Cut taxes or save Social Security? The $5 trillion question by Samuel I. Thorpe & William G. Gale

 We live in a world of trade-offs, and a looming debate in Washington will decide how trillions of dollars in government cash is spent.

Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump are eager to make permanent the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 that expire at the end of this year. This would prove quite expensive—according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, it would raise deficits by more than $5 trillion through 2035. As Republicans finalize their tax proposals, it is worth asking what else could be done with those trillions. 

The answer is “a lot.” With $5 trillion, we could bolster national defense, expand the child tax credit and reduce child poverty, fix our infrastructure, pay down the deficit … the list goes on.

There is no better example of how much revenue is at stake, however, than the following fact: For the amount of money it would take to extend the temporary provisions of the TCJA (not just over the next 10 years but permanently) policymakers could instead use the funds to keep Social Security solvent for generations. 

Why are there temporary provisions? In 2017, Senate Republicans lacked the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster, so they passed the TCJA through the “reconciliation” process, which prohibits policies that raise the deficit after 10 years. To meet this requirement, Republicans opted to let almost all the individual income tax and estate tax provisions expire at the end of 2025. Extending those provisions and repealing some business tax increases that TCJA mandated would reduce revenues by about 1.2% of GDP per year by the end of the decade—and in subsequent years if the tax cuts are made permanent. Remember that number: 1.2% of GDP. 

With a clear look at the cost of TCJA extension, the trade-offs become more obvious. Social Security is one of the nation’s most popular and successful programs, but it is in financial trouble.

Revenues that would otherwise go to making the provisions of TCJA permanent could be used instead to make Social Security solvent for at least the next 75 years.

 The program relies on payroll taxes, income taxes on social security benefits, and the principal and interest on previous surpluses in the Social Security trust fund. Since 2010, however, payroll and income tax revenues have been smaller than benefit payments to retirees.

The trust fund has dwindled and is projected to be totally depleted by 2035 under Social Security’s intermediate assumptions, at which point the other revenue sources will only cover about 83% of benefit payments. Over time, those sources would cover even less of scheduled payments. Addressing this shortfall will require either spending cuts, payroll tax increases, or increased federal borrowing that equals—that’s right—a little less than 1.2% of GDP.  

Revenues that would otherwise go to making the provisions of TCJA permanent could be used instead to make Social Security solvent for at least the next 75 years. In fact, it might keep it in the black for even longer, as revenues that would have gone to TCJA through 2034 could replenish the Social Security trust fund and extend solvency further into the future.

 Choosing to keep Social Security on solid ground versus making the TCJA provisions permanent would have several advantages. First, it would avoid cuts to Social Security benefits, which 42% of retirees depend on for at least half of their income. It would also be progressive relative to extending the TCJA, which would cut taxes by more than $70,000 per household for those in the top 1% of the income distribution, compared to just $130 on average for households in the bottom 20%. 

And unlike extending the TCJA provisions, it would not hurt economic growth: A recent CBO analysis finds that extending TCJA would have a slightly negative effect on growth within four years.

Public policy is about making choices, and lawmakers stand at a crossroads. If they choose to extend tax cuts that favor the rich while calling for cuts in “entitlements” (aka Social Security) that favor low- and moderate-income families, they will help those who don’t need it while penalizing those who do.

At best, that option is short-sighted and inequitable. Bluntly, it is a bad choice. Instead, maintaining Social Security benefits is the more appropriate option. Avoiding a massive and regressive tax cut would make it possible.

Was he grave, sombre, the consoler-in-chief? Are you kidding – this is Trump BY David Smith in Washington

 Hours after the Washington plane crash, the president’s desire to politicise tragedy was breathtaking in its audacity

 After the Challenger space shuttle disaster, Ronald Reagan ended an Oval Office address with the consoling thought that its crew had slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God. Successors such as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden also shone in the crucial US presidential role of consoler-in-chief.

How would Donald Trump fare in his test since returning to the White House? On Thursday he came to the press briefing room just 14 hours after the collision of a passenger plane and army helicopter near a Washington airport apparently left all 67 people dead.

 The early signs were promising. Wearing dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie, Trump strode to the lectern and requested a moment of silence for the victims and their families. The crammed, often rambunctious briefing room was stilled and hushed. You could have heard a pin drop.

In grave, mellow tones, Trump did the things that heads of state are supposed to do, acknowledging an “hour of anguish” for the nation, paying tribute to emergency rescue workers and offering solace that the victims’s journey ended in “the warm embrace of a loving God”.

 

“We are one family and today we are all heartbroken,” he said. “We are all searching for answers.”

Did he leave it there, channeling the sombre mood, fading with dignity into the background and handing over to experts who know what they are talking about? Are you kidding? This is Trump. He went on, ominously revealing that he had “strong opinions” on the collision (never mind the facts).

With aggression creeping into his voice, Trump pivoted to an all-out attack on his Democratic predecessors and blame the accident on policies of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The norm-busting desire to politicise tragedy was breathtaking in its audacity.

Trump claimed Obama had pushed “mediocre” standards for air traffic controllers, a job that requires “superior intelligence”, but Trump had raised them during his first term. “When I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before.”

Last week Trump signed an executive order restoring his standards. He explained: “We have to have our smartest people. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. It matters intellect, talent – the word talent, you have to be talented, naturally talented genius. You can’t have regular people doing that job.”

It’s almost as if you need a master race.

Trump claimed that the FAA under Obama “came out with a directive – too white” and described former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg as “a disaster” with “a good line of bullshit”, adding: “He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity.”

