Australia is the victim of an AUKUS ‘bait and switch’
From left to right: US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles and British Defense Secretary John Healey on the sidelines of an AUKUS ministerial meeting at the Pentagon on Dec. 10, 2025. Photo: Mark Schiefelbein / AP via The Conversation
At a security conference in Singapore over the weekend, the three AUKUS partners – the United States, United Kingdom and Australia – announced a tweak to their partnership that has generated quite a lot of attention in Canberra.
Australia will now receive three second-hand Virginia-class, nuclear-powered submarines in the coming years, instead of the original deal of two used vessels and one brand new sub.
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles spun this as a welcome streamlining of the fleet that would simplify its supply chain, as well as the management and sustainment of these complex warships.
What Marles seems not to have noticed is that not all Virginia-class submarines are the same.
The new boat the US had promised would have been from Block 6, the most recent design. Instead, all of Australia’s submarines will now likely come from Block 4, which carry a much smaller weapon payload. Firepower is a measure of a fighting ship’s utility. Having the largest weapon capacity is a key ingredient for battle success.
It seems Australia has been a willing – not to say eager – victim of what is essentially a “bait and switch.”
The deal has always been unequal
The unilateral change of plans should not have come as a surprise to anyone in the Australian government.
AUKUS has always been a one-sided deal in which the US reaps the benefits while Australia accepts the risks. The agreement Australia entered into provides the US with numerous opportunities to cancel or modify the deal. Washington simply acted on what was permitted.
In addition, the AUKUS agreement allows the US president to cancel the submarine transfer at his or her whim, while Australia has no right to challenge or lobby against the decision.
The current president, Donald Trump, is not known for loyalty to his allies. The fact the AUKUS deal was signed by his predecessor, Joe Biden, is likely to further reduce Trump’s level of commitment.
To make the US decision more of an affront, Australia has already contributed at least US$2 billion (A$2.8 billion) to the American submarine manufacturing pipeline.
The US is not building enough submarines to meet its own requirements, let alone the additional boats it has promised to Australia. The Australian cash contribution was meant to improve the US rate of production so Canberra would be able to get one or two of the latest boats. Australia’s investment has turned out to be a very poor one, and there are no refunds.
The Australian government has also misinterpreted what the US hopes to get out of the deal.
For the Americans, selling Australia any subs at all makes little sense in the contest with China for supremacy in the Western Pacific. It just reduces America’s own military capability.
The key element in AUKUS for the US has always been the submarine base that Australia is building at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia. This is where the US Navy plans to operate its submarines. The US has already announced the establishment of the support elements that will administer and sustain these warships.
As we can see now, Australia has virtually no leverage to make the submarine deal more equitable.
The Americans know that Australian strategic policy since before the Vietnam War has been to demonstrate relevance to the US. Australia has not hesitated to rush into US-led wars – even those of dubious legality – in order to show loyalty. If this was a poker game, the Australians would be playing with most of their cards face-up.
What can Australia do to gain more agency?
Unfortunately, not a lot. The US holds all the important cards. Australia will likely continue to be a dutiful ally in the hope the US will deliver what it has promised. But there are no guarantees.
The only vulnerability the US has is its desire to base its submarines at Stirling. If Australia were to halt construction or restrict US access to the base, it would be seen as tantamount to canceling the deal.
The price Australia would pay for its temerity would be an enormous loss of respect and favor in Washington – the very thing a long succession of governments has sought to boost.
Australia’s defense policy has seen our country ensnared in a trap of its own making. There are lessons our political leaders can hopefully learn. The first is to accept the wisdom of former UK Prime Minister Lord Palmerston’s adage that countries have no eternal allies, just eternal interests.
The second is to recognize that an unbalanced alliance leads to servility, not partnership. The final lesson is to develop faith in Australia’s ability to protect itself rather than turning to an ally of increasingly dubious reliability.
Albert Palazzo is adjunct professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney
Owain Rhys Davies, the Welsh actor known to Twin Peaks fans for his role in the cult classic revival Twin Peaks: The Return, has died suddenly at just 44 years old.
His family announced the heartbreaking news Tuesday, revealing that the actor’s death has left loved ones stunned and searching for answers.
Davies played Agent Wilson in Twin Peaks: The Return, the long-awaited 2017 revival of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s eerie, surreal television phenomenon. The show brought back longtime fans and introduced a new generation to the strange, haunting world of Twin Peaks.
But now, the actor’s own story has taken a tragic and mysterious turn.
His brother, Rhodri, shared the devastating update on social media, writing that he and their father were announcing the loss with “profound sadness.”
“This news will come as a great shock to many,” he wrote.
Rhodri described Owain as a man whose “love, friendship and generosity” reached far and wide, making clear just how deeply his loss is being felt by those who knew him.
The family also acknowledged that the circumstances surrounding his death are not fully clear.
Although there are “still questions that remain unanswered regarding the circumstances of his death,” Rhodri said the family’s understanding at this stage is that Owain “passed suddenly, naturally, and peacefully.”
No official cause of death has been publicly released.
Davies’ passing is especially shocking because of his young age. At only 44, the actor had built a career that included roles in television, fantasy films, and offbeat horror.
In addition to Twin Peaks: The Return, Davies appeared alongside Johnny Depp in Disney’s 2016 fantasy sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass. He also starred in the 2019 satirical horror film A Serial Killer’s Guide to Life.
For fans of Twin Peaks, his death marks another sad loss connected to one of television’s most beloved and bizarre franchises.
The revival series, which aired more than two decades after the original show became a cult sensation, was packed with mystery, nostalgia, and unsettling twists. Davies’ appearance as Agent Wilson placed him inside that unforgettable universe, alongside a cast tied forever to one of TV’s strangest legacies.
Tributes are expected to pour in from friends, fans, and colleagues as news of his sudden death spreads.
For now, his family is mourning a beloved son, brother, and friend whose life ended far too soon.
Davies leaves behind a legacy of creativity, warmth, and a screen presence that fans of the strange and surreal will not forget.
Gulf expat reactions to Iran war show us how countries like UAE instil loyalty in western migrants
When the US and Israel launched their strikes on Iran on February 28 and Iran retaliated by targeting the Gulf Arab states, I was closely monitoring social media accounts from the region. I research Middle East politics, with a focus on the Gulf, and the social media platforms I use are full of people living in the region – including western migrants, or as they tend to style themselves, expats. To my surprise, from many of them I saw the same message: “It is safe and normal here.”
This was not a trivial claim – these messages were sent as the countries they live in came under attack. But the attitudes they exhibited reflect a broad strategy long cultivated by Gulf Arab regimes. This aims to instil in the people that opt to live there a sense of security, as well as aspiration for the lifestyle on offer and loyalty towards the country for making that lifestyle available.
