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Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NATO needs to think about its future —without U.S. support
This article is the fifth in a five-part MSNBC Daily series, 'The Future of NATO.' With the Trump administration attacking allies, removing troops from European training missions, handing Ukraine's bargaining chips to Russia and refusing to guarantee European security even as 'backstop' — we're asking five crucial questions about the future of NATO, the U.S. and Europe. Any assessment of NATO's future based on a pre-Jan. 20, 2025, calculus is wrong. The United States is not only no longer a dependable ally of the other countries in the alliance it played a central role in building, it has switched sides. The Trump administration is now openly hostile to those allies, actively working to weaken the trans-Atlantic partnership and heavily supportive of the Kremlin and the loose alliance of ethnonationalist, anti-democratic nations it leads. That is no exaggeration. It is not a politically biased assessment. Just last month, we heard senior U.S. officials talk of lifting sanctions against Russia without receiving any concessions from Russia for doing so. The positioning has naturally caused a furor among European leaders who consider it, rightly, to be a betrayal and worse, a grave strategic error. The U.S. also escalated its trade war that largely targets and will heavily penalize the members of the alliance. In response, Canada's new prime minister, Mark Carney, gravely announced that Canada could no longer look upon the U.S., its neighbor, as a dependable friend any longer. Meanwhile, the U.S. also raised tensions with another NATO member, Denmark, by continuing its threats to seize Greenland. These threats were followed by a visit to that island by the U.S. vice president and his wife. In a somewhat smaller but equally chilling action, the U.S. detained a Russian scientist working at Harvard Medical School and it appears is preparing to send her, a critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, to Russia, where her fate is likely to be a very unhappy one. These actions are consistent with what has to be seen as a clear and multifaceted policy shift away from the allies and principles that have guided the U.S. since World War II, and toward a rapid realignment that will alter geopolitics to a degree that would have been unimaginable just months ago. The U.S. has turned on Ukraine and sought to force it to end the conflict that Russia started. It has made demands of Ukraine but virtually none of Russia. It has picked fights with Ukraine while sending emissaries to fawn over Putin. One by one, U.S. agencies and initiatives that were created to defend against Russia or to enable the U.S. to deter or be prepared for future conflict with Russia have been shut down or gutted. This includes standing down cyberdefenses and operations against Russia, shutting down the program that defended the U.S. from Russian election interference, shutting down the program that tracked and prosecuted wrongdoing by Russian oligarchs, firing from the government lawyers and others who investigated Russia's efforts to influence Trump in the past. High-level national security posts were given to Russia apologists and individuals who spread Russian propaganda. Incompetents were placed in other critical national security jobs, and the entire tenor of the administration's framing of the U.S.-Russia relationship was drastically different from any U.S. government since 1945. Allies have seen threats, hostility, trade wars, assertions the U.S. won't defend them if they don't contribute more to defense, general lack of solidarity with the U.S. and even, this week, as part of the Signal messaging scandal revelations, contempt from the U.S. vice president and secretary of defense about what they perceive as European free-riding. At this point, given the scope, range and consistency of the shifts in tone, policy and action, U.S. allies will increasingly have to reconcile themselves to accepting that a profound shift has occurred, as Canada's Carney recently articulated. This will and should produce major changes in doctrine and strategy. Already there is talk of Europe having to defend itself and having to formulate its own independent policies with regard to Ukraine. And such a shift, if serious, will inevitably produce unintended consequences for the United States. The first rumblings of one such shift can be felt as nations begin to question whether they should continue to buy U.S. weapons systems. There is a reasonable fear that an unreliable or even hostile U.S. could fail to honor contracts or supply necessary parts or critical system upgrades. Some countries in Europe and elsewhere that felt they benefited from protection under the shield of U.S. nuclear weapons are now beginning to ask whether they should develop their own such capabilities. An increase in the number of nuclear-armed states is seemingly inevitable, as are the concurrent dangers such an expansion of the nuclear club would bring. Further, one big geopolitical consequence of Trump's policies is that Europeans are increasing their outreach to China, seeking to deepen their relations with the 21st century's other megapower. Aggressive foreign powers like Russia and China will calculate how much time they have left with a Trump government that is likely to be more tolerant of their efforts to fulfill regional expansionist ambitions. With the approach of 2028, China