If You Want More Babies, You Have to Support the People Raising Them

There is a particular phrase that keeps coming up in conversations about paid maternity and parental leave: “Corporations give and give.”

That framing leaves out a rather important part of the economic story.

American workers have become substantially more productive over the past several decades, but their compensation has not increased proportionally. According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1979 to 2019, U.S. net productivity increased 59.7%, while compensation for a typical worker increased only 15.8%. That is a 43.9-percentage-point gap between productivity growth and compensation growth. If median hourly compensation had grown at the same rate as productivity over that period, EPI estimates the median worker would have been earning approximately $9 more per hour.

That does not mean businesses contribute nothing to productivity. Technology, investment, management, capital and entrepreneurship all matter. But workers are not passive recipients of corporate generosity. They are part of the production process that creates the goods and services businesses sell and the revenue those businesses generate.

The distinction becomes even more important when compensation includes benefits.

Paid leave is compensation. Health insurance is compensation. Retirement contributions are compensation. These are not necessarily corporations handing workers a gift out of the goodness of their hearts. They are components of the overall employment relationship and, in many cases, tools employers use to recruit and retain workers.

The federal government itself recognizes the economic value of paid parental leave. The Government Accountability Office found that most federal civilian employees became eligible for up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave beginning in 2020. GAO also found that the benefit can make federal employment more attractive and can improve employee morale and retention.

So paid parental leave can be understood as both a family benefit and a workforce policy.

That matters because the United States remains an international outlier. The OECD reports that the United States is the only OECD country without a national paid maternity-leave scheme. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act provides eligible workers with up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave, but that leave is generally unpaid, and the Department of Labor states that there is currently no federal law guaranteeing paid family and medical leave for private-sector workers.

And paid leave isn't some uniquely socialist invention.

Canada has paid maternity and parental benefits. Australia has government-funded Paid Parental Leave. Germany provides paid maternity protection and parental benefits. Japan and South Korea have paid maternity and parental-leave systems. The United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and New Zealand also provide forms of paid maternity or parental leave.

These are market economies. They have private businesses, private investment, competition and profits.

Capitalism clearly does not collapse when parents receive paid time away from work after having a child.

In fact, the economic case for supporting parents extends beyond the first few months of a baby's life. The OECD notes that parental-leave systems can help mothers remain connected to the labor market and return to work after childbirth. It also points out that employers can benefit because retaining experienced workers can be preferable to permanently replacing them.

This is where the current political conversation about having more children becomes especially interesting.

There is an increasingly visible pronatalist movement on the American right—people arguing that the country needs higher birth rates and more children. Vice President JD Vance has been one of the most prominent political voices making that case. At the January 2025 March for Life, Vance said, “I want more babies in the United States of America.” He also said that it should be easier for young parents to afford children and that government has a role in making that possible.

That isn't merely rhetoric about babies. It is an argument about economic policy.

And Vance's position deserves some nuance. He has not simply rejected paid family leave. During the 2024 vice-presidential debate, he said, “I think there is a bipartisan solution here” when asked about paid family leave, and he pointed out that his wife had benefited from paid family leave through her employer. He did not, however, commit to a specific national paid-leave program.

That distinction is important because the criticism should be aimed at the policy gap, not an inaccurate caricature of an individual politician.

Other prominent figures in the conservative movement have been considerably more explicit about prioritizing motherhood and larger families over career considerations.

In June 2026, Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA, told attendees at the organization's Women's Leadership Summit in San Antonio: “Have more babies than you can afford.” CNN's transcript confirms the statement and shows the audience cheering afterward. The conference promoted early marriage, motherhood and traditional gender roles.

Kirk had already argued in 2025 that young women should not look to government as a substitute for marriage or delay family formation for career ambitions. At The New York Times' DealBook Summit, she said she did not want young women to “look to the government as a solution to put off having a family or a marriage” and instead emphasized the financial support spouses can provide one another.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration considered a $5,000 baby bonus as a way to encourage Americans to have more children. Trump responded when asked about the proposal, “Sounds like a good idea to me.” No final federal baby-bonus program was established from that proposal, but its consideration illustrates how explicitly birth rates have entered the policy conversation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting Americans to be able to have the families they want. A declining birth rate can have significant long-term economic consequences, including a smaller future workforce supporting an aging population.

But encouraging people to have children and making it economically possible to raise those children are two different policy questions.

The second one requires more than a speech about the blessings of motherhood.

The United States has some of the highest child-care costs among wealthy countries, and roughly three-quarters of Americans surveyed by AP-NORC in 2025 said child-care costs were a major problem. The same polling found broad support for policies such as free or low-cost day care and requiring employers to provide paid family leave.

That disconnect matters.

A person can believe children are blessings and still recognize that babies come with very real economic costs. A newborn does not stop requiring food, housing, medical care or child care because someone has told their parents that motherhood is their highest calling.

And the economic consequences are not evenly distributed.

Paid family leave access has historically been much more common among higher-paid workers than lower-paid workers. A 2021 analysis by the Senate Joint Economic Committee found that only 23% of American workers had access to paid family leave, with access substantially higher among higher-wage workers than lower-wage workers.

That means the people who can most easily absorb an unpaid period away from work are often the people who need paid leave the least.

