James' World 2

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As more than 50,000 residents of Garden Grove, Calif., returned home on Tuesday and Wednesday after a narrowly averted chemical crisis at an aerospace plant, a rupture at a separate chemical tank in Washington State claimed two lives and left nine people missing and presumed dead.

The back-to-back incidents are among several high-profile disasters at chemical plants in the past year. And a Trump administration proposal to roll back federal regulations that are meant to guard against such accidents means they could become more frequent, threatening surrounding communities and on-site workers.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed repealing a 2024 rule that tightened safeguards that were designed to prevent explosions and the release of toxic chemicals at chemical plants and refineries. The rollback, which is opposed by California’s attorney general, would reduce requirements for facilities to implement safer technologies, involve employees in safety planning, and conduct third-party audits after an accident. The plan would also erase a mandate that facilities consider climate-related disasters such as floods when making emergency plans.

Without the rule, many of these details would be left to the discretion of individual companies and their safety culture. And that, experts say, means that accidents will keep happening.

“There is just not enough of that kind of planning that goes on,” says Philip Price, a retired senior research scientist and chemist in Maryland, who has worked on chemical incident investigations.

The rule hasn’t been repealed yet; a call for public comment on the proposal to repeal it just closed. The rule itself hasn’t yet been fully implemented, however, says Emma Cheuse, an attorney for the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice, which opposes the rollback.

“Some of the key provisions in the rule have compliance deadlines that were going to kick in in May 2027, so EPA is proposing to undo and weaken provisions in advance of those requirements,” Cheuse says.

The Trump administration has argued that the 2024 stipulations that require disclosures about hazardous chemicals have made chemical facilities more vulnerable to attacks and that the rule has been costly and burdensome for businesses.

The twin crises in the past week have sparked questions over safety rules for chemical plants and processing facilities. The one in southern California began at the GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems plant on May 22, when temperatures spiked inside a tank containing around 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, raising the risk that the liquid, which is used in making plexiglass, would volatilize into a gas and cause a massive explosion. In a press conference on May 25, Orange County Fire Authority officials said that a valve in the tank’s cooling system failed, leading to the potential explosion. Methyl methacrylate can cause damage to the skin and respiratory system. Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University, who has developed monitoring and response plans after chemical accidents, explains that because of the chemical’s nature, some people who are exposed to even small amounts will develop serious allergic reactions.

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Every evening at about 6:30 p.m., I pour my toddler a sippy cup of cold milk and we curl up on the couch next to my husband. “Mama sit!” he says, his way of asking to sit on my lap as he enjoys his milk and a movie of his choosing. It’s a joyful moment of family time, a carefree and cozy break at the end of our busy days.

When I learned that the Food and Drug Administration paused its quality testing on milk, my mind immediately went to our sweet family ritual. It rocked me. The testing pause comes after we learned that bird flu is spreading in dairy cows, traces of the killed virus in our commercial milk supply, which was another development that caused a spike in my anxiety and a late-night message to our pediatrician. I wondered what exactly this pause in testing meant, in the literal sense, and how long it would go on. I worried I would now spend that precious family time concerned about what was in my kid’s milk.

This particular threat is just one of many. From increasing grocery prices, shuttering Head Start programs, abortion bans that make pregnancy more dangerous, bringing back measles, not to mention the threat of gun violence in schools — there are many large ways that the Trump administration has made parents’ lives more difficult — and comparatively, concern over a sippy cup of milk might seem small.

But that smallness is part of what makes this new concern feel so particularly insidious.

Milk is a drink that, for many children, becomes an extension of the comforting bond they formed with their parent through breast- or bottle-feeding, a bridge from baby- to toddlerhood. I relish my son’s faint, milky breath before bedtime, and when I read about the FDA pause, my initial panic came in part from the fear that this tether to his early moments would be severed too soon.

These seemingly small issues like the milk testing are the ones that make the everyday lived experience of parenting feel less safe — and less joyful. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

Brittney Pagone, a former nurse and current stay-at-home mom who runs the Instagram page PAMoms4Change, felt a similar panic. The news alarmed her so much, she says, that she no longer plans to wean her nearly 1-year-old daughter, opting to breastfeed for longer rather than switching to whole milk. This is a privilege, she knows; she has both the time and the ability to breastfeed her daughter, two things many moms don’t have.

