The Conversation

Why the 60-day War Powers Resolution deadline doesn’t actually constrain presidents

May 1, 2026, marks the 60th day of Operation Epic Fury in Iran – a symbolically significant date designating when a president who has mounted unilateral military operations must receive Congressional approval or wind it down. However, the complex history of the War Powers Resolution clock demonstrates it is a toothless milestone. The Trump administration signaled on April 30, 2026, that it would ignore that deadline, set by the War Powers Resolution. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that “we are in a cease-fire right now, which my understanding is that the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a cease-fire. That’s our understanding, so you know.” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, responded that the 60-day threshold poses a “legal question” and “constitutional concerns.” This is not the first time presidents and members of Congress have sparred on the meaning of the War Powers Resolution. What happens next will play out through regular politics, because the conflict is not a matter of simple legal interpretation. War: Collective judgment In the U.S. Constitution, Congress and the president share war powers. In the shadow of political struggles in the final years of the Vietnam War,

What’s in the price of a gallon of gas?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects nationwide retail gasoline prices to average near US$4.30 a gallon for April 2026 – the highest monthly average of the year. The political response has been familiar. Georgia has suspended its state gas tax, other states are weighing their own tax holidays, and the White House has issued a temporary waiver of a law known as the Jones Act in hopes of moving more domestic fuel to East Coast ports. As an energy economist, I am often asked about what contributes to gas prices and what different policies can do to affect them. The price of a retail gallon of gas is the sum of four things: the cost of crude oil, refining, distribution and marketing, and taxes. In nationwide figures from January 2026, crude oil accounted for about 51% of the pump price, refining roughly 20%, distribution and marketing about 11% and taxes about 18%. That mix shifts with conditions: When crude oil prices spike, that can drive more than 60% of the price; when the price drops, taxes and logistics are larger shares of the cost. Crude oil is the biggest ingredient Because the price of crude oil is the largest element,

AI chatbots can prioritize flattery over facts – and that carries serious risks

In the summer of 2025, OpenAI released ChatGPT 5 and removed its predecessor from the market. Many subscribers to the old model had become attached to its warm, enthusiastically agreeable tone and complained at the loss of their ingratiating robotic companion. Such was the scale of frustration that Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, had to acknowledge that the rollout was botched, and the company reinstated access. Anyone who’s been told by a chatbot that their ideas are brilliant is familiar with artificial intelligence sycophancy: its tendency to tell users what they want to hear. Sometimes it’s very explicit – “that is such a deep question” – and sometimes it’s a lot more subtle. Consider an AI calling your idea for a paper “original,” even if many people have already written on the same topic, or insisting that your dumb idea for saving a tree in your garden still contains a germ of common sense. AI sycophancy seems harmless, maybe even cute, until you imagine someone consulting a chatbot about a weighty question, like a military strategy or a medical treatment. We study the impact of extensive human interactions with chatbots, and we recently published a paper on the ethics of AI

How Harriet Tubman and Philadelphia abolitionists coordinated dangerous journeys to freedom

A roughly 14-foot-tall bronze statue of the United States’ most famous abolitionist, Harriet Tubman, will become a permanent fixture outside Philadelphia’s City Hall later this year. It will be the first statue of a Black female historical figure in the city’s public art collection. Harriet Tubman as photographed by Harvey B. Lindsley, circa 1871-1876. Library of Congress As scholars of African American studies, Africology and geography at Temple University in Philadelphia, we believe the statue’s completion is an opportune time to think about Philadelphia’s central role in African American history, including as a key destination point for those who escaped slavery along the Underground Railroad. Philadelphia’s free Black community After Pennsylvania passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery on March 1, 1780, Philadelphia’s Black population grew rapidly. By 1790 there were about 2,000 free Black residents in the city. Among them were doctors, teachers, merchants, clergymen, sailors and skilled artisans. In 1787, the same year the nation’s founders met in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, to ratify the U.S. Constitution, Black clergymen Absalom Jones and Richard Allen established the Free African Society in Philadelphia. The FAS was America’s first Black mutual aid association, and

England’s ‘once in a generation’ housing law takes effect as US housing legislation sits in congressional purgatory

Housing costs are eating up more and more of Americans’ monthly budgets. Half of renters and a quarter of homeowners are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than a third of their income to pay their rent or mortgage. Roughly 27% of renters are spending more than half of their income on rent. In March 2026, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill to boost housing supply in the United States. More supply, the thinking goes, will staunch the surge in homes prices and rents. In the nation’s 50 biggest cities, for example, rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments have increased roughly 40%, not adjusted for inflation, since 2020. This legislation, however, is currently stuck in the House, overshadowed by issues like the Iran war and Supreme Court decisions. While housing reforms in the U.S. remain gridlocked, the U.K. has been dealing with its own housing problems: 70% of Britons say housing unaffordability has become a national crisis. Across England, rents have spiraled, homelessness has risen and deteriorating and dangerous housing conditions have threatened the health of tenants. In response, the U.K. Parliament passed the Renters’ Rights Act, a major housing law that officials described as a “once in a

When immigration detention becomes a system of concentration: Lessons from research on 150 historical cases