might well think more seriously about a move against Taiwan, while Russia could consider further moves against Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia — or perhaps the Baltics. In the past, such actions would be expected to produce a unified front from NATO or something close to it. But now, NATO's largest and most powerful nation is increasingly a member in name only, led by a president who has always been skeptical of the alliance and is warmly predisposed toward its adversaries. In other words, all bets are off. All old war-game scenarios need to be scrapped. The world is a more dangerous place as a result, and with the clock ticking on the Trump years, it could become much more perilous still. The question is: Will the nations of Europe rise to the challenge of defending democracy and open societies? Or will they too fall to Putin-orchestrated campaigns from the right and succumb to the new corrupt authoritarianism that has altered the role of the United States so dramatically? Those nations will have to confront these questions soon, because they can't look to the U.S. for guarantees. The shining city on the hill has morphed into the land of the not-so-free and the home of the not-so-brave. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NATO's Article 5 is on life support
This article is the fourth in a five-part MSNBC Daily series, 'The Future of NATO.' With the Trump administration attacking allies, removing troops from European training missions, handing Ukraine's bargaining chips to Russia and refusing to guarantee European security even as 'backstop' — we're asking five crucial questions about the future of NATO, the U.S. and Europe. President Donald Trump has never concealed his antipathy toward alliances, particularly NATO. Speaking to reporters at the White House in March, he more forcefully than ever cast doubt on his willingness to defend NATO allies and questioned their commitment to defending the United States. 'Do you think they're going to come and protect us? They're supposed to. I'm not so sure,' he mused, adding: 'If you're not going to pay your bills, we're not going to defend you.' Although the United States allocates roughly 3% of its GDP to military expenditures, Trump has demanded all other NATO member states reach the 5% mark in order to be considered in good standing with him or be effectively abandoned. So, is NATO's famous Article 5 collective-defense commitment dead and buried? The traditional reading of it, a cornerstone of U.S. statecraft since World War II, seems to be. Trump is taking a sledgehammer to 75 years of consensus understanding of Article 5. The article in the North Atlantic Treaty reads, in part, 'an armed attack against one or more [members] ... shall be considered an attack against them all.' Article 5 is more complicated, as we shall see, but decades of American strategic thinking, to the gratification of other NATO members, emphasized this passage to make guaranteed collective military self-defense essential to the logic of the NATO alliance. To maintain credibility against Soviet aggression in treaty-specified regions, Cold War-era Washington essentially threw a mighty conventional military (and even nuclear) umbrella over all NATO allies, literally drawing lines that could not be crossed. The emphasis on the implied commitment of collective self-defense in the initial language of Article 5 was an important element in the surreal but effective 'mutual assured destruction' (MAD) understanding between Moscow and Washington. That understanding prevented nuclear or any other direct conflict between the global superpowers during the Cold War, despite decades of intense confrontation and hair-trigger standoffs, especially the Cuban missile crisis. But there has always been another interpretation of Article 5, which notes that it specifies only that each NATO member state will take 'such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.' Read literally, Article 5 does not commit any state to do anything it does not 'deem necessary.' Trump is tapping into the very sentiments of huge numbers of war-weary — and somewhat isolationist — Americans in the wake of World War II. This constituency of Americans impelled Washington to insist on the vague language of Article 5, despite intensive European efforts to make collective defense more mandatory or even automatic. Citing the congressional authority to declare war, among other factors, then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson insisted in 1949 that the Washington treaty 'naturally does not mean that the United States would automatically be at war if one of the other signatory nations were the victim of an armed attack.' Treaties are interpreted according to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It holds that a treaty 'shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning' of its words 'and in the light of its object and purpose.' Seventy-five years of consensus surely ought to be sufficient to define Article 5's objects and purposes. But once the Cold War ended, it was arguably only a matter of time before some Americans would begin reading Article 5 with an emphasis on the latter passages. It's a cliché to observe that Trump has turned NATO into a protection racket, but there isn't a better metaphor. The credibility of NATO providing a collective military and nuclear umbrella is, at best, on life support. A new administration could try to restore the traditional emphasis on the collective defense passages, but