Are you pumped to gorge yourself on both food and entertainment this upcoming National Native Day of Mourning even as hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their SNAP and food stamp benefits???!!! I sure am!!! I’m so glad you all found my last holiday article, in which I suggested some low-stress ways to keep conversations civil and nonpolitical, helpful. In fact, I hear that my tactics almost worked too well for many of you, accidentally causing a total hush as your entire family, overwhelmed with your wisdom, stopped speaking and silently meditated for the entirety of Thanksgiving dinner, striving for nirvana and completely ignoring both the big football game and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. If this situation sounds familiar, read on for my tried-and-true tips to turn any awkward silence into happy and zero-conflict family time!

Tip #1: Selecting a Topic 

The most important tip, of course, is to make sure you understand the balance between casual, low-stakes conversation and something that your family could be offended by or take personally. That’s why I always start with a pleasant, objectively true comment like, “Isn’t it beautiful weather? It’s so crisp and autumny outside!” or “Wow, isn’t it great that the Supreme Court declined to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges, protecting same-sex couples’ right to marriage?” Since these comments are both friendly remarks about things we all agree about, they are perfect for starting a lively conversation without disturbing the Thanksgiving peace.

Tip #2: Setting the Mood 

After making sure your conversation starter is noncontroversial, you have to deliver it correctly. Even the most banal comment could be taken the wrong way if you seem agitated or mean when you say it. Here’s a pro tip: Thanksgiving is about thankfulness (and colonization), so you already have a built-in socially acceptable way to make comments! Simply start your sentence with “I’m so thankful for,” expressing your gratitude and joy to ensure you are not seen as disruptive or unpleasant. For example, if I grabbed a greasy serving fork, rolled my eyes back in my head, and screamed, “People wanted Charlie Kirk’s assassin to pay the highest possible penalty when they blamed a trans person, but as soon as they realized a cis, white, religious man was responsible, they switched over to thoughts and prayers for the murderer!” this could be seen as aggressive, even though I followed Tip #1 and made a noncontroversial and obvious point. Instead, I would format my comment thus: “I’m so thankful for increasing awareness of gun violence in America!” using a calm, happy voice and only gritting my teeth a little bit. Try it! 

Tip #3: Knowing Your Audience 

Always make sure you understand where everyone’s coming from before starting a conversation! Notice the little moments, and remember things your family has expressed in the past so that your comments always land the way you want. Let’s say the table is awkwardly quiet and I want to start a conversation. I look around the table and see, probably, a lot of white people. I think back to things I know about white people, like how we participated in the transatlantic slave trade, the Trail of Tears and other forms of colonization and racism, including neocolonialist practices that are still occurring today. Eureka! “Did you know that calling people ‘illegal’ for not having the correct papers under a system that makes it extremely difficult to gain these documents legally is, in fact, racist and discriminatory, devaluing immigrants as people even though America is supposed to be a nation of immigrants and a melting pot for all cultures?” I would then say. Be sure to incorporate Tip #2 — I’ve found that raising your eyebrows very high, smiling as widely as possible, and looking at everyone at the table in quick succession is the most pleasant way to deliver this point. After about 30 seconds of looking around and grinning, remember to express your gratitude by adding, “I’m thankful that you agree with me here and are working not to carry on the legacy of the horrible things the U.S. has done in the past.” Then, you should quickly jump up from the table and open the front door, welcoming in the 47,964 immigrants who committed only minor offenses, like traffic violations, held in ICE detention centers as of 2025. Education about a certain people group is, of course, best done by members of that people group, so personal contact with the minorities persecuted by President Trump’s fascist regime will be a valuable opportunity for your family to ask questions and learn.

But What if an Argument Starts Anyway? 

Once you know how to find a noncontroversial point, deliver it in a pleasant way, and understand your audience, you’ll be able to create a warm environment that fosters great conversations and promotes familial community. Unfortunately, there’s always one person who doesn’t know these tips, and might even try to start something on purpose — what a faux pas! If anyone at the table says something that is bad etiquette and doesn’t follow the above tips, whether it’s a topic that could be offensive, a downright unpleasant delivery, or a lack of effort to understand where people are coming from, you can fix it! Simply read accurate and scholarly sources about political topics, speak to a wide variety of people and make a genuine effort to understand their experiences, remember the speaker’s shared humanity as you prepare to encounter their misguided attitude and hire a death metal vocalist to loudly growl out the famous political protest song “Bella Ciao” any time the problematic family member begins speaking. This uplifting, anti-fascist experience should help even the grumpiest relative see the error of their ways, after which you can take the opportunity to share my three tips for successful holiday conversation. 

A Situation From a Reader Just Like You! 

