Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Cassandra Burke Robertson, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics, Case Western Reserve University

In federal courtrooms across America, a pattern has emerged in cases in which immigrants are being rounded up and jailed without a hearing. That’s a departure from fundamental constitutional protections in the U.S. that provide the right to a hearing before indefinite imprisonment.

In response, federal judges are systematically rejecting the Trump administration’s attempt to drastically expand who can be locked up without a hearing while awaiting deportation proceedings.

The Trump White House policy has been challenged in at least 362 cases in federal district courts, according to a recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Challengers have prevailed in 350 of those cases – decided by over 160 different judges sitting in about 50 different courts across the United States.

Behind those numbers are thousands of people whose freedom hangs in the balance while courts decide whether their imprisonment is lawful.

Trump administration officials claim they are targeting only “the worst of the worst” in immigration enforcement. Yet nearly three-quarters of people detained had no criminal history at all. Of those with criminal histories, many involved only minor offenses such as traffic violations.

The immigrants are in civil immigration proceedings to determine whether they can remain in the United States. Yet under the administration’s new policy, many are being held in jail-like facilities indefinitely, including “state-run prisons located in remote areas, soft-sided tent structures, military bases, and even in prisons in other countries,” according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute think tank.

As a law professor who studies due process in immigration proceedings, I view the overwhelming judicial consensus against this policy as the federal courts performing their essential constitutional function: checking executive overreach. The courts are enforcing fundamental due process protections.

Whether this consensus will prevail, however, depends on appeals courts and, ultimately, the Supreme Court.

A radical reinterpretation

The current controversy centers on a policy shift the Department of Homeland Security implemented in July 2025.

In an internal memo, DHS reinterpreted decades-old immigration law to classify virtually all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as “applicants for admission” who are subject to mandatory detention under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

For 30 years, this provision applied primarily to people apprehended at the border shortly after entering the country. The new interpretation extends it to anyone present in the U.S. illegally. That includes people who entered years or decades ago, have established families and businesses and are pursuing legal pathways to remain in the U.S.

The practical effect of the change is that people who were previously entitled to request release on bond while their deportation cases proceeded are now subject to automatic, indefinite detention without court review of whether their imprisonment is justified.

Courts overwhelmed by petitions

Within months of the July policy announcement, more than 700 emergency habeas petitions – legal challenges to unlawful imprisonment – reached federal courts nationwide.

In Michigan alone, U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou – a Trump appointee – received more than 100 individual cases from detainees challenging their imprisonment. Then, 97 additional detainees filed a joint lawsuit. Cases arose across the country as immigrants who were arrested at workplaces, courthouses or during routine check-ins with immigration officers asked federal courts to order their release or grant them bond hearings.

The Trump administration has fought these cases on multiple fronts. It has argued that the detention policy is lawful and that federal courts lack jurisdiction to review it at all. The government has invoked provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that it claims strip courts of jurisdiction over certain immigration decisions.

But federal judges have largely rejected these jurisdictional arguments. They have found that courts retain the power to review whether detentions comply with the Constitution and federal law.

As one district court judge explained, accepting the government’s position would mean the executive branch could detain noncitizens indefinitely without ever having to justify that detention to a court. It’s a result that would raise “serious constitutional concerns” about suspending habeas corpus, the fundamental right to challenge unlawful imprisonment.

Judge Kaplan similarly concluded that the “current administration’s unilateral decision that all noncitizens … are to be mandatorily detained affords to such individuals no process, let alone due process. It is unconstitutional.”

The policy’s ripple effects extend beyond the courts.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained a record 66,000 people in November 2025 – more than any previous administration had ever held at one time. The American Immigration Council, which advocates for immigration rights, documented 23 deaths in ICE detention during fiscal year 2025. The previous four years combined saw 24 such deaths.

A nationwide remedy

The piecemeal nature of hundreds of individual court rulings creates its own problems. Each emergency petition requires rushed briefing and a hearing. That strains the courts and detained immigrants’ ability to secure representation. Outcomes can vary based on which judge hears a case, creating geographic disparities in who remains detained and who is released.

That’s why the November decision in Maldonado Bautista v. Santacruz is potentially transformative. U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes certified a nationwide class of noncitizens subject to the policy and separately ruled that the government’s interpretation of the law was wrong – detainees are entitled to bond hearings. Combined with the nationwide class certification, this ruling could require the Trump administration to provide bond hearings to thousands of people currently in mandatory detention.

But implementation has been uneven. Immigration judges – who are Justice Department employees, not independent federal judges – have responded inconsistently to Judge Sykes’ order.

In a recent immigration court decision in Memphis, Tenn., a judge denied a bond hearing request. The judge stated that further guidance from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a Department of Justice office, was required before complying with Sykes’ order.

Attorneys representing the class say they’ve seen similar resistance from some immigration judges, while others have begun granting bond hearings. They plan to return to federal court in January 2026 to present evidence of this confusion and seek further relief.

The near-unanimous rejection by federal judges – insulated from political pressure by lifetime appointments – demonstrates why the Constitution grants judges life tenure. Federal courts remain the final check when executive action threatens fundamental due process rights.

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

– ref. Trump administration’s immigrant detention policy broadly rejected by federal judges – https://theconversation.com/trump-administrations-immigrant-detention-policy-broadly-rejected-by-federal-judges-271076

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rachel Rebouché, Professor of Law, The University of Texas at Austin

In 2026, the biggest battles over abortion will not be at the polls.

There will be a few contested measures on state ballots. Next year, Nevada’s government will ask residents to approve constitutional protection for abortion rights for the second time, as required by state law. The same measure passed in 2024 with just over 64% of the vote.

Virginians will likely see a similar ballot initiative. In November 2025, voters there cemented a majority for Democrats in the state legislature, and the House of Delegates is expected to put forth an abortion rights ballot measure to voters in 2026.

Anti-abortion proponents in Missouri want to undo an amendment protecting abortion rights that voters passed in 2024. They’re advancing a new measure that could strip residents of the reproductive rights that are now constitutionally enshrined.

However, the most consequential questions about abortion in 2026 could be answered at the federal level, by the Trump administration or in the courts. As a scholar of reproductive health law, I’m watching how federal judges and agencies respond to conservative efforts to restrict or end people’s access to mailed abortion medication.

Medication abortion in the courts

Over 25 years ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone – one of two drugs commonly paired together to end a pregnancy. Since that time, medication abortion has been closely regulated by the FDA and is under attack.

In 2022, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a coalition of anti-abortion physicians, sued the FDA for approving mifepristone in 2000 and for each time the agency eased a restriction on mifepristone thereafter, in 2016 and 2021. The complaint argued that the FDA failed to consider evidence establishing the harm caused by medication abortion – claims roundly rejected by decades of rigorous, peer-reviewed research.

The Supreme Court in 2024 ruled that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine lacked standing to sue because FDA regulation of medication abortion caused no actual injury to the doctors it represented, who do not prescribe mifepristone or perform abortions.

