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Northeast Park Hill, a Denver neighborhood, has a long history of violence. During Denver’s summer of violence in the early 1990s, it was considered ground zero for gang conflict.

From the late 1990s through 2014, violent crime in Northeast Park Hill declined from its peak in the early ’90s but remained persistently higher than city averages. In 2016, Northeast Park Hill recorded 1,086 youth arrests per 100,000 young people. The arrest rate for the combination of the other 76 Denver neighborhoods was 513.

With a population of approximately 9,600, 19% of families in the neighborhood lived below the federal poverty line, 39% of residents identified as Black, and 27% identified as Hispanic.

Yet, Northeast Park Hill is also a community defined by collective action. In 2013, residents started organizing in response to a series of violent events. They laid the foundation for an emerging movement committed to rebuilding community safety.

Building on these community strengths, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence partnered with local leaders to implement Communities That Care in 2016. The program is a science-based prevention process designed to help communities use data, evidence and collective action to reduce youth violence.

As a sociologist and director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, my work examines the root causes of youth violence. I study how community-led, data-driven prevention efforts can reduce risk and build supports that help young people stay safe and connected. Working alongside leaders and residents in Northeast Park Hill, I’ve seen firsthand what’s possible and what their remarkable success can teach all of us.

A welcome change

After just five years, the youth arrest rate in Northeast Park Hill fell to 276 per 100,000 – a 75% reduction.

This drop in youth arrests reflects a decades-long nationwide trend. Across the country as a whole, juvenile arrests peaked in 1996 and then began a steady decline.

But not all neighborhoods benefited equally. To measure the impact of local prevention work in Northeast Park Hill, we compared its arrest rate to a carefully constructed “look-alike” community made up of similar Denver neighborhoods that did not receive the intervention. We found Northeast Park Hill saw a sharper and earlier decline than its comparison community – pointing to an impact beyond national trends and tied to the local interventions.

Impacts of youth violence

Youth violence is a major cause of harm.

This is especially true for urban communities that have endured decades of chronic disinvestment. That includes neglected infrastructure, deteriorating housing and long-standing environmental and health inequities. Such environments often lack the opportunities, resources and support that are essential for healthy youth development.

Young people in these neighborhoods are more likely to face increased exposure to violence and daily challenges associated with navigating violent communities, such as witnessing shootings near their homes and schools. They also face ongoing experiences of marginalization and discrimination. Many young people move through daily life in a constant state of vigilance. Some youth withdraw, carry weapons for protection or turn to substances to cope with chronic anxiety.

Building a prevention infrastructure

As part of Communities That Care, the community formed a prevention coalition of approximately 25 members, known as Park Hill Strong, to guide the work.

Three Black leaders, Troy Grimes, Jonathan McMillan and Dane Washington Sr., who grew up in the neighborhood and experienced the violence of the 1990s firsthand, chaired the coalition.

Following the Communities That Care model, they began by creating a community profile. They used local data, including youth and parent surveys, and neighborhood indicators, such as access to safe parks, after-school programs and healthy foods. The data helped the coalition identify the biggest sources of risk and what protective supports were available in the community.

That data pointed to several factors that increase the likelihood of youth violence. Many youth felt disconnected from their community and had limited supervision or inconsistent support at home. The data also highlighted early and persistent problem behaviors among youth, including aggression and defiance, which can place young people on a pathway toward later violence.

The data also revealed protective supports to build on. It showed that opportunities for young people to participate in positive activities were limited. Community recognition of youths’ healthy and constructive contributions was also low — highlighting important areas for improvement.

Once the profile was complete, the coalition developed a community action plan describing the community prevention strategies the coalition would use to address their prioritized risk and protective factors.

Community-level prevention strategies

The coalition selected three community-level prevention strategies.

First, a youth-led media campaign called the Power of One (PO1) addressed the risk factor of low neighborhood attachment. The campaign challenged the idea that young people themselves are the cause of violence, instead highlighting how decades of redlining, concentrated poverty and limited access to quality schools and jobs have shaped the conditions they are navigating. The campaign also highlighted positive stories about young people and their communities. The Power of One has reached more than 3,000 youth and adults through social media and hosted six community block parties.

Second, the coalition selected Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies, known as PATHS. This evidence-based program aims to reduce early and persistent problem behaviors. It was implemented in all three of the elementary schools in Northeast Park Hill. PATHS helps students learn social and emotional skills, including managing strong emotions by recognizing when they are feeling angry and using calming strategies before reacting. Strengthening these competencies is associated with lower rates of aggression.

Third, pediatric health care providers identified youth at risk for carrying out future serious violence through the violence, injury protection and risk screening tool. Youth identified as high or medium risk after completing a 14-item screening tool that assesses violence and victimization history and other risk factors are referred to appropriate services. A total of 222 youth ages 10 to 14 were screened between 2016 and 2021.

Funding is in jeopardy

For more than two decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has funded the National Academic Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention, which includes programs like ours. But recent CDC funding cuts threaten the continuation of this work.

Since 2000, these efforts have contributed to reductions in violence in communities across the nation, including Chicago; Denver; Flint, Michigan; Richmond, Virginia; and Youngstown, Ohio.

In Flint, community groups mowed and removed trash from vacant lots between 2009 and 2013. The surrounding areas saw 40% fewer assaults and violent crimes between the months of May and September compared to areas surrounding unmaintained lots.

Likewise, in Youngstown, during the summer months from 2016 to 2018, violent crime fell at twice the rate on streets surrounding vacant lots transformed into gardens and play spaces by community residents than on streets where professional mowers did the greening.

Funding for programs like these is critical for neighborhoods where resources are already scarce and the burden of violence has been concentrated for generations. Without continued investment, communities risk losing hard-won gains and the capacity to create safe and supportive environments for young people.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Beverly Kingston receives funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention under Cooperative Agreement Number, 5 U01 CE002757. The findings and conclusions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the president. But most modern presidents and their legal counsel have asserted that Article 2 of the Constitution allows the president to use the military in certain situations without prior congressional approval – and have acted on that, sending troops into conflicts from Panama to Libya, with no regard for Congress’ will.

