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During his first weeks in office, Donald Trump has implemented a shock and awe strategy to overhaul the US government and its foreign policy. Notable changes include closing longstanding executive agencies, including USAid and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Other big ticket shake-ups include the planned closure of the Department of Education, freezing most foreign aid, imposing tariffs on close allies and suspending military aid to Ukraine – although this last plan has been reversed following the signing of a ceasefire deal on March 11.

Nearly all his policies were enacted through executive orders, with no Congressional involvement.

While the White House has been busy remaking the US government, Congress has focused on confirming Trump’s cabinet nominations and trying to pass a budget extension that reflects the administration’s spending priorities.

It has also sat for routine hearings. But it has not exercised its constitutional powers to check the president, instead relegating itself to a secondary support role. Congressional Republicans have demonstrated remarkable loyalty to Trump – even at the expense of their own Congressional power and possible electoral prospects.

While Trump’s second term is stretching presidential power to new limits, his approach is actually the culmination of a decades-long trend. Executive power grew at the expense of legislative power throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

During times of war and crisis, Congress has tended to grant the president broader powers. We saw this during the Vietnam War with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which authorised then president Lyndon Johnson to expand US involvement in the conflict. And again, after the 9/11 attacks with the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Both resolutions gave the president of the time far-reaching power to undertake military action without Congressional oversight.

But after the crises passed, the extension of presidential power was not ceded back to Congress, leading to a power imbalance between the executive and legislative branches. This resulted in what US historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, called “the imperial presidency” in a 1973 study.

Traditionally, executive policy dominance was primarily in the realm of foreign and military policy, while Congress was on more of an equal footing when it came to domestic policy. However, Trump has dominated in both areas. This may set a further precedent that could erode Congressional power in the long term.

Congress has been complicit in the weakening of its authority under Trump. Senate Republicans pushed through the confirmation of Trump’s cabinet nominees with little scrutiny – including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, despite his controversial views on vaccines and other issues.

The department of government efficiency (Doge), headed by Elon Musk, fired federal workers, shuttered executive agencies, and revised budget priorities without consulting Congress. Congress has made little effort to exercise oversight.

The White House froze foreign aid allocated by Congress, undermining Congress’s constitutional budget powers, known as the “power of the purse”. The US Supreme Court ultimately rejected the administration’s freezing of the aid, but the judicial challenge came from NGOs and businesses, not Congress.

Meanwhile attempts by House Republicans to pass a stopgap budget extension would surrender more Congressional power. The extension, known as Continuing Resolution, removes earmarks from the budget that designate the use of the funding.

If adopted, it will relinquish much of Congress’s ability to control how the funds are spent. But Senate Democrats are threatening to deny the Republicans the 60-40 supermajority they need to pass the legislation. If they follow through, it could mean a potential government shutdown on Friday.

Read more:
Congress, not the president, decides on government spending − a constitutional law professor explains how the ’power of the purse’ works

Muted opposition from lawmakers

Despite this eroding of Congressional power, Senate and House Republicans are reluctant to publicly challenge the president. While Democrats have been vocal about criticising the president’s policies, their minority position in the House and the Senate limits their ability to mount meaningful opposition.

Any opposition from Republicans has been restricted to back-channel lobbying with the White House. This has garnered some success for Republicans. Democrats, meanwhile, have struggled to have their concerns addressed through the same methods.

There is growing public opposition to some of the Trump administration’s policies.
EPA-EFE/Graeme Sloan

Republicans have asked the administration for more involvement in Doge cuts, which has resulted in more communication with Musk – though no formal oversight has been established. They have also asked for the cuts to be codified into law. This would make them permanent and give Congress more control, but so far it has not happened.

Republicans have also been successful in persuading the administration to reverse some Doge decisions, including rehiring fired USDA workers, addressing avian flu, reinstating some funding and services in their districts, and rehiring fired Veteran’s Affairs workers.

However, the ability to affect policy seems to depend on the individual’s access to the White House. The discretionary granting of the requests highlights Congress’ insignificance in the executive-dominated process.

Congressional Republican’s support for Trump’s policies has not wavered despite increasing opposition from the American public. Doge firings and cuts to domestic grants and aid programmes have sparked public resistance. Americans are also concerned about future cuts to Medicaid and Medicare that will likely be necessary with the proposed budget.

Republican members of Congress have received so much opposition during town hall meetings that the National Congressional Republican Committee has advised against holding them in person. This public disapproval could harm Republican electoral prospects in the 2026 midterm elections, especially in contested districts.

The steadfast Republican support for Trump shows the hold that he and his populist base have on the party. Republicans are reluctant to oppose Trump for fear of becoming a target. Given the president’s history of retaliation against those who oppose him – and his threats to do so even before the 2024 election, it leaves little hope that Congressional Republicans will try to rein in his unchecked executive power any time soon.

That could have permanent consequences for Congressional power and the system of checks and balances in the US government.

Read more:
GOP lawmakers commit to big spending cuts, putting Medicaid under a spotlight – but trimming the low-income health insurance program would be hard Läs mer…

A U.S.-Ukraine accord on a ceasefire proposal has put the notion of a negotiated end to the three-year war on the agenda, and in the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But even before Moscow responds, it’s pretty clear where the parties stand. Breaking a prior taboo against negotiations involving territorial concessions, the U.S. has suggested Ukraine must cede land in any permanent deal, whereas President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated repeatedly that he will never yield sovereignty over Ukraine’s territory.

Meanwhile, Russia has demanded that Ukraine renounce its aspiration to join NATO and accept restrictions on its military. But at present, Kyiv looks unlikely to gain the security guarantees it seeks from the U.S. before contemplating such terms.

What is talked about less is what the Ukrainian people are willing to accept for peace. And while any armistice will likely be dictated by guns, territorial gains and great power geopolitics, it will be in large part down to ordinary Ukrainians to shape what happens afterward. An ugly peace may be accepted by a war-weary population. But if it has little local legitimacy and acceptance, peace is likely to be unsustainable in the long run.

We have tracked public opinion in Ukraine from before the war and during the course of the conflict.

It is an imperfect exercise; most polling in wartime Ukraine is by mobile phone and depends upon those with service who are willing to participate. Many people, especially in the country’s south and east, do not want to answer sensitive questions out of concern for themselves and relatives, some in occupied territories and Russia.

