2026-02-27 20:00:00
美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在纽约证券交易所交易大厅内召开的关于关税的新闻发布会被电视播放。去年，特朗普的“解放日”关税本应改变一切——当公司对新关税进行报复时，经济学家曾预测价格将飙升，美国经济将陷入衰退。然而，最近最高法院裁定这些关税违宪。尽管特朗普试图重新实施这些关税，但这一裁决引发了疑问：经济学家第一次预测是否错了？布鲁金斯学会的副主席兼经济研究主任本·哈里斯，以及前拜登政府财政部经济政策副部长，表示经济学家低估了我们复杂经济体系的韧性。他说：“如果告诉一百位经济学家，平均关税率将从3%飙升至20%以上，许多人都会预测美国经济会陷入衰退。但事实上我们并没有看到这种情况。”在《Today, Explained》节目中，他与主持人诺埃尔·金深入探讨了特朗普关税政策带来的意外，以及这些政策揭示了美国经济的哪些特点，以及接下来可能发生什么。以下是对话的节选，已进行删减和润色。完整播客内容更多，因此请在Apple Podcasts、Pandora和Spotify等平台收听《Today, Explained》。
当特朗普当选总统并计划实施关税时，你听到负责任的经济学家对美国经济会有什么影响的预测吗？许多经济学家感到意外。在特朗普的第一个任期内，平均关税率从约1.5%上升到约3%，这是一次显著的增加。但我认为，经济学家在第二个特朗普任期内对关税率从3%飙升至20%以上的预测出现了“想象力的失败”。第二个意外是，这种急剧的关税上涨并没有带来我们预期的经济影响。我的猜测是，如果告诉一百位经济学家，平均关税率会从3%飙升到20%以上，他们中的许多人会预测美国经济会陷入衰退。但事实上我们并没有看到这种情况。是的，这不仅仅是我的猜测，因为去年我曾报道过“解放日”事件，当时情况几乎到了恐慌的地步。但总体来看，美国经济并未崩溃。到底发生了什么？我们从这次关税上涨中学到了三个重要的教训。第一，关税对美国消费者的影响至关重要。在特朗普的第一个任期中，总统对洗衣机实施了关税，这意味着每个美国消费者购买洗衣机时多支付约90美元。这种影响迅速传递到了消费者。因此，人们预期在第二个任期中，同样的快速传递也会发生，但事实并非如此。这可能是因为企业不确定这些关税是否能持续，因此等待观望，或者他们认为美国消费者没有足够的财富和收入来一次性承担这些关税。第二，整个经济的状况也很重要。总统和国会共和党人通过了大规模的《一项伟大的美丽法案》（One Big Beautiful Bill），其中包含大量刺激措施。因此，对于中产阶级家庭来说，关税带来的额外税收几乎被该法案提供的额外税收抵消了。第三，我们发现，贸易伙伴的预期反应并不总是如我们所想。如果我在2025年初告诉一些经济学家，关税率会像现在这样大幅上升，我认为我们会预期欧洲、亚洲等国家的贸易伙伴会采取报复措施，对美国出口实施额外关税。但事实并非如此，除了中国之外，我们看到的更多是贸易伙伴们努力建立贸易框架，而不是对我们采取惩罚性措施。为什么没有出现我们预期的报复？这可能需要几年时间才能看到更多结果。我认为，我们的贸易伙伴，就像国内经济学家一样，被关税的大幅上涨所震惊，他们并没有准备好实施惩罚性措施。此外，美国拥有庞大的出口市场，这一点特朗普从一开始就认识到了。我们对贸易伙伴有一定的影响力。因此，他们需要时间来寻找替代与美国贸易的方案。我认为，当2026年结束，进入2027年时，如果这些关税仍然有效，我们可能会看到更多的惩罚性措施，以及贸易模式向远离美国的方向转变。我们可以说，过去一年或12个月里，美国经济并未表现得很差。但我们知道，美国人对这些关税感到不满。这种不满是否意味着更大的问题？从对美国消费者的调查中，我有两个主要发现。首先，人们非常讨厌通货膨胀。我在拜登政府担任财政部首席经济学家时就学到了这一点，当时失业率低至3.5%，但人们仍然对经济感到不满，因为物价上涨。如今，特朗普以降低物价为竞选纲领，而通货膨胀率仍维持在3%左右。其次，无论是民主党还是共和党，当被问及“为什么物价上涨？”时，大多数人都将原因归咎于这些关税，这在经济上是正确的。因此，我认为美国消费者相当敏锐，同时也对这一政策感到非常不满。在过去12个月中，我们从“解放日”关税中是否学到了关于美国经济的什么教训？最大的教训是，美国是世界最大的经济体，经济结构非常多元化。仅靠一项临时的贸易政策变化就无法将我们推入衰退。现在关税被取消，接下来会发生什么？人们是否应该期待物价下降？我们可能会看到物价趋于稳定，特别是如果总统开始取消那些不受欢迎的关税。这确实是一个关键问题，因为白宫和国会的共和党人在中期选举前会采取什么行动仍不确定。众议院的共和党人显然担心失去对民主党甚至参议院的控制。有些人猜测国会可能会出台一项法案，将部分关税成本退还给美国家庭。我们还将看到针对这些关税的大量法律挑战，这些挑战将决定未来的发展方向。你可能听说过总统在最高法院裁决后宣布的“第122节”关税。这些是普遍适用的15%关税。法院将裁定他是否有权使用这些关税。此外，还有关于退税的问题。大约有1600亿美元的关税被非法征收。这些钱是否会退还给已经申请退税的众多公司？最高法院对总统来说是个好消息，他们限制了他在关税方面的权力。除了少数特殊情况外，关税对美国消费者和美国企业都是不利的。但总体而言，我认为我们不应期待短期内出现经济衰退，我们应放心，我们拥有大量资源，将继续以适度的速度增长。
President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs last year had been supposed to change everything — as companies retaliated against new tariffs, economists predicted, prices would soar and the US economy would plunge into recession.
The Supreme Court recently declared those tariffs unconstitutional. As Trump scrambles to reimpose them, though, the news raised a question: Did economists get it wrong the first time around?
Ben Harris, the vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and a former assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy in the Biden administration, says economists underestimated our complicated economic system.
“My guess is that if you told a hundred economists that the average tariff rate was going to jump from 3 percent to well over 20 percent, many would’ve predicted a recession,” Harris said. “And that was in fact not what we saw.”
On Today, Explained, he and co-host Noel King dig into the surprises from Trump’s tariff policy, what it illuminated about our own economy, and what happens next.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
When President Trump was elected and it became clear that he planned on implementing tariffs, what were you hearing from responsible economists about what was going to happen to the American economy?
