Parliament voted down a motion on April 15 to ban a practice most Canadians have never heard of, but that retailers are already rolling out: surveillance pricing.

Also called algorithmic personalized pricing, the practice uses personal data to estimate how much consumers are willing to pay, then adjusts the price accordingly. Two shoppers, same store, same item: two different prices, generated by data neither of them can see.

The NDP motion urges the government to prohibit surveillance pricing both in stores and online. The Liberals and Conservatives voted it down. NDP leader Avi Lewis had called the practice “unfair” and “downright creepy” at a news conference days earlier.

A poll by Abacus Data conducted in March found that while most Canadians are not familiar with the term, when the practice was explained to them, 52 per cent said it should be banned. Another 31 per cent of the Canadians surveyed said it should be allowed but more strictly regulated.

For Canadians struggling with cost-of-living pressure, the practice is spreading among retailers, and the laws meant to protect consumers were not designed to catch it.

Not the same as surge pricing

A useful distinction first. Dynamic pricing, the kind used by airlines, hotels and rideshare companies, adjusts based on conditions like demand, the time of day or weather, and applies the same algorithm to every customer equally.

Uber’s surge pricing is the textbook example of dynamic pricing: every rider in the same area at the same moment sees the same multiplier. Annoying? Perhaps. Personalized? No.

Surveillance pricing is different. Where dynamic pricing responds to market conditions, surveillance pricing responds to the individual. It draws on browsing history, device, postal code, purchase frequency and inferred income to predict a person’s willingness to pay.

Dynamic pricing seems to ask: “What are the conditions right now?” Surveillance pricing asks: “Who are you, and how much can we extract from you?”

How much is happening in Canada?

It’s difficult to know how much surveillance pricing is happening in Canada, if at all. So far, there has been no confirmed Canadian case, and the practice is opaque by design.

The Competition Bureau’s discussion paper, published in 2025, reported that more than 60 companies in Canada offer services that use algorithms to optimize pricing across retail, hospitality, transportation and ticketing.

The bureau’s What We Heard report, published in January after a public consultation on algorithmic pricing, identified transparency as Canadians’ chief concern. Shoppers do not know whether the price in front of them has been personalized to them specifically.

The most prominent real-world example came from south of the border. An investigation by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative documented Instacart customers in the U.S. being charged up to 23 per cent more than other shoppers for the same items, at the same store, at the same time.

Nearly three-quarters of grocery items tested were offered to shoppers at multiple price points simultaneously.

Instacart disputed the characterization, but halted the program in December 2025 following public backlash. New York Attorney General Letitia James has since demanded that Instacart share information about its price-testing experiments.

Canadian retailers, meanwhile, are assembling the same underlying toolkit: digital shelf labels that allow prices to be changed remotely in seconds, AI-driven pricing engines and the loyalty card data that feeds them.

Where Canadian law runs out

Most Canadians assume that if something feels deceptive at checkout, the law catches it. For some familiar problems, that is true.

Recent amendments to the Competition Act introduced an explicit ban on drip pricing — the practice of advertising a low price and then adding unavoidable fees at checkout.

The Cineplex case is the most prominent recent example of that law in action. The Competition Tribunal levied a record $38.9 million penalty against the cinema chain for concealing online booking fees, a ruling the Federal Court of Appeal upheld in January. Cineplex has since sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Read more: Cineplex’s $38.9 million fine is a wake-up call about corporate sustainability practices

But surveillance pricing slips past this framework entirely. The price displayed is technically accurate. No fee is buried and no phantom “regular price” is invented. What is hidden is the process.

Deceptive marketing rules assume everyone is offered the same price and someone is misrepresenting it. Surveillance pricing inverts the premise: everyone is offered a different price, and almost no one knows it’s happening.

The Competition Bureau’s mandate is to protect and promote competition, not consumer fairness. Its tools were built to catch anti-competitive behaviour between companies, not price discrimination between individual shoppers.

Similarly, provincial consumer protection laws like Ontario’s Consumer Protection Act are designed to deal with misleading or unfair practices in one-on-one transactions — not large-scale, automated differences in how millions of consumers are treated.

Privacy law, in turn, governs consent to data collection, not consent to how that data is used to shape what you pay. Three legal regimes circle the problem; none quite covers it.

What other jurisdictions have done

In November 2025, New York’s Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act took effect, requiring any business that uses personalized pricing to display a notice reading “this price was set by an algorithm using your personal data,” with civil penalties of up to US$1,000 per violation.

The European Union has required disclosure of personalized pricing since its 2019 consumer rights overhaul. Manitoba’s Bill 49, introduced March 17 by the NDP government of Premier Wab Kinew, would go further than either of those measures and prohibit surveillance pricing outright, making it an unfair business practice.

When asked if he would follow suit, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would not, telling reporters he believes in a “free market” and a “capitalist society.”

Federal AI Minister Evan Solomon said the federal government is “looking into” the issue, but that it would fall under the purview of the Competition Bureau.

What real protection would require

In the short term, shoppers can use private browsing mode, turn off location services and log out of loyalty apps before they shop.

These, however, are only workarounds. They place the burden of navigating an opaque system on the least-informed party in the transaction and they require a level of digital awareness some shoppers don’t have.

