Rep. Summer Lee, a progressive and member of the Squad, is running for reelection in Pennsylvania. | Nate Smallwood/Bloomberg via Getty Images Lee is the first Squad member to face a 2024 primary challenge. It could send a strong message about progressive power. Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) is the first member of the progressive group of House Democrats known as the Squad to be up for a 2024 primary challenge, a contest expected to be a preview of how Democratic divides over Israel could play out this year. Lee, one of the earliest lawmakers to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and to condemn Israel’s airstrikes, has fielded critiques from some Jewish leaders and members of her constituency for taking these positions. Her moderate challenger, Edgewood City Council member Bhavini Patel, has been vocal about her support for Israel and has focused her attacks on Lee on the Israel-Hamas conflict, as have outside groups. Their race reflects the intense focus there’s been on the conflict in the wake of Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack and Israel’s devastating bombings of Gaza. Democrats have been divided in their stance on the ongoing war, with many progressives on the Hill calling for a ceasefire and more moderate lawmakers arguing for military aid to Israel. As congressional primary season unfolds, many anti-war progressives — particularly those in the Squad, including Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — are facing primaries against challengers supported by pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Though Lee’s race isn’t a perfect analog for those of her Squad colleagues, it will send an early signal about just how serious a threat the primaries pose to those progressives facing challengers. “What it can tell you if someone wins with [Lee’s] position is that it may not be a vulnerability,” says Berwood Yost, the head of the Franklin and Marshall College poll in Pennsylvania. “But of course, it will depend on the candidates who are running and what they’re emphasizing.” Summer Lee’s primary, briefly explained Lee, a former community organizer and state representative, is a first-term lawmaker who represents Pennsylvania’s 12th district. The district — which is in the western part of the state and includes Pittsburgh — is solidly Democratic, but more moderate than some of the other districts that progressives hold around the country, and Lee has said that she strives to “be a representative” for everyone in her district. Lee has long backed progressive policies like Medicare-for-all and a Green New Deal. During the race, she has emphasized how much federal funding has flowed to her district during her term, including $1.2 billion dedicated to everything from replacing lead water pipes and building out passenger rail in the region. (Much of this funding is tied to the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed before Lee took office, but she could have still had a role in its distribution.) When it comes to Israel-related policy, she has condemned Hamas, called for a ceasefire, voted against a resolution establishing that Congress stands with Israel, and voted against sending a recent aid package to Israel. These positions build on past statements Lee has made in support of Palestinian rights and calling for the conditioning of US aid based on humanitarian requirements. Lee’s position on Israel’s war in Gaza has been scrutinized and, at times, criticized by some of her constituency, which includes a large Jewish American population. Squirrel Hill, a neighborhood in Pittsburgh and part of Lee’s district, was the site of a devastating antisemitic mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. “We call on Rep. Lee to exercise better leadership and join her colleagues in upholding the moral obligation for Israel to protect its citizens against Hamas,” a group of Jewish leaders in the region wrote in a letter last November. Some Jewish constituents who’ve expressed concerns about Israel’s attacks on Gaza have, however, supported Lee’s stances. Patel, meanwhile, is an entrepreneur and city council member. Some of her key policy positions include backing labor unions, supporting policing, and lowering prescription drug costs. Across a broad array of issues, including criminal justice reform, health care, and environmental policy, her stances are to Lee’s right. Patel has also taken a more moderate position on Israel’s offensive and has expressed support for the country. She’s claimed, too, that Lee’s position is not a reflection of where her constituents stand and condemned Lee’s backing of voters who choose “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary instead of supporting President Joe Biden. “She’s clearly picked a side in this situation and completely disregards her entire district,” Patel told the Washington Post. “I think it’s important that any call for a cease-fire should acknowledge that hostages are still being held.” As Post noted, however, Lee’s support for a ceasefire in Gaza reflects where many Democrats stand on this issue as well. A February 2024 Data for Progress poll found that 63 percent of Democrats support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. “There has been increasing criticism of this war, even among those who were horrified by the October 7 attacks and believe Israel has the right to defend itself,” says Dan Mallinson, a political scientist at Penn State University. “If this was January, or maybe November of last year, she may be in a slightly different position politically than she is now.” Lee has also built up an