A number of journalists, pointing to recent public opinion polls, have claimed that the scandal has hurt Trump. Others have argued that the public has largely moved on and the Epstein controversy no longer presents a political liability for Trump.

But both of these conclusions are based on limited polling about the Epstein controversy and thus may be premature.

Our recent University of Massachusetts Amherst national poll includes particularly detailed questions about the Epstein controversy and attitudes toward Trump, and thus provides fresh insights on how the controversy has affected public support for Trump.

We find that Trump’s handling of the Epstein controversy has done significant damage to his standing, particularly among his core supporters.

Trump ‘fumbling the matter’

Americans are paying close attention to the prolonged Epstein controversy. Our polling finds that 3 in 4 respondents have heard, read or seen “a lot” or “some” about Epstein.

Moreover, most believe that Trump is fumbling the matter.

Seven in 10 Americans believe that Trump is handling the matter “not well.” This includes pluralities of Trump’s most loyal supporters, 43% of Republicans, 43% of conservatives, and 47% of those who voted for him in 2024.

When we drill down on the 47% of 2024 Trump voters who disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Epstein controversy, we find significant cracks in the MAGA facade. Among members of this group, 28% now disapprove of Trump as president.

When we take demographics, ideology, partisanship and assessments of the economy into account, disapproval of Trump’s handling of the release of the Epstein files is still associated with an increase in disapproval of Trump.

Voter regret

Even more significantly, we find that among 2024 Trump voters, negative views of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files are associated with an increased desire to make a different choice if the 2024 election could be rerun.

More specifically, among Trump voters who believe that the president has mishandled the release of the Epstein files, more than one quarter – 26% – indicate that they would not vote for Trump if they had the opportunity to vote again in the 2024 election.

While there are no election do-overs, it is clear that the Epstein scandal has hurt Trump among his base of voters.

Much can happen between now and the midterm elections in November 2026, of course.

But if Trump fails to satisfy his political base, perceptions among Trump voters that he has mishandled the controversy could reduce enthusiasm and participation in the elections. Even if the share of Republicans alienated by the Epstein controversy is relatively small, this could hurt Republicans in close contests.

With over a year to go, the facts on the ground will likely change. But as of today, the controversy over the release of the Epstein files remains relevant. Whether the president responds in a manner that satisfies his voters is a question that could have important political consequences.

Tatishe Nteta, Provost Professor of Political Science and Director of the UMass Amherst Poll, UMass Amherst; Adam Eichen, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, UMass Amherst; Alexander Theodoridis, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Amherst; Jesse Rhodes, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Amherst, and Raymond La Raja, Professor of Political Science, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power.

It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past.

In his second term, President Donald Trump has revealed his ambitions to rewrite America’s official history to, in the words of the Organization of American Historians, “reflect a glorified narrative … while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.”

This ambition was manifested in efforts by the Department of Education to eradicate a “DEI agenda” from school curricula. It also included a high-profile assault on what detractors saw as “woke” universities, which culminated in Columbia University’s agreement to submit to a review of the faculty and curriculum of its Middle Eastern Studies department, with the aim of eradicating alleged pro-Palestinian bias.

Now, the administration has shifted its sights from formal educational institutions to one of the key sites of public history-making: the Smithsonian, a collection of 21 museums, the National Zoo and associated research centers, principally centered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

On Aug. 12, 2025, the Smithsonian’s director, Lonnie Bunch III, received a letter from the White House announcing its intent to carry out a systematic review of the institution’s holdings and exhibitions in the advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

The review’s stated aim is to ensure that museum content adequately reflects “Americanism” through a commitment to “celebrate American exceptionalism, [and] remove divisive or partisan narratives.”

On Aug. 19, 2025, Trump escalated his attack on the Smithsonian. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.”

Such ambitions may sound benign, but they are deeply Orwellian. Here’s how.

Winners write the history

Author George Orwell believed in objective, historical truth. Writing in 1946, he attributed his youthful desire to become an author in part to a “historical impulse,” or “the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail.

Truth, Orwell recognized, was best served by free speech and dialogue. Yet absolute power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out.

As Orwell wrote in “1984,” his final, dystopian novel, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Historian Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska has written about America’s bicentennial celebrations that took place in 1976. Then, she says, “Americans across the nation helped contribute to a pluralistic and inclusive commemoration … using it as a moment to question who had been left out of the legacies of the American Revolution, to tell more inclusive stories about the history of the United States.”

This was an example of the kind of productive dialogue encouraged in a free society. “By contrast,” writes Rymsza-Pawlowska, “the 250th is shaping up to be a top-down affair that advances a relatively narrow and celebratory idea of Americanism.” The newly announced Smithsonian review aims to purge counternarratives that challenge that celebratory idea.

The Ministry of Truth

The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith’s job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in “1984.”

The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South.

Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is.

The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or “thought crime,” is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present.

But it also controls the past. As the party’s protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down “memory holes,” where they are “wiped … out of existence and out of memory.”

At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole.

The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell’s Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past.

Down the memory hole

Even before the Trump administration announced its review of the Smithsonian, officials in departments across government had taken unprecedented steps to rewrite the nation’s official history, attempting to purge parts of the historical narrative down Orwellian memory holes.

Comically, those efforts included the temporary removal from government websites of information about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The plane was unwittingly caught up in a mass purge of references to “gay” and LGBTQ+ content on government websites.

Other erasures have included the deletion of content on government sites related to the life ofHarriet Tubman, the Maryland woman who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom.

Public outcry led to the restoration of most of the deleted content.

Over at the Smithsonian, which earlier in the year had been criticized by Trump for its “divisive, race-centered ideology,” staff removed a temporary placard with references to President Trump’s two impeachment trials from a display case on impeachment that formed part of the National Museum of American History exhibition on the American presidency. The references to Trump’s two impeachments were modified, with some details removed, in a newly installed placard in the updated display.

Responding to questions, the Smithsonian stated that the placard’s removal was not in response to political pressure: “The placard, which was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year-old exhibition, did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.”

Repressing thought

Orwell’s “1984” ends with an appendix on the history of “Newspeak,” Oceania’s official language, which, while it had not yet superseded “Oldspeak” or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect.

According to the appendix, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: “The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds.’ … political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.”

The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future.

If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change.

It has become a cliché that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it.

As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives.

This story is an updated version of an article originally published on June 9, 2025.

The Smithsonian is a member of The Conversation U.S.

Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

But one group has refused to back down is the hosts of America’s late night comedy shows.

Jon Stewart and the rest of The Daily Show team, for example, have been scathing in their coverage of the Epstein case. John Oliver continues to amass colorful analogies for describing the president and his actions. After the “Late Show” was canceled, ostensibly due to financial reasons, host Stephen Colbert was defiant: “They made one mistake – they left me alive!”

We may think of being loud, persistent, and edgy as the modern comedians’ job. However, unrelenting, critical humor has a long history in folklore.

I’m a scholar who examines the intersections between culture and politics and I teach a class on “Humor and Power.” A timeless folktale, known as “The Bird Indifferent to Pain,” can help us understand why comedy fans enjoy the annoying persistence of the jester, and explain why this trope has endured across cultures for centuries.

The invincible rooster

“The Bird Indifferent to Pain” belongs to a genre known as “formula tales.” Such tales consist of repeated patterns or chains of events, often with rhymes weaving through them. “The Gingerbread Man” captures this style perfectly with its infectious, teasing rhyme – “Run, run, run as fast as you can…”

“The Bird Indifferent to Pain” also stars a persistent and irritating creature. In most versions, a bird – often a rooster – angers a master or king for singing too loudly or saying the wrong things. The king comes up with elaborate punishments, but the bird always seems indifferent to them, responding to each move with an increasingly defiant and sometimes vulgar rhyme. At the end, the king cooks and eats the rooster, but the bird flies unharmed out of his body, rhyming and singing ever more.

Because folklore is shared casually across cultures and languages, it’s hard to tell when and where this tale first originated. However, folklorists have identified versions all over the world, from Tajikistan in Central Asia to India and Sri Lanka in South Asia, as well as Sudan in northeast Africa.

Armenia’s famous poet Hovhannes Tumanyan collected one version of this tale, which he titled “Anhaght Aklore” or “The Invincible Rooster.” In this version, a rooster finds a gold coin, and boasts about it from the rooftop: “Cock-a-doodle-doo, I’ve found gold!” When the king’s servants take the gold, the rooster continues crowing defiantly: “Cock-a-doodle-doo … the king lives on my account!” Frustrated, the king orders his servants to return the money. But the rooster still won’t shut up: “The king got scared of me!”

Finally, the king orders him slaughtered for dinner. “The king has invited me to his palace!” the rooster boasts. While he’s cooked, he claims the king is treating him to “a hot bath.” Served as the main course, he crows, “I’m dining with the king!”

The tale reaches its climax when the rooster, now in the king’s belly, complains about the darkness. The king, driven to fury by the persistent voice, orders his servants to cut open his own stomach. The rooster escapes and flies to the rooftops, crowing triumphantly once more: “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

Tumanyan doesn’t tell us what happens to the king after that.

My great-grandmother told us a Turkish version of this tale, featuring a rooster defying his “bey,” or master, in the 1980s. Her rooster crowed in rhyming couplets and used some naughty words to describe the master’s digestive system. Plus, in her version, the master’s behind – and not his stomach – tore open during the bird’s escape. We were obsessed with this story and begged her to tell it over and over.

The power of persistent irritation

What makes this tale, and its many variations, so compelling across languages and centuries? Why do so many cultures enjoy the rooster’s humorous defiance and literal indifference to punishment?

In our case, as children, we were drawn in by the rhythm of repetition and rhyme. The rooster’s colorful language held a delightful sense of transgression. Children also often identify with animals because of a shared vulnerability to adults’ power. Therefore, it is significant that the bird, the weaker of the two parties, survives the ordeal, whereas the master’s fate is uncertain. But the rooster doesn’t merely survive – he thrives and keeps on squawking. This is a story of hope.

In fact, when I told Tumanyan’s version to my 6-year-old son, he said he loved the rooster’s optimism.

Modern American popular culture contains many jocular characters that resemble this folkloric bird, who is delightfully impervious to pain, from cartoon characters such as the Road Runner – an actual bird – to the foulmouthed, self-regenerating antihero Deadpool.

Today’s political comedians, I argue, are using the rooster’s tactics as well.

Release or resistance?

Debates about political humor often circle back to its purpose. Scholars debate whether anti-authoritarian humor is just a coping mechanism, or whether can it spark change.

Psychologist Sigmund Freud believed humor’s main function was “release”: jokes offered a way to reveal our unacceptable urges in a socially acceptable way. A mean joke, for example, allowed its teller to express aggression without risking serious repercussions.

Philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued that humor in corporate capitalist media was a mere safety valve, siphoning off protest and releasing righteous outrage as laughter.

Anthropologist James Scott, however, gives jokesters more political credit. In his 1992 book “Domination and the Arts of Resistance,” Scott agreed that authorities allow some dissident humor as a safety valve. But he also identified a powerful “imaginative function” in humorous resistance. Humor, he claimed, can help people envision alternatives to the status quo.

Scott pointed out that release and resistance need not be mutually exclusive. Instead of reducing the chance of actual rebellion, comedy could serve as practice for it.

Authorities do perceive some danger in comedians’ output. In countries with fewer free speech protections, comedians may face more serious repercussions than a stern tweet.

In the case of Colbert, President Donald Trump’s gleeful response to the show’s cancellation, and his suggestion that others will be “next up,” shows just how seriously some political figures take comedic critique. At the very least, they are irritated.

And the story of the “Bird Indifferent to Pain” reminds us that sometimes the best a jokester can do is to keep irritating the bowels of the system, singing all the way.

Perin Gürel, Associate professor of American Studies, University of Notre Dame

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

I’m a sociologist who’s spent decades studying race and inequality, and when I read the documents and statements coming out of the Trump White House, these assumptions jump out at me again and again – usually implicitly, but always there.

The problem is that the evidence doesn’t back these assumptions up.

For one thing, if discrimination against white Americans were widespread, you might expect large numbers to report being treated unfairly. But polling data shows otherwise. A 2025 Pew survey found that 70% of white Americans think Black people face “some” or “a lot” of discrimination in general, and roughly two-thirds say the same of Asian and Hispanic people. Meanwhile, only 45% of white Americans believe that white people in general experience that degree of discrimination.

In other words, white Americans believe that people of color, as a group, face more discrimination than white people do. People of color agree – and so do Americans overall.

In a second national study, using data collected in 2023, Americans were asked if they had personally experienced discrimination within the past year. Thirty-eight percent of white people said they had, compared to 54% of Black Americans, 50% of Latinos and 42% of Asian Americans. In other words, white Americans are much less likely to say that they’ve been discriminated against than people of color.

The ‘hard’ numbers show persistent privilege

These statistics are sometimes called “soft” data because they reflect people’s perceptions rather than verified incidents. To broaden the picture, it’s worth looking at “hard” data on measures like income, education and employment outcomes. These indicators also suggest that white Americans as a group are advantaged relative to people of color.

For example, federal agencies have documented racial disparities in income for decades, with white Americans, as a group, generally outearning Black and Latino Americans. This is true even when you control for education. When the Census Bureau looked at median annual earnings for Americans between 25 and 64 with at least a bachelor’s degree, it found that Black Americans received only 81% of what comparably educated white Americans earned, while Latinos earned only 80%. Asian Americans, on the other hand, earned 119% of what white people earned.

These gaps persist even when you hold college major constant. In the highest-paying major, electrical engineering, Black Americans earned only 71% of what white people did, while Latinos earned just 73%. Asian Americans, in contrast, earned 104% of what white people earned. In the lowest-paid major, family and consumer sciences, African Americans earned 97% of what white people did, and Latinos earned 94%. Asian Americans earned 117% of what white people earned. The same general pattern of white income advantage existed in all majors with two exceptions: Black people earned more in elementary education and nursing.

Remember, this is comparing individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher to people with the same college major. Again, white Americans are still advantaged in most career paths over Black Americans and Latinos.

Disparities persist in the job market

Unemployment data show similar patterns. The July 2025 figures for workers at all education levels show that Black people were 1.9 times more likely to be unemployed than white Americans. Latinos were 1.4 times more likely to be unemployed, and Asian Americans, 1.1 times.

This same white advantage still occurs when looking only at workers who have earned a bachelor’s degree or more. Black Americans who have earned bachelor’s degrees or higher were 1.3 times more likely to be unemployed than similarly educated white Americans as of 2021, the last year for which data is available. Latinos with college degrees were 1.4 times more likely to be unemployed than similar white Americans. The white advantage was even higher for those with only a high school degree or less. Unfortunately, data for Asian Americans weren’t available.

In another study, researchers sent 80,000 fake resumes in response to 10,000 job listings posted by 97 of the largest employers in the country. The credentials on the resumes were essentially the same, but the names signaled race: Some had Black-sounding names, like Lakisha or Leroy, while others had more “white-sounding” names like Todd or Allison. This method is known as an “audit study.”

This research, which was conducted between 2019 and 2021, found that employers were 9.5% more likely to contact the Todds and Allisons than the Lakishas and Leroys within 30 days of receiving a resume. Of the 28 audit studies that have been conducted since 1989, each one showed that applicants with Black- or Latino-sounding names were less likely to be contacted that those with white-sounding or racially neutral names.

Finally, a 2025 study analyzed 600,000 letters of recommendation for college-bound students who used the Common App form during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 academic years. Only students who applied to at least one selective college were included. The study found that letters for Black and Latino students were shorter and said less about their intellectual promise.

Similarly, letters in support of first-generation students – that is, whose parents hadn’t graduated from a four-year college, and who are disproportionately likely to be Black and Latino – had fewer sentences dedicated to their scientific, athletic and artistic abilities, or their overall academic potential.

These and other studies don’t provide evidence of massive anti-white discrimination. Although scattered cases of white people being discriminated against undoubtedly exist, the data suggest that white people are still advantaged relative to non-Asian people of color. White Americans may be less advantaged than they were, but they’re still advantaged.

While it’s true that many working-class white Americans are having a tough time in the current economy, it’s not because of their race. It’s because of their class. It’s because of automation and overseas outsourcing taking away good jobs. It’s because of high health care costs and cuts in the safety nets.

In other words, while many working-class white people are struggling now, there’s little evidence race is the problem.

Fred L. Pincus, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As summits go, the meeting broke with many conventions of diplomacy: It was last-minute, it appeared to ignore longstanding protocol and accounts of what happened were conflicting in the days after the early termination of the event.

The Conversation U.S.’s politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat now teaching at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, to help untangle what happened and what could happen next.

It was a hastily planned summit. Trump said they’d accomplish things that they didn’t seem to accomplish. Where do things stand now?

It didn’t surprise me or any experienced diplomat that there wasn’t a concrete result from the summit.

First, the two parties, Russia and Ukraine, weren’t asking to come to the peace table. Neither one of them is ready yet, apparently. Second, the process was flawed. It wasn’t prepared well enough in advance, at the secretary of state and foreign minister level. It wasn’t prepared at the staff level.

What was a bit of a surprise was the last couple days before the summit, the White House started sending out what I thought were kind of realistic signals. They said, “Hopefully we’ll get a ceasefire and then a second set of talks a few weeks in the future, and that’ll be the real set of talks.”

Now, that’s kind of reasonable. That could have happened. That was not a terrible plan. The problem was it didn’t happen. And we don’t know exactly why it didn’t happen.

Reading between the lines, there were a couple problems. The first is the Russians, again, just weren’t ready to do this, and they said, “No ceasefire. We want to go straight to permanent peace talks.”

Ukraine doesn’t want that, and neither do its European allies. Why?

When you do a ceasefire, what normally happens is you leave the warring parties in possession of whatever land their military holds right now. That’s just part of the deal. You don’t go into a 60- or 90-day ceasefire and say everybody’s got to pull back to where they were four years ago.

But if you go to a permanent peace plan, which Putin wants, you’ve got to decide that people are going to pull back, right? So that’s problem number one.

Problem number two is it’s clear that Putin is insisting on keeping some of the territory that his troops seized in 2014 and 2022. That’s just a non-starter for the Ukrainians.

Is Putin doing that because that really is his bottom line demand, or did he want to blow up these peace talks, and that was a good way to blow them up? It could be either or both.

Russia has made it clear that it wants to keep parts of Ukraine, based on history and ethnic makeup.

The problem is, the world community has made it clear for decades and decades and decades, you don’t get what you want by invading the country next door.

