James' World 2

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Narcissistic leaders both fascinate and repel us. They can be charming, act assertively, and articulate visions that may inspire confidence, especially in times of uncertainty. This can attract many followers. In 1931 Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, echoed this belief: “[Narcissists] impress others as being ‘personalities’; they are especially suited to act as a support for others, to take on the role of leaders and to give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or to damage the established state of affairs.”

But narcissists famously have a dark side as well that includes unethical, autocratic, and aggressive behavior. They often stifle collaboration and dismiss expert advice. Given those trade-offs, why do narcissists often end up in positions of leadership, and who is drawn to them? My colleague Barbara Nevicka, an organizational psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, and I set up the Childhood Leadership Study to investigate this question in childhood, when narcissistic leadership first emerges. We conducted fine-grained assessments of leadership behavior in 332 children aged seven to 14—and found patterns both in the preference for these leaders and in the relationships that leaders and followers form.

Narcissism is a personality trait characterized by feelings of grandiosity, a sense of entitlement, and a craving for respect and admiration. It’s part of what psychologists call the “dark triad” of personality traits—along with psychopathy and Machiavellianism, or cold, strategic manipulation for personal gain. In adulthood, narcissism may develop into a narcissistic personality disorder. About 6 percent of people in the U.S. meet the criteria for this disorder at some point in their lives, though they may not receive a formal diagnosis. Our research focuses on children with above-average narcissism levels because narcissistic personality disorder is usually not formally diagnosed before adulthood.

The personality trait of narcissism develops in childhood and can be measured from middle childhood, around age seven. Although some degree of narcissism is typical in children this age, markedly higher levels compared with peers may signal a narcissistic personality. Middle childhood is also when leadership tendencies take shape and become increasingly evident. From age nine, children spend about 75 percent of their free time at school in groups of three or more peers, allowing them to form leader-follower relationships. Leadership on the playground, then, provides a blueprint for leadership in politics and beyond.

Our study shows that narcissistic children often emerge as leaders in their classrooms. When we asked children to nominate classmates who they perceived to be leaders, kids in 96 percent of the classrooms tended to pick children with more narcissistic tendencies. It seems that narcissistic children embody the qualities their peers associate with leadership.

But are narcissistic children better leaders? We assigned children to three-person groups and randomly designated one child as the leader to find out. The groups did a collaborative task, with the leader responsible for the decision-making process. Unsurprisingly, more narcissistic children perceived themselves as better leaders. Yet compared with their less narcissistic peers, they did not lead their group to perform better, exhibit stronger leadership (such as by delegating tasks), or receive higher ratings from their group members.

This finding ties in with research among adults. A meta-analysis by Emily Grijalva, an organizational psychologist at the University at Buffalo, shows that narcissistic adults tend to emerge as leaders but don’t excel in those roles.

We suspected that narcissistic traits in leaders are more attractive to some people than others. So we zoomed in on children with low self-esteem—those who feel unsatisfied with themselves and are often shy and withdrawn. We found that when followers with low self-esteem had a narcissistic leader, they perceived the leader as more effective and were more likely to endorse them for future leadership roles than did their peers with higher self-esteem. What’s more, they felt more included in the group, perceived greater group cohesion, felt better about themselves, and were more inclusive toward others when they had a narcissistic leader.

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The market volatility experienced in early April may have left some investors feeling a bit unnerved.

While many tried-and-true strategies, such as “stay the course,” are still relevant today, there are three additional strategies available to investors that may help take the sting out of lower retirement and investment balances.

1. Retirees: Turn off systematic withdrawal plans

Many retirees use systematic withdrawal plans (SWPs) to generate monthly income. These plans automatically liquidate a specified dollar amount of mutual fund investments and deposit the cash proceeds into a money market or other interest-bearing account.

In most markets, these arrangements work fine, but during a sharp market decline, retirees must be wary of “reverse dollar-cost averaging.” Lower mutual fund values mean an increasing number of units need to be sold to generate the specified amount of monthly income.

As a result, when the markets recover, there are fewer units participating in future appreciation.

We suggest pausing these programs for now and taking a deliberate approach to generating cash flow. Consider that the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index, which is a common benchmark used to evaluate the bond market, has a positive year-to-date return through April 16, 2025.

Retirees in need of monthly income may be well served by cashing in a larger portion of bond investments, giving stock investments that may be struggling more time to recover.

At first glance, this strategy may sound counterintuitive because it creates a more aggressive asset allocation at a time when most retirees are looking to derisk their portfolios.

To be clear, a wholesale change to individual portfolios is not what we are recommending. Rather, investors may want to consider a short-term fix to avoid selling stocks at the worst possible time — immediately after they have dropped in value.

Of course, if the markets begin to decline rapidly again, more drastic measures may be necessary to ensure sustainable cash flow throughout one’s lifetime.

2. Wealth accumulators: Cherry-pick specific investments for Roth conversions

Investors who are saving for retirement may have a traditional IRA or an employer-sponsored retirement plan such as a 401(k) or 403(b). When these balances are substantially lower may be an ideal time to consider a Roth conversion.

Conversions trigger an immediate income tax liability, but the future growth accumulates income tax-free.

