Across the US, the number of students who are English learners, “those whose first or primary language is anything other than English and who identify as requiring assistance in school to reach English language proficiency,” has been rapidly rising. As of 2021, nearly 11% (5.3 million) of public school students were classified as English learners (ELs), and the National Association for the Education of Young Children has estimated that by 2030, 40% of students will have a home language other than English. Due to decades of insufficient support from the government, many ELs are suffering academically. The most recent national data from the 2019-2020 school year show that the high school graduation rate percentage for ELs is 71% compared to the national average of 86%. And as of 2017, a very small percentage of graduating ELs, 1.4%, end up taking college entrance exams like the SAT or ACT. Despite the clear and pressing need for school programs dedicated to effectively supporting the increasing number of ELs and addressing some of these academic disparities, a multitude of challenges such as insufficient funding, teacher shortages, and a lack of culturally sensitive classroom spaces persist. 

Something that must be immediately addressed is the need for more funding and readily equipped EL teachers. As the New America think tank explains, “Education advocates have been pushing for more federal funding for ELs for years, calling attention to the fact that funds have not kept up with the pace of growth among the EL population.” Since 2022, the federal grant program dedicated for ELs has decreased by 24%, despite the increasing number of EL students. Furthermore, the Trump administration “has fired nearly every Education Department staffer who ensured states and schools properly spent the hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked to help over 5 million students learning English.” This development has sparked concerns from education advocates over the proper management of the already limited federal funds dedicated to ELs. 

To further complicate matters, there are not enough EL educators available. According to the latest federal data, while the number of EL students increased by 2.6% between the 2018-2020 school years, the number of certified EL teachers decreased by 10.4%. A report by the nonprofit the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) highlighted the impact of this data stating, “In the 2020-2021 school year, 33 states and DC reported a shortage of ESL or bilingual teachers.” The CCSSO further stated that in the 2020-2021 school year, “only 10% of teachers had a major, minor, or certificate in EL instruction.” Although 48% of these teachers were familiar with EL instruction to some degree due to courses taken in college, this is not the same as long-term training or a specialized degree. It is important that universities encourage education majors to consider learning more about EL instruction and offer specialized programs, as research has shown that EL students perform better academically when both their general and EL teachers have specialist certificates or training. General classroom teachers must be properly prepared to potentially instruct ELs, as “U.S. Department of Education statistics for 2020-21…showed 67% of all U.S. teachers had at least one EL student in their class.” 

Researchers and education advocates have also emphasized the importance of valuing students’ L1, or first language, as well as culturally sensitive classroom spaces for ELs. Educators and researchers have repeatedly expressed concerns over the common practice of “restricting support for students’ home languages, and emphasizing English-only approaches.” A multitude of studies and meta analyses have shown academic, cognitive, and language acquisition facilitation benefits that result from incorporating students’ L1 into classroom instruction. Furthermore, a research study on equity in classrooms emphasized the importance of teachers approaching education from a bilingual and bicultural perspective, understanding the intersection of language and culture, and applying this knowledge to support effective instruction for ELs. In order to fully support EL students and help them succeed, educators must embrace an asset-based pedagogy with ELs that values the “existing linguistic and cultural knowledge” that these students already bring with them to the classroom.  It is extremely evident by the lack of sufficient funding, trained EL teachers, and culturally responsive classrooms that ELs have been and continue to be drastically underserved and undervalued in the current US education system. With the Trump Administration eliminating “nearly 200 civil rights attorneys who would make sure school districts meet their legal obligations to support English learners” as well as declaring English to be the official language of the US, which “could lead schools to put less effort into translating documents and conversations for immigrant families” and discourage L1 incorporation in classrooms, it is clear that these policies actively harm EL students. Policymakers must recognize that EL’s “unique cultural and linguistic resources…can add considerably to the breadth and depth of knowledge, perspectives, and talents of American society.” The rise of ELs is not a burden but instead an opportunity for everyone present in the classroom. Educators and lawmakers valuing EL students and their perspectives allows for a “global, dynamic, and multicultural approach to education”—something that is necessary in an increasingly diverse and globalized world.

From the Super Bowl to Facebook to billboards, sports betting platform ads like Fanduel, DraftKings, and Bet MGM want to help you land your “three leg parlay” and “make it rain.” Where before gambling took place on occasion in casinos or at gas station slot machines, today, people worldwide can make live bets from their phones—from NFL football all the way to ping pong games sponsored by the International Table Tennis Federation—anytime, anywhere. In 2024, more than $14 million dollars were placed on sports bets, a 29% increase from 2023. Since the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Ametur Sports Protection Act in 2018, sports betting is legal in 38 states and Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico but remains controversial in mainstream society.  

