2026-04-11 20:00:00
与唐纳德·特朗普的民调相比，政治媒体的处境更糟。我们这些记者正面临信任危机、相关性下降以及被注意力经济淹没的困境，这种经济模式可能会用Claude或网红取代我们。传统新闻报道的技能，如讲故事、街头采访，甚至“调查”一词，如今已成为现代TikToker的模板。然而，新闻业的核心流程——事实核查、等待评论、注重细微差别而非轰动效应，或以好奇心为先——正变得愈发孤独，与日益被激烈观点淹没的受众争夺注意力。我希望我的新节目《美国真相》能有所不同。随着国家迈向2026年中期选举和十年来首次开放总统初选，这感觉像是一个正在发生变化的国家的新故事的开端。新兴社区、人工智能、快速变化的工作经济以及全球冲突风险等议题，本应在上一次总统大选中占据核心位置，但现在却无法再被忽视。我们正面临“我们希望成为怎样的国家？”这一问题，而回答它需要一种更关注复杂现实而非表面现象的新闻报道方式。在过去十年的政治报道中，我走访了30多个州，关注大小选举，希望实现这一目标。作为《纽约时报》的政治记者和播客《The Run-Up》的主持人，我致力于扩大对黑人选民、中西部居民和福音派群体的报道，这些群体我认为长期被忽视。我曾担任参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦和时任副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯竞选活动的首席记者，探讨代表性的价值与局限。我还专注于报道特朗普选民的趋势，通过参加集会或社区活动（如“特朗普伍德斯托克”或“查理·基尔的转折点”活动）直接倾听他们的声音。我发现了一个比人们通常认为更政治化的国家：工人阶级无需劳工统计局的最新数据便能察觉经济放缓，选民虽无法说出“选区划分”一词，却直觉地意识到国会已变得极端化。选民普遍认为，2024年拜登与特朗普再次对决的前景，反映出政治体系已完全脱离民众意愿。所谓“极化”的叙事源于将这些观点简单归类为“红队”和“蓝队”，但这并非固有的现象。我认为，将特朗普从政治讨论的核心移除，有助于更清晰地看到这一新的故事。我一直认为，尽管特朗普是独特的独裁式人物，但他利用了一个与大多数美国人关切脱节的政治体系，使其更容易被操控。只有将关注点从政客和精英媒体转向广大选民，我们才能更清楚地看到这种脱节。《美国真相》旨在展现这个国家意见的多样性。我去年加入Vox，是为了穿透噪音，放大政治报道通常忽略的声音，并帮助观众理解当今美国政治中真正重要的议题。通过这个新节目，我们希望每周探讨推动美国后特朗普时代发展的民众和思想，并为2028年大选做准备。我计划探讨的问题包括：反对伊朗战争的共和党派系有多大？日益加剧的社会孤立如何影响政治？这是否是首个黑人选民不再决定民主党初选结果的选举？美国公众对以色列日益消极的情绪将如何体现在投票中？在首期节目中，我们现在在YouTube和各大播客平台上线，民意调查专家奈特·西格尔和文化播客主持人猎人·哈里斯讨论了节目的核心问题——没有特朗普的政治节目是否可能？以及塑造我们后特朗普时代的政治与文化因素。之后，节目将邀请专家、政界人士和地方记者进行访谈，这些访谈将通过与“报告美国”（Report for America）的合作实现，该计划将新兴记者派驻全国各地新闻机构，报道被忽视的议题。我们的目标是建立一种新的理解方式，以反映特朗普时代扭曲的国家面貌。并非因为特朗普不反映我们的现状，而是因为政治体系本身具有扁平化倾向。尽管白宫可能不考虑公众意见进行治理，但候选人无法享有这种奢侈。美国公众已重新回到政治讨论的中心。2026年中期选举和2028年总统大选将迫使我们进行一次自特朗普十年来被回避的重置。最终，一个后特朗普时代将到来，让我们共同书写它。
The only people with worse poll numbers than President Donald Trump are the political media that cover him. We, the journalists, are in a crisis: of trust, relevance, and being swamped by an attention economy that will either replace us with Claude or an influencer. The skills of traditional reporting: storytelling, man-on-the-street interviews, even the language of “investigations,” are the template for the modern TikToker. But it’s the process of journalism — fact-checking, waiting for comment, leaning into nuance over sensationalism, or even leading with curiosity generally — that is growing to be a lonelier pursuit, competing for attention from an audience increasingly inundated by hot takes.
I”m hoping my new show, America, Actually, will be different. As the country marches toward the 2026 midterms and the first open presidential primary in a decade, it feels like the first steps of a new story for a changing nation. Emerging communities, artificial intelligence, a rapidly shifting work economy, and growing risk of global conflict — all things that should have been front and center in the last presidential election — can now no longer be ignored. The question of “who do we want to be?” is open, and answering it will require the type of journalism that prioritizes the messy over the clean.
In a decade in political journalism, I’ve gone to 30-plus states and followed elections big and small, in hopes of doing just that. As a political reporter and host of The Run-Up podcast at the New York Times, I sought to expand the Times’ coverage of Black voters, Midwesterners, and evangelicals — communities I felt confident were underrepresented. I was the lead reporter for the presidential campaigns of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and then-Vice President Kamala Harris, exploring the values and limits of representation. I found a niche doing trend stories about Trump voters, either by attending rallies or going to community events (like Trumpstock; “Woodstock for Trump fans,” or Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point events) to hear from his voters directly.
And what I found most was a country that was more politically attuned than it’s often given credit for. Working-class people who did not need the latest revised figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to know that the economy was slowing. Voters who could not name gerrymandering — but intuitively understood that Congress had grown more extreme than ever. An electorate that more or less agreed that the mere prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024 was a reflection of a political system that had become completely untethered from the desires of its citizenry. The whole narrative of “polarization” came from the process of sorting those views into Team Red and Team Blue. It was not inherent.
