Australia’s parliament recently passed landmark legislation that will completely prohibit children under 16 from holding accounts on major social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitch, with no exemptions for parental consent or existing teenage accounts. Companies must implement robust age-verification systems (potentially including government ID checks or facial age estimation biometrics) within weeks or face fines up to AUD 49.5 million (approximately USD 32 million) per systemic breach, while millions of underage accounts are scheduled for automatic deactivation starting in early January amid widespread criticism over privacy risks, technical feasibility, and potential circumvention through VPNs. We collectively are going to have to respond to the fact that we’ve unleashed tremendously addictive technology on the public with no guardrails and that seems unjustifiable, particularly in relation to vulnerable and mentally underdeveloped populations like kids.

Tehran’s main reservoirs have fallen to critically low levels of just 5% capacity after six consecutive years of extreme drought worsened by climate change, record summer temperatures exceeding 45°C (113°F), decades of groundwater over-extraction, damaged water-transfer infrastructure from wartime sabotage, and systemic mismanagement, resulting in nightly water cutoffs for millions of residents and rationing that leaves taps dry for up to 18 hours daily. President Masoud Pezeshkian has publicly stated that relocating the capital away from Tehran is now inevitable if substantial rainfall does not arrive by the end of this month, with government officials warning that a complete evacuation of the city’s 10 million inhabitants could become necessary as the country approaches “water bankruptcy” and ecosystems collapse across multiple provinces. This is one of the most frightening occurrences in recent memory as it serves as a stark reminder that incompetent governance can create calamities on such a scale that 10 million people can be forced to have their lives uprooted and a historic city can become defunct.

A new UNICEF report released this week reveals that more than 400 million children (roughly one in five across low- and middle-income countries) suffer severe deprivation in at least two critical life domains simultaneously, including nutrition, clean water, sanitation, adequate housing, education, healthcare access, and protection from violence or exploitation. Lack of basic sanitation affects the largest share, with up to 65% of children in the poorest countries lacking access to even a simple toilet, driving disease outbreaks and stunting growth, while the report emphasizes that multidimensional poverty of this scale traps generations in cycles of ill health, lost learning, and diminished future opportunities worldwide. Children deserve the opportunity to develop, and having so many of them in need of support in these critical areas should tell us something about the need to change the way we allow the world to function.

Senior U.S. and Russian officials have quietly negotiated a detailed 28-point framework to end the Ukraine war that would require Kyiv to permanently cede occupied territories including Crimea and parts of Donbas, shrink its military to pre-2014 levels, accept strict limits on heavy weaponry, abandon NATO membership ambitions for at least 20–30 years, and recognize Russian language rights in exchange for a ceasefire and prisoner release. American negotiators have reportedly threatened to immediately halt intelligence sharing and weapons deliveries if Ukraine refuses, imposing a tight end-of-year deadline while deliberately excluding Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and European leaders from the talks, prompting outrage in Kyiv and warnings that the plan amounts to capitulation. We stand in support of this maneuver as both European and Ukrainian leadership have largely been obstacles to any meaningful negotiations and this war must be brought to an end as soon as possible.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week released a long-awaited 400+ page evidence review concluding that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender-related surgeries for minors carry substantial risks of infertility, bone-density loss, cardiovascular complications, and mental-health deterioration, while existing studies are overwhelmingly low-quality and fail to demonstrate durable benefits for gender-dysphoric youth. The report, which echoes systematic reviews from Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the UK that have already restricted or banned such interventions for those under 18, recommends shifting clinical practice toward intensive psychotherapy as the first-line treatment and reserving medical transition only for carefully selected adults. We often talk about the culture wars having policy implications, but here we see the culture wars interacting not only with normative debates regarding cultural values but with growing scientific evidence that there may be reasons not rooted in phobias or bigotry to tamp down on gender-affirming care for children.

New Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced a sweeping reorganization effective immediately that dissolves or absorbs major clean-energy offices (including the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the Loan Programs Office’s renewable portfolio, and the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy’s grid-modernization units) into new structures explicitly focused on oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, fusion, geothermal, and “energy dominance” financing. The overhaul eliminates dedicated federal support for solar, wind, battery storage, and electric-vehicle infrastructure programs while creating streamlined units to accelerate permitting, reduce royalties, and expand fossil-fuel and nuclear development, signaling a decisive pivot away from the previous administration’s renewable-energy priorities. It seems to us that nuclear and solar energy will be the dominant forms of energy production in the future and that we must use fossil fuels as a bridge to remain stable as this transition unfolds.

Oregon’s public schools recorded a chronic absenteeism rate of 33% during the most recent school year (meaning one in three students missed at least 10% of school days), the highest among states reporting data and more than double the pre-pandemic average, with only marginal improvement from the previous year. Contributing factors include persistent housing instability affecting tens of thousands of families, heightened anxiety and transportation barriers lingering from COVID, and increased fear in immigrant communities following federal immigration enforcement actions, prompting districts to expand outreach but still fall far short of recovery targets. What shouldn’t be lost on us is that the public school system is fundamentally broken and perhaps not compatible with the burgeoning new world. Perhaps we can take this opportunity to rethink how kids should receive an education.

Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs this week signed an executive order that unilaterally raises Arizona’s standard deduction to $15,750 for single filers and $31,500 for married couples filing jointly (matching the federal level) while introducing new deductions for tipped income, overtime pay, Social Security benefits, military pensions, and interest paid on recreational-vehicle and boat loans. The changes, which bypass the Republican-controlled legislature, will appear automatically on upcoming state tax forms and are projected to save middle-income households several hundred to over a thousand dollars annually starting next filing season. We applaud all efforts to reduce the tax burden on Americans as increasingly governments at every level are prying money out of the hands of the public to overcome decades of mismanagement.

Earlier this week the Los Angeles City Council voted 12-2 to impose a new, lower formula for annual rent increases on rent-stabilized units, capping hikes at the lesser of 4% plus CPI or 7% total (rejecting tenant advocates’ demands for a hard 3-4% ceiling while still tightening restrictions beyond the previous allowance that sometimes reached 9%). The compromise aims to shield roughly 650,000 rent-controlled households from sharp spikes amid the city’s ongoing affordability crisis but drew criticism from landlord groups who warn the tighter caps will discourage maintenance and new construction. Rent controls don’t work in the long term but provide short-term relief for those most impacted by absurdly expensive housing, as is the case in LA.

Fresh Zillow data shows that 90.8% of Denver-area homes lost value year-over-year (the highest percentage of any major U.S. metro), with the typical property declining 9.7% from its 2024 peak as high interest rates, a surge in new apartment supply, and buyer hesitation cooled one of the country’s formerly hottest markets. Despite the sharp correction, most homeowners remain well above their purchase prices with substantial equity, and foreclosure rates stay low, indicating a normalization rather than a crash, though real-estate agents report listings sitting longer and price reductions becoming routine. The takeaway here is not that Denver is going to suffer a calamity but rather it is a hopeful message that the fervor of price gouging in Denver and other cities that experienced rapid growth may be coming to an end.