Congress has for the most part registered only feeble and ineffective opposition to such executive action. The current move in Congress to deny President Donald Trump the ability to continue the war with Iran – led by Democrats, but with some Republican support – will likely fail, as have previous efforts during other conflicts.

But there was a time when Americans saw Congress stand up to a president who unilaterally took the country to war.

It was at the tail end of the Vietnam War, when Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973, asserting that it was legislators – not the president – who had the power to declare war.

Once it passed both houses, President Richard Nixon vetoed it, claiming it was unconstitutional.

In response, the legislative branch overturned the veto with the two-thirds majority vote needed to prevail.

Compared to Congress’ limp response to Trump’s actions in Iran, and its similar failure to assert itself during Trump’s military action in Venezuela, it was a breathtaking act of legislative assertion.

Congress asserts itself

When they debated the War Powers Resolution, members of Congress were seeing the erosion of their control over the decision to engage in military operations large and small. With a strong bipartisan consensus, they determined they had to collectively use their powers, including the power of the purse, to thwart executive overreach.

Congress’ actions came in response to the growing protests against the Vietnam War in general and Nixon’s decision to expand the war by sending U.S. troops to invade the neutral country of Cambodia to disrupt the supply lines of the Viet Cong, the communist guerrilla force that accounted for a large number of the 58,000 Americans killed in the war.

Nixon had begun covert carpet bombing of Cambodia in 1969, and then announced in 1970 that he would send ground troops into the country the next year.

Congress – and the country– reacted extremely negatively. Members of Congress collaborated across party lines to draft legislation in an attempt to assert their power. It was a slow process, however, involving long periods of deliberation.

They used many different methods to attempt to constrain the president. Within months of the introduction of troops to Cambodia, Congress attempted to pass amendments that would restrict his ability to invade neighboring countries. Prompted by protesting and the illegal actions in Cambodia, Congress began crafting legislation that would draw down troops in Vietnam.

With these moves, lawmakers placed immense pressure on the president. This eventually led to the drafting and eventual signing of the peace agreement ending the Vietnam war in 1973.

This was not enough for Congress, however.

Rules – and flexibility

Congress wanted to create a document ensuring presidents could not unilaterally make war. They wanted legislative consultation.

They intended the War Powers Resolution to act as a permanent constraint. So, in the resolution they spelled out the specific actions in which presidents can start a conflict:

• First, if there is an invasion of the United States, the president can respond. In this instance, the president can act prior to congressional authorization.

• Second, if Congress provides an “Authorization for the Use of Military Force,” the president can assume he has authorization – but only as long as it is in effect.

• Finally, if Congress declares war, the president can act.

Lawmakers did, however, provide some flexibility. In the War Powers Resolution, they said a president can initiate and carry out hostilities for 60 days and has a further 30 days to draw down the troops. Once the executive has initiated hostilities, Congress must receive information about that action within 48 hours.

This opens the door for presidents to engage in smaller-scale or short operations without stepping outside the lines set in the law.

Presidents from both parties have availed themselves of this flexibility. As far back as 1975, when President Gerald Ford rescued the SS Mayaguez, the merchant ship captured by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, presidents have acknowledged the law and dutifully reported their military actions to Congress.

Like his predecessors, Trump sent a letter to Congress after his June 2025 missile attacks against Iran, as well as at the start of the currently open-ended conflict.

Presidents since the passage of the War Powers Resolution have not, however, acknowledged that they have to get congressional approval of their actions, with few exceptions. Predominantly, without congressional approval, they limit their actions to the 60-to-90-day window.

President Barack Obama, however, attempted to circumvent the window when his bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 dragged on, as well as when he bombed the Islamic State group in 2014. In the first instance, he claimed the War Powers Resolution did not apply. In the second, he claimed each bombing campaign was discrete, rather than part of a larger campaign.

Exploiting authorizations

The balance of power between the legislative and executive branches changed considerably with the passage of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force that gave legislative permission for President George W. Bush to invade Iraq.

Because Congress did not put sunset dates into these authorizations, subsequent presidents Obama, Trump and Joe Biden used those same authorizations for a host of later military actions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

And legislators are deeply divided in the current discussions about demanding the cessation of hostilities against Iran.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson says that limiting the president at this time is “dangerous.” Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – who has fallen out of favor with Trump’s MAGA base and the president himself – took the opposing view, posted on social media, “Now, America is going to be force fed and gas lighted all the ‘noble’ reasons the American ‘Peace’ President and Pro-Peace administration had to go to war once again this year, after being in power for only a year.”

Has the U.S. entered a moment when members of Congress reassert themselves the way they did at the tail end of the Vietnam war?

It is possible that they will follow James Madison’s advice about the power relationship between Congress and the president. Writing in the Federalist Papers, Madison said that “ambition” has “to counter ambition.” He continued, “The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.”

As I explain in my book about congressional war powers, the constitutional system creates an invitation to struggle. Now, as the U.S. wages war on Iran, Congress must decide whether it wants to struggle, as it did during the Vietnam War, or remain compliant and in the president’s shadow.

Sarah Burns has received funding from the Institute for Humane Studies.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

A bureaucratic shift in Washington is threatening to undo years of progress in Detroit’s fight against homelessness, potentially forcing thousands of the city’s most fragile residents back onto the streets.

In November 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development revised how it would allocate funding through its flagship homelessness program, the Continuum of Care.

The change reduced the share of funding available for permanent subsidized housing and increased funding for transitional short-term housing.

HUD officials described the shift as a move away from a “housing first” model toward a “treatment first” approach that emphasizes participation in services, such as drug addiction disorder treatment, before or alongside housing placement.