By removing Donald Trump from the center of the political discussion, I think it gives space to see that new story more clearly. I have always believed this president, while a uniquely authoritarian actor with unique electoral traits, has exploited a political system whose distance from the concerns of most Americans made it even more vulnerable for exploitation. And it’s only in flipping our focus, from the concerns of elected officials and the elite bubble of industry and media that follows them to the voters at large, that we political journalists see that distance most clearly.
America, Actually will seek to see the country for that diversity of opinion. I joined Vox last year because I want to cut through the noise, amplify voices that political journalism typically hasn’t amplified, and help audiences understand the issues that really matter in American politics today. With this new show, we want to create a weekly space to think about the people and ideas who are driving the country’s post-Trump future — and prepare us for the 2028 election along the way.
Some of the questions I want to explore include: How large is the wing of Republicans against the Iran war? What’s the impact of growing social isolation on politics, which has long been a community activity? Is this the first Democratic primary where the Black vote won’t be determinative? How will Americans’ souring mood on Israel manifest itself in votes? Will it?
In our first episode, out now on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts, pollster Nate Silver and culture podcaster Hunter Harris discuss the show’s premise — Is a politics show without Trump even possible? — and the political and cultural factors that will shape our post-Trump future. Later, the show will feature interviews with experts, elected officials, and local journalists, who will regularly appear on the podcast through a partnership with Report for America, the national service program that places emerging journalists into local newsrooms across the country to report on under-covered issues.
The goal is to model something different: a new way to understand a country that the Trump era has distorted. Not because this president doesn’t reflect who we are, but because the political system inherently flattens it. And while the White House may govern without public opinion in mind, candidates don’t have that luxury. The American public is back in the center of the conversation. The 2026 midterm elections, and the 2028 presidential election, will force a reset that’s been avoided since Trump came down that golden escalator more than a decade ago.
There will, eventually, be a post-Trump future. Let’s write it together.
2026-04-11 19:00:00
2026年2月25日，《Heated Rivalry》一书的副本。Archive of Our Own（简称AO3）是全球最受欢迎的网站之一，拥有超过1000万注册用户。该网站的用户不仅阅读，还创作大量关于喜爱的虚构角色的故事。它为普通读者提供了一个尝试将角色置于不同情境和结局中的平台。近年来，像AO3这样的网站成为出版商寻找新作者的重要来源，他们希望从中发掘下一个畅销作品。去年夏天，华盛顿邮报记者Rachel Kurzius撰文探讨了粉丝小说如何逐渐主流化。她指出，“粉丝小说”（Fanfic）已成为诸如《Heated Rivalry》和《五十度灰》等畅销作品的基础。她预测，随着更多粉丝小说爱好者进入主流行业，这一类型将越来越多地融入主流文化。
粉丝小说起源于上个世纪，例如《星际迷航》（Star Trek）的同人志（zines）。这些作品最初局限于特定的粉丝群体，后来随着像FanFiction.net这样的平台出现，不同粉丝圈逐渐融合，开始探索不同作品中角色的互动。如今，AO3已成为这一领域的核心平台，其组织方式类似于图书馆，用户可以按粉丝圈、角色、故事类型或情节模式进行搜索，其内容库极为庞大。
《五十度灰》最初是《暮光之城》的粉丝小说，后来成为畅销书并发展为电影系列，这促使出版商重新审视粉丝小说的价值。如今，传统出版商在推广作品时，也开始使用与AO3相似的标签，如“Draco/Hermione”等，以吸引读者。此外，粉丝小说中的一些写作趋势，如第一人称现在时的叙述方式和同性恋浪漫题材，也逐渐被主流出版界采纳。
Kurzius认为，粉丝小说如今受到更多重视，部分原因在于其质量得到了认可，同时新一代编辑和文学代理人成长于粉丝文化，对粉丝小说持更开放的态度。此外，传统出版业面临困境，而粉丝小说已证明其市场潜力，因此被视为一种相对安全的投资。然而，当粉丝小说进入传统出版领域时，其原本基于“礼物经济”的特性（即非盈利性质）可能会发生变化，这对粉丝小说作为艺术形式和社区文化的意义提出了新的挑战。
Archive of Our Own, or AO3, is one of the most popular websites in the world, with over 10 million registered users. Its users spend their time both reading and writing many, many words about their favorite fictional characters. It’s a place that allows normie readers to try out their characters in different scenarios and with different outcomes. In the last couple of years, sites like AO3 became fertile ground for publishers to find new authors who might provide them with their next big hit.
Last summer, reporter Rachel Kurzius wrote about how fan fiction is going mainstream for the Washington Post. “Fanfic,” as it’s known to its friends, is the underpinning of smash hits from Heated Rivalry to Fifty Shades of Grey. Kurzius anticipates that as more fanfic adherents grow up and get jobs in various roles in the mainstream, we’ll see more and more of this genre creeping into the mainstream.
Kurzius spoke Today, Explained host Noel King about why fan fiction is everywhere. An excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below. For the whole interview, listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
What is fan fiction?
This is such a fun question because there are a couple of different strains of thought here. So let’s start with the big tent philosophy, which is fan fiction is anything that is really derived from or inspired by preexisting works. But if we think about this broadly, basically everything that we know, including many of the classics are fan fiction, right? We could think recently about Percival Everett’s James, that’s Huckleberry Finn fanfic, right?
Does that really count?
In speaking with a lot of fandom experts, one person that I spoke with told me she used to want to define fanfic really broadly because it gave it a kind of legitimacy. Like, these are books that are considered part of the literary canon that are winning awards. And so fanfic is that too. But she came around to the idea that if you define everything that way, then that’s such a broad category that it kind of loses meaning and so a more narrow version of understanding fanfic would be these transformative works that are based on preexisting property that exist in the gift economy. And this is key. The idea that this is something that people are doing not to make money and in fact ought not make money doing this, that it’s just they’re doing it because it is fun or exciting or community building to do.
