Day: November 26, 2025

Seeing a person huddled under a makeshift roof of tarps or curled up on a warm grate can evoke powerful emotions and questions.

How did they get here? Why doesn’t someone help them? What can I do about this?

The answers to these questions are complex. However, a significant body of research suggests that there is a highly effective solution for many individuals who experience homelessness. It is called supportive housing.

Supportive housing programs combine a housing subsidy – financial assistance that helps make housing affordable even for those with very low incomes – with wraparound supportive services that help a person remain stably housed. Supportive services often include case management, occupational therapy and mental health and addiction treatment. These programs have helped thousands of Philadelphians end their experiences of homelessness.

As a researcher and former social worker, I have spent much of the past decade working in and studying homeless services in Philadelphia. For my dissertation research, I conducted hundreds of hours of ethnographic fieldwork at a soup kitchen and outreach center in the city between 2022 and 2024. I interviewed 75 homeless services workers, volunteers and people who were experiencing or had experienced homelessness. I also analyzed hundreds of pages of policy documents.

I have found that while the city has succeeded in centralizing services to support unhoused people, there remain major bureaucratic challenges exacerbated by insufficient funding and a shortage of supportive housing. These challenges impact both people seeking supportive housing and front-line workers trying to help them.

Khalil’s story

Consider the case of Khalil, a 48-year-old from West Philly who became homeless during the pandemic. (As for all the interviewees’ names used in this article, Khalil is a pseudonym I’m using to protect his privacy.) Khalil told me that he lost his job as an IT technician at Verizon, where he had worked for nine years. Sleeping outside and unable to afford life-sustaining kidney medication, he said, his physical and mental health spiraled.

A supportive housing program changed that, providing him with a stable and affordable place to live, while social workers helped him enroll in Medicaid and connect with a community health clinic. This support, Khalil explained, allowed him to “transition back into residential living and back into employment and back into being a working member of society.”

Despite the efficacy of supportive housing, cities do not receive sufficient federal funding to provide this service to all residents who are eligible. As a result, the need for these housing programs vastly outstrips the supply.

So how do officials in Philadelphia decide who will continue to sleep on the street or in a shelter, and who can move into a supportive housing facility with a warm bed and access to valuable wraparound services?

How the city determines who gets housing

Like other localities, Philadelphia uses a Coordinated Entry System. CES is a form of automated bureaucracy that combines several different algorithms and administrative processes with the goal of helping officials and social service workers allocate resources fairly and efficiently.

CES is intended to help workers identify which people experiencing homelessness are in greatest need of aid. These systems work by combining a central pool of resources like housing programs and a central list of people seeking help. Unhoused people are scored using a vulnerability assessment tool, and those that score highest are matched to an opening in a supportive housing program.

Because most of these systems are premised on targeting resources to the most vulnerable people, defining and gauging vulnerability becomes fraught with tension. After all, vulnerability is inherently subjective, and there is no universally agreed-upon best way to measure it.

These systems will soon come under even greater pressure as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development prepares to slash funding for supportive housing programs. As many as 170,000 people nationwide who were previously homeless will be at risk of returning to the streets once these funding changes are implemented.

CES has benefits and drawbacks

Coordinated entry has made real progress on several long-standing challenges for Philadelphia’s homeless services system. Chief among these is centralization.

Most resources available for people experiencing homelessness are administered by nonprofit social services organizations. Prior to CES, a person seeking assistance would separately apply to various nonprofits and put their name on multiple waiting lists.

CES centralizes resources into a common pool, accessed through the vulnerability assessment process. As one administrator with the city’s Office of Homeless Services told me, this arrangement is “immensely more supportive and fair” than the scattered process that came before. For example, individual nonprofit providers are less able to earmark resources for clients they already work with.

However, there are downsides to Philadelphia’s approach to CES.

Vulnerability assessments, like those used in Philadelphia, have been criticized for failing to capture a full picture of a person’s plight. Assessments involve asking unhoused people a series of yes or no questions about their housing, health and financial history, and generate a vulnerability score based on the responses. A person who has a relatively mild experience with several different risk factors can end up with a much higher score than a person with an extremely serious experience with just a few.

And similar to other automated assessments, such as in the criminal legal system, they have the potential to introduce racial bias into allocation outcomes.

