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Make Canada angry. Make Mexico angry. Make the members of NATO angry.

During the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a lot of things about longtime allies that caused frustration and outright friction among the leaders of those countries.

Trump and Vance indeed appear to disdain close alliances, favoring an America First approach to the world. A New York Times headline characterized the relationship between the U.S. and Europe now as “A Strained Alliance.”

As a former diplomat, I’m aware that how the U.S. treats its allies has been a crucial question in every presidency, since George Washington became the country’s first chief executive. On his way out of that job, Washington said something that Trump, Vance and their fellow America First advocates would probably embrace.

In what’s known as his “Farewell Address,” Washington warned Americans against “entangling alliances.” Washington wanted America to treat all nations fairly, and warned against both permanent friendships and permanent enemies.

The irony is that Washington would never have become president without the assistance of the not-yet-United-States’ first ally, France.

In 1778, after two years of brilliant diplomacy by Benjamin Franklin, the not-yet-United States and the Kingdom of France signed a treaty of alliance as the American Colonies struggled to win their war for independence from Britain.

France sent soldiers, money and ships to the American revolutionaries. Within three years, after a major intervention by the French fleet, the battle of Yorktown in 1781 effectively ended the war and America was independent.

Isolationism, then war

American political leaders largely heeded Washington’s warning against alliances throughout the 1800s. The Atlantic Ocean shielded the young nation from Europe’s problems and many conflicts, and America’s closest neighbors had smaller populations and less military might.

Aside from the War of 1812, in which the U.S. fought the British, America largely found itself protected from the outside world’s problems.

That began to change when Europe descended into the brutal trench warfare of World War I.

Initially, American politicians avoided becoming involved. What would today be called an isolationist movement was strong, and its supporters felt that the war in Europe was being waged for the benefit of big business.

But it was hard for the U.S.to maintain neutrality. German submarines sank ships crossing the Atlantic carrying American passengers. The economies of some of America’s biggest trading partners were in shreds; the democracies of Britain, France and other European countries were at risk.

A Boston newspaper headline in 1915 blares the news of a British ocean liner sunk by a German torpedo.
Serial and Government Publications Division, Library of Congress

President Woodrow Wilson led the United States into the war in 1917 as an ally of the Western European nations. When he asked Congress for a declaration of war, Wilson touted the value of like-minded allies, saying, “A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations.” The war was over within 16 months.

Immediately after the war, the Allies – led by the U.S., France and Britain – stayed together to craft the peace agreements, feed the war-ravaged parts of Europe and intervene in Russia after the Communist Revolution there.

Prosperity came along with the peace, helping the U.S. quickly develop into a global economic power.

However, within a few years, American politicians returned to traditional isolationism in political and military matters and continued this attitude well into the 1930s. The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 was blamed on vulnerabilities in the global economy, and there was a strong sentiment among Americans that the U.S. should fix its internal problems rather than assist Europe with its problems.

Alliance counters fascism

As both Hitler and the Japanese Empire began to attack their neighbors in the late 1930s, it became clear to President Franklin Roosevelt and other American military and political leaders that the U.S. would get caught up in World War II. If nothing else, airplanes had erased America’s ability to hide behind the Atlantic Ocean.

Though public opinion was divided, the U.S. began sending arms and other assistance to Britain and quietly began military planning with London. This was despite the fact that the U.S. was formally neutral, as the Roosevelt administration was pushing the limits of what a neutral nation can do for friendly nations without becoming a warring party.

In January of 1941, Roosevelt gave his annual State of the Union speech to Congress. He appeared to prepare the country for possible intervention – both on behalf of allies abroad and for the preservation of American democracy:

“The future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders. Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe, and Asia, and Africa and Australasia will be dominated by conquerors. In times like these it is immature – and incidentally, untrue – for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.”

When the Japanese attacked Hawaii in 1941 and Hitler declared war on the United States, America quickly entered World War II in an alliance with Britain, the Free French and others.Throughout the war, the Allies worked as a team on matters large and small. They defeated Germany in three and half years and Japan in less than four.

As World War II ended, the wartime alliance produced two longer-term partnerships built on the understanding that working together had produced a powerful and effective counter to fascism.

A ‘news bulletin’ from August 1945 issued by a predecessor of the United Nations.
Foreign Policy In Focus

Postwar alliances

The first of these alliances is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. The original members were the U.S., Canada, Britain, France and others of the wartime Allies. There are now 32 members, including Poland, Hungary and Turkey.

The aims of NATO were to keep the peace in Europe and contain the growing Communist threat from the Soviet Union. NATO’s supporters feel that, given that the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and in the Ukraine today are the only major conflicts in Europe in 80 years, the alliance has met its goals well. And NATO troops went to Afghanistan along with the U.S. military after 9/11.

The other institution created by the wartime Allies is the United Nations.

The U.N. is many things – a humanitarian aid organization, a forum for countries to raise their issues and a source of international law.

However, it is also an alliance. The U.N. Security Council on several occasions authorized the use of force by members, such as in the first Gulf War against Iraq. And it has the power to send peacekeeping troops to conflict areas under the U.N. flag.

Other U.S. allies with treaties or designations by Congress include Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, three South American countries and six in the Middle East.

In addition to these formal alliances, many of the same countries created institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States and the European Union. The U.S. belongs to all of these except the European Union. During my 35-year diplomatic career, I worked with all of these institutions, particularly in efforts to stabilize Africa. They keep the peace and support development efforts with loans and grants.

Admirers of this postwar liberal international order point to the limited number of major armed conflicts during the past 80 years, the globalized economy and international cooperation on important matters such as disease control and fighting terrorism.Detractors point to this system’s inability to stop some very deadly conflicts, such as Vietnam or Ukraine, and the large populations that haven’t done well under globalization as evidence of its flaws.

The world would look dramatically different without the Allies’ victories in the two World Wars, the stable worldwide economic system and NATO’s and the U.N.’s keeping the world relatively peaceful.

