Americans are the No. 1 consumers of toilet paper in the world. | Javier Zayas Photography/Getty Images It’s a truism that everything’s bigger in America — just look at the cars and houses. But perhaps nowhere is the virtue of bigger is better more bizarrely apparent than how toilet paper is sold. Wander into the bathroom products aisle at the supermarket and you’ve entered a topsy-turvy world where numbers shape-shift. A pack of 18 mega toilet paper rolls, for example, magically transforms into 90 “regular” ones. The labeling emphasizes this greater number in large font, lest you foolishly think 18 simply equals 18. Another pack might insist that 12 even-thicker rolls of toilet paper are the equivalent of 96 normal rolls. The advertising is clear: You’re getting a lot of toilet paper. That should be good news, since if there’s one rule of thumb everyone should live by, it’s never run out of TP. We saw anxiety around this eventuality reach new heights in the early days of the pandemic, when crowds of people fought to snap up as much toilet paper as they could, leading to a shortage and extreme price gouging. Americans’ enormous vehicles and palatial abodes may in fact exist in service of conveying and storing gigantic bulk packs of this bathroom essential. There’s some irony, then, that for all the trumpeting of gargantuan sizes, toilet paper rolls are generally getting smaller. It’s a key example of the trend of manufacturers charging the same price (or even slightly more) for less product that’s been dubbed “shrinkflation.” It makes it more difficult than ever to figure out if you’re getting ripped off. None of the three major toilet paper manufacturers Vox reached out to responded to a request for comment. “I really can’t think of any other category that’s as confusing as toilet paper,” says Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at the consulting firm GlobalData. With dubious numerical claims about how much a “mega” roll is really worth, brands can promote the perception of value without actually having to show their work. Figuring out the price per toilet paper sheet is a hassle, but it would show how much more expensive the product has become. “The consumer wouldn’t like that, so they all keep it a bit opaque,” Saunders says. Get ready for some back-of-the-toilet-paper math The most glaring issue plaguing the toilet paper industry is a lack of standardization. Double, triple, and mega rolls are imprecise descriptors that vary by brand; they are not measurement units. In fine print, toilet paper packaging will often admit that these sizes are relative to the “regular” roll — sometimes they mean their own brand’s regular size, but other times, it’s against a competitor’s one-ply regular. Unsurprisingly, the so-called standard size has no consistency, either. Charmin’s regular roll has 55 two-ply sheets, for example, but it’s often hard to even find the regular size of a brand’s toilet paper in stores. The mega roll is often advertised as having four times as many sheets as the mythical “regular” it’s being compared to, which means that Cottonelle’s idea of a regular roll contains 61 sheets, Quilted Northern’s an awkward 73.75 sheets, and Angel Soft’s 80 sheets. But even these are perplexing figures since many real-life standard toilet paper rolls contain more than 100 sheets. The sheets-per-roll ratio is also subject to change depending on whether you’re looking at single-ply, two-ply, or three-ply. (Not to make your brain hurt more, but sheet dimensions vary too.) The mega roll is just one size out of many that brands offer, all with slightly different naming conventions. Cottonelle sells mega, family mega, or super mega, while Charmin now offers the mega-XXL and even the “forever roll,” which is so big you need a standalone holder. There appears to be no limit to the jumbofication of toilet paper jargon.  All this renders comparison shopping far more challenging than it is for the average household product. Making matters worse, there’s no single consistent method of unit pricing for toilet paper. Some retailers, like Walmart, Amazon, and Target, show the price per 100 sheets, but then you still have to factor in the variation in sheets per roll for each brand. Walgreens shows price per sheet, while Home Depot displays a pretty unhelpful price per roll. Irregular unit price labeling is a problem for many consumer products, according to Chuck Bell, programs director of advocacy at Consumer Reports. Unit pricing is “only mandated directly in nine states,” Bell says, while 10 others have voluntarily taken it up. “It’s hard to compare products online for value for money.” It’s no wonder people have taken matters into their own hands. In late 2018, a California man named Victor Ly launched a “Toilet Paper Value Calculator” that crunches the number of rolls, sheets per roll, and any discounts that apply. Ly told Wirecutter in 2022 that a good deal was probably around 0.253 cents per sheet. While there’s no longer a toilet paper shortage or people panic-buying pallets of them — though the impulse to do so lingers — it’s a much more expensive commodity today than before the pandemic, especially now that we’re a few years out from a period of high inflation. A report from consumer watchdog Public Interest Research Group noted that, before the pandemic, a pack of 36 Charmin Ultra Soft rolls cost $30.95 on Amazon. At time of writing, the same pack costs $59 on the site. (In December 2020, it was selling for as high as $114.99.) Most name-brand toilet paper today far exceeds Ly’s price threshold. A 30-pack of Charmin Ultra Strong mega rolls breaks down to 0.5 cents per sheet, though a 36-pack of Scott 1000 toilet paper is about 0.083 cents per sheet. Kirkland’s 30-pack of toilet paper, selling for $23.49 at time of writing, works out to 0.206 cents per sheet. The cost of making toilet paper may have gone up in recent years, according to the Los Angeles Times, due to a slowdown in lumber production (there’s less available wood pulp, which is what most toilet paper is made of). Combine that with the fact that, as journalist Will Oremus reported in a piece about the pandemic toilet paper shortage, more people are working remotely today, reducing the time spent in office bathrooms. It means that the average consumer is using more toilet paper at home, cringing at how much their budget for bathroom products has gone up.  Shrinkflation strikes – again Toilet paper manufacturers have come up with a way to keep prices roughly the same, though — at least at a quick glance. The same pack of toilet paper you buy every month might only be more expensive upon close scrutiny of the fine print, when you realize each roll is made up of fewer sheets. A recent analysis by loan marketplace LendingTree showed that toilet paper was among the top offenders among products whose size or volume had shrunk since 2019 or 2020. A pack of 12 mega rolls from Angel Soft went from 429 sheets per roll to 320 — essentially shrinking by a quarter — but at least the price went down by 15 percent too. Charmin Ultra Strong mega rolls, on the other hand, shrank by 15 percent while the price increased by 11 percent. This isn’t a new strategy that only toilet paper makers are employing. People have been complaining about product shrinkage for years; a Consumer Reports article from 2015 compared toilet paper rolls from top brands, showing that some had reduced by over 20 percent. The reason, manufacturers claimed at the time, was that better paper quality meant that people could use less of it. An older Charmin regular roll had 82 sheets versus just 55 today. Edgar Dworsky, a former consumer protection lawyer, has been tracking this shady practice — which he calls “downsizing” — for decades on his websites, MousePrint.org and ConsumerWorld.org. “I remember back in the 1960s when my Mounds candy bar used to be two ounces and became one point something or other,” he tells Vox. He notes that old Charmin toilet paper had as many as 650 sheets in a single-ply roll; its mega-XXL today has just 440 sheets. An older Charmin regular roll had 82 sheets versus just 55 today. The playbook is to shrink the current roll size, then invent a new tier (with a more ridiculous name) that can be priced higher. Consumer brands “are in the business of making you think you’re getting more,” Dworsky says. “It’s all a name game, it’s all a numbers game, and if you’re just oblivious to it, you’re going to get snookered.” How to avoid flushing money down the toilet Toilet paper is marketed both as a value product, where you’re getting four rolls for the price of one, and a weirdly indulgent luxury at the same time. It’s something meant to be quickly disposed of, literally flushed away, yet commercials for toilet paper are almost always focusing on its delightful, cushiony softness or a special “quilted” or “diamond weave” texture that adds a premium feel to the product. There’s scented toilet paper, and even toilet paper with colorful patterns. One of Quilted Northern’s April Fool’s Day ads pokes fun at the excessive promotional style of its own industry, proclaiming a “return” to hand-crafted, artisanal toilet paper. Ultimately, this is because we spend so much time with it, and in such an intimate way, so such bells and whistles do matter to some of us. “There’s obviously some people [who], for medical reasons, like to have really soft toilet paper,” Saunders says. “Some people just like extra strong toilet paper.” For others, it’s a pure bang-for-buck play, where they might just gravitate toward the pack with the most rolls (which isn’t necessarily the best value).  The range of options, from one-ply sparseness to lilac-scented plushness, isn’t the problem. It’s that it’s so hard to disentangle the value you’re actually getting. As Dworsky notes, consumers could bring a scale to weigh packs of toilet paper every time they go to the store, but then what can you do about it? You still have to buy one of the #ShrinkFlated options, and it’s not an area where we’re spoiled for choice. While there are plenty of different versions that a single brand offers, just three manufacturers — Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Georgia-Pacific — make up some 80 percent of the bathroom tissue market. One could switch to commercial-grade toilet paper, which is much cheaper but is of (ahem) crappier quality. Where consumer toilet paper is soft, perhaps infused with lotion, often embossed with a delightful little pattern, the stuff we see in public restrooms is stiff and so thin that it breaks apart if you so much as look at it. Still, a 12-pack of commercial toilet paper at Home Depot is about $34 at time of writing, and one roll is about 700 feet long. Assuming that a square of consumer-grade toilet paper is about 4 inches long, a 440-sheet Charmin mega-XXL roll would still be under 147 feet.  Lawmakers and President Joe Biden have wagged their fingers at corporations for shrinkflation and have even introduced a bill attempting to ban the practice, though neither Dworsky nor Bell thinks it’s likely to become law. But more transparency around product sizes, more consistent unit price labels, or even requiring a consumer notice when there’s a change in size would go a long way to help shoppers. Last year, in the lead-up to price negotiations with suppliers, French grocery chain Carrefour started attaching labels next to packaged foods and drinks that had gotten smaller.  What’s certain is that the deceptive, confusing accounting of toilet paper rolls shouldn’t be the norm — and, in fact, it appears to be mostly a North American tradition. While other countries do also sell “mega” rolls, there’s no fiddly math on the packaging insisting that a dozen rolls are somehow more than that. Toilet paper is no small matter, especially for Americans. Per capita, the US is the No. 1 consumer of it in the world, each American using about 141 rolls per year as of 2018. A Consumer Reports buying guide once compared the annual usage to the length of 23 football fields. One way to avoid the frustrating morass of counting rolls and sheets is to opt out of the game altogether. “I switched to a bidet 10 years ago,” Dworsky says.

