Columns

Most attorneys, whom I know well, write better than many of us. Perhaps, these professionals embrace the idea of giving back to their larger communities in ways that reflect their desire for helping not-for-profit organizations in their communities and beyond through being a volunteer or at a greatly reduced fee.

Most attorneys, whom I know well, write better than many of us. Perhaps, these professionals embrace the idea of giving back to their larger communities in ways that reflect their desire for helping not-for-profit organizations in their communities and beyond through being a volunteer or at a greatly reduced fee. As an economist, I have used my time to help Gleaners Community Foodbank, Focus Hope, The Freezer Theater, and other not-for-profit organizations.

As we wait for opportunities, we watch many not-for-profit endeavors struggle to survive (more than usual) due to the increased demand for their services during extended periods of funding difficulties. These conditions suggest that we need to pull together as one. Our Democracy cannot fly without the unity of the left and right wings that are attached to our central body. Therefore, we need to focus on making united efforts to keep our social-benefit organizations aloft.

In writing the column as of this month, I and others prefer to share direct participatory experience, which hopefully contributes to the survival of some of these organizations. Between earning graduate degrees, I served through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in order to help Gleaners Community Food Bank, during the year that it had lost their accounting person six months earlier due to a prolonged illness. 

Because Gleaners is a not-for-profit organization, founder Brother Gene Gonya needed to pull together their accounting records and food-donation valuations to ensure the flow of ongoing grants. Given my background at the time, I dedicated two years to developing a computerized desktop system, as well as to representing the Food Bank during the audits required by their major funders. At the end of my two-year stint, we united our online system with the emerging national network of food banks centered in Cleveland, OH, by which I (intentionally) put myself out of a job.

Throughout the years, I have involved myself with establishing and developing several small Not-for-Profits in the Arts, such as the Dramatic Research Company of Detroit (aka The Freezer Theatre) and the independent label Freezer Theatre Records. However, with my newly minted Doctorate in hand, I pushed myself forward by joining the Focus: HOPE organization. 

This Detroit-based organization continues to pledge intelligent and practical action to overcome racism, poverty, and injustice. Given my role as a Senior Program Developer/Head of Research, most of my work at Focus: HOPE contributed to focusing upon grant-writing efforts that led Grant-Writer Charles Grenville and the other team members during the years of leading founders Father William Cunningham and Eleanor Josaitis. All of us who worked at Focus: HOPE viewed Charlie’s grant proposals as virtual “works of art” which contributed to the maintenance our annual budget of $80 million per annum. 

Our referees included Senator Carl Levin, his brother Representative Sander Levin, Rep. Barbara-Rose Collins, Rep. John Conyers, and similar public figures. Holding all these good folks in mind, I composed this article to share what I have learned through the decades. For additional background, please see the Focus: HOPE Collection, a compendium of records housed at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University (reuther.wayne.edu).

—————

Drawing a smaller picture

Let us begin with the approach used by smaller organizations that need limited resources to achieve their goals. This arena serves the requirements of groups that seek approximately five to ten thousand dollars for limited, localized projects. Often, the funding agencies are found under the umbrella of a local government or university. The goals of these agencies focus upon helping smaller and start-up projects. 

These actions seek to minimize agency overhead while supporting more modest worthwhile projects. To achieve their mission, these agencies usually provide “standard” forms for small-dollar simplified grants (for examples, search Google for “standard format for grant applications”).

If an agency posts its preferred standard Grant Application Form in a PDF format, this may serve as an excellent place to begin. Essentially, these common forms instruct applicants how to format a standard grant application that benefits grant-seekers, review organizations, and decision-makers who review the proposals. However, we (the writers seeking grants) still should compose a meaningful cover letter first. Second, we need to develop a brief but thorough Executive Summary. 

Thirdly, the writers need to provide a Needs Statement as the meat of the grant application, one that describes the needs of our project thoroughly and clearly. Fourth, we want to summarize our reasons for submitting the grant application by making our goals and objectives clear.

