Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Debaleena Chattopadhyay, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois Chicago

This past Christmas, I helped my parents choose a water filter. The latest “smart” models all came with a smartphone app that promised to monitor filter life, track water quality and automatically request service. Yet my father, age 75, and mother, 67, were quick to reject them in favor of a nondigital model.

“Every time it updates or I forget how to use it, we’ll have to call you,” my dad said.

As an only child living 8,000 miles (12,875 kilometers) away, I didn’t need convincing. My parents are aging in place and don’t need traditional caregiving – they cook, drive and manage their home just fine. Instead, I provide what I call technology caregiving: helping them with their digital activities of daily living, from online banking to booking theater tickets.

But as the tech industry shifts toward artificial intelligence agents and generative user interfaces – promising to make devices smarter than ever – I am bracing for this invisible workload to become heavier, not lighter. In addition to being a technology caregiver, I’m a computer scientist who studies human-computer interaction.

Technology caregiving

Technology caregiving is the act of helping someone use digital tools. While this isn’t entirely new – people have long helped grandparents program VCRs and connect parents’ desktop computers to the internet – the stakes have changed.

Today, digitization is ubiquitous. Helping with these tools is no longer just occasional unpaid tech support – it is a form of continuous caregiving essential for maintaining independence. For example, even the simple act of clipping coupons has gone digital – marginalizing older adults who are unable to navigate store apps to access these discounts.

People often view older adults as resistant to technology, but recent years – particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic – have shattered that myth. While gaps in internet access and device ownership remain, they are no longer major barriers to technology access.

The emerging crisis is not about access, but effective use. Many older adults are now online and willing to use these tools, but they require frequent help from family, friends or communities.

The innovation tax

The problem isn’t just that devices and apps are getting complex; it’s that they are constantly changing. Frequent software updates and shifting interfaces can be frustrating for all users, but they turn familiar tools into foreign concepts for older adults.

This unpredictability is about to accelerate. Take generative user interfaces, which designers can use to dynamically generate an interface in minutes. Pair them with AI agents, and the system can assume the designer’s role, taking independent actions based on how it perceives a user’s intent or need.

If the “Pay Bill” button is in a different place every third time you open a particular app because an AI decided to optimize the interface, you might feel perpetually incompetent if you can’t quickly locate it. While the industry calls this personalization, for an older adult it is a moving target.

This relentless pace of change – even when intended to be helpful – is directly at odds with age-related cognitive changes. And this dynamic is continuing with the new generation of seniors. They may be more eager to adopt new tools than the last, but wanting to use technology is not the same as being able to use it when the rules are constantly changing.

To navigate a brand new or shifting interface, your brain relies on fluid intelligence: the ability to reason, solve novel problems and ignore distractions on the fly. Unlike the knowledge that people accumulate over time, fluid intelligence naturally declines with age.

When an app updates or an AI optimizes a layout, it forces the user to discard their hard-won mental models and start over. For an older adult, this isn’t just a minor inconvenience; it is a taxing job for their working memory.

As an older adult participant in a study my colleagues and I conducted put it:

“I had a computer on my desk in 1980, OK, when nobody else did. So this is not a foreign language, but the changes that are made with little to no explanation and then things that you knew how to do have either changed or disappeared completely, that is the stuff that absolutely drives me, and I will tell you, every other older adult in America nuts.”

Help the helper

I believe that the way forward is to stop treating tech support as an afterthought and start designing for the technology caregiver. Digital literacy training for seniors and encouraging designing technologies for all users are important but not enough; it’s important to build tools that share the burden.

Two promising paths are emerging. First, cognitive accessibility features – like AI assistants that find buried buttons or provide real-time tech support – can offload tasks from the caregiver. Second, tools for caregivers are beginning to move beyond simply controlling device feature access to capabilities such as allowing authorized access for banking as co-users, or recording personalized instructions.

These tools will also need to be tailored: Family caregivers need different tools than community helpers like libraries and senior centers.

In the age of AI, innovation shouldn’t be a tax on the aging brain – it should help bridge the digital divide.

Debaleena Chattopadhyay receives funding from NSF, NIH, and CDC.

– ref. Constant technology changes throw seniors a curve – and add to caregivers’ load – https://theconversation.com/constant-technology-changes-throw-seniors-a-curve-and-add-to-caregivers-load-274814

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Iain Boyd, Director of the Center for National Security Initiatives and Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

Patriot missile batteries have been the iconic air defense system in the United States’ arsenal for several decades, but evolving threats – from cheap rockets to even cheaper drones – have forced the U.S. and other militaries to develop a range of defensive weapons to match.

In retaliation for ongoing strikes by the U.S. and Israel, Iran has been conducting daily aerial attacks using missiles and drones against Israel and countries in the Persian Gulf region. In December 2025, Iran also launched a large-scale, coordinated raid involving hundreds of missiles and drones against Israel. Hamas launched an even larger assault in October 2023 of many thousands of low-cost rockets and primitive missiles against Israel, overwhelming its highly touted Iron Dome air defense system. And, in the conflict between the Ukraine and Russia, there have been several examples of large-scale drone raids by both sides.

As an engineer who studies defense systems, I see that as the variety and number of missile and drone threats grow, militaries are forced to adapt the defensive side of the equation and respond with matching speed and breadth.

The defensive weapons are components of integrated air defense systems, which include the means to detect and track threats, typically through various forms of radar. Stemming from the Cold War, interceptor missiles have been the established weapon used to disable or destroy the threats.

