Vox: All Posts by Jonquilyn Hillhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2024-02-22T08:30:00-05:00https://www.vox.com/authors/jonquilyn-hill/rss2024-02-22T08:30:00-05:002024-02-22T08:30:00-05:00How weathering affects Black people’s health
<figure>
<img alt="A drawing of a Black female doctor holding a large band-aid." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VjlO5axg6QCQw15K9VrSAKAOJso=/0x0:4800x3600/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73156297/GettyImages_1215394350.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“There’s nothing inherently wrong with Black people. There is something very, very wrong with the systems that we are forced to live under or within.” </p> <p id="pnG3Pc">In December 2023, I had surgery to remove my fibroids. <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22664601/fibroids-healing-womens-health-recovery">Fibroids are benign tumors</a> that grow in the uterine wall. I’d had the growths for nearly a decade and, even though they were benign, they certainly added difficulty to my life. </p>
<p id="sBZ77l">Heavy periods had plagued me since I was a teenager, but they had gotten worse as I’d gotten older. They often lasted over a week, leaving me tired and anemic. Often my cramps were so bad they made me nauseated. I went through pads and tampons quickly, and often worried that sneezing or coughing or laughing at the wrong time would lead to an embarrassing leak and a day with a jacket tied around my waist.</p>
<p id="gH16xY">Fibroids grow over time and new ones form. Over the years, my doctor found another sizable fibroid, and the one they first found had grown so large that it pressed on my stomach, leading to almost daily heartburn. Four months later, I got approved for a laparoscopic myomectomy, a surgery to have the fibroids removed. I woke up in the hospital groggy from anesthesia and sore from the five incisions the surgeon made, but excited for my new fibroid-free life. I later found out that I had more than two fibroids: they removed 10 in total, and the largest had grown to 15 centimeters — about the size of a mango.</p>
<p id="DXpC96">It’s a familiar story, but despite the answers and clarity my myomectomy gave me, it’s also a mysterious one for a lot of people with uteruses. As many as <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/uterine-fibroids#:~:text=An%20estimated%2020%25%20to%2050,so%20they%20are%20often%20undiagnosed.">77 percent</a> of women will have fibroids in their lifetimes, but we don’t know what causes them. This also means that we don’t know what’s behind fibroids’ racial disparities. Black women are more likely to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/well/live/uterine-fibroids-black-women.html">experience symptoms</a> because of their fibroids, and they are <a href="https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/understanding-racial-disparities-women-uterine-fibroids#:~:text=Black%20women%20are%20also%20two,although%20research%20offers%20some%20clues.">two to three times</a> more likely to have them reoccur once they’re removed. We’re also more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age. </p>
<p id="xgAfID">Doctors have <a href="https://www.vox.com/health/23744536/fibroids-black-women-chemicals-phthalates-hair-relaxers-stress-diet-vitamin-d">theories</a> about why that is. Some researchers think genetics are a factor; others think it could be chemicals we come in contact with. And some think it could be <a href="https://www.vox.com/health/23744329/weathering-racism-black-health-chronic-stress-cancer-discrimination">a phenomenon known as weathering</a>. </p>
<p id="7773a1">Weathering is a term coined by researcher <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/weathering-the-extraordinary-stress-of-ordinary-life-in-an-unjust-society-arline-t-geronimus/18618638">Arline Geronimus</a>. It was not without <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/well/live/weathering-health-racism-discrimination.html">controversy</a> when it was first introduced, but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/well/live/weathering-health-racism-discrimination.html">more of the medical community</a> points to it as a factor for a number of health disparities for Black Americans.</p>
<p id="decrr7">Dr. Uché Blackstock, the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, explores this and other systemic failings of the health care system in her book <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/legacy-a-black-physician-reckons-with-racism-in-medicine-uche-blackstock/19433658"><em>Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine</em></a><em>. </em></p>
<p id="IOJsAn">“Essentially, it’s this idea that dealing with the chronic stress of everyday racism causes a wear and tear on our bodies that prematurely ages us,” she says. “That actually makes us as Black folks susceptible to developing chronic diseases like heart disease, like autoimmune diseases, and also like fibroids.”</p>
<p id="ePuW2h">In an episode of <em>The Weeds</em>, I sat down with Dr. Blackstock to discuss weathering, how racism has impacted medical care past and present, and what solutions could create more equity in health care. </p>
<p id="GQkeNU">Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to <em>The Weeds </em>on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts.</p>
<div id="mVMSoc"><iframe allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *; fullscreen *; clipboard-write" frameborder="0" height="175" style="width:100%;max-width:660px;overflow:hidden;border-radius:10px;" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-racism-ages-black-people/id1042433083?i=1000646239183"></iframe></div>
<h4 id="TjWv12"></h4>
<h4 id="nDWRhz">Jonquilyn Hill </h4>
<p id="PrhxWm">What role does weathering play in the health of Black people? </p>
<h4 id="U4XREO">Uché Blackstock<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p id="1hMXZj">Basically almost every health outcome, we do very poorly. And it’s not because there is anything inherently wrong with us, but there is something very wrong with the social systems that we live in. </p>
<p id="ONjrhF">This idea of weathering is so important for us to talk about because it may seem covert to some people, but there is a stress that we live with every day that actually wears down our bodies. And that’s something that we need to be aware of in how it factors into us developing other diseases. </p>
<h4 id="tAYa5z">Jonquilyn Hill<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p id="AjjP2S">What does stress do to the body? We all hear that adage “<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgmzva/a-dermatologist-explains-the-science-behind-the-black-dont-crack-stereotype">Black don’t crack</a>.” Maybe people look younger, but our bodies are telling us a different story. </p>
<h4 id="JWKKji">Uché Blackstock</h4>
<p id="FGLF3b">We know that Black birthing people have a higher cortisol level than their white peers — about <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/30/texas-abortion-black-women/">15 percent higher</a>. Cortisol is a stress hormone. That’s the hormone that goes up when you are in a fight-or-flight response. The problem is that hormones should not be consistently high. It should go up and as needed come back down. But with Black folks, because we have to go through the stress of living in essentially a racist society, our cortisol levels are consistently high. That causes an increase in our heart rate, a stress on our heart, and an increase in blood pressure. </p>
<p id="JpUBz8">There’s also another idea called <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/epigenetics.htm">epigenetics</a>, the study of gene expression and what happens when people are stressed. And there is also a correlation that because of the stress that we live with due to racism, that causes a change in how genes are expressed. </p>
<p id="fvGHEo">So while race is a social construct and it’s not biological, how we experience racism can turn on and off genes. And we think that has some implication into why Black folks are more likely to develop diabetes, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases like heart disease or atherosclerosis, and infant mortality. </p>
<p id="ygdikd">When you compare the ends of our DNA — those are called telomeres. When you look at our telomeres, Black people and other people of color, our telomeres are shorter. They actually look like they belong to people several decades older. So again, race is a social construct, [there’s] no biological basis for it. But the impact of racism in practices and policies and interpersonal interactions actually has an impact on our DNA. </p>
<h4 id="cJ8tpS">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="gLFXIp">I would love to dig into some more data around how these disparities work. There was this really interesting example you’ve talked about when it comes to Black immigrants.</p>
<h4 id="2qqeKN">Uché Blackstock<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p id="AlUPCX">When Black immigrants come to the United States, their health status is on par with white Americans. But what happens is after one to two generations, their health status actually <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29793684/">declines to that of Black Americans</a>. So what that tells you is that there is something very wrong with the forces that Black people are subjected to just living in this country, that our health status could decline after one or two generations from that of white Americans to Black Americans. </p>
<p id="QVgMmg">There’s nothing inherently wrong with Black people. There is something very, very wrong with the systems that we are forced to live under or within. </p>
<p id="5DSAtN">And that is what is accounting for this decline in life expectancy, we have some of the lowest life expectancy of any racial demographic group. </p>
<h4 id="T7yqrB">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="wAmPWp">What’s on your policy wish list? What do you think would lead to better health care and better outcomes for Black patients? </p>
<h4 id="BVrM3K">Uché Blackstock</h4>
<p id="YahrNo">I think a lot of the solutions have to happen at multiple levels. They have to happen within medical schools, how medical schools are educating our future physicians. Not just including the history, but understanding how what we call the social determinants of health, education, employment, free access to healthy foods, green space, all of that impacts health. So getting medical students more of a holistic education as to how people can stay healthy and how they get sick.</p>
<p id="yPzyOn">For hospitals, it’s really their obligation to keep track in real time of health equity metrics to see, are there differences in how our patients are being treated compared to white patients? Are there differences in prescribing habits? </p>
<p id="rgq8UD">I was working with one ER where Black patients were waiting 80 minutes longer to be admitted to the hospital than white patients. And we talked about actually developing standardized processes to keep track of that and then to make interventions if necessary.</p>
<p id="brtpuy">And for policymakers, I want them to think about health in all policies. We know that because of the legacy of slavery, because of discriminatory housing policies, our communities have been deprived of wealth and resources and opportunities. So when we think about opportunities for home ownership, for building wealth, when we think about education and how we can provide our children with a free, quality public education, all of that is incredibly important to making our communities healthier. </p>
<h4 id="iBMCWp">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="vPMj82">Does the political will to get these things done exist? </p>
<h4 id="oa9sUR">Uché Blackstock<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p id="NDOM4D">We’ve got to put the pressure on our electeds to say this is a priority for us. In 2024, why is it less safe for a Black birthing person to give birth than it was <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Trends-in-Maternal-Mortality-by-Race-United-States-1969-2018-Source-Data-derived-from_fig1_348106431">20 years ago</a>? That does not make any sense, but it does show how deeply embedded racism is in our society. And it’s unacceptable, the fact that we have worse maternal outcomes than other high-income countries and even some middle-income countries and we spend even more on health care than they do. </p>
<h4 id="jEyVBK">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="qcuV15">For those of us, and in particular Black women who have to navigate the health care system as it exists today, what are some things we can do to make it as safe as possible for ourselves? </p>
<h4 id="8Doznq">Uché<strong> </strong>Blackstock</h4>
<p id="BCLuXw">This is always a hard question for me because it’s the system. It shouldn’t be up to us, and it shouldn’t be up to Black women to have to feel like we’re going to war when we are at our most vulnerable and seeking care. But obviously, there are some things I always advise people to do. There was this <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@non_trending_news/video/7321022172229635358">viral TikTok video</a> recently by a white health professional who said, why are all my Black patients on FaceTime with someone when I come into the room? </p>
<p id="8Ej7it">It’s because we don’t trust you. </p>
<p id="kSnoxj">I always recommend people either bring a trusted friend or a loved one to an appointment. It could be for moral support. It could be to help you ask questions. </p>
<p id="BCrpD7">Also document your symptoms. When did the pain start? When did the symptoms start? How long has it been? Make sure that you have everything written down because often during appointments you can get very nervous. </p>
<p id="tfQc1d">Ask your doctor or health professionals, what do you think is going on? What is your plan for me? What is the follow-up? What are red flags where I should come back or seek care or go to the ER? </p>
<p id="PLaN29">But also just know that Black women, we are doing amazing things. Like there’s <a href="https://healthinherhue.com/about-us">Health in Her Hue</a>, which is a digital startup run by Ashlee Wisdom, and that is a directory of Black health professionals and culturally responsive health professionals who are trained to work with Black women patients. </p>
<p id="E40MGs">There is the <a href="https://irthapp.com/">Irth app</a>, also started by a Black woman, which is a directory of maternal health providers that specifically work with Black birthing people. So we’re the ones also that are creating the solutions to make the health care system more accessible and respectful to us. </p>
https://www.vox.com/the-weeds/24079547/weathering-black-health-outcomes-women-dr-uche-blackstockJonquilyn Hill2024-02-14T07:15:00-05:002024-02-14T07:15:00-05:00Why the marriage rate is falling faster for some
<figure>
<img alt="A photo of a woman wearing a 70s-era bridal gown and veil. A crying eye and a happy Black family within a lavender teardrop shape are collaged on top of the woman’s image." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BW-pT8dl7IQ9le7Po50OFMaQygg=/243x0:1683x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73138361/Vox_BlackLoveMarraige_BrittanyHollowayBrown_Final.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Brittany Holloway-Brown for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How America has made it harder for Black people to marry.</p> <p id="XyJQTN">Romantic relationships are in a weird place right now.</p>
<p id="iQi4Rs">Sure, I have anecdotal evidence; I could open my phone and see a dating app horror story in any one of my group chats. </p>
<p id="UXFMj9">But I don’t have to take you through the dating woes of DC 30-somethings because data supports this too. Statistically, things are shifting. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/28/a-record-high-share-of-40-year-olds-in-the-us-have-never-been-married/">According to Pew Research</a>, back in 1980 about 6 percent of Americans aged 40 and over had never been married. Now that number sits around 25 percent. If you’ve looked at the op-ed pages of any major newspaper, you’ve probably seen the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/opinion/marriage-happiness-career.html">hand-wringing</a> about this <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/22/marriage-polarization-dating-trump/">falling</a> marriage <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-long-term-health-and-happiness-marriage-still-matters-86114ced">rate</a>.</p>
<p id="HQ3qCk">If you are or know a single person, this probably doesn’t come as too much of a <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@superkeara/video/7291838261268450602">surprise</a>. But as I was looking at the numbers, one thing did surprise me: just how much lower the rate is for Black people. It’s always been lower, but the gap is now huge. </p>
<aside id="ddjn6w"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_sentences"}'></div></aside><p id="v79DuL">Back in the ’70s, a little over 20 percent of Black women had never been married. Now it’s nearly <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/07/marriage-prevalence-for-black-adults-varies-by-state.html">48 percent</a>.</p>
<p id="qQUpDZ">Why do Black people get married less, and why does it matter?</p>
<h3 id="27AF9F">Forbidden love</h3>
<p id="OuZwIJ">To answer that question for today’s episode of <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weeds/id1042433083"><em>The Weeds</em></a> — the latest in our “Black Women And ...” series that looks at how <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy" data-source="encore">policies</a> are impacting Black women in particular — I spoke with Dianne Stewart, the author of <em>Black Women, Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage</em>.</p>
<p id="IkZVBP">She argues that policy has made partnering especially difficult for Black people. Her answer centers around this idea that, for a long time, Black love in this country was forbidden — and that it still is.</p>
<p id="cA2B10">It’s a statement that may feel provocative on its face, but Stewart argues that marriage is a civil right Black people were initially denied in America, and policy hasn’t done enough to catch up. </p>
