People who support blocking transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams gather in front of the Supreme Court on June 30, 2026. Alex Wong/Getty Images The U.S.

Supreme Court ruled on June 30, 2026, that West Virginia and Idaho did not violate the Constitution by preventing transgender students from joining female sports teams, and that states can restrict who participates on women’s and girls sports teams based on a student’s sex assigned at birth.

This ruling, focused squarely on transgender students participating on single-sex sports teams, does not resolve other major questions that are important to trans rights. These issues include what bathrooms transgender or nonbinary students can use at school, as well as whether transgender individuals can update their names and gender markers on identity documents.

The court folded two related cases that address sports team participation at the middle, high school and college levels – Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. – into one single decision that resolved both.

The justices ruled 6-3 on the cases. This ruling backs 25 other states that, over the past few years, have passed new laws restricting transgender students from participating on female sports teams. Twenty-one states also have some sort of restriction on transgender and nonbinary students using school bathrooms designated by sex.

As a legal scholar and expert on LGBTQ+ rights, I believe that based on the court’s reasoning, it is likely that the conservative majority on the court would uphold states’ right to restrict school bathroom use based on sex assigned at birth.

However, this ruling leaves bigger questions regarding transgender students’ broader rights in school, at work and elsewhere unanswered. Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender student athlete at the center of one of the Supreme Court’s June 30 opinions, speaks during the Lambda Legal Liberty Awards National Dinner on June 4, 2026, in New York City.

Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Lambda Legal A political flash point There were estimated to be fewer than 10 transgender athletes who participated in collegiate athletics in 2024.

But the issue of transgender students participating on sports teams is a hot-button issue for the Trump administration and Republicans, who argue that transgender female students have a biological advantage in competitive sports over athletes assigned female at birth.

The issue is nuanced and depends on factors including the athletes’ age and whether they have undergone gender-affirming hormonal therapy. Some recent research shows that transgender female athletes who have undergone gender affirming hormone therapy have a comparable level of strength to cisgender female athletes.

What the rulings covered At issue in these two Supreme Court cases were what protections Title IX – which bars sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funding – as well as the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment gave transgender students.

Little v. Hecox challenged Idaho’s 2020 law that allows only students whose sex was designated female at birth to participate on girls and women’s school sports team. Lindsay Hecox, a transgender female student at Boise State University, alongside a cisgender student, filed a lawsuit against the state in 2020.

Hecox, now 24, could not try out for the school’s track and cross country team because of the law. She instead ran at the club level. In West Virginia v. B.P.J., a transgender middle school student athlete named Becky Pepper-Jackson similarly sued the state so she could continue participating in track and field.

Pepper-Jackson won a state title in girls shot put in May 2026. The state’s 2021 Save Women’s Sports Act requires public middle schools, high schools and colleges to designate all school athletic teams by biological sex.

The Supreme Court’s ruling will allow states to continue barring transgender student athletes like Sadie Schreiner, left, from participating on sports teams that are designated by sex.

Al Bello/Getty Images Understanding Title IX and how it applies The Supreme Court determined that states are permitted to restrict sports team participation under Title IX and its regulations, which explicitly permit schools to have separate male and female sports teams.

The opinion started by emphasizing there are “enduring” physical differences between males and females, and that if there were unified sports teams, females could be at a disadvantage.

“Separate sports teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable: Given the inherent physical differences between the sexes, allowing only biological females to play on women’s and girls’ teams can reduce the risk of physical injury and ensure fair competition,” the court ruled in its opinion on West Virginia v.

B.P.J., authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined the ruling. Pepper-Jackson argued that this part of Title IX did not have relevance to her case because she had taken puberty blockers and never gone through male puberty.

As a result, she argued, she did not have heightened levels of testosterone or other physical differences that could raise the concern of a competitive advantage over cis female students in sports. She also posed no physical safety concerns for her teammates.

The court’s majority rejected this argument, saying that the Title IX regulations did not speak to this issue. The court recognized that although the laws might produce unfair results for someone like Pepper-Jackson, this did not make the restrictions improper.

The court added that Pepper-Jackson and other students in her position need to take up their concerns with state legislatures. The court’s liberal wing – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – agreed with the conservative majority that the laws did not violate Title IX.

The role of the equal protection clause The court also addressed the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says that the government must apply its laws fairly and cannot treat people differently without a valid reason.

The court’s conservative majority ruled that the laws distinguished based on sex, and as a result they scrutinized the laws more carefully. However, the court concluded that the athletic restrictions nevertheless passed constitutional muster.

Here, too, the court’s majority cited the interests of safety and competitive fairness as important justifications for the laws. The liberal justices disagreed with their colleagues’ analysis. In their view, the laws were too broad to satisfy the Constitution, because they banned transgender girls who had never experienced male puberty from female sports teams.

A side step The decision is a narrow one. The court went to great lengths to emphasize that it was focused on sports, and that the court was not being asked about transgender people’s rights more broadly.

In the court’s telling, sports are unique because competition depends on the physiology and physical differences between those assigned male and female at birth. That is important, because there are few circumstances in which the physical differences between males and females continue to be relevant.

In the past, many occupations and schools were sex-segregated. Today, bathrooms, school sports teams, changing facilities, some college residence halls, juvenile detention centers and prisons are among the last places that remain segregated by sex.

Moreover, the court avoided ruling on the constitutional standard that should apply when transgender people are discriminated against. Under constitutional doctrine, courts will more closely scrutinize laws that discriminate against historically powerless minority groups, such as people of color and women.

One of the open questions in transgender rights litigation is whether transgender people qualify for that more searching review. This case did not resolve that issue.

The court’s narrow ruling on transgender athletes ultimately did not resolve other key issues for transgender rights, which the court will likely be asked to address at a later date.

Marie-Amelie George does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/supreme-court-rules-against-trans-girls-participating-in-single-sex-sports-but-leaves-open-larger-questions-of-trans-rights/

Australia’s migration system is complicated. It’s heavily influenced by politics and global pressures, which can make it difficult to understand. This often results in lively debates across the dinner table. But given migration is dominating public discussion at the moment, it’s worth explaining how the system operates so we all have a better understanding of what’s true and what isn’t.

Let’s unpack five common myths about migration in Australia. Migration is the most debated public policy issue of the current moment, both in Australia and overseas. In this five-part series, we unpack how Australia’s migration system works, both practically and politically, and what its future might look like.

Myth 1: it’s easy to get a visa to Australia The Australian migration system can be grouped into the following pathways: visitor visas student visas family visas skilled visas (both skilled independent and employer sponsored) refugee visas and visa compliance.

The migration program has planning levels per financial year based on each pathway. Each visa category has very specific and strict requirements. There are very few “loopholes” in the Australian migration system and there is not a lot of flexibility.

The migration framework is a two-stage process where the migrant must meet certain requirements when they apply for the visa and also when the visa is granted. Each migration pathway has different formal legal requirements.

For example, for certain skilled visas, a migrant is required to lodge an “expression of interest” which then ranks their qualification, work experience, English language abilities and other factors and allocates them points. The higher the points, the more likely they are to receive an invitation.

For partner visas, they need to show extensive evidence of their relationship. This could include bank statements, friend testimony, social media history and even gym memberships. as in joint gym memberships? Do they exist? Could say “party invitations” or something instead While Australia has visas to reunite families, the assumption that any migrant can bring in their family is not true.

There are only a handful of visas which accommodate family sponsorship, and even then, it’s only for immediate family members – who also need to meet health and character requirements. Myth 2: Australia lets in too many refugees There is a misconception with refugee visas that Australia “lets anyone in”.

The reality is, when you enter Australia (whether it be from a student visa or visitor visa), you do have the fundamental right to apply for a protection visa. Does this mean it will be granted?

Absolutely not. In fact, in the 2024–25 financial year, there were 23,576 applications lodged onshore and only 4,036 granted in that period. In April 2026, there was a visa grant rate of only about 16%. Myth 3: We are not “tough” on migrants When migrants apply for visas (inside or outside of) Australia, they need to meet certain character requirements.

This is not new and the Department of Home Affairs has dedicated teams to deal with this. To satisfy this, migrants are required to provide police clearance from any country they have lived in for 12 months or more.

If the migrant has any type of criminal record, it is usually referred for further assessment to a team within the department. It’s an extensive and lengthy process. If a migrant offends while here, Australia has extensive processes relating to visa cancellation and detention centre practices.

Firstly, the department has a lot of discretionary visa cancellation powers at its disposal, which it uses regularly. In the 2024–25 financial year, the department cancelled 37,033 visas. Importantly, a migrant can have their visa cancelled in Australia purely because they have been charged with an offence and are then liable for immigration detention.

There doesn’t need to be a finding of guilt for a visa to be cancelled. Australia also has automatic visa cancellation powers which means a migrant will have their visa mandatorily cancelled if they have a criminal sentence of more than 12 months and are currently in prison.

As well as being cancelled for criminal activity, visas can be cancelled for non-compliance and a range of other circumstances. This comes at a huge cost to the government. In Australia, detention centres are run by private companies and the cost to house someone in immigration detention averages 5,176 annually.

This is extraordinary, given the cost of housing a prisoner in prison is approximately 0,600 annually.

Myth 4: Migrants are a financial burden on the economy Of late, there has been considerable discussion around migration in Australia with a narrative that migration should be dramatically reduced and an assumption that Australia pays for migrants to come to Australia.

There are significant labour market and population growth advantages to migration that can’t be overlooked. In 2021, Treasury released a study which confirmed that migrants as a cohort make a positive fiscal contribution. Migrants also contribute a lot of money to federal revenue.

For example, in the 2025 financial year, the department received .15 billion in revenue just from visa application charges to migrants. Comparatively, the government raised approximately .4 billion on the new Petroleum Resource Rent Tax initiative in 2023–24. Read more: What is migration for?