Well-known examples of air defense systems that use interceptor missiles include the Patriot system and the Israeli Iron Dome. These systems are designed to be effective against small numbers of missiles, including short-range ballistic missiles, as well as aircraft and drones. The U.S. also uses the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense to defend against intermediate range ballistic missiles, including intercepting the missiles before they reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

The numbers

The current conflict in the Gulf provides the latest example of the math at the heart of the air defense challenge. Iran has fired thousands of missiles and drones, and it often requires more than one interceptor to take out an incoming missile. The Gulf states are reportedly running low on interceptors. U.S. stocks are also under pressure, and the United States is reportedly planning to move some interceptors from South Korea to the Gulf region.

Because each interceptor costs several million dollars, it is a losing proposition to use such systems to destroy rockets that only cost US$100,000. Such an asymmetric conflict is not only too expensive on the defensive side, but it is also challenging to replenish interceptors in a timely manner.

In addition, an attacker can overwhelm a defender. In the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 against Israel, the established interceptor-based air defense approach proved less than effective against the large-scale attack involving thousands of relatively primitive missiles and rockets. There are initial reports of a large barrage of rockets fired by Hezbollah at Israel on March 11, 2026.

What is needed instead are air defense approaches that scale to meet the numbers and sophistication levels of the evolving threats. One example is the U.S. Navy’s Phalanx Close-In Weapon System used to defend ships against missiles as well as small surface craft. It is an automated machine gun that can fire up to 4,500 rounds per minute. It destroys incoming targets by literally shooting them to pieces. Each round costs about $30, and usually about 100 rounds are expended on a target.

While this is a more cost-effective approach than expensive interceptors, a Phalanx magazine can be quickly depleted in 20-30 seconds, thus leaving it open to being overwhelmed by large numbers of incoming missiles. It is also the last line of defense. Ideally, you would address threats long before the Phalanx system is activated.

Drones and anti-drone drones

Large-scale, low-cost air attacks involving weaponized drones have been used in the Ukraine-Russia war and in the Middle East. While drones can be shot out of the sky by missile interceptors, this is not a cost-effective approach. Gun systems such as the Phalanx are effective against drones. U.S., Gulf states and Israeli forces have also downed drones using guns fired from aircraft.

Another new approach that has been used by Ukrainian forces is the development of anti-drone drones, or counter unmanned aircraft systems. Drones can damage or destroy other drones through a variety of mechanisms, including electronic warfare that involves jamming their radio control and communications systems, and kinetic intercepts, in which they ram directly into the target drone. An example is Merops, which the U.S. is reportedly sending to the Gulf region.

Energy weapons

Militaries are also developing non-kinetic defensive weapons that are based on directed energy technologies. The two most common forms of directed energy weapons are high-energy lasers and high-power microwaves. In both cases, they transform electrical power into physical effects that can damage or destroy aerial targets.

One of their key advantages over traditional kinetic defensive weapons is the claim that directed energy systems have an “infinite magazine.” As long as these systems are connected to an electrical power source, they can keep firing. While this is not entirely true – directed energy systems have to be cycled off to allow them to cool down – they are more cost-effective and have deeper magazines than kinetic systems.

Militaries around the world are fielding high-energy laser weapons for protection against light artillery, drones and surface craft. Lasers can create a number of different effects, including burning holes in threats and even setting them on fire.

For example, the U.S. Navy’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance is a 60-kW kilowatt ship-based system used for aerial protection. It can interfere with, or dazzle, the sensors of missiles and drones.

High-power microwave weapons are not yet as advanced for air defense applications. They operate by causing short circuits in the electrical systems of missiles and drones, causing them to lose control and veer off target.

Rapid evolution

In the cat-and-mouse game of modern warfare, there is a continual carousel of offensive weapons development and responsive defensive countermeasures. Against a recent trend toward the use of large numbers of less capable and relatively inexpensive weapons, the defensive side is responding with affordable, high-volume approaches.

Iain Boyd receives funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and Lockheed-Martin Corporation.

– ref. Not just Patriot interceptors: A defense expert explains the various weapons US and allies use to defend against missiles and drones – https://theconversation.com/not-just-patriot-interceptors-a-defense-expert-explains-the-various-weapons-us-and-allies-use-to-defend-against-missiles-and-drones-278047

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Brian Y. An, Co-Director of Center for Urban Research, Director of Master of Science in Public Policy Program, & Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology

The high cost of renting and buying homes in U.S. cities is no secret. But this affordability problem isn’t limited to urban regions – it affects rural areas as well.

Rural areas, home to about 25% of Americans, benefit from federally supported rental housing programs – particularly a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to provide affordable homes for low-income residents.

The USDA’s Section 515 program is the primary way that the U.S. government finances affordable rental homes in rural communities. Since its inception in 1963, the program has supported the construction of over 533,000 apartments, townhouses and other small, multifamily rental homes.

The program offers below-market-rate loans to private and nonprofit developers who build and manage residential housing for low-income residents in small towns and rural counties. The terms of the deal between property owners and the government obliges these landlords to keep rents affordable for their occupants for decades, generally restricting rent to about 30% of tenants’ income.

Last new loans were in 2011

People who live in Section 515 housing typically pay around US$325 per month. That’s much less than rural market-rate rents, which typically run $800-$1,100 per month for modest homes.

Because the USDA stopped issuing new Section 515 loans in 2011, this arrangement is phasing out now as existing loans mature.

Loans for about 90% of all remaining Section 515 homes will mature by 2045, according to the Housing Assistance Council, a national nonprofit that supports affordable housing efforts throughout rural America. By 2050, the owners of nearly all properties currently in the program’s portfolio are projected to have paid off their mortgages.

