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: How Trump's tariffs could affect the UK and your money  BBC Reciprocal Tariff Calculations  United States Trade Representative (.gov) Trump’s tariffs send Seattle shoppers scrambling ahead of price hikes  The Seattle Times Dow drops 1,600 as US stocks lead worldwide sell-off after Trump’s tariffs cause a COVID-like shock  AP News Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Declares National Emergency to Increase our Competitive Edge, Protect our Sovereignty, and Strengthen our National and Economic Security  The White House (.gov)

Preview: Family of teen stabbed to death at Texas track meet speaks out: 'He didn't deserve it'  ABC News Man says son was stabbed in the heart at high school track meet, died in twin's arms  NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth Man says son was stabbed in the heart at Texas track meet, died in twin’s arms  NBC News Frisco track meet stabbing: 1 student killed, another charged with murder  FOX 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth Texas high school football star Austin Metcalf stabbed in the heart, left to die in twin brother’s arms at track meet: dad  New York Post

Preview: Trump moves to fire several national security officials deemed insufficiently loyal, AP sources say  AP News Trump Live Updates: National Security Officials Said to Be Fired at Laura Loomer's Urging  The New York Times White House fires multiple administration officials after president meets with far-right activist Laura Loomer  CNN Scoop: Multiple firings on Trump's National Security Council after Loomer visit  Axios Trump moves to fire several national security officials over concerns they're not loyal: AP sources  Yahoo

Preview: Republicans Plan to Skirt Senate Rules to Push Through More Tax Cuts  The New York Times Rand Paul is ready to squeeze GOP senators on their $5T debt hike  Politico The Senate's next moves to pass Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'  Fox News Senate Republicans move forward with their budget plan to promote Trump's agenda  NPR Senate Republicans Decide Against Having a Real Budget  New York Magazine

Preview: Republicans weigh using the power of Congress to rein in Trump on tariffs  NBC News Trump tariffs live updates: Senators introduce bipartisan bill to rein in presidential tariff authority  The Washington Post Trump tariffs live updates: Canada announces counter tariffs on vehicles  ABC News Top Republican leads bill to reassert Congress’ tariff power amid Trump trade war  Politico Senators unveil bill to claw back power over tariffs amid Trump trade wars  The Guardian

Preview: Hungary withdraws from International Criminal Court during Netanyahu visit  BBC Trump speaks to Orbán and Netanyahu on Hungary's withdrawal from ICC  Axios Hungary announces plan to quit International Criminal Court as Netanyahu arrives in Budapest  AP News Hungary will withdraw from ICC, government says during Netanyahu visit  The Washington Post Netanyahu defies international arrest warrant on visit to Hungary  NBC News

Preview: After promising transparency, RFK guts public records teams at HHS  NPR RFK Jr. announces HHS reinstating some programs, employees cut by mistake  ABC News Kennedy shutters several FOIA offices at HHS  Politico NIH is the largest funder of cancer research. Here's how the Trump administration cuts could impact patients.  CBS News US Health Department Says It May Ask Fired Staff to Keep Working  U.S. News & World Report

Preview: NYC Mayor Eric Adams says he will run for reelection as an independent  CNN Adams to skip New York City’s Democratic primary, run for reelection on nonpartisan line  Politico NYC Mayor Eric Adams says he's leaving Democratic primary to run for re-election as an independent  Fox News Eric Adams announces he will run as independent in New York mayoral race  NBC News Eric Adams to Run as an Independent, Skipping Democratic Primary  The New York Times

Preview: US South, Midwest face 'generational' flood threat after severe storms, two dead  Reuters ‘Potentially historic’ flooding threat looms after almost 100 tornadoes hit US  The Guardian 'Historic' flooding threaten these US states: See maps  USA Today 'Generational flooding' possible from Arkansas to Indiana through weekend as central US battered by heavy rain  FOX Weather Severe weather live updates: 'Life-threatening, catastrophic' flash floods and tornadoes to hit Midwest and South  NBC News

Preview: Trump Commerce Secretary Makes WTF Claim On Fox News About America's 'Beautiful' Beef  HuffPostView Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: Sources told The New York Times that the president doesn't intend to cut ties with Musk after the billionaire leaves the government.

Preview: The conservative newspaper's editorial board listed some of the ways the move could backfire on the president and his agenda.

Preview: Wait until you hear who lives there.

Preview: Michael Kosta hits the president with some very specific receipts.

Preview: Former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Rand Paul and others slammed the tariffs as a tax hike on American families.

Preview: Matthew Modine shared a story about running into an "upset" Kilmer at a Los Angeles restaurant in the '80s and how it may have changed his career.

Preview: The Democratic congresswoman had it with the attorney general after she warned Crockett to "tread very carefully" with her Elon Musk criticism.

Preview: Harry Enten said this move by the billionaire "may have backfired" after Judge Brad Schimel's defeat in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Preview: "Timing is everything in this world, isn't it? [My sister] and Syd are obviously great friends, and it was a hell of a wedding," Powell said Wednesday on the "Today" show.

Preview: “You traveled to Washington to surrender before you had even begun to fight," the family of the late Judge Simon Rifkind wrote to the chairman of Paul Weiss.

Preview: Mehmet Oz, the television personality and failed U.S. Senate candidate, was confirmed Thursday as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in a largely bipartisan vote.

Preview: Mike Johnson's loss on proxy voting to Anna Paulina Luna — and decision to tell Congress to go home — shows his weakness when Trump isn't by his side.

Preview: Some of MAGA world’s most influential figures, like Joe Rogan and Ann Coulter, are turning on Trump over his immigration crackdown and mass deportations.

Preview: The president's massive tariffs on countries all over the world will bring economic hardship to Americans.

Preview: The White House said that the “case has been closed” on Signalgate, but he Pentagon’s inspector general just opened it back up, examining Pete Hegseth.

Preview: Senate Republicans setting up their budget bill for Trump's agenda are risking it failing before the parliamentarian and blowing up reconciliation hopes.

Preview: When four constitutional amendments lost Saturday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry blamed "far left liberals" and George Soros instead of accepting the voters' will.

Preview: Adams said he will run as an independent, giving himself more time to mend his reputation after politically ruinous controversies.

Preview: In the ongoing litigation fallout from President Donald Trump’s blanket Jan. 6 pardon, two of his federal appellate appointees just split on the scope of the clemency.

Preview: The 51-48 vote supporting Sen. Tim Kaine's resolution represented the most striking bipartisan rebuke of White House policy since Trump's second term began.

Preview: The U.S. economy has largely withstood inflation and high interest rates. But tariffs could bring new price increases and put a damper on hiring.

Preview: The company counts on the sale of devices for three-quarters of its nearly $400 billion in annual revenue, and it makes almost all of its iPhones, iPads and Macs overseas.

Preview: State education officials will be required to verify that they have eliminated all programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion that the administration deems unlawful, according to a new memo.

Preview: Trump cutbacks were supposedly aimed at administrators. But scientists in food and drug-testing labs and policy experts who advance generic drug approvals were also dismissed.

Preview: What do a disgraced former governor, a once-indicted mayor and a former Guardian Angel have in common? They all may be on the November ballot in the New York City mayor’s race.

Preview: Charges of antisemitism and liberal bias, and dismay over cuts to the opera budget, have led to a small mutiny at Chautauqua Institution. And this was after the attack on Salman Rushdie.

Preview: The band’s singer and bassist recounts his personal struggles and the dramatic ins and outs of the trio’s history in a new memoir, “Fahrenheit-182.”

Preview: The Israeli military said it was looking into reports about the deaths at a school-turned-shelter, which came as Israel was intensifying its offensive in Gaza to pressure Hamas to release hostages.

Preview: Hungary said it would pull out of the International Criminal Court as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visited the country.

Preview: Israel defended the moves as necessary security measures, but Syria accused it of trying to destabilize the country.

Preview: Plus: haircuts, trips to the mall, and not slapping someone in the face.

Preview: Khalil's best hope going forward is to rely on a Supreme Court decision won by radical New York lawyer Carol Weiss King.

Preview: The big question on every viewer’s mind could go one of several ways.

Preview: The “Mission South Africa” program has been a long time coming.

Preview: Is this normal?

Preview: I’m just not sure this will work.

Preview: I don’t deserve this.

Preview: Test your wits on the Slate Quiz for April 3, 2025.

Preview: Take a quick break with our daily 5x5 grid.

Preview: Ready for some wordplay? Sharpen your skills with Slate’s puzzle for April 3, 2025.

