The UK announced it would hold a referendum on its membership of the EU in 2013, when the country’s economy was doing well and had recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. Still, in 2016, the country voted to leave. The world was shocked. I was working within the UK government at this time, which showed me how unprepared officials were to handle this outcome.

However, over the next few years, the UK got to work and negotiated its exit for February 2020. Even after the formal exit from the EU, the country remained in the single market until the end of 2020. The reality of implementing these changes for businesses required more time to lessen the economic fallout.

Post-Brexit is a different story. The country is dealing with a shallow recession, high inflation and a modest economic growth of 0.3 percent this year, according to the OECD. While the pandemic and the war in Ukraine compounded Brexit’s negative economic shock, it’s not the only reason public opinion is shifting.

Leading Brexiter Boris Johnson was ousted from British politics last year, mainly due to his personal misconduct. But this was still a signal of the changing tides for Conservatives. Why? Simple demographic math. Tragically, among those most vulnerable to COVID-19 were the elderly. By the time another referendum could be called, many more will not be around to vote again. Younger Brits are more likely to support the EU. This, combined with constant political changes (like Liz Truss lasting only 44 days as prime minister) has increased the number of voters who doubt the government’s ability to take back control.

Many Brexiters’ support is wavering, but is a second referendum likely? The short answer is no. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have provided the perfect scapegoat for the country’s current economic woes. Faithful Brexiters can use this excuse to point out how well the country is faring compared to some of its European colleagues. With Germany experiencing a recession and unrest in France, why should the UK rejoin the struggling EU?

And my friends in Westminster tell me another referendum is not being discussed. At least, not seriously. Labour can’t be seen to rock boats, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is a true Brexit believer.

What really matters is what will happen in the next decade. Will new free trade agreements alleviate the current economic concerns? How well will the Windsor Framework, adopted in March, solve the border issue between Northern Ireland and the EU? The Framework isn’t much more than an economic cushion, designed to improve the flow of goods between the UK and Northern Ireland. But it won’t be fully implemented until 2025. Suffice to say, the long divorce continues.

Could the UK even rejoin the EU if it wanted to? Let’s imagine that down the road another EU referendum did occur and the British public voted to rejoin. Much like the fateful Brexit vote, it’s not a simple yes or no. Some EU member states may reject the UK — after all, there’s precedent from the French, who voted against the UK’s application for membership in the European Economic Community in 1963 and 1967. In addition, member states could require new members to join the eurozone, which may be anathema for Brits who have always preferred their pound sterling. There is also no precedent for a country that has left the EU to rejoin, which means new processes must be established and new rules negotiated. All this will take time. Ultimately, Britain rejoining the EU depends on much more than just London.

A lot could change between now and a possible future referendum, which may cause the UK to recalculate its desire to be a part of the EU. Another war might convince wavering Brits to rejoin. Or climate-related chaos might devastate economies and convince them to stay out. One day Brexit may well be reversed. But that is a long way away, if at all.

What we do know is that Brits are stuck with Brexit … for now.

Katelyn Greer is the former Chief Communication Officer on Brexit, Trade and the Economy for the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. She is now the principal of Greer Group LLC.

Unfortunately, Washington’s current defense strategy fails to account for the growing linkages between Iran and China.

To address this, the Biden administration should release a supplemental strategy to the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) that specifically acknowledges greater cooperation between Beijing and Tehran. Updating this policy would better enable U.S. government departments and agencies to address shifting national security challenges.  

As it stands, the National Defense Strategy is too narrow in its characterization of China, isolating the “pacing challenge” it poses (that is, its threat of China overtaking the U.S.) in a separate box from Iran’s designation as a “persistent threat.” The NDS echoes the National Security Strategy, painting China as the only other nation with “both the intent to reshape the international order, and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so.”

Meanwhile, Iran is described in the context of its regionally destabilizing proxy warfare and terrorism, as well as its pursuit of nuclear weapons. But the missing piece is how the two continue to collaborate, and the effect this has on integrated deterrence calculations.

Separating the “pacing challenge” from its linkages to Iran not only ignores how these two nations' bilateral cooperation threatens U.S. economic and global security interests, but also sets a meager precedent for how Washington’s national defense apparatus approaches colluding adversaries. 

Several years of Sino-Iranian economic cooperation, as well as the Chinese-brokered detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, exemplify the need for Washington’s attention. For the last ten years, China has been Iran’s largest trading partner. Advancements such as the 25-year comprehensive cooperation agreement and Iran’s recent membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization reflect Tehran’s strategy of looking East for survival under international isolation and pressure.

Beijing has also taken advantage of years of hard-hitting sanctions on Iran, becoming Tehran’s biggest oil consumer in exchange for technological development, intelligence resources, and modernized military hardware that is used to both quell domestic grievances and contribute to cross-border violence.  

The Saudi-Iran detente brokered by China in April further showcases an expanding relationship that drags the “pacing challenge” into the Middle East. While the breakthrough does not automatically equate to China replacing U.S. presence or influence in the region, China’s involvement embodies a short-term pragmatic approach based on opportunism.

In turn, otherwise-isolated Tehran welcomes these avenues for cross-border connection to assert its dominance in the region. A supplemental National Defense Strategy should consider Beijing’s behavior in the Middle East, particularly, its willingness to help restore diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Tehran, which remained frozen for more than seven years.   

The NDS’s shortcomings in directly addressing strategic alliances between America’ adversaries and competitors is also visible in the growing Russia-Iran relationship. Since August of 2022, Iran has provided Russia with hundreds of Shahed-136 suicide drones, unmanned aerial vehicles which Putin has deployed against civilians and infrastructure in his war against Ukraine. In exchange, Russia has offered Iran defense cooperation on missiles and air defense, even going so far as to train Iranian pilots to fly the Sukhoi Su-35, an advanced Russian fighter jet. In February, Putin and Raisi signed a deal to create a drone factory in Russia, and Iranian officials have already toured the country to scope prospective sites.

Moscow and Tehran’s military relationship has even expanded past the bilateral threshold, at times including China as a manufacturer. Just last month, the Treasury Department caught up to these developments, sanctioning Chinese companies that supplied Iran with the components used in drones sold to Russia that directly contributed to Ukrainian casualties.

In addition, China and Russia have covertly discussed providing Iran with a key chemical compound used to power ballistic missiles. Bilaterally and collectively, these collaborative efforts complicate U.S. security interests and demand a National Defense Strategy that keeps up.

Section IV of the NDS prescribes “integrated deterrence” as the method for countering China’s “holistic strategies.” But what the NDS presents as the “holistic” correction to its past shortcomings (e.g., lack of clarity, differing priorities, attempting to deter foreign behavior) fails to include comprehensively examining collaboration among top adversaries.

How can “integrated deterrence” be presented as “holistic” if it fails to truly integrate the reality of countries like Iran teaming up with China to get ahead? To achieve solutions, the NDS needs to look at the whole picture, and that includes addressing Iran’s linkages with China in its calculations.

When it comes to the current “pacing challenge” emanating from Beijing, recent strategic moves in the Middle East suggest the U.S. is already being outpaced. If Washington’s NDS directs Washington to work with partners and allies to deter China, it must also recognize the other parts of that equation. It’s time for the Biden administration to put forth a follow-up strategy for the NDS that specifically addresses growing ties between China and Iran.

This updated strategy should specifically address the growing military relationship between the two countries, specifically Iran’s drone proliferation and China’s financial support of such endeavors.

