Supreme Court’s Decision On Birthright Citizenship Will Depend On Its Interpretation Of One Key Phrase

When the justices weigh the arguments, they will focus on the meaning of the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, known as the citizenship clause. zimmytws/Getty Images

BY MORGAN MARIETTA

PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN CIVICS,

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE

The Supreme Court on Dec. 5, 2025, agreed to review the long-simmering controversy over birthright citizenship. It will likely hand down a ruling next summer.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order removing the recognition of citizenship for the U.S.-born children of both immigrants here illegally and visitors here only temporarily. The new rule is not retroactive. This change in long-standing U.S. policy sparked a wave of litigation culminating in Trump v. Washington, an appeal by Trump to remove the injunction put in place by federal courts.

When the justices weigh the arguments, they will focus on the meaning of the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, known as the citizenship clause: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Both sides agree that to be granted birthright citizenship under the Constitution, a child must be born inside U.S. borders and the parents must be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. However, each side will give a very different interpretation of what the second requirement means. Who falls under “the jurisdiction” of the United States in this context?

As a close observer of the court, I anticipate a divided outcome grounded in strong arguments from each side.

Arguments for automatic citizenship

Simply put, the argument against the Trump administration is that the 14th Amendment’s expansion of citizenship after the eradication of slavery was meant to be broad rather than narrow, encompassing not only formerly enslaved Black people but all persons who arrived on U.S. soil under the protection of the Constitution.

The Civil War amendments – the 13th, 14th and 15th – established inherent equality as a constitutional value, which embraced all persons born in the nation without reference to race, ethnicity or origin.

One of the strongest arguments that automatic citizenship is the meaning of the Constitution is long-standing practice. Citizenship by birth regardless of parental status – with few exceptions – has been the effective rule since the time of America’s founding.

Advocates also point to precedent: the landmark case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. When an American-born descendant of resident noncitizens sued after being refused re-entry to San Francisco under the Chinese Exclusion Act, the court recognized his natural-born citizenship.

If we read the Constitution in a living fashion – emphasizing the evolution of American beliefs and values over time – the constitutional commitment to broad citizenship grounded in equality, regardless of ethnicity or economic status, seems even more clear.

However, advocates must try to convince the court’s originalists – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – who read the Constitution based on its meaning when it was adopted.

The originalist argument in favor of birthright citizenship is that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” was meant to invoke only a small set of exceptions found in traditional British common law. In the Wong Kim Ark ruling, the court relied on this “customary law of England, brought to America by the colonists.”

One exception to birthright citizenship covered by this line of rulings is the child of a foreign diplomat, whose parents represent the interests of another country. Another exception is the children of invading foreign armies. A third exception discussed explicitly by the framers of the 14th Amendment was Native Americans, who at the time were understood to be under the jurisdiction of their tribal government as a separate sovereign. That category of exclusion faded away after Congress recognized the citizenship of Native Americans in 1924.

The advocates of automatic birthright citizenship conclude that whether the 14th Amendment is interpreted in a living or in an original way, its small set of exceptions do not override its broad message of citizenship grounded in human equality.

Opposition to birthright citizenship

The opposing argument begins with a simple intuition: In a society defined by self-government, as America is, there is no such thing as citizenship without consent. In the same way that an American citizen cannot declare himself a French citizen and vote in French elections without consent from the French government, a foreign national cannot declare himself a U.S. citizen without consent.

This argument emphasizes that citizenship in a democracy means holding equal political power over our collective decisions. That is something only existing citizens hold the right to offer to others, something which must be decided through elections and the lawmaking process.

The court’s ruling in Elk v. Wilkins in 1884 – just 16 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment – endorses “the principle that no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent.” By making entry into the United States without approval a federal offense, Congress has effectively denied that consent.

Scholars who support this view argue that the 14th Amendment does not provide this consent. Instead it sets a limitation. To the authors of the 14th Amendment, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” conveyed a limit to natural citizenship grounded in mutual allegiance. That means if people are free to deny their old national allegiance, and an independent nation is free to decide its own membership, the recognition of a new national identity must be mutual.

Immigrants living in the United States illegally have not accepted the sovereignty of the nation’s laws. On the other side of the coin, the government has not officially accepted them as residents under its protection.

If mutual recognition of allegiance is the meaning of the 14th Amendment, the Trump administration has not violated it.

The opponents of birthright citizenship argue that the Wong Kim Ark ruling has been misrepresented. In that case, the court only considered permanent legal residents like Wong Kim Ark’s parents, but not residents here illegally or temporarily. The focus on British common law in that ruling is simply misguided because the findings of Calvin’s Case or any other precedents dealing with British subjects were voided by the American Revolution.

In this view, the Declaration of Independence replaced subjects with citizens. The power to determine national membership was taken away from kings and placed in the hands of democratic majorities.

For opponents of birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment does not take that power away from citizens but instead codifies the rule that mutual consent is the touchstone of admission. The requirement to be “subject to the jurisdiction” provides the mechanism of that consent.

Congress can determine who is accepted as a member of the national community under its jurisdiction. In this view, Congress – and the American people – have spoken: Current federal laws make entry into U.S. borders without permission a crime rather than a forced acceptance of political membership.

What might happen

The court will likely announce a ruling in summer 2026 before early July, just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The court will ultimately decide whether the Constitution endorses the declaration’s invocation of essential equality or its creation of a sovereign people empowered to determine the boundaries of national membership.

The court’s three Democratic-appointed justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – will surely side against the Trump administration. The six Republican-appointed justices seem likely to divide, a symptom of disagreements within the originalist camp.

The liberal justices need at least two of the conservatives to join them to form a majority of five to uphold universal birthright citizenship. This will likely be some combination of Chief Justice John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The Trump administration will prevail only if five out of the six conservatives reject the British common law foundations of the Wong Kim Ark ruling in favor of citizenship by consent alone.

America should know by July Fourth.

