Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Emma Fenske, DO, Addiction Medicine Fellow and Internal Medicine Physician, Oregon Health & Science University

Addiction is one of the most common and consequential chronic medical conditions in the United States. Nationwide, more than 46 million people met the criteria for a substance abuse disorder as of 2021, the most recent data available.

Decades of evidence show that addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease of the brain. Nonetheless, there’s still widespread public misunderstanding of what constitutes “treatment” for addiction, not to mention heavy stigma associated with it.

Many patients, families and even health care systems view entering a detoxification or medically managed withdrawal unit as the primary step in recovery. Sometimes, this first step is considered all that is needed. As a physician and fellow in addiction medicine, I know firsthand that this common perception is wrong, and that it perpetuates misinformation about evidence-based treatment.

Centers that provide medically managed withdrawal are designed to stabilize patients in crisis, safely manage acute withdrawal and interrupt dangerous use patterns. However, the idea that “getting through detox” equates to recovery has taken hold over the past several years. This belief appears to be rooted in outdated models of addiction, public misunderstanding and media portrayals that frame addiction as solely a problem of physical dependence.

Detox is a starting point, not a treatment plan

It is not uncommon for patients to show up for medically managed withdrawal, more commonly known as “detox,” without a post-discharge plan. “I haven’t thought that far,” “I just want to get through this,” or “I am getting treatment now, aren’t I?” are some of the responses I frequently hear.

However, this first step is only the start of recovery. Detoxification from alcohol or benzodiazapines – drugs commonly known as “benzos,” such as Xanax, Ativan or Valium – can be dangerous or even deadly if it’s not managed in a medical setting. While detox is often necessary to safely get someone through withdrawal, it only addresses short-term physical symptoms, not the underlying addiction – nor does it address the factors that drive people to use alcohol and drugs problematically.

Addiction has causes that are neurobiological, psychological and structural. Treating these drivers is as important as managing the initial withdrawal. Medically managed withdrawal does not restore neurochemical imbalances, provide long-term relapse prevention strategies or help patients manage ongoing life stressors or triggers as they arise.

In a 2023 study of adults with opioid use disorder, relapse rates six months after treatment were highest among individuals who received only short-term inpatient treatment, with 77% of these patients returning to use. Relapse rates were significantly lower among those who remained in inpatient care for a longer duration or who transitioned to outpatient treatment following short-term inpatient treatment.

When people were also treated with a long-acting form of an opioid-blocking medication called naltrexone, relapse rates dropped across all settings — to 59% after short-term inpatient care, 46% after long-term inpatient care and 38% for those treated as outpatients. These results highlight that brief detoxification without ongoing care is often not enough to support lasting recovery.

However, many centers that provide medically managed withdrawal face clinical, regulatory and financial constraints. As a result, they often have limited resources and can only admit patients for as few as three to five days. In these circumstances, the centers work mainly to stabilize acute withdrawal symptoms rather than to home in on underlying factors that may drive substance use and possible return to use.

Why addiction doesn’t end after withdrawal

Addiction is a chronic, occasionally relapsing condition. It disrupts three interconnected systems in the brain:

– the reward pathway, in which dopamine, a neurotransmitter, works on pleasure centers of the brain;

– stress centers in the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions such as fear, aggression and anxiety; and

– motivation and control systems in the prefrontal cortex, which manage higher-level executive functions like planning and problem-solving.

When individuals repeatedly use substances like alcohol or drugs, they may discover that things they once found rewarding or joyful no longer can compete on the same scale. This often leads to increased stress and impaired self-control. Their body reduces the number of dopamine receptors – sites in the brain that bind dopamine – as a result, causing previously motivating and joyous activities to seem bleak.

This was what had happened to a patient who told me: “After meth, everything was messed up and nothing brought me joy.” At first, using methamphetamine creates a “high,” or euphoria; over time, though, individuals use it simply to avoid being sick. The substance that once was euphoric becomes a proverbial ball and chain.

These neurobiological changes do not happen overnight, and neither does recovery. It is unrealistic to expect that a typical admission for medically managed withdrawal, which may only span three to five days, will heal patients’ damaged circuits.

Furthermore, some symptoms, such as anxiety, mood changes, trouble sleeping and overall discontentment with life, can persist for three to six months or more following the initial withdrawal period. Cravings, which are intense psychological urges, often arise without warning. When this happens, having recovery support systems in place, such as a sponsor, mental health professional or relapse prevention plan, can be crucial.

Addiction often is rooted in exacerbating factors like anxiety, depression, trauma, chronic stress and pain. For example, chronic pain from a past injury can often lead to misuse of prescription opioids, which later may evolve into using other substances like heroin or fentanyl.

Patients with substance use disorders have often relied on substances as their escape lever from these deeper problems, rather than developing healthier coping mechanisms. All they have known in times of suffering is their drug of choice.

It often requires months or years to develop new ways of thinking, emotional regulation, habits and trauma responses after leaving a history of substance use behind. Learning to live substance-free and unaltered can be a new and terrifying concept.

Treatment after detox

If medically managed withdrawal is just the first step, what should come next? Patients may confer with their doctors and choose to start medication-assisted therapy, which helps prevent cravings and withdrawal as they address deeper issues through mental health treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy. Opioid use disorder is treated with medications like buprenorphine or methadone, while alcohol use disorder medications include naltrexone, acamprosate or disulfiram.

These medications are at least as effective as many standard treatments in medicine, and I believe they should be considered when appropriate. Medications for alcohol use disorder have proved to be effective at reducing risk of death and hospitalizations, but these medications are often underutilized.

Treating substance use disorders is like managing diabetes, high blood pressure or other chronic health conditions. Even after patients are out of imminent crisis, the work is ongoing.

Emma Fenske, DO 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. Addiction affects your brain as well as your body – that’s why detoxing is just the first stage of recovery – https://theconversation.com/addiction-affects-your-brain-as-well-as-your-body-thats-why-detoxing-is-just-the-first-stage-of-recovery-270784

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Pawan Dhingra, Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies, Amherst College

Stephen Miller’s January 2026 announcement to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers – telling them that they have “immunity to perform your duties” and that no “illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist” can stop them – may seem like an extreme statement outside the political mainstream.

And when ICE agents use facial recognition software to monitor immigrants and protesters, that might seem like an unacceptable invasion of people’s privacy.

While extreme, these cases are not too unexpected. Both Miller’s statements and ICE’s monitoring extend from the framework of immigration enforcement that grew from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Immigration enforcement was reorganized and reframed after 9/11, particularly through the creation of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.

