The UK has raised its terror threat level from “substantial” to “severe”, meaning an attack within the next six months is considered highly likely. The change means the threat level is at severe for the first time in four years. It came with a warning from the Home Office of an increased threat from individuals and small groups based in the UK.

Counter-terrorism in the UK centres on a strategy known as Contest – a key part of this is the Prevent programme. The primary objective of Prevent, as the name suggests, is to stop people becoming involved in terrorism or from supporting extremist ideologies.

As such, it is designed to deliver tailored early-intervention aimed at addressing risks of radicalisation, extremism and terrorism.

In my experience as a researcher in counter-terrorism studies, I have engaged extensively with Prevent practitioners. I have gained an insight into their work, which is carried out with commitment and dedication despite constraints in funding and resources.

A Prevent referral does not imply that someone has committed, or is suspected of committing, a criminal offence. Rather, it indicates that a professional with a statutory “Prevent duty” has raised concerns about someone’s behaviour, expressions or vulnerabilities. These professionals include teachers, healthcare workers and or social workers.

Recent data illustrates the scale of the programme: between April 2024 and March 2025, 8,778 people were referred to Prevent. This is the highest figure recorded since data collection began in 2015.

Notably, a significant proportion of these referrals involve young people, with 36% (3,192 cases) concerning children aged 11 to 15. A further 1,178 cases involved those aged 16 and 17.

The criteria for referral are broad, and they can include observable changes in behaviour, expressing extremist views, or signs of vulnerability that could make someone more susceptible to being radicalised.

Referrals are assessed by a panel that often include representatives from education, social services and law enforcement. In many cases, referrals do not progress beyond this initial stage. Instead, they may be signposted to other teams, such as social services, for more support.

But where there are still concerns, individuals may be offered support through the Channel programme. This is Prevent’s primary de-radicalisation mechanism. Channel is voluntary and confidential, and referrals can come from anyone and from any context. They are often issued by the police and education sector.

The support is tailored to the specific needs in each case and may include mentoring and mental health support. Participation is voluntary, and individuals can refuse to be involved or stop participating at any point.

Stigma and polarisation

Prevent is designed to be pre-emptive – intervening before criminal activity occurs. However, this breadth is also a source of ongoing controversy.

Critics argue that it can result in referrals based on ambiguous or misinterpreted behaviour. As such it has the potential to reinforce polarisation, particularly in relation to specific groups such as Muslims. This can clearly leave people feeling stigmatised, under surveillance or unfairly judged, particularly if they believe the referral was based on cultural, religious or political misunderstandings.

The scheme also has significant structural limitations as it functions as a time-limited intervention rather than a system of ongoing monitoring. Once a case is closed, the person is not subject to continuous oversight. This means that a previous referral does not eliminate the possibility of future risk – it simply means that the threshold for intervention was not met at that time.

It is important to remember that positive stories rarely get widespread attention. Every year, thousands of people in the UK receive early support and successfully disengage from radical and extremist ideologies.

Prevent operates in a difficult space between safeguarding and security, where risk is assessed before an offence occurs. While high-profile cases can amplify perceptions of failure, they do not reflect the full picture. Most referrals do not lead to further action, and many result in early, voluntary support that helps people disengage from harmful pathways.

At the same time, concerns around ambiguity and stigma remain valid. In short, rather than seeing Prevent as a measure of guilt, it’s important to recognise its limitations and its role as an early intervention tool.

Elisa Orofino 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.

As King Charles concludes his transatlantic travels with a visit to Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory, he can take pride in a job well done. His four-day state visit to the US – which concluded with a wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery and a block party in Virginia – appears to have been a success.

Amid a period of heightened tension between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the king’s carefully calibrated speech to a joint session of Congress has secured praise on both sides of the Atlantic (and on both sides of the Congressional aisle).

It was a remarkable performance: careful, diplomatic, occasionally pointed and at times both charming and witty. Perhaps we should not be that surprised. The king is a highly experienced diplomat, and while this was his first address to Congress, it was his 20th visit to Washington – as he himself noted.

Read more: How King Charles charmed the US while taking digs at Trump

But what does the undoubtedly warm American response to the king’s visit mean for the future of the US-UK “special relationship”?

On its own, no act of royal diplomacy, however well executed, can deliver an instant reset in US-UK relations. Nor can it force an American president of any stripe – let alone the current incumbent – to change tack or alter approach.

On this, history offers a salutary lesson. For all the positive impact of King George VI’s June 1939 visit to the US, when war broke out just a few months later, it did not lead to instant American intervention.

The queen’s visit in 1957 was similarly well received. But the work of rebuilding transatlantic trust – so damaged by the Suez crisis – remained ongoing in the months that followed.

This latest state visit will similarly offer no quick fix. But like its predecessors, it might shift the dial on the current US-UK dialogue – and perhaps help to temper the tone, at least for a while.

For the UK, there has already been one immediate win: Trump has decided to remove whisky tariffs in honour of the king’s visit. This will be very much welcomed by the Scottish whisky industry.

The potential long-term impact of the king’s visit is harder to ascertain. Not least because this will be determined by variables well beyond either his or Starmer’s control: contemporary geopolitics, especially as affected by the wars in Iran and Ukraine. Despite this week’s mutual exchange of praise and platitudes, the distance between London and Washington on these matters remains substantive.

Worlds apart

There was a brief glimpse of these differences in two of the speeches: the king’s to Congress and, on the same day, the president’s at the White House.

The king’s speech lingered on the shared ties of history and, especially, on democratic values and ideals. It included references to the importance of compassion and interfaith dialogue, and celebrated the strength of what the king called “our vibrant, diverse and free societies”.

President Trump’s speech at the White House a few hours earlier similarly featured references to the transatlantic connections born of history. But elsewhere, his tone and intent seemed rather different.

Trump celebrated “the blood and noble spirit of the British” – qualities which had provided American revolutionaries with a “majestic inheritance”. At one point, he even declared that the patriots of the American Revolution had been animated by the “Anglo-Saxon courage” in their veins. This is a claim on American history that one commentator has suggested “walks up to the edge of white nationalism”.

There are indeed echoes here of an early 20th-century diplomatic discourse known as Anglo-Saxonism. Once popular and pervasive among transatlantic writers and diplomats (including those of a nativist bent), it largely fell out of favour in the years between the world wars – its racial assumptions increasingly untenable.

As long ago as December 1918, President Woodrow Wilson explicitly told an audience of British dignitaries – including King Charles’s great-grandfather, George V – that they must not “think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the United States”.

Wilson was the first serving US president to visit Britain, and, like Trump, had a British mother (Trump’s was from Tong on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland). Wil point – made in advance of the Paris Peace Conference – was that the US was a melting pot, not a monoculture.

King Charles’s speech hailed the importance of alliances (Nato), of multilateral institutions (the UN), and of the rule of law. These, he argued, are what has delivered eight decades of transatlantic peace and prosperity.

From the president, meanwhile, came a celebration of Anglo-American blood brotherhood. It was at times reminiscent of thinking (and language) which his predecessor Wilson – no “woke” radical – had called into question well over a century ago.

These two visions of the US-UK relationship, distinct in their underlying assumptions, reflect a broader geopolitical shift – one which has increasingly strained the transatlantic relationship in recent months.

The king’s vision, indicative of widespread sentiment in Europe, represents an affirmation of the post-1945 world order. The other, with its echoes of the early 20th century, is disruptive. Between them lies a chasm of significant proportions, and bridging it will be the task of today’s transatlantic diplomats.

Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC and the US-UK Fulbright Commission. Sam is a Governor of The American Library (Norwich) and a Trustee of Sulgrave Manor (Northamptonshire).

May 1, 2026, marks the 60th day of Operation Epic Fury in Iran – a symbolically significant date designating when a president who has mounted unilateral military operations must receive Congressional approval or wind it down.

