Supreme Court affirms Congress’s power over Indian affairs, upholds law protecting Native American children

Wiping away tears, Nita Battise, vice chairperson of the tribal council of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, reacts to the Supreme Court ruling upholding a law that gives Native American families priority in adoptions and foster care placements of tribal children. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Kirsten Matoy Carlson, Wayne State University

The Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act, a 1978 law enacted to protect Native American children in the U.S. and strengthen their families, in a June 15, 2023, ruling. Tribal leaders praised the decision as upholding the basic constitutional principles governing the relationships among Native nations and the federal government.

Congress originally passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in response to requests from tribal leaders, and other advocates for Native Americans, to stop state governments from removing an alarming number of Native children from their families. Before the law took effect, state social welfare agencies were removing between 25% and 35% of all Native American children, and 90% of those removed were sent to be raised by non-Native families.

The Indian Child Welfare Act recognizes the government-to-government relationship Native American nations have with the United States. It covers certain child placements and sets uniform standards for state and tribal courts to follow when they decide American Indian child welfare cases. These standards include provisions that ensure that tribal governments are aware of and can have a say in the placement of Native American children. They aim to reduce the trauma of family and tribal separation by instructing courts to make active efforts to keep families together.

In 2017, the state of Texas and non-Natives seeking to adopt or foster Native American children challenged provisions of the law. They argued that the law exceeds Congress’ constitutional powers, impermissibly tells state officials what to do, and illegally discriminates against non-American Indians.

Writing for a 7-2 majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, “the bottom line is that we reject all of the petitioners’ challenges to the statute.”

As a result of the ruling, Native nations’ most valuable resource – their children – will continue to gain the benefits of growing up knowing their own Indigenous cultures and communities.

Court and Congress diverge

As my research has shown, Congress and the Supreme Court have increasingly diverged in how they view the laws that relate to Native American tribes.

The court has not consistently deferred to Congress but rather has increasingly claimed the power to be the final arbitrator of American Indian policy. In doing so, it has undermined congressional policies meant to foster tribal governance and protect tribal lands and bodies.

The petitioners in the current case, Haaland v. Brackeen, seized on this trend. They questioned Congress’ ability to enact laws affecting tribal governments and their citizens. They argued that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to enact the Indian Child Welfare Act.

From my perspective as an expert in federal Native American law, the court’s decision is significant because the court affirmed Congress’ constitutional power over American Indian affairs.

A member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe places regalia onto his son before a powwow. Joseph Prezioso/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Congress’ role in Native American affairs

The majority of the justices responded to the petitioners’ arguments by reiterating the court’s longstanding characterization of Congress’ power over American Indian affairs as “plenary and exclusive.”

Writing for the majority, Barrett stated, “Congress’s power to legislate with respect to Indians is well-established and broad. Consistent with that breadth, we have not doubted Congress’s ability to legislate across a wide range of areas, including criminal law, domestic violence, employment, property, tax, and trade.”

Barrett relied on earlier cases to find that Congress’ power over American Indian affairs comes from and remains limited by the U.S. Constitution. “We reiterate that Congress’s authority to legislate with respect to Indians is not unbounded,” she wrote.

The majority concluded, “If there are arguments that [the act] exceeds Congress’s authority as our precedent stands today, petitioners do not make them.”

Open questions remain

The majority reaffirmed Congress’ broad authority over Native American affairs but left other questions unresolved.

The Texas attorney general and the other litigants claimed that the Indian Child Welfare Act discriminates against non-Native Americans by making it harder for them to adopt Native children. The law instructs courts to place children with their relatives – either Native or non-Native, someone in their tribe, or an American Indian family if possible.

The litigants said this preference for placement with an Native family is racial and violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution, which requires government policies to be racially neutral. Tribal nations counter that federal laws and previous court decisions have defined Native status as a political, not racial, designation. The Court did not deal with this claim.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately to emphasize the seriousness of these claims. He stated, “[t]he equal protection issue remains undecided.”

Kavanaugh’s words may invite future challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act and to the political status of American Indians as citizens of tribal governments.

In the meantime, the court’s decision ensures that Native children will continue to experience the social and health benefits of being raised in their tribal cultures.

More importantly, the court’s decision acknowledges the vital, constitutional role that Congress plays in Native American affairs and defers to a congressional policy protective of Native nations and their people.

Kirsten Matoy Carlson, Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Wayne State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Natural pest control: Plants enlist their enemies’ enemies

These stealthy survival tactics could teach us how to curb the widespread use of chemical pesticides in agriculture. But first, researchers must learn how seemingly helpless flora deploy this masterful strategy.

By Tim Vernimmen

Plants may seem defenseless against insects, having neither hands nor tail to brush them away. But many produce potent repellent chemicals, ranging from ones that just taste or smell bad to ones that can kill.

These disgusting compounds work well against nibbling and sap-sucking insects that feed on a wide range of plant types, as well as grazing and browsing mammals. Yet inevitably, over the course of evolution, certain animals specialized to the point that they’re now attracted to even the most repulsive stuff that plants have come up with. In fact, many of the crops our own species grows for consumption, from tobacco to coffee to coriander, appeal to us precisely because of the compounds they produce to discourage herbivores. So, what’s a poor plant to do?

Some, through natural selection, have evolved a different strategy aimed at dispatching unwelcome visitors: They send out odor signals to attract their enemies’ enemies. Depending on the signal, various members of a motley crew of self-interested creatures may respond. Some devour the plant eaters, while some simply deposit their eggs in them and let their larvae finish the job. Others bring in deadly bacteria.