Importantly, the Roth IRA conversion does not have to be an all-or-nothing decision. In fact, investors can choose the portion of the account and, in most cases, the specific securities they wish to convert.

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In case you wondered what all the political noise is about!

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Project 2025 provides a roadmap for “the next conservative President” to downsize the federal government and fundamentally change how it works, including the tax system, immigration enforcement, social welfare programs, and energy policy, particularly those designed to address climate change.

It also wades deeply into the culture war that has been dividing the country. Project 2025 calls for abolishing the teaching of “‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’” in public schools, and “deleting” terms such as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “gender equity,” and “reproductive health” from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant … and piece of legislation that exists.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has sought to tie Donald Trump to the 887-page book, which was written in part by the former president’s aides. Harris and Democrats refer to the plan as “Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” and cite it as evidence (not always accurately) of what Trump will do as president, particularly on hot-button issues such as Social Security, Medicare, and abortion.

For his part, Trump has claimed he knows nothing about the plan, and his campaign said that Project 2025 “should not be associated with the campaign.”

Here, we take a look at the plan: what’s in it, who wrote it and what the candidates have said about it.

Who funded and wrote Project 2025?

The project is being led and funded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank founded in 1973. In addition to Heritage, there are more than 100 conservative organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board. Among those “coalition partners” are the Center for Immigration Studies, Moms for Liberty, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Tea Party Patriots, Turning Point USA, and America First Legal Foundation, which is headed by Stephen Miller, a former Trump senior adviser.

The project’s policy agenda was published online as a book titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The book has 30 chapters, each credited to one or more of its 35 primary authors and editors — although the final product includes input from “hundreds of contributors,” the project’s organizers said in a press release.

It’s the ninth edition in the “Mandate for Leadership” series, the first of which was published in 1981, during the Reagan administration. According to its authors, earlier editions have had success in influencing government policies.

“The Reagan administration implemented nearly half of the ideas included in the first edition by the end of his first year in office, while the Trump administration embraced nearly 64% of the 2016 edition’s policy solutions after one year,” the Heritage Foundation said in a press release announcing Project 2025.

Some of the notable authors of this most recent version include Dr. Ben Carson, Christopher Miller, and Russ Vought, who are all former Cabinet secretaries under Trump. Carson, who wrote the book’s chapter on housing, was the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Miller, who wrote the chapter on defense, was an acting secretary of the Department of Defense; and Vought, who directed the Office of Management and Budget, wrote the chapter about the executive office of the U.S. president.

Ken Cuccinelli, who was a deputy secretary for Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, and Peter Navarro, Trump’s White House adviser on trade, also penned book chapters.

“In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025,” a CNN review found.

The book is one of “four pillars” that will be available to the next conservative president. The other pillars are:

• A personnel database, which will allow Project 2025 coalition members to “review and voice their recommendations” for appointments.

• A “Presidential Administration Academy” to teach new hires “how the government functions and how to function in government.”

• A second document — “the Playbook” — which will include “transition plans” to allow the next president to implement plans quickly.

What does Project 2025 propose?

Project 2025 attempts to put “in one place a consensus view of how major federal agencies must be governed.”

We cannot summarize all of its proposals, but here are some examples:

Abortion: Project 2025 describes the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, as “just the beginning.”

“Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America,” the book states. “In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.”

The book calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to protect “the health and well-being of all Americans,” beginning at conception, and to end mandatory health insurance coverage of Ella, an emergency contraceptive that Project 2025 describes as a “potential abortifacient.” It also advocates using an 1873 anti-vice law to block abortion pills from being sent via the mail. (More about that later.)

The book also calls for ending federal funding for “Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers and redirect[ing] funding to health centers that provide real health care to women.” As we have written before, Planned Parenthood provides more than abortion services. In its 2022-2023 annual report, Planned Parenthood said it provided 4.6 million tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, 2.25 million contraception services, 464,021 cancer screenings and prevention services (mostly breast exams and Pap tests), and 1.1 million pregnancy tests and prenatal services.

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In the Trump administration’s ongoing race to make the U.S. poorer, sicker, and dumber, one more stomp on the accelerator comes from cuts aimed against its federal advisory committees. Whether on infectious diseases or space exploration, these panels of experts are the unpaid brains behind the brawn of the U.S. government.

With its signature disdain for anything smacking of smarts or competence, the Trump administration now aims to destroy or neutralize them. In a February 19 executive order, Donald Trump directed his staff to compile a list of “Federal Advisory Committees that should be terminated on grounds that they are unnecessary.” The order directly terminated the HHS Advisory Committee on Long COVID (a syndrome afflicting 23 million people in the U.S. right now) and the Health Equity Advisory Committee, which sought to help underserved people access care like blood pressure medication or postpartum treatment, through Medicare and Medicaid. Since then NOAA has closed several of its advisory panels, NSF closed a dozen, NASA has consolidated its wildly disparate astrophysics, biological and physical sciences, Earth science, heliophysics and planetary sciences panels into one body, and the U.S. Geological Survey closed its new scientific integrity body, alongside five others at the Department of Interior that included a climate adaptation panel. “This means that you, the public, will be more at-risk of being harmed because the scientific integrity and misconduct issues that were prevalent before will continue to persist,” wrote integrity panel member Jacob Carter. He called the committee’s cancellation, “an indicator that this administration has no intention to uphold scientific evidence in its decisions.”He’s right; contrary to the executive order, these committees matter. Cutting away advisory panels hurts everyone and leaves the U.S. government uninformed when making critical decisions that affect millions of lives, alongside a public left in the dark about what advice agencies do receive. These advisors, a “fifth arm of the government,” have long served as a thorn in the side of polluters and lobbyists, putting them under siege for decades, and doubtless in the gunsights of the giddily for-sale Trump administration. A 2021 Ecology Law Quarterly review found past end runs around advisory committees were linked to lead pollution, fracking contamination of drinking water, and worse air quality.

