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One way to move beyond the basic set of assumptions is asking how we could get better representatives: if we had a genuine working-class party, say, or even just a viable third party that could break the Democratic-Republican stranglehold over the shape of U.S. politics. We could try for new rules to shape the contest between political parties: ranked-choice voting to change how candidates craft their appeal to voters or proportional representation to change how parties share power after elections from a winner-take-all system to one that splits seats between parties. But while we ask those questions, it’s worth adding another, parallel set: What if elections were different? What if we could vote directly for plans rather than representatives of any party? What if we could represent ourselves?

This is not some thought experiment or conceptual exercise (though, as a philosopher, I’m not above those!). Direct democracy already exists, albeit in limited forms, but those forms could in principle scale up. Here in the United States, abortion rights have already been under attack and hang in the balance in elections. Ten states have adopted a direct democratic strategy for their defense this election season: holding referenda on abortion laws that would allow their voters to join California, Michigan, Ohio, and Vermont in enshrining reproductive rights guarantees into law, including amending state constitutions. “Leaving it to the states” doesn’t have to be only a dangerous and irresponsible failure to defend reproductive justice.

USF helps fund various programs’ efforts to reduce the digital divide in rural and underserved communities, including the Lifeline and High Cost subsidy programs, as well as the Rural Health Care Program and E-Rate, which subsidizes telecoms and other services for public schools and libraries. The amount of funding required for those programs is determined by the Universal Service Administrative Company, which assesses a contribution from each telecom service provider in the U.S. on the FCC’s behalf. Those assessments are then passed onto consumers via their monthly bills.

But the court held that this method, established under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, gave the FCC too much discretion in how it sets USF contribution rates, so the agency is making major policy decisions without congressional oversight. The court also found that the FCC’s delegation of certain functions to the USAC was not authorized under law.

The USF is something that states and localities have long seen as a key way of getting people connected. Were it to go away, it could jeopardize various federal assistance efforts and potentially put the onus on states to step up instead or leave those communities unconnected.

Grassroots activists and marine scientists in Algeria are building artificial reefs to restore biodiversity and sustain fishing communities, but scaling up requires more than passion—it needs institutional support and political will.

In Algeria, the average quantity of fish taken out of sea has been recorded at a consistent 100,000 tons per annum over the last three decades. However, as Algeria’s population continues to grow, authorities estimate that they will need to rely on techniques such as fish farming to reach the 200,000 tons that will be necessary to meet domestic needs.

Artificial reefs at a larger scale might also provide support for fishing by promoting the reproduction of fish and other marine species close to the coast. But Algeria has a long way to go, since artificial reefs have only been immersed on an experimental level by diving associations helped by scientists the last ten years. “There has been a drop-off in the number of fish over the last few years. We have to go farther and farther into sea. In other countries fishing is halted for a few weeks every year so that the species can repopulate, but not here,” Fatah claims.

Thanks to their advocacy, Hippone Sub in coordination with the Probiom Foundation—Algeria’s network for marine biodiversity protection, created in 2009—managed to attract the attention of the highest authorities in Algeria. In 2017, just one year after the first reef was submerged by the association in Annaba, the government passed a law to regulate the immersion of artificial reefs.

“This law allows a local wilaya (provincial) commission to grant permission for the immersion of artificial reefs to project sponsors, whether they are associations, institutions, or others,” explains Emir Berkane, a doctor, environmental activist, and president of the Probiom Foundation. The legislation also enabled Hippone Sub and Probiom to begin their second project in 2021 with “two new pyramidal immersions that measure 33 m³ and 66 m³,” creating one of the largest reefs in Algeria, says Emir Berkane. In Annaba, “one of the two pyramids is still thriving, along with the first artificial reef,” the environmental activist notes.