Welcome to the golden age of STI prevention. Sure, condoms are still an effective strategy for lowering the risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) — but now, they’re just one of a smorgasbord of strategies for decreasing your chances of catching an infection spread by sex.  That includes vaccines to lower your risk of certain STIs, and medications you can take to prevent infection — some with the ease of a morning-after pill, and many that can be mailed to your home after an online telehealth visit. It also includes new STI tests that people can take in their homes, with results available either instantly or within days to enable quick and discreet testing and treatment. In a world where getting sexual health care sometimes feels fraught with judgment, these new methods offer a level of discretion and convenience that feels nothing short of revolutionary. In-person care is still best for getting the most comprehensive and personalized evaluation and education, and we’ve got guidance on how to find that kind of care here. But even sexual health care clinicians recognize it’s annoying — or worse — to go to the doctor sometimes.  “Inconvenience — whether it’s cost, or travel, or parking, or taking off work, or other competing demands — is probably a big factor in why people aren’t necessarily engaged in … sexual health care that they might otherwise benefit from,” says Douglas Krakower, an infectious disease doctor and HIV prevention researcher at Harvard Medical School. Stigma — that shameful sense that people who know you have an STI look down on you, whether real or imagined — also sometimes prevents people from getting high-quality sexual health care in person.  The bottom line: People often prefer sexual health care that involves as few other humans as possible. Now, there are more ways to get that than ever. Not everyone gets to benefit equally from these advances. Some come with hefty out-of-pocket price tags or are still out of reach for pregnant or likely-to-be-pregnant people. Still, the changes represent a leap forward in an area of health care that needs as much help as it can get. Here’s what’s out there. You can greatly reduce your risk of HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and more  STIs include a range of bacteria and viruses that cause unpleasant genital symptoms, threaten your ability to have pleasurable sex, and may endanger your ability to have healthy children. Barrier protections like internal and external condoms are still the best (and usually cheapest) way to protect yourself from STIs.  However, if you anticipate having sex without condoms, there are now lots of other ways to prevent STIs. Vaccines have come a long way and several can prevent STIs, including HPV (a cause of genital warts and cervical cancer), mpox, and hepatitis A and B. Recent studies also suggest being vaccinated against meningitis can offer some gonorrhea protection, especially among gay men and the people they have sex with. There are also pills and injectable medications that can greatly reduce the risk a sexual partner will infect you with HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, or chlamydia. HIV prevention is available in a few forms: as a daily oral or every-two-months injectable medication you take before sex (called PrEP, for pre-exposure prophylaxis), or as a month-long regimen of oral medicines you take immediately after sex. The latter option, called PEP, for post-exposure prophylaxis, has to be started within 72 hours of exposure to be effective. Both options work by entering the body’s cells and preventing HIV from replicating inside them. A smorgasbord of new STI prevention options PrEP, a daily oral or every-two-months injectable HIV-prevention medication you take before sex PEP, a month-long course of oral HIV-prevention medication you take after sex DoxyPEP, a morning-after pill to prevent syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia infections Home-based testing for chlamydia and gonorrhea, syphilis, HIV, and other STIs (click here for free resources; some direct-to-consumer options are listed here) Vaccines for HPV, mpox, hepatitis A and B  There’s even more progress to come in this area: An every-six-months injectable drug for preventing HIV infection called lenacapavir has shown huge promise in preventing HIV infections in both women and trans and nonbinary people and could be available for US use as soon as late 2025. Krakower says an oral option isn’t far behind. Syphilis has been rising explosively in the US for the past few years, affecting gay men and the people they have sex with as well as heterosexual men and women, especially those whose sexual partners include sex workers and people who inject drugs. The trend has huge stakes: Women can spread syphilis to their pregnancies, leading to serious illness or death in their newborns.  Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines for using doxyPEP, a morning-after pill to prevent syphilis infection. This breakthrough strategy involves taking the antibiotic doxycycline the morning after sex — and because this medication also fights other germs, doxyPEP also reduces gonorrhea and chlamydia transmission. The problem is that doxycycline’s effects on pregnancy are unclear, but there’s suspicion they’re not good. Many clinicians are therefore hesitant to prescribe it to younger patients in their care. Still, because congenital syphilis has become such a dire national emergency, scientists are seeking ways doxyPEP can protect pregnant people and their fetuses. One focus is getting more men who have sex with men and women to use doxyPEP; another approach may involve prescribing the drug to women at high risk of syphilis infection. In a Japanese study of female sex workers, this strategy led to plummeting syphilis and chlamydia rates. You can get at-home testing for a range of STIs  It used to be that if you’d had unprotected sex with a new partner or had unusual genital symptoms — like painful urination, funky discharge, or skin changes like a bump, ulcer, or rash — you’d have to jump through a lot of hoops to figure out whether you had an STI. You would start by visiting a clinic or emergency room; getting your parts swabbed by a clinician (or peeing in a cup or getting blood drawn); waiting for a lab to process those results; waiting for the doctor’s office to communicate those results to you; going back to the clinic for medicine or picking it up at a pharmacy; and then potentially going back again to be retested once treatment was done.  Now, a variety of new testing options allows clinics to get test results within hours for a range of STIs. Once these get adopted broadly by clinics and emergency rooms, it’ll be a lot easier for people to get testing and treatment all in the space of one health care visit. Hopefully, that will lower the number of people who get diagnosed with an STI but never get treated for it. Another huge step forward: New tests now enable people to do most or all of the STI testing and treatment process at home, online, or through the mail — without a doctor or another clinician having to get involved. “Agency is what home testing gets people,” says Yuka Manabe, an infectious disease doctor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who leads the home-based HIV and STI testing program, I Want the Kit.  The FDA has only approved a handful of these tests, and they’re not perfect. For example, the only FDA-approved test that screens for chlamydia and gonorrhea with home-based sample collection is the Simple 2 test —  it’s only approved to test samples from penises and vaginas. That means the test can’t be used to diagnose throat and rectal infections, which are more common in men exposed through oral or anal sex with other men. So while the Simple 2 is a great choice for people who engage only in heterosexual sex, it leaves out gay men and people they have sex with.  Another important innovation is the First to Know Syphilis Test, which can detect within minutes syphilis-fighting antibodies in blood samples collected at home with a simple skin prick. The FDA approved the test in August. However, it has a catch: The test doesn’t distinguish between new syphilis infections and old, already-treated infections. That means people who’ve had syphilis before can’t use the test to rule out a new infection. It’s worth noting that home-use HIV tests have been FDA-approved for more than a decade, although they also require follow-up testing for positive results. Just because these tests are FDA-approved doesn’t guarantee they are covered by insurance; you can check with your insurer to find out what it will cost you. If it’s not covered, it’s worth checking to see if you live in a part of the country where free HIV, gonorrhea and chlamydia, or trichomonas test kits are available (the American Sexual Health Association lists free HIV and STI home test kit resources).   Most of this testing would be free or low-cost if you got it in person, says Elizabeth Finley, the senior director of communications and programs at the National Coalition of STD Directors. “There’s some equity implications” in the reality that higher-income people can afford to pay out of pocket for the convenience of home-based testing, while lower-income people often cannot, she says. Choosing a test is just the beginning An array of companies have created home-based STI tests that haven’t yet been approved by the FDA, including ones for hepatitis B and C, which are often overlooked. Non-approval doesn’t mean a test is garbage — it just makes it harder to be certain that it’s effective at doing what you want it to do. “There are no real guardrails for the companies in terms of the quality they have to offer to customers,” Finley says. “The tests have to work, but I’m not sure customers are fully informed about, if they see a test available on social media, ‘Is this a good one? Is this a bad one?’” The appeal of these tests is strong for people who hate having someone else get their genital sample. Many of them have you pee in a cup, pinprick your own finger and blot blood on a card, or swab a range of body parts at home (including your vagina or penis, your butt, or your throat), then mail that sample to a lab that runs the usual tests on it, which can be retrieved in an online portal.  Home testing kits also often make an end-run around the process of getting to a brick-and-mortar clinic to figure out next steps or pick up medication. Many use a telehealth platform to connect people who test positive for an STI with clinicians, who can provide counseling, suggest ways to get partners tested, and mail some medications directly to patients.  Curing many STIs requires one or more antibiotic injections, and experts sometimes recommend additional evaluation after a diagnosis. Both of these scenarios require an in-person visit with a clinician. If you test positive for one of these STIs, your test company’s telehealth provider should direct you to a clinic where you can see an in-person clinician. Giving people the option of self-directed sexual health care isn’t just good for people’s sense of autonomy — it’s also a sensible response to impending health worker shortages. Out of concern for an inadequate global supply of clinicians, the World Health Organization has recently recommended a range of self-care interventions for people all over the world, among them many of the latest innovations in STI self-sampling and testing.  It’s about time, Manabe says: “We’re not trusting the public enough.”

Over the weekend, a very small wildfire broke out in a hilly and densely vegetated area of Prospect Park, a swath of green space in Brooklyn. The 2-acre blaze drew about 100 firefighters as residents were warned to stay out of the park. Meanwhile, on the New York-New Jersey border, another blaze, the Jennings Creek wildfire, has burned thousands of acres, sending smoke drifting across much of New York City and killing an 18-year-old New York state forest ranger volunteer who died while responding to the fire.  Is this typical? Not exactly. But the Northeast has been under severe drought conditions for weeks. These fires, and the dozens of others currently burning in the Northeast and across the Ohio River Valley, as well as the scores more in the Western US, are the consequence of months of unseasonably hot and dry weather across large swaths of the country.  Okay, pause: What is a drought? Simply put, a drought is a dry period — that is, a long stretch of time without any rain or snow — that leads to a water shortage. Droughts can (and do) happen all over the world; they are not just a characteristic of a desert or a regional problem. Extreme drought can stress landscapes and water tables, regardless of whether a city is built on top of them or not. If a drought lasts long enough, people in that place can lose access to water.   This story was first featured in the Today, Explained newsletter Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day. Sign up here. While the Western United States is associated with aridity, it is remarkable to see this extent of drought spread across the Northeast. And current forecasts show that the conditions will persist for weeks or even months. “It’s problematic to see drought in all parts of the country. It’s not just a regional issue,” said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center. “Regardless of where you’re at, drought can and will impact you.” Firefighters extinguished the Prospect Park fire. Rain mercifully moved into New York on Sunday night and snuffed much of the smoke drifting across the East Coast, obscuring the fact that a cluster of fires in New Jersey continued to burn.  As the smoke fades, attention shouldn’t: Millions of people in the Northeast remain under red flag wildfire warnings, which signal conditions where anything that can generate a spark could likely lead to a fire. But we all live with drought, extreme heat, and fire now — and our relationship to water is connected to just how bad things could get. Why is the drought so severe? For much of the country, October was an extremely hot and dry month. We are currently on pace for 2024 to become the hottest year ever recorded, a declaration that forecasters from the World Meteorological Organization are making with confidence even with more than a month left.  According to the US Drought Monitor, the long periods of hot and dry conditions have left every state in the country facing drought — an unprecedented statistic.  There isn’t a single driver responsible for the scope of the current drought conditions. Even as our global average temperatures are rising thanks to climate change, our short-term weather patterns will shift all of the time. For example, despite Hurricane Helene bringing heaps of moisture to places like North Carolina a little more than a month ago, even western North Carolina is now abnormally dry. How can that be? Because it’s been that hot and dry in the weeks since — enough to erase any sign of a so-called thousand-year event.  “When I started looking at data over the past six months, you see that places like New Jersey, the Ohio River Valley, much of the plains have 12 to 15 inches below normal precipitation for this time of the year,” Fuchs said. “New York has a deficit of 10 inches. That’s very extreme for this part of the country.” And then there are these warmer temperatures later in the year that end up amplifying the ongoing drought’s worst effects. Temperatures usually fall significantly by November. Trees will drop their leaves and go dormant. Certain critters hibernate or go into low-power mode. Snow begins accumulating in the higher elevations, banking moisture that will melt out — gradually — during the warmer periods.  But when it’s 80 degrees in New York in November, trees and vegetation are still consuming water. There’s an extra period of demand on the overall water system, and that taxes water sources — lakes and streams begin to draw down and the ground holds onto less moisture. Vegetation that grew earlier in the year begins to dry out — and fuel wildfires.  “It really doesn’t take much time to transition to a hot and dry environment and you all of a sudden have all of this extra fuel for wildfires,” Fuchs said. “This is the perfect mix for fires to blossom.” Should we expect more wildfires?  Drought is a normal part of our climate, but it’s not normal to see this much drought across so much of the country.  Resources to help you understand how drought will impact where you live There are two monitors produced by the US Drought Monitor from the Climate Prediction Center that reflect what areas in the US will be most affected by drought and water scarcity. These projections, which update regularly, give a real-time pulse on conditions across the country and are created through a partnership between the US Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These tools are also  helpful in getting a clearer picture of how the climate is impacting your local landscape and will give you the heads-up if you’re likely to face water shortages. The monthly outlook is a great snapshot for this moment in time. It provides a gradient of drought conditions, shaded by severity, impacting the country. If you live in a place where drought is persisting, conserve your water and be aware of acute wildfire risk.   The seasonal outlook currently shows projection through January 2025 and will update again in mid-November to show conditions expected to the end of February. This map is helpful for getting a longer-range view of aridity and whether it’s likely to lessen or become more severe.  This extreme period of dry weather is a part of the larger picture that scientists have come to expect: that our weather will become more extreme and unpredictable and that we will collectively experience more pronounced swings from incredibly dry periods to incredibly wet periods.  Those dry periods, Fuchs says, are connected to warmer temperatures persisting into what should be the colder parts of the year and ramping up the demand on our water systems. That demand, by the way, includes water consumption by you and me and everyone else. Just multiply our daily showers, drawing from the tap, running our dishwashers and washing machines, washing our cars, watering our house plants (and so on) by the millions of people who live in a watershed, the area that shares a single water source for a particular region.  If there’s too much demand on an already stressed landscape, the wildfire risk increases as water levels in streams and in our water table drop.  To better navigate the conditions we see today and the climate we should expect in the future, we need to understand that no place is immune to drought conditions, Fuchs said. “Even if you think you’ve not been impacted by drought in the past, it’s increasingly important for people to know where their water comes from and conserve it the best you can at any time,” he said. “We’re actively experiencing severe climate change impacts,” said Aradhna Tripati, a climate scientist from UCLA who helped author the latest national climate assessment. Climate change “is no longer theoretical or a distant threat, an abstract one. It is not something that happens in the future here. It is not something only happening in places far away from where we live. All weather is now being affected.” Yes — even in New York City.