Real protection means either a federal disclosure mandate along New York’s lines, or an outright prohibition like the one Manitoba is pursuing. The Competition Bureau can keep monitoring, but monitoring is not enforcement, and competition law wasn’t designed to police unfairness on its own.

Until Parliament or the provinces close the gap, Canadian consumers have no reliable way of knowing whether the price they see is the price everyone else sees.

Jake Okechukwu Effoduh 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 story of wildlife conservation in East Africa is often told through spectacular images of beautiful scenery and the region’s charismatic animals. But seldom asked is the question about how those efforts include and impact the communities that live alongside wildlife.

At the core of Africa’s rich biodiversity are Indigenous communities, which include pastoralists and forest peoples whose ways of life and knowledge are critical to conservation.

However, these communities have historically been blamed for biodiversity loss. Pastoralists such as the Maasai are often blamed for keeping “excessive” amounts of livestock, overgrazing and land degradation.

Such tropes against African Indigenous communities linger and continue to shape conservation, which has led to strict and often punitive regulations.

My ongoing research in the Maasai Mara region of southern Kenya looks into wildlife conservancies. The region is home to the Maasai, as well as other Indigenous Peoples, and rich biodiversity. My research examines how conservancies impact local communities on whose land conservation is practised.

Read more: Tanzania’s Maasai are being forced off their ancestral land – the tactics the government uses

What are wildlife conservancies?

The decline in wildlife in Kenya led to the birth of wildlife conservancies on both community and private lands. Kenya’s 2013 Wildlife Conservation and Management Act defines a wildlife conservancy as “land set aside by an individual landowner, body corporate, group of owners or a community for purposes of wildlife conservation.”

Organizations like the Kenya Wildlife Conservation Association (KWCA) view them differently. They see conservancies as land that is not set aside, but rather managed for the well-being of wildlife and communities.

In essence, the government maintains the view of fortress conservation that entails separating humans from nature, while the KWCA imagines communities co-existing with wildlife.

At the core of wildlife conservancies is land. Land ownership largely determines the type of conservancy that is established, which are either private, community, group or co-managed conservancies.

Private conservancies

In northern Kenya, private conservancies have largely been established in the highlands that were settled by white farmers during the colonial period.
These private conservancies have been criticized as “settler ecologies” built on a “big conservation lie” because they obscure the history of violent, colonial land dispossession, the criminalization of Indigenous pastoralist livelihoods and the exploitation of land and biodiversity to profit from conservation.

Additionally, the normalization of militarized violence in conservation, appropriation and control of conservation revenues meant for communities, and restriction of access to scarce water and pasture from pastoralists even during droughts, amounts to what is known as green colonialism.

The contradiction is that it was British colonial rule in Kenya that created the need for wildlife conservation starting in the 1940s. Extensive devastation of wildlife through sport hunting, wildlife trade and culling meant animals needed greater protection from humans, primarily through state-protected national parks and reserves.

Read more: Operation Legacy: How Britain covered up its colonial crimes

Group conservancies

Group conservancies are mostly found in southern Kenya, where individual plots are amalgamated through long-term land leases to conservation investors who, in turn, establish wildlife conservancies.

In the Maasai Mara, local communities typically lease their land for conservancies in exchange for lease payments, regular access to pasture and investment in initiatives such as school bursaries and infrastructure development.

One such example is the Nashulai Maasai Conservancy, established in July 2016. It’s the first Maasai conservancy in the Maasai Mara created by Maasai peoples.

Wildlife conservancies in Kenya are an important way to enhance land security and conservation built around communities. Community and group conservancies are based on the idea of using the land, water and pastures in ways that support humans, livestock and wildlife.

As part of my research, I interviewed community members who told me about some benefits brought by the conservancy. These included access to post-secondary education through a community college, women empowerment projects such as soap made from elephant dung, river restoration for household water access and food aid during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Challenges faced by group conservancies

Many group conservancies employ strict access rules and hefty fines against human and livestock presence. These practices often agitate communities as they echo fortress conservation’s tactics of separating humans and wildlife.

Land lease agreements between conservancies and landowners are often crafted in complex legal language that only a few community members can comprehend. It is critical that communities are provided with a detailed explanation of what leasing land to a conservancy entails beyond the benefits promised.

In addition, community benefits are undermined through land dispossession by local elites during land subdivision, who, in turn, benefit unfairly from leasing the unjustly acquired land to conservancies.

Biodiversity conservation in East Africa and the Global South more broadly depends significantly on external funding from organizations in the West, especially non-governmental organizations, which British conservation scholar George Holmes calls “conservation’s friends in high places.”

However, Indigenous communities face onerous requirements and processes to access funding for conservation and climate change initiatives.

In a recent guest lecture at the University of Toronto, Kimaren Ole Riamit, the director of the Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA), explained how African Indigenous communities experience the negative impacts of climate change despite being the least responsible for global warming, lose land to conservation and carbon projects and face significant hurdles in accessing resources to address climate-related challenges.

Initiatives meant to empower communities are often captured by local elites and corporate interests that appropriate and control resources and benefits expected to flow to communities.

Carbon offsetting

Wildlife conservancies have also gained the attention of carbon offset markets, which are expanding fast in Kenya. The Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project and the One Mara Carbon Project are some of the main carbon projects in the country’s northern and southern rangelands.

