2026 World Cup and the Threat of Travel Delays — Sofia Brady
Lingering delays in visa processing from the COVID-19 pandemic will only be exacerbated by the 2026 World Cup’s expanded format to 48 teams instead of 32, which will incentivize fans from a greater number of countries to travel for the competition. Unfortunately, some of these fans will be more inconvenienced by delays in the visa approval process than others. Wait times for available consular appointments can vary greatly depending on the country, but in some cases, delays are so extreme that fans may miss the competition entirely. For example, fans applying for visas in Bogotá, Colombia must wait over a year for the next available appointment, making it impossible for them to be approved by the time the World Cup starts in June 2026.
“They’d Cry. Then They Vanished”: Inside the Collapse of USAID, in the Words of Those Who Lived It — Tal Yahalom
“Without the House, Democrats can’t do anything,” Quigley said. But even he acknowledged the broader governing failure of USAID’s gutting: “It’s not charity. It’s national security.” Indeed, foreign aid is one of America’s smartest soft-power investments. It prevents pandemics. It promotes stability. It makes the world safer — including for Americans. James Mattis, Trump’s former Defense Secretary, once said, “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition.” Congress, apparently, forgot.
Shifting Funding Priorities from Prevention to Public Health Crisis? — Paige Heffke
The announcement came in March, with the Department of Health and Human Services stating it would rescind nearly $12 billion in funds earmarked for infectious disease control, including coronavirus, measles, Candida auris, bird flu, sexually transmitted infections, and influenza. These enormous cuts include $125 million in previously awarded funds to the Illinois Department of Public Health, and an additional $324 million in future funds promised to Illinois-based health centers.
When Monopoly Met Malware: How UnitedHealth’s Dominance Led to a Catastrophic Cyber Attack — Mihika Jain
More than a year after a cyber breach affecting UnitedHealth Group (UHG) subsidiary Change Healthcare compromised 190 million people’s data, providers continue to feel the pain of UHG’s scale
Unprotected: How Battered Migrant Women Struggle for Protection in the Era of Trump 2.0 — Marcela Cid-Rosas
But this is not all. The impact of defunding reaches far beyond individual programs. It disrupts the ability of organizations like CLS to function at even the most basic level. When I asked about the broader implications, Barrientos was clear: “Without our federal grants, we have had huge financial cuts, and so it calls into question hiring and salaries. How will we get the work done if we don’t have the budget to hire/pay attorneys?” This simple question cuts to the heart of the crisis: there can be no legal aid without lawyers. And without funding, migrant women are all the more susceptible to the predations of both abusive men and a nativist government.
Outdated by Design: Reimagining Schools for Real-World Skills — Micayla Roth
Of course, cognitive and social-emotional skills go hand-in-hand: engaging with the real-world challenges of a project can teach resilience, and resilience allows students to tackle real-world problems. The strongest school models should reflect that truth – whether that looks like Polaris, where Crew is coupled with expeditionary learning, or HTH, where projects frequently challenge students to examine their identities and communities. Critically, this requires the funding and autonomy to experiment with new curricula, educational leaders committed to continuous improvement and iteration, and massive scaling of successful programs to reach students across the country.
Strings Attached: Why UChicago’s Fight Against NIH Cuts Should Matter to Everyone — Laine Weis
NIH funding is the engine behind most major medical breakthroughs in the U.S. Basic biomedical discoveries—those made in university labs, funded by public dollars—form the backbone of nearly all new FDA-approved therapies. These discoveries are shared openly, reducing duplication, lowering drug costs, and accelerating innovation. This is the key difference between private funds and federal. Federal funds acknowledge that funding early career scientists and projects that may produce slower returns on investment is an essential responsibility of the federal government, which recognizes scientific progress as a public good.