Many economists were caught by surprise. The average tariff rate in the first Trump administration went from about 1.5 percent to about 3 percent, which was a big proportional increase. But I think there was a bit of a failure of imagination by economists when it came to the second Trump administration, where post-“Liberation Day,” we saw that average rate jump well over 20 percent.
The second thing that caught economists by surprise was that the really sharp increase didn’t have the type of impact that we thought it would have. My guess is that if you told a hundred economists that the average tariff rate was going to jump from 3 percent to well over 20 percent, many would’ve predicted a recession. And that was in fact not what we saw.
Yeah, and it wasn’t just your guess, because I remember covering Liberation Day last year and it was something close to hysteria. But broadly, the American economy did not tank. What did happen?
We learned three big lessons about why this increase in tariffs did not tank the US economy.
The first lesson was that when the tariffs passed through to US consumers really matters. In the first Trump administration, you might remember that the president put in place a tariff on washing machines, which meant that every American consumer paid about $90 more for every washing machine that they bought. And that pass-through happened really quickly. And so the expectation was that the same speed of transmission would happen in a second Trump administration, and that in fact didn’t happen. And that may be because companies weren’t sure if the tariffs would stick and were waiting to see what happened, or maybe they thought that US consumers didn’t have the wealth and income to handle these tariffs all at once.
The second lesson that we learned is that it also matters what’s happening in the rest of the economy. And as you know, the president and Republicans in Congress passed this massive One Big Beautiful Bill [Act]. That bill had a lot of stimulus in it and so for a middle-class family, the extra taxes you were paying in tariffs was roughly offset by the extra tax benefit you were getting from the One Big Beautiful Bill.
The third lesson I think we learned was that the expected response from our trading partners isn’t always what we think. If I had told a bunch of economists at the beginning of 2025 that the tariff rate was going to shoot up as much as it did, I think we would’ve expected that our trading partners in Europe and in Asia and elsewhere around the world would react by putting in place additional tariffs on US exports. That’s exactly the opposite of what we saw, outside of China. We saw a lot of our trading partners racing to put together these trade frameworks rather than putting in place punitive measures against us.
Why was there not the retaliation we expected?
We’ll learn more after a few years. I think that our trading partners, like domestic economists, were caught off guard by the size of the increases and they didn’t really have plans in place to go ahead and put in place punitive measures.
Also, the United States has a massive export market, and this is something that President Trump recognized from the outset. We do have a fair amount of leverage over our trading partners. And so it just takes time for them to put in place alternatives to trading with the United States. I think that when 2026 closes, and if we get into 2027, we’ll probably see more punitive measures and more shifts in trading patterns away from the United States, if these tariffs stay in place.
We can sit here and say all day long that the American economy did not do badly last year or over the last 12 months. But we do know that Americans feel differently about the tariffs. Do we trace that to something bigger going wrong?
I think there are two big takeaways that I have from surveys of American consumers. The first is that people really hate inflation. And I learned this lesson during the Biden administration when I was serving as chief economist of the Treasury Department, where we had the unemployment rate at 3.5 percent. It was a record low, but people were still really frustrated with the economy because prices were higher. And that’s, I think, true today, where President Trump ran on a platform of lowering prices and inflation has stayed around 3 percent or a little bit less.
But the second thing is if you look at surveys of both Democrats and Republicans where they’re asked, “Why do we have higher prices?” — really high percentages of Democrats and even high percentages of Republicans attribute the higher prices to those tariffs, which is economically correct. So I think that American consumers are fairly astute and they’re also really frustrated with this policy.
Did we learn any lessons about the American economy from the Liberation Day tariffs in the past 12 months?
The big lesson about the American economy that we learned was that we are the largest economy in the world. We’re a well-diversified economy. It takes more than a temporary change in our trading policy to throw us into recession.
What happens next now that the tariffs are lifted? Should people expect that prices go down?
We’ll probably see prices stabilize, particularly if the president starts to remove some of the tariffs that have proven to be unpopular. It’s a real question as far as what the White House and the Republicans in Congress are going to do in advance of the midterms. Republicans in the House are obviously concerned about losing to Democrats and potentially even the Senate. Some people are speculating that you’ll see a bill coming out of Congress that will rebate some of the costs of tariffs directly to American households.
And we’re going to see a bunch of legal challenges to the tariffs that will determine exactly what happens moving forward. So you’ve heard of these Section 122 tariffs that the president announced after the Supreme Court decision. Those are universal tariffs of 15 percent. There will be a court ruling on whether or not he can use those. And there’s also a question as far as the rebates. And so, roughly $160 billion in tariffs have been illegally collected. Will those get rebated back to the multitude of companies that have gone ahead and filed for rebates?
The Supreme Court did the president a favor and limited his authority on tariffs. Tariffs outside of a few select circumstances are unequivocally bad for American consumers and they’re unequivocally bad for US businesses. But in general, I think that we should not expect a recession in the near term, and we should rest assured that we have a great number of resources and we’ll continue to grow at a moderate rate.