Yet the case lives on in lower federal courts. There is ongoing litigation, and politicians are taking up the fight over mailed medication abortion.

Kansas, Missouri and Idaho intervened in the Alliance lawsuit in 2023, seeking to establish standing, and Louisiana sued the FDA in a separate case challenging the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone.

The pending actions focus on the FDA’s decision in 2021 to lift the requirement that patients pick up mifepristone in person, which has permitted patients to receive medication abortion by mail. These states claim this development is dangerous and threatens their right to enforce their abortion bans.

In October 2025, a federal court in Hawaii came to a different conclusion. The court concluded that because mifepristone is very safe, the FDA must reconsider whether the drug necessitates any restrictions at all.

The politics of medication abortion

The dispute over medication abortion is playing out in Washington, D.C., too.

In 2025, 51 Republican senators and 22 Republican attorneys general asked the FDA to reinstate the 2021 in-person restriction and upend the transit of abortion pills.

In response to Republicans’ push to restrict or withdraw the availanlity of mifepristone, 47 Democratic senators and 20 attorneys general issued letters supporting mifepristone’s safety. The letters questioned a pledge by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his FDA chief to commence a “review” of the drug. The Democratic senators’ letter pressed the agency to remove all remaining restrictions on mifepristone.

In early December, Bloomberg reported that the FDA had quietly postponed its planned mifepristone “review” until after the 2026 midterm elections.

The battle over telehealth abortion care

Decades of research demonstrates that medication abortion is safe and effective. When commenced before 10 weeks’ gestation, the two-drug method is effective about 98% of the time. Complications, such as infection or hemorrhage, are rare; they occur in perhaps a fraction of a percent of all medication abortions.

Yet courts and legislators cannot agree on basic facts, in part due to widespread disinformation about abortion care, and anti-abortion forces have waged a concerted national campaign to stop mailed abortion pills.

Today, no part of the medication abortion process needs to be done in person: The patient, provider and pharmacy can all interact virtually.

Mailed medication abortion is popular nationwide, particularly in states with abortion bans. Because of mailed medication abortion, the average number of abortions nationwide has actually increased since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing abortion protections under the U.S. Constitution.

Providers in so-called “shield” states are a key reason for this. Eight U.S. states have laws that shield providers from civil, criminal and professional consequences for delivering reproductive health care to out-of-state patients.

In these shield states, doctors may prescribe abortion medication no matter where the patient lives, so long as that care is delivered by a provider licensed and located in the shield state, complying with the shield state’s laws.

These laws are the subject of legal conflicts between anti-abortion states and shield states.

Late in 2024, Texas sued a doctor in New York, a shield state, for violating Texas abortion and licensure laws. In early 2025, Louisiana indicted the same New York physician.

Texas won its case in a Texas court and then asked New York to enforce the judgment of more than $100,000 in fines and fees. A New York court has refused to do so, citing its shield law. New York also rejected Louisiana’s request to extradite the doctor to stand trial for the same reason.

On Dec. 4, 2025, Texas officially enacted the first bill in the country that explicitly targets shield laws. Passed in September 2025, HB 7 allows private citizens to file lawsuits against a person or entity for attempting or intending to mail abortion pills into the state.

Watch the courts and the FDA

Having written about shield laws extensively, I believe these interstate conflicts will land, sooner or later, before the Supreme Court. Right now, state and federal courts are deciding the issues.

If judges determine that shield laws are unconstitutional or that the FDA acted illegally, courts could substantially alter people’s ability to gain access to medication abortion.

So could the FDA. If it reimposes an unnecessary restriction on mifepristone, meaning the drug would no longer be widely available through telehealth, that decision would curb how 1 in 4 women in the U.S. receive abortion care today.

But opinion polls indicate that the majority of Americans do not think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, and they vote accordingly.

In November 2025, Democrats won significant elections, for example, in New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Abortion was absent from ballots in these states this year, but these races still held significance for abortion rights.

The election of a pro-choice governor and legislature in Virginia, for example, all but guarantees that abortion will continue to be legal in the last Southern state to protect broader abortion rights. Likewise, Pennsylvanians opted to keep the state supreme court’s liberal majority, which struck down the state prohibition on Medicaid payment for abortion.

In 2024, two years after the fall of Roe v. Wade, 14 states put forth ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right. Eleven passed.

With little political support to pass a nationwide abortion ban, making it illegal to mail abortion pills is the most immediate way to obstruct reproductive health care in states with abortion bans.

The question for abortion in 2026, then, is: Will courts or federal forces do what democratic processes cannot?

This story was published in collaboration with Rewire News Group, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering reproductive and sexual health.

Rachel Rebouché 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. 2026’s abortion battles will be fought more in courthouses and FDA offices than at the voting booth – https://theconversation.com/2026s-abortion-battles-will-be-fought-more-in-courthouses-and-fda-offices-than-at-the-voting-booth-269328

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Suvrat Dhanorkar, Associate Professor of Operations Management, Georgia Institute of Technology

Electronic gifts are very popular, and in recent years, retailers have been offering significant discounts on smartphones, e-readers and other electronics labeled as “pre-owned.” Research I have co-led finds that these pre-owned options are becoming increasingly viable, thanks in part to laws and policies that encourage recycling and reuse of devices that might previously have been thrown away.

Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy have dedicated pages on their websites for pre-owned devices. Manufacturers like Apple and Dell, as well as mobile service providers like AT&T and Verizon, offer their own options for customers to buy used items. Their sales rely on the availability of a large volume of used products, which are supplied by the emergence of an entire line of businesses that process used, discarded or returned electronics.

Those developments are some of the results of widespread innovations across the electronics industry that supply chain researcher Suresh Muthulingam and I have linked to California’s Electronic Waste Recycling Act, passed in 2003.

Recycling innovation

Originally intended to reduce the amount of electronic waste flowing into the state’s landfills, California’s law did far more, unleashing a wave of innovation, our analysis found.

We analyzed the patent-filing activity of hundreds of electronics firms over a 17-year time span from 1996 to 2012. We found that the passage of California’s law not only prompted electronics manufacturers to engage in sustainability-focused innovation, but it also sparked a surge in general innovation around products, processes and techniques.

Faced with new regulations, electronics manufacturers and suppliers didn’t just make small adjustments, such as tweaking their packaging to ensure compliance. They fundamentally rethought their design and manufacturing processes, to create products that use recycled materials and that are easily recyclable themselves.

For example, Samsung’s Galaxy S25 smartphone is a new product that, when released in May 2025, was made of eight different recycled materials, including aluminum, neodymium, steel, plastics and fiber.

Combined with advanced recycling technologies and processes, these materials can be recovered and reused several times in new devices and products. For example, Apple invented the Daisy Robot, which disassembles old iPhones in a matter of seconds and recovers a variety of precious metals, including copper and gold. These materials, which would otherwise have to be mined from rock, are reused in Apple’s manufacturing process for new iPhones and iPads.