But the value of allies to Americans, even when they benefit from alliances, appears to have shifted between George Washington’s attitude – avoid them – and that of Franklin D. Roosevelt – go all in … eventually. Läs mer…

The United States’ steadfast allegiance to Ukraine during that country’s three-year war against Russia appears to be quickly disintegrating under the Trump administration. President Donald Trump on Feb. 19, 2025, called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a dictator” and falsely blamed him for the war that Russia initiated as part of a land grab in the countries’ border regions.

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said on Feb. 19 that Trump is trapped in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “disinformation space.”

The intensifying bitterness comes as the U.S. and Russia started talks in Saudi Arabia, without including Ukraine, on how to end the conflict.

The U.S. and Russia have long been adversaries, and the U.S., to date, has given Ukraine more than US$183 billion to help fight against Russia. But that funding came when Joe Biden was president. Trump does not appear to be similarly inclined toward Ukraine.

Amy Lieberman, a politics editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Tatsiana Kulakevich, a scholar of Eastern European politics and international relations, to understand the implications of this sudden shift in U.S.-Russia policy under Trump.

Kulakevich sees Trump’s moves that could be perceived as self-interested as instead part of a calculated strategy in preliminary discussions.

An airplane passenger reads a Financial Times article about U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 19, 2025.
Horacio Villalobos Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

Can you explain the current dynamic between the U.S., Ukraine and Russia?

People should not panic because the U.S. and Russia are only holding exploratory talks. We should not call them peace talks, per se, at least not yet. It was to be expected that Ukraine was not invited to the talks in Saudi Arabia because there is nothing to talk about yet. We don’t know what the U.S. and Russia are actually discussing besides agreeing to restore the normal functioning of each other’s diplomatic missions.

People are perceiving the U.S. and Russia as being in love. However, Trump’s Russia policy has been more hawkish than often portrayed in the media. Looking at the record from the previous Trump administration, we can see that if something is not in the interests of the U.S., that is not going to be done. Trump does not do favors.

He approved anti-tank missile sales to Ukraine in 2019. That same year, Trump withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, an agreement with Russia that limited what weapons each country could purchase, over Russian violations.

In 2019, Trump also issued economic sanctions against a Russian ship involved in building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. These sanctions tried to block Russia’s direct gas exports to Germany – this connection between Russia and Germany was seen by Ukraine as an economic threat.

Based on Trump’s talks with Russia and remarks against Ukraine, it could seem like the U.S. and Russia are no longer adversaries. How do you perceive this?

There are no clear indications that Russia and the U.S. have ceased to be adversaries. Despite Trump’s occasional use of terms like “friends” in diplomacy, his rhetoric often serves as a tactical maneuver rather than a genuine shift in alliances. A key example is his engagement with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, where Trump alternated between flattery and threats to extract concessions.

Even if the U.S. is meeting with Russia and the public narrative seems to say otherwise, strategically, abandoning Ukraine is not in the United States’ best interests. One reason why is because the U.S. turning away from Ukraine would make Russia happy and China happy. Trump has treated China as a primary threat to the U.S., and China has supported Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also still saying that everyone, including Ukraine, will be at the table for eventual peace talks.

The allegations that Russia was holding some information over Trump and blackmailing him started long before this presidential term and did not stop Trump from imposing countermeasures on Russia during his first term. The first Trump administration took more than 50 policy actions to counter Moscow, primarily in the form of public statements and sanctions.

What does the U.S. gain from developing a diplomatic relationship with Russia?

Trump is a transactional politician. American companies could profit from the U.S. aligning with Russia and Russian companies, as some Russian officials have said during the recent Saudi Arabia talks with the Trump administration. But the U.S. could also benefit economically from the Trump’s administration’s proposed deal with Ukraine to give the U.S. half of Ukraine’s estimated $11.5 trillion in rare earth minerals.

Zelenskyy rejected that proposal this week, saying it does not come with the promise that the U.S. will continue to give security guarantees to Ukraine.

Historically, since the Cold War, there has been a diplomatic triangle between the Soviet Union – later Russia – China and the U.S. And there has always been one side fighting against the two other sides. Trump trying to develop a better diplomatic relationship with Russia might mean he is trying to distance Russia from China.

A similar dynamic is playing out between the U.S. and Belarus’ authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, a co-aggressor in the war in Ukraine. Lukashenko is close with both Russia and China. The U.S. administration is looking to relax sanctions on Belarusian banks and exports of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, in exchange for the release of Belarusian political opposition members who are imprisoned. There are over 1,200 political prisoners in Belarus. This U.S. foreign policy strategy is aimed at providing Lukashenko with room to grow less economically dependent on Russia and China.

A worker clears snow from a cemetery in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Feb. 17, 2025. More than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in combat since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Pierre Crom/Getty Images

Is this level of collaboration between the U.S. and Russia unprecedented?

While U.S.-Russia relations are often defined by rivalry, history shows that pragmatic cooperation has occurred when both nations saw mutual benefits – whether this relates to arms control, space, counterterrorism, Arctic affairs or health.

Moreover, the U.S. has always prioritized its own interests in its relationship with Russia. For example, the U.S. and its allies imposed sanctions on Russia’s uranium and nickel industries only in May 2024, over two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This was due to the United States’ strategic economic dependencies and concerns about market stability if it sanctioned uranium and nickel.

Even after Russia invaded Crimea – an area of Ukraine that Russia claims as its own – in 2014 and provided support for Russian separatists in Ukraine’s Donbass region, the U.S. and other Western countries imposed largely symbolic sanctions. This included freezing assets of Russian individuals, restricting some financial transactions and limiting Russia’s access to Western technology.

We should also notice that Trump in January 2025 promised to sanction Russia if it does not end the Ukraine war. The U.S. still has not removed any existing sanctions, which signals its commitment to a tough stance on Russia, despite perceptions of a close relationship between Trump and Putin.