We hope that this brief review of the basics of grant-writing gives some guidance for those starting out in the land of non-profit organizations. Furthermore, these essentials remain similar among funding agencies and applicant projects of any size. Nevertheless, greater-dollar grants require greater investment in time and money. 

—————

Learning to “paint the big picture”

At the conceptual level, viewing the big picture requires a whole within the context of a larger field requiring the abstraction of what we do, how we do it, and why these bear significance. Like all writing, grant development requires a set of conventions that vary by discipline and by depth of knowledge. Therefore, we need to stand back from our projects, to abstract them and distill them toward more effective themes and methodologies while avoiding over-immersion in proposal details.

In the meantime, we need to bear in mind that proposals must demonstrate the richness and fullness of the proposed project while we reflect on our knowledge of relevant fields of thought. Conceptually, we need to illustrate our approach with necessary and evidential precision. Generally, proposal writing does not demand a literature review as would more academic papers (such reviews often appear counterproductive to the purposes of grant proposals. Instead, our objective in writing requires the maintenance of a strong focus with minimal adornment.

Granting agencies concentrate their focus on documents that allow them to find evidence of well-established projects. Funders understand that some relevant form of public benefit and knowledge results from the grant. Therefore, these agencies must determine whether or not applicants understand the larger picture upon which their applied work contributes to the common good before, during, and after the proposed grant period.

—————

The introduction

Any grant proposal must explain clearly and precisely what the applicant, either individual or group, intends to accomplish while describing how s/he/they will do it. Agencies have come to expect a vivid opening paragraph that summarizes the above issues in a direct and concise manner. Submitters of proposals with such a presentation of essential information tend to organize these opening sections around a straightforward, overarching question or statement. 

Alas, project proposals usually do not reflect any specific topic or thesis. Therefore, as applicants, we must focus this opening volley on the significant issue at hand, how we plan to address it, and what considerable contribution the expected outcome will make, both to relevant fields of knowledge, as well as to human society.

Statements that address the significance of any project must carry great importance. Therefore, we should explain what interventions proposed projects will make to ongoing debates within the immediate field of concern. 

In addition, the writer should highlight the more significant contributions that the project may bring to humans and to scholarly knowledge. At this point, we may allow ourselves to “think big” as we communicate in a buoyant manner as to what we put at stake in the enormous scope of life. If we cannot achieve this, why would we expect anyone else to care about our project? Therefore, we should not assume any self-evident importance within our hopefully splendid ideas and plans. Rather, we need to explain the “whys and wherefores” for which our projects deserve the available funding offered.

From funders to those being served directly by the project, we need to consider all of the relevant stakeholders while developing projects that could lead to a grant proposal written for readers at the funding agency. We should ask ourselves early on: Does the road to approval require a tiered approach involving a multidisciplinary panel of outside experts along with Agency Program Officers. 

Consequently, we need to learn more about the readership before we draft our proposals and even while we are writing them. Depending on the size of a grant, we must remain aware that Agency Program Officers often bring outside experts to their panels. Therefore, we need to write strong, understandable proposals that persuade a range of evaluators.

––––––––––

Dr. John F. Sase teaches Economics at Wayne State University and has practiced Forensic and Investigative Economics for twenty years. He earned a combined M.A. in Economics and an MBA at the University of Detroit, followed by a Ph.D. in Economics from Wayne State University. He is a graduate of the University of Detroit Jesuit High School (www.saseassociates.com).

An unusually large majority of Americans agree that the recent scenes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minneapolis are disturbing.

By Nicholas Jacobs
Colby College; Institute for Humane Studies

(THE CONVERSATION) — An unusually large majority of Americans agree that the recent scenes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minneapolis are disturbing.

Federal immigration agents have deployed with weapons and tactics more commonly associated with military operations than with civilian law enforcement. The federal government has sidelined state and local officials, and it has cut them out of investigations into whether state and local law has been violated.

It’s understandable to look at what’s happening and reach a familiar conclusion: This looks like a slide into authoritarianism.

There is no question that the threat of democratic backsliding is real. President Donald Trump has long treated federal authority not as a shared constitutional set of rules and obligations but as a personal instrument of control.