The confusion Pagone felt with this news, she says, is just another part of parenting under the current Trump administration, which is currently brewing plans to boost the national birth rate. Pagone finds the administration’s push for families to have more children, at the same time eliminating the safety nets that make it feasible, utterly infuriating.

The decision to breastfeed longer than she’d planned isn’t the only one Pagone has felt forced into because of the Trump administration. Her family recently took a vacation that was close enough to Texas that she requested her infant be vaccinated for measles early.

Meanwhile, the president, who has contemplated giving people $5,000 per child to encourage larger families, has taken to billing himself as the “fertilization president.” And as we struggle to navigate what feels like an increasingly dangerous environment for our children, the government goads us to have more.

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Experts are reassuring, but for moms like me, the FDA pause on milk testing is just one more way parenting feels less safe — and less joyful — right now.

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The House on Wednesday voted to direct President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from the conflict with Iran or win approval from Congress to continue the war, after four Republicans sided with Democrats in a striking sign of growing opposition to a military campaign now in its fourth month.

Adoption of the resolution was a remarkable rebuke to Mr. Trump and his handling of the conflict, after he has repeatedly dismissed any effort by Congress to curb his power and as the G.O.P. has largely ceded its prerogatives to do so, deferring to him time and again. Republicans had abruptly postponed the vote two weeks ago, recognizing that they did not have sufficient votes to defeat the measure and wanting to spare themselves and the president the affront.

But they made no headway over the ensuing days in winning converts, as the conflict has dragged on and Mr. Trump has made little progress toward ending it. G.O.P. leaders were unable to delay the vote any longer because Democrats had invoked the War Powers Resolution, which requires consideration of such measures within a limited period of time.

The move was also the latest reflection of divisions between Republicans in Congress and the president on a range of issues as their interests diverge in the run-up to the midterm congressional elections. It came after Senate Republicans have in recent days, forced Mr. Trump to abandon his request for $1 billion in security funding for his ballroom project and a plan that the Justice Department announced to create a federal fund to pay claimants who accuse the government of having victimized them.

The vote was 215 to 208 to adopt the war powers resolution, sending it to the Senate. Even if it were to pass both chambers, the ability of lawmakers to force a president to withdraw troops remains a contested legal question, and Mr. Trump and his senior aides have dismissed any effort by Congress to limit his war powers as unconstitutional.

But the vote in the House, and a similar one in the Senate last month, when a handful of G.O.P. defectors broke from the president and opposed the war, indicate an increasing willingness by some members of the president’s party to pressure him to end a conflict that a majority of Americans say is not worth the costs.

Republican Representatives Tom Barrett of Michigan, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky crossed party lines to vote with Democrats in favor of the resolution. Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, who had previously opposed similar measures, switched his position to support it.

Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee who led the measure, praised its Republican supporters for standing up to a president who has in recent weeks sought political retribution against members of his party who have bucked him, including Mr. Massie.

Moments after the vote, he said the Republican defectors “had the wherewithal to search within themselves to do the right thing.”

Though the few defections were notable, almost every Republican voted against the resolution. Most of them have accepted the Trump administration’s claim that the initial operation had concluded and that the most recent strikes in Iran were necessary acts of self-defense, arguing that gave him full power as the commander in chief to order American troops to respond.

Republican lawmakers in the House had been able to maintain enough unity to ward off previous attempts to limit Mr. Trump’s authority.

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The vote on Wednesday was the latest reflection of divisions between Republicans in Congress and President Trump on a range of issues as their interests diverge in the run-up to the midterm congressional elections. Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

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The Trump administration’s plan to offer plutonium from dismantled Cold War–era nuclear weapons to private energy companies is drawing criticism from experts who say it makes little economic sense and presents a national security threat.

