Students are back on campus while university administrators are scrambling, lawsuits are flying, and the problems that caused rampant antisemitism last spring still have not been address. Both Presidential candidates promise to address antisemitism, but Jewish students on campus cannot afford to wait until the next President takes office in 2025. Congress needs to act now, in the narrow window before Congress goes on campaign break, to update their rules and regulations to better address antisemitism. Unfortunately, the politics of this vote create short-term problems for Democrats, who will have to answer whether confronting antisemitism is worth the political cost, a tough calculation two months before the election.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Perhaps the most important power from having the majority in Congress is the ability to choose issues that unify your party while dividing the other. Less than 10% of Americans support a complete ban on abortion (JD Vance being one of them), one reason the Senate’s focus on reproductive rights makes political sense leading in to the election. Legislation to counter antisemitism, meanwhile, splits Democrats while uniting Republicans. The Antisemitism Awareness Act would put into law the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism when enforcing discrimination on campus: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” To illustrate how antisemitism manifests, IHRA provides several examples, including “[d]enying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” This law would allow the Department of Education to cut off federal funding to schools that tolerate antisemitism.
Read More: Ben Stiller: Why I Can’t Stay About the Suffering in Israel and Gaza
Some Democrats oppose this legislation because of concerns around free speech, academic freedom, and legitimate protests on campuses. Others disagree that these positions constitute antisemitism and argue this definition could be used to silence criticism of Israel amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. When the House voted in May to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act (320-91), over one-third of Democrats voted against it while 90% of Republicans supported it. The Democratic-controlled Senate has failed to take up the legislation.
The political logic is clear: Taking a vote on this legislation could be taken as a proxy for sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict that divides Democratic voters, a divide that is especially sharp among younger liberal voters who are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians and are harder to bring to the polls, particularly in states such as Ohio and Montana, where incumbent Democratic Senators are in tough re-elections. For first time more Democratic voters sympathize with the Palestinians (49%) than with Israel (38%), while nearly 80% of Republicans stand with Israel. And looking at the broad question of support for the protests on college campuses, one poll found that Republicans opposed protests 69-16, while Democrats supported them 46-31 (the rest were uncertain). Independents broke with Republicans on the issue opposing the protests 44-24. This explains why Republicans are planning to make this an issue in swing Senate elections with a massive ad campaign.
I know what it’s like to pass a law that requires a tough vote before an election. I was the chief economist on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee as the American banking system teetered on the edge of collapse in September 2008. Democrats and Republican leadership in Congress came to a deal with the Bush Administration, but that deal was voted down in the House when rank-and-file Republican members saw the unpopularity of the bailout bill coinciding with the upcoming election. But after the stock market fell almost 1,000 points, the Senate had one last chance to act before Congress went away to campaign. I was on the floor of the Senate when members stood at their desk to vote on the law that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) by a vote of 74-25. That strong, bipartisan vote sent the message and the House quickly passed the legislation.
Read More: The New Antisemitism
Voting for TARP cost members of Congress their seat. Some lost in 2008, others in the 2010 midterm, when anger over the Wall Street bailouts inspired Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party revolts. But Democrats and Republicans who supported the legislation took that vote because they knew they had to act against the threat of financial catastrophe at home and across the globe.
While the issues are different, the history of financial crises shows that pretending a problem is contained and will go away on its own is a recipe for disaster. The history of antisemitism shows that it must be directly confronted.
The good news is that tackling antisemitism, unlike TARP, is overall politically popular. The Countering Antisemitism Act, introduced in both chambers with bipartisan support, seeks the same objective as the Antisemitism Awareness Act but through establishing a national coordinator to combat antisemitism, requiring the Department of Education to coordinate strategy to counter antisemitism in higher education without using the IHRA definition of antisemitism. But even this legislation, while not as proscriptive and generally preferred among Democrats, could be used by some on the far left as a proxy vote on the conflict in the Middle East and could drive down enthusiasm among a small but important share of the Democratic Party base.