Furthermore, the way CES works is, by design, hidden from the people it impacts most. The ambiguity is intended to prevent people from gaming the system, but it also creates confusion for those living in shelters and on the street. Some seeking aid may hide evidence of their vulnerability, such as addiction, out of fear it will disqualify them from housing. Others may amplify their vulnerability in an effort to improve their odds of receiving help.

The result is a perception among people experiencing homelessness that the system is unfair.

As Andre, a 60-year-old who had been sleeping in shelters off and on for nearly a decade, told me, a person who “goes in there and tells the absolute truth, they’re put on the back burner.”

‘You’ve got to have a record of being homeless’

Leon, a 25-year-old from North Philadelphia, told me as we chatted over coffee that in order to be prioritized through CES, “You’ve got to have a record of being homeless.”

But generating such a paper trail can be difficult. A city database tracks shelter stays that can serve as proof of homelessness, but not all shelters participate. And for those sleeping outside, like Leon, proof depends on regular interactions with outreach workers, which requires being in the right place at the right time.

If an unhoused person cannot prove the length of their time on the street, or provide documentation of a mental health diagnosis, they may be deprioritized through CES, even if they are highly vulnerable.

For all its advantages, CES in Philly is not designed to take into account the input of unhoused people themselves. In the words of Richie, a 32-year-old who was seeking housing for himself and his pregnant wife, “There is no voice for homeless people … because homeless people don’t have a voice.”

Despite these challenges, the city has lowered barriers to participating in CES. For example, the city has launched a pilot program involving mobile assessors who can complete assessments in different locations beyond city shelters, such as at soup kitchens, to meet unhoused people where they are.

3 ways to improve the system

Here are three concrete ways the city could reduce more of the bureaucratic hurdles to supportive housing.

First, the city could expand pathways to supportive housing through a model called multiprinciple allocation. This approach combines different methods for determining who gets housing. Some subsidies could be allocated through new vulnerability assessments that are better vetted for bias, while others are distributed based on length of homelessness or a lottery system. This could bolster fairness by ensuring that people whose vulnerability is not picked up through the assessment tool could still have a shot at aid.

Second, the city could provide opportunities for unhoused people and front-line workers to attest to vulnerability and experiences of homelessness in their own words – allowing someone to say, “I am struggling with housing for reasons that the assessment did not cover.”

And third, Philadelphia could reduce the degree of automation in the CES matching process. As things stand, people with high scores are mechanically matched to open programs, even if that program is a poor fit for the individual person. Giving staff and unhoused people more agency in making housing matches could produce better outcomes.

No amount of tinkering with CES can address the fundamental resource constraints that shape the fight against homelessness in Philadelphia. Simply put, Philadelphia lacks sufficient funding for housing the most vulnerable. But thoughtful changes to CES could make the response to homelessness more effective, compassionate and fair.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Pelle G. Tracey has received funding from the Google Award for Inclusion Research.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Early childhood educators and staff nurture and teach children under the age of 5. At its best, this type of early care sets kids up for long-term success.

But educators who are experiencing poor mental health are less able to cultivate positive relationships with the children in their care, which negatively affects the children’s development.

“We work in a field that has a high demand for kids to be safe and enjoy learning,” one educator told us. “We have … little people that depend on us, parents depend on us, and we need to make sure that we are there for the kids when they need us.”

Our research team – led by a clinical associate professor and a research assistant professor in public health – set out to learn how child care workers were coping with all of this responsibility.

What we learned was concerning and needs to be understood by parents and policymakers alike.

Studying 42 Head Start centers

Our peer-reviewed study examined the mental health of 332 early child care educators and other staff at 42 Head Start centers in the Denver metropolitan area and southeast Colorado.

We found that roughly 25% of early child care staff in Colorado self-reported discrimination and condescending or demeaning treatment from a colleague in the past year, with 15% experiencing more than one kind.

We measured discrimination tied to age, race, ethnicity and gender. We also measured types of demeaning treatment, which included bullying, harassment and condescending behavior. And we looked at physical violence.

Higher levels of workplace mistreatment were related to greater numbers of poor mental health days. The child care staff we surveyed reported an average of seven poor mental health days in the month prior to completing the survey.

Mistreatment in early childhood education

The early child care workforce also reports higher rates of depression than the national workforce.

High stress of educators and staff even pushes some workers out of the profession.

Working conditions matter, too, with early child care workers reporting substantial physical and psychological workplace challenges, such as lifting and carrying children, as well as managing a wide range of ages and capabilities among children in the classroom.