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Stalin’s Postwar Terror Targeted Soviet Jews – In The Name Of ‘Anti-Cosmopolitanism

A plaque in Russia commemorates the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, whose leaders were executed in August 1952. Adam Baker/Flickr via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

BY WENDY Z. GOLDMAN

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Many Americans know of Josef Stalin’s Terror of the late 1930s, during which more than 1 million people were arrested for political crimes, and over 680,000 executed.

Fewer know about the repressions that began after World War II and ended with Stalin’s death in 1953. Much like the repressions of the 1930s, they involved fabricated plots, arrests, coerced confessions and purges. Unlike the Terror of the 1930s, they were accompanied by a wave of state-sponsored antisemitism – including the purge of Jews from multiple occupations and unwritten quotas that limited their professional and educational opportunities.

The abolition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee on Nov. 20, 1948, and the arrest and execution of its members was central to this postwar assault. The committee’s elimination was accompanied by an “anti-cosmopolitan” campaign emphasizing Russian nationalism, Soviet patriotism and anti-Westernism. In certain ways, the campaign served as the mirror image of anti-communist and jingoistic propaganda in the United States at the time.

“Rootless cosmopolitan” became code for “Jewish,” and dismissals swept the arts, sciences and media. The Ministry of State Security arrested Jewish industrial leaders for sabotage and, in 1953, fabricated “the Doctor’s Plot,” which accused a group of predominately Jewish doctors who treated Kremlin officials of trying to assassinate Stalin and other party leaders.

The very idea of an antisemitic campaign following the massive Soviet losses in World War II presents an enigma. Of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, almost 2 million were murdered by the Nazis on Soviet soil. Why would Soviet leaders, who fought a bitter and costly war to defeat fascism, choose to attack the very group that the Nazis tried to annihilate?

My forthcoming book, “Stalin’s Final Terror: Antisemitism, Nationality Policy, and the Jewish Experience,” addresses this difficult question.

Clashing with the state

The Soviet state created the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in 1942 to aid the war effort at home and abroad. Its chairman, Solomon Mikhoels, was a renowned Yiddish actor and director of the State Yiddish Theater – one of the many cultural and scientific luminaries who led the committee.

The committee made an enormous contribution to the war effort, sending thousands of articles about fascism, the Jewish war experience and the Red Army for publication in the foreign press. Mikhoels and writer Itsik Fefer toured the United States, Mexico, Canada and Great Britain, where they were welcomed by rapturous crowds and raised millions of dollars.

In 1943, as the Red Army began liberating Soviet territories from German occupation, the committee was inundated by letters from surviving and returning Jews. Committee leaders tried to help people reclaim their homes, to distribute foreign aid and to identify and commemorate sites of Nazi war crimes. They wrote to Stalin suggesting the creation of a Jewish national republic in Crimea to replace destroyed communities in Ukraine, Belorussia and Russia.

But the state deemed these unsanctioned activities expressions of “bourgeois Jewish nationalism.” Some Communist Party leaders even insinuated that the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was being used by spies, and advocated its elimination.

The minister of state security, V.S. Abakumov, convinced Stalin that Mikhoels was spying for Jewish organizations in the United States, but Mikhoels was too well known at home and abroad to be arrested. In January 1948, Mikhoels was lured to a house on the outskirts of Minsk, crushed by a truck and dumped on a deserted road.

The murder, disguised as an accident, signaled a turning point in the government’s policy toward Soviet Jews. In November 1948, the government abolished the committee as “a center of anti-Soviet propaganda.” Fifteen of its leaders were arrested over the following months. The state shuttered the Yiddish publishing house, press, theaters, literary journals and writers association, and arrested hundreds of Yiddish cultural figures.

Unbowed in court

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee’s leaders were charged with bourgeois nationalism, treason and espionage. Tortured in prison and kept in cramped, freezing cells, they were forced to confess.

The Ministry of State Security hoped to stage a public show trial, but as soon as the physical coercion stopped, the defendants began to retract their confessions and write letters of protest. The evidence was based on these extracted confessions, and the state feared an international outcry.

After the group had already spent more than two years in prison, the case was reopened. M.D. Riumin, the new head of the investigatory unit, was intent on showing that the defendants directed Jewish nationalist organizations that infiltrated the government at every level. After new interrogations, an indictment was drawn up, sent to Stalin and approved by the Politburo.

A secret trial began in May 1952. Despite being physically broken, the defendants presented a powerful rebuttal.

Solomon Lozovskii, an old revolutionary and former deputy foreign minister, shredded the state’s accusations. Historian Iosif Iuzefovich retracted his confession and told the court that after numerous beatings, “I was ready to confess that I was the pope’s own nephew, acting on his direct personal orders.” Boris Shimeliovich, the director of a leading Moscow hospital, testified that he had received over 2,000 blows to his buttocks and heels. Even the chairman of the court began to doubt the charges.

Yet the defendants were convicted. Thirteen of the 15 were executed on Aug. 12, 1952. The executions were later commemorated as “The Night of the Murdered Poets, though only five of the victims were poets. Solomon Bregman, a labor leader, died in prison; Lina Shtern, a renowned scientist, was sentenced to exile.

After Stalin’s death, the defendants were exonerated. The case only became public, however, in 1988, when the country began a full reckoning with the Stalin era.

The final Terror

How do we explain this final Terror?

Jews had benefited enormously from the revolution in 1917, which eliminated czarist oppression, granted them equal rights and opened new educational and employment opportunities. They entered professions and held leading posts in the Communist Party. They were considered an official nationality, like Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Armenians and hundreds of other groups in the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Yet after the war, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee’s efforts to help Jewish survivors and commemorate the Holocaust were not acceptable to the state, which minimized the singularity of Jewish wartime experiences. The government identified advocacy solely on behalf of Jews, either at home or abroad, as "bourgeois nationalism” or Zionism.

Amid the intensifying Cold War, the government sought to mobilize popular support by resurrecting Russian nationalism, once an anathema to socialist revolutionaries. It reestablished many czarist discriminatory policies, creating obstacles to Jewish advancement and education. Despite the government’s initial support for the new state of Israel, it blocked the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee from participating in Jewish international organizations, which it viewed as a conduit for Western spies and Jewish nationalism.