For a high-income professional with substantial savings, an employer-provided benefit and a supportive workplace, taking several weeks away from work can be manageable.

For a worker living paycheck to paycheck, unpaid leave can mean falling behind on rent, utilities, groceries or other necessities.

That is why reducing paid parental leave to “corporations giving away money” misses the economic reality.

The larger question is how the gains produced within an economy are distributed and whether the employment system gives workers enough stability to participate fully in both work and family life.

The productivity numbers are difficult to ignore. From 1979 to 2019, productivity rose nearly four times as much as compensation for the typical worker—59.7% versus 15.8%. And more recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that annual-average nonfarm business productivity increased 2.3% in 2024, while real hourly compensation increased 2.0%.

The point isn't that every dollar of productivity growth should automatically become a dollar of wages. Economic growth has multiple inputs, and compensation is only one way workers share in the gains.

The point is that workers are not starting from a position where corporations have been endlessly showering them with benefits while receiving nothing in return.

Workers already contribute enormous economic value.

Paid parental leave is one relatively small way of recognizing that workers are human beings whose responsibilities do not disappear when they clock out. It can help families remain financially stable, help employees remain attached to the workforce, and help employers retain experienced people.

And if political leaders genuinely want Americans to have more children, the conversation should extend beyond encouraging birth.

It should include what happens after the baby arrives.

A serious family policy means considering paid parental leave, affordable child care, health care, housing, wages, workplace flexibility and the ability to take time away from work without putting a family's financial stability at risk.

Telling people to have more babies while dismissing the economic infrastructure that allows them to raise those babies is not a complete family policy.

It is an incomplete economic argument.

And calling paid parental leave “socialism” doesn't make much sense when wealthy capitalist economies around the world have already demonstrated that paid leave and market economies can coexist.

The United States can choose a different approach. But that choice should be based on evidence rather than the assumption that every benefit given to a worker is an act of corporate charity.

If we are serious about supporting families, let's stop arguing over political labels and start measuring outcomes. Look at productivity. Look at compensation. Look at child-care costs. Look at parental-leave policies in other capitalist economies. Then decide what kind of economy actually allows people to work, raise children and build stable lives. Follow the data—and hold policymakers accountable for whether their family policies actually support families after the baby is born.

Nearly Three Decades of One-Party Rule: What Are Texans Getting for It?

Texas Republicans have controlled the governor’s office since 1994. Republicans have also held a majority in the Texas Senate since 1997 and the Texas House since 2003. In other words, Texas has had decades of relatively uninterrupted Republican control of state government. That matters when evaluating the state's problems because many of the policies affecting Texans’ health care, schools, electricity, taxes, insurance and local governments are not decisions being made in Washington. They are decisions being made in Austin.

That does not mean every problem in Texas is the fault of one political party. It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise. Weather affects insurance costs. Population growth affects housing and electricity demand. Inflation affects school budgets. Federal policies affect Medicaid and health care. Markets matter.

But the reverse is also true: when a political party has controlled state government for decades, it is reasonable to ask what that government has actually accomplished—and what problems remain unresolved.

The question should not be, “Is Texas red or blue?”

The better question is: Are the policies being pursued by Texas government producing good results for Texans?

Health Care: Texas Made a Choice Not to Expand Medicaid

Perhaps the clearest example is Medicaid.

Under the Affordable Care Act, states were given the option to expand Medicaid to adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level. As of May 2026, 41 states, including Washington, D.C., have adopted the expansion. Texas is one of the 10 states that have not.

This isn't simply a federal-versus-state argument. The Supreme Court's 2012 decision made Medicaid expansion optional, meaning Texas policymakers have repeatedly had the authority to decide whether to participate.

The consequences are measurable.

KFF estimates that approximately 1.2 million uninsured people across the 10 non-expansion states fall into the Medicaid “coverage gap”—earning too much to qualify for their state's traditional Medicaid program but too little to qualify for ACA Marketplace subsidies. Texas has the nation's lowest Medicaid income eligibility threshold for parents: a family of three earning more than approximately $4,098 annually is above the state's parent eligibility limit. Adults without dependent children generally cannot qualify for Medicaid based solely on low income.

And the broader difference is significant. KFF reports that states that have not expanded Medicaid have an uninsured rate of 14.5%, compared with 8.0% in expansion states.

Texas also continues to perform poorly on several health-system measures. The Commonwealth Fund's state data show Texas' maternal mortality rate at 34.7 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 26.3 nationally.

To be fair, Texas has made some positive changes. The state extended Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months, an important improvement for new mothers. But that does not erase the larger coverage problem created by remaining a non-expansion state.

That distinction matters. Good policy should be acknowledged when it happens—even when you disagree with the people who enacted it.

Electricity: The Texas Grid Is Not an Accident

The Texas electricity market provides another example of why state policy matters.

Texas intentionally built a distinctive electricity market based heavily on competition and relatively limited regulation. In 1999, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 7, restructuring the state's electricity industry and deregulating electricity generation and retail competition in parts of the state. Texas law still explicitly states that electricity production and sale are not considered a monopoly requiring traditional regulation of rates, operations and services.

That doesn't mean every problem with the Texas grid was caused by deregulation. The 2021 winter storm, for example, involved extreme weather, failures across multiple parts of the energy system, natural-gas supply problems, generation outages and other factors.