How national needs wrestle with a basic human desire Myth 5: Migrants are given a ‘free-ride’ to Australian benefits Generally, a migrant who has applied for permanent residency (and some temporary visas) becomes eligible for Medicare.

Many migrants (excluding refugees) are not eligible for Centrelink benefits because most of the payment schemes, such as JobSeeker and the aged pension, require the migrant to be a resident, plus additional waiting periods (four years in some circumstances).

Importantly, this four year waiting period comes after a long period as a temporary resident in Australia. Some migrants on temporary visas are here for more than ten years before they secure permanent residency. In addition, depending on the state or territory and visa status, there are also restrictions on schooling, in which temporary migrants are required to pay for public schooling.

In terms of health care, Australia has special arrangements with other countries which allow for their citizens to access Medicare and enable Australians to access healthcare when visiting those countries (for example, the United Kingdom).

While residency definitions differ between the systems, many migrants also pay tax. Many temporary migrants would be classified as “temporary residents” by the Australian Tax Office and are taxed on income earned in Australia. In 2019–2022, temporary migrants accounted for $230 billion in personal taxable income.

Although there are many more migration myths that could be discussed, the above should assist you in the next spirited dinner debate over migration.

Louisa Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Louisa received funding through the Research Training Program.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/how-does-australias-migration-system-actually-work-5-common-myths-busted/

Amazon, Stan, Netflix, Canva, The Conversation, CC BY-NC In the middle of an unseasonably warm winter, perhaps the couch isn’t where you’re spending your weekends – preferring to enjoy the sun, however concerning its presence may be.

But even as the days get longer, sunset is still early, meaning evenings are the perfect time to sit down with a series that takes you to a different world: with teachers in Korea; with a fortune teller in Japan; or in a retirement village in New Mexico.

Here are our picks for your new favourite film or bingeable series this July. Beast Stan Patton James (Daniel MacPherson) is a retired mixed martial arts fighter. But, facing tough financial circumstances, he finds it impossible to resist when the opportunity arises to earn $150,000 fighting his former nemesis, world champion Xavier Grau (Bren Foster).

Patton returns to his old trainer Sammy (Russell Crowe). And despite some bad blood between them, Sammy and his daughter Rose (Amy Shark) end up helping him get in shape for the fight. Beast has all the expected cliches, and to say the narrative is predictable is an understatement.

But for a feel good “against the odds” sports film, this isn’t necessarily a problem. There can be something pleasurable in watching cliché after cliché unfold, and genre cinema’s capacity to fulfil our expectations is one of the reasons we keep coming back to it.

Despite being soapy and not very convincing, Beast is quite watchable as a kind of sports telemovie – earnest, if a bit lame. Sure, it runs through the motions, but the motions are compelling enough to warrant a watch for fans of Aussie cheese.

There’s something eternally pleasurable about watching an against the odds sporting movie replete with training montages, even if it is Home and Away’s answer to Rocky IV. – Ari Mattes Read more: Beast: Australia’s first MMA film, starring Russell Crowe, is cheesy yet oddly comforting Straight to Hell Netflix Straight to Hell, a nine-episode drama series from Japan, stars Erika Toda, playing the late Kazuko Hosoki, a famous Japanese fortune teller who became popular on television and published a string of best-selling books.

Set in Tokyo, it covers 60 years of her life from post-World War II through to the 2000s. The story is told in flashback via a fictional character, author and journalist Minori Uozumi (Sairi Ito). She is the framing device for the presentation of the non-linear story.

As Hosoki’s authorised biographer, Uozumi is torn over whether to voice her doubts about Hosoki’s integrity. For Japanese audiences the story is well known and mediates public memory of her fame and scandals.

For other cultures, it is not so much a biopic, but an epic tale of gender and power. Beginning with Hosoki’s childhood of poverty and homelessness, the narrative explores how such deprivation and adversity can foster resilience whilst also fuelling a capacity for reinvention.

Eventually, this drive leads her to exploit audiences who, motivated by aspirations of self-improvement, find Hosoki’s fortune telling compelling. Hosoki’s character offers a commentary on gender and celebrity, revealing how transgressive women are commodified.

Although she struggles against structural gender inequalities, she is also ruthless, exploitative and ethically compromised. She isn’t conventional, likeable or stereotypically feminine.

Hosoki is a bad woman, but a fascinating one, and the series makes it difficult not to admire her. – Lisa French Off Campus Prime Video From showrunners Louisa Levy and Gina Fattore, Off Campus explores the devastating impacts of sexual violence on young women with sensitivity, and without gratuitous depictions.

Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) is a college junior, and we follow her fake dating scheme-turned-romance with star hockey-player Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli). In a subplot, we learn Hannah was drugged and raped by a classmate, Aaron Delaney (Quinten James), at a party.

She was 15 when it happened. Hannah’s experience of assault chronologically takes place before the first episode. The incident is only hinted at subtly, through flashbacks. The focus is on her life in the aftermath of sexual assault.

The reality of violence against women is addressed, but not viscerally depicted. Alongside Hannah and Garret’s budding attraction, we get glimpses into Hannah’s post-traumatic stress.

She confides in Garrett about her inability to orgasm, is hesitant to drink at parties, and feels guilty the only result of her legal trial against her abuser was the alienation of her family in their hometown in Indiana.

She also isolates herself, struggles with overwhelming anxiety and avoids Garrett’s calls. Hannah’s beliefs reflect pervasive rape myths and stereotypes that shroud victim/survivors in doubt and shame.

Off Campus successfully touches on these problematic ideologies, before challenging a legacy of storylines that have helped endorse rape myths and minimise the effects of sexual violence. – Bridget Mac Eochagain Read more: What the hit new show Off Campus gets right in its portrayal of sexual violence America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, season three Netflix Season three of America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders presents an intriguing portrait of contemporary femininity.

In a mediascape flooded with tradwives, matchmakers and the manosphere, there is a trend towards traditional values and gender roles, often with a smidge of religiosity. In this respect, America’s Sweethearts delivers. The cheerleaders were previously documented in a CMT reality show with a lot more flash and colour.

After transitioning to the global streaming behemoth, everything seems too bright and desaturated. The watchable annual audition and training camp elements still feature but tend to be covered in a veneer of rah-rah sisterhood and lukewarm fourth-wave feminism, rather than bitchiness.

This season focuses somewhat on New-Zealand-born Australian, Faith Ward. The 2025 rookie brings some much-needed cheek. That said, the hilarity often derives from cringy fresh-off-the-plane moments – driving on the right side of the road and subjecting teammates to Vegemite tasting.

The cast’s new-found global fame presents some of the stronger storylines, which follow the young women as they grapple with social media success, while trying to hold down “normal” lives. Director Kelli Finglass often attempts to control the dissemination of more sexualised internet imagery, in a manner reminiscent of Aunt Lydia disciplining the Handmaids.

The most interesting narrative arc is “dancing for Jesus” Reece Weaver. She married quite young and her partner seems keen to move back to Alabama and settle down.

No spoilers, but what do you think the outcome of that pressure point is? – Phoebe Hart NZ Spy TVNZ (coming to ABC in later 2026) The retro James Bond parody NZ Spy asks what if the greatest threat to New Zealand was actually… Australia?

It’s the mid-1970s, and New Zealand is in economic turmoil. Brand new spies Michael (series creator Paul Williams), Michael #2 (Joe Thomas) and Sue (Rose Matafeo) got the job because no one else applied.

After a quick training montage and a supportive nod from their boss (Bret McKenzie), they are off to save the country from the Australian Intelligence Service, who have a secret plan to ruin the country.

The best spy gets a meat pack at prizegiving. This is the latest in a long line of absurd Kiwi comedies about awkward, childlike adults failing forward. Williams’ leading man is a hapless dolt who can barely remember his own name, let alone the details of each episode’s well-constructed espionage set piece.

Thank goodness hypercompetent Sue is always there to bail him out; Matafeo is in great form. The season’s six episodes run back-to-back, and they take a while to get going despite an excellent alpine set piece in episode one.

At times the deadpan humour is more sluggish than dry, but overall the show is a charming period fantasy with a great eye for detail. There’s stunning location work and some beautifully brown and orange mid-century interior design, as well as an incredible list of Australasian and international comedians in supporting roles.

The martini needs more chilling, but it’s still a nice drop. – Erin Harrington Teach You a Lesson Netflix Teach You a Lesson is about a government-backed vigilante unit trying to fix the wrongs in schools.

It depicts a version of Korean society in which rising school violence and declining teacher authority have pushed the educational system to breaking point. Education minister Choi Gang-seok (Lee Sung-min) establishes the Educational Rights Protection Bureau (ERPB) after his daughter, a teacher, tragically dies at the hands of a student.

The ERPB unit is granted extraordinary legal powers to intervene in troubled schools. Leading the unit is Na Hwa-jin (Kim Mu-yeol): the action hero, the minister’s son-in-law, and a former Special Forces captain turned inspector.

Each episode tackles a new case involving bullying, corruption, academic misconduct, juvenile crime, gambling, drug trafficking or exploitation. Victims seek help when institutions fail them, and the ERPB steps in with swift, cathartic justice.

The cases range from the spoiled son of a powerful politician being shielded from the consequences of his bullying, to a vocational school where violence is valued, and a student influencer who weaponises social media against teachers (with tragic results).

At its heart, the series is about standing with victims.

One of its most striking lines comes as Hwa-jin reflects on collapsing authority in schools: “If adults become afraid of children, the world is doomed.” Beneath its action, drama and satisfying takedowns lies a question troubling parents, educators and policymakers everywhere: what is education for, when the classroom itself is in crisis? –Yanyan Hong Read more: What is education for?

Why new Korean drama Teach You a Lesson is topping the charts Matt and Mara Mubi Led by a stellar lead of Matt Johnson and Deragh Campbell, Matt and Mara is an intimate relationship drama rich with subtlety and melancholy.

The 2024 film, directed by Kazik Radwanski, follows Mara (Campbell), a creative writing professor at the University of Toronto who is struggling with the routine of her academic career, as well as marital life.