Where did this start?
Last century, there were people who were writing zines, for example, very popularly, Star Trek among them. But those were very specific as to one fandom. People were writing fan fiction about particular characters in one world, and that tradition passed forward to various websites and online newsletters that again, were balkanized into a particular fandom.
It was only later when we saw broader websites like, for example, fanfiction.net, that were bringing all of these different fandoms together and saying, if you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you might like Supernatural. Let’s see what these characters could do, or what happens if we put these beloved characters from different worlds together and have them meet with one another.
That brings us to the modern day with Archive of Our Own, which I would say is kind of the big powerhouse archival player these days. And certainly where I look for fanfic when I read it.
Explain what Archive of Our Own is.
Archive of Our Own is a website where people can post and read fan-created transformative works, and it is organized in such a way that it’s clear it was created by librarians, right? You can certainly search by fandom, by character. You could also search by the kind of story you want to hear, or a trope that you’re interested in. You would be amazed at just how extensive the archives are on Archive of Our Own.
You would say, even if you don’t know what any of this is, it is being mainstreamed. It has been mainstreamed into culture, now. You are actually consuming things that started out as fan fiction. What are they?
The big one, the Kahuna that became the juggernaut, would be 50 Shades of Grey, which was actually Twilight fan fiction. 50 Shades of Grey completely changed the game. It was a bestseller as a book. It became an absolute bestseller as a movie series. And it got publishers thinking. I spoke with romance duo Christina Lauren [the pen name for co-author duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings], who actually met writing Twilight fanfic, and they said that when they first spoke to people about going into the traditional publishing world, and this is more than a decade ago, they were told, “Don’t say a thing about fan fiction. That’s a scarlet letter.” Well, that is not true anymore.
These days, particularly last summer, you saw three works in particular that either had been Draco/Hermione fan fiction, or at least a prominent Draco/Hermione writer wrote a series that wasn’t exactly the fanfic, but certainly the fanfic roots were actually being advertised by the publisher as a selling point. One very famous one is The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, which was originally a Rey/Kylo Ren fan fiction from Star Wars. And what is so kind of funny and meta about that is that that is now being adapted into a movie. And the male lead is actually married to the actress who played Rey in Star Wars.
If you look at genre fiction these days, publishing houses, when advertising those works, are using very similar tags to the ones that you would see on Archive of Our Own. So they are broadcasting those same tropes as saying, if you like that, you’ll find that in this book. Because they’ve realized, thanks to fan fiction, that’s how a lot of readers like to find what they’re going to read next.
Another thing that I found incredibly fascinating is a decade, a decade and a half ago, fan fiction writers were writing in the first-person present tense, and it created this kind of urgency and immediate connection, but you weren’t seeing that a lot in traditional publishing. Now that has been subsumed by traditional publishing. So a lot of really popular trends, even in terms of writing, began in fan fiction. You might also see joyous queer romance was a huge part of fan fiction before traditional publishing got on board.
So it seems clear to me, based on what you’re saying, that writers of fan fiction and the work itself are being taken more seriously than they were, I don’t know, 20 years ago. Why do you think that is? Is it just because, hey, some of this writing is pretty darn good, let’s take it seriously?
I think part of it is just a broader mainstreaming of fanfic, and that people are kind of waving that fanfic flag proudly in a way that they hadn’t a decade or so ago. And if we’re understanding the structures of traditional publishing, whether it is the editors who are acquiring works or literary agents, a lot of these people are people who grew up on fan fiction, right? So they might not have the same hangups or ideas about fan fiction that previous generations had. They’re interested in it, and they see it as a legitimate form of writing.
Part of it, I think, is because traditional publishing is in, some may say, dire straits, and there’s a broader hunger for IP, intellectual property, things that have already been proven successes. And if you look at some of these fanfics on Archive of Our Own, they have millions of views. I think traditional publishing looks at this and says, “This is basically as safe a deal as we are going to get in terms of thinking that that might be able to translate into book sales.”
What I find really interesting about it is, if one of our elemental definitions of fanfic is that it exists in the gift economy, what happens when fanfic becomes a legitimate path to traditional publishing? What does that mean for fanfic as an art or as a community? And I think that that’s something that a lot of fanfic writers and readers are wrestling with right now.
2026-04-11 05:15:00
2026年4月6日，洛杉矶一家杂货店的顾客正在购买牛肉。| Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
本文出自《The Logoff》每日简报，旨在帮助您了解特朗普政府的动态，而不会让政治新闻占据您的生活。订阅此处。
欢迎来到《The Logoff》：伊朗战争对经济的影响正逐渐显现。
最新情况：本周五公布的数据显示，3月份美国通胀率达到3.3%，比2月份上涨近1个百分点，是近四年来的最快涨幅。消费者显然对此并不满意。同一天发布的密歇根大学数据也显示，4月消费者信心指数降至50以下，创历史最低水平。虽然目前这些数据仍为初步统计，但已显示出令人担忧的趋势。
伊朗为何与此有关？战争始于2月中旬，伊朗随即关闭了关键的霍尔木兹海峡，导致美国汽油价格飙升至每加仑4美元以上，并使许多商品（包括食品）价格上涨。尽管停火协议目前维持着脆弱的平衡，但美国总统特朗普本周的施压并未促使海峡重新开放。据BBC报道，自停火协议宣布以来，仅有四艘油轮和19艘船只通过海峡，远低于正常情况下每天超过100艘的水平。即便在最乐观的情境下，若海峡近期重新开放，油品供应恢复仍需数周甚至数月时间，据Vox本周早些时候引用的石油市场专家罗里·约翰斯顿的说法。
接下来会发生什么？美国与伊朗的谈判团队将在本周末于巴基斯坦会面，讨论更持久的和平协议，这可能为美国经济带来急需的缓解。然而，谈判结果仍难以预料：本周五，特朗普在Truth Social上再次发出威胁，称“伊朗人之所以还活着，就是为了谈判！”
我总是喜欢《纽约杂志》的“Grub Street Diet”栏目，其中某位人物（可能是政界人士、名人或记者）会展示一周内颇具特色的饮食选择。最新一期由调查记者兼作家帕特里克·拉登·基夫撰写，您可点击此处阅读。
祝您周末愉快，我们周一再见！
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 economic impact of the Iran war is becoming clearer.