The phrase “concentration camp” is freighted with dark historical meaning. Most people hear it and instinctively think of concentration camps used by the Nazis to exterminate Jews and other minority populations during the Holocaust. But the use and name of concentration camps originated far earlier. In the late 1800s, Spanish military officials used concentration camps – reconcentrados – during their 1896–97 Cuban campaign to isolate civilians from rebels, resulting in widespread death and disease. We are scholars whose research into international relations and conflict includes studying historical and modern uses of these systems of camps as a form of repression. In recent peer-reviewed research, we identified four characteristics that define what qualifies as a concentration camp system: targeting groups of civilians for imprisonment; enclosed spaces where the state controls who enters and exits; departure from standard detention practices; and abuse and neglect. We then created a dataset detailing 150 systems of camps used globally since 1896 that fit this criteria. This includes the U.S. internment of more than 125,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens during World War II, the Argentine military junta’s use of camps in their mid-1970s campaign to reorganize society, and Vladimir Putin’s use of so-called filtration

Syphilis cases in expectant mothers have dramatically risen since the pandemic – here’s what’s driving the trend

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacteria Treponema pallidum. During pregnancy, this bacteria can pass from a mother with untreated syphilis, known as maternal syphilis, to her child in utero, causing the fetus to contract congenital syphilis. In January 2026, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the rate of maternal syphilis rose by 28% from 2022 to 2024, from just over 280 to nearly 360 cases per 100,000 births. I’m a public health researcher and infectious disease nurse practitioner. I study disparities in sexually transmitted infections, or STIs, and I’m currently conducting a study on syphilis in pregnancy. A perfect storm of factors behind the rise Two factors in particular have to be taken into consideration to understand the steep rise in cases. One is the rise in syphilis cases in the general population – which naturally leads to an increase in maternal syphilis – and the other is the specific variables such as funding and access to care barriers that affect pregnant women when it comes to the spread of this disease. The overall trend of increasing syphilis rates is the result of what I would describe as a perfect storm of

AI data center boom is leaving consumer electronics short of chips − even though they don’t use the same kinds

The boom in data center construction is taking up much of the supply of high-tech components, especially processor and memory chips. This demand is squeezing consumer device makers, which are having trouble acquiring enough chips. This is happening even though data center servers and smartphones use different types of chips. The key distinction between consumer electronics and data centers is what they need chips to be optimized for. Smartphones and PCs require low power use, thermal efficiency and tight integration. Data centers that run AI systems such as large language models, or LLMs, require maximum compute power, memory bandwidth and storage throughput. To meet these needs, consumer devices tend to rely on systems-on-a-chip – chips that combine processing and storage – with dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, and NAND, a type of nonvolatile memory. In contrast, AI servers rely on graphics processing units, or GPUs, or other accelerator processors combined with high-bandwidth memory chips. I study global supply chains and how businesses respond to market constraints within these supply chains. The reason for the consumer electronics supply crunch has to do with the nature of the chip market: its concentration and high costs and how it responds to boom-and-bust

Synthetic biology promised to rewrite life – with the death of its pioneer, J. Craig Venter, how close are scientists?

When scientist J. Craig Venter and his team announced in 2010 that they had created the first cell controlled by a fully synthetic genome, it marked a turning point in how scientists think about life. For the first time, DNA – the molecule that carries the instructions for life – had been written on a computer, assembled in a laboratory and used to control a living cell. The achievement suggested something profound: Life might not only be understood but designed. A biologist widely recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to genomics, including leading efforts to sequence the first draft of the human genome, Venter and his team’s successful creation of the first synthetic bacterial cell is considered pivotal to the field of synthetic biology. J. Craig Venter was a decorated scientist and entrepreneur. Mauricio Ramirez/Science History Institute via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA By combining biology and engineering, synthetic biology seeks to design and build new biological systems or redesign existing ones for useful purposes. Rather than only observing how life works, scientists use tools such as DNA synthesis and genetic engineering to “program” cells to perform specific tasks, such as producing vaccines, developing sustainable fuels or detecting environmental toxins. But how

Gerrymandering is unpopular with Florida voters – my recent survey shows why DeSantis pushed it through anyway

The Sunshine State has joined Texas, California and a handful of other states in the battle of mid-decade redistricting. On April 29, 2026, in a near party-line vote, the Florida Legislature adopted new congressional maps drawn by a staffer of Gov. Ron DeSantis. The GOP-led effort could lead to four more of Florida’s 28 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives turning Republican. Florida redrew its maps with the same underlying population data just four years ago. Mid-decade redistricting in Florida was all but inevitable once Donald Trump made partisan map-drawing a national priority. Florida’s Republican legislators had little incentive – or political cover – to resist. I’m a political scientist, and my research focuses on voting and elections. I’ve served as an expert in redistricting cases in Florida, and I’ve been tracking Florida voters’ opinions on DeSantis’ 2026 redistricting efforts. What Florida voters think about gerrymandering overall University of Florida Ph.D. student Rolland Grady and I conducted a representative survey of more than 2,300 Florida registered voters drawn randomly from the publicly available Florida voter file. Participants had one week, from April 6-13, 2026, to fill out our web-based survey linked to an email invitation. We did not offer