As a scholar of immigration in the U.S., I find that the growth of extreme immigration enforcement, both at the border and across the country, results from this change 25 years ago.

From criminality to terrorism

In November 2002, the Homeland Security Act created DHS. The founding of ICE followed a few months later. As the agency notes, it was part of “the single-largest government reorganization since the creation of the Department of Defense.” Immigration enforcement was folded into a national security priority whose primary purpose was to defend “homeland security.”

The notion of immigrants as potential criminals was widespread well before the creation DHS.

In 1996, for example, President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act. That law expanded the number of offenses that could result in automatic deportation, including of legal residents. The act also limited judicial review of deportation cases, while the very title of the law framed people in the U.S. without legal status as lawbreaking criminals.

But after 9/11, the connection between immigration and law enforcement intensified and took on a new dimension: counterterrorism. Immigration was no longer treated as a civil issue in which immigrants were deported if found through a civil court to have violated the law.

Instead, immigrants were evaluated as possible threats to the country.

Immigration trials, such as for overstaying visas, increasingly took place in closed hearings, with the government’s secret evidence not shared with the accused. Those arrested for crossing the border illegally were imprisoned and faced [criminal prosecutions]. Expedited deportations took place at the border and across the country, even for immigrants who had been in the U.S. for years.

Further federal government practices connected immigrants to terrorism. The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System or NSEERS, introduced in 2002, required immigrant men from 25 countries – almost entirely in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa – to register with the federal government after already residing in the country. It was framed as an effort to defend homeland security, and hundreds of people who had overstayed their visas for less than a month were detained.

United Nations human rights experts later criticized NSEERS for racial and religious profiling. Of the approximately 80,000 people registered, not a single terrorism prosecution resulted. About 14,000 were placed in deportation proceedings for visa irregularities, none for terrorism-related activity.

DHS suspended NSEERS in 2011, and it was terminated in 2016.

Lessons learned from 9/11

If the purpose of NSEERS was to identify terrorists, it failed.

But it succeeded in treating immigrants as potential terrorists. That connection has intensified since.

Federal government investment in facial recognition technology grew substantially after 9/11 with bipartisan support. The goal was to identify possible terrorists in American airports and cities.

Today, facial recognition has become a common tactic used by ICE officers to identify not just immigrants for potential detention but also citizen observers.

Additionally, privately owned detention centers grew in response to the mass arrests of immigrants. Treatment of immigrants at these centers, according to human rights advocates, has included “abuse, solitary confinement, and medical neglect.” For years, ICE detention centers have been criticized for similar conditions.

Programs like NSEERS produced fear and led to what policymakers have called self-deportation, where immigrants voluntarily leave the U.S. Today, self-deportation has become a government-endorsed program.

Research also shows that heightened immigration enforcement after 9/11 led many immigrants, even those with legal status, to withdraw from public life, avoiding schools, hospitals and work. ICE today produces the same kinds of fear.

Going beyond technical reforms

The immigration enforcement response to 9/11 set the stage on which Miller’s language and the collection of everyday Americans’ data become viable.

Under this way of thinking, if the homeland is under threat, then those who challenge immigration enforcement are “domestic terrorists.” Investigations into ICE officers are muted, for the officers are protecting the homeland against existential danger. Severe tactics to detain immigrants and condemn protesters become not only permissible but also advisable, according to advocates.

Perhaps technical reforms, such as requiring ICE agents to use body cameras or requiring ICE agents to have judicial warrants before entering homes, may limit some abuses.

But these measures do not address the underlying premise since 9/11 that immigration has become primarily viewed as a national security threat.

Pawan Dhingra 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 the 9/11 terrorist attacks shaped ICE’s immigration strategy – https://theconversation.com/how-the-9-11-terrorist-attacks-shaped-ices-immigration-strategy-275313

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John J. Martin, Assistant Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University

The Republican-led House of Representatives voted Feb. 11, 2026 to approve the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act – or SAVE America Act. The bill would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote and present photo identification when they do vote in federal elections.

This marks the third year in a row that the House has passed similar legislation. Passage in the Senate, which would require Democratic votes, continues to appear unlikely. But Republicans from President Donald Trump on down are clearly interested in finding ways to enhance election security – although critics contend the SAVE America Act would unfairly disenfranchise millions of citizens.

The SAVE America Act would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to first “provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” in person, such as a passport or birth certificate. The new version goes further than its predecessor by requiring many individuals voting in federal elections to present photo identification at the polls indicating proof of U.S. citizenship.

Voting rights experts and advocacy organizations have detailed how the legislation could suppress voting. In part, they say it would particularly create barriers in low-income and minority communities. People in such communities often lack the forms of ID acceptable under the SAVE America Act for a variety of reasons, including socioeconomic factors.

As of now, at least 9% of voting-age American citizens – approximately 21 million people – do not even have driver’s licenses, let alone proof of citizenship. In spite of this, many legislators support the bill as a means of eliminating noncitizen voting in elections.

As a legal scholar who studies, among other things, foreign interference in elections, I find considerations about the potential effects of the SAVE America Act important, especially given how rare it is that a noncitizen actually votes in federal elections.

Yet, it is equally crucial to consider a more fundamental question: Is the SAVE America Act even constitutional?

How the SAVE America Act could change voting requirements

The SAVE America Act would forbid state election officials from registering an individual to vote in federal elections unless this person “provides documentary proof of United States citizenship.” Furthermore, it would forbid individuals from voting unless they bring such proof to the polls each time they vote, unless their state agrees to submit voter registration lists to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on a quarterly basis.

Acceptable forms of proof for voter registration would include a REAL ID that demonstrates U.S. citizenship – most of which do not – as well as a U.S. passport or a U.S. military identification card.

So – should the SAVE America Act become law – if a person turns 18 or moves between states and wishes to register to vote in federal elections in their new home, they would likely be turned away if they do not have any such documents readily available. At best, they could still fill out a registration form, but they would need to mail in acceptable proof of citizenship.

For married people with changed last names, among others, questions remain about whether birth certificates could even count as acceptable proof of citizenship for them.

The Constitution says little about voting rights

Despite the national conversation the SAVE America Act has sparked, it is unclear whether Congress even has the power to enact it. This is the key constitutional question.

The U.S. Constitution imposes no citizenship requirement when it comes to voting. The original text of the Constitution, in fact, said very little about the right to vote. It was not until legislators passed subsequent amendments, starting after the Civil War up through the 1970s, that the Constitution even explicitly prohibited voting laws that discriminate on account of race, sex or age.

