Category: Uncategorized

U.S. companies stung by President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs had hoped for relief when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 in their favor. But settling on a remedy – namely, rebate checks from the government – may be an even bigger headache.

Fresh wrinkles are prompting businesses to take different routes as they try to recoup money, with many opting to sue to improve their odds. These lawsuits are also underscoring the complex ways that tariffs worked their way through corporate accounting. In some cases, their cost was a clear line item; in others, the impact was muddier – say, through changed supply lines or selective increases in retail pricing. And some have backed off from a legal fight altogether and sold their refund rights to investment firms, often at a deep discount, figuring that getting something is better than risk getting nothing.

These technicalities didn’t seem to concern most members of the high court. In fact, only one Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, raised the question of the decision’s practical complications in his dissent. But his warning of “substantial” repercussions now looks more prescient by the day.

“The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who have paid the … tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed down costs to consumers or others,” he wrote. “As was acknowledged at oral argument, the refund process is likely to be a ‘mess.’”

We are professors of finance and law who have been following these cases closely. To begin untangling the “mess” this ruling created, it’s helpful to focus on the different ways companies processed these tariffs – and why this means that a quick and clean remedy is unlikely.

To refund or not to refund

In its 6-3 decision, the high court concluded that a broad category of Trump’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act exceeded the president’s legal authority. Many companies that had sued for relief in the form of rebate checks cheered the ruling.

Judge Richard Eaton at the Court of International Trade, tasked with overseeing the refund distribution, then ordered the Trump administration to immediately start the process by asking Customs and Border Protection to recalculate its revenues without the tariffs to determine the rebate total – a tally that the agency estimates at about US$166 billion. But no one is sure how long it will take or whether it will work. And that uncertainty is sparking a fresh round of litigation.

Consider the different approaches taken by two businesses that paid the tariffs: logistics giant FedEx and the retail chain Costco. Costco filed suit against the Trump administration before the Supreme Court decision, while FedEx was among the many businesses that sued after the ruling.

Fedex, which saw some of its cross-border business plummet by 25% to 35%, collected tariffs from both U.S. companies importing goods and from U.S. customers ordering from abroad. In this function as broker, it was able to separate out the tariffs as a line item. That means it can more easily calculate what it would pay back to its customers. If Fedex gets the rebates, it has said it will refund all clients who bore the cost.

The accounting for Costco, by contrast, is less straightforward. It paid the duties but reallocated much of the cost internally. For some goods, it shuffled its extensive global supply chains to mitigate the tariffs’ bite or covered the cost by selectively hiking prices on items where demand would be less affected. It has not made as explicit a commitment of repaying its customers, although it has said it will try to honor it.

In both cases, executive pledges of refunds weren’t enough to prevent class action lawsuits by skeptical consumers since the Supreme Court’s decision, arguing they needed a more ironclad guarantee.

Avoiding the fight

Other companies, meanwhile, are waiving a legal fight altogether and selling their refund rights to investment firms, often at only a fraction of what they had paid in levies, in the expectation that full repayment is unlikely.

These companies typically are too small to finance a legal battle but big enough to have sufficient money at stake for Wall Street to take interest. For example, Atlanta-based Kids2, which sources almost all of its toy and infant products in China, sold its rights before the high court’s ruling for about a quarter of what it paid out in the emergency tariffs.

Legal complications aside, logistical snags are also emerging. In response to Eaton’s order, Customs and Border Protection chief Brandon Lord stated in a filing on March 6, 2026, that the government was “not able to comply” due to the “unprecedented volume of refunds” overwhelming the agency’s technology. It’s working on an online system to “streamline and consolidate refunds and interest payments,” to be operational in 45 days of that filing, he wrote.

In response, Eaton paused his order requiring immediate refunds, but he has demanded regular updates on CBP’s progress. On March 19, Lord reported
that the four components of the new online system were between 45% and 80% functional.

New tariffs may loom

While some companies may get relief for levies they already paid, there’s the risk Trump could still make good on his threat to use other federal statutes to impose tariffs. Those laws aren’t an easy workaround for the administration, but they still provide some options for Trump to apply tariffs on imports, including those that had been affected under the emergency levies.

Further uncertainty, in short, is likely.

As the stock market volatility in 2025 after Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement showed, this uncertainty can be costly. And the Supreme Court’s decision hasn’t allayed those fears. Companies have delayed investment, stockpiled inventory and diverted resources into compliance and legal review since the tariff wars kicked off.

Such actions can tie up capital that could otherwise fund new employment, higher wages or product innovation. Trump’s trade policy is, in fact, underscoring the basic economic lesson that tariffs don’t eliminate trade but simply make it more expensive, research shows.

Businesses have to decide to either pass these import taxes along to consumers via higher prices or absorb higher input costs themselves. Trump’s experiment is no different. According to fresh research from the New York Federal Reserve, as the average tariff rate jumped from 2.6% to 13% from January through November 2025, almost 90% of the burden hit consumers and businesses.

That’s why tariffs are a rare point of consensus among economists: They harm economic growth and are more costly today than ever before, given how interconnected global supply chains have become. And as the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling shows, undoing their effect is a lot messier than tariff boosters would admit.

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

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

With the war in Iran a topic on everyone’s lips, you might have noticed an inconsistency in the way that nation’s name is said, varying between a more native-like “Ih-ron” pronunciation and a more Americanized “Ih-ran” one.

An everyday listener might just chalk this up as being the result of regional differences or the version we learned growing up, like the alternate ways Americans have of saying “data” or “roof.”

But as a linguist who studies what our accents reveal about our histories and social identities, I know that the way we pronounce things often gives off clues about who we are and what we believe in.