<p id="jkeEJk">Though enslaved people often had informal marriages (there’s a reason it’s called <a href="https://www.brides.com/jumping-the-broom-5071336">jumping the broom</a>), their unions weren’t legally recognized. Slave owners often separated families through sales, and would choose partners for enslaved people at will. This changed in 1865 with the end of slavery and the passage of the 13th Amendment, but after Emancipation, many families struggled to reunite. As late as the early 20th century, formerly enslaved people were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/09/07/my-mother-was-sold-from-me-after-slavery-the-desperate-search-for-loved-ones-in-last-seen-ads/">putting out notices</a> to find family members they had been separated from. </p>
<p id="1Q6xBN">Barriers to partnership continued into the early 20th century. Until 1968, welfare operated with “<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/392/309/#tab-opinion-1947507">man in the house</a>” policies: If a woman was partnered with — or even dating — an able-bodied man, a family could no longer receive benefits. The thought process was that if a man was living in the house, then he should be able to fully provide for his family. </p>
<p id="ijJx1M">This disincentivized cohabitation and marriage for lower-income couples — a reality that disproportionately impacted Black families because many didn’t have wealth to begin with. The practice ended in 1968 with <em>King v. Smith</em>, when the <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus" data-source="encore">Supreme Court</a> ruled that the practice was unconstitutional. </p>
<div id="O1sSMa"><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=VMP7486628291" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<h3 id="pjoRFh">How this plays out today</h3>
<p id="nzMYgs">While many of these archaic policies no longer exist, their impacts are still felt today, and new policies have contributed as well. </p>
<p id="uWEK9c">The racism entrenched by slavery, for instance, plays a role. Take colorism, the phenomenon of discriminating against darker-skinned people that has its roots in colonialism and slavery. Historically, lighter-skinned people have been privileged because they’re closer to whiteness. That continues today, within larger <a href="https://qz.com/1724590/colorism-influences-probability-of-going-to-jail-new-study-finds">institutions</a>, and also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/09/colorism-racism-why-black-people-discriminate-among-ourselves">within Black communities</a>. In 2009, a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268109001577">study</a> found that for women under 30, lighter-skinned Black women were married at twice the rate of their darker-skinned counterparts and 17 percent more than Black women with medium complexions. </p>
<p id="Fbbasu">For those seeking out relationships with Black men, there are also just fewer of those men in the dating pool. In 2021, Black men were incarcerated at <a href="https://19thnews.org/2023/10/black-men-women-incarceration-rates-criminal-justice-reform/">over five times</a> the rate of their white counterparts. Across race, women are earning college degrees at a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/09/26/women-now-outnumber-men-in-the-u-s-college-educated-labor-force/">higher rate</a> than men, making it difficult for women who partner with men to find partners with the same educational background and economic status. Black women make up <a href="https://www.essence.com/news/new-study-black-women-most-educated/">66 percent</a> of all African American bachelor’s degree holders, and those with degrees are <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-women-are-earning-more-college-degrees-but-that-alone-wont-close-race-gaps/">more likely</a> to marry someone with less education. College doesn’t equate to more wealth. The median <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-was-supposed-to-close-the-wealth-gap-for-black-americans-the-opposite-happened-11628328602">net worth</a> for college-educated Black households is $8,200; it’s $138,000 for white households with the same education. </p>
<p id="NUo5tn">This problem is exacerbated for Black people when you take into account what Stewart calls “wealth spread”: Black people who accumulate wealth are <a href="https://crr.bc.edu/black-americans-generous-to-relatives/">more likely</a> to spend that money helping family members with less income. I call it the <a href="https://www.themarysue.com/soul-food-teri/">Teri Joseph effect</a>. This makes a difference now that many consider marriage a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/03/incredible-everlasting-institution-marriage/555320/">capstone of adulthood rather than a cornerstone of it</a>; Marriage is no longer that act that launches you into adulthood, but something you do when you feel emotionally and financially ready.</p>
<p id="OuaEDt">The statistics might not seem great if marriage is something you desire. But if you’re looking for love, all is not lost! Sure, the marriage rate is down, but that also means it was up at one point: Numbers are ever-evolving. </p>
<p id="uN08yT">There are policies and solutions that could help change all this. For more on that — and a defense of the institution of marriage — <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weeds/id1042433083">check out my full conversation with Stewart</a>.</p>
<p id="VCmOJL"><em>This story appeared originally in </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast"><em><strong>Today, Explained</strong></em></a><em>, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/today-explained-newsletter-signup"><em><strong>Sign up here for future editions</strong></em></a><em>.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/24072078/marriage-america-race-policy-historyJonquilyn Hill2024-01-24T10:00:00-05:002024-01-24T10:00:00-05:00Surprise! There’s a reason to be (cautiously) optimistic about the climate.
<figure>
<img alt="A protester holds a placard reading “No New Oil” outside the House of Parliament in London." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Y3E0qe6IffmNCHZF0guN3nobDMY=/214x0:4786x3429/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73080928/1948328910.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Martin Pope/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Don’t let climate doom win.</p> <p id="Gr1qvU">It’s no secret that the environmental health of the planet is in dire straits right now. The Earth was <a href="https://www.vox.com/24008047/2023-warmest-year-cop28-climate-change-science#:~:text=2023%20is%20the%20hottest%20year,low%20ice%20levels%20around%20Antarctica.">its hottest in recorded history in 2023</a>. Our winters are shorter, our summers hotter, and our natural disasters more extreme. </p>
<p id="uYtFSV">The doom and gloom around <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate" data-source="encore">climate change</a> is understandable when you take it all into account. Global governments struggled to stay under the goal of 1.5 Celsius temperature increase last year, meaning we could be barreling toward even worse outcomes. There’s a sense of existential dread, a feeling that we’ve gone too far and that there’s no stopping the inevitable demise of Earth and all the creatures that inhabit it, including us. </p>
<p id="AdJ1aA">But one expert says it doesn’t have to be that way. Hannah Ritchie — deputy editor at Our World in Data — argues that <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23622511/climate-doomerism-optimism-progress-environmentalism">climate “doomerism”</a> leads people astray from meaningful action. In her debut book, <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/not-the-end-of-the-world-how-we-can-be-the-first-generation-to-build-a-sustainable-planet-hannah-ritchie/20055919"><em>Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet</em></a>, she says we should reframe the way we talk about climate change. Hope, informed by data, can be a helpful tool for mobilizing the masses, who range from climate deniers to the most devoted of environmentalists.</p>
<p id="QNVnif">“I think tailoring messaging to different audiences is really, really crucial,” the <a href="https://www.vox.com/23901322/hannah-ritchie-scientist-our-world-in-data-future-perfect-50-2023">Future Perfect 50 honoree</a> says. “I think some people do actually just respond to the fear or the catastrophic messages. But I think there’s also a big group of people that don’t like that. I’m trying to bridge that ground a little bit and get people that might be on the fence or a bit disengaged to engage a bit more.”</p>
<p id="Q4DQfi">In this episode of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-weeds"><em>The Weeds</em></a>, we sit down with Ritchie to discuss the current state of climate change, why the planet has actually never been “sustainable” for all of human history, and why shifting toward an optimistic (but realistic) narrative can help keep the planet from warming. </p>
<p id="tbE45u">Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-weeds" data-source="encore"><em>The Weeds</em></a> on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts.</p>
<div id="rVeORO"><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=VMP1280227022" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<h4 id="wvzcaG">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="DU0umu">I want to get into something you spend time in the book discussing, and that’s what you consider ineffective policies like that around <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/27/21030090/straw-ban-environmental-regulation-plastic-ocean">plastic straws</a>, for instance. I’m curious why you think it’s ineffective, and also why there’s so much focus on these policies that aren’t maybe the most effective. </p>
<h4 id="WEOnU6">Hannah Ritchie</h4>
<p id="gI5m4v">There are two reasons to counter some of the ineffective stuff. One is that some of this stuff that people think makes a positive difference actually makes a negative difference. We should just call that out. </p>
<p id="3z7vWo">But the other dimension to this is that people often become so overwhelmed with the number of decisions they should be making about environmental stuff. They go through their day questioning every little decision. That can become overwhelming. There are probably like <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local">five big decisions</a> that make a big impact on your carbon footprint. Then the rest of the decisions really make very little difference at all, and you can do those if you want. </p>
<p id="FLr00z">But there’s also this effect, which is called <a href="https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/do-plastic-straws-really-make-difference#:~:text=Banning%20straws%20may%20confer%20'moral,they%20have%20done%20their%20part.">moral licensing,</a> where if you have done a behavior that you think has made a positive difference, often you kind of let other things fall by the wayside. So you might think, “Oh, I used a paper straw at dinner. Therefore, it doesn’t matter that I take the car or I take the flight or I eat the meat because I’ve done my bit because I used a paper straw.” The impact of the paper straw is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/banning-plastic-straws-will-not-be-enough-fight-clean-oceans-n951141">so incredibly small</a> compared to the other decisions. </p>
<h4 id="0RVWs6">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="uV4RBp">What are some of those things that we think have a positive impact but actually are not helpful at all? </p>
<h4 id="HJUNTy">Hannah Ritchie</h4>
<p id="Ipsoz9">One that comes up a lot is local food. If you ask people, “What’s the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet?” they’ll often say, “Eat local.” The rationale for that makes sense: Transporting stuff obviously emits CO2 emissions, whether on a truck or on a plane or by boat. </p>
<p id="pwgG2K">But the key thing when you break down the data on emissions from food is that <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23132579/eat-local-csa-farmers-markets-locavore-slow-food">what you’re eating matters more </a>than how far it’s traveled to reach you. If you look at the carbon footprint of different foods across the world, the average percentage that the transport part makes up is just 5 percent. </p>
<p id="VsyPXj">Most of the impacts of your food are coming from a land use change, or they’re coming from emissions on the farm. You’ll often hear people say, “My local beef is obviously much lower carbon than your avocados shipped in from a given country.” And actually, that’s just not true. The beef versus the avocados matters much, much more than whether it’s local. </p>
<p id="VPMFm5">There are reasons why someone would want to eat local, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s just not necessarily the best way to reduce your carbon footprint. So if there’s other reasons to eat local, like supporting your local community, then go ahead and do that.</p>
<h4 id="Gvk3uV">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="fLlEwb">What are some of the things we could be doing that are actually helpful? </p>
<h4 id="b19XwH">Hannah Ritchie</h4>
<p id="odsJCk"><a href="https://www.vox.com/future-of-meat">It’s primarily about meat and dairy consumption</a>. That’s probably the biggest part of your footprint there. And then <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22890292/food-waste-meat-dairy-eggs-milk-animal-welfare">food waste</a>, those are like the two massive ones on food. </p>
<p id="WOWnyu">On energy, it’s largely about travel: walking, cycling, and public transport is best. If you have a car — if you need a car, then an electric car is definitely better than a [gas] car. And then in your home, it’s not necessarily stuff like your lights or plugging your phone charger, [but] often heating and cooking. </p>
<p id="hmOgft">What’s really effective is an electric heat pump that tends to be much better than a boiler. And then putting in a solar panel on your roof massively reduces your energy footprint.</p>
<h4 id="S2FaHQ">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="3nqZ9N">It’s very easy to spiral when you think about the state that the world is in, and I’m wondering how you keep from spiraling. Because it’s very easy to start panicking. It’s understandable why the doom-and-gloom messaging takes over. </p>
<h4 id="E4EVgr">Hannah Ritchie</h4>
<p id="0BhMmf">I’m definitely not saying that you’re going to be okay. It depends on what we do.</p>
<p id="LyULuv">It’s not like we’re going to have no impact and things are all going to be fine. But the gradient of how okay things will be will depend on our actions. We have this opportunity here to really take strong action. </p>
<p id="yVxJmT">The balance there is really important. You do need to not necessarily panic, but you do need concern and you need a sense of urgency. It’s also important to focus on the solutions. If you just tell people this is a massive problem and leave them with it, what are they supposed to do with that? </p>
<p id="TEKdRZ">I often try to highlight<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy"> signs of progress</a>, and that’s not necessarily to congratulate ourselves about how well we’ve done. But it’s all often about building momentum and showing people this can change. </p>
<h4 id="Yu9mLH">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="eBfnWt">It’s this idea of celebrating small wins so that people don’t feel despondent.</p>
<h4 id="YOUIvj">Hannah Ritchie</h4>
<p id="PpX3ZY">You can relate it to even really small personal stuff in your own life, like, say, training for a marathon and you’ve never been a runner. The most demotivating thing ever is if you’ve been training for three months and you’ve made no progress. Then you just stop because you think, “I’ve been doing this for three months. I’m wasting my time. I’m just going to stop.” </p>
<p id="yHdeAp">If you’ve been training for three months, you’re not at the marathon-level standard. And that’s where we are on climate change. But you have gotten fitter over that period of time and you can now run a 10k. It’s about building on that momentum to say, “Okay, if I can build up to 10k, then with more training and with much more effort, then I can get to the marathon distance.” It’s about using momentum to drive more progress rather than just clapping and saying, “That’s kind of where we are.” </p>
<h4 id="AY30i0">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="YF2eSd">I think for a lot of people who care about the environment, these small actions matter. It offers a sense of control in a world where so much feels out of our control. These are small steps that we can take without the backing of companies or federal governments. </p>
<p id="Hvrcru">What advice do you have for people who you know want to make a change but aren’t in power or don’t have proximity to power? </p>
<h4 id="PsfXyu">Hannah Ritchie</h4>
<p id="Ic7SQ8">We often envision this as very top-down, but I think many of the successes on this have come from more community efforts. </p>
<p id="74CEAF">[Efforts like] building <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2023/11/14/does-texas-really-outproduce-california-in-wind-energy/">wind power in Texas</a>, for example, have come from small communities saying, “We’re going to build a wind farm for our community.” So often, it can start to come from the grassroots and build up. </p>
<p id="Y2nTOV">There’s a lot of that in environmentalism where it’s often pointing fingers, and I think that’s really ineffective at getting people to change. But change in yourself can often be really infectious and people get interested. </p>
<h4 id="vPfijH">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="9rPJAa">What do you think the role of optimism is in our climate future? </p>
<h4 id="vzDqIU">Hannah Ritchie</h4>
<p id="NqS8nW">It needs to be balanced with a sense of urgency and the need to act.</p>
<p id="wqFITe">A lot of people are feeling quite paralyzed at the moment. I think they are, in some sense, disengaging because they feel like we’re making no progress and we probably won’t make any progress. And this is such a critical time. We need to really get moving on this stuff. This is the worst time for people to disengage and look away. So, for me, the role of optimism is to drive people to actually take action. </p>
https://www.vox.com/the-weeds/2024/1/24/24048407/hannah-ritchie-climate-change-optimism-book-action-interviewJonquilyn Hill2023-08-23T11:55:00-04:002023-08-23T11:55:00-04:00How quickly will Donald Trump go to trial in Georgia?