How do consumers benefit?

In the past two decades, 25 U.S. states and Washington D.C. have passed laws requiring electronics recycling and refurbishing, the process of restoring a pre-owned electronic device so that it can function like new.

The establishment of industry guidelines and standards also means that all pre-owned devices are thoroughly tested for functionality and cosmetic appearance before resale.

Companies’ deeper engagement with innovation appears to have created organizational momentum that carried over into other areas of product development. For example, in our study, we found that the passage of California’s law directly resulted in a flurry of patents related to semiconductor materials, data storage and battery technology, among others. These scientific advances have made devices more durable, repairable and recyclable.

For the average consumer, the recycling laws and the resulting industry responses mean used electronics are available with similar reliability, warranties and return policies as new devices – and at prices as much as 50% lower.

Suvrat Dhanorkar 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. New industry standards and tech advances make pre-owned electronics a viable holiday gift option – https://theconversation.com/new-industry-standards-and-tech-advances-make-pre-owned-electronics-a-viable-holiday-gift-option-270347

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Brian P. McCullough, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Michigan

If you go to a pro sports event today, there’s a good chance the stadium or arena will be powered at least in part by renewable energy. The team likely takes steps to reduce energy and waste. Some even claim to have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, meaning any emissions they still do produce they offset by paying for projects, such as tree-planting, that reduce greenhouse gases elsewhere.

The venue upgrades have been impressive – Seattle’s hockey and basketball arena runs on 100% renewable energy, makes its rink ice from captured rainwater, and offers free public transit for ticket holders.

But how much of the teams’ offset purchases are actually doing the good that they claim?

It’s an important question, in part because fans may ultimately pay for those offsets.

The cost of carbon offsetting in sports varies by organization, with no industry standard for who pays. Some teams and leagues absorb costs through their operational budgets, treating carbon neutrality as a core responsibility. Others pass costs to consumers: Some teams add sustainability fees to ticket prices to offset each attendee’s carbon footprint. The payment model ultimately reflects whether an organization views offsetting as an institutional obligation or a shared responsibility with fans.

Carbon offsets in sports are also in the news, with scandals erupting around them in connection with sports from FIFA’s 2022 World Cup to basketball’s LA Clippers.

As sport management researchers, we have been following offset agreements and other sustainability commitments that teams and sports leagues such as FIFA have been making to see whether they translate into measurable environmental outcomes. We see lots of good intentions but also a disturbing amount of failures and outright fraud.

Where sports teams’ emissions come from

The vast majority of a sports team’s climate footprint comes from team’s and fans’ travel, which they have little control over. Leagues can reduce teams’ travel somewhat with creative scheduling, but unlike other industries, sports teams have few ways to reduce the bulk of their emissions.

What many of them do instead is offset those travel emissions by buying carbon credits.

Carbon credits are generated by projects that reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or prevent greenhouse gas emissions. Many of those projects involve planting trees to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; others expand clean energy to reduce fossil fuel use. Each carbon credit is supposed to represent the reduction or prevention of one metric ton of carbon dioxide.

However, carbon offset projects have come under scrutiny in recent years. Tree-planting projects, the most common type, take time to meet their promise as the trees grow, and wildfires and logging can wipe out the benefit. Studies have found that companies tend to buy cheap, low-quality carbon credits, which run a risk of exaggerating their carbon reduction claims or providing results that would have happened anyway, leaving no real climate benefit.

Unfortunately, several teams, perhaps unknowingly, have been purchasing fraudulent or low-quality credits.

Reputations at risk

FIFA brought the sports world’s carbon offset problem into the spotlight during the 2022 Qatar World Cup.

FIFA claimed the event would be carbon neutral, but that claim relied on creative accounting that understated the event’s construction and travel emissions. Organizers also used low-quality offsets. Many of those offsets were renewable energy projects with a high likelihood of being built anyway.

A year after the tournament, FIFA had completed offset purchases for less than a third of the World Cup’s estimated emissions, the nonprofit Carbon Market Watch found. And Switzerland’s advertising regulator ordered FIFA to stop claiming the World Cup had been “carbon neutral.”

The Clippers and baseball’s Boston Red Sox ran into problems when they publicly partnered with Aspiration, a now-bankrupt finance technology company and carbon credit broker, to meet their “carbon neutral” claims.

The Clippers had a US$300 million partnership with Aspiration that included paying the company at least $56 million for carbon credits in mid-2022, The New York Times reported. Both teams also had plans with Aspiration to offer fans a way to buy carbon credits to cover their own travel when purchasing tickets.

However, Aspiration officials claimed to have supported millions more tree-plantings than what had actually happened, a ProPublica investigation found. Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanberg pleaded guilty in 2025 to wire fraud involving false statements about financing to secure loans and attract investors, who lost at least $248 million.

The Aspiration partnership is also under investigation by the NBA over an endorsement deal the company made with Clippers all-star Kawhi Leonard at about the same time and questions about whether it was used to violate the league’s salary cap. Team owner Steve Ballmer, who personally invested at least $50 million in Aspiration, told ESPN he and the team did nothing wrong. “They conned me,” he said.

While the scandal focused on financial fraud and the salary cap, it also raised questions about the team’s sustainability claim.

Without verification, who knows?

In some cases, the value of offset projects is difficult to verify, even when trees are being planted nearby.

The Seattle Sounders FC declared itself the first carbon-neutral professional soccer team in North America in 2019 by cutting its waste, water and energy use and offsetting its remaining emissions through the nonprofit organization Forterra, which plants trees in the Puget Sound region.

While the effort positioned the club as a sustainability leader, the offsets lacked what’s known as third-party verification. Similar to how organic food must be certified by reputable agencies, third-party validation of carbon credits ensures credits truly represent the removal of carbon from the atmosphere or avoided emissions.

Without verification, it’s unclear whether claimed emission reductions are permanent, accurately tracked and transparently reported.

Potential legal consequences

Even the most prominent venues are susceptible to issues with unreliable credits.

Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle has been celebrated as the world’s first “zero-carbon” certified arena, with electric Zambonis, recycled materials, renewable energy and free public transit. It represents one of the most ambitious pushes to develop sustainable sport infrastructure globally.

To offset unavoidable construction emissions, the arena’s owner relied on carbon credits tied to projects meant to reduce rainforest loss in Colombia. However, an analysis by the carbon rating company Calyx Global found that while the arena’s credits may prevent some deforestation, the numbers likely overstate the benefits.

A 2023 report suggested that over 90% of rainforest carbon credits from the leading certifier of offsets lack evidence that they reduced deforestation. The certifier disputed that conclusion but is working to revise its review process.

When credits fail to offset real emissions, that erodes public trust and can expose organizations to potential legal consequences.

Delta Air Lines, for example, is facing a lawsuit over its carbon neutrality claim. The suit alleges that Delta misled passengers by describing itself as a “carbon-neutral airline” while relying on carbon offset projects that were ineffective or “junk.”

