The moon is going nuclear. On Tuesday, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy announced a commitment to build a fission reactor on the lunar surface.
NASA has been exploring nuclear power for the moon for years, but the endeavor got a boost late last year in an order from President Donald Trump to build one to ensure “American space superiority.”
The reactor will be capable of operating “for years without the need to refuel,” according to NASA. It will provide power for the agency’s Artemis program, which seeks to establish a long-term human presence on the moon—and eventually Mars.
“America is committed to returning to the Moon, building the infrastructure to stay, and making the investments required for the next giant leap to Mars and beyond,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in a statement.
Nuclear power may be an ideal fuel source in the sometimes dark, cold moon environment. While many lunar landers are equipped with batteries and solar panels to keep them running for the length of their mission, they ultimately run out of fuel—either because of a lack of sunlight as the moon turns on its axis or because their batteries die.
The space agency’s partnership with the DOE could help speed NASA’s efforts to build moon-ready reactors. Aside from any technical hurdles, putting a nuclear reactor on the moon will require a significant amount of engineering to make sure it works as desired on the lunar surface.
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A 2024 concept image of NASA’s fission surface power system for the moon. NASA
The Sun is by far the dominant body in our Solar System in many ways: in terms of size, mass, and energy, but also for generating the effects of space weather through the rapid motion of many charged particles.
Most commonly, we learn about solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and those events do indeed create the majority of auroral displays that occur here on Earth: the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis, in particular.
However, there’s a third class of space weather event that is much rarer: solar radiation storms. The last major one was in 2003, but a new one in January of 2026 just triggered a spectacular auroral show. Here’s why.
Starting on the night of January 19, 2026, planet Earth was treated to a global show that had only been seen once before in the 21st century: a spectacular auroral display that wasn’t triggered by a solar flare or by a coronal mass ejection, but instead by a completely different form of space weather known as a solar radiation storm. Whereas solar flares normally involve the ejection of plasma from the Sun’s photosphere and coronal mass ejections typically involve accelerated plasma particles from the Sun’s corona, a solar radiation storm is simply an intensification of the charged ions normally emitted by the Sun as part of the solar wind. Only, in a radiation storm, both the density and speed of the emitted particles get greatly enhanced.
We’re currently still in the peak years of our current sunspot cycle: the 11-year solar cycle that’s been tracked for centuries, where “peak years” see 100+ sunspots on the Sun while “valley years” see a largely featureless Sun. While several notable auroral displays have graced Earth in recent years, there’s only been one other severe (S4 or higher-class) solar radiation storm this century: back in 2003. Whereas most space weather events take around 3-4 days to traverse the Sun-Earth distance, the particles ejected from the Sun early on January 19, 2026 (UTC) were already triggering spectacular auroral displays less than 24 hours later. Here’s the science of how it all happened, and what dangers — and displays — such events hold in store for our world.
The solar corona, as shown here, is imaged out to 25 solar radii during the 2006 total solar eclipse. The longer the duration of a total solar eclipse, the darker the sky becomes, and the better the corona and background astronomical objects can be seen. In truth, the Sun’s atmosphere even encompasses the Earth and the entirety of the Solar System. The solar wind, as well as many other Sun-driven features, extend out beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Credit: Martin Antoš, Hana Druckmüllerová, Miloslav Druckmüller
The first thing you should understand — and not only people, but even most physicists, don’t fully appreciate this — is that the Earth, and all of the planets in the Solar System, are actually inside the atmosphere of the Sun. We usually think about the Sun as being a ball of plasma with a wispy, extended atmosphere and a halo-like corona surrounding it, but those are only the locations where the plasma density is the greatest. In reality, the Sun is a powerful enough, hot enough engine that it fills everything inside our heliosphere, which extends out to beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, with that hot, ionized plasma.
While we typically only view the extended atmosphere of the Sun under favorable viewing conditions, like during a total solar eclipse from Earth, or from up in space with the advent of a Sun-blocking coronagraph, we’ve been able to track a wide variety of its effects. We know that it produces light, sure, but it also consistently produces a stream of ions, mostly protons but also electrons, heavier atomic nuclei, and even small amounts of antimatter, known as the solar wind. That solar wind is guided by the Sun’s magnetic field, which is driven by internal processes inside the Sun, and particularly energetic outbursts come when magnetic field lines “snap” and reconnect at, near, just outside, or even fully inside the Sun’s photosphere.