Preview: President Donald Trump displays a signed executive order imposing tariffs on imported goods at the White House on April 2, 2025. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The Trump administration’s tariffs are, by every reasonable account, an economic catastrophe in the making. So why are they happening? One explanation is that this is simply democracy at work. President Donald Trump campaigned on doing more or less exactly what he’s just done, and the voting public elected him. So here we are. That’s at best a partial story. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to see Trump’s tariffs as a symptom of democratic decay — of America transitioning into a kind of strange hybrid system that combines both authoritarian and democratic features. Were America’s democracy functioning properly, Trump wouldn’t have the power to impose such broad tariffs unilaterally. Congress, not the presidency, has the constitutional authority to raise taxes — and tariffs are, of course, a tax on imports. Yet the basic design of the American system has broken down, allowing the president to usurp far more authority than is healthy. In many policy areas, the presidency functions less like a democratic chief executive who operates under constraint and more like an elected dictatorship.  And historically, dictatorships — elected or otherwise — suffer from a fatal flaw: they have no ability to stop the people at the top from acting on their policy whims and, in the process, producing national disasters. This tendency is why democracy tends to produce superior policy outcomes over the long run; why America, and not Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, won the 20th century. The tariffs, in short, show the true stakes of democratic decline. It’s not just a matter of abstract principle, but the difference between stability and disaster. America’s democratic decline caused the tariffs When Donald Trump and Elon Musk began laying waste to the federal government in February, the political scientist Adam Przeworski declared himself “at a loss.” Though Przeworski is one of the world’s most eminent scholars of comparative democracy, author of many defining pieces in the field, he could not find the right vocabulary to describe what was happening in the United States. Though “Trump was elected in fair elections,” his subsequent policy agenda amounted to “revolutionary change of the relation between the state and society” — one that attempts to replace the rules and norms that define democratic politics with something very different. Understanding America in this more textured sense, as a country under a new and confusing regime that is both democratic and not, helps us make better sense out of the Trump tariff debacle. On the one hand, an electorate that picked Trump is getting one of Trump’s signature policies. Sometimes, in democracies, demagogues win elections — a problem so old that you can find a discussion of it in Plato’s Republic. On the other hand, democracies rely on legal rules constraining the executive to prevent any such demagogue from becoming a dictator. In the American system, that means a complex system of constitutional checks and balances — one of which is the Constitution granting taxation powers to Congress and Congress alone. Yet instead of asking for statutory authorization to raise tariffs, Trump is exploiting broadly worded emergency legislation to do an end-run around the legislative branch. This is what a hybrid political system looks like in practice. The United States still has free and fair elections at all levels of government, and is in that sense democratic. But elections don’t matter in the way that they’re supposed to, because the people’s representatives in Congress are not playing their constitutionally assigned policymaking role. This is the autocratic component of the current American system, one that enables the president to sabotage the global economy if he so wishes. The transformation of America, from democracy to Frankensteinian amalgam, has been in the works for decades. The primary culprit is Congress, which has — due to a combination of partisanship and political cowardice — become both unable and unwilling to act as the supreme lawmaking body. Instead, it began delegating significant amounts of its own authority to the executive. Sometimes, this was intentional — authorizing the president to make policy through executive agencies, creating the “administrative state” conservatives decry. Sometimes, it was unintentional: Congress giving the president vague emergency powers that were supposed to function in narrow circumstances, but in practice allowed the president to act unilaterally in all sorts of “normal” policy debates. And sometimes, Congress simply did nothing on crucial policy issues — forcing the president to try to address them with dubiously broad interpretations of their own powers. The judicial branch deserves some blame too. While the Supreme Court has occasionally stepped in to address presidential overreach, it has done so in a haphazard and partisan way. Moreover, it has long deferred to the president on key issues like immigration, trade, and war. Observers on both the liberal left and the libertarian right warned for decades that growing executive power posed a problem for democracy and good policymaking. Obviously, they were right to do so in hindsight. Yet part of the reason that they were ignored is that there were other checks on the president that seemed to keep the executive in line. Some of these were internal executive branch checks. The White House relied on the Office of Legal Counsel — a group of senior executive branch attorneys — to provide independent opinions on the legality of various policy options. Internal policy shops like the Council of Economic Advisers provided informed expert opinions that would steer presidents toward more evidence-based policymaking. In dire cases, the Justice Department would probe potentially criminal activity by executive branch staff. Other checks were more informal. Fear of losing the war for public opinion might prevent a president from taking a particularly radical stance. The president’s own moral code, a sense that there are just certain things one shouldn’t do even if you can, also provided a kind of soft check on the abuse of power. But what’s clear now is that all of these internal mechanisms were voluntary. Trump has neutered executive branch checks on his authority and (clearly!) does not possess the judgment we expect from people in the highest office.  It turns out that the rest of the political system — and especially Congress — had created the conditions for our descent into a hybrid political system. The only barriers remaining were norms about how the executive branch should work, ones that a determined president like Trump could smash through with ease. The tariffs show why our hybrid system is so dangerous Sometimes, the stakes in this kind of conversation can feel a little fuzzy. Why does it matter if we are living in a hybrid system rather than a full democracy? Sure, the president may be powerful, but if we’ve still got elections, then isn’t everything going to be fine in the end?  The tariffs provide one of the clearest examples of why this matters for everyone: without democracy, the quality of our policymaking gets dangerously worse. Political scientists have long found that, on average, democracies produce better outcomes for citizens than authoritarian states. They produce higher rates of economic growth, superior technological innovation, better public health services, and are even more likely to win wars. One of the key reasons for democracy’s success has been its formalized policymaking process. Because laws are changed through legal and transparent processes, ones subject to public debate and legal oversight, they are more likely to both be well-informed by the best available evidence and corrected if something goes badly.  Authoritarian and hybrid regimes ditch these constraints, which allows them to make policy changes a lot faster. But it also enables one person, or a small group of people, to make radical decisions on a whim with disastrous consequences. Think about Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China, a direct product of the leader’s adherence to a Communist ideology that was out of touch with reality. While Trump’s tariffs are nowhere near as evil — the Great Leap Forward killed somewhere between 18 and 32 million people — the same formal problem contributed to both mistakes. For a more recent example, look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The disaster began with Putin’s personal obsession with the idea that Ukrainian nationhood was fake and that the territory was rightfully Russian. This notion went from Putin’s personal obsession to actual war because no one could stop him. Trump’s tariffs will, if fully implemented, be remembered as their own cautionary tale. While he campaigned on them, he wouldn’t have been able to implement the entire tariff package had he gone through the normal constitutionally prescribed procedure for raising taxes. The fact that America isn’t functioning like a normal democracy, with public deliberation and multiple checks on executive authority, is what allowed Trump to act on his idiosyncratic ideas in the manner of a Mao or Putin. Now, it’s still possible that Trump steps back from the brink. But even if he does, and the worst outcome is avoided, the lesson should be clear: the long decay of America’s democratic system means that we are all living under an axe. And if this isn’t the moment it falls, there will surely be another.

Preview: President Donald Trump delivers remarks on tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden on April 2, 2025. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs on pretty much everything imported into the United States. Among other things, the tariffs include a 10 percent minimum tax of imports outside of North America, a hodgepodge of different tax rates on Canadian and Mexican goods, a 25 percent tax on cars manufactured outside the US, and a chaotic mix of country-specific tariffs ranging from 10 to 50 percent. Trump’s tariffs are likely to deal a significant self-inflicted blow to the US economy. As of this writing, the S&P 500 — a common index used to track US stock prices — is down about 4 percent. The Budget Lab at Yale predicts that the tariffs will cause enough inflation to effectively reduce the average US household’s annual income by $3,789 in 2024 dollars. A similar analysis by Auckland University of Technology economics professor Niven Winchester predicts a $3,487 blow to US households. Thus far, Trump’s second presidential term has been a series of staring contests between Trump and the courts. Trump’s tariffs could lead to yet another, though the answer to the question of whether a lawsuit challenging them might succeed is quite unclear. And not just because the Supreme Court has shown great solicitude for Trump in recent years. The federal laws governing tariffs give the president very broad authority over trade policy generally, and specifically over tariff rates. A court concerned solely with following the text of federal law is likely to uphold Trump’s tariffs. But the current Supreme Court is not such a court. During the Biden administration, the Court’s Republican majority frequently used a novel legal doctrine known as “major questions” to strike down executive branch actions they deemed too ambitious. Under the doctrine, the courts are supposed to cast a particularly skeptical eye on executive branch actions “of vast ‘economic and political significance” — like, say, a new tax policy that is likely to cost the average American household thousands of dollars a year. The major questions doctrine cannot be found somewhere in the Constitution or a federal statute. It is fairly new, the Court has never explained where it comes from, and it appears to be entirely made up by the Republican justices. So it is difficult to predict whether those justices will apply it to a Republican president, or whether they will deem Trump’s tariffs a violation of this entirely arbitrary doctrine. Still, the argument that Trump’s tariffs violate the major questions doctrine is sufficiently straightforward that it would be easy for a judge to write an opinion reaching this conclusion.  It might seem that Republican judges, especially those appointed by Trump, would hesitate to apply the doctrine in a manner that would harm him. Judicial politics, however, do not always align perfectly with the behavior of elected officials. Federal judges serve for life, so they do not need to fear electoral retaliation if they break with a president of the same party. And justices sometimes have ideological commitments that trump their loyalty to whatever transient agenda their party’s political leaders are pushing at any given moment. The major questions doctrine centralizes power in the judiciary, something that members of the judiciary may find attractive. And a decision applying this doctrine to a Republican president would help legitimize it, as it has previously only been used against Biden. There is a very real chance, in other words, that five justices would place their commitment to judicial supervision of the executive above their commitment to Trump — striking down his tariffs in the process. Federal law gives Trump a great deal of authority to set tariffs In his executive order announcing the latest round of tariffs, Trump claims the power to do so under a wide range of federal laws, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trade Act of 1974. Though these laws do impose some constraints on Trump and his subordinates, those constraints are largely procedural and impose few substantive limits on the scope and size of tariffs. Under one provision of the Trade Act, for example, the US Trade Representative, a Cabinet-level position currently held by Jamieson Greer, must make certain findings — such as a determination that a foreign country’s conduct “is unjustifiable and burdens or restricts United States commerce,” or that this country’s actions are “unreasonable or discriminatory and burdens or restricts United States commerce” — before the United States may impose new tariffs under this act. Once Greer does so, however, executive power to tax imports is quite broad. The government may “impose duties or other import restrictions on the goods of, and, notwithstanding any other provision of law, fees or restrictions on the services of, such foreign country for such time as the trade representative determines appropriate.” Trump’s latest executive order, meanwhile, appears to rely heavily on his power to regulate trade after declaring a national emergency — the order makes such a declaration in response to what he labels “the domestic economic policies of key trading partners and structural imbalances in the global trading system.” Notably, this law only permits the president to declare such an emergency “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States,” but the law does not define terms like “national emergency” or “usual and extraordinary threat.” Once a declaration of emergency is in place, the president’s powers are quite broad under the statute. Trump may regulate “any property in which any foreign country or any national thereof has or has had any interest.” The Court doesn’t pay much attention to the text of federal laws in its major questions decisions Though the text of the laws governing presidential authority over tariffs give Trump and his administration a great deal of authority, so did another law known as the Heroes Act. That law gives the education secretary sweeping power to “waive or modify” student loan obligations “as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency” such as the Covid pandemic. But the Court’s Republican majority paid no heed to this broad statutory language in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), which struck down a Biden administration program that would have forgiven $10,000 worth of student loans for most borrowers. Nebraska relied, at least in part, on the major questions doctrine, claiming that the student loan forgiveness program was illegal because it was simply too big. “The ‘economic and political significance’ of the Secretary’s action is staggering by any measure,” the six Republican justices claimed in that opinion, pointing to a University of Pennsylvania analysis that concluded that the student loan forgiveness program would cost “between $469 billion and $519 billion.” Trump’s tariffs, meanwhile, involve similarly eye-popping numbers. According to the Census Bureau, there are about 127 million households in the United States. If Yale’s Budget Lab is correct that the average household will lose $3,789 in real annual income because of Trump’s tariffs, that means that American consumers face a staggering loss of more than $480 billion in real income. In fairness, Nebraska also pointed to what it called the “unprecedented nature of the Secretary’s debt cancellation plan” to justify its conclusion, and Trump may be able to point to a precedent for the kind of sweeping tariffs he recently announced. In 1971, President Richard Nixon briefly imposed a 10 percent tariff on nearly all foreign goods, and a federal appeals court upheld this tariff. Notably, however, Congress has since amended some of the laws that Nixon relied upon more than half a century ago. Additionally, there appears to be a bit of a debate over whether the major questions doctrine applies to laws that delegate power directly to the president — as opposed to a statute like the Heroes Act, which empowers a cabinet secretary or other agency-level official.  In Nebraska v. Su (2024), for example, the Biden administration argued that this doctrine does not apply to the president. Though the federal appeals court which heard this case did not reach this question, Trump-appointed Judge Ryan Nelson argued that it does — in part because the separation of powers concerns that animated decisions like Nebraska apply equally regardless of whether executive power is exercised by the president or one of his subordinates. It’s impossible to guess whether the current slate of justices will rule that the Nixon precedent justifies setting aside the major questions doctrine, or whether they will conclude that this doctrine does not apply to Trump. Again, this doctrine is brand new, is not grounded in any constitutional or statutory text, and appears to be entirely made up by the Court’s Republican majority. So asking whether this fabricated doctrine applies to the president is a bit like asking your daughter if her imaginary friend likes to dance. The answer is whatever she wants it to be. Still, the case for applying the major questions doctrine to Trump’s tariff is at least as strong as the argument for applying it to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. And, while this Court has been extraordinarily protective of Trump in the past, there are cynical partisan reasons why its Republican majority may want to apply the major questions doctrine to Trump in this case — Republicans would likely get crushed in the next election if Trump tanks the economy with his tariffs.