Her husband, Samir (Mounir Al Shami), is an experimental musician, a space Mara feels wholly estranged from – proclaiming at a dinner party that she doesn’t listen to music, nor feel an intellectual response from it.

Tensions begin to surmount when Mara unexpectedly reconnects with Matt (Johnson), an outgoing and successful writer from her past. As the two glacially rekindle what they perhaps once shared – or could have shared – Mara is forced to confront her existential unrest.

The fourth feature by Canadian filmmaker Radwanski, Matt and Mara shines within its ambiguity, dry humour and nuanced articulation of those undefinable relationships that teeter between the romantic and the platonic. Johnson, in particular, captivates with his hilarious, and impressively improvised take on the charismatic – albeit narcissistic – free-wheeling writer.

Through the pair’s dynamic, Radwanski’s indie triumph poignantly captures not only the complexity of human relationships, but a range of broader reflections pertaining to one’s creative ambitions. – Oscar Bloomfield The Boroughs Netflix The eight-part paranormal adventure The Boroughs offers a fresh take on the trope of unruly seniors.

Set in a fabulous mid-century modern inspired retirement village in New Mexico, with its low-slung homes, geometric lines and desert landscaping, it features an outstanding ensemble cast. The show’s reputation precedes it, with the Duffer brothers (Matt and Ross), of Stranger Things fame, among the executive producers.

The narrative is scary right from the get-go. But it also has a gentle humour, a rich set of characters that audiences can invest in, and at its heart, celebrates community. The Boroughs playfully challenges stereotypes that ageing diminishes sexuality and desire.

Some of the retirees are banned from the Community Centre for having orgies; two neighbours are having an affair; and the youngest of the group, at 70, has a 40-something lover. Themes include feminist commentary flagged by a Thema & Louise homage, and the character of Renee (Geena Davis), who is experiencing economic hardship following divorce.

Director Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors plays on background television, signalling a key ethical dilemma of the series: what might you sacrifice to live a longer life? The retirees are collectively dismissed as senile, so their account of alien monsters sucking brain fluid is disregarded.

This enables those who know the truth to keep it secret, that is, until the residents are confronted with a choice for community, ethics and humanity, and form an unexpected alien alliance. – Lisa French The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/unruly-seniors-dallas-cheerleaders-and-russell-crowe-as-an-mma-trainer-what-were-streaming-this-july/

The Conversation, CC BY-SA Seventy years ago, Earth had only one satellite: the Moon. Now it has more than 15,000 – about 10,000 of which are owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The world’s first trillionaire plans to launch one million more satellites, each roughly 70 metres long and 20 metres wide, that would form a data centre megaconstellation.

But more satellites means more space junk, which is already threatening critical infrastructure we rely on every day. Addressing this problem effectively requires work across three fronts: technology, policy and philosophy. The race to the Moon and beyond is accelerating.

Some say it’s for the benefit of all humanity. But is it really? In this seven-part series, we explore what our future in space will look like, how we might travel and survive out there, and what’s needed to stop a catastrophe from happening.

13 million cane toads worth of space junk Space junk is everything in Earth orbit that doesn’t have a purpose. It includes discarded rocket bodies, defunct and broken satellites, and fragments down to nanoparticle size.

There are 36,000 pieces of junk larger than ten centimetres and tens of millions of smaller pieces and particles. The estimated weight of all of this junk is 13,486 tonnes, the equivalent of 13 million adult cane toads.

The United States, Russia (as well as the former USSR), and China are the biggest contributors. Space junk is dangerous because it’s orbiting at almost unimaginable speeds – 7 kilometres per second on average in low Earth orbit.

A collision can break up a satellite and create even more space junk. The worst case scenario is called Kessler syndrome. Each collision creates space junk which collides with other space junk, in an endless cascade.

It could make regions of Earth orbit unusable, or possibly even cut Earth off from space. Human spaceflight is already threatened by the debris around Earth. The International Space Station manoeuvres to avoid collision at least once a year.

The default solution is to let space junk get dragged into the atmosphere where it incinerates. For example, at least one Starlink satellite burns up in the atmosphere every day. But this is now creating enough soot and alumina particles to have an impact on the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

New technology can help Technological solutions involve active debris removal, and strategic satellite and mission design. Active debris removal gets rid of old spacecraft by tipping them into the atmosphere or pushing them into a “graveyard” orbit” which isn’t used by functioning satellites.

There’s even a hit list of the 50 most dangerous spacecraft – mainly abandoned rocket bodies. Debris removal technologies include nets, magnets, tethers, sails, slingshots, and harpoons. Very few have been successfully tested in space. New satellites can be made from materials that are more durable, so they last longer – or more disposable, so they can be used and quickly de-orbited.

Japan has been testing wood as a spacecraft material. Other options include refuelling spacecraft to extend their life. Better policies Policies are also changing to focus more on satellite end-of-life disposal. The old standard was that spacecraft should not remain in original mission orbits for more than 25 years.

Now it’s five years. The disadvantage to this policy is that more spacecraft will burn up in the atmosphere. The European Space Agency is spearheading a zero debris policy, and the Inter-Agency Debris Co-ordination Committee issues debris mitigation guidelines.

There’s also an international standard for space debris mitigation. Better international co-operation could be achieved through space traffic management. Space traffic management aims to establish “road rules” for avoiding congestion in orbit, by limiting debris creation, co-ordinating orbital activities and sharing information.

However, a globally agreed space traffic management system doesn’t yet exist. All the same, satellite operators are starting to take their environmental responsibilities seriously. But is this enough? Rethinking space Old ways of thinking about space have not served humanity well.

The ideologies driving the space junk problem are competition for prestige and orbital resources, and the belief that there are no moral obligations to the space environment. Often, orbital space is not seen as an environment at all because it is without life.

These beliefs coincide in the “techbro” space, in which billionaires are competing to launch satellite megaconstellations. Research has shown caring for the environment is not seen as masculine. Earth and space are no longer separate domains.

Space junk should be managed as a more-than-planetary interconnected system extending from the spacecraft cemetery at the bottom of the ocean, through the atmosphere, to all Earth and lunar orbits. The Moon’s surface is also being impacted by space junk.

Philosopher Val Plumwood’s co-participation approach to environmental management provides a new perspective. We give the environment what it needs to flourish, instead of depleting it to the point of collapse. The jury is still out on whether Kessler Syndrome will eventually cut us off from space.

Perhaps new myths and stories will arise around the space junk people see burning through the atmosphere. Watching the skies for “cultural meteorites” is becoming part of the shared human experience.

Alice Gorman has received funding from the Australian Research Council to study the International Space Station.

She is a Fellow of the Outer Space Institute and a Co-Chair of the Global Expert Group for Sustainable Lunar Activity.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/13000-tonnes-of-space-junk-clutters-earth-orbit-heres-how-it-could-be-cleaned-up/

Peter Doll and Scott Ling Australia is home to some of the world’s most beautiful reefs. This includes the lush Great Southern Reef, which wraps around Australia’s southern coastline, and the world-renowned Great Barrier Reef.

But the corals of the Great Barrier Reef and the kelp forests of the south are both plagued by prickly problems – voracious starfish and sea urchins. The coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish is one of the greatest threats to the Great Barrier Reef.

And on the temperate Great Southern Reef, long-spined sea urchins have eaten their way through thousands of hectares of kelp forests. Both species are native but can boom in numbers, and the urchins have spread to new areas due to climate change.

Scientists tend to study these two species as isolated threats. But our new study shows that while they pose high but differing risks, investing in control programs and innovative research could help curb these two prickly problems.

Read more: Coral reefs are secretly connected across vast oceans – and that’s crucial for their survival Overabundant species Crown-of-thorns starfish and long-spined sea urchins threaten reefs by building up large populations that overgraze coral or kelp.

Crown-of-thorns starfish are native to the Great Barrier Reef. Their population growth follows a boom-and-bust cycle. Since data were first available in the 1950s, the number of crown-of-thorns starfish has surged by more than 1,500 per square kilometre roughly every 15 years.

But once they eat all the available coral – the foundation of their diet – the population crashes. When the starfish eat too much coral, this represents another threat to reefs already stressed by climate change. Crown-of-thorns starfish feeding on coral (left) and long-spined sea urchins feeding at the edge of a kelp forest (right).

Peter Doll and Scott Ling, CC BY Long-spined sea urchins are native to the seas off mainland Australia. Tasmanian waters were once too cold. But as the oceans have warmed due to climate change, the sea urchin has been able to spread south.

Their spread into Tasmania in recent decades, in their millions, has caused extensive damage to kelp forests. Our neighbours in New Zealand are also battling an influx of these urchins. The long-spined sea urchins can build up to densities hundreds of times higher than peak crown-of-thorns starfish densities.

And further, because of their flexible diet of various kinds of microalgae, drifting seaweed, and invertebrates, the urchins can survive in a semi-starved state. This results in the barren reefs they create persisting for decades.

Read more: Young crown-of-thorns starfish can survive heatwaves.

That’s yet more bad news for the Great Barrier Reef Tricky to manage From a conservation perspective, the way to tackle long-spined sea urchins currently differs from tackling crown-of-thorns starfish for three main reasons: 1.

Fluid borders Crown-of-thorns starfish are monitored and managed by federal institutions on the Great Barrier Reef, including monitoring by the Australian Institute of Marine Science and management by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

In contrast, long-spined urchins are spread across multiple jurisdictions, stretching from northern New South Wales to southern Tasmania. Authorities in each state manage urchins in different ways and to varying degrees, as populations change from native to invasive and overabundant.

But these urchins are a national problem, given that urchin larvae travel south for hundreds of kilometres on the prevailing ocean currents, with no regard for state borders. Read more: Sea urchins have invaded Tasmania and Victoria, but we can’t work out what to do with them 2.