<figure>
<img alt="Fulton County DA Fani Willis gestures while speaking from the podium." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JJjHPY7NqWh-vesZqgG2LsTItpM=/0x0:2883x2162/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72570431/1615613104.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference at the Fulton County Government building on August 14, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fani Willis wants a trial in six months. That could be an ambitious timeline.</p> <p id="Gb5Wxc">If you’ve paid attention to the news at all these past five months, you may have noticed that former President Donald Trump is in a bit of legal trouble. He’s now facing <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/4/4/23664866/donald-trump-indictment-alvin-bragg-jack-smith-stormy-daniels-new-york-georgia">four indictments</a>, ranging from campaign finance violations and improperly handling classified information to attempting to steal the 2020 election. </p>
<p id="uZgqGG">His most recent charges come from the state of Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has <a href="https://www.vox.com/trump-investigations/2023/8/14/23827150/trump-georgia-indictment-2020-election-giuliani-meadows">deployed a favorite law of hers</a>: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. Willis has used RICO charges in two other high-profile cases: one regarding Atlanta teachers and test scores, and the other involving the Atlanta-based rap collective Young Stoner Life (YSL). </p>
<p id="5EwZK6">Trump has been <a href="https://www.vox.com/trump-investigations/2023/8/14/23808315/trump-charges-georgia-rico-racketeering-2020-election-fulton-county">indicted alongside 18 other co-defendants</a> for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, including by trying to marshal a false slate of Georgia electors and soliciting a “violation of oath by public officer.”</p>
<p id="ZzZIup">David Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School and an expert on criminal law and criminal procedure, notes that Georgia’s RICO law covers a wider breadth than its federal counterpart. “It’s significant because it means that lots of specific Georgia crimes can be part of this indictment,” he says. “The predicate acts that are charged in this case include offenses that seem narrowly tailored precisely for circumstances like the ones that are alleged to have occurred here.”</p>
<p id="dAgs61">In this episode of <em>The Weeds</em>, we sit down with Sklansky to discuss the history of RICO laws, how they apply to this case, and what it all could mean for the future of democracy. </p>
<div id="SSObId"><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?p=VMP8285661197" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<p id="DaZJ3f">Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to <em>The Weeds</em> on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="zHCqAD">
<h4 id="yVqKqR"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="2qMrdq">There are a lot of what-ifs right now, and that’s because this is a gigantic case with some very serious implications. But before we get into what that guilty verdict could mean, I want to talk about logistics. Are we going to see this trial happen during the primary, or are things going to get shuffled around? </p>
<h4 id="8zSd3U"><strong>David Sklansky</strong></h4>
<p id="Wov2HA">I will be surprised if this case can go to trial as quickly as the DA [Fani Willis] says that she wants it to go to trial. She said that she would like to see a trial date within six months. But I think with 19 defendants, that is a real stretch. In the Atlanta educators case that Willis tried under Georgia’s RICO statute, it took a year and a half to get to trial after indictment. </p>
<p id="ZqgdLY">The YSL case is still in jury selection, which started in January. And neither of those cases have some of the additional complexities that this case has. Neither of those cases, for example, are going to involve efforts to remove the case to federal court, which this case does involve. </p>
<p id="cVCwq8">Mark Meadows, one of Trump’s co-defendants, has already said that he wants his case moved to federal court. Other defendants, including Trump, may join in that request, and that’s yet another layer of complication. And then we have the complication that the defendants in this case, including Trump, have legal complications elsewhere.</p>
<p id="vayXSB">I think each of these cases involves its own challenges, but particularly with 19 defendants and the range of legal issues that the Georgia case raises, a trial starting six months from now strikes me as ambitious. </p>
<h4 id="BDVVr8"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="UWRVWA">I’m glad that you mentioned the Mark Meadows request. I want to tease out more of that. Not just the results, but what would happen to this case if it’s moved from Georgia to a federal case? </p>
<h4 id="o7goK8"><strong>David Sklansky</strong></h4>
<p id="S2RPqP">I don’t think it’s clear that it would mean that a conviction would be subject to presidential pardon. In fact, I think it probably would not be subject to presidential pardon. </p>
<h4 id="0kG0ZN"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="gvPL9D">Even if it’s moved to federal court? </p>
<h4 id="ZjX8cR"><strong>David Sklansky</strong></h4>
<p id="fm8XXS">Yeah, because if it’s moved to the federal court, it’s still a trial for state crimes. The only thing that changes is the courtroom where the case is being held and the procedural rules that attach to the trial. So if the case gets moved to federal court, the federal rules of criminal procedure get applied, the federal rules of evidence get applied, and the jury is drawn from the area that is covered by the federal court, which would be larger Fulton County. </p>
<p id="sbfUH6">So one possible advantage for a defendant like Meadows in moving the case to federal court is that the jury pool will change and you might get a more favorable jury pool. Another possible advantage is that his lawyers may feel that a federal court is a friendlier venue for them because they are more familiar with federal procedures then the state prosecutors will be. I’m going to be interested to see whether Trump joins in this request, because I think it has advantages and disadvantages for Trump. </p>
<p id="Ix9KYC">For Trump as for Meadows, it may mean a more favorable jury pool, but it may also mean that once the case gets moved, it could move along faster rather, because federal courts in general are more used to large, complicated cases. And it’s not clear that Trump would be better off with this case in federal court. </p>
<p id="HCb9N5">Nonetheless, if I had to bet, I would bet that his lawyers will join in the request. And the reason is that it’s yet another thing that could slow things down, at least in the near term. </p>
<h4 id="nleHiE"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="Aq3AYC">I think the jury pool thing is so interesting because Fulton County is bright blue. I was listening to our colleagues over at <em>Today, Explained</em>, and they did a <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3G4jwthQ6LDfujUypMXO2I?si=983c740802534e33">wonderful episode</a> when the news initially broke. Georgia in general has Trump fatigue. </p>
<h4 id="cFNUJP"><strong>David Sklansky</strong></h4>
<p id="2rOHDL">It’s hard to know how that would play out in a criminal case, but it might well mean that the larger jury pool wouldn’t wind up helping Trump or any of the other defendants because there are lots of Republicans in Georgia who seem fed up and done with the efforts to overturn their election results and meddle in their state governance. </p>
<h4 id="hlI59L"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="yrubFT">So would the possibility of moving this from Fulton County to federal court mean that the mandatory prison time changes? What does that mean as far as sentencing?</p>
<h4 id="Vmn6TP"><strong>David Sklansky</strong></h4>
<p id="SQyhF0">It doesn’t change anything in terms of sentencing because it would mean that the procedural rules would be the federal rules and not the state rules. But the substantive law that gets applied — the criminal prohibitions, the sentencing provisions — those would all be Georgia law. </p>
<p id="Rkgugm">Which I know sounds odd. You would think, “Well, if it’s all Georgia law, why would you be moving it to federal court?” And it might not move to federal court precisely because generally state trials are handled in state courts. </p>
<p id="lVfCfI">What complicates things here is that there’s a federal statute that says that criminal defendants have a right to move their trial from state court to federal court if they have a plausible defense that centers around their federal responsibilities. And that’s what Meadows says. Meadows says, “Look, my defense is that I was just pursuing my duties and doing my job as the president’s chief of staff.” The federal district court is going to have to decide whether there really is a plausible defense here that arises from the federal position that Meadows had at the time. And if Trump joins in the request, the issue will be the same with regard to Trump. </p>
<h4 id="OJJsD0"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="Zvz3Bx">Would the federal court still be in Georgia or would it be like somewhere else?</p>
<h4 id="9unCT1"><strong>David Sklansky</strong></h4>
<p id="Js3ETk">It would probably be in Georgia. I mean, you could conceivably move the trial out of the state, but that’s generally not done and I doubt it would be done here. </p>
<h4 id="Q6QGcV"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="3DsWKU">So we’ve already established that this is one of two RICO cases out of Georgia that I have had my eye on. The other is the YSL case, and we’ve seen in that case people take plea deals. Are we going to see that in this other case?</p>
<h4 id="C1EeGu"><strong>David Sklansky</strong></h4>
<p id="y1dm91">I think you will see some plea deals. With 19 defendants, the odds that all of them will decide to go to trial is low and that hasn’t happened in the other cases where Willis has charged lots of defendants. It’s just the law of numbers that when you have this many people involved; it’s unlikely that they will all decide that they want to throw in their lot with the lead defendant in the case. Particularly when even if Trump wins the election, he won’t be in a position to pardon any of them. </p>
<h4 id="ljz3k9"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="25NEfi">I’m really curious about your thoughts on this case in the grand scheme of things. What is this telling us about our judicial system and our politics and <a href="https://www.vox.com/trump-investigations/2023/8/17/23832734/trump-indictment-democracy-paradox">the state of our democracy</a> right now? </p>
<h4 id="FQHwpl"><strong>David Sklansky</strong></h4>
<p id="cylkdp">Well, the jury is still out, you could say, because I think Donald Trump is putting American democracy to a test in all kinds of ways. One of the ways he’s putting it to the test is by pressing to see whether our legal system can deal with the kinds of blatant violations of the rule of law that Donald Trump has been engaging in for years. And we’ve never had a president who tried to throw out the results of the election in which he was voted out of office by gaming the Electoral College, by putting together fake groups of electors, by pressuring the vice president to violate his oath, and pressuring a state secretary of state to violate his oath. So it’s not clear whether our legal system and our democracy are up to these challenges. I think the indictments are good news in the sense that they suggest that our system is at least healthy enough to get these charges filed and to start moving them toward trial. But it remains to be seen whether the system will be strong enough to actually get them to trial. I think they will be, but we’ll have to see.</p>
https://www.vox.com/the-weeds/23803435/trump-georgia-trial-rico-indictment-fani-willisJonquilyn Hill2023-08-14T14:55:03-04:002023-08-14T14:55:03-04:00These kids sued over climate change — and won
<figure>
<img alt="The plaintiffs in the nation’s first youth climate change trial pose for a photo outside of Montana’s First Judicial Court on June 12." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-VMGnUrJsQxb4um68h9LZcpTkrI=/342x0:5707x4024/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72362053/GettyImages_1258644270.7.jpg" />
<figcaption>The plaintiffs in the nation’s first youth climate change trial pose for a photo outside of Montana’s First Judicial Court on June 12. | William Campbell/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The unprecedented ruling in Montana could signal a changing tide.</p> <p id="iP49E2"><em><strong>Update, August 14, 2:55 pm ET: </strong></em><em>Judge Kathy Seeley </em><a href="https://dailymontanan.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Findings-of-Fact-Conclusions-of-Law-and-Order.pdf"><em>ruled in favor of the plaintiffs</em></a><em> on August 14, handing climate activists an unprecedented victory.</em></p>
<p id="yhMzcl"><em>The decision impacts the implementation of the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA). Prior to the ruling, the state government was not permitted to consider the impact of climate change when approving energy projects, but now that process will likely change. The judge also ruled that </em><a href="https://dailymontanan.com/2023/04/23/bills-addressing-environmental-reviews-for-montana-energy-mining-projects-move-forward/"><em>a change to MEPA</em></a><em> earlier this year made by the state legislature is unconstitutional. </em></p>
<p id="uzMrNG"><em>The decision reads, in part: “Montana’s [greenhouse gas emissions] and climate change have proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury to the Youth Plaintiffs.”</em></p>
<p id="2KLU0k"><em>The original article, published June 12, is below:</em></p>
<p id="n89R2X">Do citizens have a right to a healthy environment? In Montana they do. The state constitution reads, “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” And a group of young people are using that language to sue the state over its energy policies. </p>
<p id="PfDUef">In one of the country’s first climate change lawsuits, a group of 16 young people in Montana alleges that the state has violated their constitutional right to “a clean and healthful environment.” The plaintiffs are arguing that the state government’s ongoing support of the fossil fuel industry in Montana is disproportionately harming them. Depending on the ruling, this could set an example for similar suits across the country.</p>
<p id="KK6VeU">Montana is a <a href="https://leg.mt.gov/content/publications/Environmental/2004deq_energy_report/coal_text.pdf">major coal exporter and has the largest coal reserves</a> in the United States. The coal industry has also been a boon for the local economy: Jobs in the coal industry pay about <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/the-end-of-coal-is-bringing-a-wrenching-transition">30 percent more than the median income</a> in the state. The outcome of this case could impact coal’s place in the local economy. </p>
<p id="SPt5v4">At the same time, preserving the environment makes economic sense for Montana, too. Outdoor recreation is a <a href="https://outdoorindustry.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/OIA_RecEcoState_MT.pdf">$7.1 billion dollar industry</a> there. Camping, hiking, fly fishing, and other outdoor activities draw tourists to the state. Critics of the state’s current energy policy point toward green energy like wind turbines as a possible economic alternative to fossil fuels.</p>
<p id="9JW5Sq">This case could also set a precedent, creating a legal roadmap for similar challenges at a crucial time. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/2022/04/04/ipcc-ar6-wgiii-pressrelease/#:~:text=Without%20immediate%20and%20deep%20emissions,(IPCC)%20report%20released%20today.">out of reach</a> unless drastic changes are made in the next two years. </p>