But the structure of the electricity market is absolutely a state policy choice.

And Texas is now confronting another enormous challenge: electricity demand is growing rapidly. Data centers, industrial projects, population growth and other large electricity users are creating enormous new demand. ERCOT has responded by changing how large users connect to the grid, including a new process for studying projects of 75 megawatts or more so that new demand can be matched with available capacity and necessary transmission upgrades.

The important question isn't whether Texas should have a competitive electricity market. That's a legitimate policy debate.

The question is whether the state is adapting that market quickly enough to keep electricity reliable and affordable as Texas grows.

Taxes: No State Income Tax Doesn't Mean Texans Don't Pay Taxes

Texas is famous for not having a state individual income tax. But the absence of an income tax doesn't mean Texans don't pay taxes—it means the state relies more heavily on other revenue sources, including property and sales taxes.

Property taxes have become a particularly important political issue.

In 2025, Texas lawmakers approved more than $51 billion in property-tax cuts through the state budget and related legislation. The new laws raised the standard homestead exemption to $140,000, with a $200,000 exemption for homeowners who qualify because of age or disability.

That is a substantial tax cut, and homeowners who receive it should absolutely be allowed to count it as a benefit.

But there is another side to the equation: property taxes are a major source of funding for local governments and public schools. When the state reduces property-tax revenue, policymakers have to consider how schools, cities and counties will maintain services and replace lost revenue.

So again, the issue isn't simply “tax cuts are good” or “tax cuts are bad.”

The question is: Who pays less, who pays more, and what happens to the public services those taxes help fund?

Homeowners Insurance: A State Problem With State and Non-State Causes

Homeowners insurance offers another example of why policy debates need more nuance.

Texas homeowners have faced steep increases in insurance costs. According to the Texas Department of Insurance, statewide homeowners insurance rate changes averaged 21.1% in 2023 and another 18.7% in 2024.

Those increases cannot fairly be blamed entirely on Texas lawmakers.

Texas has hurricanes, hail, tornadoes, wildfires and other severe weather. Construction and repair costs have increased. Population growth means more homes and more property exposed to risk. Climate-related changes can also affect insurance losses.

But state regulation still matters.

Texas lawmakers control the state's insurance regulatory framework, and they have debated measures intended to increase oversight of rate increases, improve consumer protections and reduce the risks that make insurance more expensive. The difficulty is finding a balance between protecting consumers and maintaining an insurance market in which companies are willing to continue writing policies.

That is precisely why this issue shouldn't be reduced to partisan slogans.

Texas homeowners don't care whether the insurance company or the Legislature has the better talking point. They care whether they can afford to insure their homes.

Public Education: A Major Investment Doesn't Erase Years of Decisions

Education provides perhaps the clearest example of why the phrase “Texas is doing great” requires context.

In 2025, the Legislature approved approximately $8.5 billion in new public-school funding. The package included money for teacher and staff pay, special education, school operations, safety, educator preparation and early learning. The Texas Education Agency describes it as the largest one-time public education investment in recent memory.

That investment deserves to be recognized.

But it also came after years in which the basic per-student funding formula had remained stagnant. The Texas Tribune reported that districts had experienced six years of stagnant base per-student funding while inflation and other operating costs increased.

And even after the $8.5 billion investment, school districts continued reporting serious financial pressures. In 2026, Texas school leaders told lawmakers that districts were still facing budget problems, with some eliminating positions or closing campuses.

That doesn't mean the $8.5 billion was meaningless. It means public policy should be judged by outcomes over time, not simply by the size of a single legislative appropriation.

Vouchers: A New Policy Choice Texans Can Now Evaluate

Texas also made a major change to education policy by creating a statewide school-choice program.

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, established through Senate Bill 2 in 2025, allows eligible families to use state funds for approved educational expenses, including private-school tuition, tutoring, career and technical education and certain homeschool expenses.

The program launched for the 2026–27 school year. By June 2026, more than 102,000 students had been awarded accounts, while nearly 145,000 remained on the waitlist.

Supporters see this as an expansion of parental choice. Critics worry about the implications for public-school finances and whether public money should subsidize private education.

Both sides can make legitimate arguments.

But now that Texas has made the policy choice, the debate can move beyond ideology and into measurement.

What happens to public-school enrollment?

What happens to student achievement?

Who benefits financially?

How much does the program cost taxpayers?

Do students who leave public schools experience better outcomes?

And does the program improve educational opportunity for low-income families, or primarily subsidize families who were already choosing private education?

Those are empirical questions. Texans should demand the data.

Local Control: Austin Has Increasingly Limited What Cities Can Do

Another issue that deserves more attention is the relationship between the state and local governments.

Texas has increasingly used state law to limit the authority of cities and counties to regulate certain issues. Housing is one particularly important example.

During the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers considered and enacted measures affecting municipal authority over residential development, zoning and occupancy. For example, Senate Bill 15 addressed residential lot size and density requirements in certain municipalities, while Senate Bill 1567 addressed municipal regulation of residential occupancy.

Whether those restrictions are good policy is debatable.

But the larger political point is not.

When the state Legislature restricts what cities can regulate, it becomes harder to blame local governments for every problem occurring within their borders.

If Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio or another Texas city is limited by state law in what it can regulate, then state lawmakers are part of the policy equation.

You cannot simultaneously argue that Texas cities should be held responsible for local outcomes while repeatedly limiting their ability to make local policy.

Housing: Texas Is Building, But Not Necessarily Fast Enough for Demand

Texas has long benefited from comparatively lower housing costs than many coastal states. But that advantage has been eroding.

A 2025 analysis cited an estimate from housing policy organization Up For Growth that Texas needed approximately 320,000 additional homes to meet housing demand. Despite Texas building more homes than any other state, population and economic growth have created demand faster than supply in many markets.

That shortage matters because housing economics are straightforward: when demand grows faster than supply, prices and rents face upward pressure.

Texas lawmakers have increasingly focused on housing supply and local regulations, including efforts to limit certain local development restrictions.

Again, reasonable people can disagree about the best solution.

But the affordability problem demonstrates why state policy matters. Decisions about zoning, density, development regulations, property taxes and infrastructure all influence how much housing can be built and what it costs.

The Bigger Picture

None of this proves that every Republican policy is bad.

It doesn't.

Texas has experienced tremendous population and economic growth. The state has attracted businesses and residents from around the country. Lawmakers have made substantial investments in public education, increased the homestead exemption, expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage and taken steps to address the electricity grid and housing supply.

Those accomplishments should be acknowledged.

But acknowledging them does not require Texans to stop asking questions.

If anything, decades of one-party control make accountability more important—not less.

A political party that has controlled the governor's office since 1994, the Senate since 1997 and the House since 2003 has had ample opportunity to shape the state's direction.

So when statewide Republican candidates gather to “chart the course to victory,” Texans should ask a very simple question:

What course?

A course toward what measurable outcomes?

More affordable health care?

A lower uninsured rate?

A reliable and affordable electric grid?

More affordable homeowners insurance?

Better-funded and better-performing public schools?

More affordable housing?

Sustainable local government finances?

Those are the metrics that matter.

Political victories are not the same thing as policy victories.

And party labels are not substitutes for results.

If Texas Republicans believe their policies are working, they should welcome an evidence-based comparison. Show Texans the numbers. Show us where the state has improved, where it has fallen behind, what policies produced those outcomes and what you intend to do differently where the results aren't good enough.

Because government isn't supposed to exist simply to preserve a political party's hold on power.

It is supposed to work for the people who live here.

After nearly three decades of one-party control, Texans are more than justified in asking whether the state's political leadership is working for us—or simply working to remain in power.

A Timeline of Claims vs. Evidence: Examining the Trump Administration's Record Through August 2026

Every presidential administration makes bold promises and ambitious claims. In a healthy democracy, those claims are tested against economic data, government records, independent research, and reporting from across the political spectrum. Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, fact-checking organizations, economists, federal agencies, and foreign policy analysts have repeatedly examined many of the administration's headline statements. Their findings reveal a recurring pattern: several of the administration's most widely promoted narratives have not aligned with the available evidence.

One of the administration's earliest economic arguments was that it inherited "the worst inflation in the history of our country." Historical data tells a different story. When President Trump took office in January 2025, the annual inflation rate was approximately 3%, far below the pandemic-era peak and nowhere near the record inflation of more than 14% experienced in 1980. While inflation remained an important concern for many Americans, economists across the political spectrum noted that describing it as the worst in U.S. history was historically inaccurate.

Tariffs quickly became another cornerstone of the administration's economic messaging. President Trump repeatedly argued that foreign governments were paying billions of dollars into the U.S. Treasury through tariffs. Trade economists, however, have consistently explained that tariffs are paid by U.S. importers when goods enter the country. Those additional costs are often passed along to wholesalers, retailers, and ultimately consumers through higher prices. Multiple economic analyses found no evidence that foreign governments were directly paying these taxes on behalf of American businesses.

The administration also promoted claims that it had generated between $18 trillion and $19.2 trillion in new domestic investment. Independent analysts questioned those figures immediately. For perspective, the entire U.S. economy produces roughly $28 trillion in goods and services annually. Reviews by independent fact-checkers concluded that the White House's numbers relied heavily on announced pledges, proposed projects, or loosely defined commitments rather than verified capital investments. Actual foreign direct investment was measured in the hundreds of billions—not tens of trillions—of dollars.

Employment statistics followed a similar pattern. The administration highlighted that more Americans were working than ever before. While the raw number of employed Americans did increase, economists noted that population growth naturally raises that figure over time. The employment rate—the percentage of Americans actually employed—declined slightly compared with January 2025, while unemployment rose modestly during the administration's first year. Likewise, claims of adding 70,000 construction jobs exceeded Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which recorded a smaller increase.

Immigration became another area where official records frequently differed from political rhetoric. President Trump repeatedly asserted that "zero illegal immigrants" had entered the United States after January 2025. Department of Homeland Security data showed that border encounters dropped substantially following stricter enforcement policies but never reached zero. Border crossings continued to occur throughout the period, even as overall numbers declined.

Another recurring claim alleged that foreign governments were deliberately emptying prisons and mental institutions into the United States. Criminologists, intelligence agencies, and independent investigations have repeatedly reported that no evidence supports the existence of any coordinated international effort of that nature. Although isolated individuals with criminal histories have crossed borders, researchers found no documentation of a systematic government-directed program matching the administration's description.