Kenya’s rangelands sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is then measured and verified by certification bodies such as Verra, and converted into tradeable carbon credits. These are sold to organizations seeking to offset their carbon emissions.

Carbon projects enter into long-term contracts with landowners, typically around 40 years, and spell out how the landowners should utilize the land to ensure adequate carbon sequestration and storage. Landowners receive expert knowledge that employs technologies and measurements of carbon that are foreign to local communities.

On the contrary, the same communities that have long managed lands and ecosystems sustainably are treated as lacking the ecological knowledge necessary for biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration.

The outcome is that the owners of the technologies and what is deemed “expert” knowledge become the owners of the value generated from the land owned by communities.

While such initiatives generate millions of dollars in revenue, it has been shown that less than two per cent of climate finance reaches Indigenous Peoples, smallholder farmers and local communities in developing countries.

To create genuinely sustainable ecological conservation and improved quality of life for local communities, the government must focus on empowering communities through meaningful participation in initiatives.

Organizations like ILEPA and the Nashulai Maasai Conservancy are working to empower Indigenous communities in Kenya. These kinds of community-led efforts exemplify how conservation can, and must, include the people who call East Africa’s rich biodiverse landscapes home.

Kariuki Kirigia has received funding from the Black Research Network at the University of Toronto, the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund, and SSHRC-IDRC through the Institutional Canopy of Conservation research project.

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.

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.

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.

The phrase “concentration camp” is freighted with dark historical meaning. Most people hear it and instinctively think of concentration camps used by the Nazis to exterminate Jews and other minority populations during the Holocaust.

But the use and name of concentration camps originated far earlier. In the late 1800s, Spanish military officials used concentration camps – reconcentrados – during their 1896–97 Cuban campaign to isolate civilians from rebels, resulting in widespread death and disease.

We are scholars whose research into international relations and conflict includes studying historical and modern uses of these systems of camps as a form of repression.

In recent peer-reviewed research, we identified four characteristics that define what qualifies as a concentration camp system: targeting groups of civilians for imprisonment; enclosed spaces where the state controls who enters and exits; departure from standard detention practices; and abuse and neglect. We then created a dataset detailing 150 systems of camps used globally since 1896 that fit this criteria. This includes the U.S. internment of more than 125,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens during World War II, the Argentine military junta’s use of camps in their mid-1970s campaign to reorganize society, and Vladimir Putin’s use of so-called filtration camps in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Our use of the term “concentration camp” is not meant to sensationalize or diminish its historical meaning, particularly as it relates to the Holocaust.

Rather, identifying such systems early is how the concept of “never again” – the promise to prevent mass atrocities, such as genocide, and combat extremism – can be translated into meaningful policy action from the public and policymakers.

Based on our criteria, we believe the network of detention facilities maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fits into this broader definition of a system of concentration camps.

The evolution of concentration camps

After the use of concentration camps by the Spanish in Cuba, British officials adopted the practice in southern Africa during their counterinsurgency campaign against the Boer population – descendants of Dutch, French and German Protestant settlers – at the turn of the 20th century. The British detained 110,000 Boers and 37,000 indigenous Blacks in their network of 120 camps. At least 27,000 Boers and 14,000 Blacks died as a result of rampant disease and insufficient food supplies.

By the time major German military operations in Eastern Europe began in 1939, states around the world had erected more than 30 systems of concentration camps, according to our research.

Yet the term soon took on an even darker meaning. Concentration camps were employed most infamously as part of the Nazi regime’s brutal genocide in the 1930s and ’40s. In its 12 years in power, the Nazi government opened more than 1,000 concentration camps in which it detained millions of individuals. In addition to facilitating the Nazi Holocaust and other group-targeted violence against minoritized and non-German populations, Nazi security forces used the camps to repress political opposition and provide labor to the German civilian and military economies.

Though few camp systems have reached the severity or scale of those used during the Holocaust, modern camps often pursue similar goals of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement, practices such as torture and an absence of due process.

In our study, we found 93 examples of systems of concentration camps used since the conclusion of World War II. This includes more than 1,200 camps erected by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang province as part of an expansive policy of discrimination against the Uyghur population there. The Chinese government has detained more than 1 million Muslim Uyghurs since at least 2017, stripping them of their traditions, cultures and languages.

Our 4 criteria further explained

Our research confirms that the word “concentration” is critical to describing these camps. Two key criteria of the camps are the concentration of large numbers of targeted civilians into spaces, which are then secured by small numbers of captors who control who enters and exits the camps.

A third criteria we examined identifies concentration camps as “irregular” insofar as they operate outside of legal frameworks that regulate prisons, refugee camps and immigration detention centers. Concentration camps are run by separate authorities that deny detainees due process, such as formal criminal charges, legal representation or a fair trial.

The last criteria we used as we evaluated camps was the presence of squalor and routine violence. Specifically, we looked for evidence that detainees regularly experienced at least two forms of abuse, including but not limited to torture, beatings, mass killing, sexual violence, psychological abuse, lack of food, lack of water, lack of shelter, lack of healthcare, overcrowding and spread of disease.

ICE detention centers

As of April 2026, there are more than 240 active ICE detention facilities across the U.S.

Migrants held in these camps are not free to leave, though some are given a choice: self-deport − agreeing to leave the country immediately − or remain in custody. Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, migrants have filed more than 34,000 habeas corpus petitions challenging their confinement without trial, exercising a constitutional right.