I did also want to address a quick reader question. Unfortunately, after reading my first Thanksgiving article, someone let me know that every year they have to share a Thanksgiving table with — the essence of medical malpractice and ableism itself? What a sticky situation! My advice is to just read RFK Jr. a peer-reviewed article about honestly any scientific topic. This will probably take him out; if not, I think a flamethrower is what you’re supposed to use for zombies.

Now that you know how to start productive conversations over the Thanksgiving holiday, you should be totally prepared for the big day! I hope my tips help you celebrate without having to worry about awkward silences or those annoying moments when your family somehow starts saying things that they clearly can’t actually believe. Happy Tofurkey Day, and enjoy the benefits of capitalist exploitation that you greedily benefit from with no concern or empathy for the less fortunate!!! God bless America!!

Sébastien Lecornu was appointed Prime Minister of France on September 9, before resigning 26 days later, stating that “the conditions were not right for governing.” Like his two predecessors, Lecornu did not have a parliamentary majority and was therefore unable to govern effectively. In other words, he anticipated a vote of no confidence that would have prematurely ended his term. 

However, in a surprising turnaround, President Macron reinstated Lecornu just 48 hours after his resignation. This unprecedented decision illustrates Macron’s stubbornness and may foreshadow his own political downfall. The French Fifth Republic seems increasingly fragile, as this constitutional crisis reveals a minority party clinging to power while refusing to compromise. As a French citizen, I find this situation deeply troubling, as it reflects a growing divide between the political elite and the general population.

What’s Different About the Lecornu II Government?

Twenty-four hours after he resigned, Lecornu appeared on national television to discuss the political impasse in France. In front of millions of viewers, he outlined, in an unconvincing manner, what he considered to be the “necessary conditions” for the next government: a cabinet based on compromise with the main parliamentary parties and ministers motivated by serving the nation rather than their personal ambitions. His words raised hopes that he might finally break free from Macron’s influence and appoint ministers more representative of the political diversity of the National Assembly. 

However, these expectations were quickly dashed. The partisan balance in Lecornu’s new government remains virtually unchanged: All ministers come from a center-right party that has historically been allied with Macron. 

Although Lecornu promised a streamlined and more autonomous cabinet of about 25 ministers, the new government has 34 ministers, all from the same political circle. He also promised that no ministers with presidential ambitions would be appointed, but Gérald Darmanin, a likely future candidate, remains in place.

Lecornu presents his administration as “technical,” but technocracy does not necessarily mean neutrality. Expertise alone does not guarantee independence from Macron’s overall agenda. The central challenge lies not in the competence of ministers, but in the president’s persistent interference in parliamentary affairs. Macron’s repeated interference contradicts Charles de Gaulle’s institutional vision, which called for the president to remain above political divisions.

The dissolution of the National Assembly, briefly considered in recent weeks, was ultimately abandoned as it would only have benefited the far right, projected to gain even more seats in recent polls. Meanwhile, two urgent issues dominate the government’s agenda: the budget and pension reform, both of which risk reigniting public discontent.

What Can We Expect from Lecornu Going Forward?

The absence of an absolute majority for any single party makes governance impossible without coalitions or alliances. This is precisely why Lecornu resigned, but he will ultimately be forced to make compromises if he wants to survive the vote of no confidence already scheduled for the end of the week.  In his address to the National Assembly on Tuesday, October 14, Lecornu announced that he would suspend the pension reform adopted by Macron a few years ago in order to secure the support of the Socialist Party (PS), without which he would not have enough votes to pass the no-confidence vote. During his 30-minute speech, he also invoked the rhetoric of “duty” and “mission,” presenting himself as a pragmatic leader ready to “act in response to crises.” His formula for renewal consists of “political innovation” and governing “with the Assembly, not against it.” However, what he claims to be political innovation is in fact the normal functioning of the legislative branch, which, according to the Constitution, is separate from the executive branch.

He also repeated the phrase “I will propose, you will debate, you will vote” seven times, presenting his renunciation of Article 49.3—used to pass laws in Parliament—as a gesture of democratic openness. Article 49.3 of the Constitution allows the executive branch to bypass Parliament to pass a law in the event of a negative vote. The use of this article is highly controversial and has been invoked numerous times over the past decade. By renouncing Article 49.3, Lecornu hopes to restore trust with Parliament and make it more sovereign, or at least that is how his statement is understood.

This so-called break is nevertheless timid. The second Lecornu government still relies on the same technocratic core as the first, and its supposed “renewal” masks continuity. The interruption of pension reform may temporarily guarantee the support of the Party Socialist (PS), but the National Rally (RN) and La France Insoumise (LFI)—the two most powerful political forces in the Assembly—are openly opposed to Lecornu. Who knows if his possible compromise with the PS will last? In reality, the PS now holds the balance of power and is the key to the government’s survival.

