natural process that can bring many rewards. Cultivating a healthy microbiome could help people enjoy their golden years more fully.

Bill Sullivan receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

– ref. Your gut microbes can be anti-aging – scientists are uncovering how to keep your microbiome youthful – https://theconversation.com/your-gut-microbes-can-be-anti-aging-scientists-are-uncovering-how-to-keep-your-microbiome-youthful-275380

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John M. Kinder, Professor of History and American Studies, Oklahoma State University

The negative public reaction to Operation Metro Surge – the violent immigration dragnet in Minnesota – was “MAGA’s Gettysburg,” wrote New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on Jan. 28.

Bouie, of course, was comparing ICE’s setbacks to the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, the battle often credited with turning the tide of the American Civil War. Fresh off a string of victories, Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, believed his men were “invincible” and launched an invasion into the North.

But Gen. George G. Meade and the Army of the Potomac won the battle of Gettysburg, and the Confederates would fight on the defensive for the rest of the war.

Since early 2026, growing numbers of commentators have turned to the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 to make sense of America’s fractured political climate.

After a masked federal agent shot and killed a 37-year-old mother of three, Renée Good, in Minneapolis, novelist Thane Rosenbaum wondered whether the city might become a “new Antietam.” The battle of Antietam, fought on Sept. 17, 1862, remains the bloodiest day in all of American history, leaving more than 3,600 soldiers dead.

Later in January 2026, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speculated that ICE violence in the Twin Cities could spark a national conflict. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” he asked an interviewer, alluding to the South Carolina harbor fortress where, in 1861, the opening shots of the Civil War were fired.

In response, defenders of Donald Trump, including CNN commentator Scott Jennings and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, compared Walz to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America. On Fox News, Washington Examiner columnist Tiana Lowe Doescher said: “News flash, Tim Walz. In this case, you’re the Confederacy,” accusing him of conspiring to defy federal immigration policy.

At a time of deepening national division, the recent spate of Civil War analogies should come as no surprise.

Unprecedented political fracture

The Civil War remains the nation’s most divisive and defining epoch. The secession of 11 states propelled a democratic nation into unprecedented political fracture. After four years of bloodshed, the Union was preserved and 4 million enslaved people were granted their freedom.

Preservation of the Union came at a heavy price. More than 700,000 people were dead, about 2% of the 1860 population, or a number roughly equivalent to the current population of the state of Maryland.

But the Civil War’s staggering death toll cannot fully explain the references to “Gettysburg” and “Jeff Davis” in media coverage of ICE operations in Minnesota and elsewhere.

As we argue in our book, “They Are Dead and Yet They Live: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America,” the impulse to connect the American Civil War to contemporary crises can be traced to the politics of memory, the ways interest groups, politicians and ordinary people shape the past to meet the needs of the present.

Likening Walz to Jefferson Davis or Minneapolis to Gettysburg or Fort Sumter are clear examples of how Americans appropriate the Civil War for our contemporary political needs.

Competing memories

In the Civil War’s aftermath, the conflict’s participants quickly crafted competing versions of the Civil War.

Some Union veterans labeled their former adversaries as traitors. Clinton Spencer, a captain in the 1st Michigan Infantry, declared, “disloyalty to the old flag was is and shall always be TREASON, deep, dark, and damnable.”

Yet the Union memory soon became subsumed by the dominance of the “Lost Cause,” an intentional and distorted narrative crafted by white Southerners. That version of the Civil War ignored slavery and celebrated Confederate soldiers in a war to defend states’ rights from federal tyranny.

By the early 1900s, Lost Cause ideology had taken root across the nation. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and other Southern apologists erected hundreds of Confederate monuments throughout the United States, and blockbuster movies like “The Birth of a Nation,” from 1915, and “Gone with the Wind,” from 1939, turned Lost Cause nostalgia into big-screen spectacle.

Over the past few decades, however, communities around the United States have made great strides to disentangle the Lost Cause from public memories of the Civil War.

After Dylann Roof massacred nine African American worshippers at Charleston’s Emmanuel AME Church in 2015, he was found to have espoused white supremacist ideas and posted a photo of the Confederate battle flag on his website. In the killings’ aftermath, cities across the South removed more than 300 Confederate flags, monuments and symbols from public view.