Based on the criteria we developed, ICE detention camps fit in the spectrum of a system of concentration camps.

Starting with the first criteria, groups of civilians are being targeted by ICE, often based on their perceived ethnicity.

Though ICE’s stated mission is to detain those without documented legal status, many arrests have been based on physical appearance and location rather than evidence of unlawful presence in the United States.

More than 272,000 people arrested by ICE in the first six months of Trump’s second term were booked into ICE detention facilities. While deportations are increasing at a rapid rate, at least 60,000 people remain in detention facilities as of April 2026 – neither released nor deported. These numbers easily exceed counts of individuals held in immigrant detention centers in earlier years.

Hundreds of U.S. citizens have been detained, without justification and against their will, by ICE. The number of individuals arrested in homes and communities, often without an arrest warrant signed by a judge, reached more than 400 people per day in October 2025.

In terms of the second part of our definition, these people are being concentrated in spaces where the Trump administration controls who, when and under what conditions people may enter or exit these facilities. Access has been restricted for lawyers, family members of migrants, journalists and members of Congress.

As for the third criteria, the ICE detention centers also operate separately from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. ICE detention is managed by the Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations under the Department of Homeland Security, in collaboration with private prison companies.

As of April 2026, more than 70% of migrants had no criminal conviction, while many of the remainder were held for minor offenses, such as traffic violations. Failure to provide trials for migrants, particularly those who do not pose these risks, is a departure from established norms.

Our framework’s final criterion is purposeful abuse or neglect. This includes the practice of inflicting direct physical harm or the failure to provide basic necessities – food, water, shelter, healthcare.

Numerous reports have highlighted cutoffs in payments to third-party medical providers who gave care to detainees and a 36% decline in mandated detention facility inspections by ICE’s internal Office of Detention Oversight. These actions have resulted in unsanitary conditions and medical neglect in these facilities. Twenty-three deaths were reported between October 2025 and March 2026, putting the current fiscal year on pace to be the deadliest in over 20 years.

As scholars, we argue that ICE detention centers meet the criteria for concentration camps. We do so not to be provocative but to provide precise language, rather than euphemisms, so people can heed the warnings of atrocities committed in the past.

As journalist Andrea Pitzer argues in her writing about concentration camps, the longer camps exist, the more they shift from a transient emergency measure to a permanent pillar of state function.

Malia Hirasa and Sydney Horton, undergraduate students at the University of Arizona, contributed to this story.

Alex Braithwaite received funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through grant award 2213615.

Rachel D. Van Nostrand 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.

Nigerian women of working age are mostly (90%) self-employed. By comparison, self-employment accounts for less than 16% of employment in high-income countries such as the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is far lower in middle-income countries like South Africa and Turkey too.

Official statistics show that self-employment in Nigeria is concentrated in the northern regions. And there’s a gender difference: women make up the majority of those working for themselves (Figure 1).

What these numbers do not explain is why women are far more likely than men to operate businesses from their homes, or whether those businesses generate meaningful economic returns.

As economists working on labour, gender, energy and development, we addressed these questions in a recent paper.

Using nationally representative household data from 2010 to 2019, the study examines why Nigerian women run enterprises from their homes. These kinds of operations include selling goods from a front room, preparing food at home, or offering haircuts, beauty services, laundry and dry cleaning, and shoe repair. They also make textiles, crafts, garments, shoes and cosmetics at home rather than in shops, kiosks or workshops.

The findings challenge the idea that home-based self-employment is mainly about personal preference or flexibility.

Childcare responsibilities, housing access, electricity and cultural norms strongly shape women’s work location. These insights reveal that supporting women in business must go beyond training or microfinance, and remove structural barriers.

Childcare limits women’s workplaces

We first identified factors associated with operating home-based businesses, using data (2010-2019) from national surveys that follow the same households over time.

We then examined how individual, household and contextual factors shape the likelihood of operating a business from home. We found that childcare was the strongest factor influencing women’s choice of work location.

The presence of young children doesn’t much affect where men work. For women, however, having young children makes it more likely they will run a business from home.

In Nigeria, women shoulder most of the unpaid domestic labour, including childcare, cooking and cleaning. Home-based businesses allow women to earn income while doing that labour.

For many women, home-based work may not be the most attractive option. Rather, the patterns we saw in the data suggest that it’s a way to reconcile income-earning with unpaid domestic responsibilities. Other research into women’s experiences has also shown that working from home may be a necessity rather than a choice.

Why home ownership doesn’t benefit women equally

Homeowners who operate home-based enterprises are better positioned to use property as collateral, access credit, expand workspace, or invest in equipment. They are able to turn housing into productive capital.

However, these advantages are not equally accessible to women.

Only 8.2% of women aged 20-49 are sole owners of land, compared with 34.2% of men, according to World Bank research into gender disparities in property ownership in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Nigerian constitution grants women equal rights to own, inherit and manage property. But many face legal, financial and social barriers that limit their actual control over assets.

Even in owner-occupied households, customary and patriarchal practices can mean that ownership doesn’t translate into decision-making power. Consequently, the same asset generates different economic returns for men and women. It confines women to lower-return home-based activities.