Given Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy, his tough rhetoric on Zelenskyy could be a deliberate negotiation strategy aimed at pressuring Ukraine into making greater concessions in potential peace talks, rather than signaling abandonment. Läs mer…

Imperialist rhetoric is becoming a mark of President Donald Trump’s second term. From asserting that the U.S. will “take over” the Gaza Strip, Greenland and the Panama Canal to apparently siding with Russia in its war on Ukraine, Trump’s comments suggest a return to an old imperialist style of forcing foreign lands under American control.

Imperialism is when a nation extends its power through territorial acquisition, economic dominance or political influence. Historically, imperialist leaders have used military conquest, economic coercion or diplomatic pressure to expand their dominions, and justified their foreign incursions as civilizing missions, economic opportunities or national security imperatives.

The term “empire” often evokes the Romans, the Mughals or the British, but the U.S. is an imperial power, too. In the 19th and early 20th century, American presidents expanded U.S. territory westward across the continent and, later, overseas, acquiring Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, Guam and the Philippines.

After that, outright territorial conquest mostly ceased, but the U.S. did not give up imperialism. As I trace in my 2023 book, “Dying by the Sword,” the country instead embraced a subtler, more strategic kind of expansionism. In this veiled imperialism, the U.S. exerted its global influence through economic, political and threatened military means, not direct confrontation.

Embracing traditional U.S. imperialism would upend the rules that have kept the globe relatively stable since World War II. As an expert on U.S. foreign policy, I fear that would unleash fear, chaos – and possibly nuclear war.

No redrawing borders

One of the most fundamental principles of this post-war international system is the concept of sovereignty – the idea that a nation’s borders should remain intact.

The United Nations Charter, signed in San Francisco in 1945, explicitly bars countries from obtaining territory through force. Outright annexation or territorial takeover is considered a direct violation of international law.

Work by the late political scientist Mark Zacher outlines how, since World War II, the international community – including the U.S. – has largely upheld this standard.

But imperialism still shapes world politics.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a blatant instance of imperial ambition justified by alleged historical grievances and national security concerns. Russia’s invasion set a dangerous precedent by undermining the principle that borders can’t be changed by force and that countries shouldn’t resort to aggression.

Putin’s precedent, in turn, has raised concerns that another great power may attempt to forcibly redraw international borders.

Take China, for example. President Xi Jinping has become increasingly aggressive toward Taiwan since 2019. If Putin’s invasion culminates with Russia successfully annexing parts of Ukraine – which the Trump administration has agreed with Russia should be part of any settlement – Xi may follow through on his threats to invade Taiwan.

A destroyed Russian tank in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 23, 2023. Territorial invasions like Russia’s ongoing effort to annex parts of Ukraine have been relatively rare since World War II.
Roman Pilipey/Getty Images

Respect for national sovereignty has made the world more stable and less violent.

The decline of traditional imperialism after World War II led to a flourishing of independent nation-states. As former colonial powers gradually relinquished control of their holdings in the second half of the 20th century – voluntarily or after losing wars of independence – the number of sovereign countries increased dramatically. The U.N. had 51 member countries in 1945 and over 150 by 1970.

The U.N. was founded on the idea that people of all countries should have a say in how they build their own futures. Today, 197 countries try to work together through the U.N. on a wide range of global issues, including defending human rights and reducing global poverty.

When a major power like the U.S. openly embraces imperialist rhetoric, it further weakens the already fragile rules that keep this delicate collaboration working.

Nonviolent imperialism

Imperialism does not require military force. Great powers still exert influence over weaker nations, shaping their behavior through economic might and wealth, diplomacy and strategic alliances.

The U.S. has long engaged in this form of influence. It has often pursued its imperialist agenda in what I would call a more “gentlemanly manner” than historical empires with their bloody physical conquests.

During the Cold War, for example, the U.S. established extensive dominance over much of the globe. In Latin America and the Middle East, it used economic aid, military alliances and ideological persuasion rather than outright territorial expansion to exert its control. Russia did the same in Eastern Europe and its other spheres of influence.

Demonstrators in Panama City insist ‘Panama Canal is Not For Sale’ following Donald Trump’s threats to seize the canal, Jan. 20, 2025.
Arnulfo Franco/AFP via Getty Images

Today, China excels at nonviolent imperialism. Its Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure construction project launched in 2013, has created deep economic dependencies among partner nations in Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Trade and diplomatic ties between China and those regions are much closer today as a result.

Nuclear era

A critical distinction between imperialism past and present is the presence of nuclear weapons.

In previous eras, great powers frequently fought wars to expand their influence and settle disputes. Countries could attempt to seize territory with little risk to their survival, even in defeat.

The sheer destructive potential of nuclear arsenals has changed this calculus. The Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction guarantees that if one country launches a nuclear weapon, it will quickly become the target of nuclear counterattack: annihilation for all sides.

Any major war between nuclear-armed nations now carries the risk of massive, potentially planetary, destruction. This makes direct conquest an irrational, even suicidal strategy rather than a calculated political maneuver.

And it makes Trump’s old-school imperial rhetoric particularly dangerous.

If the U.S. tried to annex foreign territory, it would almost certainly provoke serious international conflict. That’s especially true of the most strategic places Trump has threatened to “take over,” like the Panama Canal, which links 1,920 ports across 170 countries.

These imperialist threats, even if they’re not intended as serious policy proposals, are already ratcheting up global tensions.

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino — a pro-American ally — has flatly ruled out negotiating with the U.S. over control of the Panama Canal. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, says its territory of Greenland is “not for sale.” And Palestinians in Gaza, for their part, fiercely reject Trump’s plan to move all of them out and turn their homeland into a “Middle East Riviera,” as have neighboring Arab countries, which could be expected to absorb millions of displaced Palestinians.

Rhetoric shapes perception, and perception influences behavior. When an American president floats acquiring foreign territories as a viable policy option, it signals to both allies and enemies that the U.S. is no longer committed to the international order that has achieved relative global stability for the past 75 years.

With wars raging in the Middle East and Europe, this is a risky time for reckless rhetoric. Läs mer…

Five years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. cities are still adjusting to a new normal, with more people working remotely and less economic activity in city centers. Other factors, such as underfunded pension plans for municipal employees, are pushing many city budgets into the red.

