2026-02-04 06:25:00
2026年1月28日，佛罗里达州劳德代尔堡机场举行烛光守夜和跨宗教祈祷活动，抗议者与机场工作人员及宗教领袖聚集在一起，呼吁联邦政府延长海地移民的临时庇护地位（TPS）。| 朱伊亚斯/迈阿密先驱报/特ribune新闻社/Getty图片社
这则新闻出现在《Logoff》每日通讯中，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》：特朗普政府试图结束对超过35万名海地移民的驱逐保护措施，但目前被暂停——至少暂时如此。
发生了什么？周一晚间，联邦地区法院阻止了国土安全部（DHS）结束对35.3万名海地移民的TPS保护，此举原定于周二实施。在她的裁决意见中，联邦地区法院法官阿纳·雷耶斯写道，国土安全部长克里斯蒂·诺姆决定终止TPS是“几乎注定”的，原因是她对非白人移民的“敌意”，并认为DHS违反了《行政程序法》。
为什么是海地？特朗普政府一直打击各种身份和来源的移民，但在2024年总统竞选期间，海地移民成为右翼批评的特定目标。当时，特朗普及其共和党多数人传播了一个虚假的谣言，称俄亥俄州斯普林菲尔德的海地移民在食用其他居民的宠物。
这有什么意义？鉴于海地当前的状况，国土安全部试图终止海地移民的TPS保护不仅显得格外残酷，还可能对任何面临驱逐的人造成致命威胁。这个加勒比国家自2021年总统遇刺以来一直处于严重危机之中，其首都太子港几乎被暴力帮派控制。
背景如何？自特朗普去年重返权力以来，国土安全部试图终止对来自至少12个国家的超过一百万移民的驱逐保护，包括索马里和委内瑞拉。一些其他尝试也被下级法院阻止，等待进一步诉讼。
接下来会发生什么？周一的决定并非此案的最终裁决，特朗普政府很可能会提出上诉。但目前，数以百万计的人仍免于被驱逐回海地，联合国秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯在8月份曾将海地描述为“苦难的完美风暴”。
好了，现在是时候下线了……今天是威斯敏斯特狗展的最后一天！在今晚颁奖典礼之前，不要错过《Defector》对成为狗展评委的“艰难过程”以及如何评判狗狗的介绍。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’s attempt to end deportation protections for more than 350,000 Haitian immigrants is on hold — for now.
What’s happening? Late on Monday, a federal district court blocked the Department of Homeland Security from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 353,000 Haitian immigrants, shortly before protections were set to be terminated on Tuesday.
In her opinion, federal district court Judge Ana Reyes wrote that it was “substantially likely” that the decision to end TPS was “preordained” by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem because of her “hostility to nonwhite immigrants” and that DHS has violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Why Haiti? The Trump administration has attacked immigrants of all statuses and many different origins, but Haitians became a particular target of right-wing vitriol in the 2024 presidential campaign. At the time, Donald Trump — and much of the Republican Party — amplified a false story that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the pets of other Springfield residents.
Why does this matter? Given contemporary conditions in Haiti, DHS’s effort to end TPS for Haitian immigrants to the US is not just particularly callous, but potentially deadly for anyone made vulnerable to deportation. The Caribbean nation has been in deep crisis for years following the 2021 assassination of its president, and its capital, Port-au-Prince, is largely controlled by violent gangs.
What’s the context? Since Trump returned to power last year, DHS has attempted to end deportation protections for more than a million immigrants from at least a dozen countries, including Somalia and Venezuela. Some of DHS’s other attempts have also been blocked by lower courts, pending further litigation.
What’s next? Monday’s decision is not the last word in the case, which the Trump administration is likely to appeal. But for now, hundreds of thousands of people are still safe from being deported to what UN Secretary-General António Guterres described in August as “a perfect storm of suffering” in Haiti.
Today is the final day of the Westminster Dog Show! Before Best in Show is awarded later this evening, don’t miss Defector on the “arduous process” of becoming a dog show judge and what to look for when judging a dog. Have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
2026-02-03 20:15:00
2010年4月8日，美国总统奥巴马（左）与俄罗斯总统梅德韦杰夫在布拉格签署新的《削减战略武器条约》（New START）。这项具有里程碑意义的条约承诺两国大幅削减核武器。根据新条约，美国和俄罗斯的部署核弹头数量上限为1550枚，比2002年的限制减少了约30%。条约还对两国携带核弹头的洲际弹道导弹和潜射导弹数量设定了限制。
关键要点：
关于New START的现状：
关于特朗普的核裁军提议：
关于中国核力量增长的影响：
关于新技术对核谈判的影响：
关于俄罗斯使用核武器的威胁：
回顾过去15年的核谈判：
合作与展望：
Barring a major unforeseen announcement from Washington or Moscow, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia will expire on Wednesday.
It’s been a long, slow death for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which went into force in 2011 to replace the earlier post-Cold War START treaty and place limits on both countries’ arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads and launchers. Originally slated to expire in 2021, it was extended for five years after an agreement between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, with just two days left before the deadline.
That proved to be one of the last moments of productive diplomacy between the two countries before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In February 2023, Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the verification measures under the treaty, but would continue to abide by its numerical limits. Now, neither side is bound by those limits, raising concerns of a return to the era of arms races.
The world today is a much different place than it was in 2010, when New START was negotiated. The treaty was a product of the short-lived “reset” in US-Russian relations, during the President Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev presidencies, as well the optimistic era for arms control that followed Obama’s landmark 2009 Prague speech calling for a world without nuclear weapons.
Now, the world is on the precipice of what some call a new nuclear age, one in which these weapons are returning to the center of global politics after a post-Cold War lull. Russia has routinely threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine; Trump has called for a resumption of nuclear testing in the United States; and US allies, concerned about the reliability of American security guarantees, are more openly discussing developing their own nuclear capabilities. Meanwhile, the US and Russia still possess the overwhelming majority of the world’s nukes — but that could change. China’s rapid nuclear build-up is threatening to create a complex “three-body problem” for arms control. And the integration of new technologies like artificial intelligence into nuclear systems could lead to destabilizing new dynamics for deterrence.
It’s a pretty bleak picture overall, and the disappearance of the last major arms control agreement binding the world’s two nuclear superpowers only makes it bleaker. Still, for all his bluster, and the antipathy he showed to arms control agreements in his first term, President Donald Trump has suggested in the past that he’s open to “denuclearization” talks. And compared to other presidents, he’s certainly not averse to cutting a deal with the Russians. “When you take off nuclear restrictions, that’s a big problem,” Trump told reporters in July, and he hasn’t made clear what he’s actually going to do once the deal expires.
So, is there any hope for getting nuclear talks back on track, or are doomed to a new arms race? To get some perspective on that question, Vox spoke with Rose Gottemoeller, who, as assistant secretary of state for arms control in the Obama administration, was the chief US negotiator in the talks that led to New START. Gottemoeller later served as deputy secretary general of NATO from 2016 to 2019 and is now a lecturer at the Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute and a fellow at the Hoover Institution.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What does New START actually do?
