Preview: • Fox-Dominion trial delay 'is not unusual,' judge says • Fox News' defamation battle isn't stopping Trump's election lies

Preview: The judge just announced in court that a settlement has been reached in the historic defamation case between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

Preview: A settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation case against Fox News, the judge for the case announced. The network will pay more than $787 million to Dominion, a lawyer for the company said.

Preview: • DeSantis goes to Washington, a place he once despised, looking for support to take on Trump • Opinion: For the GOP to win, it must ditch Trump • Chris Christie mulling 2024 White House bid • Analysis: The fire next time has begun burning in Tennessee

Preview: • 'A major part of Ralph died': Aunt of teen shot after ringing wrong doorbell speaks • 20-year-old woman shot after friend turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, officials say

Preview: Newly released body camera footage shows firefighters and sheriff's deputies rushing to help actor Jeremy Renner after a near-fatal snowplow accident in January. The "Avengers" actor broke more than 30 bones and suffered other severe injuries. CNN's Chloe Melas has more.

Preview: It's sourdough bread and handstands for Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Preview: A tiny intruder infiltrated White House grounds Tuesday, prompting a swift response from the US Secret Service.

Preview: Supreme Court justices appear poised to offer Trump some immunity  The Independent The Completely Insane Trump Immunity Oral Argument: The Trump Side  National Review Samuel Alito's Resentment Goes Full Tilt on a Black Day for the Court  The New Republic Conservative Justices Take Argument Over Trump's Immunity in Unexpected Direction  The New York Times Supreme Court's Trump immunity case shows US 'crossed the rubicon': Former prosecutor  Fox News

Preview: A school principal faced threats after being accused of offensive language on a recording. Now police say it was a deepfake  CNN Racist, AI generated recording prompts calls for new laws, better technology  Fox Baltimore Baltimore principal's racist rant was an AI fake. His colleague was arrested.  The Washington Post Police: Purported recording of principal contained AI content  WBAL TV Baltimore Baltimore coach allegedly used AI voice cloning to get principal fired  The Verge

Preview: Baby girl born in Gaza after her mother was killed has died  NPR Orphaned by an airstrike and saved from her dead mother’s womb, baby Sabreen has died  NBC News Baby girl rescued from mother’s womb dies  Al Jazeera English Palestinian baby rescued from dead mother’s womb dies in Gaza hospital  The Guardian Baby Born in Gaza After Her Mother Was Killed Has Died  The New York Times

Preview: Trump lawyer tries to distance David Pecker from Stormy Daniels payments in cross-examination – live  The Guardian US Trump NY trial enters day 8 with more testimony from American Media CEO David Pecker  Fox News Prosecutors Reveal Who's Paying the Lawyers for Trump's Longtime Assistant  The Daily Beast Trump trial live updates: Prosecution calls more witnesses to establish Trump ties with Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal  Yahoo! Voices Ex-National Enquirer boss testifies that he buried story about alleged affair by Rahm Emanuel  Chicago Sun-Times

Preview: President Joe Biden says he's 'happy to debate' Donald Trump. Trump says he's ready to go  The Associated Press Live updates: Trump hush money trial  CNN A Biden, Trump debate would be ‘most important’ presidential debate since 1980: Karl Rove  Fox News Biden Revisits His Past in Interview With Howard Stern  The New York Times Fox News Host Worries Biden Will 'Nancy Kerrigan' Trump at Debate  The Daily Beast

Preview: Severe spring storms put 21 million under threat of possible tornadoes and hail  NBC News Friday, Saturday to be peak days during dangerous central US severe weather outbreak  Yahoo! Voices Oklahoma severe storm risk for Friday, Saturday; impact on marathon  KOCO Oklahoma City Tornado Watches issued in Plains as multiday severe weather threat targets more than 60 million  Fox Weather 'Erupting' Storms Seen From Space as They Hit Four States  Newsweek

Preview: Charges dropped against all 57 arrested in connection to UT-Austin pro-Palestinian protest  Austin American-Statesman Columbia president faces key vote of censure from faculty as protests continue nationwide  CNN UT organization involved in protests suspended  KXAN.com Pro-Palestinian protests grow at California campuses as opposing demonstrators clash at UCLA  Los Angeles Times Students Denied High School Graduation Due to COVID May Miss Out Again amid College Protests  PEOPLE

Preview: Charges against Trump's 2020 'fake electors' are expected to deter a repeat this year  The Associated Press Charges revealed against a former Trump aide and 4 lawyers in Arizona fake electors case  The Hill Arizona 'fake elector' indictments make it tough for Turning Point USA's 'election integrity' push  MSNBC Giuliani Makes Hilarious Attempt to Defend Against Arizona Indictment  The New Republic Arizona indictment of Giuliani and Meadows follows long racist history  Los Angeles Times

Preview: TikTok will not be sold, Chinese parent ByteDance tells US  BBC.com Why China Is Holding Its Fire as U.S. Moves to Ban TikTok  The Wall Street Journal Administrative State Hits Warp Speed  National Review Exclusive: ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say  Reuters After Biden signs TikTok ban into law, ByteDance says it won't sell the social media service  CBS News

Preview: Trump VP Prospect Kristi Noem Shot And Killed Her Family Dog And Goat, She Reportedly Writes In New Book  Forbes Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book  The Guardian Kristi Noem Defends Killing Her 14-Month-Old Dog and a Goat  The New York Times Kristi Noem Describes Executing Puppy She ‘Hated’ in New Book  Rolling Stone South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem defends book excerpt where she describes killing dog and goat  CNN

Preview: "It would be nice to be with her, but I’m at a courthouse for a rigged trial," the former president said of Melania Trump.

Preview: The incident occurred after a group of Christian nationalists marched outside the campus, which is the site of a pro-Palestinian student encampment.

Preview: “The fact that I'm moving on from my Hall & Oates experience, I'm basically reuniting with myself,” the musician explained

Preview: The South Dakota governor said she hated the dog, named Cricket, because she was aggressive and "less than worthless" for hunting.

Preview: The long-awaited move lays the groundwork for a massive overhaul in the way Americans build houses.

Preview: The president also criticized the media for going easy on Trump. "I think some of them are worried about attacking him," he told SiriusXM's Howard Stern.

Preview: "Obviously, I don't think that," the Senate minority leader said.

Preview: CNN’s Brynn Gingras said the former president smirked when witness David Pecker recounted an exchange from January 2017.

Preview: The star of the Luca Guadagnino-directed tennis drama said it’s “impossible” to sum up or define the film.

Preview: Mostly amateur Wall Street investors have collectively made tens of millions of dollars by betting the stock price of his Truth Social will keep dropping.

Preview: Donald Trump's hush-money trial in New York has revealed a side of him he long sought to conceal from the world.

Preview: Turning Point USA, the extremist-friendly, Donald Trump-loving organization for MAGA youth, is having one of its worst weeks yet from a public relations perspective.

Preview: The documentary film "Bad Faith" shows how a radical, anti-democratic Christian nationalist movement took over the Republican Party.

Preview: MSNBC Legal Contributor Katie Phang breaks down what happened during day seven of former President Donald Trump's hush money trial.

Preview: WATCH: MSNBC Legal Contributor Katie Phang breaks down what happened during day six of former President Donald Trump's hush money trial.

Preview: WATCH: MSNBC Legal Contributor Katie Phang breaks down what happened during day five of former President Donald Trump's hush money trial.

Preview: MSNBC Legal Contributor Katie Phang breaks down what happened during day 4 of former President Donald Trump's New York hush money trial.

Preview: MSNBC Legal Contributor Katie Phang breaks down what happened during day three of former President Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial.

Preview: MSNBC Legal Contributor Katie Phang breaks down what happened during day two of former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial.

Preview: MSNBC Legal Contributor Katie Phang breaks down what happened on day one of former President Donald Trump's New York hush money trial.

Preview: Thursday’s Supreme Court hearing was memorable for its discussion of coups, assassinations and internments — but very little about the former president’s conduct.

Preview: In arguments on Thursday, the justices appeared to signal two ways they could help Donald Trump as he fights charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election.

Preview: After video surfaced on social media, the student, Khymani James, said on Friday that his comments were wrong.

Preview: After Covid ruined high school graduation for the class of 2020, the response to campus protests might upend their college commencements.

Preview: On Fox and in other conservative outlets, the protests have given new lease to a long-running argument that students at elite universities are intolerant of conservative views.

Preview: President Biden has been trying to hit his opponent where it hurts, critiquing everything from his hairstyle to his energy levels in court.

Preview: The appearance allowed President Biden to tell the stories of love and loss that have defined his public image.

Preview: In a forthcoming book, the South Dakota governor, seen as a potential vice-presidential pick, tells of shooting her hunting dog. And a goat.

Preview: Few people knew Donald J. Trump like Ms. Graff, a Queens native who made a career serving the defendant.

Preview: The confrontational strategy adopted by the lawyer, Emil Bove, did not seem to work with David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer.

Preview: This could pay off our mortgage and then some—I’m furious!

Preview: Some teams’ desperation to roll the dice has never been quite like this.

Preview: It's my land.

Preview: In 20 years of officiating, he’s never seen anything quite like it.

Preview: David Pecker resumes testifying on Friday, the fourth day of testimony in Donald Trump’s first criminal trial.

Preview: Test your knowledge of this week’s big stories.

Preview: Ready for some wordplay? Sharpen your skills with Slate’s puzzle for April 26, 2024.

Preview: The groundwork for these arrests was already in place.

Preview: In part because of a song that’s not even on the album.

Preview: Reddit provides an endless well of entertainment.