Time for some strategic reassessment

These and other failures in the carbon credit market suggest the industry needs to fundamentally reassess how sports teams achieve their climate goals.

To provide meaningful sustainability commitments, sports organizations and facilities can start at home by lowering their fossil fuel use and increasing their energy efficiency. Many arenas do this.

Leagues can design game schedules to reduce team and fan travel. Many of the Paris Olympics venues in 2022, for example, were connected by subway or bus. The 2026 FIFA World Cup, in contrast, has venues hundreds of miles apart across North America, meaning potentially higher emissions from fan travel.

Where offsets will still play a role, teams can ensure that they partner with verified carbon credit providers that deliver measurable, transparent carbon reductions.

In a field where public trust and reputation matter as much as performance, the sports industry cannot afford foul play on climate. We believe a shift toward strategies that cut emissions first, and then use only the most credible offsets, will be the difference between striking out and leading the sustainability game.

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 FIFA to the LA Clippers, carbon offset scandals are exposing the gap between sports teams’ green promises and reality – https://theconversation.com/from-fifa-to-the-la-clippers-carbon-offset-scandals-are-exposing-the-gap-between-sports-teams-green-promises-and-reality-270428

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Anna Maria Santiago, Professor of Community Development, Michigan State University

High levels of neighborhood violence increase the risk of Latino and African American teens in Denver starting to use alcohol and tobacco, according to our recent study.

In the U.S., approximately 2 in 10 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 20 drink alcohol. About 1 in 10 smoke cigarettes. For teens living in neighborhoods with high levels of disadvantage and social disorganization, the odds are 35% to 72% higher. Disadvantaged neighborhoods generally have higher levels of economic hardship, poorer educational opportunities and limited resources. Those factors weaken the social fabric of a community.

Although alcohol and tobacco use among adolescents has declined in recent years, both remain the most commonly used and abused substances compared to cocaine or heroin. Alcohol and tobacco use have been linked to substance dependence in adulthood, sexual victimization, some cancers and premature death.

One of us – Anna Maria Santiago – studies neighborhood effects, or how where children and adolescents live affects their health and well-being. Iris Margetis is a Ph.D. candidate in economics and co-author of the study.

Why it matters

Exposure to neighborhood violence has been thought to trigger adolescent alcohol and tobacco use as a way of coping with the heightened levels of stress associated with that exposure. However, previous findings have been mixed.

Seventeen percent of survey participants started smoking as teens. The average age of first use was 15.6 years. Fifteen percent started drinking as teens when they were 16.1 years old, on average.

Greater exposure to neighborhood violence prompted teens in our study to start drinking and smoking two to eight months earlier than their peers. Girls started using both substances earlier than boys. Latino teens started earlier than African Americans.

We controlled for other potential individual, household and neighborhood risk factors such as family size, household stressors and level of neighborhood disadvantage. The risk of starting to use alcohol still increased 32% for all teens residing in neighborhoods with greater violence. The risk of tobacco use in those neighborhoods was 1.3 to 1.5 times higher for boys, Latino and African American adolescents.

How we do our work

We analyzed administrative and survey data originally gathered from a natural experiment involving a policy change in Denver for approximately 1,100 Latino and African American teens. The teens lived in 110 census tracts across metro Denver.

To measure exposure to violence, we used our survey data to create a neighborhood problems index that measured several factors. Those included the presence of people selling drugs, gang activity, homes broken into by burglars, people being robbed or mugged, people getting beaten or raped, and children and youth getting into trouble. We defined the presence of three or more of these as high exposure to neighborhood violence.

What still isn’t known

We still don’t know what community interventions work best. But research suggests that caregiver and community-level action is crucial. According to study participants, caregivers monitored their adolescents closely. They limited unsupervised time outside or with friends, especially in neighborhoods with higher exposure to violence.

Study findings suggest that neighborhood youth clubs, sports teams, community centers and parks may serve as powerful deterrents to substance use initiation among teens. Community-led, evidence-based programs such as Rise Above Colorado support efforts promoting positive youth development and fostering positive community norms as prevention and early intervention strategies.

The state of Colorado says preventing or delaying initiation of both alcohol and tobacco use remain key public health goals.

However, additional work is needed to develop programming and activities that facilitate these efforts in Latino and African American communities.

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

Anna Maria Santiago previously received funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Ford Foundation; the Annie E Casey Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Iris Margetis 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. Exposure to neighborhood violence leads some Denver teens to use tobacco and alcohol earlier, new study shows – https://theconversation.com/exposure-to-neighborhood-violence-leads-some-denver-teens-to-use-tobacco-and-alcohol-earlier-new-study-shows-270412

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Adetola F. Louis-Jacques, Clinical Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Florida

A growing share of Americans, especially in rural areas, are losing access to reproductive health care. At the same time, American women are dying during or after pregnancy at higher rates than in any other high-income country.

As a result, many U.S. health care providers and policymakers are looking for ways to improve maternal care.

We believe doulas – care workers who provide nonmedical support before and during pregnancy, labor, birth and the postpartum period – may be a part of the solution.

We are a physician-researcher specializing in high-risk pregnancies and breastfeeding and a Ph.D. candidate in sociology focused on reproductive health and health care disparities.

As hospitals adopt more favorable policies and states expand insurance coverage for doula services, doulas are becoming part of the mainstream U.S. maternal health system.

But there are still significant barriers to access, including awareness, costs and challenges to full partnership with doulas in hospitals.

What a doula offers

Pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period are vulnerable times, and many parents-to-be and new parents find it can be difficult to navigate. Doulas advocate for their clients, helping them voice what they need. They can also help address mistreatment and guide them to appropriate resources.

Doulas do not perform clinical tasks, such as giving medical advice, making medical decisions, providing prescriptions or delivering babies. Rather, they provide nonmedical support. This will look different depending on the type of doula parents hire.

Fertility doulas assist people who are trying to get pregnant. They offer emotional support throughout the fertility journey, complementing the medical care, diagnostics and interventions provided by fertility doctors.

During pregnancy and labor, birth doulas help their clients identify normal symptoms and those that may be urgent warning signs. They also provide labor support, such as positioning and breathing assistance, massage, words of encouragement, coaching, education, continuous presence and other forms of comfort. They offer direct emotional support through the validation of clients’ experiences and emotions.

Postpartum doulas offer extended support to new parents and infants in the immediate days, weeks or months after delivery. They educate parents and act as a bridge to mental health services and additional resources such as diapers, feeding support and housing needs. They may help with supporting a new mom’s infant feeding goals, integrating the infant into the family, sibling care and processing their births.

Full-spectrum doulas offer support throughout pregnancy, delivery and up to six months after birth. Still others offer bereavement services for parents experiencing pregnancy loss, such as abortion, miscarriage and stillbirth.

This sort of holistic care can be invaluable, even for women with access to good medical care. Several months ago, one of us (Adetola) helped a patient find a postpartum doula. She was an educated woman with insurance and access to top medical care. She was suffering the effects of postpartum depression and anxiety despite all the therapy and medical resources offered.