Well, the New START Treaty limited the strategic offensive nuclear forces of the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 delivery vehicles — those are missiles and bombers that are used to deliver nuclear weapons. Those basic limits have held now for about 15 years.
As of Wednesday, unless something else happens, and there’s no agreement by President Trump and his administration to extend the limits of the treaty, then we will be in a situation where there will be no limits.
Is there any chance of it being extended?
People have been talking kind of loosely about this, but the treaty cannot be extended. It’s a legally binding document, and it goes out of force next Wednesday. But what President Putin proposed back in September was to extend the limits of the treaty for another year in order, as he said, to prepare time for further negotiations.
That’s a political handshake. We’ve done that before. Indeed, when I was negotiating the New START Treaty, START went out of force in December of 2009, and we — on the basis of a political handshake with Moscow — agreed to extend the limits of START for what turned out to be another year plus.
So, what could actually happen now that these limits are no longer in place?
A couple of things could happen. The United States could quickly announce that it’s going to proceed with a campaign to upload its warheads. You could put more warheads on our intercontinental ballistic missiles and on our strategic strike submarines.
Or, maybe, the United States will take some time to make that announcement. [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov and [Kremlin spokesman Dmitri] Peskov have said that, as long as the United States stays within the limits of New START, Russia will stay within the limits of New START. So, the administration really doesn’t need to make any announcement. If it wants to, it can just let the status quo remain.
President Trump has spoken repeatedly about wanting to hold talks about reducing the number of nuclear weapons with Russia, China, and other countries. Is there any evidence diplomacy like that is actually taking place?
You’re right. Even going back to the 1980s, the president has been very interested in nuclear disarmament, and since he returned to office last January, he’s been very out there saying that he’s interested in what he calls “denuclearization.” He’s been very clear that he wants to negotiate with Xi Jinping and with Vladimir Putin to control nuclear weapons, and he’s hinted several times, in his recent conversations with those two men, that he’s talked to them about nuclear negotiations. But at the moment, I don’t see any signs that those negotiations are being prepared. I don’t see any signs out of Washington or any diplomatic activity that would suggest that there are some quiet behind the scenes talks going on.
If there were actually serious energy being devoted to this, do you think that it’s even realistic we could have meaningful arms control talks with the Russians right now given the war in Ukraine?
That’s certainly the linkage that Putin established in February of 2023, when he declared that Russia would no longer implement the monitoring and verification measures of the treaty. And the Trump administration, at least at the moment, seems to be saying that, yes, until we get Ukraine resolved, we can’t really move forward on these new talks with the Russians on nuclear matters.
But I keep reminding people that, in the past, we used to deconflict nuclear negotiations from anything else going on in the relationship. We had a terrible time during the Cold War with severe differences over the war in Vietnam, over the wars in the Middle East, and still, we were able to establish the first detente and agree to the first strategic arms deals with the USSR.
So, historically, we’ve always said these weapons are weapons of mass destruction. They are existential to human survival. So, they are so important that we need to talk no matter what. I think we could return to that approach pretty easily if we wanted to. We’ve known each other and been in this business together for a long time.
How does China’s rapid nuclear build-up complicate this picture? An argument you sometimes hear is that we need to bring the Chinese into the discussion, because otherwise they will just keep expanding their arsenal while we limit ours.
The first thing I’ll say is that, unlike the USSR and Russia, where we’ve had this 55-year relationship at the nuclear negotiating table, we don’t have that with the Chinese, and that creates a different overall comfort level for both sides. We’re just not used to talking to each other about these issues, and the Chinese, in particular, have been very, very resistant to discussing in detail what their objectives are with their nuclear modernization.
And I really fault them for that. If they’re looking for nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence to provide them some stability in the relationship, they need to come clean on what their intentions are, because otherwise, there’s always a worry about them arms racing and seeking strategic advantage. So, that’s an important difference between Russia and China.
I will say, I don’t believe that we should try to shoehorn China into nuclear negotiations with the United States and Russia, because the numbers are still too disparate. They have, at this moment, approximately 600 total nuclear warheads. The United States and Russia each hold a total of approximately 4,000 warheads and deploy approximately 1,550. So, the numbers are still vastly different, and that’s why I keep saying to people that we have no need to panic about this Chinese buildup.
We’ve seen it coming. We’ve received strategic warning that they are doing something different now. So, let’s take the time and make the effort to figure out what their objectives are and take control of this build-up so we don’t end up with the kind of two-nuclear-peer threat that so worries Washington. That’s my bottom line: Let’s take a chill pill here. We’ve got time to work on this problem.
How might new technology — whether it’s hypersonic missiles or the integration of artificial intelligence into command-and-control systems — complicate future arms control negotiations or change the type of agreements we might seek going forward?
I’ve generally looked at new technologies as an opportunity for the nuclear arms control arena, because I think it can improve the sophistication of how we’ve done monitoring and verification and accounting for nuclear systems. There are technologies that will help us in maintaining stable nuclear deterrence.
I do worry about what the effects [of artificial intelligence] will be on first-strike stability, and that’s why President Biden sat down with Xi Jinping in Lima and agreed to make sure there’s always a person in the loop for nuclear command and control decision making. That was an early and important step.
And then, I also worry that the very same technology that improves our ability to find and track mobile missiles could eventually, at some point, be an issue, even for our submarine-based forces.
So, yeah, I think there’s downsides and upsides to the technology revolution, and we need to be thinking together with other nuclear armed states about how to sustain nuclear stability going forward, given everything we can see coming at us in the technology race.
The nuclear threat was constantly discussed in the early months following the invasion of Ukraine, when it seemed quite plausible that Putin might follow through on his threats to use nuclear weapons in the conflict. Do you still think that’s a concern, or are you less worried about it now?
I think it’s gone way down. There was real concern in our government in the fall of 2022 that the Russian army was being defeated, and therefore, Putin was very tempted to use nuclear weapons. Some have even said there was a 50-50 chance nuclear weapons could be used as the Russian army was fleeing Ukrainian advances in the southeast of the country. I think a couple of things have happened since then.
First, Putin now feels like he’s got the momentum. He keeps pressing hard in the Donbas along the front lines. He keeps losing troops, but he’s not going away anytime soon. I do hope these talks that Trump and his administration have been pushing can produce results, but Putin’s in a much more confident place than he was back at the beginning of the war.
The second thing I think is a really interesting phenomenon, and it’s the way both Xi Jinping in Beijing and also Narendra Modi in Delhi pressed Putin back during that period in late 2022 not to use nuclear weapons. Those two men even spoke publicly to Putin in November of 2022 during a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Kazakhstan; they reproved him publicly. And I said, “Wow, that never happens.” They never say anything in public to reprove each other. But both of them stated that nuclear weapons should not be used in Ukraine. So, I do think that that has been effective, and it has perhaps tamped down the nuclear saber rattling among the top leadership.