Preview: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images The Columbia protests and the debate over pro-Palestinian college students, explained. Protests over the war in Gaza erupted on Columbia University’s campus last week and have sparked demonstrations at other universities across the country. The demonstrations appear to be growing in the face of intense crackdowns involving local law enforcement, as well as growing political scrutiny. And they have once again, made top universities the locus around which America litigates questions about the US’s support of Israel amid its deadly war in Gaza, free speech, antisemitism, and anti-Muslim discrimination — and a convenient target for political elites looking to make a point. For example: Lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, visiting Columbia’s campus this week. The demonstrations intensified in the wake of recent congressional hearings on antisemitism on campus and amid an uptick in both antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiment in the US. And they have spread across the country, including at Yale University, New York University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Miami University in Ohio, and Temple University in Philadelphia, among other campuses. At Columbia, Yale, the University of Texas-Austin, Emerson College, the University of Southern California, and New York University, students have faced mass arrests as administrators seek to quell the unrest. As of Friday, more than 500 people, including faculty like Noëlle McAfee at Emory University and Sinan Antoon of NYU, have been arrested. In an echo of previous protest movements — including those on universities in the mid-20th century, as well as more recent demonstrations for civil rights — protests at some schools, including the University of Texas, appear to be growing in response to police crackdowns on protesters. The protests are calling on universities to divest from firms that they contend profit from Israel’s war and occupation in Palestine, more than six months after the start of the war and as the death toll in Gaza has exceeded 34,000. Some groups at universities that conduct military research, like New York University, are also requesting their schools end work contributing to weapons development as well. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests have become a prominent feature on college campuses since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. They reached a fever pitch in December when the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania gave controversial testimony before Congress about campus antisemitism, both real and hypothetical. Tensions reignited last week after Columbia president Nemat Shafik gave congressional testimony that, per the Associated Press, focused on “fighting antisemitism rather than protecting free speech.” Students erected tents on Columbia’s main lawn to show solidarity with Gaza. Then Shafik took the controversial step of calling in the police to arrest those involved. That contentious decision wasn’t just jarring to Columbia students particularly because of the university’s history, but also sparked outrage among onlookers both at the site and on social media. The controversy at Columbia and other campuses has illustrated how universities have struggled to uphold their dual commitments to free speech and protecting their students during a fraught political moment when more young people sympathize with the Palestinian cause than with the Israeli government. Concerns about antisemitism at the protests (often attributed to students, but largely perpetrated by outsiders according to anecdotal reporting) also piqued national attention; amid this all, Columbia University switched to remote learning on April 22 — which also happened to be the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover. “Calling the police on campus is such a breach of the culture of a college or university,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is representing arrested Columbia students, told Vox. “To do so in response to nonviolent student protest is beyond the pale, and it really undermines the standing of the university in the eyes of a broad swath of the population as a place of free, open, and robust dialogue and debate.” What’s actually happening on college campuses It all started at Columbia, where students pitched more than 50 tents on the lawn in what they called a “Liberated Zone” on April 17. But the tents stayed up only about a day and a half before Shafik intervened. “The current encampment violates all of the new policies, severely disrupts campus life, and creates a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students,” she wrote in an April 18 letter to the Columbia community. The police arrived shortly thereafter to arrest students for trespassing and removed more than 100 protesters, tying their hands with zip ties. Some have also been suspended and removed from student housing. In the days since, pro-Palestinian student groups on other university campuses have staged similar protests in solidarity with their counterparts at Columbia. Students have also erected encampments at Yale, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, New York University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. A total of 47 students were arrested at Yale on Monday, and more than 150 were arrested at New York University overnight Tuesday. On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed Texas police to the UT-Austin campus, where they arrested 34 including a journalist. Boston police also arrested 108 people at a protest led by Emerson College students who linked arms tightly and raised umbrellas. Four officers were injured while trying to break up the crowd. A lot of the national attention has focused less on the protesters’ demands or the US-Israeli relationship — and the destruction of Gaza — and more on allegations that the protests are inherently antisemitic for criticizing Israel, or that specific antisemitic incidents have occurred. Shafik announced that all Columbia classes would be virtual on Monday (and now hybrid through the end of the academic year) to provide a “reset” on the conversation and in light of students’ safety concerns — Rabbi Elie Buechler, a rabbi associated with Columbia University’s Orthodox Union Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, had urged hundreds of Orthodox Jewish students to go home and urged them to stay there for their safety. “I cannot but agree that this is motivated by trying to pacify congressional members who are trying to interfere in the running of this university and, at this point, all universities,” Marianne Hirsch, professor emerita of English and comparative literature and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender at Columbia University, said at a press conference in front of Shafik’s house Tuesday. Student protests on Columbia’s campus have been nonviolent so far. Representatives from the New York Police Department said during a press conference Monday that there had been some incidents in which Israeli flags were snatched from students and unspecified hateful things said. But they said that there have not been any reports of Columbia students being physically harmed or any credible threats made against individuals or groups associated with the university community ahead of the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The police only enter Columbia’s campus when asked, given that it is a private university. They have established off-campus “safe corridors” where officers are stationed and will intervene in incidents involving harassment, threats, or menacing behavior — which does not constitute protected speech under the First Amendment. However, a video surfaced over the weekend of what appeared to be masked pro-Palestinian protesters outside of Columbia’s gates shouting, “The 7th of October is going to be every day for you,” at Jewish students. It’s not clear whether those shouting were affiliated with the university. Just after the video was circulated, President Joe Biden issued a statement: “This blatant Antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.” That statement served as a “blanket condemnation of the Columbia protests,” said Matt Berkman, an assistant professor of Jewish studies at Oberlin College. It failed to distinguish those featured in the video who may not have been affiliated with the university from the vast majority of student protesters, who based on many different accounts, have been peaceful. In a video address Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also misleadingly characterized the protests, falsely claiming that “antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities” in a video address and compared them to rallies held in Germany during the rise of the Nazi party. “Pro-Israel activists are clearly invested in painting everyone at Columbia, whether inside or outside the gates, with the same broad brush,” Berkman said. On Tuesday, a student draped in an Israeli flag spoke to reporters from within the fenced-in area of the encampment. Jewish students who have been suspended from Columbia and Barnard stated that they had celebrated a Passover Seder within the encampment at a press conference. There are antisemitic incidents in the United States, which represent real danger to Jewish communities and individuals — and they have increased since the Hamas attacks on October 7. In December, the Anti-Defamation League reported that antisemitic incidents had increased by nearly 340 percent since then. Complicating its data, however, is the fact that the ADL’s annual audit of antisemitic assaults, vandalism, and harassment also includes in the latter categories some anti-Zionist activism. Removing all Israel-related incidents from their count, America has a smaller but still big problem: Non-Israel-related antisemitic incidents still rose by 65 percent compared to 2022, per their data. Columbia students aren’t alone in facing broad accusations of antisemitism. Students at Yale, the Ohio State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others have all been called out by the ADL for engaging in Palestine solidarity protests as well as for specific incidents of antisemitism. Nor are they alone in facing arrest; NYU students and faculty and students at Yale have also been arrested. Police involvement in the protests — particularly on New York City campuses — has been met with backlash, particularly from university faculty and activists. Veronica Salama, who as a staff attorney at NYCLU is part of the team defending these students, told Vox that Shafik called the police as part of her emergency powers — but in doing so violated university policy. Vox has reached out to Columbia for comment and will update with its response. According to an email obtained by Vox, university administration originally set a deadline of midnight Tuesday night to reach an agreement to dismantle the encampment; if none is reached, the email said, the administration “will have to consider alternative options for clearing the West Lawn and restoring calm to campus.” That deadline has been repeatedly extended, however. What’s behind the protests? In many ways, the demands of the protesters have been overshadowed by the controversy. At Columbia, the protesters belong to a coalition, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which formed in 2016 to demand Columbia and Barnard College disclose investments in and divest — or remove from its investment portfolio — from Israeli and American companies and institutions that support Israel, citing its wars in Gaza and oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. The coalition’s demands are of a piece with the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement started by Palestinian civil society groups in 2005. BDS cites as its inspiration the anti-apartheid activists of the 1980s who targeted South Africa’s apartheid government with boycotts. While that movement wasn’t decisive in bringing down that government, it was successful in alienating the apartheid government from major global players like Barclays bank, the Olympics, and the International Cricket Conference, forcing countries and international institutions to confront their complicity in South Africa’s racist policies. In addition to divestment from “companies profiting from Israeli apartheid,” CUAD has a list of five other demands, including a call for an immediate ceasefire from government officials including President Joe Biden, and, importantly, an end to the dual degree program that Columbia has with Tel Aviv University. These demands echo those of student groups at other colleges and universities. NYU student activists are also demanding the university shut down its Tel Aviv campus and “divest from all corporations aiding in the genocide,” including weapons companies, and ban weapons tech research that benefits Israel. Critics allege that BDS and anti-Zionism are at their core antisemitic, arguing that BDS delegitimizes Israel and “effectively reject[s] or ignore[s] the Jewish people’s right of self-determination, or that, if implemented, would result in the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, are antisemitic,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. The nature and tenor of the campus anti-war protests has been at the forefront of both media coverage and congressional hearings on antisemitism and campus free speech. But administrative response to them — particularly calling the police and issuing suspensions — has added a new dimension to the debate. It’s all part of a broader fight over free speech and antisemitism on college campuses Universities have struggled to balance their goals of protecting free speech and combatting antisemitism since the outbreak of war in Gaza, which has proved a political minefield. In December, a trio of university presidents who testified before Congress were accused (if not fairly) of being too permissive of free speech in the face of antisemitism or being too legalistic in their explanations of their situation. Now, some universities seem to be changing their tack. Shafik called in the police on protesters despite Columbia’s longstanding reputation as a bastion of free speech. The University of Southern California recently canceled the commencement speech of its pro-Palestinian valedictorian over campus safety concerns. And now NYU has also instituted a police crackdown on protesters. Private universities, like many of those experiencing protests today, have long maintained policies that protect free speech similarly to the First Amendment: permitting anything up to genuine threats of violence and threatening behavior that would warrant punishment or even referrals to the criminal system. But the last six months have seemingly made many of them question not just when and where a threat begins, but also maybe even those commitments to students’ free speech more broadly. And complicating this all is a years-long history of pro-Palestinian activists saying they face targeted harassment. Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that if Columbia wants to remain committed to free speech, it has an obligation to apply its speech policies in an equitable manner that is unbiased against any particular viewpoint and to ensure that students currently facing disciplinary action are offered due process. “Columbia providing due process, while fairly and consistently applying its viewpoint-neutral speech policies, will be absolutely mandatory here if Columbia wants to start back on the right path,” Morey said. Prohibiting students from camping out or blocking entrances or exits is “all above board” if applied uniformly, Morey added. But schools should see calling the police to enforce any such policies as a last resort, said Frederick Lawrence, the former president of Brandeis University and a lecturer at Georgetown Law. “I understand the very strong desire to protect the safety of all the students involved,” he said. “At the end of the day, the presumption should be in favor of free speech and free expression, and there are exceptions to that, but [starting] with that presumption often brings a lot of clarity to these vital decisions.” Correction, April 25, 4:30 pm ET: This story originally misstated the Anti-Defamation League’s methodology for tracking antisemitic incidents. It differentiates among the categories of assault, vandalism, and harassment. Among the latter categories, it includes some anti-Zionist expressions. Update, April 26, 3:18 pm ET: This story was originally published on April 24 and has been updated multiple times, most recently to include news of the extended deadline for protestors at Columbia University.

Preview: The (bad) options for Americans facing an emergency expense. A 2023 Federal Reserve survey found that a third of Americans say they don’t have the cash to cover a $500 emergency expense. So what happens if they need it? In this video, we compare six of the ways Americans say they get money when they don’t have it: credit cards, bank loans, borrowing from a friend or family member, payday loans, selling something, and going into overdraft. How difficult is each one to access? How does paying off each kind of debt work? And how much does each one cost down the line? None of these options are great for someone who can’t pay an emergency expense. But some of them are a lot worse than others. This video is presented by DCU. DCU has no editorial influence on our videos, but their support makes videos like these possible.