Crime statistics were also the subject of significant exaggeration. The administration claimed that murders in Washington, D.C., had fallen by nearly 100% and that the United States had achieved its lowest murder rate in 125 years. While many cities experienced fluctuations in violent crime, official crime data showed that homicide rates remained well above historic lows and certainly had not approached a complete elimination in the nation's capital.

On the international stage, President Trump frequently stated that he had ended eight wars during his first year back in office. Independent reviews found that several of the listed conflicts were either ongoing, represented temporary ceasefires, or did not meet the standard definition of active wars. Some diplomatic efforts did produce pauses in fighting, but major conflicts involving Israel, Hamas, Iran, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and others continued or later resumed.

The administration also claimed credit for personally brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Indian government officials publicly disputed that characterization, stating that the agreement resulted from direct bilateral negotiations rather than U.S. mediation. Military recruitment figures were similarly described as "record-breaking," yet Defense Department data showed improvements without establishing historic records.

Some of the most unusual claims involved highly personal anecdotes. President Trump stated that Maryland Governor Wes Moore approached him in tears and called him "the greatest president of my lifetime." Footage recorded during the encounter did not support that account, and no such statement appeared in the publicly available video.

Public health messaging also drew criticism. In 2025, statements published by the White House suggested a direct link between Tylenol use and autism. Medical organizations and scientific researchers responded that the available body of evidence does not establish a causal relationship between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism, contradicting the certainty implied by the administration's messaging.

Taken individually, political exaggerations are hardly new. Every administration has faced corrections from journalists and fact-checkers. What distinguishes this period, according to organizations such as the Associated Press, PolitiFact, and numerous independent analysts, is the frequency with which major policy claims have conflicted with documented evidence across multiple subject areas, including inflation, tariffs, employment, immigration, crime, public health, and foreign affairs. Rather than relying solely on campaign rhetoric or political messaging, these reviews emphasize the importance of comparing public statements with measurable data, official government statistics, and independently verifiable records.

For voters, regardless of political affiliation, the broader lesson extends beyond any single administration. Democracies function best when claims are evaluated against evidence, statistics are placed in their proper historical context, and public officials are held accountable to facts that can be independently verified.

Genocide: A Timeline of History, Why It Happens, and How Humanity Can Stop It

Genocide is one of the most devastating crimes humanity has named. The United Nations defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The word itself was created in 1944 by lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who recognized that mass atrocities were not isolated moments of violence, but patterns that could be studied, identified, and hopefully prevented.

Yet history shows a painful reality: recognizing genocide has not always meant stopping it.

Across the last century, the world has witnessed repeated examples of populations being targeted because of who they were. From the Herero and Nama people in German South West Africa between 1904 and 1908, to the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917, to the millions who died during the Holodomor in Ukraine and the Holocaust under Nazi Germany, the same devastating themes appear again and again.

The Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge, the Anfal campaign against Kurds in Iraq, the Rwandan genocide that killed approximately 800,000 people in only about 100 days, the Srebrenica massacre of Bosniak Muslims, the atrocities in Darfur, the persecution of Yazidis by ISIS, and the violence against the Rohingya people in Myanmar all reveal a similar pattern: genocide is rarely a sudden explosion of hatred. It is usually built over time.

Before mass killing begins, societies often experience a gradual process of dehumanization. A group of people is portrayed as dangerous, inferior, disloyal, or responsible for a society’s problems. Propaganda and misinformation create an environment where discrimination becomes acceptable and violence becomes easier to justify.

History repeatedly shows that language matters.

The Holocaust did not begin with concentration camps. It began with propaganda, exclusionary laws, and the idea that Jewish people and other targeted groups were a threat to society. The Rwandan genocide did not begin with mass killings. It was preceded by years of ethnic division and propaganda that portrayed Tutsi people as enemies. The persecution of the Rohingya was preceded by decades of discrimination and efforts to deny their belonging.

Genocide also requires more than hatred. It requires systems.

Mass atrocities often depend on governments, military forces, bureaucracies, laws, and institutions that allow violence to be organized and carried out. This is why genocide prevention cannot focus only on individual acts of cruelty. It must examine the political systems, leaders, and structures that make widespread violence possible.

Another painful lesson from history is that the world often knows what is happening before it decides to act.

During the Rwandan genocide, international organizations received warnings but failed to prevent the killings. During the Srebrenica massacre, civilians were killed despite being under the protection of a United Nations-designated safe area. In Darfur, years of international condemnation did not immediately stop the suffering.

The question that repeats throughout history is not only, “Did the world know?” but also, “What did the world do when it knew?”

The ongoing war in Gaza has brought these questions into the present. Since October 2023, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, and the vast majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced. Human rights organizations, scholars, and some United Nations experts have argued that Israel’s actions meet the definition of genocide, while Israel rejects that characterization and states that its military operations are directed against Hamas following the October 7 attacks. The legal classification remains contested, but the humanitarian impact is undeniable: large-scale civilian deaths, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and a population facing immense suffering.

This debate reflects one of the biggest challenges in preventing genocide: the world often debates terminology while people are experiencing the consequences.

So how does humanity prevent genocide?

