Seven years ago, when I was a nonpartisan advocate for girls and women, I faced a startling question from a supportive Senate staffer: “Have you considered helping boys? They really need our help now.”

I resisted the urge to cringe. Instead of dismissing her point, I dived into the research and discovered a real, mostly ignored crisis facing boys and men. There was another surprise in the data: Liberal parents are uniquely positioned to make progress.

Women have fought hard for progress and personal freedom, breaking down barriers for women and girls, and that’s worth celebrating. But boys and men are facing crises that have been ignored for too long, and it’s time we extend our empathy to them and support efforts today for more compassion and resources being directed their way. We should champion efforts like Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent executive order aimed at addressing the growing crisis of suicide and social disconnection among boys and young men. Because if we root for only one sex to win, both sexes will lose.

A Brookings report highlights that both conservative and liberal parents — both mothers and fathers — express greater concern about the futures of their sons than those of their daughters.

Curiously, when asked about children in general — not their own — conservatives were more concerned about boys than about girls, and liberals expressed greater concern for girls.

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This disparity underscores a blind spot: Liberal parents must recognize that the struggles of boys are not just isolated issues affecting their individual families; the experiences reflect a systemic bias that demands our attention.

Today, we face a significant gender gap in education. In colleges across the United States, nearly 60% of students are women. The gender gap in higher education is now wider than it was when Title IX was enacted in 1972, but flipped in the opposite direction. Yet, where is the national campaign to address this imbalance?

Why aren’t we working to bring this back to center? Why have we abandoned “equality”?

Women now earn the majority of associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees, yet efforts to boost female achievement still often overshadow the need to support men.

Instead of questioning what’s “wrong” with boys, we should be examining the systems that are failing them. Our education system may not be designed to align with the general nature of boys, many of whom thrive in environments that encourage active engagement, hands-on learning and flexibility.

The crisis extends beyond boys’ education to adult men’s mental health, loneliness and well-being. Men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women and make up 71% of drug overdoses, yet our cultural narrative often blames their reluctance to “open up” or points to “toxic masculinity” as the root cause.

Men’s health, in general, is another area where disparities are stark. The United States has eight federal offices dedicated to women’s health — and none for men. The data would seem to point policy makers in the other direction: Men have worse health outcomes than women, experiencing more illness and dying younger.

This imbalance speaks volumes. If we truly value the health and well-being of the boys and men in our lives, we must advocate for federal and state initiatives that address men’s health.

The challenges facing boys and men today are interconnected, spanning education, mental health, physical well-being, the family court system and societal narratives. They are the results of a confluence of events, including cultural and technological changes that have disproportionately hit men and boys.

To address these disparities, we need leaders — women and men, Republicans and Democrats — who will champion equitable resources and systemic reforms.

The starting point has to be to think big. We must build an education system that nurtures the potential of all students, a mental health system that provides compassionate and effective care, and a healthcare system that recognizes the unique needs of boys and men.

And at the cultural level, we should rethink narratives that blame and shame our boys. It’s time to find compassion for boys and men.

A shift in public perspective is overdue, and progress can accelerate if women — particularly those with liberal values — champion this cause, because the future isn’t female: The future is everyone.

Lisa Britton of Los Angeles is a writer for Evie magazine and an advocate for boys, men and fathers. She wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

Picture this: A congressional hearing on “AI policy” makes the evening news. A senator gravely asks whether artificial intelligence might one day “wake up” and take over the world. Cameras flash. Headlines declare: “Lawmakers Confront the Coming Robot Threat.”

Meanwhile, outside the Beltway on main streets across the country, everyday Americans worry about whether AI tools will replace them on factory floors, in call centers, or even in classrooms. Those bread-and-butter concerns — job displacement, worker retraining, and community instability — deserve placement at the top of the agenda for policymakers. Yet legislatures too often get distracted, following academic debates that may intrigue scholars but fail to address the challenges that most directly affect people’s lives.

That misalignment is no coincidence. Academic discourse does not merely fill journals; it actively shapes the policy agenda and popular conceptions of AI. Too many scholars dwell on speculative, even trivial, hypotheticals. They debate whether large language models should be treated as co-authors on scientific papers or whether AI could ever develop consciousness.

These conversations filter into the media, morph into lawmaker talking points, and eventually dominate legislative hearings. The result is a political environment where sci-fi scenarios crowd out the issues most relevant to ordinary people — like how to safeguard workers, encourage innovation, and ensure fairness in critical industries. When lawmakers turn to scholars for guidance, they often encounter lofty speculation rather than clear-eyed analysis of how AI is already reshaping specific sectors.

The consequences are predictable. Legislatures either do nothing — paralyzed by the enormousness of “AI” as a category — or they pass laws so broad as to be meaningless. A favorite move at the state level has been to declare, in effect, that “using AI to commit an illegal act is illegal.” Laws penalizing the use of AI to do already illegal things give the appearance of legislative activity but do little to further the public interest. That approach may win headlines and votes, but it hardly addresses the real disruption workers and businesses face.