Some historians believe that Stalin was preparing a larger Terror, including the deportation of the Jewish population, but his plans were disrupted by his death in 1953. Others disagree, asserting a lack of evidence.

Yet one point is worth pondering: Using the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Riumin aimed to build a larger case that would have targeted Jews in every institution for treason. He never succeeded, however, in staging a public trial or launching a wider hunt for enemies throughout the government.

The courage of the defendants thwarted Riumin’s venomous ambition. They testified bravely about their abuse and exposed the falsity of the charges. Revolutionaries committed to the struggle against fascism, they held firm to the end.

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Guinea-Bissau’s Military Takeover Highlights The Nation’s Sorry History Of Coups And A Deepening Crisis Across The Region

Soldiers patrol the streets in Guinea-Bissau on Nov. 26, 2025. Patrick Meinhardt/AFP via Getty Images

BY JOHN JOSEPH CHIN

ASSISTANT TEACHING PROFESSOR OF 

STRATEGY AND TECHNOLOGY,

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Army generals in Guinea-Bissau seized power on Nov. 26, 2025 – the eve of a scheduled official declaration of the winner in the West African nation’s presidential election.

Alleging a destabilization plot by unnamed politicians and drug lords, the military suspended the electoral process and blocked the results of a contest that both the now former president, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, and the opposition candidate had claimed victory in.

General Horta Inta-a, the head of the presidential guard, was subsequently sworn in as “transitional” leader and Ilídio Vieira Té, a close Embaló ally, was appointed prime minister. The timing of the development and Embaló’s connection to the new government figures have led domestic opposition groups and some West African political leaders to claim the coup was staged to facilitate Embaló’s continued rule by proxy.

Whatever the veracity of such claims, the events point to both a deepening regional crisis of democracy and the inability of Guinea-Bissau to escape its coup-prone history. Indeed, as a scholar who has compiled and updated a dataset of coup types and documented their history in Guinea-Bissau since its independence from Portugal in 1974, I believe the country is caught in a classic coup trap whereby poverty and coups d’etat are mutually reinforcing.

The Sahel coup belt keeps expanding

The events in Guinea-Bissau reflect a so-called polycrisis for countries in and around the Sahel belt, sandwiched between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. This region has, since 2020, become the global epicenter of both terrorism and coups – so much so that it is sometimes dubbed the Sahel “coup belt”.

The events in Guinea-Bissau, which is located just south of the Sahel region, represent the 11th successful coup in Africa since 2020 – and the second successful one in 2025 after the military takeover in Madagascar in October following a wave of Gen Z protests.

Indeed, nearly three-quarters of all coup attempts in the world since 2020 have taken place in West Africa or the Sahel. The region accounts for an even higher share of successful coups since 2020. This unprecedented cluster of coups comes in a region that accounts for less than 10% of both Africa’s population and the number of states in the world.

The Sahel region is responsible for around 75% of recent coups

There have been many reasons for the various coups in the Sahel since 2020. Takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, for example, were driven in part by growing terrorist insurgencies, Russian disinformation and rising anti-French sentiment.

By contrast, data from the conflict monitoring organization Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, or ACLED, shows very little conflict or protest in Guinea-Bissau leading up to the coup. Instead, events appear to lie in political opportunism in the wake of an election marred by flaws and allegations of illegitimacy.

Guinea-Bissau’s ‘coup trap’

Before the latest military takeover, Guinea-Bissau was already the fourth-most coup-prone state in sub-Saharan Africa, having suffered five failed coup attempts and three successful ones since 1974. Coups toppled the single-party regime of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde in 1980, the authoritarian regime of Kumba Yala in 2003 and overthrew democracy and installed an indirect military regime in 2012. Meanwhile, a failed coup attempt in 1998 sparked the country’s only civil war.

Since 2020, Guinea-Bissau had suffered one bona fide coup attempt, in February 2022, in addition to a mutiny in late 2022 that Embaló condemned as a coup attempt. The coup of November 2025 was itself foreshadowed by an alleged coup plot that was revealed at the end of October, when a number of senior officers were arrested.

All of that suggests a feature of this type of instability: Coups beget more coups. In fact, seven of the nine nations that have suffered successful coups since 2020 had already suffered a successful coup within the previous 20 years.

And whereas nearly 30% of nations with coups since 2005 suffered a coup again between 2020 and 2025, states that lacked a recent coup history – even poor countries in Africa – were much less likely to suffer a coup after 2020.

Coup as a feature, not a bug

Following the 2022 coup attempt in Guinea-Bissau, Embaló had moved to consolidate the government under his leadership and reduce constraints on the executive. Indeed, data on three key dimensions of democracy shows that electoral contestation, voter participation and executive constraints have all declined significantly in Guinea-Bissau since.

The Varieties of Democracy project, which surveys experts to measure different levels of democracy, declared in 2022 that Guinea-Bissau had become an “electoral autocracy” – a term to denote governments that are elected through unfair and fraudulent means and go on to rule in an authoritarian manner.

The nation has continued to slide into autocracy since then.

Embaló used an alleged coup plot in December 2023 as a pretext to dissolve the opposition-dominated legislature. The country has not had a sitting legislature since.

Earlier in 2025, Embaló went back on his promise to step down at the end of his first term and instead announced he was running for a second term. Given that Embaló had barred the main opposition party from running, many feared he might try to steal the election, if necessary, much like Paul Biya is alleged to have done in nearby Cameroon in October 2025.

Not a ‘good coup,‘ but a ‘veto coup’

When asked about recent coups in Africa, Rwandan President Paul Kagame insisted that some coups – those that oppose corruption and bad governance – are “good coups.” Though scholars have debated how frequent so-called good coups have been in Africa, there is little doubt that the recent case better fits the classic pattern of a so-called “veto coup,” meant to prevent the winner of the election from taking office.

Indeed, the presence of prominent Embaló allies in the interim Guinea-Bissau government lends credence to opposition cries of foul play. The new government’s promise of democratic elections in a year should likewise be treated with skepticism. The promised electoral timetable has not been kept in any other recent coup case in the Sahel, where juntas remain entrenched.

