Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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March 8
The Washington Post on the Railway Safety Act
The White House is calling on Congress to include a railroad regulation bill as part of a larger transportation funding package this year. It’s not the first time President Donald Trump has supported it, and the legislative branch would be wise to ignore his counsel again.
The Railway Safety Act was first introduced in 2023 after the train accident in East Palestine, Ohio, where chemicals were vented and burned, causing environmental damage and horrific visuals. Then-Sen. JD Vance was among the bipartisan group of legislators who introduced the bill. Trump, then campaigning for president, urged Republicans to support it.
It’s understandable that Congress wanted to do something. But rather than digging into the details of what caused the accident and proposing fixes, the bill consists of unrelated mandates that would drive costs higher and slow innovation. Due largely to conservative opposition, the Senate never voted on the bill.
Perhaps there was an excuse for the bill’s authors to not know any better right after the accident. In June 2024, however, the National Transportation Safety Board published a 216-page report showing exactly what happened. Rather than removing extraneous provisions in the light of better information, legislators have again introduced the Railway Safety Act with few major changes.
The bill would turn the current industry standard of two crewmen in the cab into a government mandate. Never mind that there were three crewmen in the cab during the East Palestine accident, or that repeated investigations by the Federal Railroad Administration — including during the first Trump administration — have been unable to demonstrate that crew size correlates with safety. This provision is supported by rail unions who are afraid technological advances could reduce staffing needs.
Regulation should be based on evidence, especially when that it could be costly. Another provision of the bill, which would mandate sensors to detect overheated wheel bearings every 15 miles, would cost an estimated $1.1 billion to $2.2 billion. There’s no evidence that the 15-mile rule would have prevented the East Palestine accident. The sensors have already significantly reduced overheating accidents without being mandated at all.
The bill would also mandate increased inspections of railcars by certified mechanics, another union demand that would preserve working hours for members with little or no safety evidence to support it. The railcar that caused the Ohio accident passed inspection before its departure. The NTSB found “insufficient evidence” that a more thorough inspection would have caught the cause of the accident and did not recommend any changes to current federal railcar inspection regulations.
The staggering finding from the NTSB report was that the decision to vent and burn the chemicals being transported by the train was mistaken and based on poor communication. There are lessons to be learned from this incident, but they are more about how to respond to accidents than the wisdom of regulatory requirements.
Nor has Norfolk Southern, the operator of the train, dodged accountability. The CEO apologized during Senate testimony. Between its direct actions to clean up the spill, settlements with both the federal government and the village of East Palestine, as well as a class-action suit, Norfolk Southern has paid over $1 billion, an astonishing sum for an accident with no deaths.
Four of the 34 recommendations from the NTSB’s report were addressed to Norfolk Southern. The company has adopted all four of them, including one where it went beyond what the NTSB asked. None of the 10 recommendations made to the Federal Railroad Administration have been adopted yet.
It’s not as though railroad safety has declined in the meantime. By several measures, including the rates of derailments and employee injuries, 2025 was the safest year on record. And railroads are much safer today than they were before 1992, when crews of three or more were standard.
Transporting goods by rail is much safer than doing so by truck, which is the closest substitute. Increasing costs for rail through pointless mandates would result in some shippers opting for trucks instead, causing more highway traffic and a greater probability of freight accidents overall.
Just because a bill has “safety” in the title doesn’t mean it will make Americans safer.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/08/railway-safety-act-train-safety-norfolk-southern/
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March 5
The New York Times says politicians are trying to control the press
The shadow of press repression is spreading around the world. In the past decade, the number of journalists detained and imprisoned has soared as governments seek tighter control over the media. What started as a crackdown first by dictatorships and then by illiberal democracies is expanding to onetime bastions of civil liberties.
A recent high-profile case is Jimmy Lai, whom authorities in Hong Kong sentenced to 20 years in prison last month. He had campaigned against China’s choking of the territory’s freedoms. Mr. Lai, 78, has already spent five years in a dark cell and is ailing. The sentence effectively condemns him to dying in prison. Mr. Lai has denied all the charges against him.
His plight is increasingly common. At least 330 journalists worldwide were in prison at the end of 2025, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, up from fewer than 200 a decade ago. More than a third of them were serving sentences of five years or more. Nearly half remained behind bars despite never having been formally sentenced. One-fifth say they were tortured or beaten. An additional 129 members of the press died while doing their jobs or because of them, the highest number since records began in 1992. Among the worst offenders against press freedom have been China, Russia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Sudan and Turkey.