Preview: Food delivery apps have recently added new fees in response to minimum pay rules in New York City and Seattle. | Getty Images/iStockphoto Amid delivery discourse, a new report claims to shed some light on DoorDash’s delivery fees. No one is happy about the delivery apps. Not the customers, who feel gouged by an avalanche of fees. Not restaurants, who feel gut-punched by the commission apps take from them. Certainly not delivery workers, who have long been rewarded with a pittance for doing a job that, in a city like New York, has a higher injury rate than that of construction workers. Amid this dogpile of disgruntlement, the merry-go-round of debating the value of food delivery keeps spinning. After all, some people, especially those with disabilities, rely on such services — but then, it is difficult work, and everyone ought to tip well. Another faction argues that this isn’t fair, because it’s already so unaffordable. The delivery apps themselves recede somewhat into the background, as if their existence is a given. They’re merely fulfilling a demand in the market, naturally taking a cut for themselves — two plus two equals four. Our desire to consume is seen as the problem, the having-cake-and-eating-it-too mentality of expecting affordable convenience. But we should give credit where it’s due. Delivery apps have expended a lot of effort (and money) making the case that we — restaurants, workers, and consumers — desperately need them. Unhappy about the state of things now? You’ll really be pulling your hair out if you try to force the apps to change. In New York City and Seattle, new minimum pay laws for delivery workers recently went into effect. Immediately, additional “regulatory” fees were charged to customers, and restaurants and delivery workers complained that orders dropped, with Uber claiming in a blog post that they had dipped by 30 percent. Neither city’s minimum wage laws have forced delivery apps to tack on new fees, but both DoorDash and Uber Eats have introduced them nonetheless. (Grubhub did not.) The message is clear: If you try to mediate how the apps operate, things will just get worse. Now, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) have sent letters to DoorDash and Uber calling on the companies to stop charging junk fees. “When additional hidden fees nearly triple the price of an order, that is price gouging — plain and simple,” reads a copy of the letter sent to Vox. The letter also requests answers to exactly what the fees cover, including how much of the fees have gone to delivery workers versus to executive pay, among other questions, by no later than May 15. An Uber spokesperson told Vox that there were “consequences to bad regulations and we made these consequences clear in repeated testimony that both cities chose to disregard.” A DoorDash spokesperson wrote that its platform “has to work for everyone who uses it — Dashers, merchants, and customers alike — which is why we’ve opposed these extreme new rules.” They continued that the new laws “require platforms like DoorDash to pay well above the local minimum wages, not including additional pay for mileage and tips. Just as we warned, the increased costs created by these regulations have led to an alarming drop in work for Dashers and lost revenue for small businesses.” “Grubhub is complying with the new pay standards in New York City and Seattle, and we have made adjustments to our platform to run a sustainable business given the added costs to operate in these markets,” a Grubhub spokesperson told Vox. “We warned that these ill-conceived policies would have immediate negative impacts on the people they were intending to help, and the data is showing that to be the case.” Grubhub supports increased earnings for workers, but has previously cautioned how pay laws could impact workers’ ability to choose when and how much they work. Some headlines have already declared app-delivery regulations a failure; Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson has already proposed a new ordinance that lowers the pay rate. At the crisis point of consumers fed up with the cost of food delivery, companies like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub — the three biggest in the US — are insisting on their irreplaceable value to the restaurants, consumers, and workers who have long complained about them. “These guys are doing what I call a corporate tantrum” Kimberly Wolfe, a delivery app driver in Seattle who fought for the wage law with an advocacy group called Working Washington, isn’t buying it. “These guys are doing what I call a corporate tantrum,” she tells Vox. “They’re just cutting off their nose to spite their face.” What apps take from restaurants and customers To be sure, delivery apps are convenient. For this ease of use, customers are painfully up-charged. Menu prices are almost always more expensive than ordering directly from restaurants. Then there are the line-item fees that appear on the receipt. There’s the delivery fee, but also the frustratingly generic “service fee” that could cover anything from keeping the apps’ servers up to paying their drivers. The letter sent by Sens. Warren, Casey and Luján notes that US lawmakers demanded more transparency on these fees last February too — but the responses from DoorDash and Uber provided little clarity, according to the new April 16 letter. The letter also points out how fees have ballooned alongside executive compensation: in 2020, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu was the highest paid CEO in Silicon Valley with a pay package worth $413 million. DoorDash charges a 15 percent service fee that starts at a $3 minimum. Uber Eats charges an unspecified service fee that depends on basket size. Browsing Grubhub in Seattle, I loaded a sample $62 food order and was levied a $14 service fee. Then add the taxes and tip. For the privilege of having a meal delivered to your home — something pizza and Chinese restaurants have done for at least half a century — you might find yourself paying nearly double the cost of just the food. For restaurants, there’s a price as well. For the privilege of being found in the apps’ centralized hubs, apps can swipe as much as 30 percent of an order’s subtotal from restaurants, even collecting a commission on pickup orders. That’s if diners choose them over the influx of ghost kitchens and promoted partners. Much attention has been paid to the fact that delivery apps aren’t profitable, or were on a long road to becoming profitable — but that’s in large part because they chose to invest aggressively in growth over being in the black at the end of the year. Last year, DoorDash’s profit margin was nearly 49 percent. Even after deducting a bunch of its biggest expenses, including driver pay, Uber’s delivery segment pocketed $1.5 billion, an increase of 173 percent from 2022. Out of $8.6 billion in revenue in 2023, DoorDash spent almost $2 billion on sales and marketing, and another billion on R&D. It also spent $750 million last year buying back its own stock, a move often used by corporations to boost stock value. Uber has also long poured money into sales and marketing, which includes things like promotions and discounts, as well as R&D, in order to grow. This year, the company is preparing to shell out a cool $7 billion on stock buybacks. What (little) apps provide to delivery workers While customers find themselves paying $9-plus service fees on a delivery order, the worker handing you the food might only get a few dollars, all while paying for their own vehicle and fuel. Wolfe recalls how paltry some of the payouts were before the Seattle wage law, when she would see $2 to $3 for an order before tips. In May 2022, Working Washington aggregated data from over 400 delivery jobs in the Seattle area and found that restaurant delivery workers were making on average $8.71 per hour after deducting basic expenses such as gas, which was far below the city’s 2022 minimum hourly wage of $17.27. During a Working Washington protest at City Hall in 2022, paper bags with receipts showing how much a worker had made on a delivery order were put on display. “There were quite a few that were negative,” says Wolfe. “Once you figured expenses and all that, you were basically paying them to deliver.” A 2022 study from NYC’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) found that, after expenses, food delivery workers in the city were making an average of $11.12 per hour — again, sub-minimum wages. Crucially, customer tips made up about half of a delivery driver’s total earnings before expenses. (Data from Solo, which makes software for app-based gig workers, shows that tips make up a similar proportion of pay in Seattle.) A more recent report on the adopted minimum pay projected that drivers’ annual earnings after expenses (and accounting for the common practice of working for multiple apps) would rise from $11,970 in 2021 to $32,500 by 2025. Yet this calculation relies on a key assumption: that customers would keep tipping about the same amount as before the wage law. It’s hard to imagine that tipping rates in Seattle and NYC would stay the same given that the apps have added friction to the process. On both DoorDash and Uber Eats in these two cities, the tipping prompt now comes up after delivery, not at checkout, when diners are less likely to engage with the app. On GrubHub, the option to tip at checkout is still available, but many NYC-area restaurants on the platform now show lower default tipping options that max out at 12 percent. (Of course, a customer can still input a custom amount.) “After the minimum wage started, I would be on the apps and after two hours it would lock me out” It has also likely gone down because deliveries have gone down. While a spokesperson for the DCWP told StreetsBlog that “mass lockouts” were not occurring, some workers in NYC report that the apps are now locking them out, restricting the number of hours they work. Justice for App Workers, a coalition of rideshare and delivery workers, held a rally in front of New York’s city hall on March 27 to demand that the city address the lockouts. Food delivery workers are saying that they’re “unable to work for hours and days on end,” according to a statement released by the group. Bimal Ghale, a delivery worker in New York who is part of the Justice for App Workers group, told Vox through an interpreter that he used to work five to six hours at a time. “After the minimum wage started, I would be on the apps and after two hours it would lock me out,” he says. “The apps claim the area isn’t busy.” But Ghale is still delivering in the same neighborhoods he did before the new pay law, and the DCWP has also stated that orders have “remained steady.” An Uber spokesperson said that the city had known workers’ access to apps would become limited due to the new hourly pay rule. “Since the rule went into effect, nearly 6,000 couriers have lost access to the platform, nearly 20,000 people are on the waitlist to work on the app,” the spokesperson said. Since last December, when the pay rule went into effect in NYC, at least 500 complaints have been lodged with the DCWP alleging that apps aren’t following it. A DCWP spokesperson told Vox that the department was monitoring compliance. In Seattle, DoorDash has slapped a $4.99 regulatory fee on all orders, and in NYC it charges an extra $1.99. It’s unclear how these meaningfully differ from the catchall service fee, a portion of which can also cover worker pay — except that the labeling points the finger at the law for higher prices. DoorDash’s regulatory response fees are meant to cover the costs of new regulations. The DCWP estimates that if apps passed on only half of their labor costs to consumers, instead of all of it, they would still pocket $232 million a year in revenue. It’s not a given that the apps have to charge us more to pay their workers better. A new report released by advocacy group Working Washington claims to shed some light on how these fees might be divvied up. By comparing customer receipts and driver pay for 31 delivery orders placed since Seattle’s new minimum pay law was implemented, the group estimated that only about half of the fees DoorDash charges customers and restaurants went to workers. The report alleges that the company could ax the $4.99 regulatory fee and still retain a 30 percent margin on each order. DoorDash says that these calculations are inaccurate. “This is misinformation being sold as a ‘report’ — full of outrageous claims, exaggerations, and in many cases outright fabrications meant to deceive the public and policymakers,” a spokesperson told Vox, noting that the flat regulatory fee helps “offset only some of the costs associated with this burdensome law.” “As we have long said, if costs can be reduced through compromise legislation, we will look at all ways to reduce costs for consumers,” the spokesperson continued. Apps cry that their hands are tied Not long after the pay law went into effect, DoorDash published a blog claiming that Seattle businesses had already lost over $1 million in revenue and that workers were making less because orders on the platform had dropped. Grubhub’s write-up on the law’s adverse effects claims that tips are down 26 percent, with no mention of the fact that many of its Seattle-area merchants now show a lower range of tipping options — a tactic the company has used before. None of these tactics are new. Just look at what happened in California after the passage of a ballot initiative called Proposition 22 a few years ago, which allowed app-based gig work companies like Uber and DoorDash to classify their workers as independent contractors, saving them a lot of money. In exchange, they agreed to pay 120 percent of the minimum wage for every hour of trip time — as in, time spent logged on the app, waiting for a ride or for an order to appear, would not count. App companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars backing Prop 22, even threatening to pull out of California if it failed to pass. They also warned that, without Prop 22, prices would go up for customers. A month after the successful vote, delivery apps announced fee increases anyway. The math doesn’t add up. On the one hand, delivery apps play up the fact that they’re just intermediaries helping facilitate the sale or delivery of a product — they’re not employers, who would be on the hook for far greater payroll taxes and other employment costs than what apps currently pay. On the other hand, they command a steep price from restaurants and customers for matchmaking, of which the workers only see a narrow slice. The apps don’t make the food taste better, or deliver faster, and it’s obviously not cheaper. So who, exactly, benefits from their existence? What do they really add to the tangle of relationships we call the economy? If app companies leave cities like Seattle and New York to avoid having to pay higher labor costs, who would lose? Wolfe doesn’t seem worried. Her thinking is that if they can’t run a competent business, perhaps they shouldn’t be in business. “Don’t let the door hit you,” she says. “Because you want capitalism — baby, that’s capitalism.” Update, April 26, 10:35 am ET: This story was originally published on April 2 and has been updated multiple times, most recently with a new report that claims to reveal how much of DoorDash’s fees goes to paying workers.