What’s happening? On Friday, we learned that inflation climbed to 3.3 percent in March, almost 1 percentage point higher than it was in February and the quickest inflation has grown in nearly four years.
Unsurprisingly, consumers aren’t thrilled. New data from the University of Michigan, also released Friday, shows consumer sentiment from April under 50, its lowest point ever. It’s not even mid-April, so for now, those numbers are preliminary — but they point in a concerning direction.
What does Iran have to do with this? Shortly after the war began in late February, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passage for oil and natural gas. It has remained largely closed ever since, driving gas prices over $4/gallon in the US and making many more goods, including food, more expensive.
Will the ceasefire fix prices? No. The ceasefire, while fragile, is holding. But despite President Donald Trump’s demands this week, there is no sign that it has led to the Strait reopening.
According to the BBC, four tankers, and only 19 total ships, have passed the Strait since the ceasefire was announced; under normal conditions, well over 100 ships transit the Strait each day.
Even under the most optimistic scenario where the Strait does reopen in the near future, it will take weeks, if not months, for the oil supply to rebound, oil markets expert Rory Johnston told Vox earlier this week.
What’s next? American and Iranian negotiating teams will meet in Pakistan this weekend to discuss a more permanent peace deal, which could provide the US economy with a needed reprieve. How that will go is anyone’s guess: On Friday, Trump issued another threat, writing on Truth Social that “The only reason [the Iranians] are alive today is to negotiate!”
I always enjoy New York Magazine’s “Grub Street Diet,” where someone — a politician, a celebrity, a journalist — lays out a week of sometimes-eclectic culinary choices. Their latest features investigative reporter and author Patrick Radden Keefe, and you can read it here.
Have a good weekend and we’ll see you back here on Monday!
2026-04-11 03:55:00
根据“建筑脱碳联盟”（BDC）最新报告，2025年燃气账单上涨速度比电力账单快60%，比通货膨胀速度快四倍。这一现象背后有更深层的原因：过去，燃气账单的主要驱动因素是燃气价格本身，但如今，燃气系统基础设施成本（如管道更换）已成为主导因素。2024年，基础设施成本占客户账单的约70%，而燃气价格仅占30%。BDC报告指出，过去十年间，燃气公司用于管道和输送的支出翻了三倍，2023年达到280亿美元。自2010年起，燃气公司加快了管道更换速度，部分原因是管道寿命有限，最终会腐蚀和泄漏。2010年至2014年间，27个州实施了政策，使燃气公司能更快回收更换成本，从而提高用户费率。据美国燃气协会数据，至少42个州已通过某种形式的附加费或计划加速燃气管道更换。然而，燃气用户数量仅增长了8.5%（自2000年以来），而燃气公司支出却大幅增加，导致每户燃气用户支付的费用比30年前更高，形成“低效且昂贵”的燃气系统。BDC计算，如果燃气公司继续以2010年前的速度投资，美国用户到2023年可节省约1300亿美元，相当于每户燃气用户节省1723美元。尽管燃气行业强调使用燃气比电力更省钱，但BDC认为继续投资燃气系统并不合理。随着各州设定强制性气候目标，必须转向电气化并大幅减少化石燃料使用。报告作者凯文·卡本内尔指出，对于老旧且不安全的燃气管道，可考虑地热能网络、需求响应计划、污水热回收等替代方案。越来越多的州已开始采取行动，例如自2020年以来，13个州和华盛顿特区已启动逐步淘汰燃气供暖的程序。在明尼苏达州，一项新提案允许燃气公司建设地热能网络，以减少化石燃料使用，该提案获得州内最大燃气公司CenterPoint Energy及劳工团体的支持。与此同时，马萨诸塞州正在扩展其首个由燃气公司主导的热能社区，而马里兰州监管机构则正在评估燃气公司规划是否符合州气候目标。州政策和激励措施也在推动电气化工具（如热泵）的普及。在加州，立法者正在考虑《热泵准入法案》，以加快热泵的安装，助力该州实现2045年碳中和目标。2025年，热泵连续第四年在美国销量超过燃气炉。此外，插电式阳台太阳能系统也日益受到关注。卡本内尔表示，人们正通过升级为更高效、舒适、节能的电器而逐步脱离燃气系统。尽管特朗普政府在联邦层面削减了清洁能源激励措施，但各州在脱碳方面的进展依然显著，这进一步证明随着燃气系统成本持续上升，清洁能源解决方案正变得更具性价比。
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
From the cold snap this winter to the US war with Iran, rising energy bills are making headlines. But there’s a larger story behind spikes in gas-utility costs, one decades in the making.
The main driver of these bills used to be the price of gas itself. Now it’s the gas system infrastructure, like pipeline replacements: That accounted for about 70 percent of customer bills in 2024, while gas was just 30 percent.
“The sleeper culprit of these continuously rising bills is, in fact, the infrastructure,” said Kristin Bagdanov, co-author of a new report by the Building Decarbonization Coalition (BDC) that was published Tuesday.
Electric bills have been on the rise too, but not nearly at the same rate as those for gas. In 2025, gas utility bills rose 60 percent faster than electric ones and four times faster than inflation, the report found. All of this comes as gas use declines, a result of more efficient gas boilers alongside a push towards electrification as states work to meet climate goals.