Solar coronal loops, such as those observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite here in 2014, follow the path of the magnetic field on the Sun. When these loops ‘break’ in just the right way, they can emit coronal mass ejections, which have the potential to impact Earth. The connection between the solar corona just above the photosphere and the outer phenomena that pervade the rest of the Solar System relies on spacecraft throughout the Solar System, with the Stereo A and B spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, and an array of Sun-facing spacecraft located at the L1 Lagrange point (between the Earth and Sun) playing roles of paramount importance.
Credit: NASA/SDO
When those magnetic reconnection events occur internally, normally where sunspots are located, a solar flare often results. When those reconnection events occur externally, fully outside of the Sun’s photosphere, a coronal mass ejection often results. But when those reconnection events occur outside the surface but before you reach the corona, it typically just rapidly accelerates the charged particles that exist in that region outside of the photosphere. That creates the conditions for what’s known as a solar radiation storm, which can then be accompanied — usually afterwards — by either a solar flare (if the reconnection propagates backwards to the Sun’s interior) or a coronal mass ejection (if the reconnection propagates forwards to the Sun’s corona).
The 2003 event, known as the Halloween solar storms because they peaked from mid-October to early November, included both solar flares and coronal mass ejections, including the strongest solar flare ever recorded by the GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) system, and that was the last severe solar radiation storm that affected the Earth. On January 19, 2026, another one occurred, and it indeed was also followed up by an X-class solar flare and a coronal mass ejection. However, solar flares and coronal mass ejections are common; what was highly uncommon was the solar radiation storm, and the ultra-fast (and large flux of) solar wind particles that came towards Earth.
Above, you can see a graph of the solar wind speed just prior to the start of the solar outburst that created the radiation storm. Note that, prior to the initiation of the storm, the solar wind speed was relatively stable and typical: at around 250-300 km/s, or about 0.1% the speed of light. Under these conditions, it takes the solar wind approximately 5-7 days to traverse the Earth-Sun distance. During normal circumstances, we don’t see a major auroral event, and that’s due to the combined facts that:
The Sun’s magnetic field is weak,
The Earth’s magnetic field (at least close to Earth’s surface) is strong,
There’s only a low density of solar wind particles, and they move at relatively slow speeds,
making Earth’s magnetic field effective at diverting the majority of solar wind particles away from the planet.
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This photograph shows the Aurora Borealis as taken over Loch Calder in northern Scotland on the night of January 19, 2026. Although this was the largest solar radiation storm experienced on Earth since 2003, the aurora appeared brilliantly for only brief periods of time, due to the alignment of the Earth’s and Sun’s magnetic field only being favorable for a period of approximately two hours during the event. Credit: David Proudfoot/BlueSky
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether President Trump violated the Federal Reserve Act when he tried to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. Economists have raised the alarm, and Wall Street is watching, because presidential control of monetary policy would likely put upward pressure on inflation and interest rates.
But there is something far more fundamental at stake: Will the president be able to escape one of the central constraints on executive power in our constitutional system?
The Constitution is built on an Anglo-American tradition of checks and balances. It separates control of the sword from control of the purse. To check the chief executive, who holds the sword, the framers vested in an elected legislature the “power of the purse.” Congress controls spending not merely to ensure popular consent to taxation, but also to protect liberty. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 58, the purse is “the most complete and effectual weapon” the people’s representatives possess to secure “a redress of every grievance” and to enact “every just and salutary measure.”
Presidential control of the central bank would threaten this design. A president with effective command of the monetary levers could impose a de facto “inflation tax,” reducing the real value of money and the federal debt while sidestepping the ordinary process of taxation. And there are other, more pressing dangers.
The White House could also direct the use of central bank tools to advance its policy priorities while evading congressional control over appropriations. The Federal Reserve today possesses authorities to buy financial assets and extend credit to banks and other depository institutions and, in unusual and exigent circumstances, nonbank entities. Because the Fed can expand its balance sheet without a hard budget constraint (it creates money at the stroke of a key), the White House could press Fed officials to repurpose its powers to confer financial benefits on favored actors or to impose costs on political opponents nearly without limit.