Remember in Gulf War I, when Saddam Hussein invaded and swallowed Kuwait and made it the 19th province of Iraq? The U.S. and Europe went in there and kicked him out. Then there are also examples where the U.S. and Europe have told countries, “Don’t do this. You do this, it’s going to be bad for you.”

So if Russia learns that it can invade Ukraine and seize territory and be allowed to keep it, what’s to keep them from doing it to some other country? What’s to keep some other country from doing it?

You mean the whole world is watching.

Yes. And the other thing the world is watching is the U.S. gave security guarantees to Ukraine in 1994 when they gave up the nuclear weapons they held, as did Europe. The U.S. has, both diplomatically and in terms of arms, supported Ukraine during this war. If the U.S. lets them down, what kind of message does that send about how reliable a partner the U.S. is?

The U.S. has this whole other thing going on the other side of the world where the country is confronting China on various levels. What if the U.S. sends a signal to the Taiwanese, “Hey, you better make the best deal you can with China, because we’re not going to back your play.”

At least six European leaders are coming to Washington along with Zelenskyy. What does that tell you?

They’re presenting a united front to Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to say, “Look, we can’t have this. Europe’s composed of a bunch of countries. If we get in the situation where one country invades the other and gets to keep the land they took, we can’t have it.”

President Trump had talked to all of them before the summit, and they probably came away with a strong impression that the U.S. was going for a ceasefire. And then, that didn’t happen.

Instead, Trump took Putin’s position of going straight to peace talks, no ceasefire.

I don’t think they liked it. I think they’re coming in to say to him, “No, we have to go to ceasefire first. Then talks and, PS, taking territory and keeping it is terrible precedent. What’s to keep Russia from just storming into the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – next? The maps of Europe that were drawn 100 years ago have held. If we’re going to let Russia erase a bunch of the borders on the map and incorporate parts, it could really be chaotic.”

Where do you see things going?

Until and unless you hear there’s a ceasefire, nothing’s really happened and the parties are continuing to fight and kill.

What I would look for after the Monday meetings is, does Trump stick to his guns post-Alaska and say, “No, we’re gonna have a big, comprehensive peace agreement, and land for peace is on the table.”

Or does he kind of swing back towards the European point of view and say, “I really think the first thing we got to have is a ceasefire”?

Even critics of Trump need to acknowledge that he’s never been a warmonger. He doesn’t like war. He thinks it’s too chaotic. He can’t control it. No telling what will happen at the other end of war. I think he sincerely wants for the shooting and the killing to stop above all else.

The way you do that is a ceasefire. You have two parties say, “Look, we still hate each other. We still have this really important issue of who controls these territories, but we both agree it’s in our best interest to stop the fighting for 60, 90 days while we work on this.”

If you don’t hear that coming out of the White House into the Monday meetings, this isn’t going anywhere.

There are thousands of Ukrainian children who have been taken by Russia – essentially kidnapped. Does that enter into any of these negotiations?

It should. It was a terror tactic.

This could be a place where you can make progress. If Putin said, well, “We still don’t want to give you any land, but, yeah, these kids here, you can have them back,” it’s the kind of thing you throw on the table to show that you’re not a bad guy and you are kind of serious about these talks.

Whether they’ll do that or not, I don’t know. It’s really a tragic story.

Donald Heflin, Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The sentiment is also portrayed in popular culture such as the hit TV show “Yellowstone.”

“It’s the one constant in life. You build something worth having, someone’s gonna try to take it,” says patriarch John Dutton. He was facing repeated threats by developers from “the city” to annex his land for a luxury hotel and resort development.

As a policy scholar, I’ve talked to and interviewed many dozens of people in rural areas in Colorado. I’ve also read hundreds of newspaper articles and watched hundreds of hours of legislative testimony that capture the sentiment of rural people being left behind, left out and snubbed by their urban counterparts.

Recently, I studied the divide between rural and urban Coloradans by looking at their responses to four statewide policies. A designated day to forgo eating meat, two political appointees and the ongoing wolf reintroduction.

These policies, while specific to Colorado, are symptoms of something larger. Namely, an ever-urbanizing, globalized world that rural, agricultural citizens feel is leaving them behind.

‘MeatOut’ or misstep?

My expertise doesn’t just come from my research – I’ve lived it.

I grew up in a rural community in Elbert County, Colorado, about an hour- and-a-half southeast of Denver.

In early 2021, Gov. Jared Polis declared via proclamation that March 20 would be a “MeatOut Day.” For health and environmental reasons, Colorado residents were encouraged to forgo meat for a single day.

Supported by the Farm Animal Rights Movement, MeatOuts have been promoted across the U.S. since the 1980s. Typically, gubernatorial proclamations, of which hundreds are passed each year and are completely ceremonial and devoid of any long-term formal policy implications, go largely unnoticed. And in Denver, Colorado’s metropolitan center, this one did too.

Not so in rural Colorado.

My neighbors in Elbert County promptly responded with outrage, flying banners and flags declaring their support for agriculture and a carnivorous diet.

One rancher from Nathrop painted a stack of hay bales to say, “Eat Beef Everyday.”

Communities all over the state, and even in neighboring states, responded with “MeatIns,” where they gathered to eat meat and celebrate agriculture and the rural way of life. They also coupled these events with fundraisers, for various causes, for which hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised across the state. While Polis backed off the MeatOut after 2021, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has, just this year, supported a similar “Eat Less Meat” campaign, prompting similar rural outrage.

Did I mention there are nearly 36,000 cattle in Elbert County? This is relatively typical of a rural Colorado county, particularly on the Plains.

In Colorado, 2.7 million cattle are raised annually, with a value of US$4.5 billion. The industry is consistently the top agricultural commodity and the second-largest contributor to Colorado’s GDP, at about $7.7 billion per year.

In early March 2021, Polis declared March 22 “Colorado Livestock Proud Day,” in response to the backlash.

Other policies

This came on the heels of several policies supported by Polis prior to the MeatOut controversy that critics considered anti-agriculture.

In 2020, he appointed Ellen Kessler, a vegan and animal rights activist, to the State Veterinary Board. Kessler criticized 4-H programs, designed to educate youth on agriculture and conservation, on her social media, insisting they “don’t teach children that animal lives matter.” Kessler resigned in March 2022, just days before she was cited for 13 counts of animal cruelty. More recently, in May 2025, Polis appointed Nicole Rosmarino to head the State Land Board. Rosmarino has ties to groups that oppose traditional agricultural practices, historically a key component of Colorado State Land Board operations.

Then came wolf reintroduction, passed by urban voters by just under 57,000 votes in the 2020 general election and supported by the governor. Those in support advocated for a return to natural biodiversity; wolves were hunted to extinction in the 1940s.

Rural residents voted decidedly against the initiative. Despite much legislative and grassroots action to oppose it, wolves were reintroduced in December 2023 in various areas along the Western Slope, in close proximity to many ranches. Several cattle have since been killed by wolves. Ever since, rural interests have been working to overturn wolf reintroduction on the 2026 ballot.

An American mess

Rural residents in Colorado have told me they feel excluded. This is not new or exclusive to Colorado, but a story as old as America itself.

University of Wisconsin political scientist Katherine J. Cramer wrote about this rural exclusion in Wisconsin, calling it “rural resentment.” Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild called it “stolen pride.” In their book, Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, and Paul Waldman, a longtime journalist, characterize it as “white rural rage.”

It’s a dynamic that descends from slavery. Isabel Wilkerson, in her book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” demonstrates that while Black Americans have historically been relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy of an American caste system, poor white people are strategically positioned just above them but below white Americans of higher socioeconomic status. As Wilkerson explains, this is a durable system sustained by norms, laws and cultural expectations that feel “natural.” But they are entirely constructed and designed by the American upper class to intentionally exploit resentment of working-class white people.

The result is what sociologist Michael M. Bell calls a “spatial patriarchy” that characterizes rural America as dumb, incapable, racist, poor and degraded as “white trash.”

This spatial patriarchy is as old as industrialization and urbanization. One of the first policy iterations was rural school consolidation during the turn of the 20th century, designed to modernize schools and make them more efficient. Urban policymakers were influenced by eugenics and the assumption that rural schools “were populated by cognitively deficient children whose parents had not been smart enough or fortunate enough to leave the decaying countryside,” according to sociologist Alex DeYoung.

So, states around the country consolidated schools, the lifeblood of rural communities. Where a school closed, the town often died, as in small towns, schools are not just socioeconomic hubs but centers of cultural and social cohesion.

Environmental impact

The same concept – that urban policymakers know better than rural Americans – is manifest in the modern environmental movement. Like with the MeatOut, rural communities also distrust environmental policies that, in their view, intentionally target a rural way of life. Rural communities take the position that they’ve been made to bear the brunt of the transformations of the global economy for generations, including those that deal with energy and the environment.

For example, environmentalists frequently call for lowering meat consumption and enacting livestock taxes to lower global greenhouse gas emissions.

But, there’s a huge, untapped potential for environmental policies that use language consistent with rural attitudes and values, such as ideas about conservation and land stewardship. Political scientists Richard H. Foster and Mark K. McBeth explain, “Rural residents perceive, probably correctly, that environmental ‘outsiders’ are perfectly willing to sacrifice local economic well-being and traditional ways of life on the altar of global environmental concerns.” They instead suggest “emphasizing saving resources for future generations” so that rural communities may continue to thrive.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations attribute between 18% to 24% of greenhouse gas emissions to agriculture, while the International Panel on Climate Change places the estimate closer to 10%. However, agricultural producers point out that, while they may be responsible for that 10%, just 100 companies, such as BP and ExxonMobil, have produced 70% of all emissions. Agricultural producers say policies such as livestock taxes would disproportionately impact small-scale farmers and intensify rural inequality.

Rural communities have the distinct feeling that urban America doesn’t care whether they fail or flourish. Nearly 70% of rural voters supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election. He won 93% of rural counties. Rural Americans feel left behind, and for them, Trump might be their last hope.

Kayla Gabehart, Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy, Michigan Technological University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For the past decade, wave upon wave of protests against police violence and mass incarceration have drawn the public’s attention toward the continued significance of America’s color line, the set of formal and informal rules that maintain white Americans’ elevated social and economic advantages.

Meanwhile, an explosion of popular literature scrutinizes those rules and places white people’s elevated status in sharp relief.

How are white people making sense of these tensions?

In his 1935 publication “Black Reconstruction in America,” sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois described the “public and psychological wage” paid to white workers in the post-Reconstruction era on account of their being white. Today those “wages of whiteness” remain durable as ever. Nearly 60 years removed from the high water mark of the Civil Rights movement, its aims have not been met.

White people still enjoy better jobs, health care, housing, schooling and more.

I’m a sociologist of race and racism. My team of graduate student researchers and I have spent the past four years interviewing white people to understand how they make sense of their white racial status today. We concentrated our efforts among white people living in the U.S. South because that region is seen as more responsible for shaping what it means to be white, and the social and economic advantages of being white, than any other.

There is not much research on how white people think about what it means to be white. Meanwhile, popular and scholarly treatments of white Southerners as overwhelmingly conservative and racially regressive abound.

Some white Southerners we spoke with fit those tropes. Many others do not. Overall, we found white Southerners across the political spectrum actively grappling with their white racial status.

As Walter, 38, from Clarksdale, Mississippi, told us, “It’s a complicated time to be a white Southerner.” We use pseudonyms to protect anonymity.

Crises cast a long shadow

The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci defined a crisis as a historical period in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” Within this space between, Gramsci argued, “morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.”

Many people we spoke with lived through the defining ruptures of the 20th century that forever changed the South, and America too: the formal demise of Jim Crow rule, violent and bloody struggles over integration, and the slow, uneven march toward equal rights for all Americans.

Still others came of age against the backdrop of the defining shocks of this new century: 9/11 and the war on terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, the racial backlash to the election of Barack Obama, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

For some, the political rise of Donald Trump and his willingness to traffic in racist rhetoric constituted a crisis, too. “He embodies everything that is immoral,” said Ned, 45, from Vardaman, Mississippi. The town Ned is from is named for James K. Vardaman, former governor of Mississippi who once declared that “if it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”

Taken together, these crises cast a long shadow of uncertainty over white people’s elevated social position and anchor how white Southerners understand their white racial status.

Resistance to desegregation

Miriam, 61, from Natchez, Mississippi, grew up under the last gasps of Jim Crow. She recalled her parents pulling her from public school and sending her to a nearby private school shortly after the Supreme Court’s 1969 Alexander v. Holmes ruling, which ordered the immediate desegregation of Southern schools.

Her new school was one of hundreds of “segregation academies” founded across the South in the aftermath of the court’s ruling.

“You didn’t go over there, by the Black school,” Miriam recalled. “You stayed over by the white school. … I remember as a kid that made quite an impression.”

Reflecting on what it means to be a white Southerner today, Miriam drew from these experiences living under the region’s long shadow of segregation.

“There’s been so much hatred and so much unpleasantness. I want to do everything I can to make relations better,” she said. “I think that is part of being white in the South.”

Daryl, 42, a self-described conservative, lived in several Southern communities as a child, including Charlotte, North Carolina, in the mid-1980s as the city wrestled with its court-ordered school busing program. Daryl recalled his parents and other white people complaining about the poor quality of newly integrated schools, including telling him “stories of things like needles on the playground.”

Daryl rarely, if ever, talked with his own parents about race, but he broaches these topics with his own children today.

A self-described “childhood racist,” Daryl draws from his experiences to frame his conversations with his own children. “I remind them that there used to be this day where this was OK, and this is how things were thought of,” he says.

‘Good reason to be mad’

The region’s history also includes more contemporary crises.

Lorna, 34, is a registered Republican from Marion, Arkansas. She described how recent protests against police violence are affecting her understanding of America’s color line.

“I feel like Black people are mad or angry. They’re tired of violence and, you know, profiling,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s just in the South. I think it’s all over the United States. And they have a good reason to be mad.”

Kenneth, 35, lives in Memphis. Like Lorna and others, Kenneth’s sense of what it means to be white has been shaped by more recent crises, including the racial backlash to Obama’s elections in 2008 and 2012 that motivated Trump’s election in 2016.

Reflecting on these episodes, Kenneth believes he has an obligation as a white Southerner to become more informed about “the legacy of racism in the South and the impact that it still has today.”

Becoming more informed, Kenneth says, “will cause me to reflect on how I should think about that, and what, if anything, I should do differently now.”

Uncovering what’s minimized or ignored

Our interviews reveal a range of beliefs and attitudes among white Southerners often discounted or dismissed altogether by more popular and scholarly treatments of the region.

Contrary to research that finds white people minimizing or ignoring their elevated social status, the white Southerners we spoke with showed a profound awareness of the advantages their white racial status affords them.

“I have to admit I’m glad I’m white,” said Luke, 75, from Melber, Kentucky. “Because in the United States you probably have a little advantage.”

Our research also shows that how white people make sense of who they are is also a matter of where they are.

Places – and not just Southern ones – are imbued with ideas and beliefs that give meaning and significance to the people within them. The region’s history of racial conflict, meanwhile, renders the “wages of whiteness” more plain to see for white Southerners in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Put plainly: Place matters for how race matters.

Emphasizing this more complicated understanding of race and place allows for a more complete account of the South, including how the unfolding racial dramas of the past several decades continue to shape the region and its people.

James M. Thomas, Professor of Sociology, University of Mississippi

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Indeed, since Trump returned to office, many of his actions have alarmed international human rights observers. His administration has deported immigrants without due process, held detainees in inhumane conditions, threatened the forcible removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and deployed both the National Guard and federal military troops to Los Angeles to quell largely peaceful protests.

When a sitting commander in chief authorizes acts like these, which many assert are clear violations of the law, men and women in uniform face an ethical dilemma: How should they respond to an order they believe is illegal?

The question may already be affecting troop morale. “The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,” a National Guard member who had been deployed to quell public unrest over immigration arrests in Los Angeles told The New York Times. “This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”

Troops who are ordered to do something illegal are put in a bind – so much so that some argue that troops themselves are harmed when given such orders. They are not trained in legal nuances, and they are conditioned to obey. Yet if they obey “manifestly unlawful” orders, they can be prosecuted. Some analysts fear that U.S. troops are ill-equipped to recognize this threshold.

We are scholars of international relations and international law. We conducted survey research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Human Security Lab and discovered that many service members do understand the distinction between legal and illegal orders, the duty to disobey certain orders, and when they should do so.

Compelled to disobey

U.S. service members take an oath to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders. Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution, international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions.

Service members who follow an illegal order can be held liable and court-martialed or subject to prosecution by international tribunals. Following orders from a superior is no defense.

Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would “obey any order.” Only 9% “didn’t know,” and only 2% had “no comment.”

When asked to describe unlawful orders in their own words, about 25% of respondents wrote about their duty to disobey orders that were “obviously wrong,” “obviously criminal” or “obviously unconstitutional.”

Another 8% spoke of immoral orders. One respondent wrote that “orders that clearly break international law, such as targeting non-combatants, are not just illegal — they’re immoral. As military personnel, we have a duty to uphold the law and refuse commands that betray that duty.”

Just over 40% of respondents listed specific examples of orders they would feel compelled to disobey.

The most common unprompted response, cited by 26% of those surveyed, was “harming civilians,” while another 15% of respondents gave a variety of other examples of violations of duty and law, such as “torturing prisoners” and “harming U.S. troops.”

One wrote that “an order would be obviously unlawful if it involved harming civilians, using torture, targeting people based on identity, or punishing others without legal process.”

Soldiers, not lawyers

But the open-ended answers pointed to another struggle troops face: Some no longer trust U.S. law as useful guidance.

Writing in their own words about how they would know an illegal order when they saw it, more troops emphasized international law as a standard of illegality than emphasized U.S. law.

Others implied that acts that are illegal under international law might become legal in the U.S.

“Trump will issue illegal orders,” wrote one respondent. “The new laws will allow it,” wrote another. A third wrote, “We are not required to obey such laws.”

Several emphasized the U.S. political situation directly in their remarks, stating they’d disobey “oppression or harming U.S. civilians that clearly goes against the Constitution” or an order for “use of the military to carry out deportations.”

Still, the percentage of respondents who said they would disobey specific orders – such as torture – is lower than the percentage of respondents who recognized the responsibility to disobey in general.

This is not surprising: Troops are trained to obey and face numerous social, psychological and institutional pressures to do so. By contrast, most troops receive relatively little training in the laws of war or human rights law.