Jewish students are returning to college campuses rightfully concerned after the events of last school year. While some are suing their university to protect them, a sad statement on the failure of leadership at those institutions, only Congress can change federal law in a way that brings Uncle Sam’s strength to bear against the growing antisemitism taking hold on campuses. That is what both the Antisemitism Awareness Act and The Countering Antisemitism Act do. While the former is less popular among Democrats, they seem reluctant to take up even the more widely supported option out of fear of weighing in on a contentious issue so close to the election. This despite the fact that if Majority Leader Chuck Schumer put either bill to a vote, it would probably pass. It is critical that Senate pass antisemitism legislation to move the legislative process forward and allow the House and Senate to work through a final compromise that could be another part of President Joe Biden’s legacy, which has included wise leadership during this war between Israel and Hamas.
Will the Senate prioritize addressing antisemitism even if doing so harms some members election prospects? Soaring increases in antisemitic acts have caused a level of fear among Jews not seen in America in my lifetime. I hope that Senate leadership stands as strong now to combat antisemitism as it did then to combat financial panic.
A New Hampshire resident has died of Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) after testing positive for the rare mosquito-borne disease at the hospital, health officials said Tuesday.
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services revealed that the person who died of EEE was an adult, and was hospitalized due to severe central nervous system disease before they passed away from their illness, according to a press release.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The man was then identified by his family as 41-year-old Steven Perry. The family told WBZ that Perry did not have any underlying conditions.
This is the first New Hampshire resident to die of EEE since 2014, and the first infection in the state since that year. In 2014, DHHS identified three human infections, including two fatalities.
“We believe there is an elevated risk for EEEV (the virus that causes EEE) infections this year in New England given the positive mosquito samples identified,” said New Hampshire State Epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan. “The risk will continue into the fall until there is a hard frost that kills the mosquitos. Everybody should take steps to prevent mosquito bites when they are outdoors.”
The press release also shared that EEE has been detected in one horse and seven mosquito batches in New Hampshire so far this summer, and it pointed to the multiple recordings of EEE in its neighboring states of Vermont and Massachusetts.
Per the Center for Disease Control (CDC), EEE is incredibly rare, but it is very serious. There are typically only a handful of human cases of EEEeastern equine encephalitis in the U.S. each year —the average being 11 cases reported annually, according to the CDC. Still, the CDC cites the mortality rate for EEE as 30%, and those who survive often experience severe neurological harm.
Symptoms can include fever, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, behavioral changes, and drowsiness. According to the Massachusetts DPH, inflammation and swelling of the brain, called encephalitis, is the most dangerous and frequent serious complication of EEE. There is currently no vaccine for EEE, but the CDC recommends clinical monitoring and pain management by medical health professionals in order to relieve symptoms.
Humans and some mammals are what’s known as “dead-end hosts,” meaning they do not spread the virus, even though they get sick, to mosquitoes that bite them.
According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, four towns in Massachusetts have raised the EEE risk level to “critical” and six towns have also raised their EEE risk levels to “high.”
Read more: What to Know About the Rare But Deadly Mosquito-Borne Virus Concerning U.S. Towns
The New Hampshire DHHS provided some advice to constituents to prevent mosquito bites, especially as EEE crops up. This includes using “effective mosquito repellents,” wearing long sleeves and pants when outside. especially during peak mosquito hours in the early morning and evening— or, avoiding outdoor activities during those hours altogether.
They also recommended draining standing water around the home and placing or repairing bug screens.
Employees entering Intel’s advanced PG8 foundry on the Malaysian island of Penang must take elaborate safety precautions. Not that they’re the ones at risk.
First, staff don blue shoe coverings, followed by a hairnet, plastic hood, facemask, bunny suit, latex gloves, and eye goggles. Finally, plastic boots are placed over those already-covered shoes with a special strap tucked into the wearer’s socks to “ground” them. For it’s not just a stray hair or skin flake that can be deadly to Intel’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor chips—even the static shock from an unsuspecting pinky can measure 10,000 volts and fry their delicate circuitry.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“Static is a unit killer,” says Phynthamilkumaran Siea Dass, Intel’s director of assembly test manufacturing in Penang, as he leads TIME through interlocked doors into PG8’s cleanroom. “And we really don’t like killing units.”