And once most of the owners of these homes exit the Section 515 program, it will have been fully phased out.

An often-overlooked housing program

As a public policy professor who studies housing, I wanted to understand what happens when Section 515 loans mature. I also was interested in what determines whether properties remain affordable or leave the program after the loans are paid off.

To find out, I worked with three other housing policy researchers on a national study that was peer-reviewed and published in Housing Policy Debate in September 2025.

As of 2024, these loans were still supporting some 400,000 homes on almost 13,000 properties across 87% of all U.S. counties.

The roughly 750,000 Americans in those homes are among the nation’s poorest. The average household income of someone living in Section 515 housing in 2023 was just about $16,000 per year, which was only about one-fifth of the national median household income, which hovered around $76,600 during the same period in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars.

In addition to having a very low income, more than 60% of the people enrolled in the program are over 62, have disabilities, or fall into both of those categories.

Market-rate options after maturity

The vast majority of these affordable rental homes were built in the 1970s through the 1990s and financed with USDA loans that last between 30 and 50 years.

By 2050, there will be no Section 515 housing left.

The owners of these rental properties no longer have to keep rents affordable once they have paid off their loans. And their owners and tenants may also lose access to a USDA rental assistance program, which helps keep tenants’ housing costs low.

They can refinance the homes or sell the properties. They also can continue to charge affordable rents to occupants or convert those units to market rate. Because of this flexibility, a large share of rural affordable housing units could soon be converted to properties rented at market rates.

What the data shows so far

For this study, our research team analyzed data from nearly 15,000 of the Section 515 properties throughout the country, which have been placed in service since 1963 – including many that are no longer providing rural affordable housing.

We found that the largest factors determining whether a building remains affordable after a Section 515 loan matures are who owns and manages that property. Buildings owned by for-profit companies are far more likely to leave the program than those that belong to nonprofit housing organizations.

Nonprofit-owned buildings, after accounting for building age and local market conditions, are 30% to 40% less likely to convert formerly Section 515 affordable housing into market-rate properties after the owners pay off their loans.

After analyzing this data, we also concluded that buildings run by small property management companies are more likely to leave the program than those managed by larger ones. Properties where the owner manages the homes are also more likely to exit.

Landlords owning more residential properties were also more likely to exit the program. This indicates that larger landlords may be able to afford the renovations and upgrades required to turn their buildings into market-rate housing once restrictions end.

Why subsidies and local markets matter

Having subsidies through other government programs can help keep affordable housing units from being converted to market-rate housing.

One-third of Section 515 properties also get support from other programs, including Section 8 vouchers and low-income housing tax credits. Those tax credits are another federal incentive that’s provided to developers who build and rehabilitate affordable rental housing while allowing lower rents for low-income tenants.

Those properties are more likely to remain affordable, even years after some of these tax incentives expire.

Local economic conditions can play a role too. In areas with high unemployment rates, large military populations and low housing inventory, properties are also more likely to exit the program.

That means the same rural counties experiencing economic or demographic pressures are often the most likely to have a decline in affordable housing units when owners pay off their Section 515 loans.

Steps that can be taken

Congress and the USDA have taken some steps to slow the loss of affordable housing in rural areas.

For example, the USDA has funded preservation efforts such as the Multifamily Housing Preservation and Revitalization pilot program, which provides grants, loan restructuring and other financing tools to help repair aging Section 515 properties and extend their affordability.

These efforts have helped preserve some buildings and support ownership transfers from private sector landlords to nonprofit housing groups. But they spend only tens of millions of dollars per year and focus mainly on maintaining existing properties rather than building new housing.

Researchers estimate that about $5.6 billion in repairs would be needed to preserve the affordable housing currently tied to the Section 515 program.

Some lawmakers have proposed reforms aimed at doing more than chipping away at the loss of this kind of affordable housing. The bipartisan Rural Housing Service Reform Act, first introduced in 2023 and reintroduced in 2025, would modernize USDA rural housing programs and allow certain rental assistance contracts to continue after mortgages mature. As of early 2026, the bill remains under consideration.

Over the next two decades, most of these landlords will pay off their Section 515 loans. Unless the government reinvigorates the program or replaces it with something else, much of rural America’s affordable rental housing could gradually disappear as owners convert all Section 515 properties to market-rate housing.

Whether rural communities retain affordable housing will depend not only on what the federal government does, but also on the properties’ owners.

Brian Y. An received funding from JPMorganChase and this research was made possible through their generous support. Unless otherwise specifically stated, the views and opinions expressed in the published research paper are solely those of the paper’s authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of JPMorganChase or its affiliates.

– ref. A successful USDA program that has supported more than 533,000 affordable rental homes in rural America is getting phased out – https://theconversation.com/a-successful-usda-program-that-has-supported-more-than-533-000-affordable-rental-homes-in-rural-america-is-getting-phased-out-273637

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ashley Sanchez, Associate Professor of Immigration, University of Notre Dame

The Department of Homeland Security issued a policy memo in February 2026 that could lead to the detention of refugees who are legally in the country.

The new policy states that “DHS may arrest and detain a refugee who has lived in the United States for at least one year and has not yet acquired” lawful permanent resident status. Approximately 100,000 refugees could be at risk for such arrest and detention.

The policy rescinds a 2010 DHS policy that limited the agency’s ability to arrest refugees. The 2010 policy was cited in a 2026 court order that temporarily prohibited agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting refugees in Minnesota in an effort to root out cases of fraud in the refugee admissions process.