Preview: Donald Trump speaks while holding a chart illustrating non-reciprocal tariff examples during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019. President Donald Trump’s defenders often frame his trade policies as prioritizing economic development over the free market.  In their telling, America has an interest in manufacturing valuable goods domestically, even if producing such wares in the US is not maximally profitable right now. Our nation might not currently make semiconductors as well as Taiwan or electric vehicles as well as China. But if we protect our nascent chip and EV industries, they might eventually become globally competitive. And that could make America wealthier, as the international market for such technologies will be large and opportunities for productivity gains in those industries are significant.  This is a reasonable argument for the utility of tariffs in some contexts. But it doesn’t amount to a case for Donald Trump’s tariffs. On Wednesday, Trump announced that he will impose a 10 percent minimum tariff on all foreign imports, and much stiffer rates on most nations: 20 percent for goods made in the European Union, 46 percent for Vietnam, and 54 percent for China. In a sign of the policy’s intellectual caliber, the president also ordered a 10 percent tariff on all exports from two uninhabited Antarctic islands (perhaps on the assumption that penguins will soon develop opposable thumbs thumbs and heavy industry). Traditionally, countries use tariffs and industrial policy to climb the international “value chain” — to go from producing simple goods (like T-shirts) or basic commodities (like lumber) to making complex products that are more valuable. But Trump’s trade policies would move the United States down the value chain. His tariffs are not designed to foster domestic production of a few highly valuable, cutting-edge products. Rather, he aims to move more or less all forms of manufacturing to the United States. His tariffs apply to all imported goods, from kitchen mitts to airplanes.  As Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal notes, this would likely make the United States less competitive in the world’s most lucrative markets. If America lets poorer countries supply it with T-shirts and aluminum, it can dedicate more of its resources to producing semiconductors, airplanes, chemicals, medical equipment, software, and artificial intelligence.  The more capital and labor we must devote to providing ourselves with socks and aprons, the less we’ll have to expend on more fruitful enterprises.  Trump’s tariffs aren’t rooted in rational development aims. The president is not trying to dominate the industries of the future — he’s trying to bring back the economy of the past. Nostalgia is the point. America’s right-wing nationalists associate the manufacturing-heavy economy of the 1950s and 1960s with a favored set of social and material conditions. It was an era when rates of wage growth, marriage, and fertility were high, and regional inequality was low. And they believe that they can bend the arc of history back toward that golden age by dramatically increasing US manufacturing employment.  But this is a fantasy. America can only return to the mid-century industrial economy in the sense that it can return to subsistence farming: It is technically possible to embrace an anachronistic mode of production, but only at immense economic cost.  Why the right longs for the postwar industrial economy I don’t mean to assert that nostalgia is the driving force behind Trump’s trade agenda. Other motivations and intuitions are surely at play. For example, Trump seems to view trade as a zero-sum game, in which the loser is whichever country buys more goods than it sells. Nevertheless, nostalgia for the postwar industrial economy suffuses the nationalist right’s rhetoric about trade policy, and informs its fixation on manufacturing employment.  In the “America first” movement’s narrative of national decline, deindustrialization — which is to say, the economy’s shift away from manufacturing and toward services — is synonymous with economic devastation and moral rot.  The basic story goes like this: In a bygone, golden era, American workers made things in factories, formed stable families, and coalesced into tight-knit communities. But then corrupt, globalist elites shipped US manufacturing jobs overseas, devastating middle-class workers in general — and male ones in particular. Marriage rates collapsed, communities frayed, and moral standards declined. By reshoring production, America’s former greatness can be restored. As Trump explained in his first inaugural address, America’s fall from greatness began when “factories shuttered and left our shores” and the “wealth of our middle class” was “ripped from their homes,” leaving “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation” while “crime and gangs and drugs” festered in the ruins. In his speech to Congress this year, the president gestured at similar themes, arguing that “tariffs are not just about protecting American jobs.  They’re about protecting the soul of our country.” For the Trumpist right, the US economy’s shift away from manufacturing and toward services not only had ruinous economic effects, but destabilizing social implications.  The industrial economy put a premium on brute strength, which men are far more likely to possess than women. The post-industrial economy, by contrast, features somewhat less demand for brawn, and considerable need for soft skills commonly associated with women. Deindustrialization was therefore a crisis for men in particular.  “Over the last 30 years and more, government policy has helped destroy the kind of economy that gave meaning to generations of men,” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley argued in a 2021 speech. “Domestic manufacturing once supported millions of American men with good wages, who in turn started and supported families. Now that industry lies all but dead on the altar of globalism.” Some pro-Trump conservatives explicitly blame men’s declining economic advantage over women for falling marriage and birth rates. They argue that women tend to prefer singledom to partnering with a man who enjoys less economic status or earning potential than themselves. Therefore, to promote family formation, you need to improve men’s economic outcomes at women’s expense.  As one influential right-wing influencer mused on X, “you do not solve low birth rates by giving money to women, you solve low birth rates by taking money away from women.” National Review contributor Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry recently endorsed another X user’s sentiment that “fertility is a solved problem and tracks differential status between men and women.” It is unclear whether Trump and his allies consciously see reindustrialization as a strategy for shifting gender relations in men’s favor. But the broad sense that the industrial economy was good for male workers specifically — and thus, for family formation — permeates the nationalist right’s rhetoric. Deindustrialization really did lead to lower wages and marriage rates The right’s nostalgia for the industrial economy is understandable. From the end of World War II through the 1960s, more than one-quarter of US laborers worked in manufacturing (today, that figure is 9.7 percent). And those decades of high manufacturing employment witnessed exceptionally high rates of wage growth and economic mobility. Between 1948 and 1973, hourly compensation in the US climbed by 91.3 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Over the ensuing 50 years, by contrast, hourly wages grew by just 9.2 percent. Meanwhile, a child born into the bottom half of America’s income distribution in 1940 had a 93 percent chance of outearning their parents, according to economist Raj Chetty’s research. A child born into similar circumstances in 1980, by contrast, had just a 45 percent chance of doing so. What’s more, deindustrialization coincided with a profound shift in the relative economic power of men and women in the United States. Men bore the brunt of wage stagnation: From 1979 to 2019, the median male worker’s weekly earnings fell by roughly 3 percent, while the median female worker’s jumped by more than 30 percent. The correlation between all these economic developments and the decline of manufacturing employment is not coincidental.  In the postwar period, manufacturing workers earned significantly more than similarly skilled laborers in other occupations, enjoying a 12 percent wage premium in 1983, according to the Cleveland Federal Reserve. Thus, as the manufacturing sector hemorrhaged jobs, millions of (disproportionately male) workers transitioned into less remunerative employment. The manufacturing sector’s unusually high pay reflected two key characteristics of the industry. First, it is easier to achieve productivity gains in manufacturing than in many service-sector occupations. Increasing the number of widgets a factory worker can produce in an hour is a more straightforward engineering challenge than, say, increasing the number of children an individual daycare worker can nurture over the same period.  Second, the manufacturing sector was more heavily unionized than other parts of the economy. In 1980, 32.3 percent of manufacturing workers were organized, compared to 15 percent of all other private sector workers. The decline of manufacturing employment was therefore synonymous with the decline of unionization. And since unionized employers tend to pay higher wages than non-union ones, this likely contributed to wage stagnation. To be clear, the decline of manufacturing was not the sole — or even primary — driver of slowing wage growth or rising income inequality in the US over the past half-century. Productivity and GDP growth rates slowed during the past 50 years, which limited opportunities for wage gains. Meanwhile, pay inequality within all sectors of the economy grew, as high-skilled workers across industries saw their advantage over less-educated workers swell. Nevertheless, the decline of manufacturing explains about a quarter of the jump in US income inequality between the 1980s and 2000s, according to a 2019 IMF working paper. Deindustrialization also fed regional inequality, as localities that were economically dependent on manufacturing suffered wrenching economic decline while those dependent on the provision of high-end services such as finance or software development thrived. Some measures show a 40 percent increase in such inequality since 1980.  Finally, there is evidence that the decline of manufacturing did in fact lead to lower marriage and birth rates, as a result of men losing economic status relative to women. The economists David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson have found that trade shocks — in which localities suffer manufacturing job losses as a result of foreign competition — reduce the earnings of young men relative to young women, and consequently see lower marriage and fertility rates. All of which is to say, right-wing nationalists aren’t wrong to believe that deindustrialization contributed to many of the economic and social trends that they decry. But it does not follow that Trump can reverse these trends by imposing giant tariffs on Vietnam, Bangladesh, and floating chunks of ice in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean. Why America can’t tariff its way back to an industrial economy In the nationalist right’s account, the decline of manufacturing employment was the contingent result of bad trade policies: Were it not for the machinations of globalist elites, the past half-century of factory closures could have been averted. But this is false. America’s pursuit of free trade surely influenced the scale and speed of deindustrialization. With a different set of trade policies, manufacturing employment in the US could have been marginally higher today. Nevertheless, the United States was bound to see a massive reduction in manufacturing employment over the past 50 years, no matter what trade policy it pursued. The reasons are twofold: First, as consumers get wealthier, they spend less of their income on goods and more on services. Humanity’s appetite for appliances, cars, and other physical objects is more exhaustible than its desire for better health or higher investment returns. In 1960, Americans devoted more than 50 percent of their consumer spending to goods; by 2010, that figure had fallen to 33 percent. Thus, to keep up with shifts in consumer demand, advanced economies need to dedicate more labor to the provision of health care, financial advice, and other services, and less to the production of durable goods. Second, manufacturing is easier to automate than services. Goods production requires the performance of repetitive tasks in a controlled environment. This makes it easier to mechanize than medical care, education, or even food service: Robots are better at assembling standardized products (such as cars) than customizable ones (such as Chipotle burritos). For these reasons, manufacturing’s share of employment has been falling in all rich countries over the past 50 years. Even in Japan, which has promoted manufacturing through protectionist trade policy and government subsidies, the percentage of workers employed in manufacturing has fallen to just over 15 percent.  And this same trend is beginning to surface in China: Despite that nation’s massive trade surplus, its manufacturing sector went from employing 30.3 percent of all workers in 2013 to 29.1 percent in 2023. According to the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf, were the US to entirely eliminate its trade deficit in goods, manufacturing’s share of US employment would at most return to its level from two decades ago, leaving roughly 85 percent of US workers employed in other sectors.  There is little reason to believe that Trump’s tariffs will actually succeed in strengthening US manufacturing. To the contrary, they will massively increase the costs of producing goods in the United States, inspire foreign nations to erect new barriers to American exports, and make companies more reluctant to invest in new factories due to economic uncertainty, all of which will hurt domestic manufacturing.  But even if the president’s trade policies somehow proved exceptionally effective, they would not bring back the industrial economy of yesteryear.  We don’t need a time machine to raise working-class living standards None of this means that America must resign itself to low wage growth or high inequality. The decline of manufacturing may have been inevitable, but the rise of a more inegalitarian economic order was not. In social democratic Denmark, the decline of manufacturing employment coincided with falling inequality, according to the IMF. And although productivity gains have historically been higher in manufacturing than in services, this has become less true over time. Certain service sectors — such telecommunications and transport — have seen faster gains in output per worker hour than manufacturing in recent decades. America can build a more dynamic and egalitarian economy without reengineering mass manufacturing employment. Collective bargaining helped factory workers wield leverage over their employers in the postwar period. And it could help all workers do so today, if the US established a system of sectoral bargaining.  Demand for manufacturing labor may be inherently limited. But in other sectors, demand for blue-collar labor is artificially constrained by regulation. America has 4.5 million fewer homes than it needs. By eliminating restrictive zoning laws, and providing cheap financing to the housing sector, we can meet one of our nation’s most pressing economic needs while expanding opportunities for manual workers. And one can tell a similar story about promoting infrastructure construction or the green energy buildout. Increasing the affordability of college and trade schools can further help workers acquire the skills demanded by a modern, services-dominant economy. And a more comprehensive social welfare state can ease the burdens of future labor shocks, such as the one that artificial intelligence threatens to deliver to some white-collar workers.  The right’s desire to increase men’s economic leverage over women is morally objectionable, even if such inequality is conducive to higher marriage or birth rates. All Americans, regardless of gender, are equally deserving of opportunity. But reducing young men’s unemployment — and increasing their wages — would enhance their well-being, while shrinking the number of women who involuntarily forgo marriage and motherhood due to an absence of financially independent partners. But Trump’s policies are unlikely to advance any of his movement’s purported aims. His tariffs are poised to reduce real wages, depress housing construction, and increase unemployment. And his labor agenda aims to restrict collective bargaining rights, rather than expand them. Americans deserve an economy in which blue-collar work is more remunerative, opportunity is broadly shared, and material obstacles to family formation are less profound. But building that economy will require an unsentimental analysis of our economy’s present, not nostalgia-addled efforts to resurrect its past.