Urban fiscal struggles are not new, but historically they have mainly affected U.S. cities that are small, poor or saddled with incompetent managers. Today, however, even large cities, including Chicago, Houston and San Francisco, are under serious financial stress.

This is a looming nationwide threat, driven by factors that include climate change, declining downtown activity, loss of federal funds and large pension and retirement commitments.

Spending cuts abound in many U.S. cities as inflation lingers and pandemic-era stimulus dries up.

Why cities struggle

Many U.S. cities have faced fiscal crises over the past century, for diverse reasons. Most commonly, stress occurs after an economic downturn or sharp fall in tax revenues.

Florida municipalities began to default in 1926 after the collapse of a land boom. Municipal defaults were common across the nation in the 1930s during the Great Depression: As unemployment rose, relief burdens swelled and tax collections dwindled.

In 1934 Congress amended the U.S. bankruptcy code to allow municipalities to file formally for bankruptcy. Subsequently, 27 states enacted laws that authorized cities to become debtors and seek bankruptcy protection.

Declaring bankruptcy was not a cure-all. It allowed cities to refinance debt or stretch out payment schedules, but it also could lead to higher taxes and fees for residents, and lower pay and benefits for city employees. And it could stigmatize a city for many years afterward.

In the 1960s and 1970s, many urban residents and businesses left cities for adjoining suburbs. Many cities, including New York, Cleveland and Philadelphia, found it difficult to repay debts as their tax bases shrank.

The New York Daily News, Oct. 30, 1975, after U.S. President Gerald Ford ruled out providing federal aid to save the city from bankruptcy. Several months later, Ford signed legislation authorizing federal loans.
Edward Stojakovic/Flickr, CC BY

In the wake of the 2008-2009 housing market collapse, cities including Detroit, San Bernardino, California, and Stockton, California, filed for bankruptcy. Other cities faced similar difficulties but were located in states that did not allow municipalities to declare bankruptcy.

Even large, affluent jurisdictions could go off the financial rails. For example, Orange County, California, went bankrupt in 2002 after its treasurer, Robert Citron, pursued a risky investment strategy of complex leveraging deals, losing some $1.65 billion in taxpayer funds.

Today, cities face a convergence of rising costs and decreasing revenues in many places. As I see it, the urban fiscal crisis is now a pervasive national challenge.

Climate-driven disasters

Climate change and its attendant increase in major disasters are putting financial pressure on municipalities across the country.

Events like wildfires and flooding have twofold effects on city finances. First, money has to be spent on rebuilding damaged infrastructure, such as roads, water lines and public buildings. Second, after the disaster, cities may either act on their own or be required under state or federal law to make expensive investments in preparation for the next storm or wildfire.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (center) discusses wildfire recovery in Pacific Palisades, Calif., Jan. 27, 2025. Cleaning up after the wildfires, which destroyed more than 16,000 structures, will include disposing of several million tons of toxic ash and debris.
Drew A. Kelley/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images

In Houston, for example, court rulings after multiple years of severe flooding are forcing the city to spend $100 million on street repairs and drainage by mid-2025. This requirement will expand the deficit in Houston’s annual budget to $330 million.

In Massachusetts, towns on Cape Cod are spending millions of dollars to switch from septic systems to public sewer lines and upgrade wastewater treatment plants. Population growth has sharply increased water pollution on the Cape, and climate change is promoting blooms of toxic algae that feed on nutrients in wastewater.

Increasing uncertainty about the total costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change will inevitably lead rating agencies to downgrade municipal credit ratings. This raises cities’ costs to borrow money for climate-related projects like protecting shorelines and improving wastewater treatment.

Underfunded pensions

Cities also spend a lot of money on employees, and many large cities are struggling to fund pensions and health benefits for their workforces. As municipal retirees live longer and require more health care, the costs are mounting.

For example, Chicago currently faces a budget deficit of nearly $1 billion, which stems partly from underfunded retirement benefits for nearly 30,000 public employees. The city has $35 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and almost $2 billion in unfunded retiree health benefits. Chicago’s teachers are owed $14 billion in unfunded benefits.

Policy studies have shown for years that politicians tend to underfund retirement and pension benefits for public employees. This approach offloads the real cost of providing police, fire protection and education onto future taxpayers.

Struggling downtowns and less federal support

Cities aren’t just facing rising costs – they’re also losing revenues. In many U.S. cities, retail and commercial office economies are declining. Developers have overbuilt commercial properties, creating an excess supply. More unleased properties will mean lower tax revenues.

At the same time, pandemic-related federal aid that cushioned municipal finances from 2020 through 2024 is dwindling.

State and local governments received $150 billion through the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and an additional $130 billion through the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act. Now, however, this federal largesse – which some cities used to fill mounting fiscal cracks – is at an end.

In my view, President Donald Trump’s administration is highly unlikely to bail out urban areas – especially more liberal cities like Detroit, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Trump has portrayed large cities governed by Democrats in the darkest terms – for example, calling Baltimore a “rodent-infested mess” and Washington, D.C., a “dirty, crime-ridden death trap.” I expect that Trump’s animus against big cities, which was a staple of his 2024 campaign, could become a hallmark of his second term.

Detroit officials respond to disparaging remarks about the city by Donald Trump during a campaign speech in Detroit, Oct. 10, 2024.

Resistance to new taxes

Cities can generate revenue from taxes on sales, businesses, property and utilities. However, increasing municipal taxes – particularly property taxes – can be very difficult.

In 1978, California adopted Proposition 13 – a ballot measure that limited property tax increases to the rate of inflation or 2% per year, whichever is lower. This high-profile campaign created a widespread narrative that property taxes were out of control and made it very hard for local officials to support property tax increases.

Thanks to caps like Prop 13, a persistent public view that taxes are too high and political resistance, property taxes have tended to lag behind inflation in many parts of the country.

The crunch

Taking these factors together, I see a fiscal crunch coming for U.S. cities. Small cities with low budgets are particularly vulnerable. But so are larger, more affluent cities, such as San Francisco with its collapsing downtown office market, or Houston, New York and Miami, which face growing costs from climate change.