In my research on the presidency and state power, including my latest book with Sidney Milkis, “Subverting the Republic,” I have argued that the Trump administration has systematically weakened the norms and practices that once constrained executive power – often by turning federalism itself into a weapon of national administrative power.

But there is another possibility worth taking seriously, one that cuts against Americans’ instincts at moments like this. What if what America is seeing is not institutional collapse but institutional friction: the system doing what it was designed to do, even if it looks ugly when it does it?

For many Americans, federalism is little more than a civics term – something about states’ rights or decentralization.

In practice, however, federalism functions less as a clean division of authority and more as a system for managing conflict among multiple governments with overlapping jurisdiction. Federalism does not block national authority. It ensures that national decisions are subject to challenge, delay and revision by other levels of government.

—————

Dividing up authority

At its core, federalism works through a small number of institutional mechanics – concrete ways of keeping authority divided, exposed and contestable. Minneapolis shows each of them in action.

First, there’s what’s called “jurisdictional overlap.”

State, local and federal authorities all claim the right to govern the same people and places. In Minneapolis, that overlap is unavoidable: Federal immigration agents, state law enforcement, city officials and county prosecutors all assert authority over the same streets, residents and incidents. And they disagree sharply about how that authority should be exercised.

Second, there’s institutional rivalry.

Because authority is divided, no single level of government can fully monopolize legitimacy. And that creates tension. That rivalry is visible in the refusal of state and local officials across the country to simply defer to federal enforcement.

Instead, governors, mayors and attorneys general have turned to courts, demanded access to evidence and challenged efforts to exclude them from investigations. That’s evident in Minneapolis and also in states that have witnessed the administration’s deployment of National Guard troops against the will of their Democratic governors.

It’s easy to imagine a world where state and local prosecutors would not have to jump through so many procedural hoops to get access to evidence for the death of citizens within their jurisdiction. But consider the alternative.

If state and local officials were barred without consent from seeking evidence – the absence of federalism – or if local institutions had no standing to contest how national power is exercised there, federal authority would operate not just forcefully but without meaningful political constraint.

Third, confrontation is local and place-specific.

Federalism pushes conflict into the open. Power struggles become visible, noisy and politically costly. What is easy to miss is why this matters.

Federalism was necessary at the time of the Constitution’s creation because Americans did not share a single political identity. They could not decide whether they were members of one big community or many small communities.

In maintaining their state governments and creating a new federal government, they chose to be both at the same time. And although American politics nationalized to a remarkable degree over the 20th century, federal authority is still exercised in concrete places. Federal authority still must contend with communities that have civic identities and whose moral expectations may differ sharply from those assumed by national actors.

In Minneapolis it has collided with a political community that does not experience federal immigration enforcement as ordinary law enforcement.

—————

The chaos of federalism

Federalism is not designed to keep things calm. It is designed to keep power unsettled – so that authority cannot move smoothly, silently or all at once.

By dividing responsibility and encouraging overlap, federalism ensures that power has to push, explain and defend itself at every step.

“A little chaos,” the scholar Daniel Elazar has said, “is a good thing!”

As chaos goes, though, federalism is more often credited for Trump’s ascent. He won the presidency through the Electoral College – a federalist institution that allocates power by state rather than by national popular vote, rewarding geographically concentrated support even without a national majority.

Partisan redistricting, which takes place in the states, further amplifies that advantage by insulating Republicans in Congress from electoral backlash. And decentralized election administration – in which local officials control voter registration, ballot access and certification – can produce vulnerabilities that Trump has exploited in contesting state certification processes and pressuring local election officials after close losses.

—————

Forceful but accountable

It’s helpful to also understand how Minneapolis is different from the most well-known instances of aggressive federal power imposed on unwilling states: the civil rights era.

Then, too, national authority was asserted forcefully. Federal marshals escorted the Black student James Meredith into the University of Mississippi in 1962 over the objections of state officials and local crowds. In Little Rock in 1957, President Dwight D. 
Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent in U.S. Army troops after Gov. Orval Faubus attempted to block the racial integration of Central High School.

