Former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima after being captured by the US military. In the early hours of January 3, 2026, Caracas residents awoke  to explosions, low‑flying aircraft, and the realization that the United States was attacking their capital. By sunrise, then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was on a US aircraft, bound for a jail cell in New York. What Washington calls a surgical extraction mission is, for Latin America, a reminder th

The Trump Administration’s renewed focus on financial isolationism is strangling some of the world’s most important international aid offices. Emerging as a global superpower in the post-war era, the United States has long sought to secure its influence in international affairs. Working directly to secure the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City and a permanent seat on the Security Council, the American government has largely treated the UN as a means of extendin

New York State Senator James Skoufis speaks with Kyra’s mother, Jacqueline Franchetti. Skoufis is sponsoring Kyra's Law in the Senate. Francesca Wehner '29, Analyst in the Center for Education Policy, and Kiran Chaudhry-Bishop '29, Assistant Director of the Center for Education Policy, co-wrote this op-ed. Autumn Coleman was  a three-year-old girl growing up in Queens, New York, with curly braids, a sharp sense of humor, and dreams of being a “princess-doctor.” In March 2019,

New York State Senator James Skoufis speaks with Kyra’s mother, Jacqueline Franchetti. Skoufis is sponsoring Kyra's Law in the Senate. Francesca Wehner '29, Analyst in the Center for Education Policy, and Kiran Chaudhry-Bishop '29, Assistant Director of the Center for Education Policy, co-wrote this op-ed. Autumn Coleman was  a three-year-old girl growing up in Queens, New York, with curly braids, a sharp sense of humor, and dreams of being a "princess-doctor." In March 2019,

The sun sets on Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland and home to 1.2 million people. The city, largely rebuilt after being destroyed by the Barre regime, has made considerable progress but faces serious challenges due to limited access to foreign capital. Somaliland is a relative beacon of stability and state-building in a region where violence and poverty have become the norm, despite decades of foreign aid and intervention. The success of Somaliland stems  from its rejection

Burundi peacekeepers prepare for next rotation to Somalia. For decades, international policy toward Somalia has been framed around the single objective to defeat  Al‑Shabaab, an al-Qaeda aligned terrorist group that emerged from Somalia’s civil war and has fought the Somali government and international peacekeeping forces since the mid-2000s. From mass casualty bombings to attacks  on aid workers, the group’s violence poses a profound threat  to Somali civilians and instituti

Traffic moves through the Bowery in Lower Manhattan, within the zone covered by New York City’s Central Business District congestion pricing program. When New York City’s first-ever urban congestion pricing program—the Central Business District Tolling Program— received  final federal approval in June 2023, it ignited  fierce political hostility. Yet the program now delivers many of the benefits its designers promised, shifting the debate from whether congestion pricing works

Residents flood the iconic La Rambla to protest overtourism and its effect on their home city of Barcelona, Spain. On July 6, 2024, an unexpected splash of water punctured  the postcard image of a sunny day in Barcelona. Around 2,800 anti-tourism protesters filled the city’s streets, hoisting  “Tourists Go Home” banners and aiming  plastic water guns at visitors dining along the crowded boulevard of Las Ramblas. What appeared at first to be a theatrical stunt quickly drew  in

To work together effectively to address climate change, we ought to change the way we discuss it. Almost every week, a new infographic circulates on Instagram Stories, often featuring bold text and a somber image, highlighting the worst impacts of climate change. Infographics and other communication efforts like these seem to be widespread on social media, news outlets, and in group chats. Although well-intentioned, this negative, emotion-based communication may be counterpro

A clinician gently holds a patient's hand, representing hospice's focus on dignity and comfort at the end of life. When we hear the word “hospice,” some may intuitively visualize death, grieving, finality, and the act of providing comfort in anticipation of loss. By definition, hospice serves as a specific type of palliative care provided to individuals with terminal illnesses, focusing on dignity and quality of life. To fully understand how hospice has continued to evolve to

Young  students in a classroom excitedly learn to read—a positive sign in early childhood development. In the US today, 44% of public school students are  behind a grade level in at least one subject. In 1996, about 9% of students in grades one through twelve attended  summer school. By 2024, that number had jumped  up to 13%. Here in the Ithaca City School District, the New York State Education Department flagged nearly half of the schools for failing  to meet state standard

A photo of the Constitution of the United States of America. At the University of Dayton, Justice Antonin Scalia remarked  that “the paramount truth of democracy is process.” The judiciary comprises an essential part of this process. However, non-originalist methods are fundamentally tainted by personal preferences, failing to uphold an objective process. Living constitutionalism posits  that the meaning of the Constitution evolves based on social norms. How does an unelected

A high-speed train in Taiwan that is similar to the fleet of vehicles planned for California’s high-speed rail. For years, progressives and environmentalists have understandably promoted California’s massive $40 billion high-speed rail proposal as the most transformative transportation development in America and a long-overdue project that will help to reduce the disparity between the United States and other developed countries in terms of miles of high-speed track. While Cal

Confirmation following ticket purchase for the Noah Kahan: The Great Divide Tour. It is no secret that concert tickets have become increasingly hard to secure. While traveling over February break, I listened to Noah Kahan in the airport after trying, and failing, to get tickets to see him live at Citifield in July. With the busy Presidents Day weekend travel trends, I wondered why my seat on the plane was any different from those seats in the stands.  Airlines don’t allow fly

A wind energy farm in Haiyan, Jiaxing, China. As nationalist sentiment and political tensions continue to permeate across the planet, multinational cooperation in the fight against climate change has clearly become  less of a priority for most major powers. The 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risks Report ranked  “geoeconomic confrontation” as the number one short-term threat, trumping “extreme weather events” and “pollution,” which fell from second to fourth and sixth

Data center infrastructure in the United States. In Lansing, New York, a town of roughly 12,000 just north of Ithaca, New York, hundreds of residents packed  into a middle school auditorium last fall. They were there to confront representatives of a company most of them had never even heard of. TeraWulf, a digital infrastructure company, had signed an 80-year contract on 183 acres at the old Cayuga coal plant site to build  a data center—a facility housing the servers that po

In February 2019, Oswego Community Hospital, a 12-bed Critical Access Hospital in southeast Kansas, pictured above, abruptly closed. The organization cited financial instability arising from low reimbursement rates and high volumes of uninsured patients as factors contributing to its closure. This closure exposed how fragile rural health infrastructure has become. When a rural hospital closes , headlines tend to focus on abandoned emergency rooms and extended ambulance routes

Two federal law enforcement officers during a field operation in New York and Texas. TikTok has inundated users with videos of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents ripping people out of their homes before promptly putting a phone to their faces, seemingly to capture their facial profiles and input information into a system. ICE recorded  Alex Feinberg after he took a video of ICE agents at a Portland, Oregon, gas station. This occurrence with ICE is

The starry night sky with a view of our Milky Way. Have you ever gazed at the night sky and marveled at the Milky Way stretching across the darkness? For most of the world today, that simple pleasure is disappearing. Over 80% of people can’t see  a clear night sky, and one-third can’t spot the Milky Way due to light pollution. The culprit works beyond city lights: satellites and other space instruments streak across the skies, reflecting sunlight back to Earth. Without strong

What once was a familiar sign of opportunity is now just another piece of marketing. Generation Z is entering  one of the most difficult entry-level job markets in modern American history. The unemployment rate for recent graduates is  approximately 5.6%, and the widening inequality gap between upper- and lower-class Americans is worsening  living conditions for new-grad hires. Research from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research shows  that students who graduate