She later wrote that, for her, “the support of my postpartum doula was invaluable in my recovery. My doula provided me with the support I needed in caring for my baby for me to care for myself. Not only did she care for my baby for me to rest, but she helped me with breastfeeding.”

Doula training

As of August 2025, there were 2,232 registered doula businesses in the U.S. California has the highest concentration at 7.5%, while West Virginia has the lowest concentration, 0.1%. These numbers may not reflect hospital-based or nonprofit-affiliated doulas, or those not formally registered.

In the U.S., more than 100 independent organizations provide doula training. Some of the larger organizations include DONA International, Childbirth International and the Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association. Doula training typically covers communication and advocacy skills, stages of labor and birth, and postpartum support. It also includes coursework on how to build a business as well as infection prevention and control.

Some organizations provide online or in-person courses, and doula training can also be done through apprenticeships. While certifications or licenses are not required to practice, various state Medicaid programs mandate training and certification to qualify for Medicaid reimbursement.

Better outcomes with doula support

The services that doulas offer can complement the more mainstream biomedical approach of many doctors and nurses.

Maternal health outcomes in the U.S. have been worsening for decades in comparison to other high-income countries.

But studies show that a doula-clinician partnership improves key components of maternal health care, such as better communication and patient-centered care, accountability in the health care team and continuity of support for mothers.

Having a doula present in the lead-up to delivery, at the delivery or both is associated with lower rates of cesarean deliveries and preterm births and fewer low-birthweight infants.

Doula support is also associated with improved childbirth education attendance, birth satisfaction, self-efficacy and confidence, breastfeeding experiences and outcomes, and positive infant-care behaviors.

After birth, infants born with a doula present have higher five-minute Apgar scores, an assessment of infant health taken exactly five minutes after birth. Parents who received doula support have reduced rates of postpartum depression and anxiety.

Doula support has also been shown to help close maternal outcome gaps, particularly those rooted in racial, socioeconomic and institutional barriers.

And beyond all the health benefits for parents and infants, research shows that doulas can reduce health care costs associated with having a baby.

Funding sources for doula support

Unfortunately, despite all of these benefits, many U.S. families struggle to afford doula care. Private insurance does not typically cover doula services. Clients can pay out of pocket using a flat-rate service charge, fee-for-service or monthly stipend model. They can also pay for these services using extended benefits such as flex or health savings accounts.

The cost varies by state and region, experience level and service package. Out-of-pocket costs for comprehensive birth doula services can range from US$800 to more than $3,000 across the U.S.

As of September 2025, 23 states plus Washington, D.C., were actively reimbursing Medicaid coverage for doula care.

Only two states – Rhode Island and Louisiana – currently require that private health plans cover doula care. However, Colorado, Virginia, Illinois and Delaware are in the process of implementing doula coverage in private health plans. More states are expected to continue efforts to require doula coverage for private health plans.

Some community-based organizations and nonprofits provide free or low-cost doula care through grants or donations. These programs usually prioritize low-income families. In New York City, free or low-cost doula support is available through the Citywide Doula Initiative which serves Medicaid-eligible families, teen parents and residents of priority neighborhoods.

Moreover, some hospitals and birth centers employ doulas or work with them as part of their maternal care teams.

Finding a doula

When hiring a doula, you’ll want to consider their training, certifications and experience. You will also want to know how available they are, what services they offer and their fees and payment methods.

In addition:

• Consider asking your health care provider or hospital for recommendations for doulas in the community.
• Look into doula directories, such as DONA International, DoulaMatch.net, CAPPA and the National Black Doulas Association. Also, check to see whether your state has a doula directory, like those in California, Minnesota Oregon and Michigan.
• Ask for recommendations from friends, family or local parenting groups.
• Check local community boards, birth centers and drugstores for any doula advertisements.
• You might also connect with doulas at birth or parenting classes.

Adetola F. Louis-Jacques receives funding from NIH, Direct Relief, Children’s Trust of Alachua County.

Seun Mauton Ajoseh 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. Doulas play essential roles in reproductive health care – and more states are beginning to recognize it – https://theconversation.com/doulas-play-essential-roles-in-reproductive-health-care-and-more-states-are-beginning-to-recognize-it-253903

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

When Sabrina Carpenter’s provocative 2024 pop single “Bed Chem” plays on the radio, and I hear the lyrics

“But I bet we’d have really good bed chem / How you pick me up, pull ‘em down, turn me ’round / Oh, it just makes sense / How you talk so sweet when you’re doing bad things”

it reminds me of a song released 45 years earlier:

“Let’s take a shower, said a shower together, yes / I’ll wash your body and you’ll wash mine, yeah / Rub me down in some, some hot oils, baby / And I’ll do the same thing to you”
—“Turn Off the Lights” by Teddy Pendergrass

Growing up in Philadelphia in the 1990s, I listened to soul singer-turned-R&B sex symbol Teddy Pendergrass and other artists who defined the Sound of Philadelphia. Now, as a professor of ethnic studies, I teach students about the influence of Black artists on modern pop culture.

Pendergrass would have turned 75 this year. Although he died in 2010, he helped usher in an era of music that brought both disco and more mature, sensual music to the mainstream – and I see his influence in a number of pop and R&B hits today.

The Philadelphia sound

Theodore DeReese Pendergrass was born in South Carolina in 1950, but he grew up in North Philadelphia, where he sang and played drums in church and became an ordained minister at age 10.

He dropped out of Thomas Edison High School in the 11th grade to pursue a music career, and he recorded “Angel With Muddy Feet” in 1967. The song was not a commercial success, so he focused on playing drums for a number of local bands.

In 1970, Pendergrass was invited by Philly soul and R&B singer Harold Melvin to play drums with his group, the Blue Notes. During a performance, Pendergrass sang along, leading Melvin to invite him to take over as lead vocalist after John Atkins left the group. The following year, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes signed a record deal with the newly created Philadelphia International Records, forging a partnership between Pendergrass and label founders and legendary producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff that would last over a decade.

Philadelphia International’s influence was felt throughout the music industry, with Gamble and Huff producing many of the hits performed by the label’s artists. Gamble and Huff blended soul and funk with complex horn and string arrangements to create the Philly soul sound.

This sound became key in the development of disco, smooth jazz and neo-soul. Slower, more intimate R&B and smooth jazz also formed the foundation for the “quiet storm” radio format that Pendergrass helped foster as a solo artist on stations like WDAS in Philadelphia.

Marvin Gaye’s 1973 album “Let’s Get It On” was Motown’s response to the emergence of Philly Soul, and helped popularize more explicitly sensual R&B and soul.

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes had their first No. 1 hit with 1972’s “If You Don’t Know Me by Now.” While on the Philadelphia International label, the group recorded four gold records between 1972 and 1976. One of their biggest hits, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” in 1975, was not released until November 1976. It charted after R&B and disco singer Thelma Houston’s cover of the song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1977.