Part of the problem is definitional. “AI” is treated as if it were a single, coherent entity, when in reality it encompasses a spectrum — from narrow, task-specific tools to general-purpose models used across industries. Lumping all of this under one heading creates confusion.

Should the same rules apply to a start-up using machine learning to improve crop yields and to a tech giant rolling out a massive generative model? Should we regulate a medical imaging tool the same way we regulate a chatbot? The broader the category, the harder it becomes to write rules that are both effective and proportionate.

This definitional sprawl plays into the hands of entrenched players. Large, well-capitalized companies can afford to comply with sweeping “AI regulations” and even lobby to shape them in their favor. Smaller upstarts — which might otherwise deliver disruptive innovations — are less able to bear compliance costs. Overly broad laws risk cementing incumbents’ dominance while stifling competition and experimentation.

Academia’s misdirected focus amplifies these legislative errors. By devoting disproportionate attention to speculative harms, scholars leave a vacuum on the issues that lawmakers urgently need guidance on: workforce transitions, liability in high-risk contexts, and the uneven distribution of benefits across communities. In turn, legislators craft rules based on vibes and headlines rather than hard evidence. The cycle perpetuates popular misunderstandings about AI as a mystical, autonomous force rather than what it really is: advanced computation deployed in diverse and practical ways.

Breaking this cycle requires a shift in academic priorities. Law schools and policy institutes should be producing rigorous, sector-specific research that maps how AI is actually used in hiring, logistics, healthcare, and education. They should be equipping students — not just with critical theory about technology but with practical tools to analyze which harms are novel, which are familiar, and which are overstated. And they should reward faculty who bring that analysis into legislative conversations, even if it means fewer citations in traditional journals and more engagement with policymakers.

For legislators, the lesson is equally clear: resist the temptation to legislate against “AI” in the abstract. Instead, focus on use cases, industries, and contexts. Ask whether existing laws on consumer protection, labor, and competition already cover the concern. And when crafting new rules, ensure they are narrow enough to avoid sweeping in both the start-up and the superpower indiscriminately.

If academics can resist the pull of speculative debates, and if legislators can resist the urge to regulate AI as a monolith, we might finally bring policy into alignment with reality. The public deserves a debate focused less on worst-case scenarios and more on the practical realities of how today’s tools are already shaping daily life. That is where the real challenges — and the real opportunities — lie.

Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and author of the Appleseed AI substack. He wrote this column for The Fulcrum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news platform covering efforts to fix our governing systems.

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Vegetable-loving cooks can make ratatouille all summer long, from the first moment that peppers, zucchini, eggplant and tomatoes get glossy and ripe. But I think early autumn is when the dish truly shines.

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It’s partly context. When the evenings turn chilly, tucking into a warm bowl of soft, stewy late-season produce is inherently comforting. And since I roast my ratatouille instead of simmering it on the stove, early fall is maybe the first time since late spring when keeping the oven on for an hour is a pleasure, rather than an ordeal.

Roasted ratatouille is both less work and better tasting than the traditional method. For one thing, you don’t need to stand at the stove stirring a pot all afternoon. And spreading the vegetables out on a sheet-pan gives them the space they need to caramelize all over and develop the concentrated, almost smoky flavor that only proper browning imparts.

The key to a really good sheet-pan ratatouille is nailing both the timing and the texture. The eggplant, zucchini and peppers need to fully brown without charring. Blasting them with high heat gives them color, then dialing back the temperature lets them continue their transformation slowly and evenly. You’re not aiming for merely tender here: These vegetables should collapse into one another, melding into a glorious soft heap. (In my house, we refer to ratatouille as “mushy veg,” which we mean in the very best way.)

Using generous amounts of olive oil aids the cause, turning the vegetables confit-like. And one last crucial strategy is adding the tomatoes partway through roasting. This gives them plenty of time to burst and release their sweet juice, but not enough to evaporate it.

This weeknight version is scaled down from the party-size ratatouille recipes I’ve written in the past. Fewer vegetables create less knife work, and everything fits snugly on one pan to serve three or four people.

While the ratatouille roasts, I use the oven’s other rack to crisp up some canned, spiced chickpeas. Strewn on top of the almost custardy vegetables, they add a snappy crunch, along with protein and heft.

In summer, I often serve ratatouille with a torn hunk of baguette and a glass of ice-cold rosé. But as the weather cools, I swap out the rosé for a light-bodied red. This hearty ratatouille dinner is primed for sweater weather.

Sheet-Pan Ratatouille With Crispy Chickpeas

This colorful, vegetable-filled dish has all the flavors of ratatouille but requires a lot less work to get there. Instead of standing at the stove to cook the eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and peppers individually, they’re roasted all together on a sheet pan until they caramelize and collapse, turning silky and sweet. Spiced chickpeas are added to the oven halfway through cooking, giving them a chance to crisp up. Sprinkled onto the vegetables just before serving, they add protein and a delightful crunch.