We found that 67% of female homeowners operate home-based enterprises compared with 33% of male owners. Most men who own homes work away from home.

Geography and social norms matter

We found that home-based enterprises are concentrated in poorer regions where returns are low, particularly in northern Nigeria, as shown in figure 2.

Even after accounting for income and education, women in northern Nigeria are far more likely to run businesses from home than women in the south. Cultural and religious norms that restrict women’s mobility and public participation probably play a central role.

This complicates global policy narratives that frame home-based work as inherently empowering. In Nigeria, it often reflects the need to juggle paid work with household obligations under restrictive conditions. These businesses tend to cluster in low-entry sectors, offer limited skill development, and have little growth potential.

Education helps, but only up to a point

Education and household income do expand women’s options, but their effects are limited. Our study shows that better-educated women are less likely than equally educated men to remain in home-based businesses when alternatives are available.

As household income rises, women are also less likely to operate enterprises from home. Importantly, observable characteristics do not explain the full gender gap. The study finds that less than half of the difference in home-based self-employment can be attributed to education, household size, marital status and housing. The rest likely reflects deeper structural forces that shape outcomes differently for men and women. These are forces like social norms, unequal access to finance, gendered returns to assets, and expectations around unpaid care work.

What this means for policy

Promoting home-based self-employment as a route to women’s economic empowerment can be misleading. When women are pushed into home-based enterprises because childcare is expensive, institutions and property rights are weak, or finance is inaccessible, entrepreneurship becomes a response to constraint, not opportunity.

Policies that reduce childcare costs, strengthen women’s property and inheritance rights, and improve access to credit are likely to do more to expand women’s choices than entrepreneurship programmes alone.

Digital infrastructure can help some home-based businesses reach wider markets, but only if deeper barriers are addressed. And because constraints vary across regions, one-size-fits-all solutions are unlikely to work.

More than flexibility

Home-based self-employment in Nigeria reflects deeply gendered expectations about work and care. Many women work from home not to assert independence, but because they have limited options.

Recognising this distinction matters. Celebrating women’s “flexibility” without addressing the constraints behind it risks turning resilience into a permanent requirement. A more equal future is one in which women can choose where and how they work, rather than adjusting their livelihoods around structural barriers.

Ikechukwu (Ike) Nwaka is affiliated with REACH Edmonton Council for Safe Communities as a Board Member

George Nwokike Ike 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.

Divided along ideological lines, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29, 2026, issued a ruling that severely weakens a provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. That provision, known as Section 2, prohibited any discriminatory voting practice or election rule that results in less opportunity for minority groups to exercise their political clout.

In her dissent on the ruling, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that it is the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

The decision in the case known as Louisiana v. Callais struck down a Louisiana voting district drawn to consolidate Black voters into a district where they would be the majority. The court’s conservative majority deemed the drawing of the district an unconstitutional gerrymander.

That, wrote Kagan, will “systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power.”

I’m a historian of racial formation and electoral and cultural politics in the U.S. I see this decision by the nation’s highest court as the latest in a long line of successful attempts, by both state and federal authorities, to limit the political power of Black Americans and, most recently, to reverse the gains they won in two periods of civil rights advancement.

Etching away at voting rights

Back in 2013, the Supreme Court tossed out a key provision of the Voting Rights Act regarding federal oversight of elections.

In the Louisiana v. Callais case, the court seemed ready to abolish Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

While the conservative majority in Louisiana v. Callais did not explicitly strike down Section 2, the ruling appears likely to nonetheless open the floodgates for widespread vote dilution by allowing primarily Southern state legislatures to redraw political districts, weakening the voting power of racial minorities.

The case was brought by a group of Louisiana citizens who declared that the federal mandate under Section 2 to draw a second majority-Black district violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and thus served as an unconstitutional act of racial gerrymandering.

Initially designed to enshrine federal civil rights protections for freed people facing a battery of discriminatory “Black Codes” in the postbellum South, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause has been the foundation of the nation’s modern rights-based legal order, ensuring that all U.S. citizens are treated fairly and preventing the government from engaging in explicit discrimination.

The cornerstone of the nation’s “second founding,” the Reconstruction-era amendments to the Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, created the first cohort of Black elected officials.

As I highlight in my new book “Requiem for Reconstruction,” the struggle over the nation’s second founding not only highlights how generational political progress can be reversed but also provides a lens into the specific historical origins of racial gerrymandering in the United States.

Without understanding this history – and the forces that unraveled Reconstruction’s initial promise of greater racial justice – we cannot fully comprehend the roots of those forces that are reshaping our contemporary political landscape in a way that I believe subverts the true intentions of the Constitution.

The long history of gerrymandering

Political gerrymandering, or shaping political boundaries to benefit a particular party, has been considered constitutional since the nation’s 18th-century founding, but racial gerrymandering is a practice with roots in the post-Civil War era.

Expanding beyond the practice of redrawing district lines after each decennial census, late 19th-century Democratic state legislatures built on the earlier cartographic practice to create a litany of so-called Black districts across the postbellum South.

The nation’s first wave of racial gerrymandering emerged as a response to the political gains Southern Black voters made during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s. Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina and Louisiana all elected Black congressmen during that decade. During the 42nd Congress, which met from 1871 to 1873, South Carolina sent Black men to the House from three of its four districts.