Political scientists have found, however, that having information on international law affects attitudes about the use of force among the general public. It can also affect decision-making by military personnel.

This finding was also borne out in our survey.

When we explicitly reminded troops that shooting civilians was a violation of international law, their willingness to disobey increased 8 percentage points.

Drawing the line

As my research with another scholar showed in 2020, even thinking about law and morality can make a difference in opposition to certain war crimes.

The preliminary results from our survey led to a similar conclusion. Troops who answered questions on “manifestly unlawful orders” before they were asked questions on specific scenarios were much more likely to say they would refuse those specific illegal orders.

When asked if they would follow an order to drop a nuclear bomb on a civilian city, for example, 69% of troops who received that question first said they would obey the order.

But when the respondents were asked to think about and comment on the duty to disobey unlawful orders before being asked if they would follow the order to bomb, the percentage who would obey the order dropped 13 points to 56%.

While many troops said they might obey questionable orders, the large number who would not is remarkable.

Military culture makes disobedience difficult: Soldiers can be court-martialed for obeying an unlawful order, or for disobeying a lawful one.

Yet between one-third to half of the U.S. troops we surveyed would be willing to disobey if ordered to shoot or starve civilians, torture prisoners or drop a nuclear bomb on a city.

The service members described the methods they would use. Some would confront their superiors directly. Others imagined indirect methods: asking questions, creating diversions, going AWOL, “becoming violently ill.”

Criminologist Eva Whitehead researched actual cases of troop disobedience of illegal orders and found that when some troops disobey – even indirectly – others can more easily find the courage to do the same.

Whitehead’s research showed that those who refuse to follow illegal or immoral orders are most effective when they stand up for their actions openly.

The initial results of our survey – coupled with a recent spike in calls to the GI Rights Hotline – suggest American men and women in uniform don’t want to obey unlawful orders.

Some are standing up loudly. Many are thinking ahead to what they might do if confronted with unlawful orders. And those we surveyed are looking for guidance from the Constitution and international law to determine where they may have to draw that line.

Zahra Marashi, an undergraduate research assistant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, contributed to the research for this article.

Charli Carpenter, Professor of political science, UMass Amherst and Geraldine Santoso, PhD student, Political Science, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

During his most recent presidential election campaign, Trump proposed bombing Mexico – although, amid the flurry of claims and promises, this extreme posture almost went unnoticed. And Mexican national security analysts have been warning for the past few years that use of US military force against Mexico is becoming increasingly likely.

On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order designating cartels and some other criminal groups “foreign terrorist organisations”. For past US administrations, such a designation has often acted as a prelude to – and partial justification for – violence.

Trump’s executive order defined cartels as a “national security threat beyond that posed by traditional organised crime”. This, it added, is due to the cartels’ work with international networks, their complexity and engagement in insurgency and asymmetric warfare, and their “infiltration” of governments in the western hemisphere.

In its report on Trump’s secret directive, the New York Times highlighted how the unilateral use of military force in Latin America would represent a dangerous escalation in the region.

In the past, the US has often presented its use of military force against the cartels as support for law enforcement there. It has also relied on collaboration with local governments and militaries to conduct joint operations.

Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the US State Department, noted in the same New York Times article that any use of force would encounter domestic constraints in Washington. It would need congressional authorisations, and the US government is formally banned from attempting assassinations. This ban could only be circumvented, Finucane argued, in cases of self-defence.

However, at least since the 1980s, the ban on assassination has rarely constrained US foreign policy. The so-called “war on drugs” of successive administrations has often blended overt and covert uses of force, culminating in the killing of prominent drug traffickers.

Justifying assassination

The use of force and assassination featured in the first war on drugs, declared by then-US president Richard Nixon in 1971. Journalists working on the Watergate scandal, an investigation into the administration’s involvement in a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, revealed that Nixon and his assistants had considered using hit squads and the assassination of 150 leading drug traffickers.

But the self-defence exception first emerged under the administration of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989). The CIA’s then-director, William Casey, and its legal counsel, Stanley Sporkin, both argued that the ban on assassinations did not apply in cases of self-defence. Their argument found support in an administration that was developing a rhetoric and policies to pre-empt terrorism, similar to those established in the aftermath of 9/11.

In 1989, early in the George H.W. Bush administration, this precedent was enshrined in a memorandum of law: the Parks Memorandum. This stated that overt or covert uses of force ordered by the president in self-defence would not constitute assassination if they targeted “combatant forces of another nation, a guerrilla force or a terrorist, or other organisations whose actions pose a threat to the security of the US”.

By this time, drug trafficking had replaced terrorism as a key security concern in the US, and Medellín Cartel leader Pablo Escobar was enemy number one. In April 1989, the CIA established a counter-narcotics centre, and the National Security Council soon started working on a policy review on how to deal with drug traffickers.

Assassination and the use of force emerged as clear policy options. William J. Bennett, then chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), was a strong advocate of going after narcotraffickers. Bennett seemed to support the use of hit squads when he stated that same year: “We should do to the drug barons what our forces in the Persian Gulf did to Iran’s navy [during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s].”

Bush Sr also went back to another precedent set under Reagan. Starting in the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration had argued that a “marriage of convenience” had emerged between terrorists and drug traffickers. “Narcoterrorism”, then-secretary of state George Shultz suggested in 1987, should be considered a “shadow war”.

In this shadow war, assassination was seen as an available option – with some in the Bush Sr government proposing that if the ban on assassination did not apply to terrorists, it should not apply to drug traffickers either. Increasing violence by the Medellín Cartel at the time, alongside the Parks Memorandum and the administration’s declarations that cartels posed a national security threat, meant overt or covert use of force could be legitimised against the drug gangs too.

This became the legal rationale behind the so-called “kingpin strategy”, which involved the DEA, CIA, US armed forces and their local allies targeting and often killing drug lords and narcotraffickers. This included the leaders of the Medellín and Cali cartels. Escobar, for example, was killed by Colombian special forces in 1993, with extensive training and intelligence support from the US.

Covert and overt uses of force against “narcoterrorists” in the region continued under the following US administrations. This extended to leaders of rebel groups such as the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (Farc), who were involved in drug trafficking and thus considered a threat by the US and its allies. The US role here was largely providing the technology that facilitated cross-border assassinations.

So, the use of US force against drug traffickers is not without precedent. But the measures threatened by Trump would in my view represent a dangerous escalation at a time of unprecedented international crisis. They are certainly a challenge to the Mexican government, whose president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has unequivocally stated: “The US is not going to come to Mexico with the military.”

Several studies into the use of force in the many wars on drugs have shown that military force is not an effective tool to counter the activities of cartels. Militarisation has already contributed to more violence in Mexico, and the decapitation of cartel leadership has often only increased the degree and brutality of such violence.

Luca Trenta, Associate Professor in International Relations, Swansea University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How do wars end?

Wars end for three reasons. One is that both sides get exhausted and decide to make peace. The second, which is more common: One side gets exhausted and raises its hand and says, “Yeah, we’re ready to come to the peace table.”

And then the third is – we’ve seen this happen in the Mideast – outside forces like the U.S. or Europe come in and say, “That’s enough. We’re imposing our will from the outside. You guys stop this.”

What we’ve seen in the Russia-Ukraine situation is neither side has shown a real willingness to go to the conference table and give up territory.

So the fighting continues. And the role that Trump and his administration are playing right now is that third possibility, an outside power comes in and says, “Enough.”

Now you have to look at Russia. Russia is maybe a former superpower, but a power, and it’s got nuclear arms and it’s got a big army. This is not some small, Middle Eastern country that the United States can completely dominate. They’re nearly a peer. So can you really impose your will on them and get them to come to the conference table in seriousness if they don’t want to? I kind of doubt it.

How does this upcoming Trump-Putin meeting fit into the history of peace negotiations?

The analogy a lot of people are using is the Munich Conference in 1938, where Great Britain met with Hitler’s Germany. I don’t like to make comparisons to Nazism or Hitler’s Germany. Those guys started World War II and perpetrated the Holocaust and killed 30 or 40 million people. It’s hard to compare anything to that.

But in diplomatic terms, we go back to 1938. Germany said, “Listen, we have all these German citizens living in this new country of Czechoslovakia. They’re not being treated right. We want them to become part of Germany.” And they were poised to invade.

The prime minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, went and met with Hitler in Munich and came up with an agreement by which the German parts of Czechoslovakia would become part of Germany. And that would be it. That would be all that Germany would ask for, and the West gave some kind of light security guarantees.

Czechoslovakia wasn’t there. This was a peace imposed on them.

And sure enough, you know, within a year or two, Germany was saying, “No, we want all of Czechoslovakia. And, P.S., we want Poland.” And thus World War II started.

Can you spell out the comparisons further?

Czechoslovakia wasn’t at the table. Ukraine’s not at the table.

Again, I’m not sure I want to compare Putin to Hitler, but he is a strongman authoritarian president with a big military.

Security guarantees were given to Czechoslavakia and not honored. The West gave Ukraine security guarantees when that country gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994. We told them, “If you’re going to be brave and give up your nuclear weapons, we’ll make sure you’re never invaded.” And they’ve been invaded twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. The West didn’t step up.

So history would tell us that the possibilities for a lasting peace coming out of this summit are pretty low.

What kind of expertise is required in negotiating a peace deal?

Here’s what usually happens in most countries that have a big foreign policy or national security establishment, and even in some smaller countries.

The political leaders come up with their policy goal, what they want to achieve.

And then they tell the career civil servants and foreign service officers and military people, “This is what we want to get at the negotiating table. How do we do that?”

And then the experts say, “Oh, we do this and we do that, and we’ll assign staff to work it out. We’ll work with our Russian counterparts and try to narrow the issues down, and we’ll come up with numbers and maps.”

With all the replacement of personnel since the inauguration, the U.S. not only has a new group of political appointees – including some, like Marco Rubio, who, generally speaking, know what they’re doing in terms of national security – but also many who don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve also fired the senior level of civil servants and foreign service officers, and a lot of the mid-levels are leaving, so that expertise isn’t there.

That’s a real problem. The U.S. national security establishment is increasingly being run by the B team – at best.

How will this be a problem when Trump meets Putin?

You have two leaders of two big countries like this, they usually don’t meet on a few days’ notice. It would have to be a real crisis.

This meeting could happen two or three weeks from now as easily as it could this week.

And if that happened, you would have a chance to prepare. You’d have a chance to get all kinds of documents in front of the American participants. You would meet with your Russian counterparts. You’d meet with Ukrainian counterparts, maybe some of the Western European countries. And when the two sides sat down at the table, it would be very professional.

They would have very similar briefing papers in front of them. The issues would be narrowed down.

None of that’s going to happen in Alaska. It’s going to be two political leaders meeting and deciding things, often driven by political considerations, but without any real idea of whether they can really be implemented or how they could be implemented.

Could a peace deal possibly be enforced?

Again, the situation is kind of haunted by the West never enforcing security guarantees promised in 1994. So I’m not sure how well this could be enforced.

Historically, Russia and Ukraine were always linked up, and that’s the problem. What’s Putin’s bottom line? Would he give up Crimea? No. Would he give up the part of eastern Ukraine that de facto had been taken over by Russia before this war even started? Probably not. Would he give up what they’ve gained since then? OK, maybe.

Then let’s put ourselves in Ukraine’s shoes. Will they want to give up Crimea? They say, “No.” Do they want to give up any of the eastern part of the country? They say, “No.”

I’m curious what your colleagues in the diplomatic world are saying about this upcoming meeting.

People who understand the process of diplomacy think that this is very amateurish and is unlikely to yield real results that are enforceable. It will yield some kind of statement and a photo of Trump and Putin shaking hands. There will be people who believe that this will solve the problem. It won’t.

NOW READ: The simple act that will cripple Trump

Donald Heflin, Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The culprit isn’t food poisoning – it’s the fallout from a tick bite you may have gotten months earlier and didn’t even notice.

This delayed allergic reaction is called alpha-gal syndrome. While it’s commonly called the “red meat allergy,” that nickname is misleading, because alpha-gal syndrome can cause strong reactions to many products, beyond just red meat.

The syndrome is also rapidly spreading in the U.S. and around the globe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates as many as 450,000 people in the U.S. may have it. And it’s carried by many more tick species than most people realize.

What is alpha-gal syndrome?

Alpha-gal syndrome is actually an allergy to a sugar molecule with a tongue-twisting name: galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, shortened to alpha-gal.

The alpha-gal sugar molecule exists in the tissues of most mammals, including cows, pigs, deer and rabbits. But it’s absent in humans. When a big dose of alpha-gal gets into your bloodstream through a tick bite, it can send your immune system into overdrive to generate antibodies against alpha-gal. In later exposure to foods containing alpha-gal, your immune system might then launch an inappropriate allergic response.

Often this allergy is triggered by eating red meat. But the allergy also can be set off by exposure to a range of other animal-based products, including dairy products, gelatin (think Jell-O or gummy bears), medications and even some personal care items. The drug heparin, used to prevent blood clotting during surgery, is extracted from pig intestines, and its use has triggered a dangerous reaction in some people with alpha-gal syndrome.

Once you have alpha-gal syndrome, it’s possible to get over the allergy if you can modify your diet enough to avoid triggering another reaction for a few years and also avoid more tick bites. But that takes time and careful attention to the less obvious triggers that you might be exposed to.

Why more people are being diagnosed

As an entomologist who studies bugs and the diseases they transmit, what I find alarming is how rapidly this allergy is spreading around the globe.

Several years ago, experts thought alpha-gal syndrome was primarily limited to the southeastern U.S. because it was largely associated with the geographical range of the lone star tick.

However, both local and global reports have now identified many different tick species across six continents that are capable of causing alpha-gal syndrome, including the prolific black-legged tick, or deer tick, which also transmits Lyme disease.

These ticks lurk in yards and urban parks, as well as forests where they can stealthily grab onto hikers when they touch tick-infested vegetation. As tick populations boom with growing deer and human populations, the number of people with alpha-gal syndrome is escalating.

Why ticks are blamed for alpha-gal syndrome

There are a few theories on how a tick bite triggers alpha-gal syndrome and why only a small proportion of people bitten develop the allergy. To understand the theories, it helps to understand what happens as a tick starts feeding on you.

When a tick finds you, it typically looks for a warm, dark area to hide and attach itself to your body. Then its serrated teeth chew through your skin with rapid sawing motions.

As it excavates deeper into your skin, the tick deploys a barbed feeding tube, like a miniature drilling rig, and it secretes a biological cement that anchors its head into its new tunnel.

Once secure, the tick activates its pumping station, injecting copious amounts of saliva containing anesthetics, blood thinners and, sometimes, alpha-gal sugars into the wound so it can feed undetected, sometimes for days.

One theory about how a tick bite causes alpha-gal syndrome is linked to the enormous quantity of tick saliva released during feeding, which activates the body’s strong immune response. Another suggests how the skin is damaged as the tick feeds and the possible effect of the tick’s regurgitated stomach contents into the bite site are to blame. Or it may be a combination of these and other triggers. Scientists are still investigating the causes.

What an allergic reaction feels like

The allergy doesn’t begin right away. Typically, one to three months after the sensitizing tick bite, a person with alpha-gal syndrome has their first, disturbing reaction.

Alpha-gal syndrome produces symptoms that range from hives or swelling to crushing abdominal pain, violent nausea or even life-threatening anaphylactic shock. The symptoms usually start two to six hours after a person has ingested a meat product containing alpha-gal.

Due to a general lack of awareness about the allergy, however, doctors can easily miss the diagnosis. A study in 2022 found that 42% of U.S. health care practitioners had never heard of alpha-gal syndrome. A decade ago, people with alpha-gal syndrome might go years before the cause of their symptoms was accurately diagnosed. Today, the diagnosis is faster in areas where doctors are familiar with the syndrome, but in many parts of the country it can still take time and multiple doctor visits.

Unfortunately, with every additional tick bite or exposure to food or products containing alpha-gal, the allergy can increase in severity.

If you think you have alpha-gal syndrome

If you suspect you may have alpha-gal syndrome, the first step is to discuss the possibility with your doctor and ask them to order a simple blood test to measure whether your immune system is reacting to alpha-gal.

If you test positive, the main strategy for managing the allergy is to avoid eating any food product from a mammal, including milk and cheese, as well as other potential triggers, such as more tick bites.

Read labels carefully. Some products contain additives such as carrageenan, which is derived from red algae and contains alpha-gal.

In extreme cases, people with alpha-gal syndrome may need to carry an EpiPen to prevent anaphylactic shock. Reputable websites, such as the CDC and alphagalinformation.org, can provide more information and advice.

Mysteries remain as alpha-gal syndrome spreads

Since alpha-gal syndrome was first formally documented in the early 2000s, scientists have made progress in understanding this puzzling condition. Researchers have connected the allergy to specific tick bites and found that people with the allergy can have a higher risk of heart disease, even without allergy symptoms.

But important mysteries remain.

Scientists are still figuring out exactly how the tick bite tricks the human immune system and why tick saliva is a trigger for only some people. With growing public interest in alpha-gal syndrome, the next decade could bring breakthroughs in preventing, diagnosing and treating this condition.

For now, the next time you are strolling in the woods or in long grasses, remember to check for ticks on your body, wear long sleeves, long pants and tick repellent to protect yourself from these bloodthirsty hitchhikers. If you do get bitten by a tick, watch out for odd allergic symptoms to appear a few hours after your next steak or handful of gummy bears.

Lee Rafuse Haines, Associate Research Professor of Molecular Parasitology and Medical Entomology, University of Notre Dame

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This dismantling of the country’s terrorism and extremism prevention programs began in February 2025. That’s when staff of USAID’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Stabilization were put on leave.

In March, the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the Department of Homeland Security, which worked during the Biden administration to prevent terrorism with a staff of about 80 employees, laid off about 30% of its staff. Additional cuts to the center’s staff were made in June.

And on July 11, the countering violent extremism team at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan organization established by Congress, was laid off. The fate of the institute is pending legal cases and congressional funding.

President Donald Trump in February had called for nonstatutory components and functions of certain government entities, including the U.S. Institute of Peace, to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”

These cuts have drastically limited the U.S. government’s terrorism prevention work. What remains of the U.S. capability to respond to terrorism rests in its military and law enforcement, which do not work on prevention. They react to terrorist events after they happen.

As a political scientist who has worked on prevention programs for USAID, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and as an evaluator of the U.S. strategy that implemented the Global Fragility Act, I believe recent Trump administration cuts to terrorism prevention programs risk setting America’s counterterrorism work back into a reactive, military approach that has proven ineffective in reducing terrorism.