As abuses of these authorities would be difficult to challenge in court, de facto presidential control of the central bank balance sheet might lead to large-scale lending to private sector enterprises or foreign governments that commit to acting favorably on the president’s agenda. And because the Fed operates critical payments infrastructure — the rails that settle trillions of dollars daily — the White House could move to politicize access in ways that would chill dissent and disrupt civil society.
Although it may not look it at first glance, those issues are directly before the court in the Cook case. The court, having never addressed a presidential attempt to remove a Fed governor before, must decide for the first time what the law means when it says that a president can remove a Fed governor only “for cause.” How the justices read those two words now will determine whether the board becomes an arm of the White House.
The law, the constitutional implications, and our history provide guideposts. “For cause” is a legal term of art that Congress imported from state law. The idea was to enlist the judiciary to police removals so that the executive could not replace officials for political reasons, but for only serious misconduct or failure in office.
President Trump’s position is that courts should defer to virtually any stated grounds short of an explicit policy dispute. That approach would drain “for cause” of content and convert judicial review into a rubber stamp. Worse, a ruling adopting that theory would put the monetary levers within easy presidential reach.
Alternatively, the president could prevail if the court finds the asserted grounds against Ms. Cook meet the “for cause” standard. But the case rests on unproven allegations of private misconduct that took place before she joined the Fed. And the president afforded Ms. Cook no formal process — no formal notice, no formal opportunity to respond. The factual record is therefore skewed and incomplete. If presidents can fire Fed governors based on unproven allegations, the barrier between the White House and the central bank would effectively collapse.
If the president can dominate the central bank, Congress’s “power of the purse” is diluted, and the incentives for abuse multiply. The result would be precisely the concentration of power that the Constitution was designed to prevent.
We don’t have to use our imagination to see how things could go wrong. The administration has already shown a willingness to politicize foreign lending and weaponize tariffs. Just last week, we learned that the Justice Department is threatening Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chair, with a criminal prosecution. Meanwhile, World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency business co-founded by the president, applied for a national trust bank charter, which could allow direct access to Federal Reserve payment services. If World Liberty Financial or other cryptocurrency firms run into trouble, do we want the White House deciding whether the Fed loosens the purse strings?
The court must not lose sight of the larger constitutional stakes present in this statutory scheme.
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Photo Illustration by Philotheus Nisch for The New York Times
As of January 15, the Trump administration has walked back a plan to slash U.S. federal funding for mental health and addiction programs, a move that experts have said would have exacerbate the country’s already acute drug crisis.
The loss would have totaled some $2 billion in grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), NPR reported, citing unnamed sources. The number of grants targeted may have been as high as 2,800, according to STAT.
Before the cuts were rolled back, Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of addiction medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Scientific American that “this is going to cost American lives, no doubt.”
“It’s an utter shame, given the fact that overdoses are on the decline,” he said. “Now is not the time to let up on our efforts.”
On Wednesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that estimated drug overdose deaths between August 2024 and August 2025 declined by nearly 21 percent compared with the previous year.
The decline in overdose deaths in the U.S. is not by chance, said Regina LaBelle, a professor of addiction policy at Georgetown University, to SciAm on Wednesday.
“The federal government invested in state and community-based efforts to prevent substance use, treat people with substance use disorder, and support recovery. The funding cuts made by the administration today reflect a retreat from these investments,” she said.
Ciccarone noted to SciAm that the opioid epidemic has disproportionately affected red states. “The Trump administration, in both terms, could be claiming some credit for the reduction in deaths,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Speaking to SciAm on Wednesday, Caleb Banta-Green, a research professor at the University of Washington, who studies drug trends, said that the then proposed cuts would effectively “gut” lifesaving services for people all across the country. “In addition to saving lives and supporting recovery, treating substance use disorder is the most impactful way to reduce ‘demand’ for drugs, with its upstream impacts on drug trafficking and manufacturing,” he said. Combating drug trafficking has been a priority of the Trump administration.