Chemical ecologist Ted Turlings of the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland has been studying this bag of tricks for over three decades, in various spots around the world. A better understanding of these natural solutions, he believes, may help us to reduce our use of chemical pesticides, which are a threat not only to many potential insect allies, but also to human health.

Turlings and coauthor Matthias Erb of the University of Bern described the intriguing chemistry between plants and the organisms that protect them from pests, and how we might use it to our advantage, in the Annual Review of Entomology. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you first get interested in these kinds of rather unexpected interactions?

After finishing my studies in the Netherlands, I did a PhD in the United States, at the University of Florida — I actually worked at the facilities of the United States Department of Agriculture. My supervisor at the time asked me to find out how specific parasitic wasps find their hosts. These are tiny wasps that lay their eggs in other insects, and out of each egg comes a larva that will then eat the host insect.

I was specifically studying wasps that attack caterpillars that feed on corn plants, and we initially thought the wasps must be using odors and visual cues that come from the caterpillars. But we found out rather quickly that it was the plants that actively emit volatiles that attract these wasps. And it turned out that they were producing a blend of very specific compounds in response to an attack by caterpillars, ones that they normally do not emit.

Just damaging the plant does not induce these same emissions. But if you damage the plant and then smear some caterpillar spit on the damaged site, you get the same reaction. That was very intriguing to us, as it suggested that the plants can recognize what is attacking them and respond accordingly.

Some compounds are emitted immediately from the damaged site — we call those green leaf volatiles; they’re what you smell when you mow the lawn. But in addition to that, the plant will synthesize these new compounds in response to the spit, ones it only produces when attacked by caterpillars. And these aren’t just emitted from the damage site, but also from the undamaged leaves of a plant that is under attack.

Much later it was found that it’s not just parasitic wasps that can pick up these odors, but neighboring plants as well. And other researchers have discovered that the response is stronger in plants that are more closely related to each other. Scientists are still debating whether other plants are just eavesdropping on this signal, or whether plants under attack are communicating and may benefit from alerting the neighbors. I was actually discussing this with a colleague yesterday.

How does this work from the wasp’s point of view? Is there a wasp species for every combination of plant and pest?

Not quite. The wasps we work with are generalists, so they can attack many different caterpillar species on many different kinds of plants. These plants all emit different volatiles. It has been shown that wasps have to learn to associate these odors with the presence of insect hosts for them to lay their eggs in.

So the wasps are confronted with different signals all the time, and it’s not always predictable which signal will be the most beneficial. You can imagine that a naive wasp that has just emerged from its cocoon will start off using general signals, like the green leafy volatiles that I’ve mentioned before, which are emitted by plants when attacked.

This way, they may find a plant under attack from beetles, and since they can definitely not lay their eggs in those, they will learn to avoid the specific odors associated with that situation. But as soon as they find a plant under attack from a caterpillar and identify it as the right host, they will remember the surrounding odors as something to focus on.

Would it be possible to train wasps to be attracted to a certain smell, say strawberry, and spray it on plants we’d like them to protect against herbivorous insects?

It certainly makes sense, if you are trying to fight one specific pest, to train wasps on the odors associated with that pest. But I wouldn’t go with the strawberry approach you propose, because what would happen, I think, is they will fly around, look for hosts wherever it smells like strawberry, and not find anything. And eventually, they’ll start avoiding that odor. It might be a good way to keep them in your field for a while, but it may not work for very long.

It seems to me it would be more useful to train the wasps, before you release them, on an odor that is likely to get them to the pest you want them to kill. This might be done by combining an odor typically emitted by a plant under attack with caterpillar feces, which the wasps get very excited over, but can only smell when they get very close.

Caterpillar feces is almost odorless, which makes sense: The caterpillars have evolved to minimize any possible signal for their enemies. For the plants, it is the opposite: They release very large amounts of the volatiles they produce to attract the wasps and other natural enemies of the caterpillars.

The widespread use of pesticides in agriculture to get rid of crop pests has contributed to drastic declines in insect populations. Might these pesticides have reduced the numbers of natural enemies available to help us control crop pests, and do you think there is a way to bring them back?

Yes. In Switzerland, there are efforts to have flower strips alongside cropping fields, which already helps to keep natural enemies around.

But if you think about how corn is grown in the US, that will be quite tricky. In much of the Corn Belt, where 40 percent of all the corn in the world is produced, there is nothing but cornfields. Well — and plenty of western corn rootworm, a beetle larva that feeds on the nutrient-rich crown roots that support the stem.

There currently are relatively effective ways to control that pest by using pesticides and genetically modified plants, the Bt plants, that produce a toxin that kills the larvae. But in all cases, I’m afraid the beetles will eventually develop resistance.

The only way to avoid that, I think, is to use living organisms to control the pests.

Given that these larvae are underground, I imagine wasps will not be very helpful.

That’s right. But in fact, there are some very similar mechanisms operating underground. When under attack, the roots of most corn varieties outside the US produce a compound called caryophyllene, which attracts a number of species of tiny worms called nematodes that have a really intriguing life cycle.

Juvenile nematodes use signals like caryophyllene to find beetle larvae, then they penetrate into the larvae through any opening they can find. There they release the bacteria they always carry with them. These bacteria produce toxins that kill and digest the insects very quickly, and then they rapidly multiply. The nematodes then feed on these bacteria and the digested insides of the insect.

They go through several life cycles, producing thousands of new nematodes that will eventually burst out of the cadaver and go looking for a new host.

Intriguingly, though caryophyllene repels many herbivorous insects, the beetle larvae referred to as corn rootworm are, in fact, attracted to low amounts of it. Perhaps for this reason, in the US the ability to produce caryophyllene has been selected out of the local corn varieties.