<p id="E80fYQ">One of the plaintiffs, Grace Gibson-Snyder, remembers when she first noticed the impact of climate change in her hometown. It was during one of her summer soccer practices in August, when wildfire smoke blew into the Missoula Valley, where she lives. “The smoke was so dense that the kids on the team with asthma could not play at all,” she said. “And then for the rest of us, it was uncomfortable. It feels like it’s scratching your throat and your lungs.” </p>
<p id="8R1ZN0">Gibson-Snyder, who is 19, says she’s frustrated with the way that young people are discussed as the solution to the climate crisis. She’s also frustrated with what she views as government inaction. “I wish lawmakers understood that this is the only way I see a future where I want to be there. And the youth don’t have a choice, we will be there one way or another.” </p>
<p id="yg7KbH">The Montana state attorney general’s office has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/first-us-youth-climate-change-trial-kicks-off-montana-2023-06-09/">referred</a> to this case as a publicity stunt exploiting well-intentioned kids, and gave <em>The Weeds</em> the following statement when asked for comment, which reads in part:</p>
<blockquote><p id="d0untu">Following the legislative session, there are no existing laws or policies for the district court to rule on. A show trial on laws that do not exist, as the district court seems intent on holding, would be a colossal waste of taxpayer resources. This same lawsuit has been thrown out of federal court and courts in a dozen other states — and it should be dismissed here in Montana as well. </p></blockquote>
<p id="ndSEpJ">No matter the outcome, the trial in Helena, Montana likely won’t be the end of this legal battle, according to Amanda Eggert, environmental reporter for Montana Free Press. “I think there’s no question that there will be an appeal to the Montana Supreme Court, no matter which way it goes,” she said. “So I think we’re looking at several years before it’s finally decided.”</p>
<div id="TmEZvm"><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=VMP6742022190" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<p id="WxfraY">Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Eggert, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to <em>The Weeds</em> on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voxs-the-weeds/id1042433083">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1vSUO6Bg4abtjRF7fnGpT1">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/voxs-the-weeds">Stitcher</a>, or wherever you get podcasts.</p>
<h4 id="2FOegc"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="i97T0X">Can you walk us through the timeline of events regarding this case? </p>
<h4 id="x0CcqS"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="T9u0LB">So in March of 2020, 16 youth plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in a district court in Montana. Shortly thereafter, the state moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to bring the lawsuit. And the judge in this case, Kathy Seeley, denied the motion to dismiss and essentially set the lawsuit on a path for trial. </p>
<p id="x0WxZZ">But something interesting that happened recently is that our legislature convened in January for a 90-day session, and they passed a couple of bills that have pretty strong implications for the lawsuit.</p>
<h4 id="dh3XyC"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="QIdJas">How so?</p>
<h4 id="kL0idx"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="Vh83Md">Well, central to plaintiffs’ claims was the state’s energy policy, and that was a legislatively established piece of law that’s about 30 years old, establishing a broad energy vision for the state. And the legislature actually repealed the entirety of the policy this spring. So shortly after that was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, the state moved to dismiss the lawsuit arguing that since this piece of law is no longer on the books, the lawsuit has no grounds to proceed.<strong> </strong>And they asked the judge to dismiss the case based on the repeal of that policy. And she did decide to narrow the scope of the case based on the repeal of that policy. But there’s another law at play here too, and that is House Bill 971, and that explicitly prohibits the state from considering greenhouse gas emissions or climate impacts in its environmental review process. </p>
<p id="05M0tT">So Judge Seeley actually referenced the passage of House Bill 971 in her order that she issued on May 23, 2023, and she said that the courts may be unable to direct the state to consider greenhouse gas impacts, but it can certainly strike down a statute preventing them from doing something like that. And she’s allowed the case to proceed.</p>
<h4 id="hp2ODK"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="MJ6RRN">Were people surprised that Judge Seeley took this case on in the first place? </p>
<h4 id="sxHLFS"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="k4tHiK">Yeah, I think it is pretty surprising. It still surprises me to this day. It’ll be the first time that a climate change case of this nature goes to trial. There will be a lot of people watching it. </p>
<p id="qELkJS">Judges are often reluctant to rule on constitutional claims such as a quote-unquote “clean and healthful environment” because there’s some subjectivity to that. Oftentimes, they would prefer to rule on statute alone. You know, what legislators pass in the capitol every two years in Montana, because that can be a little bit more fleshed-out, versus a broad, overarching environmental protection for current and future generations. So, I was surprised, and it’s really going to be interesting to see how it all plays out. </p>
<h4 id="dACHn5"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="eMMGp4">Do we know why the judge denied the state’s motion to dismiss? </p>
<h4 id="aDOcPg"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="cNLK6N">I think she recognized that the plaintiffs have standing and that standing is a legal concept, essentially establishing that the plaintiffs have demonstrable harms and that there are remedial actions that can be taken to correct those harms. </p>
<p id="OoxIsz">And she also recognized that the state’s energy policies do have a direct bearing on those harms. </p>
<h4 id="X71ygj"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="B0yDSg">Often, when we talk about climate change, we talk about it on a more global scale, but this seems really individual and really small scale, these young people are saying this is harming me in this particular way. </p>
<h4 id="rtHJF9"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="j85U3c">I’ve spoken with one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs, and I know that they took great care to establish a whole record. Their initial complaint is over 100 pages, which is huge by legal standards. </p>
<p id="udKbIr">But in that they’re trying to establish very specific individual harms. So there are plaintiffs that talk about being evacuated due to forest fires or plaintiffs who talk about grieving the loss of glaciers in Glacier National Park. There are plaintiffs who talk about concerns related to wildlife. </p>
<p id="3lEDOg">And in addition to establishing those very specific harms, the plaintiffs also went to great lengths to demonstrate that climate change is happening, that climate change is happening in Montana, and that the state has been extremely permissive in its permitting of fossil fuel extraction, which is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Montana. </p>
<h4 id="QhZyqK"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="fG3y6b">What exactly is the state arguing against the plaintiffs?</p>
<h4 id="g3uVMX"><strong>Amanda Eggert </strong></h4>
<p id="87FON5">The state is making all kinds of claims. A lot of them are central to whether or not the plaintiffs have standing. That’s kind of a legal test, establishing that there’s a harm that’s occurring, that there’s some sort of judicial remedy that could correct those harms, and that the actors involved in this situation, the state, are implicated in furthering those harms. </p>
<p id="9Lm0HJ">So much of the state’s claims thus far deal with whether or not climate change is occurring, whether the plaintiffs have experienced the harms that they allege in their filings, and whether there is any legal foundation to change state energy permitting practices.</p>
<h4 id="4oCA6O"><strong> Jonquilyn Hill</strong></h4>
<p id="p0JyDh">Underlying this legal battle is another tension in Montana, between preserving the outdoor economy and the state’s role as an energy exporter. Can you talk about the impact of climate change in Montana? How is the land itself changing and how is it impacting citizens and the state’s economy? </p>
<h4 id="J6liG0"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="AS1E11">I think one of the clearest assessments we have of climate change impacts in Montana specifically came out in 2017. It’s called the Montana Climate Assessment. </p>
<p id="hrTEPn">Our governor at the time, a Democrat, Steve Bullock, asked the state to put together this assessment, and it found that between 1950 and 2015, the state had warmed on an average between two and three degrees. And then it goes into more specific impacts — we don’t have as much snowpack as we used to. And that’s a big deal for our rivers. </p>
<p id="JDvlFi">Montana is a headwater state located along the continental divide. Some of our rivers go all the way down to the Columbia, others go all the way down to the Mississippi. But with the loss of snowpack, we have less snow and therefore water to sustain our rivers into the late summer and fall. That’s a big deal for our outdoor economy. Fly fishing is a great big deal in this state. It’s also a big deal for agriculture, — lots of farmers are dependent on rivers for irrigation of their crops. </p>
<p id="jzA1lW">Loss of snowpack is also a big deal for our ski industry and our outdoor recreation economy generally, which is about $7.1 billion. And then there are other impacts, like more extreme wildfires and a longer wildfire season, which has health impacts because there’s more smoke that everyone is sucking in through much of the summer and fall. </p>
<h4 id="hoKmBZ"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="8reOK8">Montana has one of the largest outdoor recreation economies in the country. And I think that’s part of what makes Montana an interesting stage for this lawsuit, because it also has the largest coal reserves in the country. Can you talk about those opposite forces of industry? </p>
<h4 id="CGOcC4"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="lmCFeh">Yeah. And that tension is very top of mind for me, having just come out of the legislative session where lawmakers passed some significant reforms to coal permitting and litigation challenging coal permits. </p>
<p id="evUdTK">We have a Republican in the governor’s seat. We have a supermajority in the legislature of Republicans and they are a little more old school in terms of their support for what I would call a quote-unquote “traditional industry” such as logging and mining and agriculture. And that definitely is reflected in the laws that are passed at the Capitol. </p>
<h4 id="3UyMHH"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="4y0Cw8">I want to talk about the potential impact on Montana if the judge rules in the plaintiffs’ favor. What could this potentially change for Montana? </p>
<h4 id="L1plOT"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="CE7v92">That’s a really good question. And the way it’s been explained to me by one of the attorneys working for the plaintiffs is that it’s kind of like marriage equality, where initially they’re just asking the courts to recognize that the current law is out of accordance with the Constitution. </p>
<p id="8JZjva">And so it would very broadly establish that these harms are occurring, that they are not supposed to be occurring according to Montana’s constitution, and to establish this overarching principle that we’re going to kind of change the way that we do things. </p>
<p id="MmD09m">Generally speaking, that would look like asking the state to bring its energy permitting practices in alignment with the constitution and the protections for a clean and healthful environment. </p>
<p id="Kw4Ydv">What that would look like in practice would be established through many iterations of policy, I would think.</p>
<h4 id="Ha3Km2"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="WqYBgp">Can you talk a bit about the potential jobs and economic impact if these changes are made?</p>
<h4 id="GKEGny">
<strong>Amanda Eggert</strong> </h4>
<p id="7sSkLN">One of the practices that’s central to plaintiffs’ claims involves coal mining and coal combustion. And coal mining jobs are high-paying jobs relative to the median income in Montana. I think they’re about 30 percent higher than Montana’s median income. In addition to coal mining and power plants, there are communities that are entirely dependent upon coal. They’ve been described as a one-horse town kind of a situation where if you don’t have the power plant and you don’t have the mine, then all of a sudden you have tumbling property values, you don’t have a tax base to support your school at the same level, maybe some of your local retailers go under, that kind of a thing.</p>
<h4 id="5Ak4w0"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="RUyRLJ">Is it realistic to think that if the plaintiffs win in this case, Montana will make the switch to green energy?</p>
<h4 id="6TxMUX">
<strong>Amanda Eggert</strong> </h4>
<p id="9AApl7">A lot of people are really curious about that. And I think there are a couple things at play. One is that even clean energy boosters will recognize that there are not as many wind energy jobs as there are for mining coal and burning it. </p>
<p id="AzdwCr">And the other thing that they recognize is that they don’t tend to pay as well as the coal jobs. So that’s one component of it. You would potentially be looking at fewer jobs, maybe, though that’s probably debatable, that would pay a little less. </p>
<p id="1Jw35O">The other piece of this conversation that I think is relevant is there’s this kind of cultural divide in Montana regarding fossil fuel jobs and clean energy jobs. So I think it might be a little bit difficult for someone working at a coal-fired power plant or a boilermaker to sign on to maintain wind turbines, for example.</p>
<h4 id="HuYV1P"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="1rt49f">As this trial starts, what will you be watching for? </p>
<h4 id="sny0vB"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="0hL2Wr">So the state is making the argument that climate change is not a result of human activity, that it’s representative of natural variability. So I will be very interested to see how it makes those claims. They have an expert who will be testifying to that effect. </p>
<p id="la2qbr">And I’ll also be interested in getting this both broad and deep look at the permitting process for energy projects. I’m kind of an energy nerd these days, and I’ll really be interested to see how the plaintiffs lay out the specific policies that have favored the fossil fuel industry. </p>
<h4 id="l3L92h"><strong>Jonquilyn Hill </strong></h4>
<p id="UR0wjV">Do we have a sense of the timeline? Do we know about how long this trial will take and when we can expect a ruling from the judge? </p>
<h4 id="ngG7tP"><strong>Amanda Eggert</strong></h4>
<p id="3wmMGA">The trial is scheduled to take place over a two-week period, so it’ll wrap up by the end of June, and oh, man, I don’t have a crystal ball for when a ruling will come. I have talked to people who think that a ruling will come quickly. </p>
<p id="6B5Kfq">Evidently, one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs is confident that Judge Seeley will rule in the plaintiffs’ favor. </p>
<p id="ArApG4">I think there’s no question that there will be an appeal to the Montana Supreme Court, no matter which way it goes. So I think we’re looking at several years before it’s finally decided. </p>
<p id="awX152"></p>
<p id="BIqUC6"></p>
https://www.vox.com/climate/2023/6/12/23755678/montana-climate-change-lawsuit-young-people-coal-global-warmingJonquilyn Hill2023-07-11T16:05:00-04:002023-07-11T16:05:00-04:00Twitter is dying. Policing women’s bodies is keeping it alive.