The US war against terrorism

Between 9/11 and 2021, the cost of the U.S. war on terrorism was $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths, according to a Brown University study. Nonetheless, terrorism has continued to expanded in geographic reach, diversity and deadliness.

Though it was territorially defeated in Syria in 2019, the Islamic State – designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government – has expanded globally, especially in Africa. Its nine affiliates on the continent have joined several al-Qaida-linked groups such as al-Shabab.

The Islamic State has expanded through a decentralized model of operations. It has networks of affiliates that operate semi-autonomously and exploit areas of weak governance in places such as Mali and Burkina Faso. That makes them difficult to defeat militarily.

These terrorist organizations threaten the U.S. through direct attacks, such as the ISIS-linked attack in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025, that killed 14 people.

These groups also disrupt the global economy, such as Houthi attacks on trade routes in the Red Sea.

To understand why terrorism and extremism continue to grow, and to examine what could be done, Congress charged the U.S. Institute of Peace in 2017 to convene the Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States.

This bipartisan task force found that while the U.S. military had battlefield successes, “after each supposed defeat, extremist groups return having grown increasingly ambitious, innovative, and deadly.”

The task force recommended prioritizing and investing in prevention efforts. Those include strengthening the ability of governments to provide social services and helping communities identify signs of conflict – and helping to provide tools to effectively respond when they see the signs.

The report contributed to the Global Fragility Act, which Trump signed in 2019 to fund $1.5 billion over five years of prevention work in places such as Libya, Mozambique and coastal West Africa.

Programs funded by the Global Fragility Act included USAID’s Research for Peace, which monitored signs of terrorism recruitment, trained residents in Côte d'Ivoire on community dialogue to resolve disputes, and worked with local leaders and media to promote peace. All programming under the act has shut down due to the elimination of prevention offices and bureaus.

What the US has lost

The State Department issued a call for funding in July 2025 for a contractor to work on preventing terrorists from recruiting young people online. It stated: “In 2024, teenagers accounted for up to two-thirds of ISIS-linked arrests in Europe, with children as young as 11 involved in recent terrorist plots.”

In the same month, the department canceled the program due to a loss of funding.

It’s the kind of program that the now defunct Office of Countering Violent Extremism would have overseen. The government evidently recognizes the need for prevention work. But it dismantled the expertise and infrastructure required to design and manage such responses.

Lost expertise

The work done within the prevention infrastructure wasn’t perfect. But it was highly specialized, with expertise built over 2½ decades.

Chris Bosley, a former interim director of the violence and extremism program at the U.S. Institute of Peace who was laid off in July, told me recently, “Adequate investment in prevention programs isn’t cheap, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than the decades of failed military action, and more effective than barbed wire – tools that come too late, cost too much, and add fuel to the very conditions that perpetuate the threats they’re meant to address.”

For now, the U.S. has lost a trove of counterterrorism expertise. And it has removed the guardrails – community engagement protocols and conflict prevention programs – that helped avoid the unintended consequences of U.S. military responses.

Without prevention efforts, we risk repeating some of the harmful outcomes of the past. Those include military abuses against civilians, prisoner radicalization in detention facilities and the loss of public trust, such as what happened in Guantanamo Bay, in Bagram, Afghanistan, and at various CIA black sites during the George W. Bush administration.

Counterterrorism prevention experts expect terrorism to worsen. Dexter Ingram, the former director of the State Department’s Office of Countering Violent Extremism who was laid off in July, told me: “It seems like we’re now going to try shooting our way out of this problem again, and it’s going to make the problem worse.”

What can be done?

Rebuilding a prevention-focused approach with expertise will require political will and bipartisan support.

U.S. Reps. Sara Jacobs, a Democrat from California, and Mike McCaul, a Texas Republican, have introduced a bill that would reauthorize the Global Fragility Act, extending it until 2030. It would allow the U.S. government to continue preventing conflicts, radicalization and helping unstable countries. The measure would also improve the way various government agencies collaborate to achieve these goals.

But its success hinges on securing funding and restoring or creating new offices with expert staff that can address the issues that lead to terrorism.

This analysis was developed with research contributions from Saroy Rakotoson and Liam Painter at Georgetown University.

Kris Inman, Professor of African Studies and Security Studies, Georgetown University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Consider Viktor Orbán’s transformation in Hungary. Once celebrated as a liberal democrat who challenged communist rule, Orbán now controls 90% of the Hungarian media and has systematically packed the country’s constitutional court. His trajectory is now widely recognised as a textbook case of democratic backsliding.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was initially praised for showing that democracy and Islamic governance could coexist. In early reforms, he lifted millions from poverty by challenging Turkey’s secular establishment – a feat that required exceptional confidence and a bold vision. Now, a decade on, Erdoğan has turned Turkey into what political scientists call a competitive authoritarian regime.

In the US, Donald Trump rose to power promising to “drain the swamp”. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro campaigned as an anti-corruption crusader who would restore the country’s moral foundations. Both have since weaponised democratic institutions to consolidate their own power.

Part of this shift is a psychological process we term the hubris arc. This sees a visionary leader become increasingly myopic once in office. Their early successes bolster their belief in their transformative capabilities, which gradually diminishes their capacity for self-criticism.

The visionary stage typically coincides with systemic failure. When established institutions prove inadequate for addressing public grievances, it provides fertile ground for leaders with exceptional self-confidence to emerge. These outsiders succeed precisely because they possess the psychological conviction that they can challenge entrenched systems and mobilise mass support through bold, unconventional approaches.

Such leaders excel at crafting compelling narratives that enable them to to transform public frustration into electoral momentum. They offer simplified solutions to complex problems, providing certainty where establishment politicians offer only incrementalism and compromise.

Losing perspective

But as visionary capacity increases, so too does myopia. Seeing a singular path with exceptional clarity necessitates narrowing one’s perceptual field.

These leaders initially succeed because their heightened focus cuts through the paralysis of nuanced thinking. But they quickly reach an inflection point where they face a fundamental choice: accept institutional constraints as necessary feedback mechanisms or redefine them as obstacles to their vision.

Those who maintain a productive vision actively build systems for honest feedback. They allow formal channels for dissent to continue and construct diverse advisory teams.

Where strong democratic institutions endure – independent media, empowered legislatures, autonomous courts – leaders must continue negotiating and compromising. This tends to keep their confidence grounded. Some leaders successfully work within these constraints, which proves that the descent into myopia is actually more a reflection of institutional weakness than psychological destiny.

Where institutions lack strength or leaders resist self-discipline, electoral success may embolden rather than restrain authoritarian tendencies. As leaders become increasingly convinced of their transformative vision, their ability to perceive alternatives diminishes.

This psychological narrowing manifests in predictable behaviours, notably eliminating dissenting voices. With every election victory, Orbán has replaced independent-minded allies with loyalists. Trump’s first presidency featured constant turnover among advisers who challenged him. His second is populated by people who can be trusted to toe the line.

Myopic decline follows when hubris reaches saturation. Once leaders systematically eliminate feedback mechanisms, they lose all capacity for self-correction. As their ability to process contradictory information deteriorates, they may increasingly conflate personal power with national interest.

This conflation appears most pronounced in cases where leaders have systematically weakened independent media and judicial oversight.

When leaders achieve complete institutional capture, this self-conception becomes institutionalised. Orbán’s declaration, “We have replaced a shipwrecked liberal democracy with a 21st-century Christian democracy,” reveals how personal vision becomes indistinguishable from national transformation.

Institutional capture occurs through different methods but serves similar purposes. Orbán’s control of the media and courts means he has created parallel institutions that exist solely to validate his vision. Erdoğan used emergency powers after a 2016 coup attempt to instigate mass purges.

In both cases, motivated reasoning becomes institutionalised: leaders come to control the institutions that usually determine what information is legitimate and enable forms of dissent.

The endpoint is a transformation in which opposition becomes an existential threat to the nation. When Orbán positions himself as defender of “illiberal democracy” against EU values, or when Erdoğan arrests his rivals, they frame dissent as treason.

Opposition is a threat not just to their power but to the nation’s essence. Maximum vision has produced maximum blindness. Institutions have been redesigned to perpetuate rather than puncture the delusion.

Resisting the decline

The robustness of democratic institutions is decisive in determining whether hubristic tendencies can be contained within democratic bounds or whether they culminate in authoritarian consolidation.

Both Orbán and Erdoğan leveraged initial electoral mandates to systematically capture state institutions. Their hubris evolved from a tool for challenging establishments into a self-reinforcing system in which the regime’s vast sway over state institutions eliminated feedback mechanisms.

Bolsonaro’s slide toward authoritarianism – denying COVID science, attacking electoral systems, attempting to overturn his 2022 defeat – triggered immediate institutional pushback. Unlike Hungary or Turkey, where courts and civil society gradually bent to executive pressure, Brazilian institutions held firm.

Bolsonaro’s trajectory from populist outsider to authoritarian to electoral defeat and institutional rejection suggests that robust federal structures and an independent judiciary can function as circuit breakers. They can prevent permanent democratic capture.

The American experience presents a third model: democratic resilience under stress. Unlike Hungary and Turkey, where institutional capture succeeded, Trump’s first presidency tested whether these patterns could emerge in a system with deeper democratic roots and stronger institutional checks.

While his efforts to pressure state election officials and weaponise federal agencies followed recognisable authoritarian scripts, American institutions proved more resistant than their Hungarian or Turkish counterparts. Courts blocked key initiatives, state officials refused to “find votes,” and congressional oversight continued despite partisan pressures.

Yet even this institutional resistance came under severe strain, suggesting that democratic durability may depend more on specific design features and timing than general democratic culture.

The Trump stress test has revealed vulnerabilities. The erosion of democratic norms – when parties prioritise loyalty over constitutional obligations – creates openings for future exploitation.

The second Trump term could systematically target the weaknesses identified during his first: expanded emergency powers, strategic appointments to undermine the administrative state, and novel statutory interpretations to bypass Congress. The critical question is whether American institutions retain sufficient strength to again disrupt Trump’s trajectory.

The hubris arc appears inherent in populist psychology, underscoring why constitutional constraints and institutional checks are indispensable. Democracies survive not by finding perfect leaders but by constraining imperfect ones.

Trang Chu, Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and Tim Morris, Emeritus Professor, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Texas GOP move was pushed by President Donald Trump, who’s aiming to ensure he has a GOP-controlled Congress to work with after the 2026 midterm elections.

Other Republican states such as Missouri and Ohio may also follow the Texas playbook; and Democratic states such as California and Illinois seem open to responding in kind.

But there are a few factors that make this process more complicated than just grabbing a few House seats. They may even make Republicans regret their hardball gerrymandering tactics, if the party ends up with districts that political scientists like me call “dummymandered.”

Democrats can finally fight back

Unlike at the federal level, where Democrats are almost completely shut out of power, Republicans are already facing potentially consequential retaliation for their gerrymandering attempts from Democratic leaders in other states.

Democrats in California, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, are pushing for a special election later this year, in which the voters could vote on new congressional maps in that state, aiming to balance out Democrats’ losses in Texas. If successful, these changes would take effect prior to next year’s midterm elections.

Other large Democratic-controlled states, such as Illinois and New York – led by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Gov. Kathy Hochul, respectively – have also indicated openness to enacting their own new gerrymanders to pick up seats on the Democratic side.

New York and California both currently use nonpartisan redistricting commissions to draw their boundaries. But Hochul recently said she is “sick and tired of being pushed around” while other states refuse to adopt redistricting reforms and gerrymander to their full advantage. Hochul said she’d even be open to amending the state constitution to eliminate the nonpartisan redistricting commission.

It’s unclear whether these blue states will be successful in their efforts to fight fire with fire; but in the meantime, governors like Hochul and Pritzker have welcomed the protesting Democratic legislators from Texas, in many cases arranging for their housing during their self-imposed exile.

Dummymandering

Another possible problem for either party looking to gain some seats in this process stems from greediness.

In responding to Democrats’ continued absence from Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott threatened even more drastic gerrymanders. “If they don’t start showing up, I may start expanding,” Abbott said. “We may make it six or seven or eight new seats we’re going to be adding on the Republican side.”

But Abbott might think twice about this strategy.

Parties that gerrymander their states’ districts are drawing lines to maximize their own advantage, either in state legislatures or, in this case, congressional delegations.

When parties gerrymander districts, they don’t usually try to make them all as lopsided as possible for their own side. Instead, they try to make as many districts as possible that they are likely to win. They do this by spreading groups of supportive voters across several districts so they can help the party win more of these districts.

But sometimes the effort backfires: In trying to maximize their seats, a party spreads its voters too thin and fails to make some districts safe enough. These vulnerable districts can then flip to the other party in future elections, and the opposing party ends up winning more seats than expected.

This phenomenon, commonly referred to as “dummymandering,” has happened before. It even happened in Texas, where Republicans lost a large handful of poorly drawn state legislative districts in the Dallas suburbs in 2018, a strong year for Democrats nationwide.

With Democrats poised for a strong 2026 midterm election against an unpopular president, this is a lesson Republicans might need to pay attention to.

There’s not much left to gerrymander

One of the main reasons dummymandering happens is that there has been so much gerrymandering that there are few remaining districts competitive enough for a controlling party to pick off for themselves. This important development has unfolded for two big reasons.

First, in terms of gerrymandering, the low-hanging fruit is already picked over. States controlled by either Democrats or Republicans have already undertaken pretty egregious gerrymanders during previous regular redistricting processes, particularly following the 2010 and 2020 censuses.

Republicans have generally been more adept at the process, particularly in maximizing their seat shares in relatively competitive states such as Wisconsin and North Carolina that they happen to control.

But Democrats have also been successful in states such as Maryland, where only one Republican serves out of nine seats, despite the party winning 35% of the presidential vote in 2024. In Massachusetts, where Democrats hold all eight seats, Republicans won 37% of the presidential vote in 2024.

There’s also the fact that over the past half-century, “gerrymanderable” territory has become more difficult to find regardless of how you draw the boundaries. That’s because the voting electorate is more geographically sorted between the parties.

This means that Democratic and Republican voters are segregated from each other geographically, with Democrats tending toward big cities and suburbs, and Republicans occupying rural areas.

As a result, it’s become less geographically possible than ever to draw reasonable-looking districts that split up the other party’s voters in order to diminish the opponents’ ability to elect one of their own.

Regardless of how far either party is willing to go, today’s clash over Texas redistricting represents largely uncharted territory. Mid-decade redistricting does sometimes happen, either at the hands of legislatures or the courts, but not usually in such a brazen fashion.

And this time, the Texas attempt could spark chaos and a race to the bottom, where every state picks up the challenge and tries to rewrite their electoral maps – not in the usual once-a-decade manner, but whenever they’re unsatisfied with the odds in the next election.

Charlie Hunt, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This success is part of a trend. Radical right-wing populist parties are making gains in elections across many democracies and, in plenty of cases, they’re winning power. Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy has been in government in Italy since the election of September 2022, when they took 26% of the vote and captured 119 seats in the national parliament.

In the National Assembly elections of June 2024, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally increased its representation from 89 seats to 125 seats. And in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party (PVV), led by right-wing populist Geert Wilders won the largest vote share in 2023 with 24%, capturing 37 seats in the House of Representatives.

Perhaps most significantly, Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November 2024 with a rightwing populist agenda – a victory that has created turmoil in American politics and the economy, along with the rest of the world.

Expert views

The American political scientist, Larry Bartels, argued in a recent book that democracy erodes from the top. He explains that contemporary democracies die not by military coups or revolutionary overthrows but by populist leaders winning elections and then subverting the institutions of democracy from within. Once in power, they restrict the freedom of the courts, squeeze the fairness out of elections and attack the press.

The Chapel Hill expert surveys, a database that classifies political parties into ideological groupings, helps illustrate the stakes at play here.

The 2024 survey data covers 31 countries and it was administered in all the European Union member states plus a few others including Britain, Norway and Turkey. It shows that there are more radical right-wing parties than any other kind of party in these countries and they are growing in number and in support.

The 2024 data was compiled by 609 political scientists, who looked at party ideologies, their policy preferences, electoral performances and the extent to which they participate in government. There are 279 parties in the database altogether and so they are classified into “party families” to make the analysis manageable.

A party family is a grouping of parties which the experts think are similar to each other, even though there may be some differences between them. For example, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the National Rally (RN) in France, the Party for Freedom (VVD) in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party in Austria (FPO) and Reform in Britain are all classified as right-wing populist parties in the dataset. The chart shows the extent to which these 11 party families have been successful in winning votes in the most recent elections.

images.theconversation.com

The Performance of Party Families in 31 Countries in 2024:

The radical right family consisted of 48 parties, and on average they won 11% of the votes and 17% of seats in the various national legislatures. They are growing in support and influence, coming fourth after the conservative, socialist and Christian democrat party families in voting support and representation in parliaments.

The threat to democracy

We can get some idea of how likely such parties are to undermine democracy by looking at responses to a question in the Chapel Hill survey. This asked the experts to judge the extent to which parties think power should or should not be concentrated in the executive. It is measured on a ten-point scale where zero means that the party is strongly in favour of constraining the power of the executive, whereas ten means that a party opposes any restrictions on executive powers.

The chart shows the average scores for each of the party families on this executive power scale. It is readily apparent that the radical right parties are significant outliers on the scale, being very much more likely to support executive dominance than the other party families.

images.theconversation.com

Scores on the Executive Power Scale

The survey showed that parties of the right such as the Conservatives, Agrarian and Religious parties are rather more likely to support executive dominance than parties of the centre or left. But the radical right parties stand out as really strongly supporting this. This is in sharp contrast to radical left parties, which are quite suspicious of such executive dominance.

This is important since it shows that once in power these parties are tempted to subvert the separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. This is likely to be accompanied by attacks on an independent media, the use of the courts against opponents and attempts to gerrymander elections.

All this comes from the belief that a strong leader is the best form of government, a sentiment shared by many Trump supporters in the United States. Anne Applebaum’s recent book Twilight of Democracy illustrates this dynamic in the case of eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary.

The implication is that if these parties grow stronger and dominate governments they are quite likely to try to subvert democracy. Reform supporters in Britain could get more than they bargained for.

This article contains references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and this may include links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex

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The letter, among other things, reversed previous presidents’ positions on how diversity, equity and inclusion influences schools’ disciplinary measures. It advised schools to, within two weeks, begin to eliminate all discipline protocols rooted in DEI, on the grounds that this work is discriminatory against white students.