We have shown in a field trial that if we restore this ability by inserting a gene from oregano, a plant that produces plenty of caryophyllene, we can reduce the damage from corn rootworm significantly because their roots were highly atractive to the nematode. Yet because the role of caryophyllene is twofold — it attracts the rootworm-killing nematode but also the corn rootworm itself — I am not sure this will ever be commercialized.

We are now exploring methods to apply the nematodes more directly to pest insects. These efforts are focused on the fall armyworm, which is actually a caterpillar, a major pest in Africa and Asia that is also very likely to show up in Europe in the next few years. Since it attacks the plant aboveground, it would not normally come into contact with nematodes that attack insect larvae belowground. So it has no defenses against nematodes.

We have found that the nematodes are very effective at killing the caterpillars if we inject them in a gel into the center of the plant or apply them to its surface. We have done field trials in Rwanda showing this is just as effective as using a pesticide, and we are running a field trial in Vietnam this year to test it there as well.

And in each case, we use locally occurring nematodes, to avoid the risks associated with the introduction of new species.

Where do these rapidly spreading pest species like the fall armyworm suddenly come from?

From the Americas, possibly from Mexico, where many of our crops originate. In its native range, the fall armyworm is less of a problem, probably because it is quite effectively eliminated by parasitic and predatory insects. But elsewhere in the world, it appears that such natural enemies are far less effective.

The fall armyworm was first detected in Africa in 2016, and within three years, it spread all across sub-Saharan Africa, causing billions of dollars of damage. Then, in 2018, it was reported in Asia, and now it’s spread all over Asia and even Australia, creating incredible damage. That has resulted in an enormous increase in pesticide use, which has extremely negative effects not just on the environment, but also on the health of the people that are applying it, who often don’t have the means to protect themselves.

So it is very important to look for alternatives, with local partners, which is where the nematodes come into play.

What do you think is the chance that pests will become resistant to the nematodes as well?

Never say never, but I think it is unlikely, because unlike pesticides or toxins, the nematodes and the bacteria they carry can adapt to any changes the pests might evolve to avoid being killed. There are so many nematodes that there will likely always be a few with a genetic mutation to overcome the pest species’ resistance. And if that nematode doesn’t evolve by itself, we can also give it a hand, by selecting the nematodes that continue to be effective in the lab, even switching to a different species. That is the advantage of working with living organisms: We can select, and they can evolve. And the better we understand them, the more possibilities will open up.

We are working on sensors now that can detect which plants are under attack, and even distinguish between different caterpillar species, on the basis of the odors the plants produce. We hope that in a couple of years, we could have a robot going through a field, smelling the plants, and not only giving the farmer real-time feedback on which plants are under attack, but perhaps also spraying some nematodes on them.

Robots that can detect weeds and spray them with herbicide already exist, and in August we will be testing if these robots can also be used to spray the insect-killing nematodes.

Tim Vernimmen is a freelance science journalist based near Antwerp, Belgium. He hereby welcomes all parasitoid wasps to come and hang out in the little herb garden on his balcony.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. 

6 Simple Tricks to Start Each Day Strong

Pressing snooze, finally waking up frazzled, rushing through the house to leave on time, skipping breakfast – if that sounds like a typical morning for you, creating a new routine to start days on a stronger note may help you feel more refreshed and accomplished.

For many people, easy, breezy mornings may sound like a fantasy. However, instituting these simple tips from the experts at Buddha Teas – creators of fresh, organic teas with high-quality ingredients to let you explore nature’s best qualities – can put you on a fast track toward less frantic beginnings to each day.

Begin a Bedtime Routine
A bright-eyed, bushy-tailed morning actually starts the night before. To help ensure you’re getting enough sleep each night (7 hours or more for adults, according to the National Institutes of Health), make sure you’re winding down both physically and mentally before heading to bed. This often means skipping caffeine, turning off devices and avoiding big meals close to bedtime.

Wake Up at the Same Time Each Day
As part of your fixed bedtime routine, try going to sleep and waking up at the same times each day – including weekends. This may help your body create a natural rhythm to make it easier for you to rise in the morning without pressing snooze.

Start with Something You Enjoy
Whether you’re a morning person or natural night owl, knowing you’ll start the day with something enjoyable can help you dread that ringing alarm clock a little less. For example, a steaming mug of Buddha Teas Turmeric Ginger blend offers a delicious and comforting way to wake up. Turmeric’s pungent flavor combined with delightfully sweet ginger warms with every sip to energize your morning.

Meditate and Move
While a meditation session may sound like a quicker way to put you back in bed than get your day going, it can actually be beneficial to harness positive energy first thing. Focus on deep breathing, calm your mind and slow your heart rate prior to taking on the day’s tasks. Once you’re mentally motivated, move on to physical preparation with 10-15 minutes of light stretching to energize your body and get your blood flowing.

Strengthen Your Body
Another key aspect to a successful morning includes strengthening yourself physically by eating and drinking foods and beverages that provide immunity-boosting ingredients. Consuming a powerful blend of healing, protecting and preventative herbs can be a productive way to defend your body from free radicals with a beverage like Buddha Teas Echinacea Elderberry, which is packed with organic and plant-based vitamin C, antioxidants and detoxifying herbs. Echinacea, used for centuries to heal and protect, is combined with elderberry’s high levels of vitamin C, which is essential for growth, development and reparation of the body.

Eat a Nutritious Breakfast
Everyone knows the common refrain: “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” Yet, many people choose to skip a morning meal or simply run out of time, despite the many benefits of refueling before heading off to work or school. In fact, a nutritious breakfast offers a multitude of health benefits for your body, according to the International Food Information Council Foundation, including a healthier heart, better digestion, stronger bones and improved metabolism. Plus, making time to eat in the morning can provide the energy you need to tackle your to-do list.

