James' World 2

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Earlier this year, I got an Oura ring to track the state of my health. Soon, I was obsessing over my sleep and activity scores. The reports were generally positive except for one: heart rate variability, or HRV. That’s a measure of how much the time between heartbeats changes. Every morning, in bright red, my ring’s app singled out HRV and told me: “Pay attention.”

That didn’t sound good, although I had no idea why. Before wearable fitness watches, rings, and bracelets became so common and started including HRV as a data point, I had never heard of it. Even among heart doctors, its use has been limited. “I don’t think HRV is used in day-to-day clinical medical practice,” says Bryan Wilner, an electrophysiologist at the Baptist Health Miami Cardiac and Vascular Institute. “But it’s gained a lot more popularity in regular consumers with these noninvasive monitors.”

Suddenly, we are all paying attention to HRV. And as reams of data are collected from hundreds of thousands of people like me, the measure has the potential to become a far more significant tool for diagnosis and therapy, although it isn’t there yet.

The average person’s heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute when they’re at rest, but it fluctuates all day long. Standing up after lying down changes your heart rate, as does jogging or fielding stressful questions at work. The time between beats changes, too, and that’s what HRV captures. Unlike arrhythmias, which are potentially dangerous disruptions in the heart’s electrical activity, HRV measures the very slight variation in periods—a matter of milliseconds—between consecutive heartbeats, tracked over a few minutes or longer.

“There is no specific [HRV] number for what’s bad, what’s good.” —Attila Roka, electrophysiologist

 

Both heart rate and HRV reflect the differing effects of the two branches of the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system, colloquially known as “fight or flight,” increases heart rate; the parasympathetic, or “rest and digest,” slows it down. Generally, the lower a person’s heart rate, the higher their HRV. A high HRV indicates a body that adapts to stressors and can recover more quickly.

It’s a sign of a balanced autonomic nervous system and a higher level of cardiovascular fitness. Low HRV signals the opposite—that the body is less able to adjust to the ups and downs of life. Stress, anxiety, high blood pressure, inadequate sleep, dehydration, and new medicines are among the many things that can lower HRV. Disease can reduce it, too. In people recovering from heart attacks or living with heart failure, low HRV is associated with a higher risk of death and further illness. “HRV is a window into how the autonomic nervous system is interacting with our heart,” Wilner says. Oura states on its app that it flags HRV because it is a sign of stress and recovery.

“There is no specific number for what’s bad, what’s good,” says Attila Roka, an electrophysiologist at the CHI Health Clinic Heart Institute and an assistant professor at Creighton University in Omaha. Anywhere from roughly 20 to 70 milliseconds is considered within normal range. The measure is highly individual, although it generally goes down with age. Mine hovered around an unusual 14 for weeks, and that’s why my ring alerted me.

An electrocardiogram is the gold standard for measuring HRV. Cutting-edge pacemakers and defibrillators monitor it, too, and experts are investigating the use of HRV with heart disease patients to predict the onset of atrial fibrillation (Afib) in time to prevent it, says Pamela Mason, chief of cardiac electrophysiology at UVA Health in Virginia. Afib is an irregular, rapid heart rhythm that can lead to blood clots and other problems. Physicians also use Holter monitors, small devices that patients wear on their chests for a few days, to capture a full picture of cardiac activity, including HRV.

Devices like Apple watches and Oura rings work by looking at pulse fluctuations rather than electrical heart signals. Few studies have examined how accurate these devices are. But what’s more important for the average person, experts say, is the relative change over time. “You need to get a baseline HRV,” Wilner says. “HRV is most powerful when you’re measuring it over several weeks and can see a graphic trend on how it’s being affected by everything that’s going on in your life.”

HRV might one day be used to assess mental health. “If you’re in a constant fight-or-flight kind of state mentally, you’re going to lose heart rate variability,” Mason says. Conditions such as depression and bipolar disorder are likely to be associated with dysregulated nervous system activity. Even among people without medical or psychiatric disorders, studies have found a link between decreasing parasympathetic activity and emotional upset, suggesting HRV tracks psychological states.

Low HRV, in relatively healthy people, does have some remedies. “The best way to improve heart rate variability is exercise,” Mason says, “and it’s going to need to be more strenuous than gentle walks.” Pick up the pace to pick up your HRV. Drinking more fluids—water is good—also helps.

For people like me, Mason’s advice is to not obsess. Instead, consider what you could do to take better care of yourself. Prodded by red HRV alerts, I drank more water and consumed less caffeine, went to bed earlier, and engaged in vigorous exercise more regularly. Since then, my HRV has been higher than 30! Not that I’m obsessing over it.

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Jay Bendt

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Friday afternoon brought a significant development in President Donald Trump’s quest to extra-constitutionally restrict birthright citizenship, when the Supreme Court granted cert in Barbara v. Trump. The case will be heard early next year. Last year’s birthright citizenship case was a technical—but vitally important—dispute around the powers of federal district court judges. This time, the administration is swinging for the fences in an effort to do away with the substance of the 14^th Amendment once and for all. On this week’s Amicus podcast, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the surreal proposition that a case that should never exist is now poised to be taken seriously as a matter of law. A portion of their conversation is excerpted below, edited and condensed for clarity.