That appears to be the case with these two distinct pronunciations.

The sound of politics

It’s probably not a big surprise to learn that listeners often hear certain words or accents as indicating someone’s political inclinations.

That’s because people are primed to notice patterns that mark group membership – be it a style of clothes or pronouncing “fire” more like “far.” Once they notice these patterns, people then tend to assign whatever traits are believed to characterize that group to the sounds of their speech.

For instance, researchers examined how people perceived potential political candidates with a Southern vs. non-Southern American accent. They wrote in 2018 that they discovered listeners perceived Southern-sounding politicians as more likely to be conservative and to hold right-leaning views on issues such as gun rights and abortion. All that from hearing someone pronounce “pin” like “pen” or say “bah bah” for “bye.”

This suggests that even a small difference in the way a vowel is pronounced can suggest a lot more about political ideology than you might imagine, even if that suggestion is not always accurate.

Nationalism and names

Going back to the question of what drives variation in the pronunciation of Iran, a linguistic study examining politics and pronunciation during the Iraq War offers some insight.

In analyzing 2007 House of Representatives debates about sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, linguists found that a congress member’s political party affiliation was the strongest predictor of how the “a” vowel in Iraq was pronounced.

Republicans preferred the anglicized short “a” pronunciation closer to “ear-RACK,” while Democrats preferred a more “ah”-like one, as in “ear-ROCK.” The authors suggest that the Democratic preference, approximating a more native pronunciation, was motivated by greater multicultural sensitivity.

The pronunciation of the “i” vowel also exhibited a more anglicized option, as in “EYE-rack/rock,” which was also examined. Unlike the “a” vowel, a more “eye”-like pronunciation by itself did not significantly correlate with partisanship.

Two later studies, in 2011 and 2018, of everyday speakers who were asked to pronounce Iraq in nonpolitical contexts discovered no significant difference by political affiliation. The biggest predictor favoring an “ear-ROCK” pronunciation was that a person spoke multiple languages, as the “ah” vowel sound is more frequent in languages commonly spoken in the U.S., such as Spanish, French and Italian.

Despite not directly patterning with politics, when people in the 2018 study were questioned explicitly about how saying “ear-RACK” or “ear-ROCK” tied into political views, the “ah” pronunciation of the vowel was indeed heard as linked with liberalism, an association particularly strong for those who used “ah” and were liberal themselves.

This suggests that people might have picked up on this pattern from hearing politicians. They were aware of the fact that this vowel variation had become, in relevant contexts, symbolic of liberal vs. conservative stances.

Respect and pronunciation

In looking more generally at the pronunciation of borrowed words written with the letter “a,” like that of “pasta” or “tobacco,” linguist Charles Boberg suggests that Americans generally follow two possible paths, either pronouncing it with the short “a” like in “bat” or with the “ah” like in “father.”

Boberg suggests that attitudinal factors play a role in the choice between the two. Since many Americans associate the “ah” pronunciation with more education and sophistication, given its connection to upper-crust British use in words like “bath” or “aunt,” there has been an increasing tendency for Americans to use “ah” in words borrowed since World War II, as with “origami” or “nacho.”

But in looking at variability in the pronunciation of Iraq, other linguists hypothesized that the “ah” vowel is only heard as more sophisticated when a source language is held in high esteem – as with the British-derived “ah” in “aunt” – or when those speaking foreign languages are well regarded.

In contrast, when there is less respect for a people or a place, the choice of an Americanized vowel rather than the more accurate native one might be preferred. This attitude difference may well explain much of the variation in politicians’ pronunciation of Iraq – and possibly Iran.

Not surprisingly, in their study of congressional variation in pronunciation of Iraq, these researchers found that, beyond party affiliation, the politician’s war stance – for or against sending additional troops – was a significant determinant of which vowel was used. If they used the “ear-RACK” pronunciation, they were more likely to favor sending more troops to the country.

Trump and ‘I-ran’

While there is, as of yet, no similar study comparing politicians and their pronunciation of Iran, it is interesting to note that both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say the name in the more anglicized fashion, using the same vowel as in “ear-RACK” – that is, as “Ih-RAN” not “Ih-RON.”

Considering the highly contested nature of this war, this presidential preference for the anglicized version of the name may be driven by a similar politicized positioning to that found for the pronunciation of Iraq. Trump and Vance may be underscoring their “pro-America” focus by creating a linguistic and ideological distance with the named nation and its speakers.

A similar linguistic contrast was made during the Vietnam War, when “VietNAM” was commonly pronounced as having the same short “a” sound as in “bat,” including from the lips of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Now, years later, the “VietNOM” pronunciation dominates, and the “NAM” version is virtually absent in those born in more recent eras.

In the same way, Americans might eventually find a linguistic middle ground in the current pronunciation debate over Iran. But it might be a while before peace in the Middle East prevails long enough to give the next generation a linguistic clean slate.

Valerie M. Fridland 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

Three weeks into the U.S. war with Iran, it seems increasingly evident that President Donald Trump and his administration miscalculated how Iran would respond to attacks.

Besides appearing unprepared by the escalation of war, the president has offered contradictory statements on the U.S. rationale for bombing Iran, including that Iranian missiles could “soon” rain down on American cities.

The administration’s inconsistent rationale for waging war was laid bare on March 18, 2026, when Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and declined to say whether her agency had made an estimate of if and when Iran would threaten the U.S. mainland.

“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” Gabbard said.

The statement was especially odd given that the briefing’s subject was the U.S. intelligence community’s latest global threat assessment. It’s clear to me that neither Gabbard nor other members of the intelligence community were part of Trump’s decision-making about going to war.