Going solo

Pendergrass left the Blue Notes in 1976 after disputes with Melvin over money, but he stayed on with Philadelphia International and began a solo career. His self-titled album was released in 1977, and the first single, “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” reached No. 5 on the R&B charts, helping to push the album into the top 20.

The following year, his “Life Is a Song Worth Singing” hit No. 1 on the Soul LP chart behind the sensual single “Close the Door.”

Pendergrass, with his stylish good looks, quickly became not just a heartthrob, but a top R&B artist with five consecutive platinum albums between 1977 and 1981. He was selling out concerts, and legendary producer Shep Gordon recognized that the vast majority of the attendees were women. This led to Pendergrass’ “Ladies Only” tour in 1978, which became a template for future soul and R&B tours by contemporaries like Luther Vandross and later artists like Ginuwine, whose tours were also marketed specifically to women.

The 1979 erotic hit “Turn Off the Lights” strengthened Pendergrass’ reputation as a sex symbol. While Marvin Gaye was dealing with both financial and personal issues, Pendergrass became the top performer of soul “bedroom ballads.”

Pendergrass and Gaye, along with other contemporaries like Barry White, Minnie Riperton and Donna Summer, included more explicitly erotic themes and lyrics than earlier artists.

For example, in Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On,” he implores to his lover:

“There’s nothin’ wrong with me / Lovin’ you, baby love, love / And givin’ yourself to me can never be wrong / If the love is true, oh baby.”

In “Close the Door,” Pendergrass similarly tells his lover:

“Close the door / Let me give you what you’ve been waiting for / Baby I got so much love to give / And I wanna give it all … to you …”

One challenge for the songwriters like Gamble and Huff was to balance the sensuality that fans loved with Federal Communication Commission rules regarding profane language. Songs like “Turn Down the Lights,” written by Gamble and Huff for Pendergrass, describe a detailed night of romance without language that would be considered obscene by the FCC.

Slow jams and sex positivity

R&B and soul slow jams by artists like Freddie Jackson and Vandross dominated bedroom music through the 1980s, although derivative genres like neo-soul and quiet storm continued to produce bedroom ballads like Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” in 1982.

Madonna and Cyndi Lauper helped bring a female perspective to more sex-positive pop music with songs including “Like a Virgin” and “She Bop.” Janet Jackson and Salt-N-Pepa did the same in R&B and hip-hop. Other groups embraced their sex symbol status through the 1990s, exemplified by TLC’s “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” and “Creep,” and Next’s “Too Close.” The artists of the 1980s and 1990s were also boosted by MTV, bringing a visual element to their sensual lyrics.

The emergence of new jack swing, a term coined in 1987 to define a new style that combined dance, hip-hop and R&B, ushered in higher-tempo erotic songs like “Do Me!” by Bel Biv Devoe along with slower bedroom ballads like “I’ll Make Love to You” by Philadelphia’s Boyz II Men.

Bedroom ballads with disco-synth makeover

Philadelphia International’s sound and sensual lyrics have reemerged in recent years through artists Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, whose synth-pop and disco sound can be traced back to Gamble and Huff, and the label’s stable of artists.

Proto-disco songs like “The Love I Lost” and “Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and Pendergrass’ disco hit “Get Up, Get Down, Get Funky, Get Loose” – or his later synthesizer-heavy album “Joy” – would influence current synth-pop hits like Roan’s disco-influenced “Pink Pony Club” and Carpenter’s synth-pop “Manchild.”

Carpenter in particular has seemingly struck that balance between mainstream success and sensual lyrics. Her past three albums have been certified platinum and embrace increasingly mature themes such as female arousal.

“Man’s Best Friend,” released in August 2025, sparked controversy with a sexually suggestive album cover that further cemented her Carpenter’s symbol image. This image is reinforced by her stage presence, like dancing in her underwear on “Saturday Night Live” and mature songs like “Tears,”

Pendergrass’ career was derailed when he lost control of his car on Lincoln Drive in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia in 1982. The accident left him a tetraplegic. He later continued his music career, but the “Black Elvis” moved away from bedroom ballads.

Although Pendergrass’ meteoric rise was cut short, his influence is still seen and heard across music genres today, especially as empowered female artists utilize disco and synth-pop sounds while embracing their sexuality through their songs and performances.

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

Jared Bahir Browsh 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. Sabrina Carpenter’s and Chappell Roan’s sexy pop hits have roots in the bedroom ballads of Teddy Pendergrass and Philly soul – https://theconversation.com/sabrina-carpenters-and-chappell-roans-sexy-pop-hits-have-roots-in-the-bedroom-ballads-of-teddy-pendergrass-and-philly-soul-270035

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lacey W. Heinsberg, Assistant Professor of Nursing and Human Genetics, University of Pittsburgh

A newly discovered biological signal in the blood could help health care teams and researchers better understand how children respond to brain injuries at the cellular level, according to our research in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

In the future, this information could help clinicians identify children who need more tailored follow-up care after a traumatic brain injury.

Basics of epigenetics

As part of our work as a nurse scientist and neuropsychologist studying traumatic brain injury, we wanted to look for biological markers inside cells that might help explain why some children recover smoothly after brain injury while others struggle.

To do this, we focused on DNA, the instruction manual of cells. DNA is organized into regions called genes, each of which codes for proteins that carry out different functions like repairing tissues.

While your DNA generally stays the same throughout your life, it can sometimes collect small chemical changes called epigenetic modifications. These changes act like dimmer switches, turning genes up or down without changing the underlying code. In general, dialing up the activity of a gene increases production of the protein it codes for, while dialing down the gene decreases production of that protein.

One common type of epigenetic modification is called DNA methylation. DNA methylation is not fixed but can instead change in response to what you eat, how you move your body or even how stressed you are. We wondered if these epigenetic changes might also change in response to brain injury in children.

Epigenetic changes in traumatic brain injury

To explore this idea, we enrolled nearly 300 children at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in our study. Of these children, 189 had a traumatic brain injury serious enough to require at least one night in the hospital, while the others had broken bones but no head injury.

We collected blood samples while they were in the hospital, and again at six and 12 months after their injury. We then measured DNA methylation in a gene called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which plays a role in how the brain develops and repairs.

Within approximately 30 hours of injury, children with traumatic brain injury had lower levels DNA methylation than children without brain injury. Interestingly, these differences were not connected to how severe the child’s injury appeared based on tests that health care teams use in the clinic, such as brain scans or evaluations of consciousness. This suggests that two children who look very similar to the eye may be responding to their injury differently at the cellular and epigenetic level.

Our findings also suggest that DNA methylation could help researchers understand something completely new about the brain’s response to injury that existing clinical tools cannot detect.