Workers in North Miami Beach, Fla., distribute sandbags to residents to help prevent flooding as Hurricane Milton approaches the state on Oct. 8, 2024.
AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

One city manager who runs an affluent municipality in the Pacific Northwest told me that in these difficult circumstances, politicians need to be more frank and open with their constituents and explain convincingly and compellingly how and why taxpayer money is being spent.

Efforts to balance city budgets are opportunities to build consensus with the public about what municipalities can do, and at what cost. The coming months will show whether politicians and city residents are ready for these hard conversations. Läs mer…

The school choice movement received a major boost on Jan. 29, 2025, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order supporting families who want to use public money to send their children to private schools.

The far-reaching order aims to redirect federal funds to voucher-type programs. Vouchers typically afford parents the freedom to select nonpublic schools, including faith-based ones, using all or a portion of the public funds set aside to educate their children.

But research shows that as a consequence, this typically drains funding from already cash-strapped public schools.

We are professors who focus on education law, with special interests in educational equity and school choice programs. While proponents of school choice claim it leads to academic gains, we don’t see much evidence to support this view – but we do see the negative impact they sometimes have on public schools.

The rise of school choice

The vast majority of children in the U.S. attend traditional public schools. Their share, however, has steadily declined from 87% in 2011 to about 83% in 2021, at least in part due to the growth of school choice programs such as vouchers.

Modern voucher programs expanded significantly during the late 1980s and early 1990s as states, cities and local school boards experimented with ways to allow parents to use public funds to send their kids to nonpublic schools, especially ones that are religiously affiliated.

While some programs were struck down for violating the separation of church and state, others were upheld. Vouchers received a big shot in the arm in 2002, when the Supreme Court ruled in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause permitted states to include faith-based schools in their voucher programs in Cleveland.

Following Zelman, vouchers became a more realistic political option. Even so, access to school choice programs varied greatly by state and was not as dramatic as supporters may have wished. Because the Constitution is silent on education, states largely control school voucher programs.

Currently, 13 states and Washington, D.C., offer one or several school choice programs targeting different types of students. Total U.S. enrollment in such programs surpassed 1 million for the first time in 2024, double what it was in 2020, according to EdChoice, which advocates for school-choice policies.

Voters, however, have taken a dim view of voucher programs. By one count, they’ve turned down referendums on vouchers 17 times, according to the National Coalition for Public Education, a group that opposes the policy.

Most recently, three states rejected school choice programs in the November 2024 elections. Kentucky voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to enshrine school choice into commonwealth law, while Nebraska voters chose to repeal its voucher program. Colorado also rejected a “right” to school choice, but more narrowly.

In 2025, Tennessee became the 13th state to pass some sort of school choice program, despite opposition from public school supporters.
AP Photo/George Walker IV

Trump’s order

At its heart, Trump’s executive order would offer discretionary grants and issue guidance to states over using federal funds within this K-12 scholarship program. It also directs the Department of Interior and Department of Defense to make vouchers available to Native American and military families.

In addition, the order directs the Department of Education to provide guidance on how states can better support school choice – though it’s unclear exactly what that will mean. It’s a task that will be left for Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for secretary of Education, once she is confirmed.

Trump promoted school choice in his first term as well but failed to win enough congressional support to include it in the federal budget.

Research suggests few academic gains from vouchers

The push to give parents more choice over where to send their children is based on the assumption that doing so will provide them with a better education.

In the order, Trump specifically cites disappointing data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing that 70% of eighth graders are below proficient in reading, while 72% are below proficient in mathematics.

Voucher advocates point to research that school choice boosts test scores and improves educational attainment.

But other data don’t always back up the notion that school choice policies meaningfully improve student outcomes. A 2023 review of the past decade of research on the topic by the Brookings Institution found that the introduction of a voucherlike program actually led to lower academic achievement – similar to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A 2017 review by a Stanford economist Martin Carnoy published by the Economic Policy Institute similarly found little evidence vouchers improve school outcomes. While there were some modest gains in graduation rates, they were outweighed by the risks to funding public school systems.

Indeed, vouchers have been shown to reduce funding to public schools, especially in rural areas, and hurt public education in other ways, such as by making it harder for schools to afford qualified teachers.

Critics of voucher programs also fear that nonpublic schools may discriminate
against some students, such as those who are members of the LGBTQ+ community. There are some reports of this already happening in Wisconsin. Unlike legislation governing traditional public schools, state laws regulating voucher programs often do not include comprehensive anti-discrimination provisions.

School reform

Criticisms of voucher programs aside, many parents who support them do so based on the hope that their children will have more affordable, high-quality educational options. This was especially true in Zelman, in which the Supreme Court upheld the rights of parents to remove their kids from Cleveland’s struggling public schools.

There is little doubt in our minds that in some cases school choice affords some parents in low-performing districts additional options for their children’s education.

But in general, the evidence shows that is the exception to vouchers, not the rule. Evidence also suggests most children – whether they’re using vouchers to attend nonpublic schools or remain in the public school system – may not always benefit from school choice programs. And when it takes money out of underfunded public school systems, school choice can make things worse for a lot more children than it benefits.

While the poor reading and math scores cited in Trump’s executive order suggest that change is needed to help keep America’s school and students competitive, this order may not achieve that goal. Läs mer…

Cancer arises when your cells grow uncontrollably and refuse to die when they should. Normally, your body is equipped with regulatory processes to prevent this chaos. One such mechanism involves a protein called p53. Often dubbed the “guardian of the genome,” this protein plays a pivotal role in ensuring that your cells grow, divide and die in an orderly fashion. When p53 malfunctions, the result is often cancer.

Learning about how p53 works has not only deepened how scientists understand cancer, but also provided promising avenues for new treatments.

In my work as a cancer researcher, I study the underlying mechanisms of how tumors develop and resist treatment. By understanding how cancer cells bypass safeguards like p53, scientists can find better ways to stop them, leading to more effective treatments for patients.