Besides serving as chair of the National Intelligence Council in the Barack Obama administration, I was a staff member of the National Security Council in the Jimmy Carter administration. I know that this apparent lack of a coordinated policy on Iran is a far cry from the war preparation and planning done during previous presidential administrations.

National Security Council

Typically, the National Security Council, which consists of the Cabinet secretaries of the national security agencies, does its work through its committees, including the Deputies Committee, which is made up of the top deputies in those departments. The Deputies Committee reviews plans and assesses options, usually presenting a recommendation to the principals, including the president.

In that sense, the National Security Council is seen within an administration as the honest broker, especially in balancing the roles of the two main foreign affairs departments: the State Department and the Defense Department.

To be sure, different administrations have used the National Security Council in different ways.

President Dwight Eisenhower created the modern National Security Council. His was an elaborate structure, with groups for both assessing options and overseeing implementation. It reflected his wartime experience, with careful staffing from a general staff whose responsibilities ranged from operations and logistics to intelligence and plans.

Other administrations have favored less formal arrangements. John F. Kennedy, for instance, kept discussions with the National Security Council secret during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. But all the National Security Council stakeholders were represented, and Kennedy reached out to consult outside expertise on the Soviet Union.

Lyndon Johnson made Tuesday lunches his forum for debating decisions about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Beginning with just his secretaries of state and defense, the lunches became a National Security Council meeting but in less formal circumstances. The CIA director, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the press secretary were later added to the group.

In other administrations at war, including the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations in Iraq, the Deputies Committees would meet daily to assess progress and review options for what came next.

In the Obama administration, the National Intelligence Council I chaired supplied the intelligence support to the Deputies Committee. We provided a steady stream of intelligence assessments across various subjects. Those included pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring in the 2010s to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The intelligence assessments provided the information – about where wars stood and what may come next – used for discussion among the deputies. They were discussions informed by experts on the Deputies Committee and from staff on the National Security Council who specialized in the region or military affairs.

This was nowhere better illustrated than in negotiating the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran. The deal required bringing together experts on Iran and regional dynamics in the Middle East with experts on nuclear fuel cycles and the making of nuclear weapons.

Hardly seen

The Trump administration cut the National Security Council staff in half in May 2025, to around 150. The plan was to streamline and restructure national intelligence under Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Since White Houses always want to pretend they are cheaper than they are, most staff with the National Security Council are seconded – or loaned for free – from one of the agencies. The process saves the White House money. But it also provides it with invaluable in-house expertise and exposes those seconded officials to presidential policymaking.

A friend and colleague who served as under secretary of defense quipped that every time he saw a State Department counterpart coming to a Deputies Committee meeting, he knew what was coming in substance: a request for a military solution to a geopolitical problem.

His stock answer: “Yes, we can do that, but it’ll require 100,000 soldiers and cost US$10 billion.” That answer was his quip, but the Deputies Committee provided a forum for arguing about the merits of the case.

The Trump administration in January 2025 outlined the National Security Council structure in familiar terms. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and director of national intelligence, both a regular presence in debates in previous administrations, were made situational rather than regular members. They would attend as needed, not automatically.

But the National Security Council has hardly been seen since, unlike Trump’s Cabinet, which gathers occasionally at meetings that often begin with Cabinet members lavishing praise on the president.

Brian Kilmeade of Fox News Radio asked Trump on March 13, 2026, about that inner circle.

“In your Cabinet with the vice president, secretary of state, what is it like, what are the dynamics when you have a big decision like Iran or Venezuela?” Kilmeade asked. “Are people speaking up and speaking their minds?”

Trump’s answer spoke volumes.

“They do,” the president said. “I let them speak their mind, and they do. And we have some differences, but they, they never end up being much. I convince them all to, let’s do it my way.”

Perhaps this casual approach to national security from the Trump administration should not surprise Americans after “Signalgate” – when administration officials in 2025 used the messaging app Signal rather than secure government modes to discuss U.S. military strikes on Yemen and inadvertently included a journalist in the communications.

But when lives are at stake, not to mention Americans’ pocketbooks and the global economy, I think the nation deserves better. Conducting a war requires a hard-headed process for assessing progress and evaluating next steps. In other administrations, the National Security Council would have provided that.

Gregory F. Treverton 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

Imagine you’re a server at a busy restaurant that requires you to wear a form-fitting, polyester shirt as part of the uniform. When a hot flash hits, you are a sweaty mess. You really wish your employer would let you wear a cotton T-shirt instead.

If you live in Philadelphia, relief is on the way.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2027, the city of Philadelphia will prohibit discrimination on the basis of menstruation, perimenopause and menopause, and it will require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees for needs related to these conditions.

Perimenopause is the transitional period before menopause, marked by fluctuations in the hormones estrogen and progesterone. Menopause marks the end of the reproductive years, defined by not having a period for 12 consecutive months.

Both life stages are having a moment.

Social media is rife with influencers and life coaches selling supplements to relieve night sweats, clear brain fog and sustain libido. Many encourage strength training, walking with weighted vests, hormone replacement therapy and creatine, a compound that works to add muscle mass.

As a law professor at Villanova University, I teach and write about employment law and gender discrimination. I often focus on solutions to real-world problems for women and girls in the workplace.

Recently, I’ve taken up strength training, protein shakes and needlepoint. I’m clearly leaning into my identity as a woman over 50.

I believe the Philadelphia ordinance is a model for other cities and states to provide relief for workers suffering from symptoms of hormonal cycles and changes while balancing the needs of employers.