Find more beneficial ways to start your days strong by visiting BuddhaTeas.com.

SOURCE:
Buddha Teas

Connecting Eligible Households to the Internet

The Federal Communication Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program helps millions of households get and save on internet service

High-speed internet service is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for everyone, everywhere.

From doing homework to using telehealth, working remotely, connecting with family and friends and more, internet is needed for everyday life. High-speed internet has become an important part of how people live, communicate, work, learn and more, but the cost can make it hard for many to afford.

To help ensure all Americans can share in and contribute to today’s internet-based society and economy, Congress created the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) under the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Launched Dec. 31, 2021, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) oversees the program to help eligible households gain access to affordable high-speed internet service.

“For many households, the cost of groceries, gas and rent can eat up the monthly budget, putting internet access out of reach,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. “The ACP is the nation’s largest-ever broadband affordability effort, supporting internet connections in millions of households. That’s progress, but we want to do more to get out the word about this powerful program and reach families that may not know about this benefit.” 

How the Program Works
The ACP provides eligible households a savings of $30 per month toward internet service or $75 per month for eligible households living on qualifying Tribal lands. Taking part in the ACP could make internet service free if the savings covers the entire price of the plan. Eligible participants will not receive additional money back if their bill is less than the discount. Participating providers apply the monthly savings directly to internet bills for households enrolled in the ACP.

Eligible households can also receive a one-time savings of up to $100 to buy a laptop, desktop computer or tablet from participating providers. The program is limited to one monthly service discount and one device discount per household (a group of people who live together and share money even if they are not related).

As of June 2023, more than 18 million households have enrolled in the program and are connected to the high-speed internet services they need for work, school, health care and more.

How to Enroll
There are two steps to enroll in the ACP:

Step 1: Visit GetInternet.gov and submit your application or print out a mail-in application. Households with questions about eligibility or how to apply, or need to request a paper application, can call the ACP Support Center at (877) 384-2575.

Step 2: If approved, contact your local internet provider to select a plan and have the discount applied to your monthly bill. Use the Companies Near Me Tool at GetInternet.gov to find participating internet service providers in your area by city and state or zip code. Consumers can select the type and level of internet service that best suits their needs.  

The ACP protects consumers by allowing households to choose an internet service plan that meets their family's needs. Consumers also cannot be denied service because of their credit score or prior debt with a provider, and households enrolled in the ACP can switch providers and plans without incurring additional fees or penalties for early termination.

For a full list of eligibility requirements and more information, visit GetInternet.gov.

Eligibility Requirements
Ways households can qualify for the ACP include:

• Their household income is at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, about $60,000 a year for a family of four or $29,000 a year for an individual
• Anyone in the household, including children or dependents, participates in certain government assistance programs like SNAP, Medicaid, WIC, Federal Housing Assistance or other programs
• Anyone in the household already receives a Lifeline benefit

A household may also qualify for the ACP through a participating provider’s existing low-income program.

SOURCE:
Federal Communication Commission

Brunch Board with a Twist

Few things go together like the weekend and brunch. Whether that means gathering with family, friends or a combination of both, it’s the perfect time to slow down and bring your loved ones together for a lighthearted meal.

Catering to a variety of different palates requires a diverse menu of dishes ranging from fresh fruit and baked goods to proteins and more. A key ingredient to bring any spread together: Envy apples, which are a natural cross between Braeburn and Royal Gala apples.


 

With their beautifully balanced sweetness, uplifting fresh aroma, delightfully satisfying crunch and bright red skin that sometimes features a golden blush, they can be served fresh or paired with other brunch favorites in shareable dishes like the Brunch Board with a Twist. Plus, their naturally white flesh doesn’t brown as quickly as other apples, making them easy to savor while enjoying time with loved ones.

Find sweet brunch recipe inspiration at EnvyApple.com.

Watch video to see how to make this recipe!

Brunch Board with a Twist

• 2 Envy Apples, sliced
• boiled eggs, halved
• cooked bacon
• bananas, sliced
• berries
• miniature pancakes
• edible flowers, for garnish
• 2-3  Envy Apples, for garnish

1. On breakfast platter, artfully arrange sliced apple, halved boiled eggs, bacon, bananas, berries and pancakes
2. Garnish with edible flowers and whole apples.

SOURCE:
Envy Apples

Talking puppy or finger puppet? 5 tips for buying baby toys that support healthy development

Tech toys may claim to be educational – but those claims often aren’t backed by science. boonchai wedmakawand/Moment Collection/Getty Images

Brenna Hassinger-Das, Pace University and Jennifer M. Zosh, Penn State

Picking out a baby toy – whether it’s for your own child or a friend’s kid or the child of a family member – can be overwhelming. Although Americans spend US$20 billion a year on baby toys, it’s difficult to know which toy will be fun, educational and developmentally appropriate. The options seem endless, with search results at common retail sites in the hundreds, if not thousands. Is price a reliable indicator of quality? Are technological enhancements useful?

Our peer-reviewed study – published in the American Journal of Play in April 2023 – surveyed the toy market for babies and toddlers age 0-2 at two major U.S. national retailers, with an eye toward differences between battery-powered toys, like the LeapFrog Speak and Learn Puppy, and traditional toys, such as the Magic Years Jungle Finger Puppet.

We found significant differences between these two toy types in terms of how they’re marketed – with more traditional toys marketed as supporting physical development and more technological toys aimed at cognitive development. However, these companies do not always have researchers investigating whether the toys actually help children learn.

As researchers who study toys and how children learn and play, we offer five tips before you buy your next baby toy.