More importantly, the expats’ reactions exposed the role that foreign residents and influencers have played in advancing a particular understanding of “normality”. Not only do they accept authoritarian rule in the Gulf, they have been pushing out messages about insecurity elsewhere.
To be clear, a lot of foreign workers did leave the Gulf, reportedly in the tens of thousands, when the conflict began. But even so, many of the initial reactions on social media, whether people stayed or opted to leave, projected this sense of security.
Part of the US security hub
These regimes have developed an image designed to attract global connectivity, foreign capital and flows of people and goods. The UAE, especially Dubai, has become a symbol of tax-free residency and luxury tourism. Qatar has established itself as reliable gas exporter and world-class mediator. Saudi Arabia has launched a sweeping reform project recasting national identity and the kingdom’s global role in championing “moderate Islam”, while Bahrain has worked early since independence to become a regional banking hub.
These state-building processes thrived under the security umbrella of US and other western military bases across the Middle East. Firmly embedded in the US sphere of influence, Gulf monarchies have benefited from precious diplomatic cover and access to global markets. Other regional regimes, meanwhile – notably Iran – were excluded. This was more often due to their hostility towards the US than for their brutal repression and disastrous governance at home.
By directing global attention to threats such as Iran, Gulf regimes forged a strong sense of domestic normality. But in recent years, a less reliable US regional policy has made the security arrangement increasingly uncertain, prompting Gulf regimes to explore alternatives. Without renouncing deeper engagement with the US, they welcomed cooperation with other powers outside the region, like China, as well as the possibility of closer relations with Israel and even a modus vivendi with Iran.
Despite ongoing rivalries, including within the regional forum, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), regional conflict de-escalation and management appeared to be the preferred means to continue insulating the Gulf normality. Yet the ongoing destruction in Gaza, closer US-Israeli alignment in the latter’s pursuit of regional dominance, and the ensuing pressure on Iran’s network of proxies has undermined this delicate balance.
The attack on Iran exposed foreign residents’ role in sustaining the image of “normality”. Until then, expats and influencers embodied this normality by displaying safe, privileged and apolitical lives.
I saw posts attempting to divert attention from the threat of war in the Gulf by people claiming to feel safer under missile attacks in Dubai and Doha than “after 9pm” in London or Manchester. Other posts preferred the prospect of missile attacks to being “bombed by 50% taxes”.
These sorts of comments tend to mimic narratives pushed by far-right movements in the west around crime, taxation and immigration.
A viral trend concentrated in the UAE but replicated across other Gulf countries featured influencers responding to the question “Aren’t you scared?” with imagery of members of the ruling families and messages such as: “No, because I know who protects us.” The UAE president’s much-publicised walk in Dubai Mall followed this paternalistic framing of security.
After the initial shock, many influencers returned to the old form of messaging, not posting about the war and focusing on showing their privileged “everyday” lives.
Controlling the message
It’s important to remember that Gulf Arab regimes possess robust censorship apparatuses and broad national security and anti-cybercrime laws that penalise content deemed to “cause panic” or “disturb public order”.
Authorities in Saudi Arabia were swift to remind residents that “photography serves the enemy”, banning unofficial sharing of damage caused by the war, while the UAE threatened severe sentences for people posting negative messages. There have been reports of people detained for posting the wrong content – more than 300 in Qatar alone. Heightened security concerns exposed western expats to coercive practices typically reserved to political dissidents.
Having invested efforts in insulating their domestic projects from external threats through seeking political accommodation with neighbours, including Iran, Gulf leaders may now pursue a different strategy. In fact, we’re already seeing some different approaches as various Gulf countries work out their own best approach to the changing situation in their region. Some, like Bahrain, remain hostile to Iran. Others, including Saudi Arabia, are more nuanced in their approach, looking overall to ensure security in the region.
But for regimes and expats alike, this is a time of reckoning for the parameters sustaining “normality” in the Gulf. Most certainly, the region will never be the same.
How long will it take to rebuild Blue Origin’s launch pad? We asked some SpaceX vets.
A former NASA engineer named John Muratore sat on console as launch director in early September 2016 as propellant flowed onto a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida. Ahead of a planned launch two days later, SpaceX was preparing for a static fire test of the vehicle.
Then, all of a sudden, the rocket exploded. “It came out of nowhere, and it was really violent,” Muratore said. This fireball resulted in the destruction of the rocket, much of its launch site, and the AMOS-6 satellite already attached to the vehicle.
Nearly a decade later, on May 28, Blue Origin conducted a static fire test of a new rocket, with its larger New Glenn vehicle a few miles down the Florida coast. The company had gotten further into its test, reaching engine ignition, before its rocket also exploded.
For longtime space coast observers, some of the parallels between these two spectacular explosions were uncanny. Both the Falcon 9 and New Glenn programs were on the cusp of taking off toward a higher launch cadence. At the time, NASA was counting on the Falcon 9 to return its capability to launch humans, and today, NASA is counting on New Glenn as a key element of its lunar ambitions. And both explosions catastrophically damaged their launch sites.
To better understand the challenges Blue Origin now faces, Ars spoke with several SpaceX veterans who experienced the AMOS-6 failure and worked the long days afterward to get the Falcon 9 rocket flying and rebuild the shattered facility at Space Launch Complex-40.
Difficult memories return
“My AMOS-6 scar started itching when I saw the video of New Glenn,” said Hans Koenigsmann, the SpaceX engineer who led the failure investigation in the fall of 2016. “It’s really terrible.”
Koenigsmann was SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability at the time, and his team faced the challenge of identifying the failure in the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that caused it to explode during a relatively benign part of the fueling process.
This involved a weekslong search of the wetlands surrounding the launch site at Cape Canaveral for pieces of the booster. The idea was that the components farthest from the pad were nearest the most energetic part of the explosion. Ultimately, the investigative team narrowed in on the complex failure of the lining of a pressure vessel in the upper stage.
For its investigation, Koenigsmann urges Blue Origin to be as transparent as possible with NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration and to study and take apart the physical evidence as soon as possible to identify the causes of failure. Every anomaly, he cautioned, is different.
Blue Origin has not publicly discussed the cause of the New Glenn failure, but speculation has focused on a possible anomaly in one of the seven main BE-4 engines. The Falcon 9 investigation was the primary obstacle to SpaceX returning to flight, but launch pad availability will be the bigger hurdle for Blue Origin.
Searching for wreckage
After the AMOS-6 failure, SpaceX was also without an active launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket. Nearest to readiness was an existing pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which was undergoing upgrades to support the “Full Thrust” variant of the Falcon 9 rocket, which used densified propellant. This is where the Falcon 9 returned to flight, less than five months later, in January 2017.
SpaceX then focused on completing modifications to Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, which it had leased from NASA. The Falcon 9 rocket launched from here in February 2017.