impressive arsenal of fundraising and endorsements that far outpace Patel, including backing from Pennsylvania Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman — an indication of the strength of her candidacy. Such support signals that she’s in a solid position going into this race, despite the disagreement some constituents have expressed about her stances. This strength may be a reason why AIPAC, a pro-Israel group that’s vowed to send $100 million to unseat progressive candidates, did not invest in this particular primary. Other outside groups — including the Moderate PAC, which draws much of its funding from a pro-Israel Republican donor — are backing Patel. Due to fundraising gains, incumbency, endorsements, and the state of public opinion, Lee is widely expected to come out victorious against her moderate challenger. Her success would send a positive signal to her fellow progressives who are also under threat of primary challenges, including some that could be heavily supported by pro-Israel groups like AIPAC. Democratic divides are set to play a role in the election Lee’s race is far from the only one in which lawmakers’ stances on Israel are expected to be a flash point. AIPAC has already said it intends to spend its sizable war chest — as much as $100 million — on taking out certain progressive members, though that spending has yet to manifest, and groups including the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC (DMFI) have said the same. In 2022, AIPAC saw successes in six of eight Democratic primary races that it invested in, including Rep. Haley Stevens’s win over Rep. Andy Levin in Michigan. Some of the members that AIPAC and DMFI intend to target include other members of the Squad like Reps. Jamaal Bowman (NY), Cori Bush (MO), Ilhan Omar (MN), and Rashida Tlaib (MI), all of whom will be up for primaries later this year. “We’re not interested in defeating people who are pro-Palestinian, we’re interested in defeating people who are anti-Israel and I think it’s fair to say that Bowman, Bush, and some of these other members are decidedly anti-Israel,” Mark Mellman, the head of the DMFI, told the Hill. Experts note that AIPAC and DMFI may have passed on investing in Lee’s race in favor of putting their dollars in primaries in which lawmakers are perceived to be more vulnerable. Bowman and Bush are two of the lawmakers who could well see more difficult races because they’re navigating other issues that could affect their candidacies, including Bowman’s past blog posts regarding September 11 conspiracy theories and a DOJ investigation of Bush’s use of campaign security funds. “I think with Bowman and Bush, in particular, they both have controversies surrounding them that have nothing to do with the Israel issue that have made them uniquely vulnerable,” Erin Conley, a House analyst for Cook Political Report, tells Vox. Beyond Democratic primaries, there’s also an open question on the impact that intraparty fissures on Israel will have on support for Biden in November. Already, a fraction of Democratic voters have expressed their opposition to his willingness to continue backing the country’s military as more than 30,000 Gazans have been killed. In Michigan, for example, more than 100,000 people cast their vote for “uncommitted” in order to register their opposition to Biden. “We’re anticipating [the presidential race] to be close again. So anything that’s going to depress your turnout or people not being excited about you is potentially problematic,” says Mallinson.

A new study found that empathy among young Americans is rebounding after having reached worrying lows a decade ago. | Getty Images/iStockphoto A decade ago, research showed a troubling dip in empathy. A new study provides more hope. Think back to the United States as it was a year ago, a decade ago, a generation ago. Is the US a more caring or less caring nation now than it was back then? If you think Americans have lost their compassion, the data would be on your side — until recently. Since the late 1970s, psychologists have measured empathy by asking millions of people how much they agreed with statements such as “I feel tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” In 2011, a landmark study led by researcher Sara Konrath examined the trends in those surveys. The analysis revealed that American empathy had plummeted: The average US college student in 2009 reported feeling less empathic than 75 percent of students three decades earlier. The study launched a thousand think pieces agonizing over what had gone wrong. There were plenty of theories: We were too lonely to care about each other, or too stressed, or too siloed, or too tech-addled. Younger generations took the most fire, labeled as too self-obsessed and too hyper-online to connect. Most of all, the research provided new fuel for old fears that American morality was on the decline. As Jennifer Rubin wrote for the Washington Post, “The empathy decline has manifested itself in an erosion of civility, decency and compassion in our society and our politics.” But the decline also revealed something else: Empathy is not a fixed trait. It’s easy to assume that each of us is born with a given level of care, and stuck there for life. But that’s not true; our experiences can grow or shrink our empathy. That’s true of individuals’ lives and across generations. Sara Konrath emphasized this back in 2011, telling me, “The fact that empathy is declining means that there’s more fluidity to it than previously thought. It means that empathy can change. It can go up.” By now, Konrath’s optimism might seem quaint. The news bludgeons us with