Those who do respond may give guarded responses. Some are mindful of wartime censorship, while others are patriotic or wish to present themselves as such to the stranger calling them. Meanwhile, many other Ukrainians are overseas and excluded. Similarly, those in Russian-occupied territories are left out of surveys.

Nonetheless, the responses still give insights into how opinions in Ukraine have evolved since the Russian invasion of February 2022. Here are five important findings from relatively recent public opinion polls that are relevant to any forthcoming peace negotiations.

1. Nearly all Ukrainians are stressed and tired of war

Unsurprisingly, three years of a brutal war of aggression has created tremendous stress among a population increasingly weary of war.

A December 2024 poll from the respected Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, or KIIS found that nearly 9 in 10 Ukrainians experienced at least one stressful situation in the previous year. Large shares reported stressful experiences related to bombing and shelling (39%), separation from family members (30%), surviving the death of loves ones (26%) and the illness of loved ones (23%). Only 10% said they’d experienced no stressful situations.

In a related vein, surveys we have conducted showed that by summer 2024, 84% of the population had experienced violence in some form – be that physical injury at the hands of Russian forces, displacement, loss of family member and friends, or witnessing attacks.

And consistent with a growing number of news reports, we found that Ukrainians were deeply worried about war weariness among their fellow Ukrainians – just 10% reported that they did not worry about war fatigue at all.

2. More Ukrainians want negotiations, but there are red lines

As the war has gone on, several polls show that Ukrainians increasingly support negotiations. The share of the population in favor of negotiations varies depending on how the question is posed.

When given the choice between two options, a Gallup Poll from late 2024 showed that 52% preferred that “Ukraine should seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible,” whereas 38% preferred that “Ukraine should continue fighting until it wins the war.”

Our earlier surveys from 2022 and 2024 similarly show a growing preference for negotiations, though at a lower level – from 11% in 2022 to 31% in 2024. In contrast to the binary Gallup question, our surveys presented respondents with different territorial compromises for a ceasefire. While about one-third wanted an immediate ceasefire, half wanted to continue fighting until all territories, including the predominately Russian-speaking Donbas region and Crimea, are brought back under Kyiv’s control.

But survey responses make clear that the country’s political independence is a red line for the public – even if defending it comes at a very high cost.

3. Ukrainians are more open to territorial concessions

In tandem with growing support for negotiations, our surveys – in line with KIIS’s own polls – show growing willingness to cede territory. And among those most worried about war fatigue and more pessimistic about continued Western support, the willingness to cede territory is higher.

That said, most Ukrainians still want Ukraine to continue fighting until the country’s territorial integrity is restored and under Kyiv’s control, including Crimea. But that majority has diminished since the beginning of the war – from 71% in 2022 to 51% in 2024.

When we asked in July 2024 whether people agreed with the statement: “Russia should be allowed to control the territory it has occupied since 2022,” 90% disagreed. As such, there is very little evidence that Russia’s territorial annexations – or an agreement recognizing these, which is what Russia wants – will have any legitimacy among Ukraine’s population.

4. Ukrainians see Russia’s war goals in existential terms

Neither Zelenskyy nor most Ukrainians trust Putin – hence there’s a strong preference for any agreement being accompanied by security guarantees from NATO states.

Many Ukrainians share their leader’s distrust of Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Novikov/AFP via Getty Images

Poll findings in the past month from KIIS reveal that 66% of Ukrainians interpret Russia’s war aims as an existential threat, comprising genocide against Ukrainians and destruction of its independent statehood. And 87% believe Russia will not stop at the territories it already occupies. Negotiating with an enemy bent on Ukraine’s destruction appears delusional to many Ukrainians.

5. Zelenskyy remains popular; his endorsement matters

As a defiant wartime leader, President Zelenskyy’s popularity was very high in the immediate months after the invasion. Indeed, KIIS polls from May 2022 show that 90% of the population expressed trust in him.

This has declined as the war has endured, but it has always remained above 50%. Recent polling measuring his approval puts it at 63%, an increase from 2024. Indeed, the very latest KIIS polls, from February through March of this year, show a 10-point jump in his trust rating to 67%, a finding widely viewed as rallying in the face of U.S. criticism.

Thus Zelenskyy’s endorsement of any ceasefire and settlement will matter, though ceding territory is likely to be hazardous for him politically.

National security adviser Mike Waltz, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan and U.S. and Ukrainian delegates meet in Saudi Arabia on March 11, 2025.
Salah Malkawi/Getty Images

Conditions for a lasting peace

While the U.S.-Ukraine accord on a ceasefire has “put the ball” in Russia’s court, it is unclear whether it will be enough to bring Putin to the table. And even if it does, given past precedent it is difficult to see him arriving as a compromiser rather than a conqueror.

What does appear clear is that whatever “peace” emerges looks set to hang more on Ukraine making concessions and accepting losses.

Such a peace can be negotiated behind closed doors. But without public acceptance in Ukraine, whether it endures on the ground is another matter. Läs mer…

For generations, collard greens have formed an important part of African and African-diaspora diets around the world.

The leafy vegetable is a quintessential part of African American, Southern and “soul” foods in the United States. Collards are also important in some regions of Africa: In Kenya, where they are called sukuma wiki, they are one of the most commonly consumed vegetables.

Until now, the consensus scholarly view has held that collards came to the Americas early in the 16th century with Spanish, Portuguese or English Europeans, who introduced collards as a garden plant that was then taken up by enslaved Africans.

But our discovery of collards growing in southern Moroccan oases gardens put us on a quest to better understand the path collards took to arrive in the American South. Our new research suggests that they arrived in Morocco with early Muslim traders, adding the potential of a stop in North Africa hundreds of years before they journeyed to North America.

Moreover, the similarity in recipes from Morocco and the American South supports the idea that Moroccan oases may have been a stop in the journey collards took to America.

A green path

Collard greens belong to the species Brassica oleracea, which also includes broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts. The huge genetic diversity within the species has complicated research into where collards were first domesticated and how they moved around the world.

Evidence suggests collards were likely domesticated in the Mediterranean, from wild relatives also found on coastlines around the Mediterranean. Their path from the Mediterranean to the American South remains unclear.

A new theory sprouts

As ethnobiologists and researchers interested in traditional foodways, we have been studying leafy vegetables across Morocco for 20-plus years. Yet we had never seen collards growing in any of the other areas across north and central Morocco we had worked in.