“The bottom line is that federal investment in mental health and addiction services saves lives,” said Arthur C. Evans, Jr., CEO of the American Psychological Association, in a statement on Wednesday. “Abruptly cutting this support, including to school-based and other youth-focused mental health programs, threatens to destabilize mental health care in our communities and puts our most vulnerable populations at risk.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and SAMHSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The archbishop for the U.S. military services said that it “would be morally acceptable” for troops to disobey orders that go against their conscience as the Trump Administration ramps up its military actions and threats, joining other prominent Catholic leaders in sounding alarms over President Donald Trump’s aggressive foreign policy moves.
“It would be very difficult for a soldier or a marine or a sailor to by himself disobey an order,” Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio told the BBC Sunday. “But strictly speaking, he or she would be, within the realm of their own conscience, it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order, but that’s perhaps putting that individual in an untenable situation, and that’s my concern.”
When asked if he was “worried” about the troops in the archdiocese he oversees, Broglio responded: “I am obviously worried because they could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something which is morally questionable.”
Broglio, who has served as the head of the Washington, D.C.-based archdiocese of the U.S. military since 2007, specifically pushed back against Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland.
“Greenland is a territory of Denmark,” the archbishop said. “It does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation.”
Read more: Trump Warns There’s ‘No Going Back’ on Greenland and Accuses U.K. of ‘Act of Great Stupidity.’
A number of other high-ranking Catholic bishops and Pope Leo XIV have also raised vocal concerns in recent weeks as U.S. forces deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and the President has levied threats against several other countries and territories, including in his renewed push to acquire Greenland. The Pope, who—along with a number of U.S. bishops—has also challenged Trump’s immigration crackdown, recently condemned a “diplomacy based on force” in an annual speech at the Vatican.
“War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading,” the pontiff stated. He went on to call for respect for “the will of the Venezuelan people,” given “recent developments,” and spoke about several other areas around the world afflicted by conflict.
On Monday, three senior cardinals leading U.S. dioceses released a joint statement inspired by Leo’s comments, in which they called into question “the moral foundation for America’s actions in the world.”
“The events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland have raised basic questions about the use of military force and the meaning of peace,” Cardinals Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago; Robert McElroy, archbishop of D.C.; and Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark wrote, adding, “Our country’s moral role in confronting evil around the world, sustaining the right to life and human dignity, and supporting religious liberty are all under examination.”
They went on to call for a “genuinely moral foreign policy” and stated that “military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy.”
Trump has also faced pushback over foreign policy from a number of world leaders and congressional lawmakers, including some members of his own party.
In November, six Democratic lawmakers released a video in which they told members of the military and intelligence community not only that they could decline to follow unlawful orders, but that they must.
“Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” the lawmakers said. “You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
The group of politicians, all of whom are either veterans or former intelligence analysts, included Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado. They didn’t reference any specific orders troops might be receiving. But the video came as Trump faced scrutiny over his deployment of troops to multiple cities in the U.S. amid his crackdown on crime and immigration and the deadly strikes his Administration was carrying out on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that it alleged were transporting drugs.
Trump accused the group of “seditious behavior, punishable by death” in the wake of the video’s release, and the lawmakers have said they are being investigated by the Administration over their participation in it.
Read more: Is It ‘Seditious’ or ‘Illegal’ to Urge the Military to Refuse Unlawful Orders? Legal Experts Weigh In
Deluzio, Houlahan, and Goodlander said last week that they had received inquiries from the Justice Department over the video last week, while Slotkin and Crow said that Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney general in D.C., had reached out to them for interviews.
The Pentagon has also taken steps to demote Kelly, a retired Navy captain, and thereby reduce his military pension. Kelly sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying the move was unconstitutional.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, members of the military swear an oath of enlistment to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.” There is a strong presumption that orders are lawful under military law, but service members are allowed to disobey unlawful orders and can even be prosecuted for carrying out patently illegal orders, such as war crimes. Though Trump and other Administration officials have contended that the lawmakers’ comments in the video were “seditious” and violated the law, legal experts told TIME that there was nothing illegal about their message.
Broglio’s comments come as Trump is set to arrive in Davos, Switzerland, to attend the World Economic Forum, where his plans to take over Greenland are expected to be discussed with European leaders in what is being seen as an emergency summit.
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Archbishop Timothy Broglio conducts an Easter Sunday Mass at Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, Sunday, April 12, 2020.Jose Luis Magana—AP Photo/File
People across the country walked out of school and work on Tuesday afternoon as part of a nationwide walkout to protest the Trump Administration.