<figure>
<img alt="A woman in gray suit and a man in a jersey sit courtside at a basketball game." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PfTrbFUn98iPYTzELSVir2BWw2w=/0x0:4636x3477/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72444266/GettyImages_1238741060.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Actress Keke Palmer and boyfriend Darius Jackson courtside at the 2022 NBA All Star Weekend. | Juan Ocampo/NBAE via Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What Keke Palmer, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Jonah Hill tell us about how we talk about gender online.</p> <p id="Iabb6t">At this point, Twitter’s death feels imminent. Between expired rate limits, the proliferation of bots, and an <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/7/10/23788945/meta-mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-threads-twitter-instagram-social-media-platform">app from a rival</a> billionaire dubbed the “Twitter killer,” it appears the end is nigh. But it’s not dead yet. If the micro-blogging platform is a zombie, it’s arguable that policing women’s bodies are the cordyceps keeping it moving. </p>
<p id="WUFMPf">Recently, there have been three instances throwing the internet into a tizzy. First, on July 3, Tracee Ellis Ross attended the Schiaparelli fashion show in Paris, but what grabbed attention wasn’t what she wore to the runway, but what she didn’t have on beforehand. She <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CuQLf6SvZlr/?hl=en">shared</a> a topless photo of herself getting ready, and Twitter <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12262115/Tracee-Ellis-Ross-50-flaunts-physique-poses-topless-designer-fashion-Paris.html">exploded with discourse</a> about her supposed “desperation.”</p>
<p id="HvOna2">Fast forward a few days and Darius Jackson, the father of Keke Palmer’s baby and her <a href="https://people.com/keke-palmer-boyfriend-scrubs-instagram-of-her-usher-sends-support-7558064">likely- ex</a> boyfriend, <a href="https://www.theroot.com/keke-palmer-s-boyfriend-becomes-black-twitter-enemy-no-1850609779">tweeted</a> criticizing her outfit choice for an Usher concert. He doubled down, they unfollowed each other, Keke responded via dance, and all the while the Twitter gender war continued. </p>
<p id="OxQ6gm">Then, on July 8, professional surfer Sarah Brady came forward with <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leylamohammed/jonah-hill-ex-sarah-brady-emotionally-abusive-leaked-texts">accusations</a> against her ex-boyfriend, Jonah Hill. Screenshots posted to her Instagram Stories allegedly show him telling her to take down photos of herself in bathing suits, and telling her to no longer surf with male clients. From misogynistic comments from strangers, to the breakdown of a relationship and its aftermath, to allegations of emotional abuse, our feeds have become their own version of <em>The Last of Us: </em>a toxic nightmare of our society’s creation.</p>
<p id="8hCPOC">Conversations about gender and dating have gained traction on Twitter and other social media sites since the internet’s inception. But recently they’ve felt especially ubiquitous. In an effort to find out why we are all so obsessed with these conversations right now, I sat down with Dianne M. Stewart. She’s the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University and author of <em>Black Women, Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage</em>. She spends a lot of time thinking about Black women and partnership, and argues that a lot of these current conversations mirror the culture wars of the 1960s.</p>
<p id="ASCNkV"><strong>Have conversations like these — about women’s bodies and what they’re “allowed” to do — always been so prevalent? Did we see this sort of thing before the internet? Or is this a creation of social media?</strong></p>
<p id="U6rsGx">I think it’s a creation of social media when we think of the widest global public. Because now, whatever we want to convey can be conveyed digitally to millions, even billions, of people at one time. We definitely saw these kinds of conversations, perhaps in institutional spaces, such as religious spaces, or in the family, or between couples. But in terms of the public domain, social media has perhaps even made it attractive to have these discussions publicly, especially because the images also circulate so publicly and so widely.</p>
<p id="bRfE5t"><strong>I’m wondering how this all started — in particular for Black women. It almost feels like culturally, we’re using relationships to police women’s behavior.</strong></p>
<p id="mTIXVe">Ultimately we’re looking at how gender and womanhood are constructed and conceived in the Euro-Western imagination. And in the wider culture, women historically have been socialized to conduct themselves in a particular way to embrace modesty in order to reflect the virtues of chastity and purity. We’re certainly in another era of culture wars right now, and the stakes have increased because of the powerful role of social media in circulating images. We’re not just in an age where we have to go down to a local store and purchase a magazine to see those images. </p>
<p id="gygoH3">[For Black women], our sexuality has been an area, a region of anxiety and a target of attacks since the era of the slave trade and slavery. The Black woman’s womb was, as Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh likes to say, a capital asset. And Black women’s “masculinization” during slavery and even after set her apart, as the exact opposite of the white feminine archetype of what was considered womanhood. And the same thing happened to Black men. There’s this issue of the “feminization” of Black men. The castration of Black men by the wider, white society. This is the way anti-Black racism functions. It functions in ways that attack our genders [and] that attack our sexuality.</p>
<p id="4biNiL">The stakes are always higher when we’re looking at Black people. In this era of culture wars, we have Black women who feel that they should not be limited in how they express their sexuality. They are no longer playing along with the politics of respectability.</p>
<p id="iBAO4U"><strong>Why does there seem to be such a focus on black women and partnership? I look at Keke Palmer. I look at Tracee Ellis Ross. These are accomplished women and it seems like they and other women are only talked about in relation to men and men’s attraction to them.</strong></p>
<p id="DoebbB">This is a reflection of what happens in the wider culture, but I think women in this culture and probably in many cultures around the world are socialized to prepare for marriage or to prepare for long-term partnership. And oftentimes part of that socialization is to conduct yourself in such a way that a man will find you attractive and want to choose you as his partner. These are very traditional notions: the man proposes to the woman and they are kind of, in many ways, saturated in romantic ideas of love and marriage, but they also play into very deep ideas about patriarchal marriage. The role of the man and the role of the wife, as a submissive role, as a role that takes instruction from the husband or “head of household.”</p>
<p id="0ItZmU">There is increased awareness of the fact that Black women are disproportionately unmarried relative to other American women, and that there are serious structural and systemic barriers to their opportunities for marriage. Although in the public domain, many people still think it’s the fault of Black women. There is an anxiety about that. </p>
<p id="WacpqJ">There is an exaggerated hyperbolic anxiety about, “My goodness. You can’t afford to play these games. You truly have to make yourself a marriageable woman if you want to be married.” Marriage is an ideal in American society, no matter how free we think we are and how many people are not choosing marriage. If we look across a lifetime, most people do get married. The odds are very different for Black women, but most people do get married. There are benefits associated with it. Our society still loves marriage. </p>
<p id="ayYvqj"><strong>I feel like when I see these conversations online, I often see people pathologizing themselves. People discuss these things like only Black people have this type of conflict. But I know from personal experience talking with friends, dating is kind of trash right now for everybody.</strong></p>
<p id="GKUWd7">I doubt that these conversations have ever stopped. Now our norms are permissive of women exposing their bodies. That is the culture in which we live, but I’m not sure that individuals have caught up to that culture. These kinds of issues and conversations have been going on for couples since the explosion of the first set of culture wars. It’s just that the conversations are being taken out of the private domain; out of the bedroom and onto social media. And it’s because these pictures and videos are on social media in the first place. So it makes people feel that they have to put the conversation out there so that they can counter those images. </p>
<p id="LvpLpn">[And Hill’s] girlfriend perhaps wants to put it out there because she knows that there’s a community of supporters. That’s the other thing that social media does. It can situate people within communities that support one’s ideological stance or personal stance on a particular issue and it can be incredibly empowering. And that is also part of the attraction; that people are seeking support. People want to get a sense of where the broader public is on these issues and they know that people will come to their aid in the public domains. </p>
<p id="TPQA7m"><strong>There are so many things that can start conversations, but sometimes it seems like to a degree having opinions about women is what’s keeping Twitter and platforms like it alive. Why do these conversations get so much traction?</strong></p>
<p id="hpWbxT">The societies in which many of us are socialized give people permission to police women’s bodies and choices. It has happened and continues to happen in arenas beyond entertainment. One good example was when Hillary Clinton was running for president. We couldn’t stop hearing comments about how she dressed and what she looked like.</p>
<p id="0SqAJM">Our society is still emerging from a culture that placed women in the home as either sexual trophies or submissive wives that are supposed to be under the control, the domain, and the authority of men. And in some ways we are still grappling with that. </p>
<p id="4SHDx9"><strong>It seems like these discussions are not going anywhere. How do we make these conversations productive?</strong></p>
<p id="rOYyTP">Yeah, no, it’s a great point. I would love to have a more productive conversation about the capitalist marketing and selling of women’s sexuality. Is that sexual freedom? Is it a form of feminism? Because how do we situate that relative to our intentions as Black women, or women, period, and the reception of audiences? I think all of these issues matter.</p>
<p id="uurmtV">While I agree that the shaming of women in the public domain is absolutely a problem, I do think that these incidents give us the opportunity to ask what’s at stake for everyone involved. It allows us to try to understand the foundations of the ideological commitments of celebrities and others who are assessing relationship issues in the public domain. It allows us to expose those foundations and raise questions about what I call partnership over patriarchy. Part of the problem with patriarchy is that it saturates these relationships and we don’t see authentic partnership. I also have questions about the manner in which entertainment culture plays into the demands and norms of patriarchy, because all of the attention that the display of sexuality in the entertainment industry receives generates more money and more visibility — for all these entertainers as well, both the women at the center of such controversies and their male partners — while reinforcing the patriarchal objectification of women’s sexuality and women’s bodies.</p>
<p id="CAwMRh">We have not had substantive conversations in social media about what the nuanced and multilayered dimensions of these controversies mean for American culture, and particularly Black American culture. </p>
<p id="LajJdu"><strong>It’s this idea that patriarchy and capitalism are so ingrained you ask yourself: how do I know what </strong><em><strong>I </strong></em><strong>want? But asking that also kind of takes away agency, implying “I don’t know what I want, because the patriarchy is at work here.” And that doesn’t feel quite right either.</strong></p>
<p id="o7N3Iu">What you just articulated becomes a starting point for a deeper conversation. What I do think is promulgated and disseminated and what worries me most are surface understandings and superficial approaches to love, coupling, and marriage. Why do we focus so much on the body and appearance when those elements will diminish over time in relationships? When in all relationships, the most enduring elements that matter to the health and viability of the couple pertain to the beauty and quality of each person’s character? Why is it that there’s no focus on that? We do have to admit that Black women are trapped in a long legacy of sexual harm. Let’s be honest: Darius Jackson brings up an entire set of complicated issues that we need to address. I do worry about how neoliberalism — which operates from the premise that everything can be marketed, including Black women’s sexuality — impacts us as a community.</p>
<p id="3hejw6"><strong>At the end of the day, everything gets commodified. There’s no escape. Eventually everything gets sold because everything is for sale.</strong></p>
<p id="QCvuH4">There’s so much to ponder in terms of our historical experiences as people of African descent in this country with a long legacy of sexual abuse and exploitation.</p>
<p id="bs94PI"></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2023/7/11/23791376/keke-palmer-darius-jackson-tracee-ellis-ross-sarah-brady-jonah-hillJonquilyn Hill2023-06-14T06:35:12-04:002023-06-14T06:35:12-04:00We need to rethink discipline in schools
<figure>
<img alt="A Black child and a White child play with blocks. A teacher approaches, clearly focusing on the Black child." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/z7jAa7Dwux6gHha2tLzhCkGp_1A=/240x0:1680x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72341904/XiaGordon_Lede3.0.jpg" />
<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://xiagordon.com/" target="_blank">Xia Gordon</a> for Vox and <a class="ql-link" href="https://capitalbnews.org/" target="_blank">Capital B</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How school reinforces inequalities between Black children and their peers. </p> <div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/81xgC-cBhwIwBrSY7IxgXcB8oBc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24696626/JuneHighlight_PartnershipLogo.png">
</figure>
</div>
<p id="E4eOoN"><em>Part of the </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/race/23745799/discrimination-racism-university-chicago-studies"><em>discrimination issue</em></a><em> of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight"><em>The Highlight</em></a><em>. This story was produced in partnership with </em><a href="https://capitalbnews.org/"><em>Capital B</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="lOIkqZ">For many Black children, their first encounter with the discrimination that will trail them their whole lives comes from the school system — a system where they are <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/schools-are-still-segregated-and-black-children-are-paying-a-price/">five times more likely</a> to attend a segregated school than their white counterparts. </p>
<p id="k0UBOX">This early exposure to segregation is one of many possible factors contributing to what’s known as the racial achievement gap — the gap between Black and white students’ test scores. Education experts have looked to a number of factors as root causes of the gap: family income, single parenthood, school resources. </p>
<p id="yMAQXE">But <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12552-021-09347-y">a study</a> by Francis Pearman, an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, shows other components may be at play. According to Pearman, it comes down to what he refers to as “sorting mechanisms.” These are the ways students are separated from one another and into different academic experiences. “Why is it that communities with elevated rates of racial bias have higher levels of Black-white test score disparities?” he asks. “It’s partially explained by the fact that this is partially a story of racial segregation. But there’s a couple other sorting mechanisms that also play out.”</p>
<aside id="9FDb39"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Find the Weeds — Vox’s podcast for politics and policy — wherever you like to listen ","url":"https://vox.com/theweeds"}]}'></div></aside><p id="eioXpF">Black children are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/why-are-there-so-few-black-children-in-gifted-and-talented-programs/424707/">less likely to be tested for gifted programs</a> and <a href="https://fisherpub.sjf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1258&context=education_ETD_masters#:~:text=Research%20indicates%20that%20factors%20such,students%20can%20cause%20this%20overrepresentation.">more likely to be put in special education</a> than their white counterparts. The gap <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1605043113">decreases</a> when children are tested for gifted enrollment across the board.</p>