However, the complex history of the War Powers Resolution clock demonstrates it is a toothless milestone.

The Trump administration signaled on April 30, 2026, that it would ignore that deadline, set by the War Powers Resolution. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that “we are in a cease-fire right now, which my understanding is that the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a cease-fire. That’s our understanding, so you know.”

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, responded that the 60-day threshold poses a “legal question” and “constitutional concerns.”

This is not the first time presidents and members of Congress have sparred on the meaning of the War Powers Resolution. What happens next will play out through regular politics, because the conflict is not a matter of simple legal interpretation.

War: Collective judgment

In the U.S. Constitution, Congress and the president share war powers.

In the shadow of political struggles in the final years of the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 to “insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities.”

A crucial section of the resolution reasserts legislators’ role, and makes clear that the constitutional power of the president to make war is subject to, or exercised with, the following conditions: a Congressional declaration of war; specific statutory authorization; or a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions or its armed forces.

For new military campaigns that do not meet these criteria, the resolution included a 60-day clock that begins when a president reports the action to congressional leadership within 48 hours of the action beginning.

The clock can be expanded to up to 90 days upon presidential determination and certification of “unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces” related to removal of troops.

After 60 to 90 days, the resolution originally said this type of unilateral military action would be terminated automatically unless both chambers of Congress approved some form of legislative authorization.

Congress could also choose to terminate an unauthorized military operation any time before the 60 days with a concurrent resolution, which doesn’t require a president’s signature – essentially, a “legislative veto.”

And to make sure the president couldn’t stretch the definition of congressional approval, the resolution said neither existing treaties nor new budget appropriations could substitute for legislative authorization of a military action.

Since 1973, actions by all three branches across a variety of political and policy landscapes have undermined its intents and procedures.

Veto vetoed

In 1983, the Supreme Court declared various kinds of legislative vetoes unconstitutional, which led Congress to reinterpret its War Powers Resolution procedures and powers and effectively amend its processes to expedite any joint resolution or bill that “requires the removal of U.S. armed forces from hostilities outside the United States.”

Now, if members want to stop a presidential military campaign already in progress, they must act affirmatively and pass a disapproval resolution, which a president could veto like any other bill. Congress has sent only one such disapproval – to President Donald Trump in his first term – which he vetoed. Congress did not have the two-thirds required in the Constitution to override.

Both chambers of Congress now have to vote twice, once to disapprove a military action and then again to overcome a likely veto, to stop something it never approved in the first place.

The 60-day mark for the current Iran operation has therefore loomed as more of a politically charged symbol of this longstanding imbalance on war powers than a real deadline for action by either branch.

Parallels to Kosovo and Libya

The House and Senate have tried to pass legislation to stop military operations against Iran six times since operations began. All attempts have failed, including the most recent vote on April 30. Democrats are considering filing suit against President Trump if operations go beyond 60 days without authorization.

Yet federal courts have long expressed disinterest in getting involved in constitutional questions related to the War Powers Resolution, especially if members of Congress are the plaintiffs.

Although most presidents from Richard Nixon onward have claimed that the War Powers Resolution is an unconstitutional check on their institutional powers, they usually filed the required reports on new military actions 48 hours after they began.

While the current Iran conflict is different in many ways, presidential unilateralism, inconclusive chamber actions and even member lawsuits all echo controversies over U.S. military action in Kosovo in 1999 and Libya in 2011.

Where Trump administration may lean on Clinton

Operation Epic Fury against Iran began Feb. 28, 2026, and President Trump sent the required report to Congress on March 2, 2026.

After detailing the rationale for military action, Trump added “Although the United States desires a quick and enduring peace, it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary.”

He concluded the memo with his interpretation of constitutional power to act unilaterally.

“I directed this military action consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests both at home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests,” the president wrote. He acted, he said, “pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to conduct United States foreign relations.” He said he made the report “consistent with the War Powers Resolution. I appreciate the support of the Congress in these actions.”

Similarly, on March 26, 1999, President Bill Clinton sent a War Powers Resolution letter explaining his decision two days earlier to take part in a NATO-led operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, known as FRY.

Clinton wrote to Congress using mostly the same words and phrases Trump did in his 2026 letter. Clinton also said that he took the action “in response to the FRY government’s continued campaign of violence and repression against the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo.”

Clinton explained his authority in virtually the same language as Trump and, like Trump, said it was hard to predict how long the operations would continue.

The House and Senate repeatedly failed to either approve or disapprove of Clinton’s actions through a series of votes across March and April 1999. But lawmakers did send him supplemental appropriations for the operations in May.

NATO suspended the operation after 78 days. Almost a year later, a federal appellate court upheld a district court’s decision rejecting a lawsuit led by Rep. Tom Campbell, a California Republican, alleging Clinton violated the War Powers Resolution. Rather than deciding on the merits, the decision rejected the lawmakers’ claims of injury as not reviewable by the court.

Obama did it, too

In a very different context, a similar rhythm played out during President Barack Obama’s presidency.

During the “Arab Spring” revolts of 2010-2011, the U.N. Security Council passed two resolutions condemning violence against Libyan civilians by security forces under the direction of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi.

On March 21, 2011, two days after NATO operations began against Gadhafi’s forces, which included American air support, Obama sent his War Powers Resolution letter to the Republican House and Democratic Senate. Obama had not received prior legislative authority from Congress.

Obama’s letter included language almost identical to Clinton’s earlier letter and Trump’s later one.

As with Kosovo, the House and Senate did not ultimately agree to either approve or disapprove of the president’s actions in support of the UN and NATO over the operation’s 222 days. In addition, Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio led a group of mostly Republican House members in a failed War Powers Resolution lawsuit to stop the president.

Unilateral action endures

The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice has published legal opinions that explain and defend presidential war powers, including with Kosovo and Libya. In December 2025, that office published a memo defending the imminent January 2026 capture of Nicolás Maduro. On April 21, 2026, the State Department published a defense of ongoing U.S. actions in Iran.

Within the current dynamics of the War Powers Resolution, until Congress musters bipartisan supermajorities to connect its own institutional ambition with constitutional power, presidents from either party will decide alone if, and when, the country goes to war. Instead of Congress, presidents may heed public opinion and economic indicators, especially in election years.

Jasmine Farrier is affiliated with the American Political Science Association.

People in the UK are now spending fewer years in good health than they did a decade ago, according to a new analysis by the Health Foundation. The UK now sits near the bottom of a 21-country comparison, ahead only of the US.

A drop in healthy life expectancy is explained through many causes: obesity, alcohol, drugs, suicide, chronic disease, poverty and widening inequality. But one of the most powerful causes sits atop them all: housing. Where and how people live is one of the main factors explaining how health risks are created and distributed across society.

The UK Housing Review is an annual independent review of housing policy and evidence, written by housing experts and published by the Chartered Institute of Housing. Its latest edition, which we contributed to, identifies several interrelated ways that housing affects health.

A key one is affordability – housing costs shape where people can live, whether they can heat their homes, whether they can afford food and transport, whether they can move for work, whether they can leave unsafe or unsuitable housing and whether they live with chronic financial stress.

In the UK, housing costs are high by historical standards and poor housing remains widespread. The review notes that private rents are now at their highest recorded share of earnings, while millions of homes in England still contain serious health and safety hazards.

When housing is unaffordable, people are forced to make tradeoffs. For example, trading affordability for damp or overcrowded homes. They cut back on heating, food, medication, transport and social participation. They move further from public services, work and support networks. Affordability problems also force many people into cheaper, less secure, tenancies.

Poor housing quality directly shapes health. Cold, damp, mould, disrepair, poor ventilation and unsafe homes are directly linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular risk, mental health problems and reduced wellbeing.

Read more: Cold homes increase the risk of severe mental health problems – new study

The Building Research Establishment, an independent research organisation, has estimated that poor housing costs the NHS in England £1.4 billion each year. More than half of this is attributed to cold homes, which increase the risk of respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems and poor mental health. They are especially dangerous for older people, babies and people with existing health conditions.

