2026-04-23 19:15:00
丹妮尔·贝亚德·杰克逊（Danielle Bayard Jackson）是一位友谊专家，她最近发现，当她在社交媒体上发布的内容将观众置于被伤害或被忽视的角色时，会获得更高的关注。例如，关于如何判断朋友是否过度倾诉，或为何友谊期望存在分歧等内容，因其触及人们内心的情感需求而广受欢迎。杰克逊指出，现代友谊往往以自我为中心，人们更关注自身利益而非如何成为真正的好朋友。这种现象反映了当代人际关系中的一种趋势：友谊被视为一种便利或有益的社交关系，而非相互支持的纽带。
心理学家威廉·乔皮克（William Chopik）认为，只有当社交活动带来的积极影响足够显著时，人们才会愿意参与。同时，柏拉图式友谊通常被视为次要的，仅在浪漫关系之外作为补充。社交媒体的自我中心特性以及AI聊天机器人全天候倾听的便利性，可能进一步扭曲了人们对友谊的理解。杰克逊建议人们明确自己对朋友的期望，例如倾听、支持、不爽约等，并反思自己是否真正满足了这些标准。她强调，真正的友谊需要平衡分享与倾听，而非单方面索取。
研究显示，过度自我牺牲而忽视自身需求的人往往对生活满意度较低。因此，健康的友谊应建立在相互支持的基础上，而非单向付出。心理学家贾米·阿罗娜·克雷姆斯（Jaimie Arona Krems）指出，虽然人们会权衡朋友带来的成本与收益，但只有在真正需要帮助时才会意识到这种不平衡。她认为，友谊是一种双向投资，既为他人带来支持，也为自己带来快乐和意义。信任是维系这种关系的关键，而真正的自我牺牲并不意味着一味迎合，而是通过理解对方的需求，建立更深层次的连接。最终，友谊应像树木的生长一样，通过相互滋养实现共同成长。
Friendship expert Danielle Bayard Jackson recently came to a realization about her social media engagement: Any time she posts content that centers the viewer as the wronged party of the story she is telling — like how to know if your friends are venting too much or why your friendship expectations feel mismatched — it performs extremely well with her 420,000-plus followers across Instagram and TikTok.
“We tend to really notice when we are done wrong, when others are forgetting about us,” Jackson said. “We are center to the story.”
These numbers are part of a larger shift that Jackson and other experts have observed when it comes to modern friendship. These relationships are increasingly seen as something to engage in when it’s convenient or beneficial — specifically when they are beneficial to you. In short, friendship today has a touch of selfishness. Everyone wants to have good friends but are less concerned with how to be a good friend.
Most people say friendship is important to them, but often act in ways that contradict that sentiment. We want friends to show up to our birthday parties but might not bat an eye at canceling on them. We yearn for connection but only want to hang out if it’s at the right time, right place, and with the right people. Otherwise, staying home is far more appealing. “The socializing opportunity has to be so overwhelmingly positive or appealing that it’ll tip the scale,” William Chopik, an associate professor of social and personality psychology at Michigan State University, told Vox. And platonic relationships are still generally considered secondary to romantic ones, mere nice-to-haves to fill the hours when your partner is busy.
The inherent self-centeredness of social media, where you are the main character, and the popularity of AI chatbots that are always available and never tire of hearing about your life, may also be skewing our idea of what it means to be a friend. One of Chopik’s students casually likened friends to NPCs — a non-playable character populating the background of a video game — as if your BFFs lack an inner life or purpose of their own. While you are certainly the main character in your own life, you’re not the center of your friends’ worlds.
Selfishness is the biggest contributor to friendship breakups, according to behavioral science research, which means that stepping outside of yourself and making an effort to be a good pal can be the difference between a lasting friendship and a failed one. Selflessness doesn’t mean people pleasing or being a doormat; it’s more about considering how you can enrich your friends’ lives to harbor goodwill. And it involves looking at what you bring to the table instead of only thinking about what your friends can offer you.
People often consider how their friends can augment or support their lives but fail to think whether they would meet those same standards. Jackson suggests getting specific with all of the qualities you look for in a friend: a good listener, supportive, doesn’t cancel plans, offers tangible support when needed, among others. “Could another person say you’re doing a great job of actively meeting those things?” Jackson said.
In reflecting on this, you may start to see areas where you could be a little more selfless. For instance, maybe every hangout with a particular friend involves getting dinner because you enjoy it, but you never stopped to ask whether that’s what they want to do, or you assumed it was fine because they’ve never pushed back. The relationship shouldn’t be solely on your terms.
Being a good friend is more than simply holding affection for another person, which can be amorphous and hard to define. Instead, think of concrete examples of what Jackson calls “inconveniences” to gauge the extent of your selflessness. A friend called in a panic about their sick child, and you helped talk them through the emotions. You attended a friend’s poetry reading on the other side of town after a particularly hectic day. The goal here is to take stock of tangible ways you’ve performed the work of friendship that solely benefit the other person.
Of course, it’s natural to focus on your own desires and preferences. But the people who are “communally motivated” — inspired to care for the welfare of others — tend to have better relationships and are happier overall. “How can we be more communally motivated?” said Bonnie Le, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “I think about it as being attuned to what other people need.”
That might mean planning an at-home movie night for a friend who lost their job and is looking to save money or thinking of other ways to cheer them up that you know they’d really appreciate. You’re reflecting on the context and constraints of their life to craft a hangout that benefits them, even if it’s slightly inconvenient for you.