Looking back over the past 15 years, are there steps that could have been taken so that we didn’t get to this point — so that we’re not left, effectively, without any arms control between the US and Russia?
People don’t remember this anymore, but you may recollect President Obama was quite ambitious. He had this so-called Prague Initiative. New START was supposed to be the first of several nuclear arms control and reduction agreements that he wanted to negotiate in his time in office.
And, you know, once Dmitry Medvedev was removed from the presidency [in 2012], and Putin stepped back into that role, there was no love lost between Obama and Putin, and Putin simply declared that he was not willing to negotiate anymore with the United States until the limits of New START were achieved in 2018. The treaty entered into force in 2011, and we had the period between 2011 and 2018 to achieve those reductions. And, by saying that, Putin very clearly signaled to Obama: “I’m not talking to anybody — forget about it.”
That was essentially the death of the Prague Initiative, from my perspective. So, yeah, we could have had other agreements in place by this time if that more positive trajectory in the US-Russia relationship had continued. By 2014, with the seizure of Crimea by the Russians, and destabilization of the Donbas, the relationship between Washington and Moscow was sliding downhill fast. And it’s only gotten worse over the ensuing decade-plus.
This story was produced in partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners.
2026-02-03 20:00:00
2026年1月30日，美国司法部助理部长托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche）在华盛顿特区的司法部新闻发布会上宣布，司法部又公布了与已故金融家、性侵罪犯杰弗里·爱泼斯坦（Jeffrey Epstein）案件相关的三百万页文件。布兰奇表示，这些文件并未带来实质性新信息，主要是令人作呕的细节、未经证实的线索和露骨照片，但它们揭示了爱泼斯坦与多位知名人士的关系，并且是在特朗普的MAGA联盟持续施压下才被公开的。这反映了特朗普的核心选民正在逐渐远离他。虽然不能称之为“反扑”，但这种转变已经开始显现。以下是推动这一变化的三个因素。
特朗普与爱泼斯坦案件的关系错综复杂。在2024年总统竞选期间，他承诺将公布所有与爱泼斯坦及其合伙人吉斯兰·麦克斯韦（Ghislaine Maxwell）相关的调查文件，这成为许多右翼选民关注的焦点。许多人期待这些文件能揭露一个涉及名人和政客的全球阴谋，而不仅仅是爱泼斯坦已知的罪行。然而，特朗普上任后仅公布了少量文件，并称对此案的兴趣是民主党制造的骗局。随后，国会通过了两党支持的法案，要求公布剩余未分类的文件，而特朗普在两个月前签署了该法案。但此时，公众对特朗普的信任已经受损。最近的CNN民调显示，三分之二的美国成年人（包括42%的共和党人）认为联邦政府有意隐瞒信息。保守派电台主持人约翰·弗里德里克斯（John Fredericks）告诉我的同事阿斯特德·赫尔顿（Astead Herndon）：“这是他犯下的最大错误。我真的不知道帕姆·邦迪（Pam Bondi）在那边到底在做什么。……无论里面有什么，爱泼斯坦的文件都应该立即公布。”
正如我的同事埃里克·利维茨（Eric Levitz）昨日所写，移民政策是特朗普的一大“自我矛盾”。他上任之初曾获得大量支持，以强硬的边境管控政策为卖点。然而，如今大多数美国人对他的移民政策表示不满，批评者中包括越来越多的共和党人。约五分之一的共和党人表示希望彻底废除移民与海关执法局（ICE）。《右翼新闻网站》（the Bulwark）的出版人莎拉·朗韦尔（Sarah Longwell）表示，那些支持边境安全和强制驱逐的共和党人，因明尼阿波利斯（Minneapolis）等地的事件而感到不安。“他们并不希望戴着面具的特工在街头游荡，破门而入，蹲在学校门口，用孩子做诱饵，驱逐那些在美国生活了二十年、从未犯过其他罪行的人。”朗韦尔说，她每周都会与不同选民群体进行焦点小组讨论。她补充道：“选民中充满了悲伤和困惑。这不仅仅是支持特工还是支持受害者的问题，而是他们觉得这一切很糟糕，感觉很糟，看起来很糟，他们不喜欢。”
然而，尽管有街头特工和爱泼斯坦文件的争议，特朗普面临的最大问题仍然是基本商品和服务的成本上涨。他在竞选期间承诺降低生活成本，让美国再次变得负担得起。最初，选民似乎愿意等待这些承诺实现，但随着时间推移，这种信任正在逐渐消失。目前，六成美国人对特朗普处理生活成本问题的方式表示不满。最近的《纽约时报》民调显示，即使是共和党人中，也少于10%的人认为经济状况“优秀”。弗里德里克斯表示：“他们选举特朗普是为了降低生活成本，让价格下降，修复经济，改善住房，降低利率，做那些能提升他们生活质量的事情。但这些承诺还没有实现，而中期选举的窗口正在关闭。”
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Over the weekend, the Justice Department released yet another tranche of files from its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex trafficker who paled around with the likes of President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates.
The documents don’t contain a lot of meaningfully new information. Sordid details, unverified tips, and explicit photos, yes — but nothing that materially changes our understanding of Epstein’s crimes or associates.
The documents are notable for other reasons, though, like the additional light they shed on Epstein’s relationships with a number of very prominent men. And the fact that the DOJ released them at all in response to intense pressure from Trump’s MAGA coalition.
It’s one of several issues where Trump’s core voters appear to be drifting away from him. Don’t call it a backlash quite yet , but the shift is starting to feel significant. Here are three issues that appear to be driving it.
Trump’s relationship to the Epstein case is a long and tangled one. During his 2024 presidential campaign, he promised to release all files associated with the multiple criminal investigations into Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell — a priority for a large contingent of right-wing voters. Many believed the files would expose a dark global conspiracy among celebrities and politicians, separate from the many heinous crimes for which Epstein was already tried and convicted.
Once in office, however, Trump released only a handful of the DOJ’s Epstein files and called interest in the case a Democrat-led hoax. Congress then passed bipartisan legislation mandating the release of the remaining unclassified records, which Trump signed more than two months ago.
But the damage was already done. In a recent CNN poll, two-thirds of all US adults — and 42 percent of Republicans — said they believed the federal government was intentionally withholding information.
“It’s the biggest mistake he’s made,” the conservative radio host John Fredericks told my colleague Astead Herndon. “I really don’t know what the hell Pam Bondi is doing in there. … [The] Epstein files should have been released immediately, whatever’s in there.”
As my colleague Eric Levitz wrote yesterday, immigration represents a major self-own for Trump. He entered office with strong support for his border crackdown. Most Americans now say they disapprove of his approach to immigration.