Aside from these amendments, the Constitution is largely silent about who gets to vote.

Who, then, gets to decide whether someone is qualified to vote? No matter the election, the answer is always the same – the states.

Indeed, by constitutional design, the states are tasked with setting voter-eligibility requirements – a product of our federalist system. For state and local elections, the 10th Amendment grants states the power to regulate their internal elections as they see fit.

States also get to decide who may vote in federal elections, which include presidential and congressional elections.

When it comes to presidential elections, for instance, states have – as I have previously written – exclusive power under the Constitution’s electors clause to decide how to conduct presidential elections within their borders, including who gets to vote in them.

The states wield similar authority for congressional elections. Namely, according to Article 1 of the Constitution and the Constitution’s 17th Amendment, if someone can vote in their state’s legislative elections, they are entitled to vote in its congressional elections, too.

Conversely, the Constitution provides Congress zero authority to govern voter-eligibility requirements in federal elections. Indeed, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling on the Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council case, the court asserted that nothing in the Constitution “lends itself to the view that voting qualifications in federal elections are to be set by Congress.”

Is the SAVE America Act constitutional?

The SAVE America Act presents a constitutional dilemma. By requiring individuals to show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, the SAVE America Act is implicitly saying that someone must be a U.S. citizen to vote in federal elections.

In other words, Congress would be instituting a qualification to vote, a power that the Constitution leaves exclusively to the states.

Indeed, while all states currently limit voting rights to citizens, legal noncitizen voting is not without precedent. As multiple scholars have noted, at least 19 states extended voting rights to free male “inhabitants,” including noncitizens, starting from our country’s founding up to and throughout the 19th century.

Today, over 20 municipalities across the country, as well as the District of Columbia, allow permanent noncitizen residents to vote in local elections.

Any state these days could similarly extend the right to vote in state and federal elections to permanent noncitizen residents. This is within their constitutional prerogative. And if this were to happen, there could be a conflict between that state’s voter-eligibility laws and the SAVE America Act.

Normally, when state and federal laws conflict, the Constitution’s supremacy clause mandates that federal law prevails.

Yet, in this instance, where Congress has no actual authority to implement voter qualifications, the SAVE America Act would seem to have no constitutional leg on which to stand.

Reconciling the SAVE America Act with the Constitution

So, why have 108 U.S. representatives sponsored a bill that likely exceeds Congress’ powers?

Politics, of course, plays some role here. Namely, noncitizen voting is a major concern among Republican politicians and voters. Every SAVE America Act co-sponsor is Republican, as were all but four of the 220 U.S. representatives who voted to pass the SAVE Act in April 2025.

When it comes to the constitutionality of the SAVE America Act, though, proponents simply assert that Congress is acting within its purview.

Specifically, many proponents have cited the Constitution’s elections clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections, as support for that assertion. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, for example, explicitly referenced the elections clause when defending the SAVE Act earlier in 2025.

But the elections clause only grants Congress authority to regulate election procedures, not voter qualifications. The Supreme Court explicitly stated this in the Inter Tribal Council ruling.

Congress can, for instance, require states to adopt a uniform federal voter registration form and even include a citizenship question on said form. What it cannot do, however, is implement a nonnegotiable mandate that effectively tells the states they can never allow any noncitizen to vote in a federal election.

For now, the SAVE America Act is simply legislation. Should the Senate pass it, Trump will almost assuredly sign it into law, given, among other factors, his recent call for Republicans to nationalize elections. If and when that happens, the courts would have to reckon with the SAVE America Act’s legitimacy within the country’s constitutional design.

This is an update of an article originally published on April 22, 2025.

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

– ref. Citizenship voting requirement in SAVE America Act has no basis in the Constitution – and ignores precedent that only states decide who gets to vote – https://theconversation.com/citizenship-voting-requirement-in-save-america-act-has-no-basis-in-the-constitution-and-ignores-precedent-that-only-states-decide-who-gets-to-vote-275658

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Filippo Menczer, Professor of Informatics and Computer Science, Indiana University

In mid-2023, around the time Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X but before he discontinued free academic access to the platform’s data, my colleagues and I looked for signs of social bot accounts posting content generated by artificial intelligence. Social bots are AI software that produce content and interact with people on social media. We uncovered a network of over a thousand bots involved in crypto scams. We dubbed this the “fox8” botnet after one of the fake news websites it was designed to amplify.

We were able to identify these accounts because the coders were a bit sloppy: They did not catch occasional posts with self-revealing text generated by ChatGPT, such as when the AI model refused to comply with prompts that violated its terms. The most common self-revealing response was “I’m sorry, but I cannot comply with this request as it violates OpenAI’s Content Policy on generating harmful or inappropriate content. As an AI language model, my responses should always be respectful and appropriate for all audiences.”

We believe fox8 was only the tip of the iceberg because better coders can filter out self-revealing posts or use open-source AI models fine-tuned to remove ethical guardrails.

The fox8 bots created fake engagement with each other and with human accounts through realistic back-and-forth discussions and retweets. In this way, they tricked X’s recommendation algorithm into amplifying exposure to their posts and accumulated significant numbers of followers and influence.

Such a level of coordination among inauthentic online agents was unprecedented – AI models had been weaponized to give rise to a new generation of social agents, much more sophisticated than earlier social bots. Machine-learning tools to detect social bots, like our own Botometer, were unable to discriminate between these AI agents and human accounts in the wild. Even AI models trained to detect AI-generated content failed.

Bots in the era of generative AI

Fast-forward a few years: Today, people and organizations with malicious intent have access to more powerful AI language models – including open-source ones – while social media platforms have relaxed or eliminated moderation efforts. They even provide financial incentives for engaging content, irrespective of whether it’s real or AI-generated. This is a perfect storm for foreign and domestic influence operations targeting democratic elections. For example, an AI-controlled bot swarm could create the false impression of widespread, bipartisan opposition to a political candidate.

The current U.S. administration has dismantled federal programs that combat such hostile campaigns and defunded research efforts to study them. Researchers no longer have access to the platform data that would make it possible to detect and monitor these kinds of online manipulation.

I am part of an interdisciplinary team of computer science, AI, cybersecurity, psychology, social science, journalism and policy researchers who have sounded the alarm about the threat of malicious AI swarms. We believe that current AI technology allows organizations with malicious intent to deploy large numbers of autonomous, adaptive, coordinated agents to multiple social media platforms. These agents enable influence operations that are far more scalable, sophisticated and adaptive than simple scripted misinformation campaigns.