The administration has argued that this promotes self-sufficiency. Critics contend that stable housing is the foundation that makes treatment and recovery possible.

The policy revision has been challenged in court by 20 states, including Michigan, as well as city and county governments and advocacy organizations. They argue it could destabilize individuals and families across the country, state and here in Detroit.

I am an urban and regional planning scholar who studies housing policy, and I serve on the research council of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

In December 2025, I joined 77 other homelessness researchers who sent a letter to Congress analyzing the likely impacts of HUD’s revised funding approach. That analysis draws on decades of peer-reviewed research evaluating which housing interventions reduce homelessness and which do not.

That same month, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily pauses HUD’s efforts to shift funding away from permanent supportive housing.

HUD officials stated that the agency intends to apply the changes in future funding rounds, once the order is no longer in effect.

Homelessness in Detroit

Detroit’s homelessness crisis is both long-standing and worsening.

The number of people who experience homelessness in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park increased by about 16% from 2023 to 2024, with roughly 1,725 people experiencing homelessness on a single January night, including hundreds of families. Children in particular have been hit hard by this crisis. One data snapshot shows 2,579 children reported being doubled up, staying in a shelter, staying in a hotel or motel or being unsheltered. This was a record number for the Detroit Public Schools Community District.

While permanent supportive housing has strong outcomes for those who receive it, overall homelessness has continued to increase due to rising rents, economic instability and the limited housing supply, which has historically outpaced the number of available supportive units.

Detroit’s homelessness response system is coordinated through the federally funded local Continuum of Care led by the Homeless Action Network of Detroit.

In recent years, Detroit has taken steps to strengthen coordination, expand shelter capacity and increase housing placements. But the system heavily depends on federal funding to provide permanent supportive housing.

What could change in federal homelessness funding

The Continuum of Care program began in 1994 and was later codified in 2009 by the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act. It is the largest federal funding stream dedicated to addressing homelessness in the United States.

Last year alone, Detroit received US$40 million from the HUD program.

Those funds pay for emergency shelters, transitional housing and rapid rehousing programs – which provide temporary rental assistance and the assistance of a social worker, without preconditions – and permanent supportive housing.

Like other cities nationwide, Detroit has built its homelessness response system around HUD’s funding priorities.

For more than a decade, HUD has emphasized permanent housing. A strong body of evidence shows that stable housing leads to better long-term outcomes than temporary programs.

Prior Continuum of Care funding cycles allocated roughly 85% to 90% of funds to permanent housing, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

The revised funding priorities announced in late 2025 would substantially reduce that share and redirect funding toward transitional housing and short-term interventions.

According to the Homeless Action Network of Detroit, this means that Detroit area providers could go from about $34 million per year allocated for permanent supportive housing under the current allocation to no more than about $11 million under the new priorities.

Local advocates warn that capping permanent housing at roughly 30% of Continuum of Care dollars would drastically reduce the number of supportive units available and place hundreds of households at risk of returning to homelessness.

Why permanent supportive housing matters

Permanent supportive housing is one of the most rigorously studied homelessness interventions in the United States.

It is an evidence-based intervention that provides long-term rental assistance paired with voluntary supportive services for people who have experienced chronic, or repeated, homelessness, particularly those with disabilities or chronic health conditions.

Under the current Continuum of Care framework, households typically pay no more than 30% of their income toward rent, with the subsidy covering the remainder. Assistance can continue as long as eligibility criteria are met.

Programs also offer staff to help with coordination of health care and behavioral health services and assistance identifying and applying for relevant benefits to promote long-term housing stability. Tenants hold standard leases and have the same legal protections as other renters.

Research shows that permanent supportive housing using a housing-first approach consistently reduces homelessness and improves health outcomes for people with disabilities.

Greater investment in permanent supportive housing is also linked to reductions in chronic homelessness, meaning individuals or families who have been homeless for long periods or repeatedly over time.

A long-term study published in Social Service Review in 2014 found that communities that increased permanent supportive housing capacity experienced measurable declines in chronic homelessness over time.

Local data from the Detroit Continuum of Care indicate that at least 160 new permanent supportive housing units have been made available in the past year, and another 235 units are projected for 2026. These units help people exit homelessness and maintain stable homes amid rising rents and affordability challenges.

How transitional housing compares

Transitional housing typically requires residents to participate in supportive services or programming as a condition of stay. This can include regular meetings with a social worker, employment readiness classes, substance use treatment or financial literacy workshops, for example.

The model is often used for survivors of domestic violence or young adults aging out of foster care. While transitional housing can provide short-term stability and support during these transitions, it differs from permanent supportive housing in that it is time-limited and may require program compliance as a condition of continued residency. Transitional housing placements typically last from about six months up to two years.

However, research consistently finds that transitional housing is less likely than permanent housing to produce long-term housing stability. This is particularly the case for families and people with disabilities.

HUD’s Family Options Study in 2016 found that families offered permanent housing experienced significantly better long-term housing stability than those offered transitional housing, despite transitional housing costing more per household.

Follow-up research conducted by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit organization that studies economic policy, similarly found that many families who leave transitional housing once their time limit expires struggle to maintain stable housing. These findings are especially relevant for individuals with disabilities, chronic illnesses or mental health conditions, all groups that are typically prioritized for permanent supportive housing.

Why Detroit is especially vulnerable

Research shows that housing instability increases reliance on emergency services such as shelters, hospitals and public safety systems. This drives up taxpayer costs and additionally strains already overextended local services.

Detroit area homelessness service providers are pushing back against the potential federal changes, which they identify as “radical.”

In response, many organizations are turning to state and philanthropic partners for support while continuing to develop housing locally to help offset possible reductions in federal funding.

Deyanira Nevárez Martínez has received funding from the State of Michigan, the Latino Policy and Politics Institue at UCLA, the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Freedom Together Foundation (formerly the JPB Foundation). She is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Michigan State University and is an elected member of the Lansing City Council representing ward 2.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

When the bombing of Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, the Trump administration had not informed the American people exactly what it was prepared to achieve.