Those critics include a growing number of Republicans, roughly one-fifth of whom say they’d like to abolish ICE all together. Sarah Longwell, publisher of the center-right news site the Bulwark, said Republicans who voted for border security and criminal deportations have felt rattled by the stories coming out of Minneapolis.
“They did not want bands of masked agents roaming the streets, knocking down doors, waiting outside of schools, holding kids as bait, deporting people who had been here for 20 years and hadn’t broken any other laws,” said Longwell, who runs (and publishes, in podcast form) weekly focus groups with a range of voters.
“There’s a lot of sadness and confusion in the voters,” she added. “It’s not just, do they side with the officers? Do they side with the people who were killed? It’s a lot more like: ‘This is bad. This feels bad. It looks bad. I don’t like it.’”
Even with the masked agents in the streets, however — and even with the waffling around the Epstein documents — Trump’s biggest problem remains the cost of basic goods and services. Trump campaigned on affordability, promising that he would bring down inflation and “make America affordable again.” And in focus groups, voters initially seemed willing to wait for those promises to bear fruit, Longwell said.
As time passes, however, “there is a heavy sense of betrayal from voters,” she added. Six in 10 Americans now say they disapprove of Trump’s handling of cost-of-living issues. A recent New York Times poll found that, even among Republicans, fewer than 10 percent would call the economy “excellent.”
“They elected him for affordability, getting prices down, fixing the economy, getting housing, getting interest rates down, doing the things they need to do to improve their quality of life,” said Fredericks. “That hasn’t come yet. And the window is closing going to the midterms.”
2026-02-03 19:30:00
2026年1月3日，委内瑞拉最大的军事基地富尔特·蒂乌纳发生火灾，这是在加拉加斯一系列爆炸事件后从远处拍摄的画面。| 法新社/Getty Images
2024年大选中有一个被低估的故事线，如今随着特朗普展开外交政策攻势，这一议题再次浮现。他威胁要颠覆美国与盟友之间长期的国际关系规范（比如收购格陵兰岛），而Z世代的年轻人并不希望卷入战争。在我作为研究员的工作中，我曾在焦点小组和校园里听到这一点。虽然经济问题最受关注，但许多年轻人表示担心美国会被卷入冲突，以及他们这一代人将不得不承担战斗责任的后果。
“我认为特朗普在竞选中很好地传达了阻止战争的信息，”亚利桑那州18岁的尼克告诉我，在12月的一次倾听会上。“这成为他竞选的一个主要口号，表明他支持和平。”
本周我一直在思考这些选民，因为特朗普的年轻选民支持率正在急剧下降。例如，尼克指出，乌克兰战争仍然持续。在我组织下一次倾听会时，特朗普已经下令对委内瑞拉进行重大突袭，并在拉丁美洲其他地区制造了紧张局势，还威胁对伊朗发动新的打击以支持抗议者，并进一步施压争取格陵兰岛。
纽约州19岁的乔治是一名共和党人，他虽然对特朗普的外交政策持乐观态度，因为他认为美国应该“让世界变得更安全”，但他对政府最近的军事行动和对峙表示怀疑。“这感觉像是在‘边走边想’，”他说。“而谈到格陵兰岛时，我感觉像是在问‘我们在这里做什么？’这并不是在世界舞台上扮演正义的角色，为什么还要破坏局势呢？”
乔治可能比许多右翼年轻男性选民更倾向于强硬立场，而这些年轻男性选民对美国在国外的参与越来越持保留态度。根据2025年11月YouGov和Young Men Research Project的一项调查，63%的30岁以下保守派男性、57%的30岁以下MAGA共和党男性以及53%的所有30岁以下男性都表示“美国应减少在世界事务中的积极参与”。
但这不仅仅是年轻男性。来自俄亥俄州的22岁女性科琳娜表示：“‘不发动新战争’这个口号现在成了我生命中最可笑的事情。”她说：“如果我觉得我们参与的是重要的事情，那还情有可原，但我们现在却卷入了没有理由的冲突。”
尽管Z世代可能不像千禧一代那样记得“永久战争”，但他们从小就在实时关注国际冲突，如俄乌战争、以巴冲突等。虽然很少有人亲身经历过战斗，但TikTok和Instagram让他们能够近距离了解这些危机及其人道主义代价。调查显示，年轻美国人对外国干预的容忍度远低于其他世代。根据2025年3月盖洛普的一项调查，18至34岁的美国人中，只有10%认为美国应在全球事务中发挥领导作用，比35至54岁群体低10个百分点，比55岁以上的群体低13个百分点。2025年12月皮尤研究中心的一项研究显示，30岁以下的美国人中，只有39%认为美国应积极介入国际事务，比30至49岁群体低5个百分点，比50至64岁群体低20个百分点，比65岁以上的群体低34个百分点。
这些差距可能在一定程度上导致了特朗普在年轻选民中的支持率急剧下滑，尤其是在2024年Z世代转向共和党仅一年后。最近的CNN民调显示，特朗普在18至34岁选民中的外交政策支持率比水位低了39个百分点。在CBS/YouGov的一项调查中，61%的30岁以下美国人表示特朗普政府“过于关注国际事务和海外事件”，比30至44岁群体高11个百分点，比45至64岁群体高9个百分点，比65岁以上的群体高12个百分点。
特朗普在2024年竞选时承诺将美国人的利益置于首位，许多美国人认为，国内问题已经足够多，无需在国外过度介入。这种观点在“美国优先”右翼和反干预左翼中都有所体现，尤其是在乌克兰和加沙战争问题上。特朗普竞选团队显然意识到了这些担忧：JD·万斯曾嘲讽年轻选民，警告他们前共和党众议员莉齐·切尼会与卡玛拉·哈里斯联手发动核战争，并安慰一位播客主持人：“我们的兴趣是避免与伊朗开战。”
然而，今年夏天美国袭击了伊朗的核设施后，我开始听到一些年轻人对特朗普的外交政策产生不安。当美国军方逮捕委内瑞拉总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗时，这些担忧再次被激发，尽管一些人对这一行动是否合理或有帮助存在分歧。
随着国内成本不断上升和国家债务增加，特朗普再次涉足外交事务并动用美国资源，许多年轻选民开始怀疑这位“美国优先”总统是否真的关心普通美国人的利益。科琳娜说，她原本希望特朗普在第二个任期中关注降低租金和维护传统价值观等议题。“当时有很多有趣的话题，我觉得可以支持，”她说。“但所有这些话题都像凭空消失了一样，突然又冒出新的东西。”
在非战争时期，选民通常不会单独就外交政策进行投票，这在两党中都表现得非常明显。例如，2024年9月皮尤的一项调查发现，经济问题在双方选民中都比外交政策更重要。但对许多年轻美国人来说，外交政策和国内政策并不是独立的问题，它们被一位他们认为只关注自身利益和项目、而非人民福祉的总统联系在一起。
对于这一代年轻人来说，他们正在努力构建自己的未来，大学教育几乎难以负担，人工智能正在重塑就业市场，住房越来越难获得，而移民执法局（ICE）人员则不断涌入美国社区。对他们而言，特朗普似乎更关心入侵格陵兰岛，而不是解决他们的生活成本问题或确保美国街道的安全。
24岁的蒂姆在2026年1月通过短信分享了他的看法，他认为特朗普“利用外交政策来谋取个人利益，无论是为了让自己和盟友变得更富有，还是为了让自己看起来是世界上最强大的人。”根据最近的《纽约时报》/西奈调查，特朗普在18至29岁选民中的支持率在多个议题上都处于低迷状态，包括他处理埃普斯坦文件的方式（80%的年轻人表示不赞成）、生活成本（73%不赞成）、俄乌战争（70%不赞成）、移民（73%不赞成）、以巴冲突（66%不赞成）等。
他的表现如此糟糕，以至于很难找出单一原因。但尽管Z世代可能不会单独就外交政策投票，但这一届政府的外交政策立场无疑会成为他们在11月大选前关注的众多议题之一。共和党人应该非常担忧。
There was an underrated storyline of the 2024 election, one that’s increasingly starting to resurface now, as President Donald Trump goes on a foreign policy crusade, threatening to upend longstanding geopolitical norms between the United States and our allies (*cough, acquiring Greenland, cough*): Gen Z really doesn’t want to go to war.