Violence accompanied these interventions. Riots broke out in Oxford, Mississippi. Protesters and bystanders were killed in clashes with police and federal authorities in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama.

What mattered during the civil rights era was not widespread agreement at the outset – nationwide resistance to integration was fierce and sustained. Rather, it was the way federal authority was exercised through existing constitutional channels.

Presidents acted through courts, statutes and recognizable chains of command. State resistance triggered formal responses. Federal power was forceful, but it remained legible, bounded and institutionally accountable.

Those interventions eventually gained public acceptance. But in that process, federalism was tarnished by its association with Southern racism and recast as an obstacle to progress rather than the institutional framework through which progress was contested and enforced.

After the civil rights era, many Americans came to assume that national power would normally be aligned with progressive moral aims – and that when it was, federalism was a problem to be overcome.

Minneapolis exposes the fragility of that assumption. Federalism does not distinguish between good and bad causes. It does not certify power because history is “on the right side.” It simply keeps power contestable.

When national authority is exercised without broad moral agreement, federalism does not stop it. It only prevents it from settling quietly.

Why talk about federalism now, at a time of widespread public indignation?

Because in the long arc of federalism’s development, it has routinely proven to be the last point in our constitutional system where power runs into opposition. And when authority no longer encounters rival institutions and politically independent officials, 
authoritarianism stops being an abstraction.

Back in 2013, the Supreme Court tossed out a key provision of the Voting Rights Act regarding federal oversight of elections. It appears poised to abolish another pillar of the law.

By Robert D. Bland
University of Tennessee

(THE CONVERSATION) — Back in 2013, the Supreme Court tossed out a key provision of the Voting Rights Act regarding federal oversight of elections. It appears poised to abolish another pillar of the law.

In a case known as Louisiana v. Callais, the court appears ready to rule against Louisiana and its Black voters. In doing so, the court may well abolish Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a provision that prohibits any discriminatory voting practice or election rule that results in less opportunity for political clout for minority groups.

The dismantling of Section 2 would open the floodgates for widespread vote dilution by allowing primarily Southern state legislatures to redraw political districts, weakening the voting power of racial minorities.

The case was brought by a group of Louisiana citizens who declared that the federal mandate under Section 2 to draw a second majority-Black district violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and thus served as an unconstitutional act of racial gerrymandering.

There would be considerable historical irony if the court decides to use the 14th Amendment to provide the legal cover for reversing a generation of Black political progress in the South. Initially designed to enshrine federal civil rights protections for freed people facing a battery of discriminatory “Black Codes” in the postbellum South, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause has been the foundation of the nation’s modern rights-based legal order, ensuring that all U.S. citizens are treated fairly and preventing the government from engaging in explicit discrimination.

The cornerstone of the nation’s “second founding,” the Reconstruction-era amendments to the Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, created the first cohort of Black elected officials.

I am a historian who studies race and memory during the Civil War era. As I highlight in my new book “Requiem for Reconstruction,” the struggle over the nation’s second founding not only highlights how generational political progress can be reversed but also provides a lens into the specific historical origins of racial gerrymandering in the United States.

Without understanding this history – and the forces that unraveled Reconstruction’s initial promise of greater racial justice – we cannot fully comprehend the roots of those forces that are reshaping our contemporary political landscape in a way that I believe subverts the true intentions of the Constitution.

—————

The long history of gerrymandering

Political gerrymandering, or shaping political boundaries to benefit a particular party, has been considered constitutional since the nation’s 18th-century founding, but racial gerrymandering is a practice with roots in the post-Civil War era.

Expanding beyond the practice of redrawing district lines after each decennial census, late 19th-century Democratic state legislatures built on the earlier cartographic practice to create a litany of so-called Black districts across the postbellum South.

The nation’s first wave of racial gerrymandering emerged as a response to the political gains Southern Black voters made during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s. Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina and Louisiana all elected Black congressmen during that decade. During the 42nd Congress, which met from 1871 to 1873, South Carolina sent Black men to the House from three of its four districts.