2026-02-27 19:30:00
2025年2月，一名患者在乌干达首都坎帕拉的穆拉戈医院艾滋病诊所等待。该诊所一半的预算依赖美国的资助，但在美国政府冻结援助支出后，面临不确定性。尽管国会已批准94亿美元用于全球卫生项目，但这笔资金是否能真正到达像这样的诊所仍是个未知数。
全球卫生领域的好消息很少，所以让我先分享一些好消息。今年早些时候，国会通过了一项法律，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普签署生效，拨款94亿美元用于超过50个国家的全球卫生工作。这笔资金用于艾滋病治疗、儿童疫苗、疟疾和结核病项目等，金额大致与去年持平。在过去一年中，美国政府曾批评并削弱美国国际开发署（USAID），冻结并重新冻结关键的健康项目，并提议削减全球卫生资金超过60%。因此，这次拨款是一个真正令人意外的进展。
新法律的一些细节更加引人注目。国会——包括一些共和党议员——拨款5.24亿美元用于计划生育工作，而美国政府曾试图完全取消这项拨款。尽管卫生部长罗伯特·F·肯尼迪 Jr. 对Gavi（一个为全球超过一半儿童提供疫苗的国际联盟）表示强烈反对，但国会仍拨款3亿美元支持Gavi。
自20世纪90年代中期以来，国会一直资助美国在海外抗击艾滋病、疟疾和结核病的项目，你或许会认为这些资金会被实际使用。但如今，这种假设不再安全。去年，国会也拨款数十亿美元用于这些项目，但美国政府只使用了不到三分之一的资金。其中部分资金被用于白宫预算主管的安全保障，其余资金则闲置未用。因此，美国的对外援助——至少在挽救生命的全球卫生项目上——再次写在纸上。但这些资金是否能真正到达需要它们的患者和项目，仍是另一个问题。
去年资金也仅停留在纸面上。根据全球发展中心的一项分析，美国在全球卫生上的支出减少了三分之一以上，其后果非常严重。以全球基金（Global Fund）为例，这是一个为100多个国家的艾滋病、结核病和疟疾项目提供资金的国际组织。美国曾承诺向其提供60亿美元，用于2023至2025年期间的项目，国会也批准了这笔资金。然而，美国未能兑现承诺，截至2025年年中，不到三分之一的60亿美元资金已到达全球基金。由于美国的不作为，全球基金不得不削减已拨付的14亿美元用于关键项目。与此同时，美国政府还终止了数百个PEPFAR项目，这些项目为艾滋病和结核病的基层治疗提供资金。在艾滋病和结核病高发的莱索托，一些诊所甚至被迫关闭。据一位了解当地情况的援助人员透露，一名患者曾走访九家艾滋病/结核病诊所，才找到一家仍在运营的。
根据宪法，当国会拨款时，行政部门有法律义务按照国会的指示使用这些资金。但去年，美国政府并未这样做，而且基本未受到惩罚。今年，国会试图通过法律手段迫使政府执行拨款。新法律为疟疾、母婴健康、结核病和营养项目设定了具体的资金最低限额，并使用了非常强硬的语言，要求国务院向国会报告其资金使用计划，并按季度向全球基金拨款。援助追踪组织“国会山援助”（Aid on the Hill）的联合创始人朱莉安·魏斯（Julianne Weis）表示，这些监督要求以前从未达到如此严格的程度。
然而，去年法律并未阻止政府不拨款。艾滋病倡导组织AVAC曾起诉政府，要求其使用未拨付的资金，而该案件仍在进行中。真正的考验在于国会是否能执行自己的法律。AVAC的负责人米切尔·沃伦（Mitchell Warren）表示：“去年国会放弃了确保总统使用其拨款的责任。”他不确定这次国会是否会有所不同。“我们仍需要了解国务院是否有意愿和能力使用这笔资金。”全球发展中心的政策专家乔西琳·埃斯特斯（Jocelyn Estes）说道。
这种能力问题非常明显。在USAID被严重削弱之前，其结核病项目拥有近200名专职员工，其中40人在美国华盛顿特区，150人分布在世界各地，每年管理约4.06亿美元的资金，覆盖24个国家。如今，根据一位了解该项目的人士透露，只有两名国务院工作人员负责管理同样的项目。美国总统疟疾计划（PMI）原本有66名员工，现在仅剩5人。未来，美国全球卫生资金的分配方式将发生根本性变化。根据美国政府的“美国优先全球卫生战略”，美国将不再像以前那样通过USAID与援助组织合作，而是直接与外国政府签订协议。专家表示，这种方法需要更多专业人员，而不是更少。目前，美国政府已签署了16项此类协议，但这些协议并未涵盖国会刚刚拨款的关键领域，如计划生育，尽管美国政府曾积极试图取消该拨款。
魏斯对白宫是否会兑现承诺表示怀疑，即使有法律的保护措施。“我认为会有大量资金未被使用。”她说。然而，这项新法律表明，国会两党正在重新强调美国应继续进行挽救生命的全球卫生工作。“这项法律主要说明的是，国会已经回来了。”AVAC的沃伦告诉我。几十年来，美国国会一直对对外援助有广泛的跨党派支持，即使总统试图改变其方向。但沃伦仍未庆祝。“我会在每一笔国会拨款都被行政部门使用时宣布胜利。”财政年度将在9月结束，届时我们将知道结果。
There’s a dire shortage of good news in global health, so let me start with some.
Earlier this month, Congress passed — and President Donald Trump signed — a law to spend $9.4 billion on global health work in more than 50 countries. That’s funding for HIV treatment, childhood vaccines, malaria and TB programs, and much more — at roughly the same level as last year.
After a year in which the administration vilified and dismantled USAID, froze and refroze lifesaving health programs, and proposed slashing global health funding by more than 60 percent, this is a genuinely surprising development.
Some of the details in the new law are even more striking. Congress — including Republicans who co-wrote the bill — put $524 million toward family planning work; the administration had pushed to defund it entirely. Gavi, an international alliance that vaccinates more than half the world’s children, got $300 million despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vocal opposition toward it.
In the more than two decades since Congress began funding programs to fight HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis abroad, you could assume that money would actually get spent. That’s the law.
But that’s no longer a safe assumption.
Last year, Congress also appropriated billions for this work, but the administration chose not to spend more than a third of it. Some of the money meant for global health programs was used to pay for the White House budget director’s security detail, and the rest just sat there, unspent.
So now, American foreign aid — at least for lifesaving global health work — is back on paper. But whether it actually reaches the patients and programs that need it is another matter.
The money was on paper last year, too. According to an analysis by the Center for Global Development, US spending on global health fell by more than a third, the consequences of which have been devastating.
Consider the Global Fund, a massive international body that finances HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria programs in more than 100 countries. The US had pledged $6 billion to the fund for 2023 through 2025, and Congress approved the money to pay for it.
But the US failed to deliver on that pledge, and as of mid-2025, less than a third of that $6 billion had reached the Global Fund. Facing a shortfall driven largely by US inaction, the Global Fund had to slash $1.4 billion from grants it had already made to lifesaving programs.
These cuts came just as the administration was also terminating hundreds of PEPFAR programs that funded HIV and TB care on the ground. In Lesotho, where TB rates are among the highest in the world, the result was that clinics simply shut down. One patient visited nine HIV/TB clinics before finding one still open, an aid worker with direct knowledge of operations in the country told Vox.
Under the Constitution, when Congress appropriates money, the executive branch is required by law to spend it as Congress dictates. But last year, the administration simply didn’t — and largely got away with it.
This time, Congress is trying to force the issue.
The new law sets specific funding floors for malaria, maternal and child health, tuberculosis, and nutrition, and uses unusually forceful language requiring the State Department to report its spending plans to Congress and to make quarterly payments to the Global Fund. Julianne Weis, co-founder of Aid on the Hill, which tracks foreign aid legislation, said these oversight requirements didn’t exist at this level of scrutiny before.
But laws didn’t stop the administration last year. AVAC, an HIV advocacy organization, sued the government over the unspent funds; that case is still active.
The real test is whether Congress enforces its own law. “Congress abdicated their responsibility [last year] for ensuring that the president spent what they had appropriated,” said Mitchell Warren, head of AVAC. Whether this Congress will act differently is an open question.