The closest analog to what Blue Origin is attempting to do, therefore, concerns the rebuild of Space Launch Complex-40, which was largely destroyed by the AMOS-6 failure.
According to Muratore, SpaceX was not allowed to begin reconstruction work at the launch pad until January 2017. The delay stemmed from the ongoing investigation, which included a grid-by-grid examination of debris, cataloging recovered materials, and launch site remediation. Muratore and other SpaceX engineers spent these four months redesigning the launch pad.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Cargo Dragon spacecraft, seen here with the new launch tower and access arm at SLC-40.
Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Cargo Dragon spacecraft, seen here with the new launch tower and access arm at SLC-40. Credit: SpaceX
Trip Harriss, who managed the Falcon 9 fleet operations in 2016, said everyone at the company pitched in to support the investigation and then the reconstruction of the SLC-40 pad. The search for debris lasted from shortly after the explosion until early October, when efforts had to be abandoned due to the approach of the powerful Hurricane Matthew.
During this time, SpaceX pulled out all of the stops, deploying drones and aircraft with sensitive equipment. “At one point, I got a submersible to take into the flame trench, where there was an accumulation of water, to see if we could find any rocket debris,” Harriss said. “But it was just large chunks of concrete.”
Going fast
Launch pads are among the most complex pieces of infrastructure involved in sending a rocket into space. They require a lot of brawn, as evidenced by the need for tall and strong steel launch towers. Then there’s the large amount of concrete used for the foundation, flame trench, and surrounding areas.
Last Thursday, during the test failure, one of Blue Origin’s massive launch towers toppled, and the other appears to be seriously damaged. The concrete underneath the rocket also appears to have collapsed in some places. From a structural standpoint, there is likely a significant amount of work ahead.
But launch sites are about much more than concrete and steel. There is an incredible amount of electrical wiring that almost certainly got fried by the fireball. And then there is the intricate tubing that provides gas and liquids to fill not just the rocket’s propellant tanks but also smaller pressurized vessels throughout the vehicle for various purposes.
“I’m worried about the tubing,” Harriss said, noting that every launch site has bespoke plumbing and electrical elements, with lots of tasks that must be done by hand; pulling and splicing wire, delicate welding, and so much more. “It takes a lot of time and effort to put that into place.”
When it began rebuilding SLC-40, SpaceX had some advantages, Muratore said. The company had great teams coming from its pads at Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg—not just the engineers, but also welders and other laborers who work directly on the infrastructure. This allowed SpaceX—a company already known for moving rapidly—to power through the SLC-40 rebuild.
Still, it took a while, with the first Falcon 9 rocket not launching from a rebuilt SLC-40 pad until December 2017. Including site remediation, SpaceX went from the AMOS-6 failure to a new launch in 15.5 months. The actual construction part, following remediation and design, required 11 months.
On Monday night, Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said the company would launch from its damaged pad before the end of this year, less than seven months from now.
None of the former SpaceX employees I spoke with for this article—some on the record, some off—believe this timeline is realistic. Twelve months was generally viewed as the best-case scenario. Eighteen months was seen as most likely.
Silver linings
Muratore said that, as demoralizing as it may be, the failure of the New Glenn rocket presents a golden opportunity to Blue Origin. He noted that the AMOS-6 launch failure allowed SpaceX to redesign the new pad to optimize for faster turnarounds between launches.
“It’s certainly a tremendous tragedy and a setback, but looking back on it rebuilding SLC-40 enabled us to make key improvements that we really needed to achieve high flight rates,” Muratore said. “When we built the pad initially, we had limited experience, and there were limitations that were in the pad because we could only model or speculate on how the pad was going to perform.”
One of the key changes was completely revamping the “strongback throwback” that supports the rocket at the launch site and falls away just before launch. SpaceX redesigned this massive structure to pull away more rapidly during liftoff to spare its myriad umbilicals and other connections to the rocket from serious damage.
SpaceX also improved the flame trench to reduce damage and upgraded the water-based sound suppression system. These updates were intended to support a higher cadence and reduce pad turnaround times from weeks to days. And it worked. By earlier this year, SpaceX was able to launch Falcon 9 rockets from SLC-40 within 45 hours of each other.
Blue Origin also designed its launch pad at LC-36A long before the final specs for the New Glenn rocket were complete. Muratore said Blue Origin started poaching SpaceX employees to work on its Florida pad even before SpaceX completed the SLC-40 rebuild nearly a decade ago. Now the Blue Origin engineers have reams of data from three New Glenn launches and will be able to optimize the rebuilt pad for a more efficient turnaround.
Harriss also sought to offer uplifting thoughts to a Blue Origin workforce struggling through a difficult period.
“Don’t give up,” he said. “This is hard. This is recoverable. You can come out on the other side, even if it doesn’t feel like that right now. It does not feel good. You feel bad for your customer, the engineers, and the operations team. Everyone is in a place where it’s no fun to be there. But take any thoughts of this is the end and replace them with this is an opportunity to start anew.”
Ukraine hits St. Petersburg site as Putin’s Davos kicks off
Ukraine attacked an oil terminal in St. Petersburg in the early hours of Wednesday morning — just before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s big economic forum kicked off in the city.
“Important facilities on Russian territory were hit last night. Among them was the Petersburg Oil Terminal. The distance from Ukraine is about 1,100 kilometers. Purely military targets at the Kronstadt base were also hit,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement Wednesday.
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum — a key international event for Putin aiming to project strength and prove Russia is not globally isolated — started Wednesday with dozens of Russian officials, Gulf heavyweights and business representatives from Brazil and Germany expected to attend.
A U.S. delegation is expected to attend the forum for the first time since 2018, including the chair of the administration’s Commission of Fine Arts and architect of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, Rodney Cook.
The overnight attack was a joint operation by the Security Service of Ukraine, the Unmanned Systems Forces, the Special Operations Forces, the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine and the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Russian authorities confirmed the assault on Wednesday.
“Early this morning, infrastructure facilities in Kronstadt, Kirovsky, and Krasnoselskiy districts were attacked by UAVs. Several objects were damaged. Several people were injured. There are no casualties,” St. Petersburg Mayor Aleksandr Beglov said in a statement.
Russian officials did not confirm the terminal — which is the biggest in northwestern Russia — was hit, but local open-source investigators geolocated videos of blasts in the area of the local port, where the facility is situated.
Ukraine’s campaign of long-range strikes on Russia’s oil refineries this year has put 40 percent of Russia’s oil refining capacity out of action, Zelenskyy said last week.
“Russia is not doing well: Just as the Saint Petersburg Forum is about to open, large drone attacks are taking place,” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže told the Riga Stratcom Dialogue on Wednesday morning. “There has been another oil refinery strike, smoke is rising, and the economy is also not doing well.”