Trump let the genie out of the bottle. It's not going back inside easily, since many Americans think NATO has served its purpose. Ironically, the only time Article 5 was invoked was on behalf of the U.S. after 9/11. But in Trump's world, what have you done for me lately? The collective-security reading of Article 5 was indispensable to avoiding a superpower conflict and nuclear holocaust, despite the Cold War, and allowing the Washington-led West to essentially prevail in the standoff against the USSR and its own alliance. Yet it's almost impossible to imagine the Trump administration coming to the military defense of Poland or the Baltic states in the event of Russian aggression, since he paints this as the sad story of a massive rip-off. This is all a huge win for Vladimir Putin and other malefactors, and a disaster for U.S. interests, power and influence. If Trump keeps this up much longer, Article 5 will indeed be dead and buried, and effectively the NATO alliance along with it. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Europe's best defense is self-defense
This article is the third in a five-part MSNBC Daily series, 'The Future of NATO.' With the Trump administration attacking allies, removing troops from European training missions, handing Ukraine's bargaining chips to Russia and refusing to guarantee European security even as 'backstop' — we're asking five crucial questions about the future of NATO, the U.S. and Europe. In 1951, Dwight Eisenhower, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's first Supreme Allied Commander Europe, gave his colleagues a warning. 'If, in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed,' he said of the U.S. effort to build a new trans-Atlantic security architecture. Almost 75 years later, Eisenhower would be disappointed. Today, Europe is still reliant on the U.S. forces stationed across the continent and in the United Kingdom, but President Donald Trump and his advisers appear ready to break with this status quo. Europe should welcome, not fear, U.S. retrenchment. Not only will an independent defense end Europe's abdication of its geopolitical autonomy, but it will leave Europe more secure. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it bluntly. 'Stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe,' he told allied counterparts at their first meeting in February. Viewed across the Atlantic as an abandonment, the United States' move to return Europe's defense burden to Europe is long overdue and represents a return to the historical norm. European countries were building militaries and fighting wars long before the United States entered the picture. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the United Kingdom, France and Germany had the largest defense budgets. In 1912, on the eve of World War I, for instance, these three European countries each spent about 30% more in real terms on defense than the United States. This changed only in the 1950s, with the onset of the Cold War. U.S. defense spending rose quickly as American soldiers deployed around the globe with promises of protection and security guarantees for allies. Europe, in contrast, kept its defense spending considerably lower, comforted by the presence of U.S. troops and NATO's Article 5 commitment. By 1990, the United States was spending more than three times as much on defense as France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined. When the end of the Cold War removed the Soviet threat, Europe let its defense capabilities atrophy further, leaving the United States to carry most of NATO's security burden. Though it endured for seven decades, this arrangement is inherently unstable and compromises both U.S. and European interests. It is unsustainable for the United States, which faces competing global priorities and resource constraints that limit what it can and is willing to contribute to Europe's protection. And it infantilizes Europe, effectively stripping its members of geopolitical independence and influence. Now, Trump is demanding a return to the old, pre-World War II trans-Atlantic bargain in which Europe is responsible for funding its own defense. This is hardly unreasonable, and, in fact, it would leave Europe better off. An independent defense will allow Europe to be more empowered on the world stage and escape the risks created by Washington's changing whims. Europe will also be more secure if it assumes responsibility for managing its own defense rather than continuing to rely on increasingly shaky U.S. promises. Though U.S. and European leaders still call the mutual defense commitment at NATO's foundation 'ironclad,' the credibility of the Article 5 guarantee has been hollowed out over the past 35 years. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. commitments in Europe have increased. NATO added 16 members, including difficult-to-defend countries with shared borders with Russia, such as the Baltic states and Finland. Troublingly, however, new entrants were admitted without much attention to what would be required militarily to protect them, suggesting that Washington was unserious about meeting its expanded treaty commitments — or believed it would not have to. At the same time, the United States' ability and will to fulfill its role as Europe's security guarantor have waned in big and small ways. For starters, the number of U.S. military forces based in Europe has decreased sharply. In his second term, President Barack Obama cut U.S. forward presence in Europe to its lowest post-World War II levels, somewhere close to 65,000, though this number has trended back upward since. In 2022, when U.S. forces looked to transfer pre-positioned military equipment to Ukraine, they found much of it in disrepair, unready for battlefield use, revealing years of neglect. More recently, Washington acknowledged strain on its air defense capabilities and the munitions stockpiles needed in Europe but has done little to address the gaps. Europe should read these signs for what they are. Questions about the reliability of the U.S commitment to Europe are justified given clear evidence of its limited and declining interest and investment. Moreover, it has been decades since the United States indicated a real willingness or the military capacity to fight on Europe's behalf, and Washington has never shown an appetite to engage in combat to defend NATO's easternmost members. With U.S. attention and resources increasingly and irrevocably focused elsewhere, it would be foolhardy for Europe to remain dependent on American security guarantees, even in the absence of Trump's threats and pressure campaign. Europe's interest in defending itself in a crisis will always be greater and more credible than the U.S. interest in Europe. By becoming self-sufficient in the security domain, Europe can make sure that its defenses match the threats it faces and be assured that needed military forces and hardware will be there when required. Of course, building an independent European defense will not be easy. It will require overcoming intra-European disagreements about threat perception and investment priorities. Still, these differences are considerably more tractable than those that have derailed the trans-Atlantic relationship of late. Importantly, Europe has the resources and technological capability to become a world-class military power, if it chooses. Though Europe's defense outlook today is uncertain, it may soon find what the United States learned long ago: The best defense is self-defense. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's isolationism will lead more nations to seek nuclear weapons
This article is the second in a five-part MSNBC Daily series, 'The Future of NATO.' With the Trump administration attacking allies, removing troops from European training missions, handing Ukraine's bargaining chips to Russia and refusing to guarantee European security even as 'backstop' — we're asking five crucial questions about the future of NATO, the U.S. and Europe. Would America be safer if more countries had nuclear bombs? We are about to find out. For the first time in 60 years, European nations are considering arming themselves with nuclear weapons. The urgent talks in March among Europe's leaders were triggered by what Germany's next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, termed a 'profound change of American geopolitics' under President Donald Trump. 'We must brace ourselves for the fact that Donald Trump will no longer unconditionally honor NATO's mutual defense commitment,' he said. Trump's abandonment of Ukraine and his desire to forge an alliance with Russia's Vladimir Putin are forcing friends and foes to reconsider their options. Yale historian Timothy Snyder wrote that should Russia be allowed to prevail, should Ukraine be defeated, then 'nuclear weapons will spread around the world, both to those who wish to bluff with them' — the way Putin has done in his war on Ukraine — 'and those who will need them to resist these bluffs.' That is why Merz said his 'absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.' The European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said that 'the free world needs a new leader.' Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland said his country must drastically increase the size of its military and even 'reach for opportunities related to nuclear weapons.' French President Emmanuel Macron has offered to have his nation's 290 nuclear weapons serve as a Euro deterrent force, and this month he announced plans to modernize France's air force to carry next-generation cruise missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. Having the weapons of France or Britain (the only other nuclear-armed nation in Europe besides Russia) pledged in collective defense might not be enough. Consider the dilemma of Eastern European nations. If Putin prevails in Ukraine, he will certainly pursue his territorial ambitions with Moldova, Romania, the Baltic States and Poland, backed by veiled or direct nuclear threats. These nations might be able to rely on a French nuclear umbrella now, but what if far-right leader Marine Le Pen becomes president? She says that 'French defense must remain French defense.' Could Germany step into the breach? Perhaps, but if the pro-Putin, far-right AfD party, already the second-largest party in Germany, takes control, Germany would certainly not protect other nations from Putin. Worse, if America walks away from NATO while bolstering these anti-American parties, 'it will lead to a Germany once again led by fascists and willing to arm itself with nuclear weapons,' warns New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. So far, this is just talk. There are formidable technological, political and economic barriers to building nuclear weapons. It could take even an advanced nation 10 years and tens of billions of dollars to build the facilities to produce the highly enriched uranium or plutonium needed for bombs, then to construct, test and deploy even a small arsenal. But that is