stories of callousness and cruelty. If empathy indeed changes, these examples encourage us to think it’s taking a one-way trip downward. And yet, Konrath’s hopes from over a decade ago have turned out to be prescient. A few months ago, she and her colleagues published an update to their work: They found that empathy among young Americans is rebounding, reaching levels indistinguishable from the highs of the 1970s. Why aren’t we celebrating an increase in compassion? As with the decline, we might grasp for explanations for this rise. One possibility is collective suffering. Since the empathic lows of 2009, we have faced the Great Recession and a once-a-century pandemic. For all their horrors, hard times can bring people together. In her beautiful book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit chronicles disasters including San Francisco’s 1906 and 1989 earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. In the wake of these catastrophes, kindness ticked up, strangers stepping over lines of race and class to help one another. More recently, researchers chronicled a “pandemic of kindness,” as donations to charity and volunteering increased in the face of COVID-19. Still, history is not a science experiment, and it’s impossible to know exactly why American empathy has risen, just like we can’t isolate with certainty why it fell. But we might ask another question: Will people react to this good news as strongly as they did to the bad news that preceded it? Human beings pay more attention to negative news compared to positive events. This makes evolutionary sense: It’s safe to ignore a sunset, but not a tsunami. But a bias toward badness can also give us the wrong idea about our world and the people in it. We judge people more readily based on the worst things they’ve done, rather than their best, and routinely underestimate how kind, caring, and open-minded others are. Humans are prone to seeing the worst side of each other, and to imagine things are getting worse, even when they’re not. Researchers recently amassed surveys in which nearly 600,000 people were asked how humanity in the modern era compared to years past. Across dozens of countries and several decades, people agreed: Human beings were less honest, kind, and moral than they had been before. This decline is almost certainly an illusion. In other surveys, people reported on kindness and morality as they actually experience it — for instance, how they were treated by strangers, coworkers, and friends. Answers to these questions remained steady over the years. And across the decades, even as people complained about society’s collapsing morals, some major trends like decreases in violent crime pointed in the opposite direction. Our biased minds tempt us to see the worst in people. The empathy decline reported 13 years ago fit that narrative and went viral. The comeback of American compassion, I worry, might instead fly under the radar. Konrath tells me that reporters still regularly contact her about her 2011 paper on empathy decline. She tells each one about the more optimistic update on this work, yet articles on this new work appear to be much scarcer than ones about the gloomier, earlier science. At least some of this is up to us. We can keep paying attention to callousness, cruelty, and immorality. There’s certainly plenty of it to occupy us. But we can also balance that perspective by looking for kindness and care in the people around us. The data is clear: There’s plenty of that, too.

House Speaker Mike Johnson talks with members of the media following passage of a series of foreign aid bills at the Capitol on April 20, in Washington, DC. | Nathan Howard/Getty Images It heads to the Senate this week, and could soon be law. After months of uncertainty, the House has greenlit a $95 billion package with substantial aid for Ukraine, as well as funds for Israel and US allies in the Indo-Pacific region. It now heads to the Senate, which is expected to pass it later this week. This move is one of the most significant bills to pass the House in months, and follows weeks of intense GOP infighting about the wisdom of sending more money to Ukraine as its war with Russia enters its third year. Ukraine is heavily dependent on US aid, and its leaders have argued that American money will be critical to break the impasse the country is in amid tenacious Russian attacks. The bill is also a strong signal of support for Israel as global and domestic outcry has grown regarding the country’s attacks in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there. And, it contains two elements meant to target China’s power: military funding for Asian allies — in support of Taiwan — as well as a measure banning TikTok in the US if the app’s China-based owner, ByteDance, does not divest it. All four measures advanced with the help of significant Democratic support, since many Republicans have maintained vocal opposition to more Ukraine funding. The votes for the package also point to a new reality: Due to fracturing in the GOP conference, and the party’s narrow majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson has increasingly had to seek help from Democrats, risking threats to his job in the process. What’s in this package In total, the package contains four bills meant to assist key allies with their military efforts, while also deterring China and Russia. Ukraine aid: The bulk of this aid package — $61 billion — is dedicated to helping Ukraine counter Russia’s ongoing military offensive. These funds include $14 billion aimed at replenishing Ukraine’s weapons and ammunition, $13 billion to restock US military supplies that have previously been sent over, and $9 billion in forgivable loans for other rebuilding efforts, including infrastructure. This measure passed 311-112, with only Republicans voting against it, and provides long awaited funds to Ukraine as Russia has made territorial gains. This bill prompted backlash from far-right Republicans, who argue these funds would be better spent domestically. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has threatened to call for Johnson’s removal as a result of this vote. Israel aid: There’s $26 billion in the measure dedicated to aid related to the Israel-Gaza conflict, including $13 billion to bolster Israel’s military capabilities and US stockpiles that have been depleted due to material transfers, and $9 billion for humanitarian aid for Gaza and other places around the world. This measure passed 366-58, and signals that the US will continue to boost Israel’s military resources despite the Biden administration’s occasional criticism of the country’s bombings of Gaza. More than 30 progressive Democrats opposed this bill and a handful of far-right Republicans did the same. Progressives have been vocal about the need for an immediate ceasefire and have spoken out against sending more money to arm Israel. Aid to Indo-Pacific allies: About $8 billion in the aid package is focused on helping US allies in the Indo-Pacific region boost their military capabilities and better support Taiwan. That includes roughly $6 billion for deterrence, which includes building out stronger submarine infrastructure in the region. This measure passed 385-34 and comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put a new spotlight on Taiwan and the question of whether the Chinese government would one day invade it. Of the three aid bills, this one received the most bipartisan support, with just roughly three dozen Republicans voting against it. REPO Act and sanctions: A fourth bill, which contains provisions of the REPO Act, would allow the US to transfer seized Russian assets to Ukraine, which it could use for reconstruction. It also imposes harsher sanctions on Russia, Iran, and China. TikTok bill:A TikTok “ban” is also included in this fourth bill. That measure requires ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell the app within nine months or risk getting banned from operations in the US. This fourth bill passed 360-58 and had about 30 progressives and 20 far-right Republicans opposed. The REPO Act and TikTok measures were an attempt to add some concessions for Republicans reluctant to back Ukraine aid. Why this is such a big deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy enthusiastically welcomed the House’s actions, calling them “vital” and claiming they will save “thousands and thousands of lives.” Military leaders and foreign policy experts have emphasized that US aid to Ukraine has been central to its ability to hold off Russia and will be critical if Ukraine is to counter a potential summer offensive. Since the war began, the US has sent Ukraine roughly $111 billion in aid. In recent months, Ukraine has been running low on ammunition and materiel needed for its air defenses, as Russia has made more inroads. “Make no mistake: without US aid, Ukraine is likely to lose the war,” Max Boot, a military historian and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written. The Ukraine bill was a sharp reminder of the divides in the Republican Party, with more moderate and classically conservative members supporting aid and some far-right members calling for a more isolationist stance. Because of his support of Ukraine aid, and caucus rules allowing any member to trigger ouster proceedings, Johnson is now in a more precarious position. After the House returns from its current recess, he could face additional calls to vacate from those on the right, though some Democrats have signaled that they could save him. Should Johnson lose his gavel, the House would, once again, have to navigate the chaos of another speaker’s race as it did last year. The aid to Israel is notable in that the Democratic-led White House has offered critiques of the country’s offensive while simultaneously encouraging funding for it. The money comes as more than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza and as experts warn of famine and a deepening humanitarian crisis in the region. The humanitarian crisis, as well as some members’ backing for a ceasefire, led to the measure being sharply debated among Democrats. Overall, Israel aid remains an enduring flash point for Democrats, with progressives calling out the Biden administration’s ongoing willingness to provide this support without strings attached. “To give Netanyahu more offensive weapons at this stage, I believe, is to condone the destruction of Gaza that we’ve seen in the last six months. And it’s also a green light for an invasion of Rafah,” Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), a Jewish lawmaker who has called for a ceasefire, told the New York Times last week. Many of the issues raised by this package are enduring ones. Ukraine will need more support from the US down the line as Russia maintains its attacks, and Republican divides are expected to persist. It’s possible Israel could seek more funding too, as its war continues, and the bill doesn’t resolve the tensions inherent in the US’s current stance toward the country. And the TikTok measure isn’t necessarily the end of the dispute over what to do about the app. As Vox’s Nicole Narea has explained, TikTok intends to challenge the policy in court on the grounds that it threatens people’s free speech.