“The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity,” declared New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu in a 2017 speech about the removal of four Confederate statues in the city. “It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is a history we should never forget and one that we should never, ever again put on a pedestal to be revered.”

Homegrown analogy

In 1961, poet Robert Penn Warren famously observed, “Many clear and objective facts about America are best understood by reference to the Civil War.”

That remains the case today.

For many Americans, the Civil War is the prime example of the danger of allowing political division to spiral into organized violence.

Minnesota’s governor, Walz, could have used the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 or the bombing at Pearl Harbor in 1941 for his historical analogy, but the references to the start of the Spanish-American War or World War II would not have been as powerful. Using the Civil War as a reference point underscores the danger when Americans decide to abandon their shared history and values and engage in fratricidal war.

Many of the recent Civil War analogies do not hold up to scrutiny. The events going on in Minneapolis bear little to no resemblance to the years of tumult leading to the assault on Fort Sumter, and the violence on the streets of Minneapolis can hardly compare to the horrors on the fields along the Antietam Creek.

But that’s beside the point.

More than 160 years after the defeat of Confederate forces at Gettysburg, the Civil War continues to have an enduring hold on the American political consciousness – shaping the way we view the past and offering a vocabulary for understanding the political conflicts of the present.

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. From Gettysburg to Minneapolis: How the American Civil War continues to shape how we understand contemporary political conflicts and their dangers – https://theconversation.com/from-gettysburg-to-minneapolis-how-the-american-civil-war-continues-to-shape-how-we-understand-contemporary-political-conflicts-and-their-dangers-275015

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jason Zenor, Associate Professor of Mass Communication, State University of New York Oswego

In November 2025 the Trump administration announced a special park pass commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary that featured images of two presidents: George Washington and Donald Trump.

Featuring the current president – in place of the National Park Service’s usual landscape pictures – triggered both a lawsuit and a social media movement to put stickers over Trump’s face.

As a businessman, Trump has frequently emblazoned buildings and consumer products – shoelaces, an airline, an edition of the Bible, among many others – with his own name.

During his current presidential term, his administration has put his name on numerous government properties – perhaps most famously the Kennedy Center, but also money, monuments and military equipment. In January 2026, Trump floated the idea Congress would rename both New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport after him.

With Florida lawmakers considering renaming the airport near Mar-a-Lago after the president, the Trump Organization has filed an application to trademark his name for use in airports and ancillary activities, although the company said it would not charge a fee in the case of the Palm Beach airport.

As a communication professor who studies the First Amendment, I was intrigued by the federal actions and the protests they’ve triggered.

Citizens certainly have the right to protest these decisions, like any government action. The First Amendment prevents the government from making laws that abridge freedom of speech.

But does the federal government itself have freedom of speech? And can a president put his name and image wherever he wants?

Free speech for government

The answer to the first question has already been answered. In a series of rulings, the Supreme Court has upheld the government speech doctrine, which allows the government as speaker to say whatever it wants.

Moreover, if the forum is governmental, the government may even be able to compel people to express its messages – for example, with public employee speech that is part of job duties. The 2006 Supreme Court decision establishing that principle involved a deputy district attorney who’d questioned the validity of a warrant, but the rule applies to other employees, such as teachers who have to offer instruction in state-mandated curricula.

The court’s decisions in government speech cases imply that if people do not like the government speech, they should change the government with their votes.

However, some scholars and advocates argue that this relatively new constitutional doctrine gives the government too much power to drown out other viewpoints in the marketplace of ideas.

In most instances, the government cannot compel speech or force citizens to express a certain message. Compelled speech is not allowed when the government is forcing a citizen to endorse an ideological message.

For example, the Supreme Court allowed a Jehovah’s Witness to cover the words “or Die” on his license plate, which included the New Hampshire state motto, “Live Free or Die.”

The First Amendment is not absolute, and some government regulations will infringe on speech.

The federal government has strict regulations on how the American flag should be disposed of, but it cannot punish someone who is burning a flag as a form of political protest.

Government control of its own products

What happens when the government itself hosts forums for citizen speech, such as placing monuments in a park or flying flags on government property? Can the government deny certain speech based on the speaker or message?