Improving recovery after traumatic brain injury

When a child comes to the hospital with a traumatic brain injury, health care teams can assess the injury based on what it looks like and how the child is currently handling symptoms. But they cannot necessarily determine how a child’s body is responding to their injury, or what other factors put them at risk for poor recovery. That gap makes it difficult to predict which children may later experience problems with thinking, attention or behavior. Because the brains of children are still developing, early injuries can disrupt development and lead to long-term cognitive or behavioral issues.

Our findings indicate that epigenetic signals like DNA methylation might help clinicians and researchers develop more effective treatment strategies. While it’s still unclear whether these epigenetic changes influence children’s cognitive function after injury, further research could enable DNA methylation to offer a more precise guide to rehabilitation. In fact, our team is currently examining how DNA methylation patterns across all genes affect long-term outcomes in children with traumatic brain injury.

Pairing what clinicians can observe at the bedside with information at the cellular and epigenetic level can bring medicine one step closer to individualized care plans matching children with treatments that can most effectively help them heal.

Lacey W. Heinsberg receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Amery Treble-Barna receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

– ref. Newly discovered link between traumatic brain injury in children and epigenetic changes could help personalize treatment for recovering kids – https://theconversation.com/newly-discovered-link-between-traumatic-brain-injury-in-children-and-epigenetic-changes-could-help-personalize-treatment-for-recovering-kids-271453

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ari Koeppel, Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Scientist and Adjunct Associate, Dartmouth College

After a yearslong series of setbacks, NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, mission has finally begun its roundabout journey to Mars.

Launched on Nov. 13, 2025, aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, ESCAPADE’s twin probes will map the planet’s magnetic field and study how the solar wind – the stream of charged particles released from the Sun – has stripped away the Martian atmosphere over billions of years.

When I was a doctoral student, I helped develop the VISIONS camera systems onboard each of ESCAPADE’s spacecraft, so I was especially excited to see the successful launch.

But this low-cost mission is still only getting started, and it’s taking bigger risks than typical big-ticket NASA missions.

ESCAPADE is part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration, or SIMPLEx, program that funds low‑cost, higher‑risk projects. Of the five SIMPLEx missions selected so far, three have failed after launch due to equipment problems that might have been caught in more traditional, tightly managed programs. A fourth sits in indefinite storage.

ESCAPADE will not begin returning science data for about 30 months, and the program’s history suggests the odds are not entirely in its favor. Nonetheless, the calculus goes that if enough of these missions are successful, NASA can achieve valuable science at a reduced cost – even with some losses along the way.

Lower cost, higher risk

NASA classifies payloads on a four‑tier risk scale, from A to D.

Class A missions are the most expensive and highest priority, like the James Webb Space Telescope, Europa Clipper and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. They use thoroughly proven hardware and undergo exhaustive testing.

ESCAPADE is at the other end. It’s a class D mission, defined as having “high risk tolerance” and “medium to low complexity.”

Of the 21 class D missions that have launched since the designation was first applied in 2009, NASA has not had a single class D mission launch on schedule. Only four remained under budget. Four were canceled outright prior to launch.

ESCAPADE, which will have cost an estimated US$94.2 million by the end of its science operations in 2029, has stayed under the $100 million mark through a series of cost‑saving choices. It has a small set of key instruments, a low spacecraft mass to reduce launch costs, and extensively uses generic commercial components instead of custom hardware.

NASA also outsourced to private companies: Much of the spacecraft development went to Rocket Lab and the trajectory design to Advanced Space LLC, with tight contract limits to make sure the contractors didn’t go over budget.

Additional savings came from creative arrangements, including the university‑funded VISIONS camera package and a discounted ride on New Glenn, which Blue Origin wanted to fly anyway for its own testing objectives.

Commercial space

ESCAPADE launched at a moment of transition in space science.

NASA and other science agencies are facing the steepest budget pressures in more than 60 years, with political winds shifting funding toward human spaceflight. At the same time, the commercial space sector is booming, with long-imagined technologies that enable cheap space travel finally entering service.

That boom has, in part, led to a resurgence in NASA’s “faster, better, cheaper” push that originated in the 1980s and ‘90s – and which largely faded after the 2003 Columbia disaster.

In theory, leaner NASA oversight, greater use of off‑the‑shelf hardware and narrower science goals can cut costs while launching more missions and increasing the total science return. If ESCAPADE succeeds in delivering important science, it will be held up as evidence that this more commercial, risk-tolerant template can deliver.

The trade-offs

A concept put forward by Jared Isaacman, the Trump administration’s nominee to lead NASA, is that 10 $100 million missions would be better than one $1 billion flagship – or top-tier – mission. This approach could encourage faster mission development and would diversify the types of missions heading out into the solar system.

But that reorganization comes with trade-offs. For example, low‑cost missions rarely match flagship missions in scope, and they typically do less to advance the technology necessary for doing innovative science.

With a narrow scope, missions like ESCAPADE are unlikely to produce the most transformative discoveries about, for instance, the origins of life or the nature of dark matter, or the first chemical analyses of oceans on a new world. Instead, they focus on more specific questions.

Early in ESCAPADE’s development, my role was to help create a planning document for the VISIONS cameras called the Science Traceability Matrix, which defines an instrument’s scientific goals and translates them into concrete measurement requirements.

My colleagues and I systematically asked: What do we want to learn? What observations prove it? And, critically, how precisely does the instrument need to work to be “good enough,” given the budget? Loftier goals usually demand more complex instruments and operations, which drive up costs.

ESCAPADE’s broader goals are to create a clearer picture of Mars’ magnetic field, how the solar wind interacts with it, and figure out what that process does to Mars’ atmosphere. That is valuable science. But it is more modest than the $583 million predecessor mission MAVEN’s more extensive scope and richer suite of instruments. It was MAVEN that determined how and when Mars lost its once-dense atmosphere in the first place.

Both ESCAPADE and MAVEN are dwarfed again by the open‑ended potential of an operation like the James Webb Space Telescope, which observes a limitless slate of astronomical objects in the infrared light spectrum with a higher resolution than any combination of prior smaller telescopes.

Flagship missions like the James Webb Space Telescope push the state of the art in new technologies and materials. These innovations then filter into both future missions and everyday life. For example, the Webb telescope advanced the medical tools used in eye exams. Smaller missions rely more heavily on existing, mature technologies.

And when systems are built by private companies rather than NASA, those companies keep tight control over the patents rather than openly spreading the technology across the scientific community.

A tense road to launch

ESCAPADE’s principal investigator, Rob Lillis, has joked that it is the mission with 11 lives, having survived 11 near‑cancellations. Problems ranged from being late in reaching the technology readiness levels that helped ensure the probes wouldn’t malfunction after launch, to the loss of its original free ride, with NASA’s Psyche mission.

In 2024, ESCAPADE received support from NASA to ride on New Glenn’s maiden flight, only to face delays as Blue Origin worked through technical hurdles. At last, in October 2025, ESCAPADE reached the launchpad.

I traveled to Cape Canaveral for the launch and felt the tension firsthand. The first window was scrubbed by bad weather and issues with ground equipment. Then a strong solar storm — ironically, a key driver of the very processes ESCAPADE will study — shut down the second window.