Rather than generating identical posts or obvious spam, AI agents can generate varied, credible content at a large scale. The swarms can send people messages tailored to their individual preferences and to the context of their online conversations. The swarms can tailor tone, style and content to respond dynamically to human interaction and platform signals such as numbers of likes or views.

Synthetic consensus

In a study my colleagues and I conducted last year, we used a social media model to simulate swarms of inauthentic social media accounts using different tactics to influence a target online community. One tactic was by far the most effective: infiltration. Once an online group is infiltrated, malicious AI swarms can create the illusion of broad public agreement around the narratives they are programmed to promote. This exploits a psychological phenomenon known as social proof: Humans are naturally inclined to believe something if they perceive that “everyone is saying it.”

Such social media astroturf tactics have been around for many years, but malicious AI swarms can effectively create believable interactions with targeted human users at a large scale, and get those users to follow the inauthentic accounts. For example, agents can talk about the latest game to a sports fan and about current events to a news junkie. They can generate language that resonates with the interests and opinions of their targets.

Even if individual claims are debunked, the persistent chorus of independent-sounding voices can make radical ideas seem mainstream and amplify negative feelings toward “others.” Manufactured synthetic consensus is a very real threat to the public sphere, the mechanisms democratic societies use to form shared beliefs, make decisions and trust public discourse. If citizens cannot reliably distinguish between genuine public opinion and algorithmically generated simulation of unanimity, democratic decision-making could be severely compromised.

Mitigating the risks

Unfortunately, there is not a single fix. Regulation granting researchers access to platform data would be a first step. Understanding how swarms behave collectively would be essential to anticipate risks. Detecting coordinated behavior is a key challenge. Unlike simple copy-and-paste bots, malicious swarms produce varied output that resembles normal human interaction, making detection much more difficult.

In our lab, we design methods to detect patterns of coordinated behavior that deviate from normal human interaction. Even if agents look different from each other, their underlying objectives often reveal patterns in timing, network movement and narrative trajectory that are unlikely to occur naturally.

Social media platforms could use such methods. I believe that AI and social media platforms should also more aggressively adopt standards to apply watermarks to AI-generated content and recognize and label such content. Finally, restricting the monetization of inauthentic engagement would reduce the financial incentives for influence operations and other malicious groups to use synthetic consensus.

The threat is real

While these measures might mitigate the systemic risks of malicious AI swarms before they become entrenched in political and social systems worldwide, the current political landscape in the U.S. seems to be moving in the opposite direction. The Trump administration has aimed to reduce AI and social media regulation and is instead favoring rapid deployment of AI models over safety.

The threat of malicious AI swarms is no longer theoretical: Our evidence suggests these tactics are already being deployed. I believe that policymakers and technologists should increase the cost, risk and visibility of such manipulation.

Filippo Menczer receives funding from Knight Foundation, National Science Foundation, Swiss National Science Foundation, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

– ref. Swarms of AI bots can sway people’s beliefs – threatening democracy – https://theconversation.com/swarms-of-ai-bots-can-sway-peoples-beliefs-threatening-democracy-274778

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Tucker J. Gregor, Doctoral Candidate in Religious Studies, University of Iowa

Love and hate seem like obvious opposites. Love, whether romantic or otherwise, involves a sense of warmth and affection for others. Hate involves feelings of disdain. Love builds up, whereas hate destroys.

However, this description of love and hate treats them as merely emotions. As a religious ethicist, I am interested in the role love plays in our moral lives: how and why it can help us live well together. How does our understanding of the love-hate relationship change if we imagine love not as an emotion but as a virtue?

The 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas is a foundational thinker in the history of Christian ethics. For Aquinas, hate is not the antithesis of love, or even opposed to it. In his most important work, the “Summa Theologiae,” he writes that hate responds to love. In other words, hate is a reaction to threats against what we love, or what we deeply value. We can better understand the experience of hate by getting clear on what it means to love.

Greek roots

Today, scientists know that feelings of love are related to biochemical processes that release chemicals in the brain, increasing pleasure and excitement. Beyond mere biology or even emotions, some philosophers and psychologists contend that love is also a practice.

Love can also refer to a virtue: a habit or settled disposition that increases the likelihood of people thinking, feeling and acting in ways that promote happiness and well-being. For example, the virtue of courage can help people endure and thrive in the midst of fear and uncertainty.

The concept of virtue is as old as philosophy itself. In the “Republic,” written in the fourth century B.C.E., Plato distinguishes between virtue in general and the individual virtues that he believes characterize well-being, such as wisdom, courage, moderation and justice.

Love is not among them. Instead, he associates love – for which he used the Greek word “eros” – with feelings of physical desire.

It was Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, who inched love closer toward virtue. In Aristotle’s “Nicomachaen Ethics,” he writes that virtue involves learning how to act and feel “at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way.” The individual virtues are cultivated over time through repetition.

For an act to be virtuous, one must consciously and deliberately act for the sake of some moral value. For example, Aristotle states that a generous person does good by giving wealth to the right people. Someone who spends with the aim of receiving some benefit in return merely appears generous. The person’s character and the spirit in which they give matters.

The virtuous life isn’t easy – but true friends can help. Aristotle believed that relationships of mutual respect and concern can empower us to develop virtues. Unlike friendships that are situational or superficial, these deeper connections are characterized by “philia,” a kind of love. Friendships based in philia are virtuous: They involve mutual accountability and concern for each other, as if each person were an extension of oneself.

Aquinas’ take

The Christian moral tradition builds and elaborates on these Greek foundations. For Christian theologians and moral philosophers, love can refer to an emotion, an affection, a duty and, yes, a virtue.

Aquinas considers virtue to be a stable disposition of the will – our capacity to choose – that contributes to a well-lived life. Individual virtues are good habits that influence how we relate to ourselves and other people in our daily lives, including love.

He also considers love to be a theological virtue – a gift of God’s grace that people can choose to embrace or reject. “Caritas,” or “charity” in Latin, is defined as friendship with God. Aquinas writes that it has a social benefit, too: Caritas inclines people toward treating their fellow humans with kindness, acting to advance others’ well-being.

The other types of love, eros and philia, are subjective. They respond to our perception of value in other people and things. Caritas creates value in other people, whether or not we are able to see it.

Love and hate

How can approaching love as a virtue – rather than an emotion, affection or biochemical reaction – help us understand feelings of hatred?