Preview: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited West Virginia on March 28 to promote his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda at an event where he cruelly criticized state Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s weight. Kennedy suggested that he would host a public weigh-in and celebration once Morrisey had shed 30 pounds, and Kennedy had an idea about how the governor could do it: “We’re going to put him on a carnivore diet,” Kennedy said. Weeks before, science journalist and meat enthusiast Nina Teicholz argued in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled “Meat Will Make America Healthy Again” that when the US government updates its dietary guidelines this year, it needs to keep meat firmly at the center of the plate.  This story was first featured in the Processing Meat newsletter Sign up here for Future Perfect’s biweekly newsletter from Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more. Have questions or comments on this newsletter? Email us at futureperfect@vox.com! “The Trump administration can ensure that federal dietary guidelines recognize the role of high-quality protein in improving Americans’ health,” Teicholz wrote. (In her view, “high-quality protein” comes from animals, while protein from plants is “inferior.”) Meat industry groups, such as the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Pork Board, have made similar pleas. Lucky for them, Kennedy and US Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins — who so far has acted in lockstep with the meat industry — are in charge of publishing the new federal dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years.  But the push to get Americans to eat more meat goes against what the government’s own nutrition experts recommend. In December, a government-commissioned expert committee recommended the federal dietary guidelines be updated to encourage Americans to eat less red and processed meat and more protein from plant-based sources, like beans and lentils.  And it’s unclear what era of meat supremacy Teicholz means to invoke when she says meat will make America healthy again. Americans are eating more meat — and other animal products — than ever, and it doesn’t seem to be making us any healthier, though, as rates of diet-related diseases like cancer, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes remain high. Teasing apart cause and effect in nutrition research is notoriously messy and complicated, and our high levels of meat consumption alone can’t explain America’s high rates of chronic disease — other factors, like consumption of highly processed sugary and salty foods, along with rates of exercise, alcohol and tobacco intake, health care access, and exposure to pollution, also determine health outcomes. But study after study has found that high meat consumption can increase our risk of diet-related chronic diseases.  While many Americans might like to hear that our abnormally high levels of meat consumption is actually healthy and virtuous — and that we need to eat even more of it — nutrition research largely shows that we would be better off if we did the very opposite. Make America eat more plants  A significant body of research shows that when people eat more healthy plant-based foods, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, they can lower their risk of heart disease, certain types of cancer, Type 2 diabetes, and premature death. When they eat more meat — especially red and processed meats — they can increase that risk. Two recently published studies bear this out. Last week, a paper published in the journal Nature Medicine found that eating more plant-based foods — along with fewer animal products and ultraprocessed foods — is linked to a higher likelihood of healthy aging, defined as reaching 70 years of age without suffering from major chronic diseases and maintaining good cognitive, mental, and physical health. “Our findings suggest that dietary patterns rich in plant-based foods, with moderate inclusion of healthy animal-based foods, may enhance overall healthy aging,” the researchers wrote. (There are many reasons to eat a fully plant-based diet, like animal welfare and environmental sustainability, but there isn’t a strong case to be made that optimal health requires forgoing animal products entirely.) Many MAHA supporters fall prey to the same fallacy of many liberal food reformers: the belief that only what is “natural” is good. Weeks earlier, a paper published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found that butter consumption was linked to increased risk of both cancer mortality and mortality overall, while consumption of plant-based seed oils was associated with lower overall mortality, along with lower cancer and cardiovascular disease deaths. The general consensus that more plants and less meat can improve public health has been promoted by the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and leading medical institutions. It has also driven the EAT-Lancet Commission, a large, global committee of nutrition and sustainability experts, to advocate for a diet that would reduce the average American’s consumption of meat by about 75 percent. For a time, going in that direction seemed like it might be possible. Americans ate less meat during the Great Recession, even if it was done primarily to save money rather than improve personal health. And through the 2010s, the term “flexitarian” rose to prominence as a significant share of Americans told pollsters they were cutting back on meat while the benefits of plant-based eating entered the zeitgeist thanks to celebrities like Beyoncé and Lizzo. By the early 2020s, the hype around new-and-improved plant-based meat and milk products from startup darlings Beyond Meat, Oatly, and Impossible Foods became inescapable.  But this all proved to be more show than substance — American consumption of meat, dairy, and eggs has only increased over the last decade.  And the proverbial vibe has shifted from the days of buzzy Impossible burgers and skipping meat on Mondays. The health halo around “plant-based” products has worn thin — in part due to flimsy science and a mass PR campaign funded by the meat industry — while meat consumption is once again culturally ascendant, as The Atlantic’s Yasmin Tayag captured last week. The signs are everywhere, Tayag notes: declining plant-based meat sales, America’s protein fixation, the rise of the “manosphere,” and the belief of some of its loudest voices that masculinity requires eating lots of meat. Messages of moderation in the annals of American nutrition research appear to be no match against the popularity of carnivore diet devotees, protein maxxing, and MAHA-aligned health influencers who rail against cooking with seed oils while praising butter and beef tallow. After decades of government hesitance to confront the roots of America’s biggest diet-related health crises, Kennedy and the MAHA coalition’s promises to challenge large food companies and address chronic disease head-on is refreshing. But its prescription is more vibes and anecdotes than evidence. The MAHA coalition doesn’t appear to ever question our high levels of animal product consumption, for example, but rather wants to increase it, and in supposedly “natural” forms: raw milk over nondairy milk, butter and beef tallow over seed oils, and grass-fed beef over feedlot beef. In this way, many MAHA supporters fall prey to the same fallacy of many liberal food reformers: the belief that only what is “natural” is good. But milk is now pasteurized because raw milk can make people terribly sick, plant-based seed oils are likely healthier than butter, and grass-fed beef is worse for the planet and hardly better for you.  While beans and lentils are less protein-dense than meat — and are less easily digested, as Teicholz rightly points out in her op-ed, if only slightly — they’re also free of cholesterol, extremely low in saturated fat, and loaded with fiber, which, unlike protein, more than 90 percent of Americans are deficient in. (And they’re still a great source of protein.)   Calls to make America healthy again by eating more meat than ever may be politically popular — who doesn’t want to feel empowered to do something that for so long people have been made to feel bad about? But there is a cost to this collective dismissal of nutrition and public health research: Some research has shown that countries would save on health care costs if their citizens ate more plant-rich diets.  If the Trump administration is sincere about cost cutting, and RFK Jr. is sincere about making America healthier, they both ought to take that advice to heart.