A homeless man takes a break from clearing his belongings along the Santa Ana River Trail in Anaheim, California, on January 29, 2018. | Paul Bersebach/Orange County Register via Getty Images Grants Pass v. Johnson is probably going to end badly for homeless people, but it’s not yet clear how broad the Court’s decision will be. The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson probably isn’t going to end well for homeless people. The case, which asks whether a city in Oregon may enact so many restrictions on sleeping in public and similar behavior that it amounts to an effective ban on being unhoused, drew many questions from justices skeptical that the federal judiciary should play much of a role at all in addressing homelessness. That said, there is an off chance that Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett might join with the Court’s three Democratic appointees to permit a very narrow injunction blocking the web of anti-homelessness ordinances at issue in this case. Barrett, in particular, seemed concerned by the fact that the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, “criminalizes sleeping with a blanket” while outside. The bulk of the Court’s questions, however, and especially the questions from the Court’s Republican appointees, focused on the difficult “line-drawing” questions that arise once the Supreme Court says that there are constitutional limits on what the government can do to criminalize behaviors that are associated with homelessness. If a city cannot criminalize sleeping in a public park with a blanket, for example, can it criminalize public urination or defecation by someone who does not have access to a toilet? Can it criminalize lighting a fire in public to stay warm? And does the answer change if the person who lights the fire needs to do so in order to cook? Given these difficult questions, many of the justices — and especially Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, and Justice Neil Gorsuch — suggested that maybe the courts should stay away from homelessness policy altogether and let local governments sort out how they want to deal with this issue. Meanwhile, at least three justices — Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — floated the possibility that the federal judiciary may lack jurisdiction to hear this case to begin with. Such a decision would allow the Court to punt on the broader question of whether the Constitution permits the government to effectively criminalize homelessness. Given the morass of competing concerns raised by different justices, it is difficult to predict what the Court’s opinion will ultimately say — although, again, it is unlikely that Grants Pass will end in a significant victory for people who lack shelter. Grants Pass turns on the difference between “status” and “action” This case asks how the Court should apply its decision in Robinson v. California (1962), which struck down a California law making it a crime to “be addicted to the use of narcotics.” Robinson reasoned that the government may not make it a crime simply to be something — what the Court called a “status” crime — so a state cannot arrest someone simply for being a person with a drug addiction. That said, Robinson does permit a state to punish “a person for the use of narcotics, for their purchase, sale or possession, or for antisocial or disorderly behavior resulting from their administration.” So it is constitutional to punish someone for actions that are closely tied to their status as an addict, even if the addiction itself cannot be a crime. The issue in Grants Pass is that the city enacted a web of ordinances that do not explicitly ban being homeless within the city’s borders — that is, they do not actually say that someone can be charged with a crime simply for existing without a permanent address. But the plaintiffs in this case, unhoused residents of Grants Pass, Oregon, argue that the city enacted so many restrictions that it is inevitable that any homeless person in that city will eventually violate one, and thus these ordinances amount to an effective ban on the status of being homeless. Among other things, the city forbids so much as wrapping yourself in a blanket while sitting or lying down in public. Because it is often very cold in Grants Pass, that means that an unhoused individual in that city has nowhere to sleep. At least some of the justices appeared unconcerned with the fact that Grants Pass is effectively criminalizing an activity that every unsheltered person in the city will have to do eventually: sleeping. Gorsuch, for example, accused Edwin Kneedler, the Justice Department lawyer who argued that Robinson should give some protection to homeless people in this case, of trying to “extend Robinson.” In Gorsuch’s view, Robinson was strictly focused on explicit bans on living with a particular status. So, just as the government cannot criminalize addiction itself but can prohibit activities commonly associated with addiction (such as drug use), it also is free to criminalize any activity associated with homelessness — even if it is inevitable that a particular homeless person will engage in that activity. Roberts, meanwhile, tossed out various competing theories for why he might rule in favor of the city in this case. At one point, he warned that a too-broad definition of what constitutes a status crime could prevent the government from criminalizing the “status” of being a bank robber. At another point, he suggested that the status of being homeless is too transient to qualify for protection under Robinson, pointing out that someone may gain or lose access to shelter on any particular day. The Chief’s overarching concern, however, appeared to be that courts are just not well-suited to address homelessness policy. Why would someone think that “these nine people,” meaning himself and his colleagues, are better suited to decide whether a city should