While working in date palm oases in southern Morocco, we were, therefore, surprised to find collard greens in the gardens of African diaspora communities that are descended from enslaved people brought across the Sahara.

Suspecting that the presence of collards in an important ancient trade hub might shed new light on the history of the plant and its journey to the Americas, we began collecting stories, proverbs and recipes from the African diaspora communities and searching for potential links to other places where collards are culturally important.

Tracking down information was complicated: Leafy vegetables rarely show up in the archaeological record, and historical texts use the same words to refer to heading cabbage – what most people call “cabbage” today – and nonheading cabbages such as collards and kale, which were more common than heading varieties until fairly recently.

Historical texts in English refer to both as “cabbage” or “cole.” In Spanish, both are called “cole”; and “couve” is used similarly in Portuguese. Arabic texts use “kornub” to refer to both. However, this was one important clue to the ancient Arabic origins of collards in Morocco. In Moroccan Arabic, cabbage is called “mkouwer” or “melfouf,” and cauliflower is usually called “chou-fleur” – a word derived from the French. Moroccans only rarely use “kurunb,” from classical Arabic, to refer to cauliflower.

The communities that grow collards in Morocco call it by the ancient Arabic name “kornub.”

As we searched, we were astonished to find a recipe in a 10th-century cookbook from Baghdad that was almost identical to how people in Morocco cook collards. Moreover, the cookbook describes in detail a variety of cabbage with smooth leaves called “kurunb Nabati,” or “Nabatean cabbage,” where only the leaves are eaten. That, and the fact that the preparation description refers clearly to leaves rather than heads, offered further evidence that this was referencing collard greens.

We pieced together a possible historical route from Baghdad to Morocco from the rare cases when historical documents included specific descriptions of the plant.

One report from a British explorer who traveled through Algeria in 1860 included notes about finding various types of “cabbage” and about a man who had stolen cabbage and had it concealed under his shirt – suggesting flat leaves rather than heads.

Moreover, a colleague at the Oman Botanic Garden told us that collards are grown in oases gardens in the Hajar mountains of Oman.

Middle East to American South

After piecing it all together, our research suggests that collards arrived in Morocco from Iraq and Oman with early Kharijite Muslim traders in the eighth century. These are the same people who founded the great city of Sijilmasa and ran the early trade routes that carried gold and enslaved humans across the Sahara.

The presence of collards in Moroccan oases also necessitates a reconsideration of the currently held assumption of how the vegetable arrived in the Americas.

We couldn’t find concrete evidence of connections between Morocco and the arrival of collards in the Americas, so it’s impossible to say that the consensus scholarly view on collards’ journey is wrong. Still, the currently held assumption that collards arrived in the Americas with settlers and were adopted by Africans who used them as a substitute in leafy green recipes from Africa needs revisiting.

Indeed, unlike common collards recipes, most leafy vegetable recipes from West and Central Africa include fish, ground nuts or peanuts and palm oil. Compared with leafy vegetable recipes from West Africa, the collard recipes used in the United States today are strikingly similar to those from Morocco and 10th-century Baghdad. The similarity in recipes from Morocco and the American South suggests that Moroccan oases may have been a stop in the journey collards took to America.

The story of collards in the Moroccan oases is an opportunity to consider the ways the transatlantic trade systems were entangled with the trade routes and systems before them, especially the trans-Saharan trade routes, and what these entanglements mean for the foodways of Africans and African diasporas around the world. Läs mer…

For 20 years, Philly Roller Derby skaters, who go by names like Wooly Slammoth, TrailBlazeHer and Reba Smackentire, have jammed and blocked their way around oval skating rinks in the spirit of feminism, anti-racism, body positivity and queer liberation.

When the Philly league joined the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association in 2005, it was one of the first, following the Texas Rollergirls in Austin and leagues in Portland, Oregon; Chicago; New York; and other cities. The WFTDA, which governs flat-track roller derby, had formed just one year prior with a goal of “revolutioniz[ing] the role of women in sports.”

Primarily organized by women, the association takes an explicitly feminist position and welcomes anyone who is of a “marginalized gender.” This includes cisgender women as well as all transgender, intersex and two-spirit individuals. Intersex people have chromosomes and/or reproductive organs that do not fit into a binary male or female classification, while two-spirit refers to members of Indigenous cultures who identify as having both a masculine and feminine spirit.

I’m a kinesiology professor who studies philosophic and historical perspectives of sport – especially women’s sport. I have a particular fondness for roller derby, which started in the U.S. in 1935.

In some ways, roller derby’s reinvention as a revolutionary feminist sport in the 21st century isn’t that surprising. After all, women have been included as, at minimum, equal participants since the sport’s beginning.

The Passyunk Punks, in red, compete against the Germantown Loose Cannons, in blue, during the 2024 home team season.
@winterrosefoto/Philly Roller Derby, CC BY-NC-SA

Feminist roots

Seeds of roller derby’s feminist roots can be traced to its earliest version: the Transcontinental Roller Derby.

This endurance-sport fad of the Great Depression featured pairs of skaters accumulating miles as they skated laps around a track, following imaginary routes across the country. American sportswriter Frank Deford perpetuated the apocryphal story of Leo Seltzer’s invention of roller derby. Seltzer, an entertainment entrepreneur and promoter of walkathons, supposedly scribbled the basics of the sport on a tablecloth at a Ricketts restaurant in Chicago in the spring of 1935.

Whatever the truth of that story, what is true is that in August 1935, spectators gathered in the air-conditioned Chicago Coliseum to watch 25 pairs of skaters set off to travel 3,000 miles – the approximate distance of a cross-country trek from New York to San Francisco – all while never leaving the city.

Seltzer organized the event, which featured man-woman duos skating thousands of laps around a banked track while the crowd followed their fictional cross-country progress on a large electronic map. More than a month after they started, Bernie McKay and Clarice Martin completed the race in 493 hours and 12 minutes.

Leo Seltzer took his show on the road, organizing Transcontinental Roller Derby events in cities like Cincinnati, New York, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Miami. In May 1937, roller derby made its way to the Philadelphia Arena on Market Street.