Trump also issued an executive order, “Reinstating Commonsense School Discipline Policy,” in April 2025, doubling down on the letter.

Trump’s letter and executive order exert an unusual level of influence over how schools can decide the best way to teach and, when necessary, discipline students. It also cuts against recognized research that Black, Latino and Native American students are disciplined more frequently and harshly than white and Asian students.

I am an educational scholar who has spent the past 13 years analyzing school discipline policy. While previous administrations have issued “Dear Colleague” letters to schools, Trump’s is the first that frames itself as though it were law – setting a potential new precedent for the executive branch to issue educational mandates without the approval of the judicial or congressional branches of government.

While all but two states have responded to Trump’s letter, about half of them have said they are not going to comply with its terms – despite the administration’s threat of cutting funding if they do not follow the guidance.

Understanding DEI in education

Equity-oriented education, or diversity, equity and inclusion, refers to an ideology and programming that intend to ameliorate patterns of racial inequality. In the context of discipline in schools, DEI strategies could include teachers having conversations with children about their behavior, rather than immediately suspending them.

Research shows that these techniques can help reduce racial discipline gaps in academic achievement and disciplinary outcomes.

The Obama administration in 2014 recognized this research in its own “Dear Colleague” letter to schools. The administration advised schools to either reform their discipline practices toward nonpunitive alternatives to suspension or risk being investigated for discrimination.

The first Trump administration rescinded this letter in 2018.

Then, in 2023, the Biden administration released a document along the same lines as Obama’s letter.

Trump’s February 2025 letter grouped all of these recommendations under the banner of “DEI” and argued that such practices are discriminatory, privileging students of color over white and Asian students.

In his April executive order, Trump reiterated that if schools did not eliminate DEI, they would be out of compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin,

Public school districts regularly have to issue a certificate of compliance to the government showing that their work is in line with Title VI.

While the Trump administration characterizes DEI as “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline,” it does not define exactly what constitutes DEI programming.

This puts school districts at risk of losing funding if they maintain any initiatives related to racial equality.

Legal concerns with Trump’s directives

The executive office and members of Congress typically issue “Dear Colleague” letters, which are not legally binding, to advise schools and others on policy.

Yet Trump’s letter was written like a mandate and reinforced by an executive order, which is legally binding.

Some scholars are calling the letter an “overreach” of legal authority.

In the spring of 2025, I analyzed states’ responses to Trump’s letter and executive order.

Two states, Iowa and Tennessee, had not yet provided public responses.

Twenty-three states complied with the administration’s directive by signing the letter as of May 30. Some, like Oklahoma, not only certified the letter but also passed state laws banning DEI policies and programs.

The remaining 25 states refused to certify the letter, asserting that they already complied with Title VI and that their policies are not discriminatory.

In addition, 19 of those 25 states sued the Trump administration over the letter in April, culminating in a court injunction later that month that temporarily released states from having to comply with its demands.

I noticed that many states that refuted Trump’s letter used the same exact words in their responses, signaling a concerted effort to resist Trump’s directives. States that did not sign on to the letter but objected to its intent generally resisted on legal grounds, ethics or both.

A legal argument

Most states that rejected it grounded their refusal to sign Trump’s letter in federal law. They cited the Civil Rights Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act, which protects states from having to file redundant paperwork. Because these states already certified compliance with Title VI, this argument goes, they should not have to do so again under Trump’s directive.

Education commissioners from a few states, including Illinois and Minnesota, also cited specific language used by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s former education secretary in his first term, who supported DEI policies.

Charlene Russell-Tucker, the education commissioner for Connecticut, also pointed out that in order for the federal government to cancel DEI programming, it would have to first legally change the definition of Title VI.

States resisting on other grounds

Some education officials also argued that their DEI work is ideologically necessary for providing supportive learning environments for all students.

Patrick Tutwiler, Massachusetts’ interim education commissioner, wrote in an April 16 letter, for example, that “Massachusetts will continue to promote diversity in our schools because we know it improves outcomes for all of our kids.”

Other officials displayed more subtle resistance. Randy Watson, Kansas’ education commissioner, for example, affirmed the state’s “commitment to comply with all Federal statutes,” including Title VI – but did not explicitly address Trump’s “Dear Colleague” letter.

Similarly, Kentucky informed the Department of Education of its compliance with federal law, while simultaneously encouraging local districts to continue diversity, equity and inclusion work.

Mississippi’s state department of education pointed out that school districts operate independently, so the state cannot force policies on them. However, Mississippi signaled compliance by citing a new state law banning DEI and confirmed that each of its individual school districts have already certified compliance with federal laws.

More legal pushback

It is not yet clear what might follow the April court injunction, which largely prevented the Department of Education from cutting federal funding to schools that continued their DEI-related programs and policies.

While the Trump administration has made major cuts to the Department of Education, it has not announced that states refusing to certify the letter will lose funding.

This is the first time an administration is issuing such a direct threat to withhold K-12 funding, placing schools in an unknown place, without a clear blueprint of how to move forward.

Hilary Lustick, Associate Professor of Education, UMass Lowell

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nearly all US trading partners are now staring down tariffs of between 10% and 50%.

After a range of baseline and sector-specific tariffs came into effect earlier this year, many economists had predicted economic chaos. So far, the inflationary impact has been less than many predicted.

However, there are worrying signs that could all soon change, as economic pain flows through to the US consumer.

Decoding the deals

Trump’s latest adjustments weren’t random acts of economic warfare. They revealed a hierarchy, and a pattern has emerged.

Countries running goods trade deficits with the US (that is, buying more than they sell to the US), which also have security relationships with the US, get 10%. This includes Australia.

Japan and South Korea, which both have security relationships with the US, were hit with 15% tariffs, likely due to their large trade surpluses with the US.

But the rest of Asia? That’s where Trump is really turning the screws. Asian nations now face average tariffs of 22.1%.

Countries that negotiated with Trump, such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines, all got 19%, the “discount rate” for Asian countries willing to make concessions.

India faces a 25% rate, plus potential penalties for trading with Russia.

Is Trump winning the trade war?

In the current trade war, it is unsurprising that despite threats to do so, no countries have actually imposed retaliatory tariffs on US products, with the exception of China and Canada. Doing so would drive up their consumer prices, reduce economic activity, and invite Trump to escalate, possibly limiting access to the lucrative US market.

Instead, nations that negotiated “deals” with the Trump administration have essentially accepted elevated reciprocal tariff rates to maintain a measure of access to the US market.

For many of these countries, this was despite making major concessions, such as dropping their own tariffs on US exports, promising to reform certain domestic regulations, and purchasing various US goods.

Protests over the weekend, including in India and South Korea, suggested many of these tariff negotiations were not popular.

Even the European Union has struck a deal accepting US tariff rates that once would have seemed unthinkable – 15%. Trump’s confusing Russia-Ukraine war strategy has worried European leaders. Rather than risk US strategic withdrawal, they appear to have simply folded on tariffs.

Some deals are still pending. Notably, Taiwan, which received a higher reciprocal tariff (20%) than Japan and South Korea, claims it is still negotiating.

Through the narrow prism of deal making, it is hard not to escape the conclusion that Trump has gotten his way with everyone – except China and Canada. He has imposed elevated US tariffs on many countries, but also negotiated to secure increased export market access for US firms and promised purchases of planes, agriculture and energy.

Why economic chaos hasn’t arrived – yet

Imposing tariffs on goods coming into the US effectively creates a tax on US consumers and manufacturers. It drives up the prices of both finished goods (products) and intermediate goods (components) used in manufacturing.

Yet the Yale Budget Lab estimates the tariffs will cause consumer prices to rise by 1.8% this year.

This muted inflationary impact is likely a result of exports to the US being “front-loaded” before the tariffs took effect. Many US importers rushed to stockpile goods in the country ahead of the deadline.

It may also reflect some companies choosing to “eat the tariffs” by not passing the full cost to their customers, hoping they can ride things out until Trump “chickens out” and the tariffs are removed or reduced.

Who really pays

Despite Trump’s repeated claims that tariffs are a tax paid by foreign countries, research consistently shows that US companies and consumers bear the tariff burden.

Already this year, General Motors reported that tariffs cost it US$1.1 billion (about A$1.7 billion) in the second quarter of 2025.

A new 50% tariff on semi-finished copper products took effect on August 1. That announcement in July sent copper prices soaring by 13% in a single day. This affects everything from electrical wiring to plumbing, with costs ultimately passed to US consumers.

The average US tariff rate now sits at 18.3%, the highest level since 1934. This represents a staggering increase from just 2.4% when Trump took office in January.

This trade-weighted average means that, on typical imported goods, Americans will pay nearly one-fifth more in taxes.

Alarm bells

The US Federal Reserve is concerned about these potential price impacts, and last week opted to maintain interest rates at their current levels, despite Trump’s pressure on Chairman Jerome Powell.

And on August 1, economic data released in the US showed significant slowing in job creation, some worrying signs in economic growth, and early signs of business investment paralysis due to the economic uncertainty unleashed by Trump’s ever-changing tariff rates.

Trump responded to the report by firing the US Bureau of Labour Statistics commissioner, a shock move that led to widespread concerns official US data could soon become politicised.

But the worst economic impacts could still be yet to come. The domestic consequences of Trump’s tariff policies are likely to amount to a massive economic own goal.

Peter Draper, Professor, and Executive Director: Institute for International Trade, and Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Trade and Environment, University of Adelaide and Nathan Howard Gray, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for International Trade, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This isn’t a hypothetical – it’s a real dilemma faced by a real business owner who spoke with one of us over coffee this past spring. And she’s not alone. As of 2023, of those U.S. companies that import goods, more than 97% of them were small businesses. For these companies, tariff uncertainty isn’t just frustrating – it’s paralyzing.

As a family business researcher and former deputy administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration and entrepreneur, we hear from a lot of small-business owners grappling with these challenges. And what they tell us is that tariff uncertainty is stressing their time, resources and attention.

The data backs up our anecdotal experience: More than 70% of small-business owners say constant shifts in trade policy create a “whiplash effect” that makes it difficult to plan, a recent national survey showed.

Unlike larger organizations with teams of analysts to inform their decision-making, small-business owners are often on their own. In an all-hands-on-deck operation, every hour spent focusing on trade policy news or filling out additional paperwork means precious time away from day-to-day, core operations. That means rapid trade policy shifts leave small businesses especially at a disadvantage.

Planning for stability in an uncertain landscape

Critics and supporters alike can agree: The Trump administration has taken an unpredictable approach to trade policy, promising and delaying new tariffs again and again. Consider its so-called “reciprocal” tariffs. Back in April, Trump pledged a baseline 10% tariff on imports from nearly everywhere, with extra hikes on many countries. Not long afterward, it hit pause on its plans for 90 days. That period just ended, and the administration followed up with a new executive order on July 31 naming different tariff rates for about 70 countries. The one constant has been change.

This approach has upended long-standing trade relationships in a matter of days or weeks. And regardless of the outcomes, the uncertainty itself is especially disruptive to small businesses. One recent survey of 4,000 small-business owners found that the biggest challenge of tariff policies is the sheer uncertainty they cause.

This isn’t just a problem for small-business owners themselves. These companies employ nearly half of working Americans and play an essential role in the U.S. economy. That may partly explain why Americans overwhelmingly support small businesses, viewing them as positive for society and a key path for achieving the American dream. If you’re skeptical, just look at the growing number of MBA graduates who are turning down offers at big companies to buy and run small businesses.

But this consensus doesn’t always translate into policies that help small businesses thrive. In fact, because small businesses often operate on thinner margins and have less capacity to absorb disruptions, any policy shift is likely to be more difficult for them to weather than it would be for a larger firm with deeper pockets. The ongoing tariff saga is just the most recent example.

Slow, steady policies help small-business owners

Given these realities, we recommend the final negotiated changes to trade policy be rolled out slowly. Although that wouldn’t prevent businesses from facing supply chain disruptions, it would at least give them time to consider alternate suppliers or prepare in other ways. From the perspective of a small-business owner, having that space to plan can make a real difference.

Similarly, if policymakers want to bring more manufacturing back to the U.S., tariffs alone can accomplish only so much. Small manufacturers need to hire people, and with unemployment at just over 4%, there’s already a shortage of workers qualified for increasingly high-skilled manufacturing roles.

Making reshoring a true long-term policy objective would require creating pathways for legal immigration and investing significantly in job training. And if the path toward reshoring is more about automation than labor, then preparing small-business owners for the changes ahead and helping them fund growth strategically will be crucial.

Small businesses would benefit from more government-backed funding and training. The Small Business Administration is uniquely positioned to support small firms as they adjust their supply chains and manufacturing – it could offer affordable financing for imports and exports, restructure existing loans that small businesses have had to take on, and offer technical support and education on new regulations and paperwork. Unfortunately, the SBA has slashed 43% of its workforce and closed offices in major cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans and Los Angeles. We think this is a step in the wrong direction.

Universities also have an important role to play in supporting small businesses. Research shows that teaching core management skills can improve key business outcomes, such as profitability and growth. We recommend business and trade schools increase their focus on small firms and the unique challenges they face. Whether through executive programs for small-business owners or student consulting projects, universities have a significant opportunity to lean into supporting Main Street entrepreneurs.

Thirty-five million small businesses are the engine of the U.S. economy. They are the job creators in cities and towns across this country. They are the heartbeat of American communities. As the nation undergoes rapid and profound policy shifts, we encourage leaders in government and academia to take action to ensure that Main Streets across America not only endure but thrive.

The authors would like to thank Gretchen Abraham and Matt Sonneborn for their support.

Peter Boumgarden, Professor of Family Enterprise, Washington University in St. Louis and Dilawar Syed, Associate Professor of Instruction, Department of Business, Government and Society, The University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Since the heat of the November 2024 election, and continuing into July, Trump has filed defamation lawsuits against “60 Minutes” broadcaster CBS News and The Wall Street Journal. He has also sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll just before the 2024 election that Trump alleges exaggerated support for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and thus constituted election interference and fraud.

These are in addition to other lawsuits Trump filed against the news media during his first term and during his years out of office between 2021 and 2025.

At the heart of Trump’s complaints is a familiar refrain: The media is not only biased, but dishonest, corrupt and dangerous.

The president isn’t just upset about reporting on him that he thinks is unfair. He wants to redefine what counts as libel and make it easier for public officials to sue for damages. A libel suit is a civil tort claim seeking damages when a person believes something false has been printed or broadcast about them and so harmed their reputation.

Redefining libel in this way would require overturning the Supreme Court’s 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, one of the most important First Amendment legal rulings in American constitutional history

Trump made overturning Sullivan a talking point during his first campaign for president; his lawsuits now put that threat into action. And they raise the question: What happened in Sullivan, and why does it still matter?

What Sullivan was about

As chair of a public policy institute devoted to strengthening deliberative democracy, I have written two books about the media and the presidency, and another about media ethics. My research traces how news institutions shape civic life and why healthy democracies rely on free expression.

In 1960, The New York Times published a full-page advertisement titled “Heed Their Rising Voices”. The ad, which included an appeal for readers to send money in support of Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement against Jim Crow, described brutal and unjust treatment of Black students and protesters in Montgomery, Alabama. It also emphasized episodes of police violence against peaceful demonstrations.

The ad was not entirely accurate in its description of the behavior of either protesters or the police.

It claimed, for instance, that activists had sung “My Country ’Tis of Thee” on the steps of the state capitol during a rally, when they actually had sung the national anthem. It said that “truckloads of police armed with shotguns and tear-gas” had “ringed” a college campus, when the police had only been deployed nearby. And it asserted that King had been arrested seven times in Alabama, when the real number was four.

Though the ad did not identify any individual public officials by name, it disparaged the behavior of Montgomery police.

That’s where L.B. Sullivan came in.

As Montgomery’s police commissioner, he oversaw the police department. Sullivan claimed that because the ad maligned the conduct of law enforcement, it had implicitly defamed him. In 1960 in Alabama, a primary defense against libel was truth. But since there were mistakes in the ad, a truth defense could not be raised. Sullivan sued for damages, and an Alabama jury awarded him US$500,000, equivalent to $5,450,000 in 2025.

The message to the press was clear: criticize Southern officials and risk being sued out of existence.

In fact, the Sullivan lawsuit was not an isolated incident, but part of a broader strategy. In addition to Sullivan, four other Montgomery officials filed suits against the Times.

In Birmingham, public officials filed seven libel lawsuits over Times reporter Harrison Salisbury’s trenchant reporting about racism in that city. The lawsuits helped push the Times to the edge of bankruptcy. Salisbury was even indicted for seditious libel and faced up to 21 years in prison.

Alabama officials also sued CBS, The Associated Press, the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies’ Home Journal – all for reporting on civil rights and the South’s brutal response.

The Supreme Court decision

The jury’s verdict in favor of Sullivan was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in 1964.

Writing for the court, Justice William Brennan held that public officials cannot prevail in defamation lawsuits merely by showing that statements are false. Instead, they must prove such statements are made with “actual malice”. Actual malice means a reporter or press outlet knew their story was false or else acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

The decision set a high bar.

Before the ruling, the First Amendment’s protections for speech and the press didn’t offer much help to the press in libel cases.

After it, public officials who wanted to sue the press would have to prove “actual malice” – real, purposeful untruths that caused harm. Honest mistakes weren’t enough to prevail in such lawsuits. The court held that errors are inevitable in public debate and that protecting those mistakes is essential to keeping debate open and free.

Nonviolent protest and the press

In essence, the court ruling blocked government officials from suing for libel with ulterior motives.

King and other civil rights leaders relied on a strategy of nonviolent protest to expose injustice through public, visible actions.

When protesters were arrested, beaten or hosed in the streets, their goal was not chaos – it was clarity. They wanted the nation to see what Southern oppression looked like. For that, they needed press coverage.

If Sullivan’s lawsuit had succeeded, it could have bullied the press away from covering civil rights altogether. The Supreme Court recognized this danger.

Public officials treated differently

Another key element of the court’s reasoning was its distinction between public officials and private citizens.

Elected leaders, the court said, can use mass media to defend themselves in ways ordinary people cannot.

“The public official certainly has equal if not greater access than most private citizens to media of communication,” Justice Brennan wrote in the Sullivan ruling.

Trump is a perfect example of this dynamic. He masterfully uses social media, rallies, televised interviews and impromptu remarks to push back. He doesn’t need the courts.