“There’s a huge question about the intent of the State Department to spend that money, and frankly the ability — the operational capacity — to do so,” said Jocelyn Estes, a policy expert at the Center for Global Development, a nonpartisan think tank.
That capacity problem is stark. Before USAID was gutted, its TB program alone had nearly 200 dedicated staff — 40 in DC and 150 around the world — managing about $406 million a year across 24 countries. Today, according to a person with direct knowledge of the program, two people at the State Department oversee that same portfolio. The President’s Malaria Initiative, which manages $795 million in funding, went from 66 staffers to five.
And going forward, a growing share of US global health funding is supposed to flow in a fundamentally different way. Under the administration’s “America First Global Health Strategy,” the US is abandoning the old USAID practice of working with aid organizations and is instead striking deals with foreign governments — an approach that experts say requires more specialized staff, not less.
The administration has signed 16 such deals so far — but they don’t cover key areas that Congress just funded, like family planning, which received roughly $524 million despite the administration actively working to eliminate it. Weis is skeptical that the White House will follow through, even with the law’s attempted safeguards. “There’s going to be a lot of money left over that is not spent,” she said.
Still, the new law is a sign that Republicans and Democrats in Congress are reasserting that the US should continue to do lifesaving global health work. “What this law mostly says is that Congress is back,” AVAC’s Warren told me. For decades, foreign aid has had strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, even when presidents have tried to reshape it.
But Warren isn’t celebrating yet. “I’ll declare victory when every dollar Congress appropriated is spent by the administration.”
The fiscal year ends in September. That’s when we’ll know.
2026-02-27 17:00:00
For the first time, a Gallup survey found more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis in the long-running Middle East conflict, a watershed moment in relations between the US and one of its closest — but most controversial — allies.
New polling data from Gallup found that 41 percent of Americans say their sympathies are more with the Palestinians versus 36 percent for the Israelis. While that’s still within the margin of error, it’s a major change from last year, when the numbers were 46-33 in Israel’s favor.
Since Gallup started tracking this question in 2001, Israel typically held a double-digit lead, with the numbers shifting dramatically only in recent years, accelerating with the war in Gaza under then-President Joe Biden and the Trump administration’s embrace of some of Israel’s most controversial policies.
The shift over the past year is not, primarily, another example of the oft-told story of Israel losing American Democrats. Democratic sympathy had already collapsed between 2023 and 2025 and didn’t change much over the past year.
The big shift has been among independents, who flipped from 42-34 percent in Israelis’ favor in 2025 to 41-30 percent in Palestinians’ favor now. Republican support for Israel is still strong but has also been dropping, with a 10 point decline since 2024.
The shift is evident across all age groups, but the drop in support has been most pronounced among young and middle-aged Americans, whose sympathies in the conflict have nearly flipped over the last two years.
Comparing cross-tabs of age and party ID reveals some even more striking developments. (These are broken into three-year buckets to get a more robust sample size.) From 2024–2026, only 52 percent of young Republican and Republican-leaning voters sympathized more with the Israelis, down from 69 percent in the 2018–2020 period before the Gaza War, a finding that dovetails with other recent surveys showing a drop in support for US aid to Israel among young Republicans. Among young Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, it’s only 11 percent.
Over the past two decades, a long bipartisan consensus on the Middle East conflict has more or less broken down, as the government of Israel, led for most of that time by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has become ever more closely linked to the Republican Party.
This is an era that included Netanyahu’s public feuding with the Obama administration over the Iran nuclear deal; controversial moves by the Trump administration to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and endorse Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; and then widespread US backlash, predominantly on the left, to US military support for Israel during the recent war in Gaza.
Opposition to arms sales to Israel was once a fringe position for Democratic US lawmakers but is now increasingly mainstream. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful lobbying group that for decades worked to maintain a bipartisan consensus on Israel, is becoming increasingly toxic for Democrats.
Israel grew closer to the Republican Party throughout the 2000s and 2010s, when it was seen as a valuable ally in the post-9/11 war on terror and a religiously and culturally friendly bulwark against Islamic radicalism among conservative evangelicals.
More recently, however, there are signs that Netanyahu’s bet on the Republican Party in the Trump era may be backfiring, as “America First” elements of the MAGA movement are becoming increasingly vocal in their opposition to US support for Israel, led by figures like pundit Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The party’s divide was on full display in a recent contentious interview between Carlson and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee (arguably the country’s most prominent Christian Zionist), which made waves throughout the Middle East due to Huckabee’s suggestion that Israel would be entitled to control of much of the region on biblical grounds, though he added they had no such ambitions.
This trend is clearly not all about geopolitics or sympathy for the Palestinians. Carlson hosted the antisemitic, white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes on his show. And Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, running on an anti-Israel platform, has used antisemitic talking points in his campaign.
President Donald Trump seems to have a sense that the issue is not the political winner it once was for his base, reportedly warning a Jewish campaign donor last year that “my people are starting to hate Israel.”
Nonetheless, his administration continues to back some of Israel’s most controversial policies.
Just weeks after Israel’s security cabinet announced new land ownership policies for the West Bank, described by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as part of an effort to “continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state,” the US announced that it would provide embassy services to US citizens living in West Bank settlements for the first time, a move seen by critics as an indirect endorsement of a settlement project considered illegal by most of the world.
As the US military builds toward a potential new war with Iran, Politico reported this week that White House officials prefer a scenario in which Israel begins the military campaign because “the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first.” But the latest polling suggests that the politics around America’s longtime ally in the Middle East are not what they used to be.
2026-02-27 06:45:00
2025年11月20日，乔哈尔·马姆达尼在纽约曼哈顿市政厅公园。| 安吉拉·怀斯/法新社/Getty Images
本文出自《Logoff》每日通讯，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。欢迎来到《Logoff》：
截至目前，纽约市长乔哈尔·马姆达尼与总统唐纳德·特朗普之间微妙的关系似乎进展顺利。发生了什么？马姆达尼周四前往白宫，至少部分是为了讨论在纽约市建设新住房的计划。在此过程中，他成功促使特朗普释放了被联邦移民执法局拘留的哥伦比亚大学学生艾莉·阿加耶娃。马姆达尼在周四下午的一篇帖子中表示，特朗普曾说阿加耶娃将立即获释。
这有什么意义？考虑到特朗普政府在许多其他极端移民政策上的不妥协，例如2025年3月逮捕了曾就读于哥伦比亚大学、合法居住在美国的马哈茂德·哈里尔，因其参与了哥伦比亚大学的亲巴勒斯坦抗议活动，阿加耶娃的迅速获释显得尤为突出。（据报道，马姆达尼还向特朗普的幕僚长提到了哈里尔以及其他人的名字。）
阿加耶娃周四早上被逮捕，据称是ICE特工在没有司法授权的情况下，以虚假借口进入她所在的大学大楼。这种做法很可能违反宪法，据报道已成为特朗普政府下ICE的普遍政策。
背景如何？自今年1月上任以来，马姆达尼在处理与白宫复杂关系方面表现出色。在11月他以压倒性优势赢得选举后，两人有一次非常友好的会面，特朗普当时面带微笑，并对记者说：“希望你有一个非常优秀的市长。” 在周四分享的一张照片中，特朗普再次笑容满面，他举起了一份模拟的《纽约每日新闻》头版，上面写着“特朗普对城市说：让我们一起建设。”（无疑，这对特朗普来说是一个特别有吸引力的提议，毕竟他是一位纽约本地人，最初是以建筑起家的。）
据报道，这些令人愉悦的打印件是由马姆达尼带到会面中的，显然起到了良好效果：到周四下午晚些时候，阿加耶娃已经踏上归途。
就这样，是时候结束今天的新闻了……以下是来自《纽约时报》大卫·华莱士-韦尔斯的一则好消息：尽管过去一年有很多负面的气候新闻，但绿色能源转型仍在持续取得进展——即使在美国也是如此。您可以在此阅读他的完整文章，其中附有赠品链接。
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: So far, so good for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s delicate relationship with President Donald Trump.