As much as this issue resonated with many voters, America’s politicians were not ready to rethink the country’s relationship with Israel. | Joshua Lott/Washington Post/Getty Images Since the war in Gaza began, the threat of a protest vote — in which voters would choose to abstain from the presidential election or vote for third-party candidates who had no shot of winning — hung over Democrats’ heads because of President Joe Biden’s unconditional support for Israel and its right-wing government. When Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee, her lack of willingness to distance herself from Biden on this issue didn’t help alleviate that threat. Meanwhile, Donald Trump accused Democrats of not being sufficiently pro-Israel.   Throughout the election, pro-Palestinian voters tried to put pressure on President Biden to change course, organizing protests on college campuses across the country and forming various campaigns to punish him at the ballot box. One group, the Uncommitted National Movement, asked Democratic voters to cast their ballots for “uncommitted” instead of Biden during the primaries, and they amassed hundreds of thousands of votes — enough to secure delegates at the Democratic National Convention. But no matter how much pro-Palestinian voters pushed candidates to give them a better vision for how to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, none were willing to meaningfully address the concerns of pro-Palestinian voters. And for Americans who regarded Gaza as one of their top concerns, their choice boiled down to either punishing Democrats or stopping Trump. The result was an election in which neither outcome would have been a win for Palestinians. While it’s impossible to point to any single issue to explain why Harris lost to Trump, it’s clear that Harris lost at least some voters because of the Biden administration’s stance on Gaza. And now Trump, who vowed to ban Palestinian refugees from entering the United States and said he would revoke visas from foreign students who are deemed antisemitic, is the president-elect.     Voters wanted an actual plan to stop the war. Candidates weren’t interested. When it came to which candidate had a better vision for how to end the war in Gaza, neither Biden, Harris, nor Trump offered a compelling message.  President Biden offered Israel unqualified support, sending billions of dollars in military aid. His administration defended Israel even as it committed horrific war crimes, including hospital bombings. Instead of reckoning with the rapidly rising death toll in Gaza, he cast doubt on the numbers that the Gaza Ministry of Health had put out — numbers that humanitarian groups and even the US government had deemed reliable in the past. At times, Harris, after she became the Democratic nominee, tried calling out Israel for the staggering death toll, saying that “far too many” civilians had been killed and emphasizing that how Israel conducted itself during this war mattered. She called for an end to the war, but after having served in the administration that financed Israel’s war with virtually no conditions, it wasn’t a particularly convincing message. Harris also muddied her outreach — or lack thereof — to Arab Americans by coupling any sympathetic statement about Palestinians with a staunch defense of Israel. At her DNC speech, for example, she said the death toll in Gaza was “heartbreaking” and stated that Palestinians’ right to self-determination ought to be realized — reiterating long-held US talking points — but also prefaced that statement by again justifying the war itself. When she was asked whether she was worried about losing Arab American voters because of Israel’s conduct, she said, “There are so many tragic stories coming from Gaza,” but that “the first and most tragic story is October 7.” For his part, Trump didn’t try to say that he would be any better than Biden on Gaza. Earlier this year, he said Israel should wrap up the war and “get back to peace and stop killing people.” But he said it not in the context of sympathy for Palestinians, but out of concern that Israel was making itself look bad. “And the other thing is I hate — they put out tapes all the time. Every night, they’re releasing tapes of a building falling down. They shouldn’t be releasing tapes like that,” he said. “That’s why they’re losing the PR war.” Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also seemed more concerned about the lost opportunity for development in Gaza than the human suffering, saying that the strip’s waterfront properties could be very valuable. “There was no ocean as far as that was concerned. They never took advantage of it,” Trump said. “You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place — the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate.” As to how Trump would deal with Netanyahu, he indicated that he would let the Israeli prime minister be even more unrestrained, saying that Netanyahu was “doing a good job” and that Biden was holding him back. Throughout the election, Palestinians were a target Ultimately, whether Trump would end up being worse than Biden or Harris on this issue didn’t necessarily resonate with pro-Palestinian voters. For them, what’s been happening over the last year already represented the worst. Israel, after all, has already been credibly accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. As one Georgia voter told me in the week before the election, “In no way do I imagine Trump is better for Palestine … [but] I can’t imagine it worse.” That helps explain why so many Arab Americans came out against Harris last Tuesday. In Dearborn, Michigan, an Arab-majority city, Trump won 43 percent of the vote compared to Harris’s 36 percent. In 2020, Biden won the city with 69 percent of the vote, and though Harris lost there, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American, won her reelection to Congress with 62 percent of the vote. As much as this issue resonated with many voters, America’s politicians were not ready to rethink the country’s relationship with Israel, even as the war escalated to the point where now over 44,000 Palestinians have been killed. In July, when Netanyahu gave an address to Congress, he was met with a standing ovation. From the start, Palestinians were a target in this election. During the Republican primaries, candidates got on the debate stage and competed over who would be the most pro-Israel president. At that point, it had been a month since Hamas’s October 7 attack, and Israel’s war on Gaza had already killed over 10,000 Palestinians, 40 percent of whom were children. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job once and for all with these butchers,” referring to Hamas. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said, “You cannot negotiate with evil.” Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley repeated a line she had already tested out on the campaign trail: “Finish them.” She would later write that on an artillery shell during a visit to Israel. As for Trump, he even hurled the word “Palestinian” as an insult.  At each turn, no matter how devastating the war became, Palestinians were humiliated. Pro-Palestinian protesters were denigrated. And voters who sympathized with Palestinians in Gaza were scolded. That left voters with no tangible options to improve the situation in Gaza at the ballot box, prompting many to believe that the best way to be heard is by sending a message that reckless foreign policy will cost incumbents votes. Even as some voters tried to turn the election into a referendum on Biden’s Gaza policy, the reality was that no candidate was willing to promise anything beyond the status quo. So Palestinians and their supporters found plenty of reason to believe that whatever the election outcome would be, it could only range from bad to worse.  That feeling of hopelessness paved the way for a protest vote to take hold. While Biden’s Israel policy, in the end, might not have been the deciding factor for much of the electorate, in some pockets of the country, voters tried to show that they shouldn’t be ignored in the only way they could: by voting against the party that allowed Gaza to turn into a “graveyard for children.” It’s hard to know what the next few months, or next four years, will look like for Palestine. But there aren’t many signs of hope — if there are any at all. As the election drew to a close, Israelis announced that they are nearing a “full evacuation” of northern Gaza and that “there is no intention” to allow Palestinians to return. That sounds like only the beginning of a new phase in the war. ​​

Tom Homan, Lee Zeldin, and Elise Stefanik are early Trump White House picks. | Sandy Huffaker/Roy Rochlin/Andrew Harnik/Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump has begun naming members of his White House team, offering an early signal as to what direction he’ll take on issues, including foreign policy and immigration.  Thus far, Trump has announced a handful of policy staffers, nominating House GOP Conference chair Elise Stefanik as Ambassador to the United Nations, and former Rep. Lee Zeldin as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He’s also named former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Tom Homan as his choice for “border czar” and is set to announce longstanding policy adviser Stephen Miller as a deputy chief of staff. Stefanik has been a staunch supporter of Israel, and Zeldin has emphasized his desire to roll back environmental regulations. Homan and Miller, meanwhile, are known for their hard-line stances on immigration, including overseeing family separations during Trump’s first administration. Many other nominations — including for powerful Cabinet positions like Secretaries of State and Defense — are still to come.  Trump described a range of priorities while on the campaign trail, including promises of mass deportations, expansive tariffs, and cuts to protections for LGBTQ people. It will be up to his secretaries and staff to execute these plans, with his picks thus far underscoring just how serious he is about pursuing many of these goals, particularly on immigration.  During his first administration, many of Trump’s Cabinet members oversaw significant changes to the executive branch including Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who were critical to curtailing worker protections and attempting massive cuts to education spending, respectively. Trump has indicated that he wants to go further and move faster this time around and that he wants to ensure he’s surrounded by like-minded staff.  Below is a rundown of the people Trump has named and the roles these appointees could play.  House Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY) has been tapped for UN Ambassador Who she is: Once a moderate, Stefanik — currently part of Republican House leadership — has become a vocal Trump loyalist in recent years as her New York district shifted right.  Stefanik first burst onto the national stage as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, grilling witnesses as part of Trump’s first impeachment proceeding in the lower chamber in 2019. More recently, she went viral for her questioning of college presidents during a hearing on antisemitism and their handling of student protests over Gaza.  As a top House Republican, Stefanik has amplified Trump’s 2020 election denials and hewed so close to the president-elect that she was once on the shortlist for the vice presidency. Stefanik is also known for her efforts to recruit and support more Republican women for House seats.  She’s taken a pretty standard conservative stance on foreign policy: Stefanik has been a prominent supporter of aid to Israel while balking at continuing support for Ukraine. She backed early tranches of Ukraine aid but joined other Republicans in arguing that more recent aid could be better applied domestically. Stefanik has previously questioned aid to the United Nations, including to its Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been vital to providing humanitarian aid to Gaza.  “Elise is an incredibly strong, tough and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement about the role.  What we know about the role: The Ambassador to the UN serves as a vital envoy for US interests; given the country’s financial support for the body and its role on the UN Security Council, the ambassador has major influence regarding how the organization utilizes its resources and who serves in its leadership.  In the last year, UN officials have been increasingly critical of Israel’s attacks on Gaza as thousands have died, health care systems have been assaulted, and famine has struck. As Ambassador, Stefanik could criticize these positions and call for defunding UN relief programs.  This role requires Senate confirmation.  What message this sends: The pick suggests that the Trump administration could once again ramp up its disagreements with the United Nations, after attempting to curb funding for certain UN initiatives in Trump’s first term. At that time, the administration also pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council, citing its criticisms of Israel.  Stefanik’s naming could also underscore the president-elect’s skepticism of additional aid to Ukraine.  Former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan has been named “border czar”  Who he is: Homan was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration and oversaw the implementation of the family separation policy during his tenure from 2017 to 2018. He’s also long backed Trump’s desire to deport unauthorized immigrants, previously noting that if invited to join the administration, he intended to “run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.” Homan worked for ICE during former President Barack Obama’s administration as well, and has also served as a police officer and Border Patrol agent. He’s been in lockstep with Trump on implementing punitive immigration policies and called for ICE to deport a wide range of unauthorized immigrants, including those who don’t have criminal histories.  “Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “There is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders.”  What we know about the role: The “border czar” is not an official role that requires Senate confirmation; the Secretary of Homeland Security is the actual cabinet official overseeing the border. However, Homan appears poised to have a major say over policy and will weigh in on proposals at both the northern and southern borders, according to Trump.  What message this sends: Homan’s efforts in the first Trump administration and his commitment to sweeping deportations this term indicate that the president-elect is fully focused on his promise to remove a large number of unauthorized immigrants from the US.  Former Rep. Lee Zeldin tapped for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Who he is: Zeldin is a former Republican House lawmaker who also ran a failed campaign for the New York governor’s seat in 2022.  Zeldin did not previously sit on committees focused on environmental policy in the House, and focused on crime and inflation during his gubernatorial run. That year, he came within a notably close margin of Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul as a Republican running in a traditionally blue state. Zeldin has said that some of his first priorities will be to “roll back regulations that are forcing businesses to be able to struggle,” and to work on US “energy dominance.”  What we know about the role: The EPA is responsible for crafting policies that protect clean water and air, and also plays a major role in approving regulations to combat climate change. The position of administrator is a Senate-confirmed role.  What message this sends: Trump promised to take a very different approach to the environment than the Biden administration, including by exiting international climate agreements and focusing on expanding fossil fuel production. Zeldin’s nomination suggests those promises will be a priority, as will rescinding Biden-era environmental protections that curbed carbon emissions for businesses.  Trump policy aide Stephen Miller expected to be named deputy chief of staff and policy adviser Who he is: Miller is a staunch Trump loyalist and policy adviser who pushed many of the harshest immigration policies during the president-elect’s first term. He has advocated for a travel ban and family separations in the past, and he’s a chief architect and booster for the idea of the mass deportations Trump has promised this term as well. “They begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office,” Miller has said of deportations.  Trump has not yet formally announced the appointment, though Vice President-elect JD Vance has already posted his congratulations to Miller.  What we know about the role: Another political appointment that doesn’t require Senate confirmation, this position is set to focus heavily on providing policy guidance — likely focused on immigration, given Miller’s expertise — to the president-elect.  What message this sends: Between this appointment and Homan’s, Trump has made clear that his promised mass deportations will be one of his top policy goals when he retakes office.  Trump campaign adviser Susie Wiles has been named chief of staff Who she is: A longtime Florida campaign operative, Wiles helped run Trump’s 2016 campaign in the state and was a senior national adviser to him in 2024. She’s heavily credited for the success Trump had during the Republican primary in 2024 and had previously aided Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during his gubernatorial run in 2018 prior to a falling out between the two.  Wiles has also been a corporate lobbyist and worked with a spectrum of Republicans in the past, including former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Florida Sen. Rick Scott.   “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, … universally admired and respected,” Trump said in a statement.  What we know about the role: The chief of staff is effectively a gatekeeper who helps shape the president’s priorities and offers policy counsel. The position is the most prominent political appointee in the White House and is not Senate confirmed.  Notably, Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly has been a major critic of Trump, describing him as a “fascist” who favors a “dictator approach.” What message this sends: Wiles has been credited with professionalizing Trump’s campaign operations and reining in some of the chaos that has marked his past operations. That said, his campaign was still rife with racist remarks that echoed authoritarians as well as frequent lies about former Vice President Kamala Harris’s policies and identity. Kelly has said that he attempted to restrain the president during his first term, though it was still plagued by in-fighting and tumultuous policies on everything from climate to immigration. 

Donald Trump at an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 6, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump is pushing for the next Senate majority leader to allow recess appointments, which would allow him to install some officials without Senate confirmation. Typically, the Senate must approve presidential nominations for high-level posts, including cabinet positions, ambassadorships, and inspector general jobs, in a process outlined in the US Constitution. This procedure is meant to be a check on presidential power — a way of ensuring officials directly elected by citizens can guard against the appointment of unqualified or corrupt personnel. The Constitution, however, also allows for “recess appointments,” a provision that aims to prevent prolonged government vacancies by allowing the president to install officials without Senate approval while Congress is not in session.  Using such recess appointments, Trump would be able to appoint whoever he’d like without giving the Senate the opportunity to question or object to the pick. Critics of the practice note that it increases the risk of unqualified, corrupt, or ideological appointees filling government posts. It also significantly expands presidential power.  Though recess appointments have been used in the past by presidents of both parties, in recent years, the Senate has avoided going to extended recesses, blocking presidents from making any appointments in senators’ absence. Reinstating recess appointments “would essentially negate one of the Senate’s main roles in governance, which is to vet presidential nominations for high-level positions,” Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, told Vox. “It would, if the Republicans in the Senate were willing to go along with it, represent sort of an abdication; they would be simply giving up the power that’s afforded them.” Trump injected his demand into the fierce race to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell as the leader of the Senate, which will be under GOP control next session thanks to the results of last week’s election. Trump largely stayed out of that contest while on the campaign trail, but he waded into it on Sunday, writing on X, “Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!)” The three candidates for the position — Sens. John Thune (South Dakota), John Cornyn (Texas), and Rick Scott (Florida) — quickly expressed support for Trump’s demand. Scott, the underdog in the race who is also the closest Trump ally of the three, was the most explicit in his endorsement of the plan, writing “100% agree. I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible,” on X. What’s a recess appointment and how does it work? In ordinary circumstances, nominees to many government posts including cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, and federal judges must undergo a confirmation hearing, during which they are questioned by the Senate about their record, qualifications, and how they will perform their government duties. Confirmation in this process requires a simple majority voting to confirm.  Recess appointments work differently, and don’t require a vote. The president simply appoints an official of their choice. The idea behind them was that there might arise times when the president needed to appoint someone to keep the government functioning, while Congress was out of session (in recess). “At the time the Constitution was written, Congress met mainly nine out of 24 months, and there were long stretches where Congress wasn’t in session,” Squire told Vox. As such, the Constitution states the president has the “Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”  Congressional recesses aren’t as long as they once were. Now, recesses happen in between each congressional session and around holidays. Recess appointments still work the same way, however. And as the text notes, any appointment made during a recess isn’t permanent: Presidential appointments made during a recess last to the end of that second session, meaning for a period of no more than two years. A president can renominate their pick after that, or reappoint them during another recess.  How have they been used in the past? With the exception of Trump and President Joe Biden, recent presidents have made use of recess appointments; according to the Congressional Research Service, former President Barack Obama made 32 recess appointments, Bill Clinton made 139 recess appointments, and George W. Bush made 171 recess appointments. Though recess appointments were meant to be used in emergencies or in times when Congress met less often, over the past few decades, they’ve become seen as a way for presidents to get around congressional opposition. The process faced major scrutiny during the Obama administration, and was curtailed after a 2014  Supreme Court ruling that Obama had overstepped his power in utilizing the recess nominations. (That’s why neither Trump nor Biden made any recess appointments.) In an effort to block recess appointments, the chamber often employs what are known as “pro forma” sessions. These short meetings, in which no real business is conducted, mean the Senate is never in recess for more than 10 days — preventing the president from making any appointments without the body’s consent. A pro forma session can be as simple as one senator gavelling in, and then calling the session over. If indeed the recess appointments are reinstated, there is little Democrats could do to stop the process, Squire said. But they could slow down legislative processes, which “wouldn’t necessarily prevent [recess appointments] from happening, but there would be a penalty — a cost attached to it.” 