1. Consider your goal

When purchasing a toy, consider whether you have any particular developmental goal in mind. For instance, do you want your baby to develop fine motor skills by playing with a busy board, or to practice spatial skills by building a block tower?

2. Look for open-ended toys

Many parents and caregivers know that children often love playing with the box more than the toy inside it. One reason is that boxes are open-ended toys – they can become anything a young child dreams up. Conversely, a toy cellphone directs the type of play much more rigidly.

A good rule of thumb is to choose toys that require 90% activity from the child and only about 10% input from the toy. For example, infants can explore a set of realistic miniature animals sensorially – usually by putting them in their mouths – and then later use them for pretend play, or even to create animal footprints in play dough. Contrast this experience with a large plastic elephant that needs to sit on the floor and lights up and makes elephant sounds. Here, a child is limited in play, with the goal being to make the object light up or play a sound.

Parents tend to talk to kids more when they play together with traditional toys versus tech toys. iStock / Getty Images Plus

3. Recognize gender biases

Several major retailers have removed gender-based toy sections over the past decade, opting for “kids” instead of “boys” and “girls.”

However, if you enter the store of one of those major toy retailers today, you will still find some aisles filled with pink toys and dolls, while other aisles feature monster trucks and primary-colored blocks. A toy sword might not be labeled as “for boys,” yet shoppers often perceive it that way based on their own gender socialization and beliefs. If you look only in certain aisles or at stereotypical toys, you might miss out on toys that your child would enjoy regardless of gender.

4. Be wary of marketing claims

The makers of tech toys often make claims about their educational potential that are not backed by science. For example, an electronic shape sorter might claim to help children develop emotional skills because the toy says “I love you!”

Be skeptical of such claims, and use your own experience and insights to evaluate the educational potential of a toy. You might read the retailer and manufacturer descriptions, but also see what the toy actually does. If it fosters caregiver-child interactions or helps to develop a specific skill – like how building blocks support spatial skills, and finger puppets build fine motor skills – then it is likely a toy worth considering.

5. Prioritize human interactions

Keep in mind that toys are not chiefly designed to create baby geniuses – they are meant to be fun! So think broadly about whether you want a new toy to support physical, social, emotional, cognitive or creative development while keeping it fun. And remember that no toy can replace joyful, high-quality interactions between caregivers and children.

Research suggests that caregivers are less responsive and communicative when playing with tech toys versus traditional toys with their children. So choosing traditional toys, such as nonelectronic shape sorters and building blocks, may be one way to foster the types of interactions that support healthy development.

Overall, research suggests that, in most cases, traditional toys provide better interactions and experiences than technological toys. When purchasing a toy, think through the experiences you want the baby in your life to have, think broadly about the goals of a particular toy, try to provide opportunities for high-quality interactions and remember to have fun.

Brenna Hassinger-Das, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Pace University and Jennifer M. Zosh, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Why the Federal Reserve’s epic fight against inflation might be over

Time to press the stop button? iStock/Getty Images

Ryan Herzog, Gonzaga University

The Federal Reserve’s decision to hold rates steady signals that central bankers believe it is time to hit pause, at least temporarily, on their aggressive campaign to tame runaway inflation.

The latest data, not to mention several other factors, however, suggests it’s time for a full stop.

On June 14, 2023, the Fed chose not to lift rates for the first time in 11 meetings, leaving its target interest rate – a benchmark for borrowing costs across the global economy – at a range of 5% to 5.25%. Over 10 consecutive hikes beginning in March 2022, the Fed had raised rates a whopping 5 percentage points.

“Holding the target range steady at this meeting allows the committee to assess additional information and its implications for monetary policy,” the central bank said in a statement. The Fed indicated it still expects to raise rates two more times by the end of the year.

As an economist who follows the central bank’s actions closely, I believe there’s good reason to think the Fed’s brief hiatus is likely to turn into a permanent vacation.

Inflation is lower than it appears

The fastest rate of inflation since the 1980s is what prompted the Fed to hike interest rates so much. So it makes sense that inflation would be a key indicator of when its job is complete.

The latest consumer price index data, released on June 13, showed core inflation – the Fed’s preferred measure, which excludes volatile food and energy prices – falling to an annual rate of 5.3% in May 2023, the slowest pace since November 2021. That’s down from a peak of 6.6% in September 2022.

While the data shows inflation remains well above the Fed’s target of around 2%, there’s good reason to believe that it will continue to fall regardless of what the Fed does.

Shelter, a measure of the cost of owning or renting a home, is the largest component of the consumer price index, accounting for more than one-third of the total. In its latest report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported shelter costs rose 8% from a year ago. After stripping that out, inflation was up just 2.1%.

The thing is, the data reported by the bureau doesn’t reflect the reality of what’s happening in the current housing market.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics relies on a survey that gauges rental prices from 50,000 leases, many of which were signed during the rental bubble in 2021 and 2022. A better measure of current market rents is the Zillow Observed Rent Index. That index suggests rates are declining – rents rose 4.8% year over year in May, aligning with pre-pandemic rates.

Comparing the two measures suggests the official consumer price index data lags behind the market by four to six months. Using current rents would put inflation much closer to where the Fed wants it to be. Jason Furman, former chair of the government’s Council of Economic Advisors, created a modified version of core inflation – which uses a market-based measure of shelter prices – at 2.6%.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell wants to assess the data before making his next move. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

The risk of more rate hikes

Moreover, it is likely that further rate hikes will do more harm than good – particularly to the banking sector – and without helping lower inflation below its current trajectory.

Several regional lenders, including Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic, collapsed earlier this year following bank runs. Combined, they had over a half-trillion dollars in assets.