Conclusion 

The second Lecornu government is marked by a fundamental contradiction: it claims to embody renewal while recycling the same political formulas and the same faces. It promises compromise but continues to defend Macron’s policies. It invokes parliamentary sovereignty but remains dependent on the president’s will. This fragile balance cannot last indefinitely. Unless Lecornu manages to reconcile France’s fractured political landscape, his second term could prove as short-lived as his first and further erode citizens’ confidence in the Fifth Republic. As everyone wonders about the causes of France’s difficult situation, attention is now turning to Lecornu and the issues surrounding his budget proposal. Amid political anger and growing polarization, will France’s political elite be able to find a compromise and reach a consensus on the 2026 budget? Nothing is certain, and Lecornu’s legacy will most likely be judged by the outcome of the budget negotiations.

America is currently experiencing an unprecedented wave of mid-decade redistricting. As of September of 2025, eleven states, including Missouri, have made some progress towards redrawing their electoral boundaries for the 2026 elections, and Missouri joins Texas in having officially signed a new district map into law. Barring the potential of a lawsuit overturning the map, many Missouri voters, particularly those around Kansas City, will find themselves in a new electoral district in 2026, and those changes are likely to force Democratic representative Emanuel Cleaver out of his seat. 

Missouri’s Redistricting Plan and House Bill 1

Missouri’s redistricting effort can be found in Missouri House Bill 1 of the 103^rd General Assembly’s second extraordinary session (HB1). HB1 is a lengthy bill, assigning every voting district and county in the state of Missouri to one of eight electoral districts, but the key changes proposed in the bill can be found by comparing the new district map to the prior map, approved for use in 2022. 

Both maps have eight electoral districts, but the shape of several districts, particularly District 5, have been changed. Where District 5 used to contain most of the Kansas City area and nothing else, it now extends several hundred miles into rural (and reliably Republican) central Missouri. The north and south ends of the city have been placed in districts 6 and 4 respectively, which each also cover an extensive region of rural Missouri. The result is that district 5, currently held by long-serving Democrat Emanuel Cleaver II, will now lean Republican, leaving only one Democrat-leaning district in the state.

Governor Mike Kehoe signed HB1 after it cleared the state legislature, officially enshrining the new electoral map into Missouri law. However, its path forward has become fraught. Four lawsuits (at time of writing) have challenged the bill’s legality, with most emphasis being placed on the compactness (or lack thereof) of the new fifth district and the fact that the state constitution does not permit mid-cycle redistricting. Emanuel Cleaver has also promised a lawsuit if HB1 passes, so it is likely that more lawsuits are still to come.

The fate of HB1’s new electoral map will therefore depend on the decisions of several courts, and it is likely that, whatever the outcome of the initial trials, every verdict will be appealed up through the courts. 

The National Rise of Redistricting

Missouri’s redistricting effort is part of a broader effort by both political parties to create new House seats for their respective party for the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. President Trump has pushed Republican-led states to create more Republican-leaning districts, concerned that midterm election results will swing against Republicans. In the 23 midterm elections since 1934, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but three elections; Republicans currently hold a six-seat majority with three vacant seats, so any lost seats in the midterms may end the Republican Party’s control of the chamber. 

In response to Republican efforts to gain more seats in Texas, Missouri, and elsewhere, Democratic state governments have proposed their own retaliatory redistricting efforts. California Governor Gavin Newsom has taken the lead in this effort, proposing a new map that would likely swap six currently-red seats to Democrats in 2026. California’s proposition 50 is slated to arrive at the polls in November, with California citizens voting directly on whether to approve the map. Current polling indicates that the California public supports the measure, 51% to 34%, but there is still over a month before votes will be cast. Similar “reactive” redistricting has been planned in other Democratic-led states such as Maryland, but has seen somewhat limited success outside of California.

With both political parties pushing partisan redistricting, a grassroots campaign to limit redistricting has gained steam. Groups such as Common Cause have been fighting to prevent partisan redistricting and leading anti-gerrymandering protests, particularly in Republican-led states such as Indiana. Even in California, opinions are split on Proposition 50’s “reactive” redistricting, with 49% of survey respondents believing Prop 50 to be a bad thing, including 13% of those who are voting for it and 96% of those who oppose it.

Polling in Missouri shows that voters are against House Bill 1’s redistricting plan, though the margins in Missouri are significantly narrower. A Democratic Party poll finds that 48% of Missouri voters oppose the redistricting move, while 37% approve of it. Missouri voters have also attempted to force a statewide referendum on the vote (similar to California’s upcoming Prop 50 vote), which is in the early stages of collecting signatures. Even with Governor Kehoe signing HB1 on September 28th, the array of lawsuits and attempts to demand a popular referendum on redistricting leave the future of Missouri’s congressional district lines murky at best. 