These courageous journalists have sought to shine a light on the world around them. They ask questions that political leaders do not want to answer and publish information that leaders do not want the public to know. For their efforts, they have been falsely accused of being enemies of the state, terrorists, foreign agents or spies.
In February alone, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists:
The press faces challenges in freer societies, too. Israel’s war in Gaza led to the arrest of almost 100 Palestinian journalists, often without charge, and at least twice that number were killed over two years, a toll without modern precedent. In Mexico, the ruling party has tried to intimidate journalists who report inconvenient stories and regularly dismisses even legitimate information as “fake news.” In India, a court last month sentenced Ravi Nair to one year in prison related to social media posts that criticized a company run by a billionaire ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Even in the United States, home of the First Amendment and a longtime beacon of free speech, the media is being squeezed. Again and again, the Trump administration has tried to intimidate journalists who do not toe its line. It has issued rules requiring journalists covering the Pentagon to report only officially approved information. It has searched the home of a Washington Post reporter and arrested reporters covering an immigration protest in Minnesota. It has used the government’s regulatory power in an attempt to chill critical coverage and reward media companies that cozy up to the administration. Mr. Trump has filed dubious lawsuits against The New York Times, ABC News, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the owner of CBS News.
He has done more to violate the First Amendment and to restrict a free press than any modern president, even Richard Nixon.
Democrats have rightly criticized the Trump administration’s behavior. But standing up for press freedom also means resisting the temptation to adopt similar tactics. We note with concern the tactics of Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas. Ms. Crockett reportedly ousted a reporter for The Atlantic from a campaign rally last month and then lied about the reporter, saying, “She has a history of being less than truthful.” Ms. Crockett also called the Capitol Police on a CNN reporter earlier in February. Ms. Crockett lost the Democratic Senate primary in her state on Tuesday.
The goal of leaders who try to muzzle the media is plain enough. They want to snuff out the truth and establish a monopoly on information. They want only news that flatters the government.
Most worrisome, attacks on the media can feed on themselves. When a government jails or harasses some journalists, others may fear the consequences of courageous reporting. The fewer free voices there are to call out tyrants, the easier it is for them to steal and repress. This last point is crucial. The consequences of media suppression are ultimately tangible. A society without a free press is one in which the government is likely to do a poorer job of providing its citizens with decent lives and instead to become a corrupt self-enrichment machine for elites.
The best protection for the many journalists who continue to report honestly and bravely — as well as for those unfairly imprisoned — is the world’s attention. By trying to silence journalists, autocrats and aspiring autocrats hope to make the world ignore what they are doing. The rest of us should refuse to do so. We stand with Mr. Lai, Mr. Phara, Mr. Sopheap, Mr. Sophal, Mr. Nguer and the many other reporters who fight for the truth around the world, and at home.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/opinion/free-press-repression-journalists-prison.html
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March 8
The Boston Globe says limiting student loans to maintain tuition costs could have unintended consequences
Starting in July, the federal government will cap the size of student loans offered to graduate students for the first time, a policy approved by Congress in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The Trump administration suggests imposing caps will drive down graduate school tuition while limiting the debt borrowers are saddled with.
Conservatives have long argued that increasing student loan assistance just causes universities to hike their tuition rates even more — and some evidence does partially support the theory. There is less incentive for schools to keep costs down if they know their students can just borrow.
So some caps may make sense. The problem, though, is the US Department of Education has proposed implementing the caps in a way that will make it harder for students to attend professional programs in high-demand fields like nursing and social work.
The new law distinguishes between “professional” and “graduate” degrees. Professional degrees are defined by 11 categories, among them law, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, clinical psychology, and theology. Students in professional programs can borrow up to $50,000 a year in federal loans, with a lifetime cap of $200,000. For all other graduate degrees, borrowers are capped at $20,500 a year, with a lifetime limit of $100,000.
The definition of professional programs proposed by the DOE, however, would exclude many categories of programs that train students to obtain professional licenses, many in health care fields where workers are badly needed. These include physician assistants, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, and social workers, among others.
These programs may be less expensive than medical school — but they’re not cheap. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that 12 percent of all master’s students nationally took out federal loans above the new limits, and those students needed to borrow, on average, $16,000 beyond the cap. Doctoral students were less likely than master’s students to need federal loans, but among those who did borrow, nearly half exceeded the proposed cap. Students entering the health and legal professions needed to borrow the most money, with 39 percent of students in health-related professional programs borrowing on average $28,500 more than would be allowed by the cap.