The spike in the cost of gas itself is the cherry on top of a system that has grown increasingly expensive over the years. In the last decade, gas utility spending on pipes and delivery tripled, reaching $28 billion in 2023, the report notes. Utilities began replacing their pipelines more rapidly in 2010 — partially because of the lifespan of pipes, which will eventually corrode and leak.
Between then and 2014, 27 states implemented policies that allowed utilities to recover these costs more quickly, raising rates for customers. In total, at least 42 states have enacted some form of rider, surcharge or program to accelerate the replacement of gas distribution pipelines, according to data from the American Gas Association, a utility trade group.
Utility spending has far outpaced growth in the gas customer base, which is up just 8.5 percent in total since 2000, the BDC report says, citing data from the US Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile, residential gas demand has remained nearly flat since the 1970s.
“That means people are paying more per pipe than they had been 30 years ago,” Bagdanov said, creating a gas system that is “underutilized and more expensive.”
If utilities had continued their pre-2010 pace of investment, BDC calculates that US customers would have saved an estimated $130 billion in total through 2023, or $1,723 per household using gas. The gas-utility industry, however, emphasizes cost savings for residents who use gas instead of electricity. The American Gas Association writes in its 2026 Playbook that “homes that use natural gas for heating, cooking and clothes drying save an average of $1,030 per year compared to homes that use electricity for those same applications.”
The BDC report argues that continued investments in the gas system don’t make sense. States with mandated climate goals will have to invest in electrification and dramatically reduce fossil fuel use. Where replacements are needed for gas pipes that are old and unsafe, there are other options, said Kevin Carbonnier, co-author of the report, like geothermal energy networks, demand-response programs to use energy more efficiently, sewer heat recovery and electrification.
“Let’s look at non-pipe alternatives to see if we can modernize our homes and our infrastructure, rather than putting in the millions of dollars to replace that pipe,” he said.
A growing number of states have taken that sentiment to heart. Since 2020, utility regulators in 13 states and Washington, DC, have opened proceedings on transitioning away from natural gas for heating. Lawmakers are considering their options, too.
In Minnesota, for example, a new proposed bill would allow gas utilities to build geothermal energy networks in the state, a move that would reduce fossil fuel use. “We know that decarbonizing heating and cooling is one of the biggest challenges that we have in the clean energy transition,” state Rep. Athena Hollins, sponsor of the bill, said at a hearing in late March. The bill has received strong support from Minnesota’s largest natural gas utility, CenterPoint Energy, along with labor groups.
Massachusetts is already expanding its first utility-led thermal energy neighborhood, while Maryland regulators are currently accepting testimony on their review of whether state gas utilities’ planning is consistent with the state’s climate goals.
State policies and incentives are also helping to make electrification tools, like heat pumps, more affordable. In California, legislators are considering the Heat Pump Access Act to make it faster, easier, and cheaper to install heat pumps for cooling and heating, part of a push to help the state reach carbon neutrality by 2045.
In 2025, heat pumps outsold gas furnaces in the U.S. for the fourth year in a row. Plug-in balcony solar is receiving mounting interest as well. “We’re seeing a lot of electrification and people disconnecting from gas as they upgrade their homes to these modern, faster, better, more comfortable, efficient appliances,” Carbonnier said.
While the Trump administration has slashed clean energy incentives on a federal level, “what we see at the state level is actually like a lot of durable progress,” Bagdanov said. “It just reinforces the fact that as that gas system continues to get more and more expensive, these clean-heat solutions get even better and more affordable.”
2026-04-11 03:00:00
2025年11月5日，教皇利奥十四世在梵蒂冈圣彼得广场向信徒发表演讲。然而，近期一些新闻报道引发了美国天主教徒对政府是否可能推翻首位出生在美国的教皇的猜测。这些报道恰逢罗马天主教会和右翼基督教影响者对特朗普政府在伊朗战争中的政策进行批评。
核心要点
事件背景与影响
宗教右翼的分裂
总结
“阿维尼翁事件”不仅加剧了梵蒂冈与美国政府的紧张关系，也暴露了美国天主教界与宗教右翼之间的深刻分歧。事件背后涉及历史隐喻、政治立场冲突以及宗教意识形态的对抗，其影响可能持续发酵，甚至威胁到特朗普支持者内部的团结。
Most American Catholics were probably not expecting to spend the first week of Easter trying to figure out whether their government was threatening to overthrow the first American-born pope.
Yet a handful of news reports this week raised that very strange possibility. They landed just as both the Roman Catholic Church and right-wing Christian influencers have been ramping up their criticism of the Trump administration over the Iran war.
This burgeoning scandal hinges on news reports that in January, the previous ambassador of the Vatican to the United States was called into an unusual meeting with Department of Defense officials at the Pentagon and dressed down. The Pentagon officials, reportedly, wanted to complain about a speech Pope Leo XIV gave in Rome that appeared to criticize American foreign policy. During the meeting, one official issued what some in the church saw as a veiled threat to the Vatican: a warning that the US wields unlimited military power, and that the pope should be conscious of that.
If true, this episode would mark a low point in modern Vatican-American political relations — on top of being a major religious scandal for Catholics in the US.
The Trump administration denies these accounts; the Vatican is keeping mostly quiet. Meanwhile, the reporters and writers who first surfaced these allegations are standing by their stories.
Whatever the truth ends up being, this scandal points to some important fracture lines in American religious life, and offers a key to understanding the way the Iran war is cracking up the religious right. It also fits into a broader conflict that is testing MAGA Catholics’ resolve, and setting up the Catholic Church as one of the Trump administration’s most visible and relevant critics.
This whole saga began with a report from the Free Press on Wednesday, in which Italian journalist Mattia Ferraresi reported on a previously unknown meeting between Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, then-top Vatican diplomat in the US Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and a handful of Pentagon officials.