In my work as a researcher, this is something I heard in focus groups and on campus quads at the time. Yes, economic issues mattered the most, but a surprising number volunteered that they were worried about the US being dragged into conflicts — and what it would mean for the generation that would be tasked with fighting them.
“I think Trump ran a good campaign to young people on stopping war,” Nicholas, an 18-year-old from Arizona, told me in a December listening session. “That was one of the main kind of slogans, that he went off of as being pro-peace.”
I’ve been thinking of these voters this week, as the president’s approval rating plummets with young Americans. Nicholas, for example, pointed out that the war in Ukraine still remained active. By the time I organized my next listening session in January, Trump had already ordered a dramatic raid in Venezuela, made noise about follow-up action elsewhere in Latin America, threatened fresh strikes in Iran to support protesters, and escalated his pressure campaign over Greenland.
George, a 19-year-old Republican from New York, said that while he has been optimistic about Trump’s foreign policy because he believes the United States should “make the world a safer place,” he’s skeptical of the administration’s recent suite of military operations and standoffs.
“It feels like it’s very ‘make it up as you go,’” he said. “And then when it comes to Greenland, I feel like it’s sort of, ‘What are we doing here?’ It’s not being the good guys on the world stage. And why are you trying to mess things up?”
George is perhaps more hawkish than many young men voters right of center, who are increasingly wary of the need for US involvement abroad at all. Sixty-three percent of conservative young men under 30, 57 percent of MAGA Republican men under 30, and 53 percent of all men under 30 said “the US should be less actively involved in world affairs,” according to a YouGov/Young Men Research Project poll from November 2025.
But it’s not just young men.
“The ‘no new wars’ thing is now the biggest joke of my life,” said Corinne, a 22-year-old woman from Ohio who voted for Trump. “It would be one thing if I felt like we were getting involved in something that mattered…but we’re inserting ourselves in conflict that we have no real reason to right now.”
Though Gen Z might not remember the forever wars like millennials do, but they’ve grown up watching foreign conflicts in real time: Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Gaza, and more. While relatively few have faced combat themselves, TikTok and Instagram afford a veil of proximity to these crises and their humanitarian toll.
Across the board, polling shows young Americans have less tolerance for foreign intervention than older generations. Just one in 10 Americans ages 18 to 34 years old said the US should take the leading role in world affairs, which is 10 percentage points lower than those ages 35 to 54 and 13 points lower than those 55 and older, according to a Gallup poll from March 2025.
And a Pew Research Center study from December 2025 shows that only 39 percent of Americans under 30 believe it is extremely or very important for the United States to take an active role in world affairs. That’s a 5-point drop from respondents ages 30-49, a 20-point drop from those ages 50-64, and a whopping 34-point drop from those aged 65 and older.
It’s likely these gaps are playing at least some role in Trump’s collapse in polling among young voters barely more than a year after Gen Z shifted toward Republicans in 2024. A recent CNN poll found Trump’s approval rating on foreign affairs was 39 points below water with 18- to 34-year-olds. Sixty-one percent of Americans under 30 in a CBS/YouGov poll said the Trump administration is focusing “too much” on “international matters and events overseas,” 11 points higher than 30- to 44-year-olds, 9 points higher than those ages 45 to 64, and 12 points higher than those 65 and older.
Part of Trump’s pitch to voters of all ages in 2024 was his promise to focus on Americans over foreign interests. Many Americans concluded that their country had more than enough problems at home to justify pulling back abroad, a view reinforced by popular voices on both the “America First” right — especially when it came to Ukraine — and anti-interventionist left — especially when it came to Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Trump campaign was well aware of these concerns: JD Vance, who prided himself on his connection with rising conservatives, mockingly warned voters under 30 that former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney would team up with Kamala Harris to launch a nuclear war and reassured a podcaster, “our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran.”
But this summer, after the United States struck Iranian nuclear sites, I started to hear unease with Trump’s policy abroad popping up again. When the US military captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, these concerns were reignited, even as some had conflicted views on whether the move was justified or helpful.
As costs continue to rise at home and the national debt grows, and Trump dips his toes into foreign affairs and deploys US resources elsewhere, many young voters are starting to doubt that the “America First” president really has everyday Americans’ best interests in mind.
Corinne, the 22-year-old Trump voter from Ohio, said she was hopeful going into his second term that Trump would pay attention to issues like lowering rent and upholding traditional values.
“There were a lot of interesting things on the table, where I was like, ‘Okay, I can get behind that,’” she said. “And then all of those things, just like ‘poof,’ and then all of a sudden, all these new things came in.”
Outside of wartime, voters have a reputation for not voting on foreign policy in comparison to domestic issues — a Pew poll in September 2024 found it ranked well behind economic issues in both parties, for example. But for many young Americans, foreign policy and domestic policy aren’t separate issues. They’re linked together by a president who they feel is focused on his own priorities and pet projects, instead of the American people’s.
For this generation of young adults trying to build their futures, college education can feel nearly impossible to afford, AI is reshaping the job market, homes are increasingly out of reach, and ICE agents are pouring into American communities. For them, it can feel like Trump is threatening to invade Greenland instead of working to bring down their bottom line or keeping American streets safe.
As Tim, a 24-year-old in Illinois, shared in January 2026 by text, he believes Trump is “using foreign policy for his own good and gain, whether to make him and his all[ies] and friends richer or to make himself look like the most powerful person in the world.”