Over the last decade, there has been a surge in activity surrounding this issue, observes Professor Grimes. Several artificial reefs have been submerged off the Algerian coast by associations and researchers, notably in Oran and Mostaganem, which are located 420 and 330 kilometers west of Algiers, respectively. Other projects are in preliminary stages, including one in Aïn Témouchent, 490 kilometers west of Algiers, which is being worked on by Professor Grimes, himself.

Based in San Antonio, Holley serves as the executive director of Thrive Youth Center, a nonprofit organization working to provide homeless queer, trans and nonbinary youth with a safe and supportive environment. While being queer was never going to be an issue on surface level, Holley tells Reckon that this internal battle he dealt with regarding his sexuality led him to substance abuse—a point of connection he makes with the youth he sees at the center.

“My parents loved me, yet I didn’t feel loved enough. And although it’s not necessarily the reality of what was there, it was [still] my reality,” he said, explaining the profound significance of giving people a safe space. “If we can create that environment to individuals that have already gone through trauma, they can get back on track in their early teens and 20s instead of having to wait when they’re much older to deal with those issues.”

He recalls a particular story from last year, when a 19-year-old trans girl briefly stayed at Haven For Hope, another homeless shelter in San Antonio. Thrive Youth Center enrolled the teen—who had dropped out of school in seventh grade—into their own program. Within three months of staying with Thrive Youth Center, she earned her high school diploma. Today, she is in college.

ARC–Southeast had expected to reapply for more funding once that grant expired; the demand from abortion seekers was growing only more acute as more states imposed bans. But after the abortion fund published its Palestine solidarity letter last year, Schusterman moved to distance itself from its grantee. In the weeks following the letter’s release, the foundation informed ARC–Southeast that, rather than pay the third installment of the grant as normal, it would route it through a third-party donor-advised fund. The staff surmised that the change had been made “so that Schusterman’s name was not attached to funding us,” Springer told me. They had reason to worry: An employee at the foundation, whom Springer described as an “ally,” had warned them in an off-the-books meeting that the solidarity statement had put their funding in jeopardy. In late July, after the final installment, of $325,000, had arrived via the third-party fund, a Schusterman official told ARC–Southeast in an email that the payment amounted to a “tie-off/closing grant,” and that the foundation was “waiving any pending report requirements,” according to Springer, who read me the email. In philanthropy-speak, Schusterman was saying that it didn’t want to hear from ARC–Southeast again. (Roben Smolar, a spokesperson for Schusterman, disputed the idea that the philanthropy had cut ties with the abortion fund for political reasons, telling me in an emailed statement that the foundation “made the strategic decision long before October 2023 to shift away from funding individual funds to a long-term approach that will advance broad-scale access across the country,” and adding, “Our level of giving to abortion access has not changed—in fact, it has increased.” She declined to elaborate or answer further questions.)

Donors’ break with abortion funds is just one example of a quiet crackdown currently underway inside the veiled world of American philanthropy. In conference rooms, Zoom meetings, and email inboxes, largely hidden from public view, funders who style themselves as champions of progressive values are conditioning their grants on support for—or, at least, silence about—Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza, denying resources to organizations they had previously supported and praised. More than 40 interviews with people on either side of the grantmaker–grantee divide reveal a pattern of funding decisions that punish expressions of Palestinian solidarity, affecting social justice organizations that work on a range of domestic issues, from police violence and the prison system to environmental justice and the affordable housing crisis. For funders—including prominent Jewish family foundations like Schusterman—the enforcement of Israel-related guardrails lays bare the contradictions inherent in a philanthropic portfolio that pursues a progressive domestic agenda while promoting allegiance to the Jewish state. “These liberal Zionist foundations were not necessarily hiding their focus on Israel, and their support of Israel, as part of their philanthropic work,” before October 2023, said Rebecca Vilkomerson, a former executive director of the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace who now co-directs Funding Freedom, which organizes for Palestinian liberation within philanthropy. “It’s just that there was an apparent dividing line between the support for progressive causes—which is in line with the ‘liberal’ part of liberal Zionist—and the Zionist causes. And now they’re feeling forced to choose, and they’re choosing Zionist over liberal.”