why European leaders feel the urgency to begin discussions now. Should they proceed, the spread of nuclear weapons would not be limited to Europe or our allies. The nuclear reaction chain could quickly spread to Asia, where Japan, South Korea and Taiwan face similar worries about the reliability of their defense agreements with America. We have seen this dynamic before. In the 1950s and 1960s, all these nations and more explored getting their own nuclear weapons. Two initiatives convinced them not to do so. The first was America's ironclad commitment to come to their aid if they were attacked. That extended deterrence — enshrined in the NATO treaty signed in Washington on April 4, 1949 — was not, by itself, enough. The United Kingdom got nuclear weapons in 1952 and France in 1960, despite the security assurances. Another framework was needed: the arms control and disarmament commitments embodied in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), negotiated in 1968 and ratified under President Richard Nixon in 1970. That treaty and the associated mechanisms provided the diplomatic and legal framework that assured countries that if they choose not to get nuclear weapons, their neighbors would not either, and that the world was moving toward nuclear disarmament. Sweden, for example, only gave up its nuclear program in 1968 after the NPT was signed. The same year, Japan ended its nuclear flirtation and announced its firm commitment not to manufacture, possess or permit nuclear weapons on its soil. Trump is now tearing down these two pillars of global security. If any of these nations were to leave the NPT (as is their right) and launch a weapons program, others would soon follow. The nuclear dominoes would topple globally. We would be thrust back into the nuclear anarchy of decades past, when President John F. Kennedy warned of 'nuclear weapons in so many hands, in the hands of countries large and small, stable and unstable, responsible and irresponsible, scattered throughout the world.' This will be the nuclear nightmare Donald Trump has unleashed. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
America is still grappling with uncomfortable pandemic truths
As we commemorate the fifth anniversary of theWorld Health Organization declaring the novel coronavirus a pandemic, this is the first of a six-part MSNBC Daily series that reflects on the million American lives lost, the political polarization and the declining trust in public health measures that followed the virus' spread and assesses the country's preparedness for the next pandemic. An oxygen concentrator being used by Lorena Martínez (not her real name) hums like a funeral dirge in her cramped Washington, D.C., apartment, its plastic tubing snaking across the carpet that her 13-year-old daughter vacuums between homework assignments and administering her mother's insulin injections. At 37, the former bakery manager survives as a living Venn diagram of America's pandemic failures. She was infected with Sars-Cov-2 (the Covid virus) in the summer of 2020 and had a complex hospitalization resulting in a kidney transplant and an inexplicable lung condition that has left her dependent on oxygen. Her story crystallizes the pandemic's cruel duality: Even as one part of America was questioning the efficacy of masks and social distancing, another part was fighting for breath in overwhelmed hospitals where doctors tried immunosuppressants, ventilation techniques, antivirals, antibiotics and anything else in the proverbial medical kitchen sink. The machines that kept Lorena alive testify to medicine's triumphs; the child shouldering this burden for an overlooked community exposes its bankruptcies. Five years later, we remain two nations: one that feels justified in minimizing Covid and rejecting any mitigation strategies and the other trapped in the long memory of infections, isolation and death. The evocative image of Covid that former President Joe Biden often cited, a family dinner table with an empty chair, is replicated in countless homes across the nation. Even so, a narrative of resilience and recovery often dominates the official discourse. The Covid-19 pandemic reveals itself not as a singular event but as a multifaceted crisis that exposed deep-seated fault lines in American society. The numbers tell a chilling tale: over 111.8 million confirmed cases and 1.2 million lives lost as of February 2025. Yet, these statistics, as vast as they are, fail to capture the pandemic's true scope: the silent suffering, the economic devastation and the erosion of social and scientific trust. From the outset, the pandemic cleaved the nation into two distinct camps. On one side stood those who embraced public health measures, sometimes at great personal and economic cost. This America witnessed firsthand the horrors of overwhelmed hospitals and clinics, where health care workers battled exhaustion and death daily or at least acknowledged and accepted as true reports of what was happening. The virus quickly surged past influenza, strokes, suicides and car crashes to become the third-leading cause of death in 2020 and 2021, behind only heart disease and cancer. This America, driven by a sense of collective responsibility, lined up for vaccines, wore masks religiously and curtailed social gatherings. On the other side, beliefs that reports about the virus were false or exaggerated and concerns over personal freedom and economic hardship fueled resistance to lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccination requirements. This America viewed public health restrictions as an infringement on individual liberties, questioning the severity of the virus and the motives behind government interventions. This group of Americans, taking their cues from social media and partisan news outlets, contributed to a climate of mistrust and division. The economic consequences of these divergent approaches have been profound. The U.S. gross domestic product contracted by 3.5% in 2020, a decrease not seen since the end of World War II. The pandemic's economic toll as of January 2023 was $4 trillion in government expenditures alone. The government's response to the crisis was unprecedented in scale. Operation Warp Speed assembled the best scientific minds to speedily and safely develop vaccines. The CARES Act, with its Economic Impact Payments, sought to provide a lifeline to struggling Americans. The Federal Reserve slashed interest rates and implemented liquidity facilities to stabilize financial markets. These measures came at a cost, with the national debt ballooning to levels unseen in peacetime and businesses large and small suffering from stay-at-home orders and distancing requirements. Perhaps the worst have been the effects on the children who missed graduations or attended most of their classes via computer screen and the adults whose deaths were marked only by virtual forms of grief. The most uncomfortable pandemic truths lie not in what we got wrong, but in what we refused to see in the evolution of a novel virus. Early missteps — from dismissing aerosol transmission risks to underestimating asymptomatic spread — weren't mere scientific growing pains; they were systemic failures of imagination that proved deadly for vulnerable populations. Our policy responses, though unprecedented in scale, became Rorschach tests for America's structural inequities. While white-collar workers Zoomed into virtual meetings, 72% of Black workers and 65% of Latino workers remained trapped in front-line jobs with Covid mortality rates 2.1 times higher than those of their white counterparts. The $5 trillion stimulus package that saved Wall Street failed to protect a variety of immigrant front-line workers (meatpackers, drivers, grocery store clerks) without relief checks or sick leave — the very essential workforce we applauded nightly from our doorsteps. Five years after the start of the pandemic, America's recovery remains fractured by policy choices and viral aftershocks. Unemployment rates have plummeted, but at least 3.6% of adults now battle long Covid— a medical limbo where 68% see no symptom relief after two years. The administration's reinstatement of 8,000 unvaccinated troops contrasts starkly with long Covid's $168 billion annual productivity drain. The unanswered questions loom largest: Could viral remnants awaken dormant diseases? Will long Covid's $3.7 trillion care burden eclipse initial deaths? The changes the Trump administration is implementing will hamper our ability to answer these questions. The Trump administration's 2025 executive orders have defunded 13 key health agencies, reducing budgets for pandemic preparedness while eliminating 5,200 public health positions, including 10% of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's outbreak and public health leadership. Where inadequate testing capacity once plagued communities, we now face active suppression: New Food and Drug Administration guidelines have halted emergency use authorization for Covid rapid tests, privileging 'natural immunity' narratives over diagnostic transparency. The supply chain vulnerabilities exposed in 2020 have become policy choices: The Department of Health and Human Services' travel restrictions now prevent epidemiologists from investigating H5N1 outbreaks unless mortality rates exceed 5%. As the MAHA Commission focuses on food additives and 'technological habit' reforms, the pandemic playbook that guided us through successive Covid waves gathers dust in agency archives. The lesson rings clear: America's public health vulnerabilities aren't merely systemic; increasingly, they're by design. Five years after the start of the pandemic, America stands fractured yet paradoxically transformed. The crisis magnified our deepest divides — urban versus rural, privilege versus poverty, individualism versus collective survival — while stress-testing democracy itself. Yet from this crucible emerged unexpected resilience: telehealth revolutions, remote work permanence and newfound reverence for grocery clerks and nurses. Now comes the existential task: weaving these fractured realities into a national tapestry that honors both our losses and our adaptations. The pressing question isn't whether we'll face another pandemic, but whether we can reconstruct a society in which Lorena's oxygen tubing and Wall Street's recovery packages occupy the same moral universe. The answer to this question will determine whether we can confront the H5N1 outbreaks now spreading through Midwest dairy farms, reverse plummeting childhood vaccination rates' fueling measles resurgences in 32 states and address climate-driven disease vectors creeping northward — all while navigating a political landscape in which pandemic-era fractures have metastasized into active hostility toward public health institutions. Our capacity to rebuild trust in science and bridge these divides may prove the ultimate test of whether Lorena's story becomes a relic of 2020s failures or a harbinger of a 2030s collapse. This article was originally published on