According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, Trump’s under water in his approval rating with 18- to 29-year-old voters on a whole range of issues — from his handling of the Epstein files (80 percent of young respondents disapprove) to the cost of living (73 percent disapprove), Russia-Ukraine war (70 percent disapprove), immigration (73 percent disapprove), the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (66 percent disapprove), and more. He’s performing so poorly, in fact, that it can be hard to single out any one cause. But while Gen Z Americans may not vote on foreign policy in isolation in November, this administration’s foreign policy posture is surely part of the broader slate of issues they’re prioritizing ahead of November. Republicans should be very worried.
2026-02-03 19:30:00
威廉·福吉（William Foege）是一位医生和流行病学家，他领导了成功消灭天花的运动，并于2012年5月29日被奥巴马总统授予总统自由勋章。然而，福吉的去世却并未引起广泛的关注，这与许多公共卫生领域的杰出人物的离世相似，只是在业内人士中引起了一丝震动，而对大众来说则几乎无人注意。这或许正是他一生工作的最佳墓志铭：他开发的“环形接种”策略帮助人类彻底消灭了天花，而我们却无需再为这一成就而思考。
天花是一种极其致命的病毒，曾在20世纪造成约3亿人死亡。它曾是人类文明中长期存在的威胁，就像如今的流感季节一样，只是后果更为严重。1980年5月8日，世界卫生组织正式宣布天花已被消灭，这是人类文明的一大成就，尤其因为它是全球合作的结果。人类成功消灭了一种已折磨我们数千年的疾病，这种疾病曾摧毁帝国，而如今我们却似乎忘记了这一胜利的代价。
福吉的职业生涯并未止步于天花的消灭。他在卡特和里根总统任期内担任美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）主任，并推动了全球儿童免疫计划。他始终相信，只要付出足够努力，传染病是可以被控制的。他曾写道：“人类不必生活在瘟疫、灾难性政府、冲突和无法控制的健康风险之中。一群致力于此的人的协调行动可以规划并实现更美好的未来。天花的消灭提醒我们，不应接受任何低于这一标准的成果。”
然而，如今这一“美好未来”似乎越来越遥远。特朗普政府以“与国际同行接轨”为名，对儿童免疫接种计划进行了调整，将一些疫苗从常规推荐中移除，导致接种率下降。截至2026年1月29日，美国已报告588例麻疹病例，其中大部分源于去年爆发的疫情。而幼儿园麻疹疫苗接种率已降至92.5%，远低于控制麻疹所需的95%水平。我们正在倒退，部分原因是我们忘记了曾经与天花斗争的历史。
天花消灭的意义在于，当疫苗有效时，一切都会平静无事：没有疫情爆发，没有新闻报道，没有伤疤，也没有葬礼。但“一切平静”并非自然状态，而是需要持续努力维持的结果。如果我们想纪念威廉·福吉，不需要将一条公路以他的名字命名，而是要捍卫他为我们赢得的这份宁静，并拒绝以痛苦的方式重新学习天花肆虐前的世界。
Had William Foege been a military general or a CEO or a politician, his death on January 24 would have been bold-type, front-page news. Elementary schools and highways would have been named after him.
Instead, Foege’s passing registered the way the deaths of many public health giants do: as a quiet tremor among the people who know what they did, and a barely-noticed headline for the rest of us.
Which, perhaps, is the perfect epitaph for his life’s work. Foege’s greatest accomplishment was that we don’t have to think about his greatest accomplishment: developing the ring vaccination strategy that helped eradicate smallpox from the face of the Earth.
It makes sense if you’re only passingly familiar with smallpox. The disease was declared eradicated in the US in 1949, and Americans haven’t been routinely vaccinated against it for more than 50 years. But smallpox was one of the deadliest viruses in human history, killing an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century alone. For centuries smallpox was simply a background fact of civilization, the way “flu season” is a background fact now — except with grotesquely higher stakes.
The eradication of smallpox, which was formally declared on May 8, 1980, is a civilizational achievement I’d put on par with any other, all the more so because it was a collaborative global effort. Humanity took a disease that had been killing us for thousands of years, one so merciless that it single-handedly destroyed empires, and eliminated it forever. If you asked me to identify the height of what human beings can do when they work together on a single goal, I would point to this.
The cruel irony, though, is that Foege’s death comes at a moment when the US government is turning its back on vaccination, and standing idly by while long-conquered diseases like measles come roaring back. And it’s happening in part because we’ve mistaken the quiet of victory — the victory won by Foege and his colleagues — for proof that there never was a war.
We couldn’t be more wrong.
Smallpox had been killing human beings for at least 3,000 years; the mummified head of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses V, who died 1157 BCE, shows evidence of the distinct, bumpy rash that made smallpox so horrifyingly visible. Three in 10 people who contracted the highly contagious disease died, while survivors were often left scarred and even blinded.
So terrifying was smallpox, which was caused by the variola virus, that many religions and cultures had the equivalent of a “smallpox demon,” like India’s Shitala Mata. Smallpox was particularly dangerous to children, and in 17th-century England children were even not considered full members of the family until they had survived their smallpox infection.
The war against smallpox is almost as old as the disease itself. A thousand years ago, people in Asia were practicing a kind of vaccination-lite called variolation, deliberately infecting people with a mild case of the disease to guarantee immunity, though the process came with the risk of developing severe smallpox. And smallpox was the first disease to have a formal vaccine: in 1796 the British doctor Edward Jenner developed what he would call a vaccine from cowpox, a very mild version of the disease found in cows, which had the benefits of variolation without the risks.
Yet just having an incredibly effective vaccine wasn’t enough to fully defeat the disease, especially in poor countries. As late as 1967 — nearly 200 years after Jenner’s discovery — there were an estimated 10 to 15 million smallpox cases and as many as 2 million deaths per year. Even as some human beings were preparing to go to the moon, others were dying of the same disease that had killed pharaohs — and few people thought that would ever change.
That very same year, a previously abandoned World Health Organization effort to eradicate smallpox was revived. Its chances of success, however, seemed slim. Scientists believed that at least 80 percent of every population had to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, but in high-density or war-torn areas like India or Nigeria, that seemed an impossible task.
William Foege made it possible. He was serving as a Lutheran missionary doctor when he began working for the effort in eastern Nigeria, where he and his team struggled to control outbreaks in isolated rural areas and with limited supplies of vaccine. But those limitations inspired him to change tactics. Instead of aiming for mass vaccination, his team prioritized finding people with smallpox, isolating them, and vaccinating their contacts and nearby communities.
The strategy became known as “ring vaccination,” and it was essential to the ultimate success of the smallpox eradication campaign. Foege’s team could stop an outbreak in its tracks by vaccinating as little as 7 percent of the population, simply by ensuring they were vaccinating the right 7 percent. Suddenly a goal that had seemed impossible — a world without smallpox — became realistic.
There were other advances that made eradication possible, like the bifurcated needle, which made vaccination campaigns cheaper and easier to deploy, as well as the development of a heat-stable, freeze-dried vaccine that could be stored without refrigeration. And very much unlike today, the smallpox campaign saw geopolitical enemies work together. The Soviet Union supplied freeze-dried vaccine that became foundational to eradication efforts in China and India, while the CDC’s Donald Henderson directed the international program.