As an immigration scholar, I believe the new DHS memo constitutes a massive departure from previous policy – one that could result in the detention of thousands of people who have lawful immigration status.

To better understand the new DHS policy and the change it represents, it’s helpful to clarify what it means to be a refugee.

Refugees flee persecution

Refugees flee their countries to escape persecution due to their race, religion, nationality or political opinion. Under U.S. immigration law, a refugee is someone who arrived in the U.S. through an official U.S. resettlement process.

After registering as a refugee abroad, the process for being resettled in the U.S. can take years – sometimes decades – and requires rigorous background checks.

Upon arrival, refugees are permitted to live and work indefinitely in the U.S. They are also eligible to “adjust” their immigration status to lawful permanent resident, also known as a “green card,” after one year in the country.

At issue with the new DHS policy is the interpretation of Section 209 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the statute that governs refugee adjustments and moves them from refugee status to lawful permanent resident.

Section 209 states that refugees who have been physically present in the U.S. for one year and haven’t yet received lawful permanent resident status “shall, at the end of such year period, return or be returned to the custody of DHS for inspection and admission” as a lawful permanent resident.

Historically, this has meant that refugees are required to undergo a secondary screening, through an interview or paper application, before receiving their green cards.

But DHS is now interpreting the language in Section 209 to impose a duty on refugees to voluntarily return to DHS custody – which it defines as detention – after one year in the country. This is despite the fact that refugees are not even eligible for legal permanent resident status until they have been in the country for a full year, putting refugees in an impossible situation.

Essentially, every refugee could face imprisonment unless immigration officials review and approve their green card applications at exactly the one-year mark.

History of refugee policy

The language in Section 209 arose after the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, a law that created our current refugee resettlement framework. Prior to this, there was no fixed legal mechanism for resettling refugees in the U.S.

Instead, the government responded to humanitarian crises largely on an ad hoc basis. It temporarily allowed people into the U.S. from Vietnam and Cuba.

Once here, those individuals had no long-term legal status unless Congress managed to pass after-the-fact legislation authorizing them to apply for green cards, as it did for Cubans with the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.

The Refugee Act of 1980 was meant to solve this problem. It established a legal mechanism for refugee resettlement. It created a new refugee immigration status and ensured that refugees are eligible for permanent residency.

The earliest regulations implementing Section 209 show the “returned to custody” language was satisfied by attending an interview at a local immigration office. It was part of the green card process that was eventually replaced with a paper application.

The regulations implementing that change state that the “‘custody’ requirement for refugees applying for adjustment of status” can be met by filing an application.

What the DHS memo means for refugees

So, what normally happens if a refugee fails to submit their application?

Usually, nothing.

Until relatively recently, refugees weren’t even permitted to file for lawful permanent residence until after living in the country for a year.

Previous ICE guidance recognized that even if a refugee fails to file a green card application at all, they still maintain their lawful refugee immigration status. The failure to submit an application did not create any basis to deport a refugee. Therefore, absent other factors, immigration detention was inappropriate.

What will refugees do now?

Immigration attorneys are advising their refugee clients to file for lawful permanent status immediately, if they have not yet done so, to reduce the risk of detention. But that may not be enough.

The DHS memo states that a refugee “may be considered to have voluntarily returned to custody” if they filed their application and complied with any interviews. But the wording of the memo leaves open the door to detain anyone who has not yet had their application approved.

This leads to another issue, which is DHS administrative delays. The government currently takes approximately 12 months to approve refugee green card applications for requests it’s willing to process.

In January 2026, another DHS policy put an indefinite hold on all applications for individuals from a list of 39 countries. Consequently, applications for refugees from countries including Haiti, Afghanistan and Republic of the Congo are not being reviewed at all.

This means that refugees who have done everything right could be imprisoned indefinitely under this policy, because the U.S. government is refusing to judge their applications.

Against this backdrop, the Trump administration has capped refugee admissions for 2026 to a record low of 7,500.

At least one federal lawsuit has already been filed to challenge this new policy.

What happens now depends on how far DHS is willing to go and whether the courts allow it to do so.

Ashley Sanchez is the director of the Notre Dame Immigration Clinic, where she and her students represent refugees seeking permanent residency. She was previously the Supervising Attorney at Cleveland Catholic Charities, Migration and Refugee Services.

– ref. Legal refugees now face long detention after DHS reinterprets law on applying for a green card after a year – https://theconversation.com/legal-refugees-now-face-long-detention-after-dhs-reinterprets-law-on-applying-for-a-green-card-after-a-year-277054

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stephen Roll, Assistant Professor of Social Policy, Washington University in St. Louis

Childhood poverty in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in history in 2021. The fall was largely due to the expanded child tax credit and other COVID-19 pandemic supports that put cash directly in the hands of parents and lifted millions of children out of poverty.

Once these safety net changes expired at the end of 2021, childhood poverty rebounded, surging from 5% in 2021 to 13% in 2024.

While federal anti-poverty initiatives like the child tax credit expansion have stalled, states like Colorado are increasingly leveraging their tax codes to combat poverty. The Colorado Family Affordability Tax Credit took effect in tax year 2024. It is one of the most substantial and accessible state-level programs designed to support families, potentially offering thousands of dollars to low-income Colorado parents.

As economic policy researchers, we are conducting a three-year evaluation of the Colorado Family Affordability Tax Credit. We estimate that the credit reduces child poverty in Colorado by about 20%, and that reduction increases to 37% when combined with other state tax credits for low-income families, moving roughly 52,000 children above the poverty line.