As such, even if Guinea-Bissau was becoming increasingly autocratic already, the latest takeover is likely a cure worse than the disease. Whether the international community that has condemned the coup – from the United Nations to the African Union to the Economic Community of West African Nations – is willing or able to take credible steps to help guide Guinea-Bissau back to constitutional rule looks uncertain, given the recent example of other coup-hit nations across the continent.

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Book Review: The Strangers Within Us

BY LINA DELZOVICH

In March 1953, a healthy 28-year-old woman donated blood at a clinic in northern England. As technicians tried to determine her blood type, they could hardly believe what they saw. The woman, identified as Mrs. McK, had both type O and type A red blood cells. The results contradicted a central paradigm of 20th century medicine, which stated that people can only have one blood type — A, B, AB, or O.

When Robert Race, a blood-type specialist in London, received the findings, he revealed that the case wasn’t unprecedented. About a decade earlier, American biologist Ray Owen stumbled on a similar phenomenon not in humans, but in cows, in which — due to the shared placental blood circulation — twin calves had two different types of blood cells.

When asked, Mrs. McK divulged that she had a twin brother who died young. Almost 30 years later, she was still carrying her twin’s cells inside her body. The revelation was so discombobulating that Race described Mrs. McK as a “chimera,” referring to a monstrous creature from Greek mythology with a head and forequarters of a lion, a goat’s head on its back, and a serpent for a tail.

This is only one of many mind-boggling and fascinating examples of cellular trickery described by French science journalist Lise Barnéoud in “Hidden Guests: Migrating Cells and How the New Science of Microchimerism Is Redefining Human Identity.” A biological phenomenon, microchimerism refers to the presence of a small number of cells from one individual within another genetically distinct individual. It most commonly occurs during pregnancy when fetal cells escape into the mother’s bloodstream or maternal cells sneak into the placenta, eventually becoming part of the embryo or fetus. Likewise, twins may exchange cells before birth, too.

The cases aren’t that rare. “Approximately 8 percent of fraternal twins and 21 percent of fraternal triplets carry blood cells from their companions in utero,” Barnéoud writes, citing a 2020 review. Similarly, fetal cells that wander outside the placenta can persist in the mother’s body for years, genomic scientist Diana Bianchi discovered decades after Mrs. McK’s case, in 1993. Bianchi and her team found male cells in the blood of six women who had given births to sons from one to 27 years earlier. Male cells are easier to spot in women because they have X and Y chromosomes in their cell nucleus while female cells have two X chromosomes, and the Y chromosome stands out. But males can carry foreign cells too.

These wandering cells can settle anywhere in the body, making up “a tiny fraction of a kidney, for example, or the entire organ,” Barnéoud reveals. Some have been known to make a home in lungs and others in livers. Moreover, “microchimeric cells can cross the blood-brain barrier and take up permanent residence in our command center,” Barnéoud writes. A 2012 study of 54 deceased women referenced in the book found that 63 percent had male cells in their brains. And one far-fetched hypothesis even posits that women may also acquire foreign cells through semen. So, “if you don’t want to wind up with a head full of cells from multiple men, you’d better use protection!” writes Barnéoud.

Microchimerism refers to the presence of a small number of cells from one individual within another genetically distinct individual. It most commonly occurs during pregnancy.

“Mothers likely carry their children’s cells within them for the rest of their lives,” according to Barnéoud. Children may be carrying their parents. If your mother’s cells sneaked in, clinging to you while you were in utero, you may still harbor them. Bianchi found that maternal cells migrated into their offspring’s thymus, thyroid, liver, skin, and spleen. “So you think your mother is always looking over your shoulder?” Barnéoud quotes Judith Hall, a pediatrician and geneticist who wrote an editorial commenting on Bianchi’s findings, as saying. “She may be in your shoulder.”

Moreover, researchers now hypothesize that even your grandmother’s cells may be lurking in your body, passed on from your mother. It seems that a lot of us may be chimeras, not only Mrs. McK.

However, Barnéoud argues that by using the term “chimeric,” scientists did a great disservice to the cells, instantly casting them as villains. Understandably, they were shocked because Mrs. McK defied the laws of immunology at the time, which stated that a healthy immune system can’t tolerate foreign cells. Eventually, chimeric cells lived up to their reputation: In the mid-1990s, scientists implicated them in autoimmune diseases, which disproportionately affect women.

Sometimes, it seems, the immune system may decide to go after them, causing increased inflammation. (Except in this case the term “autoimmune” doesn’t apply because the cells indeed are foreign and the body isn’t attacking itself.) And so “these cells became migrants, intruders, vagrants crossing the placental border and colonizing, invading, or squatting on maternal territory,” Barnéoud writes. In medicine, it seems, the concept of “us” and “them” is just as dominant as in politics and wars.

It took time to realize that the “invading” cells can come in peace — and even bring benefits. Early in this millennia, scientists learned that microchimeric cells can repair wounds by forming skin and blood vessels. They also can heal heart damage; when injected into mice after a heart attack, they find a way to the damaged heart parts and fix them. And in post-mortem findings of a child who had diabetes, researchers discovered maternal cells were producing insulin in the pancreas, decreeing that the cells were likely helping to “restore function and regenerate diseased tissue.”

And just like that, the chimeric cells “have gone from being suspicious vagrants to productive immigrants, naturalized — in the political sense of the term — to their new home,” Barnéoud quotes historian of science Aryn Martin as saying.

Told in beautiful, sometimes bordering on poetic, language with occasional snark and humor thrown in, the book upends some of the very foundations of medicine, immunology, and genetics. And, having been rooted in cutting-edge research, it rocks our philosophical concept of self. A discovery that the microbial cells in our body may outnumber our own, made us realize we’re only partially human. Now comes the second blow to our ego — we aren’t fully one-human either. “Twenty years after the microbial upheaval, another is underway: even the human half of us does not solely consist of our ‘I,’” Barnéoud’s observes.

“The idea of an entirely independent individual self-constructed from a single fertilized egg is a myth.”