Initially, the white Democrats who ruled the South responded to the rise of Black political power by crafting racist narratives that insinuated that the emergence of Black voters and Black officeholders was a corruption of the proper political order. These attacks often provided a larger cultural pretext for the campaigns of extralegal political violence that terrorized Black voters in the South, assassinated political leaders, and marred the integrity of several of the region’s major elections.

Election changes

Following these pogroms during the 1870s, southern legislatures began seeking legal remedies to make permanent the counterrevolution of “Redemption,” which sought to undo Reconstruction’s advancement of political equality. A generation before the Jim Crow legal order of segregation and discrimination was established, southern political leaders began to disfranchise Black voters through racial gerrymandering.

These newly created Black districts gained notoriety for their cartographic absurdity. In Mississippi, a shoestring-shaped district was created to snake and swerve alongside the state’s famous river. North Carolina created the “Black Second” to concentrate its African American voters to a single district. Alabama’s “Black Fourth” did similar work, leaving African American voters only one possible district in which they could affect the outcome in the state’s central Black Belt.

South Carolina’s “Black Seventh” was perhaps the most notorious of these acts of Reconstruction-era gerrymandering. The district “sliced through county lines and ducked around Charleston back alleys” – anticipating the current trend of sophisticated, computer-targeted political redistricting.

Possessing 30,000 more voters than the next largest congressional district in the state, South Carolina’s Seventh District radically transformed the state’s political landscape by making it impossible for its Black-majority to exercise any influence on national politics, except for the single racially gerrymandered district.

Although federal courts during the late 19th century remained painfully silent on the constitutionality of these antidemocratic measures, contemporary observers saw these redistricting efforts as more than a simple act of seeking partisan advantage.

“It was the high-water mark of political ingenuity coupled with rascality, and the merits of its appellation,” observed one Black congressman who represented South Carolina’s 7th District.

Racial gerrymandering in recent times

The political gains of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes called the “Second Reconstruction,” were made tangible by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The law revived the postbellum 15th Amendment, which prevented states from creating voting restrictions based on race. That amendment had been made a dead letter by Jim Crow state legislatures and an acquiescent Supreme Court.

In contrast to the post-Civil War struggle, the Second Reconstruction had the firm support of the federal courts. The Supreme Court affirmed the principal of “one person, one vote” in its 1962 Baker v. Carr and 1964 Reynolds v. Sims decisions – upending the Solid South’s landscape of political districts that had long been marked by sparsely populated Democratic districts controlled by rural elites.

The Voting Rights Act gave the federal government oversight over any changes in voting policy that might affect historically marginalized groups. Since passage of the 1965 law and its subsequent revisions, racial gerrymandering has largely served the purpose of creating districts that preserve and amplify the political representation of historically marginalized groups.

This generational work is being undone by the current Supreme Court with its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Feb 3, 2026.

Robert D. Bland 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.

Many universities and museums in the U.S. have long held Native American burial artifacts, other sacred objects and even human remains.

Most of these collections were acquired in the late 19th and 20th centuries. They came from grave excavations, anthropological research and other practices carried out without the consent of Native American communities.

In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA. This law requires federally funded institutions, including museums and universities, to identify Native American artifacts, consult with tribes and return them to descendants, tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.

Some institutions, like the University of California, have publicly committed to returning Native American artifacts and remains to the proper communities, in a process known as repatriation. But progress has been slow, and many sacred objects and remains are still held in collections.

As a scholar of Native American genocide, memory and justice, I think repatriation is about more than merely returning items taken without permission.

It’s about how universities and other institutions are confronting the histories that produced these collections in the first place.

The case of the University of California

The University of California is not the only institution confronting this issue of repatriation. But it is one of the country’s most visible university systems, with 10 campuses across the state.

The University of California has publicly stated in a detailed policy document and other places online that it is “committed to the repatriation of Native American human remains and cultural items.” It publicly tracks its work on returning Native American items and remains via a searchable database.

As of February 2026, the university repatriated 9,303 human remains, 476,592 items used for burials, and 140,443 other cultural items, among other objects, according to its database.

Between 2020 and 2024 alone, the University of California campuses completed 100 repatriations involving thousands items, according to the California state audit released in April 2025.

However, the university is facing criticism from tribal leaders and state auditors for moving too slowly.

The 2025 audit found that the University of California still holds the remains of thousands of Native American individuals, along with hundreds of thousands of cultural items. The university’s own database confirms this analysis.

The audit also found gaps in the repatriation work. Some campuses are still discovering new collections that they did not initially document. The University of California’s office of the president does not systematically track this recovery effort, the audit found.

At the university’s current pace, some of its campuses could take more than a decade to finish repatriation.

Earlier state audits in 2019 and 2021 reached similar conclusions. They pointed to weak oversight, delayed planning and limited funding to make good on repatriation promises.

Although the president of the University of California required all campuses to create repatriation plans, many still lack full timelines or other clear steps to solve complex situations.

At the University of California, Santa Barbara, for example, some items were loaned to other institutions and have not been returned.

At the University of California, Davis, 30 items believed to be part of Native American collections were stolen from a display case in 2022. In this case, the university was not sure whether the stolen items initially came from Native communities or not.

A deeper meaning for Native Americans

For Native American communities, ancestral remains are not specimens – they are relatives.