You can’t know for sure what’s going on in another person’s life until you ask, however. (This is especially true with new friends you don’t know well.) Consider the last time you inquired into how your friends were really doing or followed up on something they shared weeks ago. When you hang out, who’s doing all the talking? The ratio of sharing to listening should generally be balanced over the course of your friendship.
Relative parity is really the key. In her research, Le has found that people who are “selfless to the point of neglecting their own needs” and who are bad at asking for help don’t feel as satisfied with their lives compared to those who gave and received support. There will always be periods of give and take in long-term relationships — a friend going through a breakup will need your support, and they’ll ideally return the favor when the time comes — but, on the whole, one person shouldn’t always be in the position of emotional caretaker.
Give and take is important, but healthy relationships don’t involve keeping score, said Jaimie Arona Krems, an associate professor of psychology and the director of the UCLA Center for Friendship Research. “Yes, people are attending to how much their friends cost and how much their friends benefit them. They’re not completely blind to it,” she said. But you’re probably not going to think much about these costs until your friend is absent when you need them the most, and you realize how much you’ve supported them without ever being helped in return. While this seems contradictory, this willful ignorance is beneficial, because as soon as we admit our care and affection is conditional, the relationship becomes transactional.
Friendship and goodwill is an investment — and, in a sense, that’s a little selfish. Sure, it has the potential to do a lot for another person; they feel supported, validated and, yes, entertained. But it also is good for you personally. It’s uplifting and energizing, makes you happy, gives you an opportunity to vent, and imbues your life with meaning. If you need a reason to be more selfless when it comes to the happiness and well-being of your friends, remember that the same goodwill comes back around eventually.
“It pays to help your friends even when your friends don’t know that you’re helping them, the same way that it pays to nurture an oak tree whose shade you benefit from,” Krems said. “Your nurturance of that tree benefits you through that tree’s growth — and the same way your nurturance of your friends will come back to you.”
This cycle is buoyed by trust. You trust your friends will continue to show up for you, will prioritize your preferences, and show curiosity in your life as much as you do theirs. Getting to this point takes time and repeatedly showing up even when there’s nothing to gain immediately. “When you have two selfless people, like in a marriage, who want to outdo each other,” Jackson said, “then, man, there’s such freedom in not having to do the mental labor of calculating whose turn it was, who’s been doing more than the other.” Because, contrary to what social media would have us believe, friendship is a two-way street, not a self-serving enterprise.
2026-04-23 19:00:00
美国政治中的选区划分（gerrymandering）历史悠久，但近年来愈发激烈。2019年最高法院裁定联邦法院无法审查党派性选区划分的诉求，加剧了这一现象。去年夏天，特朗普敦促得克萨斯州共和党重新划分选区，以期在2026年中期选举中获得更多席位。得克萨斯州共和党随后推出的选区地图预计可为其赢得5个众议院席位。与此同时，加州选民通过投票支持民主党主导的选区重划方案，可能使民主党在5个选区中占据优势。周二晚，弗吉尼亚州选民通过公投批准了一项新的选区地图，预计将使民主党在4个选区中获得胜利，这标志着民主党在应对选区划分斗争中的重要反击。
尽管弗吉尼亚州自2000年以来倾向于支持民主党，但该州在总统和州长选举中仍属摇摆州，且此前由共和党州长 Glenn Youngkin 主政。选民对双方竞选信息感到困惑，许多独立选民也对党派性选区划分持保留态度。然而，由于里士满、弗吉尼亚海滩以及弗吉尼亚北部华盛顿特区周边城市等都市地区的选民支持，民主党仍成功通过了该方案。结合加州、密苏里州、北卡罗来纳州、俄亥俄州和犹他州等其他州的选区重划，民主党可能在中期选举中获得一席优势。
佛罗里达州成为新的变数，州长 Ron DeSantis 自去年夏天以来一直试图重新划分选区，但该计划因共和党内部矛盾和缺乏准备而受阻，且州宪法禁止党派性选区划分。州议会计划下周召开特别会议，创建1至5个偏向共和党的选区。尽管这为共和党提供了机会，但也存在风险，例如拉丁裔选民可能重新倾向民主党，导致意外结果。
此外，最高法院可能对《投票权法案》作出裁决，该法案自1965年以来禁止基于种族的选举歧视。若法院推翻该条款，南方多个州可能重新划分选区，这对民主党极为不利。此前《纽约时报》分析预测，民主党可能失去约12个选区，抵消加州和弗吉尼亚州的增益。尽管研究显示选区划分未必显著加剧政治极化，但普遍的选区划分可能削弱特定选区选民的影响力，降低政治竞争。目前，多数权力方更关注遏制对手而非自身行为，这使得选区划分对民主制度构成威胁。众议院少数党领袖 Hakeem Jeffries 表示，民主党并非在进行选区划分，而是在回应共和党试图操纵中期选举的行为。
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As the old-timey term suggests, gerrymandering has a long history in American politics. But it has intensified in recent years — first after the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that federal courts cannot review partisan gerrymandering claims, and again last summer, when President Donald Trump urged Republicans in Texas to redraw their maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Texas Republicans drew up new congressional districts last summer that are expected to net their party five more US House seats in the upcoming midterm election. Californians responded by voting for an equal and opposite redistricting plan that should swing five seats for Democrats.
On Tuesday night, Dems notched another big win when voters in Virginia approved a new map that’s expected to flip four seats their way. But the Great Redistricting Wars aren’t over. In fact, they’re still spilling over to other states. So, this morning, we’re tallying each side’s score in the electoral arms race (and concluding that the real loser might be democracy).