Following Rhode Island’s lead

Women’s health advocates have brought attention to the lack of training for medical professionals on the issues girls and women face resulting from menstruation, perimenopause and menopause.

In 2022, for example, a national survey of 145 OB-GYN residency program directors found that fewer than one-third of programs included curriculum on menopause. This is despite the fact that every single woman, if she lives long enough, will go through it.

While some progress has been made in the medical field, there has been even less when it comes to workplace protections.

To address this gap, in July 2025 Rhode Island became the first state to prohibit discrimination on the basis of menopause. Rhode Island also requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees experiencing menopause-related symptoms.

The Philadelphia City Council said: “Hold my weighted vest.”

In December 2025, the council amended the Philadelphia Code to prohibit discrimination on the basis of menstruation, perimenopause and menopause. For example, if an employer fires an employee because of heavy menstrual bleeding resulting in leaking, that would violate the new law.

In addition, the City Council amended Section 9-1128, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for needs related to pregnancy, childbirth or a related medical condition. That list now also includes “symptoms of menstruation, perimenopause or menopause” – provided the employee requests the accommodation and it does not cause an undue hardship for the employer.

Experts in medicine and public health and described the physical and emotional symptoms women and girls may face during these life stages. These symptoms include abdominal or pelvic cramping, fatigue, mood changes, headaches, irregular menstrual cycles, hot flashes, sleep disturbances and cognitive changes.

One expert noted that 23% of women who are experiencing perimenopause have symptoms severe enough to “.”

Employers will not have to accommodate every symptom, only those that “substantially interfere with an employee’s ability to perform one or more job functions.” Although the new ordinance does not define “susbtantially interfere,” the intent is to require accommodations when a worker cannot perform some part of her job – for instance, if period pain is so high that a retail worker cannot stand for their shift, or if hot flashes prevent a food service worker from staying in the kitchen.

Clear and explicit protections

In light of existing antidiscrimination laws, why is such a targeted law necessary?

Federal, state and local laws already prohibit employers in Philadelphia from discriminating because of sex. They also require employers with 15 or more employees to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions.

Federal, state and local laws also prohibit employers from discriminating against people with disabilities and require reasonable accommodations to allow them to perform the essential functions of the job.

But menopause and menstruation protections do not clearly fall within these protections.

There are a few cases across the country in which an employee successfully challenged their firing for a condition related to menstruation. But other employees have lost cases under federal law when courts ruled that menstruation is not covered by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act or Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

Further, people seeking protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act for menstruation complications such as endometriosis, which occurs when tissue grows outside of the uterus and often causes severe pain during menstrual cycles, face an uphill battle. Instead of requiring employees who experience these sorts of symptoms to fit their cases into other statutes, Philadelphia’s new ordinance makes protection clear and explicit.

Reasonable accommodations

During a hearing on the proposed legislation, council member Nina Ahmad, who introduced the bill, noted that the accommodations envisioned are not costly. She and other council members gave : access to bathrooms and drinking water, brief flexible breaks, breathable uniforms, temperature control to manage hot flashes, fans or ventilation, ability to layer clothing, stocked period products and brief scheduling flexibility.

The type of accommodations necessary will change depending on the employee’s industry. Many women who experience symptoms already can decide what they wear to work, when they take a bathroom break and maybe even whether to work remotely. However, for workers in retail and service, or other workplaces with strict break policies, the ability to request a bathroom break or to drink water during a shift could significantly ease symptoms.

Just as the accommodations required will differ by job and industry, the employer’s ability to demonstrate undue hardship will also differ. Under the Philadelphia Code, undue hardship is an individualized assessment that considers such factors as the cost of the accommodations, the size of the workforce and the employer’s financial resources.

The devil is in the details, of course, but come January 2027, relief should be on the way for workers who are just trying to do their jobs while suffering from symptoms caused by menstruation, perimenopause and menopause.

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

Ann Juliano 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

Multiple women told The New York Times that Mexican American civil rights hero Cesar Chavez assaulted them decades ago, including when some were just girls, one as young as 13. Over their multiyear investigation, published on March 18, 2026, journalists at the paper found “extensive evidence” of that abuse by poring over historical records and conducting interviews with more than 60 people.

While yearslong investigations into abuse allegations are rare, silence about abuse is common.

As a clinical psychologist who studies interpersonal trauma, I’ve seen how the dynamics of abuse can lead to silence, even over decades.

This research can help answer the question many asked when they heard about the charges against Chavez: Why didn’t the women speak earlier?

Power and trust betrayed

Among the women who disclosed abuse by Chavez, Dolores Huerta described seeing him “as my boss, as my hero, as, you know, somebody that would do the impossible.” Debra Rojas said, “I had love for him … He did his grooming very well.”

When perpetrators abuse those who trust and depend on them, the betrayal adds to the harm of trauma. Betrayal trauma theory helps explain why.

Victims who depend on the people abusing them face extraordinary pressure to minimize what is happening. Disclosure can mean losing relationships or resources that are necessary for survival. Children abused by caregivers or community leaders risk relationships that they need to get their basic needs met. Adults who disclose abuse or harassment by employers risk losing their jobs and economic security.

Adding to the harm of abuse, perpetrators commonly twist reality to keep victims silent. They might directly instruct victims not to tell others what happened. They might also tell victims that they are actually the ones to blame for causing the abuse or that no one will believe them.

Victims must adapt to this untenable situation in which they depend on the very people causing harm.

For some people, betrayal results in dissociation symptoms and memory impairment for what happened. Dissociation is a common response to traumatic stress that can include amnesia, feelings that things are unreal or feeling disconnected from what is happening. Dissociation and memory impairment can help victims maintain necessary attachments in the short run.