From Aquinas’ perspective, the feeling of hate is dependent on and conditioned by the people and things that we love, or that we consider good for ourselves and other people, whether that’s a sports team, a movie or an ideology.

Yet if we take love to be a virtue – a daily habit that we choose to guide our practices – then we can exercise a degree of control over how we respond to feelings of hatred.

Consider how much hate there is in politics, such as hatred of a particular policy, politician or belief – or hatred of injustice itself. But at root, perhaps that hate is a response to love; for example, love for one’s neighbors, one’s country or one’s ideals. Recognizing that possibility can help us respond with a loving choice, like peaceful protest, as a way to advocate for rights. By cultivating the virtue of love, people are more likely to engage in practices of care and empathy necessary for communities to thrive.

Distinguishing between feelings of love, practices of love and the virtue of love can empower us to respond to feelings of hatred. Becoming better lovers requires engaging with destructive emotions, rather than running from them.

Tucker J. Gregor 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. More than a feeling – thinking about love as a virtue can change how we respond to hate – https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-feeling-thinking-about-love-as-a-virtue-can-change-how-we-respond-to-hate-272330

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Tim Swift, Professor of Management, St. Joseph’s University

For the past decade I have volunteered at St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Kensington, for those not from Philly, has long had a reputation for potent but affordable street drugs. Interstate 95 and the Market-Frankford elevated commuter train line provide easy access to the neighborhood for buyers and sellers, and abandoned buildings offer havens for drug use and other illicit activity.

St. Francis Inn Ministries, which was founded by two Franciscan friars in 1979, serves sit-down breakfast and dinner for thousands of people each year, many of whom suffer from poverty, homelessness and substance use disorder. It also runs Marie’s Closet, a charity that provides free used clothing and housewares.

These ministries are operated by a core team of nine full-time members, hundreds of volunteers from local high schools and colleges, and an ad hoc team of folks from many walks of life.

In the years I’ve been volunteering at St. Francis, significant changes have occurred in Kensington, including gentrification, soaring housing prices and increased police activity. Such changes can make it harder for people who suffer from poverty and homelessness to remain in the neighborhood.

Around 2018, the number of guests visiting St. Francis Inn was already dwindling noticeably. I heard volunteers speculate on whether St. Francis Inn should relocate further north in Philadelphia where there are more people in need. Others wondered whether St. Francis Inn should create a mobile unit that traveled to people in need wherever they may be.

As I listened, I realized that this was a business decision. As a professor of management at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, I decided to present this decision to the students in my Management Honors Capstone Seminar. In January 2026 I published a business case study titled “Dealing with Change in Kensington, Philadelphia: The Case of Saint Francis Inn.”

An interesting business case

The capstone seminar I teach is the second of two strategic management courses that honors business students take in their senior year. Using the Harvard case study method, students identify the critical issues embedded in a variety of cases and find the information needed to evaluate those issues using seminal theories in strategic management.

Students then propose a solution – a hypothesis they believe best addresses the situation. They test whether that solution works by building a plan of action – called a “proof” – that provides logic and evidence that their solution would work.

Part of what I believe makes this case study interesting is that it involves some of the most vulnerable people in Philadelphia. I felt it was important to give students the opportunity to consider important issues of social justice when applying their business decision-making skills.

Morally sound recommendations

Among other material, the course covers two different perspectives that students can use to make informed decisions and propose solutions for St. Francis Inn.

The first is the resource-based view. Using this framework, students identify the unique resources and capabilities that a firm – in this case, St. Francis Inn – has built over the years. Then they determine how to use those resources and capabilities best to carry out the firm’s mission.

St. Francis Inn’s mission is to live among and serve the poor, following the example of St. Francis of Assisi. The organization has built decades-long relationships with food companies – which share leftover meat, vegetables and other products with the inn – as well as with members of the community in Kensington. In addition, they have developed a network of hundreds of well-trained and motivated volunteer workers throughout Philadelphia and, indeed, the entire country.

The second framework that students are expected to use is “formal moral theory,” which provides a set of different theories for determining moral rules. It enables us to make ethical decisions that are structured, rational and logical.

For example, using “utilitarianism,” students quantify all of the costs and benefits of a decision and choose the option that provides the largest net benefit – or utility – to society. “Rights theory” requires students to make decisions that respect the intrinsic dignity of all persons. Students can use these theories to make morally sound recommendations on how St. Francis Inn can best serve the stakeholders in its community.

Perhaps the most obvious people affected by St. Francis Inn are the people living in the neighborhood who struggle with homelessness and substance use disorder and receive food and other assistance there. Other groups of concern include longtime neighbors who have homes nearby but still live in poverty, new residents moving into the neighborhood, local property developers who generally want to see fewer homeless people in the neighborhood, and city officials who are responsible for various government functions. These include police and emergency medical services, city council members and social services organizations.

Students must answer a two-dimensional question: Given what St. Francis Inn does best, how can it best address the needs of its most important stakeholders?

Since they are business majors, many quickly gravitate to logical business decisions that St. Francis Inn can make, such as continuing its operation where it is, relocating, or creating a mobile service. Without fail, there are students each semester who argue that regardless of what’s “best” for St. Francis Inn, the interests of the various people of concern in the neighborhood must be respected. To be honest, I enjoy watching them grapple with this problem with sincerity and care.

Here, students must balance an organization’s core competencies with the moral impact of its decisions, while prioritizing the rights and needs of diverse, nontraditional groups who have a stake in this decision. That’s a valuable skill for any future – or, for that matter, current – business executive.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Tim Swift received funding from the Villanova University Center for Church Management to write this case study in 2022.

– ref. How business students learn to make ethical decisions by studying a soup kitchen in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods – https://theconversation.com/how-business-students-learn-to-make-ethical-decisions-by-studying-a-soup-kitchen-in-one-of-americas-toughest-neighborhoods-274508

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John E. Jones III, President, Dickinson College

The word “unprecedented” is getting a workout after a grand jury in Washington on Feb. 10, 2026, rebuffed an attempt by federal prosecutors to get an indictment against perceived enemies of President Donald Trump.

It began with an unprecedented video in November 2025 featuring six Democratic lawmakers alerting military and intelligence community members that they had the duty to disobey illegal orders. That enraged Trump, who in an unprecedented move said the lawmakers were guilty of sedition, which is punishable by death. The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, made the unprecedented attempt to indict the lawmakers. The final element in this drama – the federal grand jury’s rejection of Pirro’s request – wasn’t itself unprecedented. That’s because it’s only the latest in an unprecedented string of losses for the Trump administration before grand juries.

Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, a former federal judge, spoke with The Conversation politics editor Naomi Schalit about the role of grand juries, why a grand jury would not indict someone – and how all of this is a reflection of the administration’s remarkable loss of credibility with judges and the citizens who make up grand juries.

How does the grand jury process work?

The grand jury really dates back to before the Bill of Rights, but for our purposes it’s memorialized in the Fifth Amendment within the Bill of Rights. It is meant to be a mechanism that screens cases brought by prosecutors.

Ordinary citizens, not fewer than 16 or more than 23, have the facts presented to them by a United States attorney or assistant United States attorney. They must make a determination as to whether or not there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed. It is not the purview of grand jurors to determine guilt or innocence, but merely to determine whether there is probable cause sufficient to indict.

So that means that a prosecutor will come to a grand jury and present them with the facts that they have chosen to present them with. There’s no defense at that point, and the grand jury then, relatively routinely, says OK, “Indict that person,” or “Indict those people”?

That’s correct. It’s a very one-sided process. There are no defense attorneys present. There’s a court reporter, the grand jury, the United States attorney, and such witnesses as the United States attorney decides to call. While the target of a grand jury can endeavor to present witnesses, including themselves, that generally never happens because of the danger of self-incrimination. The grand jurors can ask questions of the witnesses, but the United States attorney can choose the evidence that it wants to present to the grand jury, and typically they present only such evidence as is necessary in order to establish probable cause that a crime has been committed.

Does the public know what is presented in a grand jury room by the prosecutor?

The grand jury proceedings are absolutely secret and they remain that way, unless a federal judge authorizes that they be unsealed. So in the case involving the six lawmakers, we don’t know what the prosecutor presented to the grand jury. We just know that the grand jury refused to return an indictment. As far as I know, we don’t even know what crimes were put before the grand jury, let alone what testimony was presented. What we do know is that in all six cases, the grand jury refused to vote in favor of the indictment that was requested by the United States attorney.

Why would a grand jury refuse to give the prosecutor what they want?

It’s unprecedented, although we now see a wave of grand juries pushing back against the government. I don’t recall a single instance, during the almost 20 years I served as a U.S. District judge, when a grand jury refused to return a true bill, an indictment. It just is completely aberrational. The grand jury would have to totally reject the whole premise of the case that’s being presented to them by the United States attorney because, remember, there are typically no witnesses appearing before the grand jury to dispute the facts. The grand jury is clearly saying, “Even accepting the facts you’re putting before us as true, we don’t think under these circumstances this case is worthy of a federal indictment.”

Can a prosecutor just try again?

They can return to the well, so to speak, and they did that in Virginia in the case of Letitia James. But it’s pretty perilous because, bluntly, it’s a way that a prosecutor can get their head handed to them twice.

Originally, as set out in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, the grand jury was supposed to be a vigorous and robust check against prosecutors simply charging people with crimes. But over time, it’s become far less than that. And there is the famous quote by Judge Sol Wachtler in New York that a grand jury can be made to “indict a ham sandwich.”

So to see a grand jury fail to return true bills multiple times over the past couple of months is remarkable and unprecedented. It occurs to me that what is happening here is kind of parallel to what’s taking place with the administration and federal judges. I think we now have entered a world where the Department of Justice has lost its credibility with the judiciary.

We’re seeing that time and again in appearances in court where judges simply don’t believe what U.S. attorneys are telling them, based on past demonstrable falsehoods that have been stated in open court. And now we see grand juries that are also doubting the credibility of federal prosecutors. And these grand jurors are not blind to what is taking place in the world around them.

I think that this is further polluted by the fact that the president of the United States, for example, in the case of the six defendants from Congress and the Senate, said that they had committed seditious acts – which is punishable by death.

Obviously, this tilts the scales and is fundamentally unfair because it is destroying the concept of due process of law. People notice what the president says, and I am happy to see that the average citizen serving on a grand jury has retained what I think is a fundamental sense of fairness, even in the face of a pretty stacked deck.

What does it mean if you have a court system, judges and the grand juries who do not have faith in the administration and its legal claims?

It’s a complete drag on our system of justice. For all of the time that I sat on the federal bench, I had great respect for the Department of Justice, and the department had tremendous credibility. They were straight shooters. The prosecutors who appeared in front of me were professionals. I didn’t always agree with their arguments, of course, nor did I agree with a few of their charging decisions, but I can tell you that not once did I see a federal prosecution in front of me that I felt strongly should never have been brought at its inception.

But we now have a system where, because of the whims of the president, the Department of Justice has become utterly weaponized against his perceived enemies, and that’s a gross misuse of our prosecutorial power at the federal level.

Also, if, for example, these members of Congress had been indicted, they’d have to lawyer up, they’d have to fight their way out. That would take a lot of resources.

So, yes, the judiciary can be a bulwark against improvident prosecutions. But that comes at a cost to the defendant, and it’s been said that the process itself is the punishment. I suspect that’s what the president wants; it’s the trauma that you put somebody through that can be almost as bad as being convicted. And, of course, there’s the reputational harm as well.

John E. Jones III is affiliated with Keep Our Republic’s Article Three Coalition.

– ref. Trump administration losing credibility with judges and grand juries – a former federal judge explains why this is “remarkable and unprecedented” – https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-losing-credibility-with-judges-and-grand-juries-a-former-federal-judge-explains-why-this-is-remarkable-and-unprecedented-275741

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rachael Seidler, Professor of Applied Physiology & Kinesiology, University of Florida

Going to space is harsh on the human body, and as a new study from our research team finds, the brain shifts upward and backward and deforms inside the skull after spaceflight.

The extent of these changes was greater for those who spent longer in space. As NASA plans longer space missions, and space travel expands beyond professional astronauts, these findings will become more relevant.

Why it matters

On Earth, gravity constantly pulls fluids in your body and your brain toward the center of the Earth. In space, that force disappears. Body fluids shift toward the head, which gives astronauts a puffy face. Under normal gravity, the brain, cerebrospinal fluid and surrounding tissues reach a stable balance. In microgravity, that balance changes.

Without gravity pulling downward, the brain floats in the skull and experiences various forces from the surrounding soft tissues and the skull itself. Earlier studies showed that the brain appears higher in the skull after spaceflight. But most of those studies focused on average or whole brain measures, which can hide important effects within different areas of the brain.

Our goal was to look more closely.

How we do our work

We analyzed brain MRI scans from 26 astronauts who spent different lengths of time in space, from a few weeks to over a year. To focus on the brain’s movement, we aligned each person’s skull across scans taken before and after spaceflight.