Some of these artifacts were placed with the dead as part of burial practices. These sacred and cultural objects carry ceremonial, historical and communal meaning that does not disappear when they enter a university or museum collection.

Some tribes believe their ancestors’ spirits cannot rest until they are properly reburied, as California’s audits note.

When institutions hold on to Native people’s bodies and belongings for decades, fail to track them fully and then delay their return, the issue is not only administrative. It is also a matter of authority and respect.

This question is especially urgent in California, where many Native American tribes are not federally recognized.

In 2001, California created its own repatriation law, CalNAGPRA, to include these tribes in repatriation work.

However, changes to federal rules in 2024 have made it harder to return certain ancestral remains and cultural items to nonfederally recognized California tribes.

That conflict between federal and state law has made an already difficult process harder.

A widespread issue

This problem is not limited to California.

Across the country, a small number of universities, museums and government agencies hold a large share of the Native American remains and cultural items that have not yet been returned.

Harvard University and Indiana University, for example, are among the schools working to repatriate Native American ancestral remains and cultural items.

Some institutions have interpreted the 1990 law narrowly. In some cases, they have discounted tribal knowledge and labeled ancestral remains as “culturally unidentifiable,” meaning no clear tribal affiliation could be determined.

Moving beyond symbolism

Repatriation at the University of California is part of a broader reckoning. Universities and museums across North America and Europe face the same question: How will they move beyond symbolic statements and address the legacy of colonialism in their collections?

The University of California says campuses are updating plans, budgets and reporting in response to the 2025 audit. It has pledged to return all items by 2028.

I think that these are important steps. But a larger question remains: Will this action lead to more accountability and a quick return of all Native American items and ancestral human remains?

Repatriation is not only about correcting the past. It is a test of how universities serve the public, including Native American communities.

The University of California has adopted policies that include language of repair. The challenge now is to match that language with meeting self-imposed deadlines, and holding true to promises and the federal law in a timely matter.

Kerri J. Malloy 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.

Two months after the United States, along with Israel, launched a war against Iran, that conflict appears far from a lasting resolution.

Much commentary on the protracted nature of the conflict has centered on the limits of both the military and diplomatic approaches to the war. But the conflict has also exposed another key reality: the limits of U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. has been the world’s preeminent economic and military power for decades, certainly since the end of the Cold War. It is at the center of much global financial activity and has a military budget well beyond China, the closest competitor.

Leveraging that power, the U.S. has long used economic coercion to achieve its foreign policy goals, whether against North Korea under the Kim regime, Russia over its invasion of Ukraine or Iran since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-allied shah.

But as U.S. power in the world has slowly declined amid the rise of China and an increasingly multipolar world, the country has likewise lost some of its ability to effectively use economics as a weapon. Indeed, as scholars of economic sanctions and statecraft, we believe that the conflict against Iran has made clear the diminishing returns of U.S. economic sanctions.

The limits of sanctions on Iran

Since 1979, relations between Washington and Iran have been antagonistic. U.S. policy has been largely to punish, contain or isolate Iran, and successive administrations have done so in part through a mix of primary, secondary and targeted financial economic sanctions.

U.S. economic coercion has been applied on Iran for a variety of reasons, including its alleged state sponsorship of terrorism throughout the region and its nuclear program.

The emergence of that nuclear program in 2003, which later resulted in United Nations sanctions against Iran, saw U.S. and European Union interests around Iran converge.

This convergence led to the U.S. and EU cooperating on economic sanctions against Iran, which limited Iranian access to the European banking system. The combined coordinated efforts proved onerous for the Iranian economy, which, as political scientist Adam Tarock notes, meant Iran was “winning a little, losing a lot.”

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated between the U.S., Iran, members of the EU, Russia and China in 2015, placed limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. At the time, the Iranian economy was suffering crushing inflation and rampant food prices. The agreement would provide relief from decades of economic punishment and the removal of EU, UN and U.S. economic sanctions.

However, the U.S. withdrew from the agreement in 2018 under the first Trump administration and later reimposed sanctions on Iran. The return of economic sanctions as part of the first Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign – even if not supported by other nations – saw most global firms refrain from doing business with Iran out of risk aversion.

Additionally, despite the EU’s efforts to preserve the JCPOA, Iran restarted its nuclear enrichment program in 2019, one year after the U.S. withdrawal. The Biden administration’s subsequent expressed intention to reenter the deal never came to fruition.

Believing sanctions relief was not a realistic outcome after the agreement’s failure, Iran – though battered by losing access to the global financial system – has found increasingly creative workarounds. Those have included utilizing so-called shadow fleets shipping illicit Iranian goods, creating successful homemade military products like cheaply made drones and ramping up trade with partners outside the Western orbit.

Indeed, since the nuclear agreement’s collapse, Iran has pursued much closer ties with China and Russia at the expense of prior robust economic relations with Europe. As Iran reorients its trade and economic relations, the U.S. and the West have lost economic coercive leverage.

Separated from a diplomatic endgame, U.S. sanctions – and the current blockade of Iranian-linked ships – appear to be only hardening Iranian resolve. Even if a deal were reached to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has said it plans to push for commercial ships to pay a toll going forward – something that didn’t exist before the war.

In effect, Iran’s ongoing de facto closure of the strait has redirected U.S. economic coercion back at the Trump administration.