Dubbed the “Free America Walkout,” the protest took place on the anniversary of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. The movement is protesting the actions Trump has taken since returning to office, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, National Guard deployments, and threats to transgender rights.
“One year into Trump’s second regime, we face an escalating fascist threat,” the Free America website reads. “It is time for our communities to escalate as well. On January 20 at 2 PM local time, we will walk out of work, school, and commerce. We will withhold our labor, our participation, and our consent. A free America begins the moment we refuse to cooperate. This is not a request. This is a rupture. This is a protest and a promise. In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable.”
The Women’s March, one of the organizing partners behind the walkout, shared a video on X of the protest beginning in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday afternoon, as well as photos of a similar demonstration in Brooklyn, New York, in which protesters can be seen holding “Free America” signs.
“This is what democracy looks like,” the Women’s March wrote on X. “This is what fighting fascism looks like.”
The Women’s March also shared a video of a walkout in Oklahoma City, writing on X, “Red state. Real resistance. Feminists and their allies are walking out on fascism.” And the account posted photos of protesters in Minnesota, some of whom can be seen carrying signs that said, “ICE out for good” and “Do your job, Congress.”
Minnesotans walked out today. In the face of weeks of dehumanizing rhetoric by the right. In the face of weeks of violent and unlawful attacks by ICE agents. In the aftermath of the tragic murder of Renee Good. In freezing temperatures,” the Women’s March wrote on X. “They organize. They fight back. They walk out. We stand with Minnesota.”
Earlier this month, Renee Nicole Good—a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three—was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Trump Administration officials have accused Good of attempting to run over the agent with her car, claiming the shooting was an act of “self-defense.” But videos of the incident appear to contradict that characterization, and local leaders have strongly disputed the Administration’s portrayal. Good’s death sparked widespread outrage, and ignited protests in Minneapolis and across the country—from major cities to small-town America—over the Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.
About 4 in 10 Americans approve of the President’s performance in his second term thus far, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted earlier this month. That’s roughly the same approval rating that Trump received at the start and end of his first term, though there were periods where that number fluctuated, according to AP-NORC data. Approval of his policies in different areas varied, however. The most recent poll—which was conducted after the fatal shooting of Good—found that only 38% of Americans approve of how the President is addressing immigration issues, a double-digit decline from the 49% who approved of his immigration policies in March.
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People participate in the “Free America Walkout” on Fifth Avenue in New York City on January 20, 2026.Michael M. Santiago—Getty Images
President Trump’s intensifying standoff with European leaders over the fate of Greenland prompted a sharp response from investors Tuesday, with the value of U.S. stocks, the dollar, and government bonds all falling.
The S&P 500 dropped over 2 percent for the first time since October, as investors reacted to Mr. Trump’s increasing threat of higher tariffs on European allies unless they supported his plans for America to take control of Greenland. The Vix volatility index, known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, rose to its highest level since November.
Tuesday’s opening decline was the index’s biggest since April, when Mr. Trump first proposed sweeping tariffs on nearly all of America’s trading partners. And while the sell-off remained contained for now, with the S&P 500 still close to its record high, the moves showed a clear increase in investor concern over the future of the established world order. Investors had become inured to geopolitical upheaval in recent years because it has typically had little impact on corporate profits.
Investors’ confidence wavered on Tuesday even as Mr. Trump boasted about a long list of embellished achievements in remarks to reporters, among them the strength of investments in the United States and the stock market’s returns over the course of his first year in office.
“We have the hottest country in the world right now,” Mr. Trump said.
The moves in financial markets told a different story. Often when stocks are roiled by geopolitical upheaval, investors flock to the safety of other U.S. assets, like the dollar or government bonds. But in a sign that investors were embracing a “sell America” trade and moving away from U.S. assets altogether, both the dollar and U.S. government debt lost value on Tuesday.
Eric Teal, chief investment officer at Comerica Wealth Management, said investors should be “playing defense at this juncture,” focusing on geographic and sector diversification while the current uncertainty lingers.
The dollar index, which pits the currency against a basket of currencies that represent America’s major trading partners, fell 0.8 percent. The dollar weakened against the euro, British pound, and Norwegian Krone.