Colorado’s approach is projected to have one of the strongest anti-poverty effects among state refundable child tax credits. If Colorado’s design were implemented in every U.S. state, child poverty nationwide could be reduced by more than one-third.

However, due to the complicated funding structure of the Colorado tax credit, the program is at risk. Changes in federal legislation created tax breaks for Colorado businesses, reducing state revenue projections. Since the credit is only available when Colorado state revenue growth is above 3%, these tax breaks caused the Family Affordability Tax Credit to be suspended for 2026, meaning the credit may not be part of families’ 2027 tax refunds.

Changes put Colorado families at risk

State anti-poverty programs are more vital now as planned cuts to federal safety net programs may substantially reduce the benefits available for low-income families. The 2025 federal tax breaks and spending cuts package expanded work requirements for the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Medicaid – programs that millions of families rely on to meet their food and healthcare needs.

Following this change, most working-age adults enrolled in these programs must work 80 hours per month. Previously, Medicaid had no work requirements and SNAP had work requirement exemptions for older working-age adults. The law requires states to implement these changes by Jan. 1, 2027, though some states, such as Georgia and Ohio, are starting earlier. Proponents argue that work requirements encourage labor force participation and reduce government spending.

However, research finds that stricter work requirements reduce program participation more than they increase work. Changing enrollment systems requires retraining staff and providing outreach and education to enrollees, which is costly to implement.

As a result, many Americans may lose benefits not because of an unwillingness to work, but because of complex rules and red tape, which are difficult to manage while juggling unsteady jobs, caregiving obligations or health issues.

Federal changes to the safety net will hit Colorado especially hard. Early estimates from simulation models applying the new requirements show that roughly 298,000 Colorado families could lose their SNAP benefits, and 154,000 could lose Medicaid coverage. These cuts will disproportionately affect families with children, low-wage workers and families already struggling to make ends meet.

Amid soaring costs of living in the state, tighter eligibility doesn’t eliminate need. Instead, it forces families into difficult trade-offs. Those could include skipping meals, delaying medical care or falling behind on rent.

Using the tax system to support families

Colorado’s Family Affordability Tax Credit was implemented in 2024. The credit provides US$3,200 per child under age 6 and $2,400 per child ages 6 to 16, making it one of the most substantial state child tax credits.

Married couples filing jointly with eligible children who earn up to about $95,000 per year qualify for a portion of the credit. It is fully refundable, meaning families can receive the credit as a tax refund even if they do not owe anything in state taxes. Delivered through the tax system, access is simple and largely automatic for most households.

Parents who received the credit consistently told us in interviews that it made it easier for them to afford paying for their basic needs, such as food, housing, utilities and transportation. The reduced financial strain also improved their emotional well-being and family dynamics. As one caregiver noted, lower stress meant they weren’t in “hustle mode” just to keep the lights on.

The credit is “more than a dollar amount,” another said. It provides “peace of mind.”

Parents also highlighted the positive effects that receiving this tax credit had on children. The money allowed some to take their kids to activities and on outings, and allowed many parents to feel more present with their children.

“If I’m relaxed and my own cup is full, I can fill theirs,” said one parent. “It’s a ripple effect.”

More than 60% of the families we surveyed said they preferred the tax credit to other kinds of government benefits, citing its flexibility and ease of use. Unlike programs that require frequent reporting or compliance checks, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Colorado’s Family Affordability Tax Credit was often described as straightforward.

“I never feel it’s that difficult to get,” said one participant we interviewed.

Why tax credits work — and where this approach can fall short

Colorado’s tax-based approach to fighting poverty, which includes the Family Affordability Tax Credit, the Colorado Earned Income Tax Credit and the Colorado Child Tax Credit, offers flexible support via a familiar system. However, this approach has limitations.

Millions, including about 1 in 4 workers eligible for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit in Colorado, don’t file taxes. That means they may miss out on the tax credits.

Another issue is that lump-sum payments can be difficult to budget for people who rely on government benefits to make ends meet. Our research suggests that one-third of Colorado respondents preferred monthly payments. We’ve also found that two-thirds of federal child tax credit recipients in 2021 preferred monthly payments for budgeting reasons.

Why state investment in children matters

Although the full impacts of the Family Affordability Tax Credit on Colorado’s children are not yet known, a robust body of research points to the powerful role state policies can play in shaping young children’s development. Increased family income benefits children by enabling greater family resources, such as educational spending, and reducing parental stress.

Importantly, increasing spending that supports families with children can yield long-term benefits for society by improving children’s health, education, employment and economic stability later in life. Research shows a 10-to-1 return on investment from providing refundable tax credits to these families.

As federal support wanes, state policies, like Colorado’s, could be crucial for providing the stability children need to grow, learn and thrive. Unless Colorado makes the Family Affordability Tax Credit a permanent and reliable fixture of the state budget – as a recent proposal aims to do – the progress the state has made in reducing child poverty may only be temporary.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Stephen Roll receives funding from Gary Community Ventures.

Jenn Finders has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

Leah Hamilton receives funding from Gary Community Ventures.

– ref. Federal benefits cuts are looming – here’s how Colorado is trying to protect families with children – https://theconversation.com/federal-benefits-cuts-are-looming-heres-how-colorado-is-trying-to-protect-families-with-children-275199

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jeanette Tran, Associate Professor of English, Drake University

Did you cry during “Hamnet”?

On social media, many viewers shared the overwhelming emotions elicited by the film, which has been nominated for eight Academy Awards.