A 1937 article in the Mount Carmel Item newspaper describes the new sport of roller derby.
Mount Carmel Item, 1937

In all of those cities, skaters completed what the Chicago Tribune called an “imaginary cross-country dash”, sometimes covering up to 100 miles per day. Early on, the pairs skated for 10 to 12 hours daily. Eventually, skaters spent only the event hours on the track, usually starting at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. and finishing at midnight or 1 a.m. Teams alternated skaters – women skated against women and men against men – in 15-minute turns. In some locations, cots were set up on the inside of the track, giving alternating skaters a place to rest.

Seltzer saw women as an untapped sports audience who could bolster the success of his endeavor. He courted women spectators through advertisements, selling “Ladies Day” tickets, and dispersing discounted tickets to businesses frequented by women customers.

Seltzer believed that women spectators would be drawn to women skaters. This, in part, drove him to ensure a place for women in the roller derby. Few opportunities for women existed in traditional sports at that time. When women did participate in sport, many had to deal with commentary about their appearance and a focus on their beauty rather than their athletic accomplishments.

This was the case with roller derby too. For example, one Chicago Tribune reporter wrote that a 1935 leader of the roller derby was “the blonde in the cerise tights, and a right pretty gal she is” – without ever mentioning her name.

Roller derby skater Yolanda Trevino of the Eastern Warriors falls to the ground under a board as a member of the Brooklyn Bombers skates past her during a match at the Philadelphia Arena in 1970.
Jack Tinney via Getty Images

Paying the price

Despite the participation of women since its beginning, roller derby has certainly not been a total bastion of feminist progress.

Even when challenging gender norms, women skaters were objectified. Their appearance was used to market the sport in promotional photographs. Skaters like Tiny McDowell, whose photo advertised the opening of roller derby to Indianapolis Star readers in 1937, posed in their uniforms, but without the tights and pads worn during the event.

Roller derby in the 1970s, ‘80s and ’90s featured strong, tough women skaters. But as communications professor Heidi Mau and I wrote in a chapter of “Sportswomen’s Apparel in the United States,” the uniforms during that era were typically tight with low-cut zippers. Organizers of roller derby – and its competitors like RollerGames and RollerJam – embraced stereotypical ideas about femininity and beauty and sexualized women skaters.

The inclusion of women also signaled to some that roller derby was not a legitimate sport – something that haunts it to this day.

Philly Roller Derby members skate in the 2024 Philly Pride parade.
Jon Dilks/Philly Roller Derby, CC BY-NC-SA

Historian Michella Marino, in her comprehensive history of the sport, says that women roller derby skaters “paid a price” for doing something subversive in challenging gender norms. That price, she writes, is that sports media relegated them to the level of “spectacle,” which led to the belief that the sport was illegitimate precisely because women competed on the same level as men.

Sports columnists in the 1930s emphasized that roller derby was a dramatic spectacle, calling it a “cat fight on wheels,” an “insane indoor sport” that was about “putting on a show.”

Women skaters today approach roller derby with a feminist, do-it-yourself attitude. The modern leagues were created by women who wanted to skate and didn’t want to wait for someone else to start a team. The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association now boasts over 400 leagues on six continents.

Today’s roller derby draws spectators of all types. Tickets typically go for about $15. Some audiences come for the Riot Grrrl, or feminist punk, personas of the skaters, and are rewarded with fast-paced, high-contact skating. Others see it as a cheap family outing, and leagues advertise themselves as family friendly. Some leagues now have co-ed youth leagues, like the Junior Brawlstars of the Philly Roller Derby.

Other leagues have branched out beyond women’s flat-track roller derby, like the Penn Jersey Roller Derby in Camden, New Jersey – also founded in 2005. Home to the Devils and Hooligans, Penn Jersey competes in flat and banked track versions of the sport and even includes a team competing in the Men’s Roller Derby Association.

Still, roller derby remains unabashedly feminist, a sport that encourages women to subvert gender norms while they skate to athletic success. Läs mer…

Refugees haven’t been welcome in the United States since the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, when he signed an executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 90 days. Despite a February 2025 federal court order to resume refugee resettlement, the administration has said that won’t be happening any time soon because the country’s refugee system has been so thoroughly dismantled.

Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order discontinued regular refugee processing and halted all federal funding for refugee resettlement. It ended the State Department’s 2023 Welcome Corps program, which allowed U.S. citizens to privately sponsor refugees, as well as a program that resettled children from Central America and certain family members. Trump also suspended the follow-to-join visas that reunited refugee families.

Together, these programs make up the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Created in 1980, the program resettles refugees nationwide through partnerships between the government and U.S.-based resettlement agencies. It had made the U.S. the global leader in refugee resettlement.

As a scholar of refugees and displacement, I expect refugee admissions to remain close to zero for the rest of Trump’s term. Thousands of refugees, both at home and abroad, will suffer as a result. So will the many Americans who work within the country’s sprawling refugee resettlement network.

Brief history of US refugee policies

Under U.S. and international law, refugees are people fleeing “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution” due to race, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, religion or national origin.

While refugees have come to the U.S. since its founding, the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 was the country’s first official “refugee” law. The act, which expired in 1952, allowed more than 350,000 European refugees displaced by World War II to enter the U.S. within the constraints of an existing quota system that defined how many refugees the country would admit each year, and from which countries.

Between 1952 and 1980, numerous international refugee crises spurred Congress to pass a series of laws welcoming certain groups into the country.

Political calculations played a major role in these decisions. For instance, as part of America’s Cold War anti-Communist strategy, Congress passed laws in 1962 and 1966 giving tens of thousands of Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro’s regime sanctuary in the U.S.

In the 1970s and 1980s, following its loss to communist North Vietnam in the Vietnam War, the U.S. welcomed approximately 1.4 million refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

President Gerald R. Ford holds one of the first children evacuated from Vietnam during Operation Babylift at San Francisco Airport on April 5, 1975.
David Hume Kennerly/Bettmann/Corbis via Getty Images

In 1980, Congress passed the Refugee Act, which amended existing law to raise the annual ceiling for refugees and created a formal process for refugee resettlement.

Every year, through presidential determination, the president in consultation with Congress establishes refugee admissions levels. This decision takes into account U.S. national interests and international humanitarian crises. The caps are announced in the fall.

On average, since 1980, the annual presidential determination number has exceeded 95,000 people. Since 2000, Presidential determinations have ranged from a low of 27,131 – after the 9/11 attacks – to last year’s ceiling of 125,000 refugees per year.