For those interested in redistricting, particularly in Missouri, Jewell and Pi Sigma Alpha will be hosting a panel discussion on gerrymandering on October 15^th at 6:30 pm.

On Sep. 10, 2025, American podcaster and right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was killed during a question-and-answer session at Utah Valley University (UVU). Preliminary reports tell us that the individual who allegedly shot him is in custody. American politicians of all stripes have condemned the shooting as a travesty, and President Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-mast until Sep. 15 in his honor.

Mr. Kirk’s killing is certainly disastrous for the American body politic, and I do not take his death lightly. Political assassination has no place in any society that calls itself free. But I do not mourn his death and shed no tears for his loss. The response from the Trump administration—labelling Kirk as an American hero and “free speech warrior”—sanitizes Kirk’s destructive history, and lowering the flag for him is a disgrace to both the American flag and what the country claims to stand for. The precedent the government’s response sets is unjustifiable.

Political violence is clearly on the rise in America. Since Sep. 11, 2001, there have been two hundred and ninety-three lives lost to terror attacks in the United States. Terrorists come in all political stripes, from extreme left to extreme right. New America describes a modern terrorist threat—a label that includes political violence—that “crosses ideologies and is largely disconnected from traditional understandings of terrorist organizations.”

This upward trend in violence occurs among students as well; the increasing population of American students who believe the use of force can be justified against speakers exceeds three in ten. This figure has increased among both self-identified Democrats and Republicans and represents a grave danger to the American project.

Voices in the American right have called Kirk’s shooting the start of a civil war. They perceive Kirk’s killing as part of a “common threat” from leftists—that “The Left,” vaguely defined, poses an existential threat to the conservative movement and its members. Trump said the same, claiming that “[r]adical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.” He cited the assassination attempt against himself to back up his claim.

The data, where we have it, does not back Trump up. The suspect in Trump’s attempted assassination in Butler, PA, was a registered Republican. More broadly, extreme-right violence was the most common of the types New America considered, responsible for 139 of 293 (47%) recorded deaths. (For comparison, extreme-left violence was responsible for 3 [<1%]).

By any and all measures, Kirk was an extremist figure with substantial ideological biases. Here is a brief and definitely non-exhaustive list of problematic things he has called for:

• He called on Taylor Swift to “Reject feminism [and] Submit to your husband,” noting that Ms. Swift “wasn’t serious” about her engagement if she did not change her surname.
• He claimed that Black professionals should be treated with skepticism, before walking it back: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like ‘boy, I hope he is qualified.’”
• He labelled the Civil Rights Act “a huge mistake.”
• He believed in a Jewish conspiracy, claiming that “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
• He said of transgender individuals, “Someone should’ve just taken care [of them] the way we did in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”
• He advanced the debunked “great replacement theory,” which believes that “they [unspecified, but likely non-White immigrants from context] won’t stop until you [White rural America] and your children and your children’s children are eliminated.”

Despite these moral shortcomings, Kirk does not deserve to die. He may deserve harassment charges, but he does not deserve to die.

The government’s response to Kirk’s death is distasteful at best and a national disgrace at worst. In his address to the nation, Trump mentioned attacks against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. He mentioned the attack on his own life. He mentioned a 2017 attack on Rep. Steve Scalise. Yet he did not mention attacks on key Democrats: Trump’s list omits the arson attack against Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro (2025), shooting of Minnesota Dems Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman (2025), “the 2020 attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, [and] the brutal attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022.” In the last case, Trump publicly mocked Mr. Pelosi.

In response to Mr. Kirk’s death, Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-mast for three days. At first glance this seems consistent, as it was an honor he gave to two children killed while worshipping in August. Yet this administration’s general policy on lowering the flag for political deaths is simple: if he likes you, the flag comes down. He demanded the flag be raised early after Jimmy Carter’s death and kept it raised after Hortman’s death, though she (like Kirk) was assassinated in cold blood.

American politics is not a war, not in the traditional sense. Its instruments are words, not weapons; ballots, not bullets; legislation, not legions. Kirk had First Amendment rights to speak for what he believed, just as I do and just as every person in this country does. He can reasonably be described as an activist, a conservative firebrand, or a beacon to young people who saw themselves as conservative. But he was not a national hero, nor should he be treated as one. Kirk’s policy positions and extremist rhetoric caused significant damage to the United States of America and significant distress to those I love. While others may be mourning, I shed no tears for him.