Giving public officials the power to sue over news stories they dislike could well create a chilling effect on the media that undermines government accountability and distorts public discourse.

“The theory of our Constitution is that every citizen may speak his mind and every newspaper express its view on matters of public concern and may not be barred from speaking or publishing because those in control of government think that what is said or written is unwise,” Brennan wrote.

“In a democratic society, one who assumes to act for the citizens in an executive, legislative, or judicial capacity must expect that his official acts will be commented upon and criticized.”

Why Sullivan still matters

The Sullivan ruling is more than a legal doctrine. It is a shared agreement about the kind of democracy Americans aspire to. It affirms a press duty to hold power to account, and a public right to hear facts and information that those in power want to suppress.

The ruling protects the right to criticize those in power and affirms that the press is not a nuisance, but an essential part of a functioning democracy. It ensures that political leaders cannot insulate themselves from scrutiny by silencing their critics through intimidation or litigation.

Trump’s lawsuits seek to undo these press protections. He presents himself as the victim of a dishonest press and hopes to use the legal system to punish those he perceives to be his detractors.

The decision in the Sullivan case reminds Americans that democracy doesn’t depend on leaders who feel comfortable. It depends on a public that is free to speak.

Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The objectives of the tariff policy include raising tax revenues, delivering lower prices for American consumers, and boosting American industry while creating manufacturing jobs. The president has also vowed to get better trade deals for the US to reduce its trade deficit and to face down China’s growing influence on the world stage.

But recently the US Federal Reserve voted to keep interest rates unchanged at 4.25% to 4.5%, despite pressure from Trump to lower them. In his monthly press briefing, Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, said they were still in the early stages of understanding how the tariff policy would affect inflation, jobs and economic growth.

On tariffs, Powell did say that revenues had increased substantially to US$30 billion (£22.9 billion) a month. However, only a small portion of the tariffs are being absorbed by overseas exporters, with most of the cost being borne by US import companies. In comments that will concern the Trump administration, the Fed said the cost of the tariffs was beginning to show up in consumer prices.

The Fed expects inflation to increase to 3% by the end of the year, above its 2% target. US unemployment remains low, with Powell saying the economy is at or very close to full employment.

While Powell’s decision to hold interest rates probably irritated Trump, economic theory suggests that lowering them with the US economic cycle at full employment would be likely to increase inflation and the cost of living for US consumers. A survey by Bloomberg economists suggests that US GDP growth forecasts are lower since April 2025, specifically because of its tariff policy.

In terms of boosting US employment, the US administration can point to significant wins in the pharmaceutical sector. In July, British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZenica announced plans to spend US$50 billion expanding its US research and manufacturing facilities by 2030. The announcement follows a similar pledge from Swiss pharmaceuticals firm Roche in April to invest US$50 billion in the US over the next five years.

Tougher times for US manufacturing

The impact of tariffs on traditional US manufacturing industries is less positive. The Ford Motor Company has warned that its profits will see a sharp drop. This is largely down to a net tariff impact that the firm says will cost it US$2 billion this financial year. This is despite the company making nearly all of its vehicles in the US.

Firms such as Ford are seeing an increase in tariff-related costs for imports. This dents their profits as well as dividends to shareholders.

In recent months the US has announced major new trade agreements, including with the UK, Japan, South Korea and the EU. Talks on a trade deal with China continue. But rather than trade deals, these announcements should be thought of as frameworks for trade deals. No legally binding documents have been signed to date.

It will take many months before a clear picture emerges of how these bilateral deals will affect the US trade deficit overall. Meanwhile, in Washington, a federal appeals court will hear a case from two companies that are suing Trump over the use of his International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977.

VOS Selections Inc, a wine and spirits importer, and Plastic Services and Products, a pipe and fittings company, are arguing that the president has “no authority to issue across-the-board worldwide tariffs without congressional approval”.

With so much in play, it is difficult to judge whether Trump’s tariff policy can be viewed as a success. Higher tariff revenues from imports as well as significant investments from the pharmaceutical industry can be seen as clear wins.

But increasing consumer costs through rising inflation, as well as tariff costs hurting US manufacturers, are clear negatives. While several framework trade deals have been announced, the real devil will of course be in the detail.

Perhaps the greatest impact of the tariff policy has been the uncertainty of this new approach to trade and diplomacy. The Trump administration views trade as a zero-sum game. If one side is winning, the other side must be losing.

This view of international trade harks back to mercantilism, an economic system that predates capitalism. Adam Smith and David Riccardo, the founders of capitalist theory, advocated for free trade. They argued that if countries focused on what they were good at making, then both sides could benefit – a so called positive-sum game.

This approach has dominated global trade since the post-war period. Since then, the US has become the largest and wealthiest economy in the world. By creating and the institutions of global trade (the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization), the US has advanced its interests – and American-based multinationals dominate, especially in areas such as technology.

But China and others now threaten this US domination, and Trump is tearing up the economic rulebook. But economic theory clearly positions tariffs as the wrong policy path for the US to assert and further its economic interests in the medium to long term. That’s why Trump’s course of action remains such a gamble.

NOW READ: Team Trump delivers another slap in the face

Conor O'Kane, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

But some political commentators have observed that the president this time around has primarily appointed loyal advisers who will not challenge him.

As Thomas Friedman pointed out in The New York Times on June 3, 2025, “In Trump I, the president surrounded himself with some people of weight who could act as buffers. In Trump II, he has surrounded himself only with sycophants who act like amplifiers.”

As a scholar of Greco-Roman antiquity, I have spent many years studying the demise of truth-telling in periods of political upheaval. Spanning the period from 27 B.C.E. to 476 C.E., the Roman Empire still offers insights into what happens to political leaders when they interpret possibly helpful advice as dissent.

Particularly telling is the case of Nero, Rome’s emperor from 54 to 68 C.E., who responded to a disastrous fire in 64 with extreme cruelty and self-worship that did nothing to help desperate citizens.

Suppressing honest advice under Nero

Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, established a handpicked circle of advisers – called the consilium principis in Latin, meaning emperor’s council – to give a republican look to his autocratic regime. Augustus became the emperor of Rome in 27 B.C.E. and ruled over the empire, which stretched from Europe and North Africa to the Middle East at its peak, until his death in 14 C.E.

Augustus wanted to hear what others thought about the empire’s needs and his policies. At least some of Augustus’ advisers were bold enough to assert themselves and risk incurring his displeasure. Some, such as Cornelius Gallus, paid for their boldness with their own lives, while others, such as Cilnius Maecenas, managed to push their political agendas in softer ways that allowed them to maintain their influence.

But the Roman emperors who came after Augustus were either less skilled at maintaining a republican facade, or less interested in doing so.

Nero was the last of the emperors from the noble Julio-Claudian dynasty in ancient Rome at its peak of power. Historians who describe Nero’s rise and fall from power describe the first five years of his reign, or the quinquennium neronis in Latin, as a period of relative calm and prosperity for the empire.

Because Nero was just 16 years old when he acceded to power, he was assigned advisers to guide his policies. Their opinions carried significant weight.

But five years into his reign, chafing at their continued oversight, Nero began to purge these advisers from his life, via execution, forced suicide and exile.

Nero instead collected a small cadre of self-interested enablers who derived power for themselves by encouraging their leader’s delusions, such as his desire to project himself as the incarnation of the sun god, Apollo.

The single most unspeakably corrupt and nefarious of these preferred advisers was Ofonius Tigellinus. Tigellinus had caught Nero’s eye early in 62 by urging the senate to convict a Roman magistrate of treason for having composed poems that he deemed insulting to the emperor. Later that year, Tigellinus was appointed the head of the emperor’s personal army.

As praetorian prefect, Tigellinus was charged not only with protecting Nero from physical harm, but also with crafting and guarding the leader’s public image. Tigellinus urged Nero to stage an ongoing series of public spectacles – like theatrical performances and athletic competitions – that featured him as a divine ruler and a god on Earth.

Up in flames

It was likely at Tigellinus’ urging that, in the aftermath of the great fire of 64 that raged for six days in Rome, Nero staged an exorbitant garden party where Christians were soaked in flammable oils and lit as human torches to illuminate a decadent late-night feast.

But, try as he might, Nero couldn’t outrun the fire and its aftermath by indulging in clever cruelties. Huge swathes of the city had been razed by the fire. Thousands of citizens lacked clothing. They were hungry, displaced and homeless.

For answers, the fire’s countless victims looked to Nero, their earthly Apollo, for help. But they did not encounter a sympathetic leader sweeping in to address their needs. Instead, they found a man desperate to place blame on others – in this case, foreigners from the east.

In order to squelch rumors that Nero had lit the fire, Tigellinus’ army unit rounded up Christians, falsely blamed them for starting the fire and executed them.

But this move just showcased Nero’s failure to focus on the dire needs of the poor, the very people who worshipped him. Instead, he sought to rise above the ashes by doubling down on his divine pretensions.

Once the rubble left by the fire was cleared away, Nero built a magnificent new home for himself. This palace, called the domus aurea in Latin, meaning house of gold, covered more than 120 acres in the heart of Rome. It featured spectacular water fountains, elaborate works of art and, standing tall in the entryway, a 120-foot bronze statue of Nero as the sun god, Apollo.

No truth-teller was there to tell Nero that maybe he shouldn’t rub his people’s noses in their suffering.

Nero’s delusional response to the fire did not put an end to his career, but it did much to hasten its end.

Less than four years later, with armies bearing down on the city, Nero committed suicide. Rome tumbled into civil war.

Self-worship in the Trump era

Trump has long expressed a desire to have his face carved on Mount Rushmore, a national memorial in South Dakota that features the likenesses of legendary American presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

This dream became a bit closer to reality when Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles in July 2025 urged the Department of the Interior to explore adding Trump’s image to Mount Rushmore – even though such an addition might not be possible because of geological issues. Trump’s critics have long noted the president’s propensity to focus on himself and his own greatness and power, rather than the needs of citizens.

As far away as the Roman Empire might seem, Nero’s rise and fall offers a lesson in what can happen when honest criticism of a political leader is sidelined in favor of idolatry.

Instead of honest solutions to real problems, what Romans got was a colossal statue that portrayed their leader as a god on Earth.

Kirk Freudenburg, Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Classics, Yale University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The US president is suing the billionaire media owner, alongside the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones and others, for libel after it published an article alleging that Trump once wrote a “bawdy” birthday letter to the convicted sex offender, the late Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump is seeking US$10 billion in damages. In a court filing in late July, his lawyers asked the court to order a swift deposition, citing Murdoch’s age at 94.

Trump and Murdoch have a transactional friendship that goes back decades. Despite past tensions, this rupture is something new in a relationship that has continued to serve both men’s interests.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, professor of journalism Andrew Dodd at the University of Melbourne takes us back to where their relationship began in 1970s New York, to understand how Murdoch helped to build brand Trump.

Murdoch was already a very successful media magnate in Australia and the UK before he made his move to America. In 1976, after dabbling in two newspapers in Texas, he bought the New York Post.

“ Murdoch wanted to make it big in the US and to do that he really needed to break into New York,” says Dodd. US television networks were all based in US, he explains, “so by influencing what was going on in Manhattan, he was influencing the entire country’s media.”

Meanwhile, Trump was a young property developer from Queens. “ He’s wanting to develop and build, and he’s also wanting a profile because the profile will help him along the way,” says Dodd. “But he’s also an egomaniac. He needs publicity for its own sake, and so he’s attracted to the media.” Trump became easy and frequent fodder for the new Page Six gossip column of Murdoch’s New York Post.

Dodd says that both men saw in each other “opportunities for their own advancement”. For Trump, it was about access to notoriety. For Murdoch, a newcomer and foreigner in New York, he needed to make friends quickly and start establishing relationships. “He’s becoming ingratiated with power in the city, and so they’re all using one another,” he says.

Listen to the conversation with Andrew Dodd about Trump and Murdoch and the power they now wield over each other, on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware with assistance from Ashlynne McGhee. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newclips in this episode from ITV News, MSNBC and The Independent.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is, after all, the media mogul whose US television network, Fox News, actively supported Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election result and paid out a US$787 million (about A$1.2 billion) lawsuit for doing so.

It is also the network that supplied several members of Trump’s inner circle, including former Fox host, now controversial Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth.

But that is where we are after Trump filed a writ on July 18 after Murdoch’s financial newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, published an article about a hand-drawn card Trump is alleged to have sent to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. The newspaper reported:

A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The Journal said it has seen the letter but did not republish it. The letter allegedly concluded:

Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.

The card was apparently Trump’s contribution to a birthday album compiled for Epstein by the latter’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence after being found guilty of sex trafficking in 2021.

Trump was furious. He told his Truth Social audience he had warned Murdoch the letter was fake. He wrote, “Mr Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but obviously did not have the power to do so,” referring to Murdoch handing leadership of News Corporation to his eldest son Lachlan in 2023.

Trump is being pincered. On one side, The Wall Street Journal is a respected newspaper that speaks to literate, wealthy Americans who remain deeply sceptical about Trump’s radical initiative on tariffs, which it described in an editorial as “the dumbest trade war in history”.

On the other side is the conspiracy theory-thirsty MAGA base who have been told for years that there was a massive conspiracy around Epstein’s apparent suicide in 2019 that included the so-called deep state, Democrat elites and, no doubt, the Clintons.

Trump, who loves pro wrestling as well as adopting its garish theatrics, might characterise his lawsuit against Murdoch as a smackdown to rival Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant in the 1980s.

To adopt wrestling argot, though, it is a rare battle between two heels.

A friendship of powerful convenience

Murdoch and Trump’s relationship is longstanding but convoluted. The key to understanding it is that both men are ruthlessly transactional.

Exposure in Murdoch’s New York Post in the 1980s and ‘90s was crucial to building Trump’s reputation.

Not that Murdoch particularly likes Trump. Yes, Murdoch attended his second inauguration, albeit in a back row behind the newly favoured big tech media moguls. He was also seen sitting in the Oval Office a few days later looking quite at home.

But this was pure power-display politics, not the behaviour of a friend.

Remember Murdoch’s derision on hearing Trump was considering standing for office before the 2016 election, and his promotion of Ron De Santis in the primaries before Trump’s second term. Murdoch’s political hero has always been Ronald Reagan. Trump has laid waste to the Republican Party of Reagan.

Murdoch knows what the rest of sane America knows: Trump is downright weird, if not dangerous. This, of course, only makes Murdoch’s complicity in Trump’s rise to power, and Fox News’ continued boosterism of Trump, all the more appalling.

But, in keeping with Murdoch’s relationship to power throughout his career, what he helps make, he also helps destroy. Perhaps now it’s Trump’s turn to be unmade. As a former Murdoch lieutenant told The Financial Times over the weekend:

he’s testing out: Is Trump losing his base? And where do I need to be to stay in the heart of the base?

And here is Murdoch’s great advantage, and his looming threat.

A double-edged sword

The advantage comes with the scope of Murdoch’s media empire, which operates like a federation of different mastheads, each with their own market and aspirations. While Fox News panders to the MAGA base, and The New York Post juices its New York audience, The Wall Street Journal speaks, and listens, to business. Each audience has different needs, meaning they’re often presented with the same news in very different ways, or sometimes different news entirely.

Like a federation, though, News Corp uses its various operations to drive the type of change that affects all its markets.

It might work like this. The Wall Street Journal breaks a story that’s so shocking it begins to chip away at MAGA’s unquestioning loyalty of Trump. This process is, of course, willingly aided by the rest of the media. The resulting groundswell eventually allows Fox News and the Post to tentatively follow their audiences into questioning, and then perhaps criticising, Trump.

The threat is that before that groundswell builds, Murdoch is seriously vulnerable to criticism from a still dominant Trump, who can turn conspiracy-prone audiences away from Fox News with just a social media post. Trump has already been busy doing just that, saying he is looking forward to getting Murdoch onto the witness stand for his lawsuit.

If the Fox audience decides it’s the proprietor who’s behind this denigration of Trump, they may decide to boycott their own favoured media channel, even though Fox’s programming hasn’t yet started questioning Trump.

The Murdochs’ fear of audience backlash was a major factor in Fox’s promulgation of the Big Lie after Trump’s defeat in 2020. The fear their audience might defect to Newsmax or some other right-wing media outfit is just as real today.

History littered with fakery

We also need to consider that Trump might be right. What if the letter is a fake?

Murdoch has form when it comes to high-profile exposés that turn out to be fiction. Who can forget the Hitler Diaries in 1983, which we now know Murdoch knew were fake before he published.

Think also of the Pauline Hanson photos, allegedly of her posing in lingerie, all of which were quickly proved to be fake after they were published by Murdoch’s Australian tabloids in 2009.

There was also The Sun’s despicable and wilfully wrong campaign against Elton John in 1987 and the same paper’s continued denigration of the people of Liverpool following the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989.

But while Murdoch’s News Corp has a history of confection and fakery, the Wall Street Journal has a reputation for straight reportage, albeit through a conservative lens. Since Murdoch bought it in 2007, it has been engaged in its own internal battle for editorial standards.

Media rolling over

What Trump won’t get from Murdoch is the same acquiescence he’s enjoyed from America’s ABC and CBS networks, which have both handed over tens of millions of dollars in defamation settlements following dubious claims by Trump about the nature of their coverage.

In December 2024, ABC’s owner Disney settled and agreed to pay US$15 million (A$23 million) to Trump’s presidential library. The president sued after a presenter said Trump was found guilty of raping E. Jean Carroll.

Trump had actually been found guilty by a jury in a civil trial of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and was ordered to pay her US$5 million (A$7.6 million).

CBS’ parent company, Paramount, did similarly after being sued by the president, agreeing in early July to settle and pay US$16 million (A$24.5 million) to Trump’s library. This was despite earlier saying the case was “completely without merit”.

Beware the legal microscope

From Trump’s viewpoint, two prominent media companies have been cowed. But his campaign against critical media doesn’t stop there.

Last week, congress passed a bill cancelling federal funding for the country’s two public-service media outlets, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR).

Also last week, CBS announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s stridently critical comedy show, although CBS claims this is just a cost-cutting exercise and not about appeasing a bully in the White House.

Presuming the reported birthday letter is real, Murdoch will not bend so easily. And that’s when it will be important to pay attention, because at some point Trump’s lawyers will advise him about the dangers of depositions and discovery: the legal processes that force parties to a dispute to reveal what they have and what they know.

If the Epstein files do implicate Trump, the legal fight won’t last long and the media campaign against him will only intensify.