In such cases, courts have had to decipher whether the forum was purely governmental. To do so, they examine the history of the forum in which the contested speech takes place, who controls the forum, and the public perception of who controls it.

This brings us back to the question of Trump’s name and likeness. As a constitutional matter, the Trump administration can express itself as it sees fit under the government speech doctrine. But in some cases, the administration may be bound by statute or formal contracts, as with the legal battle over the naming of the Kennedy Center, which was named by an act of Congress. The lawsuit over the National Park passes claims that the administration is violating a federal law requiring that the winning entry in a public lands photo contest be used for the passes.

Still, I believe it would be difficult to win a lawsuit claiming that the new passes are a form of compelled speech, with bearers of the pass arguing they are being forced, in effect, to endorse Trump. Most people would likely see the park passes’ artwork as being controlled by the government and therefore a form of government expression, not a form of private expression.

Can people cover up Trump?

But the Trump administration may not be able to defend its policy of declaring passes null and void if the president’s image is covered by a sticker. Citizens protesting Trump’s appearance by covering up the president’s image is protected speech, in my view. The government’s action to void the passes is likely a violation of the First Amendment.

On the face of it, placing stickers on passes would appear to violate the long-standing Interior Department rule that passes are “void if altered.” Those regulations were content neutral and incidental to any particular message or cardholder.

However, the updated policy, voiding the pass if Trump’s image is covered or marred, is more suspect. The new rules seem to be a direct response to the protesters’ political speech and, as applied, primarily aim to affect these stickers and speakers.

With an administration known for its social media savviness, it may not be convincing for officials to argue they did not know about the protest or that the policy was not a direct attempt to chill such speech.

The government will have the right to put Trump’s name and images on more government property in many cases, but most resulting political protests, in my view, will also be protected speech.

Jason Zenor 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. TrumpRx, Trump Kennedy Center, Trump National Parks passes − government free speech allows the president to name things after himself – https://theconversation.com/trumprx-trump-kennedy-center-trump-national-parks-passes-government-free-speech-allows-the-president-to-name-things-after-himself-274484

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Noah Dormady, Associate Professor of Public Policy, The Ohio State University

American families are feeling the pinch of rising electricity prices. In the past five years alone, the generation portion of the standard service residential electric bill in Columbus, Ohio, has increased by 110%. This is one data point in a national trend.

Energy affordability is quickly shaping up to be a key election issue at all levels of American politics. And more than half of U.S. adults surveyed in January 2026 reported being very concerned about the price of electricity.

Experts in the energy industry are fiercely conflicted on what, or who, is to blame. People have sought to blame geopolitical events like the war in Ukraine, dramatic changes in U.S. energy policies, power grid operators, regulators and artificial intelligence and data centers.

But new research from The Ohio State University’s Energy Markets and Policy Group, where I serve as principal investigator, provides new insights about another factor you were probably not thinking about – middlemen introduced by deregulation.

How deregulation brought middlemen instead of competition

Between the late 1990s and early 2000s, several state legislatures deregulated their electricity systems. Deregulation was originally sold as a way to replace inefficient regulation and reduce bureaucracy. People were told that competition would deliver lower prices.

Under the old system, a state regulatory commission set prices for all electricity services – generation, transmission and distribution – which were supplied by the same monopoly utility company. Each state commission was required by federal law to ensure that rates were “just and reasonable.” Under deregulation, that same commission rate-setting process still holds for transmission and distribution, but the generation part was split off.

Deregulation created competitive wholesale markets for generation, but price competition did not spread widely at the retail level. In states with active retail deregulation, there are two ways the retail generation price can be set. Consumers get to pick which one – buy from a marketer on the open market, or do nothing. Most people choose to do nothing.

Rather than introducing efficiency, this system of retail deregulation created a new complexity: middlemen marketers. In most cases, no matter which choice people make, it’s hard for them to understand how their electricity rates are set. That’s where our research comes in.

Option A: The open market

Electricity customers in deregulated retail markets can choose a company that buys the electricity on their behalf. People who live in these states may be familiar with energy salespeople who come to their homes, approach them in a convenience store, or use telemarketers.

