The recent push by state and federal authorities to restrict or ban kratom, including certain derivatives of the plant, highlights a contentious debate over individual health autonomy, public safety and the proper role of government in personal medical decisions. Kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) is not scheduled under the federal Controlled Substances Act and remains legal at the federal level, though it is considered an unapproved substance and is not recognized as safe or effective for medical use (FDA). Despite this federal legality, access to kratom has been sharply curtailed by a growing patchwork of state and local laws. As of 2025,…

When the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 2025–2030 were released on Jan. 7, they arrived the way most federal nutrition advice does: quietly, wrapped in PDFs, accompanied by earnest press briefings that few people outside policy and health media will ever watch. And yet, beneath the familiar bureaucracy, something had shifted. Not everything. Not nearly enough to satisfy critics on either side of the endless food wars. But enough to suggest that the long-running experiment of treating Americans as carbohydrate-burning machines fueled by grains and fortified products may finally be losing its grip. One of the most talked-about changes was…

American energy policy often frames itself as a single, optimized solution: one national grid, one universal model, and one set of answers. This view works well enough inside dense urban networks, but not in the vast stretches of rural land where reliable heat is not optional but essential to survival. Wood stoves occupy that uneasy space between policy regulation and hard necessity. They remain old technology in principle, but far from obsolete. In recent years, millions of U.S. households have continued to depend on wood for heating, with the fuel supplying a meaningful share of residential energy, especially in rural…

As the new year begins, resolutions tend to orbit the personal: health, money, maybe a vague commitment to “less screen time” that will quietly die by February. Yet 2026 opens with a resolution that is no longer merely private but infrastructural: how to maintain individual autonomy in an economy increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence (AI). On Dec. 11, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” aimed at establishing a unified federal approach to AI governance by challenging state-level regulations deemed burdensome to innovation (The White House). The order directs the…

For more than three decades, the MetroCard functioned as a quiet constant in New York City life, a thin rectangle of plastic bent in wallets, demagnetized in pockets, and occasionally rejected by turnstiles with a small, public humiliation. That era is now ending. Beginning Jan. 1, 2026, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will stop selling new MetroCards, completing the transition to One Metro New York (OMNY), its contactless tap-to-pay fare system (The New York Times, Dec. 22, 2025). Introduced in 1994, the MetroCard replaced subway tokens and eventually came to dominate the city’s transit economy, powering billions of rides across…

In December 2025, the White House installed a series of plaques beneath the Colonnade, inaugurating what officials have termed the Presidential Walk of Fame. The name itself carries a faintly comic optimism, as though the gravitational pull of celebrity culture might finally solve the messier problem of historical judgment. The plaques are modest in size, durable in material and positioned in a corridor designed less for contemplation than for transit, which may be the point. History, here, is something you absorb while walking briskly to a meeting. The plaques include summaries of each president’s tenure. For example, Barack Obama’s plaque…

In the dimming light of 2025, as the year draws to a close amid the usual swirl of holiday distractions and political maneuvering, President Trump’s announcement that the members of his proposed Gaza “Board of Peace” will not be revealed until early 2026 arrives. One that, for those attuned to the rhythms of American conservatism, might prompt a quiet reevaluation of our longstanding commitments in the Middle East.1 2 This board, envisioned as a transitional oversight body to guide Gaza from the ruins of conflict toward some semblance of reconstruction, was initially floated with the optimism of a pre-Christmas unveiling,…

Senate candidate Graham Platner speaking at a food and medicine event. Maine, that rocky outpost where the Atlantic keeps up its cold percussion against granite cliffs and the pine forests seem to murmur secrets to anyone patient enough to listen, has stumbled into a political drama that manages to feel both trivial and cosmic at once. It begins, as many modern political morality plays do, with a single image posted online. Out of everything we are presented with a photograph of Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. The symbol, according to anyone with even a slight knowledge of…