One viewer commented on Reddit that the movie was an “out of body experience.” Another posted on X that it left them “covered in tears” and “ugly crying the entire drive home.” New York Times columnist Sarah Wildman wrote that the film left her “sobbing in my seat.”

In “Hamnet,” which director Chloé Zhao adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name, William Shakespeare’s youngest son, Hamnet, dies of the bubonic plague at the age of 11. The film traces the profound impact this loss has on his family, while also suggesting that Hamnet’s death influenced the genesis of Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece “Hamlet.”

But as critics debate whether “Hamnet” constitutes “grief porn” or is instead a brilliant field guide for how to move through the dark woods of sorrow, I found the film so compelling due to how the characters themselves grieve.

Much like Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Hamnet” critiques the notion that grieving is somehow unmanly.

A mother mourns

“Hamnet” offers an intimate portrait of Shakespeare’s personal life, though aspects of the story are highly fictionalized.

In the film, Shakespeare and his wife, commonly known as Anne but renamed Agnes in “Hamnet,” fall in love, bear three children and suffer through the tragic death of 11-year-old Hamnet.

The couple’s marriage is tested by the contrasting ways they grieve Hamnet’s death. Agnes believes Shakespeare, who is in London writing plays when Hamnet dies, fails to grieve their son appropriately because of his desire to return to London so shortly after Hamnet’s death. At the same time, the film suggests Agnes would prefer to stay in the family’s dilapidated home forever because it tethers her more closely to Hamnet’s memory.

In a feminist move, the film notably centers Agnes, who’s been an afterthought in popular memory: She’s largely known for Shakespeare bequeathing her his “second best bed.”

Her perfect love for her children is made palpable through her vigilant care for them – in health, sickness and death.

And yet, “Hamnet” would not be “Hamnet” without Shakespeare and the way his failure to grieve affects Agnes. Agnes losing her son is the film’s central tragedy. But the second tragedy is her loss of faith in her husband, who suddenly strikes her as cold and overly career driven.

How could a man capable of writing poetry with such emotional depth be so clueless about how to grieve their dead son? For Agnes, this is no man at all.

Then and now, expressions of grief are often gendered.

In her 1996 study “Telling Tears in the English Renaissance,” literary scholar Marjory E. Lange explains how in Shakespeare’s time, men who cried might be perceived as being dramatic and weak for appropriating a female form of expression; those who shed tears in public – to borrow a contemporary term – could be accused of “sadfishing” for attention, even if they were genuinely overcome with emotion.

And in her monograph “Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature,” literary scholar Jennifer Vaught also notes that men during Shakespeare’s life were expected to be stoic in their grief.

But Vaught complicates the idea that male weeping was universally frowned upon back then. She points to how emotion routinely serves as a springboard for virtuous action in the era’s literature. For example, in Shakespeare’s tragicomic romance “The Winter’s Tale,” King Leontes’ tears facilitate his evolution from jealous, abusive monarch to loving husband and father. Without this grief-induced transformation, the reunion with his wife and daughter – whom he believed were dead – would never have been possible.

To grieve or not to grieve?

Zhao’s “Hamnet” and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” each explore the anxiety men can feel about expressing grief. But they also find ways to show how that grief can be both beautiful and productive.

In “Hamlet,” Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, challenges his masculinity due to his overwrought grieving style.

Hamlet’s grief is essentially the polar opposite of how Shakespeare’s is portrayed in “Hamnet”: When Hamlet enters the stage, he’s wearing an inky black coat, which symbolizes his ongoing mourning of his dead father. His mother, Gertrude, has moved on after just two months and has married her dead husband’s brother, Claudius.

Claudius is quick to chastise Hamlet for his “unmanly grief.” He acknowledges that “tis sweet and commendable” that Hamlet mourns his father, but to persist in grief amounts to a weakness of heart, reason and faith. Why mourn death when it is so common and perhaps even willed by God? Instead of crying, Claudius suggests Hamlet profess, “This must be so.”

“Hamlet” reveals how grieving men are held to different standards than women, and that these fluctuating standards can be contradictory and confusing.

It isn’t that Zhao’s Shakespeare doesn’t feel Hamnet’s loss with the same profundity that Agnes does; he just can’t express it in the same manner. In the same way Claudius suggests Hamlet must move on because the kingdom needs governance, Shakespeare insists on getting back to work to fulfill his artistic calling, provide for his family and, in a surprising twist, grieve his son.

‘Hamlet’ as a vehicle for grief

The satisfying resolution of the film reveals that Shakespeare has been living in deplorable conditions in London.

Agnes believed he was enjoying the trappings of his budding celebrity. But the small, disheveled room above the theater where he sleeps and writes suggests he has been mourning in private. He channels his private grief into his very public play “Hamlet,” which, when performed before Agnes, reads as a coded articulation of his love for her, their dead son and the playwright’s endless well of sorrow.

The play cleverly allows the deceased Hamnet to live on perpetually through the character Hamlet.

At the film’s start, Zhao cites literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt’s finding that Hamnet and Hamlet were the same name and entirely interchangeable, which makes Hamnet’s death and the birth of “Hamlet” feel inevitable. Zhao invites viewers to imagine that the character of Hamlet grieves openly in a way that Shakespeare does not have the courage or capacity to do. Though Claudius ridicules Hamlet for his emotional vulnerability, his grief drives him to avenge his father and emerge as a hero.

Even the most open-minded readers may fall into the trap of emasculating Hamlet, simply because he begins the play by visibly grieving.