How to get refugee status

To vet potential refugees and assist qualifying refugees in the resettlement process, several U.S. government agencies coordinate closely: The State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.

To qualify for consideration, refugees must be living overseas. The resettlement process begins with registration with the U.N. Refugee Agency. U.N. officials collect documentation and perform an initial screening, then refer qualifying individuals to one of seven U.S. State Department resettlement support centers worldwide.

State Department officials interview applicants and submit them to a rigorous screening that includes an FBI background check. Highly trained immigration officers posted overseas then try to confirm whether applicants meet the legal standards of a refugee. They conduct face-to-face interviews to verify who they are and what forced them to flee. Testimonies are evaluated for consistency with country conditions.

The process takes 18 to 36 months or longer.

Once refugees are accepted into the U.S., 10 national refugee resettlement agencies in coordination with local nonprofit partners support them during their first 90 days in the country.

Previous suspensions

Critics of resettlement, including Trump, have argued that refugees threaten U.S. national security, are unvetted and do not assimilate into the U.S. economy and society.

However, research show that refugees contribute both economically and socially through taxes and entrepreneurship. They also revitalize towns with declining populations.

Between 2005 and 2019, refugees yielded a net positive fiscal impact of US$123.8 billion, at both federal and state levels, and generated an estimated $581 billion for governments at all levels. A 2023 American Immigration Council report found that the spending power of refugees in just one state, California, totaled more than $20.7 billion.

There is no link between refugees and crime, nor is there any notable link to terrorism.

Although the 9/11 attacks were not committed by refugees, President George W. Bush in 2001 suspended refugee admissions for several months, leaving 23,000 refugees already approved for resettlement in limbo, mainly in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Many had sold their belongings and homes in anticipation of moving to the U.S.

In 2017, Trump in his first term in office issued executive order 13769. The directive suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days and barred entry of people from seven Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – for 90 days. It also indefinitely banned Syrian refugees.

Trump also lowered the annual refugee admissions cap, from 110,000 in 2017 to 45,000 in 2018, and continued dropping it each year. By 2021, his administration had set the lowest refugee cap in U.S. history, at 15,000.

What happens when refugee resettlement pauses

The second suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program drastically affected refugees waiting abroad for resettlement and those already in the U.S.

Arabic-speaking refugees in particular struggled with discrimination and psychosocial challenges such as stress and other medical issues, leading to poorer social integration.

During Trump’s first term, a ban on refugees from Muslim-majority countries created chaos at U.S. airports.
David McNew/Getty Images

The U.S. economy suffered, too. One researcher estimated that Trump’s 2017 suspension of refugee resettlement deprived the country of $9.1 billion in economic activity per year and sapped public coffers at all levels of government of over $2 billion a year. More than 300 Americans who worked in refugee resettlement were laid off in 2017 alone.

Trump’s Muslim ban created an enormous backlog of immigration cases. In 2021, for instance, the incoming Biden administration inherited petitions for 25,994 unprocessed refugee family reunification cases.

Many other vetted refugees were not allowed entry, including U.S.-affiliated Iraqis and Afghans who remained trapped in violent contexts.

Immediate impact of Trump’s order on refugee resettlement

Similar repercussions are already seen today.

As of Jan. 22, 2025, the Trump administration had canceled the flights of 10,000 vetted refugees into the U.S. Most of them were coming from the 10 countries that the U.S. had accepted refugees from in recent years, including Venezuela, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Sudan and Iraq.

These refugees are now at acute risk of persecution and violence.

Recently arrived refugees, who would normally receive assistance for their first 90 days, are likewise losing support for basic essentials such as warm clothing, food and housing assistance.

Resettlement agencies nationwide are also feeling the pain of Trump cutting federal funding for refugee resettlement.

Several nonprofits have lost millions in government contracts allocated to assist new arrivals. They were forced to fire dozens or in some cases hundreds of staffers.

Three refugee resettlement agencies have sued the federal government for withholding congressionally appropriated funding for refugee processing and services. On Feb. 25, 2025, a federal judge in Seattle agreed with the plaintiffs in Pacito v. Trump that Trump likely exceeded his authority and temporarily blocked the refugee program’s suspension.

The legal battle over America’s refugee system has just begun. History suggests everyone involved with the program and the U.S. economy will suffer for years to come. Läs mer…

Throughout history, when pioneers set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands, they carried with them only the essentials: tools, seeds and clothing. Anything else would have to come from their new environment.

So they built shelter from local timber, rocks and sod; foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet; and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they needed to survive.

Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars – although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for example, the Vikings did when they reached Greenland and Newfoundland. Not only will the astronauts have limited supplies and the need to live off the land; they won’t even be able to breathe the air.

Instead of axes and plows, however, today’s space pioneers will bring 3D printers. As an engineer and professor who is developing technologies to extend the human presence beyond Earth, I focus my work and research on these remarkable machines.

3D printers will make the tools, structures and habitats space pioneers need to survive in a hostile alien environment. They will enable long-term human presence on the Moon and Mars.

NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore holds a 3D-printed wrench made aboard the International Space Station.
NASA

From hammers to habitats

On Earth, 3D printing can fabricate, layer by layer, thousands of things, from replacement hips to hammers to homes. These devices take raw materials, such as plastic, concrete or metal, and deposit it on a computerized programmed path to build a part. It’s often called “additive manufacturing,” because you keep adding material to make the part, rather than removing material, as is done in conventional machining.

Already, 3D printing in space is underway. On the International Space Station, astronauts use 3D printers to make tools and spare parts, such as ratchet wrenches, clamps and brackets. Depending on the part, printing time can take from around 30 minutes to several hours.

For now, the print materials are mostly hauled up from Earth. But NASA has also begun recycling some of those materials, such as waste plastic, to make new parts with the Refabricator, an advanced 3D printer installed in 2019.

Manufacturing in space

You may be wondering why space explorers can’t simply bring everything they need with them. After all, that’s how the International Space Station was built decades ago – by hauling tons of prefabricated components from Earth.

But that’s impractical for building habitats on other worlds. Launching materials into space is incredibly expensive. Right now, every pound launched aboard a rocket just to get to low Earth orbit costs thousands of dollars. To get materials to the Moon, NASA estimates the initial cost at around US$500,000 per pound.