Democrats strike back. The Virginia referendum — and a similar initiative in California — were intended to offset Texas’s new maps. Currently, Virginia’s congressional delegation is split 6-5 in Democrats’ favor. The referendum approved on Tuesday night asked voters to rejigger the map to favor Democrats in 10 districts, netting four seats and bolstering Democrats’ chances of flipping the House of Representatives.
The proposal marked a significant shift for Democrats, who have often opposed partisan gerrymandering in the past. And the victory itself was hard won. Though Virginia has tended to vote for Democrats in presidential and gubernatorial elections since 2000, the state is swingy and had a Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, until January.
Voters also complained about confusing messaging from both sides of the campaign, and many independent voters seemed uncomfortable with the notion of a partisan power grab. The electorate leaned more Republican than it did in last year’s elections, and the race was closer than expected.
Still, urban centers like Richmond, Virginia Beach, and the Washington, DC, suburbs of northern Virginia turned out enough Democratic and independent votes to carry the measure. Combined with redrawn maps in several other states — including California, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and Utah — the Virginia vote creates the possibility that Democrats will enter the midterm elections with a one-seat edge.
Florida could be next. Primaries have already begun in several states, so time is running out for any enterprising partisans who want to gerrymander further ahead of the midterms. The big wild card is Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has wanted to redraw his state’s maps since Trump’s appeals last summer.
But the effort has been mired in GOP infighting and a lack of preparation, and it faces a state constitution that bars partisan redistricting. The state legislature is scheduled to meet for a special session to create anywhere from one to five additional Republican-leaning districts next week.
“It’s a big state, so that would give Republicans a lot of opportunity,” Barry C. Burden, an elections expert at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told my colleague Christian Paz. But it also creates some risk for Republicans: In spreading their voters across new districts, they’re opening themselves up to the possibility of an upset — particularly if Latino voters drift back toward Democrats.
The Supreme Court has the last word. A pending Supreme Court decision could, crucially, also kick off another round of gerrymandering just ahead of the midterm elections. It’s a scenario that my colleague Ian Millhiser called “nightmare fuel for Democrats.”
The Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 law, prohibits election practices that discriminate based on race and has historically been used to justify the creation of congressional districts where racial minorities make up a majority of the population. Should the Court strike down that provision during this term, a number of Southern states would likely redraw their electoral maps. Several still have time to do so before the midterm contests.
What would that mean in political terms? Nothing good for Democrats. Last fall, a New York Times analysis predicted the party could lose roughly a dozen districts, wiping out whatever gains it made in the California and Virginia referendums.
Partisan gerrymandering isn’t great for democracy, either. While research suggests it doesn’t significantly increase polarization — a claim some critics have made — widespread gerrymandering could dilute the power of voters in affected districts and dampen political competition. But few in power seem to care about that much anymore, as long as it’s the other side facing limits.
“We’re not engaged in political gerrymandering,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told the Times this week. “We are engaged in responding to the Republican effort to rig the midterm elections.”
2026-04-23 18:00:00
2025年12月29日，以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡在佛罗里达州棕榈滩的马阿拉歌庄园与美国总统唐纳德·特朗普举行新闻发布会。此前，以色列学者约纳坦·利维曾前往匈牙利观察选举，他与议员及活动人士一同研究反对党领袖彼得·马加尔如何对抗专制总理。他认为，以色列尚未成为“中东的匈牙利”，但正逐渐接近这一状态。内塔尼亚胡的对手认为，他试图削弱以色列的民主制度并长期执政，其行为与匈牙利前总理欧尔班的策略相似。尽管内塔尼亚胡在以色列国内面临反对，但他的支持者仍占据多数，且右翼联盟可能因拒绝与阿拉伯政党合作而难以形成多数。因此，尽管反对派有希望击败内塔尼亚胡，但若无法获得阿拉伯政党支持，内塔尼亚胡仍可能继续执政。这反映了以色列民主制度的深层矛盾：多数犹太人希望维持民主，但同时又希望将阿拉伯以色列人边缘化并压制巴勒斯坦人。内塔尼亚胡的右翼阵营倾向于放弃民主，而其主要对手则未能有效解决这一结构性矛盾。即将到来的选举将是对以色列民主的双重考验：既要看其能否抵御内塔尼亚胡的“欧尔班式”专制倾向，也要看其是否能解决内部矛盾。利维认为，若反对派能像匈牙利反对党领袖马加尔那样，坚持自身议程而非被内塔尼亚胡主导，或许能改变现状。但目前，阻止内塔尼亚胡仍是选民的首要诉求，其胜利可能只是更多斗争的开始。
Earlier this year, Yonatan Levi left his home country of Israel to observe the Hungarian election. Levi, a scholar at the center-left think tank Molad, had traveled with a group of parliamentarians and activists to study how opposition leader Péter Magyar was running a winning campaign against an authoritarian prime minister.
This was, in their view, a vital mission ahead of their own elections this year. Levi and his colleagues see, in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a kindred spirit to Hungary’s defeated autocrat. Israel “is not the Middle East’s Hungary yet,” Levi says. But, he added, “it’s getting closer and closer.”
Indeed, opposition parties are bullish on taking down Netanyahu — and defending democracy is central to their campaign.