Preview: Judge Susan Crawford, the Democrat-backed nominee for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in Madison, Wisconsin, on March 31, 2025. | Jim Vondruska/Bloomberg via Getty Images Democratic voters just won a 10-point landslide in a state that President Donald Trump won last year. How? The answer is a defining trend of modern elections: There are two different kinds of electorates who come out to vote in the Trump era. On Tuesday night, the liberal, Democrat-aligned Judge Susan Crawford defeated her Republican-backed opponent by nearly 300,000 votes — a 10-point margin — less than a year after Trump carried the state on his way to a battleground sweep. She achieved that victory as more than 2.3 million people turned out to vote, about two-thirds of last year’s electorate. That’s significantly more than the last time a high-profile court seat was up for grabs and nearly matches the level of turnout in the 2022 midterms. Crawford’s victory has been cast as symbolic for many reasons. It’s both a referendum on the months-old Trump administration and on Elon Musk for his involvement and spending in the race. It was a test of liberal organizing and Democratic enthusiasm ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, as the party’s base demands their leaders do more and they look for ways to resist Trump. But Wisconsin’s weird voting dynamics in the Trump era, combined with other national special and off-year elections, also demonstrate the role Trump has played in scrambling electoral coalitions and see-sawing the balance of power both in Washington and in the states.  Two different electorates, polarized by education, class, and political engagement, have emerged — one which  benefits Democrats broadly, another which benefits solely Trump himself. Wisconsin’s recent see-sawing Wisconsin in the age of Trump has been a curious place to watch. As a battleground for presidential and state-level contests, it has swung wildly between barely electing a Republican or Democratic presidential candidate, and delivering comfortable margins for liberals and Democrats running in off-year or midterm cycles.  2016: Red. Trump flipped the state, long a part of the Democratic “Blue Wall” (the Rust Belt, overwhelmingly white working-class states that used to elect Democrats) by a tiny margin of 0.7 percent, or about 20,000 votes. White working-class and non-college-educated voters came out to vote for Trump, while minority voter turnout dropped, dooming Hillary Clinton. 2018: Blue. Just two years later, the state’s progressive Democratic senator, Tammy Baldwin, won reelection by about 10 points, boosted by high Democratic enthusiasm and Trump disaffection. Suburbs and urban centers boosted Baldwin’s win, as college-educated, wealthier, and suburban voters around the country moved away from the Trump Republican Party and felt comfortable voting for a Democrat. 2020: Blue. Joe Biden flipped the state back from Trump, but just barely. He won with a 0.62 percent margin, much closer than expected, as Trump was able to again get out more votes from his Republican base of white non-college educated voters. Turnout in cities and suburbs helped the Democrats outpace the number of new rural and non-college-educated voters going for Trump.  2022: Red (barely). Two years later, during midterm elections that went much better than expected for Democrats, the state’s other senator, the conservative, ultra-MAGA loyalist Ron Johnson, retained his seat with a 20,000 vote — or 1 percent — margin. Most counties in the state shifted right during that election compared to 2020, making it a bit of an outlier among battleground states. 2024: Red again. Trump would then go on to win the state in 2024, beating Kamala Harris by about 30,000 votes, or 0.86 percent, as he turned out even more rural voters. All but four highly urban and college-educated counties would shift to the right that year. What explains these wild pendulum swings? A clear story emerges when looking at overall turnout, county-specific demographics, Democratic enthusiasm, and polling in Wisconsin. And that story fits into a pattern of elections in the state. Wisconsin’s 2025 electorate was deeply Democratic: made up of not just the most informed and engaged voters, but also some lower-propensity voters who were persuaded to flip. As the data journalist Steve Kornacki pointed out ahead of the election, in off-year contests when Trump isn’t on the ballot, pro-Trump blue-collar white voters have been less motivated to vote than have anti-Trump college-educated voters.  That dynamic leads to results like Tuesday night’s, when turnout in the most highly educated, Democratic parts of the state was much higher than turnout in the more non-college-educated, pro-Trump places. An emblematic location was Dane County, home of Madison: Crawford received more net votes and a higher share of the vote than the Democrats’ 2022 Senate nominee Mandela Barnes. This dynamic may continue to repeat itself Wisconsin is just the latest example of how two different electorates are determining the balance of power in America.  When Trump is on the ballot, lower-propensity, non-college-educated, and (more recently) disaffected voters of color are more likely to turn out and vote for him, even if they don’t necessarily vote for other Republicans.  That was a factor that contributed not just to Harris’s loss in 2024, but also to Senate and House Democrats’ overperformance in swing states. Democratic Senate candidates like Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, Ruben Gallego in Arizona, and Baldwin in Wisconsin all outran Harris’s performance and won their respective races, in part because Republican turnout for Trump didn’t trickle its way down the ballot. When Trump is not on the ballot, highly motivated, high-information, and disaffected anti-Trump voters (some of them former Republicans) still turn out, or turn out at even higher rates for Democratic candidates — and those candidates still win over some share of Republicans who can be persuaded to vote for a Democrat. At the same time, lower-propensity Trump voters stay home.  This is a historic shift. For most of the last 30 years, it’s been the Republican Party that has had the more attuned, higher-propensity voters who would turn out in off-year elections, and so would benefit from a smaller electorate. Democrats were the ones struggling to get their voters to the polls when Barack Obama wasn’t on the ballot. But the Republican Party has been trading away many of those higher-propensity, college-educated, and wealthier voters to the Democrats in the Trump era, as Democrats lost more white, non-college-educated voters. This pattern was again demonstrated in Wisconsin this week, but also in special elections across the country. In Florida’s First and Sixth Congressional Districts, a share of Republican voters who turned out voted for Democratic candidates, particularly in the First District, which has more of a college-educated electorate. This was also a factor in the 2022 midterms, when states like Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia had plurality-Republican electorates that still ended up sending Democratic Senate candidates to Congress. Democrats are celebrating this most recent win in Wisconsin, and there are clear signs that the next year stands to see a score of Democratic victories in statewide and House elections. But the dynamic that is saving them in off years might not rescue them in the next presidential election (in which Trump will presumably not be on the ballot). They may have more lessons to learn about how to take advantage of the fundamentals that benefit them right now, and they surely have lessons to learn about how to counter Trump’s influence before the next presidential cycle.

Preview: Pedestrians walk on the Stanford University campus in March 2025. This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. In recent weeks, colleges and universities have found themselves at the center of the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape American society and culture. As the administration extracts concessions from universities and seeks to deport students based on their participation in protests, experts are raising questions about the future of the American academy and the country’s larger place on the world stage. A lot of rising college freshmen have a different, more basic anxiety, however: They just want to know if they’ll be able to pay for school. The Trump administration’s highly publicized efforts to dismantle the Education Department have some students questioning if federal student aid even still exists, according to nonprofits that support college access. “Students are wondering if the FAFSA is still available,” Marcos Montes, policy director of the Southern California College Attainment Network, told me. Others are concerned that they won’t be able to get federal Pell grants or other financial aid they need to attend college, said Karla Robles-Reyes, chief program officer at OneGoal, a nonprofit that helps low-income students with college access.  As of now, both Pell grants and the FAFSA, or free application for federal student aid, remain available. But some students fear that if they use the FAFSA to apply for federal aid, information about their families’ immigration status could be shared with ICE — a concern that college counselors and advocates cannot fully dispel. That fear is contributing to a drop in federal financial aid applications, Montes said. Graduating seniors are concerned about other issues too, like whether they’ll be able to exercise their freedom of speech on campus. But a lot of young people’s biggest worries are about “the critical resources that they need to pursue their higher education,” Robles-Reyes said — and whether those resources are still available under Trump. It’s a reminder that although colleges and universities have become a topic of heated political debate — and students and professors a symbol of decadent liberalism to many on the right — postsecondary education is also just an increasingly necessary career step that a majority of Americans undertake at some point. And for this year’s high school seniors, especially those who are low-income or the first in their families to apply to college, that step could get a lot harder to take. Students have very real fears about paying for college Just to be clear, the Education Department still exists, and cannot be closed without an act of Congress. However, the Trump administration has announced the layoffs of more than 1,300 department employees, and in March, Trump signed an executive order directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to close the department “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” One of the biggest functions of the Education Department is overseeing the federal student aid system, including Pell grants (need-based awards of up to $7,395 per year) and federal student loans. Grants and loans are critical for low- and middle-income students across the country at a time when average college tuition ranges from around $11,000 a year for public institutions to more than $43,000 annually for private schools (the average annual wage in the US, meanwhile, is around $66,000). As of the 2019-20 school year, 55 percent of undergraduates got some form of federal aid. So when high school students hear that the department could be “closed” or “dismantled,” they’re understandably scared. “There is a lot of confusion,” Montes said. Students are asking questions like, “Should I just drop out of school and wait for another president, because I don’t know if I’m going to have the financial aid that I need to be able to pay for college?” Robles-Reyes said. Trump has said that funding for Pell grants and student loans will not be affected by changes to the Education Department, and there’s no indication that the Trump administration is planning direct cuts to student aid. But experts say that layoffs at the department and the administration’s plans to move some of its functions to other agencies could cause errors in loan disbursement or a lack of support for borrowers. Students got a glimpse of what dysfunction in student aid could look like last year, when a new FAFSA form rife with technical issues led to long delays and application roadblocks for students and families. “The largest amount of aid I receive is from the federal government,” Nomar, a first-year college student who asked that his last name not be used, told me. He worries that if student aid gets moved to another department, his loans or grants could be delayed, preventing him from registering for classes. For students with parents or other family members who are undocumented, meanwhile, there’s an added concern: that filling out the FAFSA could reveal their family members’ immigration status to the federal government, leaving them vulnerable to deportation (the form asks applicants for parents’ Social Security numbers, which undocumented immigrants often do not have). Federal law prohibits the use of FAFSA data for any purpose other than student aid, but experts are cautioning students that there’s no guarantee the Trump administration won’t use their data to target their family members for immigration enforcement. OneGoal tells students that they have no indication that FAFSA data is going to be used to initiate deportations, Robles-Reyes told me. But, she said, “we can’t promise that it wouldn’t.” Even beyond federal aid, students have financial fears. Lila, a high school senior in California who asked that her last name not be used, told me she worries about losing access to scholarships aimed at people of color and other historically marginalized groups. Many such scholarships were meant to address centuries of racism and other biases in education, but they are now being targeted as part of Trump’s push to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.  Trump’s anti-DEI efforts are also affecting colleges in other ways, with some overhauling or shutting down DEI offices, and others disbanding affinity groups for women, students of color, or LGBTQ students. College-bound students are left wondering if “they’re going to have the same services available that students previously had,” Montes said. “They’re not sure what going to college next year is going to look like.” Young people have also been watching with concern as ICE officers arrest students who are in the US legally, apparently based on their participation in pro-Palestinian protests or advocacy. High school students have been asking for “rights trainings” and “trying to figure out how they can make their voices heard,” Montes said.  “I have to be careful with what I say, the opinions that I might put out in the world,” Nomar, a green-card holder, told me.  Disruptions to college could derail students’ futures — and the country The heightened level of fear and uncertainty about college could have a serious impact on graduating seniors, Montes said. In California, the number of high school seniors completing the FAFSA was down by 25 percent in February, compared with the previous year, and the number of students with at least one undocumented parent applying was down 44 percent. For some, no FAFSA could mean no college. “Without financial aid, college is very inaccessible for first-generation students and students from low-income backgrounds,” Montes said. Forgoing college, in turn, could do long-term damage to students’ careers. “College is the number one workforce training out there,” Montes said. It’s more than an individual issue. “Our economy requires a skilled workforce,” Robles-Reyes said. “If these disruptions in the Department of Education lead to more students not enrolling, then our economy really is at risk.” State policymakers can help college-bound students by making state financial aid applications more accessible, Montes said. In California, for example, students can apply for state financial aid without fear that their data will be shared with the federal government. When it comes to freedom of speech, Lila, the high school senior, wants to see colleges back up their students: “What I’m afraid of happening in colleges would be them buckling down under the pressure and just changing their policies to keep getting funds,” she said. Universities and elected officials also need to keep students updated about how Trump administration policy could affect their education, Nomar said, so that “when we start the semester, we don’t have this huge worry or these huge questions that are going to take us away from what we came here to do.” Despite the upheaval of the last two months, Nomar is clear on the purpose of college in his life. As a first-generation student “who grew up in a place where education was scarce,” he relishes “the opportunity to expand my knowledge and grow as a person.” “For me,” he said, “going to college is the gateway for the world.” What I’m reading Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and 22 other Democratic senators sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon this week, requesting information on how the Education Department plans to protect the rights of students with disabilities amid layoffs, cuts, and restructuring. The department’s recent “reduction in force” will “critically damage your ability to fulfill your statutory duties to students with disabilities by eliminating nearly half of your workforce,” the senators wrote. A survey of 1,500 11- to 13-year-old Floridians found that having their own phone was actually associated with a number of positive outcomes, including higher self-confidence and even spending more time in person with friends. However, posting frequently on social media was associated with problems like an increased risk of anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, a recent poll conducted for Common Sense Media asked kids and parents what factors “make families strong.” For kids, the top answer by far was “parents who listen to their kids,” followed by “parents accepting their children no matter what.” (For parents, the top answer was quality education.) My little kid and I have been reading The Rock From the Sky, a 2021 picture book about a big rock that falls out of the sky, and how some small animals react to it. I choose to see this as a story about anxiety, the impossibility of predicting the future, and also, of course, the ever-present danger of falling objects. From my inbox The Common Sense Media poll got me thinking about what kids and parents want and need from one another. If you’re a parent, what do you think your kids most want from you right now? What do they need (which could be very different)? And for everyone: As a kid, what did you most want and need from the people who raised you? What do you think kids today need most from adults right now? Let me know at anna.north@vox.com!