The Monon High Bridge in Delphi, Indiana, where Abigail Williams and Liberty German were murdered in 2017. | Stephen B. Goodwin/Shutterstock [Editor’s note: On November 11, 2024, Richard Allen was convicted of the 2017 deaths of Liberty German and Abigail William.] In my inbox sit three eerie, unsolicited photographs of a crime scene.  The photos, not graphic but disturbing all the same, were allegedly taken at the scene of the Delphi murders — the double homicide of two best friends, Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, in rural Delphi, Indiana, in 2017. The whistleblower who sent them to me, as he calls himself, runs one (or several) of a slew of anonymous accounts who’ve recently been contacting reporters, YouTubers, and true crime podcasters in an effort to get someone to publish these allegedly exclusive photos. The assumption is that as a reporter who covers these stories, and an admitted true crime fan myself, I’d be interested.  I’m not, but this is one of the things that happens when a murder, or murders, in America stops being a local tragedy and becomes “true crime.” It’s extremely difficult to describe Delphi — “Delphi” here encompassing the murders, the town, the investigation, the online community of true crime enthusiasts following it, and all of their complex interactions with one another. It’s too vast and tragic to put into words, and also too messy and complicated. Of all the recent “big” cases, Delphi has developed an entire true crime ecosystem of communities — all wanting justice for two tragically murdered girls, and all too often at odds with each other in their pursuit of it. It’s easy to see why it has gotten so big and complex. With both images and audio of the alleged killer made quickly available to the public, this was a case primed for virality — and all that goes with it. Six years, two separate witness sketches, a long chain of hotly debated suspects, multiple side investigations into different crimes, a massive online sideshow, and one strangely unsatisfying arrest later — of a local man who made himself known to police on the very first day — Delphi is still a troubling, disturbing mystery.  As difficult as Delphi is to stare directly at, however, it’s worth making the attempt. Because as eerie and ugly as it is, this case is significant, not just for the complex ecosystem that has formed around it, but because, in all its messiness, it points the way toward the complicated future of true crime itself. Monon High Bridge, Delphi, Indiana; Courtesy of Nexstar/WXIN, Indianapolis “Down the hill” Carroll County, Indiana, where tiny Delphi, population 2,972, is located, is as rural as it gets. Near the northern edge of town lies the Monon High Bridge Trail, an easy walking path that runs southeast to the Monon High Bridge. An abandoned railroad trestle, it’s a massive, 853-foot-long structure, the second-tallest bridge in the state, and it has no railing: A slip and a fall, a tumble through one of the many missing railroad ties on the bridge, and it’s a sheer drop of 63 feet to the creek below. While the terrifying bridge is technically off-limits to the public, in reality it’s a cool hangout spot. On February 13, 2017, a sunny Monday afternoon, best friends Abby Williams and Libby German asked German’s older sister to drop them off at the trail. According to German’s grandmother, German and her older sister frequently hung out at the bridge, hiking and taking photos, so it wasn’t a concern for big sis to drop the two girls off, shortly before 2 pm, and be on her way.  German’s father intended to pick them up in an hour or two, after he was done with his afternoon errands. As the girls were crossing the bridge, German turned back and posted several photos to Snapchat, including one of Williams minding her steps. The girls walked to the southeast end of the bridge, at which point the trail effectively ends, petering out into the undergrowth. German’s camera briefly captured footage of a burly man in a blue coat and jeans, walking along the bridge toward them. As German continued recording, what started out as speculation turned to fear. As a 2022 arrest affidavit eventually revealed, one of them, likely Williams, murmured, “Gun,” as the man approached.  Trapped between the man and the woods, with a steeply sloping hill on either side and no way back across the bridge, the girls were effectively cornered.  “Guys,” he ordered them, “down the hill.”  A 2017 search warrant, revealed in 2022, confirmed the existence of a chilling 43-second video of almost total silence following these words, during which the girls were seemingly marched to their deaths. By the time German’s father reportedly called her at 3:11 pm to say he was on his way to pick them up, the girls had likely already been abducted. The families quickly formed search parties; at 5:20 pm, German and Williams were officially reported missing.  Numerous people were on the High Bridge Trail that day. Several of them came forward that same afternoon, but none of them reported seeing what happened to Williams and German. Around noon the next day, Valentine’s Day 2017, the girls were found lying about a half-mile from the bridge, across a stretch of private property by the creek. The widely accepted but as yet unconfirmed details of what happened to them are horrific and bizarre, with some authorities believing the bodies could have been “moved and staged.” This has prompted theories that the girls were placed in the creek after the initial searches on the 13th were called off for the evening. But this is just one of the myriad speculations in a case that became a many-headed hydra of warring beliefs, agendas, and endless theories, with few answers. A frustrating conundrum: An abundance of leads, and no suspect in sight The Delphi murders should have been easy to solve. Law enforcement had a full, if blurry, video of the perpetrator, plus a recording of his voice. Surely, someone in such a small community would recognize him immediately. Right? That’s not what happened.  Using the footage German captured of the abduction in-progress, police quickly released the now-famous double photo of the man the internet has dubbed “Bridge Guy.” Nine days after the murders, police released an audio recording of Bridge Guy, now officially named a suspect, saying, “Down the hill.”  This was arguably the moment when Delphi stopped being solely a hometown tragedy and entered the annals of true crime fame — when the eerie disembodied audio, complete with the pixellated image of the killer, swept across media outlets nationwide, galvanizing interest in the tragic story of two young friends who died brutally, side by side. The day after the release of the recording, police had to divert tips in the case to a national call center run by the FBI’s Major Case Contact Center. By early March, the case had received over 11,000 leads from across the country.  “I consider Delphi to be the first case that hit that land speed record in terms of [generating] interest in it at once,” defense attorney Bob Motta, who hosts the Defense Diaries podcast, tells Vox. This is the rare case that law enforcement wanted to go viral. Police turned to the wider public in the hope of generating leads, and when public interest waned, they kept the case on the national media radar by doling out new tidbits of information.  At the same time, the police seemed to clamp down hard when it came to providing vital context for the info they shared. Even six years later, there’s scant information on the official ISP tip page. (A spokesperson for the Indiana State Police was unable to comment on the investigation due to a recent court gag order.) The little information the police did reveal was often confusing, baffling, even contradictory. This limbo left the public with no real guidelines for how to be helpful — which may have rendered them anything but.  The first police sketch, and the chaos it awakened On July 17, 2017, authorities released a sketch of a suspect based on an eyewitness sighting. ISP Sgt. Kim Riley informed the public at a press conference that authorities believed this to be “the same person” captured in the stills from German’s video, a.k.a. Bridge Guy. This sketch opened the floodgates for online guesswork. Just two days after the sketch’s release, ISP was cautioning “armchair sleuths” to stop posting side-by-side images of the suspect sketch and random men on social media. Online, suspicion was often aimed at the victims’ family members as well as unaffiliated Delphi residents and men across the US — anyone and everyone who bore a passing resemblance to the sketch. Two Delphi residents who have the same name both experienced intense harassment after multiple true crime podcasts hinted at the involvement of one of them, again based on nothing more than speculation. Multiple people I spoke with lamented the current state of online sleuthing around the case, but blamed the pointed but incomplete information coming from law enforcement for leading to the anarchy online. “I don’t think of myself as having been drawn to the online community in this case so much as having been ‘pushed’ to the online community due to law enforcement being so tight-lipped,” Robby Coleman, a 36-year-old Indianapolis websleuth, tells Vox. “This was the only avenue for learning anything for years.” The second sketch, and a trail going cold Despite this frenzy of interest in the case, for the next two years, there were no significant developments. Then, on April 22, 2019, authorities unveiled an onslaught of information. Among the reveals was an amended audio clip of the killer, in which he could be heard saying one extra word; “Guys, down the hill,” and a two-second video clip of the image they’d previously provided stills of. Both clips raised more questions than answers.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seWioxRdQ5k The most puzzling reveal was a new suspect sketch, reportedly drawn early in 2017. Authorities presented it as a replacement for the old sketch, eventually clarifying that this was an entirely new suspect — a man in his mid-20s to 30s, where “Bridge Guy” appeared to be 40-50. Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter described the investigation as “shift[ing] gears to a different investigative strategy,” without specifying what that strategy was.  After two years, was the case back to square one?  Any hope that this about-face would lead to renewed momentum quickly faded: Another two years passed before there was a significant update in the case — or at least one that seemed significant at the time. In December 2021, authorities arrested a man named Kegan Kline, a 27-year-old resident of nearby Peru, Indiana, who had been linked to an online catfishing account. Although authorities have never named Kline as a person of interest in the Delphi investigation, they made it clear they believed there was a connection. Kline was subsequently prosecuted for 25 charges related to possession of child sexual abuse material and child exploitation; his trial is currently scheduled for May 2023.  In early February 2022, the ISP’s Carter did an interview with ABC in which he stated — in what was certainly news to those following the case — that police “know a lot” about the killer, without saying anything about what, or who, that might mean.  A cold trail gets hot online Following Carter’s interview, ambivalence from law enforcement again enabled the websleuths to fill in the gaps with chaos. On numerous subreddits and other forums, hordes of “leakers” tout exclusive insider intel and spout arcane theories built around regional gossip and local politics: law enforcement cover-ups, drug ring conspiracies, sheriffs with tunnel vision, former prosecutors with vendettas, officers maligned for doing their jobs too well, an investigation driven more by the vicissitudes of local elections rather than a pursuit of justice — every “murder in a small town” trope you can foist onto one crime.  To even be able to read most of the Delphi forums, you have to learn a glossary of acronyms and shorthand lingo — BG (Bridge Guy), FSG (Flannel Shirt Guy, one of the witnesses seen on the bridge), OBG (Old Bridge Guy), YBG (Young Bridge Guy), LE (law enforcement), MBW (“Muddy and Bloody” Woman — we’ll get to her), and an endless parade of other people referred to only by their initials. Anyone who surmounts that barrier to entry is already more likely to be invested in the case — and more likely to find themselves joining in the rampant, furious finger-pointing that accompanies it.  One of the most polarizing constituents is The Murder Sheet, a podcast by a husband-and-wife team who originally met and bonded over true crime. Áine Cain, a former senior retail reporter at Insider, and Kevin Greenlee, an attorney, wanted to bring their professional roles to the podcast. In an interview, Cain says the show focuses on journalism that “furthers your understanding of the case.” They’ve arguably been successful; they’ve gotten several exclusives, like excavating the 2017 search warrant of the property where the girls were found. (Suspicions against the property owner, Ronald Logan, have lingered and continue to run rampant; Logan was never named a person of interest and reportedly died in 2022.)  Online, however, despite Cain’s long journalism career, and perhaps because they began as true crime fans, some sleuths see them as little more than glorified redditors. Then there’s the issue of money. The podcast is self-sustaining (“just barely”), and Cain and Greenlee have recently gone full-time. That move, in turn, invites criticism that the podcasters are exploiting tragedy for personal gain. Yet The Murder Sheet is far from the only monetized true crime project focused on this case. One forum advertises a secretive community with exclusive access to private information from law enforcement ($20 to join; the owner told Vox he has made over $5,000 from the entry fees alone). The massive growth of the true crime industry means more people than ever are engaging in the space — and not always ethically. One popular podcast courted controversy when it aired a series of episodes in which the hosts put forth speculation about a random Delphi resident with no known connection to the crime. The Murder Sheet’s biggest find arguably came in 2022: a transcript of a police interview with Kegan Kline. The interview contained a wealth of new information. Yet the pair came under fire from other podcasters and onlookers for leaking info and reportedly initially leaving in an unredacted identifying detail. The transcript, however, provided the first substantiated link between Kline and the murders. Kline admitted in it to having previously interacted with Libby German. This flurry of online activity stood in stark contrast to the radio silence from law enforcement. By 2022, even the victims’ families were voicing their frustrations. “They don’t know what they’re doing,” German’s mother told reporters in May.  In October of that year, however, the state of the case abruptly changed — with a surprising, confounding arrest. A sudden arrest and a whole new set of questions On October 26, 2022, authorities arrested a Delphi resident: Richard Allen, a 50-year-old CVS pharmacy employee with no criminal record.  A few days later, authorities confirmed the arrest in a frustratingly brief press conference. It took another month for the arrest affidavit to be unsealed, revealing the stunning truth behind the arrest: Allen had actually gone to police in 2017, shortly after the murders, and identified himself as having been on the bridge on February 13. Why had it taken so long to find him? Media reports blamed the snafu on the FBI, hinting that a filing error by “a civilian FBI employee” led to the delay. Was it really that simple? Did the investigation spin its wheels for five years for no reason at all? The most overwhelming evidence for Allen’s guilt is that he placed himself on the bridge and he looks like Bridge Guy. According to the affidavit, Allen’s self-identified outfit of a blue jacket and jeans matched that of the suspect. This could, on the one hand, be highly damning circumstantial evidence; if he didn’t realize Libby German had caught him on camera, he’d think nothing of placing himself on the bridge. Then again, he was arguably wearing one of the most generic outfits in Indiana: a blue Carhartt jacket and jeans. The multiple eyewitness sightings of Bridge Guy are consistent with Allen. One woman claimed to have seen a man who fits Allen’s description looking “muddy and bloody.” Then there are the ballistics. According to the affidavit, an unspent shell casing was found lying between the bodies of the victims — a casing investigators were able to match to Allen’s gun. There’s no mention in the affidavit of DNA, so this could be the best forensic evidence the state presents.  