Initially, the white Democrats who ruled the South responded to the rise of Black political power by crafting racist narratives that insinuated that the emergence of Black voters and Black officeholders was a corruption of the proper political order. These attacks often provided a larger cultural pretext for the campaigns of extralegal political violence that terrorized Black voters in the South, assassinated political leaders, and marred the integrity of several of the region’s major elections.

—————

Election changes

Following these pogroms during the 1870s, southern legislatures began seeking legal remedies to make permanent the counterrevolution of “Redemption,” which sought to undo Reconstruction’s advancement of political equality. A generation before the Jim Crow legal order of segregation and discrimination was established, southern political leaders began to disfranchise Black voters through racial gerrymandering.

These newly created Black districts gained notoriety for their cartographic absurdity. In Mississippi, a shoestring-shaped district was created to snake and swerve alongside the state’s famous river. North Carolina created the “Black Second” to concentrate its African American voters to a single district. Alabama’s “Black Fourth” did similar work, leaving African American voters only one possible district in which they could affect the outcome in the state’s central Black Belt.

South Carolina’s “Black Seventh” was perhaps the most notorious of these acts of Reconstruction-era gerrymandering. The district “sliced through county lines and ducked around Charleston back alleys” – anticipating the current trend of sophisticated, computer-targeted political redistricting.

Possessing 30,000 more voters than the next largest congressional district in the state, South Carolina’s Seventh District radically transformed the state’s political landscape by making it impossible for its Black-majority to exercise any influence on national politics, except for the single racially gerrymandered district.

Although federal courts during the late 19th century remained painfully silent on the constitutionality of these antidemocratic measures, contemporary observers saw these redistricting efforts as more than a simple act of seeking partisan advantage.

“It was the high-water mark of political ingenuity coupled with rascality, and the merits of its appellation,” observed one Black congressman who represented South Carolina’s 7th District.

—————

Racial gerrymandering in recent times

The political gains of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes called the “Second Reconstruction,” were made tangible by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The law revived the postbellum 15th Amendment, which prevented states from creating voting restrictions based on race. That amendment had been made a dead letter by Jim Crow state legislatures and an acquiescent Supreme Court.

In contrast to the post-Civil War struggle, the Second Reconstruction had the firm support of the federal courts. The Supreme Court affirmed the principal of “one person, one vote” in its 1962 Baker v. Carr and 1964 Reynolds v. Sims decisions – upending the Solid South’s landscape of political districts that had long been marked by sparsely populated Democratic districts controlled by rural elites.

The Voting Rights Act gave the federal government oversight over any changes in voting policy that might affect historically marginalized groups. Since passage of the 1965 law and its subsequent revisions, racial gerrymandering has largely served the purpose of creating districts that preserve and amplify the political representation of historically marginalized groups.

This generational work may soon be undone by the current Supreme Court. The court, which heard oral arguments in the Louisiana case in October 2025, will release its decision by the end of June 2026.

The U.S. Department of State has announced that starting on Jan. 21, 2026, it has indefinitely stopped issuing immigrant visas for people from 75 countries, claiming concerns that some immigrants may rely on public benefits once they get to the United States.

(THE CONVERSATION) — The U.S. Department of State has announced that starting on Jan. 21, 2026, it has indefinitely stopped issuing immigrant visas for people from 75 countries, claiming concerns that some immigrants may rely on public benefits once they get to the United States.

While applications may still be processed, no immigrant visas will be issued during the pause, including family-based visas for U.S. citizens to sponsor their parents.

This focus leaves little room for recognizing the unpaid caregiving and everyday family support provided by immigrant parents already living in the U.S., support that allows others, including their U.S. citizen children, to remain employed and households to stay stable.

Family-based immigration, particularly visas that allow U.S. citizens to sponsor their parents, strengthens social capital: the networks of care and shared responsibility that allow people to work, stay healthy and raise children who become productive members of society. Weakening these networks risks undermining the social foundations of long-term economic growth.