In addition to OFAC’s recent sanctions against Chinese-based companies that supplied Iran with drone components, an additional strategy for the NDS can specifically address countering Iran’s drone capabilities, accounting for how the regime is malignly using it for its partnerships with both China and Russia.

In addition, this new strategy can address Iran and China’s growing economic relationship and what it could mean for U.S. competition with Beijing. The supplemental strategy should be the first step in driving substantial defense policy that realistically unpacks the ramifications of a growing China-Iran relationship.

Iran and China’s growing relationship is no longer a “what-if,” but a “what-do-we-do-now.” U.S. strategy for Iran cannot be kept in an isolated box, focused exclusively on limiting its nuclear threat capabilities. If the main U.S. priority is to keep up with the current “pacing challenge” of China, then the conversation needs to include Iran.

Arona Baigal and Kiana Alirezaie are researchers on the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.  

The near downfall of the 107-year-old PGA at the hands of a foreign government is but one example of America’s waning cultural influence. Even with their deep pockets, it is hard to imagine the Saudis making this attempt a decade or even just five years ago.

There are other signs U.S. cultural influence is ebbing. Hollywood studios, Disney theme parks and the NBA have all come under fire for making concessions to Chinese censorship. Young Americans are just as likely to encounter content from Chinese-owned TikTok as from a U.S. movie or TV show. And Korean pop music, or K-pop, now has a good claim to being the most popular music in the world.

As the world realigns in the post-Cold War era, our cultural influence is a key factor that will help to determine whether we can build a new international system aligned with American interests. We need to use every resource we can to give our soft power a boost, including state support — something for which there is plenty of precedent in diplomatic history and U.S. policy.

On the defensive after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the great diplomat Talleyrand used French cuisine to entice Prussia, Russia and England to the table — quite literally. Begging for support from Paris to his embassy at the Vienna peace conference, Talleyrand is said to have quipped, “Sire, I need saucepans more than written instructions!” Talleyrand got his saucepans, and the result was a treaty that stabilized Europe for a century.

At the Cold War’s start, it was Eisenhower himself who added “American” to the name of the Ballet Theatre in New York, creating the ABT, which still tours the world. At the same time, MoMA began to mount touring exhibits of Abstract Expressionist painting to showcase American creativity, which Kennedy later formalized as the Art in Embassies program. Now, the Art in Embassies collection has work by 20,000 artists.

Up to now, the U.S. has largely kept pace with our rivals. Yet in the Belt and Road project that extends through Africa and Southeast Asia, the Chinese government is promoting the arts and academic exchanges alongside infrastructure. The global Russian propaganda machine is relentless, as are their systematic attempts to destroy Ukrainian culture. That the majority of countries in the Global South do not agree with the U.S. policy in Ukraine suggests that something about the Russian influence strategy is working.

Right now, our cultural diplomacy is anchored in the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which does outstanding and essential work with only about $770 million of funding. By contrast, as of 2017, it is estimated that the Chinese government spent $10 billion.

We need more financing and to expand our horizons. One way forward is to capitalize on our existing strengths, like education. The State Department in the past has estimated that 300 current and former heads of state were educated in America. Education is a service export, creating jobs here at home and influencing the next generation of leaders around the world. Yet the recruitment of foreign university students is not guided by any long-term strategy.

There is also a rich opportunity in public-private partnerships. Why not incentivize a world-famous museum like MoMA, which already partners with private companies and international artists, to open branches in other nations, as the Louvre has done in Abu Dhabi? The same could be said for The Getty, the Smithsonian and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, all among the top 10 most-visited museums in the world.

Some branches of the Smithsonian — in particular the National Museum of the Native American and the National Museum of African American History and Culture — could be a great way to showcase the breadth and richness of American culture, a unique strength of ours.

It has been a long time since Talleyrand’s saucepans. Cultural diplomacy now has many digital tools available to it. To make use of them, we can launch hybrid or virtual artists exchanges, or recruit foreign students to U.S. online educational programs. American performing arts companies and museums still struggling to rebuild post-COVID could become “digital touring companies,” mounting live-streamed performances geared toward specific foreign audiences.

With the explosion of AI-enabled internet, online gaming, new social media platforms, and augmented reality in the near future, there are unlimited options for what a digital cultural diplomacy policy could look like. The challenge is to expand our efforts to experiment early, to be ready for whatever medium scales next.

All of these new efforts rest on an old truth: that alliances are not built only on shared economic and military interest. There are always flesh-and-blood human beings on the other side of the negotiating table. It is only by consistently displaying the best of America that we can keep them there.

Fred P. Hochberg served as chairman of the United States Export-Import Bank under President Obama from 2009 to 2017. He is the author of “Trade is Not a Four-Letter Word: How Six Everyday Products Make the Case for Trade.” He is currently chair of Meridian International Center, a D.C.-based nonprofit.

In a 6-3 decision, the court held that Harvard University’s and the University of North Carolina’s admissions processes violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion explains that the Constitution does not allow admissions policies that single out a particular race for either an advantage or a disadvantage.

The decision has prompted much hand-wringing by progressives still interested in judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. But progressives should also understand that the court’s Students for Fair Admissions cases effectively sound the death knell for the raced-based reparations movement.

The Fourteenth Amendment declares that no state shall “deny to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.” Early Supreme Court decisions understood that this meant that “the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States.”

In 1896, the court’s odious decision in Plessy v. Ferguson deviated from that early understanding, upholding the notorious policy of “separate but equal” discrimination. But in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education restored the court’s colorblind view. The Supreme Court has consistently held since then that any government policy involving the use of race must be held to the exacting standard known as “strict scrutiny.” Even in Regents of Univ. of California v. Bakke, the first case to allow “affirmative action,” Justice Powell explained that “[r]acial and ethnic distinctions of any sort are inherently suspect,” and that “antipathy toward them was deeply “rooted in our Nation’s constitutional and demographic history.”

The Students for Fair Admissions decisions reaffirmed the legal principle that law and government policies must be colorblind. All government programs will now be assessed by what Roberts calls “the Equal Protection Clause’s twin commands: that race may never be used as a ‘negative’ and that it may not operate as a stereotype.”

Government payments made based on someone’s race — also known as reparations — fail this same common-sense test. Reparations advocates publicly call for governments at the local, state and even federal level to make payments with taxpayer dollars only to Black or African American individuals who descended from slaves. Those of all other races would be ineligible.

That means that a government-funded reparations policy would use race to the detriment of some and the benefit of others. Whether that policy proposes paying $1.2 million per recipient such as the plan California has been considering, or the $25,000 per Black resident that Evanston, Illinois agreed to pay last month, it is a clear violation of Roberts’s rules and the principle of ensuring colorblind laws and government programs.

Government may not provide subsidies or bonuses to whites because they are white. By the same token, it cannot deny them subsidies because they are white.

Reparations programs would do exactly that. If put to the test judicially, they should meet the same ill judicial fate as race-based college admissions policies. After all, as Roberts observed, the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause is “universal in [its] application,” and “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

Reparations proponents should take Roberts at his word.

Horace Cooper, the chairman of Project 21, is the author of Put Y’all Back in Chains: How Joe Biden's Policies Hurt Black Americans.

These efforts are misguided. Congress should instead support market-based pricing of licensing fees. 