Preview: If you’d asked me a decade ago how I felt about my phone, I would have said: “Wow, I love it.” And also: “How could you even ask me such a thing?”  2015 was a quieter, happier time. Barack Obama was president, “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars was the No. 1 song, and I had a sleek, slim iPhone 6 in my pocket. We’re now up to the iPhone 16, and while you already know the other details about our current reality, I will confess that I hide my phone from myself, on a daily basis, in order to feel something real. This sorry state of affairs led me to the Light Phone, a minimalist device that promises freedom from infinite feeds. The third generation of the device, which debuted in late March, represents a radical rethinking of what a smartphone can and should do, cutting off users from distracting features while directing them toward simple tools they need to thrive in a digital world, like a phone and a calendar. There is no web browser, no app store, no forms of entertainment — not even a game to distract you. The Light Phone 3 is intentionally boring but useful. That’s the sales pitch anyways, and it arrives in a world where many are nostalgic for a time when we were far less subservient to our technology. I recently met Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang, the co-creators of the Light Phone and co-founders of its parent company, Light, in their Brooklyn, New York, workshop, where they walked me through the development of the Light Phone 3. They’d given me the device to test out ahead of time, and while I loved the gadget in concept, I had a brutally hard time letting go of my iPhone, which I hate by the way. But how could I give up the many apps I’ve become dependent on to do my job and keep up with my family? How could I get through the day without my algorithmically generated Spotify playlists? How would my brain work without the ability to Google random questions when they pop into my head?  “I think that moment when you find yourself pulling out the Light Phone for the fifth time and realizing it does nothing, that’s like a very profound initial Light moment, where you’re like, ‘Now, what?’” Hollier told me. About nine out of 10 Americans own a smartphone, and I’d guess many of them have passed a point of no return, when it comes to connected living. It feels impossible for some people — parents, knowledge workers, Spotify fanatics — to live without a smartphone. For others, it’s simply inconvenient. But ditching your smartphone is a way of liberating your free time and winning back your attention, which has led to a movement of people buying gadgets that are specifically designed to bridge the gap between our dumb phone past and a future where technology use is more intentional. I’m about a week into trying to join this movement. It’s not easy, but it sure does seem peaceful. Why you might need an “intentional” phone  Smartphones and dumb phones — think flip phones or phones that can only place calls and send messages — are familiar categories to most people. But intentional phones — phones designed to limit interactions with the device and to help users focus on being present — are a new category, arguably created by the Light Phone itself. When you do something on an intentional phone, you intend to do it, and then you stop using the phone. The original Light Phone, “your phone away from phone,” launched as a Kickstarter campaign in May 2015. It was roughly the size of a credit card and could only place voice calls. That meant you could disconnect for an afternoon and go on a hike but remain reachable. The device sold out, while Hollier and Tang built its successor, the Light Phone II, which shipped in 2019. This phone had an e-ink display, like a Kindle, which refreshes too slowly to support easy scrolling — and came with a handful of simple tools, like messaging and a music player, but lacked a web browser and email. So far, Hollier and Tang have shipped over 100,000 of these devices, and their staff still repairs the old ones in their Brooklyn studio. “We don’t want the device to try to fight for your attention, or be shiny. We wanted it to be calm, low key, and just disappear, even when you use it.” Kaiwei Tang, co-creator of the Light Phone The Light Phone 3 takes things a stage further — but not too much further. Instead of the gritty e-ink screen, the new model has a black and white OLED display with a coating that makes it less shiny. There’s a very basic camera on the back, which Hollier and Tang say is really for documenting things or taking pictures of receipts, since you can’t post any photos from the phone. There’s an updated directions tool, and a directory that works a bit like the Yellow Pages: You search for something, say a coffee shop, and the tool provides a list of nearby businesses with some basic information, like their phone number and hours. There’s also a new podcast app that lets you download episodes of podcasts and take them with you when you’re out, but you can’t look up new content while you’re out. The operating system is built by Light, and there’s no data harvesting.  “We don’t want the device to try to fight for your attention, or be shiny,” Tang told me. “We wanted it to be calm, low key, and just disappear, even when you use it.” It’s actually remarkable to use a piece of technology that’s designed to be used as little as possible. It’s beautifully boring. The Light Phone 3 is also just plain beautiful — a slab of black anodized aluminum that fits neatly into a shirt pocket and just works. It retails for $799, although you can preorder one now for $599. The Light Phone 2 is still available for $299. There are other intentional phones on the market that give users more digital liberties. The Bigme Hibreak Pro runs a version of Android and supports all apps but has an e-ink screen that discourages scrolling. The Unihertz Jelly Max is a tiny smartphone that has a color screen, but it’s so small that you’d be hard-pressed to watch a YouTube video on it. The Mudita Kompakt is a lot like the Light Phone 3, except it has an e-ink screen and a few more functions.  Then there’s the Sidephone, which starts shipping this year and can run critical apps, like Uber, WhatsApp, and Spotify, while otherwise offering minimal features. It’s actually designed to work alongside a smartphone, with a dedicated phone number you only give to close friends.  When I first started using it, the Light Phone 3 reminded me of my digital life not 10 but 20 years ago, when I left the house with an iPod, a Motorola Razr, a notebook, and a Nikon film camera. (Fun fact: Tang actually helped design the Motorola Razr way back when.) Each thing had its own purpose, and if I didn’t need any one thing, I left it at home. If I got bored with my devices, I simply had to find something else to do. Today, there’s something naive about imagining a return to life in 2005, when I was in my 20s. I have a wife, a baby, and a job that demands knowing what’s happening in the world on a daily basis. Leaving the house with just a Light Phone 3 feels like a fantasy, albeit one that is appealing on days when I can’t escape the ping of Slack messages or the buzzes of my news alerts. Toward a philosophy of digital minimalism It was about a decade ago that our digital world started to get really dopamine-driven. Twitter was ascendant, and within a couple years, Facebook would buy Instagram and usher in an era of algorithmic feeds designed to keep users engaged. This is also when Gen Z started to come of age. It didn’t take long for the first generation to live their entire lives online to have second thoughts about social media, smartphones, and technology in general. Gen Z adults are now leading the way in incorporating dumb technology into their lives, according to a 2024 Morning Consult poll. Millennials, like myself, are very close behind. Light says that 70 percent of its users are between 18 and 35 years old, and that 56 percent of them only use Light Phone. Hollier and Tang told me last week that Light Phone adoption has kind of happened in that order, too: Gen Z jumped on board first and more millennials seem to be buying the devices lately. I have to wonder if it’s because more millennials are noticing that they’re reflexively checking their feeds while also watching their kids at the playground. I’ve done it, and it sucks. Young parents are also realizing that the Light Phone is an excellent way to stay connected to their children without giving them unbridled internet access.  Jose Briones, a long-time Light Phone user, spent years and thousands of dollars in the smartphone upgrade cycle. A few years ago, Briones became more interested in finding technology that would help him optimize his time, instead of robbing him of hours spent scrolling. Briones now runs a YouTube channel where he reviews intentional phones, like the Light Phone, and describes himself as a digital minimalist.  “More people are coming to the realization that they don’t want to live their lives through a screen, but instead, they want to experience it with their own eyes,” Briones said. Digital minimalism is the philosophy that drives a lot of the conversations around the Light Phone. The term was popularized by Georgetown University computer science professor Cal Newport, who also coined “deep work” in 2016 and published a book about digital minimalism in 2019, at the same time Marie Kondo’s Netflix show dropped and not long before the pandemic made us all digital maximalists.  3 easy things to do Nobody should feel helpless in our app-saturated world. But you can update a few simple settings to make your phone less habit-forming. Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, offered three tips in a 2018 Vox video that still make sense today: Turn off all nonhuman notifications Make your screen grayscale Restrict your home screen to essential, everyday tools There are now communities for all corners of this movement. Briones is a moderator in the subreddits for Light Phone fans as well dumb phones more broadly. There’s also a subreddit for digital minimalism, where people share their experiences of living life without smartphones or how to minimize screen time. Reading through the posts will give you a sense of how deeply some people’s dissatisfaction with the connected life runs and how passionate they are about finding technology that works for them, full stop. The market is starting to meet those needs. Will Stults and his girlfriend Daisy Krigbaum opened an online shop just for intentional phones called Dumbwireless in 2022, which stocks Light Phone models as well as a dozen other devices handpicked for their approach to intentional phone usage. It’s also a side-gig for Stults and Krigbaum, who both have day jobs but are seeing growing demand for devices like this. But after I told him about my own slow start with the Light Phone 3, Stults reiterated that everyone quits smartphones for different reasons and has different needs. “We almost want to put up a disclaimer on our site, like, ‘The perfect non-smartphone does not exist, by the way,’ and that’s kind of the point of this,” Stults said. “You’re going to make some sacrifices. It’s going to be a challenge.” Consider a weekend phone At a certain point, it feels like we’re coming full circle with some of these phones. If you strip away everything you don’t like about your smartphone and then start adding it back in spurts, you eventually end up with digital clutter again. But if you’re mindful of the clutter and keep tidying up as life goes on, you will enjoy some of the benefits from more dramatic moves, like going full Light Phone. You could even use your dumber device as a weekend phone when there’s no particular need to stay so connected.  This strategy is essentially what Casey Johnston, who writes a newsletter about health and fitness, described when she “lobotomized” her smartphone recently. Delete everything and then add back the apps intentionally — in classic Marie Kondo-style. Johnston’s tips for streamlining your smartphone are not that different from what I’ve suggested myself, and I would highly recommend tweaking your settings so that newly installed apps do not appear on your home screen. I also like her advice to use an old phone plugged in at a specific location “like a landline” for social media, if you must. I’m not going to throw away my iPhone any time soon. As a husband, dad, and journalist, I’ve come to depend on certain apps and features and immediacy. You might even say living life with just a Light Phone seems like a real luxury. But this notion of being intentional with technology, using the right tool for the right job, and not being afraid of disconnecting — it’s a worthwhile aspiration. I do aspire, at the very least, to take the weekend phone approach in the near future.  It’s also neat that there are now gadgets designed specifically for this, and I have to wonder if bigger tech companies, including Apple, will start taking the intentional phone movement seriously. Light Phone, after all, reminds me of the best of Apple’s design ethos: elegant products that solve problems. Only Light Phone is asking a bit more from its users. “Every decision we made is intentional,” Tang told me. “We’re hoping our customers will do the same.” A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!