But the wider costs are even greater. Poor sleep, stress, disrupted schooling, insecure work, social isolation and caring strain all affect mental and physical health. They increase pressure on families and, over time, on health, education and social care systems.

Historically in the UK, social housing has provided some protection to people unable to access good quality affordable housing in the open market. But the stock of social rented housing in the UK has declined. This means that people are increasingly dependent on (often expensive) market rental, where the quality, size and location of housing depend much more directly on income.

The rise of the private rented sector this century has meant that more households are exposed, not just to higher housing costs, but also to shorter tenancies and fewer protections than social housing traditionally provided.

The Renters’ Rights Act increases security, but does not remove “no fault” evictions altogether and does little to protect tenants from economic pressures that can result in eviction. The cognitive burden of worrying about eviction, arrears, repairs or the next rent increase is a direct health risk.

Recent evidence also suggests that insecure housing can result in measurably faster biological ageing, equivalent to the effects of more traditional health concerns like smoking.

Additional weeks of biological ageing per year from different factors

The number of people living in temporary accommodation has risen dramatically, reaching over 130,000 households at the beginning of 2025. This is a 156% increase compared with 2010, largely driven by the poor affordability and insecurity of the private rented sector and lack of social housing. Temporary accommodation is inadequate housing, particularly for children. Living in temporary accommodation was a contributing factor in the deaths of at least 104 children in England between 2019 and 2025, 76 of whom were under one year of age.

This is not about housing quality alone. Temporary accommodation reflects multiple risks brought together: poverty, overcrowding, poor conditions, instability, lack of space for safe infant sleep, poor access to services and wider racial and social inequality. The National Child Mortality Database identifies temporary accommodation as a contributing factor to vulnerability, ill health or death, not necessarily as the sole cause. Emerging evidence also links temporary accommodation with stillbirth and neonatal death.

Read more: Insecure renting ages you faster than owning a home, unemployment or obesity. Better housing policy can change this

Housing health inequality

ONS data shows a very large difference in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas. In 2022-24, healthy life expectancy in the most deprived areas of England was just 49.8 years for men and 48.2 years for women, compared with 69.2 and 68.5 years in the least deprived areas.

Housing contributes to this difference, determining whether people live in homes that support recovery or deepen stress, whether children grow up in stable and safe environments, and whether older people can remain warm and independent.

If the government is serious about its stated aim to “halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions”, housing policy must become health policy.

That means investing in social housing, enforcing decent standards in the private rented sector, making homes warmer, safer and more accessible, and recognising temporary accommodation, overcrowding and insecurity as public health failures, not just housing management problems.

It also means changing the way that success is measured. Housing policy is too often judged by supply numbers, prices or tenure outcomes. These matter, but they are incomplete. A healthy housing system should also be judged by whether people can live in homes that are affordable, secure, decent, suitable and resilient to climate change.

The decline in healthy life expectancy is a warning light. It tells us that the UK is not only failing to keep people well for longer, it is failing to provide the foundations of health.

Emma Baker receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Australian Research Council, The National Health and Medical Research Council, and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

Amy Clair receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

Mark Stephens receives funding from ESRC, the EU/Innovate UK and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

We asked ten literary experts to recommend the climate poem that has spoken to them most powerfully. Their answers span over 200 years and a range of emotions from sorrow, to anger, fear and hope.

This article is part of Climate Storytelling, a series exploring how arts and science can join forces to spark understanding, hope and action.

1. Death of a Field by Paula Meehan (2005)

Published in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Paula Meehan’s Death of a Field critiqued the environmental impact of the Celtic Tiger economy in Ireland.

The poem anticipates the destruction of the titular field by property developers with little regard for native ecologies: “The end of the field as we know it is the start of the estate.”

The global effects of the climate crisis are seen from a uniquely local perspective as the displacement of Irish wildlife mirrors the effect of colonial violence. “Some architect’s screen” is simply the latest iteration of imperial technologies that seek to plunder Irish landscapes. The poem gains further strength by refusing to replicate a hierarchical relationship to nature by preserving its many mysteries:

Who can know the yearning of yarrow

Or the plight of the scarlet pimpernel

Whose true colour is orange?

Jack Reid is a PhD Candidate in Irish literature

2. Darkness by Lord Byron (1816)

Darkness imagines the fallout of a volcanic eruption that has destroyed the Earth. The “dream” that the poem mentions was inspired by genuine weather conditions during the “year without a summer” in 1816, caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the previous year.

Sulphur in the atmosphere caused darkness and low temperatures across Europe. In Lake Geneva, Lord Byron experienced the infamous “haunted summer” of darkness.

Byron’s depiction of climate catastrophe is bleak, with words like “crackling”, “blazing” and “consum’d” bearing resemblance to contemporary reports of wildfires caused by climate change. After a famine, all elements of Byron’s Earth, from the clouds to the tide, eventually cease to exist: “Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless– / A lump of death – a chaos of hard clay.” Read as a portent of the Anthropocene, Byron’s poem urges readers to seriously consider the future of mankind.

Katie MacLean is a PhD candidate in English Literature

3. Mont Blanc by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)

Byron’s close friend Percy Bysshe Shelley was also inspired by the “year without a summer”. He witnessed temperatures drop, volcanic ash hanging heavy in the air and crops failing. While his wife Mary used the gloomy climatic event to inform her novel Frankenstein (1818), Shelley channelled them into his poem Mont Blanc.

In his ode, Shelley describes a timeless “wall impregnable of beaming ice”. By drawing on his scientific reading, he then explains his fears regarding global cooling and the possibility of vast glaciers eventually covering the alpine valleys.

He imagines “the dwelling-place / Of insects, beasts, and birds” being obliterated and mankind forced to flee. While Shelley saw this process as “destin’d” and inevitable, it is clear that Mont Blanc is a poem with catastrophic climate change at its heart. In 2026, it is difficult to read in any other way.

Amy Wilcockson is a research fellow in Romantic literature

4. Characteristics of Life by Camille T. Dungy (2012)

There’s something gloriously elastic about invertebrates: the spinelessness of a worm, the pulsing of the jellyfish, the curling of an octopus. Spiders, snails and bees, too, with their exoskeletons on display, invite us to see things “inside-out”.

These are the thoughts I have when I read Characteristics of Life by Camille T. Dungy, which opens with a snippet from a BBC news report claiming that “a fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction”. What would a world be without the “underneathedness” of the snail beneath its shell beneath the terracotta pot in the garden? Or “the impossible hope of the firefly” whose adult lives span only a handful of human weeks?

Dungy speaks from a “time before spinelessness was frowned upon”, and from a world where to dismiss a being as “mindless” (jellyfish have no brains) or even “wordless” would be “missing the point” entirely. As I think of these creatures that dwell beyond our usual line of vision – flying, crawling, tunnelling and swimming – I find my perspective on our beautiful world turning and shifting.

Janine Bradbury is a poet and a senior lecturer in contemporary writing and culture

5. Prayer at Seventy by Vicki Feaver (2019)

One of my favourite poems about climate change is Vicki Feaver’s Prayer at Seventy from her 2019 collection I Want! I Want!.

The speaker’s request of passing her “last years with less anxiety” appears to be denied by a god who first responds by changing her into “a tiny spider / launching into the unknown / on a thread of gossamer” and who, when she begs to “be a bigger / fiercer creature”, turns her into “a polar bear / leaping between / melting ice floes”.

Both images present creatures who are in precarious positions, their futures uncertain, reflecting the state of a person contemplating the unknowns of old age and death. But the poem moves beyond the personal. The reference to the melting ice floes is not solely metaphorical: it reminds us that the planet itself is in danger and every living thing is therefore vulnerable – and will be increasingly so.