Devices such as smartphones have to comply with numerous standards. In the case of 5G, for example, there are an estimated 100,000 “essential” patents. These are known as standard essential patents. Because device-makers can’t make 5G phones without using these patents, standard essential patents are licensed on the basis of what’s called “fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory” (FRAND) royalty fees. Determining these FRAND rates is the main source of conflict in the China-EU-U.S. tech fight. 

Starting in 2020, China systematized a provocative approach to standard essential patents. While China’s courts handled infringement cases, they stopped patent holders from simultaneously enforcing their rights in foreign courts, issuing anti-suit injunctions. China also backs up its anti-suit injunctions by fining patent holders $156,845 per day if they fail to comply. Chinese courts tend to rule for below-market FRAND rates, so anti-suit injunctions have the effect of making undervalued standard essential patents a global focal point for foreign courts to follow. 

The EU wasn't having it and filed a dispute against China at the World Trade Organization. Brussels says the anti-suit injunctions constitute a “policy” that violates provisions of the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, notably by keeping patent holders from enforcing their rights in a non-Chinese court. 

In opening arguments before the WTO, the EU explained that patent holders have the right to conclude licensing contracts on FRAND terms, free of “measures that restrict, or seek to restrict, the exercise of that right.” This argument is spot on but tinged with irony, since the EU is actually doing even more than China to impair these rights. 

Indeed, in parallel with its WTO case against China, the EU is implementing a standard essential patents regime that’s shockingly political. The plan, set out in a new regulation, is for the EU Intellectual Property Office to regulate most aspects of standard essential patents. Despite lacking expertise in patents, the EUIPO will issue non-binding valuations of FRAND rates, and determine the “essentiality” of each standard essential patent. It will also maintain a registry, the key being that only registered standard essential patents will be enforceable in Europe. 

Why is the EU doing this? Brussels insists that this new regime will help small and medium-sized enterprises more easily navigate the complexities of FRAND rates and avoid becoming entangled in costly litigation. This is nonsense. Of the six device-makers — Huawei and three other Chinese companies, plus Apple and Samsung — none are small-to-medium enterprises, and all are quite experienced at negotiating licenses.  

The EU’s real motivation is the same as China’s: to lower FRAND rates for end-users. The European Commission’s own impact study, for example, touts the benefits of a lower FRAND for auto manufacturers and internet-of-things producers, who have the political upper hand on innovators. 

Not to be left on the sidelines, Congress has mulled over a bill, titled the Standard Essential Royalties Act, that shares several things in common with Europe’s regime. It proposes a new federal court to decide FRAND rates where there are inconsistencies across domestic rulings, or where foreign courts hand down verdicts that disadvantage American patent holders. The bill is clearly written with China’s and Europe’s standard essential patents regimes in mind. 

Would the act help or hurt? Its emphasis on reasserting U.S. sovereignty taps the anti-China mood of Congress. But in truth, it plays into China’s (and the EU’s) hands, the message being that more bureaucracy is the answer to a problem that doesn’t exist. 

Neither China nor the EU offers a shred of evidence that FRAND rates are somehow above market. China’s anti-suit injunctions play well for Huawei and the country’s other three device makers. As for the EU, the European Commission’s own impact study never once shows that FRAND rates are amiss. Similarly, a group of former U.S. government officials did an assessment of the EU’s standard essential patents regime, and couldn’t put their finger on the problem that Brussels thinks it’s solving. Unless the Standard Essential Royalties Act’s proponents can fill in the blanks, Congress shouldn’t create a new court that only affirms China’s and the EU’s efforts to promote non-market licensing of standard essential patents. 

This isn’t to say that Washington should do nothing. The U.S. has reserved third-party rights in the EU’s WTO case against China, and will hopefully voice support for innovation. If the WTO rules for the EU, Beijing will have to change its standard essential patents regime going forward or find itself the target of anti-anti-suit injunctions issued by courts around the world. 

The U.S. could also file a WTO case against the EU. This would likely be a win, as the EU’s new regulation clearly restricts the enforcement of standard essential patents in Europe. Even if Brussels chose not to comply, it would face a domestic political backlash, since there’s already confusion about which directorate-general is calling the shots and strong European opposition to this new standard essential patents regime. 

More fundamentally, the U.S. needs to insist on market-based pricing of standard essential patents to incentivize innovation. Anything else would be a gift to Huawei and a substantial setback for the future of 6G.  

Marc L. Busch is the Karl F. Landegger Professor of International Business Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition. Follow him on Twitter @marclbusch. 

While the Fed has done a good job bringing down inflation in the past year, it should be cognizant of its blind spots and the flawed process it has been utilizing to make decisions.

The Fed and its chairman, Jerome Powell, have been unable to recognize a heating or cooling economy in a timely fashion to take orderly action to minimize the negative effects.

In 2019, Powell began to tighten the Fed rate prematurely, recognized his mistake and reversed course. 

In spring 2020, facing a pandemic-induced economic collapse, he pumped trillions of dollars into the economy for far too long, held the fund rate close to zero and induced high inflation.

In March 2022, he finally began tightening and has been moving rates higher and faster ever since. So far, he has raised rates 10 times, brought the fund rate to 5 percent-5.25 percent and plans to raise rates by .25 points in the upcoming July and September meetings. 

As a result, the Consumer Price Index went down from 9.1 percent to 3 percent in the year through June. And the latest Producer Price Index for all goods minus food and energy — an indicator of future core inflation that the Fed watches — decreased 0.2 percent in the year through June, and according to the University of Michigan's ongoing survey, consumer sentiment soared to 72.6 in July— higher by 13 percent from June.

These data indicate a steep downward CPI trend that would continue to lower inflation for several more months toward the Fed’s 2.0 percent rate, and therefore not require additional hikes. But the fact that the Fed intends to raise rates twice more suggests an unsound decision-making process. As I have reported elsewhere, for the past 18 years the seven U.S. Federal Reserve Board governors who make up the stable core of the rate-setting committee have voted in lockstep. During that period, spanning approximately a collective 144 decisions and 1,008 individual votes, not one governor dissented. As a result, these decisions could have been made by one person, and in the future, they can be made using AI.

Looking at this issue from a cost-benefit perspective leads to a similar conclusion.

The negatives of raising rates further include a greater chance of a hard landing, that is, a sudden and quickly-evolving recession, a higher rate of unemployment, which tends to affect minorities and people of color more harshly than the rest of the population and thus increase social disparities, and a need to start lowering rates quickly after landing.

On the other hand, refraining from further rate increases would result in a better chance for a soft landing, which will assure both consumers and producers a more stable and predictable economy. There will be fewer unemployed, which will contribute to social cohesion, and a less urgent need to lower rates.   

All of these obviate the need for further rate increases in the near future. It is time for Fed members to rest on their laurels for a while, watch their past rate hikes continue to percolate in the economy and drive inflation down with little or no side effects.

Will the Fed listen? Not likely. Except for the pause in June, the Fed has been raising rates for more than a year — several times by .75 percent. It’s a path to which it is committed and in which it feels comfortable. And it makes decisions by a consensus that has not been enhanced for many years.  

It behooves the Fed to pause now and critically examine and modify the way it makes decisions before Congress forces such changes, which could be far more overreaching.  

Avraham Shama is the former dean of the College of Business at the University of Texas, The Pan-American. He is a professor emeritus at the Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico. His new book, “Cyberwars: David Knight Goes to Moscow,” was recently published by 3rd Coast Books.