By Melissa Clark

Yield: 3 to 4 servings

Total time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

INGREDIENTS

2 (15 1/2-ounce) cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3/4 pound zucchini, cut into 3/4-inch chunks (about 3 cups)
3/4 pound eggplant, cut into 3/4-inch chunks (3 1/2 cups)
1 large red, orange or yellow bell pepper, seeded and sliced 1/4-inch thick
4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for drizzling
1 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more for sprinkling
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
4 thyme or rosemary sprigs (or a mix)
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds (or use more cumin)
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne or hot smoked paprika
Torn basil leaves (or other soft herbs, such as chives, parsley or mint) and lemon wedges, for serving

DIRECTIONS

1. Arrange racks in the top and bottom thirds of the oven and heat to 425 degrees. Spread chickpeas on a clean kitchen towel or paper towels, patting them dry, then let air dry while you prepare the vegetables. The drier they are, the crispier they will get.

2. On a rimmed baking sheet, toss together the zucchini, eggplant, pepper, garlic, 5 tablespoons olive oil and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and spread everything in a single layer. Roast on the bottom rack for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through.

3. Stir tomatoes and herb sprigs into the vegetables. Scatter onion slices on top, drizzle everything with a little more oil and sprinkle with a little more salt. Roast for 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, spread chickpeas on another rimmed sheet pan and toss with remaining 3 tablespoons oil, the cumin and fennel seeds, cayenne, and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt.

5. Give the vegetables a stir. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees.

6. Put chickpeas on the top oven rack. Continue to roast, stirring the vegetables once or twice, and shaking the pan with the chickpeas, until vegetables are tender, chickpeas are crisp and everything is golden, 30 to 40 minutes.

7. Serve ratatouille topped with chickpeas, basil leaves or lemon wedges for squeezing.

Never had so many admirals and generals been summoned from Europe, Asia and the Middle East to a single military base. Because such a gathering has no apparent modern precedent, you would think that the event Tuesday in Quantico, Virginia, was for a good reason. But that wasn’t the case.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to fly in more than 800 of the United States’ most senior military officers to sit through two hours of banal, rambling speeches reflects how far the Pentagon has come in eight months of this administration, becoming subject to President Donald Trump’s politics and the idea that troops should be used at home.

The military was once again used as a backdrop for Trump’s ongoing clashes in America’s culture wars. What played out was largely a political-rally performance in front of service members who, by rule, aren’t allowed to engage in partisan activities.

Instead of hearing about a key strategic military shift or department restructuring, Hegseth informed them about the administration’s plans to tighten fitness and grooming standards, before Trump delivered an hour’s worth of gripes and ruminations on political life that included taking potshots at his immediate predecessor.

Appearing in front of a large American flag display, Patton-style, Trump was surprised when the military officers greeted him with silence rather than uproarious applause. “I never walked into a room so silent before,” he said. “Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. You’re not allowed to do that. Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything that you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank. There goes your future. But you just feel nice and loose, OK, because we’re all on the same team.”

It was delivered as a joke — one of many the president made that drew uncomfortable laughter over the course of his address — but Trump has pressure-tested the military’s apolitical posture. He did it this year in a speech to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and he did it repeatedly Tuesday.

He criticized President Joe Biden, taking an unusual swipe at a former commander in chief in front of U.S. forces. He doubled down on rancor when he claimed the United States faced “a war from within.” Cities led by “radical left Democrats,” he said, are unsafe places. “We’re going to straighten them out one by one,” he said. “And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too.”

Trump’s inclination to use military forces in blue parts of the country has quickly become a defining characteristic of his second term. Rather than the usual practice of deploying U.S. forces into communities confronting an emergency or natural disaster, Trump sees them as a means to establish law and order. He’s already sent the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and on Tuesday he suggested they were going into Chicago “very soon.”

These U.S. cities, he said, should be used as “training grounds” for the troops.

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In his address, Hegseth criticized the “stupid rules of engagement,” that he claimed constrained soldiers in combat. This could mean that military lawyers are reevaluating what actions are permissible on the battlefield, but he stopped short of detailing what changes were occurring.

It’s hard to believe, given that his speech ran nearly an hour, but outside of suggestions along these lines, there might not have been a single new piece of information that was relayed to the hundreds of officers compelled to attend the meeting, the total cost of which will probably never be publicly disclosed.

Instead, Hegseth spoke at length about the urgent need for U.S. service members to maintain clean-shaven faces, conduct daily workouts and execute physical fitness tests twice a year.

“Unfortunately, we have had leaders who either refused to call BS and enforce standards or leaders who felt like they were not allowed to enforce standards,” he said. “Both are unacceptable. And that’s why today, at my direction, the era of unprofessional appearance is over. No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”

He described how he was fed up with “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals.” Equally important, he continued, was the elimination of political correctness and “woke garbage” within the ranks. Hegseth punctuated this point by defending his decision to fire more than a dozen military leaders, many of whom happen to be women or people of color.

While the senior officers managed to keep silent for much of this meeting, Trump is expected to continue to test the military’s nonpartisanship during future on-base appearances. Service members will be tested to hold true to its apolitical tradition — a responsibility that could be as consequential as any they might find while in uniform.

W.J. Hennigan writes for the New York Times.