It’s meticulous care emblematic of the precision engineering taking place these days on Penang, a tropical island perched off peninsular Malaysia’s west coast that for centuries was synonymous with betel trees, before the late 18th century arrival of British colonizers transformed it into a flourishing trading post. Today, Penang rivals South Korea and Silicon Valley as a vital hub producing the semiconductor chips that power the AI revolution.
As a part of this drive, Intel is investing $7 billion in new facilities in Penang, including an advanced packaging site codenamed “pelican” for transformative “3D” semiconductors—which stack chips on top of each other to boost performance—set to open early next year. As semiconductors chips themselves have exponentially advanced, so has the complexity of the backend work necessary for their deployment. Today, Intel uses its Penang and sister facilities in the nearby Kulim Hi-Tech Zone to assemble and test dozens of products including its Core, Xeon, and latest AI-enabled Meteor Lake chips.
“Malaysia is a very, very critical location in Intel’s supply chain where we are not only doing manufacturing, assembly, and testing products, but we also have design,” says Keyvan Esfarjani, an executive vice president and chief global operations officer for Intel.
And it’s not just Intel; chipmakers and suppliers including Micron, AMS Osram, and Ferrotec are all investing big in Malaysia as firms look to decouple supply chains from China (a trend dubbed “China+1” diversification). Meanwhile, Chinese counterparts are also setting up shop here partly with a view to sidestepping U.S. tariffs and export controls, thrusting backend hubs like Malaysia to the forefront of the $520 billion global semiconductor industry.
In July, foreign investors plowed $1.3 billion into Malaysian bonds, the largest monthly inflow in a year. On Aug. 8, German semiconductor giant Infineon Technologies AG opened the world’s largest 200-mm silicon carbide power fabrication plant in Kulim as part of a $7.7 billion expansion. Penang alone attracted $12.8 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2023—more than the total it received from 2013 to 2020 combined—from companies sold on its solid infrastructure, decades of engineering expertise, as well as perks like 15-year tax breaks.
“Chinese, U.S., and European firms are all converging here,” Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow tells TIME in his Georgetown office. “We welcome all investments and are neutral in the sense that we do not take sides.”
Yet geopolitics continues to bubble in the background and many wonder for how long nations like Malaysia can play all sides, with some industry groups fearing the U.S. could start restricting products and equipment built in Malaysia by locally based Chinese companies. It’s a delicate balance; while the U.S. is the top source of FDI to Malaysia, China has been its largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been fiercely critical of Washington’s backing of Israel over the Gaza crisis, and a recent survey found 75.1% of Malaysians thought the nation should align with China if forced to choose between the superpowers.
Speaking to TIME on the sidelines of the Infineon launch, Anwar stressed that Malaysia sought to benefit from the trade war without being dragged into it. “Some say maybe we’re tilting somewhat,” he said. “I would say no, we maintain a very fiercely independent foreign policy and continue to engage [all sides]. But it’s not easy to navigate this; people become very uptight about being with us or with them.”
It was 1972 when Intel—the world’s largest chipmaker by revenue—chose Penang for its first overseas production facility. Dubbed A1, that initial factory was constructed on the site of a paddy field so off-grid that the car carrying Andy Grove—Intel’s legendary future CEO and TIME’s 1997 Man of the Year—got stuck in a bog during an early site inspection and had to be dragged out by local staff.
Over half a century later, Intel’s facilities across Penang and Kulim are home to some 15,000 staff, working both to the clatter of industrial machinery and hum of climate-controlled offices. Inside its shimmering clean rooms, wafers are precision sliced into individual chips, mounted on a resin substrate, pumped with epoxy underfill, covered with metallic plates, heat-treated, and tested for defects. The only reminder from Intel’s mud-spattered local origins is Grove’s famous saying—“only the paranoid survive”—emblazoned on a stairwell wall.
It’s a maxim that neatly captures today’s industrial zeitgeist following a pandemic and simmering technology war that have upended global trade, prompting a frenzy of “friendshoring” or “nearshoring”—rather than prioritizing costs, partnering with countries more politically aligned and closer geographically—ostensibly to instill resilience into supply chains. In this regard, semiconductors are crucial—a typical car contains over 1,000 chips—and are poised to get more so following recent advances in AI.