The future lawyer endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and denounced Israel for “murdering” the old and the young, “encourag[ing] lynch mobs” against Palestinians and “imprisoning” children.  

Condemnations came fast and furious, while powerful campus union officials stayed silent. 

New York lawmakers called on the state’s governor to cut the school’s funding. Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz labeled CUNY Law an “embarrassment.” Jewish activists petitioned the IRS to investigate the university for potentially violating its tax-exempt status. And CUNY Law alumni decried their alma mater as “toxic.” 

This groundswell of fury prompted CUNY’s Board of Trustees to issue a statement calling the remarks “hate speech.”  

That’s when CUNY’s faculty union finally chimed in — not to criticize Mohammed, but to defend her.  

The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), a public-sector union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, represents 30,000 university faculty and staff, many of whom are Jewish. Yet PSC officials called on CUNY’s Board to retract its statement, claiming that the Board’s condemnation “betrays” the university’s commitment to “the full and free exchange of ideas.” 

Mohammed soon doubled down on her comments, telling Jewish Currents, “I would not change a single word of my speech — and I would say it louder.” 

To many CUNY professors, the union’s willingness to defend what so many others recognize as an antisemitic rant came as no surprise. They had already witnessed the union fostering an environment hostile to Jews, while ostracizing those who disagree — even its own members.

For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cited CUNY in 2021 for failing to protect a Jewish professor after the PSC discriminated against him and subjected him to a hostile work environment on the basis of his Jewish faith. 

That same year, the PSC encouraged support for the BDS movement, calling Israel an apartheid state. In a resolution later echoed in Mohammed’s commencement speech, the union bemoaned “the continued subjection of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation, and use of lethal force by Israel.” 

And last year, when a New York City councilwoman confronted PSC president James Davis about the union’s antipathy towards Jews, Davis denied having publicly supported the BDS movement. Yet a campus organization fighting antisemitism has him on video admitting to just that. 

Unions present themselves as a means for employees to combat discrimination and harassment. But what recourse do employees have when their own union encourages this abuse? 

Hundreds of dues-paying CUNY professors dropped their PSC memberships in protest following the union’s pro-BDS resolution. Unfortunately, they are all still being represented by the union they want no part of, and the law is currently on the union’s side. 

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision five years ago, these non-member professors can’t be forced to pay the union for its unwanted representation. Janus prohibited mandatory union payments in the public sector on First Amendment grounds. However, it did not fully free nonmembers from union control. 

New York, like many other states, gives public-sector unions the right to represent all employees in a bargaining unit, whether or not those employees are union members. This practice, called “exclusive representation,” means that public employees cannot choose different union representation or negotiate with their employer for themselves. 

For six CUNY professors, five of whom are Jewish, it is unacceptable to be represented in employment matters by a union that emboldens and defends an unrepentant antisemitic speaker such as Mohammed. They do not wish to have their salary and working conditions negotiated by such an organization.  

Facing this reality, these professors banded together to battle, through the courts, what they view as an oppressive union monopoly. Their federal lawsuit before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, filed by attorneys at the Fairness Center and National Right to Work Foundation, challenges exclusive representation as a violation of their First Amendment right of free association.  

Unless the courts intervene, PSC officials will remain free to alienate Jews, knowing their only escape from the union is to quit their jobs. Not only that, but public employees across the country who object to their unions’ divisive actions or political stances would similarly remain trapped in unwanted representation. 

Nathan McGrath is president and general counsel for the Fairness Center, a nonprofit law firm representing those hurt by public-sector union officials. 

Still, leaders of both countries have shared a gnawing resentment of their treatment by the West. Turkey was deemed a candidate member of the EU in 1999 and then watched 10 former communist countries join as its own application languished. Russia was not even in the queue, but virtually all of its neighbors have been wooed by both the EU and NATO. Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar deemed this shared partnership the “Axis of the Excluded” in 2006.

At various times this relationship produced substantial gains. When Russian forces invaded Georgia in 2008 and resected parts of that country into two statelets, Turkish authorities blocked the U.S. Navy from sending ships through the Turkish Straits, enforcing a right granted by the 1936 treaty of Montreux. From 2016 to 2022, Turkish-Russian trade grew fivefold to the point where Russia became Turkey’s largest trading partner. Russia supplied the new Turkstream pipeline with gas destined for Europe, helping Turkey become an “energy hub” and allowing Russian exports to bypass Ukraine. Russian tourists flocked to resorts in Antalya and Izmir; more than five million did so in 2021.

The Russian-Turkish relationship is backstopped by deeply personal ties between Recep Erdogan and Vladimir Putin. After the Turkish air force shot down a Russian jet in 2015 and Putin imposed economic sanctions, the Turkish president made a pilgrimage to Moscow to apologize, and economic ties resumed.

While Russian-Turkish relations blossomed, tensions grew with the United States. There have been many issues, including American support for Kurds fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but the low point came with the 2017 agreement by Turkey to buy and install Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles. The deal produced worries about NATO’s defense in a key global area and provoked sanctions by the U.S. The sale of newer F-16 aircraft was blocked, and Turkey was excluded from the new F-35 fighter program.         

As a centrally located “middle power” in a dangerous and changing neighborhood, Turkey must be nimble in its policies. The end of the Cold War decreased its strategic value as U.S. priorities shifted toward Asia. At the same time, the growing power of an expanding European Union attracted Ankara. At first this had Erdogan’s blessing, but steady movement away from democratic rule set the country back and the EU membership process stalled. After a crackdown following the 2016 coup attempt, negotiations were suspended along with those on revising a customs union that Turkey has long criticized as unequal. While the European Parliament has passed several resolutions criticizing Turkish practices on human rights and the erosion of democratic institutions, ties with Moscow come with no such judgments. They also act as a reminder to Washington and Brussels that Ankara has alternatives.

Among those is a rising China. Turkey’s size, strategic location and links to Europe make it attractive to Chinese investment and an active consumer of Chinese products. China is now the largest provider of imports to Turkey (and the leading source of its trade deficit). Investments have multiplied and include Kumport, Turkey’s third largest port. For a time, Erdogan was careful to mute criticism of China’s suppression of its Turkic-speaking Uighur population.

Turkey’s ability to balance all of these pressures has been tested by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ankara has not supported Western sanctions and, along with China, provides a crucial outlet for the export of Russian oil and gas. At the same time, Turkey blocked the Black Sea to Russian warships in 2022 and successfully brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative that, until recently, allowed export of Ukrainian grain and agricultural products. Less well advertised is Turkey’s provision of key war materiel to Ukraine, including drones. Earlier this month, Turkey allowed the repatriation of five commanders of Ukraine's Azov Battalion, leaders in the defense of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. They had been remanded to Turkey in a prisoner exchange with Russia but were allowed to return home, to Moscow's annoyance.

The war has contributed to a sharp challenge to the power and status of these two of Ankara’s friends. China’s slowed economic and population growth, unbalanced international accounts and crippling Covid lockdown have disrupted trade and investment. Bullying associated with China’s flagging Belt and Road Initiative and, most of all, its support for the Russian invasion, have produced the most negative international views of that country in years. Russia’s failures are obvious and include the murderous and disastrous war in Ukraine, a stagnant and sanctioned economy, huge intellectual and capital flight and, most recently, a rebellion of mercenaries that featured an almost unopposed march toward Moscow. A wounded and weakened Putin could sure use a stalwart friend. Today, that is not Recep Erdogan.