While there were several factors behind the banks’ demise, an important one was the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes, which caused the value of many of their assets to fall. The banks catered to depositors with accounts that exceeded the US$250,000 threshold protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. These depositors ran for the hills when they learned about the extent of the bank losses.

This turmoil, in tandem with higher rates, is also cooling business activity. This means the Fed doesn’t need to go as high on rates as it otherwise would have.

Further troubles loom over the banking sector. In recent days, notable figures in the finance industry, such as Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, have warned that nearly $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate loans will require refinancing over the next three years.

The combination of already high interest rates and low office occupancy rates will likely force banks to absorb hundreds of billions of dollars in loan losses, inevitably putting more banks on the brink of failure.

And if the Fed keeps raising rates, the situation is likely to get a lot worse.

Don’t make the same mistakes

The Fed was behind the curve in 2021 and 2022 in realizing inflation was getting out of control, and it has been historically slow in recognizing the impact of rental rates on inflation.

The June pause in raising rates should give the Fed time to take a break, look at the data and, I hope, realize inflation is closer to its target than it appears.

But if it continues to raise rates, I believe the central bank will be repeating the same mistakes it made in the past.

Ryan Herzog, Associate Professor of Economics, Gonzaga University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Cormac McCarthy’s fearless approach to writing

McCarthy attends the 2009 premiere of the film adaptation of his novel ‘The Road.’ Evan Agostini/AP Photo

Bill Hardwig, University of Tennessee

Cormac McCarthy, who died on June 13, 2023, at the age of 89, is often characterized rather narrowly as a Southern writer, or perhaps a Southern Gothic writer.

McCarthy did lean heavily on his Tennessee upbringing in his first four novels, and he set many others in the deserts of the Southwest U.S. However, as a writer, he saw himself as a part of an expansive literary community, one that stretched back to the classical and Elizabethan periods, and one that drew on a variety of genres, cultures and influences.

His unique and varying writing style has been compared with that of many of the greatest authors of American letters, with scholars highlighting connections to the writings of Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.

As such an unwieldy list of compatriots suggests, McCarthy is an author who experimented with language and literary technique. Each of his books typically departs radically in tone, structure and prose from the previous one.

I’m currently working on a book that’s tentatively titled “How Cormac Works: McCarthy, Language, and Style.” In it, I trace McCarthy’s career-long commitment to playing with style, particularly his approach to narration and his techniques for conveying a mood.

Two radically different reading experiences

Depending on the book – and even passages within certain books – McCarthy’s writing can be characterized as minimalistic, meandering, esoteric, humorous, terrifying, pretentious, sentimental or folksy.

The title page for the first edition of McCarthy’s 1985 novel ‘Blood Meridian.’ Wikimedia Commons

Some novels depend heavily on dense passages of narrative exposition and philosophizing, while others lean heavily on everyday dialogue. Some books celebrate regional voices and vernacular, and others adopt a neutral, removed and clinical tone.

It is possible to see McCarthy’s literary range and stylistic experimentation in two of his most famous novels, “Blood Meridian,” which came out in 1985, and “The Road,” which was published over two decades later, in 2006, and was turned into a movie in 2009.

In “Blood Meridian,” set in the desert of the Southwest U.S. and Mexico, McCarthy’s prose is dense, with details piling up one after another.

Take the famous scene in which a mercenary gang of American scalp hunters encounters a band of Comanche warriors:

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador. … ”

The entire sentence is much too long to quote here. But you get the picture: There is very little punctuation and there are few places to even take a breath.

The narration in other moments of the novel catalogs the desert landscape of the U.S. West in similarly painstaking and tedious – if also beautiful – detail. The prose feels drawn out, slow and repetitive, like the subject of the novel: the United States’ western expansion in the 19th century, a campaign of escalating destruction that McCarthy characterizes in the novel as “some heliotropic plague.”

“The Road,” a later novel similarly committed to the idea of incessant movement, could not be more different in its style, pacing and rhythm. The prose in that novel, which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is concise and is marked by a linguistic restraint that’s entirely absent in “Blood Meridian.”

Rather than dense and overwhelming passages, this novel is constructed of short and distinct paragraphs that are separated by white space and often unrelated to what comes directly before or after:

It was colder. Nothing moved in that night world. A rich smell of woodsmoke hung over the road. He pushed the cart on through the snow. …

In his dream she was sick and he cared for her. The dream bore the look of sacrifice but he thought differently. …

On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world. Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

Dark of invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. …

People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate and smoking in their clothes. Like failed sectarian suicides. …

Each paragraph in this passage is different in tone, subject matter, place, and time from what comes before and appears after.

A lasting legacy

It might be tempting to see such difference as an evolution, as McCarthy honing and taming his narrative voice from his earlier work. But his final long novel, “The Passenger,” which was published in 2022, returns again to the rambling prose reminiscent of McCarthy’s big novels in the middle of his career, “Suttree” and “Blood Meridian.”

A portrait of McCarthy used for the first edition of his 1973 novel ‘Child of God.’ Wikimedia Commons

Some readers find McCarthy’s stylistic flourishes and experimentation excessive – or, even worse, pretentious. But they always struck me as reflecting his love of words and the endless possibilities of language.

In a blurb that was originally written for McCarthy’s first novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” Ralph Ellison wrote, “McCarthy is a writer to be read, to be admired, and quite honestly – envied.”

As I learned of McCarthy’s death, I couldn’t help but think of this quote that marked the beginning of his career, and to think how right Ellison was to champion McCarthy’s craft – the careful use of language that sustained his work for six decades across 12 novels.