It was the classic argument from an administration that regards America as a pure meritocracy where systemic racism is a myth and the poor can pull themselves by their bootstraps. It must have just been a coincidence that on Thursday the message was delivered by four white heterosexual men.

Transportation secretary Sean Duffy lavished praise on the president’s “remarkable” leadership and said: “We can only accept the best and the brightest in positions of safety that impact the lives of our loved ones, our family members, and I think you make a really important point on that, Mr President. That is the motto of your presidency. The best and the brightest. The most intelligent coming into these spaces.”

Next up was Pete Hegseth, recently confirmed as defence secretary despite allegations of excessive drinking and abuse of his second wife. Hegesth vowed: “The era of DEI is gone at the defence department and we need the best and brightest.”

Duffy and Hegseth were like King Lear’s two eldest daughters trying to outdo each other in their flagrant genuflection. Then came the paragon of obsequiousness, Vice-President JD Vance, thanking Trump for his leadership and bringing a “hire-the-best-people” approach.

One reporter asked Trump if he was saying diversity hiring caused the crash and what evidence he has for that. “It just could have been,” teased the president, who has spent the first 10 days of his presidency hammering DEI in government and beyond.

Another reporter challenged that we do not yet even know the names of the 67 people killed and Trump is already blaming Democrats and DEI policies. Is he not getting ahead of the investigation? What comfort will this bring the families?

Trump rambled then snapped it was “not a very smart question”. He was pressed again on why he was able to so conclusively say DEI policies were responsible. “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level.”

And of course Trump is the chess grandmaster. It was in this same room that Trump once floated the idea of bleach as a cure for Covid-19. Just weeks ago, after a terrorist attack in New Orleans, he was quick to blame illegal immigration even though the attacker was an American citizen born in Texas.

 

After Thursday’s debacle, Buttigieg responded on the X social media platform: “Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying … One of [Trump’s] first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe.”

Trump, Duffy, Hegseth and Vance. The best and brightest that America has to offer?

 

 

Which is worse for wildlife, wind farms or oil drilling? by Sophie Hardach

 

US President Donald Trump says that wind farms harm birds and whales. Scientists weigh wind power's impacts on wildlife against those of oil and gas.

Aspen Ellis, a seabird biologist at University of California, Santa Cruz, spent a decade doing field work on remote islands off the coast of the United States. She often lived for months amongst thousands of birds, becoming so immersed in their ways that she even learned to tell which predators were nearby from the birds' calls. But as she added her observations to 40 or 50 years of previous research on these colonies, she noticed a worrying pattern.

"Again and again, I just found myself logging the impact of climate change over time," she recalls, from rising sea levels that threatened breeding colonies, to fish moving to cooler areas and leaving seabird chicks starving. "Without addressing this larger issue of climate change, the seabird conversation work we were doing wasn't sufficient to save those populations," she adds. She decided to change focus – and today, studies ways to make clean-energy offshore wind farms safer for birds.

The impact of energy production on wildlife has come into the spotlight again amid US President Donald Trump's plan to pivot the country's supply from renewables such as wind, to oil and gas. In his first days in office, Trump revoked former-president Joe Biden's ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling. "We will drill, baby, drill," Trump promised when he was inaugurated, while putting the brakes on the expansion of wind farms. One of his arguments is that wind farms harm birds and whales. His executive order halting offshore wind farm development cited the importance of marine life as one of the reasons for the decision.

 Renewables beyond the US

The US energy policy pivot towards fossil fuels is halting wind power developments for now, even as other nations press ahead with the expansion. China, for example, is home to almost two-thirds of the world's solar and wind power projects in construction.

After China, the UK is the world's next-largest offshore wind market. Scotland's government has described wind power expansion as a "once in a generation economic opportunity", with a pipeline of around 40GW of offshore wind capacity in addition to 3GW already in Scottish waters.

Meanwhile, the fastest-growing renewables sector of any major economy belongs to India. And in almost every country worldwide, wind and solar remain the cheapest way to add new power.

 

While wind farms can have some adverse effects on local wildlife in the habitats where they are sited, including through noise, Ellis and other scientists specialising in the environmental impact of wind farms challenge the claim that wind power is more damaging to wildlife than fossil fuel extraction. They describe wind energy as a powerful and necessary weapon against climate change, arguing that its impact on wildlife can be understood, managed and reduced. They contrast this with the existential risk posed by fossil fuels driving global warming – along with the ongoing noise and pollution from oil and gas production.

The debate is highlighting one of the most challenging conundrums facing renewable energy projects around the world – to what degree must they balance the impact they can have on local environments with the global effects of climate change? And how do those wind-power related impacts compare with the local effects of oil and gas drilling?

Weighing up the threats

"Fossil fuels, and their effect on climate change, outweigh everything," says Beth Scott, a professor in marine ecology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, a nation that has become a wind energy powerhouse. "Climate change is by far, by far the worst enemy, to all wildlife, and humans." Speaking from Aberdeen, she points to her window, at a brewing storm due to batter Scotland later in the day. It's too soon to say if this particular storm has been made stronger by climate change, but the overall picture is clear – extreme weather is "only going to get worse" in a warmer world, she says.

Scott and her colleagues are studying the impact of wind power on the marine ecosystem. While that impact exists – more on it later – she also describes wind power especially useful tool in the switch to renewable, climate-friendly energy because it can be built quickly and at scale.

 

"Once you start construction, in less than two years, you can build a 2GW [offshore wind] farm – the equivalent of a nuclear plant," Scott says. Nuclear power plants can take over a decade to construct. "So, in terms of rapid response to climate change, there's that."