For more than a year, Ankara had been blocking Sweden’s NATO membership, pressing it to suppress the activities of what it sees as Kurdish terrorists. Then, just before the NATO summit in Vilnius, Turkish objections were abruptly dropped and Sweden’s membership virtually assured. At a stroke, NATO gained control of almost the entire Baltic littoral, greatly improving its strategic position and ability to defend the Baltic members and the European far north. Another of Putin’s nightmares just came to life.

In return for its acquiescence, Turkey will be allowed to buy the newer American F-16 jets. Sweden amended its constitution and change its laws and, as a bonus, agreed to support Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU. The value of such promises remains to be seen — the U.S. arms sales will still need congressional approval — and serious progress with the EU seems unlikely. Nevertheless, this agreement reflects the change in Turkey’s global calculus. Ever nimble and facing a changing global balance of power, Turkey did what’s best for Turkey.

These actions reflect the foreign policy sentiments of no less an authority than former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (and before him, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston) who said, “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

As in Washington, so in Ankara. Stalwart friends will just have to understand.

Ronald H. Linden is a retired professor of Political Science and Director of European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is co-author of “Turkey and its Neighbors” and “co-editor of Turkey in Transition.”

Because they are not subject to political micromanagement, medicare advantage plans can attract enrollees by cutting wasteful expenditures and using the savings to reduce out-of-pocket costs, waive premiums for prescription drug coverage and add coverage for dental care.

But Medicare’s traditional public option can still serve a valuable purpose by focusing on a new role: guaranteeing a safety net of access to essential services from a broad network of providers and quantifying the public subsidy that is needed to ensure this.

Under the traditional Medicare benefit, the federal government pays medical providers directly for each service they deliver to elderly and disabled beneficiaries, regardless of cost-effectiveness. Alternatively, beneficiaries can opt to receive benefits through Medicare Advantage, which pays private insurers a pre-fixed amount to purchase whatever medical services enrollees need during the year.

This has encouraged Medicare Advantage plans to provide additional preventive services to enhance the management of chronic conditions, avoid costly hospitalizations and improve clinical outcomes. It also enables them to reduce costs by establishing networks of preferred providers, ensuring that the most cost-effective therapies are employed and cutting out fraudulent reimbursement claims. As a result, Medicare Advantage plans bid to deliver the basic Medicare benefit at 14 percent less cost than the traditional federally managed benefit — generating savings worth around $2,000 per beneficiary, which they have been able to use to attract enrollees. 

Whereas the traditional Medicare benefit requires beneficiaries to pay 20 percent of Part B costs out-of-pocket (typically exceeding $20,000 for new cancer drugs), Medicare Advantage plans capped total out-of-pocket costs at an average of $4,972 in 2022. Whereas traditional Medicare enrollees must pay additional annual premiums averaging $478 for prescription drug coverage and between $564 and $617 for dental insurance, Medicare Advantage makes free drug coverage available to 99 percent of beneficiaries, while 94 percent receive dental benefits as part of their plans.

Some politicians have argued that Medicare Advantage’s larger benefits result from plans being “overpaid” relative to traditional Medicare, and estimates suggest that Medicare Advantage plans receive 5 percent more from taxpayers to cover beneficiaries with equivalent medical needs. But Medicare Advantage plans must also do more work to qualify for payments, with 2.4 percent of their revenues contingent on compliance with a host of process regulations.

Nonetheless, overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans are dwarfed by those resulting from traditional Medicare supplemental insurance plans, which beneficiaries can purchase to eliminate cost-sharing designed to control inappropriate utilization of Medicare services. One study estimated traditional Medicare supplemental plans increased the cost of Medicare by 22 percent; another found they drove up costs by 24 percent, with the spending increase concentrated among healthier beneficiaries. 

Whereas most Medicare Advantage enrollees pay no additional premium, supplemental Medigap plans typically charge an additional $2,000 per year. The additional cost to taxpayers resulting from traditional Medicare supplemental enrollment, therefore, goes largely to wealthier seniors. Unlike Medicare Advantage plans, traditional Medicare supplemental insurers can, in 46 states, refuse to cover individuals with preexisting conditions. 

A simple principle of parity in subsidy and regulatory burden across Medicare coverage options is clearly appropriate, and Medicare Advantage provides the appropriate framework for this. To the extent that richer beneficiaries wish to purchase supplemental coverage to reduce their out-of-pocket cost exposure while maintaining access to a broad network, they should pay the full additional associated cost through a Private Fee-For-Service plan. Firms purchasing supplemental coverage for retired workers should do similarly with an Employer Group Waiver Plan.

So, does Medicare’s traditional public option still serve a purpose? 

Some scholars have suggested making the highest quality Medicare Advantage plans the default source of coverage. But this would likely distort competition in Medicare Advantage, by making plans compete for the favor of bureaucrats rather than that of beneficiaries. It could also likely invite a regulatory blowback upon Medicare Advantage, as enrollees find they are in narrower networks than they expected. Furthermore, it would likely provide large windfalls to insurers assigned beneficiaries who (for unanticipated reasons) consume few or no Medicare services.   

The relative merits, benefits and costs of alternative Medicare plans should certainly be made clearer to beneficiaries signing up, but the traditional public option therefore remains appropriate as a default.

While it doesn’t make sense for the government to micromanage the procurement of medical care for most beneficiaries, traditional Medicare can still play a valuable role in determining the benchmark payment for the basic package of Medicare benefits which are to be funded by taxpayers. By setting prices at levels needed to maintain access to essential healthcare services, traditional Medicare can ensure that Medicare continues to guarantee a robust benefits package while checking whatever tendency Medicare Advantage plans may have to unduly narrow access to care.

In the long run, the role of defining and guaranteeing a core package of benefits is likely to become increasingly important. The federal government cannot afford to keep expanding the program to every new medical service that is developed, regardless of its additional cost or effectiveness. 

By maintaining the current benefits package and selectively adding high-value new services, a public option can ensure that Medicare’s benefit expands without absorbing all available federal revenue, even while Medicare Advantage can allow beneficiaries who wish to pay more for broader access to less-effective new services to do so. 

Chris Pope is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

A host of recent federal legislation is already paying dividends. The Inflation Reduction Act is the largest climate package in U.S. history, and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has provided a much-needed funding boost to modernize and upgrade infrastructure. From electric vehicles to battery plants to energy storage and solar panels, this legislation is leveraging tens of billions of dollars in private investment to manufacture and deploy new clean energy technology. As a result, we are seeing thousands of new jobs in red, blue and purple states alike, and across every region of the country. 

In the states, this adds up to a major opportunity to capitalize on new grant programs and historic federal tax credits for businesses and consumers shifting to clean energy. Leading governors and lawmakers recognize that, by passing their own ambitious policies that facilitate climate action, they can leverage all those federal dollars to unlock even more private investment in their states.

And this year, nobody has done a better job than Colorado.

The administration of Gov. Jared Polis and the state legislature explicitly set out to maximize the benefits for federal investments for Colorado’s businesses, residents, communities and overall economy. They’ve emerged from an impressive blitz of legislation and policymaking in a much better position to do so.

Deeply aware of the risk that climate change poses to some of its premiere industries, from skiing to brewing, Colorado in 2019 passed a strong climate law, pledging to reduce climate pollution by 90 percent by 2050. But because the Inflation Reduction Act, increasingly ambitious private sector action, and technological advances have all put a 100 percent reduction in play, this year Colorado passed legislation to increase its 2050 ambition to achieving a net zero economy with strong interim targets along the way. The upped ambition sends a strong signal to industry that the state is committed to a clean economy, inviting investment, innovation and solutions to achieve that mission.