How p53 works

Each cell contains DNA that instructs it how to function. Over time, this instruction manual can accumulate errors due to various factors like exposure to harmful ultraviolet rays, smoking or even just natural wear and tear.

This is where p53 comes in. It acts like a vigilant proofreader, detecting errors in DNA and deciding how to handle them. If the damage is minor, p53 instructs the cell to repair it. But if the damage is beyond repair, p53 triggers a process called apoptosis, or programmed cell death, ensuring the faulty cell doesn’t turn cancerous.

In more than half of all human cancers, p53 is either missing or dysfunctional. This often happens when the gene that encodes for p53 is mutated or deleted. Without a functioning p53, errors in DNA go unchecked, allowing damaged cells to multiply and form tumors.

p53 has four arms to wrap around and bind to DNA.
David Goodsell/RCSB PDB-101, CC BY-SA

Targeting p53 pathways

Given its crucial role in preventing cancer, p53 has become a major target for drug development.

Over the years, scientists have devised various strategies to target the p53 pathway, or the network of molecules p53 controls to regulate cell growth, repair DNA damage and trigger cell death. Rather than acting alone, p53 interacts with multiple molecular pathways – some of which researchers are still discovering – that help determine a cell’s fate.

Treatment approaches aim to restore or mimic p53’s function in cells where it has gone awry. For example, scientists have developed small molecules that can bind to mutant p53 and stabilize its faulty structure, restoring its ability to bind DNA and regulate genes. Drugs like PRIMA-1 and MIRA-1 essentially “rescue” p53, allowing it to resume its role as the cell’s guardian.

Even when p53 is missing, scientists can still target the processes it normally controls to treat cancer. For example, drugs can activate apoptosis or halt cell division in ways that mimic p53’s normal function. Drugs like ABT-737 or Navitoclax can block proteins in the p53 pathway that usually stop apoptosis, allowing cell death to occur even when p53 is absent.

Targeting p53’s overseers

Researchers are also investigating other proteins that interact with p53 as potential treatment options. Because the p53 pathway is highly complex, targeting different parts of this network presents both opportunities and challenges.

My colleagues and I are studying two other closely related proteins that regulate p53 by marking it for destruction when it’s no longer needed. These proteins, called MDM2 and MDMX, become overactive in cancer and break down p53.

p53 is quickly activated to respond to DNA damage.

Researchers have developed drugs to block MDM2 or MDMX, but targeting just one of these proteins is often not enough. If one is blocked, the other can step in and continue to destroy p53. Most existing drugs are also much better at blocking MDM2 than MDMX due to subtle differences in the latter’s shape, including a smaller area for p53 to bind. This makes it harder for drugs designed to target MDM2 to effectively bind to or reach MDMX.

To find molecules that could bind to both MDM2 and MDMX, researchers traditionally synthesize and test each molecule individually, which is often time-intensive and costly. In contrast, my colleagues and I used computer modeling tools to simulate how thousands of molecules might interact with the proteins, allowing us to narrow down potential candidates much more quickly.

We identified a small molecule we called CPO that shows promise in its ability to target both MDM2 and MDMX. Our models showed that CPO may have a stronger ability to block both MDM2 and MDMX than another molecule that researchers previously found could inhibit both of these proteins in cell culture.

More research is needed to confirm whether CPO works in living systems the same way it does in our computer predictions. If CPO is as safe and effective in cell and animal models, it may offer another treatment option for cancers where MDM2 and MDMX are overactive.

p53 and cancer treatment

The journey to fully harnessing the p53 pathway for cancer therapeutics is ongoing, and researchers are exploring several promising options.

Advances in gene-editing technologies like CRISPR are opening doors to directly correct p53 mutations in cancer cells.

Additionally, researchers are exploring combination therapies that pair p53-targeting drugs with other treatments, such as immunotherapy, to amplify their effectiveness.

Like other cancer treatments, one major challenge is ensuring the drugs target p53 in cancer cells and spare healthy cells from unnecessary damage. Achieving this balance will be crucial in translating these therapies from the lab to the clinic. Läs mer…

National Leadership Day, which takes place every Feb. 20, offers a chance to reflect on what truly defines leadership – not just strategy or decision-making, but the ability to build trust. In an era of rapid change, when teams look to leaders for stability and direction, trust is the invisible currency that fuels organizational success.

As an economist, I know there’s a lot of research proving this point. I’ve conducted some myself, including work on how trust is essential for leaders in cross-cultural business environments. In an expansive study of China’s fast-paced restaurant industry, my colleagues and I found that leaders who cultivate trust can significantly reduce employee churn and improve organizational performance.

While my study focuses on one sector, its lessons extend far beyond that. It offers insights for leaders in any field, from corporate executives to community organizers.

Understanding the impact

In China, as in the U.S., the restaurant industry is known for high turnover rates and cutthroat competition. But our study found that managers who demonstrate trustworthiness can keep employees from fleeing to rivals, creating a more stable and committed workforce.

First, we conducted a field experiment in which we asked managers at around 115 restaurants how much money they were willing to send to employees in an investment game – an indicator of trust. We then found that for every 10% increase in managers’ trust-driven actions, employee turnover fell by 3.7 percentage points. That’s a testament to the power of trust in the workplace.

When managers are trustworthy, workers tend to be more loyal, engaged in their job and productive. Employees who perceive their managers as trustworthy report higher job satisfaction and are more willing to exert extra effort, which directly benefits the organization.

We also found that when employees trust one another, managers get better performance evaluations. That makes sense, since trust fosters improved cooperation and innovation across the board.

Practical steps to foster trust

Fortunately for managers – and workers – there’s a lot of research into how to be a more trustworthy leader. Here are a few insights:

• Empower your team. Let employees take ownership of their responsibilities and make decisions within their roles. This not only boosts their engagement but also aligns their objectives with the broader goals of the organization. Empowerment is a key strategy in building trust.

• Be fair and transparent. Managers should strive to be consistent in their actions, address concerns promptly and distribute rewards equitably. Those practices can create a psychologically safe and supportive work environment.