Ellis also sees wind power as especially promising. "There is a lot of consensus [among seabird experts] on the need to move from traditional energy sources to a renewable energy framework, and offshore wind has a really big potential to do that," she says. "We're seeing the industry really boom very quickly, there's a lot of interest in that internationally, there's a lot of capacity for it internationally."

Finding the right location

Wind farms, both on land and in the sea, do pose a risk to birds, however, including habitat loss and collisions with the turbine or their blades. In Scotland, for example, the northern gannet and the black-legged kittiwake are considered at high risk of collision with wind farms. 

Seabirds may also suffer indirect effects, for example if they change their routes to avoid wind farms, and then spend more time and energy finding food. How much seabirds avoid wind farms, and how this affects them, may vary significantly and is still subject to ongoing research. Some, such as the red-throated diver, have been reported to avoid wind farms, while others, such as large gulls, have a mixed response to them, research suggests. Others again, such as cormorants, seek out wind farms to forage and roost there. (Read more about how wind farms can be made safer for birds.)

 

In Scotland, Scott and other scientists are conducting wide-ranging research on the impact of wind farms on the whole food web, including on plankton, using ocean robots and other instruments. Wind power does alter the ecosystem, Scott says, but the impact is not necessarily always negative. Research tracking seals suggests that they now use wind farms as hunting grounds to forage for fish gathering around the turbines, for example, with one seal's tracks showing how the animal made its way through the farm and stopped at different turbines to snack.

Decades of research from around the world suggests that oil production affects birds, whales and other wildlife in many different ways. Apart from the climate factor, there is the risk of oil spills as well as smaller, chronic leaks, scientists say, which can harm seabirds, whales, dolphins and other wildlife. Dolphins exposed to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, for example, suffered health problems including chronic lung disease and abnormal hearts, research has shown.

Kaitlin Frasier, an associate research scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, and other researchers have studied how the unprecedentedly large and deep offshore oil spill has impacted different whale and dolphin species in the long term. They used acoustic sensors to record the clicks emitted by the animals, and from that, estimated their population density in the area. They found that a decade after the spill, seven of eight monitored species groups had declined, including sperm whales (by up to 31%) and beaked whales (up to 83%).

But the sensors also picked up on something else, which you can listen to in the recording below: deafening blasts from oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

"[The Gulf of Mexico] is a really noisy area because of all of the surveys that are associated with drilling, they do these seismic surveys that generate a whole lot of noise as they are looking for the oil pockets and understanding how the oil is moving," says Frasier.

Noise pollution at sea

The noise from oil and gas is largely from seismic surveys deploying airguns, which are towed behind ships and blast compressed air through the water every 10 seconds, Frasier says. "They're doing this in deep water, 1,000m (3,280ft) or more, and it's really low frequencies, so theses sound waves travel really far in deep water," she says. The sound is so powerful that "you can hear it all the way across the Gulf of Mexico".

"So, they're surveying off of Texas, you'll hear it off of Florida, you'll hear it in Mexican waters. There's no way to escape that sound," she says.

Imagine if a light was being blasted into your face every 10 seconds – that would be disruptive as you're trying to go about your day

For whales, dolphins and other marine mammals that rely on sound and echolocation to find their food in dark and murky water, such loud and sudden underwater noise can be deeply disorienting, equivalent to being blinded, as well as being very distressing for them, research has shown.

"If you think about a sperm whale, one of the species in our study, a third of the body of the animal is a sound-production device. That's how important sound is to the animal. Their whole life is centred around the use of sound," says Frasier.

In the Gulf of Mexico, the noise from the airguns as well as vessels may be making it harder for whales and dolphins to forage for food, Frasier suggests. The oil and gas industry, however, maintains that there is no evidence that airgun noise injures or harms marine life, an assertion that environmental groups dispute.

 

"It's not that we think those sounds are directly killing whales, but those whales use sound in their daily life to find food, to communicate with each other," Frasier says. "Imagine if a light was being blasted into your face every 10 seconds – that would be disruptive as you're trying to go about your day." 

Wind farm construction also involves noise, for example during surveying but also when the pile is hammered into the seabed. Studies have shown that seals and harbour porpoises are affected by the noise from pile-driving, causing them to flee for several miles and affecting their ability to feed.

 

But Frasier highlights that with oil and gas, the surveys happen over a longer time period, not just before but also during extraction.

"We see it in all of our recordings," she says of the oil-related noise, which she describes as a constant backdrop to the whale sounds. "It's very heart-wrenching to listen to."

By comparison, evidence from European offshore wind farms suggests that loud noise from wind farm construction tends to be more temporary and containable, as it happens during the pile-driving phase. In Europe, some countries such as Germany now legally oblige offshore wind farm developers to place devices called bubble curtains around the construction sites to buffer such pile-driving noise, and protect porpoises and other marine animals. (Read about how bubble curtains work, and their effect on wind farm noise).

Once the wind farm is in place, it can keep spinning for decades and then be replaced with new turbines on the same land, whereas oil production moves on once one site is exhausted. There is, however, also ongoing noise in offshore wind farms from the spinning turbines and the supply and maintenance vessels. Ship noise – whether from such maintenance vessels, or shipping generally – can in turn affect marine mammals such as harbour porpoises.