There is no single solution, but history provides some lessons. Prevention begins with recognizing warning signs early: hate speech, discrimination, attacks on minority rights, forced displacement, and leaders using fear to justify violence. It requires accountability, because perpetrators who believe they will never face consequences are more likely to continue. It requires protecting historical truth, because denial and distortion allow dangerous ideas to survive. And it requires applying human rights principles consistently, regardless of a victim group’s nationality, religion, ethnicity, or political importance.

The history of genocide is not only a record of humanity’s darkest moments. It is also a record of choices.

Every genocide was preceded by decisions: decisions to ignore, decisions to dehumanize, decisions to remain silent, or decisions to intervene.

The greatest lesson history offers is that genocide is not inevitable. It is allowed to happen when warning signs are ignored and when the humanity of others is denied.

The question for every generation is not simply, “How did this happen?”

The question is:

“When we see the warning signs, what will we choose to do?”

She Always Showed Up: The Life and Legacy of Shundra Jacquot

By the time the service began at Windsor Village Church Family, the room was already filled with a quiet kind of anticipation—the kind that settles when love and grief share the same air and neither one is willing to yield.

As the procession began, clergy, pallbearers, and family moved together down the aisle while the congregation stood in reverent acknowledgment. Even in motion, there was a stillness to it, as if everyone understood they were stepping into something sacred and final. Music from Windsor Village rose gently in the background, not as performance but as witness, carrying the room from arrival into awareness.

When Marcus Jacquot stood to read from Ecclesiastes 3:1, the familiar words about seasons did not feel distant or ceremonial. They felt lived in, as if the family had been walking inside that scripture long before it was ever spoken aloud. Moments later, Toni Cormier followed with John 14, offering words that have steadied generations through grief. In that moment, the scripture did not instruct so much as accompany—ancient reassurance spoken softly into a room holding its breath.

Prayer followed, moving slowly through the sanctuary. The words did not rush to fill silence; they respected it. Another musical selection came afterward, lifting the atmosphere just slightly, reminding everyone that sorrow and worship can exist in the same breath without cancelling each other out.

Resolutions were then acknowledged, each one received with quiet nods and hands holding programs a little tighter than before. Formal words of remembrance passed through the room, but what lingered was the unspoken understanding that a life like hers did not need introduction inside those walls.

When the expressions began, the tone shifted into something more personal. Gerald “Jay” Jacquot spoke first, remembering her not just as family but as someone who held the structure of connection together—someone who kept people close even when life made distance easier. Adrienne Parker followed, speaking of a friendship that began in adolescence and quietly became sisterhood through shared rooms, shared meals, and shared growing pains that never managed to break them apart. Roshon Williams reflected on a life of dreaming, working, and reinventing without ever losing the essence of who she was. Constance Mackey-Cox spoke into the kind of bond that defies easy definition, the kind that grows so naturally it becomes impossible to explain without diminishing it.

By the time the family rose to speak, the room had already begun to understand what kind of woman she had been to so many different people in so many different ways.

Zachary Jacquot spoke first, not only as a son but as someone still learning what it meant to carry her influence forward. He remembered lessons that were sometimes direct and sometimes unspoken—moments of discipline, moments of laughter, and moments that revealed her philosophy more clearly than any speech could. Even now, as an adult, he still reached for her hand when he saw her. It was not something he thought about. It was something his body remembered before his mind could explain it.

She had a way of making him feel invincible.

“She made me feel like I was Superman.”

Chasity Jacquot followed with a kind of humor that only exists between mothers and daughters who have spent a lifetime negotiating love through discipline. She spoke of childhood mischief, forged signatures, ISS slips, and punishments that always made it clear that love in her mother’s house was never passive. It corrected. It guided. It insisted. Even near the end, she joked, her mother was probably still fussing at her.

Jazmyne Ware stood beside her sister throughout, fanning her gently and offering tissue to her siblings as they spoke. Even without words, her presence reflected the same quiet steadiness that defined so many of the people closest to Shundra.

When the video presentation began, the lights dimmed and photographs filled the screens. Childhood folded into adolescence. Adolescence gave way to adulthood. Hairstyles changed. Children became parents. Smiles remained constant across decades. The room responded in waves—soft laughter, quiet recognition, and tears that arrived without warning. It felt less like watching a slideshow and more like standing inside a living family archive that belonged to everyone present.

The Praise Dance Ministry followed to “Well Done” by Deitrick Haddon, moving across the floor as light caught fabric in motion. What unfolded was not just choreography but offering—grief and worship meeting in the same space without competing for attention.

When Rev. Kenneth K. Rose, Jr., Pastor of Mt. Vernon Baptist Church, rose to deliver the eulogy, the tone of the room settled again into reflection. His words anchored the service in faith, in endurance, and in the kind of life that leaves an imprint not because it was flawless, but because it was faithful in its persistence. A life that understood storms but refused to be defined by them. Not untouched. But standing.

The committal came gently, marking both finality and release without rushing either one. And as the recessional began, clergy, pallbearers, and family moved once more down the aisle, carrying both presence and memory forward into the world outside the sanctuary doors.

What remained in the room lingered longer than the service itself.

By the end of the afternoon, pink had become impossible not to notice. It lingered in flowers and dresses, in ties and jewelry, in ribbons wrapped around bouquets, and in the subtle accents worn by her children dressed in white. People gathered programs, embraced one another longer than usual, and made promises they intended to keep.