What’s happening? Mamdani visited the White House on Thursday, at least in part to discuss plans to build new housing in New York City. In the process, he successfully secured the release of Ellie Aghayeva, a Columbia University student detained by federal immigration enforcement; Mamdani wrote in a post Thursday afternoon that Trump had said Aghayeva would be released immediately.
Why does this matter? Aghayeva’s quick release is striking, given the Trump administration’s reluctance to give ground on many of its other extreme immigration actions, including the March 2025 arrest of a former Columbia student, lawful US resident Mahmoud Khalil, for his involvement in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia. (Mamdani reportedly also raised Khalil’s name, as well as others, with Trump’s chief of staff.)
Aghayeva was arrested early on Thursday morning after ICE agents reportedly entered her university-owned building under false pretenses and without a judicial warrant — a likely unconstitutional practice that reporting suggests has become widespread ICE policy under Trump.
What’s the context? Mamdani, who took office in January, has been remarkably successful at navigating a complicated relationship with the White House. The two had a strikingly warm meeting in November following Mamdani’s runaway election win, where Trump beamed and told reporters, “Hopefully, you’ll have a really great mayor.”
In a photo shared by Mamdani on Thursday, Trump was again all smiles as he held up a mocked-up front page for the New York Daily News, reading “Trump to city: Let’s build.” (No doubt a particularly appealing prospect to Trump, a native New Yorker who got his start as a builder.)
The flattering printouts were reportedly brought to the meeting by Mamdani, evidently to good effect: Aghayeva was on her way home as of late afternoon on Thursday.
Here’s some good news from the New York Times’s David Wallace-Wells: Despite plenty of bad climate news in the past year, the green energy transition is still winning out — even in the US. You can read his full, encouraging article here with a gift link. Have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
2026-02-27 06:45:00
2026年2月23日，美国战争部长彼得·赫格赛特（Pete Hegseth）在科罗拉多州路易斯维尔的Sierra Space公司进行访问。赫格赛特有时似乎更关注扮演军事领导人的形象，而非真正具备军事领导能力。这或许就是他选择在类似好莱坞“午后的决斗”时刻，与AI公司Anthropic展开日益激烈的争执的原因。赫格赛特要求Anthropic在周五下午5点01分之前回应他的要求，即允许美国军方完全无限制地使用其AI技术，否则可能会面临威胁其生存的后果。截至目前，Anthropic尚未作出回应。
本周发生的这场冲突是自2018年谷歌员工反对与五角大楼合作以来，美国政府与科技公司之间关于AI伦理的最大对抗。然而，如今AI技术比八年前更加先进，也对美国经济和国防至关重要，因此当前的冲突影响更大，不仅关系到Anthropic自身，也涉及谁将最终掌控这种关乎存亡的技术。
人们不禁要问：五角大楼到底想要什么？Anthropic已经与五角大楼签订了一份价值2亿美元的合同，为其提供先进的AI技术以应对国家安全挑战，其聊天机器人Claude也是首个能够在军方保密网络中部署的AI模型。但五角大楼现在坚持要求Anthropic签署一份允许Claude用于“所有合法用途”的合同。这听起来似乎合理，但实际上意味着Anthropic将无法对Claude的具体使用情况进行审查，也无法限制某些应用。五角大楼将拥有决定如何部署Anthropic AI技术的最终权力。
但问题是，既然Anthropic已经向五角大楼提供AI技术，为什么还要由公司决定其用途？这就像五角大楼不需要事先联系波音公司，就可以使用其军用飞机一样。赫格赛特在2月10日的会议上似乎正是用这个类比来向Anthropic首席执行官达里奥·阿莫代伊（Dario Amodei）施压。
那么，为什么Anthropic不愿妥协？它并非完全抗拒合作。除了与五角大楼的合同，Anthropic还参与了更多直接的军事项目，如导弹防御系统。它一直公开主张美国与中国在AI领域存在“文明竞争”。尽管Anthropic以安全意识强著称，但它并非软弱可欺。其政策允许Claude用于军事打击、外国监视，甚至在人类批准后用于无人机攻击。但Anthropic坚持两个“红线”：不开发完全自主的武器系统，也不进行大规模国内监控。
公司认为Claude目前还不足以独立做出生死攸关的决策，且缺乏法律框架来支持AI驱动的大规模监控。虽然Anthropic并不反对未来开发致命性自主武器，但其认为当前技术尚无法有效完成此类任务。因此，五角大楼要求Anthropic允许Claude用于其认为无法实现的用途，这似乎荒谬。
事情的起因可以追溯到1月初，美国在一次行动中捕获了委内瑞拉总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗。据Axios报道，Claude通过由亲军方的AI公司Palantir运营的平台被部署在此次行动中。随后，一名Anthropic员工询问Palantir的同事Claude在行动中的使用情况，似乎暗示了对这一用途的担忧。Palantir随后将此讨论上报给了五角大楼。
五角大楼此前就对Anthropic坚持其安全红线的做法不满，而Anthropic尚未被纳入五角大楼于2025年底建立的GenAI.mil平台。赫格赛特曾在1月的一次演讲中明确表示：“我们不会使用那些不允许你打胜仗的AI模型。”因此，周五下午5点01分的“对决”似乎不可避免。
如果Anthropic坚持己见，五角大楼可以取消其2亿美元的合同，这在法律上是允许的。虽然这对Anthropic来说是不小的损失，但公司目前估值达3800亿美元，因此可能不会受到太大影响。其他AI公司如xAI似乎更愿意接替Anthropic的位置。然而，赫格赛特似乎并不打算采取这种相对理性的做法，而是想通过此举表明特朗普政府将主导美国AI公司的行为。
五角大楼还威胁要动用《国防生产法》（Defense Production Act），这是一项冷战时期的法律，允许总统强制要求公司接受国防合同。过去该法律被用于增加关键物资的国内生产，例如特朗普在疫情期间要求增加呼吸机产量。但若将其用于针对国内公司，以强制其接受AI技术的使用，这将前所未有，且可能引发漫长的法律纠纷。
对Anthropic来说，最糟糕的情况是被列为“供应链风险”企业。这一标签通常用于来自敌对国家的公司，如中国的华为。如果被贴上此标签，所有国防承包商都将被禁止使用Anthropic的产品。由于许多美国大公司都持有军事合同，这将严重影响Anthropic的企业业务，甚至可能破坏其计划中的首次公开募股（IPO）。
据Axios报道，五角大楼已经开始要求波音和洛克希德·马丁评估他们对Claude的依赖程度。这让人困惑：五角大楼一方面声称Claude存在国家安全风险，另一方面又想强制其用于各种军事用途？正如Vox的编辑兼Argument专栏作家凯尔西·皮珀（Kelsey Piper）所说：“声称Claude构成国家安全威胁，同时又要求将其国有化，这显然是荒谬的。”
接下来会发生什么？目前，Anthropic没有退让的迹象，而AI界大多数人士都站在它一边。包括谷歌的杰夫·迪恩（Jeff Dean）和前特朗普AI顾问戴恩·鲍尔（Dean Ball）等人都表示，五角大楼考虑的措施将是地球上任何政府对AI实施的最严格监管，而这一政策却来自一个自称为“反AI监管”的政府。
很明显，如果五角大楼成功迫使Anthropic妥协，无论通过《国防生产法》、供应链黑名单还是商业压力，都将意味着美国的AI公司无法再对政府的AI使用要求保持独立的安全限制。除非国会采取行动，通过法律限制五角大楼使用致命性AI的方式，否则我们可能正走向一个无法控制的黑暗未来。
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth sometimes appears as if he’s more interested in the optics of playing the part of a military leader than he is in actually being a military leader.
Maybe that’s why he has chosen a Hollywood-esque high noon — or, at least, late afternoon — showdown for his deepening dispute with the AI company Anthropic. Hegseth has given Anthropic until 5:01 PM on Friday to respond to his demands that the company give the US military full and unfettered access to its AI or faces consequences that could threaten its survival. Anthropic has so far refused.