Preview: Carolyn Fong/The Washington Post via Getty Images Harvard dishonesty researcher Francesca Gino faked her research. But she still has a lot to teach us. When it is alleged that a scientist has manipulated data behind their published papers, there’s an important but miserable project ahead: looking through the rest of their published work to see if any of that is fabricated as well. After dishonesty researcher Francesca Gino was placed on leave at Harvard Business School last fall following allegations that four of her papers contained manipulated data, the people who’d co-authored other papers with her scrambled to start double-checking their published works. Gino was a prolific researcher, and with 138 papers now called into question and more than 143 people who had co-authored with her, it proved a challenge to find who handled what data — so six co-authors began to work through each paper to systematically make public how the data was collected and who had custody of it. Their work was organized as the Many Co-Authors Project. The group was undeterred by Gino suing all of her accusers last summer, as well as by her condemnation of the project as unfair (“it inadvertently creates an opportunity for others to pin their own flawed studies or data anomalies on me,” she wrote). But their work provides a window into what kinds of manipulations and errors might make it past peer review until they come under heightened scrutiny — and raises in its own way a broader problem with our current research system. Based on the group’s work, it looks plausible that the data manipulation for which Gino is under fire is not contained to the four papers that have already been retracted. For example, in this 2019 paper, many participants were disqualified for not paying attention to the instructions — but the participants who were disqualified were overwhelmingly ones whose results were contrary to the hypothesis. (Likely because of the litigation surrounding the charges against Gino, the authors are careful not to say outright that what they’ve seen is a surefire sign of fraud.) But papers like the 2019 one — where the data is available — are the exception, not the rule. For most of the papers, no one has access to the data, which leaves no way to determine whether manipulation occurred. In some cases, co-authors are wary of participating in the effort to find other sketchy studies, worried that their name will be tarnished by association if they find a fraudulent paper. With systematic fraud, transparency is the only way through. Without a serious reckoning, the discovery of data manipulation doesn’t undo the harm it caused to our understanding of the world. Even after a paper is retracted, it doesn’t mean that other research that relied on those findings becomes amended. Instead, new studies are built atop flawed research. That’s a problem for scientific inquiry. We need to do something more systematic about fraud There’s something simultaneously heartwarming and exasperating about stories of researchers across the globe coming together to check whether their published research was actually faked. Why is basic information such as “which co-author collected the data?” and “who has access to the raw data?” not included as part of the process of publishing papers? Why is the data itself not available by default, which allows for finding mistakes as well as fraud? And after many researchers have been accused of systematic fraud, why is there still no process for systematically looking for problems in research? This is one of Gino’s complaints about the Many Co-Authors Project. “Like all scholars, I am interested in the truth. But auditing only my papers actively ignores a deeper reflection for the field,” she wrote. “Why is it that the focus of these efforts is solely on me?” The focus is on her for a good reason, but I do think that the Many Co-Authors Project is a symptom of a broken system. Even once a researcher is suspected of fraud, no institution is responsible for reviewing the work they’ve published and how it might affect the literature. Richard Van Noorden reported in Nature last year about what happens when a researcher is well-known to have fabricated data: “A more recent example is that of Yoshihiro Sato, a Japanese bone-health researcher. Sato, who died in 2016, fabricated data in dozens of trials of drugs or supplements that might prevent bone fracture. He has 113 retracted papers, according to a list compiled by the website Retraction Watch.” So what happened to other work that relied on Sato’s? For the most part, the retractions haven’t propagated; work that relied on Sato’s is still up: “His work has had a wide impact: researchers found that 27 of Sato’s retracted RCTs had been cited by 88 systematic reviews and clinical guidelines, some of which had informed Japan’s recommended treatments for osteoporosis. Some of the findings in about half of these reviews would have changed had Sato’s trials been excluded.” Journals do not consider themselves responsible for following up when they retract papers to see if other papers that cite those papers should be affected, or to check if other papers published by the same author have similar problems. Harvard doesn’t consider itself to have this responsibility. Co-authors may or may not consider themselves to have this responsibility. It’s as if we treat every case of fraud in isolation, instead of acknowledging that science builds on other science and that fraud rots those foundations. Some easy principles for reform I’ve written before that we should do a lot more about scientific fraud in general. But it seems like a particularly low bar to say that we should do more to, when a person is demonstrated to have manipulated data, check the rest of their work and get it retracted if needed. Even this low bar, though, is only being met due to the unpaid and unrewarded work of people who happened to notice the problem — and some of them have been sued for it. Here’s what could happen instead: Data about which co-author conducted the research and who has access to the raw data should be included as a matter of course as part of the paper submission process. This information is crucial to evaluating any problems with a paper, and it would be easy for journals to simply ask for it for every paper. Then you wouldn’t need a project like the Many Co-Authors Project — the data they’re attempting to collect would be available to everyone. Nonprofits, the government, or concerned citizens could fund an institution that followed up on evidence of data manipulation to make sure that manipulated results no longer poison the literature they’re a part of, especially in cases like medical research where peoples’ lives are at stake. And the law could protect people who do this essential research by making it faster to dismiss lawsuits over legitimate scientific criticism. Gino sued her critics, which is likely contributing to the slowness of reevaluations of her other work. But she was only able to do that because she lived in Massachusetts — in some states, so-called anti-SLAPP provisions help get quick dismissal of a lawsuit that suppresses protected speech. Part of the saga of Francesca Gino is that Massachusetts has a very weak anti-SLAPP law, and so all of the work to correct the scientific record takes place under the looming threat of such a lawsuit. In a state with better anti-SLAPP protections, she’d have to make the case for her research to her colleagues instead of silencing her critics. It is very much possible to do better when it comes to scientific fraud. The irony is that Gino’s research and the controversy surrounding it may well still end up having a long-lasting legacy in teaching us about dishonesty and how to combat it. A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

Preview: JoJo Siwa performs at Miami Beach Pride Festival on April 14, 2024. | Sean Drakes/Getty Images Is the massive backlash against the former child star justified? It’s a Hollywood cliche, but unfortunately true, that talented children rarely have it easy transitioning their careers into adulthood, much less transitioning to adulthood themselves. The recent string of controversies around Dance Moms-kid-turned-pop-star JoJo Siwa, however, reminds us that rebranding from a child star to a mature one isn’t easy — especially if your “brand” was perhaps never fully understood to begin with. Since Siwa started promoting her new single “Karma” over a month ago, the backlash from fans and haters alike has been virtually nonstop. Audiences have trashed her for everything from allegedly “stealing” the song itself (she didn’t) to getting too sexual in the music video, which went viral in part due to the outrage over a scene in which she dry-humps another woman. (She did warn us it wouldn’t be kid-friendly.) All of this outrage is simultaneously more and less complicated than it looks on the surface. On the one hand, Siwa is yet another young star who’s had trouble putting an end to the aura of their childhood cuteness, and who’s being perceived as “trying too hard to shock us” with a rebrand many seem to view as crass and over-sexualized. On the other hand, the controversy seems to suggest that there’s a limit to what kind of public queerness we’re comfortable with — especially regarding queer women. On top of all this, there’s an arguably separate conversation about the actually offensive things Siwa has allegedly done and said — a series of missteps, bad business decisions, and profound failures to read the proverbial room that can’t be ignored. Siwa’s promotion of “Karma” has already dealt her plenty of backlash JoJo Siwa has long been a fixture of competitive reality TV thanks to her striking personality, nimble dancing, and perhaps most famously, her collection of big bright hair bows, made by her mom. Siwa joined the Dance Moms universe in 2013, when Dance Moms instructor Abby Lee Miller, who ran the show’s focal dance studio, highlighted her as a guest dancer on the spinoff series Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition. She joined the main show in its fourth season the following year, then rode the reality dance show wave through the rest of her adolescence and early adulthood. Siwa grew her fanbase through YouTube via her XOMG POP! channel. Her hit 2016 single “Boomerang,” released when Siwa was almost 13, currently sits just shy of 1 billion views. The video sees her sporting her trademark bows and fully embracing her ice-cream-colored teen girl bubble-pop era. On the strength of its success, Siwa signed a lucrative deal with Nickelodeon in 2017 to do similar work aimed at Nickelodeon’s target audience of preteens — leading Siwa to helm an “empire” of children’s programming that netted her an estimated $20 million over the years. In 2020, Time named Siwa, at 17, one of its 100 most influential people. Siwa’s Nickelodeon era plays like an extended Hannah Montana remix of fully kid-themed, ditzy pop. Simultaneously, however, and a little incongruously, she continued her dance show career, using it to help her transition toward more adult mediums: She featured as a singing, dancing T-Rex on the third season of The Masked Singer in 2020. After casually coming out in a tweet in 2021, she competed on Dancing With the Stars in its 30th season, dancing to upbeat queer anthems like “Born This Way” as part of a historic same-sex dance team. The last two seasons of So You Think You Can Dance have seen Siwa joining the show as a somewhat controversial judge. You might expect that with that much influence and popularity and the ability to leverage her dancing skills into an ongoing career, Siwa would have relatively little problem transitioning out of her Nickelodeon phase. But therein lies the problem: The image she’s trying out now is, depending on who you talk to, either a step too far removed from that earlier spunky kid for many fans to take, or not far enough — just “Disney with cuss words,” as one X user put it. “Child stars and celebrities embody not only our culture’s ideals of childhood, but also demonstrate how contradictory those ideals actually are,” Djoymi Baker, who researches child stars as a media and cinema studies lecturer for RMIT University in Melbourne, told Vox in an email. “Child celebrities are expected to act as if they are not getting older, and maintain a child-like innocence or face public outrage.” With “Karma,” the outrage at Siwa seemed to peak. Siwa’s “Karma” music video released on April 5, yet due to the incendiary previews of a fully sexualized Siwa, it was drawing backlash well before its release. The general consensus was that Siwa was trying too hard to perform a hyper-sexualized, raunchy caricature of her own queerness — and the actual video only seemed to confirm that view. Highlights include Siwa’s much-mocked choreography and a sequence in which Siwa makes out with a series of different women, set to lyrics about infidelity and reaping what you sow. The public’s general distaste for Siwa’s “Karma” persona involved debates about authenticity and whether her style is really “her” — a conversation that soon extended to controversy over the song itself and whether it’s also really “hers.” Things kicked off when Siwa claimed to invent a subgenre of music that already existed. “I want to start a new genre of music,” she told Billboard on April 5, “called ‘gay pop.’” She then went on to list example songs like Lady Gaga’s “Applause” and her own version of “Karma,” prompting many people to respond by noting both the long history of queer pop artists and the long existence of the music she claimed to want to “start.” She quickly corrected the statement, telling TMZ less than a week later that she “definitely [was] not the inventor” of the style, but rather wanted to “be a piece in making it bigger than it already is.” By the time Siwa walked back that unfortunate statement, however, the hostility toward her had already calcified. On April 12, artist Lil Tay slammed Siwa on Twitter, noting that she “didn’t buy the song [her 2023 single “SUCKER 4 GREEN”] or hire a ghostwriter,” implying that Siwa had. It’s true that Siwa didn’t write “Karma,” but rather picked up a new production of an old track. According to Siwa, she was pitched an old song that had been recorded by previous artists, including Miley Cyrus, who never released it. Although it’s a completely pedestrian thing for artists to release previously unreleased or little-known tracks, most of those artists hadn’t recently claimed to be inventing something new, and the backlash that settled on Siwa was ferocious. As part of the virality of the outrage, fans discovered singer Brit Smith’s 2012 version of “Karma” and boosted its sales, pushing the artist to a surprise No. 1 spot on Billboard’s electronic digital chart, all while Siwa’s version failed to even reach the Hot 100. Lil Tay’s “SUCKER” also got a boost, passing a milestone of 5 million Spotify streams amid all the noise over Siwa. That doesn’t mean the reception to “Karma” has been fully negative, however: Siwa’s version did open across multiple ranking charts, and she played to a crowd of over 50,000 at the Miami Beach Pride Festival on April 14, performing “Karma” for enthusiastic fans and reportedly breaking audience records. Still, the sheer level of the public’s anger toward Siwa suggests that something deeper is happening. It might stem from the career growing pains of a young adult making young adult mistakes, but part of it seems to boil down to a fundamental misunderstanding of Siwa herself. Siwa’s “rebrand” arguably isn’t that much different from her original brand During her time on Dance Moms, Siwa was portrayed as colorful, loud, opinionated, “obnoxious, [and] sometimes rude.” Siwa channeled that energy into her performances, which usually reflected an edgy personality and powerful, athletic dancing. The bows she always wore, followed by her Nickelodeon era, may have given audiences the false impression of Siwa as forever innocent, stuck in arrested development as a preteen. Writing for Vogue in 2021, Emma Specter argued Siwa had “built a brand off of the kind of glittery, bow-festooned femininity that is typically reserved for straight women” — a brand that her coming-out, especially at the young age of just 17, worked to subvert. But in fact, there’s really not much difference between one of Siwa’s early dance routines and her current much-touted “rebrand.” It’s not a stretch, for example, to see the girl who performed a tongue-wagging “Electricity” trotting out a KISS homage for an awards show. Abby Lee Miller herself recognized Siwa’s underlying consistency when she reacted to “Karma” on TikTok. “Everyone’s making such a big deal about the rebrand,” she noted. “I think it’s JoJo with paint on her face and a fabulous costume. It’s always been JoJo.” On the other hand, the backlash to this aesthetic has resurfaced some not-so-good things Siwa has actually done. Though Siwa is only 20, the list of her controversies and allegedly offensive behavior would be notable for a star at any age — everything from marketing a makeup line that was recalled for containing asbestos, to allegedly helping create an abusive work environment for members of her failed pop group XOMG POP!, to defending and continuing to be friends with disgraced YouTuber Colleen Ballinger after Ballinger allegedly engaged her underaged fans in inappropriate sexual exchanges. Though some of these claims and allegations aren’t necessarily Siwa’s fault, many seem completely avoidable — like the time a white child dancer was asked to don brown monkey makeup for her 2020 music video “Nonstop.” Responding to backlash over the alleged blackface, Siwa doubled down rather than apologizing. That’s more or less her MO for these situations — forging ahead rather than wasting time asking for forgiveness. And while there’s a huge difference between an adult putting a kid in blackface and a 17-year-old Siwa doing it, she’s old enough to know better, and this sort of behavior has caused Siwa’s notoriety to surpass her fame. Still, none of these controversies were what caused such deep public outrage in the days since “Karma” was released, and it’s hard not to think that this negative response ultimately boils down to a mismatch of expectations between Siwa’s extended public audience and the core queer audience to whom she’s performing. It’s hard not to compare Siwa’s fairly tame performance of queer sexuality in “Karma” to Lil Nas X’s wildly successful “Montero” music video. Both were the entries of established pop stars into a queer space, claiming their recently announced sexualities through raunchy, glittery, erotic performances. “Montero” saw Lil Nas X riding a stripper pole and giving the literal devil a lap dance before crowning himself the king of hell. By comparison, “Karma” is milder and murkier: Siwa uses the muddled metaphor of a sea monster emerging from the ocean to illustrate the anxieties of a girl who can’t choose between any of the beautiful women in her orbit. Admittedly, “Montero” is a lot more fun, full of far more creative and inventive artistry; yet it’s hard not to wonder if the vast difference between the public’s glee and delight in “Montero” and its disdain and derision for Siwa’s “Karma” is ultimately about a misogynistic refusal to let female pop stars grow up — at least without forcing them into rigid parameters of what that adulthood looks like. “The child star brand of innocence has historically been quite specific,” Baker said. “It is predominantly white, able-bodied, cis-gendered, and ostensibly asexual, with an expectation that growing up will be both heteronormative and yet as non-sexual as possible, particularly for women. This pattern has been seen again and again, with female child stars such as Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.” Baker pointed out that the Siwa backlash closely mirrors the backlash her teen pop predecessor Miley Cyrus received a decade ago, at the same age of 20, after twerking with Robin Thicke in 2013 — a move for which Cyrus recently confessed she “carried some guilt and shame.” “I was creating attention for myself because I was dividing myself from a character I had played,” Cyrus told British Vogue last year. “Anyone, when you’re 20 or 21, you have more to prove. ‘I’m not my parents.’ ‘I am who I am.’” Baker noted that Siwa has called Cyrus her “number one idol” for making the transition to an adult brand. A good deal of the criticism Cyrus faced in 2013 focused on the racially insensitive cultural appropriation of her twerking. Yet Baker also observed that both women’s queerness, and their performance of that queerness against their earlier sanitized child-star images, may have amplified the backlash they received. “That Cyrus is pansexual and Siwa is lesbian means they do not fit into the restrictive ideals of childhood, the child star, or growing up that still dominate,” she said. After all, apart from Siwa claiming her sexuality, just about everything else about her aesthetic is the same — she’s still colorful, opinionated, and backed by innumerable sparkly outfits. It’s somewhat ironic, then, that “Karma” has provoked such conversations about authenticity. Love her or hate her, the JoJo we have now was arguably the JoJo we had all along.