The music faded. The voices softened. The room slowly released its breath.

And somewhere in the quiet that followed, it was still possible to imagine her—not rushed, not hurried, not gone from the rhythm she had always known.

Not rushing.

Never rushing.

Standing before a mirror somewhere, adjusting an earring, reaching for her purse, slipping into her heels, and preparing—as she always had—to arrive.

When Neutral Language Produces Unequal Outcomes: Disparate Impact and Modern Policy Promises

We live in a political era where almost no policy is described in openly discriminatory language. That fact is often treated as proof that modern governance has moved beyond discrimination itself. But civil rights law—and decades of evidence in housing, employment, education, and criminal justice—tells a more complicated story: policies do not need discriminatory intent to produce discriminatory outcomes.

This is not a rhetorical claim. It is a legal and empirical doctrine embedded in U.S. jurisprudence under the concept of disparate impact, first clearly articulated in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971), where the Supreme Court held that facially neutral employment practices can still violate civil rights law when they operate to reproduce racial inequality. The Court’s logic was direct: neutrality in language does not erase inequality in effect when systems are built on unequal foundations.

That principle was reaffirmed decades later in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519 (2015), where the Court explicitly recognized that structural inequality can be reinforced through neutral policy mechanisms—and that civil rights law must be capable of addressing outcomes, not just intent.

That legal framework is essential for understanding the current wave of major federal policy promises being debated and implemented in the second Trump term. Because when you strip away branding, slogans, and political framing, what remains is a consistent pattern: large-scale, facially neutral policies operating in a society that is already deeply unequal.

And in that kind of system, neutrality is not enough to guarantee fairness.

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Start with immigration enforcement. A promise to carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” is typically framed in neutral terms: law enforcement, border security, and legal compliance. But law does not operate in abstraction—it operates on people distributed across a real population.

And in the United States, undocumented immigrants are not evenly distributed across racial and ethnic groups. They are disproportionately Latino, disproportionately concentrated in specific industries and regions, and often embedded in mixed-status families. That means large-scale enforcement does not land evenly on “the population” as a whole. It lands with concentrated force on specific communities.

No explicit racial language is required for that outcome. It emerges from demographic structure itself.

That is disparate impact in its most basic form: a neutral rule producing predictable, uneven burden because the underlying population is not neutral.

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The same logic applies to voter identification and citizenship verification policies. These are almost always justified in the language of integrity and standardization. The argument is simple: everyone should follow the same rules.

But equality of rules is not the same as equality of access to compliance. Decades of election research, including analyses from the Government Accountability Office, have shown that access to qualifying identification is unevenly distributed across income levels, age groups, and geographic regions. Those disparities are not random—they reflect long-standing structural inequalities in transportation, bureaucracy, housing stability, and administrative access.

So when the requirement is applied universally, the burden is not universal. It is concentrated. And because race in the United States is tightly correlated with income and geographic inequality due to historical housing and labor patterns, that burden often tracks racial lines even when race is never mentioned.

This is precisely the kind of mechanism civil rights law was designed to recognize: systems that appear neutral on their face but reproduce inequality in practice.

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Education policy provides another clear example. Efforts to reduce federal oversight or expand school choice are often framed as empowering families and returning control to local communities. On paper, this sounds like decentralization and freedom.

But the United States does not begin from an equal educational baseline. School funding is still heavily tied to local property wealth, which means educational quality is structurally linked to neighborhood wealth. And neighborhood wealth in the United States is not randomly distributed—it reflects decades of housing segregation, redlining, and economic stratification.

So when federal equalization mechanisms are weakened, the result is not a level playing field where all districts suddenly compete equally. It is a system where already-advantaged districts are better positioned to adapt, while under-resourced districts absorb greater instability.

Once again, the policy may be neutral in design. But the effects are not neutral in distribution.

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Tariffs and broad import taxes operate through a different but equally revealing mechanism. A tariff does not say anything about race, class, or identity. It is applied uniformly to imported goods. Yet economic research consistently shows that tariffs function as consumption taxes that are partially passed on to consumers.

And consumption is not evenly distributed across income groups. Lower-income households spend a larger share of their income on goods affected by price changes. That means the same policy produces unequal economic pressure depending on where you sit in the income distribution.

No targeting is required. The structure of consumption alone determines the outcome.

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Even in criminal justice policy, the pattern repeats. Expanding enforcement capacity, increasing penalties, or strengthening policing authority is almost always justified in the language of safety and deterrence. But enforcement in the United States has never been evenly distributed geographically or socially.

Policing intensity, prosecution patterns, and sentencing outcomes are all shaped by where enforcement is concentrated. And where enforcement is concentrated is itself shaped by historical patterns of segregation and poverty.

So even neutral laws, when filtered through uneven enforcement systems, produce uneven outcomes.

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When viewed individually, each of these policy areas can be debated on its own terms. Immigration policy raises questions about sovereignty and labor. Voter ID laws raise questions about integrity and access. Education policy raises questions about federalism. Tariffs raise questions about industrial strategy. Criminal justice policy raises questions about safety.

But when viewed together, a broader structural pattern becomes impossible to ignore:

Neutral policy language does not produce neutral outcomes when applied to a structurally unequal society.