The onshore effects of oil, gas and wind

Liba Pejchar, a professor and conservation biologist at Colorado State University, and her team have compared the effects of inland wind energy and oil and gas on ecosystems in Colorado and neighbouring Wyoming. These states are home to wind farms, as well as oil and gas fields. One of the aspects they studied was habitat loss and fragmentation, meaning, wildlife habitat being lost or broken up through roads as well as the turbines or oil and gas fields themselves.

 

They found that both onshore wind farms and oil and gas production, caused habitat loss. However, "we found overall that wind energy resulted in less habitat fragmentation than oil and gas and especially, less impacts over the long term", she says. "In the near term, the impacts were often somewhat equivalent, but wind energy is a renewable resource, so once you put in the turbines, they continue to harness that energy for decades to come. Whereas oil and gas have to keep moving, and so those impacts just getting compounded across the landscape."

While wind power hazards for birds, such as collisions, are well-known, preliminary research by Pejchar's team suggests oil and gas production can also negatively affect birds and their habitat, and for example, have impacted ferruginous hawks in Wyoming.

Like the other scientists, Pejchar also highlights how climate change, driven by fossil fuels, is already changing the environment. "There's a higher frequency of these large, catastrophic fires in Colorado in particular," she says. "Sometimes wildlife can benefit from fire, it's a natural form of disturbance, but the scale of these fires and the intensity and frequency – there could be complete state changes, where forests can no longer be sustained because fire is moving through them on such a regular basis. So that's going to have a huge impact on wildlife communities."

 Both industries are taking steps to reduce the effect their activities have on the local environments where they operate.

 

In a 2022 study co-led by Ellis, an international group of scientists and also conservation organisations such as American Bird Conservancy developed a process that allows wind farm developers to identify and minimise the risks to seabirds. They recommended measures to reduce or offset the impact that included choosing sites that are less in the way of seabirds' known flight routes or habitats; wind farm developers building alternative nesting sites; and developers funding conservation programmes to boost the species in other habitats. 

"Seabirds are a great case study for this [process], because we have a lot of data about many of these species," Ellis says. In addition, "seabird conservation is very well understood", she says, both in terms of specific threats to seabirds, such as predators and invasive plants, and also in terms of how to effectively address those threats, for example by removing predators such as rats, and clearing invasive plants. The assessment process outlined in the study could then also be used to reduce the impact of wind power on other species, such as bats and whales, with measures that are appropriate for them, she says.

Regarding the environmental impact of fossil fuel extraction, some of the most important measures have aimed at reducing oil spills and chronic oil pollution, which can be catastrophic for birds and other wildlife. Monitoring of beached, oiled birds in Europe's North Sea has revealed a sharp decline in the rate of oiled birds, suggesting a decrease in oil pollution and spills as a result of measures such as requiring oil tankers to have double hulls.

But the attempts to lessen the local effects of energy infrastructure do little to address the wider context of climate change, the threat of which has led to international agreements to phase down fossil fuels. Carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are leading many parts of the world to feel the effects of global warming.

And these are beginning to affect the environments where fossil fuels are extracted too. The Gulf of Mexico, for example, has been in the grip of a climate-change-fuelled marine heatwave, which can make hurricanes more intense.

 

Alongside the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels, the intensity of extracting the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has an additional climate impact from the release of large quantities of methane – an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period.

Although the global supply of renewable power is surging, and demand for oil, gas and coal are all predicted to peak this decade, the race to build energy infrastructure that doesn't harm wildlife looks set to be a challenge for years to come.

How the energy industry responds will be felt in habitats around the world.

The US economy just had another robust year Bryan Mena, CNN

 

Another year of robust economic growth is in the books, underscoring how the Biden administration handed President Donald Trump what many consider a solid economy.

The US economy grew 2.5% over the past year, according to new Commerce Department figures released Thursday, comparing the fourth quarter in 2024 with the one from a year earlier. A resilient labor market supported strong consumer spending last year. Americans’ spending accounts for about 70% of the US economy. Business investment also fueled growth in 2024, though it went into reverse in the final months of the year.

The economy expanded at an annualized rate of 2.3% in the fourth quarter, as measured by gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output. That was slightly below economists’ expectations of a 2.4% rate, according to FactSet. The figures are adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation.

“Fourth-quarter GDP data capped off a surprisingly strong year in 2024,” Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, said in commentary issued Thursday. “The US consumer has been unstoppable, supported by wealth creation, a strong labor market, and lending.” 

 

The latest GDP report comes on the heels of the Federal Reserve’s latest policy decision announced Wednesday. The central bank opted to hold its key interest rate steady, following three back-to-back rate cuts last year.

While Fed officials seem inclined to hold off on further rate cuts for the next few months, Fed Chair Jerome Powell in his post-meeting news conference said the US economy remains in a good place, with a steady labor market and inflation that seems on track to slow further. He also noted that the strong numbers in the aggregate are masking some economic pain under the surface.

Economists broadly expect the US economy to continue with its expansion in 2025, but the one wild card is the economic effect of Trump’s policies, which include mass deportations, stiff tariffs and making his 2017 tax cuts permanent.

Details from the report

Consumers stepped up their spending in the October-through-December period, boosting the overall economy in the process.

Consumer spending accelerated to an annual rate of 4.2% in the fourth quarter, up from the prior quarter’s 3.7%. Spending both on goods and services gained steam that period, especially purchases of durables, which registered a stunning 12.1% rate.

The pick-up in spending on durable goods — products meant to last at least three years such as furniture and cars — may have been due to shoppers scrambling to get ahead of the stiff tariffs Trump has floated. The president has promised to slap 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada on February 1, a move that could make appliances and cars more expensive.