The Shangri-La shockwave and the death of automatic assurance
When US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took the podium at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, his words signaled a profound structural shift in the global security landscape. Declaring that the era of America subsidizing the defense of wealthy nations is officially over, Hegseth outlined a new doctrine of “pragmatic idealism” in which Washington demands partners, not protectorates.
For decades, the post-Cold War architecture operated on the central assumption that the American security umbrella was a permanent, ideological certainty. That assumption is now collapsing, replaced by a hyper-realistic, transactional blueprint that is forcing major Asian powers, especially Japan, to rapidly reassess their strategic foundations. For Tokyo, Hegseth’s declaration landed with particular force, signaling that the era of automatic strategic assurance has ended.
This shift carries particular weight for Tokyo. The dominant narrative surrounding this change often focuses on regional anxiety or the potential for heightened friction. It is no longer that simple. The Shangri-La Dialogue has evolved into a laboratory for a new form of geopolitical adaptation, in which medium and major powers are discovering that traditional alliances no longer guarantee automatic stability. National resilience must instead be engineered through self-reliance, enhanced capabilities, and carefully cultivated regional partnerships rather than distant guarantees.
What we are witnessing is not a retreat into isolationism, but the structural fragmentation of global security into localized, parallel arrangements that empower capable regional actors like Japan to play more proactive roles. For Japan, this is not merely a shift in diplomatic atmosphere – it is generational strategic realignment that will reshape its security posture for decades.
This matters profoundly because the Indo-Pacific remains the primary engine of global economic growth. More importantly, the unfolding dynamic exposes three structural transformations that will shape international politics over the next decade.
First, middle and major powers are entering an era of calculated strategic autonomy, where nations like Japan must balance historical constraints with the imperatives of a more competitive environment.
Second, the traditional security architecture is being replaced by a model of “businesslike cooperation” where burden-sharing is the mandatory baseline, compelling allies to demonstrate tangible contributions.
Third, regional powers are taking the driver’s seat in managing their own neighborhoods, reducing their reliance on external arbiters while still preserving essential diplomatic channels.
These trends are already filtering into Japan’s domestic debates on constitutional reinterpretation, defense spending, and the country’s long term strategic identity.
Nowhere is this transformation more visible than in Tokyo’s response. For years, Western analysts assumed Japan would remain a passive consumer of Western defense guarantees, bound by historical and constitutional constraints. Instead, Tokyo is actively adapting to the new reality of American transactionalism with sophistication and determination.
Faced with explicit signals from Washington that alliances will be judged strictly by hard power and collective readiness, Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi used the Singapore summit to deliver a sophisticated defense of Japan’s evolving posture. Rather than engaging in defensive rhetoric, Koizumi emphasized that Japan’s door to dialogue remains always open, even as the country advances concrete defense enhancements.
Tokyo is moving forward with tangible initiatives – including expanding defense technology co-production, revising arms export guidelines to enable greater collaboration with partners and strengthening maritime partnerships across Southeast Asia, notably with the Philippines, Australia, and South Korea. These steps build on Japan’s recent decisions to raise defense spending toward 2% of GDP and invest heavily in next-generation capabilities such as missiles, cyber defenses, and joint production arrangements.
This represents a major strategic evolution for Japan. No longer waiting for external clarity, Tokyo is quietly but steadily building its own minilateral defense networks to hedge against an increasingly unpredictable global system. These efforts include deeper integration with like-minded nations through frameworks that emphasize interoperability, intelligence sharing and joint exercises, all while maintaining a firm commitment to international law and a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Yet, this strategy is carefully calibrated. Even as Tokyo enhances its defense capabilities through increased budgets, technological innovation and expanded partnerships, its leadership has repeatedly emphasized that the door to dialogue remains open with all parties, including China. This approach rejects hostile framing in favor of maintaining practical diplomatic channels and underscores Japan’s identity as a peace-loving nation that respects established norms.
This balanced posture mirrors a broader regional trend: Asian powers are seeking to stabilize their environments through bilateral diplomacy, economic pragmatism, and incremental security cooperation rather than getting drawn into ideological crusades.
Washington, meanwhile, faces a deeper dilemma than merely demanding that allies pay their way. The current administration’s posture risks shifting from long-term systemic stability to short-term crisis management if not carefully managed. By prioritizing transactional outcomes over unconditional structural commitments, Washington is altering the psychological baseline of global deterrence.
Governments from Seoul to Manila, and particularly in Tokyo, are quietly recognizing an uncomfortable truth: military dominance without absolute predictability forces every state to become an independent strategic architect, investing more deeply in its own resilience while forging flexible partnerships. The age of dependent allies is ending; the age of self-designed security architecture is beginning.
The consequence of this realization is already transforming public psychology and policy planning across Asia. In capitals throughout the region, the strategic conversation is no longer about abstract ideological alliances alone. It is about supply chain resilience, independent deterrence capabilities, the defense of critical maritime commerce lanes and the development of robust domestic defense industries.
Middle powers like Japan recognize that they are vulnerable to uncertainty itself. A temporary strategic shift can be managed through adaptation, but permanent unpredictability alters long-term investment behavior, fiscal planning, technological priorities, and national risk assessments.
Once regional states begin pricing geopolitical volatility into their sovereign defense planning – as Japan has done through its updated national security strategies – the strategic landscape changes permanently, creating both challenges and opportunities for greater self-determination.
The danger now is not necessarily a sudden escalation between competing powers. The greater danger is the normalization of systemic fragmentation over time.
If security guarantees become contingent on transactional metrics, other regional security frameworks may follow similar patterns. Strategic defense, maritime access, and even critical digital infrastructure corridors could evolve into systems governed by temporary, conditional permissions rather than enduring commitments. That would fundamentally transform global stability in ways that require careful navigation by all parties involved.
Asia is entering an era in which security will be a patchwork of flexible arrangements rather than a single US-led framework. The coming months therefore will matter enormously for Japan and the wider region.
Washington must decide whether its long-term interests are truly served by trading structural alliances for immediate transactional concessions, or whether a balanced approach can sustain deterrence while encouraging greater partner contributions.
Concurrently, regional powers like Japan must determine how to balance their enhanced strategic autonomy with the preservation of regional equilibrium, ensuring that self-reliance strengthens stability rather than undermining it.
One reality is already clear. The Shangri-La Dialogue has shown that power in the modern era is measured no longer solely by old alliance frameworks but also by the ability of individual nations – Japan foremost among them – to navigate a fragmented world, secure their own borders, maintain strategic balance independently and contribute meaningfully to collective security in the Indo-Pacific.
Imran Khalid is a senior fellow at Foreign Policy In Focus – USA.