As a scholar who studies family relationship dynamics and social capital, I have observed how these family ties are not simply private family matters but a public good that sustains community well-being. When parents are present, families are better able to share child care, navigate illness and remain economically active.

—————

Family reunification as social infrastructure

The United States offers no national paid family leave, unlike countries such as Finland and Hungary, which guarantee paid time off to care for children, aging parents or ill family members. Instead, the U.S. provides only unpaid leave under federal law.

Consequently, many families rely on informal caregiving to balance work and care. Research shows that when adequate support is unavailable, workers, especially parents, are more likely to reduce hours or leave the labor force altogether.

This strain is widespread across the U.S.: Roughly 63 million Americans, nearly 1 in 4 adults, provide unpaid care for a family member with a serious health condition or disability, in addition to unpaid child care.

Sponsored immigrant parents often become part of this informal care system. They provide child care, prepare meals and supervise children.

In many U.S. states, the cost of child care now exceeds in-state college tuition, pushing families to reduce formal care or rely on relatives.

Family reunification, therefore, functions as social infrastructure, filling gaps that markets and public systems do not, a role family scholars have emphasized.

Decades of research illustrates this dynamic. In their book "Immigrant America," sociologists Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut show that immigrant families often rely on close family ties when government support is limited.

Families also pool resources by living together and combining time, skills and income to cover basic needs. These arrangements help households cope with job instability, illness and long work hours. They also reduce reliance on formal child care and paid domestic labor.

Economic development does not happen in isolation from family life. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's framework on measuring well-being emphasizes that economic performance, health, social connections and family support are interconnected rather than separate policy domains. When people are supported and less stressed, they are healthier and more productive.

Sociologist James Coleman similarly has noted that children raised in stable, supportive households are more likely to succeed in school and contribute meaningfully as adults. Family reunification, therefore, is an investment in the social relationships that underpin economic prosperity.

—————

Social capital and child development

Immigrant grandparents and extended kin often play an active role in children's lives. They help with learning, language development and daily routines.

This kind of family involvement also helps explain what scholars call the "immigrant paradox," in which many immigrant children achieve better-than-expected academic and emotional results despite socioeconomic challenges.

As of 2023, about 19 million U.S. children, roughly 1 in 4, have at least one parent who is an immigrant. Therefore, policies that restrict family reunification shape the everyday environments in which millions of children grow up. This influences the support they receive at home and the workforce they will help build as adults.

—————

Social capital is not public dependency

Concerns raised by federal policymakers that immigrants will become a "burden on taxpayers" shape restrictions on family-based immigration. These concerns are reflected in federal policy through the Department of Homeland Security's public charge rule, which allows immigration officials to assess whether applicants are likely to rely primarily on government assistance such as cash welfare or long-term public support for basic needs.

However, analyses of 2022 U.S. Census data show that immigrants overall use public assistance at lower rates than native-born Americans.

In practice, family reunification is less about public dependency and more about sustaining the relationships that allow families and the economy to function.

The question for policymakers is not whether the U.S. can afford to support family reunification, but whether it can afford not to. In a country facing caregiver shortages, rising parental stress and limited public care infrastructure, investing in social capital through family reunification may be one of the most effective and overlooked ways to support long-term economic growth.

In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally declared that greenhouse gas emissions, including from vehicles and fossil fuel power plants, endanger public health and welfare. The decision, known as the endangerment finding, was based on years of evidence, and it has underpinned EPA actions on climate change ever since.

By Gary W. Yohe
Wesleyan University

(THE CONVERSATION) — In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally declared that greenhouse gas emissions, including from vehicles and fossil fuel power plants, endanger public health and welfare. The decision, known as the endangerment finding, was based on years of evidence, and it has underpinned EPA actions on climate change ever since.

The Trump administration now wants to tear up that finding as it tries to roll back climate regulations on everything from vehicles to industries.

But the move might not be as simple as the administration hopes.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin sent a proposed rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget in early January 2026 to rescind the endangerment finding. Now, a Washington Post report suggests, action on it may be delayed over concerns that the move wouldn’t withstand legal challenges.