Right now we have the spectre of Murdoch joining that other disaffected mogul, Elon Musk, in a moral crusade against Trump, the man they both helped make. The implications are head-spinning.

As global bullies, the three of them probably deserve each other. But we, the public, surely deserve better than any of them.

Andrew Dodd, Professor of Journalism, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne and Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Originating at a depth of roughly 20 kilometres, today’s powerful earthquake – among the ten strongest in recorded history and the largest worldwide since 2011 – has caused building damage and injuries in the largest nearby city, Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky, just 119 kilometres from the epicentre.

Tsunami warnings and evacuations have reverberated through Russia, Japan and Hawaii, with advisories issued for the Philippines, Indonesia, and as far away as New Zealand and Peru.

The Pacific region is highly prone to powerful earthquakes and resulting tsunamis because it’s located in the so-called Ring of Fire, a region of heightened seismic and volcanic activity. All ten most powerful earthquakes recorded in modern history were located on the Ring of Fire.

Here’s why the underlying structure of our planet makes this part of the world so volatile.

Why does Kamchatka get such strong earthquakes?

Immediately offshore the Kamchatka Peninsula is the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, a tectonic plate boundary where the Pacific Plate is being thrust beneath the Okhotsk Plate.

While tectonic plates move continuously relative to one another, the interface at tectonic plates is often “stuck”. The strain related to plate motion builds up until it exceeds the strength of the plate interface, at which point it is released as a sudden rupture – an earthquake.

Because of the large areas of interface at plate boundaries, both in length and depth, the rupture can span large areas of the plate boundary. This results in some of the largest and potentially most damaging earthquakes on earth.

Another factor that affects the rates and sizes of subduction zone earthquakes is the speed at which the two plates are moving relative to each other.

In the case of Kamchatka, the Pacific Plate is moving at approximately 75 millimetres per year relative to the Okhotsk plate. This is a relatively high speed by tectonic standards, and causes large earthquakes to happen more frequently here than in some other subduction zones. In 1952, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred in the same subduction zone, only about 30 kilometres away from today’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake.

Other examples of subduction plate boundary earthquakes include the 2011 magnitude 9.1 Tohoku-Oki Japan earthquake, and the 2004 magnitude 9.3 Sumatra-Andaman Indonesia “Boxing Day” earthquake. Both of these initiated at a relatively shallow depth and ruptured the plate boundary right to the surface.

They uplifted one side of the sea floor relative to the other, displacing the ocean above it and resulting in devastating tsunamis. In the case of the Boxing Day earthquake, the sea floor rupture happened along a length spanning roughly 1,400km.

What is likely to happen next?

At time of writing, approximately six hours after the earthquake struck, there have already been 35 aftershocks larger than magnitude 5.0, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Aftershocks happen when stress within Earth’s crust is redistributed following the mainshock. They are often as large as one magnitude unit smaller than the mainshock. In the case of today’s earthquake, that means aftershocks larger than magnitude 7.5 are possible.

For an earthquake of this size, aftershocks can continue for weeks to months or longer, but they typically will reduce in both magnitude and frequency over time.

Today’s earthquake also produced a tsunami, which has already affected coastal communities on the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kurile Islands, and Hokkaido, Japan.

Over the coming hours, the tsunami will propagate across the Pacific, reaching Hawaii approximately six hours after the earthquake struck and continuing as far as Chile and Peru.

Tsunami scientists will continue to refine their models of the tsunami’s effects as it propagates, and civil defence authorities will provide authoritative advice on the expected local effects.

What are the lessons from this earthquake for other parts of the world?

Fortunately, earthquakes as large as today’s occur infrequently. However, their effects locally and across the globe can be devastating.

Apart from its magnitude, several aspects of today’s Kamchatka earthquake will make it a particularly important focus of research.

For instance, the area has been seismically very active in recent months, and a magnitude 7.4 earthquake occurred on 20 July. How this previous activity affected the location and timing of today’s earthquake will be a crucial focus of that research.

Like Kamchatka and northern Japan, New Zealand also sits above a subduction zone – in fact, above two subduction zones. The larger of these, the Hikurangi subduction zone, extends offshore along the east coast of the North Island.

Based on the characteristics of this plate interface, and geological records of past earthquakes, it is likely the Hikurangi subduction zone is capable of producing earthquakes at magnitude 9. It hasn’t done so in historic times, but if that happened it would produce a tsunami.

The threat of a major subduction zone earthquake never goes away. Today’s earthquake in Kamchatka is an important reminder to everyone living in such earthquake-prone areas to stay safe and heed warnings from civil defence authorities.

Dee Ninis, Earthquake Scientist, Monash University and John Townend, Professor of Geophysics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Celebrating the change, House Speaker Mike Johnson highlighted an argument that’s popular among some conservatives: that the Constitution does not actually require the separation of church and state.

Thomas Jefferson, who coined the phrase, did not intend “to keep religion from influencing issues of civil government,” Johnson wrote in a July 12 op-ed published on the social platform X. “The Founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”

Officials in several red states have challenged long-standing norms surrounding religion and state, ranging from introducing prayer and Bibles in public classrooms to attempts to secure government funding for religious schools.

Conservative thinkers have long pushed for closer ties between religion and the government, arguing that religious institutions can create strong communities. In my own research, I’ve found that mass shootings are less likely in a more religious environment.

For critics, of course, attempts to lower the wall of separation between church and state raise constitutional concerns. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” What’s more, critics fear that recent attempts to lower barriers between church and state favor conservative Christian groups over other faiths.

But as a scholar of religion and politics, I believe another reason for caution is being overlooked. Research indicates that strong relationships between religion and state can be a factor that actually decreases religious participation, rather than encouraging it.

All or nothing

Some scholars suggest that religious institutions operate like businesses in a marketplace, competing for believers. Government policies toward religion can change the balance of power between competing firms the same way that economic policies can affect markets for consumer goods.

At a glance, it might seem like government support would strengthen religious institutions. In reality, it can backfire, whether or not the government promotes one particular faith above others. In some cases, adherents who cannot practice religion on their own terms opt out of practicing it entirely.

In Israel, for example, Orthodox Jewish institutions receive government recognition that more liberal Jewish denominations do not. Orthodox authorities are allowed to manage religious sites, run public religious schools and perform marriages. Many couples who do not want to get married under Orthodox law, or cannot, hold a ceremony abroad or register as a common-law marriage.

In fact, many scholars refer to Israel as an example of a religious “monopoly.” Because the government sponsors a particular branch, Orthodox Judaism, Jewish citizens sometimes face an “all or nothing” choice. The country’s Jewish population is sharply divided between people who are religiously observant and people who identify as secular.

Government involvement can also hurt religious institutions by making them seem less independent, decreasing people’s trust. In a 2023 study of 54 Christian-majority countries, political scientists Jonathan Fox and Jori Breslawski found that some adherents felt that religious institutions become less legitimate when backed by the government. In addition, support from the state decreased people’s confidence in government.

Their findings built on previous research showing that the public is less likely to contribute to faith-based charities and attend religious services when the government offers funding for religious institutions.

In fact, many of the world’s lowest rates of religiosity are found in wealthy countries that have official churches, or had one until relatively recently, such as Sweden. Others have a history of separating people of different faiths into their own schools and other institutions, such as Belgium and the Netherlands.

History lessons

Perhaps the strongest example of how government support for religion can decrease religious participation is found in the former Soviet Union and its allies.

During the Cold War, Soviet officials sought to stamp out religious activity among their citizens. However, policies to repress independent religious institutions worked hand in hand with policies to co-opt religious institutions that would work with the government. Access to religious spaces made it easier for officials to spy on members and punish clergy who protested their rule.

In Hungary, the Communist Party sponsored government-run Catholic churches that were cut off from the Vatican. In Romania, the regime integrated formerly Catholic Churches into a state Orthodox Church. In the former Czechoslovakia, meanwhile, the Communist Party paid clergy’s salaries to keep them subservient.

To this day, many countries in the former Eastern Bloc have low rates of religious participation. In Russia, for example, a majority of citizens call themselves Orthodox Christians, and the church wields influence in politics. Yet only 16% of adults say religion is “very important” in their lives.

While scholars can point to the legacy of overt repression as a source of low religiosity, government support of religious institutions is also a lingering factor. Most post-Soviet states inherited systems that require religious groups to register, and they only provide funding to faiths that the government considers legitimate. Similar policies remain common in southeastern and central Eastern Europe.

In recent years, some countries in the region, including Russia and Hungary, have experienced democratic backsliding at the hands of populist leaders who also politicize religion for their own gain. Because of low rates of religious practice in such countries, religious leaders may welcome government support.

Free market for faith

Most wealthy countries have witnessed steep declines in religiosity in the modern era. The United States is an outlier.

Overall, the percentage of Americans belonging to a religious congregation is declining, as is the share of Americans who regularly attend worship services. However, the percentage of Americans who are intensely religious has remained unchanged over the past several decades. Around 29% of Americans report praying several times a day, for example, and just under 7% say they attend religious services more than once a week.

Some religion scholars argue that the “free-market approach” – where all faiths are free to compete for worshippers, without government interference or preference – is what makes America relatively religious. In other words, they believe that this so-called “American exception” is because of the separation between church and state, not in spite of it.

Time will tell if conservatives’ push for collaboration between religion and the government will continue, or have its intended effects. History suggests, however, that governments’ attempts to strengthen particular religious communities may backfire.

Brendan Szendro, Faculty Lecturer in Political Science, McGill University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In early February, Trump issued an executive order: “Addressing Egregious Actions of The Republic of South Africa”. The order included the allegation of “unjust racial discrimination” against the white Afrikaner community and recommended the establishment of an Afrikaner refugee scheme. In his meeting with Ramaphosa, Trump doubled down on US hostility to the South African government. He repeatedly claimed – and produced purported evidence of – so-called genocide against Afrikaner farmers.

This level of hostility towards multi-racial, post-apartheid South Africa may seem to have come out of the blue. Some may think it was inspired by Trump’s close relationship, at the time at least, with South Africa-born business leader Elon Musk – who could be seen standing in the corner of the Oval Office watching the uncomfortable scene unfold. But the claim that white Afrikaners are victims of violent and vengeful black South Africans has a much longer history.

It’s a history that goes back almost five decades. It connects white supremacy in southern Africa and the apartheid government’s international disinformation strategy with the evangelical Christian right in American politics. Some of the individuals and institutions that were vocal advocates of white-minority rule against the threat of black government in South Africa are the same people who have the Trump administration’s ear today.

As the South African academic Nicky Falkof has observed, the claim of white victimhood is nothing new. She believes that “entire political agendas develop around the idea that white people must be protected because they face exceptional threats”.

The apartheid years

The idea that white South Africans face an existential threat emerged in the violent final decade of apartheid rule. It was a key narrative that the National Party government of president P.W. Botha liked to present to the outside world.

In 2021, a former apartheid intelligence officer named Paul Erasmus published his autobiography detailing his work for Stratcom, the apartheid government’s international covert communications and intelligence agency. Erasmas detailed his work in the US and, in particular, Stratcom’s close links with Republican policymakers.

One of the primary US conservative contacts was said to be Dr Edwin Feulner, a founder and president of the Heritage Foundation. Erasmus wrote that Feulner, who was a foreign policy advisor to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, was “already well positioned to serve Stratcom the kind of high-level advice that we needed to temper growing international affection for the ANC as the first ruling party of a democratic South Africa”.

The Conversation approached Dr Feulner through the Heritage Foundation to seek his comments on specifically whether he had any past association with the apartheid-era government in South Africa and received no reply on the matter. But in 1986, during Feulner’s presidency of the Heritage Foundation, it published a report presenting alleging “close links between the ANC [African National Congresss] and the communists and the way in which the communists exploit the ANC to manipulate Western opinion”.

This history is key to understanding Trump Oval Office meeting with the South African president. The Heritage Foundation continues to have close links with Afrikaner nationalists. And it is well known that the foundation is central to Trump’s governing strategy, having published its Project 2025 on which much of this administration’s policy is based.

The South African media outlet, the Daily Maverick, has investigated links between the self-defined Afrikaner minority rights movement, Afriforum, the Heritage Foundation and the Republican Party. Since Trump was first inaugurated in 2017, Afriforum representatives – including CEO Kallie Kriel and his deputy Dr Ernst Roets – have made several visits to Washington, most recently in February 2025, to speak with senior representatives of the Trump administration and representatives of the Heritage Foundation. For some time, Afriforum has claimed there are “elements” of a genocide against Afrikaner farmers in South Africa, including inflammatory speech and murders of farmers.

When asked directly about its relationship with Afriforum, a Heritage Foundation spokesperson denied any particularly close links between the two organisations, saying: “We meet with hundreds of individuals and groups every year.” He pointed to the Heritage Foundation’s recent round table and stressed the foundations’s “well-documented and long-running effort to work with leaders from across Africa”.

Trump began to tweet about the killing of farmers in South Africa in 2018 and is very opposed to South Africa’s recently passed Expropriation Act. This act allows for the expropriation of land without compensation, but only if it is “just and equitable and in the public interest” to do so.

In May 2024, the Heritage Foundation called for the cancellation of US aid to South Africa. It accused the ANC government of supporting Hamas and not aligning “with American values”.

Religious links

America’s evangelical Christian community was a strong supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa. This is a key constituency of Trump’s electoral base. The historian Augusta Dell'Omo has documented the South African government lobbying of US televangelists such as Pat Robertson – an outspoken supporter of apartheid South Africa. As Dell'Omo argues, Christian evangelicals were not just vexed by threats to apartheid in South Africa. They were drawing a “direct link between the causes of Black grievances in the US and South Africa and a global threat to conservative and religious values”.

There is not just an historical – but also an ideological – link between Trump’s attitudes to farm killings and land expropriation in South Africa and his vehement opposition to diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes in the US. This white grievance politics continues to consider South Africa as a symbol of the overthrow of white privilege and the disorder that multiculturalism and black-led government ostensibly creates.

As academic Nicky Falkof has argued in The Conversation: “The architecture of white supremacy depends on the idea that white people are extraordinary victims. This is the driving notion beneath the great replacement theory, a far-right conspiracy theory claiming that Jews and non-white foreigners are plotting to ‘replace’ whites.”

Trump’s accusations against the current government in South Africa have their roots in the murky international disinformation campaigns of apartheid’s final years and the willing cooperation of key actors on the right of US politics and society. That white-supremacist politics from the past would continue to have currency in today’s White House is shocking. It should be opposed by all who support a democratic, multiracial and prosperous South Africa.

Daniel Conway, Reader in Politics and International Studies, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The most enduring ones usually take hold for two reasons: first, because there’s some grain of truth to them, and second, because they speak to foundational historical divisions.

The theories morph and change, distorting the grain of truth at their centre beyond reality. In the process, they reinforce and deepen existing divisions, encouraging hateful blindness.

US President Donald Trump is perhaps the most successful conspiracy trafficker in modern American history.

Trump built his political career by trading on conspiracy. These have included a combination of racist birther conspiracies about former president Barack Obama, nebulous ideas about the “Deep State” that conspired against the interests of regular Americans, and nods to a more recent online universe centered on QAnon that alleged a Satanist ring of “elite” pedophiles involving Hillary Clinton was trafficking children.

These theories all had their own grain of truth and tapped into deep-seated historical fears. For example, Obama does have Kenyan heritage, and his Blackness threatened many white Americans’ sense of their own power.

Revelations about disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein’s trafficking in children and the way in which that implicated the “elite” of New York seemed to confirm at least parts of the final theory. It tapped into the belief – one that does have some basis in reality – that America’s elite play by rules of their own, above justice and accountability.

In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump increasingly engaged with this online universe. He seemed to quietly enjoy suggestions that he might be “Q” – the anonymous leader who, according to the theory, was going to break the paedophile ring wide open in a “day of reckoning”.

Many of Trump’s perennially online supporters based their championing of him around these conspiracy theories. QAnon believers were among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 2021. A core section of Trump’s base continues to believe his promises that he would at last reveal the truth – about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Deep State, and Epstein.

That it has long been public knowledge that Trump and Epstein had a longstanding friendship did not impinge on these beliefs.

Conspiracy theories have swirled around Epstein since at least his first arrest nearly two decades ago, in 2006. After allegations of unlawful sex with a minor, Epstein was charged with soliciting prostitution. This elicited suggestions he was receiving special treatment because of his elite status as a New York financier and philanthropist.

That pattern continued over the next decade as accusations multiplied, culminating in his arrest in 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking, including to a private island. The allegations touched the global elite, including former president Bill Clinton, the United Kingdom’s Prince Andrew, and Trump. In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his cell, allegedly by suicide – adding further fuel to the already intense conspiracy fire.

Epstein’s arrest and death occurred during the first Trump administration. Since then, there has been a steady trickle of accusations and revelations that have increased pressure on the administration to declassify and release material relating to the case. Many of Trump’s most loyal supporters, including a set of influential podcasters and influencers, have built their audiences around Epstein and the insistence that the truth be revealed.

Early in the life of the current administration, Attorney-General Pam Bondi – whom Trump is wont to treat as his personal lawyer – said she was reviewing the Epstein “client list”.

In the past few weeks, however, the administration has indicated it will not release the list or other materials relating to the case. At the same time, more information about Trump’s relationship with Epstein has trickled out, including more photos of the two together. It’s hard to deny the sense there is more to come.

Trump’s posting about the issue, despite his apparent wish to divert from it, seems only to compel more interest. Sections of his online conspiracy base, including vocal supporters such as Tucker Carlson, are outraged at what they see as a betrayal. Reports suggest a significant rift developing between Trump and key backer Rupert Murdoch over the issue. Democrats, rightly, sense weakness.

Loyal Republicans seem rattled enough that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called an early summer recess, sending congresspeople home in an apparent effort to avoid any forced vote on the issue.

The obvious inference – though it is inference only – is that Trump and Republicans are so worried about what is in the Epstein material they would rather cop strong backlash from the base, looking scared and weak, than release the information. If nothing else, that is a guaranteed way to fuel an already raging fire.

Trump’s tanking approval rating and the salience of this issue lead to an obvious question: is this going to be the thing that finally scratches the Teflon president? Will his base turn on him at last?

If history is anything to go by, that seems unlikely. Trump is remarkably resilient, using crises like this to consolidate his power. Trump commands loyalty, and he has it from Bondi, Johnson and others in this weakened and increasingly ideologically driven federal government. And his conspiracy-fuelled base is in so deep that turning on the president now is not just a question of admitting error, but one of core identity.