<p id="5WbqDN">“The other big pathway is with regard to discipline,” he says. Communities where residents have higher levels of anti-Black bias also see a major difference in how Black and white students are disciplined: While Black students make up about 15 percent of total students, they make up <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/07/zero-tolerance-policies-are-destroying-the-lives-of-black-children/">36 percent </a>of all expelled students. </p>
<p id="ngSUBR">In this episode of <a href="https://link.chtbl.com/Weeds614"><em>The Weeds</em></a>, we sit down with Pearman to talk about the role school discipline plays in the achievement gap. </p>
<p id="3BzrCF">Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to <em>The Weeds</em> on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voxs-the-weeds/id1042433083">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1vSUO6Bg4abtjRF7fnGpT1">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/voxs-the-weeds">Stitcher</a>, or <a href="https://link.chtbl.com/theweedspod">wherever you get podcasts</a>.</p>
<div id="8XtrC0"><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=VMP4744542012" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="V0uTuN">
<p id="Qy2hC2"><strong>When we’re talking about school discipline, what exactly are we referring to?</strong></p>
<p id="Ympldv">When we talk about discipline in a general sense, we’re talking about tools that any individual uses to correct student behavior. Now, there are a lot of different ways in which student behavior can be corrected. In general, school discipline has been characterized in one way, shape, or form as exclusionary discipline. </p>
<p id="Y0U82F">That exclusion could take the form of an in-school suspension. That is sending a student out of a classroom and sending them into a separate classroom in a school environment for a day or extended period of time, but the student stays at that school. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><div id="njIfrI"><div data-anthem-component="aside:11910587"></div></div></div>
<p id="9vFioK">There’s also out-of-school suspensions that are for any given behavioral infraction. There’s also more extreme forms, like expulsion, where you’re sending a student away from the school entirely. </p>
<p id="4RhXjR">But there’s also this increasing presence of law enforcement in schools that also have a number of related disciplinary outcomes of interest that are similarly understood in this exclusionary framework.</p>
<p id="TVcy4K"><strong>Suspension has always been a fascinating form of discipline to me. When I was a kid I thought, “Wait, they get to get out of school for being ‘bad’?” </strong></p>
<p id="I79GSR">There’s a certain irony with the decision to send a kid away from a learning environment that we broadly understand as helpful and promoted for that child’s development. In some cases, maybe the student didn’t want to be in that learning environment to begin with, right? For some students, that might be a welcomed disciplinary action on their part. </p>
<p id="keMkZx">But really, the issue — aside from just the kind of the curiousness of that approach — is we also know that experiencing school discipline is associated with a variety of outcomes that are generally not that good. Students who experience suspensions, expulsions, any sort of arm of this exclusionary discipline process, are less likely to graduate high school, are less likely to persist in school, and are more likely to drop out of school. They’re less likely to go on to college and are far more likely to become involved in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/criminal-justice" data-source="encore">criminal justice</a> system as a result of that exclusionary discipline experience happening. </p>
<p id="EvdEo1">So because of that, it really is quite important to really interrogate instances of exclusionary discipline, and understand the ways in which they’re being meted out in unfair ways. It’s highly consequential for students, both [for] short- and longer-term outcomes. Which is part of the reason a number of progressive school districts have begun to rethink what school discipline ought to look like. There’s this growth in restorative justice practices, positive behavioral supports, and systems based on this idea that, rather than thinking about correcting student behavior by sending students elsewhere, we should really be thinking about correcting student misbehavior in ways that create bridges. </p>
<p id="GFtTiu"><strong>Can you talk about how race factors into discipline in particular when it comes to this? How do we </strong><em><strong>know</strong></em><strong> race is a factor?</strong></p>
<p id="7EWVza">We know that racial discrimination is a persistent feature of many of our social institutions in the United States. There’s quite a bit of evidence on this point that racial biases actually play out in how discipline is meted out in classrooms. For instance, we know that teachers are<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/04/black-students-teachers-implicit-racial-bias-preschool-study"> more likely to gaze at Black students</a> when they expect problematic behavior of the classroom overall. So if a teacher’s anticipating there being a problem, they look at Black students. We know that white children are far more likely [to be] sort of given the grace associated with childhood status compared to Black children. Teachers or authority figures are far more likely to give white children a second chance when it comes to misbehavior than they are to Black students. </p>
<p id="osjQD7">But more specifically in regard to discipline and out-of-school suspension, there’s quite a bit of work that’s tried to disentangle these factors over time. We know that for any given behavioral infraction, Black students in particular are not only more likely to experience punishment, but the severity of the punishment that they experience is also worse than their white counterparts.</p>
<p id="plMZQW"><strong>As an adult, I look back on my own experience in the public school system. And I remember when I was in middle school in Kansas City before my family moved, I went to this college preparatory magnet middle school. One of the factors that I had to think of when I was getting ready for school in the morning and being on time was that we had to go through metal detectors. If we were in line for the metal detector when the bell rang, we would be marked as late or as absent. At the time I thought, “Yeah, this is teaching me responsibility, it’s teaching me how to manage my time, it’s keeping me safe.” And I look back and I think “Oh, maybe it was less about keeping me safe and more about teaching me how to be policed.”</strong></p>
<p id="lqM8L7"><strong>At the same time, I think of those schools that are really hard and disciplined for Black children. And the thing is, the world is not that kind to Black people. And as tragic as having to do that is, I kind of understand — especially why parents — can be so tough on those Black children: because the world is tough on them. How do we straddle that line? Do we live in an existence where we say, “Okay, but that’s not the world I want to live in, so that’s what I’ll prepare my children for?” Or do you say, “Hey, this is real life, and yeah, you’re going to have to be way more on top of it than people who don’t look like you?”</strong></p>
<p id="4oaGWl">You’re bringing up such an important point. Think about the role that schools play in our society. In one respect, you can think about schools as preparing students to engage [with] the world [as it] is. Equipping students with the dispositions, with the skills, with the mindsets that allow them to kind of plug and play.</p>
<p id="J24GJc">The concern or the critique there is that the world in which they would plug and play is deeply unequal and deeply unfair along the lines that we’re talking about here. Specifically, we know that racial inequalities are a key feature of the way that the world is. And so many of the ways that we’ve conventionally understood schooling, and the type of preparation that students receive, the concern is that this type of schooling that we organize is also one in which Black and brown students will be disproportionately exposed to these disciplinary tools like metal detectors. More likely to be exposed to school resource officers, for instance. There’s this concern that if we’re engaging in school for the purpose of plugging students into the world that currently exists, we’re doing a disservice both to students and also to the world that might become.</p>
<p id="Zn8c3s"><strong>In 2014, the Obama administration put guidelines in place regarding school discipline that were, in part, aimed at lessening these disparities, and the </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/trump-administration" data-source="encore"><strong>Trump administration</strong></a><strong> got rid of those </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy" data-source="encore"><strong>policies</strong></a><strong>. Is there a federal policy that could push this along, or is this something more on the local level?</strong></p>
<p id="B5l019">Well, I think this is a both-and question. There’s certainly a role that our federal government plays in our school systems. Data collection is really important. And data collection in a way that allows us to track student outcomes of interest. Being able to track these outcomes over time becomes extremely important. Being able to understand the subgroups that are experiencing elevated rates of, for instance, suspensions. That’s an important part of this story. To be fair, the federal government has been tracking these over time, but my point is there’s more that we could do. </p>
<p id="LpFYwe">Most of what we know about school discipline at the national level pertains to these pretty extreme outcomes. Whether students are being suspended, expelled, I think there’s a lot of room to improve our understanding of classroom management practices. These lower-order offenses that teachers are constantly on a day-to-day basis forced to grapple with. There’s ways to sort of think about expanding data coverage and access to these sorts of lower-order offenses. </p>
<p id="XxvuL7">Now, naturally this is a big undertaking to go down that path. But nevertheless, when we’re talking about sort of moving the needle forward in the role that the federal government plays in tracking disparities over time, I think there’s a lot of fruit to be had there. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="TsCxnb">Now you mentioned what role more local solutions play. We can think about innovative ways to leverage the resources that exist in a given community to address school disciplinary-related issues. There’s always ways to think about and make our school disciplinary policies in particular more responsive to the communities they serve.</p>
<p id="AqWFIe"><a href="https://www.vox.com/authors/jonquilyn-hill"><em><strong>Jonquilyn Hill</strong></em></a><em> is the host of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-weeds"><em><strong>The Weeds</strong></em></a><em>, Vox’s podcast for politics and policy discussions. Prior to joining Vox, she was a senior producer for WAMU and NPR’s 1A.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/race/23745609/school-discipline-racial-discrimination-achievement-gapJonquilyn Hill2023-04-26T09:20:00-04:002023-04-26T09:20:00-04:00How Pete Buttigieg wants to make America’s roads safer
<figure>
<img alt="Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg looks upward while speaking into a microphone." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2tcRIIkw_1kS1zuGIZMcexWC8jY=/667x0:6000x4000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72218641/1483649645.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg testifies during a House committee hearing on April 20, 2023. | Alex Wong/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our roads are deadly. Here’s how the secretary of transportation says we can fix them.</p> <p id="8EN6uW">Transportation secretaries normally don’t get the attention that Pete Buttigieg does. The current secretary and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has become somewhat of a political lightning rod ever since his 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination.</p>
<p id="jB2JRS">The status was made clearer after the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which led to calls that Buttigieg himself should be held accountable. </p>
<p id="ZdzZkp">“Ordinarily, transportation secretaries don’t go to active sites of crash investigations because that’s for the NTSB to do,” he said on the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-secretary-buttigieg-wants-to-make-americas-roads-safer/id1042433083?i=1000610694297">most recent episode of <em>The Weeds</em></a>. “But I did go to East Palestine because the residents there were getting so much misinformation, and I think were really questioning whether the administration was there for them.”</p>
<aside id="55raUf"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Find the Weeds — Vox’s podcast for politics and policy — wherever you like to listen","url":"https://link.chtbl.com/theweeds426"}]}'></div></aside><p id="rav2at">Buttigieg’s department is also managing more everyday crises and disasters. Though it often fades to the background of our daily lives, access to transportation can be make-or-break for those striving to make their way out of poverty. According to <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/federal-infrastructure-funds-could-fill-gaps-local-transit-accessibility">the Urban Institute</a>, only about 8 percent of Americans live near accessible public transportation. In 2016, <a href="https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-car-ownership-poverty.html">20 percent</a> of those in poverty had no access to a car. </p>
<p id="A5Bh0I">Meanwhile, American roads are getting more dangerous. And when cars are on the road, they often become deadly. Last year, <a href="https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-estimates-2022">nearly 43,000 people</a> died in traffic accidents in the United States, a number comparable to the number of gun violence deaths in the same time frame. </p>
<p id="2v7x7T">“What I try to make sure of every day is that, if my profile is a little different than most transportation secretaries, that’s something that at the end of the day, we shape for the benefit of the agency’s ability to meet its mission,” Buttigieg said of the attention his tenure as head of the Department of Transportation has gotten. </p>
<p id="fYsPoe">“If we can attract more attention to the issue of roadway deaths, if we can really get some facts out there about electric vehicles, if we can have an honest conversation about disparities in our transportation system and what to do about them, then there’s a chance to do a lot of good. But you’re right. It would be naive to ignore the political noise around all of this.”</p>
<p id="BHksla">On this week’s episode of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-weeds"><em>The Weeds</em></a>, we sit down with Buttigieg in a wide-ranging interview on transportation in the US, including the future of public transportation and the policies that can curb traffic deaths.</p>
<div id="YFs2e8"><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=VMP7370962467" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<p id="5RHND3">Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to <em>The Weeds</em> on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voxs-the-weeds/id1042433083">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1vSUO6Bg4abtjRF7fnGpT1">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/voxs-the-weeds">Stitcher</a>, or wherever you get podcasts. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="9KcuoH">
<h4 id="j5FXe7">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="sxWtc2">There’s this debate between people who want systems to spend money to make it cheaper. In Philadelphia, there’s a floated program for low-income people to ride free. In DC, we could all be riding the bus for free by the summer. And then there are those who argue that money should be used to improve service, making it more reliable, making it more frequent, rather than getting rid of fares altogether. Where do you stand when it comes to that conversation? </p>
<h4 id="EN9lcm">Secretary Pete Buttigieg</h4>
<p id="mIXKEf">I think the honest answer to your question is the jury is still out a little bit. And what I mean by that is we need to see more of the data that comes back through some of these efforts for fare-free transit. There’s an active debate with a lot of really important points being made on both sides. Are you going to invest it in free fares or are you going to invest in some kind of service improvement? Now, that’s not always as straightforward as it sounds, because sometimes [when] you do the free fare, you get more ridership that actually leads to more revenue. Another way that some communities seek to split the atom is means testing, so that lowest-income riders can get free fares, but that can be complicated to implement. </p>
<p id="Io08Qc">This is the exact reason why we’re not trying to dictate any of that from here at the US DOT. We are closely watching these pilot programs, though, around fare-free transit to see what the results are and to see how that compares to the other strategies transit agencies are attempting. </p>