Americans know, and generally dislike, Netanyahu based on his foreign policy: the brutality in Gaza or more recent lobbying for the ruinous Iran war. But inside Israel, Netanyahu’s opponents are most animated by domestic issues: specifically, a fear that his ultimate aim is to demolish Israel’s remaining democratic institutions and stay in power indefinitely.
This is a reasonable concern. Netanyahu’s government has put cronies in charge of Israel’s security services, demonized the Arab minority, persecuted left-wing activists, and pushed legislation that would put the judiciary under his control. He is currently on trial for corruption — with the most serious charges stemming from a scheme to trade regulatory favors for favorable news coverage from a major Israeli outlet. President Donald Trump is actively pushing Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who holds a more ceremonial position, to grant him a pardon.
Netanyahu’s tactics come directly from the playbook Viktor Orbán used to hold power in Hungary for nearly 20 years — and the two leaders know each other well. So much like in the United States, Orbán’s Hungary has become a major part of Israeli public discourse: a boogeyman for the center-left and an aspirational model for the Netanyahu-aligned right.
“I’ve never seen a foreign election being covered so closely [in the Israeli press] — except for US elections,” Levi says.
At present, Israelis expect a similar outcome. Polls consistently show that Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for all but one year since 2009, would lose his governing majority if elections were held now — and they’re required to take place no later than October. If these trends hold, then there is a real chance that he will be the next leader in the Trump-aligned far-right international to fall.
Whenever anyone talks about Israeli democracy, there are at least two giant and important asterisks attached.
The first, of course, is the Palestinians. In the West Bank, they live under Israeli military occupation, unable to vote in Israeli elections and yet still subject to the harsh rules imposed on them by IDF leadership. And the situation is even worse in Gaza.
For Israeli citizens, Jewish and Arab alike, political life is meaningfully democratic: Elections are generally free of fraud and opposition parties compete openly under relatively fair conditions. Netanyahu’s authoritarian impulses have often been limited by his small-and-rickety electoral coalitions; his Likud party has never enjoyed a margin in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) akin to Orbán’s two-thirds majority in the Hungarian legislature.
Yet here’s our second asterisk: Despite Netanyahu’s weakness relative to someone like Orbán, the quality of Israeli democracy has degraded substantially under his watch.
While he has not yet compromised the system to the point where it can be considered a species of “competitive authoritarianism” — the political science term for Hungary under Orbán — his attacks on the judiciary and minority rights protections have damaged its foundations. Dahlia Scheindlin, a prominent Israeli political scientist and pollster, describes the country as only “very partially” democratic for its citizens — though she admits it still remains “nowhere near Hungary” in levels of authoritarian drift.
Delegations like Levi’s reflect the level of alarm among Netanyahu’s opponents: They believe that, with more time in office, Netanyahu could conceivably further entrench himself in power. While Hungary’s opposition might have just dug itself out of the competitive authoritarian hole, their Israeli peers hope to never be in it in the first place.
So what are their odds of beating Bibi?
The short answer is that their chances are reasonable, but far from guaranteed. To understand why, you need to understand the deeper divisions in Israeli politics.
Currently, Netanyahu’s governing coalition controls a majority of seats in the Knesset. The future is not bright: Polls currently show, and have shown for several years, that the five parties in its coalition are collectively likely to lose quite a few seats in the next election. Unless the numbers change substantially, Netanyahu is unlikely to be able to remain prime minister without adding new parties to his alliance.
The opposition is in better shape. As in Hungary, a broad coalition of Jewish factions ranging from the center-left to the right have come to see Netanyahu as a threat to the very survival of Israeli democracy — campaigning against him and his coalition in existential terms. Polls show these parties as, collectively, right on the cusp of winning a majority (61 seats) in the Knesset.
“It is now Zionist, nationalist liberals against people who believe Israel shouldn’t be a democracy, and we are the majority,” Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid faction, told the Times of Israel. “The elections are going to be about this, and the next government is going to reflect this majority.”
Netanyahu has sought to position himself as an irreplaceable wartime leader who can defend the country and navigate complicated international politics, especially the relationship with Trump’s Washington. His critics have countered, often attacking him from the right, that he failed to stop the October 7 attacks and has not decisively dealt with Iran.
However, it is not clear whether this anti-Netanyahu alliance is capable of delivering meaningful change on the issues Americans tend to care about most in Israeli politics: The government’s treatment of Palestinians and its military conflicts with regional neighbors.
The country’s center of gravity is well to the right. The best-polling party is led by Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister who began his career by outflanking Netanyahu to the right on both the Palestinian conflict and judicial independence. While it seems Bennett’s commitments have shifted somewhat with the political wind, he is still the same person — and a coalition dependent on him would be profoundly shaped by his influence.
The opposition’s ideological makeup is not just a substantive problem in the event of an opposition victory, but in some way a barrier to them winning in the first place.
There is a third grouping beyond these two major Jewish party blocs: the Arab parties, who are projected to control around 11 or 12 Knesset seats. These factions are staunchly anti-Netanyahu; an alliance between the Arab party Ra’am and anti-Bibi Jewish factions briefly ousted Netanyahu in 2021 (and made Bennett prime minister).
Yet at the same time, there is resistance from the rightward flank of the opposition from forming a government with Arab support. Bennett has explicitly ruled out doing so. It’s a decision rooted in the political cost he paid for that last partnership among his right-wing base, and a sense that growing anti-Arab sentiment after October 7 would make that cost even higher in the future.
“There are many Israelis — I say this with great regret — who believe that a government should not be constrained in national security decisions by a party [primarily made up of Arabs],” said Natan Sachs, an expert on Israeli politics at the Middle East Institute.