The Swiss Franc, another haven in times of uncertainty, strengthened almost 1 percent against the U.S. dollar. Gold and oil prices also climbed higher, with the precious metal up 1.8 percent in another sign of investor caution.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which moves inversely to price, also rose, meaning its value declined. This yield acts as one of the most important interest rates in the world by underpinning interest rates across consumer and corporate debt.
The yield rose to its highest level since August, undermining the administration’s efforts to move interest rates lower. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, pointed to rising bond yields in Japan as a factor helping push U.S. yields higher.
Andrew Brenner, head of international fixed income at National Alliance Securities, said that Mr. Trump “has a path to lower rates and less controversial path with Greenland, but the question is will he take it?” He warned investors on Tuesday to expect “major volatility.”
Tuesday’s trading was the first chance U.S. markets had to react to Mr. Trump’s escalating threats toward Europe over the weekend with the U.S. stock market closed on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King’s Birthday.
Despite the modest sell-off, major stock indexes remain close to record highs after a third consecutive double-digit rise in 2025.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, speaking on a panel discussion at the World Economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, defended the Trump administration’s “America First” policies even as it has rattled investors and trading partners.
“Everyone said, ‘You are going to do all these tariffs, you are going to destroy the world,’” he said. “The world’s stock markets are up. Which ones of them? All of them.”
Investors have mostly looked through geopolitics in recent years, as the tangible detrimental effect to corporate profits has been limited. The sharp moves on Tuesday suggest a heightened nervousness among investors about the administration’s persistent pursuit of a European ally’s territory.
European stock markets also fell on Tuesday, with bourses in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all moving roughly 1 percent lower.
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Stock Drop– Greenland
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For more than five decades, the Clean Air Act has prevented millions of premature deaths, hospitalizations, and lost work and school days. By one official reckoning in 2011, the act’s limits on harmful pollution has benefited the U.S. economy to the tune of $2 trillion by 2020, in contrast with $65 billion in costs to implement regulations.
But now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is abruptly changing how it enforces at least parts of the Clean Air Act by not calculating the economic benefits of some regulations. The seemingly inevitable result is that Americans will soon breathe noticeably dirtier air and see worse health outcomes, experts say.
“I don’t think anyone wants to go back to … not being able to see anything,” says Camille Pannu, an environmental law expert at Columbia University.
The EPA will no longer consider the dollar value of lives saved or other ill effects averted by placing limits on fine particulate matter with the designation PM2.5 or ozone emissions in at least some cases, the New York Times reported on Monday. Instead, the agency will only calculate the cost to industry to enforce the act’s rules.
To get a sense of why this matters, it is important to understand what ozone and PM2.5 do to our body. PM2.5 describes particles that have a diameter smaller than 2.5 microns. They are tiny enough to enter the bloodstream, lodge deeply in the lungs and cross the blood-brain barrier. PM2.5 has been liked to diabetes, obesity, dementia, cancer, low birth weight, and asthma. Ozone, a key ingredient of smog, is particularly dangerous for people with asthma and other lung diseases, especially children.
The Clean Air Act was enacted precisely because the health effects of bad air are population-wide and difficult to evaluate. In other words, without estimating costs, even imperfectly, “everything is costly, and nothing is worth regulating,” Pannu says.
In a document reviewed by the New York Times, an EPA official cited language that argued that how the dollar value of the benefits of the regulation was calculated “provided the public with false precision and confidence.” Yet experts point out that that is part of the point: the act’s authors “wanted to have EPA regulate even if the science was uncertain,” says Lisa Heinzerling, an environmental law expert at Georgetown University.
Different presidential administrations have taken distinct approaches to totaling up the value of those benefits, but the science underlying these estimates is well established.
For decades, researchers have compared places with higher and lower levels of pollutants and have looked at differences in premature deaths and other negative health outcomes while controlling for other factors that could affect those numbers. Those analyses are then combined with economic studies that estimate the “value of a statistical life” by looking at, for example, the amount of lost wages incurred when a parent stays home with a child who is experiencing an asthma attack. Because this work has been going on for so long, it means researchers can feel confident in the value they arrive at, says Rachel Rothschild, an environmental law expert at the University of Michigan.
Independent analyses have also been conducted that showed PM2.5’s “harms were so significant” and “the benefits [of the Clean Air Act] were so enormous” that they far outweighed the costs of implementing the law, Rothschild says. The Clean Air Act’s regulations “pay for themselves; they pay for the entire EPA,” Heinzerling agrees.