The clemency action applies to all federal death row inmates except three convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attack; Dylann Roof, who shot dead nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh's Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers in 2018.

Of the more than 3,000 candidates who ran for seats for provincial governors, city leaders, and regents across the country, more than a dozen were influencers. Shu, 37, has more than 200,000 followers on TikTok and about 2.8 million on Instagram. She has been a member of the NasDem Party since 2018, often seen at campaign rallies for party leaders. Still, it is through her social media platforms that voters in Cilacap in Central Java know her best.

Shu did not win, but she is among dozens of influencers in Indonesia trying to parlay their social media success into a career in politics. More than 20 influencers were elected to the Indonesian parliament in the national election in February, the highest number so far. That shows that influencers are gaining the trust of voters, Pradipa Rasidi, a digital anthropologist, told Rest of World.

While Indonesian political parties have a long history of recruiting famous people to boost their chances in polls, the fact that this has now become routine underlines a larger issue of the parties having “failed to foster a new generation of politicians,” Titi Anggraini, an advisory board member at the advocacy group Association for Elections and Democracy, told Rest of World.

With few strong candidates, “they have to increasingly rely on influencers to win elections,” she said. Politicians tend to pick celebrities because of their fame and following rather than their leadership qualities because “people ultimately vote for familiar faces over politicians who they don’t know.”

Candidates who run for office don’t need to have a political background or other relevant experience. But what is worrying is that even after being elected, “most celebrities and influencers don’t spend enough time learning and understanding the party’s ideologies … so they focus more on appealing to people’s emotions and less about educating them, or themselves, about the programs and policies,” Titi said.

The 19th: For those unfamiliar with the term “petro-masculinity,” what does this rhetoric around oil and gas dominance have to do with gender and identity?

I first thought of this term after Trump was elected in 2016 because I saw this trend of support for fossil fuels and climate denial on the one hand and misogyny on the other. They were usually treated as separate problems, and just coincidentally appearing together.

I come from a critical eco-feminist background where scholars connect the domination and exploitation of the natural world to the justifications for the domination and exploitation of work that is often done by colonized peoples, and by women or feminized bodies. Historically, this process developed under colonial capitalism. It helps me understand that these are not coincidental, that these two go together. In the United States, for example, it can be seen in the way that care work is devalued or taken for granted, in the same way that nature is considered a resource, something free to be taken.

Both of these are background assumptions that drive the capitalist economy. So the separation of them into the economic sphere and the private or identity issue sphere is really making it hard for people to see that these are not separate. These actually work together.

The draft law replaces legislation from 1984 and targets internet users who have more than 100,000 followers on a single platform or 200,000 across several, the justice ministry said in a statement.

These outlets and the platforms that host them must have a mechanism to facilitate citizens' right to ask that false or inaccurate information that harms them be corrected publicly, the ministry said.

The correction request will no longer have to be addressed to the outlet's director because confirming their identity is difficult for many "pseudo media", justice minister Félix Bolaños told a press conference.

Manufacturers say that installing a couple of 300-watt panels will give a saving of up to 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill. With an outlay of €400-800 and with no installation cost, the panels could pay for themselves within six years.

In Spain, where two thirds of the population live in apartments and installing panels on the roof requires the consent of a majority of the building’s residents, this DIY technology has obvious advantages.

With solar balconies, no such consent is required unless the facade is listed as of historic interest or there is a specific prohibition from the residents’ association or the local authority. Furthermore, as long as the installation does not exceed 800 watts it doesn’t require certification, which can cost from €100 to €400, depending on the area.

As with all solar power systems, balcony power only works in daylight and a battery storage system can add at least €1,000 to the installation cost.

Vernetta says the vertical surface area of cities is far greater than that of the roofs and that, in Spain, balcony panels benefit more than roof panels from the low winter sun.

Cities such as Helsinki are already experimenting with buildings with solar panel cladding.