Still, manufacturing things in space is a challenge. In the microgravity of space, or the reduced gravity of the Moon or Mars, materials behave differently than they do on Earth. Decrease or remove gravity, and materials cool and recrystallize differently. The Moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth; Mars, about two-fifths. Engineers and scientists are working now to adapt 3D printers to function in these conditions.

An artist’s impressions of what a Mars base camp might look like.
peepo/E+ via Getty Images

Using otherworldly soil

On alien worlds, rather than plastic or metal, 3D printers will use the natural resources found in these environments. But finding the right raw materials is not easy. Habitats on the Moon and Mars must protect astronauts from the lack of air, extreme temperatures, micrometeorite impacts and radiation.

Regolith, the fine, dusty, sandlike particles that cover both the lunar and Martian surfaces, could be a primary ingredient to make these dwellings. Think of the regolith on both worlds as alien dirt – unlike Earth soil, it contains few nutrients, and as far as we know, no living organisms. But it might be a good raw material for 3D printing.

My colleagues began researching this possibility by first examining how regular cement behaves in space. I am now joining them to develop techniques for turning regolith into a printable material and to eventually test these on the Moon.

But obtaining otherworldly regolith is a problem. The regolith samples returned from the Moon during the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 70s are precious, difficult if not impossible to access for research purposes. So scientists are using regolith simulants to test ideas. Actual regolith may react quite differently than our simulants. We just don’t know.

What’s more, the regolith on the Moon is very different from what’s found on Mars. Martian regolith contains iron oxide –that’s what gives it a reddish color – but Moon regolith is mostly silicates; it’s much finer and more angular. Researchers will need to learn how to use both types in a 3D printer.

See models of otherworldly habitats.

Applications on Earth

NASA’s Moon-to-Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology program, also known as MMPACT, is advancing the technology needed to print these habitats on alien worlds.

Among the approaches scientists are now exploring: a regolith-based concrete made in part from surface ice; melting the regolith at high temperatures, and then using molds to form it while it’s a liquid; and sintering, which means heating the regolith with concentrated sunlight, lasers or microwaves to fuse particles together without the need for binders.

Along those lines, my colleagues and I developed a Martian concrete we call MarsCrete, a material we used to 3D-print a small test structure for NASA in 2017.

Then, in May 2019, using another type of special concrete, we 3D-printed a one-third scale prototype Mars habitat that could support everything astronauts would need for long-term survival, including living, sleeping, research and food-production modules.

That prototype showcased the potential, and the challenges, of building housing on the red planet. But many of these technologies will benefit people on Earth too.

In the same way astronauts will make sustainable products from natural resources, homebuilders could make concretes from binders and aggregates found locally, and maybe even from recycled construction debris. Engineers are already adapting the techniques that could print Martian habitats to address housing shortages here at home. Indeed, 3D-printed homes are already on the market.

Meanwhile, the move continues toward establishing a human presence outside the Earth. Artemis III, now scheduled for liftoff in 2027, will be the first human Moon landing since 1972. A NASA trip to Mars could happen as early as 2035.

But wherever people go, and whenever they get there, I’m certain that 3D printers will be one of the primary tools to let human beings live off alien land. Läs mer…

I’m not sure when I first encountered the Serenity Prayer, or when it first occurred to me to ask who wrote it. For much of my life it never occurred to me that prayers were the kind of things that people actually wrote down, especially something as popular as the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference.”

This simple, powerful sentence has been reprinted on everything from key chains and coffee mugs to tattoos and tea towels. For many people, it is probably most closely associated with 12-step recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. There, the prayer serves as a reminder both of human limits and of the fact that they do not define us.

Originally, however, the prayer was written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. For him, it was a call to confront the realities of the world with courage – relying not on one’s own power but on God’s grace.

Christian realism

Over the years, the prayer has often been attributed to other Christian writers, including Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Francis of Assisi. Many people might be surprised to discover that, far from being penned in an ancient European monastery, the Serenity Prayer was written less than a century ago in a cottage in western Massachusetts.

Niebuhr was born the son of a German American pastor in Wright City, Missouri. He became a pastor himself, serving a congregation in Detroit before moving to New York to teach at Union Theological Seminary, where he gained recognition as a theologian, activist and social critic. His brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, also became a well-known ethicist and theologian, as did his sister Hulda.

Reinhold Niebuhr photographed in 1963.
AP Photo

Today, Reinhold Niebuhr is probably best known as a founder of “Christian realism.” As I describe in my book “The Niebuhr Brothers for Armchair Theologians,” it is an approach to ethics grounded in the insight that human beings are called to strive toward their highest moral ideals, while recognizing our inability to fully achieve them.

This idea is captured by the title of one of his best-known books, “Moral Man and Immoral Society.” There Niebuhr argued that, while individuals are sometimes capable of acting purely from love for others, groups are not. When human beings form collectives, those collectives are ultimately capable of acting only from self-interest.

Therefore, the most that can be expected from any society is not love but justice – which approximates, but never fulfills, the demands of love.

Over the years, Niebuhr’s thought became particularly influential in politics. His work was read and respected by liberal politicians such as Arthur Schlesinger and Hubert Humphrey, who was vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson. Some of these admirers had little use for his religion, and even dubbed themselves “atheists for Niebuhr,” but they respected and embraced his insights into society.

2 versions

How then did Niebuhr come to write this prayer?

His daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, recounts the story in her book “The Serenity Prayer.” She was a girl when Niebuhr first composed the lines for a worship service near their summer home in Heath, Massachusetts. Later, as she tells it, he contributed a version to a prayer book for soldiers being shipped off to fight in World War II, and from there it eventually migrated to Alcoholics Anonymous.

A sobriety medallion used in an addiction recovery program, imprinted with the Serenity Prayer.
Joe van petten/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Niebuhr did not believe that prayers should be copyrighted, she writes, and never profited from its popularity – though friends would gift him with examples of Serenity Prayer kitsch, such as wood carvings and needlework.

Yet the best-known version of the prayer is not quite the version that Niebuhr originally wrote. According to Sifton, his first version read, “God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

The differences between the two versions are subtle but significant, emphasizing themes that were central to Niebuhr’s thought. He did not simply pray for serenity, but for grace. He did not pray for courage to change what can be changed, but only for what should be changed.

And crucially, it is not an individual prayer, but collective: “grant us,” not “grant me.” Niebuhr believed that while the highest moral achievements could be attained only by individuals, constructive social change was possible only by working together for justice.

