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The first four months of the Trump administration have seen the largest destruction of our federal governments capacity in history, with the reckless and illegal dismantling of agencies, the arbitrary slashing of the workforce, and the elimination of countless programs and critical public services. President Trump has literally set the house on fire, requiring a public response to this five-alarm emergency that shouldnt involve only the political process and the courts. The fight must involve foundations, philanthropists, nonprofits, and state and city governments, which either fund or become the home for the abandoned federal initiatives, services, and civil servants. Theres no way, of course, to replace the depth and breadth of the federal governments brazenly and often illegally discarded work, but even saving some of the contents of the burning house will have value. A number of efforts are already taking place to preserve the knowledge, expertise, and critical services and programs, but so much more needs to be done. Several organizations, for example, have retrieved thousands of data files that the Trump administration purged from agency websites containing public health information, scientific research, environmental risk alerts, crime statistics, and mental health information. Harvard University recently announced that its librarys Innovation Lab is making available 311,000 datasets retrieved from 2024 and 2025, representing a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov, while the National Security Archives Climate Change Transparency Project has published information on climate change and environmental justice that had been removed from agency websites. Even without any new data in the coming years, these efforts will preserve institutional knowledge for scientists, policymakers, and researchers, and provide a starting point for collecting important data again in the future. Bloomberg Philanthropies and others have pledged to help cover the U.S. contribution to the U.N.’s climate change budget, filling a gap left by the Trump administration, while the Rhode Island Foundation announced it will award $3 million to local nonprofits that lost federal funding for a range of local services in areas such as healthcare, housing, education, and public safety. Several colleges and universities, including Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern, are providing funding to temporarily support graduate students and faculty who have had research grants cut off by the Trump administration, while the MacArthur Foundation has committed an additional $150 million in funding in 2025 and 2026 for organizations that have lost federal aid and are involved in maternal health, climate, justice, and human rights. Several former employees of the depleted Consumer Financial Protection Board have been discussing ways that state attorneys general, through umbrella organizations, might gather lawyers, advocates, and researchers for the shared purpose of helping victims of financial fraud. In addition, a number of federal labor unions, legal entities, and nonprofits (including my own organization) recently launched a legal defense fund to help federal employees who were fired or are facing termination, and a number of state governments have been actively recruiting federal employees who were laid off by the Trump administration. The opportunities for outside parties to act are far more plentiful than these few examples. My organization recently published a list100 Harms in 100 Daysof the damaging and senseless cuts dealing with veterans, education, public health, scientific and medical research, the environment, public lands, and agriculture. Even that breathtaking list just scratches the surface, but it does offer a starting place for those wondering what they can do to help. So ask yourself how you can help, perhaps through specialized expertise, financial resources, passion for a cause, a willingness to donate your time, or any number of other ways. We can all play a role. The harsh reality is that we are watching the arson of our government. As I see it, those of us with the capacity to helpas individuals or organizations or bothhave two options: We can stand by and watch in horror as the Trump administration burns down our collective home, or we can try to save as much as we can from the indiscriminate destruction. To be clear, this isn’t a permanent solution. No other entity can replace the scale and resources of the federal government. And the administration should not be superseding Congresss constitutional role and shuttering agencies, freezing appropriated dollars, and destroying the nonpartisan, expert civil service. This is about making sure we will be more ready to rebuild better when the time comes.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trumps idea of a Golden Dome missile defense system carries a range of potential strategic dangers for the United States. Golden Dome is meant to protect the U.S. from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles, and missiles launched from space. Trump has called for the missile defense to be fully operational before the end of his term in three years. Trumps goals for Golden Dome are likely beyond reach. A wide range of studies makes clear that even defenses far more limited than what Trump envisions would be far more expensive and less effective than Trump expects, especially against enemy missiles equipped with modern countermeasures. Countermeasures include multiple warheads per missile, decoy warheads, and warheads that can maneuver or are difficult to track, among others. Regardless of Golden Domes feasibility, there is a long history of scholarship about strategic missile defenses, and the weight of evidence points to the defenses making their host country less safe from nuclear attack. Im a national security and foreign policy professor at Harvard University, where I lead Managing the Atom, the universitys main research group on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy policies. For decades, Ive been participating in dialogues with Russian and Chinese nuclear expertsand their fears about U.S. missile defenses have been a consistent theme throughout. Russian President Vladmir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have already warned that Golden Dome is destabilizing. Along with U.S. offensive capabilities, Golden Dome poses a threat of directly undermining global strategic stability, spurring an arms race, and increasing conflict potential both among nuclear-weapon states and in the international arena