Cracks in the administration’s plan are already evident. On Jan. 30, a federal judge ruled that the Department of Energy violated the law when it handpicked five researchers to write the climate science review that the EPA is using to defend its plan. The ruling doesn’t necessarily stop the EPA, but it raises questions.

There’s no question that if the EPA does rescind the endangerment finding that the move would be challenged in court. The world just lived through the three hottest years on record, evidence of worsening climate change is stronger now than ever before, and people across the U.S. are increasingly experiencing the harm firsthand.

Several legal issues have the potential to stop the EPA’s effort. They include emails submitted in a court case that suggest political appointees sought to direct the scientific review.

To understand how we got here, it helps to look at history for some context.

—————

The Supreme Court started it

The endangerment finding stemmed from a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA.

The court found that various greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, were “pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act,” and it gave the EPA an explicit set of instructions.

The court wrote that the “EPA must determine whether or not emissions from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”

But the Supreme Court did not order the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Only if the EPA found that emissions were harmful would the agency be required, by law, “to establish national ambient air quality standards for certain common and widespread pollutants based on the latest science” – meaning greenhouse gases.

The EPA was required to follow formal procedures – including reviewing the scientific research, assessing the risks and taking public comment – and then determine whether the observed and projected harms were sufficient to justify publishing an “endangerment finding.”

That process took two years. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced on Dec. 7, 2009, that the then-current and projected concentrations of six key greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – threatened the public health and welfare of current and future generations.

Challenges to the finding erupted immediately.

Jackson denied 10 petitions received in 2009-2010 that called on the administration to reconsider the finding.

On June 26, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the endangerment finding and regulations that the EPA had issued under the Clean Air Act for passenger vehicles and permitting procedures for stationary sources, such as power plants.

This latest challenge is different.

It came directly from the Trump administration without going through normal channels. It was, though, entirely consistent with both the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan for the Trump administration and President Donald Trump’s dismissive perspective on climate risk.

—————

Trump’s burden of proof

To legally reverse the 2009 finding, the agency must go through the same evaluation process as before. According to conditions outlined in the Clean Air Act, the reversal of the 2009 finding must be justified by a thorough and complete review of the current science and not just be political posturing.

That’s a tough task.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has talked publicly about how he handpicked the five researchers who wrote the scientific research review. A judge has now found that the effort violated the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires that agency-chosen panels providing policy advice to the government conduct their work in public.

All five members of the committee had been outspoken critics of mainstream climate science. Their report, released in summer 2025, was widely criticized for inaccuracies in what they referenced and its failure to represent the current science.

Scientific research available today clearly shows that greenhouse gas emissions harm public health and welfare. Importantly, evidence collected since 2009 is even stronger now than it was when the first endangerment finding was written, approved and implemented.

For example, a 2025 review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine determined that the evidence supporting the endangerment finding is even stronger today than it was in 2009. A 2019 peer-reviewed assessment of the evidence related to greenhouse gas emissions’ role in climate change came to the same conclusion.

The Sixth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a report produced by hundreds of scientists from around the world, found in 2023 that “adverse impacts of human-caused climate change will continue to intensify.”

In other words, greenhouse gas emissions were causing harm in 2009, and the harm is worse now and will be even worse in the future without steps to reduce emissions.

In public comments on the Department of Energy’s problematic 2025 review, a group of climate experts from around the world reached the same conclusion, adding that the Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group review “fails to adequately represent this reality.”

—————

What happens if EPA does drop the endangerment finding

As an economist who has studied the effects of climate change for over 40 years, I am concerned that the EPA rescinding the endangerment finding on the basis of faulty scientific assessment would lead to faster efforts to roll back U.S. climate regulations meant to slow climate change.

It would also give the administration cover for further actions that would defund more science programs, stop the collection of valuable data, freeze hiring and discourage a generation of emerging science talent.

Cases typically take years to wind through the courts. Unless a judge issued an injunction, I would expect to see a continuing retreat from efforts to reduce climate change while the court process plays out.