Betrayal also contributes to more shame and self-blame, as well as more severe psychological and physical health problems.

Shame and self-blame can make it harder to disclose what happened. Not surprising, then, victims of high-betrayal traumas are less likely to disclose what happened relative to other kinds of traumas.

When betrayal-trauma survivors do speak up, delayed disclosures can be met with blame or disbelief, even from health providers. Survivors with more severe psychological symptoms are also met with more negative reactions to their disclosures.

Betrayal also makes escaping abusive relationships, including physically violent ones, difficult. Greater dependence on the perpetrator has been linked with a greater likelihood of staying with an abusive partner a year after a police report of domestic violence.

Cultural and institutional betrayal add to harm

Women told The New York Times that they stayed silent about their abuse, which for some began when they were girls, in part “for fear of tarnishing the image of a man who has become the face of the Latino civil rights movement.”

When people in marginalized groups are abused by someone from the same group, that constitutes an additional wound. Dr. Jennifer Gómez described this as “cultural betrayal trauma.”

With cultural betrayal trauma comes even greater pressure to stay silent as well as greater harm from the abuse.

When institutions such as churches, schools or unions fail to stop abuse or respond appropriately, that institutional betrayal can also add to the harm caused by the original abuse. In turn, institutional betrayal predicts greater dissociation and health problems, adding to the burden of abuse.

Anticipating disbelief and blame

Ana Murguia told The New York Times that she believed she would be blamed for the abuse.

Huerta, who was one of three co-founders, along with Chavez, of what ultimately became the United Farm Workers union, told the newspaper that she “feared that no one within the union would believe her.”

Anticipating disbelief and blame affects decisions to disclose. When researchers asked college women who were sexually victimized at some point in their lives why they kept what happened to themselves, they heard four common reasons. Women kept assaults private because they felt shame, guilt or embarrassment, minimized what happened, feared consequences of disclosing or wanted privacy.

Fears about negative reactions are unfortunately well founded. Research shows that when victims do disclose, victim blaming and other negative reactions are common. In turn, those negative social reactions add to psychological distress and the harm of abuse.

Connection and courage: Antidotes to betrayal

In the wake of the harm that betrayal trauma causes, healing is possible through connection and care.

Research shows that people can learn to respond in better ways to disclosures of abuse, such as connecting people to resources and expressing empathy. In addition, institutions that act with courage in the wake of abuse, such as by making it easy to report or taking actions to prevent future abuse, can help reduce harm to survivors.

When survivors disclose, avoiding blame, disbelief and other negative reactions can minimize additional harm. Taking steps to offer emotional support and resources can even help open doors.

That’s what my research team found when we asked sexual assault survivors about the reactions they received from service providers, such as counselors or victim advocates. When survivors received more tangible support, they were more likely to later disclose what happened in a formal report to the police.

Anne P. DePrince has received funding from the Department of Justice, National Institutes of Health, State of Colorado, and University of Denver. She has received honoraria for giving presentations and has been paid as a consultant. She has a book with Oxford University Press. She is an Advisory Group Member of the National Crime Victim Law Institute and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Institutional Courage.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

In 2024, Donald Trump dramatically improved his performance among nearly all groups of voters from four years earlier. Trump’s growth among Hispanic voters was especially notable, increasing by more than 10 points from 2020 to 2024, at least according to exit polls.

This led to a considerable amount of commentary speculating that Hispanic voters, historically more supportive of Democrats, might continue shifting toward the GOP.

News reports suggesting Latinos were critical to Trump’s 2024 victory were, in our view, overblown. Even if Latinos had not shifted, Trump still would have won in 2024.

Yet there is no question that over the past three election cycles, Latino voters – Latino men under 40, in particular – have shifted right. That change has benefited GOP candidates, even as the majority of Latinos still voted for Democrats.

However, evidence from general elections in 2025 in places such as New Jersey, New York and Virginia, as well as special elections in 2026, suggest an abrupt correction is underway, with some of the Latino voters who backed Trump now swinging back to the Democrats.

As political scientists and pollsters who study Hispanic voting trends, we are concerned with the question of whether these latest movements are real or simply a function of fluctuating Latino Democratic turnout rates. In other words, are Latinos broadly changing their votes back to Democrats, or are Latinos who remained loyal to the Democrats now more angry and fired up?

Survey and election data suggest it’s a bit of both. So what does this portend for the future of American politics?

Latino voting trends

The history of the Latino vote nationwide had for decades been one of long-term stability. Historically, Democrats enjoyed an approximate 65% to 35% advantage over Republicans.

That advantage shrank marginally after Republican President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, providing a path to citizenship for millions. But the more familiar two-thirds advantage for the Democratic Party returned following passage of Proposition 187, a 1994 anti-immigrant initiative in California that ultimately mobilized Latinos against Republicans.

Another effort at GOP outreach to Hispanic voters culminated in President George W. Bush taking approximately 40% of the Latino vote in 2004. That growth, however, soon eroded in the wake of anti-immigrant legislation passed by the Republican-controlled House in 2005 and 2006.

The successful campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, as well as Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 campaign against Trump, saw Democrats reaping a relatively high level of Latino support, peaking at a 3-to-1 advantage in 2012.

That made Trump’s improvements among Latinos in 2020 and 2024 feel, for some, particularly unexpected. He lodged notable breakthroughs in parts of Florida, where he carried Miami-Dade County, and Texas, where he flipped the historically Democratic Rio Grande Valley.