Our survey also revealed that 1 in 4 early child care staff experienced condescending or demeaning treatment by colleagues or superiors in the past 12 months. This was the most common type of workplace mistreatment.

In early child care, teamwork and collegiality are integral and are linked to educator well-being. Mistreatment between colleagues can strain relationships, contribute to burnout and reduce the likelihood of educators stepping into leadership roles.

Our study found that 1 in 10 early child care staff reported discrimination at work based on race or ethnicity. Experiences of discrimination have an impact beyond mental health and also affect physical health, job attitudes and engagement in the workplace.

Younger workers are struggling

Discrimination was three times as likely to be reported by the younger workforce, ages 18-29, than older workers. Discrimination between age groups affects trust and can reduce employee engagement.

Mistreatment of early child care workers can take several forms that happen at the same time. For example, age discrimination can occur in either direction. Younger staff may be viewed by older colleagues as less experienced, less committed or less capable than more experienced colleagues. Older colleagues may be perceived to be less creative or less willing to adapt to new strategies and practices.

Yet overall, younger workers seemed to be struggling more. Workers under 35 reported an average of eight to nine poor mental health days in a 30-day window; older workers reported an average of 5.6.

Improving staff well-being

Our study indicates a need for both societal and organizational change to prevent mistreatment of early child care staff, which can improve worker well-being and lead to better care for young children.

At a societal level, it is important to acknowledge the integral role of the early child care workforce and compensate these workers at a level commensurate with their importance. In 2023, the average U.S. preschool teacher earned an annual income of $37,120 compared to the $63,680 annual income of elementary school teachers.

Adequate pay and appreciation can reduce turnover. Rates of turnover are four times higher among early child care educators than elementary school teachers.

“Turnover has a lot to do with pay, unfortunately, and we don’t get paid a whole lot of money,” one educator said. “And … I don’t think I’ve always felt valued in the position I’m in.”

At an organizational level, leaders can implement health-centered policies and offer managerial training on how to build supportive teams. Total Worker Health interventions may also help to guide needed policy changes with input from staff. These interventions are holistic programs that focus on both the safety and well-being of workers and include elements such as environmental and social supports. They are shown to improve worker well-being.

One initiative compared wellness intervention models across six Early Head Start and Head Start networks nationally to address the comprehensive well-being in staff. Direct outcomes of the programs included workplace and organizational culture improvements, as well as higher staff well-being.

We designed the WELL Program, which has successfully been implemented at five Colorado-based Head Start networks. The program includes training to promote better sleep and mindfulness.

“WELL help(ed) people keep going every day and deal with their stress in a healthy way so it didn’t come out in the classroom, or come out against kiddos that are tough,” one participant said.

Our study also suggests there may be generational differences in workplace communication and a varied understanding of what it is to be mistreated. Additional research on these differences may help us to address causes of mistreatment and find solutions.

Charlotte Farewell receives funding from the Administration for Children and Families.

Jini Puma receives funding from the Administration for Children and Families.

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

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

A federal judge on Nov. 24, 2025, dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, blocking the Department of Justice’s efforts to prosecute two of President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries.

But U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie qualified her dismissals, saying she did so “without prejudice.”

What does that legal term mean?

Unaddressed charges

In her ruling, Currie concluded that the appointment of interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who filed the cases against Comey and James, was unlawful. Currie wrote:

“Because Ms. Halligan had no lawful authority to present the indictment, I will grant Mr. Comey’s motion and dismiss the indictment without prejudice.”

She wrote the same about the case against James.

Currie’s “without prejudice” reference means the dismissal did not address what legal scholars like me call the merits or substance of the underlying criminal charges.

A “without prejudice” dismissal is legalese for “you can try again if you can fix the problems with your case.” Had the judge ruled that the dismissals were “with prejudice,” that would have meant the government could not have brought the cases again.

Here’s what prosecutors would need to fix to be able to bring cases against Comey and James again.

Federal law provides that whenever a U.S. attorney’s position is vacant, the attorney general may appoint an interim U.S. attorney for a period of 120 days. At the end of that period, it’s up to the federal judges of the district where that position is vacant to appoint someone to continue in that role unless and until the president nominates, and the Senate confirms, a U.S. attorney through the normal appointments process.

The Trump administration appointed Halligan’s predecessor, U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, in that interim role in January 2025. And when the 120 days from his appointment lapsed, the district judges of the Eastern District of Virginia selected him to continue on in his interim role.