And to kickstart that effort, lawmakers also passed a menu of state tax credits to help consumers and companies access clean technology. The package includes incentives to encourage the adoption of heat pumps, e-bikes, electric lawn equipment, and zero-emission cars and trucks — including both passenger vehicles and larger commercial vehicles. Designed to complement or, in some cases, fill in the gaps of the Inflation Reduction Act’s federal tax credit, it provides even more incentive to adopt clean technologies that will ultimately benefit the climate, save consumers money, and grow Colorado’s economy.

The new incentives will add to the already surging demand for electric vehicles. But the Polis administration accounted for that as well by adopting a pair of important clean transportation regulations that will ensure the availability of their vehicles for consumers and companies alike.

The Advanced Clean Trucks rule, adopted earlier this year, will ensure that manufacturers boost production of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles as corporate fleet owners increasingly look to adopt them to save on gas and maintenance costs. Meanwhile, the next phase of the Advanced Clean Cars program, which the state is in the process of adopting, will similarly encourage automakers to bolster electric vehicle sales in the state. Not only do these programs help to address transportation-related climate pollution — the largest source of it in the state —it also signals that the state is prepared to act as a leader in adopting clean vehicles that are rapidly growing in popularity.

And those were just the headliners. The state passed several additional policies as well, including efforts to encourage geothermal heating, to expand electric vehicle charging, and to organize utilities’ planning processes around achieving the state’s clean energy targets — all of which will further complement and build off those federal investments.

The surge of clean energy investment across the nation is living proof of what forward-looking companies and investors have been saying for years: strong public policy to confront the climate crisis and build out the infrastructure to do so is not just an imperative for the good of the planet but a massive economic opportunity. 

Still, states that want all that federal and private investment shouldn’t just count on it pouring in. By taking action, Colorado is now ideally situated to attract huge sums of federal and private investment to grow the economy of the future. It's an alluring position for any state, and Colorado has provided the model to get there.

Alli Gold Roberts is the senior director of state policy at the sustainability nonprofit Ceres.

President Eisenhower made it a priority to catch up from this setback — just four months later, U.S. engineers sent an even more capable Explorer 1 into orbit. The Eisenhower administration then established NASA, to ensure that the United States would triumph in any future space competition.

Keeping this historic anecdote in mind today, it’s troubling how far we have fallen behind both the Russians and Chinese in terms of hypersonic weapons capabilities. We must get up to speed in responding to this challenge.

While the U.S. is seemingly stuck in the research and testing phase of hypersonic capabilities development (the acquisition “valley of death”), rival powers appear to have already fielded operational systems, which can be exceedingly difficult to defend against because of their high speed and maneuverability.

Among the headlines coming out of the war in Ukraine are Russia’s attacks with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, which are air-launched and alleged to be able to reach Mach 10 — ten times the speed of sound. Though the Ukrainians have cited examples of U.S. Patriot missiles shooting some down, the U.S. cannot yet offer its own hypersonic weapons to match the threat.

China is reportedly further along than Russia in hypersonic weapon deployment, which not only menaces Taiwan but by extension the United States. Moreover, China flexes its military muscle with the DF-17 medium-range ballistic missile and DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile, both equipped with hypersonic glide vehicles. In 2021, the Chinese sent a hypersonic weapon into low orbit, ominously foreshadowing potential first-strike capability worldwide.

Why is the U.S. seemingly so far behind? What is the holdup in U.S. fielding operational systems?

It’s not a lack of willingness to commit resources or a failure to appreciate the need for advanced weapons systems. In fact, we’ve seen a record-setting $842 billion Defense budget request for fiscal 2024, $11 billion of which is allotted for research, development, testing and evaluation of both hypersonic and long-range sub-sonic missiles.

To its credit, the Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act’s Title III several months ago to “rebuild and expand the nation’s domestic hypersonic industrial base.” It was designed to dovetail with the president’s Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains of February 2021 to ensure our taxpayers are “buying American” as best we can. Moreover, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering has designated “Hypersonics” as one of its 2023 critical technology areas. And Congress has repeatedly, over the last five years, deemed the development of hypersonic capability as a key element of national defense.

The major disconnect between such emphasis and the ability to rapidly field such capability appears to stem from many years of mixed messages from the Department of Defense to the defense industry over the need for independent innovation and an unfocused goal with respect to hypersonic technology. The result is the all-too-common occurrence of DoD funding duplicative programs that do not move the needle geopolitically and still rely on continued annual funding by a Congress that is eager to see small success as a win but unwilling to continue to tolerate schedule delays and testing failures.

A prime example is the latest Air Force project Mayhem, a $334 million hypersonic weapons program in the middle of an identity crisis. Recent open-source reporting points to the development of a missile; however, digital renderings depict the possibility of a future airplane. It’s another questionable approach that will most likely be terminated like the many other hypersonic programs, such as the U.S. Air Force Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), or take an expensive circuitous route to becoming an overpriced drone. The lack of clarity and commitment to innovation beyond what our peer countries have already achieved will only continue to delay our ability to field our own hypersonic weapons.

At a recent conference of the National Defense Industrial Association, Congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado noted in a keynote address that hypersonics is “a technology that was born in America, but is being perfected by China and Russia.”

The current unfocused “fund everything and hope that something sticks” approach toward developing hypersonic capabilities is not fielding systems in a timely manner. This has resulted in a limited number of suppliers and limited production capacity along with a manufacturing, materials and testing infrastructure that does not support large scale development and timely fielding.

Complicating matters, the Congressional Budget Office issued a lukewarm review of hypersonics in a January 2023 report, noting “technological challenges must still be overcome” in order to field them. While not unreasonable to conclude at present, we must emphasize the importance of overcoming those challenges in order to match Chinese and Russian technological advances and not fall even further behind.

In sum, the government and the defense industry must cooperate to match resources with requirements. We can’t afford to wait for operational hypersonic systems indefinitely. The need to view the threat posed by Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons must be treated as a national security threat similar to that posed by a Soviet Sputnika generation ago.

Donald P. Loren is Distinguished Professor of Practice at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. He is a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense, and former assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs.

According to new aggregate polls from the LA Times, Harris’s unfavorable rating is higher than at any point since she became vice president and her popularity is as low as or lower than every previous vice president of the last 30 years during similar stages of their terms — including Dick Cheney (R) and Al Gore (D), both of whom struggled with popular opinion throughout their terms. 

This ignoble distinction raises important questions as the election season heats up: Is Harris really doing such a terrible job, so out of touch with the American people that she deserves this historic disapproval? Or as the first female vice president of color, is she on the receiving end of well-documented and deeply ingrained bias? 

The vice presidency is a notoriously difficult and vague job. John Adams called it "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." But for Harris, insignificance is not an option. Like all high-profile firsts, she carries not only the weight of her job but the expectations, hopes and dreams of those who will follow her. She must forge new norms and standards for women leading at the highest levels and redefine the role, while also succeeding in it. She must be both a loyal cheerleader and supporter of the president, while also serving as a role model and mentor to future women leaders everywhere.