Commercial interests Crown-of-thorns starfish have no economic value. But urchins can be harvested for their roe, considered a delicacy in countries such as Japan. While demand for this high-value seafood product continues to grow, it is not yet at the scale required to combat the problem.

Developing the urchin industry further would see more urchins removed from the water, enhancing reef protection. A diver culling a crown-of-thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef (left) and a diver harvesting long-spined sea urchins on the Great Southern Reef (right).

Peter Doll and Matt Testoni, CC BY 3. Inconsistent funding Sustained, large-scale investment in management is necessary to tackle these prickly problems. The roughly $20 million-per-year federally funded crown-of-thorns starfish control program is locked in years in advance.

But funding for urchin control in Tasmania is about 40 times lower. Researchers, managers and politicians alike have been calling for federal investment into the urchin fishery, but to date no substantial funding has been delivered.

Investment into developing a profitable and larger sea urchin industry would deliver a long-term, low-cost solution to the urchin problem. Read more: Whether you’re a snorkeller or CEO, you can help save our vital kelp forests Natural defences To protect our precious tropical and temperate reefs, we must take action.

One strategy is to protect their natural predators. A 2026 study showed the spangled emperor is the key predator of crown-of-thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef. This fish species is found throughout the Indo-Pacific region but is sought after by fishers.

On the Great Barrier Reef there are six times more spangled emperor in areas protected from fishing. This suggests protecting spangled emperor populations can help control crown-of-thorns starfish. Read more: How we found 112 ‘recovery reefs’ dotted through the Great Barrier Reef Similarly, the highly valuable southern rock lobster is a predator of long-spined sea urchins in Tasmania.

Although these lobsters are widespread, they are highly sought after by fishers. When given a break from intensive fishing, lobster populations can build up, helping to limit urchin populations. Rebuilding predator populations can form part of a whole-of-ecosystem reef management approach, where priority is given to the overall health and balance of ecosystems and communities.

Plotting a positive future As our climate changes, Australia’s reefs face an uncertain future. Outbreaks of coral-eating starfish and kelp-grazing sea urchins can rapidly transform healthy reefs into degraded ecosystems. Yet this future is not inevitable.

By investing in collaborative research we can find ways to restore and protect these iconic environments.

John Keane receives funding from the state government of Tasmania and the Fisheries Research Development Corporation.

Scott Ling receives funding from the Australian Research Council and has received funding from the Australian government’s Saving Native Species program.

Sterling B.

Tebbett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/prickly-starfish-and-urchins-are-decimating-australias-reefs-but-we-could-find-ways-to-protect-them/

Robina Weermeijer/Unsplash It’s been a year since Australia launched its National Lung Cancer Screening Program. Since July 2025, about 100,000 Australians have been screened. Now, the big question is no longer whether screening is a good idea.

It is whether the health system can follow through after the screening results. As I’ve written about before, there are issues with the process of how patients are followed up and treated, and with having enough staff to safely guide them through this critical time.

Without addressing these and other concerns, the program will find early lung cancers without delivering the full benefit Australians were promised. Remind me, what’s lung cancer screening? The National Lung Cancer Screening Program uses low-dose CT scans to look for lung cancer in high-risk people without symptoms.

It is aimed at people aged 50–70 who currently smoke, or have quit in the past ten years, with a smoking history of at least 30 pack-years (for example, one pack a day for 30 years). The logic is straightforward: find lung cancer earlier, where there is a good chance of a cure and reduce deaths from a disease that remains Australia’s leading cause of cancer deaths.

The need for lung cancer screening is clear. Lung cancer causes more deaths than breast and bowel cancer combined. In 2025 more than 15,000 Australians were diagnosed with it. Early detection can shift more people into the stage where curative treatments, such as surgery, are possible.

Read more: ‘The dirty disease’ – both smokers and non-smokers get lung cancer. They face stigma on top of illness Shortage of staff, and unequal access to services But screening is only the front door. Once someone has an abnormal scan, the system needs enough staff, specialist services and coordination to move quickly from suspicion of lung cancer to diagnosis to treatment.

That is where the risk lies. Australia still has gaps in lung cancer services. This includes shortages of specialist nurses, incomplete specialist teams and uneven access to diagnostics and personalised medicine to treat the cancer.

A recent survey showed only four in ten institutions reported having the recommended core workforce for multidisciplinary lung cancer team meetings. This is where multiple members of a person’s health-care team meet to create and review their treatment plan.

Around one in four institutions lacked specialist lung cancer nurses. This matters because these nurses help coordinate care, explain test results and keep people moving through a complicated pathway. The shortage of staff and services is felt most sharply outside major cities.

The same survey found gaps in thoracic surgeons, nuclear medicine specialists and access to personalised molecular testing, particularly in non-metropolitan centres. For patients in regional and remote areas, that can mean more travel, longer waits and a slower route to treatment.

Screening may be national, and is even more accessible with mobile screening being rolled out in regional and rural areas. But lung cancer care is still too often determined by postcode. This matters especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who carry a disproportionate burden of lung cancer.

We’ve long known this group is more likely to be diagnosed with it, and die from it, than non-Indigenous Australians. The screening program was co-designed with Cancer Australia and the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, which is a strong start.

But equity will only be real if access is culturally safe, follow-up is timely and Aboriginal community-controlled services are properly supported to deliver services. How about quitting smoking? There is also a missed opportunity to combine screening with more support to quit smoking.

There are important short- and long-term benefits of giving up smoking around the time of screening, a time when people are most open to quitting. The screening program encourages clinicians to support participants to quit.

However, there is no Medicare Benefits Schedule item number to support and fund this. So health professionals may be less likely to properly support people to quit smoking at the time of screening. Are services working well?

We just don’t know Australia also needs better nationally collected data to tell us where clinical services are working well and where improvements are needed. Right now, different hospitals across different jurisdictions use multiple different indicators of quality, so we cannot compare them.

This data also doesn’t allow for the near-real-time feedback needed to improve care across the health system. So it’s hard to tell whether the screening program is narrowing health equity gaps as it is designed to do, or simply revealing them earlier.

If these gaps are not addressed, the likely result will be more detection of early-stage lung cancer, but ongoing delays in accessing services and treatments.

We’ll continue to see fragmented, poorly coordinated care across multiple health care providers and avoidable differences in outcomes and survival.

Fraser Brims receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF, Cancer Australia, Lung Foundation Australia.

He is the Chief Investigator for the Australian lung cancer clinical quality data platform collaboration.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/australias-lung-cancer-screening-program-is-a-year-old-but-can-the-health-system-deliver/

Natalia Lebedinskaia/ Getty Images I hate you. You’re the worst mum in the world! It’s a sentence that can feel heartbreaking to parents. You try to set a boundary with your little one and they lash out with “I hate you”.

Those words land can like a punch. Even when you know, deep down, that your child doesn’t really mean it. Why do kids say this? And how can you respond? Hitting a nerve Part of what makes “I hate you” so hard to hear is that it can touch on something most parents quietly worry about.

“Am I doing this right?”, “Am I a good parent?”. Being on the receiving end can also be unexpectedly triggering. For parents who grew up in households where strong emotions were dismissed, minimised, or hidden, a child’s emotional outburst can feel alarming, disrespectful or even shameful.

Your instinct might be to shut it down quickly, or to feel something has gone badly wrong. What’s going on when a child says ‘I hate you’? Try not to read too much into it if you child says “I hate you”.

Young children, especially those under six, are in the early stages of learning how to understand and regulate their emotions. The part of their brain responsible for regulating emotions, is still very much developing. While this is most common in young children, children of all ages can struggle to find words for overwhelming feelings.

When a young child is overwhelmed by an emotion (like anger at being told no or disappointment of being told to leave the playground), they often don’t have the language to help them express these big feelings.

So they may use the strongest words they know without understanding the true meaning. The good news is children are most likely to express big, uncomfortable emotions with the people they feel safest with. They trust that this person can handle their feelings, and are confident their love is unconditional.

This reflects a strong, secure parent-child relationship. What can parents do in the moment? 1. Take a breath before you respond Notice what this brings up for you. Where you can, take a moment to regulate your own emotions so you can model emotion regulation for your child.

2. Acknowledge and validate the emotion Before anything else, name what you’re seeing. For example, “I can see you’re really angry right now. That makes sense. You really wanted to keep playing, and it’s hard when we have to stop.” This isn’t about agreeing with the outburst.

It’s about letting your child know their feeling has been seen and that anger itself is OK. Strong emotions need acknowledging before they can settle. Teaching children all emotions are OK early on sets them up for strong emotional regulation skills later on.

3. Stay present while the feeling passes Once you have acknowledged the feeling try to avoid problem-solving straight away.

Staying present (keeping your attention on your child — resisting the urge to walk away, pick up your phone, or move straight to problem-solving) and helping your child ride out the big emotion and find a calmer state is the goal.

For some children, they may respond well to a hug or having you sit calmly next to them. Other children may want more space. Staying calm and being present is often enough to help a child regulate their emotions.

4. Gently name the limit Once there is more calm, gently remind your child that while all emotions are OK, telling someone you hate them can hurt their feelings. For example, “It’s OK to feel angry but it’s not OK to say I hate you.

What else could you say next time?” 5. Reconnect Once your child is calm, find a way to show they are safe and loved. Repairing a situation after conflict is one of the strongest ways to build and sustain a secure attachment – or the bond between parent and child.

This is also an important way to model respect, even during times of conflict. You could say, “That was hard. You were really upset. I love you, even when you’re angry.” 6. Help build their emotional literacy Teaching kids to recognise and name all their emotions can help give them the words to say “I’m angry” next time.

Integrating this into play and via books can be useful. Practising strategies that help them respond to strong emotions (for example, jumping up and down, colouring, going outside, petting a pet) when they are calm, can help kids when intense emotions do show up.

7. Remember that support is available If you find yourself upset about these moments often, or they are bringing up things for you, it’s worth reaching out for support.

Talking to someone, whether that’s a friend, a GP, a psychologist or a helpline, can really make a difference and help parents be in a place to better manage when these situations come up.