Some Latinos question whether Democrats have delivered

It should not have been such a surprise. There has been a history of sizable shares of Latinos supporting Republican candidates. For instance, both former President George W. Bush and his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, performed well with Latinos in Texas and Florida.

For two decades, Democrats have campaigned among Latinos on the promise of comprehensive immigration reform and an economic policy that would level the playing field, including raising the federal minimum wage, providing universal pre-K education and promoting affordable housing.

Many Latinos feel they are still waiting for these Democratic policies to be enacted, let alone improve their lives.

Democratic trifectas in 2009-10 and 2021-22 – when the party held both chambers of Congress, along with the presidency – failed to produce meaningful movement on immigration policy. Many Latinos felt their daily lives had not improved, as they faced high costs of living, expensive housing markets and rising health care costs. While House Democrats did pass numerous bills to address these topics, Senate moderates proved difficult to persuade.

Given these shortcomings, running on the message that “the GOP are bad guys” only gets Democrats so far. In 2024, surveys and focus groups of Hispanic voters made it clear that not everyone was convinced by this characterization. The frustrations of working-class families during the Biden administration were real, whereas fears of mass deportations and other social chaos that a second Trump term might portend were, at that point, conjecture.

The Trump campaign specifically promised widespread action against immigrants, but many of our Latino focus group participants felt this was bluster. They believed that Trump’s actions would be targeted against blatant criminals and that his policies would not affect their families and friends.

They did not believe the worst-case scenarios presented by Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats during the campaign. Despite often not liking Trump, his economic promises felt good during the 2024 affordability crisis.

Latinos shifting back left?

Many Latinos are now quite upset with Trump. The 2025 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia point to dramatic 25-point changes in the Latino vote in the Democrats’ direction, compared with Trump’s 2024 performance.

In December 2025, the first Democrat was elected mayor of Miami since 1997, with Latino support. A Democrat won a heavily Republican state legislative district in Texas in February 2026 with an estimated 79% of the Latino vote. Most recently, Latino voter turnout surged to record levels in the March Democratic primary in Texas.

Majorities of Latino voters believe that their economic fortunes have declined since Trump returned to the White House. Moreover, they expect the situation to worsen over the next year. In March 2026, The Economist reported that Trump’s support among Latinos had fallen to 22%.

In a bipartisan poll by UnidosUS released in November 2025, only 14% of Latino voters said their lives were better after one year under Trump, while 39% said they had gotten worse. Looking ahead, 50% expected things to get worse still in 2026, while only 20% were optimistic about their economic future. Two-thirds of Latino voters felt that Trump and the Republicans were not focusing enough on improving the economy for people like them.

What’s more, mass deportations have happened under the second Trump administration. The vast majority of those detained for deportation, including those who have died, had no criminal record.

Latinos are overwhelmingly opposed to federal troops in U.S. cities, according to our polling; 41% fear legal residents and U.S. citizens getting caught up in enforcement actions. The No. 1 immigration concern for Latino voters remains a path to citizenship for Dreamers – the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – and for immigrants who have worked and paid taxes in the country for more than 20 years but lack formal status.

Among Latinos who actually voted for Trump, many would not do so again. Our poll suggests that 22% of Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 would not vote for him again. By contrast, Democrats retain support from 93% of their 2024 Latino voters.

The long-term effects of the Trump presidency on the Latino electorate are difficult to predict, but for now party preferences have shifted firmly back toward the Democrats. Among voters in the UnidosUS poll, 55% said they felt the Democrats “care a great deal” about Latinos, compared with 29% saying they felt that way about the GOP. At the same time, 33% of Latino voters see the GOP as “hostile,” compared with just 7% who believe this about the Democrats.

If the recent leftward shift is sustained, or the earlier shift to the right was illusory, the effects on the politics of 2026 could be large, potentially putting control of Congress in the hands of Latino voters. There are 46 House districts where the number of registered voters who are Latino exceeds the total margin of victory for those seats in 2024, with 23 currently held by Republicans and 23 currently held by Democrats.

Latino voters need to believe that politicians truly care about their concerns and will work to implement a plan to create equal opportunities for the nation’s largest minority group to achieve the American dream. We believe the candidates able to make that pitch convincingly will be the most successful.

Matt A. Barreto is principal and co-founder of the polling firm BSP Research. BSP Research has conducted polling for non-profit and advocacy organizations, businesses, and candidates. Barreto has, in the past, directly consulted with Democratic candidates for House, Senate and the presidency.

Gary M. Segura is principal and co-founder of the polling firm BSP Research. BSP Research has conducted polling for non-profit and advocacy organizations, businesses, and candidates. Segura has, in the past, directly consulted with Democratic candidates for House, Senate and the presidency.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

For generations, most Americans knew – and maybe believed – a story about upholstery seamstress Betsy Ross and the making of the nation’s first flag.

In the account passed down through her family, Ross was a young Philadelphia widow when George Washington and a congressional committee asked her to make a flag for the Colonies uniting in rebellion against England.

A sketch showed what they envisioned: red and white stripes and a constellation of six-pointed stars across a blue field.

But, the story continues, Ross folded a piece of paper “just so,” made a single cut, and voila! She produced a perfect five-pointed star. The men approved, she stitched a flag, Congress cheered and history was made.

As a historian of early American craftswomen, including Ross, I have often seen how mythologies – history’s sound bites – can bury richer and deeper understandings of the past. That’s the case with Betsy Ross, whose story was never about designing one flag but about producing many – and being one of thousands of women whose labor was essential to the nation’s origins.

Making of a legend

In 1870, Ross’ grandson William J. Canby recounted the family’s story about Betsy Ross and the making of the first flag in a speech to the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Historians and members of the public greeted the tale with skepticism.