Vice President Harris is not perfect — and she has sometimes been her own worst enemy, struggling to keep good staff and appearing stiff and scripted at public appearances. But it’s hard to square the outsized negative attention she receives with any rational critique, and impossible not to see parallels to the only other woman ever to come so close to our nation’s highest office — Hillary Clinton. She, too, endured years of disinformation and gendered attacks that affected the outcome of the 2016 election.

The parallels are hard to miss. Impossible expectations and double standards for women — sometimes called the double bind — have dogged the vice president from the start. Just as they did with Clinton. President Biden did her no favors in trying to shape her agenda in his image, giving her a bound-to-fail portfolio at the outset, including immigration reform, which has been stalled for decades. 

But for those of us who work to support women advancing to elected leadership, the challenges facing the vice president are very familiar. Women in positions of power, especially Black women, face ingrained bias at every turn — they are routinely labeled as unlikeable, angry, aggressive and more likely to be subject to online hate. In fact, recent studies have shown that women of color are twice as likely to be the subject of harassment and disinformation. Many female candidates of color feel the abuse and mis- and disinformation they face is specifically meant to push them out of politics.

The problem is so severe that in 2021 researchers at Brookings labeled gendered disinformation a national security threat and called on the Biden-Harris administration to prioritize combatting it. In the high-stakes world of presidential politics, disinformation and distrust can quickly metastasize into a political liability.

Attacks on the vice president from the right are not especially new but they are increasingly misinformation laden. In 2020, President Donald Trump pushed a racist conspiracy about her eligibility to be president — as he did with President Obama. But recently, there has been a coalescing among other Republicans who are pushing the false narrative that Harris is actually the president and running some kind of puppet regime. On Fox News, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called her “President Harris” and has referred to her and President Biden as “co-Presidents.”  

Obviously in an election year, exploiting weaknesses in the opposition is fair game, but the gendered conspiracy-laden misinformation can be especially damaging. It’s easy to see how that kind of rhetoric creates a double bind for the vice president and may be weighing down her consistently poor polling. 

The outcomes here are not inevitable, and both Harris and the president need a real strategy to bolster the vice president heading into the 2024 election to help the president’s own prospects. In the last year, she seems to have zeroed in on a better, more comfortable portfolio of abortion rights in the post-Dobbs world, serving as an ambassador to world leaders and, of course, as a surrogate to the legions of Black voters who helped assure the Biden/Harris victory. But more focus is required. Harris already broke the mold once by winning in 2020, and she can use that experience and key learnings from the first term to win again in 2024.

Here, the experiences of other women of color who have successfully won races despite relentless attacks serve as a template for turning around the vice president’s prospects.

First,  she and her supporters must actively and vocally fight back against negative, biased and simply wrong narratives. That means calling it out regularly and publicly on social and traditional media. The administration has been very effective in pointing out Republican hypocrisy on infrastructure and student debt. They should deploy the same tactics to combat attacks on the vice president. They will be getting help from Emily’s List, which has pledged millions to support the vice president’s reelection bid. 

Second, the vice president needs to be a more visible and active campaigner heading into 2024 — her low poll numbers are not a reason to sideline her. On the contrary, getting her off the sidelines has the potential to bolster her numbers as she defines herself to the public rather than allowing her to be defined by others. 

Finally, Kamala needs to be Kamala; when she’s free to be herself — to connect with people around her and be human and real — she is at her best. Authenticity both makes better leaders and winning campaigns. When Harris shattered the second-highest glass ceiling in 2020, she inherited the traditional norms of the role, which were defined by all of the straight white men who preceded her. Breaking free from the ghosts of vice presidents past and leading as she truly is is the strategy for success. 

If Harris can turn around her polls, and she must, she not only helps the Biden ticket and her own political future but paves the way for the generation of women leaders who will follow her. For their sake let’s hope she succeeds.

Lauren Leader is co-founder and CEO of All In Together, a nonprofit women’s civic education and leadership organization. She tweets @laurenleaderAIT.

It wasn't the most exciting job in the world, but I believe it was important and still is. I may not work in that arena anymore, but I still follow the issues because today, everyone has to. When it comes to the digital world, the fight for freedom and privacy is never-ending, and all the concepts are just as important today as they were in 2007 

Those “free” apps, websites and services everyone loves are never actually free. Online, if you are not the paying customer, you are the product. Those apps are fishing nets for data — your data. That data is then refined into gold for the companies that collect it. 

They know what you want almost before you do, tailoring ads based on algorithms and now artificial intelligence to bring you advertisements for things you didn’t even know you need or want. And they’re very good at it — there’s a reason the number of billionaires in the United States went from 359 in 2009 to 614 in 2020, and it wasn’t because so many of them respect the privacy of the public. 

If you’re like me, you try to mess with the system as much as you can; a lame rebellious swipe at the system that ultimately means so little it means nothing at all. My birth year on Facebook, for example, is 1911. I’m no teenager, but I am not 112…at least not yet. I tend to list my location as Earth, and keep my employment and education history to myself. I may be the product, but I’m not going to give them a lot to sell me with. A moral victory, at best, but I’ll take it, if only so I can lie to myself about beating the system a little.

Being the product brings with it an ever-increasing attempt to get more information from you, which creates a never-ending kabuki dance between Big Tech companies and the public. One thing the internet pioneered was the endlessly long, overly lawyered, confusing and always changing user agreements. When was the last time you read one of those? If you’re like me, it’s never. 

But those user agreements have led to an interesting story I’ve been following for a while now out of Illinois. 

There is no user agreement that does not favor the company that wrote it, it’s just a universal truth. And not reading it isn’t going to help you should an issue arise. However, in Illinois someone actually did read the user agreement with Samsung and found a way to use it against the company. 

Samsung was accused by users in Illinois of collecting and misusing consumer’s biometric data – fingerprints, facial recognition, etc. — without properly informing them. The tech giant’s user agreement, like almost all of them do, required arbitration rather than a lawsuit. Companies hate lawsuits, especially class action lawsuits, which could easily result from allegations of violations of user agreements. 

Class-action suits have serious drawbacks. I’ve been an unwilling party to a few of them, as you likely have, too. I didn’t even know I’d been “wronged,” and it’s irritating to discover that the “righting” of whatever wrong there was involves lawyers getting rich and me getting lousy coupons for future purchases from the company that has supposedly wronged me. The lawyers never get paid in coupons.

That being said, sometimes class actions are necessary when enough people have been seriously wronged. Samsung protected itself against that with their user agreement. Creatively, users found a way to make the company pay: mass arbitration. Not mass-arbitration in the sense that there is a large class of people demanding a single arbitration, but because they are bringing tens of thousands of arbitration cases. 

Companies tend to prefer arbitration to lawsuits, but arbitration also costs money. The prospect of tens of millions in fees to cover arbitration hearings presents a mighty incentive for Samsung or any other company to reevaluate its policies, don’t you think?

Naturally, Samsung is now seeking to change the rules in their favor again. Because 50,000 customers making arbitration claims is going to leave a mark on their bottom line. I don’t know what is ultimately best for consumers and for privacy, aside from massive tech companies not violating our privacy in the first place. But I do enjoy boat-rocking, and I know that a good check against their abuses would be to use their own ever-changing, massive, lawyerly user agreements against them. 

The next step would be honesty and transparency, but that will likely have to wait until tech giants are really made to hurt. 

Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).