If this article has raised issues for you, some helplines include: PANDA — 1300 726 306 (for perinatal mental health, which is also relevant if the parent is also experiencing postnatal difficulties) Beyond Blue — 1300 22 4636 Mensline- 1300 78 99 78 (a free telephone and online counselling service offering support for Australian men anywhere, anytime) 13YARN — 13 92 76 (for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples)

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/i-hate-you-what-little-kids-really-mean-when-they-say-this/

In Victoria and New South Wales, roughly one third of homes are sold at auction.

Australia is one of very few countries in the world to regularly make use of auctions to sell homes – let alone “open outcry” auctions, where bidders compete with each other out loud in real time.

Auctions are known for this transparency, and there is a perception among many sellers they may get a higher price. But what about their risks – in particular, what happens if an auction fails?

Around the country, auction clearance rates have plunged to their lowest levels since the pandemic, continuing a downward trend that began as interest rates were pushed higher, even before major tax changes were announced in this year’s federal budget.

For buyers and sellers alike, what can research tell us about the upsides and risks of going to auction? And what can a failed auction mean for a property’s final selling price? Our recent research, based on 13 years of data from New South Wales and Victoria, showed just how much of a discount you might expect to see.

Australia’s love affair with auctions If an Australian shared a story about successfully buying a home at auction with someone from the United States, the likely response would be: “Why did you buy a foreclosed home?” That’s because in the US, auctions are primarily used as a last resort, such as when a lender takes control of a property.

So, how did Australia fall in love with auctions? Or, more specifically, Melbourne and Sydney, since these two capital cities dominate the auction market? Part of the reason is historical. In early Melbourne, for example, auctions were used not only to sell parcels of land but also many other goods such as livestock.

It was convenient for buyers and sellers to meet in one place. But the enduring popularity of auctions suggests Australians must like something about them. Transparency and pricing For buyers, a key reason is that the auction process adds transparency to a negotiation in which it is often hard to know what to believe.

Buyers get clearer information about who is interested in a property and what they’re willing to pay. For sellers, auctions are also commonly thought of as a way to help achieve a higher price.

But our recent research shows the price premium from selling via auction (as opposed to via a private treaty sale) may be more modest than is sometimes conveyed in the media. More likely, an auction campaign is convenient, especially for real estate agents who avoid continuous back and forth between prospective buyers and the seller on price negotiation.

Of course, that is, if all goes well. What if an auction fails? Our research found that from 2007 to 2019, between 10%–40% of auctions failed in a given month in New South Wales and Victoria. What happened to those properties?

For sellers, it wasn’t good news.

On average, properties that subsequently sold after failing at auction did so at a 1.3% discount, compared to the price our modelling estimates they’d have made if the seller had just chosen a private treaty in the first place.

Our findings suggest that when an auction fails, it creates stigma around a property. People become less interested in buying a property if they think other people believe something’s wrong with it. We found the price effect of this stigma stemming from a failed auction lasted roughly 10 months, after which the price recovered.

Despite the common perception that auctions are significantly better than private treaty, we found that factoring in this risk of failure, auctions on average only yielded a price premium of 0.3% relative to the same property selling via a private treaty.

In any event, when a property is “passed in”, it provides a public dollar figure on what the sellers were hoping to achieve. This gives potential buyers a clear indication of where to start negotiating.

What about house prices? Recent data from Domain suggests that an increasing number of sellers are withdrawing properties from auction as Australia’s property market cools.

Alternatively, due to increasing mortgage costs, we may see some sellers make their reserve prices more realistic, or at least meet the market by negotiating with the highest bidder in the case of a failed auction.

But it’s important to remember, falling auction clearance rates are only one marker of cooling demand in the housing market.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/auction-clearance-rates-are-sliding-heres-what-can-happen-when-a-home-doesnt-sell/

Authors provided/based on DESI data, CC BY-SA Modern cosmology rests on a simple assumption: if we look on large enough scales, matter should be distributed evenly, with no preferred direction within the cosmos. This is known as the cosmological principle.

Now, as new telescopes both on Earth and in space, such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and Euclid, deliver ever more detailed maps of the universe, this assumption can finally be properly tested.

In our new paper, we uncover evidence that the distribution of galaxies does not become uniform on the largest scales we can currently test. Using DESI data, we find directional patterns extending across distances of several billion light years.

If confirmed, our results would force physicists to rethink some basic ideas about the universe, including what dark matter is, and how gravity shapes matter on the largest scales. A model that worked remarkably well The cosmological principle underpins the standard cosmological model, which provides a recipe for the universe: roughly 5% ordinary matter, 25% dark matter and 70% dark energy (represented by the Greek letter Λ).

This is known as the standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) model. The model has been remarkably successful.

For example, it describes the expansion history of the universe, the formation of light elements after the Big Bang, and the cosmic microwave background – ancient light released when the universe first became transparent – with impressive precision.

However, this success has also made the growing observational tensions harder to ignore. The rate of cosmic expansion is known as the Hubble constant, but precise estimates of the present expansion rate of the universe do not all agree.

This has led to a much debated challenge of the ΛCDM model – the Hubble tension. Recent observations of ancient galaxies by the James Webb telescope also put into question our understanding of early cosmic structure formation.

However, many recognise the most perplexing puzzle is an anomalously large dipole – a “one direction versus the opposite direction” asymmetry in the sky – in the distribution of very distant quasars and radio galaxies. This is in stark contrast with the ΛCDM model.

Finally, last year data from DESI have challenged the very nature of dark energy, which may not be a constant as assumed. This shakes the foundation of modern cosmology.

Investigating large-scale cosmic structures DESI is building one of the most detailed three-dimensional maps of the universe yet made, measuring galaxy positions in the sky and their redshifts, which tell us how far away they are.

Our work asks whether the matter distribution really is becoming smooth and directionless on the largest scales we can observe. In other words, is the cosmological principle supported by our best data? To test this, we used a technique which measures the probability of finding a galaxy at a given distance and along a specific direction from another galaxy.

We computed this for all galaxy pairs and averaged the result. If galaxies are distributed uniformly, those pair directions should be evenly spread. If galaxies sit in long filaments or walls, more pairs will line up along particular directions.

A persistent cosmic web Applying this to DESI galaxies, we found a clear directional signal. Galaxy pairs were not randomly oriented but rather aligned, tracing coherent filaments and walls. This would not be surprising if the signal weakened at larger scales.

Instead, the patterns persisted over enormous distances, extending to several billion light years in the deepest samples. The cosmic web did not appear to fade into a uniform, directionless distribution on the largest scales we could test.

Even on the largest scales, the universe seems closer to a tangled yarn rather than a misty fog. We then compared the observations with simulated universes based on the standard ΛCDM model. The difference was striking.

The simulated universes showed weaker and smaller directional patterns in the matter distribution. The real DESI data showed stronger structures, persisting across much larger distances. What this means Our results suggest that, within the standard model, there has not been enough time for structures this large to form.

If galaxies follow the overall distribution of mass, including dark matter, the pattern in galaxy locations calls into question our assumption that the universe is roughly uniform at large enough scales. One possible explanation is that dark matter can interact in complicated, unexpected ways, beyond those included in the simplest models.

Another is that we need a more complex general description of the Universe, one that allows large-scale inhomogeneities to play a greater role. Or the answer may be something else altogether. Our results reveal coherent structures spanning billions of light years, much larger than expected in the standard cosmological model.

If confirmed, they would directly violate the cosmological principle. This would suggest that matter remains organised into large-scale patterns over much greater distances than currently thought. The next step is not speculation, but measurement. Future data from DESI, Euclid and other surveys will be crucial.

If the evidence persists, cosmologists may need new models of structure formation and a revised picture of the Universe on the largest scales.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/the-universe-is-less-uniform-than-we-thought-cosmology-may-need-a-radical-rethink/

A review of the 2020 deal underpinning the U.S.-Mexico trade relationship will likely be hamstrung by President Donald Trump’s trade-deficit fixation and aggressive use of tariffs. AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo Most Americans understand that their avocado toast and Super Bowl guacamole depend on a green fruit imported from Mexico.

But few realize that Mexico is the United States’ top trading partner, both as the largest source of U.S. imports and the largest market for its exports. Mexico supplies everything from fruits and vegetables to computers, medical equipment and electrical machinery – not to mention vehicles and auto parts.

Mexico is also the top consumer of U.S. exports, ranging from corn, pork and dairy products to natural gas, to auto parts. Given these ties, the stakes will be high on July 1, 2026, when U.S., Mexican and Canadian trade negotiators begin a required trilateral review of the 2020 trade deal underpinning this relationship.

But a de facto stalemate is likely, resulting in uncertainty that will dampen growth in all three member countries.

Meanwhile, consumers will have to keep paying the tab for imports affected by Trump’s tariffs, including global tariffs announced in April 2025, as well as specific levies on autos and products made with steel and aluminum.

According to the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. inflation rate in March 2026 would have been 0.8 percentage point lower year on year without these tariffs.

As a scholar of U.S.-Mexico relations, I argue this outcome reflects President Donald Trump’s desire to reduce U.S. trade deficits, bring manufacturing back to the U.S. and retain coercive power over his neighbors.

But all it will likely do is yield a poorly defined process of annual reviews of the longer-standing agreement – signed by Trump during his first term. The logic of trade integration The 2020 pact, known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, has been a linchpin for U.S. global competitiveness, especially for the trade relationship with Mexico.

With some modifications, it succeeded the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexico doesn’t export just agricultural goods and products assembled with factors of production imported from the U.S. It supplies such inputs to the U.S. production process as well.

This bilateral trade supports key cross-border supply chains for regional manufacturing. This is most striking in the automotive industry. A telling measure is that a typical “U.S.” vehicle crosses the U.S.-Mexico border up to eight times during the manufacturing process.