In the battle to maintain the restrictions on online betting platforms, advocates have pointed out how the addictive nature of gambling creates a noxious cycle that harms sports fans while sports leagues, betting platforms, and politicians benefit financially.

There is a lot riding on the legality of gambling. Sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB have a vested interest in allowing sports betting to remain legal by advertising sports betting platforms. When gambling platforms sponsor repeat bettors, fans are encouraged to make live bets, increasing viewership on games and raising revenue for the leagues. 

Sports betting companies, like DraftKings, have the most to lose if sports betting ceases to be legal as they earn revenue through fees on losing gambling bets. According to ESPN, these sports betting platforms boasted a $13 billion dollar revenue in 2023. 

The final cashout in sports betting comes in the form of political campaign financing and lobbying. Lobbying seeks to influence candidates’ and parties’ positions on issues, with some companies donating large amounts of money to gather support for their own views and interests. At the beginning of this year, a coalition of Sports Betting giants (DraftKings, Bet MGM, and Fanduel) formed a legal alliance to hire lobbyists to work in the House of Representatives. These giants also spent over one million dollars combined on the 2024 presidential and congressional elections. Unfortunately, while governments and politicians benefit from sports gambling, consumers suffer the consequences of an unregulated online sports betting system. 

Sports betting is highly addictive and uses hits of dopamine to reinforce behaviors, while platforms sell gambling as an “easy and fun” way to make money. Platforms like DraftKings utilize advertisements to draw people in, like five-dollar coupons that make the first bet free and offering bonus bets for the completion of certain challenges. People end up chasing losses by trying to gamble more in order to break even, creating a harmful downward spiral. Research done by the University of Kansas indicates that betting is more likely to take place in low-income households, thus exacerbating poor economic conditions.

Fortunately, there are lawmakers opposed to this harmful practice. House Rep. Paul Tonko of New York’s 20th district has proposed a bill titled “S.A.F.E Bet” that would tighten restrictions on online gambling, making advertising guidelines stricter and preventing gamblers from making large consecutive bets. By restricting the amount and the frequency of bets gamblers can make in one night, S.A.F.E Bet can help mitigate the noxious cycle many bettors are stuck in. Rep. Tonko’s bill was proposed in the House and sent to committee as of September 2024.

Additionally, some health professionals have suggested that gambling addictions should be treated as an issue of public health. The combination of the stimulating nature of gambling and the accessibility of betting apps makes it addictive. As the popularity of online sports betting apps increases, advertising increases to attract more bettors, leading more people down the cycle of losing and chasing the money to win back losses. This cycle can result in debt, substance abuse, depression, and loss of relationships—it is both a financial and a mental health issue. The classification of sports betting addiction as a public health issue would help paint the image of how harmful the practice is and aid lawmakers like Rep. Tonko to make sports betting illegal.  

Online sports betting apps are regressive, invasive, and addictive. Sports betting apps are advertised as a quick and fun way to make money while your favorite teams play, but in reality, the bettor is the one getting played.

The way people furnish their homes is often seen as an exhibition of their personal taste, culture, and socioeconomic status. Beyond aesthetics however, interior design can also reveal manifestations of emotion. Studies in environmental psychology suggest that one creates spaces that reflect their circumstances. A home full of personal decorations, comfortable furniture, and sentimental items is often associated with stability and a sense of belonging, while an impersonal or empty space often signals transition, uncertainty, or distress.

In this respect, this relationship with space for undocumented immigrants becomes complicated. Their homes instead reflect a state of transience, an unwillingness to settle in completely. Given this, there is then a tendency to avoid investing in furniture, home renovations, or even personal decorations. This is not necessarily because they lack the means, but because they live with the constant possibility of displacement. In that case, a sparsely furnished home is much easier to walk away and disassociate from.

Beyond the psychological impact of family instability, legal status has tangible effects on financial and employment decisions. In the United States, home ownership is considered to be one of the primary ways families can build generational wealth. Yet for undocumented immigrants, the barriers to buying a home are high, not just due to financial challenges. Once again, it’s the uncertainty that defines their lives, which can cloud judgment when making decisions.

Currently, no laws are preventing undocumented immigrants from purchasing property, and some even manage to do so through individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITINs) instead of regular Social Security numbers to build credit. However, many choose not to, as only 5,000-6,000 ITIN mortgages were made in 2023, a number which could have been from 73,000 to 88,000 without market barriers. Interest rates and down payments on mortgages are also usually higher than a traditional one, with them being 50 to 200 basis points and 10 to 20 percent higher respectively. Renting instead becomes the default option, but even that comes with social instability. Undocumented immigrants often rely on informal rental agreements to avoid leases that require extensive documentation. With limited engagement with the market through these aversions, many tend to move frequently to avoid attention or because their housing situation remains only temporary. Although there is no explicit data that details this, there is, according to a study, a higher concentration of people living in shared, overcrowded, or undesirable housing.