Julie Gardner is a PhD candidate in literature

Read more: How poetry can sustain us through illness, bereavement and change

6. Walrus by Jessica Traynor (2022)

Walrus, from Jessica Traynor’s 2022 collection Pit Lullabies expresses the quiet anxiety a mother has for her child in the world of climate breakdown.

While stripping wallpaper from the box room of her house, the poet discovers a mural of the Walrus and the Carpenter from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Traynor takes part of Lewis Carroll’s poem about the Walrus and the Carpenter walking along the beach, eating the vulnerable oysters, and weaves it into her own poem.

Carroll’s absurd verse includes what, at that time no doubt, seemed like an impossible image of a “boiling hot” sea. In the 21st century, this is no longer an absurdity, as Traynor knows. She makes a connection with Carroll’s poem, imploring her child:

Sleep as the sun rises and ice melts

and for want of the freeze a walrus

pushes further up a cliff-face.

It’s a complex poem that reimagines a key work of children’s literature, connecting it with the reality of the changing world. All the while the mother keeps her fears at bay for the sake of her child, “brows[ing] washing machines” with a “ball of tears” in her throat.

Ellen Howley is an assistant professor of English

7. Ocean Forest, co-created by the We Are the Possible programme

Ocean Forest is woven out of words, research, ideas and stories shared by scientists, educators, health professionals, youth leaders, writers and artists. They took part in creative writing workshops to co-create the anthology Planet Forest – 12 Poems for 12 Days for the UN Climate Conference in Brazil in 2025.

In the shallows, alert to change,

the minuscule, overlooked creatures

weave between seagrass, and weed –

live their shortened lives.

When ships pass overhead, when sands shift,

fish navigate swell, migrate beyond

where coral’s been bleached, through schools

of silenced whales and barely rooted mangroves

struggling to thrive in darkening water.

Deeper down,

pressure builds, species exist, unaware,

undisturbed. As heat and waves rise there’s hope

the unfound, the unnamed, the unpolluted

in the remotest ocean forests will survive.

Through uniting disciplines and voices the poem takes unexpected shifts. It demonstrates that climate change affects and erodes the habitats that lie beneath the surface and that urgent action is needed to protect disappearing species.

Yet, there is also a glimmer of hope – that in the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean, where temperatures are near freezing and there are bone-crushing pressures, maybe there are creatures that will survive human interference and pollution.

Sally Flint is a lecturer in creative writing and programme lead on the We Are the Possible programme

8. Di Baladna (Our Land) by Emi Mahmoud (2021)

Emtithal “Emi” Mahmoud is a Sudanese poet and activist, who has won multiple awards for her slam poetry performances. Mahmoud performed Di Baladna at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2021.

Poetry – especially spoken word – helps people connect emotionally with the human side of climate-driven displacement, a topic that’s often explained only through technical language. The language of emissions targets, temperature thresholds, or policy frameworks can distance people emotionally from its consequences. Yet poetry can cut through this abstraction.

Mahmoud’s performance gave voice to those forced from their homes by environmental collapse, reminding listeners that climate change is not only an environmental crisis but a deeply human one, with profound effects on individuals, families and communities.

By merging vivid natural imagery with the rhythms of displacement and lived testimony, the poem urges listeners to replace passive awareness with empathy. Mahmoud implores us to feel the loss, fear and resilience of displaced communities, looking beyond news headlines and images of victimisation. Engaging with such work helps transform climate refugees from statistics into people.

Clodagh Philippa Guerin is a PhD candidate in refugee world literature

9. Flowers by Jay Bernard (2019)

At first glance, Jay Bernard’s Flowers is circular poem (one that begins and ends in the same place) but you soon realise that the circle isn’t going to complete. It opens:

Will anybody speak of this

the way the flowers do,

the way the common speaks

of the fearless dying leaves?

And closes:

Will anybody speak of this

the fire we beheld

the garlands at the gate

the way the flowers do?

And the answer seems to be, no: no one will speak of these things – the “coming cold” and the “quiet” it will bring – only the things themselves as they die. With the songs Where Have All the Flowers Gone? by Pete Seeger and Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan in its DNA, Flowers has the eternal power of a folk-lyric – prophetic and unignorable.

Kate McLoughlin is a professor of English literature

10. Place by W.S. Merwin (1987)

Climate change poetry – should it be a thing? How do poets avoid the oracular pomp it threatens? Browsing my small library I’m shocked anew to realise most poets lived and died blissfully innocent of our condition.

OK, what about the late John Burnside’s lyric Weather Report (“this is the weather, today / and the weather to come”). It poignantly extrapolates from a sodden summer to his sons’ futures: “a life they never bargained for / and cannot alter”. Heartbreaking. Or the odd dread of spring in Fiona Benson’s Almond Blossom, a season characterised as Earth’s, “slow incline … inch by ruined inch”. Ditto.

But then I reach back to the great American poet W.S. Merwin’s short prayer Place to find that grace-note of hope which surely needs to thread through all poems, whether they speak of climate change, mortality or love: “On the last day of the world / I would want to plant a tree.” Me too.

Steve Waters is a playwright and professor of scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Amy Wilcockson receives funding from Modern Humanities Research Association as Research Fellow for the Percy Bysshe Shelley Letters project.

Steve Waters receives funding from AHRC

Clodagh Philippa Guerin, Ellen Howley, Jack Reid, Janine Bradbury, Julie Meril Gardner, Kate McLoughlin, Katie MacLean, and Sally Flint 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.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced on April 28 that it will leave the global oil producers’ cartel Opec. Its decision is the latest sign that the war in the Middle East has not only deepened animosities between Iran and its Gulf neighbours, but among the Gulf states too.

Founded in 1960, Opec is a rare success story among multilateral organisations in the region. Its policies paved the way for Gulf oil producers to have enough funds to buy back or renationalise their oil resources, and finance the spectacular development of their states.

The organisation has survived all major revolutions and wars in the region thus far – though Qatar left in 2019 when it was blockaded by its Gulf neighbours.

Saudi Arabia, the largest oil producer in Opec, holds substantial leverage within the group. This has led to tension with the UAE, which has for some time pushed for higher production quotas for itself, given its spare capacity. These efforts have been to no avail.

However, its decision to leave Opec is about more than merely frustration with the organisation.

Though it was very close to Saudi Arabia in the mid-2010s, the UAE has in recent years drifted apart from its larger neighbour. This has been driven by a number of regional issues including the countries’ diverging strategies in wars in Yemen and Sudan, and their respective relations with Israel.

The UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020, while the Saudis say they will only normalise once a Palestinian state is established.

The two countries have also recently become serious economic competitors. And although both states have been hit hard by Iran in the current war, the conflict seems to have accelerated their rivalry.

Saudi Arabia is the largest and richest country in the Gulf. But many of its transformative economic projects require political stability and a high oil price to succeed. The war has exposed the limits of its policy of tentative outreach to Iran, and of its partnership with a US that is so closely allied with Israel. So, the Saudis have strengthened defence ties with nuclear-armed Pakistan.

These deepening ties have been met with dismay in the UAE, which has close ties to India. The Emiratis have been critical of Pakistan during the war, calling on Islamabad to condemn the Iranians more forcefully – something that is not possible due to Pakistan’s role as a mediator in peace negotiations.

At least partly in frustration at its response to the war, the UAE recently demanded that Pakistan repay a US$3.5 billion (£2.6 billion) loan. Saudi Arabia immediately came to the rescue by providing Pakistan with financial support.

The UAE’s announcement to leave Opec coincided with a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, where members sought to find common ground on the Iran war. This was a major affront to the Saudis.

Other Gulf frictions

The war has sparked other frictions in the Gulf, including reviving old tensions between the UAE and Iran over three islands – Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb – that Iran occupied at the time of Emirati independence from Britain in 1971. These islands strengthen Iran’s strategic position along Gulf shipping lanes.