• Promote collaboration. Encourage an atmosphere in which employees can openly share ideas and support one another. Activities that promote team cohesion and open communication can significantly enhance trust within the team.

• Measure and manage trust. Implementing regular surveys or feedback sessions can help assess and manage trust levels within an organization. Consider integrating trust metrics into performance evaluations to emphasize their importance.

Some takeaways for National Leadership Day

Whether helming a business, a nonprofit or a local community initiative, leaders should recognize that being trustworthy isn’t just a “soft skill.” It’s a measurable force that drives success. By making trust-building a deliberate goal, leaders can create stronger, more resilient teams.

So this National Leadership Day is a good time to reflect: How do you build trust in your leadership? And how can you foster a culture of trustworthiness?

Managers should commit to leading with trust, acting with integrity and fostering workplaces where people feel valued and empowered. The impact will speak for itself. Läs mer…

Popularised in the 2009 Drew Barrymore film, Whip It, roller derby is one of the fastest growing sports for women worldwide – particularly in the US.

While this roller speed-skating competition was originally established as a marathon race in the 1930s, the modern, kick-ass, punk-inspired, version began in the early 2000s.

Players wear four-wheeled “quad” roller skates and mandatory protective equipment, including a helmet, mouth and wrist guards and elbow and knee pads – but foot injuries are common. These often include bruising, torn ligaments, broken bones and toenail injuries – like the one featured in the image below.

Since roller derby is a growing sport, podiatrists like me will likely see more foot injuries from players, including bruising under the toenails and lost nails. Lost toenails are a common injury among these athletes due to the frequent quick turns and stops required during events.

Many roller derby athletes wear tight skates to improve responsiveness during quick turns and stops. Loose fitting boots can also increase the risk of ankle injuries, such as sprained or torn ligaments and broken ankle and foot bones.

Under pressure

It is not at all uncommon for people to have one foot longer than the other, which will increase pressure in the roller skate, particularly on the big toenail. Silicone toe protectors can be worn to reduce this pressure; however, they may also reduce the amount of available room in the toebox – front of the shoe.

Roller derby player foot injury.
Benjamin Bullen, Author provided (no reuse)

Appropriate roller skate fit is essential to prevent such nail injuries and, much like other sports, shoes that are too short or too long may lead to recurring nail issues, such as “runner’s toe” – also known as a subungual hematoma – a painful, blackened toenail caused by repeated trauma.

Skates with a deeper and wider toebox may reduce the likelihood of injury. The front of the shoe may also be “punched-out” following gentle warming of the material. This can be achieved professionally with the assistance of special stretchers. In keeping with the “do-it-yourself” ethos of roller derby, though, skaters may use the rounded end of a broom handle to gently stretch the shoes over the big toenail area.

In addition, loose roller skate laces leave the ankle unstable and more likely to roll, leading to strains, sprains and even broken bones. Firm lacing secures the foot firmly within the roller skate, also reducing the potential for friction and the foot sliding forward within the roller skate, avoiding nail trauma.

Foot injury prevention

As a podiatrist, I advise patients to use protective dressings before playing sport, wear cushioning socks to absorb some of the force, and keep toe nails short with regular trimming. Some roller derby athletes have been known to apply superglue or nail glue to re-attach lifted nails – but this practice is not advised. Supergluing lost nails could cause lead to irritation, infection and further injury.

Keeping nails short and ensuring good roller skate fit and firm lacing are essential to prevent foot, ankle and toenail injuries. Whether a roller derby player or not, if you do experience foot and ankle issues, why not visit your friendly local podiatrist?

Later, skater. Läs mer…

The UK’s pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 hinges on replacing millions of petrol and diesel vehicles with cleaner alternatives. But transitioning to electric transport isn’t just about manufacturing new cars, installing chargers and so on. It’s a gargantuan energy generation challenge that could push the power grid to its limits.

In 2023, UK transport consumed about 46 million litres of petrol and diesel. If we convert that into electricity, it would be equivalent to 49.5 gigawatts (GW) of continuous power throughout a whole year. For perspective, this is about one-third more than the UK’s entire current electricity generation capacity.

In other words, every single power station in the UK could be devoted entirely to powering electric vehicles and it still wouldn’t be enough. But one might say we didn’t consider the efficiency of electric vehicles. Petrol and diesel engines waste about three quarters of their energy as heat, with only a small portion used to propel the car. Electric vehicles meanwhile waste only about one quarter.

Adjusting for this, the actual power needed if the UK went entirely electric drops to around 20 GW. It would still mean increasing today’s grid capacity by almost half (46%), corresponding to building 17 nuclear plants (1.2 GW each) or 5,800 skyscraper-sized wind turbines (3.5 MW each). Those wind farms would cost around £22 billion, while the nuclear plants would cost significantly more.

At the moment, less than 1% of vehicles in the UK are electric, which explains why there are no specific power issues – yet. But if the country did have a fully carbon-free fleet of vehicles, the associated surge in demand would strain infrastructure and risk large blackouts. California’s grid, for example, already faces stress during electric vehicle charging peaks, prompting warnings and forcing the state to put “managed charging” policies in place.

‘A gargantuan energy challenge’.
Supamotionstock.com / shutterstock

Massive upgrade needed

Most countries looking to switch to zero-carbon transport will need to massively upgrade their electricity grid and power plants. Renewable energy complicates matters as wind and solar can’t always meet demand spikes (you can burn more gas or coal when needed, but you can’t choose when the wind blows or the sun shines). Nuclear offers stable and massive output, but new plants can take decades to build and the public is often hostile.

Certain “smart” solutions could help things even if the grid itself isn’t overhauled. Electric vehicle batteries could be linked to the grid for instance, and used to store and supply power. Overnight, millions of cars will soak up electricity before releasing it when demand spikes again in the morning. Price discounts would encourage people to charge their cars at night, when demand for electricity is at its lowest.

This can help mitigate many of the issues related to wind and solar being intermittent. But it will cause batteries to deteriorate faster, and still won’t solve the problem of having to generate more electricity.