Preview: At Vox, I specialize in writing and editing all sorts of stories about animal agriculture and the future of food, from the strange ritual of eating turkeys on Thanksgiving to the policy debates around the fate of mother pigs in the pork industry. But the lives of America’s 9.4 million dairy cows have always been especially close to my heart, and to many people who care about farm animals, for reasons that will become clear as you read this comic. I’d written a bit about dairy cows before, but to truly do the story justice, I knew I needed to narrate and illustrate, in depth, a dairy cow’s life from birth to death (and even then, there was so much from my research that had to be left on the cutting-room floor). Once you really see it, it’s impossible to look at milk the same way again. Sources and further reading: • Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood, by Anne Mendelson • The Cow with Ear Tag #1389, by Kathryn Gillespie • Americans are drinking more cow’s milk. Here’s why that’s a problem. (Vox) • 9 charts that show US factory farming is even bigger than you realize (Vox) • Big Milk has taken over American schools (Vox) • The truth about organic milk (The Atlantic) • What happens at livestock auctions? (Vox) • “I just want to leave with the calf”: The US activist befriending farmers (The Guardian) • Newborn dairy calves endure long, grueling journeys across the United States (Animal Welfare Institute) • Regrouping induces anhedonia-like responses in dairy heifers (JDS Communications, a journal of the American Dairy Science Association) • Don’t mind milk? The role of animal suffering, speciesism, and guilt in the denial of mind and moral status of dairy cows (Food Quality and Preference journal)

Preview: The world is trying to kill you, this much is true. Planes are crashing on a near weekly basis. “Forever chemicals” and microplastics are in our water, embedded in our beauty products and clothing, and even burrowed in our brains. Your kitchen utensils might be poisoning you and perhaps your food is, too. Mysterious diseases — and not-so-mysterious diseases — seem to be forever threatening another global pandemic. Alarming news coverage of violent crime has people on edge, concerned for their safety. With all these anxieties coursing through modern life, you might suspect the world is a fundamentally menacing place. In 2023, 40 percent of Americans said they felt unsafe walking home alone at night, the highest rate since 1993, according to a Gallup poll. Ongoing research suggests Gen Z sees more risk around them than other generations.  You would, however, be wrong to assume that danger is everywhere. Violent crime has been down, air travel is as safe as it’s ever been, mortality from infectious disease largely fell throughout the 20th and 21st centuries (even the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was blunted by the swift development of effective vaccines). While much more can be done to ensure the safety and well-being of people, animals, and the earth, Americans live longer, safer, wealthier lives than centuries past.  Nothing is without risk, but fixating on certain perils may be misplaced, experts say. Risk and danger are non-negotiables in the great project of human existence. The line between sufficient self-preservation and excessive vigilance is thin and our own miscalculations on what actually constitutes a risk may only muddy the waters. But a life without risk is one without joys and excitements.  Our wonky (mis)calculations about risk  Generations ago, risks were largely evaluated by the scientific and cultural knowledge of the day. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, some of the greatest risks came from “natural” causes: fires that razed homes and cities, infectious diseases, and unpredictable weather conditions. Absent any kind of data or expert guidance, people largely relied on their own experience — and the experiences of others — to weigh risk. If your cousin embarked on a transcontinental ocean voyage only never to return, your perception of such a trip’s risk would have been swayed. But as technology advanced, around 150 years ago, the risks also proliferated. New transportation, like railroads, held hazards for both passengers and workers. Mines, factories, and other industrial-era workplaces were hotbeds of danger. In order to assess the risks of industrial labor, states began collecting data about accidents and deaths. “It was collected to make an argument about you should pay attention to this kind of risk, that the government should step in and try to manage the risk,” says Arwen Mohun, a history professor at the University of Delaware and author of Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society. “The first widely collected data is about public health and about workplace accidents, and those were both big political issues. The numbers were meant to shift people’s perceptions of risk.” People use both numbers and stories to build a narrative around what is safe and what isn’t. These days, especially as mass media makes it possible to stay informed about all the bad and scary happenings the world over, data and statistics are in no short supply, documenting everything from the number of flu infections in a given year to the likelihood of winning the lottery. But the power of experience still shapes how individuals weigh risk. People use both numbers and stories to build a narrative around what is safe and what isn’t.  The problem is we’re not good at parsing either.  Trust plays a huge role in what data, experts, and firsthand accounts we take into consideration, says Jens Zinn, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Melbourne. For instance, if you’re sick and worried about the risk of getting sicker, you usually seek more information from a trusted source: perhaps a doctor. However, when people believe a source of information is trying to deceive them, they’re less likely to trust the information, even if they know it to be true. In a time when trust in institutions is at an all-time low, some might turn to sometimes misleading belief systems when weighing risk, Zinn says. Those who are skeptical of science or expertise may feel like subject-matter experts are corrupt and speaking in a language they don’t understand and instead turn to what they know to be true, because they’ve seen it themselves or heard it online from someone who did. Perhaps they’ll turn to a content creator peddling so-called wellness cures or, a leader with convincing, but unfounded, claims about health and safety. When these messages align with your personal experiences and beliefs, they’re all the more compelling. “Embodied truth is something [that] is much more convincing than…abstract reasoning,” Zinn says. Unfortunately for scientists or academics who wish to sway skeptics based on facts, facts aren’t always convincing.  If all of your car rides occurred without incident, you may incorrectly believe driving carries less risk than air travel, based purely on your own history. Although data appears objective, we’re not very good at interpreting this information, says Dirk Wulff, a senior research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The human brain is ill-equipped to process large numbers. While a one-in-a-million chance of developing a rare cancer is hard for our brains to digest, “people often think it’s more likely than it in reality is,” Wulff says. The same goes for evaluating risk based on our own experiences. “It’s just objectively often wrong because we haven’t made enough experiences to see some of the bad things that could happen,” Wulff says. If all of your car rides occurred without incident, you may incorrectly believe driving carries less risk than air travel, based purely on your own history. The most accurate assessment of risk, Wulff says, is to marry experience with data and expert-driven advice. But human miscalculations continually threaten that delicate balance. People tend to misjudge the risk for rare and extreme events — they choose to gamble despite the low likelihood of winning, or opt out of swimming in the ocean due to the potential of a shark attack. The more information people have about the probability of experiencing a certain negative event, even if it’s high-risk, the less likely they are to perceive it as a risk. When it came to Covid-19, people considered their personal risk low, but saw the virus as posing a greater threat to others. The more in control you feel, the more comfortable you are with risk. “People fear cancer more and heart disease less because they think they have control over heart disease,” says David Ropeik, author of How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, “because the risk factors are [things] they think they can control, and the cancer fear is higher because the risk factors of things they feel they can’t. It’s wrong.”  The inevitability of risk In today’s hyper-connected world, we’re inundated with stories of danger.  As a part of ongoing research into Gen Z’s perception of risk, Gabriel Rubin, a professor of justice studies at Montclair State University, has found that an onslaught of information about a plethora of threats, like crime — from small-town kidnappings to mass shootings — and climate change has led to young people’s increased fears. “A lot of people say that ‘I could be kidnapped, I could be attacked, or crime is the worst it’s ever been,’” Rubin says. “Which isn’t true.” Watching extravagant “safety” routines on TikTok — videos that outline ways to intruder-proof a hotel room or home — can add to young people’s beliefs that the world is a dangerous place. “In the threat literature, they would call it availability bias,” Rubin says, “which is your bias towards something that you can imagine. With crime, they can imagine it happening to them.” This tendency to assume highly publicized incidents, from plane crashes to true crime, pose more of a risk to you, personally isn’t limited to young people. Constant news — and noise — about risks, real and imagined, raise alarm bells for all audiences. Persistent news coverage of plane crashes, violent crime, and toxic chemicals may lead readers and viewers to assume these events are more of an imminent danger than they actually are. Non-expert commentators and content creators also peddle misinformation about nonexistent risks on TikTok — such as the supposed dangers of sunscreen — in order to further their own agenda or to sell products. The popularity of true crime could contribute to people’s fear of violence despite evidence of decreasing crime rates.  Persistent news coverage of plane crashes, violent crime, and toxic chemicals may lead readers and viewers to assume these events are more of an imminent danger than they actually are. This mismatch between what the evidence says is risky and the appropriate level of fear is what Ropeik calls the risk perception gap. “When our fears don’t match the evidence,” he says, “the gap between our fears and the facts becomes a risk all by itself.” For instance, vaccine skeptics who fear the side effects of immunizations create a greater risk of illness or death by forgoing the shots. Their anxieties are simply centered around the wrong thing. A wealth of information may seem beneficial in allowing people to learn and gird themselves against dangers, but our system starts to short-circuit with too much data. “We’re not built for all the inputs that we’re getting,” Rubin says. “We have so much information flooding us. Our brain tries to keep us alive by emphasizing via our emotional system that this or that is scary, you should stay away from it.” But in a world where seemingly everything poses a risk, how can you discern the imminent dangers from statistical anomalies?  Living — and coping — with risk Feeling constantly threatened can lead to perceiving more threats and increased anxiety. All this stress has profound effects on the body, from increased risk of heart disease to suppressed immune system function. “Our radar screens are more constantly filled with boogeymen,” Ropeik says. “That has a biological impact. It makes every blip on the radar screen look bigger.” The result is a culture that highly regards safety. Generational shifts in child-rearing have given rise to helicopter and bulldozer parents who emphasize protecting kids from life’s difficulties and dangers at all costs. From a young age, children learn from the adults in their lives the dangers of certain behaviors — running too fast at the playground, sleeping over a friend’s house — and start to craft a risk-free life as they grow up. The tendency to assume if something bad happens to you, it’s your fault sends the message that one must be on-guard at all times.  How to more accurately weigh risk in two steps Avoid forming an opinion based on gut feelings: Do some research and read scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals or reports from trusted sources about the rates of the specific risk. Ask yourself why you’re frightened: Is the topic capturing your attention because of news coverage or conversations on social media? Are you distrustful of the people or institutions involved? Do you feel at greater risk because of your gender or identity? “Ask yourself questions about what psychological or emotional filters you’re seeing the risk through,” Ropeik says. “They’re like stained-glass windows. What kind of stained-glass windows are in the way between the risk and me that are making it feel the way it does?” Meanwhile, virtual worlds and entertainment provide a supposedly risk-free alternative. Video games and social media provide “safe” environments to have vicarious experiences without the risk of physical harm. You can’t break a bone or get kidnapped if you never leave your room, never log off. Of course, social media use carries risk for negative mental health consequences for adolescents and adults alike. And opting to spend more time alone — binge-watching, doomscrolling — adversely impacts mental and physical health. “Especially this Covid generation, they think that being home is a safe space and it has no risk,” Rubin says, “and they’re suffering mentally — which is a risk.” Risk-aversion may be a lingering hangover effect from the pandemic. Research has found that Americans who lived through the Great Depression and the 2008 economic recession were less likely to take financial risks. The pandemic might have had a similar effect on risk-taking overall, says Wulff, the research scientist.  Because nothing in this world is without risk — it’s possible to die from loneliness or in your bed, fast asleep — we must learn to live with it. Some perceived risks do have positive payoffs. Exploring the world, falling in love, and changing careers are among life’s richest experiences, but they’re far from safe.  Taking chances and bouncing back from setbacks help build resilience and perhaps the chronically risk-averse need to feel comfortable with the possibility of short-term hurt for long-term gains. “It used to be said that [challenges] built character,” Mohun, the historian, says. “That you needed to fall off, metaphorically or literally, because you needed to know that you could get up and walk away.” Of course, there’s no need to put yourself in dangerous situations. But with the help of a mental health professional, slow exposure to fear-inducing activities can help reduce anxiety. With each incident-free subway ride, you may be less avoidant, less likely to see danger in public spaces. Just because danger could lurk at every turn doesn’t mean life is inherently unsafe. Risk is inescapable, as are death and taxes. But avoiding it means cutting ourselves off from everything pleasurable, too. And that isn’t living — it’s limbo.