Blowback in the energy markets

The biggest costs of that ongoing closure for the U.S. has been in energy.

The U.S. today is one of the largest exporters of crude and refined petroleum globally, making it particularly exposed to oil price volatility. At the same time, some Americans see the development of fossil fuel resources as a key policy priority. As the U.S. becomes more embedded in the export energy sector, it is increasingly experiencing collateral damage – namely, higher oil and gasoline prices – when its foreign policy decisions disrupt oil-related trade.

One way that collateral damage manifests is the affordability problem for many Americans as gas prices rise, which is likely to also create political costs for the Trump administration.

While the U.S. has taken steps to ease the economic disruptions to American consumers by relaxing oil sanctions on Russia and Iran – thus undermining its own sanctions policy – these policy shifts have done little to nothing to offset rising fuel prices. They will likewise fail to ameliorate the potential for economic damage caused by the ongoing disruptions to commerce due to the Strait of Hormuz dangers and uncertainties.

Famed economist Albert O. Hirschman once noted that countries use their strategic position to shift others’ cost–benefit calculations, especially through trade disruptions. And for decades, the U.S. used its privileged position in the global financial system to pressure both rising countries and those not explicitly part of the U.S. alliance.

But as the U.S. becomes more exposed to the consequences of its own decisions, its ability to lead and coerce has stalled under costs it cannot easily absorb.

No longer leading by example

Historically, U.S. economic power was made possible not only by the country’s unilateral strengths but its willingness to pool resources and work multilaterally with other nations.

The Trump White House’s inability to put together a multinational coalition to address the political and economic challenges caused by U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran is not surprising. But they further reflect the evaporation of goodwill the U.S. previously enjoyed with allies in and outside the region.

As the U.S. abandons a playbook that has buttressed its power for decades, Russia has grown bolder, China is edging ahead of the West and middle powers like Iran are able to hold out against American economic and military strength.

None of this means the U.S. no longer holds significant global power. But its turn toward a sanction-first, ask-questions-later approach has, we believe, eroded its ability to shape the behavior of other nations. And it has done so while imposing increasingly tangible costs on both American strategy and the well-being of its own citizens.

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

Caring about future generations means believing that people who will live decades or centuries from now deserve ethical consideration. In practice, that means taking their interests into account when making all kinds of decisions across a range of issues – from aggressively cutting carbon emissions to investing in pandemic preparedness initiatives and regulating powerful emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

While it may sound like a niche moral view to care about future generations in this way, our new research, published in the academic journal Futures, suggests otherwise. In fact, Americans appear to care substantially about future generations. Nevertheless, they also systematically underestimate how much other Americans care.

To study this, we conducted two online surveys of U.S. adults, totaling 1,000 respondents. The samples were built to roughly match the U.S. population in age, gender, race or ethnicity, and political affiliation. In one survey, people told us their own views about future generations. In the other, a different group told us what they thought the average American believes.

We examined this in three ways. First, we asked how many future generations people think society should keep in mind when making collective decisions. For example, when setting climate targets or designing pandemic response systems, how many future generations should count as stakeholders in that decision? Second, we asked how many future generations elected officials should keep in mind when making decisions about laws and public policy. Third, we asked how far into the future people still deserve “moral concern.”

For the third question, participants were shown a list of the present generation and the next 50 generations, with each generation defined as a 25-year period. They then indicated how many of those generations still belonged inside their “moral circle.” In plain terms: If someone will live 100, 200, or even 1,000 years from now, does their suffering matter – and do we have some responsibility to help make their lives go better?

We found that Americans, on average, extended at least some moral concern about 28 generations into the future, or roughly 700 years. But there was a mismatch about when other people’s concern faded – respondents guessed that it happened around 21 generations out, about 175 years sooner.

A similar pattern appeared on the policy questions. Americans said society and government should take into account people living roughly 16 to 17 generations ahead, respectively – around 400 to 425 years into the future. But they assumed other Americans would endorse a shorter horizon of only about 13 generations, or roughly 325 years. In other words, Americans are more future-oriented than they think their fellow citizens are.

Why it matters

Public support for long-term policies depends partly on what people think other people value. Research on climate policy, for example, shows that Americans often underestimate how much support already exists for major mitigation measures. When people wrongly think their view is unusual, they can become less likely to speak up, join with others or pressure leaders to act.

Our findings suggest a similar dynamic may shape support for future-oriented policies more broadly. For issues such as pandemic preparedness, nuclear risk and emerging technologies, decisions made now can affect people far into the future.

It’s possible that a person might support stronger emissions cuts, better disease-prevention systems or safeguards on high-risk technologies, but stay quiet if they assume most other Americans do not care about those kinds of long-term consequences.

What’s next

For climate change, misperceptions are partly driven by partisan polarization, visible disagreement among leaders and vocal opposition from skeptics. Together, they can make public support appear weaker than it is.

Concern for future generations, by contrast, is much less overtly politicized – meaning it does not divide along party lines the way climate policy does. Most Americans, regardless of political affiliation, say they care about people living centuries from now. Yet this concern is rarely voiced in everyday conversation, in media coverage or in political debate.

Future research needs to examine why concern for future generations isn’t more visible in public life, such as in the media or voiced in everyday conversations. As a result, people might assume that others do not care as much as they actually do.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

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