There are currently no operational nuclear reactors in the country that are built to use plutonium-derived fuel. Instead, nuclear power plants in the U.S. are powered by a mixture of two uranium isotopes. A small portion, usually around 5 percent, of that fuel is uranium 235, which can also be used to make nuclear weapons. The majority is uranium 238, which cannot sustain a nuclear fission reaction on its own. Because of that balance, if some of this fuel were to fall into the wrong hands, it would be enormously difficult to weaponize, says Scott Roecker, vice president of nuclear materials security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing nuclear catastrophe.

“The most difficult step in getting a nuclear weapon is having enough of that material,” he explains. “The U.S. government has spent probably billions of dollars over the last several decades to remove highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium from countries that don’t need it.”

Plutonium, meanwhile, is considered a human-made element and is a by-product of the reactions that take place inside nuclear reactors. As uranium 238 is bombarded with neutrons inside the reactor, the molecules absorb some of these particles and become the heavier uranium 239, which rapidly decays and eventually becomes extremely radioactive plutonium.

That plutonium can be mixed back with uranium to be used as fuel in specific nuclear reactors called mixed oxide reactors. The U.S. abandoned mixed oxide reactors in the 1970s because they were both difficult and expensive to run. These kinds of reactors do exist elsewhere, though—in Japan, Russia, and France—but those countries have encountered their own problems with the reactors, Roecker says.

“In France, the government’s subsidizing that process,” he says. “Only I think 1 percent of the uranium that’s actually reprocessed is being reused. And in Japan, it’s cost the country billions of dollars and has still not started operation, and who knows if it actually ever will.”

The U.S. Department of Energy has defended the plan, saying the private sector could play a vital role in advancing U.S. nuclear power infrastructure. Ted Garrish, assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy, said in April that decommissioned nuclear fuel “represents an immense, untapped energy resource for the United States.”

“The Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program is anticipated to help companies unlock the next level of private funding to broaden domestic nuclear fuel supplies, spur innovation on American recycling technologies, and unlock private sector funding to fuel the nation’s nuclear renaissance,” said a DOE spokesperson in a statement, adding that five companies have been selected to take part in the program.

Aside from the concern over cost and feasibility, other experts point out that keeping plutonium secure is much more difficult than doing so with typical uranium-based nuclear fuel. Daniel Speyer, a professor of nuclear power plant systems at New York University, says he isn’t convinced that energy start-ups could properly store plutonium. Even if the material is mixed back with uranium, separating the two to isolate the highly fissile material isn’t so difficult as to be impossible, which introduces a clear security threat, he says.

“It’s not something that a small organization really probably could do, but if you give them plutonium in purer form, I think it’s almost a trivial act to make a bomb,” he says. “A simple atomic bomb is not difficult to make.”

The DOE says that any company selected to receive the Cold War–era plutonium will have to show a deep understanding of the technology involved, as well as robust security plans and regulatory compliance. The plan has also met some pushback on Capitol Hill, however. Last September, Democratic senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts and two Democratic congressional representatives sent a letter to President Donald Trump raising concerns over the risk to national security.

“The transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists,” they wrote.

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Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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I’ve been writing about travel for years, and I’ll admit to being a travel addict. The moment I set foot in an airport, I smile. As a nomad by vocation, I’ve always been aware of the formative and educational value of travel: discovering new destinations opens the mind; stimulates curiosity, creativity, and our imaginations; exposes us to different ways of life; teaches tolerance; and trains us to live lightly. When in transit, you can achieve an almost Zen-like attitude when it comes to possessions and mishaps.

But a different aspect of travel has been highlighted by several recent studies: Travel is also good for the body, according to a study published in the Journal of Travel Research, if it’s done the right way. We’re not talking about the weight-training benefits of lifting suitcases, but how travel more broadly can have a positive impact on our overall health, while preventing premature aging. In short, it’s a longevity-boosting practice that can extend our lives while benefiting our mental health. But how? And why? And are there any tips and tricks for planning and executing the perfect anti-aging trip?

A new study claims that traveling extends life

Conducted by Fangli Hu, a PhD candidate at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, the study argues that instead of retinol creams, travel may be the best way to combat premature aging.

“Tourism isn’t just about leisure and recreation,” says Hu. “It could also contribute to people’s physical and mental health.” In short, travel could become a real form of therapy. “Tourism typically exposes people to new surroundings and relaxing activities, and novel settings can stimulate stress responses and elevate metabolic rates, positively influencing metabolic activities and the body’s self-organizing capabilities. These contexts may also trigger an adaptive immune system response,” the ECU Newsroom reported in a story covering the study.