Mark Joseph Stern: This is a clean vehicle for the justices to decide whether the Constitution does, in fact, grant birthright citizenship to virtually all people born here. Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in office, on Jan. 20, 2025, that purported to strip birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants who are here on temporary visas, as well as undocumented immigrants moving forward. That, of course, violates the plain text of the 14^th Amendment, a federal statute, and more than 120 years of Supreme Court precedent. But he did it anyway. 

We thought we were going to get a big decision on this last term, but in Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court ended up taking away the nationwide injunctions that had blocked the policy instead. This time around, Barbara v. Trump is a pretty clean shot at the fundamental question on the merits: Can Trump do this? The Justice Department is not trying to fight any kind of procedural or equitable issues here. This was a class action, and the administration accepts that. The lower courts ruled against the government. The administration is saying, “Just give us a win and tell us that we can implement this policy.” So this is the fight: This is the big one we’ve been waiting for after the fake out last year. By the end of June 2026, the Supreme Court will have told us whether or not we still have a 14^th Amendment.

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Finally, we’ll get a decision on the merits here. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Win McNamee/Getty Images, Getty Images Plus, and SupremeCourt.gov.

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The court’s three liberal justices warned of the far-reaching consequences for the structure of the modern government if the majority sided with the Trump administration in the Federal Trade Commission matter.

A decision in the president’s favor, they said, would call into question the constitutionality of job protections extended to leaders of more than two dozen other agencies Congress has charged with protecting consumers, workers, and the environment.

Justice Elena Kagan said such a ruling would “put massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the administration’s lawyer that “you’re asking us to destroy the structure of government” and to take away from Congress its ability to insulate independent agencies from political pressures.

In response, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said that “the sky will not fall” if the justices give the president this new power. “In fact, our entire government will move toward accountability to the people,” he said.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies, and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.

The Supreme Court has generally allowed the firings to take effect through temporary emergency orders. Monday’s case presents the first opportunity for the court to issue a conclusive ruling on the underlying legal questions of Mr. Trump’s firings.

Next month, the justices will separately consider whether the president has the power to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board governor. The justices have allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her post for now, signaling that the central bank may be uniquely insulated from presidential interference because of its history.

At issue on Monday was Mr. Trump’s firing in March of Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the F.T.C. Mr. Trump said he was removing her because she did not align with his agenda, despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Ms. Slaughter promptly sued.

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The Supreme Court in Washington.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times

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Seventeen elements of the periodic table have taken on outsize importance because of their use in smartphones, electric vehicles, medical devices, and other technologies. They’re valued for their special chemistry, which gives them particular magnetic properties and other advantages. These traits come from the unique configuration of the elements’ valence electrons—the outer electrons commonly used in chemical bonds. In the rare earth elements, some of the valence electrons stay close to the atomic nucleus and tend not to interact with the atoms’ outside environment, and so they rarely form bonds. The result is that they have predictable, dependable chemical properties.

Humans have mined about 4.5 million metric tons of rare earth elements so far, and we know of only 90.9 million metric tons left on Earth. At today’s production rates, we will run out of these materials in 60 to 100 years. Efforts are underway, however, to find more deposits of the metals, which aren’t actually especially rare but are difficult to extract because they are usually found in low concentrations along with other elements.

Current mining methods are slow, energy-intensive, and highly damaging to the environment. They generate acidic and radioactive waste, and they leach toxic chemicals into the ground. “We have to figure out ways to do it better and cleaner,” says Justin Wilson, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He and his colleagues recently tested a new way to extract rare earth elements from recycled electronic waste. “I’m optimistic that we can collectively find solutions to these problems as long as the federal government remains committed to providing funding for this research,” Wilson notes.

WHAT ARE THE RARE EARTH ELEMENTS?

These chemicals are mostly the lanthanides, which occupy the second-to-last row of the periodic table, along with scandium and yttrium. Their unique properties arise largely from the configuration of the electrons in a sublevel called the 4f shell. “When I took freshman chemistry, no one ever talked about these elements; they were just the ones at the bottom of the periodic table,” Wilson says. Now their use in electronics “has put them in the spotlight.”

HOW MUCH HAS ALREADY BEEN MINED?

Most of the rare earth elements mined so far have come from China, which leads the world in the infrastructure and expertise to extract these minerals. The major U.S. source is the Mountain Pass deposit in southern California. Given the surging demand for the elements, however, countries around the world are actively looking for new stores of them.

HOW MUCH IS LEFT?

China, too, has the largest known global reserve of rare earth elements, followed by Brazil, India, and Australia. Given the race to discover new deposits, these figures could change. Many countries that had been content to let China lead in rare earth–resource mining before the recent tech boom are increasingly recognizing the importance of local options. This has been especially true in the U.S. since President Donald Trump imposed new tariffs on imports.