US mainstream media has long pursued a “gotcha” approach to Trump, driven by a model of journalism that still seeks out smoking guns and dreams of Watergate. Not unlike the conspiracy theories it reports on, this framing hopes for a neat, clear resolution to the story of US politics. But politics doesn’t work like that – especially not for Trump.

From the outside, Trump’s attempts to pivot on the issue and build on his existing conspiracies around Obama and Hillary Clinton might look feeble, but they are tried and true. Trump is now focused on fanning theories around Obama and Clinton, broadening them to include accusations of “treason”. Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard went so far as to claim Obama had “manufactured […] a years-long coup against President Trump”. Even reporting on these claims with rightful incredulity adds fuel to the raging fire.

In the personality cult of an authoritarian leader, conspiracy is easily weaponized against enemies, perceived and real. In the febrile environment of US politics, these conspiracy theories tap into and encourage a long vein of white supremacy and racial revanchism that has shaped American politics since even before the nation’s founding.

Trump can morph and change conspiracy theories like no one else, building on fears and deepening existing divisions. He understands the power of pointing to “enemies from within”, and just how well that reinforces the narrative he has already so successfully ingrained in US political culture. We underestimate him, and the power of conspiracy theory, at our peril.

Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is, after all, the media mogul whose US television network, Fox News, actively supported Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election result and paid out a US$787 million (about A$1.2 billion) lawsuit for doing so.

It is also the network that supplied several members of Trump’s inner circle, including former Fox host, now controversial Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth.

But that is where we are after Trump filed a writ on July 18 after Murdoch’s financial newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, published an article about a hand-drawn card Trump is alleged to have sent to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. The newspaper reported:

A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The Journal said it has seen the letter but did not republish it. The letter allegedly concluded:

Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.

The card was apparently Trump’s contribution to a birthday album compiled for Epstein by the latter’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence after being found guilty of sex trafficking in 2021.

Trump was furious. He told his Truth Social audience he had warned Murdoch the letter was fake. He wrote, “Mr Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but obviously did not have the power to do so,” referring to Murdoch handing leadership of News Corporation to his eldest son Lachlan in 2023.

Trump is being pincered. On one side, The Wall Street Journal is a respected newspaper that speaks to literate, wealthy Americans who remain deeply sceptical about Trump’s radical initiative on tariffs, which it described in an editorial as “the dumbest trade war in history”.

On the other side is the conspiracy theory-thirsty MAGA base who have been told for years that there was a massive conspiracy around Epstein’s apparent suicide in 2019 that included the so-called deep state, Democrat elites and, no doubt, the Clintons.

Trump, who loves pro wrestling as well as adopting its garish theatrics, might characterise his lawsuit against Murdoch as a smackdown to rival Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant in the 1980s.

To adopt wrestling argot, though, it is a rare battle between two heels.

A friendship of powerful convenience

Murdoch and Trump’s relationship is longstanding but convoluted. The key to understanding it is that both men are ruthlessly transactional.

Exposure in Murdoch’s New York Post in the 1980s and ‘90s was crucial to building Trump’s reputation.

Not that Murdoch particularly likes Trump. Yes, Murdoch attended his second inauguration, albeit in a back row behind the newly favoured big tech media moguls. He was also seen sitting in the Oval Office a few days later looking quite at home.

But this was pure power-display politics, not the behaviour of a friend.

Remember Murdoch’s derision on hearing Trump was considering standing for office before the 2016 election, and his promotion of Ron De Santis in the primaries before Trump’s second term. Murdoch’s political hero has always been Ronald Reagan. Trump has laid waste to the Republican Party of Reagan.

Murdoch knows what the rest of sane America knows: Trump is downright weird, if not dangerous. This, of course, only makes Murdoch’s complicity in Trump’s rise to power, and Fox News’ continued boosterism of Trump, all the more appalling.

But, in keeping with Murdoch’s relationship to power throughout his career, what he helps make, he also helps destroy. Perhaps now it’s Trump’s turn to be unmade. As a former Murdoch lieutenant told The Financial Times over the weekend:

he’s testing out: Is Trump losing his base? And where do I need to be to stay in the heart of the base?

And here is Murdoch’s great advantage, and his looming threat.

A double-edged sword

The advantage comes with the scope of Murdoch’s media empire, which operates like a federation of different mastheads, each with their own market and aspirations. While Fox News panders to the MAGA base, and The New York Post juices its New York audience, The Wall Street Journal speaks, and listens, to business. Each audience has different needs, meaning they’re often presented with the same news in very different ways, or sometimes different news entirely.

Like a federation, though, News Corp uses its various operations to drive the type of change that affects all its markets.

It might work like this. The Wall Street Journal breaks a story that’s so shocking it begins to chip away at MAGA’s unquestioning loyalty of Trump. This process is, of course, willingly aided by the rest of the media. The resulting groundswell eventually allows Fox News and the Post to tentatively follow their audiences into questioning, and then perhaps criticising, Trump.

The threat is that before that groundswell builds, Murdoch is seriously vulnerable to criticism from a still dominant Trump, who can turn conspiracy-prone audiences away from Fox News with just a social media post. Trump has already been busy doing just that, saying he is looking forward to getting Murdoch onto the witness stand for his lawsuit.

If the Fox audience decides it’s the proprietor who’s behind this denigration of Trump, they may decide to boycott their own favoured media channel, even though Fox’s programming hasn’t yet started questioning Trump.

The Murdochs’ fear of audience backlash was a major factor in Fox’s promulgation of the Big Lie after Trump’s defeat in 2020. The fear their audience might defect to Newsmax or some other right-wing media outfit is just as real today.

History littered with fakery

We also need to consider that Trump might be right. What if the letter is a fake?

Murdoch has form when it comes to high-profile exposés that turn out to be fiction. Who can forget the Hitler Diaries in 1983, which we now know Murdoch knew were fake before he published.

Think also of the Pauline Hanson photos, allegedly of her posing in lingerie, all of which were quickly proved to be fake after they were published by Murdoch’s Australian tabloids in 2009.

There was also The Sun’s despicable and wilfully wrong campaign against Elton John in 1987 and the same paper’s continued denigration of the people of Liverpool following the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989.

But while Murdoch’s News Corp has a history of confection and fakery, the Wall Street Journal has a reputation for straight reportage, albeit through a conservative lens. Since Murdoch bought it in 2007, it has been engaged in its own internal battle for editorial standards.

Media rolling over

What Trump won’t get from Murdoch is the same acquiescence he’s enjoyed from America’s ABC and CBS networks, which have both handed over tens of millions of dollars in defamation settlements following dubious claims by Trump about the nature of their coverage.

In December 2024, ABC’s owner Disney settled and agreed to pay US$15 million (A$23 million) to Trump’s presidential library. The president sued after a presenter said Trump was found guilty of raping E. Jean Carroll.

Trump had actually been found guilty by a jury in a civil trial of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and was ordered to pay her US$5 million (A$7.6 million).

CBS’ parent company, Paramount, did similarly after being sued by the president, agreeing in early July to settle and pay US$16 million (A$24.5 million) to Trump’s library. This was despite earlier saying the case was “completely without merit”.

Beware the legal microscope

From Trump’s viewpoint, two prominent media companies have been cowed. But his campaign against critical media doesn’t stop there.

Last week, congress passed a bill cancelling federal funding for the country’s two public-service media outlets, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR).

Also last week, CBS announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s stridently critical comedy show, although CBS claims this is just a cost-cutting exercise and not about appeasing a bully in the White House.

Presuming the reported birthday letter is real, Murdoch will not bend so easily. And that’s when it will be important to pay attention, because at some point Trump’s lawyers will advise him about the dangers of depositions and discovery: the legal processes that force parties to a dispute to reveal what they have and what they know.

If the Epstein files do implicate Trump, the legal fight won’t last long and the media campaign against him will only intensify.

Right now we have the spectre of Murdoch joining that other disaffected mogul, Elon Musk, in a moral crusade against Trump, the man they both helped make. The implications are head-spinning.

As global bullies, the three of them probably deserve each other. But we, the public, surely deserve better than any of them.

Andrew Dodd, Professor of Journalism, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne and Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The book marked its 50th anniversary in 2023, but a couple of years later, we find ourselves in a time where “big is best,” at least according to the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump, and his administration.

The most recent example of their the-bigger-the-better mentality is the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill that recently became law.

Understandably, the focus in the extensive news coverage of the nearly 900-page document has been on the contents of the bill, especially the economic implications for American citizens, institutions and organizations.

But very little attention has been paid to the actual language of the bill, not least because, well, who has the time to pore over 900 pages of language?

Linguistic analysis

This is where a new kind of political language analysis can help.

In my 2022 book, I deconstructed and analyzed the speeches of past American presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. In my subsequent 2024 book, I subjected five of Trump’s major campaign speeches to an in-depth level of linguistic analysis that had not been applied before.

One of the findings of my 10 years of analyzing Trump speeches since 2015, when he famously announced his plans to run for the presidency while riding on a golden escalator, is how effective the advice was of his former adviser, Steve Bannon. He reportedly told Trump in 2018 “to flood the zone with s---.”

In other words, Bannon was advising Trump to ensure there was so much information, disinformation and misinformation coming from the Trump campaign that neither the political opposition nor the media could keep up with it.

And even if they tried, distinguishing fact from fiction and disentangling exaggeration and bombastic hyperbole from carefully calculated lies became an insurmountable task even for the most dedicated of investigative journalists, including Canadian-born Daniel Dale.

Why another four years?

Applying Schumacher’s idea that “small is beautiful” to language analysis is one way of countering the kind of deliberate language overload employed by the Trump administration.

Taking small but complete slices of language and subjecting them to a new kind of forensic, linguistic analysis can help us understand, in this case, why more than 77 million American voters decided that what their country and the world needed was another Trump presidency. What role did Trump’s language play in that outcome?

An example of a small but complete piece of language is the official announcement of the One Big Beautiful Bill on the White House website on July 7.

The announcement was entitled: “President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill: A Win for Workers, Farmers, and America’s Future.”

The first thing to notice is what this is not. It is not presented as a bill passed by the U.S. government or even the Republican Party. It is Trump’s bill, which may be a small but clear, concise example of the ways in which a nation’s government can be reduced to a single person, like autocratic dictatorships and absolutemonarchies.

Then there is the title of the legislation, which has been described as “absurd” and therefore easy to dismiss. But the three-B alliteration is nonetheless catchy, which makes it memorable and all the more irresistible to the world’s mainstream media.

The title also identifies three supposedly big winners in the bill: American workers, American farmers and America the Beautiful.

Stoking fears

“Winner takes all” appears to be the mantra of the second Trump administration, but it’s important to notice the exclusions of large groups, including those who live in the U.S. but aren’t working — like children, retirees and the unemployed, which is the majority of citizens — and those who aren’t farmers, which is more than 99 per cent of all Americans.

It’s also critical to be aware of the aggrandizing and misleading language of the bill. The introductory paragraph on the page announcing the bill describes it as a “sweeping legislative triumph” — despite the fact that the legislation passed by a single vote — while referring to “the largest tax cuts in history” and “historic funding for national security.”

The recurring references to American history are at odds with the fact that Trump lacks knowledge of both U.S. and world history, which has been on display many times over many years.

The introductory paragraph also highlights the importance of “America’s defences” and “our nation’s defence,” which continue to give the impression that the U.S. is a country under siege and vulnerable to attack from various enemies at any time. But given how much the U.S. spends on its military, there is probably no other country in the world more capable of defending itself.

But the language is the point. By constantly repeating the “we are under attack” line, fear is effectively created and maintained, especially the fear of anyone who doesn’t look or sound like Trump and his followers.

Using words to manipulate

Keeping with the wartime-like language, the introduction claims that the One Big Beautiful Bill “unleashes economic prosperity and empowers every American.” Such statements are already being shown to be untrue, as many millions of American are likely to be severely, negatively impacted by the legislation.

The introduction is followed by 10 statements that are, in effect, “product endorsements” published in obscure, pro-Trump media, like The National Hog Farmer, all expressing gushing enthusiasm and unqualified support for the points made in the introduction.

This new kind of in-depth linguistic analyses of the language of the world’s most powerful people can help us move beyond their obviously false and misleading statements and claims, to become more aware of how their words may be being used not to communicate — but to manipulate.

Andy Curtis, Distinguished Guest Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, City University of Macau

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-profile connections, was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and later died by suicide in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial.

In early 2025, a federal court unsealed portions of the court documents. While names of some of the alleged clients and victims were released, many were redacted or withheld.

Epstein’s arrest and death became a central focus for QAnon followers, who saw them as proof of a hidden global elite engaged in child trafficking and protected by powerful institutions. The release – or withholding – of the Epstein files is often cited within QAnon movement circles as evidence of a broader cover-up by the so-called “deep state.”

Some followers of the MAGA – Make America Great Again – movement and the Republican Party believe in the false claim that the United States is secretly controlled by a cabal of elites who are pedophiles, sex traffickers and satanists.

Over time, what started as a baseless conspiracy on obscure platforms has migrated into the mainstream. It has influenced rhetoric and policy debates, and even reshaped the American political landscape. The foundational belief of many of the QAnon followers is that Trump is a heroic figure fighting the elite pedophile ring.

Trump’s attempts at downplaying or obstructing the very disclosures they believe would validate their worldview has led to confusion. To some, the delay in the release of the files feels like a betrayal, or even the possibility of his wrongdoing. Others are trying to reinterpret Trump’s actions through increasingly baseless conspiracy logic.

Trump has publicly dismissed demands for the full release of the Epstein Files as a “hoax.” He has also made false claims. On July 15, 2025, Trump said: “And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama.”

As a scholar who studies extremism, I know that the movement views Trump as a mythological figure and it interprets Trump’s actions to fit this overarching narrative – an elasticity which makes the movement both durable and dangerous.

From Pizzagate to QAnon

The QAnon movement began with the Pizzagate conspiracy theory in 2016, which falsely claimed that high-ranking Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. The baseless theory gained enough online momentum that a man armed with an assault rifle stormed the restaurant, seeking to “free the children.”

In 2017, an anonymous figure called “Q” began posting cryptic messages on message boards like 4chan and 8kun. The baseless accusations of a global network of elites involved in controlling global institutions, including governments, businesses, and the media, as well as operating a child trafficking and ritual abuse, were central to the QAnon movement’s narrative.

The movement has recruited followers through language like “Save the Children,” to mobilize around issues of child trafficking.

Many QAnon adherents, particularly women, were drawn to the movement through such appeals to child protection. According to psychologists Sophia Moskalenko and Mia Bloom, this type of appeal taps into powerful emotional instincts, making conspiracy theories like QAnon more persuasive and harder to dislodge, even in the face of contradictory evidence.

QAnon movement’s rise

QAnon followers perceived Trump as a messianic figure working to expose this cabal in a climactic reckoning known as “The Storm” – a moment when mass arrests would finally bring justice.

They claimed that this moment would eventually bring about a “Great Awakening,” a reference to the religious revivalist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this context the phrase described the supposed political and spiritual enlightenment that would follow “The Storm” – a moment of mass realization when people would “wake up” to the truth about the “deep state.”

In 2019, the FBI identified QAnon as a domestic terrorism threat, and major social media platforms began banning related content, but by then, QAnon had bled into mainstream conservative politics. Q-endorsing candidates, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, ran for and won elected office a year later.

Trump and QAnon

During Trump’s first administration – from 2017 to 2021 – the QAnon movement flourished. The posts from Q claimed to reveal insider knowledge of a secret war being waged by the president, often in coordination with the military, against the powerful elite.

Trump never explicitly endorsed the movement, but he did little to distance himself from it.

His administration also included figures, like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who openly interacted with Q content online.

Trump’s rhetoric, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election, gave new life to QAnon narratives. When he questioned the integrity of the electoral process, QAnon followers interpreted it as confirmation of the deep state’s meddling.

However, after Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, QAnon followers revised their original prophecy to maintain belief in “The Storm” and “The Great Awakening.” Some claimed the defeat was part of a larger secret plan, with Biden’s presidency serving as a cover for exposing the deep state. Some believed Trump remained the true president behind the scenes, while others reframed the awakening as a spiritual rather than political event.

Indeed, by 2020, several congressional candidates openly embraced or showed sympathy for the QAnon movement.

At various campaign rallies in 2022 and after Trump used the movement’s symbolism. On Truth Social, his social media platform, he retweeted Q-affiliated accounts, and praised QAnon supporters as “people who love our country.” That same year he reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.”

After the 2020 elections

Trump’s departure from the White House in January 2021 created an existential crisis for the QAnon movement. Predictions that he would declare martial law or arrest Joe Biden and other Democrats on Inauguration Day failed to materialize. Q’s posts also stopped, leaving many followers adrift.

Some abandoned the theory. Others rationalized the failed predictions or embraced new conspiracy narratives, such as the belief that Trump was still secretly in charge or that the military would soon act to reinstate him.

Some QAnon communities merged with or were absorbed into broader anti-vaccine, anti-globalist, and Christian nationalist movements.

How big is the movement?

Estimating the number of QAnon believers is difficult because many individuals do not openly identify with the movement, and those who do often hold a range of loosely connected or partial beliefs rather than adhering to a consistent or uniform ideology. Not everyone who shares a Q meme or echoes a Q talking point identifies as being part of the movement.

That said, surveys by groups like the 2024 Public Religion Research Institute and the Associated Press have found that 15–20% of Americans believe in some of QAnon’s core claims, such as the existence of a secret group of Satan-worshipping elites controlling the government.

Among Republican voters, the number is often higher.

This does not mean all these people are hardcore QAnon adherents, but it does show how far the narrative, or parts of it, has seeped into mainstream thinking.

Epstein as evidence of ‘the cabal’

The Trump administration’s failure to disclose the information in Epstein files has fueled internal confusion, disillusionment and even radicalization within the movement.

For some QAnon believers, this failure was a turning point: if Trump – once seen as the hero in the conspiracy narrative – would not or could not reveal the truth, then the “deep state” must be more entrenched than imagined.

At the same time, frustrations have grown within MAGA and the QAnon movement’s spaces. Some see it as a failure to fulfill one of his most important promises: exposing elite pedophiles. Others believe the delay is strategic, another example of “the plan” requiring more patience.

The QAnon movement continues to evolve, even as its central figure hedges and hesitates, showing how potent myths can be in times of uncertainty. In my view, understanding why this belief continues to gain traction is essential for understanding the current state of American democracy.

Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.