Just an hour east of the cobblestoned streets and brightly colored Spanish colonial buildings of San Juan, a symphony of bird calls and croaking coquí frogs echoes along the first backpacking trail in a U.S. tropical rainforest. Puerto Rico’s new NorEste (Northeast) Trail takes hikers from the coral reefs and bioluminescent lagoon of Fajardo to the highest peak in El Yunque National Forest—a 28,000-acre tropical rainforest known for its beauty and biodiversity. Only 25 to 50 hikers a day will be allowed to experience the 40-mile, three- to five-day adventure. While the official route is about 90 percent complete, you can already…

Tlthough most famous for her work on another banality, Hannah Arendt wrote forcefully against the use of cliché verbiage. Said Arendt, “clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.” This seems especially true for those of us who work in media, on both the right and the left. Phrases such as “coastal elites” and “the mainstream media,” not to mention the banality that is “making space” for transgender voices, all too often stand in for actual thought. Such clichés do our thinking for us, and when we…

When my friend Lakshminarayana Ganti, an operations management and cybersecurity specialist from India, texted me this year to let me know that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had “lost” the $1,225 check his lawyer had submitted as payment for processing his green card application, I wasn’t especially shocked. Such incompetence is commonplace in U.S. immigration bureaucracy, and most immigrants to the United States have experienced or heard of similar treatment. The resulting delay though meant that his eligibility for a green card lapsed—the official term is “retrogressed”—and he could now be looking at another year or more before…

Students need more exposure to the way everyday things work and are made.   One of the most useless questions you can ask a kid is, What do you want to be when you grow up? The more useful question is: What are you good at? But schools aren’t giving kids enough of a chance to find out. As a professor of animal science, I have ample opportunity to observe how young people emerge from our education system into further study and the work world. As a visual thinker who has autism, I often think about how education fails to meet the needs of our…

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is responsible for the two planes full of illegal immigrants that landed at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts on Wednesday, according to Fox News. Approximately 48 migrants landed at Martha’s Vineyard Airport Wednesday afternoon, the Vineyard Gazette reported. Although the Gazette reported the migrants came from Texas, DeSantis took credit for sending the migrants. “Yes, Florida can confirm the two planes with illegal immigrants that arrived in Martha’s Vineyard today were part of the state’s relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations,” Desantis communications director Taryn Fenske told Fox News. “States like Massachusetts, New York and California will…