In a letter to the DOE, Massachusetts’ Commissioner of Higher Education Noe Ortega wrote that approximately 13,000 Massachusetts graduate students have financial need above the level of borrowing allowed under the new rule. Ortega warned that these students will have to seek more expensive, riskier financing in the private loan market. An estimated 4,000 students are unlikely to qualify for private loans, Ortega wrote, which could lead them to forgo graduate programs entirely.
As Ortega points out, if students can’t attend graduate school in areas like nursing, that could make it harder for patients to get care. The Globe has reported that the cap will likely make it harder to fill nursing positions in a field that’s already experiencing worker shortages. Massachusetts nurses have long complained of understaffing. According to the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, Massachusetts hospitals reported vacancy rates around 15 percent in 2024 for masters-level social work and physician assistants jobs — both are positions that require graduate degrees.
Rebecca Gewirtz, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers’ Massachusetts chapter, said there are already waiting lists for those seeking mental health care provided by social workers. And the association has been trying to diversify the profession, which means reaching people in lower-income communities who rely on loans to attend school. While tuition can vary widely, a two-year masters of social work program costs more than $93,000 at Boston College and $77,000 at Simmons University just for tuition, not counting the cost of housing, books, and other expenses. “I think if this rule becomes final, it will further exacerbate the mental health care shortage we have in this state,” Gewirtz said.
At William James College in Newton, which trains mental health professionals, President Nicholas Covino said it can cost more than $200,000 to earn a doctoral or even a master’s degree, between tuition, fees, and living expenses. Because mental health professionals are in demand, Covino said virtually every graduate finds work and repays their loans. Some enter public service — working for state government or community mental health centers — because it makes them eligible for federal loan forgiveness. Covino worries that if fewer federal loans are available, some people won’t be able to afford graduate school, while those who can afford it will be less likely to go into public service. “The real issue isn’t that it will drive the cost (of education) down, the real issue is it will drive the students you’d like to have away,” Covino told the editorial board.
Ortega, in his letter to the DOE, suggested that a better rule would define professional programs “as those linked to objectively-defined high-need, high-value occupational fields, such as nursing, social work and education.”
Alternatively, the rule could define professional programs as those that require professional licensure, a definition the federal government uses elsewhere. Republican Representative Mike Lawler of New York introduced legislation to broaden the definition to include specific professions like nursing, physical therapy, architecture, accounting, and special education.
If, facing federal pressure, schools lower their tuition and students require fewer loans, that would be a good thing. But the proposed rule is more likely to push students into obtaining riskier private loans or forgoing programs in high-needs professions like health care. In response to the thousands of comments it received, the DOE should revise the rule by broadening the definition of professional degrees.
ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/08/opinion/student-loan-professional-graduate-degrees/
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March 5
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the Iran war
Can anyone reading this editorial right now explain, clearly and succinctly, why the U.S. is currently engaged in an open-ended military operation against the Islamic Republic of Iran?
If you said yes, congratulations — you’re doing better than the Trump administration. President Donald Trump and his advisers have offered nothing but shifting and often self-contradictory explanations since the American-Israeli attacks against Iran started over the weekend.
Trump’s habit of doing whatever impulsive thing strikes his fancy, without permission from or even a coherent explanation to Congress, the American people or anyone else, is reckless enough when the topic is, say, randomly imposing tariffs on our trading partners. When the subject of Trump’s reckless impulsivity is the powder keg known as the Middle East, it is nothing short of terrifying.
A war powers resolution vote of the kind some in Congress are trying to force is the very least that must happen.
Conflicts in that region have a way of going sideways even when they begin with clear objectives and the building of domestic and international support. Recall that even George W. Bush’s catastrophic war in Iraq began with at least the pretense of a clearly stated goal (to eliminate what turned out to be nonexistent weapons of mass destruction).
To paraphrase a recent comment by some internet wag: This time, we don’t feel like we’ve even been properly lied to. Trump has gotten us into another potential forever war — the kind he has campaigned against for years, by the way — with seemingly as little forethought or public discussion as his impetuous tear-down of the White House’s East Wing.
None of this is to suggest mourning for the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 86-year-old leader killed in airstrikes Saturday. The world is undoubtedly a better place with one less theocratic dictator who oppresses and routinely murders his own people.
But for all Trump’s sabre-rattling in recent weeks about Iran’s killing of thousands of Iranian protesters, the U.S. did nothing until that slaughter was effectively over.
In Trump’s eight-minute weekend video announcement of airstrikes that had already started, he encouraged Iranians to “take over your government.”
Regime change, then? No, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday: It is “not a so-called regime-change war.”