Employment decisions follow a similar pattern. Many undocumented workers take jobs in industries that do not require extensive paperwork, such as construction, cleaning, or agriculture. These jobs often lack job security, making any long-term financial planning difficult, and are more prone to exploitation. Even those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, which provides temporary relief from deportation, live with uncertainty, as it must be renewed every two years and policy changes could alter their status overnight. In taking into account recent developments, there are reports that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is nearing a deal with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to share data of undocumented taxpayers, which could be seen as a breach of privacy, despite being told by previous presidential administrations that it would fast-track the citizenship process. 

Such fears can also extend across generations in households where the parents are undocumented but the children are U.S.-born citizens. Children may grow up in environments where their parents are hesitant to make the home feel settled, either due to financial constraints or a deeper, subconscious reluctance.  Even if the children have legal status and the means to engage legally with educational opportunities, such an environment can lead to lower probabilities of graduating or obtaining advanced degrees. According to a study conducted by Harvard researcher Roberto G. Gonzales in 2011, this demographic is “at risk of lower educational performance,” while also exhibiting lower rates of enrollment in public programs that they are eligible for. Of the 150 interviewed, only 31 had completed college or advanced degrees, with none working in their respective fields. Such developments highlight how fear can cloud judgement of those who are able to exercise their rights as U.S. citizens.

Thus, home in its fullest sense can be interpreted as not just walls and a roof, but also providing security and ensuring family stability. For those who live with the constant fear of deportation, however, it can be a battleground of emotions and survival. The choices that they make on furniture, housing, and employment reflect a larger legal situation that determines their right to security. This reality is a reminder that policy decisions are not just abstract debates, but that they also have personal consequences. In this case, a sparsely furnished room is not just an aesthetic choice, or sign of financial struggle. Rather, it is a reflection of a and testament to a life of uncertainty and fear that comes with legal limbo.

New Zealand, Mexico, India, Barbados, Peru, and many other countries all over the world have had female presidents or prime ministers, while the United States lags behind. In fact, the U.S. has a very short history of women in political offices that only truly began with the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, giving women the right to vote. Since then, the highest political office a woman has achieved has been vice president—Kamala Harris in 2020. The issue is not unique to the oval office. As of 2023, women made up less than 50% of congress, governors, state legislatures, Fortune 500 CEOs, Fortune 500 board members, and university presidents. Yet, women make up over half of the U.S. population and have consistently outpaced men in college completion since 1995. Despite the disproportionately large share of educated women in the United States, they are drastically underrepresented in decision-making spheres. Why?

Answering with the blanket term “sexism” would fail to assess how the complex mixture of historical, systemic, and social factors impact our subconscious today. The implicit biases people hold are what continue to hinder leadership opportunities for women. Most Americans believe in the abstract idea that they would vote for “the right woman” in a presidential election, but when faced with the reality of a female candidate, their support falters. Moreover, the majority of Americans say that women and men make equally good leaders, but past elections—primarily presidential elections—have not reflected this sentiment. Voters tend to come up with other unfavorable attributes to justify their decision not to vote for a female candidate.

One of these attributes is associated with experience. Karrin Vasby Anderson (2017) theorizes that a “first-timer/frontrunner double bind” allows male “first-timers” such as Donald Trump in 2016 to benefit from being seen as a political outsider, a change candidate. Female politicians do not have the same advantage. In order to earn credibility, they must have significant experience and support, but paradoxically their political experience is often viewed as entitlement and megalomania. Women will undeniably struggle to win if they don’t have experience, but oftentimes, they can’t win even if they do. This was a major challenge for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and despite a vastly different political environment and circumstances in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris struggled with the same problem. The first-timer/frontrunner double bind may help answer the question about why women are underrepresented in the United States: the problem is not that there are not enough qualified female candidates, but rather that unconscious bias prevents Americans from realistically selecting them. As Anderson puts it, “the problem lies with the culture rather than with the candidates.” In conclusion, there is no “right woman.” 

Culture is very complex, which is why this problem is so hard to solve. Every person is molded by the culture in which they grew up in, absorbing lasting attitudes through their subconscious. Psychologist Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions gives insight into the cultural factors that can contribute to collective bias. The two dimensions to look at are power-distance, which measures the emphasis on equality and democratic approaches, and masculinity. Ironically, the United States has low power-distance (more equal/democratic), but is also masculine, meaning expected gender roles are more distinct. This explains the inconsistency between Americans’ abstract belief in gender equality versus the reality of the gender gap. 

Looking back through U.S. history, women have taken on more traditional feminine roles such as homemakers. They were expected to be emotional, nurturing, and gentle—not typical qualities sought out in leaders. The man was the head of the house and expected to be decisive and assertive. Now, despite a more progressive era in which gender equality has greatly improved, society still possesses the remnants of old stereotypes. Biases can linger and fester, whether people know it or not. 