Bill Hardwig, Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

El Niño is back – that’s good news or bad news, depending on where you live

Warm water along the equator off South America signals an El Niño, like this one in 2016. NOAA

Bob Leamon, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

El Niño is officially here, and while it’s still weak right now, federal forecasters expect this global disrupter of worldwide weather patterns to gradually strengthen.

That may sound ominous, but El Niño – Spanish for “the little boy” – is not malevolent, or even automatically bad.

Here’s what forecasters expect, and what it means for the U.S.

What is El Niño?

El Niño is a climate pattern that starts with warm water building up in the tropical Pacific west of South America. This happens every three to seven years or so. It might last a few months or a couple of years.

Normally, the trade winds push warm water away from the coast there, allowing cooler water to surface. But when the trade winds weaken, water near the equator can heat up, and that can have all kinds of effects through what are known as teleconnections. The ocean is so vast – covering approximately one-third of the planet, or about 15 times the size of the U.S. – that those sloshings of warm water have knock-on effects around the globe.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains teleconnections and the impact of El Niño.

That warming at the equator during El Niño leads to the warming of the stratosphere, starting about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) above the surface. Scientists are still studying how exactly this teleconnection occurs.

At the same time, the lower tropical stratosphere cools.

That combination can shift the upper-level winds known as the jet stream, which blow from west to east. Altering the jet stream can affect all kinds of weather variables, from temperatures to storms and winds that can tear hurricanes apart.

Basically, what happens in the Pacific doesn’t stay in the Pacific.

So, what does all that mean for you and me?

With apologies to Charles Dickens, El Niño tends to create a tale of two regions: the best of times for some, and the worst of times for others.

On average, El Niño years are warmer globally than La Niña years – El Niño’s opposite. Globally, a strong El Niño can boost temperatures by about 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.4 Celsius). But in North America, there is a lot of local variation.

El Niño years tend to be warmer across the northern part of the U.S. and in Canada, and the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley are often drier than usual in the winter and fall. The Southwest, on the other hand, tends to be cooler and wetter than average.

El Niño typically shifts the jet stream farther south, so it blows pretty much due west to east over the southern U.S. That shift tends to block moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, reducing the fuel for thunderstorms in the Southeast. La Niña, conversely, is associated with a more wavy and northward-shifted jet stream, which can enhance severe weather activity in the South and Southeast.

El Niño’s typical effects in winter. NOAA

El Niño also affects hurricanes, but in different ways in the Atlantic and Pacific.

Over the Atlantic, El Niño tends to increase wind shear – the change in wind speed with height in the atmosphere – which can tear apart hurricanes. But El Niño has the opposite effect in the eastern Pacific, where it can mean more storms. The ocean heat can also raise the risk of marine heat waves that can devastate corals and ecosystems fish rely on.

In the middle of the U.S., El Niño is generally associated with warmer and drier conditions that can mildly increase the chances of a bountiful corn crop.

In contrast, El Niño can wreak havoc on crops in Southern Africa and Australia and increase Australia’s fire risk with dangerously dry conditions. Brazil and northern South America also tend to be drier, while parts of Argentina and Chile tend to be wetter.

Australia endured its worst drought in decades in 2005 with the combined effect of increasing temperatures and an El Niño. Ian Waldie/Getty Images

Of course, just because this is normally what happens doesn’t mean it happens every time. Witness California’s record rainfalls from multiple atmospheric rivers at the end of the last La Niña, which normally would mean dry conditions.

Every weather event is somewhat different, so the influence of El Niño is a matter of probability, not certainty. How El Niño and La Niña will be influenced over time by climate change isn’t yet clear.

The forecasts don’t all agree

Is 2023 going to be a record-breaking year? That’s the multibillion-dollar question.

The National Weather Service declares the onset of El Niño when water temperatures are at least 0.9 F (0.5 C) above normal for a three-month period in what’s known as the Niño3.4 region. That’s a large imaginary rectangle south of Hawaii along the equator.

Watching El Niño develop in the tropical Pacific, January to June 2023. The box shows the Niño3.4 region. NOAA Climate.gov

For a strong El Niño, the Niño3.4 region needs to warm by 2.7 F (1.5 C) for three months. It’s not clear as of right now whether this El Niño will meet that threshold this year.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s first El Niño advisory of the year, released on June 8, sees an 84% chance of El Niño being greater than moderate by winter and a 56% chance that it will be strong.

Those forecasts can change, though, and different forecasting methods offer different forecasts of the magnitude.

“Dynamical” models, similar to the models used for typical weather forecasts, have projected a very strong El Niño, whereas “static” or statistical models are far less optimistic. Personally, I’m a statistical modeler, and my own model doesn’t suggest a strong El Niño in 2023. Rather, my model – like other static models – predicts that 2023 will fizzle out, and after a couple of quiet, or neutral, years, we will see a strong El Niño in 2026. I did get the recent unusual “triple dip” La Niña right, but I’m willing to be proved wrong by observations, as any good scientist should be.

El Niño often means winter rain for California. While it’s needed, it’s sometimes too much. Watchara Phomicinda/MediaNews Group/The Press-Enterprise via Getty Images

But no computer model of any flavor has had experience with the globally super-high ocean temperatures that are occurring right now. The Atlantic is unusually warm, and that could offset some of the usual forces that come with El Niño.

Bob Leamon, Associate Research Scientist, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

UK PM Sunak visits Washington to strengthen ties, watch baseball – having already struck out on trade deal

‘I don’t drink coffee, I take tea’ – the quintessential Englishman in, well, D.C. Paul Faith/WPA Pool/Getty Images

Garret Martin, American University School of International Service

Alongside meetings with President Joe Biden, U.S. business leaders and members of Congress, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will take in a baseball game during a Washington trip that starts June 7, 2023. He may be given the honor of throwing out the first pitch; many at home will be hoping he doesn’t drop the ball.