The U.S. and Mexico don’t just trade finished products; they produce things together, as Mexico scholar Chris Wilson has put it. These deeply integrated supply chains lower the cost of production, which in turn helps the U.S. compete with China, generate investment, spur job creation – and keep consumer prices down.

Recognizing this, the Trump administration agreed to exempt all exports that comply with the terms of the 2020 trade pact from the global tariffs announced in April 2025. This exemption now applies to 85% of Mexican exports, according to Mexico Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard.

Mexican avocados, like other goods covered by the 2020 trade pact between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, were exempted from President Donald Trump’s 2025 tariffs. AP Photo/Armando Solis Annual reviews are likely outcome Under the terms of the 2020 pact, the three countries have to review the deal after six years.

Potential outcomes of the 2026 negotiation round range from renewing the deal in full for 16 more years, ending it altogether or agreeing to undergo a series of annual reviews that could extend it through 2036. Given the three countries’ supply-chain integration, preserving predictability in trade and investment through a successful review should be a slam-dunk case.

But that outcome looks unlikely for three reasons. First is Trump’s abhorrence of trade deficits, stemming from his belief that they’re caused by U.S. production and jobs moving overseas due to unfair trade practices.

While this argument applies to U.S.-China trade to a certain degree, it does not to Mexico. For example, 30% of Mexican-manufactured exports to the U.S. include U.S. content, a share that rises to 40% for vehicles.

The effect of these integrated supply chains is to create jobs rather than replace them.

What Trump also overlooks is that Washington’s success in pressuring manufacturers to move production out of China and into low-cost producers – including Mexico – has helped widen the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico, a “problem” of Washington’s making.

In fact, a 2026 Federal Reserve study found that 53% of the increase in Mexico’s trade deficit with the U.S. over the past five years resulted from U.S. tariffs on Chinese exports. Despite such clear findings, the Trump administration remains fixated on reducing the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico, making a successful review even less likely.

The reshoring illusion Second, Trump is wedded to the idea of “reshoring,” or bringing production back to the U.S. But that position runs against the trade deal’s logic of “nearshoring,” or bringing production back to North America.

That was the principle also embedded in NAFTA.

This reshoring obsession drove Washington’s refusal to exempt Mexican steel and aluminum exports from the 50% tariff that the administration imposed in mid-2025 and provide only a partial exemption on a 25% tariff on autos and auto parts.

It’s also behind Trump’s demand to add a high minimum U.S. content requirement in autos. Taken together, the levies and demands by Trump will likely stymie a successful review of the pact that replaced NAFTA.

Coercion through chaos Finally, Trump and his team believe that advancing Washington’s interests depends on wielding U.S. power to coerce other countries. This includes using tariffs not merely to redirect international trade but to pressure allies and adversaries alike to meet U.S. demands.

Mexico and Canada were the first two targets of this coercive tool in February 2025, when Trump slapped tariffs on all Mexican and Canadian exports to force their leaders to cooperate on migration and drug policies.

Although the goods that fell under the 2020 trade pact were quickly declared exempt and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that the legal foundation for those levies was unconstitutional, Trump’s desire to exploit the coercive power of tariffs persists.

He has no incentive to ink a trade agreement that limits his power to impose tariffs at will. He restated this indifference in June 2026, when he asserted that he wasn’t “looking to renew” the pact because he believes the U.S. would do better without it.

“We don’t need anything that Canada has,” he added. “We don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have. They have to treat us better.” Implications of annual reviews Mexico needs investors to have the certainty provided by a successful review.

But without knowing the future rules of the road, investors are sitting on the sidelines, which is weakening the country’s growth strategy tied to nearshoring.

As a result, Mexico has focused on preserving the 2020 agreement – even if this means a more ad hoc cycle of annual reviews – because it still guarantees a lower tariff rate compared with what other countries face with Trump in the White House.

Indeed, in a private conversation, a Mexican official told me that keeping this lower rate is a core objective in Mexico’s trade talks with the United States. Although not ideal, this outcome would protect the North American supply chains that drive growth in a country where exports account for 37% of its GDP.

But for Americans, an unsuccessful review followed by ongoing talks without resolution has few upsides.

Instead, it’s likely to weaken the U.S. competitive advantage relative to China – all while Trump’s trade policy leaves them grappling with higher prices on products such as cars and trucks and with no uptick in job creation.

Pamela K.

Starr is affiliated with the Mexico Program of the Inter-American Dialogue as a non-resident fellow, and with Monarch Global Strategies as a senior advisor.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/as-key-trade-talks-start-the-us-mexico-relationship-will-likely-limp-along-but-at-a-cost/

Within hours of the recent shooting in Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood, arguments about the gunman’s 104-page manifesto had already split along familiar lines. Most Canadian outlets called it an incel manifesto. Right-wing sites fired back that the media had buried the obvious and that the document was really Marxist and anti-Zionist.

Both sides are partially correct, which is exactly the problem.

‘Salad bar’ of grievances I have read and analyzed more than six decades of violent extremist manifestos , and the Montréal text is a tidy example of what researchers call mixed, unclear and unstable ideologies, hybrid extremism or “salad-bar” extremism.

A lone attacker builds a world view the way you build a plate at a buffet — a bit of racism here, some antisemitism there, a scoop of anti-government conspiracy; whatever fits his grievance. It doesn’t hold together as a doctrine.

It holds together as a feeling. That’s why trying to file the Montréal shooter under “left” or “right” keeps producing a mess. He borrows the language of Marxist revolution and calls for the overthrow of capitalism.

He also rages against feminism, dating apps, pornography and “degeneracy,” a vocabulary of the online manosphere and part of the far right. He attacks a “Judeo-bourgeois class” and names “influential Zionists” as targets — old-fashioned antisemitism wearing an anti-capitalist coat.

Asking whether he was left-wing or right-wing is the wrong question. Misogyny at the root Here is the part the left-versus-right debate keeps stumbling over. There is, in fact, a base layer to the killer’s manifesto, and it’s misogyny.

Everything else grows out of male sexual grievance.

The author’s organizing idea is “hypergamy,” the incel belief that women want only a small minority of desirable men and that the ordinary “common” man is “sexually left behind.” He calls these men “the dispossessed.” He then reaches for Karl Marx, casting lonely men as a “proletariat” robbed by a powerful class.

The antisemitism answers who rigged the game. Take the misogyny out and the whole thing falls apart. There is no grievance left to revolt about. This is the bit my field sometimes gets wrong, and I have said so in my own work.

The salad-bar image makes the mix sound optional, as if every ingredient were equal. But misogyny is rarely just another item on the bar. It is the lettuce the whole salad sits upon. It supplies the anger and humiliation that allow racism, antisemitism and anti-government paranoia fuse into one story of betrayal.

American terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman and colleagues made this point years ago; my own data backs it up across six decades. Read more: I analyzed more than 100 extremist manifestos: Misogyny was the common thread Written to recruit There is something else worth noticing about how the manifesto was written.

It was built to be read. At one point, the author explains that he dropped the usual academic citation style so the text would be “more accessible to men” who do not read scholarly work.

He asks for it to be translated into seven languages and spread in plain words anyone can read. A manifesto like this is a performance, and its job is to recruit. In my research, I call these ideological batons that are meant to be picked up by the next person.

That also explains the salad bar. A text built to recruit lonely men has reason to toss in a little of everything, to find more to hook. The mix is aimed at reaching more men.

The argument to potential followers never changes — that the lonely man’s pain is not his fault. He ended his manifesto with the words: “I have laid out the required tactics, targets, and preparations here and elsewhere.

Be resilient, be pragmatic, be implacable, and be perceptive.

Remember everything that they have taken from you, and remember all of the pain that they have caused …Be unflinching, go forth, and KILL THEM ALL!” That is the true objective of the manifesto, and the attack confirms this interpretation.

Police are investigating whether the gunman was targeting offices of Aylo, the company that owns Pornhub, across the street from his hotel in Montréal. Pornography is one of his named targets, and his hatred of it runs back to the grievance at the centre of the text.

A police officer and a member of the local Jewish community were killed in the gunfight that followed. The manifesto frames dying at the hands of police as a worthy end — a common pattern in gender-driven attacks.

More than a label So can we call it a left-wing manifesto? The manifesto uses left-coded language. But if “far-left attack” becomes the headline, investigators and researchers are hunting for the wrong warning signs and ignoring the young men who have never read any Marx and are radicalizing in manosphere forums.

The same goes for anyone calling the manifesto right-wing. What predicts this violence has little to do with the political spectrum. Its foundation is misogyny, and we are still reluctant to treat that as a serious threat in its own right.

Read more: Toronto van attack: Guilty verdict, but Canada still needs to tackle ideological violence Canada has been here before.

The 2018 Toronto van attack was carried out by an incel, and a 2020 Toronto massage parlour attack was “the first terrorism prosecution in Canada involving incel ideology.” Whether this shooting is ever classified as terrorism is a separate question from what drove it, and that process is only beginning.

The RCMP’s national security branch has opened an investigation into ideologically motivated violent extremism. The legal label is one thing. The analytical one is not hard once you stop arguing about left and right.

A lonely, furious young man built an ideology to justify killing, and its bedrock was a hatred of women. The Marxist language is just something he poured on top.

Karmvir K. Padda receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/the-montreal-shooters-manifesto-isnt-left-or-right-its-rooted-in-misogyny/

Imagine a piece of space debris the size of a hockey puck slams into a Starlink satellite at about 10 kilometres per second. The kinetic energy is equivalent to two kilograms of TNT, or a fully-loaded semi-truck travelling at 100 kilometres an hour.

The Starlink satellite sprays out dozens of new debris pieces into an expanding cloud. Other satellites will pass by the new debris within minutes — some will need to manoeuvre to avoid yet another collision. Read more: As corporations race for the stars, we need international collaboration on space governance As corporations around the world continue to fill low-Earth orbit with megaconstellations, such collisions are increasingly likely.