Being aware of and addressing these biases is the key to overcoming them. For example, Project Implicit utilizes Implicit Bias Testing. Participants are asked to quickly categorize words or images on screen, and their response time based on certain stimuli provides insight into their mental associations. Furthermore, data from Project Implicit suggests that 75% of participants associate men more strongly with the workplace and women more so with family roles. You can take the Gender and Leadership Implicit Association Test yourself, and you may be surprised by the results. 

To open doors for women leaders, it is imperative that people continue evolving and recognizing their own biases. Being unwilling to address implicit bias prevents progression not just for women, but for everyone. It produces countless negative impacts on society including sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and more. Most Americans already believe in the capability of women leaders—subconscious minds just need to catch up. The more people acknowledge their implicit biases, the more the United States progresses toward equality.

The issue of felony disenfranchisement stands as a barrier between the realization of all fundamental rights and the principles of justice, raising questions about representation and the path to social reintegration. Studies indicate that three out of every four Americans who cannot vote due to a felony conviction, reside within our communities while completing felony probation or parole. This issue can be felt even in the familiar streets of downtown Athens, where the heartbeat of the city oscillates. Among the various activities and gatherings and throngs of people, are those who were formerly incarcerated. There are those who, despite their past mistakes, have become an integral part of the community. They volunteer, advocate for policy reform and contribute to the betterment of the community. Despite their efforts, there is a glaring disparity. Because of a history of incarceration, they are denied the fundamental right to vote, depriving them of any way to enact changes in the laws and policies that directly impact them. 

The consequences of disenfranchisement extend beyond the individual level. Research indicates that it contributes to the perpetuation of systemic inequalities within communities, particularly those already marginalized. A study conducted by the Sentencing Project reveals that Georgia’s disenfranchisement rate of 3.1% exceeds the national average of 2.0%, with  5.2% of the state’s Black voting-age population being denied the right to vote. 

In Georgia, as in many other states, individuals convicted of felonies lose their right to vote even after completing their sentences. The impact is staggering, with African American men disproportionately affected by these laws. According to the Department of Justice, the percentage of Black men likely to go to prison during their lifetime is 28.5% compared to that of white men, who have a likelihood percentage of 4.4%.  African American men are six times more likely than white men to be incarcerated during their lifetimes. This disparity in incarceration rights draws attention to the racial inequities embedded within the criminal justice system. It reflects a history of systemic biases, from policing practices to sentencing outcomes, disproportionately affecting communities of color. These inequities not only increase cycles of marginalization but also challenge the principles of fairness and equality our democratic society claims to be built on. 

In addition to the challenges faced by formerly incarcerated individuals in Georgia, the issue is exacerbated by the involvement of private prisons in the state. Private prisons, operated by corporations for profit, have a vested interest in maintaining high incarceration rates to ensure financial viability. Consequently, they often lobby for harsher sentencing laws and contribute to the continuation of policies that disenfranchise individuals with felony convictions. Profit motives often take precedence over rehabilitation and reintegration efforts, and contribute to the overrepresentation of African American men in the criminal justice system.  

The journey of reintegration for individuals post-incarceration is filled with challenges, from securing employment to rebuilding relationships. As stated above, one often overlooked aspect is the restoration of civic rights. When individuals are unable to vote, they are effectively silenced in the democratic process. This absence of voice not only eliminates their sense of belonging but also hinders the collective representation of their communities. In places like Athens-Clarke County, where historical disenfranchisement and racial tensions persist, restoring voting rights to the previously incarcerated is crucial for promoting inclusivity.

Efforts to address felony disenfranchisement are gaining momentum across the country. Organizations like Common Cause advocate for the restoration of voting rights, highlighting  the importance of civic engagement in reducing recidivism and fostering community reintegration. Local and state organizations in Georgia, including the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU of Georgia and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, are actively engaged in legal battle and advocacy efforts to change laws that prolong this deprivation of fundamental rights.  The Georgia Justice Project is another organization that plays a crucial role in advocating for criminal justice reform and supporting individuals affected by the system. The Georgia Justice Project focuses on providing legal representation, support services, and advocacy for individuals impacted by the criminal justice system. Through these efforts, the project aims to address the root causes of mass incarceration, promote alternatives to incarceration and advocate for the restoration of voting rights. By working collaboratively with community members, policymakers, and others, these organizations strive to create a more just society where everyone has the opportunity to rebuild their lives and participate fully in civic life. 