This is the central insight of disparate impact doctrine. It is also its most politically uncomfortable implication. Because it shifts the focus away from intent—away from what policymakers say they are trying to do—and toward what policies actually do once they interact with real-world inequality.

That does not require assuming malicious intent. In fact, disparate impact theory explicitly does not depend on it. It requires something more grounded and more empirically verifiable: the recognition that unequal starting conditions produce unequal outcomes even under uniform rules.

So when evaluating a policy agenda, the most important question is not simply whether it is framed in neutral terms, or whether it is justified through legal authority. The deeper question is structural: who bears the burden of implementation, and is that burden predictably concentrated in already-marginalized communities?

Because if the answer is yes, then neutrality in language does not resolve the question of fairness in effect.

When a Country Is Understood Like a Small Town

One of the most fascinating dynamics in American politics is how people make sense of numbers. The United States is a nation of more than 340 million people, yet political debates are often framed in ways that feel more appropriate for a town of 3,400.

This matters because scale changes everything.

Imagine a small town where ten residents are caught committing fraud in a public assistance program. That would likely become the biggest local story of the year. People would know the names involved. Local officials would feel pressure to respond. Residents might reasonably conclude that the system has a serious problem.

Now imagine a national program serving tens of millions of people. Even if thousands of fraudulent cases are discovered, the actual rate of fraud could be extremely low. Yet when politicians or media outlets report only the raw number—"thousands of cases of fraud"—many listeners instinctively evaluate the information using a small-community framework. The number sounds alarming because human beings are generally better at understanding concrete counts than percentages.

This is not unique to one political party. However, conservative messaging has often been particularly effective at translating national issues into the language of local experience. A problem involving a fraction of one percent of participants can be described in a way that makes it feel immediate, personal, and widespread.

Consider Medicare. More than 65 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare. When officials announce that they have uncovered hundreds of thousands of improper claims or payments, the figure sounds enormous. But without context, it is difficult to know whether that represents a systemic collapse or a relatively small error rate in a program serving a population larger than many countries.

The same dynamic appears in discussions about immigration. Headlines may report that millions of migrants crossed the southern border over a period of years. That is undeniably a large number. Yet numbers can be both large and contextual at the same time. A country with more than 340 million residents, an economy employing more than 160 million workers, and millions of annual births, deaths, and residential moves operates on a scale that is difficult for the human mind to grasp intuitively.

When people hear "millions," they often imagine an immediate transformation of their local environment. Yet the impact of migration is distributed unevenly across geography, industries, and time. Understanding what those numbers mean requires more than hearing the number itself. It requires understanding the denominator.

The same pattern emerges in discussions surrounding transgender Americans. Political campaigns and media coverage frequently devote significant attention to transgender participation in sports, school policies, healthcare, and public accommodations. Yet estimates generally place the transgender population at well under 2 percent of Americans. Even if one believes these debates are important, the amount of political attention devoted to them can create the impression that the issue affects a much larger portion of the population than it actually does.

Psychologists have a name for part of this phenomenon: the availability heuristic. People tend to judge how common something is based on how easily examples come to mind. If a particular type of story is repeated frequently, the public often assumes the underlying event is common, regardless of its actual prevalence.

A shark attack provides a useful comparison. Shark attacks receive extensive media coverage despite being extraordinarily rare. Most Americans understand that sharks are not one of the leading threats to their safety, yet many still report feeling greater fear of sharks than statistically more dangerous risks. The stories are vivid. The examples are memorable. The scale becomes distorted.

Political communication often operates in the same way.

A handful of welfare fraud cases can become symbolic of an entire assistance program. A small number of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants can become representative of immigration as a whole. A few controversial incidents involving transgender individuals can come to define public understanding of an entire population.

Again, this does not mean the underlying concerns are fabricated. Fraud exists. Crimes occur. Policy debates matter. The question is whether the scale of the response matches the scale of the problem.

This may help explain one of the enduring puzzles of American politics: why many rural and small-town communities often support policies that economists argue provide them with limited direct economic benefit.

The answer may be that many voters are not primarily making economic calculations. They are evaluating politics through the lens of community management. In a small town, maintaining order, preserving cultural norms, protecting local identity, and ensuring fairness often feel more important than maximizing economic efficiency. Political messages that emphasize rule-breaking, social change, or threats to community cohesion may resonate even when the measurable economic effects are small.

Viewed this way, the divide is not necessarily between informed and uninformed voters. It is partly a divide in scale. One side often talks about percentages, systems, and aggregate outcomes. The other often talks about stories, examples, and exceptions. One asks, "What does the data say about the whole population?" The other asks, "What would happen if this occurred in my community?"

Both approaches contain useful insights. Statistics can reveal patterns that individual experiences miss. Personal stories can highlight problems that aggregate data obscures.

The challenge arises when a nation-sized problem is evaluated entirely through a small-town lens. At that point, a few thousand cases can feel like a national crisis, while a policy affecting millions can seem abstract and distant.

America's political debates often turn not on the facts themselves, but on the scale at which those facts are understood. Before asking whether a number is large or small, it may be worth asking a simpler question:

Large compared to what?

In a nation of hundreds of millions of people, that question may be more important than the number itself.