"Opioids are a symptom and a symbol of far deeper issues in the U.S.," says Shannon Monnat, associate professor of sociology and Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion. She points to deteriorating economic conditions, a lack of investment in schools, a quick-fix culture and a toxic mix of "pain, despair, disconnection and lack of opportunity" as upstream problems that have fed into the nation's current drug crisis.

According to Dean David Van Slyke, "The bigger and longer term issue is: What will be the capacity of the federal government to actually attract the best and brightest people to its work?"

"Most people are not being inundated with fake news," says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science. "That is not to say that this isn’t a problem, but I don’t think this is the magnitude of a problem that people often think it is."

"For many government workers, it's still a chance to have real upward mobility but also be able to balance work and life," says Dean David Van Slyke. "It's 40-45 hours a week of work, but you still can have upward mobility, positive benefits and have purpose in your job."

Perry Singleton, associate professor of economics, was cited in Psychology Today, about his study which found that the association between disability and divorce is greatest among young and educated males who experience a work-preventing, rather than a work-limiting, disability.

 The team, which includes Doug Wolf, professor of public administration and international affairs, Shannon Monnat, associate professor of sociology, and Jennifer Karas Montez, professor of sociology, will explore pre-emption’s effect on geographic inequities in health, focusing on labor and environmental policies.

"Politicians are always looking to avoid blame," says Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science. "It's not surprising that the IRS is one of the agencies where people are now going back, because people do notice if they don't get their tax refunds on time. What this is doing is to try and get the public to not notice, to smooth over some of the bumps we'll see if the shutdown continues much longer." 

According to University Professor Sean O'Keefe, "...it isn’t necessarily the beginning of a new space race as much as it is evidence that exploration beyond low Earth orbit is picking up momentum. That’s been a long time coming, but it signals the dawning of a new chapter of global ambitions to explore our neighborhood in this solar system." 

The magazine leads with a feature on Minnowbrook at 50, where leading public administration scholars and practitioners gathered to address the field's most pressing issues. Historically, each Minnowbrook conference culminated in the publication of books, articles and/or special issues of journals that left a lasting impression on scholars around the world.

"Both sides are finding out that trade wars are painful," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics. "The Chinese economy is slowing. ...Foreign investment into the U.S. is down, and there is concern about domestic investment moving forward."

To reconcile the differences between the Antideficiency Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, Todd Dickey, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs, suggests that the government "could make clear when the government could lawfully pay FLSA-required wages for labor performed during a shutdown." 

Research by Uğur Altundal, a PhD student in political science at the Maxwell School, was cited in the Newsweek article "Ranked: The World's Least Powerful Passports in 2019." "Despite the important progress made in overall global mobility," Altundal and co-author Omer Zarpli write in their contribution to Henley and Partners annual report on global mobility, "there remains a significant ‘global mobility divide’, with some passports much more powerful than others." 01/11/19