Currie found that when Siebert resigned after his reappointment, that did not empower the Trump administration to appoint a new interim prosecutor. The power still resided with the District Court judges. Because of that, Halligan’s appointment and her efforts to secure the Comey and James indictments were void.

The end of the beginning

The Department of Justice can certainly appeal these rulings and could get them reversed on appeal, or it could refile them after a new U.S. attorney is named in accordance with law.

It may be too late for the case against Comey, however, because the statute of limitations on those charges has already run out. As Currie noted in her Comey ruling, while the statute of limitations is generally suspended when a valid indictment has been filed, an invalid indictment, like the one against Comey, would not have the same effect on the statute of limitations.

That means the time has likely run out on the claims against the former FBI director.

If Currie’s rulings stand, the Justice Department can’t just file the cases again, with Halligan still in this role, unless the Trump administration follows the procedures set forth in the law for her proper appointment.

While this is not the beginning of the end for these prosecutions, it is, at least, the end of the beginning.

Ray Brescia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

I was hired at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1995 as a language professor. I relocated from Hawaii, where I had learned the Hawaiian language.

When I arrived in Colorado, I decided I needed to learn about the Indigenous language of the Boulder and Denver area, Arapaho. The Arapaho people had occupied the area for many years until they were forced to leave in the 1860s.

I first visited the Northern Arapaho people on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1999. At that time, there were hundreds of speakers of the Arapaho language.

Today, there are less than 100, and all are over the age of 70.

The Arapaho people in Wyoming and Colorado believe their language can still survive, and so do I. That’s why I am working to combine decades of language documentation with new technological approaches in order to help revive the language.

Loss of Native languages

Many Native American languages currently have few Native speakers, and the speakers are typically the oldest members of the community. The languages of the Wichita and Kansa people, for example, are among many that are no longer spoken at all.

Native American languages have been in decline in the face of Euro-American pressure for centuries.

On the Great Plains, this decline accelerated after World War II when Native soldiers came home after seeing prosperity off the reservation.

Arapaho elders tell me that bilingual parents decided to speak only English to their children to improve their chances of success in life. They were certain the tribal languages would come “later.”

But “later” didn’t happen. Boarding schools had already been suppressing the language, and now economic improvements brought cars, radios and televisions to Wind River, further promoting the use of English. Without language exposure in the home, children were not able to acquire good speaking abilities.

Today, however, tribal communities around the country increasingly want to maintain or reacquire their languages. Efforts to do this have been going on for several decades, with some successes, such as the Mohawk language of New York and Canada, Cherokee in Oklahoma and North Carolina and the Blackfoot language of northern Montana.

In most places however, numbers of Native speakers continue to decline, while learning among younger speakers progresses slowly.

Uses of data for curriculum

My early work focused on documenting the Arapaho language. Past linguists working with Native languages typically focused on traditional storytelling, as well as audio-recorded data. But my interest in anthropology led me to focus on conversation and everyday interaction. I also recorded on video to capture social settings, gestures and sign language. And to better understand the role of the language in daily use, I worked to become a good speaker myself.

I have compiled my documentation into a database that contains over 100,000 sentences of natural Arapaho speech. All of this has been transcribed, translated into English and accompanied by detailed linguistic analysis.

The database is further supported by an online learning site and an online dictionary of around 25,000 entries. They are among the largest such resources for an Indigenous language, though resources do exist for other languages, such as Yurok.

From documentation to curriculum

In response to the Arapaho people’s goal of language revitalization, my own work has shifted from documentation to assisting teachers, students and curriculum developers. The database turns out to have great value in this area.

Adult learners can watch the videos along with the Arapaho transcriptions or English translations, or both, and review the detailed grammatical analysis.

However, it is quite difficult for young learners to immediately benefit from listening to natural discourse. That’s why carefully graded curricula are crucial. Unlike for commonly taught languages such as French or Spanish, materials for most Native American languages are just being developed.

Arapaho can be challenging to learn because its structure is quite different from English. Many small chunks of meaning are combined to produce long, complex words. For example, an English speaker can start with “happy” and produce “un-happi-ness.” Arapaho speakers typically add three, four or even five prefixes, and multiple suffixes as well. A speaker can say the word “niibeetwonwoteekoohunoo” – which has six separate meaningful chunks. This translates to English, “I want to go and drive to town.”

There is little value in memorizing such complex words, just as English learners don’t memorize entire sentences. Instead, Arapaho learners need to understand the separate parts, and how they combine.