‘Saved by hope’

The Serenity Prayer in all of its forms rests on Niebuhr’s hard-won sense of history’s tragic dimension, borne of his experience of two world wars and a global depression. He recognized that even the most courageous actions are not guaranteed to succeed.

But Niebuhr was no fatalist and did not believe uncertainty was a reason not to act. On the contrary, he believed that as human beings we are obligated to enter the fray of social conflict – not with an arrogant sense of our own superiority, but with a humble recognition of our limits.

As he wrote elsewhere: “Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”

In the end, for Niebuhr, it is God’s grace that determines the final course of history, rather than our own actions – enabling us to accept the reality that the outcomes of our actions are often out of our hands. Läs mer…

Interest from the United States in Canada’s water is concerning, though nothing new. In the most recent development, the U.S. has paused negotiations the Columbia River Treaty, a key water-sharing agreement between both countries.

Geopolitical tensions, when coupled with demand that is outpacing a decreasing supply under a changing climate, are posing an imminent and very real threat to Canada.

An abandoned water project known as the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) was tabled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s. It’s considered a zombie project, always resurfacing, never dead.

The $80 billion plan proposed construction of 369 structures that would divert water from the Yukon, Liard and Peace Rivers through a “Rocky Mountain trench” connecting Alaska to the Mississippi and Colorado River basins, and Alberta to the Great Lakes.

The goal was to convey massive volumes from the “water-rich” north to “water-deficient” but highly productive agricultural landscapes. Marc Reisner — an American environmentalist and author of Cadillac Desert, an account of water management and development across the Midwest — estimated that “six nuclear power plants worth of energy” would be required to pump the required volume of water across the Rockies.

Sounds like science fiction, except that it was — and remains — a genuine threat to Canadian water security.

Canada has an abundance of freshwater supply, and the United States has long been eyeing it.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Giordano Ciampini

Canadians not interested

Canada was simply in the way decades ago. Benefits from an American perspective were clear: improving water security and agricultural dominance of the American Midwest, and massive energy (hydropower) generation potential.

However, within the project’s blueprint is some of the most ecologically sensitive and protected wilderness in North America.

NAWAPA would have profound consequences for Indigenous communities and the environment. If enacted, it would alter the Rocky Mountain landscape and open the door to cross-border water trading. When first proposed, Canadians had little appetite for the plan.

The need for water in the U.S. has and always will be greater than Canada’s due to its population and industrial dominance; therefore Canadian justification to hold back water is regarded as weak from an American perspective.

Read more:
Canada has 20 per cent of the world’s freshwater reserves — this is how to protect it

NAWAPA has always walked a fine line politically, with water being exempt from free-trade agreements and opinions on water export historically divisive in Canada. Decades ago, the Canadian government was resistant to bilateral talks on water, and NAWAPA was considered impractical. That was until there was a “change of heart and attitude” in Canada. But in 2025, Canadian officials appear back to being firmly opposed.

While NAWAPA has not been seriously considered since the 1970s, there is growing speculation about whether it’s truly dead or just buried in bureaucracy, which is why it’s been coined a zombie project.

Trump’s water moves

Talk of NAWAPA recently resurfaced amid construction of BC Hydro’s Site C that would reportedly enable water transfers east of the Rockies and south to Texas.

A few key moments of the first Trump administrations have also resembled the early days of NAWAPA. In 2018, a memorandum of understanding gave the Secretary of the Department of the Interior a mandate to secure more water for the arid Midwest.

Soon after, the Columbia River Treaty between the U.S. and Canada was opened for renegotiation with the intent of optimizing energy generation in the U.S. through water storage on the Canadian side, despite an increased potential flood risk for Canada.

Significant concerns were also raised at the time over highly sensitive fish populations, the need to ensure adequate habitats for sensitive species and spawning, as well as Indigenous water rights and allocations.

The Columbia River flows through Oregon.
(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

This was followed by a 2020 executive order by Trump to modernize America’s water resource management and water infrastructure. The order was aimed at improving co-ordination among U.S. agencies managing water or infrastructure issues and streamlining resources to improve the efficiency of water management.

Through this order, a mandate was issued to “increase water storage, water supply reliability and drought resiliency” through internal co-ordination, but also to seek new external opportunities.

In late 2024 — at the end of President Joe Biden’s term — an agreement in principle between Canada and the U.S. was reached on the Columbia River that appeared to strike a compromise over many of the aforementioned concerns by adjusting the timing of when water could be stored, how much could be stored and when it would be released.

Trump’s recent “Putting People Over Fish” executive order, however, makes clear his stance on some of the Columbia River issues, calling into question whether the new treaty terms negotiated under the Biden administration will ever be ratified by Congress, especially now that final negotiations have been officially paused.

Boundary Waters Treaty disregarded?

Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order highlights the over-reach of his administration as it deliberately defies the National Ecological Preservation Act to ensure water and energy supply is allocated to people first, disregarding environmental and ecological concerns.

For Canada, this has important implications for the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, which oversees sharing of international waters along the Canada-U.S. border. In some cases, the treaty allows Canada to hold back or divert water from the U.S., provisions that would be in direct violation of the Unleashing American Energy executive order even though Canada isn’t mentioned explicitly.

An aerial view of Georgian Bay, Ont.
(Shutterstock)

The Boundary Waters Treaty has long since been the envy of other nations struggling to come to agreeable terms over transboundary water-sharing and rights. Historically, it has been framed as a sign of a mutually beneficial, co-operative relationship between Canada and the U.S., a state of affairs that seemingly no longer exists under the Trump administration.

One thing is clear — despite uncertain times, Canadians must hold firm when it comes to water. Former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed perhaps said it best when he warned against sharing Canada’s water, reminding Canadians that “we should communicate to the United States very quickly how firm we are.” Läs mer…

When the first cases of COVID began to spread around the world in early 2020, people in Iquitos, a remote city in the Peruvian Amazon, weren’t unduly worried. They assumed their isolation would protect them. It didn’t. Peru, and Iquitos, were hit fast and hard.

In many wealthier parts of the world, states stepped in to help people whose livelihoods had disappeared. Not in Iquitos. The pandemic led to an extreme case of societal breakdown. In a surreal situation, people were left to fend for themselves, fighting to get hold of oxygen on the black market for their loved ones and forced to put themselves in danger to survive.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to a researcher who spent a year living in Iquitos, trying to understand what happened there during the pandemic. It serves as a warning that even after facing multiple crises, five years later, few places are ready for the radical reckoning needed to avoid the same thing happening again.