Clever chapter names — “The Other in Me,” “The Other Mes” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — make you question your biological composition. You can’t help but wonder where all these “others of you” came from and how they interact with one another — and yourself. Instead of a single, uniform genome defining your biological identity, you begin to see yourself as something greater than just you.

“The idea of an entirely independent individual self-constructed from a single fertilized egg is a myth,” Barnéoud concludes. That myth may bode well with the ideals of modern Western societies, where we prioritize the individual’s rights over the needs of a collective, but in this new, emerging biological reality, no human is a true individuum. We all are living communities of cells — some ours, some ancestral, some microbial — all of which are in perpetual flux that sometimes results in health and sometimes disease.

Instead of being battlegrounds of “us” and “them,” our bodies operate on never-ending negotiations, tolerating and benefiting from genetic strangers within. “We are each of us a collective in constant co-construction,” Barnéoud resolves, “and our equilibrium depends on the interactions of our constituents.”

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Who Wins And Who Loses As The US Retires The Penny

BY NANCY FORSTER-HOLT

CLINICAL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF 

INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP,

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

By now, Americans know the strange math of minting: Each penny costs about 4 cents to make. Chances are you have some in a jar, or scattered among pockets, purses and car ashtrays.

As small as it is, the penny punches above its weight culturally. If it ever disappeared, so too might the simple kindness of “take a penny, leave a penny,” alongside timeless classics like penny loafers and the tradition of tossing a penny in a fountain.

But the penny’s days are indeed numbered. The U.S. Mint pressed the last 1-cent coin on Nov. 12, 2025, following a directive from the White House. While pennies will remain legal tender, old ones will gradually be taken out of circulation.

The impact of this change will reach beyond coin jars. Its ripples will be felt as small, cash-reliant Main Street merchants face another test of adaptability in a system that increasingly favors scale, technology and plastic. It will also be felt by people who rely on cash – often people without bank accounts who have the least room to absorb even tiny shifts in price.

My interest comes from my former lives as the chief financial officer of a large credit union and as a small-business owner. Now, I bridge theory and practice as a professor – or “prac-ademic,” as I like to say – studying the challenges facing Main Street businesses.

When the penny goes away, some will win, some will lose – and for some, it’ll be a coin toss.

Heads, they win

The first and most obvious winner is the U.S. government, which will save tens of millions of dollars each year by no longer minting a coin that costs more to make than it’s worth. Ending production seems like an easy call for efficiency’s sake.

Banks and credit unions will likely benefit too. Pennies are disproportionately expensive to handle: Every bag of pennies gets counted, sorted, rolled, verified and shipped back to the Federal Reserve, generating labor and equipment costs that far exceed the coin’s value. Removing the smallest denomination strips out an entire layer of cost and friction from bank operations – savings that scale immediately across thousands of branches.

Another beneficiary, this one hiding in plain sight, is who transports the cash: the armored-carrier industry. For companies such as Loomis and Brink’s, pennies are heavy, low-value cargo, and a logistical money-loser. Removing penny pickups eliminates one of their most inefficient services, reducing fuel use, labor hours and truck wear.

Large retailers will likely also win. Size and scale make it easier to undertake preparations both big and small, such as reprogramming cash registers and stockpiling pennies to hedge against shortages. Larger companies also have the talent and bandwidth to figure out the true costs and benefits of accepting cash or noncash payments. If most of their transactions are already digital, they could be relatively indifferent to the end of the penny.

Large retailers also negotiate lower card processing rates, which are the fees merchants must pay to the card companies every time a customer uses a credit or debit card. These rates aren’t uniform: Large chains get discounted pricing based on sales volume, while small businesses face higher costs for identical transactions. It follows that any policy change leading to more people paying with plastic will disproportionately benefit larger retailers.

To be sure, some banks, credit unions and large retailers have expressed concern and surprise at the pace of the change and the lack of guidance from the federal government. But for most, the penny’s end is a minor operational footnote. Online-only businesses operate in this frictionless world as well – no coins, no counting, no issue.

Tails, they lose

For small, Main Street businesses, the penny’s disappearance highlights the structural disadvantages they already face – and I think it will force a reckoning about what types of payments benefit their bottom lines.

As pennies phase out, local businesses are likely to round cash transactions to the nearest 5 cents, resulting in what economists call a “rounding tax.” Rounding to the nearest nickel could cost businesses and consumers about $6 million annually, according to researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

And it wouldn’t offer much relief if more shoppers turn to plastic and other noncash payments. That’s because most small merchants lack the negotiating power to lower their card-processing fees.

Card acceptance comes with a layered stack of costs for merchants: interchange fees, network assessments, processor markups, gateway fees, chargeback penalties, terminal rentals and more. Together, these average 2.5% to 3.5% per sale for many small businesses. Also, there are expenses related to adopting the latest, greatest payment methods, and then keeping them updated.

Consider a quick-service restaurant where a typical customer spends $14. If that customer pays with a credit card and the business pays an average processing fee of 2.2% plus 10 cents per transaction, each sale incurs about 41 cents in fees. Even low-cost debit cards include fixed per-transaction charges that disproportionately affect businesses when the per-sale average is small. When the average sale is $10 or less, it barely covers the cost to process it as a card transaction.

That said, handling cash also comes at a cost, and it’s not always easy to know what’s best for business. One analysis found that accepting cash costs 53 cents per $100 of sales, compared with $1.12 for accepting debit payments using a signature and 81 cents for PIN-based debit. Of course, businesses also should keep in mind that different customers will have different payment preferences.

And speaking of customers, those who are most likely to feel the pinch from the end of the penny are people who still rely on cash: older adults, lower-income households, people without credit cards or bank accounts – either unbanked or under-banked – and people who budget in cash because it provides firmer spending discipline.

A few cents added to a grocery total or a convenience store purchase may not matter to someone tapping a rewards credit card, but cash-dependent consumers experience those small increases directly, with no offsetting points, perks or end-of-month cash back. And yes, prices often end in 99 cents, which get rounded up, not down. So the burden falls disproportionately on those least equipped to absorb even small, cumulative increases.