In 1977, just 10 years after the intensified program was launched, a hospital cook in Somalia named Ali Maow Maalin became the last person on Earth to naturally contract smallpox. (The final person to die was Janet Parker, a medical photographer in the British city of Birmingham who tragically contracted the disease in a lab accident in 1978.) On May 8, 1980, after enough time had passed to be sure, the World Health Assembly declared that “the world and all its peoples had won freedom from smallpox.” A virus that had haunted humanity for thousands of years was gone.
Foege’s career didn’t end with smallpox eradication. He would serve as CDC director under Presidents Carter and Reagan, and he was instrumental in pushing for global campaigns around childhood immunization. At each stop he was motivated by the belief that, with enough effort, infectious diseases could be rolled back.
As he once wrote: “Humanity does not have to live in a world of plagues, disastrous governments, conflict, and uncontrolled health risks. The coordinated action of a group of dedicated people can plan for and bring about a better future. The fact of smallpox eradication remains a constant reminder that we should settle for nothing less.”
But today, that “better future” seems further off than ever. The Trump administration has overhauled the childhood immunization schedule in the name of “aligning with peer countries,” shifting some shots away from routine recommendations and into murkier, more discretionary territory — the kind of ambiguity that reliably leads to fewer kids getting their shots. As of January 29, the CDC had counted 588 measles cases already in 2026, with the vast majority linked to outbreaks that started last year; meanwhile, kindergarten measles vaccine coverage has fallen to 92.5 percent — well below the roughly 95 percent level that keeps measles from finding oxygen.
We are going in reverse, in part because we’ve forgotten the past we once lived with.
The point of smallpox eradication — the point of vaccination itself — is that when it’s working, nothing happens. No outbreaks, no headlines, no scars, no funerals. But “nothing happening” is not nature; it’s deliberate and difficult maintenance. If we want to honor William Foege, we don’t need to rename a highway. We need to defend the quiet he helped win — and refuse to relearn, the hard way, what the world looked like before people like him made it safer.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
2026-02-03 19:00:00
股市上涨，招聘减少。| Getty Images 当前美国经济正上演着“道尔顿·杰克尔与海德”的故事。股市达到历史高点，最新经济增速超过4%，呈现出繁荣的景象。但这种积极的表象背后却隐藏着阴暗的一面：几乎没有招聘，这让许多美国人感到被困住和焦虑。这被称为“无就业繁荣”，对华尔街来说是理想的状态，但对普通民众却十分艰难。
经济快速增长主要得益于人工智能的热潮以及富裕美国人的消费支出（我称之为“K型经济”回归，即最顶层的20%人群繁荣，而底层的80%人群仅能维持基本生活）。通常情况下，强劲的经济增长会带来大量招聘，但如今并非如此。去年是自2003年以来除经济衰退外，招聘最差的一年——当时经济在互联网泡沫破裂后经历了“无就业复苏”。2025年，美国若不是因为医疗和社会援助行业招聘，就会出现失业。
大多数蓝领和白领行业在去年都减少了就业岗位。近85%的新增就业发生在2025年4月之前，当时特朗普总统宣布了广泛的关税政策，扰乱了许多企业的供应链并提高了消费品价格。此后，尽管早期对经济衰退的担忧逐渐消退，投资者对经济增长的信心也增强，但招聘依然低迷。最新数据显示劳动力市场疲软，失业率自9月以来基本维持在4.4%左右，裁员并未增加，而招聘却依然疲软。
理解为何出现“无就业繁荣”至关重要。有三个关键因素在起作用：第一，2022和2023年过度招聘后的调整；第二，特朗普政府在关税和移民政策上的重大变化；第三，人工智能的影响。
1）疫情后的招聘热潮已经结束。疫情后，企业争相招聘，2021至2023年期间，企业努力获取尽可能多的人才，而工人则在历史性的换工作率中寻找更好的机会。如今，企业开始精简人员，用“缩减规模”来形容这种调整。许多企业领袖私下认为，这是招聘减少的主要原因。数据显示，美国在2022年6月已恢复疫情期间失去的所有就业岗位，但2022和2023年的招聘依然强劲。2015至2019年的平均每月新增就业岗位约为19万，而2022年下半年平均达到33.1万，2023年为21.6万。但到了2024年，平均每月新增岗位降至16.8万，2025年更是只有4.9万。换句话说，这些招聘高峰几乎被过去两年的低迷所抵消。
2）白宫政策的影响。2025年政策发生了巨大变化。特朗普实施了自1930年代以来最高的关税，并限制移民并推行大规模遣返计划。布鲁金斯学会的研究发现，这是自半个世纪以来，美国首次出现净移民为负的一年。此外，DOGE等举措导致联邦雇员人数自2025年1月以来减少了27.7万人。值得注意的是，招聘在4月后几乎停滞（医疗和社会援助行业除外，因为美国人口老龄化，该行业一直需要招聘）。企业因不确定性而暂停招聘，一些小型企业甚至进行了裁员。制造业自4月以来已减少了7.2万个岗位。由于移民政策收紧，可招聘的劳动力减少。一些经济学家估计，由于劳动力池大幅减少，每月可能需要至少3万个新岗位才能维持失业率稳定。
3）人工智能的影响。目前尚无明显证据表明人工智能正在取代工作岗位。斯坦福大学和耶鲁预算实验室的研究人员密切跟踪人工智能对劳动力市场的影响，但目前尚未发现显著变化。然而，从CEO的角度来看，人工智能可能并未直接导致失业，但企业每年在技术和劳动力上的投资预算有限。2025年，企业大量投入人工智能和机器人技术，这意味着用于招聘的资金减少。其中一个能说明21世纪美国经济状况的图表是：经济“蛋糕”中有多少分配给工人工资？最新数据显示，2025年美国工人获得的国民生产总值（GDP）创下了历史最低纪录。换句话说，企业领导者正在优先考虑资本投资，并从中获得巨大回报。这种趋势在人工智能时代变得更加明显。
当然，这些因素对经济的影响并不相同。我个人认为，政策变化是2025年招聘低迷的主要原因，其次是企业“缩减规模”的调整。正如会计公司KPMG首席经济学家迪恩·斯旺克在10月首次称其为“无就业繁荣”时所说，人工智能“并非目前劳动力市场疲软的主要原因”。截至目前，其影响主要体现在近期大学毕业生身上。
尽管如此，这场关于影响因素的争论仍将持续，聪明的人们可以就如何权衡这些因素展开讨论。无就业繁荣很可能在2026年继续。目前的条件为经济增长提供了良好的基础：不仅富裕阶层的消费强劲，人工智能的发展仍在持续，而且去年通过的《一个伟大的美丽法案》带来了利率下降、监管放松和减税等利好政策，短期内为经济增长提供了额外动力。然而，这些刺激措施的成本将在未来显现。
即便经济增长强劲，招聘仍可能在一段时间内低迷。展望未来，如果企业已经完成“缩减规模”的调整，招聘可能会重新回升，尤其是如果经济增长持续且政策不确定性有所降低。过去一年，工资增长出人意料地保持在3.8%（相比之下，通货膨胀率为2.7%）。如果劳动力市场重新活跃，工资可能仍将保持高位，更多美国人可能会感受到经济上的好处。
然而，仅从1月份的情况来看，白宫政策的不确定性依然很高——当特朗普威胁对欧洲实施关税，甚至对格陵兰岛采取更极端措施时，股市和债市曾短暂动荡。人们担心，如果股市出现抛售，投资者重新评估其对人工智能的投资，富裕阶层和企业的支出是否会受到影响。此外，许多CEO也因削减成本和裁员而受到股东的奖励。因此，企业可能还需要一段时间才能恢复信心并扩大招聘规模。这对在无就业繁荣中感到不安的美国人来说是个坏消息，也可能给共和党在中期选举前扭转经济形象带来麻烦。
A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story is playing out in the US economy right now. The stock market is at record levels, and the latest economic growth reading is above 4 percent, a boom-like scenario. But this positive tale has a dark side: there is virtually no hiring, and that has left many Americans feeling stuck and anxious.