Consumers may have also been enticed to snap up durables because of lower short-term interest rates.

However, business spending was one big red flag in the latest GDP report.

Nonresidential fixed investment, which captures how much businesses are investing in their operations, contracted at an annual rate of 2.2% in the fourth quarter, down sharply from the 4% gain in the prior three-month period. 

 

“The one drag was businesses didn’t invest in inventories as much as expected, which may be a reaction to economic uncertainty surrounding the new presidential administration,” Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a note Thursday.

The economy under Trump 2.0

Trump is beginning his second term with a US economy that’s in very good shape, but he’s also promised major policy changes.

“In terms of the outlook, President Trump is looking to create a low-taxation, light-touch regulatory environment in order to boost growth prospects while implementing tariffs to improve US manufacturing competitiveness and promote reshoring of economic activity,” James Knightley, chief international economist at ING, said in a note Thursday. “This should all be supportive for economic activity, but at the same time there is evidence of a cooling jobs market and nominal income growth is slowing notably.”

Trump has also kicked off an aggressive crackdown on immigration, which economists say could weigh on growth and put employers who rely on migrant labor in a bind.

There aren’t many concerns about economic growth this year, but one fear is that Trump’s “expansionary” policies, aimed at boosting economic activity, could end up stoking inflation. If that turns out to be the case, not only would it sting everyday Americans who’ve already dealt with years of high inflation, but it could also keep the Fed from cutting rates, and possibly hike them instead.

I study democracy worldwide − here’s how Texas is eroding human rights, free expression and civil liberties by Katie Scofield

 

While concerns about the future of American democracy dominate headlines worldwide, millions of Texans are already seeing a rapid decline in democratic standards.

In December 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion-inducing medications to a woman in Collin County, Texas, alleging that the shipment violated Texas’ near-total ban on abortion.

Two months earlier, Paxton’s office had sued to block a federal rule protecting women’s out-of-state medical records from criminal investigation. And in 2022, it sued the Biden administration over federal guidelines requiring doctors to perform abortions in emergency situations.

Paxton’s lawsuits – alongside the state’s restrictive abortion policies – raise troubling questions about individual privacy and women’s bodily autonomy in Texas, where I live and teach. And they’re indicative of a broader problem. As my research on democracy and human rights shows, the state government is becoming increasingly antidemocratic.

Scholars examine a number of factors to determine the health of a democracy. Elections must be free and fair. There should be freedom of expression and belief, multiple competitive political parties and minimal corruption. A democratic government must also respect individual freedom.

On many of these metrics, I believe Texas falls short. 

 

Are Texas elections free and fair?

Texas has some of the most restrictive voting laws in the United States, including strict voter ID laws, stringent limits on mail-in and absentee ballots and no online voter registration.

Republicans, who passed each of these policies, claim their concern is a democratic one – election integrity. Yet, when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick offered a US$25,000 reward to anyone who could prove voter fraud in the 2020 election, it led to just one arrest.

The Texas Legislature nonetheless pledged to pass an even more restrictive voting bill in 2021, referencing “purity of the ballot box,” an old Jim Crow phrase. Democratic lawmakers ended up fleeing the state to paralyze the state assembly and keep the most egregious parts of the bill from passing.

Healthy democracies also have robust competition between multiple parties so that voters have real choices at the polls.

Yet since its current constitution was written in 1876, Texas has effectively been a one-party state governed by conservatives. No Democrat has won statewide office since 1994 – the longest Democrats have been locked out of statewide office in any state. 

 

Money in politics

Texas puts no limits on individual campaign contributions to the governor, one of just 12 U.S. states that lacks this common anti-corruption measure.

This has allowed Texas’ current governor, Greg Abbott, who has been in office since 2015, to raise vast sums of money. In the 2022 Texas gubernatorial race – the most expensive in the state’s history at $212 million – Abbott outspent his Democratic opponent by almost $50 million. In 2018, he had 90 times more cash on hand than his Democratic opponent.

Texas’ lack of effective campaign finance regulations has given big donors access to power in the form of gubernatorial appointments.

An in-depth investigation by The Texas Tribune in 2022 revealed that 27 of the 41 members of the governor’s COVID-19 task force were campaign donors who had collectively paid $6 million toward the governor’s reelection. Many were business owners who had a vested interest in reopening the state.

Freedom of expression

Texas is also at the center of a national struggle over academic freedom, a key component of free expression.

Texas passed a law in 2023 requiring public universities to close their diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, offices, depriving the most vulnerable student communities of resources such as scholarships, mental health programs and career workshops.

The Texas Senate is considering expanding this legislation to prohibit “DEI curriculum and course content.”

The mere threat appears to be squelching freedom of thought and intellectual exploration in Texas universities already. The University of North Texas in November started editing course titles and syllabi to remove identity-based topics.

On Jan. 14, Abbott threatened to fire the president of Texas A&M University – a part of my university system – if faculty attended an academic conference showcasing the work of Black, Latino and Indigenous scholars.

Human rights at the border

Abbott’s campaign to control the U.S.-Mexico border has raised concerns among human rights groups about civil rights in the state.

In March of 2021, Abbott declared a state of emergency in counties on the Texas border, allowing him to deploy the Texas National Guard there. The initiative, Operation Lone Star, was supposed to stop migrants from crossing the border outside official government checkpoints.

Since border enforcement is a federal authority, however, the troops have mostly enforced state laws on trespassing or drugs and weapons possession. Guardsmen have also participated in busing migrants to Democratic-run cities such as New York and Chicago and built razor-wire barriers in the Rio Grande.