The meeting, which is now confirmed to have happened, was unusual, Ferraresi and other reports noted, because of where and when it happened: at the Pentagon, instead of with diplomats of the Department of State, and after Pope Leo had delivered a speech decrying the breakdown in the post-war international order and the escalating use of force and violence abroad by nations, including the US, to achieve their aims.
“War is back in vogue and the zeal for war is spreading,” Leo had said in his speech to diplomats.
That the meeting happened isn’t in doubt; but no one seems to agree on what was actually said in the encounter. The Free Press reported that the meeting was meant to be a warning to the Vatican, a reminder that militarily, the US can do “whatever it wants…and that the Vatican, and Leo, better take its side.” And so, it devolved into a “bitter lecture.”
The Pentagon, meanwhile, said Thursday that the group “had a substantive, respectful, and professional meeting” and that “recent reporting of the meeting is highly exaggerated and distorted.” The US ambassador to the Holy See (the Vatican’s political government) echoed that sentiment, and called media reports exaggerations and fabrications.
But other news outlets also began picking up on the fallout. NBC Chicago, of the pope’s hometown, quoted a Vatican source who called the Pentagon meeting “most unpleasant and confrontational.” The Financial Times reported that the meeting was supposed to deliver a “friendly message” to the pope, and to ask the Vatican to be more supportive of the Trump administration’s policies, but unraveled when Pierre said the pope would follow Catholic values in conducting Vatican foreign policy.
That’s when one specific term jumps out, which caused this whole episode to become an actual scandal. Someone in the room, according to the Free Press, the Financial Times, and independent journalist Christopher Hale, invoked the name “Avignon” — which some Vatican officials reportedly understood to be a military threat against the Vatican.
Why did this particular phrase set off alarm bells? To answer that, we have to go back 700 years.
Though these accounts don’t agree on who invoked Avignon, the term is a trigger for Catholics, historians, and history buffs: It references the French city that served as the home base for popes in the 14th century after a French king, Philip IV, sent an army to Italy where they attacked the sitting pope, Boniface VIII, after years of feuding over who was the preeminent political power.
Phiip IV went on to force the election of a new French pope, who moved the papacy to Avignon. For 70 years, popes held court and governed Christendom from the city’s papal palace — and when the last Avignon pope tried to move the office back to Rome, it spawned a crisis for the church and the rise of rival “antipopes” in Avignon claiming to be the real pope for nearly 40 years after.
As you might now understand, “Avignon” is a loaded term. And combined with the nature of the meeting — at the Pentagon, having to do with comments Pope Leo had made about America’s use of force — you can see how this episode could be interpreted as being a veiled warning about the church staying in its lane when it comes to criticizing the dominant military power.
Regardless of who invoked Avignon or how confrontational the meeting was behind the scenes, it fits into a pattern of growing public conflict between the Church and the Trump presidency.
This applies to both style and substance: Pope Leo, and the American bishops, have become loud critics of Trump’s immigration and mass deportation policy, his foreign interventions abroad and use of force against other nations, and the breakdown of the US-European alliance. For all intents and purposes, MAGA has forced the Catholic Church to appear like the chief resistance.
But it’s the joint US-Israeli war on Iran that has caused the most visible strain and direct condemnation of Trump and the American government by the Roman pontiff. After spending weeks calling for peace talks and ceasefires, and preaching the Church’s anti-war message during Holy Week commemorations, Leo used Trump’s name for the first time last week, expressing hope that he was “looking for an off-ramp” from the war.
And after Trump warned that Iranian civilization might “die” on Tuesday, Leo condemned the statements as “truly unacceptable” and urged “the citizens of all the countries involved to contact the authorities, political leaders, congressmen, to ask them, tell them to work for peace and to reject war.”
The pope hasn’t said anything on this latest development, but the Vatican has weighed in — a significant move given their traditional reluctance to address these kinds of political disputes.
After the Vatican Press Office initially declined to comment earlier in the week, Vatican press secretary Matteo Bruni released a statement on Friday confirming Cardinal Pierre met with Colby “for an exchange of views on matters of mutual interest,” and that “the narrative offered by certain media outlets regarding this meeting does not correspond at all with the truth” — without clarifying which narrative that was, or where existing reporting got things wrong.
Meanwhile, the Vatican diplomat involved in the meeting, Cardinal Pierre, told one independent journalist he would “prefer not speak.”
But the Free Press report suggested that this dustup is leading the Vatican to keep the US government at arm’s length while Trump is president. The first American pope has declined invitations to come to the US during its 250th celebrations, and will instead spend that time at an island in Italy where migrants fleeing danger in Africa frequently stop off while trying to reach Europe. The Trump administration has openly supported anti-immigrant political parties and leaders in Europe, while also trying to block asylum seekers and refugees from entering America.
Vance, a Catholic convert who has a book coming out later this year on his faith journey, was asked about the Pentagon episode on Wednesday while traveling in Hungary. He denied knowing the Vatican diplomat in question, and said he’d rather not comment on an unconfirmed report.
Vance is the highest ranking of a significant number of Catholics serving in the Trump administration (including Secretary of State Marco Rubio), was one of the last public leaders to meet with the late Pope Francis before his death, and was famously rebuked by two popes (Francis and Leo, albeit before the latter became pope) for invoking his new faith to defend the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
Beyond being a spectacle, Avignon-gate is also a helpful key to understanding what is happening on the religious right in 2026.
As Vance’s prior papal feuds indicate, the Free Press story also runs into some intra-Catholic tensions. Colby, the Pentagon official embroiled in the mess and a reported ally of Vance, is also Catholic. Some of the leading intellectual figures on the right in MAGA circles are traditionalist Catholics who have been critical of the current and former popes for what they see as concessions to modern liberal political values.
Within US politics, Vance also represents a wing of the GOP that is being split apart by the Iran war, partly over religious lines — and in ways that could threaten his potential aspirations for the presidency in 2028. This story could make that divide even more difficult to navigate.