4 major longevity benefits of travel

Travel encourages socializing, which keeps our brains young

Much research regarding the Blue Zones of the world, where the social calendars of centenarians are packed, points to one conclusion: A rich social life is one of the keys to a long, healthy life. Travel provides opportunities to meet people, learn languages, and try new activities. All of this creates new pathways between the brain’s neurons, improving cerebral neuroplasticity and preventing neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia. It’s clear that these rewards are part of why many people choose to travel. According to a survey conducted by Amadeus, 41% of travelers hope to return home with a “calmer nervous system,” while others describe their goal as having a “refreshed brain.”

It offers new opportunities for physical activity

When traveling, we often try our hand at new activities: we go for walks, ski, hike, and climb mountains; at a resort, we might try aqua aerobics or yoga; at the beach, we’ll swim, stand-up paddleboard, surf, or join a windsurfing class. The combination of physical activity and being in the great outdoors gives the body a boost of vitality. Exercise also strengthens muscles that lose mass with age, helping us stay strong and flexible.

Travel strengthens the immune system and improves circulation

“Participating in [physical] activities could enhance the body’s immune function and self-defense capabilities, bolstering its hardiness to external risks. Physical exercise may also improve blood circulation, expedite nutrient transport, and aid waste elimination to collectively maintain an active self-healing system. Moderate exercise is beneficial to the bones, muscles, and joints in addition to supporting the body’s anti–wear-and-tear system,” says Hu.

Travel lowers stress (and cortisol) levels

According to the study, leisure travel can also help alleviate chronic stress, one of the key factors in premature aging. Stepping away from our usual routines in a different setting, far from our commitments and deadlines, can give us a sense of calm, detachment, and tranquility. Ideally, this will take place immersed in nature, the quintessential stress-relieving environment. In those situations, levels of stress hormone cortisol drop while those of serotonin and endorphins rise. The important thing is to be able to completely unplug, leaving worries at home. Stress-relieving travel can also slow the shortening of telomeres, one of the indicators of biological age.

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Photographed by Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, September 2012

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On Friday, a federal judge in Florida took a motion from 35 former federal judges very seriously. She ordered President Trump to respond to their request that she reopen a case the administration had used as a vehicle to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate his allies and to shield him from tax audits and liabilities.

The former judges said the asserted settlement of the case was the product of collusion and fraud. That argument has been made far and wide, but it may have taken on special force coming from people who, as they put it in their motion, “have dedicated their professional lives to the administration of justice.”

It is possible, of course, that the judge overseeing the case, Kathleen Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami, would have taken similar actions without outside prompting or spurred by someone else’s filing. But she seemed to welcome a motion from her former peers.

‘The Federal Judges Are Infuriated’

Even larger groups of former judges have filed supporting briefs in other cases.

In a Supreme Court case on protections for immigrants, more than 175 former judges filed a brief in March arguing that the court’s emergency orders do not count as precedent binding lower courts if the justices did not give reasons. Recent emergency orders have tended to come with explanations.

In May, more than 100 former judges urged the federal appeals court in Boston to address what they called a pattern of abuse by immigration officials, including moving detained immigrants around the country to thwart court challenges and “a broader pattern of disrespect by ICE for judicial process and orders.” The case is pending.

Harold Koh, a professor and former dean of Yale Law School, is among the lawyers for the former judges in the Boston case.

“I thought we’d get about 20 judges, which is still impressive, and instead we got 135,” he said, adding that the surge of interest was driven by a threat to the rule of law.

“This is no longer about ICE versus the detainees,” Professor Koh said. “It’s about ICE versus the courts. The federal judges are infuriated.”

Perhaps the most prominent of the retired judges, Michael Luttig, signed all three of those briefs. Judge Luttig was appointed to a federal appeals court by President George H.W. Bush, served for 15 years, and was considered for a seat on the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush.

He is now a harsh critic of the Trump administration, and he said current and former judges must speak up.

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President Trump at the White House last month. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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