Electricity stored overnight can be very useful in the morning when millions of lights and kettles are switched on.
Smile Fight / shutterstock

One underappreciated strategy is empowering households and businesses that generate their own electricity via solar panels, small wind turbines, or even micro-hydro systems. By 2035, with vigorous policies, these “prosumers” could supply up to 15% of the UK’s electricity, easing grid strain and reducing reliance on centralised funding. Such policies in Germany have lead its prosumer networks to already offset 10% of the national demand.

Without such decentralised efforts, the financial burden of grid upgrades will fall entirely on taxpayers, at staggering costs. The alternative is a huge rise in price of electricity, felt by all, and a stalled transition.

No time to delay

Generating more power remains the core issue. Without urgent action, the transition to low-carbon transport could stall – or worse, overload the energy system. The governments of France, the UK and some other countries have recently begun to discuss increasing energy production, but the focus is on meeting AI-related demands rather than electricity for the next generation of vehicles.

Critically, net-zero will only happen with strong transport and energy policies in place. Governments must increase grid capacity and incentivise small-scale renewable generation through tax breaks and specially-designed payments. The alternative – delaying and relying solely on public funds – is economically unviable and politically risky. Läs mer…

Dogs may look adorable when they snooze, but their sleeping habits actually hold fascinating clues on how living with humans has shaped canine behaviour. The sleep-wake patterns of the dog can also serve as a useful model for human sleep and wellbeing research.

Domestic dogs have largely diurnal sleeping habits (awake during the day, asleep at night), aligning themselves to the lifestyle of their owners. Most of their sleep happens during the night, between the hours of 9pm and 6am. Unlike humans, however, dogs have frequent bouts of sleeping during the daytime, particularly in the afternoon.

A 2020 study estimated that the average pet dog sleeps for roughly ten hours a day. In reality, it is difficult to determine how much dogs sleep during a 24-hour period because drowsiness (resting with eyes closed) accounts for a considerable proportion of their daily activity. This has led to a large range of estimation (seven to 16 hours) in the amount of time that dogs devote to sleep.

The dog’s ancestor, the grey wolf, tends to show nocturnal (night-time active) or crepuscular (dawn and dusk active) sleep patterns in the wild. That said, wolves can show high variability in their activity, with human disturbance, food availability and weather conditions all influencing their sleep-wake cycles.

Captive wolves, like dogs, typically have a diurnal circadian rhythm, adapting their sleep-wake cycle to the feeding regimes and human activity in their environment. Free-ranging domestic dogs are more inclined to resemble wild canids in their sleep cycles, showing a greater propensity towards crepuscular or nocturnal activity. In urban areas feral dogs may, again, align their sleeping habits with human activity.

These cross-species studies suggest that domestication may not necessarily have changed the sleeping habits of dogs per se. Rather, sleep in dogs appears to be determined by human lifestyle and situational factors. Left to their own devices, however, dogs may be more likely to assume the sleeping habits of their wild ancestors.

The nature of sleep in dogs

Dogs have a number of sleep stages, including drowsiness, lighter non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and deeper rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, where most, although not all, dreaming happens. Dogs devote more of their total sleep time to REM (roughly 2.9 hours a day) than humans (1.9 hours a day).

However, a 2022 study that involved researchers cuddling dogs and socialised wolves to sleep, found that dogs spent less time in REM sleep than the wolves.

Both species, however, spent a similar amount of time in the other stages of sleep. This raises questions about whether REM sleep is related to domestication. Species which are at high risk of being attacked while asleep typically spend less time in REM sleep than animals who live in safer environments, so the findings from this study are intriguing.

Dogs nap during the day more than people or wolves.
manushot/Shutterstock

Dogs engage in their deepest sleep during the night, and their daytime naps are relatively light. Like other animals, including rats and hedgehogs, dogs often wake up after a period of REM sleep, perhaps an evolutionary adaptation designed to force them out of their slumber to check for dangers in the environment.

These frequent and relatively brief sleep-wake cycles allow dogs to adjust to changes in their routine more readily than humans. Drug detection dogs, for example, have been found to cope remarkably well with changes to their working schedule, showing little disruption to their sleeping patterns.

As with humans, the duration and quality of sleep in dogs fluctuates, both day to day and over their lifespan. As dogs get older, their sleep becomes more fragmented, accompanied by decreased bouts of REM sleep at night and increased NREM sleep during the day.

Other factors, including canine sex, daytime activity, welfare, environmental conditions, and even social interactions, can affect sleep quality. Deprivations in daytime napping typically lead to quicker sleep onset and longer REM sleep at night, both for dogs and other animals.

Why do dogs sleep?

Scientists still don’t agree why dogs, or indeed other animals, sleep, although we do know that the process is heavily involved in physical restoration.

Memory consolidation (the conversion of short-term memory to long-term memory), closely linked to REM sleep, is perhaps the most studied function of sleep. Most of this work points to sleep’s important role in facilitating learning.

For example, in 2017 researchers in Hungary found that dogs’ memory recall significantly improved when the animals were taught unfamiliar words and then allowed to take a three hour period of sleep and rest.

The nature of sleep in dogs, as in humans, may be influenced by emotional processing. The 2017 Hungarian study found negative experiences, such as owner separation and approach from a threatening stranger, resulted in increased REM sleep and decreased drowsiness in the dogs. Further work on this aspect of sleep is much needed, particularly considering there are close parallels in cognitive functioning between humans and dogs.

Scientists already use dogs as a model for studying a range of sleep-related issues in humans, including sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy and REM behaviour disorder, and age-related changes similar to dementia in humans (cognitive dysfunction syndrome). Although still in its foetal stages, work in this area is starting to yield data that may be useful in helping us decipher early mechanisms for Alzeimher’s disease and treatment for age-related health problems.

It is clear that our dogs are not wasting their time slumbering on the sofa. There is still much to be learned from exploring the biological rhythms of the animals we share our lives with, so let those sleeping dogs lie. Läs mer…