Mayor Mamdani’s absence from a long-standing civic celebration left many Diaspora Jews feeling newly exposed in the city with the world’s largest Jewish population
On Saturday, my friend Craig asked our group text if any of us were interested in going to the Israel Day Parade in New York City the next day. We all live in New Jersey suburbs more than an hour outside the city with our families, and inserting an unscheduled, multihour event into the middle of a weekend full of other obligations was no small request.
None of us is particularly religious, and while we are all proud Jews and supportive of the State of Israel, most of my peer group, with just a few exceptions, do not define themselves primarily by their Jewish identity.
Most American Jews grew up in a golden era of Diaspora Jewry, with our people highly assimilated and good-naturedly associated with beloved neurotic characters like Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, and Woody Allen. Unique, but not reviled.
My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, and my mother was born in a displaced persons camp in Munich after the war, before coming to America. So my lens may be slightly more Jewish-centric than others’. My childhood unfolded alongside the ever-present, firsthand trauma my still-young grandmother was left with. I grew up with constant warnings about Jews’ experience throughout history, which did not align with mine in 1980s and 1990s New York. At times, I resented being asked to view my American life through their wounded lens.
Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City—home to the largest Jewish population of any city in the world—has been a wake-up call for New York Jews and for Diaspora Jews more broadly.
Since October 7, there has been a palpable shift in how Jews are characterized in our home countries. Our Instagram feeds are filled with anti-Jewish hate crimes; our local news shows crowds of impossibly angry “protestors” in masks and keffiyehs, viciously accusing Jews of the almost unimaginable atrocities to which we have been subjected as victims, both recently and in the past.
Historically, the New York City government has proudly supported our community. Just a few years ago, Michael Bloomberg, one of our own, was mayor.
With the revival of sleeping European antisemitism, now accentuated by the left’s embrace of jihadist Muslim extremism, the post-October 7 world feels much more antagonistic toward Judaism and Zionism.
Surely this can’t touch New York City, right? New York Jews are an almost indistinguishable part of the culture. Bagels and lox, anyone?
Wrong. So shockingly wrong. So naive.
To many Jews, Mayor Mamdani’s politics seem to merge the left’s oppressor-oppressed framing of Israel with rhetoric and alliances that treat Zionism itself as illegitimate. He apologizes for none of it. “Globalize the intifada!” OK by him. Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions? Yep, more of that, please. Rescind the order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism? Where do I sign? Veto a school buffer-zone bill backed by Jewish groups, while allowing a narrower houses-of-worship measure to become law without his signature? Of course. And now, lastly, finally—the first mayor in 60 years to skip the New York City Israel Day Parade. New York mayors have traditionally treated the parade as a must-attend civic event. Mamdani chose not to go. It would have been strange for him to be there, to be honest, but the final open slap to the Jewish community was felt.
So my friend Craig, who sent the original text, and I took the train to the city to attend the parade, show support for our community, and be counted in the face of our own mayor’s betrayal of this part of his constituency. Craig summed it up later: “I think Mamdani’s unapologetic antipathy towards the largest Jewish population outside Israel was a wakeup call for many Jews who previously didn’t think much about antisemitism.”
Others told me, “I’m glad you went—we need to show support.” It must have been a common feeling, because I understand this year’s event was the largest in its history, with reports putting attendance in the tens of thousands.
Meanwhile, in the city with the world’s largest Jewish population, attending our own parade required blocks of barricades, police lines, and helicopters overhead. The mayor stayed away, and the security presence made clear that even a celebration of Jewish identity now unfolds under a shadow.
The parade itself was a joyful celebration of the miracle of the State of Israel—its strength, its pride, its accomplishments, and especially its existence. It was a proud gathering of spectators and supporters, including Jewish Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Jewish former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish parade participants, including city officials, police, firefighters, and others. We cheered and waved American and Israeli flags, listened to music, and watched groups of youths, politicians, performers, and floats.
Still, the shift in tone was felt, even out in the suburbs. Diaspora Jews are awake. We are definitely awake.
Beans use an immune receptor to call in airstrikes on caterpillars
For decades, scientists have understood that plants can release volatile organic compounds—essentially airborne chemical signals—to attract the natural enemies of the things that eat them, like caterpillars. What we didn’t know was exactly how a plant translates the physical act of being eaten into a specific, predator-summoning distress signal.
“[One] thing we didn’t know is how the plant detects the caterpillar in the first place,” says Adam Steinbrenner, a biologist at the University of Washington. Now, after years of experimenting with common bean plants in the lab and in the agricultural fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, Steinbrenner’s team pinpointed a single immune receptor that orchestrates its anti-caterpillar defense system.
Drooling caterpillars
When an herbivorous insect like a caterpillar feeds on a plant, it introduces its saliva straight into the plant’s damaged tissues. This saliva contains biological clues called HAMPs: herbivore-associated molecular patterns. One of the HAMPs molecules is a peptide called inceptin, and there’s an 11-amino acid fragment of inceptin named In11, as well. Both of them turn out to be a fragment of the ATP synthase found in chloroplasts—basically a piece of one of the plant’s own proteins. As the caterpillar ingests the leaf, its gut enzymes chop up the plant’s cellular engines and their pieces, including In11, are regurgitated back onto the leaf’s surface, albeit at extremely small concentrations.
Over millions of years, plants like the common bean have evolved a specialized cell-surface receptor called the inceptin receptor just to detect In11. When this receptor interacts with In11, it sets off a signaling cascade in the plant’s cells, initiating immune responses. Proving that this specific receptor is responsible for releasing predator-summoning signals, though, was extremely tricky. “We were excited to do that, but we needed the perfect comparison plants—plants lacking the receptor versus ones that have the intact receptor,” Steinbrenner says.
The problem was that common bean plants are notoriously difficult to genetically modify, so the usual modern techniques like gene silencing were off the table. Picking an easier-to-modify plant was off the table, too. “We were sort of limited to bean because this receptor we were studying is only present in certain bean species,” Steinbrenner explains. To get around it, his team had to introduce the modifications they needed the old-fashioned way—through selective breeding.
Breeding siblings
The first step was to find a common bean plant with a muted In11 receptor. What the team needed was a natural mutant that was unable to detect the caterpillar’s saliva. They screened a massive panel of Mesoamerican beans, looking for varieties that failed to produce ethylene gas, a classic plant stress indicator, when exposed to In11. Out of 89 varieties tested, they found two that completely ignored the peptide. Of these two, they picked a Honduran strain called W6 13807.
When the researchers sequenced the genome of this insensitive bean, they found it had a naturally occurring 103-base-pair deletion in the gene that encodes the inceptin receptor. This mutation, they found, deletes a crucial chunk of the receptor, resulting in a truncated, non-functional protein.