The result is an $11 billion policing program that has largely targeted Latino American citizens – not immigrants. Fully 96% of those arrested on trespassing charges are Latino, and 75% of those facing court proceedings for that and other crimes as a result of Operation Lone Star are U.S. citizens. 

 

Women’s freedoms

Finally, women’s right to bodily autonomy is under threat in Texas, which has one of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws.

At least three women have died as a result of doctors being afraid to treat their miscarriages. Overall, maternal mortality rates have increased by 56% since the ban was imposed in 2021. Scary statistics haven’t stopped the state’s plans to tighten its ban.

The 2025 Texas legislative session began with Republican legislators having prefiled several bills aimed at ending abortion by mail services, including one that would reclassify common abortion pills as controlled substances like Valium or Ambien. Doctors warn that this reclassification could also make it harder for them to disperse these medications quickly in life-threatening emergencies.

And a handful of rural Texas counties have made it illegal to transport women seeking out-of-state abortions on their roads.

As Texas goes, so goes the nation?

The question of whether a government is democratic is often not black or white. It should be viewed on a sliding scale.

Freedom House, a nonpartisan international democracy watchdog, ranks countries on a 100-point scale based on the factors I mentioned earlier, among others, and labels countries as “free,” “partly-free” and “not free.”

The freest country in 2024, Finland, had a score of 100. The U.S. has been sliding down the rankings, receiving a score of 83 in 2024 – down from 94 in 2010. It’s still solidly in the “free” category, but U.S. democracy looks less like Germany’s and more like Romania’s. The antidemocratic policy changes made in Texas and a handful of other states contribute to this slide.

Freedom House doesn’t rank states, but if it did, Texas would likely still rate as a “free” democracy. There is space for dissent, opposition and free speech. Democratic politicians have occasional political victories.

But Texas is decidedly less democratic than the U.S. at large. Democracy here is not lost, but I fear Texas is in danger of becoming only “partly-free.”

n one of his final actions, Biden urges continued help for left-behind places by Mark Muro and Headshot Mark Muro Senior Fellow - Brookings Metro Anthony F. Pipa

 

President Donald Trump signed an avalanche of executive orders on his first day in office, consuming policymakers’ and the media’s attention. Meanwhile, former President Joe Biden’s very last executive order on economic policy—issued on January 19, the last full day of his tenure—has gone relatively unnoticed. 

Yet Biden’s order—on “helping left-behind communities make a comeback”—merits attention. Not only does it memorialize an important part of the Biden-Harris economic agenda, but given continued bipartisan concern for “left-behind places,” the action also extends important ideas about place into the next administration and beyond. As such, Biden’s order provides a strong foundation on which the Trump administration can build. 

Biden came into office pledging to address the nation’s stark economic divides, which the 2016 election had brought into sharp relief. Geographic inequality between places had risen across the country, related in part to the extreme concentration of the nation’s innovation sector. 

The 117th Congress responded to those concerns by mobilizing often bipartisan support for investments in distressed places via legislation such as the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. These laws created groundbreaking new programs such as the Good Jobs Challenge and Recompete Pilot Program, which focused on turning “setback into comeback,” as a White House fact sheet about the executive order declared. Other programs such as the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs, Regional Innovation Engines, and Microelectronics Commons sought to fuse regional uplift with place-based innovation strategies. 

In short, the Biden administration moved quickly to prioritize investment in distressed areas such as rural villages, struggling factory towns, Native American reservations, and former coal communities. What’s more, it elevated numerous regional commissions, drove the development of new community leadership coalitions, and created initiatives such as the Build Back Better Regional Challenge, the Economic Recovery Corps, and the Rural Partners Network to ensure localities—including small-town communities—had the capacity to access and use federal resources. 

Are the new policies working? Early signs are positive, though the programs’ effectiveness cannot be ascertained yet. Still, the “comeback” push represents a coherent and well-designed approach to economic development that merits a chance to work. And that is the ultimate purpose of Biden’s executive order: As one of his final public actions, the directive seeks to extend important ideas about helping struggling communities into the next administration and beyond, given how important consistency will be to achieving success.  

In this direction, the executive order urges policymakers to: 

• Maintain the focus on left-behind communities in economic development funding opportunities, tasking the assistant secretary of economic development at the Department of Commerce to work over the next year with federal agencies to support localized community economic development. 
• Develop and maintain a “whole-of-government” coordination of such investments. 
• Establish a more user-friendly “No Wrong Door” responsiveness to community inquiries as stakeholders navigate the federal system to identify the appropriate investments and technical assistance that can advance places’ economic development. 
• Leverage federal programs for rebuilding resilience in disaster-prone and disaster-affected communities. 

Will the executive order actually influence the Trump administration? Further infusions of investment capital are unlikely, as cost-cutting talk swirls in some corners of Washington. Yet the genie of helping left-behind places with focused, coherent, place-based economic policies is out of he bag—often with bipartisan support.   

It bears noting, for example, that Trump signed his own executive order on such issues during his first term, creating a White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council to address concerns about distressed communities that “despite the growing national economy…are plagued by high poverty levels, failing schools, and a scarcity of jobs.” More recently, Republican senators played important roles in the early development of place-based programs such as the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs in the CHIPS and Science Act. And Brookings research has found that the Biden administration’s implementation of these investments in distressed communities has often tilted significantly toward places—many of them rural—where a majority of residents voted for Trump.   

In short, both Republicans and Democrats have taken an interest in helping left-behind places, both rural and urban. Such professed concern raises the hope that the priorities set out in Biden’s closing executive order really might persist and get the time and support they need to enable local transformations.  