Preview: A billboards paid for by the Canadian government protesting US tariffs. | Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focusing on Donald Trump saying he’s imposing tariffs on products from around the world. If real and permanent — two big ifs — the policies represent a shift in economic policy that will have major effects on all Americans. What’s the latest? Trump today promised a 10 percent tariff on all foreign goods, with goods from many countries — including some of our largest trading partners — being taxed at a far higher rate. Trump also said certain foreign-made cars would face import taxes of 25 percent. Trump said the tariffs would take effect right away, though the exact timing is unclear. Is it real this time? This was Trump’s most sweeping tariff announcement to date, and he announced it during a high-profile White House ceremony, suggesting these tariffs may be here to stay. That said, it was only a month ago that Trump announced tariffs on our largest trading partners, only to rescind or delay some of them days after they took effect.  Can Trump do this without Congress? There will likely be legal challenges, but existing law gives the president wide authority to unilaterally impose tariffs. What do tariffs mean for you? In the short term, higher prices. Tariffs are taxes paid by importers and passed on to consumers, so, if they remain in place, you can expect to pay more for a sweeping range of goods. Economists also fear that this tariff policy could kick off a recession, particularly as other countries promise to counter with taxes on US exports. What’s the big picture? There are valid critiques of past US free trade policies — particularly in how they’ve hurt certain communities and segments of the labor force. But economists are skeptical Trump can bring back US manufacturing at anywhere near the scale he’s promising, and they’re confident these new taxes will result in severe and widespread economic pain. And with that, it’s time to log off… If you want a high-brow reprieve from the chaos, Vox’s Unexplainable podcast has a great new episode about deep-sea microbes — ancient organisms so different from the rest of the planet’s creatures that they’re raising questions about what it means to even be alive. (As an added bonus, Vox members can now listen ad-free!) I loved this podcast, but if you’re having a “just get through it” kind of Wednesday, might I recommend 3 minutes and 23 seconds of tropical birds’ mating dances? Thanks so much for reading, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Preview: WASHINGTON—Seeking to reassure the public after his latest tariffs sent both U.S. and international markets into free fall, President Donald Trump calmly reminded the nation Thursday that desire is the root of all suffering. “My fellow Americans, remember that attachment to worldly things stands at the very foundation of the illusions that lead us to […] The post Trump Calmly Reminds Nation That Desire The Root Of All Suffering appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: Following a biochemical analysis, parishioners of an Indiana church were informed that the red substance on a communion wafer they thought to be the blood of Christ was actually fungus and three different species of bacteria commonly found on human hands. What do you think? The post Communion Wafer ‘Miracle’ Turns Out To Be Bacteria appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: The post CNBC Hosts Sit In Stunned Silence For 19th Consecutive Hour appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: WASHINGTON—Giving Democrats a sense of hope for the first time in months, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) reportedly set the congressional record this week for the longest fingernails on the Senate floor. “With your support, I have grown my fingernails to eight feet and three-quarters inches,” said Booker, whose act of strength and courage inspired millions […] The post Cory Booker Sets Record For Longest Fingernails On Senate Floor appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: WASHINGTON—Saying that Americans should anticipate certain lifestyle changes as a result of his newly announced tariffs, President Donald Trump informed the nation Thursday that they better start liking those little canned wieners. “Hope you aren’t too attached to whatever fancy crap you eat now, because those little wiener dogs in the cans are coming back […] The post Trump Informs Nation They Better Start Liking Those Little Canned Wieners appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: Significant mystery has cloaked a 14,400-square-foot Tuscan-style villa and a second, adjacent mansion purchased by the world’s richest man for himself and his extensive family. Here, The Onion uncovers what’s inside Elon Musk’s $35 million Texas compound. The post Inside Elon Musk’s Texas Compound appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: RAFAH, GAZA—Responding to reports that 15 rescue workers in Gaza were killed execution style and buried in a mass grave, Israel claimed this week that the slain Palestinians did not properly identify themselves as human. “Unfortunately, upon their encounter with IDF soldiers, these Palestinians provided no documentation indicating they were sentient beings entitled to basic […] The post Israel Claims Slain Palestinian Rescue Workers Didn’t Properly Identify Selves As Human Beings appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: After performing as a musical guest on the show to promote his upcoming album, Morgan Wallen made headlines when he abruptly left the Saturday Night Live stage. Here is everything you need to know about the artist. Birthplace: Bass Pro Shops Pyramid, Tennessee Genre: See name Default Setting: Aggrieved Fandom Name: Whites Controversies: 2016–present Favorite […] The post Artist Profile: Morgan Wallen appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: TECOLUCA, EL SALVADOR—Saying things had only gone downhill after a terrible morning, lawful U.S. resident Oscar Fernandez-Lopez, 38, stated Wednesday that he had already been having a bad day before being deported to the Salvadoran mega-prison known as CECOT. “I knew things were heading in the wrong direction when I spilled coffee on my shirt, […] The post Man Already Having Bad Day Deported To Salvadoran Mega-Prison appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: BEND, OR—Pointing out how the 4-year-old Jack Russell terrier was already shaking with anticipation, avid bungee jumper Isaac Branch confirmed Thursday that his dog also loves bungee jumping. “Rocko’s obsessed with bungee jumping—he does it all the time!” said Branch, 25, who described the 15-pound canine as a “total adrenaline junky” who gets so riled […] The post Dog Loves Bungee Jumping, Owner Of Bungee-Jumping Dog Reports appeared first on The Onion.