In Context
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COVID-19 is Unleashing the Bicycle Revolution
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Lockdowns and stay at home orders from Chicago to London to Beijing have resulted in fewer cars on roads and reduced public transit ridership. The nosedive in daily commuters has transformed large swaths of cities around the world into a sea of deserted asphalt in the middle of the day.…
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Millions of Americans Have Lost Their Health Insurance in the Middle of a Pandemic
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The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the US economy and produced record-high unemployment. To make matters worse, more than half of the US adult population—about 158 million people—receives health insurance through their employer. This means that the current economic crisis has the potential to strip millions of people of their health…
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Social Networks That Help During Crises
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Humans naturally exist in social networks where they exchange ideas and form relationships. Times of collective crises magnify the importance of our social embedding. Understanding how social networks are formed—and how they adapt to new circumstances—can help ensure policy responses are designed to slow the spread of bad things, like…
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Democrats Can Do More Than Pack the Court
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Democrats are reconsidering their relationship with the Supreme Court. In the wake of the failed Merrick Garland nomination in 2016—and amid a rushed effort to confirm conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett—some in the party are discussing familiar ideas to prevent a 6-3 conservative majority. Judicial term limits and partisan balancing…
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The CARES Act Offered a Radical Experiment in Cash Transfers. Here’s What We Learned.
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In March, as the world stared into a financial and epidemiological abyss, Congress acted more swiftly and dramatically to save the U.S. economy than during any crisis in American history. The CARES Act—signed into law by President Trump on March 27 after facing virtually no resistance in the House or…
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Trump and COVID-19: 5 Election Scenarios
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President Trump shocked the nation last week when he announced that he tested positive for COVID-19. Reports of the president’s medical treatment suggest that he is suffering from serious symptoms, throwing an already chaotic election season into further disarray. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s move to create a Commission on…
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The Rushed Confirmation of Amy Barrett
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Today, President Trump nominated 7th Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. As previously reported, any of the potential replacements would move the ideological center of the Supreme Court to the right. Importantly, while the rightward shift of the center of the…
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Racial Disparities in Access to Public Green Space
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As the COVID-19 pandemic rages around the globe and ravages communities, racial disparities in many aspects of public life in the US have been highlighted. Access to public green spaces, including parks, nature preserves, forests, and community gardens (Wolch et al., 2014) varies across racial and economic lines. Income and…
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The Privacy Concerns of Contact Tracing
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Social distancing. What about digital distancing? How private are digital handshakes? The spread of coronavirus has prompted government officials across the world to use technology to monitor infected individuals’ contacts. The result: digital contact tracing using a smartphone app. The costs: privacy, identity, and possibly more. Nations throughout the world…
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Record Unemployment is a Policy Choice
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Europe and the United States are pursuing vastly different strategies in response to the economic crisis caused by Covid-19. Structural differences between the US and EU member states’ welfare systems have informed the divergence in government intervention. Throughout most of Europe, central governments are propping up companies by covering their…
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Exorbitant Costs and Minimal Benefits: the Impact of Hosting the Olympics
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Every four years, the world tunes in to watch pageantry, competition, and peak athletic performance at the Summer Olympics. Before the COVID-19 crisis, the 32nd Summer Olympiad was scheduled to take place in Tokyo from late July to early August 2020 and was marketed as the “Recovery Olympics” in light…