That comparison allowed us to measure how the brain shifted relative to the skull itself. Instead of treating the brain as a single object, we divided it into more than 100 regions and tracked how each one had shifted. This approach enabled us to see patterns that were missed when looking at the whole brain, on average.

We found that the brain consistently moved upward and backward when comparing postflight to preflight. The longer someone stayed in space, the larger the shift. One of the more striking findings came from examining individual brain regions.

In astronauts who spent about a year aboard the International Space Station, some areas near the top of the brain moved upward by more than 2 millimeters, while the rest of the brain barely moved. That distance may sound small, but inside the tightly packed space of the skull, it is meaningful.

Areas involved in movement and sensation showed the largest shifts. Structures on the two sides of the brain moved toward the midline, which means they moved in the opposite direction for each brain hemisphere. These opposing patterns cancel each other out in whole brain averages, which explains why earlier studies missed them.

Most of the shifts and deformations gradually returned to normal by six months after return to Earth. The backward shift showed less recovery, likely because gravity pulls downward rather than forward, so some effects of spaceflight on brain position may last longer than others.

What’s next

NASA’s Artemis program will mark a new era of space exploration. Understanding how the brain responds will help scientists assess long-term risks and develop countermeasures.

Our findings don’t mean that people should not travel to space. While we found that larger location shifts of a sensory-processing brain region correlated with postflight balance changes, the crew members did not experience overt symptoms – such as headaches or brain fog – related to brain position shifts.

Our findings do not reveal immediate health risks. Knowing how the brain moves in spaceflight and subsequently recovers allows researchers to understand the effects of microgravity on human physiology. It can help space agencies to design safer missions.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Rachael Seidler receives funding from NASA.

Tianyi Wang received funding from NASA.

– ref. Living in space can change where your brain sits in your skull – new research – https://theconversation.com/living-in-space-can-change-where-your-brain-sits-in-your-skull-new-research-273663

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Timothy Welbeck, Director of the Center for Anti-Racism, Temple University

On the evening of May 21, 1796, Ona Judge made the daring decision to free herself.

Considering the prominence of her owner, the laws of the time and the dangerous trek to New Hampshire, a place where she could discreetly live freely, the act carried remarkable risk. Nevertheless, she slipped out of the President’s House undetected while the first family dined.

The house, then located at the intersection of 6th and Market streets in Philadelphia, served as the first executive mansion. It stood mere feet from Independence Hall, where the nation adopted its lofty language regarding freedom.

Years later, Judge described her narrow escape to Rev. Benjamin Chase in an interview for the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Judge told Chase, “I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington’s house while they were eating dinner.”

Prior to her escape, Judge served as a chambermaid in the President’s House. She spent years tending to Martha Washington’s every need: bathing and dressing her, grooming her hair, laundering her clothes, organizing her personal belongings, and even periodically caring for her children and grandchildren.

Being a chambermaid also included grueling daily tasks such as maintaining fires, emptying chamber pots and scrubbing floors.

Even though she engaged in this arduous labor as property of the Washingtons, living in Philadelphia provided Judge a glimpse of what freedom could eventually look like for her. Historians estimate that 5% to 9% of the city’s population at the time were free Black people. Prior to her escape, Judge befriended several of them.

In the spring of 1796, the Washingtons prepared to return to Virginia to resume private life. President Washington issued his farewell address in the fall of 1796, but he told family and close confidants of his plans earlier in the year.

During that time, Martha Washington made arrangements for their pending return to Mount Vernon. Her plans included bequeathing Ona Judge to her granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis, as a wedding gift. Upon learning this, Judge made plans of her own.

In her interview with Chase she explained, “Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn’t know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty.”

As a civil rights lawyer and professor in the Africology and African American Studies department at Temple University in Philadelphia, I study the intersection of race, racism and the law in the United States. I believe Judge’s story is vital to the telling of America’s history.

Dismantling history

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University, tells Judge’s fascinating story in her book “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave Ona Judge.”

Before January 2026, those who wished to learn about Judge could literally stand on the same walkway in Philadelphia where Judge once stood when she chose to flee. Several footprints, shaped like a woman’s shoes and embedded into the pathway outside of where the President’s House once stood, memorialize the beginning of Judge’s journey. These footprints composed part of an exhibit examining the paradox between slavery, freedom and the nation’s founding.

The exhibit, “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” also included 34 explanatory panels bolted onto brick walls along that sidewalk. They provided biographical details about the nine people the Washingtons owned while living in the presidential mansion. The exhibit presented the sobering reality that our nation’s first president enslaved people while he held the nation’s highest office.

This changed in late January when the National Park Service dismantled the slavery exhibit at Philadelphia Independence National Historic Park. The removal sparked intense, immediate outrage from people across the country dismayed by the attempt to suppress unfavorable aspects of American history.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker responded swiftly. “Let me affirm, for the residents of the city of Philadelphia, that there is a cooperative agreement between the city and the federal government that dates back to 2006,” she said in a public statement. “That agreement requires parties to meet and confer if there are to be any changes made to an exhibit.”

The city of Philadelphia later sued Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and National Park Service acting Director Jessica Bowron. Pennsylvania subsequently filed an amicus brief in support of the city’s lawsuit.

After an inspection of the exhibit’s panels, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who is overseeing the case, ruled that the government must mitigate any potential damage to them while they are stored.

Civil rights activist and Philadelphia-based attorney Michael Coard recently had an opportunity to visit and examine the exhibits in storage. Coard has led the fight to create and preserve the exhibit and now is at the center of the fight to restore it.

Limiting discussion of race

While the court deliberates the future of the exhibits, critics continue to raise key concerns regarding the exhibit’s removal. Many argue the National Park Service’s dismantling of the exhibit is an attempt to “whitewash history” and erase stories like Ona Judge’s.

This is particularly the case considering the Trump administration has restored and reinstalled two Confederate monuments of Albert Pike in Washington, D.C., and Arlington National Cemetery, while removing the slavery exhibit in Philadelphia.

Moreover, during the first week of his second term, Trump signed multiple executive orders to eliminate
diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Similarly, during the first Trump administration, the federal government engaged in various efforts to counterbalance the 1619 Project, a project spearheaded by Pulitzer-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones that discussed the 400th anniversary of slavery’s beginnings in America. The 1619 Project spawned yearslong backlash. This included the 1776 Commission, created during the first Trump administration, which tried to discredit the conclusions of the 1619 project.