A 2016 analysis from the University of Chicago found that people in the U.S. had gained 336 million life-years, a measure of how long people are expected to live in a healthy condition, since amendments to the Clean Air Act were passed in 1970. And in 2011, the EPA estimated that updates to the act made in 1990 would prevent more than 230,000 early deaths, 75,000 cases of bronchitis, 120,000 emergency room visits, and 17 million lost workdays by 2020. About 85 percent of these benefits stem from deaths avoided because of reductions in particular matter alone.
Estimates of cost are also inherently uncertain. And according to Rothschild, past EPA analyses have almost always found the agency overestimated those costs. She and others expect this move to be challenged in court.
It is also unclear how widely this new policy may be applied. Documents cited by the New York Times’ reporting suggest it will apply to proposals from the agency’s Office of Air and Radiation, with the consequences including repeals of limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The Times also cited similar language to what the EPA emails mentioned in a regulatory impact analysis posted on Monday concerning limits on nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide from combustion turbines at gas-burning power plants. Such plants are in demand at data centers to fuel their considerable power needs.
The EPA is legally required to provide its rationale and any data it is relying on to make such decisions, Heinzerling says.
In a statement in response to detailed questions from Scientific American, an EPA spokesperson said the agency is continuing to consider the impacts of PM2.5 and ozone on human health, adding that “the agency will not be monetizing the impacts at this time.”
“EPA is fully committed to its core mission of protect human health and the environment,” the statement continued.
The EPA spokesperson also noted that the previous Biden administration did not calculate the value of health benefits for some rules under the Clean Air Act, including for PM2.5. Rothschild says that some past administrations may have not quantified the benefits of every proposed regulation—particularly those that were very difficult to calculate. But, she says, “the health benefits from reducing particulate matter and ozone are some of the easiest to quantify and monetize out of all types of environmental pollution.”
“It’s disappointing that the EPA isn’t interested in making the best decision for the public,” Rothschild says.
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Smog in Denver in January 1974. Bill Wunsch/The Denver Post via Getty Images
On Instagram, Morgan also shared a photo of an X-ray that showed his fracture.
Piers Morgan apologizes to Jay-Z and Beyoncé after Jaguar Wright interview
According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, femoral shaft fractures usually require surgery and take between three and six months to completely heal.
“A broken femur is a serious injury that requires immediate medical care,” the Cleveland Clinic explains. “Broken femurs are treated with surgery and physical therapy. It can take months for your broken femur to heal. You can break your femur by being in a car crash, falling or being shot. Elderly people who are prone to injuries from falls can break their femurs.”The Mayo Clinic also notes that a hip replacement is a surgery to remove and replace damaged sections of the hip joint, and replacement parts “are usually made of metal, ceramic, and hard plastic.”
Piers Morgan doubles down on Duchess Meghan’s Oprah interview: ‘I still don’t’ believe her
Morgan currently serves as host of the online talk show “Piers Morgan Uncensored.” He previously hosted “Piers Morgan Live” on CNN and has held roles at British tabloids, including News of the World and The Sun. Morgan, who has stirred backlash over the years for his commentary on topics including Duchess Meghan, is also a former judge on “America’s Got Talent.”
Declaring childbirth a patriotic act. Nagging newlyweds about family planning. Taxing condoms.
To get its citizens to have babies, the Chinese Communist Party has pulled every lever.
The efforts have largely failed. For the fourth year in a row, China reported more deaths than births in 2025 as its birthrate plunged to a record low, leaving its population smaller and older.
The government on Monday said 7.92 million babies were born last year, down from 9.54 million in 2024. The number of people who died in 2025, 11.31 million, continued to climb. The latest population figures were reported alongside economic data that showed China’s economy grew 5 percent in 2025.
The number of births for every 1,000 people fell to 5.63, the lowest level on record since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, according to official government data.
Around the world, governments are contending with falling birthrates. But the problem is more acute for China: Fewer babies mean fewer future workers to support a rapidly growing cohort of retirees. A worsening economy has made addressing the challenge even more difficult.
“China is facing a severe challenge posed by an extremely low fertility rate,” said Wu Fan, a professor of family policy at Nankai University in eastern China.