Concurrently, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed new launch restrictions due to the government shutdown that would have postponed the launch further if not for a last-minute exemption.

Finally, on Nov. 13, after repeated setbacks, New Glenn lifted off to cheers around the country. ESCAPADE reached orbit, and after a nervous few hours of receiver misalignment, mission controllers established communication with the spacecraft.

What’s next

While in Florida, I also watched another milestone in commercial spaceflight: the record-breaking 94th launch from Cape Canaveral in 2025, marking the most launches from Florida in a single year. It was a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites.

Like New Glenn, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 saves money by landing and reusing rockets. If multiple providers like SpaceX and Blue Origin compete to keep launch prices low, the economics of small science missions will only improve.

If ESCAPADE’s twin spacecraft reach Mars and deliver new insights as planned, they will demonstrate how minimalist, commercial-forward approaches can expand the planetary knowledge base.

But even then, a string of future SIMPLEx successes would likely not be a substitute for the uniquely capable, technology‑advancing flagship missions that answer the most far‑reaching questions. ESCAPADE can instead help test whether a broader mix of small missions – leaning on commercial partners and a few big, ambitious flagships – can together sustain planetary science in an era of tight budgets.

For now, that balance remains an open experiment, and only time will tell whether ESCAPADE is a lone bright spot or the start of a real shift.

Ari Koeppel was a team member on ESCAPADE’s VISIONS cameras and has previously received funding from NASA research grants. He currently works with The Planetary Society.

– ref. Lower-cost space missions like NASA’s ESCAPADE are starting to deliver exciting science – but at a price in risk and trade‑offs – https://theconversation.com/lower-cost-space-missions-like-nasas-escapade-are-starting-to-deliver-exciting-science-but-at-a-price-in-risk-and-trade-offs-270619

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Tim Slack, Professor of Sociology, Louisiana State University

Roughly 1 in 5 Americans live in rural areas – places the federal government defines based on small populations and low housing density.

Yet many people understand rural America through stereotypes. Media and political conversations often use words or terms such as “fading,” “white,” “farming,” “traditional” and “politically uniform” to describe rural communities.

In reality, rural communities are far more varied. Getting these facts right matters because public debates, policies and resources – including money for programs – often rely on these assumptions, and misunderstandings can leave real needs neglected.

We are rural demographers at Louisiana State University and Syracuse University who study the causes and consequences of well-being in rural America. Here we outline six myths about rural America – a few among many – highlighted in our recent book “Rural and Small-Town America: Context, Composition, and Complexities.”

Myth 1: Rural America is disappearing due to depopulation

Many people think rural America is emptying out. The story is more complicated. It’s true that from 2010 to 2020 most rural counties lost population. But about one-third grew, especially those near cities or those with lakes, mountains and other natural attractions. And there have been times, like in the 1970s and 1990s, when rural populations grew faster than cities – periods called “rural rebounds.”

An important thing to know about rural population change is that the places defined as “rural” change over time. When a rural town grows enough, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget reclassifies it as “urban.” In other words, rural America isn’t disappearing – it’s changing and sometimes urbanizing.

Myth 2: Most rural Americans live on farms

Farming is still important in many rural places, but it’s no longer the way most rural Americans make a living. Today, roughly 6% of rural jobs are in agriculture. And most farm families also have members who work off-farm jobs, often for access to health insurance and retirement benefits.

A bigger source of employment in rural America is manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing plays a larger role as a share of jobs and earnings in rural areas than in cities. That also means that deindustrialization – steady job losses in manufacturing over the decades – has been especially painful in rural America. Unlike large cities with lots of employers, rural communities rely on just a few. When a rural plant or factory closes, the local impacts are often devastating.

The largest share of rural jobs today is in service-sector work, such as retail, food service, home health care and hospitality. These jobs often pay low wages, offer few benefits and have unstable hours, making it harder for many rural families to stay financially secure.

Myth 3: Only white people live in rural America

People often picture rural America as mostly white, but that’s not the full story. About 1 in 4 rural residents are nonwhite. Hispanic and Black people make up the largest shares, and Indigenous people have a greater portion of their population living in rural areas than any other racial group.

Rural America is also getting more racially and ethnically diverse every year. Young people are leading that change: About 1 in 3 rural children are nonwhite. The future of rural America is racially diverse, even if popular images don’t always show it.

Myth 4: Rural America is healthier than urban America

Many people imagine rural life as healthier than city life. But the opposite is true. People in rural areas die younger and at higher rates than people in cities. Scholars call this the “rural mortality penalty,” and it has been widening for years. The COVID-19 pandemic made the gap even larger due to higher death rates in rural communities.

This isn’t just because rural areas have more older people. Rural working-age people, ages 25 to 64, are dying younger than their urban peers, and the gap is growing. This trend is being driven by nearly all major causes of death. Rural residents have higher rates of early death from cancers, heart disease, COVID-19, motor vehicle crashes, suicide, alcohol misuse, diabetes, stroke and pregnancy-related complications.

Myth 5: Rural families are more traditional than urban families

Images of rural life often evoke households in which married couples are raising children in traditional family structures. Historically, rural children were more likely to live with married parents. But that’s no longer the case.

Today, rural children are less likely than urban children to live with married parents and are more likely to live with cohabiting unmarried parents or in the care of grandparents or other relatives. Partly as a result, rural child poverty rates are higher than urban rates, and many rural families rely on safety-net supports such as the food aid program SNAP. Rural families are diverse, and many are economically vulnerable.

Myth 6: A new ‘rural revolt’ gave Donald Trump his presidential victories

Many rural voters have supported Donald Trump, but this didn’t happen overnight.

For much of the 20th century, Democrats drew major support from rural areas due to the party’s alignment with the working class and 100 years of single-party rule in the South spanning Reconstruction to the civil rights era.

However, social class and regional flips in voting patterns have meant rural voters have been shifting toward Republicans for nearly 50 years. The last time rural and urban residents voted within 1 percentage point of each other was in 1976, when Georgia peanut farmer and former governor Jimmy Carter was elected.

The partisan gap between rural and urban voters averaged 3 percentage points in the 1980s and 1990s, before growing to 10 percentage points in the 2000s and 20 percentage points in recent cycles. So, Trump’s support in rural America was not a new “revolt” but part of a long-term trend.

And in 2024, the key geographic story wasn’t rural voters at all – it was the sharp drop in turnout in big cities. Both candidates got fewer urban votes than in 2020, with Kamala Harris capturing over 10 million fewer votes in major and medium-sized cities than Joe Biden had four years earlier.

Tim Slack has received funding from the NSF, USDA, NIH, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Energy, Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources, and Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.

Shannon M. Monnat receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health at Syracuse University.

– ref. 6 myths about rural America: How conventional wisdom gets it wrong – https://theconversation.com/6-myths-about-rural-america-how-conventional-wisdom-gets-it-wrong-269037