This short-term political problem reflects, at its core, the deeper foundational problem in Israeli democracy.
Without Arab party support, the opposition might very well lack an outright majority. If that happens, and Bennett or other prospective coalition members still refuse to cut a deal with the Arabs, the most likely result is that Netanyahu stays prime minister. So there could be either a deadlock — in which Netanyahu remains in office until another election — or else a fracturing of the anti-Netanyahu bloc, in which one of the right-leaning factions defects to a prime minister they had previously described as an authoritarian menace.
This short-term political problem reflects, at its core, the deeper foundational problem in Israeli democracy.
The majority of Israeli Jews want to live in a democracy, but they also (at present) want it to see Arab Israelis marginalized and Palestinians repressed. But this is not a tenable balance. Eventually, Israeli Jews will have to seek accommodation with Palestinians or else abandon democracy entirely. The Netanyahu-aligned right has moved toward the latter solution, while his leading Jewish opponents have (for the most part) either rejected the former or refused to seriously pursue it.
The next election, then, is shaping up to be a double test of Israeli democracy: how it has weathered the immediate threat from Netanyahu’s Orbánism, and whether it is capable of confronting the structural contradiction that produced it.
As part of the shrunken pro-peace camp in Israel, Levi, the Molad scholar, is hopeful for a revival. He thought Hungary’s opposition leader Magyar won in part because he refused to let Orbán set the term of debate and pressed his own argument — in that case, the economy and corruption. With more confidence, perhaps the Israeli left could one day defeat the “little Bibi inside every Israeli politician’s head” and change the terms of the conversation themselves.
But, for now, what unites the most voters is stopping Netanyahu. A victory now only sets the stage for more fights to come.
2026-04-23 06:10:00
2021年8月20日，一名美国士兵在卡塔尔的阿斯赛利耶营指导阿富汗难民。| 照片由Jimmie Baker中士/美国陆军提供，经盖蒂图片社授权使用。本文出自《Logoff》每日简报，帮助您了解特朗普政府的动态，而不让政治新闻占据您的生活。订阅此处。欢迎来到《Logoff》：据报道，特朗普政府正考虑将滞留在卡塔尔阿斯赛利耶营的1100多名阿富汗难民送往刚果民主共和国，或送回他们逃离的阿富汗。发生了什么？据《纽约时报》报道，这些难民原本被承诺有机会前往美国，但现在可能面临选择：要么被送往刚果民主共和国，要么返回阿富汗。这两个选择都不理想：刚果民主共和国目前正面临严重的难民危机和与叛乱民兵组织的持续冲突，而难民们与该国并无联系；而在阿富汗，他们将面临塔利班政府带来的即时安全威胁。这些难民是谁？其中许多人在过去二十年的战争中协助美国，担任美军翻译或阿富汗特种部队成员。《时报》称，一些人是美国士兵的家属，超过400人是儿童。据NBC报道，大多数难民已经通过筛查并获准前往美国。背景如何？美国在2021年8月撤军后，接收了近20万名阿富汗难民，但去年因华盛顿特区两名国民警卫队员被一名2021年获准入境的阿富汗国民枪击，特朗普政府停止了所有阿富汗人的签证处理。接下来会怎样？目前这仍处于讨论阶段，尚未确定，但特朗普政府正与刚果官员协商。这符合特朗普政府一贯的做法，即不顾安全和伦理问题，将难民和其他移民送往任何地方。本月早些时候，刚果同意接收被美国驱逐的第三国移民，至少有15人已于上周被送往刚果。## 说到这里，是时候下线了……亲爱的读者，祝您地球日快乐！如果您正在寻找一些今天可以采取的环保行动，我的同事在Future Perfect上整理了一些慈善机构的推荐。如果您只是想下线，希望您今晚能走出户外，享受一下自然。感谢阅读，明天我们再见！
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is reportedly hoping to send Afghan refugees to Congo — or back to the country they fled from.
What’s happening? According to a New York Times scoop, more than 1,100 Afghan refugees who are currently in Qatar at a former US military base and who were promised a chance to come to the US may soon be offered a choice between relocation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and returning to Afghanistan.
Neither option is desirable: Congo is currently facing a serious refugee crisis and ongoing fighting with a rebel paramilitary group, and the refugees have no ties to the country. But in Afghanistan, their lives would be in immediate danger from the country’s Taliban government.
Who are the refugees? Many of the 1,100 Afghans now stuck in limbo in Qatar aided the US over nearly two decades of war as interpreters working with US troops or served as members of the Afghan special forces. Some, the Times reports, are family members of American soldiers, and more than 400 are children.
Most have also already been screened and approved to move to the US, according to NBC.
What’s the context? The US took in nearly 200,000 Afghan refugees during and after its chaotic withdrawal from the country in August 2021, but the Trump administration ended visa processing for all Afghans last year after two National Guard members in Washington, DC, were shot by an Afghan national who was admitted to the US in 2021.
What comes next? This is not yet a done deal, only under discussion by the Trump administration and Congolese officials. But it would match a well-worn pattern of the Trump administration trying to send refugees and other immigrants anywhere they can, regardless of safety or other ethical concerns. Earlier this month, Congo agreed to receive immigrants from third countries deported by the US, and at least 15 people were sent there last week.
Hi readers, happy Earth Day! If you’re looking for some actionable ways to help the planet today, my colleagues over at Future Perfect pulled together some charity recommendations here.