There are several problems with this, however. For starters, the entire field of ballistics evidence is increasingly considered to be subjective pseudoscience rather than legitimate forensics. And even among already-shaky ballistics, matching an individual gun cartridge to an unspent casing is an extremely rare type of evidence. In an interview with The Murder Sheet, one anonymous criminal defense attorney said he’d never seen an unspent shell casing presented as evidence in a trial. The probable cause affidavit has divided followers of the murders into camps; Allen’s defense released a strongly worded rebuttal to it, pointing out the many gaps in the investigation. Meanwhile, the case is under a gag order, which means no more information will be forthcoming until trial. The first hearing was recently delayed because the prosecution had yet to turn over all of its evidence to the defense.  If Allen is Bridge Guy, then his role in the crime raises numerous questions. Was he acting alone or — as prosecutors have claimed — with others? Is Kegan Kline still somehow connected to the murders? If Ronald Logan was the original hot choice for Bridge Guy, as indicated in the search warrant for his property, why didn’t law enforcement pursue him as a person of interest more diligently? And why did Allen continue living in Delphi, even keeping his clothes from the day of the homicides, as though nothing had happened? If there’s little forensic evidence tying Allen to the crime, then the abundance of alternate suspects could present a gold mine for his defense. Meanwhile, websleuths continue pursuing their own agendas — to the point that, even if Allen is found guilty, there will likely be plenty who reject the verdict. “You need to accept that Ron Logan is Bridge Guy,” the whistleblower tells me. When asked about the lack of evidence, he retorts, “I don’t care about evidence, there’s no such thing as evidence.”  He has a point: If there’s anything true crime teaches us, it’s that facts, circumstances, evidence, proof, doubt, and truth are all often in the eye of the beholder. “There’s a million Scott Petersons out there,” Defense Diaries’ Motta says, referring to the convicted family annihilator whose guilt has lately been a trendy topic of debate. “If people start digging they’re going to find warts on every single case.” He feels there likely will be no narrative resolution. “It’ll always be left for us to wonder.” And yet, ironically, as C.J. Hoyt, news director of the Indianapolis news stations Fox59 and CBS4, points out, if Allen is guilty, it won’t be in any way because of the years of obsessive work by armchair detectives.  “I think any exposure can be good,” he said, “but there are elements that can clearly be harmful, especially to the victims’ families. An example of that would be the person trying to sell crime scene photos. But like most cases, the online community didn’t factor in at all when it came to solving it — if Allen is, in fact, the killer.” And that might be the biggest irony of all — because however obstructing, counterproductive, or messy their efforts are, every websleuth I spoke to says they do it not because of the game, the thrill of the chase, or the clout, but because of Abby and Libby — the girls who had a sleepover the night before and awoke early that morning, excited about having a day off school. They helped Libby’s grandmother with filing papers in exchange for pocket money; they wanted to go shopping later that afternoon, after the bridge. “Last year, I took my own kids to the bridge,” Coleman told me. “I didn’t tell them what happened. They thought it was just a neat hike. They noticed the teddy bears and the memorials and asked, but I kept it at arm’s length. But I needed that to keep perspective. To make it real. A lot of the people in these groups need their own moment like that.” And even those furthest down the rabbit hole say they are doing it for the girls.  “I believe the girls are watching this,” the whistleblower tells me. “I believe the girls are helping.” Still, the empathy only extends so far. When he talks about the mother of one of the victims, he’s derisive. “She’s blocked, we don’t care about her.”  Then he tosses in an aside: He wants me to know he knows who killed Natalie Wood. Clarification, March 6, 1 pm ET: This story, originally published March 6 at 7 am, has been changed to reflect a source’s preferred job title. Update, November 11, 2014, 3:45 pm ET: This story has been updated with news of Richard Allen’s conviction.

Monkeys at the Alpha Genesis research facility in Yemassee, South Carolina. Last week, 43 monkeys, all of them young female rhesus macaques, escaped from the Alpha Genesis research laboratory in Yemassee, South Carolina, when an employee failed to properly secure the door to their enclosure.  It wasn’t the first time something like this happened at Alpha Genesis, a company that breeds and uses thousands of monkeys for biomedical testing and supplies nonhuman primate products and bio-research services to researchers worldwide. In 2018, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) fined the facility $12,600 in part for other incidents in which monkeys had escaped. “We’re not strangers to seeing monkeys randomly,” a nearby resident and member of the Yemassee town council told the New York Times.   Alpha Genesis is now working to recapture the macaques, who are each about the size of a cat; over the weekend, 25 of them were recovered. Meanwhile, the animal protection group Stop Animal Exploitation Now, which for years has filed federal complaints against the facility, has called on the USDA to prosecute Alpha Genesis as a repeat violator of its duty to keep the animals secure. “The recovery process is slow, but the team is committed to taking as much time as necessary to safely recover all remaining animals,” a Facebook post from the Yemassee Police Department said, attributing the comment to Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard. In one way, this is a story about what looks like a corporate failure. But there is another way to understand this situation, both legally and morally. What if these intrepid macaques, who the lab has said pose no threat to the public and carry no infectious diseases, have a legal claim to freedom?  The legal status of wild animals is more contested and malleable than ever, evident in the recent court case arguing that Happy, an elephant living at the Bronx Zoo, was a legal person entitled to freedom, the phasing out of animal use at entertainment venues like circuses, and the end of US lab experimentation on chimpanzees. While Alpha Genesis may have a strong financial incentive to recapture the escaped monkeys, longstanding legal doctrines suggest that the 18 monkeys still at large may not belong to the company as long as they remain free and outside of its custody. State officials, or perhaps even members of the public, might even be legally protected in rescuing these monkeys from a fate of cage confinement and invasive experimentation and bringing them to a sanctuary. Such an outcome would matter not just for these monkeys but also for the rights of captive animals more broadly.    When a captive animal becomes free For many people, the idea of a lost animal becoming the property of another person might seem absurd. Certainly, no one would imagine forfeiting the companionship of a beloved dog or cat because the animal got out of the yard and was found by someone else. Neither law nor morality treats the escape of a domesticated animal as tantamount to a forfeiture of all claims to the animal.  But when it comes to wild animals, the law is different.  When a captive wild animal escapes, their captor generally remains liable for any damage the escaped animal creates to persons or property, but they may lose ownership of the animal, especially if the creature integrates into an existing wild population (sometimes called “reverting to the common stock”). That might sound unlikely for rhesus macaques in the US — the species is native to South and Southeast Asia and has been exported around the world for lab testing. But it turns out that it’s perfectly possible to live as a free-roaming rhesus macaque in South Carolina, where a more than four-decade-old population of the monkeys resides on the state’s Morgan Island, also known as “Monkey Island.”  Originally relocated from Puerto Rico between 1979 and 1980, the Morgan Island macaques now serve as a kind of reservoir of lab monkeys for the US government. Last year, Alpha Genesis won a federal contract to oversee the monkey colony there — in fact, the 43 escaped macaques had originally lived as “free-range” monkeys on the island before they were taken to be used for testing and research purposes, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CBS News in a statement. While these monkeys may not be able to rejoin the Morgan Island colony on their own, the fact that they came from a wild population strengthens the view of them as animals who not only can live in the wild but who deserve to be free. Our modern understanding of animals’ legal status derives from 19th-century American common law cases, which adopted the classical Roman legal approach to wild animals, or ferae naturae. Under that system, wild animals were a special type of property known as “fugitive” property because they could move freely and weren’t owned by anyone before being captured by a human. This created unique legal challenges — for example, conflicts between two hunters claiming the same animal — that can help us understand the case of the escaped monkeys.  The 1805 New York Supreme Court case Pierson v. Post, sometimes considered the most famous property case in American law (and about which one of us has written a book), is the starting point for understanding who legally owns a wild animal. In a dispute between two hunters, one who had been in hot pursuit of a fox and one who swooped in to kill the animal, the case held that the property interest of the latter was stronger. The court made clear that a definitive capture, and not pursuit alone, was necessary to establish and retain ownership of a wild animal.  In 1898, another New York case, Mullett v. Bradley, went further by recognizing that capture alone is not sufficient to claim ownership of a wild animal if the animal is able to escape and regain their liberty. The court found that a sea lion who had been brought by rail from the Pacific Ocean to the East Coast and later escaped from an enclosure in Long Island Sound was legally free until he was captured by a different person two weeks later. Cases like these gave rise to a doctrine that legal scholars now call “the law of capture,” which holds that if a captive wild animal escapes and control over them is lost, they no longer necessarily belong to the party who had previously captured them.   This line of legal reasoning generally works to the detriment of animals, ensuring that each generation of law students learns that animals are ours to possess and use for our own ends. But in the case of the escaped South Carolina monkeys, the law of capture raises doubt about whether the lab retains ownership of the animals unless and until it recaptures them.  A more recent Canadian case suggests that the law of capture may indeed offer a path to rescue for escaped animals like the South Carolina lab monkeys. In 2012, Darwin, a Japanese snow macaque, became a worldwide media sensation when he was found roaming through an Ontario IKEA store wearing a shearling coat and a diaper. While Darwin had been kept as a pet, a Canadian court ruled that he was a wild animal, and his owner lost her rights to him after he escaped from her car. Toronto Animal Services captured Darwin inside the store and transferred him to a primate sanctuary, where he could live among other macaques.  Still, one could argue that the escaped lab monkeys in South Carolina are effectively domestic animals who belong to their owner. Alpha Genesis has put resources into housing and raising them, including managing the monkey population on Morgan Island. But unlike pets who have been domesticated over many generations to live safely among humans, these rhesus macaques retain their wild instincts — they’ve been described as skittish, and food is being used to lure them into traps.  If the monkeys were to return on their own, like a house cat coming home after a day of adventure, the legal case for viewing them as domestic animals would be stronger because wild animals, once they stray, must have no animus revertendi, or intention to return. So long as these monkeys express their desire to remain free by evading capture, they should be considered wild animals. A 1917 Ontario court case, Campbell v. Hedley, involving a fox who had escaped a fur farm, established a similar principle, finding that the animal remained wild and thereby became free after fleeing the farm because they belonged to a species that “require[d] the exercise of art, force, or skill to keep them in subjection.”  There are, to be sure, cases in which common law courts have found losing control of an animal does not result in a loss of ownership. A 1927 Colorado case, Stephens v. Albers, held that a semi-domesticated silver fox who escaped from a fur farm still remained the property of that owner. And questions about the ownership of wild animals are infinitely debatable, as any good student of Pierson v. Post will tell you.  While these past cases offer important insight into the treatment of wild animals under common law, none of them took place in South Carolina, so courts in that state could consider them for guidance but wouldn’t be required to follow them when deciding who owns the escaped Alpha Genesis monkeys (and nothing in this piece should be construed as legal advice).  The moral meaning of animal escapes Yet the law of capture aside, the plight of these monkeys is also interesting to us as legal scholars because it highlights one of many disconnects between the law and our moral intuitions about animals who have escaped and who are seeking or being afforded sanctuary. As journalist Tove Danovich has written, there is often great public sympathy and compassion for animals who escape painful confinement or slaughter at zoos, factory farms, or research labs — even among people who might otherwise tolerate the very systems that normalize those animals’ suffering. The public’s outrage when a single cow who escapes slaughter is gunned down by authorities is palpable and crosses ideological lines. There is something enchanting and powerful, even romantic, about the idea of an animal escape, especially if it results in the animal’s rescue from confinement. Yet the law generally fails to recognize the moral tug that these escapes place on our collective conscience. In a recent high-profile case in upstate New York, two cows wandered onto an animal sanctuary after escaping from a neighboring ranch. Unlike the South Carolina monkeys, these were straightforwardly domesticated animals, and the response from local law enforcement was harsh.  The sanctuary owner, Tracy Murphy, was arrested, shackled, and faced criminal liability for taking the cows in and refusing to immediately turn them over for slaughter (one of us, Justin, was defense counsel for Murphy, whose case was dismissed last month after a two-year legal battle). Her aid to two escaped cows was widely vilified by her neighbors and by local law enforcement because our legal system continues to treat many animals as property without any recognized rights or interests of their own.  The law is unlikely to swiftly abandon the archaic notion of human ownership over nonhuman animals. But we believe the law does implicitly recognize a right to rescue escaped animals, at least those who are lucky enough to make it on their own steam. We hope that the case of the escaped South Carolina monkeys will inspire conversations about the right of at least some animals to liberate themselves from exploitation and harm at human hands. Escapes are rare, but when they happen against all odds, we might ask ourselves, on both legal and moral grounds, whether the animals have a claim to freedom.  