focus its limited resources on addressing homelessness and not, say, replacing lead pipes or some other important problem? Not every justice was as skeptical of the plaintiffs’ arguments as Roberts and Gorsuch, but even some of the more sympathetic justices worried about the courts getting too involved in addressing homelessness. Barrett, for example, pointed out that Grants Pass is a “pre-enforcement” case — meaning that the lower courts forbade the city from enforcing its ordinance against anyone experiencing “involuntary” homelessness, regardless of that person’s individual circumstances. Barrett suggested that a better approach might be a narrow Supreme Court decision holding that Robinson may still protect some unhoused individuals, but also holding that individual homeless people must wait until they are charged with violating the law and then raise Robinson as a defense against those charges. The advantage of this approach is that it would mean that a court could determine whether this particular individual was truly unable to exist in Grants Pass without violating the city’s ordinances. And there’s also a possibility that the Court might make this case go away without deciding it at all. The federal courts may not have jurisdiction over this case No one is allowed to file a federal lawsuit challenging a particular law unless they can show that they’ve been injured in some way by the law they are challenging, a requirement known as “standing.” Federal courts also typically lose jurisdiction over a case challenging a particular law if that law ceases to operate against the plaintiffs, rendering the case “moot.” As at least three justices noted at oral argument, there are plausible arguments that the plaintiffs in this case either lack standing or that their case has become moot. Thomas and Sotomayor raised a potential standing problem. Robinson says it is unconstitutional to make it a crime to have a particular status, but it’s less clear whether Robinson prohibits civil lawsuits arising out of an individual’s status. As Thomas noted, it’s not clear whether any of the plaintiffs named in this suit have actually been hit with a criminal sanction (as opposed to a civil fine), so they may lack standing to assert their claims under Robinson. Meanwhile, Jackson flagged a potential mootness problem. The state of Oregon, she noted, has passed a law that limits Grants Pass’s (or any other municipality in Oregon’s) authority to target homeless individuals with ordinances like the ones in this case. So there may no longer be a live conflict between the plaintiffs in Grants Pass and the city because state law now forbids the city from enforcing its ordinances against those plaintiffs. A decision on standing or mootness grounds would most likely delay a reckoning on whether the law can criminalize homelessness, but it is unlikely to put that dispute off altogether. That’s because a 2018 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the Constitution “bars a city from prosecuting people criminally for sleeping outside on public property when those people have no home or other shelter to go to.” That decision will remain in effect unless the Supreme Court modifies it or tosses it out, so another jurisdiction in the Ninth Circuit (which encompasses nine western states) could raise the same question presented by Grants Pass in some future case. But the justices did appear uncertain how they want to resolve the difficult line-drawing questions raised by Grants Pass. A decision punting the case on standing or mootness grounds would, at the very least, buy them more time to think about those questions.

Rachel Hillis for Vox Highlighting the unexpected ways our lives are connected with the natural world and how humans can deepen that connection and preserve our shared planet. Today, on Earth Day, Vox launches a new editorial project, Home Planet, from the Climate, Even Better, and Future Perfect teams. Home Planet is a collection of feature stories that celebrate the unexpected ways our lives intertwine with the natural world and how humans can adapt to preserve our planet and deepen our connection to Earth. “The climate crisis is such a huge, abstract problem. Considering our human timescales, it is this slow-motion horror that often feels disconnected from daily life. We wanted to create something that illuminated the opposite, so Home Planet was born,” says climate editor Paige Vega. “The package includes eight stories exploring life and living on planet Earth as a shared home, exploring how we all grapple with climate change in our own lives, homes, and relationships.” Contributors to the package include Tracy Ross, who provides an intimate exploration of parenting Generation Alpha as her preteen daughter comes of age during a time of climate acceleration; Benji Jones, who explores the underground NYC wildlife-rehabber community; Allie Volpe and Benji Jones, who provide a relatable guide that helps connect readers to the outdoors; and artist Christine Mi and Marina Bolotnikova, whose graphic essay teaches readers how to incorporate a plant-based diet into their lives. Additionally, Brian Resnick sits down in conversation with Ferris Jabr, author of the forthcoming book Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life; Umair Irfan explores the efficiency wars and our fraught relationships with our household appliances; Keren Landman dives deep into how a quirky census of squirrels helped her find community; and Paige Vega explores how the climate crisis has disrupted our sense of home and belonging. Taken together, these stories give readers new frameworks and ideas for solving problems and help them make more informed decisions in their daily lives. Even the smallest shifts, the most subtle changes in our orientation, can make a huge difference in how we exist on our planet. As humans on Earth in 2024, there’s still much to be hopeful about.