It is a high-stakes visit for Sunak, his first to Washington since becoming prime minister in October 2022. The British leader will be keen to showcase his close relationship with Biden. And he will want to underscore his more stable and pragmatic foreign policy, in contrast to his predecessors, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Yet Sunak, despite being prime minister for less than a year, is under great pressure. His party remains far behind in the polls, less than 18 months before the next general election is held in the U.K.

He has little time to burnish his credentials as a leader, and Washington may not be the most fertile ground to do so. Bilateral relations between London and Washington have been thorny in recent years, and three topics illustrate the challenges – and possible opportunities – ahead for Sunak: trade, Northern Ireland and security.

The forgotten trade deal

Sunak and Biden will have a busy agenda during talks due to take place in the Oval Office on June 8, but one topic will be conspicuously absent. As a Downing Street spokesperson confirmed prior to the trip: “We are not seeking to push a free trade agreement with the U.S. currently.”

This is in stark contrast to what Sunak’s Conservative Party manifesto had touted in the 2019 general election – the second to take place since a 2016 referendum upset the U.K.’s trading setup by triggering the country’s exit from the European Union.

The document promised that in a post-Brexit U.K., 80% of trade would be covered by free trade agreements within three years.

Negotiations for a trade deal with the U.S. began in 2020 under the Trump administration, but made limited progress. The pandemic, and the question of access of U.S. agricultural goods to the U.K. market, further disrupted talks. In particular, U.K. concerns about differing food standard practices in the U.S., such as chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-treated beef, complicated discussions.

Yet the broad ideological shift in American attitudes toward trade proved the main obstacle. Since taking office, the Biden administration has consistently expressed its skepticism of emulating past free-trade agreements. According to the administration, these deals have too often ended up impoverishing American workers, while enriching multinational firms.

That shift on trade policy is not limited to members of the administration. Both Democrats and Republicans, even if for different reasons, have become more critical of unfettered globalization.

Don’t expect the U.S. to throw a lifeline on trade any time soon. Yui Mok/Pool Photo via AP

In lieu of any breakthrough on a trade deal between the two countries, the U.K. has been focusing efforts on striking deals with individual U.S. states. In particular, the U.K. government hopes Rishi’s visit can pave the way for closer partnerships with California and Texas.

But these will have only a modest impact at best, when the U.K. economy is forecast to grow by only 0.4% in 2023.

The shadow of Northern Ireland

With trade unlikely to further cement U.S.-U.K. ties, Sunak will also have to navigate the divisive question of Northern Ireland. There is still strong bipartisan support in the U.S. for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland. This reflects the historic role played by Democratic and Republican administrations in helping to mediate and implement the accord.

In that context, the U.K.’s exit from the EU served only to fuel tension between London and Washington. Brexit negotiations lingered for many years because of the sheer difficulty of reconciling conflicting pressures over the status of Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K. but borders the Republic of Ireland, which remains an EU member state.

Throughout the prolonged Brexit process, American politicians across the aisle repeatedly expressed their concerns to the U.K. government. They emphasized the need to avoid measures that could restore a hard border on the island of Ireland. Among those airing such views was Joe Biden, who warned in 2020, “We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.”

Biden’s deeply rooted emotional attachment to Ireland has hardly abated since he has been in office. His recent visit in April, for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, was rich in personal significance and symbolism.

Most of the trip was viewed as a homecoming, with Biden visiting his ancestral roots in Ireland. His time in Northern Ireland was brief in comparison, with only a terse meeting with Sunak. And if the message was not sufficiently clear, later remarks by Biden at a fundraiser left little doubt as to the president’s feelings. He went to the island of Ireland “to make sure the Brits didn’t screw around” with the region’s peace process, he said.

Sunak did win some praise for the recent Windsor Framework, which addressed some of the tension over Northern Ireland. But he has yet to solve the prolonged boycott of power-sharing institutions by the pro-U.K. Democratic Unionist Party.

Nonetheless, Sunak will have his work cut out for him to convince Biden that the U.K. can play a constructive role in further stabilizing Northern Ireland.

Better off sticking to security and China

Trade and Northern Ireland will likely bring little joy for Sunak. He will, however, be on far more fertile ground when the discussion shifts to the realm of security.

The prime minister has signaled on many occasions his very close alignment with the U.S. insofar as tackling China. At the recent G7 summit in Japan, Sunak defined Beijing as “the biggest challenge of our age to global security and prosperity.” And the March 2023 signing of the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal in San Diego further confirmed the U.K.’s tilt to the Indo-Pacific.

Regarding Ukraine, the U.K. has frequently been at the vanguard of providing support and new weapons to Kyiv. In May 2023, Sunak announced a plan, with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, to build an “international coalition” to help Ukraine acquire F-16 fighter jets.

Britain also led the way in being the first Western country to supply long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine. This was after being the first country to agree to deliver battle tanks to support the Ukrainian army. And that bullishness reportedly played a key part in convincing Washington to lift its objection to sending F-16s to Ukraine.

The alignment in the field of global security will undoubtedly help Sunak’s attempt to ingratiate himself with Biden. But the harder test will be whether this convergence between Washington and London can extend to NATO.

The alliance will hold a crucial summit in Lithuania in July, where it will discuss longer-term plans to support Ukraine. That will include the thorny question of offering NATO membership to Kiev, which does not yet have unanimous support among members.

Even without talk of a trade deal, in terms of agenda items on Sunak’s visit, the bases are loaded. It is questionable whether he can hit a home run though.

Garret Martin, Senior Professorial Lecturer, Co-Director Transatlantic Policy Center, American University School of International Service

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.