Photo Credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-with-a-wristband-casting-a-vote-5926256/

“Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.” In this quote, Winston Churchill expressed the challenge of a game that never definitely submits to the skill of the player; however secure one’s position might be, golf would find some weak spot and again prevail. Every day in corporate settings, women in leadership deal with gendered difficulties that are resistant to most solutions, just like those in golf. Even behind the sport itself is a profound history of sexism, which raises the question of whether or not golf should still be used as a major form of networking. Golf is the only sport used as a tool for career advancement in corporate settings, and yet its male-only past still precedes its name, evidenced by the popular acronym “gentlemen only, ladies forbidden.” How does the use of golf to network worsen barriers faced by women in corporate leadership roles?

Outside of the office, female golfers were not offered a spot on the green until they fought a long and difficult gender-based battle. The Masters, the first major professional golf tournament of the year, refused to admit women to their host club, Augusta National, until 2012. In 2002, with the National Council of Women’s Organizations, Martha Burk wrote a nine-sentence letter to Augusta National urging reevaluation of their male-only membership policies. The letter didn’t make headlines until chairman William “Hootie” Johnson caused a public relations nightmare, responding on the behalf of Augusta National, “We do not intend to become a trophy in their [NCWO’s] display case. There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership but that timetable will be ours, and not at the point of a bayonet… [Augusta] will not be bullied, threatened, or intimidated,” Johnson continued. 

Augusta National and the Masters never fully recovered from the damage to their reputation that Hootie Johnson provoked. When the club finally extended membership to women in 2012, many remembered his sentiment that promising women entrance does not guarantee acceptance. Professional golf has its roots in male power, and the casual use of golf in the workplace to network upholds male power further. Having noted such resistance to change within the golfing community, as a method of networking the sport may be damaging to the mobility of women in corporate leadership.

The glass ceiling, a conceptual barrier prohibiting racial minorities and women from advancing professionally, is made up of several specific obstacles. One of these obstacles is the ostracism of women from informal networks through the sport of golf: namely, the grass ceiling. Exactly how women are excluded from informal networks created through golf is by way of the contemporary American model of gender equality. Under the modern system, women are expected to engage in a career equal in workload to that of a man’s while simultaneously maintaining traditional caretaking responsibilities. “The influx of women into the economy has not been accompanied by a cultural understanding of marriage and work that would make this transition smooth,” (Hochschild, 2012). Referring to the lion’s share of childcare that mothers take as the second shift, sociologist Arlie Hochschild noted that most working fathers have yet to spend more time caretaking. This time is instead dedicated to career-building, and indeed, most working men golf during the free time that most working women spend attending to familial responsibilities. When a network-building activity such as golfing takes place outside of work hours, women struggle more to participate. In tandem with stereotyping and biases against female golfers, it becomes almost impossible for women to reap the benefits of golfing in corporate settings that men have been able to.

As the green helps build careers, it is imperative that women are granted access to the networks that men form while playing golf. Shifting the narrative within golf to recognize the value of women’s participation would benefit executives of all genders, considering that women are now integral to the economy. Nevertheless, traditional caregiving roles will long remain an obstacle for women in positions of leadership, regardless of the avenue they choose to build their careers. But this can be mollified through the reallocation of time between working parents and cultural acceptance of corporate women in golf. Dismantling the grass ceiling may enable the corporate world to relieve female executives of power scarcities, in progress towards a future in business where influence is awarded equally.

Photo Credit: https://golfweek.usatoday.com/gallery/masters-2024-sunday-final-round-augusta-national-photo-gallery/

In a capitalist system, free markets self-regulate and redistribute wealth without any assistance from government institutions. Even as disparities in income, education, and access to resources rise, America promises that no economy or government other than one functioning under capitalism, is better for one’s personal finances, one’s fiscal mobility, and the American collective on the whole. Even when the wealthiest five percent of Americans amass over two-thirds of the wealth in the United States, unwavering support of the capitalist system from American legislatures has remained. However, the cracks in the system are becoming more evident as the United States has entered a new era of late-stage capitalism. Late-stage capitalism describes a point in which there is an acceleration in the turnover of capital, concentrating wealth in the hands of the few, resulting in a continuous tendency to crises. As this stage of capitalism has developed, the United States has seen a dramatic rise in inequality, exacerbated by weak democratic institutions, as a result, undermining democracy as a whole. Without institutional correction in the form of tax reform, the share of wealth the top one percent of income earners in America harbor will only continue to grow, sending democracy to a standstill and leaving the United States miles behind the rest of the developed world.  