<p id="kM4pBo">Transit agencies are under huge pressure right now, post-Covid. Commuting still has not reached a stable, permanent new normal, in my view. We’ve seen a lot of recovery, but not back to what it was like in 2019. And yet we know that transit is more important than ever, especially for those who count on it every day. And whether you ride transit or not, you benefit from transit in every respect, from the essential workers who count on it, to the fact that if you’re driving a car on the road, every person who’s on transit means a car that’s not on the road and means less congestion for drivers. So it really is a win-win, to say nothing of the safety benefits, because transit ultimately has better safety.</p>
<h4 id="VELu4T">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="szahLx">Even in cities, people don’t always have access to transit. Only about 8 percent of the US population lives near public transportation. And you can compare that with 20 percent of the population in France. What do you make of expansions in cities? Should that be one of the priorities that these municipalities are making? </p>
<h4 id="B4HZ0Q">Secretary Buttigieg</h4>
<p id="FoSq05">I think the right answer is going to look different from city to city. And some places it’s got more to do with making the service you’ve already got be more frequent and more reliable. But yeah, there are other places where expansion could make a huge difference. </p>
<p id="4sZQVc">I’ll give you just one example. In Chicago, there’s a neighborhood in South Chicago called Roseland, and that neighborhood within the city limits of Chicago has folks who [travel] almost an hour and a half to get to downtown Chicago to work. And the reason that stuck in my mind so strongly when I was there visiting with community leaders is that there is a town called Roseland, Indiana, close to South Bend, where I grew up, which is 90 miles east of Chicago. It takes about the same amount of time to get from Roseland, Indiana, to downtown Chicago if you do have a car as it does to get from the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago to downtown, if you don’t. </p>
<h4 id="mLPQwc">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="MGqzhN">You mentioned how mass transportation can help when it comes to road safety. And I briefly want to touch on that. Car crashes are a leading cause of death here in America. And last year they were up: over 9,500 people died in traffic crashes in the first quarter of the year alone. What are some policy solutions? How do we fix this other than say, “Hey everybody, drive better”? </p>
<h4 id="1olEwk">Secretary Buttigieg</h4>
<p id="0ddfgl">We should all be up in arms about roadway deaths in this country. As you said, about 10,000 people a quarter. That means about 40,000 people a year, which, by the way, is roughly equivalent to the number of lives we lose to gun violence in this country. And I think precisely because it happens so often, there is an attitude that it’s inevitable. It’s not. </p>
<p id="HzAXht">Our strategy has five elements: safer roads, safer vehicles, safer drivers, safer speeds, and a better standard of post-crash care. So when you do have a crash, the emergency response is in a position to make it less likely to wind up as a fatality. And we have to do all five of those things ... Some of it is behavioral, for sure, the choices that the drivers make. But a lot of it is design, and good design recognizes that humans make mistakes, but prevents them from being fatal. </p>
<p id="XrLXpN">A good example to show you what’s possible here is our aviation system. We’re always making improvements to our aviation system. But think about the fact that we often have a year — more years than not — where the number of people killed in an airliner crash is zero. This is a form of transportation that has 16 million flights a year that involves people flying through the air at nearly the speed of sound. And almost every single time you have a perfectly safe arrival and return, in a way that is just completely different from what we have on our roadways. So we know that if we have the right attention and the right systems in place and the right safety checks, we could be saving so many lives. The recent rise [in deaths] appears to be plateauing. That’s what we’re seeing in <a href="https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-estimates-2022">the data that just came out</a>. Stopping the rise is step one. But our goal, of course, is to reverse the rise. </p>
<h4 id="zRxm3g">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="0uRHLw">What’s caused that rise?</p>
<h4 id="3w8wkY">Secretary Buttigieg</h4>
<p id="HAK2DC">Well, there are several factors that we think are at play. There was an unusual rise during the year of Covid, which is a bit counterintuitive because you’d think there was less driving going on, but with less driving, there were actually more opportunities for speeding on open roadways. What you often saw was people who were treating those freeways as railways. And so we need to have a future outlook where we have neither congestion nor danger on our roads. And that’s what we’re trying to design for. There are questions about the design of vehicles, vehicles that have technology on board that’s meant to benefit safety. But if you lean on it too much, it can have the opposite result. </p>
<p id="vIHwAT">Think about the lane assist technology, for example, and the kind of cruise control that actually knows how far away you are from the car in front of you. In theory, that’s a safety boon, but not if you get so comfortable with it that you take your eye off the road and check your email. There is no vehicle you can get on commercially today where it’s okay to not be paying attention to the road. It is especially important as you hear some of the marketing going on out there. Just to be really clear, some of these technologies are exciting, but none of them — at least nothing available today to people buying a car — permit you to stop having your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. </p>
https://www.vox.com/podcasts/23698202/pete-buttigieg-roadway-deaths-public-transportationJonquilyn Hill2023-03-10T10:05:00-05:002023-03-10T10:05:00-05:00How the train industry could change after the Ohio disaster
<figure>
<img alt="A train on a track is seen through a chainlink fence as the sun sets. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3B_ra5urYJzHoi7t3sA4gNmLsMk=/296x0:5105x3607/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72059271/1247486226.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A Norfolk Southern train passes underneath a bridge in East Palestine, Ohio. | Michael Swensen/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Ohio train derailment has put a spotlight on freight companies, rail safety, and how to prevent the next environmental disaster.</p> <p id="heVa8K">Railroads are a fixture of the American landscape: There are about <a href="https://railroads.dot.gov/rail-network-development/freight-rail-overview">140,000</a> miles of track in the United States. But most people don’t think of the trains running through our towns and cities all that often. </p>
<p id="vwbIJm">“It was just a means of transportation for moving goods from one point to the other,” Wayne Bable <a href="https://www.vox.com/science/23624376/east-palestine-derailment-air-quality-safety">told Vox’s Benji Jones</a> last week in East Palestine, Ohio. “I mean, the trains are every 15 minutes on a regular basis. So it’s just part of life. … After a while, you don’t hear them. We sure hear them now.”</p>
<p id="x1ic9J">It was the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23597778/ohio-train-east-palestine-trainwreck-accident-chemical-norfolk">dramatic derailment of a train</a> last month in his small town that changed Bable’s awareness of that regularity. On February 3, a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials derailed near East Palestine. In its wake, concerns have been raised on the environmental impacts of the spill, and over the trains and how they run.</p>
<p id="RVvGVJ">Action in Washington has been relatively swift. There’s now a <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/2/23622455/ohio-train-derailment-congress-rail-safety-bill">bipartisan effort</a> to address railroad safety, and Norfolk Southern’s CEO testified Thursday before Congress. </p>
<p id="g13JzD">The derailment and <a href="https://www.vox.com/science/23612128/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-chemical-spill-cleanup-norfolk-southern">its fallout</a> raise a lot of questions about the rail industry, its profits, and deregulation. But in order to understand the regulatory landscape, we first need to know how the modern rail industry functions. To talk about that for an episode of <em>The Weeds</em>, we called Joanna Marsh, a senior staff reporter at <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/">FreightWaves</a>, which covers freight transportation. And for a better understanding of the policy solutions, we talked to<em> </em>Washington Post transportation reporter Ian Duncan. </p>
<div id="IObQsC"><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=VMP7843835916" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<p id="lJOUoV"></p>
<p id="DObREo">Below are some of their answers to our big questions about the state of railways and the railroad industry. Host Jonquilyn Hill’s questions and the reporters’ answers have been edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to <em>The Weeds</em> wherever you get podcasts, including <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voxs-the-weeds/id1042433083"><strong>Apple Podcasts</strong></a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLmZlZWRidXJuZXIuY29tL3ZveHRoZXdlZWRz"><strong>Google Podcasts</strong></a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1vSUO6Bg4abtjRF7fnGpT1"><strong>Spotify</strong></a>, and <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/voxs-the-weeds"><strong>Stitcher</strong></a>.</p>
<h3 id="YL3inR">Who are the big players in the modern railroad industry, and how much stuff are they moving? </h3>
<p id="J8u8aB"><strong>Joanna Marsh: </strong>There are a lot of railroad companies operating in the United States. According to the <a href="https://railroads.dot.gov/about-fra/program-offices/program-offices-overview">Federal Railroad Administration</a>, there are over 800 freight and passenger railroads. That includes subways and commuter rails and Amtrak. But you still have hundreds of railroad companies. </p>
<p id="oE3qxo">There are three economic classes of railroads. You have your smallest companies, like mom-and-pop operations. They serve the small towns, like companies or shippers that might be there if you want to transport crushed stone somewhere or farmers who want to sell their soybeans. </p>
<p id="psFTgC">And then you have a slightly larger size, which means they make more money and they generate more revenue. Those include small railroads that might cover a wider territory, or they might include companies who have several of these smaller rail assets throughout the country or in a certain region. These two kinds of railroads are called short line railroads. </p>
<p id="Tvb84j">The last category consists of the biggest railroads, and they’re the ones who have thousands of miles of track, who make millions of dollars, and who spend millions of dollars. And they’re called the Class 1 railroads. There are seven of them right now in the United States and Canada … all of them except BNSF are publicly traded. </p>
<p id="zETJuB">The bulk of freight goods are transported by truck, but rail handles a sizable portion of it as well. A lot of what rail handles are bulk commodities and things that you might not necessarily need right away. So things like coal or grain, or energy products such as ethanol or crude oil. Other commodities that the railroads carry include automotive parts and vehicles. Those components kind of go back and forth between the US and Canada and Mexico. So your car might have parts that are produced in Canada and the US and is actually put together in Mexico, and then [it] goes back into the US via train. </p>
<p id="CUzhel">And there is also a type of rail car called intermodal cars or intermodal containers. Those are ones that carry your import goods, things that might come from the ports, inland. </p>
<h3 id="eTI5u8">How often do freight trains derail? Is East Palestine an outlier? </h3>
<p id="Dvg1uJ"><strong>Joanna Marsh: </strong>Train derailments among the Class 1 railroads actually happen quite a bit. </p>
<p id="pynjBv">Between January and November 2022, there were 818 train derailments reported to the Federal Railroad Administration out of 1,049 total. That <a href="https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/OfficeofSafety/publicsite/Query/TenYearAccidentIncidentOverview.aspx">number</a> is actually slightly lower than 2020 and 2021 numbers, which are hovering around 870. </p>
<p id="ZODzmp">It’s interesting what happened in East Palestine as well, because it’s not an unusual cause to have overheated bearings. </p>
<p id="4IKPKR">Part of the reason you don’t hear about derailments as much is because they might be occurring in places where there just aren’t very many people around. </p>
<p id="s7HslQ">Part of it, too, might be that the derailment isn’t as flashy, like it might not have resulted in multiple cars derailing or what derailed didn’t cause tank cars to heat up their chemicals and cause an explosion. </p>
<p id="VMyghE">There are various reasons why derailments occur. One could be how the track has been maintained. Another reason could be mechanical issues with the rail cars. </p>
<p id="DCHW9n">Looking at this [East Palestine] train derailment, even though this happened on Norfolk Southern’s track and it was a Norfolk Southern train and the wayside detectors of the hot box detectors are owned and operated by Norfolk Southern, the rail cars themselves are actually not owned by Norfolk Southern. </p>
<p id="xx2Q4I">Norfolk Southern inspects the train to make sure everything looks okay. But who is actually liable for the rail car is kind of to be determined. </p>
<p id="ynV3Gy">Most rail cars are owned by either rail car leasing companies such as Trinity Industries or GATX. The other kind of rail car owners are companies — or shippers, as people call them: your chemical manufacturers or your plastics producers or your grain producers or your coal companies.</p>
<h3 id="6SQmYE">How are railroads regulated? </h3>
<p id="Rqijnt"><strong>Ian Duncan:</strong> So the regulation of railroads goes back to the 19th century, because it’s obviously one of the oldest big industries in the country. </p>
<p id="Nkr34a">The modern era, starting in the 1980s, has been about deregulation. That’s where we get to today, where there is federal oversight, but it’s reasonably limited and a lot of it has to do with safety measures. </p>
<p id="XRFeC3">There is a part of the US Department of Transportation called the Federal Railroad Administration, and they have the power to set safety rules for the railroads. It’s a little bit like the Federal Aviation Administration for planes, but they’re not running the air traffic control system in the same way. They do some hands-on stuff, they do some inspections, but it’s mostly about setting safety rules. </p>
<p id="ZdF4HQ">There’s a body called the Surface Transportation Board, which has some commercial oversight of the relationships between railroads and their customers. And there was some kind of attention on that last year because there was a lot of tension about the service railroads were providing to their customers. But it’s fairly light touch regulation there. </p>
<h3 id="A97X3c">Why does the federal government have such little oversight of railroads? What rules are in place?</h3>
<p id="erRQhg"><strong>Ian Duncan: </strong>Transportation in this country … used to be much more tightly controlled. </p>
<p id="QuWuOp">In aviation and in railroads, you’ve seen deregulation, the idea being that with the railroads, they were struggling financially. And so you had attempts to kind of free them up and help them turn into more viable businesses. And if you talk to the railroads, they would say this has been a period of real growth and financial success and that that’s good for the country because they’re providing this vital service to get goods where they need to go. </p>
<p id="qdrP4W">There are rules around inspection of tracks and standards for maintaining tracks and equipment on railroads. </p>
<p id="htnMoq">I think the big thing that’s come into focus in the last decade or so and certainly in the last few weeks has been around how a special kind of train that’s called a high-hazard flammable train is regulated. They’ve come to be seen as particularly dangerous, full of chemicals that potentially can burn or explode. And so there you have a system of laws like speed limits, braking standards, much more detailed regulation about what the railroads are required to do. </p>
<h3 id="SUmF52">What is the role of lobbying when it comes to railroads?</h3>
<p id="h10RYr"><strong>Ian Duncan: </strong>It’s a pretty consolidated industry, so that gives them a reasonable amount of power in Washington. They have an association that also represents them. What we’ve seen in this period where there’s been interest in trying to set new safety standards is that the railroads will often lobby against that. </p>