If you’re just ready to log off, I hope you’re able to do it by getting outside and enjoying nature a little bit this evening. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
2026-04-23 05:35:00
最高法院助理大法官克拉伦斯·托马斯在2025年2月5日于白宫椭圆办公室见证帕姆·邦迪就任美国司法部长。在Hencely诉Fluor公司一案中，最高法院裁定州法律未被联邦法律明确取代，因此允许士兵Hencely起诉Fluor公司，指控其未能充分监督自杀炸弹袭击者Nayeb。此案涉及“联邦法律优先”原则，即当联邦法律与州法律冲突时，联邦法律应优先适用。尽管Hencely的诉讼并未直接针对Fluor雇佣Nayeb的行为，而是其监督不力，但最高法院认为联邦政府确实要求Fluor对特定阿富汗籍雇员进行严格监管，因此Fluor未能履行义务。托马斯大法官在多数意见中指出，只有当联邦政府明确指示承包商执行某项被州法律禁止的行为时，才应适用联邦法律优先原则。这一立场与他此前在Wyeth诉Levine案中的观点一致，即反对仅基于联邦政策目标就推翻州法律的做法。此案显示，当前最高法院在处理联邦法律优先问题时更加谨慎，无论该决定对哪一方有利。这可能对消费者权益和移民政策产生不同影响，例如可能削弱类似Hines案的先例，该先例允许联邦法律优先于州对移民的限制。
The facts underlying Hencely v. Fluor Corporation, a case the Supreme Court handed down on Wednesday, are horrible and tragic.
During a 2016 Veterans Day celebration on Bagram Airfield, a US military base in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber named Ahmad Nayeb detonated an explosion that killed five people and wounded 17 more. One of the wounded was Army Specialist Winston Hencely, who confronted the bomber and attempted to question him — causing Nayeb to set off his suicide vest shortly after Hencely approached him.
The Army believes that Hencely’s actions “likely prevent[ed] a far greater tragedy,” because the soldier stopped Nayeb from triggering the explosion in a location where it could have killed more people. Hencely is now permanently disabled from skull and brain injuries suffered during the bombing.
The legal issue in Hencely involves “preemption,” a constitutional principle dictating that, when federal law and state law are at odds with each other, the federal law prevails and will often displace the state law entirely. After the bombing, Hencely sued Fluor Corporation, a military contractor that employed Nayeb, claiming that Fluor violated South Carolina law by failing to adequately supervise Nayeb. Fluor has two subsidiaries in South Carolina.
In Hencely, six justices concluded that the wounded soldier’s lawsuit is not preempted, and thus does not need to be dismissed before any court determines if Fluor should be liable. While all three of the Court’s Democrats sided with Hencely, the case cleaved the Republican justices straight down the middle (and not in the way that the Republican justices ordinarily split when they split down the middle). Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, which was also joined by Republican Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The question of when a particular state law is preempted by federal law does not always divide the justices along familiar political lines. An expansive approach to preemption sometimes yields results that liberals will celebrate, and other times, benefits right-leaning policymakers. In Wyeth v. Levine (2009), for example, Thomas also took a narrow view of when federal laws should be read to preempt a state law, and thus ruled against a pharmaceutical company whose drug caused a woman to lose her arm. But advocates for immigrants also frequently argue that state laws targeting their clients are preempted by federal law.
So the Hencely case is significant because it reveals how each of the current justices tends to view preemption cases. Thomas has long questioned many of the Court’s previous cases, taking a broad view of preemption, and it now appears that Gorsuch and Barrett share some of his skepticism. The other three Republicans, by contrast, appear much more sympathetic to arguments that the federal government should have exclusive control over some areas of US policy.
The Constitution provides that federal law “shall be the supreme Law of the Land,” and state law must yield to it. But determining whether a specific state law is preempted by a federal law is not always a simple task.
The easiest cases involve “express” presumption, when Congress enacts a law that explicitly invalidates particular kinds of state laws. Imagine, for example, that South Carolina had a law requiring all T-shirts to be made with 100% yellow fabric. If Congress passed a law saying that “no state may regulate the color of T-shirts,” that federal law would expressly preempt South Carolina’s yellow shirt law.
Other relatively easy cases involve “impossibility” preemption, which occurs when it is impossible for someone to simultaneously comply with a state law and a different federal law. If Congress passed a law requiring all T-shirts to be made with 100% red fabric, for example, the hypothetical yellow shirt law would also be preempted because a shirt cannot be entirely red and entirely yellow at the same time.
The hardest preemption cases, meanwhile, involve state laws that may undercut a federal policy or undermine the goals of a federal law, but that do not present such a clear conflict with a federal law that it is impossible to comply with both laws. In Hines v. Davidowitz (1941), for example, the Supreme Court struck down a Pennsylvania law requiring noncitizens to register with the state, even though no federal law explicitly prohibited Pennsylvania from enacting such a registration regime.
The Court reasoned that Congress had passed “a broad and comprehensive plan describing the terms and conditions upon which aliens may enter this country, how they may acquire citizenship, and the manner in which they may be deported,” and that this plan fully established the rights and obligations of noncitizens within the United States. If Pennsylvania were allowed to supplement this federal plan with additional regulation, that would stand “as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.”
Hencely involved a dispute that more closely resembles Hines than it does the more clear cut hypotheticals involving yellow T-shirts. On the one hand, Nayeb had a job at Bagram because of a US military program called “Afghan First,” which, as Thomas explains in his opinion, “sought to stimulate the local economy and stabilize the Afghan Government by requiring contractors to hire Afghans ‘to the maximum extent possible.’”
