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This Presidents Day, I’ve been thinking about George Washington − not at his finest hour, but possibly at his worst.

In 1754, a 22-year-old Washington marched into the wilderness surrounding Pittsburgh with more ambition than sense. He volunteered to travel to the Ohio Valley on a mission to deliver a letter from Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, to the commander of French troops in the Ohio territory. This military mission sparked an international war, cost him his first command and taught him lessons that would shape the American Revolution.

As a professor of early American history who has written two books on the American Revolution, I’ve learned that Washington’s time spent in the Fort Duquesne area taught him valuable lessons about frontier warfare, international diplomacy and personal resilience.

The mission to expel the French

In 1753, Dinwiddie decided to expel French fur trappers and military forces from the strategic confluence of three mighty waterways that crisscrossed the interior of the continent: the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers. This confluence is where downtown Pittsburgh now stands, but at the time it was wilderness.

King George II authorized Dinwiddie to use force, if necessary, to secure lands that Virginia was claiming as its own.

As a major in the Virginia provincial militia, Washington wanted the assignment to deliver Dinwiddie’s demand that the French retreat. He believe the assignment would secure him a British army commission.

Washington received his marching orders on Oct. 31, 1753. He traveled to Fort Le Boeuf in northwestern Pennsylvania and returned a month later with a polite but firm “no” from the French.

Dinwiddie promoted Washington from major to lieutenant colonel and ordered him to return to the Ohio River Valley in April 1754 with 160 men. Washington quickly learned that French forces of about 500 men had already constructed the formidable Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio. It was at this point that he faced his first major test as a military leader. Instead of falling back to gather more substantial reinforcements, he pushed forward. This decision reflected an aggressive, perhaps naive, brand of leadership characterized by a desire for action over caution.

Washington’s initial confidence was high. He famously wrote to his brother that there was “something charming” in the sound of whistling bullets.

The Jumonville affair and an international crisis

Perhaps the most controversial moment of Washington’s early leadership occurred on May 28, 1754, about 40 miles south of Fort Duquesne. Guided by the Seneca leader Tanacharison – known as the “Half King” – and 12 Seneca warriors, Washington and his detachment of 40 militiamen ambushed a party of 35 French Canadian militiamen led by Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. The Jumonville affair lasted only 15 minutes, but its repercussions were global.

Ten of the French, including Jumonville, were killed. Washington’s inability to control his Native American allies – the Seneca warriors executed Jumonville – exposed a critical gap in his early leadership. He lacked the ability to manage the volatile intercultural alliances necessary for frontier warfare.

Washington also allowed one enemy soldier to escape to warn Fort Duquesne. This skirmish effectively ignited the French and Indian War, and Washington found himself at the center of a burgeoning international crisis.

Defeat at Fort Necessity

Washington then made the fateful decision to dig in and call for reinforcements instead of retreating in the face of inevitable French retaliation. Reinforcements arrived: 200 Virginia militiamen and 100 British regulars. They brought news from Dinwiddie: congratulations on Washington’s victory and his promotion to colonel.

His inexperience showed in his design of Fort Necessity. He positioned the small, circular palisade in a meadow depression, where surrounding wooded high ground allowed enemy marksmen to fire down with impunity. Worse still, Tanacharison, disillusioned with Washington’s leadership and the British failure to follow through with promised support, had already departed with his warriors weeks earlier. When the French and their Native American allies finally attacked on July 3, heavy rains flooded the shallow trenches, soaking gunpowder and leaving Washington’s men vulnerable inside their poorly designed fortification.

The battle of Fort Necessity was a grueling, daylong engagement in the mud and rain. Approximately 700 French and Native American allies surrounded the combined force of 460 Virginian militiamen and British regulars. Despite being outnumbered and outmaneuvered, Washington maintained order among his demoralized troops. When French commander Louis Coulon de Villiers – Jumonville’s brother – offered a truce, Washington faced the most humbling moment of his young life: the necessity of surrender. His decision to capitulate was a pragmatic act of leadership that prioritized the survival of his men over personal honor.

The surrender also included a stinging lesson in the nuances of diplomacy. Because Washington could not read French, he signed a document that used the word “l’assassinat,” which translates to “assassination,” to describe Jumonville’s death. This inadvertent admission that he had ordered the assassination of a French diplomat became propaganda for the French, teaching Washington the vital importance of optics in international relations.

Lessons that forged a leader

The 1754 campaign ended in a full retreat to Virginia, and Washington resigned his commission shortly thereafter. Yet, this period was essential in transforming Washington from a man seeking personal glory into one who understood the weight of responsibility.

He learned that leadership required more than courage – it demanded understanding of terrain, cultural awareness of allies and enemies, and political acumen. The strategic importance of the Ohio River Valley, a gateway to the continental interior and vast fur-trading networks, made these lessons all the more significant.

Ultimately, the hard lessons Washington learned at the threshold of Fort Duquesne in 1754 provided the foundational experience for his later role as commander in chief of the Continental Army. The decisions he made in Pennsylvania and the Ohio wilderness, including the impulsive attack, the poor choice of defensive ground and the diplomatic oversight, were the very errors he would spend the rest of his military career correcting.

Though he did not capture Fort Duquesne in 1754, the young George Washington left the woods of Pennsylvania with a far more valuable prize: the tempered, resilient spirit of a leader who had learned from his mistakes.

Christopher Magra 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

When it comes to national politics, Americans are fiercely divided across a range of issues, including gun control, election security and vaccines. It’s not new for Republicans and Democrats to be at odds over issues, but things have reached a point where even the idea of compromising appears to be anathema, making it more difficult to solve thorny problems.

But things are much less heated at the local level. A survey of more than 1,400 local officials by the Carnegie Corporation and CivicPulse found that local governments are “largely insulated from the harshest effects of polarization.” Communities with fewer than 50,000 residents proved especially resilient to partisan dysfunction.

Why this difference? As a political scientist, I believe that lessons from the local level not only open a window onto how polarization works but also the dynamics and tools that can help reduce it.

Problems are more concrete

Local governments deal with concrete issues – sometimes literally, when it comes to paving roads and fixing potholes. In general, cities and counties handle day-to-day functions, such as garbage pickup, running schools and enforcing zoning rules. Addressing tangible needs keeps local leaders’ attention fixed on specific problems that call out for specific solutions, not lengthy ideological debates.

By contrast, a lot of national political conflict in the U.S. involves symbolic issues, such as debates about identity and values on topics such as race, abortion and transgender rights. These battles are often divisive, even more so than purely ideological disagreements, because they can activate tribal differences and prove more resistant to compromise.

Such arguments at the national level, or on social media, can lead to wildly inaccurate stereotypes about people with opposing views. Today’s partisans often perceive their opponents as far more extreme than they actually are, or they may stereotype them – imagining that all Republicans are wealthy, evangelical culture warriors, for instance, or conversely being convinced that all Democrats are radical urban activists. In terms of ideology, the median members of both parties, in fact, look similar.

These kinds of misperceptions can fuel hostility.

Local officials, however, live among the human beings they represent, whose complexity defies caricature. Living and interacting in the same communities leads to greater recognition of shared interests and values, according to the Carnegie/CivicPulse survey.

Meaningful interaction with others, including partisans of the opposing party, reduces prejudice about them. Local government provides a natural space where identities overlap.

People are complicated

In national U.S. politics today, large groups of individuals are divided not only by party but a variety of other factors, including race, religion, geography and social networks. When these differences align with ideology, political disagreement can feel like an existential threat.

Such differences are not always as pronounced at the local level. A neighbor who disagrees about property taxes could be the coach of your child’s soccer team. Your fellow school board member might share your concerns about curriculum but vote differently in presidential elections.

These cross-cutting connections remind us that political opponents are not a monolithic enemy but complex individuals. When people discover they have commonalities outside of politics with others holding opposing views, polarization can decrease significantly.

Finally, most local elections are technically nonpartisan. Keeping party labels off ballots allows voters to judge candidates as individuals and not merely as Republicans or Democrats.

National implications

None of this means local politics are utopian.

Like water, polarization tends to run downhill, from the national level to local contests, particularly in major cities where candidates for mayor and other office are more likely to run as partisans. Local governments also see culture war debates, notably in the area of public school instruction.

Nevertheless, the relative partisan calm of local governance suggests that polarization is not inevitable. It emerges from specific conditions that can be altered.

Polarization might be reduced by creating more opportunities for cross-partisan collaboration around concrete problems. Philanthropists and even states might invest in local journalism that covers pragmatic governance rather than partisan conflict. More cities and counties could adopt changes in election law that would de-emphasize party labels where they add little information for voters.

Aside from structural changes, individual Americans can strive to recognize that their neighbors are not the cardboard cutouts they might imagine when thinking about “the other side.” Instead, Americans can recognize that even political opponents are navigating similar landscapes of community, personal challenges and time constraints, with often similar desires to see their roads paved and their children well educated.

The conditions shaping our interactions matter enormously. If conditions change, perhaps less partisan rancor will be the result.

Lauren Hall is a Distinguished Fellow for the Study of Liberalism and a Free Society with the Institute for Humane Studies. She was previously a Pluralism Fellow with the Mercatus Center.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The January 2026 release of additional files related to the Justice Department’s investigation of convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell has brought renewed attention to the late financier’s connections to the world’s rich and powerful.

However, the failure to redact identifying victim information and explicit photos has also brought unwanted attention to survivors. The lack of consideration for their welfare illustrates how legal proceedings can add to child sex trafficking victims’ existing trauma and burden instead of offering a stable path forward.

Some states have passed laws in recent years to protect child victims of sex trafficking. But at the same time, most states have passed laws that allow those same children to be arrested or prosecuted for prostitution. It’s a tug of war between advocates, law enforcement and policymakers to determine the best approach for keeping vulnerable children safe from pimps, predators and dangerous family members.

Often these intentions to “keep kids safe” end up harming the very children the laws are supposed to protect. This is done by identifying them as criminals and not victims.

As a sociologist and scholar who researches the commercial sexual exploitation of children, I believe Americans have to look at the many different ways states treat sexually exploited minors to fully understand this issue and the harm that is being done.

Retraumatizing victims

When approved in 2000, the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act established that children under 18 who experience commercial sexual exploitation are sex trafficking victims.

Criminally charging a child with prostitution, as most states allow, asserts they are willfully participating in the commercial sex trade, while identifying a minor as a sex trafficking victim recognizes they are not in this situation by choice.

Some states require minors to prove a third party forced, deceived or coerced them into prostitution to be considered a child sex trafficking victim. Their innocence, despite their age, is not automatically assumed. This approach risks retraumatizing victims by labeling and stigmatizing them as criminal, as voluntary participants in the commercial sex trade.

Examining these state statutes is important because these minors are more likely to interact with local law enforcement than federal agents. That’s because in the U.S. federalist system, states have more power than the national government to set rules regarding crime.

Arresting and prosecuting minors for prostitution

As of 2025, 15 states do not arrest and prosecute children for prostitution, while seven states allow a minor to be arrested but not prosecuted for this charge, according to my unpublished research. As a result, sexually exploited minors can be criminalized in 35 states for their maltreatment because they can be charged or prosecuted for prostitution.

These laws determine how courts identify commercially sexually exploited minors, as victims or criminals.

Safe harbor laws have been adopted by 31 states as a legal strategy to divert sex trafficked minors from the criminal legal system. These measures connect them to specialized services, including trauma-informed health care and safe housing. But safe harbor statutes do not guarantee that children will be protected from arrest or prosecution for prostitution.

For example, New York’s 2008 safe harbor law requires a child charged with prostitution to admit they participated in this crime. The child also has to explain why they shouldn’t be held liable for the charge.

Another common strategy adopted by some states, including Rhode Island, requires a minor to fulfill a specific “child sex trafficking victim” definition – such as proving force, fraud or coercion by a third party – to avoid being criminalized for prostitution. Yet mandating sexually exploited minors to meet such requirements places the burden of proof on the child.

Conversely, Massachusetts’ safe harbor law does not afford any protections to minors, allowing a child to be arrested and prosecuted for prostitution. State and local police collaborate with child protective services and are trained not to arrest sexually exploited minors. But some officials argue law enforcement needs the threat of criminal charges to pressure minors they see as “noncompliant” to accept services or leave trafficking situations.

This approach blurs the line between criminal legal mechanisms and social work. It positions police as “helpers” who expect trafficked youth to accept support or risk criminal punishment.

In sum, unlike federal law, which recognizes all sexually exploited minors as victims, some state authorities present minors with a choice: comply with law enforcement or prove their innocence.

The adultification of child victims

These demands that shift legal burdens to sexually exploited minors signal that law enforcement and legislators expect them to have the capacity to make mature and rational choices. Yet, neuroscience research indicates juveniles don’t have the same decision-making capacity as adults until their early to mid-20s.

Further, sexually exploited minors with trauma may appear as uncooperative in stressful situations. Those include being detained or arrested for prostitution.

By blaming sex trafficked minors for “making bad choices,” the criminal legal system treats commercial sexual exploitation victims as complicit. And this may lead to prostitution charges instead of support. Furthermore, focusing on a child’s “choices” does not address the financial, familial and traumatic adversities that make victims vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation in the first place.

Commercial sexual exploitation risk factors include complex post-traumatic stress disorder, low socioeconomic status, limited educational access and child sexual abuse prior to this exploitation. That includes exploitation from fraught family living situations where a parent, relative or caregiver sexually exploits a child.

Racial inequality in prostitution charges

Similarly, racial bias has deeply influenced trafficking legislation.

In 1910, Congress passed The Mann Act, also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act. This measure framed commercial sexual exploitation as a problem affecting only white women and girls, erasing the exploitation of people of color.

This pattern continues today. Black and brown children in the U.S. are more likely to be arrested and detained for prostitution than all other racial groups. Children who live in states with higher levels of structural economic inequality, which affects children of color at higher rates that white children, are at higher risk of being arrested and prosecuted for prostitution.

My research with Keith Bentele indicates that states with higher levels of structural economic inequality are less likely to adopt legislation protecting children from arrest and prosecution for prostitution.

Increasing compassion for victims

Without addressing these structural inequalities and the lack of a social safety net, sex trafficked children, particularly children of color and LGBTQ+ youth, are at risk of facing further marginalization and criminalization for prostitution.

One state has risen above the rest in recognizing and addressing these systemic barriers. Minnesota’s “No Wrong Door” framework utilizes a public health approach and is regarded as the gold standard of state-level commercial sexual exploitation legislation.

Protecting youth up to age 24 from prostitution charges, Minnesota offers housing and medical services to victims instead of criminal punishment. It also coordinates trauma-informed training for professionals, such as police and social workers.

An evaluation of this model indicates that it has successfully increased compassion for youth victims in the community, particularly among law enforcement.

Mallika Sunder, a student at Wellesley College and intern in its Wellesley Centers for Women, co-authored this article.

Kate Price 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

In the first weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a strange pattern emerged in Western media coverage. Headlines oscillated between confidence and confusion. Kyiv would fall within days, one story would claim, then another would argue that Ukraine was winning. Russian forces were described as incompetent, then as a terrifying existential threat to NATO.

Analysts spoke with certainty about strategy, morale and endgames, but often reversed themselves within weeks. To many news consumers, this felt like bias – either pro-Ukraine framing or anti-Russia narratives. Some commentators accused Western media outlets of cheerleading or propaganda.

But I’d argue that something more subtle was happening. The problem was not that journalists were biased. It was that journalism could not keep pace with the war’s informational structure. What looked like ideological bias was, more often, temporal lag.

I serve in the Navy as a war gamer. The most critical part of my job is identifying institutional failures. Trust is one of the most critical and, in this sense, the media is losing ground.

The gap between what people experience in real time and what journalism can responsibly publish has widened. This gap is partly where trust erodes. Social media collapses the distance between event, exposure and interpretation. Claims circulate before journalists can evaluate them.

This matters in my world because the modern battlefield is not just physical. Drone footage circulates instantly. Social media channels release claims in real time. Intelligence leaks surface before diplomats can respond.

These dynamics also matter for the public at large, which encounters fragments of reality, often through social media, long before any institution can responsibly absorb and respond to them.

Journalism, by contrast, is built for a slower world.

Slow journalism

At the core of their work, journalists observe events, filter signal from noise, and translate complexity into narrative. Their professional norms – editorial gatekeeping, standards for sourcing, verification of facts – are not bureaucratic relics. They are the mechanisms that produce coherence rather than chaos.

But these mechanisms evolved when information arrived more slowly and events unfolded sequentially. Verification could reasonably precede publication. Under those conditions, journalism excelled as a trusted intermediary between raw events and public understanding.

These conditions no longer exist.

Information now arrives continuously, often without clear provenance. Social media platforms amplify fragments of reality in real time, while verification remains necessarily slow. The key constraint is no longer access; it is tempo.

Granted, reporters often present accounts as events are occurring, whether on live broadcasts or through their own social media posts. Still, in this environment, journalism’s traditional strengths become sources of lag.

Caution delays response. Narrative coherence hardens fast. Corrections then feel like reversals rather than refinements.

Covering real-time events

The war in Ukraine has made this failure mode unusually visible. Modern warfare generates data faster than any institution can metabolize. Battlefield video and real-time casualty claims flood the system continuously.

For their part, journalists are forced to operate from an impossible position: expected to interpret events at the same speed they are livestreamed. And so journalists are forced sometimes to improvise.

Early coverage of the war leaned on simplified frames, including Russian incompetence, imminent victory and decisive turning points. They provided provisional stories generated to satisfy intense public demand for clarity.

As the war evolved, however, those stories collapsed.

This did not mean the original reporting was malicious. It meant the narrative update cycle lagged behind the underlying reality. What analysts experienced as iterative learning, audiences experienced as contradiction.

The acceleration trap

This forces journalism into a reactive posture. Verification trails amplification, meaning accurate reports often arrive after the audience has already formed a first impression.

This inverts journalism’s historical role. Audiences encounter raw claims first and journalism second. When the two diverge, journalism appears disconnected from reality as people experienced it.

Over time, this produces a structural shift in trust. Journalism is no longer perceived as the primary interpreter of events, but as one voice among many, arriving late. Speed becomes a proxy for relevance. Interpretation without immediacy is discounted.

Although partisan bias certainly exists, it is insufficient to explain the systemic incoherence Americans are witnessing.

Can journalism adapt?

Institutions optimized for one tempo rarely adapt cleanly to another. Journalism is now confronting the risk that its interpretive cycle no longer matches the speed of the world it is trying to explain.

Its future credibility will depend less on accusations of bias or even error than the question of whether it can reconcile rigor with speed, perhaps by trading the illusion of early certainty for the transparency of real-time doubt.

If it cannot, trust will continue to drain. An institution that evolved to help society see is falling behind what society is already watching.

The opinions and views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.

Charles Edward Gehrke 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

When the early 2000s hit series “The West Wing” returned on Netflix in December 2025, it spurred conversation about how the idealistic political drama would play in Donald Trump’s second term.

The series features a Democratic presidential administration led by President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, and his loyal White House staff negotiating political challenges with character, competence and a fair bit of humor.

It sparked cultural commentary long after it ceased its original run in 2005.

In 2016, The Guardian’s Brian Moylan asserted that the “The West Wing” was appealing because it portrayed “a world where the political system works. It reminds us of a time, not too long ago, when people in political office took their jobs very seriously and wanted to actually govern this country rather than settle scores and appeal to their respective bases.”

In 2025, Vanity Fair’s Savannah Walsh mused that “The West Wing” might be dismissed by younger audiences as a “form of science fiction” or lauded by the demographic currently watching “Jed Bartlet fancams scored to Taylor Swift’s ‘Father Figure’” on TikTok.

Audiences have been comfort-streaming the “The West Wing” since Trump’s first term. Interest in the series spiked after Trump’s election in 2016, and it served as an escape from the contentious 2020 campaign.

When the cast reunited at the 2024 Emmy awards, the Daily Beast’s Catherine L. Hensley remarked that the series’ “sense of optimism about how American government actually functions … rang hollow, almost like watching a show from another planet.”

Nonetheless, Collider’s Rachel LaBonte hailed its Netflix return in late 2025 as a “balm for these confusing times.”

“The West Wing’s” transition from broadcast television behemoth to “bittersweet comfort watch” in today’s streaming era reveals a lot about how much our media and political landscapes have changed in the past 25 years.

As professors of media studies and political communication, we study the fracturing of our media and political environments.

The shifting appeal of “The West Wing” during the past quarter century raises a sobering question: Is political competence and an idealized respect for democratic norms losing popularity in 2026? Or does the new political reality demand engagement with the seamier side of politics?

‘The West Wing’s’ optimistic big tent

“The West Wing” premiered on NBC in the fall of 1999, blending political intrigue with workplace drama in a formula audiences found irresistible. The show surged in viewership in its second and third seasons, as it imagined responses from a Democratic administration to the values and ideology of the newly installed Republican President George W. Bush.

But the series was undergirded by an ethic of political cooperation, reinforcing the idea that, according to Walsh, “we’re all a lot more aligned than we realize.” In 2020, Sheen observed in an interview that writer “Aaron Sorkin never trashed the opposition,” choosing instead to depict “people with differences of opinion trying to serve.”

In 2019, The New York Times observed that the “The West Wing” presented “opposition Republicans, for the most part, as equally honorable,” and noted that the show earned fan mail from viewers across the political spectrum.

At its height of popularity, episodes of “The West Wing” garnered 25 million viewers. Such numbers are reserved today only for live, mass culture events like Sunday night football.

Of course, “The West Wing” aired in a radically different television environment from today.

Despite competition from cable, that era’s free, over-the-airwaves broadcasters like NBC accounted for roughly half of all television viewing in the 2001-02 season. Currently, they account for only about 20%.

Gone are the days of television’s ability to create the “big tents” of diverse audiences. Instead, since “The West Wing’s” original airing, television gathers smaller segments of viewers based on political ideology and ultraspecific demographic markers.

Darker, more polarized media environment

The fracturing of the television audience parallels the schisms in America’s political culture, with viewers and voters increasingly sheltering in partisan echo chambers. Taylor Sheridan has replaced Sorkin as this decade’s showrunner, pumping out conservatively aligned hits such as “Yellowstone” and “Landman.”

Liberals, conversely, now see “West Wing” alumni recast in dystopian critiques of contemporary conservatism. Bradley Whitford morphed from President Bartlet’s political strategist to a calculating racist in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” and a commander in “The Handmaid’s Tale’s” misogynist army.

Allison Janney, who played “The West Wing’s” earnest and scrupulous press secretary, is now a duplicitous and potentially treasonous U.S. president in “The Diplomat,” whose creator in fact got her start on “The West Wing.”

Even Sheen has been demoted from serving as America’s favorite fictional president to playing J. Edgar Hoover in the film “Judas and the Black Messiah,” whom Sheen described as “a wretched man” and “one of the worst villains imaginable.”

Television as equipment for living

Philosopher Kenneth Burke argued that stories function as “equipment for living.” Novels, films, songs, video games and television series are important because they not only reveal our cultural predilections, they shape them, providing us with strategies for navigating the world around us.

Films and series like “Get Out,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Diplomat” and “Judas and the Black Messiah” urge audiences to confront the racism and sexism ever-present in media and politics. That includes, as some scholars and viewers have noted, the often casual misogyny and second-string roles for some women and Black men in “The West Wing.”

As U.S. citizens protest authoritarianism in the streets from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, a comfort binge of a series in which the White House press secretary, as Vanity Fair said, “dorkily performs ‘The Jackal’ and doesn’t dream of restricting West Wing access – even on the administration’s worst press days” is appealing.

But indulging an appetite for what one critic has called “junk-food nostalgia for a time that maybe never even existed” may leave audience members less equipped to build the healthy democracy for which the characters on “The West Wing” always strived. Or it may invigorate them.

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

Few ideas are as central to the nation’s identity as that of the American Dream.

With the 250th birthday of the United States coming up in July 2026, it’s worth stepping back to examine a concept essential to the nation’s self-image.

The term “American Dream” was actually coined in the 1930s by historian James Truslow Adams. Ever since the establishment of the Colonies, however, America has been viewed as a land where individual and collective hopes and aspirations can be realized.

From the idea of America as a shining “city on a hill” to the Declaration of Independence’s guarantee of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the nation has been premised on high aspirations. The concept of the American Dream has epitomized these hopes, and it continues to be present throughout our cultural landscape.

As a social scientist, I set out to explore what Americans thought about the American Dream in today’s society. I interviewed scores of people, from an elderly man sleeping on the street to a billionaire entrepreneur.

I wanted to know exactly how they defined the American Dream – and whether it has become harder to achieve today than in the past.

Defining the dream

From pickup trucks and lawn tractor ads to the labeling of undocumented immigrant children as Dreamers, references to the American Dream in contemporary life are ubiquitous. Washington, D.C., is now home to a brand-new, US$500 million museum, the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, devoted to celebrating the idea and its history.

It turns out that for most people I interviewed, the American Dream consists of three basic ideas.

The first is what might be called an economic bargain: If you work hard and play by the rules, you should expect to have a financially secure life. This includes owning a home, being able to afford raising kids and retiring in comfort.

Second, the American Dream is centered on hope and optimism. It is about personal progress and the belief that the nation’s best days lie ahead. It’s the idea that each generation should do better than the previous one, and that upward economic mobility is essential for bringing this about.

The third and final idea people expressed was having the freedom to pursue their hopes to reach their full potential. For many, this is the epitome of the American Dream.

At its best, the U.S. is seen as allowing individuals the freedom to live the life they want. Liberty and rugged individualism have been hallmarks of America since its beginnings, so it should come as no surprise that they are also central to the American Dream.

Economically more elusive?

Given this, has the American Dream become more or less difficult to achieve over time? Unfortunately, for a growing number of Americans, it appears to be more difficult.

First, the goal of leading an economically secure life in exchange for hard work has become more elusive. Data from the Census Bureau indicates that median wages for full-time male workers have essentially flatlined since 1973. The economy has been producing more low-wage and part-time jobs. Many of these lack benefits, such as health insurance.

Less-skilled workers, such as truck drivers and postal clerks, have actually lost ground in terms of income. At the same time, housing, medical care, child care and higher education costs have dramatically increased over the past 40 years.

What about upward mobility and the hope for each generation to do better economically than the previous one? There is some evidence that one reason the middle class is shrinking is that more people have entered upper-income tiers.

Still, younger generations will actually earn, on average, less as adults than their parents did. This is the first time in U.S. history that this is the case. The formerly taken-for-granted idea of generational progress and moving forward appears to have stalled.

Upward economic mobility for lower-income workers has also slowed over the past 50 years, making it harder to climb the ladder of opportunity.

Dissatisfied, not dreaming

Finally, what about personal freedom? Survey data indicates that greater numbers of Americans feel they have less control over their lives and futures than in the past.

For more than 20 years, Gallup has asked the question, “In this country, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?” The percentage of Americans reporting being satisfied has dropped notably over the past two decades. In 2007 it was 87%, but by 2024 it had fallen to 72%. For women, the number was even lower, declining from 85% in 2007 to 66% in 2024.

By comparison, the average for the wealthiest countries in the Gallup survey was 86%. Consequently, on all three counts it appears that the American Dream is becoming harder to achieve.

An aspirational hope

These trends are important for making sense of the polarization and general negativity found in America today. Too many Americans feel that they’ve been left behind and that the American Dream has become a distant reality.

For these Americans, the words of the late comedian and social commentator George Carlin ring true: “It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

Yet the American Dream is a powerful metaphor and aspiration that continues to inspire many in this country. Among those I interviewed, there was a strong consensus that it represents the very best of what America has to offer.

There is no other country that has quite the equivalent of the American Dream. As the nation enters its next 250 years, working toward reestablishing the concept as a reality for millions of people who have fallen behind may be vital to maintaining the essence of the American promise.

Mark Robert Rank 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

Many Americans report frustration with the two-party system, in which the Democratic and Republican candidates are seen as the only viable options for elective office.

But an alarming trend in many state legislative elections is lowering the bar even further, to something more like a one-party system. In dozens of states, an increasing number of state legislative seats are going completely uncontested by one of the two major parties.

State legislatures play a crucial role in American governance. As congressional gridlock has intensified over recent decades, state governments have increasingly picked up the slack on policymaking.

Yet in many states, competition over who serves in these legislatures has deteriorated significantly.

The result is a genuine crisis for political representation, policy innovation and candidate recruitment.

Scale of the problem

In many cases, one of the only two viable parties can’t field enough candidates for the state legislature to mount a credible challenge to the other, more dominant party.

While uncontested seats for Congress remain relatively rare – approximately 3% to 4% of U.S. House districts in recent cycles were uncontested – the phenomenon has become endemic in state legislatures. In recent election cycles, between 30% and 50% of lower-chamber state legislative seats nationwide went uncontested by one of the two major parties.

Even more astounding is the lack of competition in individual states, some of which see far less competition than others. Some states, like Michigan and Minnesota, regularly field candidates for both parties in nearly all their state legislative races.

Massachusetts is a different story: In their lower legislative chamber, more than half the races have gone uncontested by one of the two major parties in every election since at least 2010. In the 2024 elections, four out of every five seats went uncontested in races for the Massachusetts House. In Mississippi, out of the 174 seats in the state Legislature, only 25 of them – 14% – had actual contests with both parties participating.

In practice, this means that for many state legislative chambers each election cycle, the party that will control the majority in the next legislative session – a major prerequisite for governing and passing legislation – is literally a foregone conclusion. In these chambers, one party or the other has fielded candidates for less than half of the legislative seats.

In other words, it’s mathematically impossible for that party to win a majority, even if its candidates win every seat they compete in.

In the 2022 cycle, for example, simple majorities were guaranteed for either the Democrats or Republicans in 22 chambers across 16 states. In some of these cases, one party was guaranteed a veto-proof majority – meaning that party had enough lawmakers to override a governor’s veto if necessary – before a single vote had even been counted in the election.

What is and isn’t behind lack of competition

Several factors contribute to the prevalence of uncontested races, including the individual decision-making processes of potential candidates.

Running for office requires substantial investments of time and money, as well as major sacrifices of privacy and, in many cases, public and personal reputation. Even many individuals who are interested in serving decide that the cost isn’t worth it, especially when winning isn’t a guarantee.

The calculus is even more straightforward in heavily partisan districts, where the other party’s presidential candidate may have won by 40 or 50 percentage points in a previous election. Here, even well-qualified candidates face near-certain defeat. It’s easy to see why would-be candidates might reasonably decide to opt out.

Structural explanations for this lack of competition are more complex. For example, gerrymandering – the practice of drawing district boundaries to favor one party – is frequently cited as the main culprit.

But while gerrymandering does occur and merits concern, the evidence suggests it is not the principal driver of uncontested seats. Many states with independent redistricting commissions, such as Idaho, have experienced high rates of non-contestation despite having drawn competitive districts. Meanwhile, many states where legislatures control redistricting, such as Minnesota and Florida, maintain robust competition.

The phenomenon is also not correlated with whether a state is red, blue or somewhere in between, indicating that partisan control of redistricting alone cannot explain the trend.

Two complementary factors are more likely important. First, geographic partisan sorting – the concentration of politically like-minded people in communities – has accelerated over the past three decades. Democrats have consolidated in urban centers while losing ground in rural areas, particularly in the South and Midwest. This residential sorting creates naturally uncompetitive districts regardless of how boundaries are drawn.

Second, state and local party organizations have experienced significant decline in power and influence, particularly in states where one party holds an overwhelming advantage. These organizations historically served as recruitment and support networks for candidates challenging incumbent officeholders.

Without robust local party infrastructure, even qualified potential candidates in minority parties lack the resources and institutional backing necessary to mount viable campaigns.

Competition is fundamental to a functioning democracy

Regardless of underlying causes, the consequences of uncontested races extend beyond the immediate lack of choice on the ballot.

When one party faces no meaningful electoral threat, research shows that policy innovation and responsiveness suffers. Dominant parties lack incentives to develop proposals that address the concerns of all constituents, or to engage seriously with opposition ideas.

More fundamentally, the prevalence of uncontested races raises questions about democratic legitimacy. Elections serve not merely as mechanisms for selecting officeholders, but as opportunities for citizens to evaluate governance and hold officials accountable. When voters face no choice – when a candidate wins by default and not by persuasion – the basic requirements of democratic representation go unmet.

Obstacles to renewed competition

Reversing this trend requires overcoming significant practical obstacles.

Recruiting qualified candidates to run for office is famously difficult; recruiting them for seemingly unwinnable seats is nearly impossible. And convincing national party organizations, interest groups and donors to invest resources in what they see as “hopeless” races is equally challenging.

But the consequences are too significant to ignore, and go beyond democracy or policy considerations.

State legislatures serve as the primary training ground for candidates who later seek higher office. When parties and their candidate talent decline to compete in entire states, they forfeit not only immediate electoral contests, but also the opportunity to cultivate future leaders at the federal level.

Competition cannot be superficially manufactured, and both the causes of and solutions to its recent decline are complex. Both, however, must be reckoned with. Without real competition, elections risk going from true exercises in popular sovereignty to a mere administrative formality.

Charlie Hunt 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

In separate encounters, federal immigration agents in Minneapolis killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in January 2026.

Shortly after Pretti’s killing, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said he committed an “act of domestic terrorism.” Noem made the same accusation against Good.

But the label “domestic terrorism” is not a generic synonym for the kind of politically charged violence Noem alleged both had committed. U.S. law describes the term as a specific idea: acts dangerous to human life that appear intended to intimidate civilians, pressure government policy or affect government conduct through extreme means. Intent is the hinge.

From my experience managing counterterrorism analysts at the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center, I know the terrorism label – domestic or international – is a judgment applied only after intent and context are assessed. It’s not to be used before an investigation has even begun. Terrorism determinations require analytic discipline, not speed.

Evidence before conclusions

In the first news cycle, investigators may know the crude details of what happened: who fired, who died and roughly what happened. They usually do not know motive with enough confidence to declare that coercive intent – the element that separates terrorism from other serious crimes – is present.

The Congressional Research Service, which provides policy analysis to Congress, makes a related point: While the term “domestic terrorism” is defined in statute, it is not itself a standalone federal offense. That’s part of the reason why public use of the term can outpace legal and investigative reality.

This dynamic – the temptation to close on a narrative before the evidence warrants it – seen most recently in the Homeland Security secretary’s assertions, echoes long-standing insights in intelligence scholarship and formal analytic standards.

Intelligence studies make a simple observation: Analysts and institutions face inherent uncertainty because information is often incomplete, ambiguous and subject to deception.

In response, the U.S. intelligence community codified analytic standards in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The standards emphasize objectivity, independence from political influence, and rigorous articulation of uncertainty. The goal was not to eliminate uncertainty but to bound it with disciplined methods and transparent assumptions.

When narrative outruns evidence

The terrorism label becomes risky when leaders publicly call an incident “domestic terrorism” before they can explain what evidence supports that conclusion. By doing that, they invite two predictable problems.

The first problem is institutional. Once a senior official declares something with categorical certainty, the system can feel pressure – sometimes subtle, sometimes overt – to validate the headline.

In high-profile incidents, the opposite response, institutional caution, is easily seen as evasion – pressure that can drive premature public declarations. Instead of starting with questions – “What do we know?” “What evidence would change our minds?” – investigators, analysts and communicators can find themselves defending a superior’s storyline.

The second problem is public trust. Research has found that the “terrorist” label itself shapes how audiences perceive threat and evaluate responses, apart from the underlying facts. Once the public begins to see the term as a political messaging tool, it may discount future uses of the term – including in cases where the coercive intent truly exists.

Once officials and commentators commit publicly to a version ahead of any assessment of intent and context, confirmation bias – interpreting evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs – and anchoring – heavy reliance on preexisting information – can shape both internal decision-making and public reaction.

The long-term cost of misuse

This is not just a semantic fight among experts. Most people carry a mental file for “terrorism” shaped by mass violence and explicit ideological targeting.

When Americans hear the word “terrorism,” they likely think of 9/11, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing or high-profile attacks abroad, such as the 2005 London bombings and December 2025 antisemitic attack in Sydney, where intent was clear.

By contrast, the more common U.S. experience of violence – shootings, assaults and chaotic confrontations with law enforcement – is typically treated by investigators, and understood by the public, as homicide or targeted violence until motive is established. That public habit reflects a commonsense sequence: First determine what happened, then decide why, then decide how to categorize it.

U.S. federal agencies have published standard definitions and tracking terminology for domestic terrorism, but senior officials’ public statements can outrun investigative reality.

The Minneapolis cases illustrate how fast the damage can occur: Early reporting and documentary material quickly diverged from official accounts. This fed accusations that the narrative was shaped and conclusions made before investigators had gathered the basic facts.

Even though Trump administration officials later distanced themselves from initial claims of domestic terrorism, corrections rarely travel as far as the original assertion. The label sticks, and the public is left to argue over politics rather than evidence.

None of this minimizes the seriousness of violence against officials or the possibility that an incident may ultimately meet a terrorism definition.

The point is discipline. If authorities have evidence of coercive intent – the element that makes “terrorism” distinct – then they would do well to say so and show what can responsibly be shown. If they do not, they could describe the event in ordinary investigative language and let the facts mature.

A “domestic terrorism” label that comes before the facts does not just risk being wrong in one case. It teaches the public, case by case, to treat the term as propaganda rather than diagnosis. When that happens, the category becomes less useful precisely when the country needs clarity most.

Brian O’Neill 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

On Dec. 26, 1926, 16,000 hockey fans packed Madison Square Garden to witness the birth of a rivalry between the New York Americans and the brand-new New York Rangers. The game would later be remembered for establishing a foundation of popularity for the sport in New York City.

The only American playing for the Rangers that night also happened to be the largest player in the history of the NHL up to that point, defenseman Clarence “Taffy” Abel.

Standing over 6 feet tall and weighing 225 pounds, Abel was a brutal behemoth on the ice. Yet off the ice, he was a quiet, personable man who charmed sportswriters.

Despite being a foundational figure in American hockey – an Olympic silver medalist and a two-time Stanley Cup champion – Abel has been largely erased from the national memory. His story is not just one of athletic prowess, but of a secret identity maintained for survival and a career ended by a league that turned against him. As a scholar of Olympic media history, I recognize Abel’s story as an important but overlooked example of how race and labor issues can influence public memory.

Passing as white: Abel’s secret identity

Taffy Abel, who earned his lifelong nickname from his childhood love of candy, was half-Ojibwe, born in 1900 in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. One of Abel’s few surviving relatives, George Jones, a nephew by marriage, recalled that his mother, Charlotte, an Ojibwe woman, encouraged Taffy and his sister to “pass” as white to protect them from the era’s rampant racism and the threat of being sent to an Indian boarding school. Though his heritage remained an open secret in his hometown, Abel maintained his whiteness throughout his hockey career.

His mother died in 1939, and it was only after her death – and years after his retirement – that Abel began to speak openly and proudly of his Indigenous roots. This forced silence is a primary reason his legacy remained obscured; for decades, he was categorized simply as a white American athlete, masking his status as a racial trailblazer.

Pioneer on the ice

Abel’s hockey journey was historic. At the 1924 Chamonix Games – the first official Winter Olympics – he was chosen to carry the U.S. flag during the opening ceremony. He led the American team to a silver medal before being recruited by Conn Smythe for the inaugural New York Rangers roster.

Because of his size, and perhaps also because of his biracial identity, which was likely known to many players in the NHL, Abel was forced to fight often in his rookie year. He led the Rangers with 78 penalty minutes, and soon became famous around the league for his jarring and ferocious checking.

In Abel’s second season playing for the Rangers, the team won the Stanley Cup. He became the first American player to win a medal at the Olympic Games and the Stanley Cup, cementing his legacy as one of the finest hockey players in the world. In 1929, he was traded to the Chicago Black Hawks, where he anchored the defense on a team that won the Stanley Cup in 1934.

Hits the wall

The end of Abel’s career was not dictated by age or injury, but by a stand for labor dignity. After the 1934 championship, he held out for a salary that reflected his value as a star attraction. Black Hawks management responded by insulting him in the press, portraying Abel as an ungrateful prima donna.

Around the league, executives mocked Abel’s weight, telling newspapers that Abel walked out because he wouldn’t respect a team-mandated diet. Abel believed a team would sign him for 1935, but it soon became clear he had become effectively banned from the league due to his advocacy for equitable pay.

He had been a star attraction for the Black Hawks, and despite leading the team to the Stanley Cup in his final game, Abel never played another game in the NHL. At age 34, he returned to Sault Ste. Marie, operated a café and coached youth hockey, quietly fading from the national spotlight.

Complicated reckoning

Only recently has the NHL acknowledged Abel’s Native American heritage. However, his story presents a challenge to the league’s historical narrative. To celebrate Abel as a pioneering person of color requires the NHL to confront its own role in the systemic racism that forced him to hide his identity. Only recently has the league’s longtime, historical ban on nonwhite players – dating from its founding in 1917 – been an open and popular subject of public discussion.

Furthermore, the history is messy. Because Abel passed as white during his playing days, some modern observers find it difficult to reconcile his achievements with those of later pioneers who broke the color barrier more overtly.

Ultimately, Clarence “Taffy” Abel was a resilient path breaker who navigated artificial borders – between the U.S. and Canada, and between white and Indigenous identities. He was a charter member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 1973, and his memory inspired future Indigenous stars like T.J. Oshie.

Yet his name remains largely unknown because, I believe, his life forces a reckoning with a society that dehumanized him. Even Abel’s U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame biography minimizes his heritage, noting “Thought by some to be the first Native American to play in the NHL.”

Abel fought for fair pay, against racism and through physical pain. He died in 1964, but the issues he grappled with – labor exploitation and racial identity – remain at the forefront of the American story today.

Michael J. Socolow 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