Previous efforts have succeeded in teaching children to speak basic Arapaho. The challenge now is to keep improving their Arapaho language abilities, using a graded curriculum that continues through all school levels.

The database can identify and label the individual chunks of words, and assign meanings to each chunk. A beginner’s dictionary of 1,300 entries has been created by calculating the overall frequency of base words in the 100,000 sentences, and then selecting only the most common ones.

The list has been broken down further to produce target vocabulary for each grade level. Smaller chunks of prefixes and suffixes are also measured, and sequential grammar-learning goals can be produced based on frequency and complexity.

A draft Arapaho learning sequence has been created, with 44 stages. It is now possible for the first time to produce a full, progressive language curriculum for Arapaho. The next step is to develop more curricular materials and train teachers to use them.

The sequence of 44 stages is now being introduced at Wyoming Indian Elementary School, the first school on the Wind River Reservation to pioneer dual-language classrooms.

Limitations of technology

Technology is not a magic bullet, however. Only Native people can save their languages, by choosing to learn and speak them.

Because artificial intelligence works using large language models, it needs billions of words of discourse to be trained effectively in a language. No Indigenous language has nearly that amount of data, so the capacity of AI to address Native language endangerment is limited. Moreover, many Indigenous communities are wary of AI due to concerns over data sovereignty and cultural property rights.

My own old-fashioned experience as a learner and teacher has proved crucial. I can see where difficulties lie for learners, and how to fine-tune computational measurements and predictions. I’ve learned that success in helping revitalize Native languages depends on researchers building long-term relationships with Native peoples and, ideally, speaking Native languages. Only then can new technologies be applied most productively.

Andrew Cowell currently receives funding from National Science Foundation. Past funding related to the work described here has come from the American Council of Learned Societies and Hans Rausing Endangered Language Documentation Programme.

He has received compensation from elements of the Northern Arapaho Tribe and the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe for some of his assistance and consultation.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

In an unprecedented step, the Department of Defense announced online on Nov. 24, 2025, that it was reviewing statements by U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, who is a retired Navy captain, decorated combat veteran and former NASA astronaut.

Kelly and five other members of Congress with military or intelligence backgrounds told members of the armed forces “You can refuse illegal orders” in a video released on Nov. 18, reiterating oaths that members of the military and the intelligence community swear to uphold and defend the Constitution. The legislators said they acted in response to concerns expressed by troops currently serving on active duty.

President Donald Trump called the video “seditious behavior, punishable by death.”

Retired senior officers like Kelly can be recalled to duty at any time, which would make it possible for the Pentagon to put Kelly on trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, although the Defense Department announcement did not specify possible charges. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote online that “Kelly’s conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately.”

This threat to punish Kelly is just the latest move by the Trump administration against perceived enemies at home. By branding critics and opponents as disloyal, traitorous or worse, Trump and his supporters are resurrecting a playbook that hearkens back to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s crusade against people he portrayed as domestic threats to the U.S. in the 1950s.

As a historian who studies national security and the Cold War era, I know that McCarthyism wrought devastating social and cultural harm across our nation. In my view, repeating what I believe constitutes social and political fratricide could be just as harmful today, perhaps even more so.

Targeting homegrown enemies

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many Americans believed the United States was a nation under siege. Despite their victory in World War II, Americans saw a dangerous world confronting them.

The communist-run Soviet Union held Eastern Europe in an iron grip. In 1949, Mao Zedong’s communist troops triumphed in the bloody Chinese civil war. One year later, the Korean peninsula descended into full-scale conflict, raising the prospect of World War III – a frightening possibility in the atomic era.

Anti-communist zealots in the U.S., most notably Wisconsin Republican Sen. McCarthy, argued that treasonous Americans were weakening the nation at home. During a February 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy asserted that “the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this nation” were undermining the United States during its “final, all-out battle” against communism.

When communist forces toppled China’s government, critics such as political activist Freda Utley lambasted President Harry Truman’s administration for what they cast as its timidity, blundering and, worse, “treason in high places.” Conflating foreign and domestic threats, McCarthy claimed without evidence that homegrown enemies “within our borders have been more responsible for the success of communism abroad than Soviet Russia.”

As ostensible proof, the senator pointed to American lives being lost in Korea and argued that it was possible to “fully fight a war abroad and at the same time … dispose of the traitorous filth and the Red vermin which have accumulated at home.”