Herzog is a fig leaf, putting a kinder, gentler face on Israeli apartheid and the most extreme government in Israel’s history. Last year was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, and this year is on pace to be even worse, with more than 140 killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers so far. In just the first six months of 2023, Israel has already broken the annual record for new settlement units, and responsibility for Israel's illegal settlement enterprise has been shifted to civilian oversight — in effect de facto annexing the occupied West Bank — all under Herzog’s watch.

Herzog’s invitation, extended last year by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to mark the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, appears meant to silence Israel’s critics from the top down. The critics could not be defeated at the popular level as evidenced by a recent Gallup poll showing that, for the first time, a majority of Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis. To stem the momentum of progressive movements, pro-Israel lobby groups have ramped up their efforts to adopt legislation intended to suppress the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, as well as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition equating criticism of Israel to antisemitism.

The recent attacks on Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) are part of this effort.

Over the weekend, Jayapal told a Chicago audience something quite plain: that “Israel is a racist state.” Her words should not be controversial. Legacy and Israeli human rights organizations, together with United Nations agencies, committees and multiple independent studies, have all concluded that Israel oversees an apartheid regime. Legislated as a crime against humanity in 1973 and again in the 1998 Rome Statute, apartheid is, by definition, established “for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them." If it is apartheid, it is racist.

The rebuke of Jayapal ignores the overwhelming empirical evidence and analytical findings of the world’s most renowned human rights advocates and scholars. Following the backlash from Israel’s supporters, including several of her fellow Democratic members of Congress, Jayapal amended her statement to describe Israel’s government, rather than the Israeli nation, as racist.

Ironically, there is no such thing as an Israeli national — this is the crux of the matter.

Israel is not, and has never been, a state of its citizens. Under Israeli law, which bifurcates Jewish nationality and Israeli citizenship, a Jewish teen in Lisbon who just discovered Israel on a map has more rights in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories than an 80-year-old Palestinian woman born in what became Israel before it was established in 1948.

Native Palestinians who became citizens in Israel — and make up more than 20 percent of its population — are not only second-class citizens, they are rendered present-absent to facilitate their ongoing dispossession. In 2018, Israel’s parliament adopted the Jewish Nation-State Law, declaring that only Jews have the right to self-determination in Palestine/Israel. A year later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it even more plainly: Israel is “the national state, not of all of its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.”

Yet for the U.S. elected officials singing Israel’s praise, it is as if none of this has happened. As if Israel did not torpedo the Palestinian state as well as the possibility of binationalism; did not declare unilateral sovereignty over Jerusalem; or allow three settler pogroms against Palestinian villages. It's as if a robust social movement featuring Black and Palestinian solidarity that has affirmed joint struggle and helped catapult progressive Democrats into office never took place. As if Israeli leaders themselves did not call it apartheid and become sidelined by an extremist government intent on upending an independent Israeli judiciary.

It may as well be 1987, when Herzog’s father, Chaim Herzog, addressed Congress, or 2000, when the Oslo negotiations collapsed at Camp David. U.S. official rhetoric is the same, even though so much has fundamentally changed. There exists an apartheid reality in Israel and rather than contend with this, Israel’s most ardent defenders want to normalize and exemplify it.

In their invitation to Herzog, Sen. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi referred to the founding of Israel as a “historic and joyous milestone” to be celebrated. They fail to acknowledge that exclusive Zionist sovereignty necessitated the ethnic cleansing of three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homeland to make way for a Jewish majority state, known to Palestinians as the Nakba (catastrophe), and that their systematic erasure continues into the present. The ongoing Nakba and the massive suffering it inflicts on Palestinians is nothing to be celebrated.

Herzog might be considered a moderate by the right-wing standards of Israeli politics, but that says little. He does not even oppose the West Bank settlement enterprise, considered illegal by international diplomatic consensus and now up for scrutiny as a war crime before the International Criminal Court. Congress should be discussing measures of accountability, rather than normalizing the apartheid of our time.

At least five progressive members of the House have said they will boycott Herzog’s address, as many did with the recent address by Indian Prime Minister Modi. Others should join their principled stand and skip Herzog’s speech.

Nelson Mandela once said that the freedom of South Africans is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians. So too is the case for progressive movements in the United States. Abandoning Palestinians is not a pragmatic option — it is only self-defeating and harmful precisely at a time when the tide is turning.

A human rights attorney, Noura Erakat is associate professor at Rutgers University and author of “Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.”

 It’s one of the oldest, strongest and most consistent poll findings on record.   

Americans are happy to cut government spending in general, but adamantly oppose cuts in most all specific areas.    

 A few months ago, the Associated Press (AP) and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) examined spending issues and found 60 percent of Americans saying the U.S. government was spending “too much.”   

 Presumably, that majority wants to pare federal outlays.  

 But which spending?  

 Just 29 percent say we are spending too much on the military. Little support for reductions there.   

Social Security and Medicare? Just 7 percent and 10 percent, respectively, believe too much is being spent on those programs.  

 “OK,” you say, “we’re hitting third rails.” True perhaps, but those three third rails, plus interest on the debt, account for over half of federal expenditures.    

 “What about some of President Biden’s favorites,” Republicans might argue. “Should be easy pickings there.”  

 But only 11 percent want reductions in infrastructure spending. Just 25 percent see too much spending on the environment and 20 percent on scientific research. Even fewer, 16 percent, say the same about assistance with child care.  

 “Surely,” GOPers say, “we can demagogue welfare.” But only 18 percent would curtail “aid to the poor” in the AP/NORC survey. In YouGov polling earlier this year, just 15 percent favored cutting Medicaid, 17 percent would cut SNAP, only 16 percent supported cuts to Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the same small number favored cutting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.   

 So, no, voters don’t want to scale down those safety net programs.   

Only 12 percent would countenance cuts to education spending and, GOP efforts to demonize law enforcement notwithstanding, just 23 percent favor reductions there.    

My apologies for the long recitation of numbers, but I hope the point is clear. While voters want to cut government spending generally, large majorities oppose cuts in almost every specific category.   

 Yet, catering to the demands of the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy will force every House Republican to vote for massive spending cuts in each and every one of these programs, alienating the vast majority of Americans.  

 Republican appropriators already proposed cutting education by over $22 billion, which would mean firing 220,000 teachers across the country, increasing class sizes. In addition, they’re cutting over a billion dollars from STEM education.   

 To say voters will be angry about such reductions puts it mildly.  

 Unlike Democrats, Republicans are actually defunding the police, eliminating $1 billion from the FBI, which means fewer agents and federal prosecutors, which means fewer criminals brought to justice.   

 The GOP is backing a nearly 40 percent, $4 billion cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, which translates into fewer resources to clean up the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound, as well as less assistance for clean drinking water across the country.   

 Republicans are cutting cancer research, mental health support and preschool.    

GOP House members will end up voting for these or similar cuts because McCarthy first surrendered to the Freedom Caucus on the debt limit negotiations and then gave them license to cut even more, after the deal was complete.   

 But Republicans are unlikely to stop with votes to slash crowd-pleasing spending. At the insistence of the far right, the GOP will likely shut down the government to force these unpopular cuts.   

 That’s what happened in 1996, and Democrats won races as a result.   

 That year we campaigned against the GOP shutdown and for preventing Republican cuts to Medicare, education and the environment. The result: 18 Republicans lost their seats to Democratic challengers, while only three Democrats were defeated.   

Far fewer would flip the House in 2024.  

 Circumstances and context have changed, but Republicans seem intent on following the far right down the same path toward defeat in response to their effort to slash popular spending.

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.