I’ll sometimes ask my students or colleagues to tell me what they think Hamlet looks like, and their descriptions often play into anti-masculine stereotypes: The Hamlet of their imagination is usually slim, slight and a bit wan, much like actor David Tennant, who played Hamlet in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2008 production. Franco Zeffirelli’s casting of Mel Gibson as Hamlet in his 1990 film adaption of Shakespeare’s play created a stir because it went so clearly against type.

Now I hope reading Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” alongside Zhao’s “Hamnet” can instill an appreciation for manly grief, one that expands the possibilities of who Hamlet can be.

It has become trendy to say real men cry. But Zhao’s film suggests they can also create emotionally devastating art that invites audiences to cry with and for them.

Jeanette Tran 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. ‘Hamnet’ is making audiences break down in tears – and upending beliefs about male grief – https://theconversation.com/hamnet-is-making-audiences-break-down-in-tears-and-upending-beliefs-about-male-grief-277474

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jennifer B. Nuzzo, Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Pandemic Center, Brown University

In the three decades between 1993 and 2024, measles in the U.S. was relatively rare – a few hundred cases each year, at most. But suddenly, the disease has become so entrenched in American life that it sometimes fails to make headlines when a new outbreak erupts.

As of March 2026, measles has been continuously circulating around the U.S. for more than a year, starting with an outbreak in Texas that lasted from January to August 2025. Before that outbreak was declared over, an outbreak on the Utah and Arizona border began in August and is ongoing. An outbreak in South Carolina began in September, drastically increased in January 2026, and continues.

Thirty states have had measles cases this year; 47 have seen cases since the start of 2025. Health officials across the U.S. have confirmed 1,300 infections already this year as of March 6, putting the country on track to surpass 2025’s numbers, which were the highest in 35 years.

We study outbreak preparedness and response at Brown University’s Pandemic Center, and we view the return of measles in the U.S. as a grim signal of what’s to come.

Low levels of vaccination across the country mean measles outbreaks will continue to occur, needlessly hospitalizing and killing the unvaccinated. But beyond these harms, the disease’s resurgence serves as a serious warning about the country’s capacity to manage infectious disease threats of all kinds.

An eliminated disease returns

Measles’ return is no mystery: At its root is the falling vaccination rate.

Around 90% of the U.S. population has received the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella, and in some regions of the country, the rate is below 60%. Since about 2019-2020, that overall number has dropped below the 95% needed for herd immunity. It is necessary to keep that rate nationally, but maintaining herd immunity at the local level is equally important in order to prevent measles from finding pockets of unvaccinated communities.

Countries that remain free of continuous transmission for 12 months are deemed to have eliminated measles – a designation the U.S. achieved in 2000. The Pan American Health Organization was scheduled to decide in April whether the U.S. should lose that designation, but the organization postponed its meeting until November.

Current trends suggest that both the U.S. and Mexico, which has also been battling the disease, may lose this status – as Canada did in November 2025. All three countries have seen their vaccination rates fall below the 95% threshold, and their outbreaks may share epidemiological links.

A serious, long-term threat to US health

By any measure, the ongoing U.S. measles outbreaks signal that the disease has returned in a way that will have serious adverse health consequences. In 2025, three people died from measles in the U.S. That is more than in any year since the disease’s elimination 25 years ago.

Of the country’s 2,283 confirmed measles cases in 2025, 11% were sick enough to be hospitalized. In South Carolina, where most measles cases have been reported in 2026, hospitals don’t have to report when patients are admitted due to measles complications, so the actual number of hospitalizations due to measles could be much higher.

People who recover from measles can experience complications such as pneumonia, which can lead to death, or encephalitis, which can later lead to deafness or intellectual disabilities from the brain swelling. The virus can also affect the immune system, making people more susceptible to other infections over the long term, even ones they’ve had before.

In rare instances – though more likely if someone is infected as a child – measles patients can develop a progressive dementia known as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE, anywhere from two to 10 years after their infection. SSPE always leads to death. This past year, a school-age child in Los Angeles died of this condition years after being infected with measles as an infant, before they were old enough to be vaccinated.

Measles is an economic scourge

Recurring outbreaks of measles in the U.S. will mean high economic costs. Countries have pursued measles elimination in part because of the clear economic benefits of stopping domestic transmission of the virus.

Studies have found that the cost of containing measles outbreaks is often as much as tens of thousands of dollars per case. One outbreak in Washington state in 2018-2019, which involved 72 cases – a small outbreak compared with what states are reporting now – cost US$3.2 million for the public health response, medical expenses and productivity losses. The Common Health Coalition found that a sustained 1% drop in MMR coverage would cost the U.S. billions across health care systems and the economy.

An opening for infectious disease

As concerning as recent outbreaks of measles have been, they herald a larger systemic problem.

How a country controls measles can be viewed as a proxy for how well it would control many other diseases. That’s because the steps for stopping the spread are the same: deploying vaccines to prevent infections, detecting and isolating cases when they occur, identifying exposed contacts of infected people and making sure they stay home if they’re likely to be contagious, and treating sick people safely.

But besides measles, we’ve already seen infections that were once controlled, like whooping cough, that rose sharply in 2024 and remained high in 2025 compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s because controlling the spread of many infectious diseases depends on the public’s trust in the basic components of public health. Declining MMR vaccine coverage reveals underlying challenges in public support for vaccines. Public confidence in the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also eroding, according to polling from 2023 to early 2026 by the health policy organization KFF. Less than half of the people polled trust the government even “a fair amount” to provide reliable vaccine information.

These growing cracks in the country’s public health armor will complicate efforts to protect Americans from future disease threats – whether an outbreak, a pandemic or a biological attack.