For example, people who live in the Cincinnati area can contract with one of more than 50 suppliers to buy electricity on their behalf from the wholesale market. Their monthly bill would still come from Duke Energy, a regulated distribution utility, and would still include regulated charges for distribution and transmission set by state and federal officials. But it would also include charges from an unregulated retail supplier, for the generation part of their bill – their electric supply.

Some locations also have community choice aggregation, in which their municipality participates in the open market on their behalf unless they opt out.

Our research has found that these markets are not working as intended.

Option B: Do nothing – default service

For people who choose not to shop on the open market, by doing nothing they remain on what is called the “standard offer” or “default service.” Sometimes it is also called “provider of last resort” service because it is not meant to be the best option.

For these people, state law generally requires each distribution utility to hold auctions or use a procurement process like a request for proposals to determine which middlemen companies get to be their supplier, and of course, at what price.

People in this category still buy from middleman marketers. But rather than choosing their own middleman, they get the middleman the utility company selects for them.

Problems in the open market

People who live in states with deregulated electricity markets know that these open markets have many problems. There have been investigations into unfair trade practices, lawsuits and regulatory penalties for misleading sales practices.

Other problems include deceptive marketing, a process called “slamming” in which companies change customers’ suppliers without their knowledge, contract loopholes that increase prices, and outright fraud.

Help for consumers usually comes after problems have arisen, rather than preventing them in the first place.

Our research team sought to determine whether, and how much, electricity consumers would save money if they used the supposedly competitive open market, rather than going with the default rate. To answer this question, we developed a detailed database of every daily retail choice offer filed by every supplier in all service territories in Ohio for a decade – which meant compiling millions of records.

We found that 72.1% of the open-market offers exceeded the utility’s default rate. In some years, there was not even one single cost-saving offer for the entire year, or longer. The vast majority of these supposedly competitive electricity prices were higher than customers would get by doing nothing. Taking the time to research the market and compare prices was often not worth consumers’ time.

Importantly, the study found that suppliers in the open market were not setting their prices based on market fundamentals – like the underlying wholesale price of electricity. Instead, they were setting prices based on the results of the utility’s default supply selection. In a competitive market, that is not supposed to happen.

Is default service really competitive?

In a separate study, our team evaluated every default service auction in every utility service territory in Ohio since 2011, nearly 15 years. We found that the number of companies competing with one another in these auctions is a key determinant of the retail markup consumers have to pay.

In some of the default-option rate auctions, as few as five suppliers placed bids. In others, there were as many as 15 companies vying to provide default-option electricity. Our analysis found that in situations when the underlying costs of generating electricity were the same, default supply auctions with fewer bidders delivered significantly higher prices for consumers than auctions with more bidders.

The study included numerous statistical controls for other factors that could otherwise help explain the prices, including natural gas prices and market volatility. The number of bidders was the key factor. Having just three additional bidders could reduce consumers’ default-option rates by 18% to 23%. Nine additional bidders, the analysis found, could deliver savings of as much as 60%.

It’s important to note that Ohio’s process for setting default service rates is more robust than many other states. In some states, it is not uncommon for even fewer companies to bid. So Ohio’s situation is not actually a worst-case scenario for consumers. Rather, it’s probably better than many other states with deregulated electricity markets.

Putting it all together

The first study showed that the open market is not setting efficient retail rates and is not working as intended. Most of the offers made available to consumers are not worth their time, and the suppliers in those markets are not setting their prices based upon market fundamentals. Instead, these companies are taking their cues from the local distribution utility’s default supply auctions. That is not how deregulation was envisioned.

The second study showed that the process which sets the default supply rate is also not very competitive. Less competition means the middleman companies bidding in those auctions can bid, and win, higher prices – raising electric bills and increasing their profit margin.

Energy deregulation promised lower prices through competition. But instead, consumers got an army of middleman marketers. And, those middlemen have been taking their cues from a bidding process that often has too few participants to keep prices low.

Noah Dormady receives funding from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and the US Department of Energy (DOE).

– ref. How deregulation made electricity more expensive, not cheaper – https://theconversation.com/how-deregulation-made-electricity-more-expensive-not-cheaper-272780