Water being sampled for PFAS testing in Salindres, France, in April 2024. | Pascal Guyot/AFP via Getty Images A roadmap for PFAS risk, testing, and more. In 1992, Sandy Wynn-Stelt and her husband Joel bought a house they loved in a wooded area near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Twenty-four years later, Joel abruptly died of liver cancer; the year after that, state authorities knocked on Sandy’s door to ask if they could test the private well that supplied her home’s drinking water. That water, it turned out, had 38,000 parts per trillion of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, otherwise known as PFAS. And the results were even higher on repeat testing. The chemicals had leached into her and her neighbors’ wells from the surrounding aquifer, into which the Wolverine Worldwide shoe company had been dumping its tannery waste for years. The attorney Wynn-Stelt hired suggested she get her blood checked for PFAS, and when her stratospherically high levels came back, “everybody’s jaw hit the floor,” she says. Her doctor, initially flummoxed, knew of a study that had found high cancer and disease risks in thousands exposed to PFAS over the course of a half-century near a West Virginia DuPont plant (an event that received renewed attention after the 2019 release of the film Dark Waters). Soon after, Wynn-Stelt was diagnosed with thyroid cancer — a very treatable condition with an excellent prognosis, but still a shock. Wynn-Stelt feels lucky her doctor took her seriously and responded proactively. She’s since helped create a medical education video aimed at clinicians, but realizes many patients and providers still struggle to find a way forward when PFAS exposure is on the list of health concerns. “How do we get doctors to pay attention to that along with the 3,000 other things?” she says. PFAS isn’t just one chemical, but thousands of different chemicals used in a range of industrial processes, many of which involve making products slick, nonstick, or waterproof. Unlike some other synthetic chemicals, they’re extraordinarily hard to break apart: They degrade especially slowly in the environment and in human bodies, leading to the moniker “forever chemicals.” For decades, companies dumped PFAS directly into the natural environment, including rivers and aquifers, contaminating drinking water in many parts of the US. Additionally, consumer products shed the chemicals onto surfaces in our homes and into the food we eat. As a consequence, experts believe most people have some quantity of PFAS in their bodies. In early April, the Environmental Protection Agency set the first national limits for six PFAS chemicals in drinking water; water purveyors will have five years to comply. While that’s an important step, it doesn’t address the broader problem of the US’s broken policy regulating the chemical industry’s safety practices — policies made even more favorable to industry under the Trump administration. “The number of PFAS that are going out into our environment under the aegis of trade secrecy is very substantial,” says Alan Ducatman, a retired physician who led several PFAS research projects at West Virginia University and now consults for consumer health advocacy groups. In a world where our environment’s safety is so closely tethered to capitalist interests, understanding how to manage and make decisions about environmental risks rests on patients and providers — even though it shouldn’t. Here’s what you need to know about assessing your PFAS exposure risk, getting tested, and working with a health care provider to find a way forward. Do I need to worry about PFAS? High PFAS levels are associated with a range of health problems, including high cholesterol, some cancers, and immune system disorders; some health consequences linked with the chemicals also appear to be present with low blood PFAS levels. While their health risks are concerning — and scientists still have a lot to learn about them — it can be helpful to think of PFAS in the context of some other common toxins, says Ducatman. If you had “the choice between smoking a pack [of cigarettes] a day or being in one of those high-PFAS populations,” he says, “high-PFAS population is way safer.” However, health-minded people can avoid cigarettes, while they don’t have the option of not drinking water — and the more experts understand about PFAS’s links to human disease, the more concerned they get. A reasonable first step toward understanding your own PFAS risk is looking into the safety of your drinking water over the years and reviewing your employment history. That’s because people with high PFAS levels typically get them either by drinking contaminated water on a frequent basis or through extended on-the-job exposure, said Jamie DeWitt, a PFAS researcher who directs Oregon State University’s Environmental Health Sciences Center. It’s not as straightforward as it should be to get information about the PFAS levels in your drinking water. The Environmental Working Group maintains a map of tap water levels from all over the US, but its data is far from complete — for example, no data from New York City is included. Several experts told me that for people in metropolitan areas, the best way to get information about your local water source is by contacting your water purveyor directly. Your mileage may vary: Although my local paper reported recent monitoring (mandated by the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule of the Safe Drinking Water Act) showed PFAS in Atlanta drinking water, details were not readily available from the Atlanta Department of Watershed Management on the website or over the phone. Smaller water utilities not