Given today’s geopolitical climate, “what non-China customer would accept a supply plan that is anchored on China?” says Hassane El-Khoury, CEO of Arizona-based Onsemi, a $31 billion manufacturer of power semiconductors with operations in over a dozen countries including India, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Today, Onsemi aims to offer its products via two completely distinct supply chains within the same company, which “is very, very favorable from a customer perspective,” he adds.
However, at present Taiwan produces over 90% of the most advanced semiconductor nodes and China’s repeated threats to invade the self-governing island is a cause of significant anxiety. In response, the 2022 U.S. CHIPS and Science Act allocated $39 billion to semiconductor manufacturers to subsidize the opening of American foundries, including nearly $28 billion shared between Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and Micron, alone.
“The semiconductor ecosystem is critical and if you take out one player you could cripple the whole thing,” says Daniel Nenni, co-author of Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry. “So any type of repetition or redundancy we can build in is always a good thing.”
Southeast Asia is also seeing a glut of investment with over $70 billion unveiled by the world’s top tech firms in recent months. Malaysia has in particular emerged as a hub for cloud and AI data centers, with recent pledges of $6 billion from Amazon Web Services, $4.3 billion from Nvidia, $2.2 billion from Microsoft, $2.1 billion from Bytedance, and $2 billion from Google.
In addition, the rise of “chiplets”—microprocessors of varying performance and providence fused together into bespoke chips—has boosted the intricacy and importance of back-end semiconductor work. With AI capabilities today being infused into everything from cars to refrigerators, there’s an explosion in demand for advanced chips. However, AI chips are extremely expensive and overkill for more mundane functions, making the ability to package small, advanced chips with much older, basic nodes a net win for functionality and cost. “Advanced packaging is becoming more and more important and where a lot of the action is going,” says Willy Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School.
Of course, Malaysia faces fierce competition as many countries vie to be the “plus one” in every multinational’s China+1 strategy, especially India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Mexico. Each comes with advantages and drawbacks. Proximity to the U.S. makes Mexico favored by firms focusing on American consumers. India is offering many billions of dollars in subsidies, though is hampered by a comparatively unskilled labor force, onerous red tape, and untested infrastructure. Vietnam and Thailand both welcomed huge investments by Apple and Microsoft respectively in recent months, but lack a ready supply of talent or preexisting tech ecosystem. This is where Malaysia—already the world’s sixth-biggest semiconductor exporter, packaging 23% of all American chips—excels.
“It’s a really amazing semiconductor ecosystem they’ve developed specifically in Penang,” says Peter Hanbury, a semiconductor specialist at the Bain & Co. consulting firm. “It has all the different semiconductor players, their manufacturers, tool vendors, and assembly tests.”
Still, Malaysia is only too aware that it cannot afford to rest on its competitive advantage. In May, Prime Minister Anwar unveiled a three-phase $5.3 billion National Semiconductor Strategy including the training of 60,000 new engineers. “Malaysia realizes you cannot any longer just offer free land and local workers,” says Siobhan Das, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Malaysia. “It’s about the quality of the people put into those jobs.”
While the goal of international firms is to bolster supply chain resilience, for Malaysia and its competitors the impetus is to move up to higher value activities such as wafer fabrication and integrated circuit (IC) design. And rather than just attract foreign firms, they want to leverage that investment and expertise to foster domestic champions. “We’re not doing enough in IC design and wafer fabrication, because this is where the value-add is,” Zafrul Abdul Aziz, Malaysian Minister of Investment, Trade, and Industry, tells TIME. “We’re doing 20%—but 80% is what we’re not doing, because actually design is about half of the value-add process.”
Semiconductor design is not for the fainthearted. After all, not even Japan or South Korea had firms ranking in the top 10 IC designers by global revenue last year. While affluent Singapore serves as a design hub for international companies like Broadcom, Ceres, and MediaTek, it still lacks any native design industry of note. Zafrul knows that to harness the potential of design will require loosening immigration policy for foreign talent to empower the local workforce. He’s also urging the Finance Ministry to bow to demands to match the subsidies offered by other countries—even if this means diverting billions that could be spent helping local SMEs or other social projects. “If we were starting from zero, I can understand [objections],” says Zafrul, who formerly served as Finance Minister. “But we’re not that far behind. And if you look at the spillover, this is justified.”