I see no scenario in which a legal challenge doesn’t end up before the Supreme Court. I would hope that both the enormous amount of scientific evidence and the words in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution would have some significant sway in the court’s considerations. It starts, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,” and includes in its list of principles, “promote the general Welfare.”

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy who is an asylum seeker, in Minneapolis on Jan. 20, 2026, the photos quickly became a flash point in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement activity.

(THE CONVERSATION) — When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy who is an asylum seeker, in Minneapolis on Jan. 20, 2026, the photos quickly became a flash point in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement activity.

In one image, a man wearing a black uniform holds onto a gray and red Spider-Man backpack that the worried-looking young boy, wearing a blue bunny hat with floppy ears, has on his back.

Meanwhile, ICE and Customs and Border Patrol operations near schools have become increasingly common over the past year, spreading from Texas to Maine. While some parents in Minnesota have set up patrols around schools, there are families choosing to keep their kids home for days or weeks.

We are scholars of migration and children and childhood adversity.

Our research shows that exposure to severe immigration enforcement experiences during childhood carries long-term, significant consequences: These children are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety in young adulthood.

—————

Why this matters

There is well-documented research showing how immigration enforcement has immediate negative effects on children and adults

Children whose immigrant parents are arrested, detained or deported often experience emotional and behavioral problems, including separation anxiety, school absenteeism, hyperactivity and other behavioral issues.

Yet, until recently, it has not been well understood how experiencing or being subjected to immigration enforcement actions affects children once they grow up to become adults.

That said, over three decades of research shows the clear links between traumatic childhood events and mental health problems in adulthood. Studies show, for example, that adults who experienced temporary separation from their parents as children are more likely to say they’ve experienced depression symptoms years later.

We decided to investigate whether a child being exposed to immigration enforcement actions – meaning the arrest of a parent, or detention of a close family member, for example – is associated with mental health problems among young adults who grew up in immigrant families.

—————

How immigration enforcement unravels families

Our study first combined interviews and open-ended survey questions to define what it means to experience severe immigration enforcement during childhood.

We then examined the link between severe immigration enforcement actions and anxiety among 71 young adults – all U.S. citizens age 18 to 34 – who were raised in immigrant households in New York.

As children, all of these young adults witnessed or experienced the arrest, detention or deportation of an immigrant family member or a member of their communities. Three-quarters of the participants identified as Hispanic.

We analyzed our interviews to develop several criteria to determine what constitutes severe exposure to enforcement during childhood, considering factors like whether they witnessed a detention or arrest more than once, and how old they were when these experiences took place.
We found that approximately 26% of the survey participants – all of whom in this group were Hispanic, except one – had severe exposure to immigration enforcement actions during childhood. Not all of them had a parent who has been deported.

Some of these young people had relatives who had drawn-out cases in immigration court, or felt constant fear that their parents might be deported.

When we linked our interviews with survey data, our results were striking.

We found that young adults who experienced severe immigration enforcement actions as children were twice as likely to have anxiety, compared with young adults who did not have this experience when they were growing up.

Exposure to severe immigration enforcement actions as a child was not independently associated with depression as a young adult. But all the survey participants who said they were experiencing depression also reported anxiety symptoms – further evidence of a connection between severe immigration enforcement actions and anxiety among young people.

—————

Lasting impact of today’s policies

Many legal experts and political observers say that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis and in other cities are designed to intimidate and instill fear among civilians.

Children are not immune to these tactics, either as witnesses or as targets.

Federal immigration officers deployed tear gas, for example, on students at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis on Jan. 8. Experiences like this constitute a major adverse childhood event, exposing children and adolescents to significant trauma.

We believe that we can learn from decades of adverse childhood experiences research, which clearly shows the link between childhood adversity and physical and mental health outcomes in adulthood.

The enforcement tactics ICE is using in Minnesota and other places in the U.S. today are likely, our research suggests, going to harm the next generation of U.S. citizens and residents.

As trauma researchers have long known, our bodies keep score over a lifetime. The question facing policymakers is not whether these enforcement tactics will cause lasting harm – our research suggests they would – but what human costs we, as a nation, are willing to bear.