For some, it’s a coin toss

Digital-first consumers may barely notice the penny’s disappearance. They tap phones, scan QR codes and use payment apps that will still settle to the exact amount.

While businesses haven’t received final guidance on how to handle payments in the post-penny era, one option is to price electronic transactions to the cent and round cash transactions to the nearest nickel. If that were widely adopted, digital payments alone would remain precise.

Consumers who use cashless payments may believe their choice doesn’t affect how they shop, but behavioral research says otherwise. Credit cards reduce the “pain of paying,” leading people to spend more – often 10% to 20% more than with cash. Credit card rewards programs further incentivize card use. In one last nod to the cost of noncash payments, those rewards are funded by higher merchant fees that ultimately translate into higher retail prices.

Killing the penny makes economic sense for the government and some businesses, yet it also highlights a deeper truth: Efficiency tends to reward the already efficient. For many, however, even when the change is small, every cent still counts.

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50 Years After Franco’s Death, Giving A Voice To Spanish Dictator’s Imprisoned Mothers

A protester holds a banner with pictures of people who went missing during the Spanish dictatorship of Francisco Franco. John Milner/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

BY ZAYA RUSTAMOVA

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF SPANISH,

KENNEDSAW STATE UNIVERSITY

In the run-up to the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death on Nov. 20, 2025, the left-leaning Spanish government led a vigil honoring the many victims of the dictator’s regime.

While the exact numbers remain impossible to determine, historians estimate that Franco’s men killed up to 100,000 people during the brutal Spanish Civil War, and tens of thousands were executed during his dictatorial rule from 1939 until his death in 1975. Hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned, sent to labor camps or subjected to political persecution. To these figures, we must add the roughly half a million people who fled or were forced into exile.

Among the multitudes of Francoism’s victims were women and children who endured psychological and physical abuse in prisons, orphanages and asylums. Yet for decades their experiences have remained marginal in the public narrative – highlighting the uneven acknowledgment of different groups of victims amid Spain’s broader struggle to confront its past.

Still, their stories remain alive in the testimonies of the women who were imprisoned by the regime. In the summer of 2024, I conducted research at the Documentation Center of Historical Memory in Salamanca, collecting documented written accounts of traumatic experiences suffered by Spain’s female population under Franco. They reveal the extent to which Francoist repression was structured through gender, framing women as inherently subordinate and subjecting those who resisted the regime’s patriarchal order to especially severe punishment.

Franco’s gendered violence

My study explores the testimonies of women imprisoned during the civil war or subsequent decades, all of whom endured suffering related to their motherhood. While some were detained for their ideological allegiance to the republic that preceded Franco’s ascent, others had no formal partisan affiliations or were merely related to men who did.

These women suffered what many survivors and historians have described as a “double punishment” – targeted not only for their beliefs or associations but just for being women and mothers.

The earliest testimony I came across was from a woman detained in 1939, just three years after Franco, a military general, led an uprising against the democratically elected government of the Second Republic that precipitated the civil war and his subsequent reign.

Under Franco’s dictatorial regime, women’s roles were rigidly controlled by the ideology of National Catholicism, which linked femininity, motherhood and loyalty to the state. The church reinforced this vision, “dictating that women served the fatherland through self-sacrifice and dedication to the common good.”

Those who defied the patriarchy were criminalized and subjected to “re-education” focused on religious values.

Women’s so-called “redemption” under this reeducation was no less violent than their confinement. As one witness described, in May of 1939 the auditorium of Las Ventas prison was prepared to celebrate “two girls and a boy (… recently) born in prison.” During the ceremony, a choir “composed of forty inmates, including opera singers, music teachers, violinists, and amateurs,” had to perform the national anthems with the fascist arm-raised salute.

Yet confinement itself was particularly brutal.

According to Josefina García, a woman imprisoned during the 1940s, guards regularly insulted and beat inmates. “If you were at home behaving like decent women, you wouldn’t be here,” she recalled one saying. García continued: “Of course, they used a crude, sexist language. The police ‘used words’ in a way that sometimes leave a mark deeper than a bruise.”

Gender also played a role in the type of punishment prisoners received. Following their arrest, women were subjected to head shaving, forced ingestion of castor oil and the subsequent public humiliation of being made to walk in circles while defecating. In addition, they were often subjected to sexual violence by prison guards or interrogating officers.

Recounting her experience, another witness reported the case of an 18-year-old sister of a guerrilla fighter in Valencia who “was subjected to terrible torture, stripped naked in a room with several Civil Guards who pricked her breasts, genitals, and stomach with … needles.”

Motherhood as battleground

One of the most painful aspects of Franco’s repression was the forced separation of mothers and their children.

Upon incarceration, women frequently lost custody of their sons and daughters, who were placed in orphanages or adopted by families loyal to Franco and his regime. Such violent ruptures of the maternal bond were more than an act of personal cruelty – they were a calculated political strategy rooted in the broader Francoist ideology.

Since Francoism promoted an image of women as obedient wives and self-sacrificing mothers devoted to the Catholic family model, Republican women were demonized as immoral, dangerous and unworthy of motherhood.

By stripping women of their children, the regime both punished them and reinforced its narrative that only “loyal” women could be true mothers.

Meanwhile, child-rearing or birth during incarceration was marked by fear and uncertainty. In certain cases, newborns were allowed to stay with their mothers for a short time. However, a lack of proper nourishment and mental exhaustion made breastfeeding an impossible task.

At times, women who began to lactate were denied the possibility of nursing their infants, leading to physical pain and emotional torment.

More often, babies were permanently taken away altogether, deemed at risk of being “contaminated” by their mothers’ ideological values.

“When I was arrested, my son was five days old,” one victim, Carmen Caamaño, reported. “About a year later, they said I no longer needed to breastfeed him and took the child out of the prison. Some friends had to take him in because I had no family there.”

There were also countless cases in which children were imprisoned alongside their mothers. With no other relatives to care for them, these children suffered from hunger, disease and a lack of basic hygiene in their overcrowded cells. For mothers, the psychological burden was immense as they were forced to watch their children suffer, yet they had no power to protect them.