The ultra-fast cancer treatments which could replace conventional radiotherapy by David Cox

 

A pioneering new treatment promises to tackle a wider range of cancers, with fewer side-effects than conventional radiotherapy. It also takes less than a second.

In a series of vast underground caverns on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland, experiments are taking place which may one day lead to new generation of radiotherapy machines. The hope is that these devices could make it possible to cure complex brain tumours, eliminate cancers that have metastasised to distant organs, and generally limit the toll which cancer treatment exerts on the human body.

The home of these experiments is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (Cern), best known to the world as the particle physics hub that developed the Large Hadron Collider, a 27 kilometre (16.7 mile)-long ring of superconducting magnets capable of accelerating particles to near the speed of light.

Arguably Cern's crowning achievement was the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the so-called "God Particle" which gives other particles their mass and in doing so lays the foundation for everything that exists in the universe. But in recent years, the centre's unique expertise in accelerating high-energy particles has found a new niche – the world of cancer radiotherapy.

Eleven years ago, Marie-Catherine Vozenin, a radiobiologist now working at Geneva University Hospitals (Hug), and others published a paper outlining a paradigm-shifting approach to traditional radiotherapy treatment which they called Flash. By delivering radiation at ultra-high dose rates, with exposures of less than a second, they showed that it was possible to destroy tumours in rodents while sparing healthy tissue.

 

Its impact was immediate. International experts described it as a seminal breakthrough, and it galvanised fellow radiobiologists around the world to conduct their own experiments using the Flash approach to treat a wide variety of tumours in rodents, household pets, and now humans.

The Flash concept resonated as it addressed some of the long-standing limitations of radiotherapy, one of the most common cancer therapies, which two-thirds of all cancer patients will receive at some point in their treatment journey. Typically delivered through administering a beam of X-rays or other particles over the course of two to five minutes, the total dose is usually spread across dozens of individual treatment sessions over up to eight weeks, to make it more tolerable for the patient.

Over the past three decades, advanced imaging scans and state-of-the-art radiotherapy machines have made it possible to target an individual tumour with increasing precision. But the risk of damaging or deadly side effects is still present.

Vozenin cites the example of paediatric brain tumours, which can often be cured by blasting the brain with radiotherapy, but at a great cost. "The survivors are often left with lifelong anxiety and depression, while the impact of the radiation affects brain development, causing significant loss of IQ," she says. "We're [sometimes] able to cure these kids but the price they pay is high."

 

Billy Loo, a professor of radiation oncology who runs the Flash sciences lab at Stanford University School of Medicine in the US, explains that tumours, especially those of larger volume, are rarely neatly segregated from the surrounding tissue. This means it's often next to impossible to avoid harming healthy cells, so oncologists are often unable to use as high a dose as they would like, says Loo.

Cancer specialists have long believed that being able to boost the radiation dose would greatly enhance their ability to cure patients with difficult-to-treat cancers, according to Vozenin. For example, research has previously indicated that being able to increase the radiation dose in lung cancer patients with tumours that have metastasised to the brain could improve survival.

In recent years, animal studies have repeatedly shown that Flash makes it possible to markedly increase the amount of radiation delivered to the body while minimising the impact that it has on surrounding healthy tissue. In one experiment, healthy lab mice which were given two rounds of radiation via Flash did not develop the typical side effects which would be expected during the second round. In another study, animals treated with Flash for head and neck cancers experienced fewer side effects, such as reduced saliva production or difficulty swallowing.

Loo is cautiously optimistic that going forwards, such benefits may also translate to human patients. "Flash produces less normal tissue injury than conventional irradiation, without compromising anti-tumour efficacy – which could be game-changing," he says. An additional hope is that this could then reduce the risk of secondary cancers, resulting from radiation-induced damage later in life, although it is still too early to know if that will be the case.

Now, increasing numbers of human trials are beginning to take place around the world. Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Ohio, US, is planning an early stage trial in children with metastatic cancer that has spread to their chest bones. Meanwhile, oncologists at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland are conducting a Phase 2 trial – where the details are finessed, including the optimum dose, how effective the treatment is and if there are any side effects – for patients with localised skin cancer.

 

But the next phase of research is not only about testing whether Flash works in people. It's also about identifying which kind of radiation is the best one to use.

A choice of particles

From carbon ions to protons and electrons, there are many ways of delivering radiotherapy, each with different applications and challenges. One of the most precise forms of radiotherapy is hadron therapy, delivered with carbon ions. But there are only 14 facilities which can deliver this in the entire world, each one costing an estimated $150m (£122m). Currently this therapy is delivered using a conventional dosing regime, in which the radiation is delivered over several minutes. However, with the Flash protocol the ions would be delivered in less than a second.

"High energy electrons can be used to treat superficial tumours in the skin," says André-Dante Durham Faivre, a radiation oncologist at Hug. "Photons, i.e. X-rays, or protons [a type of subatomic particle], can be used to treat deeper tumours, while we save carbon ions and helium particles for very specialised cases, as it's only very, very big clinical centres that can offer that type of treatment. The particle accelerator needed to administer carbon ion radiotherapy is the size of a building."

 This is one tricky problem with Flash therapies. Because creating subatomic particles requires extremely complex particle accelerators, at the moment this treatment can only be delivered via vast pieces of equipment in specialist centres, which is expensive. This means patients will most likely need to travel long distances for their treatment – and while researchers hope that eventually Flash will be available to everyone who needs it, at the moment treatments such as proton therapy are only available to a relatively small minority of patients.