The UAE has long claimed sovereignty over the islands, while Iran claims they were always part of its territory. Iran’s control of the three islands is thought to be part of a secret deal between Britain and the Shah of Iran around 1970, whereby the shah would renounce a claim Iran maintained to Bahrain in return for the islands.

This and other historic border disputes in the region, including between the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, remain some of the most sensitive topics in modern Gulf history. For a forthcoming book on the rise of the Gulf states, I have tried to access relevant UK Foreign Office documents, but have had numerous freedom-of-information requests denied on closed material dating back to the 1960s and earlier.

The northern Gulf state of Kuwait has also been hit hard during the conflict. Here, many attacks seem to have come from Shia militias based in Iraq. These attacks have revived traumatic memories of Iran-linked political violence in the 1980s, and Iraq’s invasion in 1990.

States that cannot bypass the closed Strait of Hormuz – such as Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar – have experienced the most economic damage from the war. To balance its budget, Bahrain is already dependent on aid by wealthier Gulf states. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, on the other hand, have the geographical means to bypass Hormuz.

Oman, which controls one side of the strait, may well benefit in the long run. This could either be through a new arrangement with Iran to charge vessels a toll, or because its ports on the Arabian Sea will increase in significance – perhaps even resurrecting some of Oman’s former glory, when it was a major regional power. This is not something neighbouring UAE and Saudi Arabia would like to see.

The reckless US-Israeli attack on Iran has thus opened up old faultlines, and could create new ones between states around the Gulf. It is also undermining the few avenues of regional cooperation that remain. This makes a fragmented and dangerous region even more so.

Toby Matthiesen 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.

Actor Sarah Michelle Gellar, best known for her role as teenage demon slayer Buffy Summers, recently shared in an interview that she uses an “EMS suit” during workouts to stay fit. And she’s not the only one who has made this form of exercising a trend – with celebrities from Tom Holland to Cindy Crawford all using EMS workouts to get fit.

EMS, short for electromyostimulation, uses electrical impulses to support muscle contraction. The idea is that the machine uses electricity to stimulate your muscles to work harder, to help you get more out of your workout without lifting heavy weights.

Some companies even claim that a 20-minute EMS session (roughly half an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), can deliver the same benefits as hours in the gym. For people who are short on time, dislike traditional exercise or want a novel way to stay motivated, this sounds very tempting.

But while EMS does have some evidence-based benefits, particularly in rehabilitation settings, it’s far from a miracle shortcut to getting fit.

In clinical contexts, EMS works by sending small, electrical impulses through pads placed on the skin. Just like with regular workouts, these impulses stimulate nerves, triggering muscles to contract. Physiotherapists have used EMS for decades to help patients recovering from injury or surgery, especially when regular movement is difficult.

It has even been used in spaceflight simulations, in which participants have to lie in a bed tilted slightly downwards for extended periods to replicate the effects of being in space on the body. This can cause muscles to weaken, and research has explored EMS as a countermeasure loss during these conditions, particularly when combined with resistance exercise.

What is new is the rise of “whole body EMS” in the fitness industry. Instead of placing electrodes on a single muscle group, users wear the suit or vest. It contains multiple electrodes targeting the arms, legs, glutes, back and core. During a session, people perform squats, lunges, arm raises and more, while the suit pulses to intensify muscle activation.

In practice, the benefits depend heavily on who you are and how you train.

Does it work?

Research suggests EMS can help maintain strength and muscle mass after five to six weeks of treatment compared with doing a conventional exercise programme. A meta analysis in 2023 supports this, outlining how between one to three whole-body EMS sessions per week for six to 12 weeks can result in modest improvements in muscle mass, strength and power.

Another separate study also reported strength gains after a similar frequency of use in non-athletic, sedentary adults.

For people who are sedentary, or have joint pain, EMS may offer an alternative to stimulating muscles without the stress of exercise.

However, it is not a substitute for the broad, well established, whole-body health benefits of regular exercise, which extend beyond muscles to the cardiovascular and metabolic systems, among others.

This distinction becomes clearer when we look at regular exercisers. A recent study, which examined EMS use in athletes and trained sportspeople, found little to no benefit on performance measures such as jumping, sprinting or agility.

Furthermore, studies examining strength outcomes report inconsistent findings, with results varying widely depending on the EMS protocol used and how it’s combined with conventional training.

Taken together, these findings suggest that for people who are already active, EMS probably won’t provide a meaningful edge as conventional exercise is already very effective. Lifting weights, sprinting or doing bodyweight exercises all produce strong, natural muscle contractions without the need for electrical stimulation.

Should you try it?

Overall, the research on EMS is promising but far from definitive. Many studies are small, short term, or use differing protocols, making comparisons difficult.

Some combine EMS with exercise, while others compare it to doing nothing at all. This makes it challenging to determine whether improvements come from EMS alone, its combination with exercise or because participants are just being more active.

Because EMS can produce strong, involuntary muscle contractions, overuse can also lead to severe muscle soreness or, in rare cases, a condition called rhabdomyolysis. This occurs when muscle tissue breaks down rapidly and releases proteins into the bloodstream, harming the kidneys.

Read more: High-intensity workouts may put regular gym goers at risk of rhabdomyolysis, a rare but dangerous condition

Several cases of rhabdomyolysis have been reported after intense EMS sessions, even after a single workout. For this reason, it is recommended to start slowly, stay hydrated and use EMS under professional supervision.

Cost is another factor. Whole body EMS sessions can be expensive, and purchasing a suit for home use can be even more costly. For many people, that money might be better spent on evidence-based, personal training or structured exercise programmes.

For those that can afford it, EMS should be viewed as a supplement, not a substitute, for regular exercise. The strongest evidence for improving health, fitness and body composition still comes from simple, consistent habits: lifting weights a few times a week, walking more, cycling, swimming, jogging or following a gym programme.

There’s no shortcut around the basics. EMS may add a spark, but it can’t replace the benefits of real exercise.

John Noone 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.

A century ago, the five-day working week helped reshape society. It was introduced at scale by industrial pioneers to address not only worker wellbeing but also economic pressures.

US industrialist Henry Ford was among the first to give workers two full days off per week, 100 years ago this month. Ford suspected that giving workers a “weekend” would increase overall productivity – and he was correct.

Today, as advances in artificial intelligence accelerate and concerns about job security grow, a similar question is emerging. Could reducing working time again help societies adapt to these seismic changes?

The evidence increasingly suggests it can, but not in the simplistic way that is often portrayed. The four-day week is not just a workplace benefit. It is a potential tool to improve wellbeing, support families and rethink how work is distributed in society.

Research across multiple countries, including large-scale pilots in the UK and Portugal, shows that reducing working time can deliver meaningful benefits for both employees and organisations.

In a 2025 study of four-day week adoption, my colleagues and I found improvements in sleep, exercise and quality of working life. There were positive implications for both the mental and physical health of employees.

Our research showed productivity at work can also increase, alongside reductions in absenteeism and staff turnover. And it can be beneficial for an employer’s social image.

However, the most important insight is not about productivity but what happens outside work. After all, time is a social resource, not just an economic one.

When people move to a four-day week, they do not simply rest more. They reallocate time in ways that have broader implications for society.

Across our research, participants said they spend more time with family and friends, engaging in community activities and investing in their physical and mental health by exercising and practising hobbies and self-care activities.

These are not trivial changes. Over time, they contribute to stronger social ties, better mental health and more resilient communities.

There are also important gender implications. Early findings suggest that reduced working time can lead to fathers being more involved in caring for their children and other domestic responsibilities. While this does not automatically solve gender inequality, it creates conditions that make more equal divisions of labour possible.

In this sense, the four-day week is not just about work. It is about how societies organise care, relationships and everyday life.

The challenge in service sectors

Critics of a four-day week often point out that it is harder to implement in service sectors such as healthcare, childcare, manufacturing, hospitality or retail. This is true, but it is not a reason to dismiss the idea.