Trump’s video and later comments also cited the urgency of ending Iran’s development of nuclear weapons — the same program the U.S. “completely and totally obliterated” with its bombing campaign last June, as the administration crowed back then.
The administration later claimed the purpose of the current attack wasn’t to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions but to prevent it from developing conventional missiles that could reach the United States. This despite the assessment of our own military experts that such a threat is a decade away, if at all.
Again, from Hegseth: “Iran had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb.”
Good luck untangling that one.
Perhaps the most novel explanation for the current hostilities came from one of the few grownups in this administration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“Why now?” he rhetorically asked in a news conference. One reason, he said, was that the U.S. knew Israel was preparing to attack Iran, so we needed to join in to “preemptively” ward off any counterattacks on U.S. assets.
So now the Israeli government is deciding for us when we go to war?
Trump later flipped that explanation on its head, saying of Israel, “I might’ve forced their hand” in the joint operation.
Did you get all that?
Is everything more clear now?
We would note that Trump’s attack on Iran blithely ignores the Constitution’s requirement that only Congress can declare war — though that’s an issue that far pre-dates this president. Congress hasn’t formally declared war on anyone since World War II. In the many U.S. military conflicts since then, presidents of both parties have taken advantage of an AWOL Congress that has meekly refused to assert its constitutional authority on this most fraught of subjects.
Still, most of those conflicts have at least entailed a president consulting with Congress and with the American people. Trump, being Trump, has bothered with neither.
Efforts to force a vote on a war powers resolution in Congress might at least pressure Trump and his allies to articulate a single coherent purpose for a conflict that has at this writing already cost six American service members their lives and will undoubtedly cost more going forward. They and their loved ones, along with the rest of us, are at least owed that much.
ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_5a0c0387-0d30-415d-a5dc-118610051954.html
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March 5
The Guardian says Iran war has no defined goal and no end in sight
There will be no quick or easy wins – even on US and Israeli terms. They have celebrated assassinating Iran’s supreme leader; their offensive has also killed more than 1,000 civilians so far, including scores of children, according to a US-based rights group. As Iran retaliates, hoping America’s allies will try to rein it back, it is targeting US bases and civilian sites across the region – even in Oman, which was at the forefront of efforts to stave off the war. Gulf powers are increasingly irate, though wary of acting on threats to go beyond defensive action. Israel has ordered hundreds of thousands of civilians to leave a vast swathe of southern Lebanon, blaming Hezbollah’s retaliation for the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Those who warned that the US-Israeli attack on Iran would lead to war engulfing the Middle East have proved, if anything, conservative in their predictions. A Hezbollah-launched drone hit an RAF airbase in Cyprus at the weekend. On Wednesday, Azerbaijan reported strikes on an airbase (though Iran denied responsibility, as it did over a missile fired towards Turkey ). The day before, the US sank an Iranian warship 2,000 miles away, in waters close to Sri Lanka, as it returned from multilateral exercises with India – killing at least 87 people. And governments around the world face soaring energy prices and rattled markets thanks to Iran’s chokehold on the strait of Hormuz.
Far from seeking to de-escalate, Israel and the US talk of weeks’ more conflict and the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, promises “death and destruction from the sky all day long”. Israel believes it has a unique opportunity to destroy an adversary and sees only advantages in persisting until Iran falls into chaos. The US reportedly seeks to support Kurdish fighters to cross the border from Iraq – exacerbating the risk of a chaotic civil war, and of wider fragmentation. The rationales offered by the US for this conflict have shifted as fast as its boundaries have expanded: they include regime change, preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, destroying its ballistic missile capability, or preventing Tehran from retaliating against the US for an Israeli attack.
Though Donald Trump avoided presenting his plans to Congress, it shows no signs of restraining him. But six American soldiers have already been killed; the military is running through its expensive stock of interceptors; his anti-interventionist Maga base is unhappy; American (and Trump family) investments in the region are at risk; and energy prices are surging, ahead of November’s midterms. The Iranian regime will put little confidence in talks with a foe that has struck it during negotiations twice in a year. It will regard its mere survival as a victory. But with no clear criteria for a US win, the president might arbitrarily declare one, even without a deal. Others would bear most of the consequences for now, and he does not concern himself with what may happen a few years down the road.
The kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro convinced Mr Trump that he could claim flashy victories at little cost. He appears to have hoped that this would be another quick win; it is already proving more costly. Yet no one should count on this conflict curbing his newfound appetite for reckless and illegal military adventurism. Others must continue to defend the standards of international law.
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