Was the attack intended to degrade Iran’s nuclear program? Trump had declared that “obliterated” after last June’s bombing.

Was it to slow Iran’s ballistic missile program? U.S. intelligence assesses that Iran is years away from any ballistic missile that could strike the United States.

Was it to show support for Iran’s opposition, as Trump’s earlier “HELP IS ON ITS WAY” posts on Truth Social suggested? A bombing campaign that was bound to kill innocent Iranians, including 175 people at a girls elementary school near a military base, seemed an odd form of support.

I am a scholar and former practitioner of intelligence and national security policy in the White House. I believe there are lessons in effecting political change in Iran that can be taken, ironically, from the very U.S.- and British-led clandestine campaign in the mid-20th century that set Iran on the road to the intense anti-Western and anti-American sentiment that has characterized its government policy for decades.

How does this end?

President Trump has said he wants regime change in Iran but has articulated no strategy for achieving that end.

Strategy is the connection between means and ends. For waging a war, it means asking whether the military means available match the desired military outcome. In trying to effect political change, it means asking whether the instruments employed will produce the desired change.

As journalist Fareed Zakaria put it, “‘Bomb and hope’ is not a strategy.”

Looking at the last U.S. effort at regime change in Iran – the CIA’s 1953 covert program to oust Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and strengthen Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s rule – offers insight into what might have been … and what still might be this time around in Iran.

Mossadegh had moved to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – effectively, British oil interests. Britain responded with an an oil embargo and a severe economic squeeze on Iran.

Western powers feared that prolonged Iranian instability could open the door to Soviet influence in the oil-rich country – a central Cold War concern.

By early 1953 the U.S. government, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorized the CIA to prepare a covert plan to remove Mossadegh and restore effective power to the shah, who at the time held a more ceremonial role. British intelligence had been pushing a similar agenda, and the two services collaborated on both the strategy and its implementation.

The operational details, especially those declassified in recent decades, paint a striking picture of a carefully planned clandestine political intervention that was successful, rather than a simple military invasion.

A far cry from ‘bomb and hope’

The British-American budget for the joint plan was modest by military standards. It was aimed at propaganda and influence operations, and it sought to shape public perception and political support.

It was composed of three elements. First it funded newspapers and printed propaganda designed to discredit Mossadegh, portraying him as corrupt or sympathetic to communism. The propaganda also promoted fears of instability and communist infiltration.

Second, according to declassified histories, agents staged “false flag” incidents – attacks attributed to communists, for example – to stoke fear and backlash against Mossadegh among religious and conservative groups.

Third, the coup planners attempted to engage influential clerical leaders and organizations to amplify anti-Mossadegh sentiment.

Shaping the crowds on Tehran’s streets proved critical to the operation. The CIA organized demonstrators to pose as pro-shah protesters, including paying individuals to chant slogans and confront Mossadegh supporters.

These orchestrated demonstrations climaxed on Aug. 19, 1953, when pro-shah forces and sympathetic leaders in the Iranian military – with CIA financial and logistical backing – seized key points of the country, confronted Mossadegh loyalists and helped topple his government. Estimates suggest around 200 to 300 people were killed in the chaotic fighting in Tehran.

What might have been, and what might be

The Mossadegh coup occurred in a less transparent world. However – and regardless of how you feel about it – the coup suggests the value of having a strategy to accomplish political change and, beyond Israel, bringing allies along if possible.

So far, Trump has called for the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guard to lay down their arms. But the Trump administration has provided no guidance on how to do so, or to whom to do so.

Surely, the administration should be able to devise a plan for potential political change in Iran. It has insight from the years it has spent negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. Recent events suggest the extent of Israeli, if not American, penetration of Iran.

In 2018, for instance, Israel’s Mossad national intelligence agency broke into an Iranian facility and stole archives on Iran’s nuclear activities, 55,000 pages and another 55,000 files stored on CDs.

In June 2025, Israel conducted covert drone operations deep inside Iran, in concert with airstrikes on Iranian missile and military infrastructure. Mossad reportedly established an undercover drone network and launched explosive drones to neutralize air defenses and missile launchers before the main attack.

The successful targeting of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his close associates in the latest round of airstrikes suggests the extent of likely Israeli monitoring of Iranian communications by Mossad and the CIA.

Crises tend to put pressure on governments to open communications channels, and the take from any successful eavesdropping might be passed to opposition groups to help them organize and avoid capture.

If Israel can smuggle explosive drones into Iran, it should be able to make the satellite internet provider Starlink and its kin available to enable the opposition to better – and more safely – organize.

It is late in the day to emulate the Mossadegh coup with information operations, and it is probably more difficult in an era of ubiquitous social media, not newspapers. But it’s not too late to try.

I believe those brave opposition elements in Iran, who have been killed by their government and bombed by the United States and Israel, deserve no less.

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

The Oregon Supreme Court on Feb. 5, 2026, issued a ruling that will have a wide impact. More than 1,400 criminal cases had to be dismissed, the justices ruled, due to lack of adequate counsel available for defendants.

Like other states, Oregon must provide defendants with legal representation if they cannot afford attorneys on their own. But Oregon has less than one-third of the attorneys it needs to provide adequate defense for indigents, or people who can’t afford counsel on their own.

Shortages of this scope are common around the country. Pennsylvania faces a similar shortage of about 30% of the public defenders it needs, with insufficient numbers of attorneys in nearly every county. New Mexico needs 67% more attorneys to provide effective counsel. Kansas needs 277 more public defenders, or roughly triple its current number.

As public policy researchers who study legal defense issues, we believe it’s clear that such shortages have repercussions throughout the criminal justice system.

Without enough lawyers providing indigent defense, defendants sit in jail longer, plead without guidance and risk wrongful convictions. Prosecutors face delays in clearing their cases. Court dockets slow, costs rise and public trust declines.