Federal advisory committees operate under a 1972 law, which governs the roughly 1,000 expert committees advising federal agencies on evidence-based practices on issues like boating safety or railroad retirement benefits at a yearly cost of $400 million. The panels are a bargain, providing by law “fairly balanced” expert advice that includes disclosing financial conflicts of interest and providing information openly to the public. The best-known examples from the pandemic were those FDA and CDC panels that voted on the safety and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to much attention.

History repeats when it comes to attacks on advisory panels. In 2019, Trump ordered a one-third cut in the number of them. The order took aim at science panels at NASA, the NSF, and the Energy Department, in particular. The first Trump administration’s sheer incompetence kept many of those kinds of closures at bay. His then EPA chief resorted to stuffing a clean air panel with industry stooges instead, and an antiabortion advocates panel lacking any scientific credibility was whipped up to eliminate fetal tissue research at NIH.

Now, however, the crush of executive orders and disregard for Congress seen in the first 100 days of the new regime make things look even more dire. The dangerous, unqualified HHS chief Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has forced out top FDA vaccine official Peter Marks, who oversaw the vaccine panel that held steadily to public health principles during the pandemic, refusing to bend to Trump’s demand for an “October Surprise” vaccine to save himself in the 2020 election. All Department of Homeland Security advisory committees members were fired in January, halting a probe into a massive Chinese breach of U.S. telecommunications infrastructure.

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The US Department of Education is resuming collection efforts on defaulted student loans starting on Monday. If you’re more than nine months behind on your student loan payments, that means your wages could be garnished as soon as this summer.

It may sound scary, but wage garnishment to pay off a debt isn’t new. Currently, some Americans have their wages garnished to pay back taxes, child support, and other debt, including student loans. It just might feel “new” since there were protections in place to allow borrowers in default time to catch up since the COVID-19 pandemic. But starting in May, payments will begin to come due.

“This is actually the norm,” said Elaine Rubin, a student loan expert and corporate communications director for Edvisors. “If a loan is in default, then actions will be taken to then collect on the default loan.”

Student loans are considered in default after you’ve missed 270 days of payments (excluding payment pauses). It’s estimated that 5 million borrowers are in default and will have their loans sent to collections next week. If you’re one of them, here’s what you need to know.

When will the government start garnishing wages for student debt?

There’s less than a week left to pull your loans out of default, with the administration indicating it plans to restart collection efforts on May 5. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll see a hit to your paycheck starting next week. The Department of Education has to notify you 30 days ahead of your wage garnishment.

Expect your defaulted student loan account to move from your current servicer to a private collections agency around the beginning of May and wage garnishment to begin about one month later, Rubin explained.

Will SAVE borrowers have their wages garnished? 

There’s a lot of confusion on Reddit and social media about how wage garnishment will affect SAVE borrowers. If you’re enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, your loans have been placed in an administrative forbearance since last summer. With SAVE on hold, millions of borrowers have not been required to make payments, which has led to some wondering if that means their loans are in default.

“It is confusing, because they haven’t been making a payment and believe that it could be at risk of defaulting,” said Rubin. “If you’re not required to make a payment because you’re in an approved forbearance, a deferment, or you actually have a $0 IDR payment, technically, you’re making a payment in that situation.”

The best way to check if your loans are in default is to visit StudentAid.gov or your loan servicer’s website to check your loan standing.

How will I know if my wages are being garnished?

You can check to see your current loan standing on the StudentAid.gov website or by logging into your loan servicer’s website. If your loans are in default and the Department of Education begins the collections process on your debt, you’ll receive a letter in the mail from the department 30 days in advance. This letter will contain your options, including the ability to voluntarily reenter repayment or object to having your wages offset.

How much can the government pull from my paycheck?

The federal government will pull a percentage of your take-home pay (the amount you receive after deductions) to put toward your student loan debt — up to 15%. It won’t take all of your paycheck. Your tax refund or Social Security benefits could also be garnished.

Can I prevent my wages from being garnished?

Yes, there are steps you can take to avoid wage garnishment, but they may not be feasible for everyone.

“As far as 100% preventing it, not everyone is going to be able to do that,” Rubin said. The two best options for most borrowers will be applying for a loan rehabilitation or direct loan consolidation. The third is to pay your loan in full, which Rubin acknowledged will not be possible for most borrowers. 

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