covered by that rule might not gather this data, and if you get your water from a private well, you’d need to get it tested to know if its water contains PFAS, says DeWitt. “If you’re exposed to less than four parts per trillion” — the level set by the EPA in the latest regulations — “you can generally anticipate that your health risks are relatively low. Not nonexistent, but relatively low,” DeWitt says. People whose drinking water has higher levels and hasn’t been filtered (more on that later) may be at increased risk. When it comes to assessing your occupational risk, you can start with the PFAS exposure history on the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry website. At highest risk are people who work in facilities that produce PFAS chemicals, and people whose jobs use products that contain lots of PFAS, including firefighters, carpet installers, ski waxers, and people in hospitality who handle a lot of food packaging. You can also ask your doctor to help you assess your risk. Even if they don’t have expertise in environmental health, lots of information and training is available to get them up to speed: Several experts recommended the resources on the clinician section of the PFAS REACH (Research, Education, and Action for Community Health) website, and the lengthy but well-organized document published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). What does PFAS testing look like? If you or your provider determines you’re likely to have been exposed to a relatively high amount of PFAS, the next step is getting your levels tested. Insurance companies don’t typically cover these tests, and it costs between $300 and $500 out of pocket. Although tests aren’t done by most hospital labs, Quest Diagnostics recently began offering a PFAS test. Usually, the test is done on blood obtained through a routine blood draw, although some tests can also be conducted on urine. Ducatman cautions that testing is somewhat limited in what it can tell you. “What people want to know is two things: ‘What’s my PFAS levels,’” he says, “and ‘What are my risks from that,’ which the test doesn’t interpret for you.” That’s partly because the levels testing labs define as normal are sometimes based on old data — and partly because the industries that produce PFAS are constantly creating chemicals to replace the ones restricted by regulation, he said. To explain what makes PFAS testing so complicated, says Courtney Carignan, an environmental exposure scientist at Michigan State University, it’s worth comparing the chemicals to another well-described environmental toxin: lead. It’s much simpler to identify in the environment and in people, partly because it’s just one substance. “The thing that makes PFAS more difficult is that there’s so many of them,” she says, “so we are playing this whack-a-mole game.” While commercially available PFAS tests might not yield data on all of the thousands of PFAS chemicals that could be in a person’s body, it’s still a reasonable place to start when it comes to understanding the individual risk of health outcomes related to these chemicals. How can I minimize the negative consequences of high PFAS levels? When a patient comes to a health care provider with abnormal results from a PFAS test, there’s a non-zero chance they’ll get a blank stare. “That’s the way health care practitioners are educated — toxicology is just a really small piece of their education,” says DeWitt. Again, patients can point their providers to resources published by PFAS REACH and NASEM to help guide the way forward. These organizations differ slightly in their approaches to medical monitoring for PFAS effects, but both recommend that people with high blood levels of the chemicals get blood and urine tests on a regular basis to check for high cholesterol and abnormal liver, kidney, and thyroid function. They also recommend regular urine tests to check for certain kidney conditions, regular screening for testicular cancer and ulcerative colitis (which usually starts with a physical exam and may involve some testing), and screening for breast cancer (which may mean getting more mammograms than otherwise recommended). Experts also recommend providers speak with patients about the likelihood of PFAS transmission to newborns through pregnancy and breastfeeding, and inform them that high levels of the chemicals may inhibit responses to vaccines. There’s no Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment to lower PFAS levels. What everyone can do to prevent PFAS exposure to begin with Although it’s almost impossible to completely avoid contact with PFAS, you can take some steps to reduce your exposure. Filtering your drinking water can help lower its PFAS levels, whether you do it with the first-line (but pricey) reverse osmosis under-sink filters or the cheaper (but still pretty good) carbon filters in pitchers, sinks, and refrigerators. It can also help to avoid waterproofing and stain-resistance treatments for carpet and upholstery, and to minimize eating food that’s touched take-out containers and wrapping, whose nonstick surfaces may contain PFAS. Many other consumer products contain these chemicals; referring to a list of PFAS-free products can help consumers make decisions that limit exposure. Whatever decisions you make, be aware there’s some uncertainty that’s unavoidable when it comes to these extraordinarily common chemicals. Wynn-Stelt tries to minimize her risk but really wants to see industry take more responsibility for reducing consumers’ exposure, both by reducing PFAS use and clearly labeling products that contain the chemicals. “Knowledge is power,” she says, “and consumers really can drive the economy.”