In other words, indigent defense shortages harm not only defendants but the justice system as a whole.

Rights to an attorney

The Sixth Amendment guarantees individuals facing criminal charges the right to defense counsel, at government expense if required. This right was clarified by a landmark Supreme Court case in 1963, Gideon v. Wainwright. The court ruled that states are required to provide attorneys to defendants who cannot afford an attorney.

About 80% to 90% of state defendants and more than 90% of federal defendants cannot afford a lawyer. The exact rate varies by state, year and type of charge, but it generally falls well above 50% of all criminal cases.

Fulfilling the promise made in Gideon often falls to public defenders and private lawyers appointed by courts. Sixty-three years after the decision, the pool of lawyers willing to fulfill this promise is rapidly shrinking, aging and is overburdened, with lawyers sometimes working without pay.

Texas reflects this national problem. There are too few lawyers handling too many cases, putting the whole criminal justice system at risk. In a research report for the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, our team at Texas A&M University found that the state lost 1,345 attorneys who had been handling indigent defense cases between 2014 and 2023, or about one-fourth of all such attorneys. That decline happened even as the total number of lawyers in Texas grew by more than 25,000.

The problem is worse in rural areas, where judges cannot find enough attorneys to appoint, slowing court operations. In Texas, 27% of attorneys in rural counties are already overburdened and exceeding recommended caseload guidelines.

“I understand the irony of a prosecutor advocating for money for a public defender office, but at the end of the day it would help the county carry out its constitutional obligation,” Val Verde County prosecutor David Martinez told the Texas Tribune. “It would save the county hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run.”

Fewer attorneys available

This problem is not new. A 2004 report from the American Bar Association outlined funding shortages that hampered hiring of defense counsel, leading to inexperienced and sometimes incompetent lawyers handling excessive caseloads.

But the problem has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruption of the labor market.

Our research shows that attorneys who take indigent defense cases often do so out of a strong sense of civic duty and commitment to public service. Attorneys are asked to do far more than just apply the law. They regularly help clients navigate housing, transportation, substance use and mental health needs. Without a strong sense of calling, many attorneys choose other areas of practice instead of public defense.

Some attorneys with a sense of motivation are still unable to join public service. Citing the cost of repaying law school loans, they enter private practice instead.

No simple solutions

The shortage of attorneys willing to take indigent defense cases is a serious policy problem. Solving it requires expanding the pool of attorneys who are available to take these cases – both the attorneys who are practicing today and the attorneys who will enter the profession in the future.

Policymakers have mainly focused on expanding the pool of existing attorneys. The most common tools include increasing appointment fees, offering additional financial incentives and creating or expanding public defender offices.

These approaches can help in the short term, but their effects are limited. Raising fees rarely brings new attorneys into indigent defense; instead, it often lures attorneys from neighboring jurisdictions that already face shortages.

Raising fees for private lawyers also fails to address public defender offices, where attorneys are salaried and often paid less than prosecutors. Loan forgiveness programs can help recruitment and retention; research shows they matter for public service careers, but these programs are uneven across states and uncertain over time.

Financial incentives alone will not solve a workforce problem rooted in supply. A sustainable solution requires expanding the pool of prospective attorneys. We believe it would help for recruitment to begin much earlier, at the high school level, especially in rural areas, and continue through college and law school.

Current efforts tend to focus only on law students who are already committed to legal careers. Partnerships between counties, state agencies, bar associations, universities and community organizations could help build pipelines leading to public defense careers. They might offer, for example, internships and mentoring, or reduce barriers for students who want to serve their communities.

Expanding the pool of attorneys will require years of coordinated investment across states, counties, courts, law schools and the legal profession. Short-term incentives can prop up overburdened systems, but long-term recruitment will be needed to keep courts functioning and fully protect the constitutional right to counsel.

Georges Naufal has received funding from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission.

Emily Naiser has received funding from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Does politics stress you out? Did the last election cause you to lose sleep, lose your temper or lose a friend? If so, you weren’t alone.

For the better part of two decades, the American Psychological Association has documented a steady increase in the phenomenon of “political stress” among American voters. However, research and reporting during that same period have focused primarily on the political consequences of increasing polarization and division rather than the psychological consequences of the modern political climate.

As a political scientist studying how the public engages with politics and media, I wondered: What does it mean to live in a political environment that is highly confrontational, emotionally charged and difficult to escape? And how does that environment affect people over time?

During the 2024 presidential election, I teamed up with three colleagues to answer those questions. Our book, The Anxious State: Stress Polarization, and Elections in America, published in January 2026, summarizes what we learned.

While several features of the modern political landscape contribute to political stress, one culprit in particular is alarmingly efficient at converting politics into chronic stress – social media.

Political stress builds fast

We conducted four large, nationally representative surveys tracking Americans’ political attitudes and well-being, one every three months over the course of 2024. Across our election year surveys, roughly 4 in 10 American adults consistently reported that politics had caused them to experience at least one significant stress reaction in the past month. These included nontrivial conflicts with friends and family, sleep disruptions, lost tempers and being unable to mentally or emotionally disengage from politics.

In a country of roughly 260 million adults, that amounts to well over 100 million people experiencing measurable political stress in any given month.

In just one example, at each point in 2024, around 17% of American adults reported losing sleep over politics. This translates to roughly 44 million people nationwide. Sleep loss is not a trivial inconvenience. Extensive research shows that insufficient sleep is associated with impaired cognitive function, chronic health problems, diminished productivity and an increase in traffic accidents, just to name a few.

Our findings point to similar trends from the effects of lost tempers, fractured social networks and excessive political rumination. And while some degree of political stress might be expected in the lead-up to a highly consequential election, what surprised us most was how little these numbers changed over time. Despite a year filled with dramatic political events, reported levels of political stress rarely budged.

This stability suggests that political stress is no longer driven primarily by isolated moments of breaking news or electoral upheaval. Instead, it appears to be sustained by the environment in which people now encounter politics – and that environment is increasingly shaped by social media.

Why social media is different

Social media differs from earlier forms of political communication in a crucial way: Content is not presented chronologically or editorially; it is presented algorithmically. Platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok are designed to maximize attention and engagement, which means they privilege content that provokes strong emotional reactions.

In other words, content that causes outrage, fear, moral condemnation and conflict is simply more likely to keep users scrolling, clicking, commenting and sharing.

As a result, political information on social media is more likely to reach people through a sensationalized and emotionally charged lens than information encountered through traditional news sources. And given the architecture of social networks, this content tends to reach users whether they seek it out or not.

Time spent online is stressful, but engagement makes it worse

Our findings show that even passive exposure to political content on social media is linked to elevated political stress. But active engagement – such as likes, reposts and comments – makes the problem substantially worse.

People who reported frequently encountering, commenting on or sharing political content online consistently exhibited the highest overall levels of political stress in our survey. Compared with those who primarily consumed political information passively and without engaging, active participants were far more likely to report losing sleep, losing their temper and feeling unable to disengage from politics.

In other words, the more that social media turns users from observers into participants in political conflict, the greater the psychological toll appears to be.

A generational divide

These effects, while substantial, were not distributed evenly across the population.

Younger Americans, particularly members of Gen Z, reported higher levels of political stress associated with social media use than older cohorts. This is not especially surprising. Younger adults are more likely to rely on social media as a primary source of political information.

For a generation that has never known a political environment without algorithmically curated feeds, the boundary between politics and everyday life is especially thin. Politics does not arrive at scheduled times, through discrete channels. Rather, it is interspersed with expressions of social identity, entertainment and peer interaction. And this constant exposure comes with a psychological cost.

Social media alone certainly isn’t to blame for the anxious and divisive state of America’s political climate. In our research, we identified a number of factors that contribute to Americans’ current levels of exhaustion with politics, including sharp increases in partisan hostility and negative – often uncivil – campaign tactics.

But social media nonetheless stands out for how efficiently it amplifies this stress – and that is unlikely to change unless and until voters become more aware that their emotions and well-being are being negatively influenced by the very platforms they turn to for information and connection.

I don’t own or “work for” the publisher selling our recent book, but the exposure for these data would presumably benefit both they and me.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Shortly after the opening salvo of U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026 – with missiles targeting cities across the country, some of which killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – President Donald Trump declared the objective was to destroy Iran’s military capabilities and give rise to a change in government.

Framing the operation as a war of liberation, Trump called on Iranians to “take over your government.”

In the first days alone, Israel dropped over 2,000 bombs on Iranian targets, equal to half the tonnage of the 12-day Israel-Iran conflict in June 2025. Heavy U.S. bombing, meanwhile, has targeted Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as well as ballistic missile and aerial defense sites.

The destruction is real. But, as an international relations scholar, I know that destruction is not the same as political success. And the historical record of U.S. bombing campaigns aimed at regime change shows that the gap between the two – the point at which Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya campaigns all stalled – is where wars go to die.

Destruction is not strategy

Decades of scholarship dating back to World War I on using air power to force political change has established a consistent finding: Bombing can degrade military capacity and destroy infrastructure, but it does not produce governments more cooperative with the attacker.

Political outcomes require political processes – negotiation, institution-building, legitimate transitions of power.

Bombs cannot create any of these. Instead, what they reliably create is destruction, and destruction generates its own dynamics: rallying among the population, power vacuums, radicalization and cycles of retaliation.

The American record confirms this. In 2003, the George W. Bush administration launched “Shock and Awe” in Iraq with the explicit aim of regime change. The military objective was achieved in weeks. The political objective was never achieved at all.

The U.S. decision to disband the Iraqi army created a vacuum filled not by democratic reformers but by sectarian militias and eventually ISIS. The regime that eventually emerged was not friendly to American interests. It was deeply influenced by Iran.

In 2011, the Obama administration led a NATO air campaign in Libya that quickly expanded from civilian protection into regime change. Dictator Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown and killed.

But there was no plan for political transition. Chaos and political instability have endured since. Asked what his “worst mistake” was as president, Barack Obama said, “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” Libya remains a failed state today.

The intervention also sent a powerful signal to countries pursuing nuclear weapons: Gaddhafi had dismantled his nuclear program in 2003. Eight years later, NATO destroyed his regime.

Even Kosovo, often cited as the success story of coercive air power, undermines the case. Seventy-eight days of NATO bombing did not, by themselves, compel Slobodan Milosevic, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to withdraw.

What changed was the credible threat of a ground invasion combined with Russia’s withdrawal of diplomatic support. The political outcome – contested statehood, ongoing ethnic tensions – is hardly the stable governance that air power advocates promise.

The pattern is consistent: The United States repeatedly confuses its unmatched capacity to destroy from the air with the ability to dictate political outcomes.

Why this war?

The recent U.S. attacks on Iran raise a fundamental question: Why is the United States fighting this war at all?

The administration has declared regime change as its objective, justifying the campaign on the grounds of Iran’s nuclear program and missile capabilities.

But that nuclear program was being actively negotiated in Geneva days before the strikes. And Iran’s foreign minister told NBC the two sides were close to a deal. Then the bombs fell.

Iran did not attack America. And it currently does not have the capability to threaten the American homeland. What Iran challenges is Israel’s regional military dominance, and I believe it is Israel’s objective of neutralizing a rival that is driving this operation.

Israel targeted 30 senior Iranian leaders in the opening strikes. Israeli officials described it as a preemptive attack to “remove threats to the State of Israel.” I see the strategic logic for these killings as Israel’s, and Americans are absorbing the costs.

U.S. military bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have taken Iranian missile fire. American service members are in harm’s way – three have already been killed – not because Iran attacked them, but I believe because their president committed them to someone else’s war without a clear endgame.

Each coercive step in this conflict – from the 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear deal, to the 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander, to the June 2025 strikes – was framed as restoring leverage.

Each produced the opposite, eliminating diplomatic off-ramps, accelerating the very threats it aimed to contain.

The regime is not one man

Decapitation strikes assume that removing a leader removes the obstacle to political change. But Iran’s political system is institutional — the Guardian Council, the Assembly of Experts and the Revolutionary Guard have survived for four decades.

The system has succession mechanisms, but they were designed for orderly transitions, not for active bombardment. The group most likely to fill the vacuum is the Revolutionary Guard, whose institutional interest lies in escalation, not accommodation.

There is a deeper irony. The largest protests since 1979 swept Iran just weeks ago. A genuine domestic opposition was growing. The strikes have almost certainly destroyed that movement’s prospects.

Decades of research on rally-around-the-flag effects – the tendency of populations to unite behind their government when attacked by a foreign power – confirms that external attacks fuse regime and nation, even when citizens despise their leaders.

Iranians who were chanting “death to the dictator” are now watching foreign bombs fall on their cities during Ramadan, hearing reports of over 100 children killed in a strike on a girls school in Minab.

Trump’s call for Iranians to “seize control of your destiny” echoes a familiar pattern. In 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in the name of freedom.

That produced the Shah, the Shah’s brutal reign led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the revolution produced the Islamic Republic now being bombed.

What comes next? And what guarantee is there that whatever emerges will be any friendlier to Israel or the United States?

What does success look like?

This is the question no one in Washington has answered. If the objective is regime change, who governs 92 million people after?

If the objective is stability, why are American bases across the Middle East absorbing missile fire?

There is no American theory of political endgame in Iran — only a theory of destruction. That theory has been tested in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – and Iran itself over the preceding eight months. It has failed every time, not because of poor execution, but because the premise is flawed.

Air power can raze a government’s infrastructure. It cannot build the political order that must replace it. Iran, with its sophisticated military, near-nuclear capability, proxy networks spanning the region and a regime now martyred by foreign attack, will likely not be the exception.

U.S. law prohibits the assassination of foreign leaders, and instead Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader while American warplanes filled the skies overhead. Washington has called the result freedom at hand, but it has not answered the only question that matters: What comes next?

Farah N. Jan 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

If you gathered every American with a prison record into one contiguous territory and admitted it to the union, you would create the 12th-largest state. It would be home to at least 7 million to 8 million people and hold a dozen votes in the Electoral College.

In a close presidential race, this hypothetical state of the formerly incarcerated could decide who wins the White House.

It may sound far-fetched to conceive of former felons determining the outcome of a presidential election, not by voting but by failing to vote. But there’s a real chance they already have – not just once, but twice. That’s in addition to affecting the outcomes of some U.S. Senate and gubernatorial elections.

I am a political scientist with a long-standing interest in the question of why mass incarceration rates vary so widely across states. My 2024 book, “The Jailer’s Reckoning,” explores that question and measures its political, social and economic impacts.

One of my findings is that the sheer number of people who’ve cycled through prisons over the past 40 years is influencing election outcomes.

Scholars vigorously debate the reasons why the United States locks up more of its citizens than any other liberal democracy, or even most authoritarian regimes. Less examined are the consequences of this decades-long social experiment in mass incarceration.

The consequences, however, likely include affecting the results of close elections. Incarceration certainly plays a key role in depressing voter turnout, which lags, in no small part, because felony convictions have made so many people ineligible.

Mass incarceration has led to a fast-growing bloc of citizens who either are legally barred from voting or have just stopped bothering. Under the right circumstances, this slice of the electorate is large enough to tip an election.

Imprisonment and the franchise

Felony conviction reduces political engagement, sometimes entirely. Inmates are legally barred from voting in all but two states, Maine and Vermont. Ten states bar ex-felons from voting either permanently or for some period of time, depending on the crime, absent unusual circumstances such as a governor’s pardon.

In Idaho, Oklahoma and Texas, a criminal record means that as many as 1 in 10 citizens are ineligible to vote. Among Black Americans, that number can jump to 1 in 5.

However, even when legally eligible, ex-convicts rarely exercise the right to vote. Turnout rates among this population may be as low as 10%. Contact with the criminal justice system lowers political trust, which in turn reduces the likelihood of political engagement among ex-convicts.

Although scholars debate the exact partisan tilt of this potential constituency, there’s a consensus that it is disproportionately Democratic. The upper end of estimates suggest that if this group showed up to the polls, 70% would cast ballots for Democrats.

Even estimates that are much lower sketch a picture of an alternative political world. In 2000, roughly 7% of Florida’s 11.7 million voting-age residents were disenfranchised due to past convictions. They represented about 800,000 potential voters.

If 10% of them had voted and, say, 55% voted Democratic for president, that would have translated to a 6,000-vote swing for Vice President Al Gore. In reality, Texas Gov. George W. Bush won the state – and with it the presidency – by 537 votes.

Florida Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott may have owed their initial, tight gubernatorial victories to felony disenfranchisement, since the outcomes could have been much different if former felons had the franchise.

In 2018, Florida voters did approve a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights automatically to most former felons. But a subsequent law requiring felons to pay off fines and fees has kept nearly 1 million Floridians from being able to vote, according to the Sentencing Project, a group that opposes mass incarceration.

An electorate in the shadows

Serving time behind bars or having a felony record is not a social anomaly. It is an increasingly normalized feature of American life.

The most careful scholarly estimate suggests that at least 20 million Americans have served time in prison or lived under felony supervision, or both. That’s now a conservative estimate, as it is based on 2010 data.

Given their lack of voting habits, the millions of people in this group constitute a vast shadow electorate, far larger than the roughly 2% of American citizens legally ineligible to vote due to being currently incarcerated.

These disenfranchised or absent voters are a quiet force with the potential to reshape American democracy. The statistical models in my book show that in statewide races this constituency represents roughly a 1- or 2-percentage-point swing.

That might not sound like much, and in single-party strongholds it is not. In genuinely competitive statewide elections, however, a percentage point or two can be decisive.

Consider the 2016 presidential election. That year, the Electoral College outcome was decided by Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Donald Trump won all three states by less than a percentage point. Again, the outcome could easily have been different if voting rights for former felons were a given.

Kevin B. Smith 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 rounds of nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran failed to persuade President Donald Trump that a solution to the two country’s nuclear impasse lay in diplomacy, rather than military action. A perceived lack of progress in the last of those indirect negotiations on Feb 26, 2026, was enough to prompt Trump to green-light a massive onslaught of missiles that has degraded Iran’s offensive capabilities and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several members of Iran’s senior military leadership.

In response, Tehran has launched strikes across the Middle East, targeting Israel as well as Gulf states that host U.S. airbases. At least three Americans have been killed.

While the scale of the U.S., Israeli and Iranian strikes has taken some observers by surprise, the failure of the talks that led to them was all too predictable.

For diplomacy to be successful, both sides need to agree on the issues subject to negotiation and also believe that peaceful resolution is more valuable than military engagement. This clearly was not the case in the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks of 2025 and 2026.

As someone who has researched nonproliferation and U.S. national security for two decades and was involved in State Department nuclear diplomacy, I know that even under more favorable conditions, negotiations often fail. And the chances for success in the Iran-U.S. talks were always slim. In fact, publicly stated red lines by both sides were incompatible with each other – meaning negotiations were always likely to fail.

Iran wanted the talks confined only to guarantees about the civilian purpose of its nuclear program, not its missile program, support of regional proxy groups or human rights abuses. Essentially it wanted a return to 2015’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which halted Iran’s development of nuclear technology and stockpiling of nuclear material in exchange for lifting multiple international economic sanctions placed on Iran.

Meanwhile, Trump insisted on limits to Iran’s ballistic missiles and the cutting of Tehran’s support for regional militias. These were not included in the 2015 agreement, with parties ultimately deciding that a nuclear deal was better than the alternative of no deal at all.

False hope

Nevertheless, there had been a slim chance for a breakthrough of late.

While the positions of both the U.S. and Iranian governments had ossified since May 8, 2018 – the date when the first Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal – there had been some recent movement by Iran, according to former U.S. diplomats involved in negotiations during the Obama and Biden administrations.

With U.S. military building up in the region, Iran appeared more willing to negotiate within the nuclear arena than before. There were plausible solutions to the issue of Iran’s enrichment of uranium capabilities, including maintaining a minimum domestic capacity to develop medical isotopes and a removal of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium necessary to build a nuclear bomb.

There was less openness on other points of contention. Notably, there was no movement on ballistic missiles, which had always been a red line. On the eve of the round of discussions held in Geneva on Feb. 17, Trump stated: “I think they want to make a deal.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, noted progress over the “guiding principles” of the talks.

But a lot of this optimism appeared to have dissipated by the time the two sides held another round of talks on Feb. 26. While mediator Oman’s negotiators continued to talk of progress, the U.S. side was noticeably silent. Reporting since has suggested that Trump was displeased with the way the talks had gone, setting the stage for the Feb. 28 attack.

Military brinkmanship

The threat of military action was, of course, a continued backdrop to the talks.

The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group was deployed near Iranian waters in January as a signal of support to the Iranian protesters. The USS Gerald R Ford carrier group joined the buildup before the last round of talks.

Trump warned Iran that “if they don’t make a deal, the consequences are very steep.”

The thinking may have been that Iran, weakened by both the June 2025 U.S.-Israeli strikes and diminished capabilities of Tehran proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, was playing a weak hand in the talks.

Yet Iran also signaled a willingness to engage in military action. In the run-up to the last round of talks, Iran held military exercises and closed the Strait of Hormuz for a live-fire drill. Leaders in Tehran also declared that they would not restrain its response to another attack. The world is seeing that now, with a response that has seen Iran launch missiles across the Middle East and at rival Gulf nations.

Optimism has fallen before

Trump isn’t the first president to fail to secure a nuclear deal, although he is the first to respond to that failure with military action.

The Biden administration publicly pledged to strengthen and renew the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2021. However, Iran had significantly increased its nuclear technical capability during the years that had passed since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action collapsed. That increased the difficulty – just to return to the previous deal would have required Iran to give up the new technical capability it had achieved for no new benefits.

That window closed in 2022 after Iran removed all of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s surveillance and monitoring under the deal and started enriching uranium to near-weapons levels and stockpiling sufficient amounts for several nuclear weapons. The IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, maintains only normal safeguards that Iran had agreed to before the plan of action.

Optimism also existed for a short time in spring 2025 during five rounds of indirect talks that preceded the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June as part of a broader Israeli attack.

A more unstable Middle East

When I worked in multilateral nuclear diplomacy for the U.S. State Department, we saw talks fail in 2009 regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, after six years of on-and-off progress. The consequence of that failure is a more unstable East Asia and renewed interest by South Korea in developing nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, the same dynamic appears to be playing out in the Middle East.

Military strikes have already killed more than 200 in Iran and across the region. A wider war in the Middle East is a possibility, and should the Iranian regime survive, it may commit to developing nuclear weapons given that the lack of them proved no deterrent to U.S. and Israeli military action.

Talks do not necessarily need an end point – in the shape of a deal – for them to have purpose. Under situations of increased military brinkmanship, talks could have helped the U.S. and Iran step back from the edge, build trust and perhaps develop better political relations – even if an actual deal remained out of reach.

Instead, Trump opted to go a different route.

This article includes sections originally published by The Conversation U.S. on Feb. 17, 2026.

Nina Srinivasan Rathbun 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