America faces some of the lowest participation in elections of any developed country. Of the indicators of a functioning democracy, one of the most important is participation in elections. Sweden, a country often regarded as one of the world’s most robust democracies, had 80.3% of their of-age voters turn out in their 2022 election, while in the U.S. 2020 presidential election, that number reached only 62.8%. America lacks institutions like that of Sweden to help bolster democratic participation, but it also lacks the more fundamental component, exacerbated by late-stage capitalism, required to sustain it: income equality. In 2014, almost all of the most financially secure Americans (94%) said they were registered to vote, while only about half (54%) of the least financially secure were registered. Poorer Americans, who are more often women and people of color and who tend to vote in one direction, have much lower voting rates compared to their wealthier counterparts. If the number of people living below the poverty line continues to increase, the people actually getting to the polls will elect a skewed Congress, as those who do end up voting, are voting in the interests of a narrower population, inaccurately representing the true beliefs and desires of the entirety of the United States, undermining America’s democracy further. In a country with as much income disparity as the United States, a structural solution is required to account for the weakening of democracy that late-stage capitalism has created.

A seemingly intuitive solution, yet a controversial one, is implementing a wealth tax. Taxes are a central institution in securing the operation of virtually every public sector, and no one relies on the operation of these services more than America’s lowest-income earners. In the United States, the majority of taxes come from federal income taxes, while taxes from large corporations make up only six percent of tax revenue. Further, while the average American paid 14.9 percent of their income in taxes in 2021, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in America contributed just 8.2 percent of their income to taxes. Even worse, each of the top 1,300 richest households in America made more than $62 million in 2012, but they pay a lower percentage in federal income taxes than upper-middle-class people. 

The solution is simple: increase the proportion of tax revenue coming from both corporations and America’s wealthiest. A wealth tax redistributes money that would have been used in the interests of the wealthy and invests it back into the public sector. This allows people to save money they would have otherwise been forced to spend if not for the support of public resources, therefore reducing the burden taxes possess on the poor. Among rental households below the official poverty threshold, 61.4% included at least one person getting SNAP and 19.2% included at least one person getting Social Security benefits in 2016. It is evident that Americans in poverty rely heavily on government programs for support, support that is no less essential when it’s time to go and vote. A wealth tax could fund systems like public child care and paid time off, services often not available to working-class Americans who would require such services in order to safely take time away from their precious working hours to go and vote. For people who rely on every single paycheck, every single paid hour, in order to provide for their families, the choice between three hours of paid work or participation in America’s democracy is a simple one: they will choose the grocery money, the insurance money, the childcare money, and the gas money every single time. In order to maintain a healthy democracy, access to it must be undemanding to its participants. For the wealthy, without time, money, or resource constraints, there are few obstacles. 

When it redistributes effectively, a wealth tax reduces some of the obstacles America’s poorest face when attempting to participate in democracy, increasing their representation and reinforcing democratic institutions. In an era of late-stage capitalism, institutional structures are required to ensure democracy functions at its best.

Photo Credit: https://www.stockvault.net/photo/108803/money-pile-of-dollar-bills

The United States has not seen a third-party candidate with significant impact since Ross Perot in 1992. Yet, polling shows a steady increase in Americans willing to vote for a third-party candidate, with recent data showing upwards of 63%. While this sentiment has grown throughout the voter base, the landscape for national elections has become a duopoly between the Republicans and Democrats, who have changed the rules. They’ve done this in two ways: first, by forcing independent candidates to gather signatures to “qualify” to get on the ballot in the various states. This can range from a couple of thousand to hundreds of thousands. A project that only needed a couple of thousand signatures could most likely do it only using volunteers. But RFK Jr.’s campaign estimates that they will need roughly a million signatures to get on all the ballots of all 50 states, costing them upwards of 15 million dollars. So far, the campaign reports it has enough signatures to appear on the presidential ballot in Hawaii, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Utah, and is on track to gain enough signatures for Kennedy to appear on the ballot in Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, and Michigan. The way they are gaining these signatures is by hiring signature collectors. These individuals pose as volunteers to gather signatures from eligible voters, but in fact, are being hired by super PACs and election committees to gather artificial support for candidates. UGA has even seen some of these signature collectors on campus.

The second issue that RFK is dealing with is states barring him entirely. The Kennedy campaign has sued Utah and Idaho over their ballot access rules and is likely to file lawsuits in six other states. However, for RFK to make a real impact, he doesn’t need to get on the ballot in all 50 states. Getting on the ballot in just 3 or 4 of the seven swing states could drastically change the overall election results.

“If you can’t beat them, join them.” This wasn’t the approach that RFK took as he initially ran as a Democrat and dropped out, but it was the approach of Dean Phillips, a Democrat running against incumbent and current President Joseph Biden. Phillips, who recently suspended his campaign, ran into alternative barriers while trying to run within the two-party system. Though Phillips announced his candidacy late in October before the primary season, he was left off the ballot in several key states, including Nevada, North Carolina, and Florida.

Phillips was also met with other challenges, which included his main opponent Joe Biden not filing for the New Hampshire primary and instead opting to be an in-write candidate. It was the first time an incumbent chose not to file in the first primary election. 