What’s unfolding this week is the biggest confrontation between the US government and a tech company over AI ethics since Google employees rebelled against working with the Pentagon in 2018. But with AI far more advanced and far more essential to both the American economy and American defense than it was eight years ago, the stakes now are much greater — certainly for Anthropic itself, but also for the question of just who has final control over an existential technology. (Disclosure: Future Perfect is funded in part by the BEMC Foundation, whose major funder was also an early investor in Anthropic. They do not have any editorial input into our content.)
This has all raised plenty of questions, starting with:
What does the Pentagon actually want?
Anthropic is already a supplier for the Pentagon, having signed a $200 million contract in July to provide advanced AI for national security challenges, and its chatbot Claude was the first AI model that could be deployed on the military’s confidential networks. But the department now insists that Anthropic sign a contract allowing its Claude AI to be used for “all lawful purposes.”
That might sound fine — it has “lawful” in the words, after all — but what it means in practice is that Anthropic would have no say over individual use cases, no ability to review how Claude is being used in classified settings, and no right to restrict specific applications. It would be the military that would decide how to deploy Anthropic’s AI technology.
Okay, but if Anthropic is already supplying its AI to the military, why should the company get to decide how that AI is used? It’s not like the Pentagon has to call up Boeing before it uses one of its jets in a military strike.
Hmm, do you currently work at the Pentagon press department? As it happens, that’s precisely the analogy that Hegseth reportedly presented to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a tense meeting on Tuesday.
So, why won’t Anthropic play ball?
It’s not being fully recalcitrant. Even beyond the $200 million Pentagon contract, Anthropic has already been deeply involved in government work, including in more direct military uses like missile defense. Anthropic has been one of the most outspoken proponents of the idea that the US is in a civilizational race with China over AI supremacy. While Anthropic has a (mostly if not entirely) deserved reputation as the most safety-minded of the major AI labs, they’re not a bunch of bleeding heart softies.
Anthropic’s policies allow its models to be used as part of targeted military strikes, foreign surveillance, or even drone strikes when a human approves the final call. But it has maintained two specific “red lines” it won’t cross: fully autonomous weapons, meaning AI systems that select and engage targets without a human involved, and mass domestic surveillance of American citizens. The company argues Claude is too unreliable — prone to hallucinations and errors that all large language models exhibit — to make life-or-death targeting decisions on its own and that no legal framework exists for AI-powered mass surveillance.
It’s not that Anthropic would never be involved in building lethal autonomous weapons. Just look at Ukraine — the realities of modern warfare have made it all but inevitable that such weapons and systems will be built. But Anthropic does believe the models simply aren’t capable of carrying this out effectively today.
So, what’s happening is that the Pentagon is demanding Anthropic allow it to use Claude for a use Anthropic says Claude can’t even do now?
Pretty much.
How did this all happen?
Things started going sideways after the operation in early January that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Claude, according to reporting by Axios, was deployed during the operation through a platform operated by the very military-friendly AI company Palantir. Soon after the operation, an Anthropic employee reportedly asked a Palantir counterpart how Claude might have been used in the operation, apparently in a way that indicated Anthropic might have a problem with it. Palantir then allegedly flagged the discussion for the Pentagon.
The Pentagon was already reportedly unhappy with Anthropic’s insistence on its red lines, and the company has not been included so far on the GenAI.mil platform the department built out in late 2025. At a speech in January, Hegseth pointedly said that “we will not employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars.”
That brings us to the Friday 5:01 PM showdown.
If Anthropic sticks to its guns, what can the Pentagon do?
It could simply cancel the $200 million contract, which it would be in its rights to do. Hegseth isn’t wrong to say that suppliers as a rule do not dictate government policy. That would be a minor financial bummer for Anthropic, but the company is currently valued at $380 billion, so I think it would be ok. Other AI companies like xAI seem more than happy to take Anthropic’s place.
But Hegseth does not seem ready to take this relatively rational course of action. Instead, he’s talking as if he wants to make an example out of Anthropic and demonstrate that it is the Trump Administration that will tell US AI companies how to act.