We have developed something called the CRASH Clock to measure this. It asks a simple question: if all satellites in orbit suddenly lost the ability to manoeuvre and control their orientation, how long would it take for two to come close enough to crash?

In 2018, before megaconstellations began launching, the CRASH Clock value was 164 days. It has been steadily dropping since then. Our new research finds that as of May 2026, it is at 2.5 days. Lethal pieces of debris Satellites fragment for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes they explode internally, as happened to Starlink 34343 in March 2026. Sometimes they collide with debris or a meteoroid. Sometimes it’s even on purpose, for example when Russia tested an anti-satellite weapon in 2021. When a satellite collides with debris, ground-based radar stations gather information and send alerts to satellite companies and government agencies, who scramble to assess how dangerous low-Earth orbit has become and protect their satellites.

Typically it takes about 100 days to catalogue half of the debris from a collision event like this. Today, there are more than 10,000 SpaceX Starlink satellites and 5,000 other satellites orbiting above our heads. There are tens of thousands of large pieces of debris with well-measured orbits, which often need to be avoided by satellites with onboard propulsion systems.

There are also more than one million pieces of potentially lethal debris that are too small to be tracked, some just like the hockey puck in the hypothetical scenario above.

Frequent close calls We haven’t had a satellite-on-satellite collision since 2009, when the Iridium 33 and the defunct Cosmos 2251 collided at an altitude of 770 kilometres, even though there are nearly 20 times more satellites in orbit today.

This is due to careful satellite constellation design, station-keeping manoeuvres, collision avoidance manoeuvres and to some extent, luck. However, close approaches happen very frequently. Approximately every two minutes, a satellite in the Starlink megaconstellation makes a manoeuvre to avoid another satellite or debris.

Currently, they manoeuvre whenever the calculated probability of collision rises above one in 30 million — a successfully conservative approach. That made for around 300,000 manoeuvres in 2025. The collision-avoidance manoeuvre rate is increasing over time as more and more satellites are launched.

The likelihood of a collision with an untracked piece of debris is also increasing over time. If other satellites are hit by collision debris, more debris clouds will form, possibly causing even more collisions. With clouds of debris come clouds of uncertainty.

These clouds also quickly shear into thick rings.

This animation shows active satellites and space debris of different sizes that were in orbit around Earth in 2023. (ESA) A fragile house of cards The CRASH Clock highlights how reliant we are on flawless operations to avoid collapsing the fragile house of cards we’ve built in low-Earth orbit.

The CRASH Clock value can be calculated from the publicly available orbits of all satellites and tracked debris. While the calculation we use is based on a worst-case scenario — that all the satellites in orbit suddenly lose the ability to manoeuvre and control their orientation — this situation is not impossible.

An exceptionally strong solar storm, a bad software update or a cybersecurity event are sobering possibilities that could trigger widespread satellite control outages. The CRASH Clock value over time has steadily dropped as more satellites are added into orbit.

CC BY-NC The CRASH Clock ticks To reiterate, at the beginning of 2018, before megaconstellations began launching, the CRASH Clock value was 164 days. By May 2026, it had dropped to a mere 2.5 days. Our direct simulations agree with our probabilistic calculations.

They also highlight how averaging techniques can smooth out events — a collision may take days or weeks to occur, or it could occur a few hours after losing control. Starlink has by far the most satellites in orbit, densely packed within a narrow altitude range, mostly near 550 kilometres from Earth.

A recent analysis by renowned space debris researchers Hugh Lewis and Donald Kessler shows that this dense bit of orbit is the only altitude below 800 kilometres that is above the collisional runaway threshold. In other words, if there is a collision at 550 kilometres altitude, the debris would collide with other satellites, making more debris and causing more collisions.

This is called the Kessler Syndrome. The CRASH Clock shows how dependent we are on collision avoidance systems continuing to work perfectly, every moment of every day, indefinitely. After the crash Our CRASH Clock only explores the typical time before collisions could occur.

It’s not a countdown to the Kessler Syndrome, nor does it signal an end to our use of satellites in low-Earth orbit. But any collision in orbit makes future collisions more likely. The CRASH Clock is a measure of how little wiggle room we have to recover from anything that disrupts satellite control.

We are now launching about 100 satellites per week and the CRASH clock is ticking down. This means we have less time to recover from mistakes, while the consequences of any one mistake grow.

Samantha Lawler receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

She is a fellow of the Outer Space Institute.

Aaron Boley receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

He co-directs the Outer Space Institute.

Sarah Thiele and Skye Heiland do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/a-new-crash-clock-measures-the-chance-of-satellite-collisions-and-its-ticking-down-fast/

The International Renewable Energy Agency projects that global ammonia demand could approach 700 million tonnes a year by 2050, nearly four times more than what is produced today. (Unsplash) Ammonia rarely makes headlines, but much of modern life depends on it.

The compound of nitrogen and hydrogen is the key ingredient in the fertilizers that help feed roughly half of the world’s population. It is also attracting serious attention as a carbon-free fuel for ships, power plants and heavy industry.

The problem is how we make it.

Nearly all of the world’s ammonia comes from the Haber-Bosch process, a century-old technology that forces the nitrogen from air and hydrogen together at temperatures of 400 to 500 C and pressures more than 200 times that of the atmosphere.

It works remarkably well, but it is also energy intensive. The process consumes about two per cent of the world’s energy supply and produces between one and two per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Our research at McMaster University points to a different path: using renewable electricity to turn nitrate, one of the most common water pollutants, directly into ammonia. In our recently published study, we showed how carefully designed iron-based catalysts can make this conversion more efficient.

The approach tackles two environmental problems at once. It removes a harmful pollutant from water and produces a chemical the world urgently needs. The timing matters.

The International Renewable Energy Agency projects that global ammonia demand could approach 700 million tonnes a year by 2050, nearly four times more than what is produced today, driven by growing food demand and ammonia’s emerging role as a clean energy carrier.

Meeting that demand with today’s technology would lock in decades of emissions. A growing pollution problem Nitrate contamination is a widespread and growing problem. Fertilizer runoff from farms, municipal wastewater and industrial discharge can all carry nitrate — a chemical compound containing nitrogen and oxygen — into rivers, lakes and groundwater.

Too much of it feeds harmful algal blooms, degrades drinking water and creates expensive treatment challenges for cities and industries. Conventional water treatment deals with nitrate by converting it into nitrogen gas, which simply returns it to the air.

That solves the pollution problem but wastes the nitrogen entirely; nitrogen that took enormous amounts of energy to capture from the atmosphere in the first place. There is a better option. Using electricity from wind or solar power, an electrochemical reactor can convert nitrate in water into ammonia at room temperature and normal pressure.

No extreme heat, no crushing pressures and no fossil fuels. Instead of destroying a pollutant which comes from use of ammonia as a fertilizer, we can recycle it into fertilizer or clean-burning fuel. What we discovered The heart of any electrochemical technology is the catalyst: the material that drives the chemical reaction.

We designed and tested four versions of an iron-based molecular catalyst, each modified with a different chemical group attached to its edges. Going in, we expected the winner would be the catalyst that moved electrons most efficiently, the conventional wisdom in our field.

The experiments, however, told a more interesting story. It turns out that how the surface of the catalyst interacts with water and dissolved nitrate is just as important as how well it conducts electrons. The surface of a catalyst can be more or less water-attracting and more or less hospitable to nitrate molecules trying to land on it.

These properties control how easily the raw ingredients (water and nitrate molecules) reach the active sites where the chemistry actually happens. Think of it like a busy kitchen: having a powerful stove matters, but so does how easily a chef can reach the ingredients.

In our experiment, we passed an electric current through a water solution containing nitrate, the same compound found in agricultural runoff and industrial wastewater. In the solution, the electric current triggers a chemical transformation, converting nitrate into ammonia, molecule by molecule.

The best-performing catalyst didn’t just deliver electrons efficiently; its surface chemistry also welcomed water and nitrate molecules in, keeping the active sites well-supplied. More research needed We want to be clear about where this technology stands.

Our experiments were done under controlled laboratory conditions, and significant engineering challenges remain before electrochemical nitrate conversion can operate at industrial scale. The next phase of our research focuses exactly on addressing that gap: testing these catalysts at higher ammonia production rates, over longer operating times and under the messier conditions using real wastewater.

The goal is to find out whether materials that shine in the lab can hold up where it counts. If they can, the payoff could be considerable. Wastewater treatment plants could become more than facilities that remove pollution; they could become local producers of fertilizer and clean fuel, powered by renewable electricity.

Water utilities would gain a revenue stream. Farmers would gain a sustainable nitrogen source and the chemical industry would take a step toward a circular model where waste becomes a resource. That future is not here yet.

But every scientific and engineering breakthrough that lets us make ammonia from pollution rather than fossil fuels brings that future a little closer.

Drew Higgins research program at McMaster University receives funding to support the work referred to in this article from NSERC, Mitacs and Nutrien Ag Solutions (Canada).

Navid Noor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/ammonia-from-wastewater-how-were-turning-a-pollutant-into-fertilizer-and-clean-fuel/

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its latest ruling on campaign finance. Nora Carol Photography/Getty Images A decades-old law limiting how much money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates was struck down by the Supreme Court on June 30, 2026.

Citing First Amendment principles, the court held in NRSC v. FEC that the limit unduly prevented political parties from “freely” and “fully” advocating for their respective nominees. The case marks the Roberts court’s latest chapter in a 20-year trajectory toward a more deregulated campaign finance system.

While not the earth-shattering decision that was Citizens United, the 2010 ruling that struck down limits on corporate and union campaign spending as a violation of their free speech, NRSC v. FEC is still significant. And it has the potential to materially reshape the American political process going forward.

Indeed, campaign finance regulation is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Some political theorists even contend that the private funding of campaigns is antithetical to core democratic principles of integrity, equality and responsiveness to voters.

Campaign spending: Freedom or corruption?

At a minimum, it is broadly agreed upon – and observed – that reining in money in politics is necessary to curb all-out corruption, where the wealthy are able to donate unlimited sums of money to politicians in exchange for favors.