To test the effect of this dysfunctional receptor on the plant’s defenses, the team began breeding the plants for their experiment. Through a series of genetic crosses and backcrosses between the mutant and a standard bean variant that was responsive to In11, they created sibling plants that were nearly identical genetically except for the presence or absence of the functional inceptin receptor. “We were just being breeders and that took several years”, Steinbrenner recalls.
When these two siblings were put side by side in the lab and in the field, it turned out the consequences of having a broken inceptin alarm were rather grave for the bean plants.
The cost of silence
First, the researchers examined direct defenses—the chemical and physical changes the plant undergoes to make its leaves less palatable for caterpillars and thus hamper their growth. When caterpillars fed on the mutant beans with inactive inceptin receptors, though, they had a field day. Over a five-day feeding period, their growth rate was over 70 percent higher than on the plants with a functional receptor.
More detailed analysis revealed exactly why this was the case. In plants that could detect the In11 peptide, a feeding caterpillar triggered the rapid up-regulation of 527 genes, including the ones responsible for anti-herbivore defenses. The plants that were oblivious to the In11 in the caterpillar spit failed to mount this targeted response. Instead, they reacted as if they were just being mechanically wounded by the wind or a passing animal. Without the receptor, they entirely missed that a live, hungry insect was actively eating them.
Another consequence for In11 insensitive beans was that they were unable to summon predatory wasps.
Calling air support
When a normal bean plant detects In11, it begins synthesizing and emitting a highly specific blend of volatile organic chemicals. To a predatory wasp, this blend of scents signals not just “a plant is damaged,” but specifically “a caterpillar is actively feeding here right now.” Lab tests showed that the plants without the active inceptin receptor failed to emit this volatile blend when exposed to either the synthetic In11 peptide or actual caterpillar oral secretions.
To see how much this lack of chemical signaling mattered in the wild, the researchers packed up their sibling bean lines and headed to an experimental agricultural field in Oaxaca, Mexico. There, they placed pairs of bean plants—one with the active receptor and one without it—out in the open. They treated the plants with either water, caterpillar oral secretions, or In11. Then, they attached live sentinel caterpillars to the leaves and sat back to watch what happened.
It turned out local predatory wasps were highly active in the field, but they weren’t searching randomly. Driven by the airborne chemical cues, the wasps disproportionately targeted the plants that had functional inceptin receptors. The plants treated with In11, or caterpillar spit were sending out their chemical distress signals into the wind, and the wasps were coming in to attack and remove the caterpillars in response to the call.
At the same time, the plants unable to detect the molecular signature of the caterpillar’s drool were largely ignored by the wasps. They weren’t completely defenseless, though. “There are other papers that show if you knock out all immune signaling, the caterpillars grow twice as big—they get enormous,” Steinbrenner says. This, he suggests, indicates the immune system had other pathways to deter herbivores like the caterpillars.
Crop defense systems
While the team connected the broken inceptin receptor to a muted distress call, the exact downstream immune signaling pathway isn’t fully understood. The authors suspect that the highly specific caterpillar detection they saw piggybacks on the plant’s general wound response, potentially triggering secondary internal alarms known as damage-associated molecular patterns, or DAMPs. Exactly how the initial receptor activation ultimately translates into the production of volatile organic compounds remains a puzzle.
Another caveat lies in the choice of the attacker. The Spodoptera exigua, known as the beet armyworm, is a generalist herbivore, meaning it feeds on a wide variety of plants and is rather susceptible to botanical defenses. Specialist herbivores that feed on specific plants likely evolve metabolic countermeasures to detoxify or otherwise bypass chemical defenses of their hosts. In the study, the researchers acknowledge that we’re not yet sure whether a functional inceptin receptor provides broad-spectrum resistance, or if specialized pests can fool this alarm system.
Finally, in the Oaxacan field test, the team showed that predatory wasps use the airborne distress signals to find their prey, but the relative importance of direct leaf defenses versus this indirect wasp recruitment isn’t clear. In their future research, the scientists want to investigate this in more detail. Still, the team hopes their work will help us better protect crops like bean plants from pests.
“Today, we do that with chemicals, with pesticides, but if we could use the best receptors and the best volatiles from lots of different plants, maybe we might be able to confer immunity to most problematic pests or pathogens in a sort of targeted way,” Steinbrenner says. “That’s the big picture, the goal of our lab in the long run. And I think doing that would mean understanding more of these types of receptors and volatiles.”
Establishment Dems Stave Off the Left in Key California Congressional Primaries
With many votes still to be counted in California and little certainty in most of Tuesday’s closest-watched primary elections, one early pattern is taking shape: Progressive candidates for Congress across the state are failing to top their more moderate Democratic opponents.
In the race for Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat in San Francisco, the YIMBY State Senator Scott Wiener secured a comfortable victory with more than 40% of the vote, according to the Associated Press, which made the early call. Local politician Connie Chan earned the second spot, according to the AP, leaving Saikat Chakrabarti, a prominent figure in national progressive politics, off the general election ballot in November.
In Los Angeles, AIPAC-backed incumbent Rep. Jimmy Gomez easily won a spot on the November ballot, according to a call from the AP. Despite the election day revelation of a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against him, Gomez fended off a challenge from the progressive insurgent Angela Gonzales-Torres by a wide margin. Results are still coming in, but Gonzales-Torres appears likely to face off against Gomez again in the general election thanks to California’s “jungle primary” system, in which the top two candidates move on to a runoff.
Meanwhile in Sacramento, longtime establishment Democrat Rep. Doris Matsui is currently leading progressive city council member Mai Vang, though that race remains too close to call.
In these three solidly blue districts, each race has been viewed as part of a wider battle for control between a Democratic establishment seen as faltering in the face of the second Trump administration and a progressive wing that has grown in influence in the decade since the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — and argues the establishment strategy gave rise to Trump in the first place.
Chakrabarti, Gonzales-Torres and Vang all had the backing of Justice Democrats, a group that supports progressive challengers in primary elections and helped elect members of the Squad in Congress. Earlier in the evening, Justice Democrats notched a victory when Dr. Adam Hamawy, a former combat surgeon who volunteered in Gaza and faced a barrage of attacks that often peddled in Islamophobic tropes, comfortably beat a crowded field of Democrats in New Jersey.
Justice Democrats had hoped to elevate Chakrabarti, one of its co-founders, to Congress. After earning his fortune at the tech firm Stripe, the centimillionaire worked on Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, co-founded Justice Democrats, and became chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Chakrabarti grew to become an influential activist in progressive politics, but he was often a divisive figure, known for riling Democrats online and antagonizing Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who he hoped to succeed. Pelosi, who won her last reelection with 82 percent of the vote in her district, ultimately endorsed Chan, a San Francisco Board of Supervisors member. When the AP called the race for Chan, she held a lead of 13% over Chakrabarti.