 

So far, protons have been the particle of choice for human Flash trials, both because they can penetrate up to 30cm (12in) into the body, enabling them to reach relatively deep internal organs, and because existing proton radiotherapy machines can be adapted relatively easily to deliver Flash dose rates.

In 2020, the University of Cincinnati Medical Centre launched the first ever clinical trial of Flash proton radiotherapy in patients whose primary cancer had metastasised to the bones, with early results suggesting that the treatment was just as effective as conventional radiotherapy and the incidence of adverse events was similar. Now, radiation oncologists at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine are hoping to launch their own trial later this year in patients with recurrent head and neck cancer.

"These are patients who have few other options as their tumours are impossible to remove via surgery," says Alexander Lin, professor of radiation oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, who will lead the proposed trial. "Going through another course of standard radiotherapy would potentially lead to dangerous side effects such as jaw fractures, mouth wounds and even potentially fatal damage to the carotid artery. We believe that proton Flash will be less toxic."

 

A practical challenge

However, if proton Flash were to be approved by regulators in future, Durham Faivre says that one of the disadvantages is that the machines required are still relatively large, meaning the treatment could only be administered in a select number of centres, restricting patient access.

Now Cern are working with researchers at Lausanne University Hospital and the French company TheryQ to try and develop a new form of accelerator which delivers even more radiation – described as very high energy electrons – at Flash dose rates. And according to Durham Faivre, Hug researchers are currently in discussions with commercial partners to develop an X-ray Flash machine.

 Such accelerators could enable the benefits of Flash to be applied to deep tumours without requiring a vast machine, says Durham Faivre. The ultimate goal is to make it possible for any hospital with radiotherapy equipment to be able to provide Flash. "We believe that X-ray Flash machines could in time replace existing conventional X-ray machines," he says.

 

In particular, Durham Faivre is optimistic that newer accelerators could allow oncologists to tackle more complex tumours such as glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer and one of the deadliest forms of the disease, with a five-year survival rate of just 5%.

Following on from the University of Cincinnati trial, oncologists are also hopeful that Flash machines could improve the treatment of various forms of metastatic disease (where the cancer has spread from its primary location) and actually cure patients who were previously considered incurable. Loo predicts that Flash could be used to destroy the primary and secondary tumours, then followed by chemotherapy or immunotherapy to eliminate the microscopic cancer cells which are enabling the disease to spread.

"Metastatic cancers involve large volumes of the body because of their diffuse distribution," says Durham Faivre. He explains that this means they're usually hard to cure, because it wouldn’t be possible to deliver enough radiation to the body’s tissues to kill all the cancerous cells. If you did, the patient may not survive the effects of the radiation on previously healthy tissue. But newer treatments are changing this, he says, particularly in people with limited metastases.  “Flash offers the prospect of safely treating many more metastases," he says.

 

Another hope is that Flash could ultimately help make radiotherapy more accessible to all.

The radiotherapy gap

At last September's UICC World Cancer Congress – a conference that brings together cancer experts from around the world – Katy Graef, vice-president of the non-profit Bio Ventures for Global Health, highlighted a major challenge in global health which is sometimes referred to as "the radiotherapy gap".

Using data compiled by the Lancet Oncology Commission, Graef described how there are only 195 radiotherapy machines in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 4,172 in the US and Canada. With the annual incidence and mortality from cancer expected to double across the African continent by 2040, she explained that it has been projected that the region will require more than 5,000 additional machines in the next two decades, a demand which many nations will struggle to afford.

In December, a new review of national cancer control plans around the globe highlighted how the radiotherapy gap extends beyond Africa to many low and middle-income countries. "Only about 10% of cancer patients in low-income countries have access to radiotherapy, compared to 90% in high-income countries," says Lisa Stevens, director of the programme of action for cancer therapy at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and one of the authors on the paper. "The integration of radiotherapy into cancer control strategies is more crucial than ever."

 

The challenges behind these statistics go beyond the mere costs of the machines. In hot and humid environments, radiotherapy particle accelerators often break down, and with few trained technicians, repairs can take time. As a result, the International Cancer Expert Corps (ICEC) have launched an initiative called Project Stella, in partnership with Cern and several UK universities, which aims to develop next-generation accelerators with integrated software that can predict faults in advance and streamline maintenance, enabling countries to make the best use of the machines they have by minimising downtime.

But Durham Faivre is optimistic that Flash machines could also have a role to play, eventually making it easier for cancer patients living in low- and middle-income countries to receive the treatment they need. Instead of needing to repeatedly travel long distances over the course of many days and weeks to receive multiple radiotherapy sessions, Flash could enable them to receive it all in either a single session or a small handful of sessions. Because each treatment takes less than a second, it would also enable doctors to treat many more patients in a single day.

"If we can get a normal sized machine that fits in all the hospital bunkers in the world and can administer Flash, that can allow countries to treat many more patients," says Durham Faivre. "If instead of treating 50 patients a day, you can treat 150, you're massively increasing your capacity, and your ability to handle the public health need."

Many experts feel that this would also yield substantial cost savings benefits for high-income countries, as well as having a potentially enormous improvement for patients' quality of life. 

"It should be a more cost-effective treatment once the initial investment is made, since much fewer treatments are needed," says Constantinos Koumenis, professor of radiation oncology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in the US. Savings to the health system could also come due to fewer hospitalisations due to complications, he adds.

The first step, Koumenis explains, is investigating just how good Flash is – and whether it’s actually better than standard radiotherapy.