Preview: Columbia University students participate in an ongoing pro-Palestinian encampment on their campus following last week’s arrest of more than 100 protesters, on April 25, 2024 in New York City. | Stephanie Keith/Getty Images The crackdown on protesters at Columbia and elsewhere lays bare the challenge of balancing academic freedom with student safety. Student protests are heating up around the country, just as the school year is winding down. At Columbia University in New York, a deadline is nearing for the administration to clear the student encampment off the campus lawn. The NYPD chief of patrol defended his department’s actions earlier this week in arresting over 100 student protesters on campus, writing “Columbia decided to hold its students accountable to the laws of the school. They are seeing the consequences of their actions. Something these kids were most likely never taught,” in a post on X. But the root of all the arrests and protests at Columbia is, arguably, free speech. In testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in Washington, DC, last week, Columbia President Minouche Shafik struggled to walk a line between ensuring student safety and protecting academic freedom. “We believe that Columbia’s role is not to shield individuals from positions that they find unwelcome,” she said, “but instead to create an environment where different viewpoints can be tested and challenged.” In light of the fierce debate over campus speech and student safety, Today, Explained reached out to the president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Irene Mulvey to get her view on the state of free speech on college campuses. AAUP is a nonprofit organization comprising faculty and other professionals in academia whose stated mission is to protect academic freedom and support higher education as a public good. Mulvey shared her insights into whether Columbia and other institutions where crackdowns of protests are happening are living up to those ideals. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. —Miranda Kennedy Sean Rameswaram Has protecting academic freedom and supporting higher education become more difficult since October 7? Irene Mulvey Yes, it has become more difficult since October 7. Although I would say our job of protecting academic freedom and protecting higher education from outside interference has always been difficult. There’s always been political interference into higher education, and that’s why we were founded. In the past, the interference into higher education has been targeting individual professors, you know, a wealthy donor doesn’t like somebody’s research and they want to get them fired. Or somebody speaks up at a faculty meeting, criticizing the administration and the administration doesn’t want them to get tenure. What we’re seeing now is an escalation in that the entire enterprise of higher education as a public good in a democracy is being attacked. We’re seeing attacks at the state level with legislation that will censor content — we call these educational gag orders, where there’s legislation that says what can be taught in a college classroom. That’s just outright censorship and the kind of thing you see in an authoritarian society, not a democracy. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has dragged these presidents in front of the committee for a performative witch hunt of a hearing. And that is an escalation because those are private institutions. So it’s a remarkable escalation for the federal government to be intruding into what’s happening at private colleges. To think about how professors are feeling about these protests, we need to think about how professors feel about higher education. And what professors are thinking [is] that in higher education, we should have a robust exchange of ideas in which no idea is withheld from scrutiny or debate. Our students have very strong feelings about what’s happening in the Middle East. They are attempting to have that robust exchange of ideas about what’s happening. And I think as faculty members, we support that. Students on a campus, the students are learning from professors. They’re learning how to conduct research on their own. They’re learning how to analyze arguments. They’re learning how to think critically about complex matters. And they have thoughts about what’s happening in the world [and] on their campuses, with regard to what their campuses are doing to support what’s happening in the Middle East. Faculty members are supportive of this. This is what academic freedom means. Sean Rameswaram So it sounds like you don’t support the president of Columbia University calling in the NYPD to make arrests at a peaceful protest. Irene Mulvey That’s an understatement. I think what the Columbia president did was the most disproportionate reaction that I’ve ever seen. My understanding is these were peaceful protesters on an outdoor lawn on a campus where they pay a lot of money to attend, and she had them deemed as trespassers and invoked a statute where she has to argue that they are a clear and present danger to the functioning of the institution in order to allow the NYPD on campus. The most important thing is her response is doing the opposite of what’s supposed to happen on a campus. Her response silenced the voices of the students. Her response suppressed the speech and suppressed the debate. It’s the absolute opposite of what should happen on a college campus, and it was extremely disappointing. Sean Rameswaram If you had been in her position as the president of Columbia, and you were dealing with these protests and people [are] saying they feel unsafe, that there’s antisemitic slogans, that there was a protest outside where a Jewish student was told to go back to Poland, how would you have navigated these competing forces? Irene Mulvey Yeah, well, it’s not easy. Let’s be clear, there’s no easy answer to what’s going on here. But the principle behind anyone’s response should be education, should be speech, should be debate, should be ideas being put up for justification. And, you know, there could be some kind of forum for the students. Of course, they have to protect the safety of all students. But if the way you’re choosing to keep students safe is by suppressing somebody else’s speech, that’s a false choice. You don’t have to suppress speech to keep students safe. I agree that these are difficult situations. And I know all of these campuses where these things are happening — Columbia, NYU, Yale — these campuses and these presidents will espouse academic freedom and free speech at the drop of a hat. But if you’re not standing up for those principles at times like these, then those words are completely meaningless. Sean Rameswaram It’s interesting because I think what we’re seeing here is the clearest evidence that we haven’t quite figured out where the line is on protecting students versus free speech versus the open discussion of ideas. I think the president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, made that point in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, that universities haven’t figured this out. The Supreme Court hasn’t figured this out, and it shouldn’t be on universities to figure this out. Do you have some idea of where the line is between the open academic discussion of ideas and something that could be dangerous for students and thus not permitted? Irene Mulvey The way to think about it is in situations like this where there are polarized views, there are really strong feelings for very good reasons. Not all the speech is going to make you comfortable. Academic freedom and free speech can be messy. And so I think you have to err on the side of allowing the speech and allowing the debate and allowing the discussion. When it veers into something that doesn’t feel good, then someone should speak up and say that. But silencing voices because you don’t like what they’re saying is a very dangerous, slippery slope that we do not want to get onto. Sean Rameswaram One thing I’ve found heartening following these protests on college campuses for six months is that they’ve mostly been peaceful. Now, that being said, if I’m a Jewish student walking across campus and someone says, “Go back to Poland!” I might start to feel unsafe. If I’m a Muslim student and someone’s doxxing me because of my attending a protest, I might start to feel unsafe. How do college administrators navigate safety, which feels sort of amorphous sometimes, in a free-speech environment? Irene Mulvey Administrations — universities — have an obligation to address issues of harassment and hate speech through their policies that have been in place for decades. Because hate speech didn’t just arrive on campus since October 7. We’ve had to address issues like this for decades. So campuses have policies to address issues like that, and their obligation is to keep the campus safe. For the most part, I feel the protests that I’ve seen have been peaceful. But again, it’s a messy situation. The important way to handle it is to stand back on principles of academic freedom, free speech, and keeping the campus safe, and addressing issues of hate speech through policies that are developed with the faculty. Sean Rameswaram You were a professor of mathematics for 40 years — for four decades. I imagine before that, maybe you were a student at a college protest, trying to voice your opinion and embracing free speech. Do you think with all the perspective that you have that this is just a rough patch that we get over and we’re stronger because of it? Or do you think we’re really going to get bogged down here? Irene Mulvey Oh, that’s a good question. I did participate in protests as a student during the Vietnam War. I was in high school. But this is definitely a rough patch. And where we come out on the end of it is an open question. I think what’s happening is part of an agenda to control what happens on campus, not just about the history and policies of Israel. What’s happening now is part of a larger movement, the anti-DEI movement, the anti-CRT movement, which is intended to censor or control what can be learned in a college classroom and what can be taught on campus. I think that’s the real danger, that broader movement, which I think would really damage higher education and the role it’s supposed to play in a democracy — to be a check and balance on politics. Be sure to follow Today, Explained on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Preview: Paige Vickers/Vox Years ago, scientists made a devastating prediction about the ocean. Now it’s unfolding. More than five years ago, the world’s top climate scientists made a frightening prediction: If the planet warms by 1.5 degrees Celsius, relative to preindustrial times, 70 to 90 percent of coral reefs globally would die off. At 2°C, that number jumps to more than 99 percent. These researchers were essentially describing the global collapse of an entire ecosystem driven by climate change. Warm ocean water causes corals — large colonies of tiny animals — to “bleach,” meaning they lose a kind of beneficial algae that lives within their bodies. That algae gives coral its color and much of its food, so bleached corals are white and starving. Starved coral is more likely to die. In not so great news, the planet is now approaching that 1.5°C mark. In 2023, the hottest year ever measured, the average global temperature was 1.52°C above the preindustrial average, as my colleague Umair Irfan reported. That doesn’t mean Earth has officially blown past this important threshold — typically, scientists measure these sorts of averages over decades, not years — but it’s a sign that we’re getting close. David Gray/AFP via Getty Images Marine biologist Anne Hoggett swims above bleached and dead coral on the Great Barrier Reef in April 2024. David Gray/AFP via Getty Images Tourists snorkel above a section of the Great Barrier Reef full of bleached and dead coral on April 5, 2024. So, it’s no surprise that coral reefs are, indeed, collapsing. Earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the planet is experiencing its fourth global “bleaching” event on record. Since early 2023, an enormous amount of coral in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans has turned ghostly white, including in places like the Great Barrier Reef and the Florida Keys. In some regions, a lot of the coral has already died. “What we are seeing now is essentially what scientists have been predicting was going to happen for more than 25 years,” Derek Manzello, a marine scientist at NOAA who leads the agency’s coral bleaching project, told Vox. The recent extreme ocean warming can’t solely be attributed to climate change, Manzello added; El Niño and even a volcanic eruption have supercharged temperatures. But coral reefs were collapsing well before the current bleaching crisis. A study published in 2021 estimated that coral “has declined by half” since the mid-20th century. In some places, like the Florida Keys, nearly 90 percent of the live corals have been lost. Past bleaching events are one source of destruction, as are other threats linked to climate change, including ocean acidification. The past and current state of corals raises an important but challenging question: If the planet continues to warm, is there a future for these iconic ecosystems? What’s become increasingly clear is that climate change doesn’t just deal a temporary blow to these animals — it will bring about the end of reefs as we know them. Will there be coral reefs 100 years from now? In the next few decades, a lot of coral will die — that’s pretty much a given. And to be clear, this reality is absolutely devastating. Regardless of whether snorkeling is your thing, reefs are essential to human well-being: Coral reefs dampen waves that hit the shore, support commercial fisheries, and drive coastal tourism around the world. They’re also home to an incredible diversity of life that inspires wonder. “I’m pretty sure that we will not see the large surface area of current reefs surviving into the future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, who was involved in the landmark 2018 report, led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that predicted the downfall of tropical reefs at 1.5°C warming. “Every year is going to be worse.” NOAA A map of coral bleaching “alerts,” which indicate where the ocean is unusually warm and bleaching is likely to occur. Red areas have a risk of reef-wide bleaching; magenta and purple regions are at risk of coral death. But even as many corals die, reefs won’t exactly disappear. The 3D formation of a typical reef is made of hard corals that produce a skeleton-like structure. When the polyps die, they leave their skeletons behind. Animals that eat live coral, such as butterfly fish and certain marine snails, will likely vanish; plenty of other fish and crabs will stick around because they can hide among those skeletons. Algae will dominate on ailing reefs, as will “weedy” kinds of coral, like sea fans, that don’t typically build the reef’s structure. Simply put, dead reefs aren’t so much lifeless as they are home to a new community of less sensitive (and often more common) species. “Reefs in the future will look very different,” said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, a leading marine scientist who’s also involved with the IPCC. “Restoring coral reefs to what they were prior to mass bleaching events is impossible. That is a fact.” On the timescale of decades, even much of the reef rubble will fade away, as there will be no (or few) live corals to build new skeletons and plenty of forces to erode the ones that remain. Remarkably, about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide that we pump into the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. When all that CO2 reacts with water, it makes the ocean more acidic, hastening the erosion of coral skeletons and other biological structures made of calcium carbonate. Jennifer Adler for Vox Bleached staghorn coral in a nursery run by the Coral Restoration Foundation off the coast of the Florida Keys in September 2023. Buying time For decades now, hard-working and passionate scientists have been trying to reverse this downward trend — in large part, by “planting” pieces of coral on damaged reefs. This practice is similar to planting saplings in a logged forest. In reef restoration, many scientists and environmental advocates see hope and a future for coral reefs. But these efforts come with one major limitation: If the oceans continue to grow hotter, many of those planted corals will die too. Last fall, I dived a handful of reefs in the Florida Keys where thousands of pieces of elkhorn and staghorn — iconic, reef-building corals — had been planted. Nearly all of them were bleached, dead, or dying. “When are [we] going to stop pretending that coral reefs can be restored when sea temperatures continue to rise and spike at lethal levels?” Terry Hughes, one of the world’s leading coral reef ecologists, wrote on X. Ultimately, the only real solution is reducing carbon emissions. Period. Pretty much every marine scientist I’ve talked to agrees. “Without international cooperation to break our dependence on fossil fuels, coral bleaching events are only going to continue to increase in severity and frequency,” Manzello said. Echoing his concern, Pörtner said: “We really have no choice but to stop climate change.” Jennifer Adler for Vox A collection of bleached “planted” staghorn coral on a reef in Florida in September 2023. But in the meantime, other stuff can help. Planting pieces of coral can work if those corals are more tolerant to threats like extreme heat or disease. To that end, researchers are trying to breed more heat-resistant individuals or identify those that are naturally more tolerant to stress — not only heat, but disease. Even after extreme bleaching events, many corals survive, according to Jason Spadaro, a restoration expert at Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory. (“Massive” corals, which look a bit like boulders, had high rates of survival following recent bleaching in Florida, Spadaro said.) Scientists also see an urgent need to curb other, non-climate related threats, like water pollution and intensive fishing. “To give corals the best possible chance, we need to reduce every other stressor impacting reefs that we can control,” Manzello told Vox. These efforts alone will not save reefs, but they’ll buy time, experts say, helping corals hold on until emissions fall. If those interventions work — and if countries step up their climate commitments — future generations will still get to experience at least some version of these majestic, life-sustaining ecosystems. This story appeared originally in Today, Explained, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. Sign up here for future editions.