In the summer of 1941, about six or seven children died daily in these prisons from starvation and diseases, according to accounts of survivors.

Trauma and resistance

Alongside trauma, there were also moments of resistance.

Mothers in prison looked for ways to nurture their children despite scarcity and fear. Testimonies I reviewed relate cases of inmates sharing food, telling stories and protecting children as best they could. These small acts of care were a quiet but powerful form of defiance.

Yet for many women, the trauma of these losses never healed. Survivors often speak of the pain of separation as an open wound that lasted a lifetime. Children raised in prisons or separated from their families carried the scars into adulthood.

Even decades after the regime ended, many descendants still struggle with the weight of this silenced past. Yet because of Spain’s Amnesty Act of 1977, which was granted for past political crimes, those responsible for atrocities committed under Franco have seldom been held accountable.

Histories of the Franco years often leave the grief of the intergenerational trauma in the shadows. And for the victims themselves, the traumatic motherhood experiences under his dictatorship reveal more than just personal suffering – they expose how authoritarian power can reach into the most intimate parts of life.

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Vice President Dick Cheney’s Life Followed The Arc Of The Biggest Breakthroughs In Cardiovascular Medicine

BY WILLIKAM CORNWELL

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CARDIOLOGY,

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHULTZ

MEDICAL CAMPUS

The life and political legacy of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died on Nov. 4, 2025, at the age of 84, has been well documented. But his decades-long battle with heart disease may be less appreciated.

Cheney benefited from almost every major advance made in cardiovascular medicine. These breakthroughs enabled him to sustain an active political career and gave him additional years of an enjoyable life after he moved away from the political spotlight.

As a cardiologist who specializes in both sports medicine and heart disease, as well as advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology, I frequently provide care for patients who, like Cheney, are supported by powerful medicines and procedures to help support heart function.

Cheney’s passing provides an opportunity to reflect on the rapid evolution in medical technology, especially in the past half-century, that improved the lifespan and overall quality of life for Cheney, as well as millions of heart patients around the world.

The formative days of cardiac medicine

Cheney suffered his first of five heart attacks at age 37, in 1978, when the standard of care mainly involved pain relief and bed rest, and when medical professionals did not yet have a clear understanding of what causes heart attacks in the first place.

Today, doctors understand that a heart attack occurs when blood flow through an artery is blocked by a blood clot called a thrombus and oxygen cannot get to the heart muscle. Imagine a kink in a hose that prevents water passing through it. When the heart muscle does not receive oxygen for a long enough period of time, the heart muscle will die and a scar will form.

In the 1960s and ’70s, however, doctors thought a thrombus was the result of – not the cause of – a heart attack.

It is now clear that the formation of a thrombus leads to a heart attack rather than the other way around. That important lesson revolutionized the way doctors like me treat patients with heart attacks.

Big and small breakthroughs

Today, we reopen arteries with stents. When stents are not available, we use powerful medications called thrombolytics, or clot-busters, to break down the thrombus. These kinds of treatments seem commonplace today, but it wasn’t until 1988 that a pivotal study showed combining aspirin and streptokinase, a clot-buster drug, improved survival after a heart attack by almost 50%.

Cheney had additional heart attacks in 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2010. Notably, all but the last were during election years, underscoring the detrimental effects of stress on heart health. His heart attack in 2000 occurred as the courts worked to determine whether Al Gore or George W. Bush – with whom Cheney would become vice president – had won the presidential election.

As technology advanced over the years, Cheney had multiple angioplasties – a procedure to open up narrowed or blocked arteries. During an angioplasty, a procedure developed in the 1980s, heart doctors would place a balloon made of flexible polymers inside an artery to open up and clear the thrombus.

While angioplasties were helpful, one of the main limitations was that the walls of the artery would quickly shrink back – known as recoiling – after the balloon was deflated.

How stents became mainstream

That limitation led to the concept of stents – devices that are now frequently used to treat heart attack patients.

Cheney’s first heart attack in 1978 occurred well before the first stents became available.

Stents started out as metal, tubelike structures that cardiologists used to open up narrowed or blocked blood vessels. The original stents, made of stainless steel, fixed the problem of blood vessels recoiling.

But over time, cardiologists found that stents become stenotic, meaning they themselves would become narrow, making it difficult for blood to flow through them. This problem was solved with the introduction of drug-eluting stents, which have a polymer that coats the metal struts of a stent and prevents stenosis from occurring.

Drug-eluting stents were a game-changer and reduced the need for repeated procedures by about 50% to 70%. Like millions of Americans, Cheney received several stents during his long battle with heart disease.

While stents are helpful, sometimes patients require a surgery called coronary artery bypass graft. Heart surgeons perform this procedure when there are blockages that angioplasty or a stent cannot fix, or when there are too many blockages in the heart arteries.

In 1988, at age 47, Cheney underwent a quadruple bypass operation to help restore blood flow to his heart following his third heart attack.

Battling heart disease

Despite the best efforts of cardiologists, many patients with heart disease, like Cheney, go on to develop heart failure.

There are two main types of heart failure. One – called heart failure with preserved ejection fraction – occurs when the left ventricle, the largest and strongest chamber of the heart, becomes stiff and unable to relax.

The other type – heart failure with reduced ejection fraction – occurs when the left ventricle becomes enlarged and weakened, and fails to pump blood efficiently.

Both types of heart failure make it difficult for the heart to adequately pump blood throughout the body. Cheney, like millions of people throughout the world, suffered from a dilated and weakened heart.

Fortunately, now there are several classes of medications used to treat the kind of heart failure that Cheney suffered from.

There are four main types of drugs that heart failure cardiologists use to manage patients with this condition, which are referred to as the “four pillars” of heart failure management. These medications work together to reduce the amount of stress placed on the heart and to create an environment that helps a weakened heart pump blood more efficiently throughout the body.

Thanks to these four medication types, millions of patients with dilated, weak hearts are living much longer with a higher quality of life and staying out of the hospital. Some of these medications are also used for patients with stiffened hearts, but there is a lot of ongoing research to better understand how to take care of patients with that kind of heart failure.