In these sectors, work is tied to time, presence and staffing levels. Reducing working hours often requires more complex redesign, including changes to rotas, additional hiring or upfront investment. Colleagues and I have highlighted this when addressing the UK case of the NHS.

But these challenges should be seen as design problems, not impossibilities. In fact, the potential benefits to society may be even greater in these sectors. Improved wellbeing and reduced burnout among healthcare staff and care workers can translate into better quality of service and fewer mistakes.

A more important concern is inequality. If working time reductions are adopted unevenly, there is a risk that some workers will be excluded – often those in lower-paid or frontline roles. This is a valid concern, but not an argument against the four-day week. Rather, it is an argument for implementing it more thoughtfully.

Instead of asking whether all jobs can adopt the same model, the focus should be on how different forms of reduced work time can be adapted across sectors. This could include shorter daily hours, staggered schedules or phased time reductions.

The future of work

The renewed interest in reducing the amount of time we spend working is not happening in isolation. It is closely linked to broader debates about automation, productivity and the future of work.

If technological advances continue to increase productivity, a fundamental question arises: who benefits from these gains?

Historically – during the Great Depression, for example – working time reductions have been one way of redistributing those benefits. Compared with more radical proposals such as universal basic income, the four-day week offers a more direct and socially embedded way of sharing gains in productivity.

The four-day week is not a universal solution, and it will not look the same everywhere. But the evidence shows working less can go hand-in-hand with maintaining productivity.

It can also support a shift towards a society where time is valued not only as an economic input, but as a foundation for wellbeing, relationships and participation in community life.

A century after the five-day week helped define modern work, there may be another turning point on the horizon. This time, the real question is not whether we can afford to reduce working time, but whether we can afford not to.

Rita Fontinha’s employer, the University of Reading, has received funding from the Portuguese Government and the Azores Regional Government to conduct academic research on four-day working week pilots.

With all the talk about the May 12 budget containing significant tax reform, Anthony Albanese sounded very sensitive when confronted about one big reform his government won’t be making.

In a question-and-answer session at a forum run by the Daily Telegraph on Friday, it was put to Albanese, “You’re talking about fundamental and profound reforms, but why won’t you do the simplest and most effective reform and index income tax rates?”

The prime minister bristled, first saying (wrongly) “no government has done that” and then going on, “you define it that way. I don’t think that’s the most – I think that’s a very big call from you,” he told editor Ben English.

Pressed on whether such a change would not be about equity, Albanese said, “It’s an even bigger call for you to say that that’s the biggest thing we can do on equity in the budget. So, thank God you’re not on the ERC [expenditure review committee].

"There’s a range of tax measures you can do to really go hard on equity. That’s not at the front of them.”

Economist Richard Holden, from UNSW, points out that “bracket creep” – inflation pushing people into higher tax brackets – will worsen as a result of the Iran war.

“The higher inflation flowing from the ongoing impact of the energy crisis will lead to more bracket creep than before,” Holden told The Conversation.

“Even pre-crisis, bracket creep was significant. Based 2.5% per annum inflation over a decade a taxpayer on average full time earnings would go from paying an average tax rate of 22.8% to 25.9% over a decade.”

An advocate for indexing tax brackets to inflation, Holden said “this would end bracket creep forever.

"Many peer jurisdictions, including the United States, do exactly this. Politicians have an incentive not to do so, so they can dish out essentially fake tax cuts.”

Governments shy away from indexation because of the cost to revenue, and also the fiscal flexibility and political advantage they get when they have discretion over the timing and amount of tax cuts.

The Fraser government introduced tax indexation but later cut it back and then dropped it altogether.

Former treasury secretary Ken Henry has advocated indexing income tax thresholds. Henry said last year: “Fiscal drag has got so bad, politicians are getting away with blue murder – and they shouldn’t”.

Then opposition leader Peter Dutton flirted with the idea before the last election but did not commit to it as a policy promise.

The budget will contain changes to the capital gains tax and negative gearing. They will be sold as promoting intergenerational equity, and helping with housing affordability.

On another tax front, Albanese has ruled out any new tax on gas exports, despite a strong public campaign for one.

Meanwhile Treasurer Jim Chalmers has released updated numbers to show some of the “biggest spending pressures” on the budget.

They include:

• $25 billion for the hospitals agreement with the states

• About $14 billion for defence investments

• More than $6 billion in new and amended Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme listings

• $4.4 billion in additional payments for Disability Support Pensioners

• $3.2 billion in additional income support for Jobseekers

• $2.5 billion to halve the fuel excise

• $2.5 billion in additional natural disaster support

• $1.5 billion to meet infrastructure cost pressures

• $1.5 billion in additional financial support for Carers

• $1.5 billion in additional payments for Aged Pensioners

• More than $500 million to respond to the antisemitic Bondi terrorist attack – with additional funding provisioned for the National Gun Buyback scheme.

The figures cover the budget period, over five years from 2025-2026. (The hospitals agreement covers five years from 2026-27.)

The spike in inflation from the Middle East conflict affects both the spending and revenue sides of the budget, increasing the cost of some programs but also boosting some revenue items.

Chalmers said the Middle East conflict meant higher borrowing costs on debt “that will hit the budget hard, and higher inflation that will flow through to higher payment costs”.

Michelle Grattan 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.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects nationwide retail gasoline prices to average near US$4.30 a gallon for April 2026 – the highest monthly average of the year. The political response has been familiar. Georgia has suspended its state gas tax, other states are weighing their own tax holidays, and the White House has issued a temporary waiver of a law known as the Jones Act in hopes of moving more domestic fuel to East Coast ports.

As an energy economist, I am often asked about what contributes to gas prices and what different policies can do to affect them.

The price of a retail gallon of gas is the sum of four things: the cost of crude oil, refining, distribution and marketing, and taxes.

In nationwide figures from January 2026, crude oil accounted for about 51% of the pump price, refining roughly 20%, distribution and marketing about 11% and taxes about 18%. That mix shifts with conditions: When crude oil prices spike, that can drive more than 60% of the price; when the price drops, taxes and logistics are larger shares of the cost.

Crude oil is the biggest ingredient

Because the price of crude oil is the largest element, most of the price at the pump is derived from the global oil market.

Usually, big swings in crude prices come mainly from shifts in global demand and expectations – not from supply disruptions, according to widely cited research in 2009 by the economist Lutz Kilian.

But what is happening in early 2026 with the war in Iran is one of the exceptions: a classic supply shock. Severe disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Middle East oil infrastructure have taken millions of barrels a day off the global market.

Most drivers generally can’t quickly reduce how much they drive or how much gas they use when prices rise, so gasoline demand doesn’t change much in the short run. That means a jump in crude costs tends to result in people paying more rather than driving less.

Refining, regulations and the California puzzle

Refining turns crude into gasoline at industrial scale. The U.S. doesn’t have a single gasoline market, though. Roughly a quarter of U.S. gasoline is a cleaner-burning blend of petroleum-derived chemicals called “reformulated gasoline,” which is required in urban areas across 17 states and the District of Columbia to reduce smog.

California uses an even stricter formulation that few out-of-state refineries make. California is also geographically isolated: No pipelines bring gasoline in from other U.S. refining regions.

California’s gasoline prices have long run above the national average, explained in part by higher state taxes and stricter environmental rules. But since a refinery fire in Torrance, California, in 2015 reduced production capacity, the state’s prices have been about 20 to 30 cents a gallon higher than what those factors would indicate.

Energy economist and University of California, Berkeley, professor Severin Borenstein has called this the “mystery gasoline surcharge” and attributes it to the fact that there isn’t as much competition between refineries or gas stations in California as in other states. California’s own Division of Petroleum Market Oversight says the surcharge cost the state’s drivers about $59 billion from 2015 to 2024. It’s not exactly clear who is getting that money, but it could be gas stations themselves or refineries, through complex contracts with gas stations.