When Japhy Wilson began asking people in Iquitos of their memories about the first wave of COVID in March 2020, many mentioned the story of one man: Juan Pablo Vaquero, known locally as Uncle Covid.

 This man who had been taken to the main hospital in the city at the height of the first wave, was pronounced dead. His sister wasn’t allowed to see his body. She had to return home and three days later he appeared at her front door, supposedly stinking of death. She asked what had happened to him, and he told her that he’d awoken in a pile of black garbage bags out in the jungle and had found his way home from there.

In 2022, Wilson, a lecturer in human-environment interactions at Bangor University in Wales, went to live in Iquitos for a year. He recently published research based on interviews he did with people in the city about their memories of the early stages of the pandemic.

 I knew there’d been this huge disaster, but everyday life was just carrying on as normal. It was being kind of deliberately forgotten, and as soon as I started talking to people about it all kinds of extraordinary stories emerged. Almost everybody had lost at least one close family member during this first wave. I’ve done research in a lot of difficult, conflict situations in the past. But never had I encountered so many people breaking down in tears as they did in this case.

Listen to the conversation with Wilson on The Conversation Weekly podcast and read an article about his research.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware with assistance from Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from Al Jazeera English, AP Archive, NBC News, The Guardian and CityNews. Thanks to Japhy Wilson for sharing audio clips from life in Iquitos, and from one of his interviews in the city.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. Läs mer…

It was not a given that petrol-powered cars would come to dominate the world. In fact, back in 1900, just 22% of cars produced in the US were powered by gasoline (also known as petrol, benzine or various other names). The rest split between electric and steam cars.

There is no consensus on what explains the success of the petrol car and the historical demise of the electric. Some zoom in on the technical inferiority of electric cars, even though they had an average range of about 90 miles (135 kilometres) in the 1910s and eventually became cheaper to drive.

Others, including my colleague Hana Nielsen and I, argue that technological limitations could have been counteracted if electricity grids and charging station infrastructure had been rolled out in the early years of the 20th century.

But this does not rule out explanations based on social or cultural factors. Specifically, do gender roles decide what technologies we end up with? In the 1990s, US historian Virginia Scharff broke new ground when she suggested that electric cars had been labelled “women’s cars”, and that this image “took hold early and tenaciously”. Similar claims have been made for the UK.

A 1916 ad for Baker Electric.
GRANGER – Historical Picture Archive / Alamy

In a new study I used American electric car advertisements from motorist journals and comprehensive vehicle statistics between 1900 and 1919 to examine these claims. I found it is undeniable that electrics were, in fact, considered to be women’s cars.

They were not marketed that way at first, however. I found that only 22% of electrics between 1900 and 1904 were marketed towards women.

In these very earliest days, electric car ads were rather addressed to businessmen and family men, countering the “adventure machine” vision of cars that was popular at the time. Electric car manufacturers imagined electrics as clean and reliable cars for the business commute in the cities the grid kept them restricted to. This was a valid argument since gasoline cars were prone to break down and had to be manually restarted with a crank.

‘EVs for women’ was a response to petrol’s success

But petrol-powered cars were taking over, accelerated by the iconic, cheap and mass-produced Ford Model T. It was only then that electric vehicle makers began marketing them as “women’s cars” to keep market share.

This advert, published during the first world war, urged women to ‘be patriotic’ and buy an electric car as petrol was needed for the war effort.
Early Advertising of the West Collection / wiki

During the 1910s, 77% of electric vehicles directly appealed to female consumers. This reflected traditional gender roles and the Victorian idea of “separate spheres”, promoting the idea that women had limited mobility needs and needed safe, easily operated vehicles.

In the short term, this was a successful strategy: car manufacturers that advertised to female consumers survived much longer. One of the most well-known examples, the Detroit Electric, produced more than 13,000 cars during its lifetime and was the only major electric car producer to survive into the 1920s.

A 1910 Detroit Electric ad states the ‘well-bred woman’ could ‘preserve her toilet immaculate, her coiffure intact’ and ‘drive… with all desired privacy, yet safely’.
Country Life in America, 1910

A significant shift occurred when prolific inventor Charles Kettering introduced electric starting ignition in the 1912 (petrol-powered) Cadillac. These electric starters were initially conceived as “effeminate”. But practicality won and they were introduced as a standard in the immensely popular 1919 T-Ford.

When petrol cars emulated “feminine” qualities such as windscreens and electric starters and made them appeal to both men and women, the electric was in a tough spot. It had become heavily invested in traditional gender roles that were becoming increasingly obsolete.

So, did gendered marketing doom the electric car? Not at first. Arguably, the lack of infrastructure was the biggest problem, initially, and differences in range and speed became increasingly problematic with the rise of countryside touring. Gendering came as a response to these developments.

However, gender did matter once we ask why the electric car did not exist longer. In particular, the link of electric cars to a conservative gender order helps explain why they did not bounce back despite being cheaper to operate due to falling electricity prices. Reducing technology choice to a question of gender meant that the electric lost the battle in the public imagination of what cars and mobility could become.

The most useful ‘feminine’ features were adopted

As the historian Virginia Scharff pointed out, US petrol car makers simultaneously saw that windscreens, the starting ignition, and other “feminine” additions to the car were not just good for women, but universal.

Windscreen wipers were invented by a woman in 1903 and eventually became standard, as shown in this 1955 General Motors ad.
adsR / Alamy

Things are now quite different: women buy half of all new cars in the US. Meanwhile, there is a widening gender gap in political attitudes towards sustainability and renewable technology, as evidenced in several studies, where sustainability is often viewed as feminine.

In this context, it is a curious irony of history that the CEO of one of the world’s leading electric car producers has been so vocal in favour of bringing back masculinity and traditional gender roles, amid a rise of what some have termed “technofascism”.

The history of electric vehicles rather illustrates that social constructions of feminine and masculine can be barriers to progress and innovation. It also poignantly shows that we do not always end up with socially optimal technology and that “tech leaders” are as unable to foresee the long-term consequences of technology choice as anyone else.

If history is any guide, innovation needs to be based on principles of universal access and inclusion. Democratic influence can help ensure that technological transitions benefit a large majority of people regardless of their gender, class or ethnicity.

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