Preview: Ella Purnell as Lucy in Fallout. | JoJo Whilden/Prime Video What a post-nuclear aftermath could really look like. Between the crumbling of trust in our institutions and escalating global conflict, dystopia feels deeply familiar in today’s world. Though there are people and organizations who are working to keep the globe and our humanity intact, it’s normal for us to think of the worst-case scenarios. Fallout, a recently released show on Amazon Prime based on the popular video game franchise, is the latest exploration of one of these scenarios: survival after nuclear war. Fallout takes place in two different periods in the Los Angeles area: the moments before nuclear bombs are dropped across the US, and 200 years later. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), the show’s protagonist, is a “vault-dweller” — the term for people who live underground in sealed bunkers created by a company called Vault-Tec. Despite their world’s dark past, Lucy and the community of Vault 33 remain optimistic that one day — when the radioactive levels are low enough on the surface — civilization can restart with their help. But when her father, the leader of their vault, gets kidnapped by people from the surface, Lucy leaves her bunker to bring him back. As she embarks on her quest to find her dad, Lucy finds that the surface is a hostile place. There’s little to no food or clean water, danger exists around every corner in the form of bandits and mutants, and the lone survivors are cynical and distrustful — especially toward Lucy, whose bunkered life seems easy by comparison. As one disgruntled shopkeeper tells Lucy, “The vaults were nothing more than a hole in the ground for rich folks to hide in while the rest of the world burned.” Indeed, in our real world, there are wealthy people investing in bunkers in case shit hits the fan, including some big names like Mark Zuckerberg. But what about everyone else? That’s a key message in Fallout: Survival isn’t equitable. And while Fallout is a fictional depiction of nuclear war that’s heavy on the sci-fi, nuclear warfare itself is not off the table in reality. There are also plenty of other existential risks that can shape how we live, like future pandemics, a changing climate causing extreme weather and disasters, and harmful artificial intelligence. What makes nuclear war particularly terrifying is the devastation it can cause in just seconds — the horrifying damage and loss of life from the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 80 years ago underscore why we should prevent this from ever happening again. Yet, nine countries are still armed with nuclear weapons, with the US and Russia possessing thousands of nuclear warheads. So I reached out to Seth Baum, the executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, a think tank that analyzes the greatest threats to civilization and develops strategies to reduce these risks. We talked about what the aftermath of a nuclear war could look like in our real world — and also what we should focus on now to prevent this scenario from happening, as well as how we could prepare for it if it does. “We do actually need to take this seriously, as dark and unpleasant as it is,” Baum said. “It is a very worthwhile thing to be doing because we could really need it. It could be the difference between life and death for a massive number of people.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity. After watching Fallout for myself, it feels like an ominous warning. But, of course, it’s also describing an alternate history, and there’s a lot of science fiction in the story. What could an actual post-nuclear world look like for us? [It] probably would not involve mutants and monsters. Nuclear radiation can cause some mutations, but it probably wouldn’t actually happen like that. But that’s okay, it’s a video game and a TV show, it’s supposed to be entertaining — that’s fine. The most important thing we can do is to not have a nuclear war in the first place. And that should always be the first option to address the risk of nuclear war. In the event of an actual nuclear war, for people who are in the immediate vicinity of the explosion, there’s not much that can be done. The force of a nuclear explosion is too much. Buildings will be destroyed, people will be killed, that’s just how it’s going to be. Then for the rest of the world, this is where things get interesting. The plausible nuclear war scenarios would not have nuclear explosions across the whole world. First of all, we just don’t have that many nuclear weapons, which is a good thing. Second of all, much of the world is just not a likely target in any actual nuclear war scenario. You know, I live in New York City, it’s a good chance I would die, right? We are a likely target of nuclear explosions. But across much of the world, across Latin America, across Africa, large portions of Asia — these are countries that are not involved in any significant disputes with the nuclear-armed countries. There’s only a few nuclear-armed countries, and we tend to have our nuclear weapons pointed at each other and at our close allies, maybe. So unless you happen to live near [a nuclear missile silo], you’re probably not going to get hit, you’re probably going to survive the immediate attack. Then there are a few things that you’re going to want to look at. The two big global effects are one, nuclear winter, and two, damage to the global economy. If you start removing hubs from the economy, that’s going to have an effect on the rest of the economy. What would that effect be? Well, nobody really knows, we’ve never tried it before. That’s something that every country would have to deal with. At a minimum, there’s going to be some sort of supply chain shocks. Also, nobody’s really studied this in much detail — we could at least try studying it a little bit. There has been more research on nuclear winter — I’m using the term nuclear winter broadly to refer to all of the global, environmental effects of nuclear war that come from basically the ashes of burning cities and burning other places going up into the stratosphere, which is the second level of the atmosphere, and it stays up there for months, or even years. That can have a variety of effects. One of the biggest being plants don’t grow as much, because it’s colder, it’s darker, there may be less precipitation. So there are some projections and very severe agricultural shortfalls. It could take a lot of effort just to survive, even for countries that had nothing to do with a conflict that caused the war. How is the US prepared to preserve the lives of its civilians in the event of a nuclear war or other catastrophic events with similar impacts, if at all? My understanding from this is that we’re just not really prepared to handle this type of situation, that we have some emergency management capabilities, but we push past the reasonable limits of those capabilities pretty quickly in these very extreme scenarios. So would we be able to do some things to help out? Yeah, sure. Would we be able to keep society intact? Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it. This is really just something that we are not currently set up to do. Frankly, this would be a good thing to invest more in for the United States government and other governments, to invest more in the capabilities of more successfully surviving these extreme catastrophe scenarios. Nuclear war is one of them, it’s not the only one. This is something that we could and, I think, should do better at. In the show, a select few of the population get to live safely in bunkers underground — those who have access to power and money, generally. In real life even, there’s a community of wealthy people who have invested in bunkers in case of emergencies. How do we ensure shelter and refuge for as many people as possible in these kinds of situations? Yes, there are wealthy people who are making these preparations. There are also the survivalists, the preppers, who are doing similar sorts of things, often with a much deeper commitment to actually surviving. Having a bunker in New Zealand doesn’t do you very much good if you’re in the United States during the time of the war. So for people living out in more strategic locations on a permanent basis, those people may be a lot more likely to survive something like a nuclear war, which targets the big cities in ways that it doesn’t matter how much money you have, you can’t survive the nuclear explosion. It just doesn’t work that way. What does bring benefits is having the resources in place to deal with the aftermath, which for nuclear war could include a combination of food stockpiles, and preparations to continue making food through any agricultural shortfalls with nuclear winter, could include the public health capabilities to manage the effects. If we see significant supply chain shocks, and just general disruption of how a civilization functions, that can create major public health challenges even away from where the attacks occurred. And also, the social and psychological and institutional preparedness. This is a really big challenge — getting people to wrap their minds around and make actual serious plans with institutional weight behind them, to be prepared to deal with this sort of thing. It’s not easy. This is not something that we like to think about, like to work on, this is not happy stuff, right? It’s tough because most of the time, you don’t need it. In fact, hopefully you never need it. And yet, if something like this happens, and it could happen, then this could be the difference between life and death for a large number of people. Why is there this ever-present fascination with stocking up on supplies? Whether it’s bunkers or emergency kits, it feels like people can buy their way to safety — I’m curious what you think is the underlying dynamic here? Well, first of all, it’s just interesting. I’m fascinated by it, even if I myself am a real failure of a prepper. Despite my line of work, I’m actually not personally very good at this, plus I live in Manhattan — my default expectation is that I would just die. I don’t know my way around this stuff. But some people do, and you know, more credit to them for taking on that sort of responsibility. And a lot of this is things that any of us would be well-served by doing even for a much more basic set of catastrophes. I remember, a few years ago, I went to a meeting of the New York City preppers group. And I was a little disappointed. I was kind of hoping to meet some really crazy, eccentric people. And it just wasn’t. The group was led by a police officer who was just doing this in his spare time, this little public service, and the people there were normal and they were just trying to learn some basics of what to do. And it turned out some of the basic preparations, it’s a lot of the stuff that FEMA recommends people do for basic disaster preparedness. Now, is that gonna be enough for a nuclear war? Maybe not. For that, you might need something more serious, and some people are trying to do that sort of serious thing. In the event of a nuclear war, that might be the difference between them surviving and then them not surviving. It’s entirely reasonable that there’s some people out there doing it. For the rest of us, we should, I think, broadly be supportive of this. I wouldn’t look at those people as eccentric crazies — I would look at them as people who are taking the responsibility of ensuring their own survival and their family’s survival across a wide range of scenarios. That’s commendable, and I wish that there was more of a public or communal attitude toward: Can we help all of us to do more along these lines? Because we could end up really needing it. While the US hasn’t faced any events as deeply catastrophic for our survival as nuclear warfare would be, are there past crises that we can look to and learn from in an effort to prepare for the worst in the future? This is a major challenge in the study of global catastrophic risk. We don’t really have a lot of data points. I mean, modern global civilization has never been destroyed before, which is a good thing. That’s, of course, a good thing. But for research purposes, it means a lack of data. What we have to do is make use of what information we do have. And events like the Covid-19 pandemic are one really important source of information. Another we can try to learn from [is] major catastrophes that have occurred across human history. Then also for the local scale disasters that occur on a relatively frequent basis: natural disasters, violent conflicts, and so on. All of this does provide some insight into how human societies respond to these sorts of situations. The best we can do is take what we do have experience with, what we do have data on, and extrapolate that as well as we can to these other scenarios that have never happened before, and use that as the basis for using our best judgment about how we can survive and cope with it. And along the way, we can perhaps use that as that much more motivation to prevent these scenarios from happening in the first place, which, again, is always the best option. Ideally, the world never finds itself in a situation as devastating to human life as global nuclear war would be. How do we reduce that risk as best as possible? There are a lot of small-picture things that can be done, and then there is that one big-picture thing that, in my opinion, is not getting the attention that it deserves. The small picture things — and in my experience, this is the primary focus of work on nuclear war risk reduction — are just the day-to-day management of nuclear weapons systems and relations between the countries that have them. This was all especially pronounced recently during the most tense moments of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and is probably still a day-to-day concern for the people who manage the nuclear weapons systems in Russia, in the United States, and France and the UK. There’s a lot to be done there to prevent things from escalating, and this is important work. In my opinion, none of this solves the underlying issue: which is that there are these countries that have nuclear weapons, some of them in rather large numbers. And so those nuclear weapons are pointed at each other and may at some point get used. My view is that the only real solution to this is to improve the relations between these countries, enough that they don’t feel that they need the nuclear weapons anymore. Now, that process can include attention to how terrible the aftermath of nuclear war would be that makes countries that much more eager to get rid of these terrible weapons. But I have a hard time seeing any significant nuclear disarmament without significant improvements in the relations between the countries that have them, the most important of which is Russia. This is not a quick-fix solution. This is something that, if it’s going to happen, it would probably happen over the decades.