Chakrabarti, Chan and Wiener all jockeyed to be seen as the progressive in the race: All three campaigns call for Medicare for All, the overturning of Citizens United, and abolishing or defunding of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yet differing views on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and wealth taxes on billionaires, which Wiener and some of his richest tech-and-development-friendly backers oppose, became notable wedge issues.
While Wiener and Chan have come to embrace placing conditions on offensive weapons to Israel, Chakrabarti advocated for a total arms embargo on the country. Wiener’s previous support for pro-Israel bills in the state legislature and his earlier opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza drew intense scrutiny during the race, and anti-genocide and anti-Zionist protesters at times disrupted his events on the campaign trail.
The weekend before the primary election, the race was jolted with final-hour reporting from Drop Site News that revealed the pro-Israel lobby giant, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and its offshoot, Democratic Majority for Israel, DMFI, had been funneling money into a super PAC supporting Chan. Chakrabarti used the revelation to claim that AIPAC had attempted to keep him out of the general election because of his support for Palestinian human rights, suggesting a degree of collusion between Chan and AIPAC.
Chan, in turn, rejected Chakrabarti’s claims as “absurd and laughable.” She restated her campaign pledge against accepting AIPAC donations and her advocacy for Palestinian rights.
In Los Angeles, Gonzales-Torres, a community organizer, also made her opposition to the pro-Israel lobby and Israel’s genocide in Gaza a major part of her platform against Gomez. Despite the incumbent’s earlier vows that he would try to rid his fundraising of corporate backers in favor of grassroots support, Gomez’ previous two reelection bids have been fueled by special interest groups, such as the cryptocurrency industry and AIPAC and DMFI.
AIPAC has continued to support Gomez in the current election cycle, pouring nearly $150,000 into his 2026 run, according to FEC filings. Gomez has consistently voted to send military aid to Israel.
The race was rocked after CNN reported Tuesday that Gomez was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sexual misconduct against Gomez. The news came months after the New York Post alleged Gomez, who is married, was spotted kissing the staffer of another member of Congress in 2023 at a party hosted by former Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. Swalwell resigned from Congress and ended a California gubernatorial campaign earlier this spring after reporters unearthed allegations of sexual assault former staffers leveled against him, which he denies.
Gonzales-Torres had previously called into question Gomez’s close relationship to Swalwell and asked whether Gomez, who backed Swalwell’s campaign for governor, had knowledge of the incidents at the time. On Tuesday, she wrote on X that if Gomez “has nothing to hide, he should have no concern. But if there was any criminal behavior that he witnessed, participated in, or helped conceal, we will find out and we will help ensure accountability and justice.”
Gomez, in a statement to CNN, admitted to “personal mistakes outside my marriage that have caused real pain to my wife and family,” but insisted he did not break the law or House ethics rules.
Gomez has thrice fended off another progressive challenger, attorney David Kim, who in 2020 trailed by 6 percentage points in the November general election and came only 3 points from winning in the 2022 general election. Gonzales-Torres, who had previously volunteered for Kim’s campaign, believes her campaign can build on that success and defeat Gomez.
In Sacramento, Vang is facing off against one of California’s most powerful Democratic families. Matsui has held her House seat since 2005, winning after the death of her husband, Bob Matsui, who had represented Sacramento in Congress since 1979.
Vang’s campaign criticized Matsui’s acceptance of corporate donations and painted Matsui as out-of-touch with a transforming Democratic voter base. Vang championed policies that have animated the left, such as Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Green New Deal. At the time of publication, Vang is in a tight battle with a pro-Trump Republican candidate, Zachariah Wooden, a student at California State University, Sacramento.
Many primaries across the state, such as the Matsui-Vang contest, remain too close to call, with huge numbers of votes left to count and final positions far from settled. That includes the race for California governor, where moderate Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican commentator Steve Hilton are neck-and-neck, with billionaire Tom Steyer, around whom progressives had coalesced, trailing in third at the time of publication. In the Los Angeles Mayor’s race, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass secured her spot in a November runoff, with reality TV personality Spencer Pratt leading Nithya Raman, a progressive councilmember.
Other progressive candidates led their races on Tuesday, including Jane Kim, who is running for the state’s insurance commissioner with the endorsement of Sen. Sanders. In Los Angeles, city attorney candidate Marissa Roy, who drew support from the city’s progressive base, is ahead of the incumbent, Hydee Feldstein Soto, who caught heat for defending LAPD’s brutal tactics against protesters and for deciding not to charge members of a Zionist mob that attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment.
Texas State Takeover of Local School Districts Expands, Raising Concerns
No state has taken over as many local public school districts as Texas. Just since 2020, the Texas Education Agency has installed its own hand-picked leaders in eight districts. Four of those came this spring. At least another 10 are at risk of takeover, including, as of last week, the Austin Independent School District.
And to lead some of these districts, Texas is turning to a cadre of officials with ties to Mike Miles, the man the education agency chose in 2023 to oversee the Houston school district, the state’s largest. Miles is also a close ally of Mike Morath, Texas’ powerfuleducation commissioner.
Already, at least two of these new district leaders have started to adopt policies similar to the contentious reforms Miles has pursued in Houston. He has touted improved test scores under his charge. Houston ISD had no F-rated campuses and fewer D-rated campuses in the state’s latest ratings compared with previous years. But Miles has also sparked widespread protests in response to the district’s rigid adherence to scripted lessons and repetitive testing, the firing of principals and teachers, mass school closures, and the conversion of schools into charters.
Miles did not respond to requests for comment from the Texas Observer. Houston ISD officials, in a statement to the Observer, said the district did not achieve better ratings by maintaining the status quo but “made difficult decisions” to improve academic performance, noting the majority of its campuses are now rated A or B.
These school districts whose new leaders have connections to Miles should prepare for “upheaval and chaos,” warned an elected Houston school board member.
“If anything doesn’t align with improving test scores, it will be taken away,” said Maria Benzon, who was elected in November to the Houston ISD board but is not permitted to serve under the ongoing state takeover. Under Miles, for example, Houston ISD eliminated librarian positions and turned some libraries into what Benzon called “detention centers,” because they are being used, in part, for students with behavioral issues. Morath, the TEA commissioner, has said the centers are used for more than just punishment.
Texas law allows the TEA to take control of districts with multiple failing school ratings or governance issues and to replace their superintendent and elected boards.