Beyond being a spectacle, Avignon-gate is also a helpful key to understanding what is happening on the religious right in 2026, and how the Iran war is affecting both the MAGA coalition and the American Catholic Church.
The report landed just as arguments over Israel and Iran were driving a wedge between the GOP’s pro-Trump evangelical base, who tend to be Christian Zionists sympathetic to Israel, and a group of prominent Catholic and non-evangelical commentators who are increasingly hostile to Trump’s foreign policy agenda and critical of Israel.
Among the latter group, which includes Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Carrie Prejean Boller, and Nick Fuentes, Avignon-gate quickly became a hot topic, with many eager to embrace the most explosive interpretation of events.
“On the pope thing, that is how you know this administration is the antichrist…these people hate Catholics,” the self-described Catholic and white supremacist Nick Fuentes said on his show Thursday. Boller took aim at Colby on X, saying, “you won’t bully or threaten the Catholic Church into your unjust war.”
Many of these more isolationist and antiwar figures have also been condemned within the right for either tolerating or openly espousing antisemitism. As they rally to the Church’s side now over the war, and justify their opposition to Trump in increasingly theological terms, this episode puts more pressure on Leo to address the church’s relationship with them as well. Ferraresi, the author of the Free Press article that kicked off this affair, challenged Pope Leo in the same piece to condemn “the growing choir of Catholic pundits injecting bigotry into the MAGA infosphere,” and not just focus the church’s fire on the pro-war right.
In short, it’s a mess. Avignon-gate is almost perfectly calibrated to raise temperatures not only between the White House and the Vatican, but within the US Catholic community, and within the MAGA movement. And the issues it raises are nowhere near being resolved.
2026-04-10 18:30:00
大多数时候，我与治疗师见面时，她会处理我生活中某个正在崩溃的方面，比如我无法理性讨论政治，或者个人财务状况。但偶尔，生活显得平淡无奇，我走进咨询室时毫无话题。我曾多次考虑取消这些看似无意义的会谈。如果我感觉良好且无话可说，为什么要花45分钟时间和30美元的共付费用呢？然而，根据两位治疗师的说法，这些看似无聊的会谈其实非常有洞察力和影响力。事实上，与治疗师随意聊聊可以加深你们之间的关系，帮助他们了解你在平静时期的表现，并发现未被处理的问题。纽约市“年轻女性心理治疗”创始人兼临床主管Claudia Giolitti-Wright告诉Vox：“当客户说‘没什么好聊的’时，这些会谈往往并不空洞。它们通常会揭示一些重要的内容。”因此，我从这两次访谈中确信，轻松随意的会谈与充满冲突的会谈同样重要。以下是原因：
治疗师经常遇到这种情况，并知道如何应对
如果你像我一样，经常在会谈开始时为“没什么可说的”道歉，那么请不要担心或感到尴尬。心理治疗师Matt Sosnowsky表示，他经常听到患者这么说，这并不值得大惊小怪。治疗师专门接受过处理这种沉默期的训练。他可能会引导患者分享最近的生活动态，或者针对特定问题进行跟进。对于其他患者，他则会采用更开放的方式，询问工作、整体情绪或人际关系，以推动对话。他强调，你不需要提前准备，也不必表现得像在表演。治疗师知道如何应对。
这些会谈为被忽视的问题提供了浮现的空间
即使你认为自己非常了解自己，或清楚为何寻求治疗，仍可能有更深层、被掩盖或完全回避的问题。当你开始交谈时，即使感觉毫无价值，这些潜在问题往往会浮出水面。有时这些问题会自然浮现，比如Giolitti-Wright所说，人们可能一开始谈论圣诞树，却“最终聊到最深层的困扰”。即使没有这种情况，治疗师也能通过细微的肢体语言、语气和态度变化察觉你可能面临的困难。Sosnowsky称这些线索为“入口”，它们可能是了解你内心负担的切入点，而治疗师会借此深入探讨。
治疗师能提前察觉你可能面临的困境
“谈论无意义话题”的另一个好处是，治疗师可能在你察觉之前发现心理健康问题的早期迹象，例如重度抑郁症或广泛性焦虑症。即使你整体状态良好或症状已缓解，累积的压力可能逐渐改变你的心理平衡。Sosnowsky指出，许多人并不意识到自己正在滑向抑郁状态，尤其是那些症状波动的人。定期会谈，包括看似无成效的会谈，有助于治疗师追踪你随时间推移的细微变化，如从压力感到绝望感，并及时察觉你可能进入困难时期。这可能促使治疗师询问你的日常习惯，例如是否锻炼、睡眠是否充足、饮食是否规律、是否有愉悦的活动等，并讨论如何防止症状恶化。他提到，这些检查有助于你“在抑郁症爆发前采取行动，因为一旦陷入全面发作，治疗会更加困难。”
强化与治疗师的关系对长期治疗至关重要
至少，这些“无话可说”的会谈会加深你与治疗师之间的关系。虽然这可能看起来不重要，但牢固的关系是治疗成功的关键。研究表明，被称为“治疗联盟”的治疗师与患者之间的关系是决定治疗效果的最重要因素。Sosnowsky表示：“可以说，这是治疗最重要的方面，不仅关乎体验质量，更决定治疗的实际效果。”你越亲近治疗师，信任、共情和合作就越强，这将帮助你更开放地交流并实现个人成长。最后，需要注意的是，并非所有会谈都必须有意义。如果你感觉每次咨询都毫无进展，可能需要寻找新的治疗师。但偶尔与治疗师轻松闲聊，比如谈论同事，也说明你正在有效利用时间。并非所有重要的工作都需要费力去做。
Most weeks when I meet with my therapist, she triages some aspect of my life that is actively bursting at the seams — my inability to rationally talk about politics, for example, or the state of my personal finances. But, every so often, life feels uneventful, and I head into sessions with nothing to talk about. On a number of occasions, I’ve considered cancelling these appointments. Why waste 45 minutes of my time and spend $30 on a copay when I feel fine and have nothing to say?