Thus, as Alito wrote in dissent, the military had apparently decided that these “long-term foreign policy and defense objectives” justified the risk that an Afghan national might find work on a US military facility, and then use their limited access to that facility in order to commit a terrorist attack.
In other words, much as the Pennsylvania immigrant registration law undercut the federal government’s broader goals of providing a certain level of civil liberties to noncitizens, Alito argued that allowing Hencely to sue a military contractor who complied with the federal government’s policy of giving jobs to Afghan nationals would undermine that policy.
Thomas, meanwhile, concluded that, while Fluor may have hired Nayeb in order to comply with a federal directive, it allegedly did not comply with all of its obligations to the federal government. Though Nayeb was allowed on the base, he was a “red-badge holder” and thus was supposed to be closely monitored and often escorted through the base by Fluor.
An Army report, Thomas writes, concluded that “Fluor’s lax supervision … allowed Nayeb to check out tools that he did not need for his job and that he used to make the bomb inside Bagram.” It also found that Fluor failed to escort Nayeb off the base at the end of his shift.
Ultimately, Thomas disagrees with Alito that a state law can be preempted merely because it undercuts the military’s Afghan First policy in some oblique way. In Thomas’s view, preemption is only justified when “the government has directed a contractor to do the very thing” that is forbidden by state law. Hencely did not sue Fluor for hiring Nayeb; he sued Fluor for failing to adequately supervise Nayeb, and the federal government did, indeed, direct Fluor to monitor and escort red-badge-holding Afghan nationals.
Thomas’s opinion in Hencely won’t surprise anyone familiar with his opinion concurring in the judgment in Wyeth, the case ruling in favor of the woman who lost her arm due to a drug’s side effect. In that case, Thomas wrote that “I have become increasingly skeptical of this Court’s ‘purposes and objectives’ pre-emption jurisprudence,” which allows courts to invalidate “state laws based on perceived conflicts with broad federal policy objectives … that are not embodied within the text of federal law.”
Justice Thomas, in other words, appears to reject cases like Hines, which hold that federal law can sometimes displace state laws even when there isn’t an unavoidable conflict between the two laws. The fact that Gorsuch and Barrett joined his opinion in Hencely suggests that these two relatively new justices, who weren’t on the Court when Wyeth was decided, may share Thomas’s views.
As a practical matter, that’s good news for consumers and for consumer rights lawyers. Cases like Wyeth, where the manufacturer of a potentially dangerous product claims that state lawsuits arising out of that product are preempted by federal law, are fairly common. Hencely suggests that at least three of the Court’s Republicans will not support these preemption claims, at least when federal law does not clearly conflict with a state law.
At the same time, immigrants and immigration advocates will likely look upon Hencely with trepidation, as it suggests that this three-justice bloc may also seek to overrule Hines, a seminal precedent establishing that states typically may not impose restrictions on immigrants that cannot be found in federal law.
Preemption is not an issue that always favors the left or the right. Sometimes a state law benefits traditionally liberal causes, and sometimes it tries to advance a more right-wing goal. But Hencely suggests that the current Court will be more cautious about preemption claims generally, regardless of who benefits from that decision.
2026-04-22 20:30:00
地球周期间，人们常常困惑该怎样利用这个假期。是开始堆肥、放弃快时尚，还是为环保事业捐款？还是说，个人行为对解决气候和生态危机毫无影响，唯有政府和企业才能承担起责任？后者观点在现代环保运动中逐渐成为主流。尽管这一观点有一定道理，但仍有少数个人行动能显著改变当前的环境趋势。其中一些最具影响力的行为可能出乎你的意料。环保组织“Project Drawdown”分析了家庭可采取的前20项减少碳足迹的措施，发现减少食物浪费和采用“植物丰富型”饮食（即减少肉类和乳制品摄入）并列排名第一，而安装太阳能板则排名第三。其他环保研究也普遍将植物丰富型饮食列为最有效的环保生活方式之一。
幸运的是，食物选择是一项低门槛、每天都可以做出的决策，相较于购买电动车或进行节能家居改造等高影响行为，更具灵活性。然而，调查显示，人们普遍低估了肉类和乳制品对环境的巨大影响，不仅包括气候变化，还涉及森林砍伐、水污染等问题。正如几年前我所写：“发电厂排放黑烟的污染显而易见，而公路旁的牛羊牧场却显得自然甚至环保。” 因此，以下八张图表将展示我们的饮食选择对环境的总体影响。
首先，肉类和乳制品的生产方式效率低下。为了产出一单位可食用的肉类、乳制品或鸡蛋，畜牧业需要消耗大量热量。《Meat》一书的作者、好食物研究所所长布鲁斯·弗里德里希将这种效率比作丢弃八盘意大利面只吃一盘。因此，肉类生产本身可被视为一种食物浪费。为了种植玉米、大豆等饲料作物以及放牧牛羊，全球大部分地区已被转化为大型畜牧业用地，占地球可居住土地的三分之一以上。这是全球森林砍伐和栖息地丧失的主要原因，对野生动物构成重大威胁。在美国大陆，这一比例甚至高达41%。
除了土地，畜牧业还消耗大量淡水资源。它不仅用水量巨大，还严重污染河流和溪流。在美国，畜牧业可能是最大的水污染来源，主要污染源包括数以百亿计的农场动物产生的粪便，以及种植饲料作物所需的肥料。
最后是气候变化。全球肉类和乳制品生产是气候变化的主要驱动因素之一，占全球温室气体排放量的14.5%至19%（包括化肥生产、粪便排放、森林砍伐以及牛的甲烷排放）。相比之下，植物性蛋白质来源（如Impossible汉堡、豆类和豆腐）的碳足迹远低于牛肉、猪肉和鸡肉。
除了数据，科学家们也提供了有力的证据。2021年一项针对200多名农业和环境科学家的调查发现，大多数人都认为减少肉类和乳制品消费是降低农业碳排放最有效的方式。如果你担心个人行为无法带来改变，可以参考以下数据：俄克拉荷马州立大学的农业经济学家杰森·卢斯和巴利·诺伍德的研究表明，当消费者减少对肉类、鸡蛋和牛奶的需求时，确实会减少这些产品的生产（更多详情请见此处）。此外，采用植物丰富型饮食不仅对健康有益，还能减少在残酷工厂农场中饲养的动物数量。
长远来看，像其他污染行业一样，政府和企业也需要推动重大变革。但目前，肉类行业已成功抵制了许多环保法规。除非更多人要求改变，否则这种趋势难以逆转。我们可以通过每一餐的选择逐步改变这一现状。为此，我们提供了相关资源，例如《Meat/Less》和Vox的实用指南，帮助你减少肉类摄入，增加植物性食物的比例。
It’s Earth Week, and these days, it’s become hard to know just what to do with this holiday. Is it a reminder to start composting, ditch fast fashion, or donate to climate causes? Or does nothing we do as individuals really matter, and it’s on governments and corporations alone to fix our climate and ecological crises?