as a whole, a joint statement from China and Russia said. While that is a propaganda statement, it reflects real concerns broadly held in both countries. History lessons Experience going back half a century makes clear that if the administration pursues Golden Dome, it is likely to provoke even larger arms buildups, derail already-dim prospects for any negotiated nuclear arms restraint, and perhaps even increase the chances of nuclear war. My first book, 35 years ago, made the case that it would be in the U.S. national security interest to remain within the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which strictly limited U.S. and Sovietand later Russianmissile defenses. The U.S. and the Soviet Union negotiated the ABM Treaty as part of SALT I, the first agreements limiting the nuclear arms race. It was approved in the Senate 98-2. The ABM Treaty experience is instructive for the implications of Golden Dome today. Why did the two countries agree to limit defenses? First and foremost, because they understood that unless each sides defenses were limited, they would not be able to stop an offensive nuclear arms race. If each side wants to maintain the ability to retaliate if the other attacks (Dont nuke me, or Ill nuke you), then an obvious answer to one side building up more defenses is for the other to build up more nuclear warheads. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviets installed 100 interceptors to defend Moscow, so the U.S. targeted still more warheads on Moscow to overwhelm the defense. Had it ever come to a nuclear war, Moscow would have been even more thoroughly obliterated than if there had been no defense at all. Both sides came to realize that unlimited missile defenses would just mean more offense on both sides, leaving both less secure than before. In addition, nations viewed an adversarys shield as going hand in hand with a nuclear sword. A nuclear first strike might destroy a major part of a countrys nuclear forces. Missile defenses would inevitably be more effective against the reduced, disorganized retaliation that they knew would be coming than they would be against a massive, well-planned surprise attack. That potential advantage to whoever struck first could make nuclear crises even more dangerous. Post-ABM Treaty world Unfortunately, President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, seeking to free U.S. development of defenses against potential missile attacks from small states such as North Korea. But even now, decades later, the U.S. has fewer missile interceptors deployed (44) than the treaty permitted (100). The U.S. pullout did not lead to an immediate arms buildup or the end of nuclear arms control. But Putin has complained bitterly about U.S. missile defenses and the U.S. refusal to accept any limitation at all on them. He views the U.S. stance as an effort to achieve military superiority by negating Russias nuclear deterrent. Russia is investing heavily in new types of strategic nuclear weapons intended to avoid U.S. missile defenses, from an intercontinental nuclear torpedo to a missile that can go around the world and attack from the south, while U.S. defenses are mainly pointed north toward Russia. Similarly, much of Chinas nuclear buildup appears to be driven by wanting a reliable nuclear deterrent in the face of the U.S.s capability to strike its nuclear forces and use missile defenses to mop up the remainder. Indeed, the Chinese were so angered by South Koreas deployment of U.S.-provided regional defenseswhich they saw as aiding the U.S. ability to intercept Chinese missilesthat they imposed stiff sanctions on South Korea. Fuel to the fire Now Trump wants to go much further, with a defense forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland, with a success rate very close to 100%. I believe that this effort is highly likely to lead to still larger nuclear buildups in Rusia and China. The Putin-Xi joint statement pledges to counter defenses aimed at achieving military superiority. Given the ease of developing countermeasures that are extraordinarily difficult for defenses to overcome, odds are the resulting offense-defense competition will leave the U.S. worse off than before, and a good bit poorer. Putin and Xi made clear that they are particularly concerned about the thousands of space-based interceptors Trump envisions. These interceptors are designed to hit missiles while their rockets are still burning during launch. Most countries are likely to oppose the idea of deploying huge numbers of weapons in space, and these interceptors would be both expensive and vulnerable. China and Russia could focus on further developing anti-satellite weapons to blow a hole in the defense, increasing the risk of space war. Already, there is a real danger that the whole effort of negotiated limits to temper nuclear arms racing may be coming to an end. The last remaining treaty limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, the New START Treaty, expires in February 2026. Chinas rapid nuclear buildup is making many defense officials and experts in Washington, D.C., call for a U.S. buildup in response. Intense hostility all around means that for now, neither Russia nor China is even willing to sit down to discuss nuclear restraints, in treaty form or otherwise. A way forward In my view, adding Golden Dome to this combustible mix would likely end any prospect of avoiding a future of unrestrained and unpredictable nuclear arms competition. But paths away from these dangers are available. It would be quite plausible to design defenses that would provide some protection against attacks from a handful of missiles from North Korea or others that would not seriously threaten Russian or Chinese deterrent forcesand design restraints that would allow all parties to plan their offensive forces knowing what missile defenses they would be facing in the years to come. I believe that Trump should temper his Golden Dome ambitions to achieve his other dream of negotiating a deal to reduce nuclear dangers. Matthew Bunn is a professor of the practice of energy, national security, and foreign policy at Harvard Kennedy School. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
How did Crunchyroll become the powerhouse of the anime world? In this episode of FC Explains, we dive deep into how Crunchyroll transformed from a small streaming service to the global leader in anime distribution. Discover how it helped push anime into mainstream pop culture, influenced the global perception of Japanese media, and changed the entertainment landscape forever.
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