This choice was made following Joe Biden’s finish in 5th place in the New Hampshire primary voting in 2020, not winning a single municipality. As a result, the DNC officially filed for Biden in South Carolina first. South Carolina gave Mr. Biden his first 2020 primary win and revived his White House run.  The silence and dismissiveness of Phillips’ efforts to compete in New Hampshire forced the hand of the officials, stating that it was a meaningless primary. This incident represents a possibly scary future, where presidential candidates are picked not from the population but from Super PACs with the most money or party elites.

The ballot access laws for the president are much more lenient than for other offices as state legislators place more personal importance on legislative rather than presidential elections. However, for former president Donald Trump, the barriers are unprecedented for a sitting president seeking re-election. At least two states, Colorado and Maine, have already barred the former president from appearing on their ballots due to his actions seeking to overturn the 2020 election results and his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. A further 11 states have filed litigation seeking to exclude Mr. Trump as well, in a historically rigid application of ballot access laws. Though he sits charged with 91 felonies, he has not been convicted of a criminal offense. 

Logically, it is very damning to be charged with 91 felonies. However, in America, students are taught that one is innocent until proven guilty, and political pressures should not influence who can and cannot sit on the balance. 

“It’s an unconstitutional effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans who want to vote for President Trump,” said campaign spokesman Steven Cheung. “We’ll fight this every step of the way.” But these obstacles do not come cheap. The Trump campaign has already racked up over $25 million in legal fees battling the ballot exclusions, a financial drain on resources that could significantly hamper efforts in critical swing states. Additionally, Trump also faces $500 million in civil liabilities that will damage not only his image but also his financial ability to campaign through November.

These challenges come in all different shapes and sizes, yet they all raise the same question: Is the line so clear that we still have fair elections guaranteed to us as Americans? And with these candidates facing such challenges, what needs to be done to ensure elections become more fair in the future?

Photo Credit: https://www.thenewworldreport.com/2024-elections-digital-threats-forecast/.

Over the last several years, human rights have been at the heart of much of the widely known international news. The #BoycottMulan campaign, which began in 2019, was a response to a comment by the film’s star supporting Hong Kong police in their crackdown on political demonstrations. The film also drew negative media attention for its use of the Xinjiang region, where China is known to abridge the human rights of Uighurs. In 2022, international outcry arose when Iranian Mahsa Amini died as a result of brutality from the morality police who punished her for not wearing her hijab properly. Today, issues concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict are often couched in terms of human rights. American activism on issues like these demonstrate that they care about universal human rights. However, while they protest abuses, they are simultaneously undergoing a moral revolution that undermines support for the very existence of universal human rights.

A key component of this revolution is the rise of moral relativism. This ideology has staked a claim on a large portion of our population and is manifested in common positions on cultural hot topics. For example, “My body, my choice” can be justified two ways. One way is to suggest the primary moral issue concerns controlling women. The other signifies advocates believe morality is relative to the individual, or at least no one has a superior claim to have figured morals out, and so they should not force their moral interpretation on others. Either way, these interpretations of the refrain are directly or effectively examples of moral relativism because they indicate that it is fine to have different opinions on moral issues, but you cannot enforce yours on others. 

While the abortion example is just one particular interpretation of a particular issue, there is evidence that such moral relativism is fairly prevalent in the United States. Philosophy professor Thomas Polzler teamed up with psychologist Jennifer Wright to study this very topic. In a 2019 study of about 100 students and workers, they found that moral realism, which is the belief that morals are an objective and universal reality, was less common than anti-realism, which encompasses both the belief that morals do not exist at all and the belief that they are subjectively determined. More specifically, Polzler and Wright found that 64% of respondents believed moral truth was either determined by their own or their culture’s dominant moral beliefs. A much larger study of about 1,000 interviews in 2015 confirms Polzler and Wright’s conclusion. Barna Group, a private, non-partisan organization, found that 57% of American adults agreed that knowing what is right or wrong is a matter of personal experience. 65% of respondents agreed strongly or somewhat with the view that “every culture must determine what is acceptable morality for its people” while only about a third of respondents believed moral truth is absolute.

This moral revolution has significant implications for American support of human rights. The concept of universal human rights presumes at least a basic level of universal and objective morality. Universal human rights suggests that there are certain behaviors that no one, no matter their culture or beliefs or background, can engage in without actually wronging someone else. However, the erosion in belief in objective morality in the US has triggered a need to reconsider whether our culture’s philosophy justifies support for universal human rights at all. If one group of people can justly proclaim another person or group immoral, then the morality of the criticized behavior must supersede culture. If we are right to proclaim China to be immoral for sending Uighurs to concentration camps or Israel for failing to protect Palestinian civilians or Hamas for waging war using civilian human shields, then there must be at least some basic moral code that exists above the individual or cultural level. However, if we adhere to the ideologies that the research suggests are taking hold of Americans, then we have no basis for declaring another individual or culture in the wrong for behaviors it engages in outside our borders. For if each culture decides its own morality, then it can decide it is not immoral to elevate one people group within the culture and oppress another. If morality depends on the individual, then we do not even have grounds to judge others in our own culture, let alone in another. If either of these ideologies are true, our condemnation of a foreign culture or state has no place pressuring them to change because we have no right to tell anyone else what they should and should not do. Our condemnations would be nothing more than commentaries on cultural differences or expressions of personal preferences. 