IT SEEMS LIKE THERE’S A LOT LEFT. SO WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

Rare earth elements are actually more abundant than precious metals such as platinum and gold. The challenge, however, is finding minable sources of them; they are often present in small amounts and difficult to separate from other elements. Extracting them is a laborious, multistep process

EXTRACTION

• Open-Pit Mining Approach: This technique involves removing ore from the ground, then transporting it to a leaching pond, where chemicals separate out the different metals. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT: The toxic chemicals in the leaching pond can leak into groundwater and contaminate water supplies. The process also produces toxic waste.
• In Situ Leaching Approach: In this method, pipes pump chemicals directly into the ground to flush out rare earth elements. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT: The chemicals are toxic and, as with open-pit mining, can contaminate groundwater. Both methods produce toxic dust, waste gas, and radioactive waste.

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Studio Terp

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Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., criticized the nationwide redistricting fight in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” arguing that the country is going through “a repeat of a history that led to some catastrophic consequences in our previous history.”

Clyburn was asked at the start of the interview whether he agreed with Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who opposed his state’s redistricting and argued that “if you fight fire with fire long enough, all you’re going to have left is ashes.”

“I agree with him entirely,” Clyburn said.

Clyburn pointed to the emergence of Jim Crow after the post-Civil War Reconstruction period ended, saying these racist laws and Supreme Court decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson “made a mockery of democracy.”

“That is what we are approaching today,” he added, asking: “Are we going to continue our pursuit of a more perfect union, or are we going to make a mockery out of this democracy?”

His comments come after the Supreme Court allowed Texas to use a new congressional district map, which could help Republicans gain five House seats in next year’s midterm elections. Texas’ move set off redistricting battles across the country, with state legislators on both sides of the aisle pushing to redraw maps to favor their party.

Separately, Clyburn responded to former first lady Michelle Obama’s comments last month, saying that the U.S. is not ready for a female president.

Asked whether he agreed with Obama, Clyburn said that she “is absolutely correct,” but argued that it did not mean we should stop trying.

“If you look at the history, we demonstrated that we were not ready,” Clyburn said. “These are incredible women who have run: Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and I think that we are getting there. That’s why we can’t afford to turn the clock back.”

He added that “just because it doesn’t seem that we are ready, doesn’t mean we should stop the pursuit.”

“My dad used to tell me all the time, ‘Son, the darkest part of the night is that moment just before dawn.’ And so we may be in a dark moment as it relates to women serving as president, but we may be in that moment just before dawn, where the woman will serve,” he continued. “And in order for that to happen, they have got to run.”

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Rep. James Clyburn

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Where Things Stand

• Boat strike: Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, accused the Pentagon of concealing video of a strike that killed two survivors of an attack on a vessel in the Caribbean because it is “very, very difficult to justify.” Mr. Smith told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s suggestion that releasing the video could “compromise sources and methods” rang hollow after videos of other strikes had been made public. “It seems pretty clear they don’t want to release this video because they don’t want people to see it,” Mr. Smith said. Read more ›

• Kennedy Center: Mr. Trump is scheduled to become the first president to host the Kennedy Center honors on Sunday night. Mr. Trump has largely taken over the institution, installing himself as chairman and personally approving the honorees. Read more ›

• Bessent’s holdings: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he divested from his holdings of thousands of acres of North Dakota soybean farmland to comply with his federal ethics agreement. He drew criticism from ethics watchdogs for being slow to sell the properties, which posed potential conflicts of interest. Read more ›

Trump blasts a Democrat lawmaker for not switching parties after receiving a pardon.

President Trump on Sunday upbraided Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, for not switching parties in his re-election bid after Mr. Trump pardoned him and his wife on bribery charges last week, saying Mr. Cuellar’s decision displayed a “lack of LOYALTY.”

Mr. Cuellar was indicted by a federal grand jury last year on charges that he and his wife had accepted roughly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani oil company and a Mexican bank in exchange for promises that he would use his position in ways that would benefit Azerbaijan and the bank.

In a break from precedent, President Trump takes a starring role at the Kennedy Center Honors.

President Trump is slated to host the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night in an event that will pay tribute to the actors Sylvester Stallone and Michael Crawford, the singers Gloria Gaynor and George Strait, and the band Kiss.

While past presidents have typically watched from a designated box in the opera house of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Trump will be the first president to host the event, putting his administration’s cultural takeover of Washington and its institutions on vivid display.

Democrats call for releasing classified video of deadly boat attacks.

Top Democrats called on Sunday for the release of classified video of the U.S. military’s first operation targeting a boat in the Caribbean in early September, an attack that has faced heavy scrutiny in part for its follow-up strike that killed two survivors.

Democrats and Republicans have offered starkly different descriptions of the video, which was seen by some members of Congress but has not been made public. Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said it was “simply not accurate” that the video of the Sept. 2 strike on the boat carrying 11 individuals showed the survivors trying to flip a capsized boat, rescue its cargo, and continue trafficking drugs, as Republicans in Congress have maintained.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not committed to releasing the full video of a strike that killed two survivors of an attack on a vessel in the Caribbean.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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