The recent takeovers include Beaumont, Lake Worth and Connally independent school districts, whose new superintendents worked under Miles when he was superintendent in Dallas ISD; two of them also worked for him in Houston. In Fort Worth ISD, one of the state’s largest districts, the new state-appointed superintendent chose Daniel Soliz as his second-in-command, another person who worked under Miles in Houston ISD. Soliz did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath attends a meeting at Harmony Hills Elementary School in San Antonio in 2025.The pace of state school district takeovers has increased during Morath’s time as commissioner.Scott Stephen Ball for The Texas Tribune
At least two of the state’s new superintendent appointees — Sandi Massey, who now helms Beaumont ISD in southeast Texas, and Ena Meyers, TEA’s appointee for Lake Worth ISD, a small district near Fort Worth — also worked for the controversial Colorado-based charter network Third Future Schools, which Miles led prior to becoming superintendent in Houston. In April, the Observer revealed that Miles had an ongoing $120,000 annual consulting contract with the charter network, an arrangement that likely violated a new statewide ban on public school administrators’ moonlighting. After questions from the news organization, Miles canceled the contract. The district said Miles “remains fully focused on leading Houston ISD and delivering results for students.”
Third Future’s charter network is expanding around the state as districts turn campuses over to the nonprofit’s Texas subsidiary, often as a means to delay possible state takeover. The nonprofit did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.
School district takeovers often involve layoffs, school closures and an increase in charter schools, as has happened in Houston, said Domingo Morel, an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University, who found Texas has had more district takeovers than any other state since 1989.
What’s unique to Texas, Morel said, is that the low bar required to take control has led to more takeovers. Since 2015, five consecutive failing state ratings at just one school can trigger a takeover, as occurred in Houston, which has 273 campuses.
Texas has also made it harder for districts to appeal these seizures. The Legislature passed a law in 2021 that barred districts from using public funds to challenge the education commissioner’s “final and unappealable” decision to take them over. The threshold that defines a failing school was also lowered. Then, in 2025, the state passed another law restricting districts from using public funds to sue the state when challenging its accountability ratings.
The state “is the player, the referee, the coach, the scorekeeper,” when it comes to rating schools and deciding when to seize control, said Steven Nelson, an associate professor of education policy and leadership at the University of Nevada who’s been studying school takeovers for more than a decade. He said he suspects the TEA-appointed leaders connected to Miles will also focus on standardized testing, which will result in “a narrow curriculum when all is said and done.”
The acceleration of takeovers,and the state’s increasingly stringent rating system, comes just as Texas rolls out a school voucher program that will, in most cases, award parents $10,000 in state funds to send their children to private schools. State accountability standards do not apply to private schools, where students don’t have to take the standardized tests required in Texas public schools.
TEA spokesperson Jake Kobersky said the agency does not expect the four school districts that have recently been taken over to adopt the same reforms that Miles implemented in Houston. “During an intervention, state law requires the agency to appoint a new superintendent and a board of managers. All other staffing and operational decisions are made locally by the district,” Kobersky said.
But last August, Morath told lawmakers other districts “should be copying the changes that we see in Houston.”
Massey, the new superintendent in Beaumont, has also cited the changes in Houston ISD as a blueprint.
“The model that we are implementing here is a very similar model to Houston. And why? Because of the success that Houston has had,” Massey said at a May 21 board meeting, referring to her time working with Miles at Houston ISD, where he selected her to be chief of schools.
A speaker addresses the school board in Beaumont.Danielle Villasana for ProPublicaPeople clap as Massey speaks during a school board meeting.Danielle Villasana for ProPublica
Under Massey, the newly appointed board of managers voted at their first meeting to temporarily suspend a number of policies related to governance and hiring practices, including employees’ rights to present grievances to the board and principals’ ability to approve new hires without district permission. Board of managers member Jeff Wheeler said at the meeting, “We are requesting that they be suspended until the board can move, can more fully evaluate our local policies.”
The board has taken other steps that mirror what happened in Houston after the takeover there: On May 14, the district announced it was cutting 34 positions that support student mental health, and on May 21, it announced a high school would close.
Massey did not respond to the Observer’s requests for comment about whether she’s following the Houston playbook. Jackie Simien, a spokesperson for Beaumont ISD said, “Massey has worked alongside successful educational leaders with demonstrated results in improving systems, instruction, and student performance.”
Students protest against the state’s takeover of Houston ISD in 2023.Douglas Sweet Jr. for The Texas TribuneThe late Sylvester Turner, then mayor of Houston, speaks about the takeover of Houston ISD during a press conference in 2023.Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune
Benzon, the elected Houston ISD board member, said Miles is sidelining parent and teacher voices in her district, and they are leaving in droves as a result. “They are trying to escape the New Education System and Miles’ bad policies,” Benzon added, referring to a program Miles transplanted from his former charter school network that is characterized by scripted lessons and repetitive testing. The Houston Chronicle reported the district “is losing students at an accelerated pace” under the takeover, spurring the district to shutter 12 schools ahead of the next school year.
In its statement to the Observer, Houston ISD cited a survey of families reporting a “favorable perception” of the district and said it retained many exemplary teachers.
Nelson and Morel said they believe the ultimate objective of any takeover is to disenfranchise local communities. Black and Hispanic students make up the majority of the population at all four of the districts now headed by Miles’ associates.
“It all begins at the school board level to then completely disempower the community,” Morel said.
On April 23, Houston ISD moved to fire a veteran teacher and president of the Houston Education Association teachers union after she protested requirements to comply with Miles’ New Education System.
Meyers, the new Lake Worth superintendent who at the time was Houston ISD’s deputy chief of strategic initiatives, testified in favor of the teacher’s termination.
“We do not allow our staff to make decisions about curriculum in a New Education System school or in Houston ISD,” Meyers said, according to a transcript of the hearing. “If they are not following expectations, we would not allow them to stay in HISD as an employee.”
Since taking over in Lake Worth, Meyers and the board of managers have temporarily suspended board policies related to governance procedures, hiring and employee assignments and schedules, similar to what Massey and her board did in Beaumont.
In response to the Observer’s inquiries about replicating Houston ISD’s reforms in her new role, Meyers wrote in an email that “Lake Worth ISD is very different from Houston ISD. We are a district of five schools serving a much smaller community, so our approach must reflect the unique needs of our students, staff, and families.”
Her email continued, “I believe educators should learn from successful practices wherever they exist.”
As in Beaumont and Lake Worth, the takeover in Fort Worth ISD has been characterized by swift changes. After less than a month under the new leadership, the 68,000-student district has suspended local board governance and hiring policies and has cut dozens of staff positions, including those supporting English-language learners.
Parent organizer Zach Leonard said a new instructional model Fort Worth ISD is rolling out in 19 schools, called “Elevate,” is essentially the same as what Miles has done in Houston, an assertion district spokesperson Tierney Tinnin refuted.
Leonard, along with other parents with his organization, notes the similarities between the programs: “scripted slide-by-slide lessons, rigid timed instruction, and ‘demonstrations of learning’ reduced to data points.”
“This isn’t education reform,” Leonard said, referring to Miles’ model of learning being transported to Fort Worth. “It’s a franchise being handed to our children without a vote.”