The latter idea — that our own individual actions won’t help to heal the planet — has become almost gospel in the modern environmental movement. And it’s largely right. But there are a few actions that individuals can take that actually do make a substantial difference in turning our current environmental trajectory around. And some of the most impactful ones might not be what you’d expect.
The environmental nonprofit Project Drawdown analyzed the top 20 actions that households can take to minimize their carbon footprint. It found that reducing food waste and eating a “plant-rich” diet — one that’s lower in meat and dairy — came out tied with each other for the No. 1 spot of most impactful changes. Putting solar panels on your roof ranked third, lagging far behind. (A number of other environmental analyses have put plant-rich diets as top contenders for environmental lifestyle changes, too.)
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And fortunately, food selection is a low-overhead choice we get to make many times each day, which makes it more flexible than other high-impact actions, like buying an electric vehicle or making energy-efficient home renovations.
Yet surveys show that people greatly underestimate meat and dairy’s enormous impact on the environment — and not just its fueling of climate change, but also its massive contribution to deforestation, water pollution, and other problems.
It’s understandable why. As I wrote a few years ago, “a power plant emitting plumes of black smoke screams pollution, while a pasture of cattle, chickens, or pigs along the highway looks natural and quaint — even eco-friendly.” So here are eight charts that break down how truly massive an impact our food choices have when you add them all up.
First, meat and dairy production are really inefficient ways to produce food.
Meat companies have to feed animals a lot of calories to produce just one calorie of edible meat, dairy, or eggs. Bruce Friedrich, president of the Good Food Institute and author of the book Meat, likens this efficiency to tossing eight plates of pasta into the trash for every one plate we eat (in the case of chicken — and it’s far higher for beef).
In this way, meat production itself is a form of food waste.
To grow all these crops, like corn and soy — and graze cattle and sheep — farmers and meat companies have turned much of planet Earth into one big animal farm, occupying more than one-third of habitable land. It’s the top cause of global deforestation and habitat loss, and thus a leading threat to wildlife.
It uses up even more land in the continental US: 41 percent.
To look at it another way, here’s the amount of land required to produce various diets:
But land isn’t the only essential resource that animal agriculture gobbles up. It’s also the largest user of freshwater.
Animal agriculture doesn’t just use up a lot of water; it also heavily pollutes waterways like rivers and streams. In the US, it’s arguably the biggest source of water pollution. The pollution primarily stems from two sources: manure from the world’s hundreds of billions of farmed animals, and the fertilizer used to grow their feed crops.
Finally, there’s climate change.
Globally, meat and dairy production is one of the leading drivers of climate change, accounting for 14.5 percent to 19 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (including from fertilizer production, manure, deforestation, and, yes, cows’ methane-rich burps). Meanwhile, plant-based protein sources, like Impossible burgers, beans, and tofu, have much lower carbon footprints than beef, pork, and chicken.
Aside from hard data, compelling evidence on the necessity of plant-rich diets also comes from scientists themselves. In a 2021 survey of more than 200 agricultural and environmental scientists, most ranked “reducing meat and dairy consumption” as the most effective way to reduce agricultural climate emissions.
And if you’re worried that your individual actions don’t actually matter, consider this table below. It’s from leading agricultural economists Jayson Lusk and Bailey Norwood of Oklahoma State University, who crunched the numbers and determined that when consumers buy less meat, eggs, and milk, it truly does reduce production of them (more on that here).
What’s more, embracing a plant-rich diet is also much better for your health and, of course, helps to reduce the number of animals reared on cruel factory farms.
In the long run, like every other polluting industry, significant change will also have to come from governments and corporations. But so far, the meat industry has been highly effective at beating back environmental regulations. It’s hard to see how that’ll change unless more people demand it. We can start — one meal at a time — with what we eat. And we’ve got you covered with resources to get started: Check out Meat/Less, Vox’s practical guide to eating less meat and more plant-based foods.