This is a jobless boom. It’s an unusual situation that is ideal for Wall Street, but tough for many on Main Street. The economy is growing at a rapid rate, due largely to the AI boom and spending by wealthy Americans (what I dubbed the return of the “K-shaped economy” where the top 20 percent are thriving and the bottom 80 percent are just getting by). Normally, a strong year of economic growth leads to ample hiring, but that isn’t happening. Last year was the worst year for job gains outside of a recession since 2003 — when the economy was in a “jobless recovery” after the dot-com bubble burst.
The United States would have lost jobs in 2025 if it weren’t for health care and social assistance hiring. Most blue-collar and white-collar industries shed jobs last year. Nearly 85 percent of the job gains that did occur happened by April, when President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs that disrupted supply chains for many businesses and raised prices on consumer goods. There was little hiring the rest of the year, even as early fears of a downturn faded and investors became more confident growth would continue.
The latest data shows a labor market that is weak. Unemployment has basically been at 4.4 percent since September, and layoffs aren’t picking up. But hiring remains puny.
It’s critical to understand why the jobless boom is happening. There are three key factors at play: First, a correction from the overhiring in 2022 and 2023. Second, Trump’s dramatic policy changes on tariffs and immigration. And third, AI.
There was a post-pandemic hiring frenzy. Firms were trying to grab as much talent as possible in 2021, 2022, and 2023 as the economy rebounded and workers were job switching at historic rates to take advantage of a bidding war for their services. Now, business leaders are pruning. In corporate speak, they are “right-sizing” their headcount.
Many business leaders privately tell me they think this is the largest factor driving the lack of hiring. Data backs up this argument. The United States recovered all jobs lost during the pandemic by June 2022. But hiring remained strong for the rest of 2022 and even 2023. The typical monthly average for job gains in 2015 through 2019 was about 190,000 a month. The monthly average in the second half of 2022 was a whopping 331,000, and it was 216,000 in 2023. Then the situation changed: The monthly average was 168,000 in 2024 and a mere 49,000 in 2025. To put it another way, those hiring boom years are almost entirely offset by the weaker past two years, as the table below illustrates.
To put it mildly, there were dramatic shifts in policy in 2025. President Trump put in place the highest tariffs since the 1930s. He also curbed immigration and put in place a mass deportation program. The overall impact is that net migration was negative in 2025 for the first time in half a century, Brookings Institution research finds. DOGE and related efforts to scale back various agencies contributed to a 277,000-person reduction to the federal workforce since January 2025.
It’s telling that hiring basically stops after April (with the exception of health care, which is always hiring, given America’s aging population). Firms reacted to all the uncertainty by halting hiring, and smaller firms appear to have gone a step further and done some layoffs. Manufacturing, an industry especially hard-hit by tariffs, shed 72,000 jobs since April.
Due to the administration’s crackdown on immigration, there are fewer workers available to hire. Some economists estimate that as few as 30,000 new jobs per month might be needed to keep the unemployment rate steady since the labor pool has dwindled so much.
There’s little evidence that AI is replacing jobs yet. Researchers from Stanford University and Yale Budget Lab are tracking the impacts of AI closely on the labor force, and both see almost no impact so far.
That said, it’s important to step back and look at this from a CEO’s perspective. AI may not have directly replaced jobs in 2025, but each firm has a limited supply of money to spend each year on new investments in technology and labor. In 2025, firms spent a lot of money on AI and robots. That meant there was less to spend on hiring more workers.
One of the best charts that tells the story of the American economy in the 21st century is this one: How much of the economic “pie” goes to worker wages? The latest data show that 2025 hit a record low in national GDP going to workers. In other words, business leaders are prioritizing capital investments (and reaping big rewards for doing so). This is an ongoing trend, but it’s getting even more pronounced in the AI age.
Not all of these factors impacted the economy equally, of course. Personally, I would argue that policy was the biggest driver of the hiring recession in 2025, followed by firms’ “right-sizing” hiring. As Diane Swonk, the chief economist at accounting firm KPMG, who was the first to call this a “jobless boom” in October, put it, AI was “not the primary driver of the weakness in the labor market to date.” So far, its effects have mostly been felt among recent college graduates. But this debate will continue, and smart people can disagree about how to weigh these factors.
The jobless boom is likely to continue in 2026. The pieces are in place for a hot growth year. Not only is spending by the rich strong and the AI buildout ongoing, but on top of that, lower interest rates, a regulatory rollback, and reduced taxes from the One Big Beautiful Bill enacted last year all give extra fuel to growth in the short run. The costs of all this stimulus will come later. Still, even with this hot growth, hiring could remain anemic for a while.
Looking ahead to the rest of the year, the optimistic case is that firms are mostly done right-sizing. Hiring could pick up again, especially if growth stays hot and policy uncertainty ratchets down a bit. Wage growth has remained surprisingly high at 3.8 percent in the past year (versus 2.7 percent inflation). If the labor market jumpstarts again, wages would likely remain elevated and more Americans could begin to feel some financial gain.
But January alone has already illustrated that White House policy uncertainty remains high — stock and bond markets briefly buckled as Trump threatened Europe with tariffs, or worse, over Greenland — and there are worries about how robust spending by the rich and corporations would be if the stock market experiences a sell-off as investors re-price their AI bets. Many CEOs are also being rewarded by shareholders for cutting costs and shedding workers. It will probably take a while for firms to feel confident enough to expand headcount.
That’s bad news for Americans feeling uneasy in the jobless boom — and it could mean trouble for Republicans looking to turn around economic perceptions before the midterm elections.