Despite the use of medications to treat dilated, weak hearts, some patients suffer from continued weakening of the heart muscle and progress to end-stage, or advanced, heart failure. When this happens, there are only two treatment options available. These options are a mechanical pump or a heart transplant.

Heart transplantation is the gold-standard, preferred treatment option for advanced heart failure that results from a dilated, weakened heart.

In 2023, there were about 4,500 heart transplants in the U.S. and about 2,200 in Europe. On average, patients live well over a decade with a heart transplant, and many will go on to live for 20 to 30 more years.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

Benjamin Franklin famously quipped, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

In an interview with “60 Minutes” in 2013, Cheney said his heart disease was the result of genetics and an unhealthy lifestyle. He admitted that he drank beer, ate fatty foods and also smoked three packs of cigarettes per day.

Millions of people across the U.S. and Europe have a lifestyle that is similar to that of Cheney’s prior to his heart transplant. While heart patients benefit from medications, stents and surgeries, preventive strategies cannot be underestimated.

Almost all major health organizations, including the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and the Department of Health and Human Services, recommend 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise.

This recommendation translates to a brisk walk about 30 minutes per day, five days per week. This level of exercise leads to large increases in survival and preservation of overall health throughout a lifetime.

While Cheney lived through five heart attacks, the goal for patients and their doctors is to avoid the first. Scientific advances in cardiology have led to a dramatic improvement in survival and quality of life for millions of people, but preventive measures are still by far the most effective lifesaving measure.

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Black Student Unions Are Under Pressure – here’s What They Do And How They Help Black Students Find Community

Members of the Black Student Union at Johns Hopkins University pose for a portrait in Baltimore in 2004. JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Getty Images

BY ANTAR A. TICHAVAKUNDA

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION,

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA

BARBARA

Black student unions have been a vital part of many Black college students’ lives for more than 60 years. But since 2024, Black student unions have lost their institutional support, campus space and funding with the rise of anti-diversity, equity and inclusion laws in Utah and Alabama.

Black student unions now face a new wave of pressure, as more than 400 colleges and universities under the Trump administration have rebranded or eliminated programs and centers that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

Amy Lieberman, education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Antar A. Tichavakunda, a scholar of race and higher education, to better understand what Black student unions are and how they influence Black students’ experiences in higher education.

Why are Black student unions important, particularly for Black students?

Aside from Black fraternities and sororities, Black student unions were among the first ethnic student organizations at colleges to be established. A group of students started the first Black student union in 1968 at San Francisco State University. This happened during the Black Campus Movement, when Black college students advocated for themselves, making demands for resources, respect, spaces and programs to support Black student life. At the time, Mariana Waddy, a student at San Francisco State University and the first president of a Black student union, said, “This college had done little for Black students except try to whitewash them.”

Today, these student unions are essential for Black student life on college campuses. They offer a place of belonging, where Black students can figuratively exhale from a predominately white campus or student environment. Black student life on campus isn’t a given – just because there are Black students, it doesn’t mean there is a Black student community. These unions allow Black students to come together as a community.

What do these unions look like and do, day to day?

Black student unions largely operate independently. They have various events, like cookouts and parties. If a campus is dealing with an issue or some kind of racist occurrence, for example, Black student union leaders will come to the forefront to be an advocate for Black students. They try to engage with students and university leaders on whatever is happening.

How are political pressure and policy shifts influencing these unions?

The University of Utah and the University of Alabama announced in 2024 that they would no longer fund or support their schools’ Black student unions. Universities typically give these unions a certain amount of money, as they do with other student-led groups. With this funding pulled, it is going to make it harder for Black student unions to exist. Where are they going to meet? Will they have to pay for a place to meet off campus?

And if you want to encourage students to come to Black student events, you will likely want to have food for them. If you want to arrange a trip to a conference or host a movie night, those things cost money and require space.

These cuts have drained time, energy and resources from Black student unions.

Now, Black student leaders are filling gaps where funding, staff, spaces and infrastructure used to exist to support and meet the needs of Black student life.

The Trump administration’s attempts to remove funding from and shut down diversity, equity and inclusion programs could lead Black student union leaders to act as unpaid diversity workers if and when these positions at universities are eliminated.

This work also involves organizing social events and support services for Black students. It means continuing to creatively advocate for Black student needs.

Full-time students leading Black student unions now find themselves doing unpaid labor that helps sustain Black communities and the universities that profit from them.

How exactly are universities profiting from Black student unions’ work?

Here’s one example: I observed a university tapping student leaders from a Black engineering group to represent the university’s school of engineering at public events. These leaders might have had to skip class or lose study time to be available for this event. But the university wanted other people, including prospective Black students, to know that there were already Black students at this school.

Black students in these positions have mentioned to me that sometimes administrators will pressure them to show up for panels and other events as a form of marketing. I think most of these requests are well-meaning. But I also know that Black student representatives and leaders place pressure on themselves to also show up for their community and school.

Their presence and visibility help universities have a more welcoming environment. They have an active, vibrant community because of Black student unions and leaders. Organizations like this create community and lead to more positive experiences for students. This joy can lead to more students staying in school.

If I am a Black parent touring a college with my child and don’t see any Black students participating in the tour or on campus, that sends a message to a prospective Black student – will I, or my child, belong here?

What message are Black student unions receiving with these policy shifts?

I think the message to Black student unions is that you all have to fend for yourselves. That is what inequality is all about, having different expectations for different students.

Cuts to diversity, equity and inclusion work signals to Black students that they are not valued and that, if they want to have meaningful experiences as a Black student community, they will have to do this work themselves. You can discern an institution’s values in their budget priorities. If there is nothing being materially invested in Black students, how can you say you support them?

My research shows that Black students act independently to achieve their goals. They create places of joy and belonging for themselves and others, navigating institutions to create full, dynamic lives.

Black students have historically played the cards they were dealt, even if they were inequitable. They have worked to create traditions and lives within and outside of higher education’s campus walls. Some Black student unions may look different going forward, but I have full faith they will continue.

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