Preview: Pierre Poilievre speaks at a protest against a Federal Carbon Tax increase on March 27, 2024. | Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images The rise of an unusually tame right-wing populist reveals how Canadian democracy stays strong — and why the world should take notes from Ottawa. “Are we a country that looks out for each other ... or do you go down a path of amplifying anger, division and fear?” That’s how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the stakes in his country’s upcoming election in an interview with Vox’s Today, Explained this week — outlining the 2025 contest as no ordinary election but a referendum on the very soul of Canada. This existential framing is an unsubtle shot at Trudeau’s rival, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, a populist firebrand who is currently outpolling the prime minister by a wide margin. Poilievre rose to party leadership as a champion of the extremist trucker convoy that occupied Ottawa in January 2022, and since then has regularly pandered to far-right voters. He has proposed defunding the CBC (Canada’s widely respected public broadcaster) and repeatedly promoted a conspiracy theory in which Trudeau is in league with the World Economic Forum. There’s a reason that Trudeau and many others have directly linked Poilievre to Trump: His political style practically invites it. But how accurate is the comparison? Is Canada really poised to be the next Western country to fall to the far-right populist global wave? The answer, as best as I can tell, is mixed. It’s true that, by Canadian standards, Poilievre is an especially hard-nosed figure, one far more willing to use extreme rhetoric and attack political opponents in harsh terms. But on policy substance, he’s actually considerably more moderate than Trump or European radicals. Mostly eschewing the demagogic focus on culture and immigration that defines the new global far right, Poilievre is primarily concerned with classic conservative themes of limited government. His biggest campaign promises at present aren’t slashing immigration rates or cracking down on crime, but building more housing and repealing Canada’s carbon tax. Poilievre is basically just a conventional Canadian conservative who wraps up his elite-friendly agenda in anti-elite language aimed at working-class voters. He’s the kind of politician that some Republicans wish Donald Trump was: a tame populist. Understanding Poilievre isn’t just of interest to Canadians. There are reasons that his brand of populism is less virulent than what’s cropped up in many other Atlantic democracies — ones that hold important lessons for safeguarding democracy around the world. Why Pierre Poilievre doesn’t fit the far-right script The University of Georgia’s Cas Mudde, one of the leading scholars of the European right, has developed what is (to my mind) the most useful definition of radical right politics today. In his account, this party family — factions like Hungary’s Fidesz, France’s National Rally, and the US GOP — share three essential qualities. First, they are nativist; they strongly oppose immigration and multiculturalism. Second, they are willing to use aggressive, even authoritarian measures to deal with social disorder like undocumented migration and crime. Finally, they are populist, meaning that they define politics as a struggle between a virtuous people and a corrupt elite. Poilievre is certainly a populist. A right-wing operative and politician since he was a teenager, he rocketed to the top of the Conservative Party hierarchy after emerging as the most vocal champion of the 2022 Ottawa occupation. The uprising, which began against pandemic restrictions but swiftly became a broader far-right movement, was quite unpopular nationally. But inside the Conservative Party, there was enough support for its “pro-freedom” message that Poilievre rode his pro-convoy stance to victory in the party’s subsequent leadership election. Steve Russell/Toronto Star/Getty Images A protester makes his stand as police remove the “Freedom Convoy” from Ottawa on February 18, 2022. Since then, his populism has focused relentlessly on attacking the media, “globalists,” and (above all) Trudeau. Casting the fight between his Conservatives and Trudeau’s Liberals as the “have-nots” versus the “have-yachts,” he has argued that the prime minister embodies a debased Ottawa establishment out of touch with the needs and values of ordinary Canadians. In a recent speech, Poilievre cast Trudeau as an “elitist” leader gunning for Canada’s freedoms. “If he had read Nineteen Eighty-Four, he would have thought it was an instruction manual,” Poilievre argued. Somewhat ironically, Poilievre also believes Canada’s criminal justice system should be harsher. Blaming Trudeau for a recent rise in car thefts, Poilievre has argued for a reimposition of mandatory minimum sentences and other tough-on-crime policies. This means there’s at least a case that he also fits the second prong of Mudde’s definition of radical right politics. But on the first prong, nativism, Poilievre clearly diverges from Trump and the European far right. He has publicly insisted that “the Conservative party is pro-immigration,” and he has made appealing directly to immigrants a central part of his campaign strategy. “It doesn’t matter if your name is Poilievre or Patel, Martin or Mohamed,” he said at a Diwali event in October 2022. “If you’re prepared to work hard, contribute, follow the rules, raise your family, you can achieve your dreams in this country.” While he has called for a decrease in current levels of immigration, he has refused to specify a target for said cuts. His most recent position is that immigration levels should be linked to housing supply — the more houses and apartments built, the more immigrants should be let in. And since he is solidly pro-construction, that doesn’t necessarily imply that immigration needs to be cut radically. This a far cry from Trump’s claim that Mexico is sending rapists and drug dealers, or Dutch radical Geert Wilders’ (recently withdrawn) proposal to ban mosques in the Netherlands. Poilievre may assail the media and champion right-wing hooliganism on the streets of Ottawa, but he’s unwilling to attack immigrants and ethnic minorities in the way that others in the global far right do. Rather, Poilievre’s politics seem more shaped by Canada’s longstanding populist tradition than anything new or global. Arising primarily in Western provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Poilievre’s native Alberta), Canadian “prairie populism” historically draws strength from the notion that the federal government cares more about the population centers in Quebec and Ontario than the rest of the country. Prairie populism, which comes in left- and right-wing varieties, focuses far more on regional and economic issues than the cultural obsessions of the modern far right. “We have had a long history of populism — particularly in the prairie provinces, the Western provinces — going back to the 1920s and 30s,” says Keith Banting, a professor at Queen’s University in Ontario. “Populism draws less extensively on anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada than it does almost anywhere else.” Indeed, Poilievre’s biggest focus is cost-of-living issues — blaming ordinary people’s economic pain on high taxes and big government. His signature proposals are repealing Trudeau’s carbon tax, cutting spending to fight inflation, and removing restrictions on housing construction. You can think whatever you want about the merits of these various views (personally, I’m against the first two and for the third), but they’re basically what you would expect from any Conservative Party leader in his position: the historic party of Canada’s wealthy calling for lowering taxes and shrinking government. While the global far right is unbendingly hostile to immigration and flexible on size-of-government questions, Poilievre is essentially the reverse. Poilievre’s “plutocratic populism” While Poilievre is a very Canadian figure, fitting solidly into the right-wing prairie populist tradition, his politics also have a lot in common with a concept developed for the United States: political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s “plutocratic populism.” In their book Let Them Eat Tweets, Hacker and Pierson argue that the Republican Party uses culture war as a vehicle to attract popular support for a party that primarily caters to the interests of the rich. This strategy of “exploiting white identity to defend wealth inequality” allowed Trump’s GOP to attract downscale, non-college-educated voters without abandoning its core commitment to tax cuts and deregulation. But in the United States, the populists ate the plutocrats. Trump’s anti-democratic instability and economic heterodoxy on issues like trade led some GOP billionaires, like the Koch family, to try and unseat him in the 2024 primary. They failed miserably and now are slinking back. In the Republican Party, MAGA is calling the shots. Poilievre, by contrast, keeps his populism within plutocrat-acceptable bounds. His rhetorical gestures toward the working class are paired with solidly pro-rich policy views and a distinct absence of attacks on the democratic system itself. In 2013, he claimed to be “the first federal politician to make a dedicated push” toward imposing US-style right-to-work laws in Canada. He has endorsed tax cuts for the rich and cuts to social spending. His trade policy is far more free-market than Trump’s. There are no signs that he would challenge the legitimacy of Canadian elections, let alone stage a January 6-style insurrection. None of this should be surprising. Poilievre is a longtime creature of the Conservative Party, a cabinet minister in former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government. He is not an anti-establishment figure like Trump but rather a member of the establishment. There’s no reason to believe his leadership would seriously diverge from the Conservative Party’s historic policy priorities to any major degree. He is the kind of “populist” that people like the Kochs wish Trump was. What the world can learn from Canada’s tame populism All that being said, Poilievre’s populist positioning is not harmless. There are genuine costs to villainizing your political rivals, mainstreaming conspiracy theories, and corroding public trust in the media. In the long run, this rhetoric can corrode the bonds of citizenship and raise polarization to dangerous levels. His proposal to defund the CBC’s English-language broadcasts is concerning; if implemented, it would be quite damaging to Canada’s civic health. Perhaps for this reason, many members of his own party oppose the idea. Yet in comparison to places with significant far-right problems —like the United States or even Germany — Canada’s democracy is still in relatively safe waters. Poilievre’s aggressive rhetoric is worrying, but it’s hardly a system-threatening danger akin to Trump’s election denialism. This speaks, more than anything else, to the durability of what’s been termed “Canadian exceptionalism:” an unusual level of resistance to far-right populism when compared to its peers in the Atlantic world. Generally speaking, Canadian exceptionalism seems to stem from the country’s historically high levels of public support for immigration and multiculturalism. Unerringly, right-wing extremist parties around the world draw the core of their strength from majority-group voters concerned about ethnic and religious minorities. While such people certainly exist in Canada, they are a smaller percentage of the overall population than in peer democracies and, accordingly, less politically influential. This exceptionalism is rooted in Canada’s distinct national identity as one that elevates the ideas of tolerance and diversity into defining and distinctive national values. In fact, Canadians who express higher levels of patriotism tend to be more supportive of immigration (in the United States, the relationship unsurprisingly goes the other way). Steve Russell/Toronto Star/Getty Images Canadians Maryam and Nore Kasmeih wait for Syrian refugees at the airport on December 10, 2015. Between Poilievre’s rise to power and a recent poll showing concern about immigration driving up housing costs, some have worried that this may be ending. But a closer look suggests that these are actually testaments to the enduring power of Canadian exceptionalism. The Canadian Conservative Party has remained in bounds on issues of immigration and identity because going harder would be politically counterproductive (as the public disapproval of the trucker protest showed). Even amid the current concern about rising home prices, a majority of Canadians believe that immigration levels should be kept the same or increased. If Poilievre is a tame populist, the people responsible for taming him were not the Canadian rich but rather the Canadian majority. His populism is primarily rhetorical — rather than system-threatening — because the Canadian system for limiting extremism is still basically intact. The lesson for the rest of the world is that Canada is onto something. Several decades of official multiculturalism have helped it build up antibodies to the infection eating away at democracies as different as the United States, Hungary, India, and Israel. Liberals and democrats everywhere should be trying to think about how to build their own variants of this ideology at home. Realistically, this is a long-term project. Canada’s multiculturalism project began under Trudeau’s father, Pierre, in 1971. It took decades for it to build on itself and become an authentic part of Canadian identity, one strong enough to create barriers to far-right politics. This isn’t something that can be adopted overnight in response to an extremist challenge; in fact, the very existence of that challenge creates a significant barrier to moving in Canada’s direction. But at the same time, the crisis of global democracy may be the time to get started. Canada’s multiculturalism policy was in large part a response to internal conflict and crisis: violent Quebecois separatism rooted in French-Canadian desire for cultural autonomy. Perhaps the current crisis in global democracies will create a similar incentive to start thinking about long-term policy ambitions in their own countries. At the very least, the rise of Poilievre should not be seen as a failure of the Canadian model. If anything, his relatively neutered populism should be seen as a testament to its strength