It is all part of a broader pattern across the country to limit how public institutions broach topics pertaining to race and racism.

This pattern has intensified as the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the framers signing the Declaration of Independence. As the nation celebrates its history, it must decide how much of it to explore.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Timothy Welbeck has colleagues and affiliates who are members of Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, an organization which is mentioned in this article.

– ref. Martha Washington’s enslaved maid Ona Judge made a daring escape to freedom – but the National Park Service has erased her story from Philadelphia exhibit – https://theconversation.com/martha-washingtons-enslaved-maid-ona-judge-made-a-daring-escape-to-freedom-but-the-national-park-service-has-erased-her-story-from-philadelphia-exhibit-274394

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jennifer Lynn McCoy, Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University

In the face of widespread pessimism about the political fate of the United States and growing political polarization, scholars and citizens across the country are reimagining how American democracy could better serve the needs of the whole population.

In an October 2025 poll, a slight majority said that radical change is needed to make life better in America, compared to 32% who answered only small change is needed.

Reimagining a political system’s future effectively begins with the system’s foundation: how the populace chooses the people who will represent them and make collective decisions.

The U.S. Constitution mandates elected representatives in Congress to decide important questions, such as how to tax the population and spend that collective revenue. And they determine whether to go to war or to defend allies if they are invaded.

These representatives are chosen in a winner-take-all system that research shows favors those with money to spend on the race. It also feeds stark polarization, helps restrict choice to two major parties and leaves out the voices of many voters.

What would it take to make that electoral system become more responsive to citizens’ needs? How could it be fairer and more accurate in representing the entire electorate?

One answer is found in proportional representation, an electoral system used in most of the rest of the world’s established democracies. These systems elect multiple representatives in a district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them.

A recent report from the Academy of Arts and Sciences that I participated in analyzed the pros and cons of moving to such a system.

It examined evidence from other countries and concluded that proportional representation could provide more fair and accurate representation and more choice. Proportional representation could also help with the deep political polarization engulfing the United States.

How proportional representation works

This proposal would change the way Americans elect representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives and potentially to state legislatures.

Currently, the winner-take-all system in the U.S. works like this: States are divided into districts based on population and elect one representative to the House of Representatives per district. The winner is the person who gets the most votes. Most states also use this single-member district system to elect members of their state legislatures.

A proportional representation system has larger, multimember districts. Candidates are elected according to the share of votes they or their parties receive.

Different versions of proportional list systems exist. In one version called open list proportional representation, voters choose a candidate from party lists of nominated candidates or from lists of independent candidates.

So if the Good People Party, for example, wins 40% of the vote in a district with 10 members, it will get four seats. And the top four vote-winners on their list will be elected. If the Serious People Party wins 20% of the vote, it will get two seats, with the top two vote-getters on their list elected.

This method simultaneously serves the purpose of a primary election, allowing voters to choose among nominees from a party.

Another version of proportional representation also has multimember districts but uses ranked-choice voting to select the members, where voters rank candidates in order of preference. New Zealand and Australia changed to this system for some of their representative bodies in 1993 and 1948, respectively.

The advantages of proportional representation include outcomes where many more voters would live in a district with at least one of the elected officials representing their choice. That differs from the winner-take-all system where those on the losing side feel unrepresented, especially when the district is split 51% to 49%, for example.

Proportional representation opens the door to more choice because it becomes possible for a smaller party to win one seat out of five, for example. It would begin to break up the two-party system that currently forces some voters to choose the “lesser of two evils,” or to vote strategically against their most disliked party rather than for someone they want.

Proportional representation also eliminates gerrymandering because voters would not be split into small, easily manipulated district boundaries. Proportional representation, additionally, has been shown to give more equal representation to minorities and women.

How the US could get there

To be sure, proportional representation can lead to difficulty in forming a majority coalition. This happened in Belgium in 2010. It can also lead to situations where small, extremist parties can demand major concessions to join a larger party in forming a majority coalition, which Israel recently experienced.

Israel is often cited as a negative example of proportional representation. But the country remains unusual in that its extreme electoral system includes the entire country as one large district with 120 seats, so that many small parties can be elected.

Research indicates that districts with three to eight members are ideal to provide more accurate representation without overly fragmenting the party system.

In the U.S. it’s more likely that proportional representation would allow for different factions of the existing parties to be represented. Imagine a five-seat district that elects one MAGA Republican, one traditional Republican, one progressive Democrat, one centrist Democrat and one third-party or independent candidate. This would begin to break down the polarization and allow for different coalitions to form across different issues.

Changing the system to elect House members does not require a constitutional amendment. The Constitution allows states to determine the manner of elections.

But Congress would need to repeal a 1967 law that mandates single-member districts, written to help implement the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Southern states that had used a bloc system to disenfranchise Black voters.

In a bloc system, voters get as many votes as there are seats in that district. So in a five-seat district, each voter gets five votes instead of only one vote in a proportional system. A majority group, say whites, could thus choose to vote for only white candidates and win across the board, locking out any minority candidate from winning. The repeal could include a prohibition on returning to that bloc system.

Proportional representation would require that lawmakers who hold their seats under the current system agree to change the 1967 law. And they may be reluctant to change to a system that would give voters more choice.

But interviews with retiring lawmakers show their frustration with the dysfunction and toxicity of the current Congress. And some lawmakers are pushing for a committee to study how changes to the electoral system could create a better-functioning Congress.

Additionally, there is growing support for electoral reform in the U.S. A September 2024 poll found that over half of Americans think the U.S. should change the way we elect representatives to Congress. And 63% believe the country would be better off with more than two competitive parties.

One U.S. city – Portland, Oregon – recently moved to proportional representation. The Portland City Council that took office in 2025 has greater gender, minority and neighborhood representation than in the past, even if it experienced some initial difficulty in forming a majority coalition. And Cambridge, Massachusetts, has used proportional representation since 1941, where 95% of voters see one of their top three choices elected.

States and municipalities could thus become laboratories of innovation, experimenting with different versions of proportional representation and providing models and momentum for a national-level change. And the country could begin not only to reimagine but to experience a different democracy that serves all.

Jennifer Lynn McCoy receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation for an Andrew Carnegie fellowship on depolarization as well as the Institute for Humane Studies.. She is Regent’s Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

– ref. ‘Proportional representation’ could reduce polarization in Congress and help more people feel like their voices are being heard – https://theconversation.com/proportional-representation-could-reduce-polarization-in-congress-and-help-more-people-feel-like-their-voices-are-being-heard-270411