Getting the gas into your car

The distribution and marketing category covers the costs of everything involved in getting the gasoline from the refinery gate to your tank.

Gasoline moves by pipeline, ship, rail and truck to wholesale terminals, and then by local delivery truck to service stations.

At the retailer’s end, the key factors are station rent and labor, the cost to buy gasoline in bulk to be able to sell it, credit card fees of as much as 6 to 10 cents a gallon at current prices, and franchise fees paid to the national brand, such as Sunoco or ExxonMobil, for permission to put their branding on the gas station.

Most gas station operators net only a few cents per gallon on fuel itself – which is why many gas stations are really convenience stores with pumps out front. Borenstein and some of his collaborators have also documented that retail gas prices rise quickly when wholesale costs climb but fall slowly when wholesale costs drop.

The question of gas tax holidays

The federal government charges a tax on fuel, of 18.4 cents a gallon for gasoline and 24.3 cents a gallon for diesel. States charge their own taxes, ranging from 70.9 cents a gallon for gas in California to 8.95 cents in Alaska.

When gas prices rise, many politicians start talking about temporarily suspending their state’s gas tax. That does reduce prices, but not as much as politicians – or consumers – might hope. Research on past gas tax holidays has found that consumers get about 79% of the reduction in gas taxes. That means oil companies and fuel retailers keep about one-fifth of the tax cut for themselves rather than passing that savings to the public.

Gas tax holidays also reduce funding for what the taxes are designed to pay for, typically roads and bridges. That pushes road and bridge upkeep costs onto future drivers and general taxpayers.

There is an additional problem, too: Taxes on gasoline are supposed to charge drivers for some of the costs their driving imposes on everyone else – carbon emissions, local air pollution, congestion and crashes. But Borenstein has found that U.S. fuel tax levels are already far below the true cost to society. Removing the tax on drivers effectively raises the costs for everyone else.

The Jones Act: A small number that adds up

The 1920 Jones Act is a federal law that requires cargo moving between U.S. ports to travel on vessels built and registered in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed primarily by U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Of the world’s 7,500 oil tankers, only 54 meet this requirement. Only 43 of these can transport refined fuels such as gasoline.

So, despite significant refining capacity on the Gulf Coast, some U.S. gasoline is exported overseas even as the Northeast imports fuel, in part reflecting the relatively high cost of moving fuel between U.S. ports.

Economists Ryan Kellogg and Rich Sweeney estimate that the law raises East Coast gasoline prices by about a penny and a half per gallon on average, costing drivers roughly $770 million a year. In light of the war’s effect on gas prices, the Trump administration has temporarily suspended the Jones Act requirements – an action more commonly taken when hurricanes knock out Gulf Coast refineries and pipeline networks.

What moves the number

The result of all these factors is that the price that drivers see at the pump mostly reflects the global price of crude, plus a stack of domestic costs, only some of which are inefficient.

Tax holidays give a partial, short-lived rebate. Jones Act waivers trim pennies, though permanent repeal may cause more fundamental changes, such as reduced rail and truck transport of all goods, which could lower costs, emissions and infrastructure damage associated with cargo transportation. Harmonizing fuel blends across states and seasons may lower prices somewhat, but likely at the expense of increased emissions.

Ultimately, the best protection against oil price shocks is a more efficient gas-burning vehicle, or one that doesn’t burn gasoline at all. In the meantime, the best I can offer as an economist is clarity about what that $4.30 actually buys.

Robert I. Harris 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.

In the summer of 2025, OpenAI released ChatGPT 5 and removed its predecessor from the market. Many subscribers to the old model had become attached to its warm, enthusiastically agreeable tone and complained at the loss of their ingratiating robotic companion. Such was the scale of frustration that Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, had to acknowledge that the rollout was botched, and the company reinstated access.

Anyone who’s been told by a chatbot that their ideas are brilliant is familiar with artificial intelligence sycophancy: its tendency to tell users what they want to hear. Sometimes it’s very explicit – “that is such a deep question” – and sometimes it’s a lot more subtle. Consider an AI calling your idea for a paper “original,” even if many people have already written on the same topic, or insisting that your dumb idea for saving a tree in your garden still contains a germ of common sense.

AI sycophancy seems harmless, maybe even cute, until you imagine someone consulting a chatbot about a weighty question, like a military strategy or a medical treatment. We study the impact of extensive human interactions with chatbots, and we recently published a paper on the ethics of AI sycophancy. We believe this tendency harms people’s ability to tell truth from fiction, and is psychologically and politically dangerous.

Flattery over facts?

In the simplest terms, sycophancy is the tendency to prioritize approval over factual accuracy, moral clarity, logical consistency or common sense. All AI models suffer from this trait, although there are some tonal differences between them. Open AI’s ChatGPT is often warm and affirming; Anthropic’s Claude tends to sound more reflective or philosophical when it agrees with you; and xAI’s Grok is insistently informal, even jocular.

Politeness and adapting to someone’s communication style are not the same as sycophancy. Neither is using diplomatic language to convey sensitive information. A chatbot can be tactful without becoming sycophantic, just like a person can. Unlike people, though, AIs can’t be aware of their own sycophancy, because they are not – so far – aware of anything at all. Calling AIs sycophantic describes their patterns of behavior, not their character traits.

The problem stems from the architecture of chatbot technology and the sources it draws from. Models are sycophantic because a great deal of language use on the internet – the raw material that chatbots learn from – displays sycophantic features. After all, humans often communicate with each other in sycophantic ways.

Second, the training process to fine-tune AI models’ responses includes a kind of “quality control” carried out by human supervisors. This training method is known as “reinforcement learning from human feedback,” and it involves people rating chatbots’ comments for appropriateness and helpfulness. Human beings often are subject to an “agreeableness bias”: Our own preference toward sycophancy rubs off on models as we train them.

Finally, it’s hard to deny that sycophancy renders chatbots more likable. That, in turn, increases the chance that a given user will keep using it. It also increases the technology’s ability to extract user data, assuming that people are more likely to divulge information to a friendly bot.

Truth and trust

Why is this phenomenon so troubling?

Let’s begin with AI sycophancy’s epistemic harms: how it hurts human users’ capacity to know the truth.

The quality of any decision depends on a clear grasp of the facts pertaining to it. A general inquiring about the combat-readiness of an infantry division needs straightforward information. A CEO considering a merger with a competitor needs an honest assessment of the market conditions. A public health leader needs to know the real risk that an emerging pathogen poses.

In all those cases, telling leaders what they might like to hear instead of the truth could lead them to make dangerous decisions. And the same is true in more humdrum contexts. People need to have the best information available before choosing a job, picking a major, buying a house or deciding on a medical procedure.

In our February 2026 paper, we argue that sycophancy is also psychologically damaging. And that is true whether it comes from a person or from a chatbot. You never quite know if your very obliging interlocutor is being nice because they like you or because they want something. A shadow of suspicion creeps in: “Could my ideas really be that brilliant?” “Are my jokes really that hilarious?” This background music of doubt undermines the quality of the interaction.

Sycophancy also undermines people’s capacity to know their own minds. If conversation partners – human or artificial – keep telling you how smart, funny and insightful you are, it damages your ability to identify your own weaknesses and blind spots.

The psychological harms are compounded as people develop relationships with chatbots. The sycophancy of these models profoundly limits the kind of “friendship” you can have with them. In his classic account of friendship, Aristotle wrote that real friendship, which he calls a friendship of virtue, is based on trust and equality between the friends. You can’t trust a sycophant, because he doesn’t tell you the truth. And since he only tells you what you’d like to hear, he doesn’t put himself on an equal footing.

More importantly, interactions with sycophantic chatbots impart all the wrong habits for navigating the world of human relationships, where friction, disagreement, boredom and different opinions than your own are prevalent.