China’s top leaders have redoubled their efforts to try to boost the national birthrate enough to reverse the decline, something that demographers have said is probably impossible now that China has crossed a demographic threshold where its fertility rate, a measure of the number of children a woman has over a lifetime, is so low that its population is shrinking.
Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has called for a “new type of marriage and childbearing culture,” entreating officials to influence young people’s views on “love and marriage, fertility and family.” Local officials have responded with increasingly ham-handed measures to get citizens to have babies, including tracking women’s menstrual cycles and issuing guidelines to reduce abortions that are medically unnecessary.
Many of the measures have been met with a collective shrug by young people who do not want to start a family.
On Jan. 1, officials placed a 13 percent value-added tax on contraceptive drugs and condoms, a move that has been met with a mix of indifference, mockery, and derision.
While that policy was not explicitly directed at boosting the birthrate, it was immediately interpreted by a skeptical public as yet another futile attempt to encourage more children.
Jonathan Zhu, 28, said the price increase would have little effect on his habits. “I’ll still use them,” he said, citing financial pressure as his reason for delaying fatherhood until marriage. His girlfriend, Hu Tingyan, 26, agreed, noting that the cost of condoms does not influence her willingness to have children. “I don’t feel the time is right yet,” she said.
On Chinese social media, people commented that the price increase was annoying, but it was still cheaper than raising a child. Others pointed out that condoms had more than one purpose.
“Which ‘genius’ came up with this brilliant move?” asked Ke Chaozhen, a lawyer based in Guangdong. “The state is urging marriage and births in such a subtle way — are they afraid that we marriage and family lawyers will go out of business?” he mused on social media.
Other comments were deemed so incendiary by state-directed censors that they were scrubbed from Chinese social media platforms.
Some of the government’s other baby-boosting measures, such as offering cash and subsidized housing for couples, have also failed to move the needle.
“The empirical evidence from other countries so far is that monetary incentives have almost no effect in raising fertility,” said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.
For many young people, the high costs of raising a child are especially discouraging amid a slowing economy and a property crisis. In addition, youth unemployment remains high, and many recent college graduates are struggling to land a steady paycheck, falling back on their parents with little support from a threadbare social welfare system.
“With China’s economic woes, young people may want to wait and see, and that’s not good news for raising fertility,” Mr. Wang said.
China arrived at this problem much sooner than it anticipated it would, even a decade ago, when officials relaxed the one-child policy to permit couples to have two children. (It adjusted its birth policy again to allow three babies in 2021.) This has left the government with less time to fix its severely underfunded pension and health care systems.
At the same time, China has experienced a sudden and rapid decline in the working-age population, as the number of citizens age 60 and over is projected to reach 400 million by 2035. Young people often express reluctance to contribute to the public pension fund because of the financial burden.
A low retirement age has complicated things. The government raised it last year for the first time since the 1950s and plans to gradually increase the official age by 2040 to 63 for men, 58 for women in office jobs, and 55 for women in factories. However, it remains among the lowest in the world.
More recently, some party officials have even offered cash rewards to successful matchmakers, hoping to spur a baby boom by getting more people to marry.
Jia Dan, 46, understands the scope of the challenge. When he was single, Mr. Dan began hosting matchmaking events in Beijing in 2012 as a side project. Soon, he found a girlfriend. (They later married.) His events became so popular that he decided to turn them into a full-time business in 2018.
Since then, two things have become clear to him. It’s always the men who return. Women rarely attend more than once.
More glaringly, most people don’t seem to want to get married.
“You can really feel that the number of people in Beijing who actually want to get married is shrinking,” he said. “More and more young people just don’t want to do it anymore.”
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Despite sweeping efforts to boost births, China’s population has shrunk and aged for a fourth straight year as deaths again outnumbered births. Credit…Wu Hao/EPA, via Shutterstock
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
This photograph shows the Aurora Borealis as taken over Loch Calder in northern Scotland on the night of January 19, 2026. Although this was the largest solar radiation storm experienced on Earth since 2003, the aurora appeared brilliantly for only brief periods of time, due to the alignment of the Earth’s and Sun’s magnetic field only being favorable for a period of approximately two hours during the event. Credit: David Proudfoot/BlueSky
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