Preview: Gazan teams, civil defense, crime scene investigation, and forensics continue to carry out investigation at the scene after Israeli siege and attacks that destroyed Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza, on April 17, 2024. | Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images What we know — and what we don’t — about the mass graves at Gaza hospitals. A mass grave with 324 bodies was uncovered at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, members of Gaza Civil Defense said over the weekend. The discovery follows reports of similar mass graves at the al-Shifa Hospital complex, where some 381 bodies have been exhumed since Israeli troops withdrew from the facility at the beginning of April. As part of its ongoing war in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the Israeli military conducted extensive raids at both hospitals earlier this year. There’s a lot that’s unknown about the victims, including their causes of death. Some bodies had been buried at and around the hospital grounds because they could not safely be interred at cemeteries. But the sharp increases in the number of dead raise concerns that both hospitals could be the sites of serious crimes, including possibly extrajudicial killings, that require an independent investigation, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. That’s why the discovery of hundreds of bodies in the grave sites is so alarming. There are allegations that IDF soldiers moved bodies that were temporarily buried at the hospital, which could lead to families losing track of remains, among other issues. Hospitals are supposed to be protected spaces under international humanitarian law, with an exceptionally high legal bar for carrying out military operations there. And if people were killed during those raids, authorities must be able to determine who they were and how they died, as the intentional killing of civilians is a war crime. In the near term, the ongoing conflict will make it difficult to determine exactly what happened, hindering accountability efforts if wrongdoing occurred. Some of the victims “were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands ... tied and stripped of their clothes,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Tuesday in a press release. (The UN has not said if it has independently verified these reports but has said they have “renewed concerns about possible war crimes amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes.”) The Israeli military has rejected the idea that its soldiers buried the bodies, calling such accusations ”baseless and unfounded.” The IDF told CNN that it had examined some bodies in their search for the remains of Israeli hostages, but returned the remains “to their place.” Here’s what we know about the graves Starting last fall, Israeli forces targeted Gaza’s hospitals with bombing campaigns and with weeks-long raids at Nasser and al-Shifa, on the premise that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure like hospitals to plan and conduct operations. After a siege on al-Shifa Hospital and a later raid, as well as one on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, medical officers suggested many had died. It is not clear how many people were killed in each hospital, how they died, or who they were. Here’s what we do know about what happened at each hospital. Al-Shifa Hospital At al-Shifa Hospital, the IDF says that it killed 200 “terrorists” hiding at the facility and has for months alleged that the hospital was a base of Hamas operations. Hamas media officials say that 400 people were killed during the raid, including at least 20 patients who died from lack of access to medical care, according to the WHO. Hospital staff have denied that Hamas fighters were at the hospital, according to Reuters. Al-Shifa was destroyed, rendered essentially inoperable during the raid. Nasser Hospital According to the IDF, its February attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis was an operation to recover the remains of Israeli hostages thought to be at the facility. At the time, the IDF told Vox, without providing any evidence to support this assertion, that “Hamas terrorists are likely hiding behind injured civilians inside Nasser Hospital right now and appear to have used the hospital to hide our hostages there too.” The IDF later claimed to have detained 200 “terrorists and suspects in terrorist activities,” but when contacted this week, the IDF did not provide information about what happened to those detained. Some bodies had been buried at a temporary site at Nasser Hospital during the Israeli siege and raid in February, according to Gaza Civil Defense. But the number of bodies discovered after the raids surpasses the number previously thought to be buried at either site, and it’s not clear where the new bodies came from. Furthermore, Col. Yamen Abu Suleiman, head of Gaza Civil Defense in Khan Younis, said some of the bodies at the mass grave at Nasser Hospital show signs of summary execution, and some bodies had their hands and feet bound. “We do not know if they were buried alive or executed,” he told CNN. “Most of the bodies are decomposed.” (CNN and other media organizations have not been able to independently verify these allegations.) The group is also searching for the bodies of about 400 people missing since Israeli forces left Nasser Hospital. The broader picture Those allegations — and the uncertainty around where the unexpected bodies came from — prompted UN human rights commissioner Volker Türk’s call for “a clear, transparent and credible investigation” into how the people buried at the sites died. “What appears to have happened, or what is alleged to have happened, is that the IDF dug up many of those bodies, removed identifying information, and then put the bodies back in the grave,” Adil Haque, an international humanitarian law professor at Rutgers University, told Vox. “So now people can’t identify their loved ones without great difficulty.” There are provisions in international law regarding the dignity of the dead; people should, whenever possible, be buried in marked graves, and their families and loved ones should be able to engage in mourning practices. The presence of mass graves can indicate improper burials, though that is not always the case. Very little is known about the mass graves so far, especially what happened to the new people buried within them — and that is what’s alarming. “The question is, what happened during the IDF takeover of the hospital that explains why there’s so many more bodies in the grave than were originally there?” Haque said. And it’s not clear that the justification for the raids on the hospitals was legal under international humanitarian law, given that medical facilities and personnel receive special protection. “You cannot attack a hospital, medical services, medical units; medical personnel and medical institutions must be protected,” Anjli Parrin, director of the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, told Vox. “That you’re seeing large numbers of deceased individuals at a hospital is very troubling. There’s a question not just of the bodies but why did you attack these places? Who were the civilians harmed? Was it really the only option? Was it under the legal standard of hostile acts harmful to the enemy?” Mass graves show a real need for an independent investigation What happened to the people in the mass graves and why they are there is difficult to understand in part because of the lack of independent information coming out of Gaza. No outside reporters have been allowed in, almost a hundred Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, aid groups struggle to operate, and independent investigative bodies have not been able to access the territory. “That we don’t know is not good enough,” Parrin said. “The discovery of these mass graves suggests that there’s a really urgent need to carry out investigations, one, but even before you get to that point, to preserve evidence, which the International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to do” following the court’s January ruling that Israel was not doing enough to prevent genocide in Gaza. If the IDF indeed willfully killed civilians or even militants hors de combat — meaning they’re not on the battlefield due to injury, for example — at the hospitals, that would be a crime. All of the parties to combat are obligated to make sure that evidence is preserved for later investigations and prosecution per IHL. But getting that investigation into motion will be difficult; for one, it’s not clear who would carry it out, though Haque suggested that the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, or the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights would be the appropriate bodies. And there would need to be a ceasefire, or at the very least guarantees that the investigators could carry out their work safely. But there is still the question of why Israel has raided so many hospitals in Gaza, which, as Parrin said, is highly unusual in conflict. “There’s a risk [that] this kind of conduct becomes normalized,” she said. “It would be very worrying for other conflicts. It shouldn’t be the situation that attacks on a hospital are somehow justified.”

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