Jennifer B. Nuzzo receives general research funding from the Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and NTI, to support general policy and practice research on infectious disease trends, science and practice. This support is not specific to the topic covered by this piece.

Andrea Uhlig 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. We study pandemics, and the resurgence of measles is a grim sign of what’s coming – https://theconversation.com/we-study-pandemics-and-the-resurgence-of-measles-is-a-grim-sign-of-whats-coming-275059

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Shalom Goldman, Professor Emeritus of Religion, Middlebury College

As the American and Israeli war with Iran unfolds, some American Christians are speaking of the conflict in biblical terms, mapping end-time prophecies on to current events in the Middle East.

In a sermon on March 1, 2026, for example, John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, described the war as part of a divine plan. “Prophetically, we’re right on cue,” he said. Later, he prayed that “God Almighty is brought onto the battlefield and the enemies of Zion and the enemies of the United States can be destroyed before our eyes. Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered.”

Meanwhile, Christian singer and activist Sean Feucht referred to “the end-time open doors of what (God) is going to do in Iran when this regime is prayerfully removed.”

This type of apocalyptic thought has roots in the 19th century, when many American preachers turned toward more literal readings of the Bible. Those readings also emphasized the Bible’s account of God promising the “Holy Land” to Abraham and his descendants. But Christian Zionism’s influence on politics has grown over the past half-century, as I write about in my book “Zeal for Zion.” Today, that mindset seems to be moving into the halls of the American government and the military.

End of an age

“Dispensationalism” is a Protestant idea that human history is divided into different ages, or dispensations, that each unfold God’s plan for the world. Churches that embrace it, which tend to be evangelical, believe that the current dispensation is coming to an end. But that time can be ushered in only by great suffering, a period known as “Jacob’s tribulations.” Israel is the place where they believe these tribulations will begin, and where they will culminate in Jesus’ Second Coming.

In the U.S., the most powerful manifestation of dispensationalist and apocalyptic thought is Christian Zionism. The term refers to many Christians’ strong support for Israel, rooted in the biblical account of God’s covenant with the Hebrew people.

Even before Israel was established, conservative evangelicals have long been enamored of the idea of a Jewish return to Zion. In the 1940s, Protestant emphasis on these biblical narratives influenced American public opinion and helped make the case for a Jewish state.

But in the first two decades of Israel’s history, from 1948-68, fundamentalist Christians had few direct allies among either Israeli or American Jews. Neither evinced much interest in working with conservative Christians, some of whom were involved in missionary work. Why would Jewish groups ally themselves with Christians seeking to convert them?

Turning point

The outcomes of Israel’s 1967 war with a coalition of Arab states changed that situation. From Syria, Israel conquered and occupied the Golan Heights; and from Jordan, East Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan. From Egypt, Israel won the Sinai Peninsula, from which it eventually withdrew, and the Gaza Strip.

As Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg noted, “The Six Day War did more than create a new political and military map in the Middle East. It also changed the mythic map, in a piece of the world where myths have always bent reality.”

In some evangelicals’ view, Israel’s victories in the Arab-Israeli wars were the triumph of divinely ordained good over evil. For them, God’s plan in history, revealed to humanity in the Bible, was now unfolding in the Holy Land. Many conservative Christians view the Jewish return to Israel as a prelude to the Second Coming.

This theology had appeared before the 1967 war. But afterward, it placed its hope on the fulfillment of a quite specific scenario: that the government of the Jewish state would rebuild the ancient Temple in Jerusalem and thus set the stage for the end of days. With the return of Jesus, the historic mission of the Jewish people would be fulfilled. Many Jews would perish, and the remnants would become the vanguard of believers in Jesus.

This scenario, once promoted by small groups within some Protestant denominations, had by the 1990s become widely diffused in popular culture. The “Left Behind” series, apocalyptic novels inspired by the biblical Book of Revelation, sold over 80 million copies.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hostility toward Islam also fueled Christian conservatives’ support for Israel. Televangelist Pat Robertson, for example, said Islam was “violent at its core.”

Around the same time, in a significant political shift, many American Jewish organizations welcomed Christian Zionists’ support. As Israel’s treatment of Palestinians attracted more criticism, the Israeli government and some Jewish groups in the U.S. began to rethink their relationship to conservative Christians.

In 2002, the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group that has historically promoted liberal and civil rights causes, took out an ad in major American newspapers. In that ad it reprinted a statement by Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, which was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.

Into government

Today, however, it seems Christian Zionism’s influence has risen to a new level in government.

Since the strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group, reported over 200 complaints about commanders telling troops across branches of the U.S. armed forces that the current war with Iran was part of a divine plan, invoking biblical ideas about the “end times.”

“Anytime Israel or the U.S. is involved in the Middle East, we get this stuff about Christian nationalists who’ve taken over our government, and certainly our U.S. military,” Air Force veteran Mikey Weinstein, the foundation’s president, told The Guardian.

A further sign of Christian Zionism moving into government was the 2025 appointment of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. Among the most influential and prominent Christian Zionists, Huckabee, a Baptist minister, for years led “Holy Land tours” to Israel.

“I believe it is a special place because God made it special,” Huckabee told conservative Christian activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September 2025. “I believe the Scripture, Genesis 12: Those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. I want to be on the blessing side, not the curse side.”

Shalom Goldman 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. As Iran war expands, some conservative Christians interpret the conflict through biblical prophecies – https://theconversation.com/as-iran-war-expands-some-conservative-christians-interpret-the-conflict-through-biblical-prophecies-277488