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President-elect Donald Trump at a meeting in New York on September 27, 2024 in New York City. | Alex Kent/Getty Images The relationship between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has always been, to put it mildly, a little complicated. In 2019, there was the “perfect phone call,” in which Trump allegedly leveraged US aid to Ukraine to pressure Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden. And the more recent awkward meeting in New York during the 2024 presidential campaign in which Trump talked about his good relationship with Vladimir Putin in front of the man whom the Russian leader had reportedly tried to kill.  But Trump has also expressed some grudging admiration for Zelenskyy, a fellow TV star-turned-politician who has demonstrated he knows how to close a deal. “I think Zelenskyy is the greatest salesman in history — every time he comes into the country, he walks away with $60 billion,” Trump said at a rally in September.  But after Trump’s return to the White House, Zelenskyy may now have his toughest “sales” job yet. Zelenskyy quickly congratulated Trump on his victory and the two held an initial phone call last week which was joined — in a likely sign of strange things to come — by Elon Musk, and described by Ukrainian officials as somewhat reassuring. Trump also reportedly spoke with Putin over the weekend, according to the Washington Post, though the Kremlin has since, confusingly, denied it.  The conventional wisdom is that Trump’s election is a major setback for Ukraine, coming at a moment when it is already losing territory and troops at a slow but steady rate to Russia’s relentless advance and when its civilian population is likely in for another brutal winter due to Russian strikes on the country’s energy grid. Opposition to support for Ukraine has become a core position of the Republican Party’s MAGA wing, and GOP opposition earlier this year held up a major aid package to Ukraine for months.  Trump himself has blamed Zelenskyy for starting the war. He has also promised to end the fighting in 24 hours once in office. It’s not clear how he plans to do that, but Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has suggested it would involve freezing the current front lines in place and Ukraine declaring its neutrality and giving up its ambitions to join NATO. (Though Zelenskyy has mostly avoided directly criticizing Trump, he has described Vance as “too radical.”)  Ukraine’s government would view a “deal” like this as full surrender, and argues, with reason, that Russia shouldn’t be trusted to maintain a ceasefire: Putin could always try again to take more territory or even Kyiv itself after a pause to replenish his losses.  But while the conventional wisdom may be true that Trump’s win is a blow to Kyiv, Ukrainian leaders are still expressing some cautious optimism that they can work with the new administration. The pitch from “the greatest salesman in history,” however, is going to have to change.  Selling Ukraine One thing you likely won’t be hearing as much: talking points about defending democracy or upholding the rules-based international order, which both Zelenskyy and Joe Biden frequently used over the last two years since Russia’s invasion. Such rhetoric is likely to fall flat with Trump, given his often nakedly transactional approach to foreign policy and general fondness for authoritarian leaders.  Speaking on a press call hosted by the think tank German Marshall Fund on Friday, Hanna Hopko, a former Ukrainian parliament member and co-founder of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory, an advocacy group, made the change clear. “We understand that with Trump, it’s not about philosophy,” she told reporters. “It’s not talking about a rules-based order. It’s about a very pragmatic approach.” That’s probably why Zelenskyy has lately been emphasizing that Ukraine is “rich in natural resources,” including critical minerals like titanium, graphite and lithium, which could be vital for the green energy transition. It’s a line that has been echoed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of the few close Trump allies who is also a staunch Ukraine supporter. Noting that Trump has said in the past that Russia should be allowed to keep the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, Hopko argued, “It’s important to explain to Trump, who likes to be a winner, that Crimea has huge potential for natural gas extraction.”  This type of logic has worked on Trump in the past: During his first term, he claimed he ultimately decided to keep US troops in Syria, despite several pledges to withdraw them, in order to “keep the oil” in the region. Ukrainian officials also believe they can portray themselves as good for American business. “I’ve heard that Republicans stand for the defense industry. We’re bringing value to the defense industry of the US,” Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries, told a gathering on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Washington over the summer. More than $68 billion of the money allocated for Ukraine has been spent on the US companies. Hopko also noted that Ukraine’s advances in drone warfare and autonomous weaponry can benefit the US military through technology-sharing and battlefield testing.  John Conway, director of strategy for Republicans for Ukraine, an advocacy group, said that supporters of Ukraine’s cause should emphasize the threat a victorious Russia would pose to the US itself. “Just recently [Putin’s] secret operatives tried to blow up civilian airplanes bound for our airports and called in bomb threats to disrupt our elections,” Conway told Vox by email. “When Putin loses, America wins. Ukraine can make Putin lose.” The other reason Trump may end up extending support for Ukraine rather than making a deal is that it’s not clear whether Putin is interested in peace at a time when he likely feels he has the upper hand in the war. The choice may not be between ongoing war and negotiations but between ongoing war and Ukrainian defeat — something an always image-conscious Trump may not want to see under his watch.  David Kramer, a former US assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush, said the prospect of a full Ukrainian defeat happening as a result of his actions might give Trump pause. “The last thing that Trump is going to want there would be a chaotic collapse, a la Afghanistan 2.0,” he said. (Though Trump’s first administration negotiated the agreement that led to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, he repeatedly blamed the Biden administration for its handling of the chaotic pullout.) Will Trump listen?  Ukrainian officials and their Western advocates often point out that for all his kind words for Putin and tense relationship with Zelenskyy, it was Trump who agreed to sell Ukraine anti-tank Javelin missiles — something the Obama administration had declined to do. Javelins would later play a pivotal role in Ukraine’s ability to resist the initial Russian invasion in 2022. (This was likely part of the reason why Russia’s official reaction to Trump’s return was a lot less jubilant than it was in 2016.)  More recently, Trump was convinced to give his congressional allies blessing to approve a Ukraine-aid package earlier this year after the money was structured as a loan rather than a grant — a sign, perhaps, that appealing to his business instincts can be a winning strategy.  Whether Ukraine’s new pitch will work could also depend on who ends up in Trump’s Cabinet. Ukrainians might have hoped for a return of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has visited Ukraine and has advocated for providing it with more advanced weapons systems. Trump, though, has already ruled out a role for Pompeo in the new administration, and early indicators are that Republican hawks may not have a home in the new administration.  Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who unlike his two predecessors in the first Trump administration, didn’t subsequently condemn Trump, is thought likely to return to a senior role this time. O’Brien argued in an article in Foreign Affairs earlier this year that Trump’s strategy would be to “continue to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, financed by European countries, while keeping the door open to diplomacy with Russia—and keeping Moscow off balance with a degree of unpredictability.” O’Brien also advocated for increasing NATO’s military presence in Eastern Europe, close to Russia’s border — a step guaranteed to raise Putin’s ire.   It’s not at all clear that Trump shares the views being ascribed to him by O’Brien, but it’s a sign that there is likely to be a wider range of opinion in the new administration’s foreign policy team than many might think.  It’s not going to get easier for Ukraine The reality is that a reckoning on US support for Ukraine might well have taken place even if Vice President Kamala Harris had won the presidency, if only because of growing opposition in Congress as well as Russia’s undeniable battlefield progress, with Moscow willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of soldiers for its war goals. It’s not only MAGA figures who are pushing for compromise with Russia — some members of Washington’s foreign policy establishment increasingly are as well.  It’s also worth pointing out that while Biden was a staunch advocate for the Ukrainian cause, officials in Kyiv have often expressed frustration with his administration’s delays in providing new weapons systems and capabilities, motivated by what they see as an unwarranted fear of escalating war with a nuclear-armed Russia.  “Every time we ask for something, we get it months or a year later when it won’t make as much of a difference as it would have before,” parliament member Oleksandra Ustinova told Vox in June.  Some advocates even hope Trump could take the gloves off, greenlighting tactics like long-range strikes into Russian territory with American weapons, something the Biden team was reluctant to approve. On the other hand, Trump, like Biden, has warned of the specter of “World War III.” In a September op-ed, the president-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his new ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advocated negotiations with Russia in order to avoid nuclear war. Those escalation fears are unlikely to disappear.  Ultimately, the Ukrainians will hope for the best and try to work with Trump’s team because there’s little other option. Trump’s relationship with Putin and past statements about the war don’t give much cause for optimism, but ironically, the thing the Ukrainians now seem to be counting on is his unpredictability 

Look around: Does it seem like everyone has been pouring little packages of electrolyte into their beverages lately? Pre-workout, post-workout, without a workout at all? Powders and tablets like LMNT, Liquid I.V., and Nuun are everywhere, from TikTok ads to your office snack counter. The concept of hardcore hydration isn’t new — athletes have been adding stuff to their water for millennia. And electrolyte-filled drinks like Gatorade have been mainstays in sports culture for decades. But today’s electrolyte supplements aren’t just for football players or ultramarathoners. Companies like Nuun market their tablets for everyone from aspiring endurance athletes to regular people going to yoga classes during their lunch breaks. These brands are “playing into people’s perception of what is healthy,” said Samantha Coogan, a nutrition sciences educator at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And it seems to be working: According to Precedence Research, the global electrolyte drinks market is worth over $40 billion and is expected to grow to nearly $75 billion in the next decade. The concept of hydration has become a point of fixation in wellness culture, even though experts still don’t entirely agree on how much hydration we need or the ideal way to get there. With electrolytes making their way from the world of endurance athletes to brunch cocktails, it’s tempting to believe that they might indeed be a magic cure for everything from leg cramps to hangovers.  While electrolyte supplements are great for athletes and lifesaving for cholera patients, they’re not magic. Here’s what you need to know about what electrolytes can and can’t do, and whether you need them.  What is an electrolyte, anyway? Our bodies need to maintain a certain balance of essential minerals to function properly: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, chloride, phosphate, and bicarbonate. These minerals are all electrolytes, substances that carry electricity through the body, controlling fluid balance, muscle function, and communication between the brain and the body. The “electro” in “electrolytes” comes from the electric charge produced when they’re dissolved in a fluid like blood. Without electrolytes, these electrical signals get disrupted, causing muscle spasms and cramps, headaches, and trouble thinking clearly.  Sodium in particular is an important electrolyte because it aids in controlling the amount of water in your blood. Electrolytes like sodium “basically help water in the body go where it’s supposed to go,” said Holley Samuel, a registered sports dietitian who works with endurance athletes.  When we sweat, we lose a lot of sodium and chloride (a.k.a. salt). But if a person profusely sweating only chugs water without also replenishing the salt, it throws off the balance of sodium and water in the body, pushing too much fluid inside of cells. This can eventually make those cells swell like raisins soaking in water, a potentially dangerous condition called hyponatremia. When you drink water with electrolytes, that water is better able to stick around inside your body where it’s needed.  Electrolytes like sodium “basically help water in the body go where it’s supposed to go.” It’s important to note that “electrolytes don’t exist only in a magic packet,” said Stavros Kavouras, director of the Hydration Science Lab at Arizona State University. Beyond tablets, packets, and powders, electrolytes exist in regular foods we eat all the time, like bananas (potassium), cheese and crackers (sodium and calcium), and spinach (magnesium). Electrolytes as pre-packaged water supplements, as we think of them today, have only been around for a few decades.  In the 1960s, assistant coach Dewayne Douglas noticed that his University of Florida football players were struggling to recover after practices in the swampy Gainesville heat. Athletes shed weight — Douglas recalled losing up to 18 pounds per game himself, when he played — but barely felt the need to pee. After conducting studies with UF first-year football players as subjects, kidney disease specialist J. Robert Cade found that players felt terrible because in addition to experiencing low blood sugar after working out, they were sweating out tons of electrolytes, especially sodium and potassium. So he created a new sports recovery drink for the Florida Gators, called Gatorade: basically water, salt, sugar, and lemon juice for taste. The sodium-enriched drink helps athletes retain water while sweating, and the results were remarkable. “One Lil’ Swig of That Kickapoo Juice and Biff, Bam, Sock — It’s Gators, 8-2,” the Florida Times-Union celebrated in December 1966, after Gatorade’s first season with the team. Sports drinks took off, and other companies began capitalizing on Gatorade’s success. All sports drinks are variations on Gatorade’s theme: Water for hydration, sugar for energy, and electrolytes to aid in fluid absorption, as well as flavoring to get it down. Sports drinks act as “one magic bullet” for athletes, Kavouras said. “You take one thing, and it has everything in there.” This formula is so effective it’s recommended by the World Health Organization for rehydrating people, especially cholera patients or children experiencing diarrhea. At first, these beverages were primarily marketed to professional athletes. Today, Powerade and Gatorade are advertised as soft drinks for anyone.  In 2024, the year of the giant water bottle, there are also a bunch of new-wave electrolyte supplements like Nuun, LMNT, and Liquid I.V. in grocery and convenience store aisles, which swap sugar for alternative sweeteners like stevia leaf extract or allulose to target consumers who don’t want to drink too many extra calories. These supplements market themselves as hydration superfoods: something to help athletes, sure, but also a hangover cure and overall vibe-booster for regular, health-conscious people.  