AI sycophancy carries political risks as well. The success of liberal democracies has, traditionally, depended on the strength of their empirical and meritocratic mindset: on the ability of officials and citizens to identify, share and act on the truth.

Historian Victor Davis Hansen famously attributed some of the Allies’ success in World War II to their ability to quickly recognize and address the faults of their strategic bombing campaigns. Lower-ranking officers were able to tell their superiors what wasn’t going well and argue forcefully for changing course. That was a real advantage over authoritarian competitors.

Reining it in

What can we do to reduce the risks?

One promising approach is AI lab Anthropic’s embrace of what the company calls Constitutional AI: the attempt to teach chatbots to follow principles rather than mirror user preferences.

But beyond technical innovations, it’s important to consider the policy side. One idea is to require AI companies to run and then publish sycophancy audits of their models – tests that show how well their products meet honesty benchmarks. We would argue that AI labs should also disclose sycophancy-related risks that emerge while training and testing their models, and the mitigation efforts they have undertaken.

Some responsibility is on the users and their teachers: Schools and universities should be paying close attention to sycophancy as part of their AI literacy programs. But courts can also consider holding AI labs responsible for harms traceable to the sycophancy of their products, much as they are now contemplating social media companies’ responsibility for the addictive design of their platforms.

As people interact more with chatbots, asking for advice about everything from whether your shoes go with your pants to how countries should conduct wars, the impact of AI’s sycophantic behavior is likely to become dramatic. Our intellectual, psychological and physical well-being requires taking this algorithmic vice very seriously.

The Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston receives funding from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Nir Eisikovits serves as the data ethics advisor to MindGuard, a startup focused on AI integration into companies' workflow.

Cody Turner is a fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

A roughly 14-foot-tall bronze statue of the United States’ most famous abolitionist, Harriet Tubman, will become a permanent fixture outside Philadelphia’s City Hall later this year. It will be the first statue of a Black female historical figure in the city’s public art collection.

As scholars of African American studies, Africology and geography at Temple University in Philadelphia, we believe the statue’s completion is an opportune time to think about Philadelphia’s central role in African American history, including as a key destination point for those who escaped slavery along the Underground Railroad.

Philadelphia’s free Black community

After Pennsylvania passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery on March 1, 1780, Philadelphia’s Black population grew rapidly. By 1790 there were about 2,000 free Black residents in the city. Among them were doctors, teachers, merchants, clergymen, sailors and skilled artisans.

In 1787, the same year the nation’s founders met in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, to ratify the U.S. Constitution, Black clergymen Absalom Jones and Richard Allen established the Free African Society in Philadelphia. The FAS was America’s first Black mutual aid association, and it provided financial aid to poor and elderly, unemployed and sick individuals, as well as orphans and widows. Jones later formed the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and Allen founded the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, both in 1794.

Beginning in earnest around 1830, Philadelphia’s vibrant free Black community, led by successful Black industrialists and merchants such as James Forten and Robert Purvis, collaborated with local white abolitionists, including Quakers such as Thomas Garrett, to fund and arrange people’s escapes from slavery on the Underground Railroad.

A key stop on the Underground Railroad

Importantly, the Underground Railroad was neither a railroad nor underground. It was a clandestine network of places, people and routes used by Black people enslaved in the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War.

Even while this secret network was in operation from about the 1830s to 1860s, the railroad metaphor was widely used. According to the tasks they performed, there were Underground Railroad “agents,” “conductors” and “station masters” who hid “passengers” at safe houses through their journeys to freedom.

Geography was an important aspect of Philadelphia’s service to the Underground Railroad. Located in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania and just north of Delaware Bay, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean, 19th-century Philadelphia served as a major port where many free Black and white people worked in the maritime industry. This network was highly efficient in passing on Underground Railroad communications and coordinating escapes within the coastal and bay regions to the south.

Simple proximity to the Mason-Dixon Line, which formed Pennsylvania’s southern border with Maryland, and which symbolized the division of “free” states from “slave” states, also made Philadelphia an attractive destination for those escaping slavery.

William Still’s careful records

William Still, who was born in New Jersey to a formerly enslaved couple from Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay region, moved to Philadelphia in 1844. He initially worked as a clerk and janitor in Philadelphia’s Abolition Society. Later he served as the secretary of Philadelphia’s abolitionist Vigilance Committee, from 1853 to 1861.

Also known as “the Father of the Underground Railroad,” Still coordinated many Underground Railroad escapes and received over 900 passengers who made their way to Philadelphia and continued on to points farther north, including Canada.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 compelled authorities in northern free states to assist in apprehending and returning those who escaped back to slavery. There were harsh penalties, including imprisonment. Court trials often led to fines as large as $1,000 for those who assisted escapees.

Despite the danger to himself, Still provided financial assistance for travel to many of those who escaped and hid some passengers at his own home at 244 S. 12th St. – mere blocks from where Thomas Jefferson had penned the Declaration of Independence 77 years earlier.

Still carefully recorded the information about the passengers he received, including their names, how they escaped, where they escaped from, and the destination where they planned to unite with family members, when that was the case. Thanks to those records, hundreds of Black families were reunited after the Civil War.

Harriet Tubman plays a prominent role in Still’s records as a brave woman who was called “the Moses of her people.” Tubman memorized the routes and went back at least 19 times to the Eastern shore of Maryland where she originally escaped from. Carrying a rifle, she would walk with her company at night, heading north and passing through New York’s Finger Lakes, across the international bridge at Niagara Falls, to St. Catharines in Canada. Her final stop was the Salem Chapel British Methodist Episcopal Church, where she gave thanks for delivering her passengers to safety.

In his book, Still provided the copy of a letter about Harriet Tubman’s last trip to Maryland. It was sent by Thomas Garrett to Still on Dec. 1, 1860, and described how Tubman and Garrett coordinated a couple’s dangerous escape with their three children from Dorchester County to Chester County outside Philadelphia. This was Tubman’s final rescue mission before the start of the Civil War, when she joined the Union Army as a nurse, spy and scout due to her extensive knowledge of the routes and the geographical terrain.

What Still’s records show us today

Despite the risks, Still preserved his records and later published them in his 1872 book “The Underground Rail Road.”

Recent work by scholars to abstract and digitize Still’s records has made them more accessible to researchers like us. We leveraged this digital data to map and analyze Still’s records, comparing place names of escape origins that Still recorded and linking them to historic towns, cities and counties.

We then created maps that show precisely where people escaped from, when they escaped from those places, and how they traveled to Philadelphia during their flight.

Our analysis reveals several important places of origin and routes used by those escaping slavery to Philadelphia. In 1855, for instance, there was a sharp spike in escapes to Philadelphia from Norfolk, Virginia, which lies at the very southern end of the Chesapeake Bay. We believe this was due to successful efforts to raise funds and bribe steamship captains, though outraged enslavers quickly put a stop to such activities by passing a state law in 1856 requiring ship inspections.

For those escaping to Philadelphia from regions nearer to Pennsylvania, clandestine travel by small boat or by road was more likely than stowing away on a steamship. A distinct rise in escapes from Dorchester County, Maryland, can be observed in Still’s records in 1857. This was no doubt due to the activities of Tubman, who inspired and coordinated numerous escapes in the county where she was born and raised.

The hypocrisy of ‘independence’

In his famous 1852 “Fourth of July” speech, formerly enslaved abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass famously noted the glaring hypocrisy of the institution of slavery while celebrating American independence.

“This Fourth July is yours, not mine,” he said. “You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?”

Today, more than 150 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States, the history and memorialization of both America’s founding and the freedom movement illustrate Philadelphia’s major role in the success of the Underground Railroad. The city shares an honorable legacy through its fight for freedom and its resistance against slavery and injustice.

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Jeremy Mennis receives funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Science Foundation. He is affiliated with the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.

Nilgun Anadolu-Okur 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.