Canby’s best efforts notwithstanding, no archival evidence then – or since – has confirmed that Ross fabricated the first U.S. flag.

Still, the story gained traction. For a long while, Ross was a popular historical figure in U.S. culture, up there with the likes of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. One of the earliest biopics imagined her life story, and her name graced everything from dolls to decanters. Over time, thousands of people began visiting her supposed home at 239 Arch St. in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia. The landmark is preserved as a house museum.

As late as the 1980s, history professor Michael Frisch reported that “college students asked to name any person from pre–Civil War America who is not a politician or military figure” included Ross “year after year.”

But in the years following the 1976 U.S. bicentennial, Ross’ fame was already cresting. Today many Americans aren’t entirely sure whether she was real or fictional.

Widow turned aspiring government contractor

Elizabeth Griscom Ross was indeed real. She was an upholstery worker who lived in Philadelphia from the 1750s to the 1830s. While no written record confirms the flag story, ample evidence survives to document the successful multigenerational flagmaking enterprise that she launched and then sustained with her daughter and granddaughters.

According to an oral history recorded with Ross’ youngest daughter, sometime in the 1760s a young Elizabeth Griscom, who was born in 1752, joined a sister employed by Philadelphia upholsterer John Webster. Ross learned the craft of upholstery as well as the making of tassels and fringe from Ann King, who oversaw women’s work there.

Ross married upholstery apprentice John Ross in 1773, and the pair launched a small shop. John died in January 1776. Ross’ second husband, mariner Joseph Ashburn, served the Revolution as a privateer and died in an English prison. In 1783, another privateer, John Claypoole, became Ross’ third husband, and the couple raised a large family and lived full lives in the city.

My take on the legend’s veracity is that it is partly accurate, partly not, and there isn’t really any “first” flag.

What is certainly true is this: Ross found herself widowed in 1776 just as Philadelphia braced for British forces, an effort that required the building of a navy and new flags representing the Americans. Women all around the seaport were getting contracts to stitch flags, and Ross surely wanted in.

The “Did she or didn’t she sew the ‘first flag’?” question is usually framed as a story of design, but it’s not: It’s a story of production.

Ross, drawing on years of experience, was saying to these potential clients, “If you want a lot of these flags, and fast, five-pointed stars work better.”

Women’s massive wartime effort

When Betsy Ross told this story later to her children and grandchildren, at the heart of the story is a young craftswoman who met the “Father of Our Country” – and believed she taught him something.

Understanding Ross’ real life is important because her story offers a view of women’s massive wartime production of flags, uniforms, tents, knapsacks and more – and because of the deep pride she and women like her felt in their contributions to the independence movement.

Hundreds of Philadelphia women – including, briefly, Ross – manufactured ordnance for the Schuylkill arsenal. White, Black, Indigenous, enslaved and free women provided labor in the form of nursing, cooking, and making and maintaining clothes that was essential to military encampments. Women shaped diplomacy directly, especially among Indigenous peoples, and indirectly as they shared their perspectives with husbands, fathers and sons. They also managed affairs for absent family and stretched scarce resources to sustain wartime households.

Whatever she did or did not offer to the making of the first U.S. flag, Elizabeth Griscom Ross Ashburn Claypoole certainly enjoyed a long career in flagmaking.

The best documentation for this came just before the War of 1812. When Purveyor of public supplies Tench Coxe needed flags, he steered contracts to the onetime Elizabeth Ross, now known as Elizabeth Claypoole. In 1808, for instance, Coxe recorded that yards of blue fabric were en route to her; weeks later, the craftswoman submitted a bill for two garrison flags, two silk flags and seven regimental colors.

In 1810, she was contracted for six 18-by-24-foot garrison flags for a military installation at New Orleans. These flags unfolded to 432 square feet and required more than 100,000 stitches. They must have been well received because another order followed, for 46 garrison flags, which she was to deliver “with all dispatch” to the arsenal. Orders also came in from the Indian Department to produce dozens of flags used in diplomatic exchanges with Native nations.

By the time the U.S. went to war with England a second time in 1812, flags by Elizabeth Claypoole, aka “Betsy Ross,” flew all around the United States.

Over her long career, Betsy Ross produced an unknown number of flags – the hundred or so recorded in archival sources represent a fraction of her total output. As the U.S. observes the 250th anniversary of its independence, Ross’ real life – today fully interpreted by the dedicated staff of the Betsy Ross House – offers a view into the lives of working women across America whose wartime labor helped build a nation.

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

Marla Miller receives funding from the National Park Service as a consultant providing expertise on women and the the American Revolution.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Wars are rarely lost first on the battlefield. They are lost in leaders’ minds − when leaders misread what they and their adversaries can do, when their confidence substitutes for comprehension, and when the last war is mistaken for the next one.

The Trump administration’s miscalculation of Iran is not an anomaly. It is the latest entry in one of the oldest and most lethal traditions in international politics: the catastrophic gap between what leaders believe going in and what war actually delivers.

I’m a scholar of international security, civil wars and U.S. foreign policy, and author of the book “Dying by the Sword,” which examines why the United States repeatedly reaches for military solutions and why such interventions rarely produce durable peace. The deeper problem with the U.S. war in Iran, as I see it, was overconfidence bred by recent success.

Dismissed concerns

Before the conflict involving Iran, Israel and the U.S. escalated, Energy Secretary Chris Wright dismissed concerns about oil market disruption, noting that prices had barely moved during the 12-day war in June 2025 between Israel and Iran. Other senior officials agreed.