While this shift to moral relativism has not stopped many from speaking out against human rights violations yet, belief in our domestic lives that morality is individually subjective, or at least culturally determined, philosophically undermines our condemnation of international abuses and cripples our ability to address them. If people truly believe that they are right in their condemnations, they must believe in at least some universal morality. If we want to be credible actors on the issue of human rights, we must have a standard by which to identify them. Without universal morality providing consistent guiding moral principles, even if we agree to support human rights because doing so feels right, disagreement over what counts as a right or as an infringement will increase. We will face increasing challenges in our engagement with this field because each protester and decision maker will be guided by his or her own preferences and intuitions rather than by a shared objective standard to work towards.

Americans have a decision before us. We can continue along the path of this moral revolution, upholding relativist views in our personal lives at the cost of having a justification for condemning atrocities beyond ourselves or our society, or we can return to moral objectivism as the first step to upholding human dignity through the support and defense of human rights. This return will not resolve all of the troubles and challenges we face in upholding human rights. However, without even admitting to the existence of universal morality, we remove the very possibility of there being a reliable guide for identifying human rights or a reason to engage in such issues beyond the manifestation of our own preferences. We must reverse course before the moral revolution taking hold in the United States finishes its exchange of justification for universal human rights with the affirmation of individual and cultural relativism.

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The event was moderated by Dean Matthew Auer of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), presented alongside special remarks by UGA President Jere Morehead and former chief of staff and political strategist for Senator Isakson, Heath Garrett. 

Every seat in the UGA Chapel was filled on the morning of the symposium, with some guests even opting to stand in the back of the aisles. 

According to SPIA’s website, the Isakson Symposium “honors and perpetuates Senator Isakson’s legacy of statesmanship and political civility. Special guests consider how civil debate, mutual respect, and common-interest problem solving advance the public good.”

Isakson was a University of Georgia alumnus who also served in the Georgia Air National Guard from 1966-1972. He was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1976 and served seven terms, including four as a minority leader. Following a failed gubernatorial campaign in 1990, he was elected to the Georgia Senate in 1992 and served one term. He was elected to the United States Senate in 2004 by a wide margin and remained there until his resignation on Dec. 31, 2019. His Senate seat was succeeded by Kelly Loeffler, a fellow Republican appointed by Governor Brian Kemp. Isakson died two years later on Dec. 19, 2021, following a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. 

The symposium served as a time for state leaders to remember Isakson’s ability to bridge political divides, a toolset that Auer said SPIA attempts to instill in all of its students.

“Hence the focus on political civility, meeting in the middle, crossing the aisle, building bridges,” Auer said. “That’s what we train our students to do. We’re extremely lucky, because we have a home-grown exemplar in the form of Johnny Isakson.”

Manchin and Blunt’s discussion revolved around the value of crossing the aisle to pass bipartisan legislation. 

“It takes a bipartisan approach to get most things done,” said Manchin at one point during the event. 

Blunt echoed that, saying, “You don’t have to agree with them on everything, you have to agree with them on one thing.”

Blunt was announced as a speaker only a few short weeks before the event, replacing Senator Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky. McConnell was originally slated to attend, but a scheduling conflict did not allow him to make the trip after all. 

Blunt was especially close with Isakson. 

“He was really a good friend of mine,” Blunt said. “When I was majority whip in the house, I had a smaller group of about five other deputies who helped plan how we get things done. Johnny was in that group, so we were together multiple times a week, every week, for a decade.”

Manchin’s attendance was high profile, as he announced that he will not be running for re-election on the day before the symposium. A polarizing figure at times, political analysts speculate that Manchin may announce a presidential bid in the coming weeks. 

“I’ve become a firm believer in term limits,” Manchin said. “I think we should be thinking about, how do we fix the system? We’re letting it get further apart and we’re breaking it more.”

When asked about his next steps, Manchin did not give a direct response. He alluded to a step away from politics due to concern about rising inflation and geopolitical unrest. 

“My main thing is, I’m concerned about my country,” Manchin said. “We have got to get our financial house in order because the finances and debt of the nation will take (the next) generation down. We’d be the first generation to put (the next) generation in peril, because every generation before us has given us better opportunities. I don’t want to be part of that.”