Political opponents might disparage McCarthy for his “dishonest and cowardly use of fractional fact and innuendo,” but the Wisconsinite knew how to play to the press. Time and again, McCarthy would bombastically lash out against his critics as he did with columnist Drew Pearson, calling him “an unprincipled liar,” “a fake” and the owner of a “twisted perverted mentality.”

While McCarthy focused on allegedly disloyal government officials and media journalists, other self-pronounced protectors of the nation sought to warn naive members of the public. Defense Department pamphlets like “Know Your Communist Enemy” alerted Americans against being duped by Communist Party members skilled in deception and manipulation.

Virulent anti-communists denounced what they viewed as inherent weaknesses of postwar American society, with a clearly political bent. Republicans asserted that cowardly, effeminate liberals were weakening the nation’s defense by minimizing threats both home and abroad.

Censure and worse

In such an anxiety-ridden environment, “red-baiting” – discrediting political opponents by linking them to communism – spread across the country, leaving a trail of wrecked lives. From teachers to public officials, anyone deemed un-American by McCarthyites faced public censure, loss of employment or even imprisonment.

Under the 1940 Smith Act, which criminalized promoting the overthrow of the U.S. government, hundreds of Americans were prosecuted during the Cold War simply for having been members of the Communist Party of the United States. The act also authorized the “deportation of aliens,” reflecting fears that communist ideas had seeped into nearly all facets of American society.

The 1950 Internal Security Act, widely known as the McCarran Act, further emphasized existential threats from within. “Disloyal aliens,” a term the law left purposefully vague, could have their citizenship revoked. Communist Party members were required to register with the government, a step that made them susceptible to prosecution under the Smith Act.

Immigrants could be detained or deported if the president declared an “internal security emergency.” Advocates called this policy “preventive detention,” while critics derided the act as a “Concentration Camp Law,” in the words of historian Masumi Izumi.

Scapegoating outsiders

The scaremongering wasn’t just about people’s political views: Vulnerable groups, such as gay people, were also targeted. McCarthy warned of links between “communists and queers,” asserting that “sexual perverts” had infested the U.S. government, especially the State Department, and posed “dangerous security risks.” Closeted gay or lesbian employees, the argument went, were vulnerable to blackmail by foreign governments.

Fearmongering also took on a decidedly racist tone. South Carolina Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., for instance, argued in 1957 that enforcing “Negro voting rights” would promote the “cause of communism.”

Three years later, a comic book titled “The Red Iceberg” insinuated that communists were exploiting the “tragic plight” of Black families and that the NAACP, a leading U.S. civil rights advocacy group, had been infiltrated by the Kremlin. Conservatives like Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater criticized the growing practice of using federal power to enforce civil rights, calling it communist-style social engineering.

A new McCarthyism

While it’s never simple to draw neat historical parallels from past eras to the present, it appears McCarthy-like actions are recurring widely today. During the Red Scare, the focus was on alleged communists. Today, the focus is on straightforward dissent. Critics, both past and present, of President Donald Trump’s actions and policies are being targeted.

At the national level, Trump has called for using military force against “the enemy from within.” On Sept. 30, 2025, Trump told hundreds of generals and admirals who had been called to Quantico, Virginia, from posts around the world that the National Guard should view America’s “dangerous cities as training grounds.”

The Trump administration is making expansive use of the McCarran Act to crack down on immigrants in U.S. cities. White House adviser Stephen Miller has proposed suspending the constitutionally protected writ of habeas corpus, which entitles prisoners to challenge their detentions in court, in order to deport “illegal aliens,” alleging that the U.S. is “under invasion.”

In my home state of Texas, political fearmongering has taken on an equally McCarthyesque tone, with the Legislature directing the State Board of Education to adopt mandatory instruction on “atrocities attributable to communist regimes.”

Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that right-wing activist Laura Loomer has unapologetically called for “making McCarthy great again.”

Disagreement is democratic

The history of McCarthyism shows where this kind of action can lead. Charging political opponents with treason and calling the media an “enemy of the people,” all without evidence, undercuts democratic principles.

These actions cast certain groups as different and dehumanize them. Portraying political rivals as existential threats, simply for disagreeing with their fellow citizens or political leaders, promotes forced consensus. This diminishes debate and can lead to bad policies.

Americans live in an insecure world today, but as I see it, demonizing enemies won’t make the United States a safer place. Instead, it only will lead to the kind of harm that was brought to pass by the very worst tendencies of McCarthyism.

Gregory A. Daddis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation