2025-12-05 07:20:00
2025年12月2日，唐纳德·特朗普在白宫内阁会议上讲话，国防部长皮特·赫格塞特在场旁听。| Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
本文出自《Logoff》每日通讯，旨在帮助您了解特朗普政府的动态，而不会让政治新闻占据您的生活。请在此订阅。
欢迎来到《Logoff》：特朗普政府正面临关于其在打击所谓毒品贩子行动中涉嫌战争罪的新一轮审查。发生了什么？
自9月初以来，美国一直在加勒比海和太平洋地区打击所谓的“毒品船”，已造成至少83人死亡。但其中第一次打击——9月2日的行动——因《华盛顿邮报》上周报道称国防部长皮特·赫格塞特下令“杀光船上所有人”而受到特别关注。目前所知的情况如下：
国际法怎么说？
在海上杀害无助人员——在第一次袭击中，船上的幸存者已被击毁，因此处于无助状态——这显然是战争罪，同时也违反了五角大楼自己的战争法手册。目前的主要争议是9月2日的后续袭击是谁下令的。赫格塞特表示他当时并未在场，而是由海军上将弗兰克·布拉德利下令。
大局如何？
当前关于战争罪的讨论背后，还有一个更广泛的问题：特朗普政府对所有这些袭击都没有法律授权。法律专家普遍认为，其声称美国与负责这些船只的贩毒集团处于“非国际性武装冲突”中的论点毫无根据。
接下来会发生什么？
国会正在罕见地进行跨党派调查，以了解9月2日事件的经过。周四，国会议员观看了袭击的视频，并听取了军方官员的证词。民主党议员吉姆·希姆斯称该事件是“我担任公职以来见过最令人不安的事情之一”。
好了，是时候下线了……我非常喜欢PBS最新推出的播客《Settle In》的最新一期。主持人乔夫·贝内特与演员尼克·奥弗曼（因出演《公园与游憩》而闻名）探讨了“成为人类的意义”以及制造东西和积极参与公民生活的价值。希望您也会喜欢，祝您今晚愉快。我们明天再见。
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is facing renewed scrutiny over an apparent war crime committed in its campaign against alleged drug traffickers.
What happened? The US has been striking alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean and the Pacific since early September, killing at least 83 people. But it’s the first strike, on September 2, that has become an object of particular scrutiny after the Washington Post reported last week that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave an order to “kill everybody” on the boat.
Here’s what has been reported so far:
What does international law say? Killing helpless people at sea — and with their boat disabled in the first attack, the survivors would have been helpless — is unambiguously a war crime, as well as a violation of the Pentagon’s own law of war manual. The major dispute is who ordered the follow-on strike on September 2. Hegseth has said he was not in the room when it happened and that it was ordered by Adm. Frank Bradley.
What’s the big picture? There’s a broader issue underlying the current war crimes debate: The Trump administration has no legal authority for any of the strikes it has conducted. Legal experts have widely dismissed its argument that the US is engaged in a “noninternational armed conflict” with the cartels responsible for the alleged drug boats as baseless.
What happens next? Congress is, somewhat unusually, pursuing bipartisan oversight into what happened on September 2. On Thursday, lawmakers viewed video of the attack and heard testimony from military officials. Democratic Rep. Jim Himes described it as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”
I really enjoyed the latest episode of PBS’s new podcast Settle In. Host Geoff Bennett speaks with actor Nick Offerman of Parks and Recreation fame about “the whole point of being a human” and the value of making things and being an active citizen. I hope you enjoy it, too, and as always, have a great evening. We’ll see you back here tomorrow.
2025-12-05 03:15:00
去年，加州和华盛顿州禁止养殖章鱼以获取其肉，其他七个州以及美国参议院也提出了类似的法案。智利和西班牙的立法者也在考虑禁止养殖章鱼。尽管有如此多的立法行动，但目前全球还没有一家章鱼养殖场。
故事内情：
这一故事是Animal Charity Evaluators支持的一系列报道之一，该组织获得了EarthShare的资助。反对章鱼养殖的运动，由动物福利活动人士、海洋保护主义者和关心动物福利的学者领导，可能看起来像是在寻找一个不存在的问题。从理论上讲，养殖章鱼并不合理：它们是野生的、孤独的、食肉的且有同类相食的习性；在出生后的前两个月非常脆弱，大多数会死亡；它们的尿液含有大量氨，因此养殖公司必须处理大量污染的水。此外，章鱼还擅长逃脱。这些都是养殖章鱼时不想看到的特性。
但西班牙的Nueva Pescanova公司仍试图大规模养殖章鱼，以供应“高端国际市场”，如美国、韩国和日本，这些地方对章鱼肉的需求正在上升。目前，大量章鱼仍从野外捕捞用于食用。根据联合国粮农组织的数据，2023年全球捕捞了超过35万吨章鱼，相当于超过1亿只个体。它们通常被捕捉在陷阱中，误以为是自然庇护所，然后用各种令人不安的方法杀死，包括用棍棒击打头部、刺穿大脑或悬挂至窒息而死。
然而，某些地区的章鱼捕捞量因过度捕捞而下降，因此Nueva Pescanova希望尽快在其通过环境评估后启动第一家章鱼养殖场。但反对者认为，养殖章鱼在经济上和道德上都不可行，因为章鱼具有复杂的需要和出色的认知能力。章鱼会使用工具、解决问题，甚至喜欢玩耍。在野外，它们的活动范围可以覆盖数英亩，用于狩猎、躲藏和探索。生态学家兼非营利组织Aquatic Life Institute的主管Sophika Kostyniuk表示：“这是一种孤独的动物，需要大量刺激……将它们放入高密度的封闭环境中，会产生无法估量的压力，导致攻击行为和高比例的同类相食。这完全是不道德的。”
章鱼养殖的（不）可行性： 2019年，Nueva Pescanova声称已经掌握了在人工环境中养殖章鱼的技术，包括孵化章鱼卵、将其养到成年并繁殖下一代。该公司曾表示，到2023年，养殖的章鱼肉将出现在商店货架上。然而，其养殖场计划仍在等待环境评估，因此具体启动时间尚不明确。另一家西班牙海鲜公司Grupo Profand以及一些大学研究机构也在努力探索章鱼养殖的商业化途径。
2023年，非营利组织Eurogroup for Animals获得了Nueva Pescanova在加那利群岛建立的第一家章鱼养殖场的计划文件，该计划最初由BBC报道。文件显示，该公司计划：
在野外和人工环境中，章鱼在高密度下常常表现出同类相食的行为。但Nueva Pescanova声称在其试验中没有观察到这种情况。这引起了章鱼专家、加拿大大学的Jennifer Mather教授的关注，她认为章鱼无法被经济或人道地养殖。Mather表示，她曾要求Nueva Pescanova提供数据，但该公司拒绝了。她说：“这让我感到科学家的警报器响了。给我证据，如果一家商业公司不给我证据，我怀疑是因为证据根本不存在。”
Nueva Pescanova拒绝了对本故事的采访请求，并未回应关于Mather请求数据的问题。通过电子邮件，一名发言人表示：“在Nueva Pescanova通过水产养殖培育的五代章鱼中，没有记录到任何同类相食的情况。”
Mather还有其他理由认为养殖章鱼不可行。章鱼是食肉动物，对螃蟹情有独钟，但喂养螃蟹成本高昂，经济上并不划算。如果喂养人工鱼饲料，虽然章鱼会吃，但它们的生长速度会变慢，体重也会减少，这对章鱼养殖的商业可行性不利。然而，Nueva Pescanova的计划指出，其章鱼可以在短时间内达到2.5至3公斤的市场重量，死亡率在10%至15%之间。公司还声称养殖章鱼有助于保护野生种群。Mather驳斥了这一说法，指出野生章鱼种群通常状况良好，因为商业捕鱼已经消灭了许多章鱼的天敌，如鲨鱼和大型鱼类。虽然西班牙海域的章鱼数量近年来有所下降，但Nueva Pescanova的保护主张缺乏证据支持。
谁支持章鱼养殖？ 我希望能找到支持章鱼养殖的人，但Nueva Pescanova和Grupo Profand拒绝接受采访，于是我联系了Roger Villanueva。他是西班牙国家研究委员会下属的海洋研究所的海洋生物学家，研究章鱼数十年，包括如何养殖它们。几个月前，他与其他人共同撰写了一封发表在《海洋政策》期刊上的信件，反对美国对章鱼养殖的禁令，呼吁采取“平衡的方法”。超过100位同行也签署了这封信。值得注意的是，信件的合著者之一为一家日本快餐连锁公司提供咨询服务，该公司专门经营章鱼菜品，而一些签署者则与海鲜行业有联系，包括一些与Nueva Pescanova有关联的人士。
当我与Villanueva交谈时，他并未否认章鱼养殖存在一些实际障碍，但他认为这些障碍可以克服。他不认同动物福利方面的担忧。“章鱼是聪明的动物，”他承认，但认为养殖它们与养殖鸡和猪没有本质区别——“这些动物我们已经作为食物养殖了数千年。”这一论点也是Nueva Pescanova所提出的。Villanueva告诉我，反对章鱼养殖的运动源于一种“情感上的观点”，但考虑到猪和鸡在养殖过程中受到的恶劣待遇，我们养殖它们并不意味着我们应该养殖章鱼。章鱼的许多特性与密集养殖不兼容：它们是孤独的，但在养殖场中会被密集地关在水箱中；它们喜欢黑暗的庇护所，但在养殖过程中会经历间歇性的强光；它们是食肉猎手，却被迫依赖人工饲料；它们的认知能力加上我们对如何在人工环境中给予它们良好生活了解有限，可能会加剧它们的痛苦。不过，Villanueva表示，养殖场可以通过多种方式衡量和改善章鱼的福利，例如观察它们的食欲、检测皮质醇水平、监测皮肤颜色变化，这些都能反映它们的情绪状态。养殖场还可以保持良好的水质、将大小不同的章鱼分开（以减少同类相食）、提供它们在野外喜欢的藏身之处，这些Nueva Pescanova都表示会做到。“确保章鱼养殖场的福利并不容易，”Villanueva说，“但如果养殖场建立良好的标准，这是可能的。”
然而，Mather对此并不认同。“你可以做这些事情来判断它们是否感到压力，但答案会是‘是的’，”她说，“然后你该怎么办？”更根本的是，Mather认为章鱼养殖剥夺了章鱼作为章鱼的本性。“表达物种典型行为的自由在某种程度上是最重要的动物福利之一，”她说，“这不仅仅是‘活到被屠宰’的问题，而是‘我们是否真的剥夺了动物生命的基本权利’？”
学术界的抗争： Villanueva和Mather之间的分歧反映了研究水生动物的科学家群体中更广泛的分歧，以及他们提出的问题类型。美国迈阿密大学的环境科学与政策教授Jennifer Jacquet正在领导学术界反对章鱼养殖的行动，包括签署支持美国全国禁养章鱼养殖的信件，该信件由大约100位学者联署。她表示，许多海洋科学研究者的目标并非单纯保护海洋和野生动物，而是“增加食物生产，也许让渔业可持续，以免过度捕捞导致自身灭绝”。Mather指出，许多研究章鱼的学者——包括鱿鱼、墨鱼和其他一些动物的研究者——“并不真正关心动物本身，而是将它们视为可利用的资源。”（在2010年，章鱼国际顾问委员会的一份通讯中，一位成员曾表示，她正在寻找一家出版社出版章鱼食谱，许多同行都贡献了“精彩的食谱”。）
在陆地养殖动物的学术领域也存在类似的情况。尽管有一部分章鱼研究社区专注于章鱼的商业化用途，但许多学者——包括那些不属于该领域的——也在努力保护章鱼免受痛苦和剥削。章鱼被用于各种科学实验，包括进化生物学、神经科学和机器人学等领域。在1990年代，Mather帮助在加拿大推动了对实验中使用的章鱼等头足类动物的基本福利保护，其他国家随后也跟进。到2012年，一群著名神经科学家声明，证据表明所有鸟类和哺乳动物，以及许多其他动物，包括章鱼，都具有意识。2021年，Netflix热门纪录片《我的章鱼老师》（My Octopus Teacher）讲述了一位人类与南非野生章鱼之间的感人故事，赢得了奥斯卡最佳纪录片奖（Mather是该纪录片的科学顾问）。一年后，英国通过了一项法律，宣布所有脊椎动物和一些无脊椎动物（包括章鱼）具有感知能力，未来法律需考虑它们的福利。
然而，章鱼养殖的前景可能成为这一进步的重大障碍。它也揭示了食品养殖行业在考虑动物福祉时的局限性。这些行业会为了利润最大化而不断推动动物的极限，例如培育体型巨大的鸡，以便从每只鸡身上获取更多肉；将野生中进行史诗级迁徙的鲑鱼关在狭小的水箱中；如果能拓展新市场，就将孤独的章鱼密集养殖。Mather和一些关注动物福利的学者希望行业能超越利润的考量。“归根结底，赚钱不应该是我们真正关心的事情，”她说，“我们与所有动物共享这个星球，我们的基本态度应该是：‘我们是否在关心它们？’”
Last year, California and Washington state banned farming octopuses for their meat, and bills have been introduced in seven other states — plus the US Senate — to do the same. Lawmakers in Chile and Spain are weighing a prohibition on farming them, too.
All this legislative activity, and yet there’s not a single octopus farm anywhere in the world.
This story is part of a series supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from EarthShare.
The movement to ban octopus farming before it starts — led by animal welfare activists, ocean conservationists, and concerned academics — might be easy to dismiss as a solution in search of a problem. On paper, farming them doesn’t even make sense: they’re wild, solitary, carnivorous, and cannibalistic; in the first two months of their lives they’re incredibly fragile and the vast majority die; and their urine contains high amounts of ammonia, which means whatever company that farms them would have to deal with the ordeal of a lot of polluted water.
They’re also talented escape artists.
These are all traits you really don’t want in an animal you’re trying to farm. But it hasn’t stopped the Spanish seafood giant Nueva Pescanova from trying to make large-scale octopus farming a thing in order to supply “premium international markets,” like the US, South Korea, and Japan, where consumer demand for octopus meat is on the rise.
Currently, huge numbers of octopuses are already caught from the wild to be used for food. In 2023, over 350,000 metric tons of octopuses were captured from the ocean, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which totals well over 100 million individual animals. They’re typically caught in traps — which they mistake for natural shelter — and then killed using a variety of disturbing methods, including clubbing them in the head, stabbing their brains, or hanging them in the air to suffocate to death.
But octopus catches have declined in some regions due to overfishing — and so, to create a more reliable supply, Nueva Pescanova hopes to open its first octopus farm as soon as it passes an environmental review. But to those who oppose octopus farming, the pursuit is impractical at best, and morally atrocious at worst, given the animals’ complex needs and impressive cognitive abilities. Octopuses can use tools, solve problems, and they even like to engage in play. In the wild, their home ranges span several acres where they hunt, hide, and explore.
“This is a solitary animal that requires a lot of stimulus…So putting it into a confined setting that has high density with other [animals] creates immeasurable stress, produces aggression, produces high levels of cannibalism,” Sophika Kostyniuk, an ecologist and managing director of the nonprofit Aquatic Life Institute, told me. “It is just totally unethical.”
In 2019, Nueva Pescanova said it had figured out how to raise octopuses in captivity — that it could successfully hatch octopus eggs, raise them to adulthood, and breed them for another generation. Farmed octopus meat would be on store shelves by 2023, the company said at the time. But its start date remains unclear, as its proposed farm in the Canary Islands is still awaiting environmental review.
Another major Spanish seafood company, Grupo Profand — which didn’t respond to an interview request for this story — and a few university research centers are also busy trying to figure out how to commercialize octopus farming.
In 2023, the nonprofit Eurogroup for Animals obtained Nueva Pescanova’s plans for its first octopus farm on the Canary Islands, which was first reported by the BBC. The documents revealed that the company planned to:
Both in the wild and in captivity, it’s not uncommon for octopuses to turn cannibalistic at high densities. But Nueva Pescanova has claimed it hasn’t observed any cannibalism in its trials. That caught the attention of Jennifer Mather, an octopus expert and psychology professor at the University of Lethbridge, who believes octopuses cannot be economically nor humanely farmed. Mather told me she had asked Nueva Pescanova to send her the data, which, she alleges, the company declined to provide.
“That makes my scientist alarm bells go off,” Mather said. “Show me the evidence, and in the case of a commercial enterprise, if they don’t show me the evidence, I suspect it’s because the evidence isn’t there.”
Nueva Pescanova declined an interview request for this story and didn’t respond to a question about Mather’s request for data. Over email, a spokesperson said that “not a single case of cannibalism has been recorded in five generations of octopuses raised by Nueva Pescanova in aquaculture.”
Mather has other reasons to think farming octopuses is not feasible. Octopuses are carnivores who are “nuts about crabs,” she said, but feeding them crabs, which are expensive, is “economically not a good idea.” If you feed them fish pellets, which Nueva Pescanova has stated it will, “they’ll eat them, but they will grow more slowly and gain less weight,” Mather said, which is a strike against the commercial viability of octopus farming.
But Nueva Pescanova’s plan states that its octopuses can quickly reach a market weight of 2.5 to 3 kilograms with a mortality rate of 10 to 15 percent.
The company has also argued that farming octopuses will help conserve wild populations. Mather dismisses that claim, explaining that wild octopus populations are generally fine because the commercial fishing industry’s plundering of the oceans has killed off many of the octopus’ predators, like sharks and large fishes. While octopus populations in Spanish waters have fallen in recent years due to overfishing, Nueva Pescanova’s conservation claim is dubious; there’s little to no evidence that fish farming has helped wild fish populations rebound.
I wanted to talk to someone supportive of octopus farming, and since Nueva Pescanova and Grupo Profand wouldn’t talk to me, I reached out to Roger Villanueva.
A marine biologist at the Institut de Ciències del Mar, part of the Spanish government’s national research council, Villanueva has studied octopuses for decades — including how to farm them. A couple months ago, he co-authored a letter in the journal Marine Policy arguing against a proposed ban on octopus farming in the US, calling for a “balanced approach” to the issue. Over 100 of his peers signed it, too. (It’s worth noting that his co-author on the letter consults for a Japanese fast food chain that specializes in octopus dishes, and several of the co-signers have affiliations with the seafood industry, including some with ties to Nueva Pescanova).
When I spoke to Villanueva, he didn’t deny that there are some practical obstacles that stand in the way of commercializing octopus farming, though he believes they can be overcome. But he doesn’t agree with the welfare concerns.
“The animals are intelligent,” he acknowledged, but in his view, farming them is not fundamentally different from farming chickens or pigs — “animals that we [have used] as food for many, many thousands of years.” It’s an argument Nueva Pescanova has made, too. The movement to preemptively ban farming octopus, Villanueva told me, comes from a “sentimental point of view.”
But the fact that we farm chickens and pigs for food isn’t really an argument in favor of farming octopuses, considering how terribly farmed pigs and chickens are treated. What’s likely more relevant is that octopuses possess so many traits and behaviors that are incompatible with intensive farming: they’re solitary, but on farms, they’d be tightly packed into tanks with other octopuses. They like dark shelters, but they would be subjected to occasional periods of constant light. They’re carnivorous hunters who would be forced to subsist on manmade pellets. And their cognitive sophistication, plus how little we understand about how to give them a good life in captivity, could further compound that suffering.
But Villanueva said that farms can measure and improve octopuses’ welfare in a number of ways, such as observing their appetites, checking cortisol levels, and monitoring skin color changes, which can provide insight into their moods. Farms can maintain good water quality, keep small and large octopuses separate (to reduce cannibalism), and provide places for them to hide and shelter, as they like to do in the wild — all things that Nueva Pescanova says it will do.
“It’s not easy work” to ensure good welfare on octopus farms, Villanueva said, but it’s possible if farms develop good standards.
None of this, however, sits well with Mather. “You can do all these things to figure out whether they’re stressed or not — the answer’s going to be, ‘Yes, they are,’” Mather said. “And then what do you do?”
More fundamentally, Mather said, octopus farming denies octopuses the ability to be octopuses. “The freedom to express species-typical behavior is in some ways the most important welfare one,” she said. It’s not just about “surviving until somebody comes and slaughters you; it’s about, ‘Are we really taking away the fundamentals of an animal’s life?’”
The disagreements between Villanueva and Mather reflect a broader divide among the scientists who study aquatic animals, and the kinds of questions they ask.
Jennifer Jacquet, an environmental science and policy professor at the University of Miami, is leading the academic charge against octopus farming, including a letter in support of a US-wide ban that was signed by around 100 academics. She told me that much of the marine science research community aims not to protect oceans and help wild animal populations thrive for their own sake, but to “increase [food] production, maybe make fisheries sustainable so that they don’t kill themselves by totally over-exploiting” fish populations. “You really have to think of [the field] as completely beholden to the industry interests.”
Mather said that many in the cephalopod research community — those who study octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, and some other animals — “are not fundamentally interested in the animals qua animals; they’re interested in the animals as subjects,” she said, of “exploitative enterprise.” (In a 2010 newsletter of the Cephalopod International Advisory Council — an organization for cephalopod scientists — one member wrote that she was looking for a publisher for a cephalopod cookbook, for which many fellow members had “contributed some fabulous recipes.”)
There’s a similar dynamic at play in the academic fields that study animals farmed on land.
Still, while a significant segment of the cephalopod research community is focused on how octopuses can be used commercially, many within it — and outside of it — are pushing to protect octopuses from suffering and exploitation.
Octopuses are used in experimental research by scientists in a range of scientific fields, including evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and robotics. In the 1990s, Mather helped get some basic welfare protections for cephalopods used in experiments in her home country of Canada; other countries later followed. By 2012, a group of prominent neuroscientists declared that evidence indicates that all birds and mammals, “and many other creatures, including octopuses,” possess the capacity for consciousness.
And public interest in octopuses swelled in 2021, when the hit Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher — which captivated audiences with a story of a human relationship with a wild octopus in South Africa — won the Oscar for best documentary (Mather was a scientific adviser on the documentary). A year later, the UK passed a law declaring that all vertebrate animals and some invertebrates — including cephalopods — are sentient, and that future laws need to consider their welfare.
But the specter of octopus farming could pose a major setback to this progress. And it reveals that there’s no point beyond which the industries that raise animals for food will think twice about how far they’re pushing the animals themselves. They’ll breed chickens to grow so big they can’t walk, just to squeeze more meat out of each bird. They’ll cram salmon, who make epic migratory journeys in the wild, into small tanks. They’ll tightly pack solitary octopuses if it can help them expand into new markets.
But Mather and some of her welfare-minded colleagues want industry to look at more than just profit. “When it comes right down to it, how to make a lot of money should not be what we really care about,” she said. “We share this planet with the animals — all the animals — and our basic orientation should be, ‘Are we caring?’”
2025-12-04 20:45:00
这个故事最初发表于Vox的儿童新闻通讯Kids Today。在美国各地的学校操场上，大约在上午10点，孩子们在攀爬架上玩耍，从滑梯上滑下来，玩着绷带游戏或四人四角游戏，有的则在跑道上安静地和朋友聊天。这些孩子是幸运的。专家一致认为，课间休息是孩子学校生活中最重要的部分之一。“当孩子们玩耍，尤其是户外活动时，他们能感受到快乐，感受到连接，感受到自己在学校中属于某一部分。”非营利组织Playworks的首席执行官Elizabeth Cushing告诉我。但家长们和倡导者表示，如今许多孩子在课间休息时被留在教室里，无法享受到户外活动带来的全部益处。
在西方各州，极端高温正越来越多地迫使孩子们待在室内。亚利桑那州立大学健康解决方案学院的Allison Poulos教授表示，在一项从7月到9月进行的研究中，她的团队发现孩子们在课间休息时有大约40%的时间是在室内。在较冷的地区，也有多种因素影响孩子们的户外活动。Shanée Garner，费城家长组织Lift Every Voice Philly的执行主任表示：“我们听到一些校长说，他们不希望孩子们弄乱操场。我们也听到有人表示没有足够的工作人员，还有人说孩子们之间无法相处。”当孩子们在教室里度过课间休息时，他们通常比较安静，甚至可能在看一部电影。根据亚利桑那州的研究，那些在教室里度过课间的孩子，在上课时的学习准备程度不如那些在户外玩耍的孩子。
如今，全国各地的家庭都在呼吁增加户外活动时间，研究人员也在探索学校如何在气候变化的背景下让孩子们更多地接触户外或至少在室内更加活跃。倡导者表示，这些变化是必要的，因为没有玩耍，孩子们就无法学习。“课间休息对儿童的成长和发展非常重要，我们必须认真对待这个问题。”Poulos说。
课间休息不仅仅是课堂的休息时间，也是孩子们练习社交和情感技能的重要时刻。加州大学圣克鲁兹分校的社会学教授Rebecca London表示，通过玩耍，孩子们学会“如何合作、如何沟通、如何解决冲突”。他们还学会情绪调节：“如果我输了一场比赛，我是否能保持冷静并继续玩耍？”自由玩耍对儿童发展至关重要，对一些孩子来说，课间休息可能是他们一天中唯一没有结构的玩耍时间。自2001年《不让任何孩子掉队法案》（No Child Left Behind）引入高风险测试后，课间休息时间大幅减少。从2001年到2019年，平均每周的课间休息时间减少了60分钟，仅剩下每天25分钟。虽然一些州如加州已通过法律规定了孩子每天的最低课间休息时间，但这些法律并不强制要求户外活动。与此同时，由于气候变化，极端高温变得越来越频繁，孩子们在课间休息时经常面临超过100华氏度的高温。此外，许多操场在高温天气下并不适合玩耍，因为它们通常缺乏树木遮荫，且由黑色沥青等材料制成，这些材料在高温下会变得非常危险。在美国许多地区，野火导致的空气污染也成为一个问题。在加州，有时会有几天甚至几周的时间，孩子们无法外出，因为空气质量太差。与夏季的高温不同，冬季的气温在美国许多地方变得更为温和。然而，极端天气和异常寒冷的天气却变得更加频繁，可能会干扰孩子们的户外活动。户外课间休息的温度限制因学区而异，有时由学校管理人员单独决定。“我曾去过一些地方，温度低于35华氏度时就禁止户外活动，也去过一些地方，温度低于10华氏度时就禁止。”London说。一些学校的家长抱怨，即使在温和的冬季天气中，孩子们也无法外出。“总是有各种借口，比如太湿或者孩子们没有合适的衣服。”一位母亲在去年3月马萨诸塞州沃思堡的学区会议上说道。除了天气因素，学校有时也难以招聘或培训足够的课间监督员。Garner表示，课间和午餐的监督员是整个学区中薪资最低的工作人员之一。通常，“负责课间活动的成年人没有接受过任何培训或支持。”Cushing说。如果课间监督员没有接受过冲突解决和促进玩耍的培训，打斗事件就会增多，学校可能会让孩子们留在室内以减少混乱。但缺乏培训和关注课间工作人员的现象，反映了对儿童乐趣和自主权的更大程度忽视。Garner表示，学校已经失去了“孩子们会玩耍”的理解。取而代之的是，“孩子们被期望被管理。”
当孩子们待在室内时，他们的玩耍活动会受到极大限制。Poulos告诉我，大多数小学都没有体育馆，因此孩子们通常在教室里度过课间休息时间，这样他们就失去了运动的机会，无法与不同班级的同学社交，也无法自由选择去哪玩、玩什么。London说：“室内课间休息与户外课间休息完全不同。”在美国，低收入地区、城市以及服务更多有色人种家庭的学区，孩子们获得的户外课间时间比富裕的郊区或以白人为主的地区要少得多。2019年，KUOW对西雅图公立学校进行的一项调查得出一个令人震惊的结论：“白人孩子通常有更多课间时间，而黑人孩子则较少。”然而，倡导者和研究人员正在努力让所有孩子都能获得户外课间休息，或者至少是合理活跃的替代方案。一些寒冷地区的学校在操场设有大型遮蔽设施，以保护孩子们免受雨淋。London说，这些遮蔽设施也可以在炎热地区建造，以提供阴凉。亚利桑那州立大学已与坦佩市及其他组织合作，在校园内种植树木。同时，一些学校正在将黑色沥青替换为本地植物或其他地面覆盖物。如果课间休息必须在室内进行，校长们则通过指定某些教室用于特定活动，并允许学生在这些教室之间移动，来给予学生更多的灵活性。除了改善设施，对课间监督员进行简单的培训也能帮助减少冲突，Cushing说。甚至像用石头剪刀布来解决争执这样的小措施，也能减少冲突。当学校管理者看到良好组织的课间休息所带来的好处，包括学生更快地回到课堂，他们就更有可能接受一些小雨或阴天。其他人则在推动学区层面的政策改革。在费城，Lift Every Voice组织呼吁结束学校中的12项有害做法，包括剥夺课间休息时间。对Garner来说，这个问题很简单：“孩子们就是孩子，他们应该被当作人类，而不是机器来对待。”
洛杉矶的官员表示，家庭对移民与海关执法局（ICE）突袭的恐惧正在阻止他们让孩子入学，导致学区的入学人数显著下降。Jill Barshay在Hechinger报告中写道，特朗普政府的第一年对教育研究来说是毁灭性的：“重建对联邦数据的信心，并从一个混乱的年份中恢复机构知识，所需的时间远比拆解所需的时间要长。”看起来，Easy-Bake烤箱又回来了。我小儿子正在享受《Ada Twist，科学家》这本书，讲述一个家庭如何适应他们女儿对科学探索的热情（最初表现为想要爬上家具并对猫进行实验的欲望）。
This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.
At about 10 am local time on school playgrounds across the United States, kids are climbing on jungle gyms and whooshing down slides. They’re playing bandage tag or foursquare. They’re walking around the track, quietly catching up with their friends.
Those are the lucky ones. Recess, experts agree, is one of the most crucial parts of a child’s school day.
“When kids get to play, and especially outside, they get to feel joy, they get to feel connection, they get to feel like they belong at school,” Elizabeth Cushing, CEO of the nonprofit Playworks, told me. “That’s the kind of experience we all want for them.”
But parents and advocates around the country say that, too often, kids are now spending recess in their classrooms, where they don’t get the full benefits that outdoor play can provide.
In Western states, extreme heat is increasingly keeping kids indoors, said Allison Poulos, a professor at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions. In one study conducted from July to September — the hottest months of the year in Arizona — her team found that kids were inside for recess about 40 percent of the time.
In colder areas, a variety of factors are at play. “We’ve heard a principal say he didn’t want the kids messing up the playground,” said Shanée Garner, executive director of Lift Every Voice Philly, a parent organizing group. “We’ve heard some folks say there’s no staffing. We’ve heard other folks say that the kids don’t get along with each other.”
When kids have recess inside instead of on the playground, they’re typically sedentary and often watching a movie, experts told me. In the Arizona study, kids who had recess in their classrooms were less ready to learn when lessons resumed than kids who actually got to play outside.
Now, families around the country are pushing for more outdoor time, and researchers are exploring ways that schools can get kids outside — or at least get them more active indoors — as the climate changes. These changes are necessary, advocates say, because without play, kids can’t learn.
“Recess is a very important period and time for children’s growth and development,” Poulos told me. “We have to be thinking of this and taking this seriously.”
Recess isn’t just a break from class; it’s also a time when kids practice the social and emotional skills they’ll need throughout their lives. During play, kids learn “how to collaborate, how to communicate, how to resolve conflict,” said Rebecca London, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has worked on recess research. They also learn emotion regulation: “If I lose a game, can I keep it together and keep playing?”
Free play is critical to children’s development, and for some kids, recess is “the only unstructured play they have any time in their day,” London said.
Recess in general suffered after the introduction of high-stakes testing with No Child Left Behind in 2001, as educators came to believe that kids needed as much instructional time as possible to increase test scores, London said. Average weekly recess time declined by 60 minutes between 2001 and 2019 to just 25 minutes a day.
A few states, like California, have passed laws setting a minimum amount of recess time for kids, but they don’t necessarily require that time to be spent outside. Meanwhile, as extreme heat becomes ever more common as a result of climate change, kids around the country are routinely facing temperatures over 100 degrees at recess time. Moreover, many playgrounds are exceptionally bad places to be when it’s very hot out; they often have minimal tree coverage and are made of materials like blacktop that can become dangerously hot to play on, Poulos said.
In many parts of the US, poor air quality from wildfires is also becoming an issue. In California, “there could be days or even weeks where kids cannot be outside because the air quality is so bad,” London said.
Unlike summer heat, winter temperatures are getting milder across much of the US. However, severe storms and unusual cold snaps are becoming more common, potentially disrupting kids’ outdoor time.
Temperature thresholds for outdoor recess vary from district to district, and it’s sometimes left up to individual school administrators to decide how cold is too cold. “I’ve been to places where the cutoff is 35 degrees, and I’ve been to places where the cutoff is 10 degrees,” London said.
Parents at some schools have complained that, even on mild winter days, kids aren’t getting outside. “There are constant excuses, whether it is too wet or students don’t have the right clothes,” one mom said during a school board meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts, last March.
Beyond the weather, schools sometimes struggle to recruit or train enough aides to supervise kids outside. Recess and lunch monitors “are some of the lowest paid folks in the entire school district,” Garner said.
Often, “the adults who are in charge of recess are not given any training, any support,” Cushing said. When recess monitors aren’t trained in conflict resolution and facilitating play, fights become more common, and schools may keep kids inside to limit the chaos.
But the lack of training and attention for recess staff is a symptom of a larger deprioritization of children’s fun and autonomy, some say. Schools have lost “an understanding that kids are going to play,” Garner said. Instead, “kids are expected to be managed.”
When kids are inside, that play is dramatically limited, experts say. Most elementary schools don’t have a gym, Poulos told me. Instead, they’re usually in their classrooms, where they miss out on movement, the chance to socialize with kids who aren’t in their class, and the opportunity to choose where they go and what they do.
“Indoor recess is not the same as outdoor recess,” London said.
Around the country, children in lower-income areas, cities, and districts that serve a higher percentage of families of color have less access to outdoor recess than their counterparts in more affluent, suburban, or predominantly white areas, London said. One 2019 investigation of Seattle public schools by KUOW came to a stark conclusion: “White kids typically get more recess. Black kids get less.”
But, advocates and researchers are working to make outdoor recess — or at least a reasonably active alternative — available to all kids. Some schools in colder areas have large shelters on their playgrounds to protect kids from rain, London said. Such shelters could also be constructed in hotter climates to provide shade.
Arizona State University has partnered with the city of Tempe and other groups to plant trees in schoolyards. Meanwhile, some schools are removing blacktop and replacing it with native plants or other ground cover. And if recess has to be indoors, principals have given students a bit more flexibility by designating certain classrooms for certain activities and allowing students to move between them, Poulos said.
Beyond facilities improvements, simple training for recess monitors can help reduce fights, Cushing said. Even something like having monitors use rock, paper, scissors to resolve disputes can help cut down on conflict.
When school leaders see the benefits of a well-run recess, including students who transition more quickly back to class, “they’re more likely to accept the drizzle,” Cushing said.
Others are pushing for policy change at the district level. In Philadelphia, Lift Every Voice has called for an end to 12 damaging practices in schools, including withholding recess.
For Garner, the issue is simple: “Kids are kids, and they should be treated like human beings, not like bots.”
Officials in Los Angeles say families’ fear of ICE raids is discouraging them from enrolling their children in school, contributing to a significant enrollment drop in the district.
The first year of the Trump administration has been devastating for education research, Jill Barshay writes for the Hechinger Report: “Rebuilding confidence in federal data — and recovering the institutional knowledge lost in a single chaotic year — will take far longer than the dismantling.”
The Easy-Bake Oven is back, apparently.
My little kid has been enjoying Ada Twist, Scientist, about a family coming to terms with their daughter’s passion for scientific exploration (which initially manifests as a desire to climb furniture and conduct experiments on the cat).
How do the kids in your life feel about recess? Do they wish it was longer? Do they get to play outside? Why is recess important to them? And what are your memories of recess as a kid? Let me know at [email protected].
2025-12-04 20:30:00
2019年，大法官尼尔·戈萨奇似乎呼吁对最高法院关于过度惩罚的处理方式进行全面反思。近25年前，在阿特金斯诉弗吉尼亚州案（2002年）中，最高法院裁定对有智力障碍的罪犯执行死刑违宪。然而，下周最高法院将审理一个新的案件——哈姆诉史密斯案，以判断当前共和党占多数的法院是否希望保留这一对死刑的限制。哈姆案最可能的判决结果是允许各州对那些“边缘”案件（即临床医生可能对其是否患有智力障碍意见不一的案件）拥有更大的执行死刑的自由。但至少有部分大法官表示希望走得更远。在2019年的布克勒诉普里塞案中，五位共和党大法官似乎支持对第八修正案（禁止残酷和不寻常的惩罚）的激进重新解释。
关键要点：
在过去大约六十年里，最高法院一直认为，该修正案的含义应从“社会成熟过程中体现的道德标准”中推导出来。因此，随着某些惩罚方式在现代美国社会中变得不常见且不被接受，其宪法合法性也变得越来越可疑。例如，阿特金斯案援引了“许多州禁止对智力障碍者执行死刑”这一事实，以支持其结论。但在布克勒案中，戈萨奇大法官的多数意见忽略了这一“道德标准”框架，转而主张法院应考虑惩罚是否在“建国时”就已不再流行。
尽管戈萨奇在布克勒案中提到一些执行方式（如“剖腹”或“活活烧死”）认为其违宪，但他认为这些方式在“建国时”早已不再使用，因此属于“不寻常”的惩罚。因此，问题不在于惩罚是否残酷和不寻常，而在于其是否在250年前就被认为如此。如果最高法院接受这一观点，那么现代对残酷或过度惩罚的大部分限制可能会被推翻。
在阿特金斯案中，斯卡利亚大法官曾反对，认为只有“严重或极度”智力障碍的人才受到保护。他的一些资料甚至暗示，只有智商低于25的人才受到第八修正案的保护。更广泛地说，斯卡利亚认为第八修正案只禁止“始终如一的残酷”惩罚，如“刑架”和“铁钳”，而不阻止政府对轻微犯罪施加过度惩罚。
因此，哈姆案不仅威胁到对智力障碍者的宪法保护，还可能彻底改变最高法院对第八修正案的解读方式，允许对轻微犯罪施加严厉的惩罚。目前尚不清楚最高法院是否真的有五票支持这种变革。虽然布克勒案中的五位大法官仍然在任，但自2019年布克勒案判决以来，最高法院并未采取系统性措施推翻“道德标准”框架。可能至少有部分布克勒案多数意见的大法官加入戈萨奇的意见，是因为他们同意判决结果，但对戈萨奇的第八修正案理论仍有疑虑。但至少，大多数大法官似乎对哈姆案的处理并不满意，因为他们更倾向于遵循霍尔案中确立的框架。
Nearly a quarter century ago, in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional to execute offenders with an intellectual disability. Next Wednesday, however, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a new case, Hamm v. Smith, which tests whether the Court’s current Republican majority wishes to retain this limit on capital punishment.
The most likely outcome in Hamm is probably a decision giving states more leeway to execute people with marginal claims that they are intellectually disabled — “borderline” cases where clinicians might disagree on whether the offender should be diagnosed with an intellectual disability. But at least some members of the Court have signalled that they would like to go much further.
In Bucklew v. Precythe (2019), five Republican justices seemed to endorse a radical reshaping of the Court’s approach to the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.”
For about six decades, the Court has held that this amendment “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Thus, as a particular punitive practice became less common and less accepted within modern American society, it stood on increasingly dubious constitutional ground. Atkins, for example, pointed to the “large number of States prohibiting the execution of [intellectually disabled] persons” to justify its conclusion that these individuals may not be killed by the state.
In Bucklew, however, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion ignored this “evolving standards of decency” framework, instead suggesting that courts must ask whether a particular punishment had fallen out of favor “by the time of the founding.” While that distinction might seem esoteric, the implications are breathtaking.
Among other things, this historical approach would likely lead the Court to overrule past decisions holding that the Constitution forbids excessive punishments for relatively minor crimes. So jaywalkers, small-time drug offenders, or a driver who does not come to a complete stop at a “STOP” sign could all be sentenced to life in prison.
Though it’s not at all clear that a majority of the Court will go that far, it is very likely that the Eighth Amendment will emerge smaller from the Court’s decision in Hamm, potentially diminishing the legal protections against bizarre or excessive punishments that all Americans enjoy.
The Court’s right flank has criticized Atkins from the day it was decided, and that right flank now controls six seats on the nine-justice Court. It also doesn’t help that the death row inmate at the heart of Hamm’s claim that he is intellectually disabled is genuinely marginal.
So the Court won’t even have to reach very far to decide that he should be executed.
Joseph Clifton Smith was sentenced to death for a 1997 robbery and murder. He claims that he cannot constitutionally be executed because he has an intellectual disability.
Courts hearing Atkins claims are supposed to apply the clinical definition of intellectual disability, and one of three factors that clinicians look at when diagnosing an intellectually disabled patient is their IQ score. Broadly speaking, clinicians look for an IQ of 70 or below when diagnosing such a disability. Although, because IQ tests have a margin of error, recent editions of the diagnostic manual for mental disorders indicate that “a score of 65–75 (70 ± 5)” is often consistent with intellectual disability.
Smith has taken five IQ tests, and he scored 75, 74, 72, 78, and 74 on those tests.
Under current law, the fact that Smith has never scored below 70 on an IQ test is not fatal to his claim that he has an intellectual disability. A recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders warns that someone “whose IQ score is somewhat above 65–75 may nevertheless have such substantial adaptive behavior problems…that the person’s actual functioning is clinically comparable to that of individuals with a lower IQ score.”
Similarly, the Supreme Court held in Hall v. Florida (2014) that “intellectual disability is a condition, not a number,” and thus states that wish to determine if a particular individual may be executed “must afford these test scores the same studied skepticism that those who design and use the tests do, and understand that an IQ test score represents a range rather than a fixed number.”
Thus, despite Smith’s IQ scores, the lower federal courts that heard Hamm determined that Smith is intellectually disabled based on his “significant deficits in social/interpersonal skills, self-direction, independent home living, and functional academics.”
But Hall was also a 5-4 decision, and the majority included retired Justice Anthony Kennedy and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both of whom were replaced by Trump appointees. So it is far from clear whether the Court’s new majority will care what Hall had to say about the death penalty.
It’s also safe to say that Smith’s Atkins claim is far from a slam dunk. The tools that clinicians use to diagnose mental disorders are often imprecise, in part because they do not need to operate with mathematical precision. The actual differences between a child who has an IQ of 69 and a child with an IQ of 71 are quite small, and both children may be given nearly identical education plans while they are still in school — regardless of whether each is diagnosed with an intellectual disability.
But, because Atkins sets up a rigid binary between people who are intellectually disabled (and thus cannot be executed) and people who are not (and thus can be executed), Smith’s life depends on very small distinctions. And the Supreme Court can doom him by reaching the entirely plausible conclusion that he just barely qualifies as not disabled.
To some extent, Hamm turns on a real tension within the Court’s current decisions applying Atkins. On the one hand, while Atkins did hold that executing intellectually disabled offenders is unconstitutional, it gave the governments in states where the death penalty is still legal a fair amount of leeway in how they implement this holding. “[W]e leave to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction” against executing the intellectually disabled, the Court said in Atkins.
More recent decisions, however, insist that states must follow clinical standards when determining which offenders are intellectually disabled. These rulings also warn that states must not be given too much control over this determination. “If the States were to have complete autonomy to define intellectual disability as they wished,” Hall warned, then “the Court’s decision in Atkins could become a nullity.”
Before Gorsuch joined the Court in 2017, the Court’s internal fights over Atkins frequently turned on this tension between deferring to states and ensuring that death penalty states use clinically rigorous standards. Dissenting in Hall, for example, Justice Samuel Alito accused the majority of striking “down a state law based on the evolving standards of professional societies, most notably the American Psychiatric Association (APA).”
He argued that courts should look at “laws enacted by state legislatures” in death penalty states to determine whether states may use a particular method to determine if someone is intellectually disabled. Under Alito’s approach, each state should be allowed to decide how it determines who is intellectually disabled, unless a state uses a highly unusual method that is rejected by nearly every other state where the death penalty is legal.
In its brief to the justices in Hamm, Alabama, the state that sentenced Smith to death, similarly argues that courts should be more deferential to states in Atkins cases.
Yet, while Alito’s approach would likely enable states to undermine Atkins, Alito at least attempts to fit his preferred rule within the broader “evolving standards of decency” framework that the Court has applied in Eighth Amendment cases since the mid-20th century. Alito’s position is that courts should determine what these evolving standards are by looking at how pro-death penalty states actually apply the death penalty.
In Bucklew, however, Gorsuch took a much more radical approach.
Bucklew asked whether states may use a particular method of lethal injection that can cause inmates to feel a great deal of pain before they die. Gorsuch’s opinion holding that states could use this method did not explicitly overrule the Court’s previous decisions applying the “evolving standards” framework. Instead, it seems to exist in an entirely different legal universe — ignoring past decisions altogether to apply Gorsuch’s preferred historical approach.
Though Gorsuch did name some execution methods, such as “disemboweling” or “burning alive” which he does think are unconstitutional, he wrote that these methods are not allowed because “by the time of the founding, these methods had long fallen out of use and so had become ‘unusual.’” Thus, the question was not whether a particular punishment is cruel and unusual today, but whether it was considered cruel and unusual nearly 250 years ago.
If the Court embraces this approach, it would likely mean the end of most modern-day restrictions on cruel or excessive punishments. Dissenting in Atkins, for example, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that only “severely or profoundly” intellectually disabled people are protected against execution. One of Scalia’s sources suggests that only people with an IQ of 25 or below are protected by the Eighth Amendment from execution.
More broadly, Scalia argued that the Eighth Amendment only forbids “always-and-everywhere ‘cruel’ punishments, such as the rack and the thumbscrew,” and does not prevent the government from imposing excessive punishments for minor crimes. If the Constitution permits the state to execute murderers, then it may also impose the death penalty for lesser offenses such as shoplifting or driving over the speed limit.
Hamm, in other words, does not simply threaten constitutional protections for people with intellectual disabilities. It could potentially revolutionize the Court’s approach to the Eighth Amendment and permit very steep penalties for very small crimes.
It is unclear whether the Court actually has five votes to bring about such a revolution. While all five justices who formed the majority in Bucklew remain on the bench, the Court hasn’t taken any systematic steps to dismantle the “evolving standards” framework since Bucklew was handed down in 2019. It’s possible that at least some members of the Bucklew majority joined Gorsuch’s opinion because they agreed with the result, while still harboring some qualms about his broader theory of the Eighth Amendment.
But, at the very least, it is unlikely that the justices took up Hamm because most of them are satisfied with the framework laid out in Hall.
2025-12-04 19:00:00
主要观点：
One Battle After Another is, perhaps, too on the nose. Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic depicts past and present revolutionaries fighting back against a heavily militarized, white-supremacist regime that seemed to mirror reality in the United States when the movie hit theaters in late 2025. Characters rescue immigrants from detention centers, bomb the office of an anti-abortion politician, and engage in explosive standoffs with the police.
But according to its auteur, One Battle After Another is not a manifesto. Nor was the script, which he started working on two decades ago, intended to challenge the particular moment. The film is loosely based on the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, a dark satire set just after Reagan’s reelection. Anderson has said that the film depicts the timeless nature of fascism but that he was more focused on the journey of its characters. He hasn’t credited Trump as an inspiration for the film.
“The biggest mistake I could make in a story like this is to put politics up in the front,” Anderson told the Los Angeles Times.
Still, questions over whether One Battle After Another is radical enough persist online. It’s just another example of a growing tendency for audiences to pigeonhole films politically, regardless of their text or the filmmaker’s intent. People expect a straightforward and instructive political message and then judge the work by that metric.
Art, of course, can be a powerful vehicle for politics, and audiences are free to extract political commentary from movies. However, these analyses have recently digressed into more reductive takes and, consequentially, misguided demands.
Many fans claimed that this year’s Superman blockbuster is anti-Zionist with its warring countries representing Israel and Palestine, even though director James Gunn has denied this interpretation. Since being adapted to screen with a diverse cast, fans are narrowing the politics of Wicked, which has been on Broadway for over 20 years, down to a critique of white feminism. On the flipside, critics denounced After the Hunt, a film about a college student’s sexual assault allegation against a professor, for supposedly not being direct enough in its commentary on the #MeToo movement and cancel culture.
As politics have become an inescapable part of daily culture, people are desperate for movies to telegraph their specific worldview.
“People have become obsessed with categorizing films as morally good or bad in order to neatly insert them into the wider political discourse,” says film critic and programmer Jourdain Searles. “Films aren’t message delivery machines.”
But not every piece of culture intends to “take a side” or make a bold political statement. This myopic way of consuming films might be useful in a debate online, but it’s not how you get the most out of a movie.
The second Trump administration has dedicated much of its authoritarian efforts to dissenting voices in the media and the arts. It’s understandable that audiences would seek films that challenge the status quo, even if they politicize movies that didn’t set out to be political statements.
After all, the idea that movies can speak to the current moment is “as old as Hollywood itself,” according to Montclair State University assistant professor Joel Penney. Look no further than propaganda films like D.W. Griffith’s 1915 pro-Ku Klux Klan epic The Birth of a Nation or, later, Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 comedy The Great Dictator.
For nearly 50 years, movies with overtly political themes weren’t hard to find. In the 1960s and ‘70s, there was a surge in countercultural and independent movies, many of them made by Black independent filmmakers addressing systemic racism. The ’70s, in particular, commented on the Nixon era with political thrillers, like All the President’s Men, The Conversation, The Days of the Condor, and The Parallax View, all of which grappled with the weakness of political leaders and the disappointment of politics.
By the ’80s and ’90s, director of George Washington University’s film studies department Elisabeth Anker says Hollywood saw a huge rise in movies “taking place in the walls of Congress” about political leaders and how power works, including The American President, Nixon, JFK, and Wag the Dog.
In the early 21st century, the extent to which movies took on political subject matter waxed and waned based on public consensus around certain issues and figures and what studios think will make the most money. For example, Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 Iraq war film The Hurt Locker and her controversial 2012 follow-up Zero Dark Thirty, about the CIA’s hunt for Osama Bin Laden, were box-office successes and eventual Oscar winners.
“Hollywood appears to have largely stopped making political movies,” wrote Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz of the current landscape in a CBS News column, citing studio executives’ aversion to risk and controversy. This is despite how much politics have dominated the culture in the wake of Trump’s election in 2016. (Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic Vice, from 2018, and his 2022 climate satire Don’t Look Up stick out as rare examples.)
Mankiewicz points to The Apprentice as an example of what can go wrong. The 2024 Donald Trump biopic had trouble finding distribution, particularly after Trump threatened legal action. The 2020 film The Hunt, which depicted elites hunting “deplorables” for sport, was also censored after backlash from Trump. After the president denounced the film on social media, Universal removed the movie from its release schedule, before sending it straight to streaming.
“The Trump era has definitely made studios more cowardly about direct political work that implicates the right for its escalating bigotry and politicians, in general, for being directly responsible for the poverty and strife in this country,” says Searles.
So it makes sense that, with fewer choices of films that directly tackle systems of power, moviegoers want to find messages that meet our historical moment — even if those messages aren’t actually there.
To be clear, this isn’t just a tendency of progressive moviegoers. This hunt for social and political messaging is far more extreme on the right. Regardless of the topic or genre, conservatives have been particularly aggressive about misreading films for political ends, launching outlandish attacks against mainstream movies as a way to insert themselves into pop culture. The past few years have seen pundits, like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, categorize anything from The Super Mario Bros. Movie to Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid as “woke” propaganda for casting people of color or containing female-empowerment storylines. It amounts to ragebait, but it seems to be having an influence on how movies are discussed on social media.
None of this means that critics or audiences aren’t allowed to take issue with the content of films like One Battle After Another or After The Hunt and find them underwhelming. But we limit the possibilities of movies and filmmakers when we expect them to provide an answer to our current moment rather than tell their own stories in a way that’s captivating and meaningful. One Battle After Another, “only falls short politically if you expect any fictional political story to bear the weight of this country’s entire history,” says Searles.
“It isn’t mainstream cinema’s job to provide a clear or coherent political message to the audience,” says Searles. “These are stories about people, and we are watching them live their lives, just as we do.”
2025-12-04 07:00:00
2025年11月30日，唐纳德·特朗普在乘坐空军一号前往华盛顿特区途中向媒体发表讲话。| Pete Marovich/Getty Images
本文出自《Logoff》每日通讯，旨在帮助您了解特朗普政府的动态，而不让政治新闻占据您的生活。欢迎订阅。
欢迎来到《Logoff》：特朗普政府宣布暂停来自19个国家的移民申请，以回应上周华盛顿特区发生的两名国民警卫队士兵遇害事件。具体变化是什么？此次暂停涵盖了此前已实施旅行禁令的12个国家，以及另外7个面临部分限制的国家。根据新政策，来自这些国家的移民将暂停所有绿卡和公民身份申请。美国公民及移民服务局还表示，将重新审查自拜登政府上任以来的所有移民案件。
受影响的国家包括阿富汗、缅甸、乍得、刚果共和国、赤道几内亚、厄立特里亚、海地、伊朗、利比亚、索马里、苏丹、也门、布隆迪、古巴、老挝、塞拉利昂、多哥、土库曼斯坦和委内瑞拉。
背景是什么？这是特朗普政府针对华盛顿枪击事件发起的更广泛的移民收紧措施的一部分，包括暂停庇护申请。枪击案嫌疑人拉卡纳沃尔，是一名阿富汗籍人士，曾在其国内与一家美国中央情报局支持的准军事组织合作，之后于2021年进入美国。
大局如何？即使在最近的限制措施出台之前，特朗普（以及白宫副幕僚长兼反移民激进分子斯蒂芬·米勒）已经大幅削减了美国的移民来源。今年10月，特朗普政府将年度难民配额设定为仅7500人，而拜登政府则为125000人。这7500人中，几乎全部可能是白人南非人——受益于特朗普政府所构想的所谓“难民危机”。
这有什么意义？特朗普正利用华盛顿枪击事件来推动更广泛、更恶劣的反移民议程，特别关注排除来自非白人国家的移民。最新例子就是昨天在内阁会议上，特朗普攻击了索马里移民，称他们为“垃圾”，并告诉记者“我不希望他们进入我们的国家”。
无论新闻多么糟糕，与朋友面对面相处（最好是远离手机）都是改善世界现状的一种方式。这可以有多种形式，但我的同事艾莉·沃尔普有一个具体的建议：尝试重新举办睡衣派对。她写道，与朋友随意共处是放松身心、加深友谊的好方法，无论年龄大小。您可以在这里阅读她完整而有说服力的论述。
一如既往，感谢您的阅读，祝您有一个美好的夜晚，我们明天再见！
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is stopping all immigration applications from 19 countries in response to last week’s deadly shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, DC.
What’s changing? The pause covers 12 countries that were already under a travel ban imposed earlier this year, as well as seven others facing partial restrictions. Under the new policy, all green card and citizenship applications will be halted for immigrants from those countries. US Citizenship and Immigration Services also said that immigration cases dating back to the start of the Biden administration will be re-reviewed.
The affected countries are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
What’s the context? This is part of a broader immigration crackdown by the Trump administration in response to the DC shooting, including a pause on asylum applications. The shooting suspect, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is an Afghan national who worked with a CIA-backed paramilitary unit in his home country before entering the US in 2021.
What’s the big picture? Even before the most recent restrictions, President Donald Trump (and White House deputy chief of staff/anti-immigration zealot Stephen Miller) choked off many sources of immigration to the US. In October, the Trump administration set its annual refugee cap at just 7,500 people, compared to 125,000 under President Joe Biden. Of those 7,500, nearly all may be white South Africans — beneficiaries of what is largely an imagined crisis on the part of the Trump administration.
Why does this matter? Trump is seizing on the DC shooting as an opportunity to advance a much broader, much uglier anti-immigration agenda, with a particular focus on excluding immigrants from non-white countries. The latest example of that came just yesterday: Trump attacked Somali immigrants in a Cabinet meeting, calling them “garbage” and telling reporters that “I don’t want them in our country.”
There are few ways to feel better about the state of the world, however bad the news might be, than to spend time with friends in person (ideally with phones far away). That can take lots of forms, but my colleague Allie Volpe has a specific recommendation: Try bringing back the slumber party. Simply coexisting with friends in an open-ended hangout, she writes, is a great way to relax and deepen friendships, whatever your age. You can read her full, compelling case here.
As always, thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!