The Pentagon has threatened to use the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law that allows the president to compel companies to accept defense contracts. In the past that’s meant things like bolstering domestic production of critical supplies, as during the Covid pandemic, when President Trump invoked it to force additional ventilator production. But deliberately using it to target a domestic company over a policy dispute about AI safety rules — and essentially force Anthropic to train what some are calling a “War Claude” — would be unprecedented and certainly lead to drawn-out legal wrangling.
So, that’s not good for Anthropic, AI safety, and maybe even the rule of law. But even worse for Anthropic at least would be the last option: designating Anthropic a “supply chain risk.” This label — typically reserved for companies from adversary nations, like China’s Huawei — would prohibit every defense contractor from using Anthropic’s products. Since many of America’s largest corporations hold military contracts, this could effectively poison nearly all of Anthropic’s enterprise business and potentially torpedo a planned IPO. Axios has reported that the Pentagon has already started by asking Boeing and Lockheed Martin to assess their reliance on Claude.
Wait, I’m confused. So, essentially, the Pentagon is saying that Anthropic might be both a serious supply chain risk, but, also, it would like to compel the company to let it use Claude in just about any way it sees fit?
Yes, as Vox contributing editor and Argument staff writer Kelsey Piper put it: “It’s patently ridiculous to both claim that Claude poses a national security threat and also that it’s so necessary for wartime production you have to nationalize the company.”
So, what happens next?
Anthropic has shown no signs of backing down, and much of the AI world is on its side. That includes competitors like Jeff Dean of Google and voices like Dean Ball, a former Trump AI advisor, who wrote on X that what the Pentagon is considering would represent “the strictest regulations of AI being considered by any government on Earth, and it all comes from an administration that bills itself (and legitimately has been) deeply anti-AI-regulation.” What seems clear is that, if the Pentagon successfully compels compliance — whether through the DPA, supply chain blacklisting, or commercial pressure — it will establish that no American AI company can maintain independent safety restrictions against government demands. Unless Congress does what it should do and passes laws constraining how the Pentagon uses lethal AI, we could be headed for a very dark future indeed — and one out of our control.
2026-02-27 05:00:00
本周当我拿孩子生日蛋糕时，我感到一丝内疚，这种感觉我相信很多人都很熟悉。这蛋糕是不是含糖量太高了？在健康与健身领域，有很多人提倡零糖或无糖饮食，有时是为了短期排毒，有时则是作为长期的生活方式。糖被大众影响力人物和美国卫生与公共服务部部长罗伯特·F·肯尼迪 Jr. 所批判，他去年春天称糖为“毒药”。但肯尼迪所说的“糖”实际上指的是添加糖，比如精炼的棕榈糖和甘蔗糖，或者是以“-cose”结尾的糖浆，它们常用于糖果、包装好的格兰诺拉麦片和可乐中。虽然添加糖与糖尿病、炎症、肥胖和癌症等健康问题有关联，但肯尼迪（以及其他一些人）将反糖的叙事推向了极端：上个月发布的新的美国饮食指南指出，10岁以下的儿童不应摄入任何添加糖（而之前的指南仅限制2岁以下儿童）。成年人也被建议饮食中不应有添加糖，但如果摄入，每餐的摄入量不应超过10毫克（大约相当于一小罐希腊酸奶的含糖量）。在肯尼迪的愿景下，万圣节和生日派对将不再一样。但除了失去这些珍贵的传统（以及让生活更美味的其他甜点），完全禁止糖摄入其实并没有科学依据。糖无处不在，我们不可能进行一个真正零糖的实验。相反，我们知道摄入更少的糖对健康更有益。糖并不全是坏的，它也不是单一的东西。关键在于你吃的是哪种糖，以及摄入量多少。让我们来具体分析一下。## 两种糖一般来说，糖可以分为两类：天然存在于水果或碳水化合物中的糖，以及人为添加到食物中以增加风味的“添加糖”。你咖啡摩卡或肉桂卷中的添加糖对你并不太好，尤其是在大量和频繁摄入的情况下。但天然存在于水果或全谷物碳水化合物中的糖则并不令人担忧。事实上，它们可以成为甚至肯尼迪也支持的健康饮食的一部分。## 注册“Good Medicine”新闻简报我们的政治健康环境已经发生了变化：新领导人、可疑的科学、矛盾的建议、信任的破裂以及令人困惑的系统。面对这一切，人们该如何理解？Vox的高级记者Dylan Scott长期关注健康领域，每周他会深入探讨各种争议话题，回答合理的问题，并解释美国医疗政策的最新动态。点击这里注册。从生理学角度来看，区分这两种糖是有原因的。水果中的糖通常与其他营养成分结合，特别是纤维，这些成分可以减缓消化过程，帮助身体更好地处理糖分。一项研究发现，吃整个橙子比喝橙汁引起的血糖波动更小。另一项研究也显示：摄入水果与患2型糖尿病的风险无关，甚至风险更低（除非你喝的是果汁，那风险就会增加）。因此，天然糖是安全的。“添加糖”则不同，它们经过加工处理，去除了原本存在于甘蔗或玉米中的其他营养成分，只剩下纯糖。从身体健康的角度来看，这些糖更值得关注。摄入高添加糖的食物或饮料会导致血糖的剧烈波动，进而引发健康问题。2023年的一项重要荟萃分析发现，含糖饮料与2型糖尿病、高血压和心脏病风险增加有关。此外，摄入量也是一个关键因素：摄入的糖越多，潜在的危害也越大。营养师特别关注含糖饮料，如果汁、咖啡饮料、汽水和其他调味饮料，因为它们是摄入大量糖而不自知的便捷方式。当然，关注添加糖的摄入量是明智的。但完全消除糖摄入实际上与营养科学中一个新兴概念——代谢灵活性——相悖。这个概念的核心是，身体能够灵活地适应不同的能量来源（如脂肪或糖）越强，就越健康。虽然肥胖或糖尿病的发展确实会限制身体的这种灵活性，但完全剔除某些食物也会产生类似的影响。2022年的一项荟萃分析指出，长期摄入糖过少可能也会带来一些负面影响。## 放弃“无糖”概念，关注“低糖”这种对糖的过度关注反映了肯尼迪及其“让美国再次健康”运动中存在的一些问题：他们确实识别出一个值得认真对待的健康问题，但信息被过度简化，以至于掩盖了更多细节。而“零糖”或“糖是毒药”的观念忽略了重要的细节。如果你仔细阅读饮食指南（几乎没有任何美国人会这么做），你会发现指南中专门有一个部分解释了“添加糖”是什么。但肯尼迪经常笼统地建议人们完全从饮食中剔除糖。他说：“我们可能需要让美国人了解他们产品中的糖含量，同时，通过新的营养指南，让他们清楚知道应该摄入多少糖，也就是零。” 这样一来，人们就会感到困惑并提出一些问题，比如“如何找到不含糖的水果？”（这是不可能的。）这确实是个问题，因为实际上有很多健康食品含有糖，包括苹果、橙子、浆果和牛奶等“全食物”。我们不希望人们因为这些食物含有糖而放弃食用。综合以上信息，我们可以更清晰地看待糖与健康之间的关系：不要担心水果或全麦面包中的糖分，因为这些食物还含有帮助身体处理糖分的其他成分。尽量减少含糖饮料（包括果汁）以及糖果和非全谷物碳水化合物的摄入。但也要记住，对食物过度焦虑本身并不健康；对食物营养成分的过度关注和“干净饮食”可能会导致一种称为“正食癖”的进食障碍。我们也不希望在孩子身上引入这些焦虑。达特茅斯大学儿科胃肠病学专家Amer Al-Nimr博士表示：“我们不希望人们得到这样的信息：食物是坏的，或者食物是令人担忧或焦虑的来源。”“无糖”是难以实现的，而且也不太有趣。你尽你所能让糖摄入保持在较低水平即可，但偶尔吃点甜食并不会致命，水果当然也不是问题。请让自己和孩子在生日派对上吃个蛋糕吧。它可能不是最健康的选择，但味道依然甜美。
When I picked up my kids’ birthday cake this week, I felt a tinge of guilt that I’m sure many people will find familiar. Isn’t this thing loaded with sugar?