But according to the two therapists I spoke with for this story, these seemingly boring sessions can be incredibly insightful and impactful. In fact, shooting the shit with your therapist can strengthen your bond, help them see how you function during periods of calm, and uncover unaddressed problems. As Claudia Giolitti-Wright, the founder and clinical director of Psychotherapy for Young Women in New York City, tells Vox, “Sessions where a client says, ‘I have nothing to talk about’ — they’re rarely empty. They often reveal something.” So much, in fact, that I left these two interviews convinced that the easy breezy appointments are just as important as the turbulent ones. Here’s why.
If you, like me, often start your sessions by apologizing for “have nothing going on,” consider this permission not to worry or feel awkward. Matt Sosnowsky, a psychotherapist and the founder of Philadelphia Talk Therapy, says he hears this from patients all the time, and it’s no big deal. Therapists are specifically trained to deal with this kind of lull.
“Oftentimes, I’ll just prompt them for an update on what’s been going on,” he says. With clients who are there to work on a specific issue, he’ll follow up on the topics they’ve been working through. With other patients, he’ll keep things more open-ended, asking about work, their overall mood, or their relationships to get the conversation flowing. This is to say: Don’t sweat it if you aren’t prepared. You don’t need to show up ready to perform or impress, says Giolitti-Wright. Your therapist knows what to do and say.
Even if you consider yourself highly self-aware and feel clear on the reasons you’re in therapy, there are almost always deeper, buried issues that you’ve overlooked, downplayed, or completely avoided. As you start talking, even if it feels like you’re saying nothing of value, these underlying issues often rise to the surface. Sometimes these issues naturally bubble up — as Giolitti-Wright says, people will start rambling about, say, how they bought a Christmas tree but then “end up talking about the deepest shit.”
Even when that doesn’t happen, your therapist is trained to pick up on subtle cues — such as shifts in body language, tone, and attitude — that signal you’re struggling with something. Sosnowsky calls these cues “ports of entry.” “Those are often inroads to learn about what you’re carrying that you may not even notice,” he says, and your therapist will likely use that to dig deeper.
For example, if you let out a big exhale while talking about work, Sosnowsky might say, “I noticed that deep sigh, what’s that about?” or ask more targeted questions about your job. Then, you’re off to the races. This creates an opportunity for you to examine something you may not have fully considered yet or have been avoiding altogether, says Sosnowsky.
After all, these simmering problems tend to influence your mood and choices on a regular basis more so than the obvious catastrophes, adds Giolitti-Wright. Tending to them early and proactively can help you and your therapist identify solutions for long-term relief and prevent them from snowballing into larger, more difficult issues.
Many people, myself included, tend to see therapy as a thing to do when you’re dealing with something specific or when there’s an emergency. But that’s a huge misconception, according to Giolitti-Wright. The purpose of therapy is to enhance your daily functioning, improve your quality of life, and ease symptoms like irritability or hopelessness. To do this effectively, your therapist needs to see how you function as a whole person. As Giolitti-Wright puts it, “How you are when nothing is wrong or in crisis is as important as how you are in crisis.”
If your therapist only ever sees you during moments of extreme stress, it can actually be harder for them to provide guidance that effectively addresses and resolves your problems long-term, she adds. By learning about how you move through your day when things are good — and getting a sense of your strengths, your sense of humor, etc. — your therapist can provide personalized advice and spot patterns that may be contributing to recurring challenges.
Recognizing these patterns can reveal deeper, more systemic issues affecting your life, says Sosnowsky. What initially appears to be minor frustration with your new boss, for example, may actually stem from a more general resistance to change. These revelations “often come just from getting to know what somebody’s life is when they’re not completely zeroed in on explaining to you their interpretation of a specific issue,” Sosnowsky says.
One additional benefit of “talking about nothing” is that it may help your therapist pick up on early signs of mental health conditions like major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder. Even if you’ve been doing well overall or your symptoms have been in remission, mounting stressors can gradually shift that balance, says Sosnowsky. Many people don’t recognize when they’re slipping into a depressive state, especially folks whose conditions typically ebb and flow, he says.
Regular appointments, including ones that seem unproductive, allow therapists to track subtle changes over time — like a shift from feeling stressed to hopeless — and notice when someone may be entering a more difficult period. That might lead your therapist to ask about your everyday habits — Are you exercising? Sleeping well? Eating enough? Doing things for pleasure? — and discuss ways to prevent your symptoms from escalating, says Sosnowsky. As he puts it, these check-ins help you “get ahead of the depression because it’s much harder to treat when you’re in the throes of a full-blown depressive episode.” They may also prompt your therapist to conduct an assessment to determine if you may have a mental health disorder that hasn’t been diagnosed.
At the very least, your “nothing to talk about” sessions will strengthen the bond you have with your therapist. While that may not seem all that important, having a strong relationship is absolutely critical. Research suggests this relationship, dubbed the “therapeutic alliance,” is the most powerful determinant of how effective therapy will be for you. “You could argue this is the single most important aspect of therapy, and not only in terms of the quality of the experience, but the actual efficacy of outcomes,” Sosnowsky says. The closer you feel to your therapist, the more trust, empathy, and collaboration there will be, which will ultimately help you open up more and experience personal growth.
One final thing to keep in mind: You don’t want every single appointment to be aimless. If you perpetually feel like you’re spinning your wheels or that your mental health is stagnant, it may be time to look for a new therapist, says Sosnowsky. But, if, every now and then, you feel like you spent $30 to kick back and gossip about your coworkers with your therapist, rest assured that you’re still making good use of your time. Heavy lifting doesn’t always need to feel so heavy.