An example from the Federal Election Commission’s website of one form that must be filled out when a political party makes a campaign donation. Federal Election Commission The U.S.

Supreme Court has historically upheld restrictions on political spending only if they furthered this anti-corruption goal – the idea being that fighting corruption is a compelling enough reason to limit political expression and association conducted via the dollar.

Modern-day discussion of U.S. campaign finance revolves around issues such as dark money, outside-group spending and corporate personhood. Political party spending, by contrast, receives comparatively little attention from scholars, activists and the media. This asymmetry is not entirely without warrant.

Political party spending used to dominate election cycles, with parties sometimes even outspending their own candidates. In 2000, for example, the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee combined spent more money on television ads supporting Texas Gov.

George Bush and Vice President Al Gore than the candidates’ own campaigns did. Over the past two decades, however, political parties have played a waning role in elections.

The advent of super PACs, political action committees that can receive and spend unlimited sums of money to support candidates, has led to a degree of outside-group spending – spending made without coordination with any candidate – that far surpasses that of political parties.

Moreover, candidates’ growing reliance on small-dollar donations in the age of online fundraising has shifted their financial support base from their party to their individual followers. Political party spending nonetheless remains consequential in U.S. elections.

In the 2024 election cycle, for instance, political parties spent over US.6 billion to support federal candidates – a substantial amount, even if modest compared with the $5.5 billion spent by federal candidates themselves and the whopping $15.5 billion spent by PACs and super PACs.

The regulation of party spending is therefore a significant component of the U.S. campaign finance system. And its deregulation could unleash billions of dollars more in spending by parties in future elections. Quid pro quo risk?

Federal campaign finance law regulates political parties in a variety of ways. Individuals are limited in how much money they can donate annually to political parties – $10,000 to state and local party committees and $44,300 to national party committees, as of 2025.

Political parties are further prohibited from accepting money from corporations and unions for party-building purposes, known as “soft money.” Finally, prior to the NRSC v. FEC ruling, political parties were subject to limits on how much money they could spend to support a given candidate.

This last restriction has faced the most challenges in court. NRSC v. FEC is not the first time the Supreme Court considered the legality of party expenditure limits. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Supreme Court heard two such challenges, both brought by the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee.

In the first case, Colorado Republicans challenged a federal campaign finance provision that limited how much money political parties could independently spend to support candidates. The Supreme Court ultimately struck down the limits as a violation of parties’ First Amendment speech rights.

The second challenge, meanwhile, targeted federal limits on party spending made directly in coordination with party nominees. The Supreme Court heard this case in 2001 and, in a perhaps surprising 5-4 decision, ultimately upheld the limits.

Why the different outcome? In the court’s view, with coordination came a real corruption risk. Indeed, underlying the Supreme Court’s broader campaign finance doctrine is a long-standing – and controversial – assumption that political spending raises zero corruption concerns when made independent of any collaboration with a candidate.

And when corruption is not a concern, the court believes limits on political spending are unjustified. Using this logic, the Supreme Court identified coordinated party spending as a potential source of corrupt dealings. Specifically, the court found that donors could use political parties as “conduits” to funnel further money to candidates.

For instance, individuals can currently donate up to only ,500 to a given federal candidate. Yet, they can donate $44,300 to a national party committee, which can then channel that money to the same federal candidate. Back to the court The difference between a $3,500 donation and a nearly $50,000 donation is, of course, stark.

In its latter Colorado Republicans opinion, the Supreme Court specifically noted concerning practices born out of this conduit system. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, for instance, used to have exclusive clubs in which generous donors were invited to personally meet with Democratic senatorial candidates.

In the 25 years following this decision, coordinated party expenditure limits remained on the books, with the precise dollar amount changing each election cycle. For 2026, political parties could spend up to $65,300 in coordination with U.S.

House candidates, or $130,600 in states with only one representative. The limit, meanwhile, varied for U.S. Senate candidates depending on state population, ranging from $130,600 for Wyoming to $4,071,800 for California. Hanging on by a mere 5-4 Supreme Court majority, however, campaign finance experts knew the coordinated party expenditure limit rested on shaky ground.

And in 2022, with an almost entirely different Supreme Court composition, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee sued the Federal Election Commission over its enforcement of the limit. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion in the campaign finance case.

Win McNamee/Getty Images Money equals speech The plaintiffs’ arguments were largely the same as the Colorado Republicans’ over two decades earlier, resting primarily in the First Amendment. Nevertheless, as the plaintiffs explicitly noted in their briefs, the Supreme Court’s campaign finance doctrine had shifted remarkably under Chief Justice John Roberts’ tenure, moving toward a more libertarian, deregulatory jurisprudence.

The plaintiffs thus asked the court to revisit its treatment of coordinated party expenditure limits. The court answered in NRSC v. FEC, overturning its previous decision on the matter and ultimately striking down the coordinated party expenditure limit.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, largely adopted the First Amendment argument that the limit impedes political parties’ ability to advocate for their candidates. As for the government’s anti-corruption interest, the court was not convinced that limiting coordinated party expenditures was necessary to curb conduit corruption.

Specifically, the court noted that existing disclosure laws and rules about earmarking donations already act as disincentives for donors hoping to use parties as a means to indirectly funnel money to candidates. Many election law experts will likely argue that this decision will now result in increased circumvention of federal limits on individual contributions to candidates.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan contended that the decision will only further contribute to “a legal regime increasingly unable to stop political corruption, and thus to preserve our institutions’ democratic legitimacy.” Still, not all experts see today’s outcome as a cause for concern.

Numerous scholars have called for the bolstering of political party power in light of an increasingly polarized country, viewing parties as an antidote to ideological extremism fueled by outside-group spending. For those scholars, permitting unlimited coordinated expenditures by parties may help to realize that goal.

One thing is certain after the NRSC v. FEC decision: Political party spending is now unleashed. Parties will likely play a bigger role in future elections than they have in some time. Whether that is good for American democracy remains to be seen.

John J.

Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/political-parties-can-now-spend-unlimited-money-supporting-candidates-after-supreme-court-overturns-decades-of-precedent/

Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock Yoga can be seen as an accessible way to exercise and improve wellbeing. You don’t always need a gym membership, specialist machinery or other people to do it. But in practice, yoga in the UK is easier for some people to access than others.

It is increasingly being linked to NHS social prescribing, where people may be connected with health-promoting, non-clinical activities delivered by community and voluntary services. Yet what is available, accessible or affordable can differ from place to place.

My research suggests that some of the people who could benefit most from yoga face barriers to taking part. Available evidence suggests that yoga participation in the UK is strongly skewed towards a narrow demographic.

Respondents to a 2020 survey of UK yoga students and teachers were 91% white, 71% university educated and 87% female. These figures sit uneasily beside yoga’s reputation as open to all. Many of the people least represented in yoga also experience poorer health outcomes and face health inequalities: avoidable and unfair differences in health between different groups of people.

If yoga is being used as part of public health and wellbeing services, we need to ask who can realistically afford it, reach it and feel welcome once they arrive. Mind and body Yoga is a mind-body activity with roots in ancient south Asia.

It can include breathing exercises (pranayama), philosophy, mindfulness, meditation and movement.

Research suggests that it may help some people manage aspects of physical and mental health, including chronic lower-back pain, stress, symptoms of anxiety or depression, and quality of life and fatigue among some cancer survivors.

The strength of the evidence is variable and covers a wide range of conditions, but yoga is widely understood to support health. I am a researcher and yoga teacher with a focus on inclusion and marginalised groups.

I teach yoga in northern city neighbourhoods with high levels of deprivation. These subsidised classes are more diverse than many other yoga spaces, and I wanted to find out why yoga is so often lacking in diversity.

In my forthcoming book, The Diversity Gap in UK Yoga: Outsider Perspectives, I examined the yoga access experiences of people from a range of backgrounds under-represented in yoga, including those on low incomes, disabled people, people with a high body-mass index and minority ethnic groups.

When analysing the interviews, I looked not only at the barriers people described directly, but also at underlying issues of power and inequality that shaped how bodies, backgrounds and needs were viewed in yoga spaces.

This helped me identify cultural barriers that might otherwise be overlooked. Identifying barriers Some of the barriers I found were practical.

Classes could be difficult to attend because of where and when they were held, how easy they were to reach, how much they cost and whether people were expected to buy particular clothing or equipment.

Other barriers were linked to how people imagined yoga before they tried it. Some worried that yoga would be too physically demanding, or not active enough. Some thought it might be “uncool”. Others felt that yoga was only for people who were slim, flexible, athletic or already confident in exercise spaces.

Some were also put off by elements that felt unfamiliar or alien, such as chanting, especially when these were not clearly explained. Other barriers were cultural: they related to yoga spaces and the assumptions within them.

Some participants felt excluded by the tendency for people within yoga to overlook access barriers, or to assume they could be overcome through luck, confidence, persistence or the right attitude, rather than recognising that the barriers themselves needed addressing.

Representation also affected whether people felt they belonged. Not seeing anyone like themselves could be alienating for some people. For some people from south Asian national or faith backgrounds, it was also alienating when yoga’s south Asian origins were ignored, simplified or used in ways they felt were inappropriate.

A strong belief that yoga is inherently welcoming could also make it harder to raise concerns. If criticism is discouraged, access problems are less likely to be acknowledged or addressed. My research helps explain why yoga in the UK is often so white and middle class, and why this has consequences when yoga is used to support health and wellbeing.

It found that people with marginalised identities experienced practical, perceptual and cultural barriers when they tried to get involved in yoga. Many of these groups already face poorer health outcomes and greater barriers to care.

These findings offer yoga teachers, studios and community providers an opportunity to examine their practices and make yoga more accessible to people who have too often been excluded.

Sally S.J. Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/30/nhs-patients-are-being-socially-prescribed-yoga-but-is-yoga-ready-to-help-them/