The health and wellness space is filled with people pushing zero/no sugar diets, sometimes as a short-term detox, sometimes as a long-term way of life. Sugar has been vilified by popular influencers and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who called it “poison” last spring.
When Kennedy talks about “sugar,” what he really means is added sugar: the refined brown and cane sugars or syrups that often end in “-cose” that are used to sweeten candy, packaged granola, and Coke.
While added sugars are broadly linked to diabetes, inflammation and obesity, and cancer, Kennedy (among others) has pushed the anti-sugar narrative to an extreme: The new US dietary guidelines released last month state that children under the age of 10 should not eat any added sugar. (The previous guidelines limited the prohibition to kids 2 and under.) Adults are also advised that no added sugars are part of a healthy diet — but if we do consume them, we should limit our intake to no more than 10 milligrams per meal (about the amount in a tiny container of Greek yogurt).
Under Kennedy’s vision, Halloween and birthdays would never be the same. But beyond losing those treasured traditions (and the other treats that make life delicious), an absolute prohibition isn’t really supported by science. Sugar is so ubiquitous that we could never realistically run an experiment of what happens if you eat zero sugar. Instead, what we know is that less sugar is better for you than more.
“Sugar” isn’t all bad — and it’s not one thing. It’s more about which sugars you’re eating and how much you’re consuming. Let’s break it down.
Generally speaking, sugar falls into two categories: naturally occurring sugars in fruits or carbohydrates and the “added” sugars that are artificially inserted into foods to add flavor. The added sugar in your frappuccino or cinnamon rolls is not particularly good for you, especially in large and frequent doses. But the naturally occurring sugars in fruits or even whole-grain carbohydrates are not really worrisome. In fact, they can be part of the healthy diet that even Kennedy endorses.
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There is a physiological reason to make a distinction between the two types. Sugar in your fruit is combined with other nutrients, particularly fiber, that slow down your digestion and allow your body to better process the sugar. One study found eating whole oranges was associated with a lower blood sugar spike than drinking orange juice. Another study is also revealing: Researchers examined whether consuming fruits was associated with higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and the answer was no; in fact, the risk was lower. (Unless you drank fruit juice, and then it was higher.)
So those natural sugars — they’re fine. “Added” sugars, on the other hand, go through processing that leaves only the pure sugar, without any of those other nutrients, from the cane or corn that originally contained it. These are the sugars that are more concerning from a physical health standpoint. The dramatic spikes and drops in blood sugar that occur when you eat or drink foods high in added sugars may lead to health problems. One major 2023 metaanalysis found that sugary drinks were associated with a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Scale matters, too: The more sugar you consume, the more dangerous it can be. Dietitians worry about sweetened drinks in particular: Juices, coffee drinks, sodas, and other flavored beverages are an easy way to consume loads of sugar without realizing it.
It’s certainly wise to keep an eye on your added sugar consumption. But eliminating sugars entirely would actually run counter to one of the emerging concepts guiding nutrition science: metabolic flexibility.
The basic idea is that the better your body can adapt to different energy sources — like fats or sugars, for example — the healthier you are. It’s true that the development of obesity or diabetes can limit your body’s ability to be flexible in this regard… but it’s also true that eliminating certain foods entirely can have a similar impact. One 2022 metaanalysis noted that chronically low sugar intake may have its own adverse effects.
This sugar fixation is a microcosm of what can be confounding about Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement: They identified a genuine problem worth taking seriously, but the message has become over-simplified to the point that it obscures as much as it illuminates. And the “zero sugar”/“sugar is poison” mindset overlooks important nuance.
If you read the fine print of the dietary guidelines (which almost no American will actually do), you would get the right idea; they actually devote a box to explaining what “added sugars” are. But Kennedy often speaks broadly about eliminating sugar entirely from your diet. “What we need to do, probably, is give Americans knowledge about how much sugar is in their products, and also, with the new nutrition guidelines, we’ll give them a very clear idea about how much sugar they should be using, which is zero,” he said shortly after assuming the HHS secretary position last year.
That’s how people end up confused and asking questions, like “How do I find fruits that have no sugar in them?” (Impossible.) That’s a problem because there are actually lots of foods that are good for you and have sugar — including “whole foods” like apples, oranges, berries, and milk — that we don’t want to discourage people from eating.
Taking all this together, you start to get a clearer picture for how to think about sugar and your health: Don’t worry about the sugar in your fruits or whole-grain breads; those foods also come with stuff that helps your body process the sugar they do have. Do try to limit sugary drinks — even fruit juices — as well as candies and non-whole grain carbs.
But also remember that stressing out about food isn’t healthy either; obsessing over foods’ nutritional value and “clean” eating can lead to a form of disordered eating called orthorexia. And we don’t want to introduce those anxieties in our children either. “We don’t want people getting the message that food is bad or that food is a source of concern or a source of anxiety,” says Dr. Amer Al-Nimr, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Dartmouth University.
“No” sugar is unattainable — and it’s also no fun. Do what you can to keep it on the lower side, but know that the occasional sweet treat isn’t going to kill you, and fruit is definitely not a problem. And please let yourself — and your kid — have a cupcake at a birthday party. It may not be the “healthiest” option, but it still tastes sweet.