<p id="UW4o2B">Their argument is that it’s a period of technological change in the industry, and so if you write rules right now, they might be outdated by the time that they’re put in place. </p>
<p id="AMotzE">The Obama administration made some efforts to tighten the rules. But the Trump administration was interested in deregulation especially when it came to transportation. They looked for opportunities to walk things back. The guy who ran the Federal Railroad Administration during the Trump administration had worked as a railroad executive. They were able to get some rules rolled back. </p>
<h3 id="ks6Cjz">How quickly is railroad technology moving? </h3>
<p id="I4YNit"><strong>Ian Duncan: </strong>An example: There’s technology that can automatically check basically the health of tracks. It’s pretty new. The industry thinks this is much better at finding potential problems on tracks that can lead to derailments or other kinds of accidents than human inspectors. And so they’ve been trying to get permission to walk back the number of visual inspections that they do and rely on this technology. The Biden administration allowed some testing to go on. But what they’ve been saying since the derailment in East Palestine is you can do both. You don’t need to get rid of the human inspections in order to use this technology; let’s do both. But the industry obviously also has a kind of commercial incentive to try and use technology that might be cheaper than having people do the work. </p>
<p id="pbEo9y">Another one of the big disputes currently is how many people need to be on these trains. The standard at the moment is an engineer who essentially drives the train and a conductor who’s responsible for keeping tabs of what’s on the train. </p>
<p id="Q2RwwN">That was reasonably astonishing to me, when you think of just the size of these vehicles. … There used to be five [people]. But the unions that represent these workers on the railroads are worried that the railroads are looking to go down to just one person, just an engineer, and then maybe having someone following in a truck or on the ground. </p>
<p id="1qh02A">The union’s view is that you can’t cut this back, that these machines do only work as well as the people. But the industry has seen it’s been able to cut the crews before and I think is interested in seeing if you can go even further. </p>
<h3 id="7j3zBU">What are pneumatic brakes, and were they a factor here?</h3>
<p id="zFvjRO"><strong>Ian Duncan: </strong>This was a huge dispute. It’s really more of a political dispute than an actual dispute. It gets back to this issue of deregulation during the Trump administration. </p>
<p id="diKADw">The current emergency brakes have an air hose that sort of connects between all the cars on a train. So when it’s tripped, that signal kind of pulses down the train, so that all the cars aren’t having their brakes applied at the same time. The electronic brakes would be designed to have this kind of immediate braking on all the cars. </p>
<p id="NQWICH">The history is pretty tangled here, but basically the Obama administration wrote a rule and said they should be required on these high-hazard flammable trains. And Congress stepped in and said you need to have another look at that. We’re not convinced. Under the Trump administration, they tried to figure out what would be the cost to the railroads of installing these brakes and what would be the benefits in terms of preventing accidents. In their view, it didn’t pencil out, so they repealed that requirement. </p>
<p id="zYPgd8">The train that derailed in East Palestine was not one of these high-hazard trains. It didn’t meet the definition. And so even had the rule been in place, it wouldn’t have had these brakes on and then there would have been a question about would they have helped stop it? Maybe they would have. But we just won’t know. </p>
<h3 id="ygDC5Z">What policy proposals are emerging now that could make railways safer? </h3>
<p id="wkw97V"><strong>Ian Duncan: </strong>So there’s a few things, and we’ve seen movement on some of these already. </p>
<p id="i84F30">The <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/29/23484623/congress-rail-strike-biden-sick-days">sick leave thing</a>. [Transportation Secretary Pete] Buttigieg has cast that as a safety measure. Essentially, if you have workers who are exhausted, who are ill and can’t take time off to get medical care, they’re not going to be working safely. Some of the railroads have sort of made some steps toward offering leave. </p>
<p id="qOPCFS">And then the other thing that happened is that there’s a close call reporting system that’s run by the government, and that is something that the government sees as a way for workers to kind of come forward and confidentially report safety risks without feeling like there’s going to be reprisals. The big freight railroads had resisted that. The administration came down pretty hard and said that we really want you to join this. And so they’ve all agreed that they will do that. </p>
<p id="ou4vNw">I think, looking forward, the big dispute that was already playing out before this derailment was this question of crew sizes. The unions really want to get a floor set at two. </p>
<p id="a2tHrN">There was a bill that was introduced after the derailment that includes that idea. There are some questions about, “Could we set standards for a type of technology that is along the tracks and is designed to detect problems on the train?” — in this case, bearings that are too hot on the trains — and they did that too late. And so could we space them out differently? Could the thresholds at which they send a warning to the crew be changed? There’s interest in putting that into law. </p>
<p id="mCqmJn">The other big thing that Secretary Buttigieg just called for in this legislation as well is to increase the fines for when railroads break these violations. They cap out at around $200,000. These are companies that make billions and billions of dollars. Buttigieg has said that’s just no kind of deterrent to them. And so, again, that legislation would also ramp up the maximum fines pretty dramatically potentially. </p>
<h3 id="uqNJIn">What are the politics of getting anything done here? </h3>
<p id="JU2IFD"><strong>Ian Duncan: </strong>[The train derailment] took on this political life. A lot of that has been focused on Buttigieg, and I think a big reason for that is that he’s kind of an unusual person to be transportation secretary. This is an office that — they’ve faced crashes and big disasters and things in the past, but it hasn’t been led by someone who was so political and is presumed to have continuing political ambitions. And so Republicans in Congress had already been looking for opportunities to criticize him. Especially with air travel, <a href="https://www.vox.com/even-better/23529788/canceled-flight-delay-travel-refund">winter was pretty messy</a>. And so they tried to lay some of that his door — some of it, I think reasonably so. The question was where is he? Why hasn’t he showed up? </p>
<p id="Irs760">It is interesting to see this kind of two-track political response, because [Republican Sens.] J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, for example, have been some of the loudest critics of Buttigieg over all of this, and yet they’re sponsors of this legislation that does a lot of the things that he’s also been calling for. So when you get down to specifics, there seems to be maybe some room for agreement. </p>
<p id="SdQTcq"><em>For more on the policy solutions being explored and the political obstacles to getting anything done, listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast app. </em></p>
<p id="NVwTPs"></p>
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/10/23632683/ohio-train-derailment-rail-safety-regulations-norfolk-southernJonquilyn HillSofi LaLonde2023-01-24T16:05:00-05:002023-01-24T16:05:00-05:00How the Voting Rights Act ended up back at the Supreme Court
<figure>
<img alt="The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JyTJN0mTOHmb_V7zFSuMofFIGUY=/205x0:5538x4000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71901862/1246369264.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC. | Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The past — and future — of the Voting Rights Act.</p> <p id="TZ2KAK">Although we’re months out from any rulings, many <a href="https://www.vox.com/voting-rights">voting rights</a> advocates have their eyes on the Supreme Court, which is likely to rule on a few cases this term that could affect the strength of the Voting Rights Act. </p>
<p id="CztcCP">The act was passed and signed in 1965, but it was a long time in the making. Its roots trace back to the end of Reconstruction. Federal troops withdrew from the South after the Compromise of 1877, ushering in what’s known as the nadir of race relations in America. Jim Crow laws were enacted, the Ku Klux Klan rose to power, and many of the attempts Black people made to vote and exercise full citizenship were met with violence. That violence persisted well into the 1960s.</p>
<p id="EE7PMU">After the VRA passed, Black voter registration in the South rose immensely, and throughout the nearly six decades since it was enacted, the legislation has been both strengthened and weakened. According to Atiba R. Ellis, a Case Western Reserve School of Law professor, “In some ways, the way the Voting Rights Act has changed has been, in part, a conversation between Congress and the Supreme Court.” </p>
<p id="cOGKCy">On this week’s episode of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-weeds"><em>The Weeds</em></a> — Vox’s podcast for politics and policy discussions — we hop in the Weeds Time Machine with Ellis and go back to the circumstances that gave us the VRA, and look forward to what the policy could become in the near future. </p>
<div id="ddbzD6"><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=VMP9716112865" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<p id="hUOPsN">Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to <em>The Weeds</em> on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voxs-the-weeds/id1042433083">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1vSUO6Bg4abtjRF7fnGpT1">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/voxs-the-weeds">Stitcher</a> or wherever you get podcasts. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="9KcuoH">
<h4 id="vIHwAT">Atiba R. Ellis</h4>
<p id="WzvroY"><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/10/4/23387283/supreme-court-merrill-milligan-alabama-racial-gerrymandering-voting-rights-act"><em>Merrill</em> [<em>v. Milligan</em>]</a> is now in front of the Court, and it concerns a redistricting plan in Alabama. Alabama went through its redistricting process, and it drew one district for its US House of Representatives that was majority Black. The plaintiffs here are basically arguing that Alabama packed Black voters into that district when it should have drawn more districts that were majority African American. And so [the plaintiffs say] that this violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. </p>
<p id="NSlj9M">So this has the potential of completely changing the standard for racial vote dilution cases under the Voting Rights Act and potentially making it a lot harder for plaintiffs to bring their claims. </p>
<h4 id="ydCimw">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="RgpbWQ">That’s not the only Supreme Court case regarding voting that could impact the Voting Rights Act coming up this summer, correct? </p>
<h4 id="aQrFn7">Atiba R. Ellis</h4>
<p id="v3AHJy">Another really important case, even though not directly about the Voting Rights Act, [that] would nonetheless impact the VRA is a case called <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/21-1271"><em>Moore v. Harper</em></a>. And this case comes out of North Carolina, where the North Carolina General Assembly passed another set of voting rules after a history of voting cases where both federal courts and state courts have struck down North Carolina’s efforts. But this time, the North Carolina Supreme Court strikes down the General Assembly’s rule, and the General Assembly then goes to the US Supreme Court, arguing that the independent state legislature theory should be adopted by the US Supreme Court and thus cutting out state courts from being able to rule on what the state legislatures do in regards to federal election rules. </p>
<p id="sWZuyU">So they’re saying, well, if it’s up to the states, and the text of the elections clause in Article 1 of the Constitution says the legislature shall make the rules. They’re saying take that literally, as in the legislature and no one else can make the rules. </p>
<h4 id="N6EWvy">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="u08UH5">But it’s the court’s job to interpret the rules that they make. This is why we have three branches. This is why we have our executive, our legislative, and our judicial. And isn’t the state court technically part of the state? </p>
<h4 id="103LYn">Atiba R. Ellis</h4>
<p id="LBpjHf">In my view — and, full disclosure, I co-authored a brief on the <em>Moore v. Harper</em> case — our argument was this makes no sense. Branches of government exist to balance the work of any one. And so for the legislature to have all the power and, depending on the version of the independent state legislature theory that you’re looking at, it could be just the state legislature and maybe the federal courts, or maybe just the Supreme Court, but not the state courts themselves. Does it make sense that a state court with its state constitution that says the state courts can check the legislature, that all that gets ignored because of this? Overarching, [this is an] ahistorical and nonsensical interpretation of the Constitution. </p>
<h4 id="3htQQB">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="DBUTKo">What does the future of voting in America look like without the Voting Rights Act — or without any of its teeth, which very well may happen after this next session of the Supreme Court? </p>
<h4 id="ESwQON">Atiba R. Ellis</h4>
<p id="YD3lLD">I think voting becomes very challenging or very advanced, depending on what state you’re in. Because the pattern that seems to be at play these days is one of certain states wanting to take on more and more initiatives driven by the myth of voter fraud and desiring to make the rules more strict, make the regulations more rigid and onerous. Some states have even recently passed rules that would require voting be exclusively in person. </p>
<p id="WwNZkI">The challenge is with the stricter rules driven by voter fraud talk, does that make it too hard for people without the means to overcome these hoops to participate? And to me, that echoes the Jim Crow problems that we were talking about: the nadir of voting rights. This is an era where a full third of the country’s population couldn’t effectively vote because there were too many regulations that exploited the weaknesses of that population. And all of that discrimination fell largely along the lines of race. Does something of that sort repeat itself? Maybe not to the scope of Jim Crow apartheid, but I would think that any repetition of that could be problematic, and if history teaches us anything, a lot of that will fall along the lines of race. </p>
<p id="1Ramrn">And, of course, the irony is, depending on what state you look at, there’s also advancements in voting rights, right? There are some states that have embraced mail-in voting, drop boxes, same-day registration, more moderate versions of voter ID, and the like. And so I wonder whether the future might be a new “separate but equal” kind of voting map across the country, and the ease with which you can vote, the ease with which you can participate in democracy, depends on what state you’re in and what the agenda of your legislature is. </p>
<h4 id="wrGheB">Jonquilyn Hill</h4>
<p id="IRzNku">I’m curious what parallels exist between the era that gave us the Voting Rights Act and our current political landscape. Because in a lot of ways, it’s different. But in a lot of ways, it feels very similar.</p>
<h4 id="S3822m">Atiba R. Ellis</h4>
<p id="SZ34dN">On one level, there’s a lot of what I like to think of as the hyperregulation of the vote in the period immediately before the passage of the Voting Rights Act. You had this list of Jim Crow rules that dissuaded people from voting. And today, arguably, we have the rise of another set of rules driven by concerns around voter fraud that doesn’t exist: strict voter ID laws, more aggressive voter purges, the narrowing of opportunities to vote outside of just Election Day itself, which in and of itself creates long lines and makes voting more difficult. </p>
<p id="VTIwOS">We remember the footage from Georgia in the wake of their recent laws that were passed, that created long lines, and you had rules that said you couldn’t bring someone to drink water while they’re standing in line for hours on end in order to wait to vote. All of these kinds of rules have their own form of dissuasion effect that would chase people away from voting. </p>
<p id="vZISuw">But this sort of expressive harm of dissuading people from exercising the vote might well become the norm. It’s worth taking a moment to think about the effect of voter fraud talk, in the period around Reconstruction and in the Jim Crow period and even the Voting Rights Act period. And now a lot of the justification for these strict rules is preventing fraud, preserving the integrity of elections.</p>
https://www.vox.com/podcasts/23568372/voting-rights-act-civil-rights-legislation-us-historyJonquilyn Hill