Coogan said, if you’re eating a balanced diet and aren’t training for a marathon, you probably shouldn’t be pounding back electrolyte packets. If your body needs extra electrolytes, supplements — whether a Gatorade or a Nuun — can be an efficient way to rehydrate. But, Coogan said, if you’re eating a balanced diet and aren’t training for a marathon, you probably shouldn’t be pounding back electrolyte packets. “Too much of a good thing is not always a good thing,” Coogan said. Okay, but what about hangovers? Pedialyte, an oral electrolyte solution meant for babies and children, has become the go-to hangover cure for young adults at music festivals and fraternity parties. College students are even trying to sidestep the consequences of binge drinking by swapping beers for BORGs (“blackout rage gallons”): a half-gallon of water mixed with a bottle of liquor and an electrolyte additive. Alas, electrolytes are not a magic hangover cure — trying to undo a night out with electrolyte supplements is “just going to be an uphill battle,” Coogan said. While pre-hydrating with an electrolyte supplement before a night out might help mitigate some of the consequences of the impending alcohol-fueled dehydration, the only real hangover cure is time. Electrolytes are great for super-sweaty times. Otherwise, meh. The best time to consume extra electrolytes is when you’ve been sweating a lot, or otherwise losing a lot of fluids through something like food poisoning. Training for a long-distance run? Working on a construction site on a summer day in a place like Phoenix? Experts say electrolyte supplements are definitely a good call. Many people (myself included) fall somewhere in between couch potato and ultramarathoner. I asked experts how I should think about electrolytes, as someone who spends most of the day sitting in front of my computer, then goes to a CrossFit or pole dancing class after work. Samuel says that for casual gym rats and recreational athletes, how you should rehydrate largely depends on how much you sweat, and what your sweat is made of. Some people “go to do a spin class and they’re on the bike for five minutes, and there’s a puddle around them,” Samuel said. “If that’s you, you’re a heavy sweater.” Sodium levels in sweat can also vary anywhere from 200 milligrams per liter to 2,000, depending on the person. If your sweat tends to sting your eyes or leave white streaks or crystals on your skin and clothes, you might be a salty sweater. For casual gym rats and recreational athletes, how you should rehydrate largely depends on how much you sweat, and what your sweat is made of. Both heavy sweaters and salty sweaters should consider electrolyte supplements before, during, and after working out. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends consuming at least 300 milligrams of sodium per hour if you’re going to be out sweating for more than an hour, whether you’re participating in a sport or simply working outside on a hot day. Read labels, too: Try to stay below 14 grams of sugar per 8 ounces of fluid (that’s about half of the amount in a Gatorade Thirst Quencher).  Make sure to check the sodium content on the label of your electrolyte supplement, though: Some popular supplements, like Liquid I.V., contain 500 mg of sodium, which is more than what’s necessary for all but the sweatiest endurance athletes. Those athletes usually need to consume more sodium than other people, Samuel said. For everyone else, supplements with more moderate levels of sodium (around 200 to 300 mg), should be enough to rehydrate.  About one-third of otherwise healthy people are sensitive to salt, meaning that consuming high amounts of sodium causes an increase in blood pressure. “That’s why you have heard that a high sodium diet can lead to hypertension and cardiovascular disease,” Kavouras said. If you’re sensitive to salt, you’ll want to be careful. The FDA recommends Americans limit their sodium intake to 2,300 mg per day.  Nevertheless, for most people, it’s next to impossible to consume a dangerous amount of electrolytes. If you eat more carbs, fat, or protein than your body needs, they get stored as fat. But electrolytes aren’t stored — they’re eliminated. “If you drink too much sodium,” Kavouras said, “you will be peeing more sodium.” You don’t necessarily need an electrolyte supplement after your workout. Low-fat milk (or soy milk, for lactose-intolerant and plant-based athletes) offer enough electrolytes, carbs, and protein to rehydrate, repair muscles, and stabilize blood sugar, and smoothies can incorporate protein and fats in addition to electrolyte-rich foods like bananas, dates, leafy greens, and coconut water. Electrolytes have another counterintuitive benefit: making you thirstier. “Electrolytes help in maintaining the thirst drive for a longer period of time,” Kavouras said. This can be helpful for those who struggle to drink enough water, because they aren’t thirsty enough to reach for it — or because they don’t like the taste of water. “If it tastes better, and if it drives thirst longer, you will be drinking more on your own,” Kavouras said. While drinking an electrolyte supplement when you don’t really need one is rarely dangerous, Samuel cautioned that consuming extra sodium without enough extra water (or sweating it out) is dehydrating — say pouring two LMNT packets into one regular-sized water bottle, although that would taste pretty bad. “You’re basically creating jerky out of yourself by salting too much,” she said. “We want to be a nice, hydrated steak.” You don’t need them all the time, but electrolytes can help rebalance a sweaty body and make drinking water a little more fun. Just remember that they’re hardly magic — they’re salts. 

The US nuclear industry has been struggling to hold its ground for decades as it contends with rising costs, an aging fleet, a shrinking workforce, and stiff competition from natural gas and renewable power.  The most recent US nuclear reactors to come online, units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, started up in 2023. It was years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Meanwhile, more than a dozen reactors have shut down since 2013. Several companies developing advanced reactors and small modular reactors, promising greater safety and lower costs, have seen their projects and their businesses collapse. But in the past year, some big tech companies have taken steps toward a revival.  Amazon has signed a $500 million deal with X-energy to deploy 5 gigawatts worth of small modular reactors (SMRs) in Washington state. The company is also investigating new nuclear projects in Virginia. Google and nuclear startup Kairos Power agreed to develop molten salt-cooled nuclear reactors, an approach that promises greater efficiency and lower costs. Microsoft has made advanced nuclear energy, including technologies like SMRs and fusion, a part of its energy strategy. These tech firms are looking to meet their climate goals while sating energy appetites that have exploded with the push for artificial intelligence. Last year, new data center power demand grew 26 percent to more than 5 gigawatts in North America.    The case to lean into nuclear power at this moment is compelling. It could generate massive quantities of electricity, day or night, rain or shine, without emitting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Nuclear fission is also one of the safest energy sources. Coal kills more than 32 people per terawatt-hour of electricity produced while nuclear kills about 0.03. But building a new nuclear power plant from scratch, especially a new design, is an arduous, expensive process that can span decades.  At the same time, old, carbon dioxide- and soot-spewing coal power plants are also shutting down. Many states are looking to fill the void while also trying to meet their goals to decarbonize their power grids. That’s why tech companies are also looking to revive shuttered nuclear plants. Progress is underway to resurrect reactors at three nuclear power plants that were slated for dismantling and could restart as soon as next year. It’s a stunning and unprecedented development for the nuclear industry.  “If you told me we would’ve been talking about this 10 years ago, I would’ve laughed at you,” said Patrick O’Brien, head of government affairs and communications at Holtec International, a nuclear services company that until recently specialized in shutting nuclear plants down.  Three plants are on the resuscitation list. The 800-megawatt reactor at the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan, which shut down in 2022, is slated to revive by the end of 2025; Holtec bought the Palisades plant in 2022 and is now leading its restart. Microsoft signed a deal with Constellation to resuscitate the 835-megawatt Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which initially turned off in 2019 and could power up by 2028. NextEra Energy is mulling breathing life back into the 600-megawatt Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa. The plant closed in 2020 after sustaining damage during a derecho, a fast, powerful thunderstorm.  Restarting these plants is a critical test for nuclear power in the US, and how they fare will bolster or erode confidence in broader ambitions for a new generation of nuclear deployment. But whether they will help keep global warming in check depends on how much they will displace dirtier energy sources as opposed to merely enabling new demand.  How to restart a nuclear reactor Alas, restarting a nuclear power plant doesn’t involve flipping a comically large circuit breaker. The reality is much more tedious.  For a would-be nuclear resurrectionist, the main tasks are appeasing the regulators and reinvigorating the hardware.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal agency in charge of commercial nuclear reactors, says the reason these power plants — Palisades, Three Mile Island, Duane Arnold — are eligible to be restarted is that, from the regulator’s perspective, they’re only mostly dead.  When a reactor first gains approval from the NRC, its initial operating license runs for 40 years. At the end of the first license, the operator can then seek a 20-year extension. “The key to all of these restart efforts is the fact that the licenses that are involved have not yet hit their expiration date,” said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the NRC.  These reactors were shut down ahead of schedule not for technical problems but because the business wasn’t panning out.  After shutting down a plant, operators remove fuel from the reactors and place it in spent fuel pools. They disassemble pipes and machinery. They drain coolants and lubricants to prevent contamination. A complete decommissioning can cost up to $2 billion and take 20 years.  But the three plants under restart consideration haven’t gotten far along in the disassembly process. Until recently, no one has sought to bring back a plant already slated for retirement, so there isn’t an established rulebook for how to go about it. “There’s never been a case up to this point where a company has come back and said, ‘Well, I’ve changed my mind,’” Burnell said. The first thing someone seeking to resuscitate a nuclear reactor must do is seek an exemption from the current rules that make shutting down a one-way street, which requires an enormous amount of paperwork.  The operator then has to put a safety plan in place and bring the plant back up to the original requirements under its operating license. Therein lies the next undertaking.  Palisades, Three Mile Island, and Duane Arnold shut down relatively recently, but they’ve still been offline for years. Imagine letting a car sit in your driveway unused for a couple of years and then trying to fire it up. Odds are, it won’t start on the first try. The motor may have seized, the fuel may have separated, the battery may have discharged completely. Even sitting unused, components like rubber hoses, gaskets, and tires can oxidize and turn brittle with time. Metal parts can rust. A shuttered nuclear power plant faces similar concerns, albeit with significantly higher consequences.  Nuclear operators have to first meticulously investigate all the parts of their offline facilities before they get the thumbs-up to power up again.  However, this shutdown, inspection, and resuscitation process can also be an opportunity. Holtec’s O’Brien noted that operating nuclear power plants have regularly scheduled downtime lasting a month or so to conduct maintenance and refuel. But a longer outage gives the operator more time to do more extensive upgrades and restoration.  “We have parts of the turbine that have been sent out to North Carolina for refurbishment that’ll be gone for a year with the work being done,” O’Brien said. “You couldn’t have done that when you’re an [actively] operating plant.” The other challenge is the workforce. Running a nuclear power plant requires highly specialized personnel, and since the US has been so slow in building reactors, many veteran staffers have retired or left the industry while fewer new graduates are rising to replace them. Palisades employed 600 workers when operating and brought in 1,000 more during refueling and maintenance periods. When a plant is slated for shutdown, many of those workers leave the area or retire. So to restart a nuclear facility, operators need to get their teams back together, sometimes bringing workers out of retirement while recruiting and training new ones.   Nuclear revivals still have to prove their economics The biggest challenge for nuclear restarts may not be the hardware or the regulations, but competition. According to a 2021 report from the Congressional Research Service, “The US nuclear power industry in recent years has been facing economic and financial challenges, particularly plants located in competitive power markets where natural gas and renewable power generators influence wholesale electricity prices.” The reactor revivers say they can overcome what killed these power plants in the first place. With Palisades, Holtec is securing a power purchasing agreement with Wolverine Power Cooperative, a nonprofit that provides electricity to 280,000 homes and businesses in rural Michigan. Rather than competing head-to-head with other generators, this guarantees the plant can sell a given amount of electricity at a fixed rate.  O’Brien said Holtec is putting up $500 million of its own money. The company also received $300 million in grants from the state of Michigan and a $1.52 billion loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy for its effort.   Holtec is also aiming to use the Palisades site to deploy two 300-megawatt small modular reactors, essentially becoming its own first customer for these reactors and demonstrating them for future clients. Since the site is already certified to be a nuclear power plant, it cuts out a lot of the development costs that come with building a plant on fresh soil. Holtec is aiming to have its first SMR up by 2030.  While a lot of the recent activity around nuclear power has been fueled by the energy-hungry tech industry, Michigan has set its own ambitious climate goals that make Palisades an even more attractive option. The state is aiming to phase out all of its coal-fired power plants by 2030. Coal currently provides more than 22 percent of the state’s electricity. That’s a big hole to fill in over the next six years.  Like many states, Michigan is experiencing growing electricity demand, particularly as hotter summers increase cooling needs. The rise of electric cars and switching from natural gas heating to electric heat pumps is increasing energy appetites as well. The state also sees an opportunity to get a piece of the AI action and is instituting tax breaks for new data centers. Revived plants like Palisades can’t keep running forever though. In a car, regular oil changes, tire replacements, and inspections can keep it on the road for a long time. But if the engine block starts to wear down, it’s usually not worth the time or money to replace it. Similarly, with a nuclear power plant, ongoing fueling and maintenance can keep it operational, but if its equivalent of an engine block — the reactor pressure vessel around the reactor core — becomes brittle over time as neutrons from nuclear fission bombard it, that can be expensive and difficult to replace. Its integrity is often the main determinant of the overall lifespan of a nuclear plant.  Palisades was already 50 years old when it went offline, and the NRC’s current regulations are set up to allow for two 20-year renewals after an initial 40-year license for a nuclear power plant. “We’ve had several plants that have come in for a second renewal, which would allow them to run essentially for 80 years,” Burnell said. A plant could theoretically push that further, but no one has tried yet.  And all nuclear plants have to deal with rising costs. Maintaining a nuclear workforce is getting more expensive, and safety regulations continue to ratchet up. Inflation is making materials more pricey and higher interest rates are increasing financing expenses. At the same time, photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines have experienced extraordinary price drops and explosive growth around the world. The nuclear industry’s challenges remain immense, but concerns about climate change might end up being the most compelling driver for new nuclear power. When it comes to ample, around-the-clock, zero-emissions power, nuclear is a strong contender in the competition.  But nuclear energy is now facing another curveball. Donald Trump’s reelection to the White House likely means that addressing climate change will become a lower priority, as it did during his first term. How much the federal government will continue backing nuclear restarts and new companies is unclear, and the industry might need to figure out a new pitch for more public investment. 