Fire Season Has Begun and Wildland Firefighters Are Facing a New Threat: The Trump Administration — Kate Wehle
Despite the objects of many experts, the administration, in January, issued a federal hiring freeze, preventing the hiring and onboarding of seasonal firefighters, who, last year, composed a third of all federal wildland firefighters. The administration has also attempted to eliminate the jobs of permanent Forest Service employees. In early February, the administration issued an executive order that fired (and was subsequently forced to rehire) 3,400 probationary employees, about 10% of the Forest Service’s workforce.
Going Corporate: Trumps Threat to Privatize the United States Postal Service — Kalysa Blunt
The threat of privatization facing USPS is looming and it is pertinent that those most affected understand the potential dangers these changes may bring. However, recognizing the value USPS brings to communities, particularly rural and underserved populations, empowers citizens and policymakers to push for reforms that strengthen USPS rather than dismantle it. As USPS continues to be a lifeline for millions, ensuring that essential communication and goods remain accessible regardless of location is necessary.
Neglected Diseases and Patients: The NIH Funding Crisis — Timothy Yi
The proposed funding cut “means fewer new treatments, slower time to realizing some of the benefits of medical research, and probably, ultimately, an inability to advance innovative health care in the way that we have in the past,” Prensner said in an interview I conducted with him in April. Though Prensner hasn’t reported experiencing disruptions to ongoing clinical trials in his own lab thus far, cancer treatment plans have already been suspended for a number of patients across the country.
Immeasurable Talent: Trump’s Erosion of School Accountability & Choice — Ethan Yoon
Trump cuts have dulled what was once the sharpest weapon in policymakers’ educational arsenal. Since the start of his second term, the Trump administration cut around $1 billion from the Department of Education’s funding. Despite promising to insulate NAEP from those cuts, Trump cancelled the 2015 NAEP for 17-year-olds and has since placed the former Biden-appointed commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, who oversees the NAEP, on paid leave before the completion of her term. His cuts on the Department of Education’s headcount left only three employees at the National Center for Education Statistics to run the NAEP.
Doctors on Strike, Patients in Limbo: Korea’s Healthcare Crisis — Emily Kang
Trust was already strained. Doctors who work long hours, handle life-or-death cases, and shoulder high legal risk are deeply familiar with the healthcare system’s shortcomings. Many felt the new policy ignored on-the-ground realities. The government had long failed to address systemic issues like burnout, low compensation in high-risk specialties, and rising litigation. Now it was pushing a policy that, to many doctors, felt more political than medical—an attempt to boost sagging approval ratings by casting reform as a battle between the administration and obstructive elite doctors. Although the government later adjusted the number to 1,509, it was too late.
Halting Science at its Roots: The Trump Administration’s Attacks on Early Career Scientists — Anna Kilpatrick
A country that disinvests from science does so at its own peril, and targeting early-career scientists is particularly short-sighted for a country that has led the world in scientific discovery for more than eight decades precisely because of our university-centered structure. Abandoning support for future scientists will reduce the quality of the science we’re able to produce, something which is especially alarming as we continue to navigate complex, accelerating problems.
Medical Debt Doesn’t Have to be Normal — Aidan Shannon
The good news is that we know what works to prevent medical debt. It starts with the foundational step: expand health insurance coverage. States that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act have seen dramatic reductions in medical debt. A 2021 JAMA study found that new medical debt fell by 44 percent in states that expanded Medicaid, compared to just 10 percent in states that refused to expand. Expanding Medicaid in the ten holdout states would extend insurance to millions of working poor Americans, dramatically cutting the amount of unpaid hospital bills.
Prohibiting Prosperity: The High Cost of the Taliban’s Opium Ban — An Anonymous Author
In 2022, Afghanistan produced more than 80% of the world’s opium, capturing as much as 95% of the market in Europe. With a shaky start to external relations, the Taliban’s edict to outlaw opium was likely deemed an effective way of appealing to Western sentiment. But using force to outlaw the main source of livelihood for a significant percentage of the population holds potentially devastating ramifications from which the Afghan nation will struggle to recover.