What followed was significant: Iranian-aimed missile and drone barrages against U.S. bases, Arab capitals and Israeli population centers. Then Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes daily − not with a naval blockade, not with mines or massed anti-ship missiles, but with cheap drones.

A few strikes in the vicinity of the strait were enough. Insurers and shipping companies decided the transit was unsafe. Tanker traffic dropped to zero, although the occasional ship has made it through recently. Analysts are calling it the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s oil embargo.

Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has since vowed to keep the strait closed. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, reported after a closed-door briefing that the administration had no plan for the strait and did not know how to get it safely back open.

With no embassy in Tehran since 1979, the U.S. relies heavily for intelligence on CIA networks of questionable quality and Israeli assets who have their own country’s interests in mind. So the U.S. did not anticipate that Iran had rebuilt and dispersed significant military capacity since June 2025, nor that it would strike neighbors across the region, including Azerbaijan, widening the conflict well beyond the Persian Gulf.

The war has since reached the Indian Ocean, where a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian frigate 2,000 miles from the theater of war, off the coast of Sri Lanka – just days after the ship had participated in Indian navy exercises alongside 74 nations, including the U.S.

The diplomatic damage to Washington’s relationships with India and Sri Lanka, two countries whose cooperation is increasingly important as the United States seeks partners to manage and mitigate Iran’s blockade, was entirely foreseeable. Washington has put them in a difficult position, with India choosing diplomacy with Iran to secure passage for its vessels and Sri Lanka opting to retain its neutrality, underscoring its vulnerable position.

But U.S. planners didn’t foresee any of this.

The wrong lesson from Venezuela

The swift military intervention by the U.S. in Venezuela in January 2026 produced rapid results with minimal blowback − appearing to validate the administration’s faith in coercive action.

But clean victories are dangerous teachers.

They inflate what I call in my teaching the “hubris/humility index” − the more a leadership overestimates its own abilities, underestimates the adversary’s and dismisses uncertainty, the higher the score and the more likely disaster will ensue. Clean victories inflate the index precisely when skepticism is most needed, because they suggest the next adversary will be as manageable as the last.

Political scientist Robert Jervis demonstrated decades ago that misperceptions in international relations are not random but follow patterns. Leaders tend to project their own cost-benefit logic onto opponents who do not share it. They also fall into “availability bias,” allowing the most recent operation to stand in for the next.

The higher the hubris/humility index, the less likely there is to be the kind of strategic empathy that might ask: How does Tehran see this? What does a regime that believes its survival is at stake actually do? History shows that such a regime escalates, improvises and takes risks that appear irrational from an outside perspective but are entirely rational from within.

Recent cases reveal this unmistakable pattern.

The United States in Vietnam, 1965–1968

American war planners believed material superiority would force the communists in Hanoi to surrender.

It didn’t.

American firepower alone didn’t lead to military defeat, much less political control. The Tet Offensive in 1968 – when North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched coordinated attacks across South Vietnam – shattered the official U.S. narrative that the war was nearly won and that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Athough the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces ultimately repelled the attacks, their scale and surprise caused the public not to trust official statements, accelerating the erosion of public trust and decisively turning American opinion against the war.

The U.S. loss in Vietnam didn’t occur on a single battlefield, but through strategic and political unraveling. Despite overwhelming superiority, Washington was incapable of building a stable, legitimate South Vietnamese government or recognizing the grit and resilience of the North Vietnamese forces. Eventually, with mounting casualties and large-scale protests at home, U.S. forces withdrew, ceding control of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in 1975.

The U.S. failure was conceptual and cultural, not informational. American analysts simply couldn’t picture the war from their opponent’s perspective.

Afghanistan: Deadly assumptions

The Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1979 and the United States in Afghanistan after 2001 conducted two different wars but held the same deadly assumption: that external military force can quickly impose political order in a fractured society strongly resistant to foreign control.

In both cases, great powers believed their abilities would outweigh local complexities. In both cases, the war evolved faster − and lasted far longer − than their strategies could adapt.

Russia, Ukraine and the Strait of Hormuz

This is the case that should most haunt Washington.

Ukraine demonstrated that a materially weaker defender can impose huge costs on a stronger attacker through battlefield innovation: cheap drones, decentralized adaptation, real-time intelligence, and the creative use of terrain and chokepoints to find asymmetrical advantages. The U.S. watched it all unfold in real time for four years and helped pay for it.

Iran was also watching − and the Strait of Hormuz is the proof.

Iran didn’t need a navy to close the world’s most important energy chokepoint. It needed drones, the same cheap, asymmetric technology Ukraine has used to blunt Russia’s onslaught, deployed not on a land front but against the insurance calculus of the global shipping industry.

Washington, which had underwritten much of that playbook in Ukraine, apparently never asked the obvious question: What happens when the other side has been taking notes? That is not a failure of U.S. intelligence. It is a failure of strategic imagination − exactly what the hubris/humility index is designed to highlight.

Iran does not need to defeat the U.S. conventionally. It needs only to raise costs, exploit chokepoints and wait for a fracture among U.S. allies and domestic political opposition to force a fake U.S. declaration of victory or a genuine U.S. withdrawal.

Notably, Iran has kept the strait selectively open to Turkish, Indian and Saudi vessels, rewarding neutral countries and punishing U.S. allies, driving wedges through the coalition.

Historian Geoffrey Blainey famously argued that wars start when both sides hold incompatible beliefs about power and only end when reality forces those beliefs to align.

That alignment is now happening, at great cost, in the Persian Gulf and beyond. The Trump administration scored high on the hubris index at exactly the moment when it most needed humility.

Monica Duffy Toft 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