Elon Musk joined President Trump at this October 5, 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the former president’s assassination attempt. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images In the weeks after Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, many top tech leaders found themselves at a meeting in Trump Tower, frowning and quite obviously full of dread. Now, the same executives sound enthusiastic when they say they’re looking forward to working with the next president. After Tuesday’s election, the congratulations from the tech elite to Trump came in fast. The day after he secured the White House, everyone from Tim Cook to Mark Zuckerberg posted their well wishes for Trump’s second term. Even Jeff Bezos weighed in, hailing Trump’s “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.” This, from a man who has been in more than one public feud with Trump. The newfound praise does not, however, signal a political realignment in all of Silicon Valley. Tech executives as well as rank-and-file workers overwhelmingly supported Kamala Harris in the election, which shouldn’t be too surprising: She’s been involved in Bay Area politics for many years and has deep ties with the tech and venture capital industries. That allegiance continued the trends of the Obama era, which was marked by a bit of a love fest between Washington and Silicon Valley. Barack Obama, who won the White House in 2008 with the help of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, embraced the ethos of startup culture and celebrated tech companies as a positive force in the United States. He developed personal relationships with executives like Zuckerberg and championed tech-friendly policies.  Now, that era is over. In its place is something darker and dominated by a small but very loud group of techno-libertarian Trump fans whose ranks include not only Elon Musk but also the industry’s most influential investors, most of the PayPal Mafia, and the vice president-elect.  Does that mean the tech industry has taken a turn to the right? Is Silicon Valley Trump country now? “It is neither left nor right, Democrat or Republican,” Margaret O’Mara, an American history professor at the University of Washington, told me after the election. She pointed out that the tech industry culture in Silicon Valley has its roots in post-Vietnam baby boomers viewing personal computers as a form of liberation.  “They didn’t feel like they had anything in common with political conservatives, but they shared a libertarianism that ran its way all the way across the political spectrum,” O’Mara added. “It’s kind of a funny libertarianism.” You get a sense of Silicon Valley’s anti-bureaucratic worldview in everything from Apple’s famous “1984” ad, which quite literally suggests tearing down the establishment, to Google’s celebrated 20 percent rule, which lets employees work on side projects of their own choosing. There’s also a more extreme version of this philosophy in the tech industry, especially lately, one that leans into anti-establishment thinking, which explains their affinity for crypto. These 21st-century techno-libertarians just want to be left alone to build things and make money.  The tech executives busy kissing the ring this week are not necessarily part of this crowd. The Tim Cooks of the world are just doing business, and that requires doing business with the president of the United States, whomever it might be. After the tumultuous first Trump administration, these leaders learned that the president-elect responds best to flattery and praise. They’ve actually been sucking up to Trump for months in hopes that they might have some sway in the event of his return to office.  This would be handy for many reasons. The Biden administration, in a break from Obama, has been tough on Big Tech. He appointed anti-monopoly legal star Lina Khan to chair the Federal Trade Commission, and she mounted multiple antitrust suits against the country’s biggest tech companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. Now, Khan is currently waiting to see if she’ll keep her job, and the targets of those lawsuits may have an ally in Trump, who gets to decide Khan’s fate. In addition to less intense regulatory scrutiny, tech companies would also enjoy lower corporate taxes, which Trump has promised to provide.  “​​In my mind, this isn’t a story about Silicon Valley overall and DC overall,” said Robert Lalka, a professor at Tulane University. “Instead, what’s occurring now involves the influence of far fewer people: a very close-knit network of like-minded Trump supporters, especially if we focus on the PayPal Mafia, and the transformation of the Republican Party and its policy agenda.” The PayPal Mafia refers to a group of entrepreneurs who worked at PayPal in its early days before going on to found or help build hugely influential tech companies. If you had to pick a godfather of the PayPal Mafia — and hence the leader of this pro-Trump techno-libertarian political revolution — it would be Peter Thiel. The PayPal co-founder donated over $1 million to Trump’s campaign back in 2016 and spent $10 million to help JD Vance win a Senate seat in Ohio in 2022. Thiel also helped fund a project to establish autonomous, floating nations in international waters, where they would be free of all laws and regulations — one reason he has been called the “avatar of techno-libertarianism.” The motivations of the techno-libertarians, also now known as techno-authoritarians, are more twisted. Elon Musk, who was also a PayPal co-founder, emerged this year as Trump’s biggest supporter after donating nearly $119 million to his campaign through his America PAC and has made the promotion of free speech one of his missions. Free speech is also a big part of why, after accusing it of censorship, Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and turned it into X, where the promotion of right-wing propaganda and misinformation may or may not have helped Trump get elected too.  It’s not hard to see why Musk would benefit from a close relationship with the White House. The billionaire certainly didn’t have much of a rapport with the Biden administration, which snubbed him at an electric vehicle summit, an incident that reportedly led Musk to embrace Trump. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, makes billions of dollars through government contracts, while his car company, Tesla, is lobbying for fewer regulations around self-driving cars as it attempts to launch a robotaxi business. Musk’s company Tesla Energy, formerly SolarCity, has received billions in subsidies over the years and surely looks to benefit from the federal government’s continued investment in the energy transition. Meanwhile, Trump has promised Musk a role in his administration as the “secretary of cost-cutting” — a position that doesn’t yet exist, but one that Trump seems to be seriously entertaining. The other loud pro-Trump voices in Silicon Valley share a web of connections to each other and to Musk. There’s former PayPal COO and Musk pal David Sacks, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July; Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded Palantir with Peter Thiel and helped launch Musk’s America PAC; and Marc Andreessen, who last year published the 5,200-word Techno-Optimist Manifesto that envisions tech leaders as keepers of the social order.  It’s worth noting that not every member of the PayPal Mafia has pledged allegiance to Trump. Reid Hoffman, another former PayPal COO and LinkedIn co-founder is a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser. He donated $7 million to pro-Harris and pro-Biden PACs, even though he’s a vocal Lina Khan critic. He was also on a list of more than 100 venture capitalists who threw their support behind Harris leading up to the election. And then there’s cryptocurrency. Andreessen’s VC firm announced in 2022 it was going all-in on crypto, a bet that’s starting to pay off after two years of looking very foolish. Trump has promised to create a strategic cryptocurrency stockpile for the US government in his second term. Trump’s general anti-regulation, pro-crypto stance sent Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies soaring to all-time highs after election night, following a widely covered crypto winter that lasted a couple of years.  You could argue that the crypto vote was vital to helping Trump and a lot of other Republican candidates win, too. The crypto industry has emerged as one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the country, pouring tens of millions of dollars into races against politicians they perceive to be anti-crypto — and it’s working. So far, 48 candidates backed by pro-crypto PACs have won their races this year. Zero have lost.  When you think of it that way, Trump’s win on the back of techno-authoritarian billionaires seems less like a seismic shift in the politics of the tech industry and more like a bunch of one-issue voters who donated lots of money and got their way. “I think a lot of it is about crypto,” O’Mara said. “Crypto is also tied in — and always has been tied in — to a broader worldview, which is one of libertarianism, deregulation, or privately regulated markets that are separate from government.” She described this ethos as “escaping the state.” Now, the techno-libertarians are the state. The day after Trump declared victory, he asked Musk to join him on a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And in the coming months, several more members of the PayPal Mafia get to decide what US tech policy will be for the next four years.  You have to wonder if they just want to tear it all down. Or maybe they’ll get bored and move to a floating nation in international waters where there are no laws and never have been.

Americans disheartened by this year’s election results may find themselves in a 2016 redux. Facing yet another Donald Trump presidency, you might be asking yourself: How do I cope? How will I steel myself to do it all over again for the next four years? This time around, Trump and his allies have vowed to deport millions of people, fire civil servants and appoint loyalists in their stead, and further restrict abortion access. These policies are genuinely distressing and can feel overwhelming for the many millions of people who will be affected by them.  But it is not 2016. Having a clear-eyed plan for how you’ll handle what lies ahead is more protective than succumbing to despair. You can take the lessons learned to buttress your coping skills and avoid psychological exhaustion to make it through the coming days — and the next four years.  How to cope right now Don’t suppress your emotions, process them In the immediate aftermath of the election results, you may be flooded with emotions ranging from despair to rage. “You can’t suppress those emotions of fear and despair. You have to process them,” says Adrienne Heinz, a clinical research psychologist at Stanford University. “When you finally accept how you feel and the reality, you can start to focus on what you can change.” Processing emotions requires quiet time with your thoughts. It’s important in this moment to tune out distractions, like social media, and resist avoidant coping strategies, such as sleeping or doomscrolling, and sit with your feelings instead — whether out in nature or while meditating in your living room. “Right now, we probably don’t have very high distress tolerance — we’re maxed out,” Heinz says. “But just remembering those emotions don’t last forever. They might feel like they’re going to eat you and swallow you whole, but if you can walk through them and come out the other side, you will be more emotionally intelligent.” You may want to seek out a trusted friend or a mental health professional to help you work through some of your feelings, says Riana Elyse Anderson, an associate professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work. However, give yourself permission to mute group chats with friends if the conversation or information shared feels overwhelming. Stay in the moment Instead of worrying about what’s to come, hard as that may be, ground yourself in the present. Remind yourself that the tree on your lawn is still there, that the bus is still following its route, says licensed clinical social worker Jneé Hill. Squirrels are still scurrying along. “Life is still going on,” Hill says. She also recommends spending time with children who generally have other concerns — they’re more interested in the book fair they just visited or the new move they learned in karate. This can bring you back into the present moment. Don’t forget to lean into joy wherever you can — this is what refills your energy stores. Avoid fatalistic thinking Although the country has clarity on its next president, there are still plenty of unknowns about what exactly will unfold over the next four years. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, research shows, so it’s understandable to feel uneasy. Daniel Hunter, founder of Choose Democracy, an organization that provides resources to help Americans prepare for an undemocratic power grab, says his experience in activism has taught him that the solution isn’t to bury your head in the sand or jump to the worst-case scenario. Try not to paint a narrative of the future based on assumptions. “Consciously engage in that uncertainty and hold there are things we don’t know,” he says. “We can grieve for the things we know, and we can grieve for the things we don’t know, the things we’re not certain about. But that’s different than telling ourselves a story.” What to do in the weeks, months, and years ahead Curb reactionary impulses Trump’s first administration was a near-daily blitz of chaotic headlines, Hunter says. “Trump would announce at 3 am some new policy that had never been discussed before,” he says. “Then people would feel like we have to react and do something about that. What it meant was we stayed in a constant state, or near-constant state, of Trump setting the agenda.”  This time around, try to be more measured and targeted with your reactions, Hunter says. Use moments of outrage to ask yourself what you feel inspired to do and what you’d like to accomplish, “and continue to press forward on those things, regardless of a political context,” he says. Hunter points to the effectiveness of the so-called Muslim ban protests, which communicated the public’s outrage over the policy at airports across the country. “The disruption that happened in the airports,” he says, “was a major piece of putting the pressure on in a material way.” Focus on what you can change In a similar vein, instead of devoting your attention to things you have no power to change, like the enactment of specific policies or Cabinet appointments, Heinz says to focus on what you do have control over. Choose one issue that resonates with you and find ways to get involved locally. “It might be organizing something at the grassroots level to support new families who need child care,” Heinz says. “It could be going to a city council meeting to talk about housing.” You can also consider areas where you don’t feel like you have total control, Hill says. “Are you not feeling in control of your livelihood, of your safety, your security, just being able to go out and not be attacked or injured?” The question to then ask is, what can you control to make yourself feel safer during this moment? Perhaps that’s spending more time with friends in your home. “Maybe I want to spend some time beautifying and taking care of it,” Hill says. Find — or bolster — your community efforts Social isolation can make you feel fatigued and emotionally exhausted, studies suggest. Lonely people may also be less trusting of others, another study found. Surrounding yourself with people you love can bring comfort, Heinz says. The morning the race was called, Hunter texted a few friends to make plans to get together and commiserate, cry, laugh. Knowing your neighbors and finding local groups of people who champion the same causes as you can help you form community. Anderson recommends Mobilize to find events and volunteer opportunities near you. Think about what makes you feel like you’ve made a difference in the world. Is it protesting? Working with a mutual aid organization? Making dinner for your elderly neighbor? Ask yourself what issue in your town or city matters the most to you and how you could make an impact there. “Getting people in person with each other is how we’re going to be able to show up for each other and also get the work done more effectively,” Anderson says.  You’ve got to live Authoritarianism is fueled by fear, isolation, and perceived helplessness, Heinz says. “That combination ultimately leads to psychological exhaustion,” she says. But throwing yourself completely into resistance mode will ultimately lead to burnout. On the other end of the spectrum, there will be moments when you want to curl up in bed and shut out the world, but that isn’t an effective long-term strategy, either. To keep from full emotional exhaustion, you need to set boundaries. “We need psychological boundaries,” Hunter says, “not on our phones all the time, spaces where we’re not talking about it.”  Take time to rest and recuperate, but don’t disengage. Set time limits on your news consumption, but don’t avoid it completely. Balance upsetting coverage with good news, stories of progress, and examples of people who have gone through tragedy and made it to the other side. Support those you love and stand together with your community to protect others.  “How we live [is] not really a question that’s intrinsically tied to a political outcome,” Hill says. “Obviously, it has real-life impact, globally and personally, but that philosophical question of how you live your life is not something that can be dictated by other people.”