Zafrul points to how Malaysia has already turned from being a hub for semiconductor assembling and testing into an exporter of equipment designed for that purpose. Local firm ViTrox, founded in 2000 by two former Hewlett Packard Malaysia employees, today sells assembly and testing equipment to over a dozen countries including China and the U.S. But talent acquisition and retention are key. As part of its new data center investment, Microsoft has unveiled plans for an AI Centre of Excellence to provide education and training to 200,000 young Malaysians. And as more firms converge here, competition for the best engineers will only increase.
“The ‘talent war’ is not only faced by Malaysia but is actually across this region,” says AK Chong, Intel vice-president of foundry manufacturing and supply chain. “We face strong competition not only locally and also externally.”
It’s a problem KS Pua knows only too well. Famed as the inventor of the USB flash drive, Pua was born in Malaysia but founded $3.3 billion flash memory pioneer Phison Electronics Corp. in Taiwan in 2000 after graduating there. With his U.S. customers now demanding that Phison diversify supplies away from Taiwan, and lingering doubts over the merits of India or Vietnam, Pua says he has “no choice” but to return to Malaysia. However, he says he must train his own staff and offer them equity in the new venture—Malaysia AI Storage (Mai Storage)—to prevent them being immediately poached. “Malaysia has a big problem in design,” he says. “It is difficult to get designers, especially IC designers, because they don’t have this industry and universities don’t produce this kind of talent.”
Still, today not even subsidies, talent, and an established tech ecosystem are sufficient to ensure FDI. Foreign firms are also highly cognizant of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics for investments. Although Malaysia is politically stable with a secular constitution, the Muslim-majority country of 35 million retains oppressive laws criminalizing same-sex relations that run counter to practically every multinational’s commitment to inclusion and fighting discrimination. (Although Das insists “we’ve never really had an issue” in this regard as investors “respect what the country’s profile is.”)
More immediately pressing are environmental concerns given the semiconductor industry’s sizable power and water footprint, as well as the looming influx of energy-hungry AI data centers. Owing in part to booming FDI, Malaysia envisions doubling its energy consumption by 2050—the same year it intends to go carbon neutral—but as of 2020 had an energy mix consisting of 42% natural gas, 27% oil, 26% coal, and just 4% renewables. Zafrul says one potential solution already underway is the liberalization of theliberalizatione the energy market toand allow big firms to buy clean energy directly fromnegotiate with private renewable suppliers. to access clean energy. For one, Nvidia’s new multibillion dollar data center will partner with local conglomerate YTL Power International, which has been enlisted to provide a 500-megawatt on-site solar facility.
The focus on energy supply is already causing shifts. While most hi-tech investment has until now been focused on more developed peninsula Malaysia, energy concerns are encouraging firms to look at Eastern Malaysia’s two provinces of Sabah and Sarawak, which hug the northern fringe of Borneo and boast bountiful hydropower. Sarawak’s energy composition is currently 70% green and is on track to be 100% within five years, with the province negotiating to sell clean electricity to nearby Singapore. Although comparatively underdeveloped, an enviable green energy mix helped propel Sarawak to rank fourth out of Malaysia’s 13 states for FDI in the first quarter of the year.
Still, as nations and regions tussle for a piece of the friendshoring boom, the question remains: how much resilience is really instilled, and at what cost? After all, even if the backend testing and assembly is diversified around the world, the most advanced nodes remain centered on Taiwan. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has said she aims to bring home 20% of advanced node production by the end of the decade. But with Apple alone accounting for about a quarter of TSMC’s total revenue, even a best case scenario sees American firms relying on Taiwanese imports for decades to come.
There are many other chokepoints. Most crucially, only Dutch firm ASML produces the advanced lithography machines that the most advanced fabs rely on. And while Chinese aggression has spurred efforts to diversify semiconductor chips away from Taiwan, nearly all the world’s supply of memory chips—another essential component of digital devices—are produced in South Korea, which sits under perennial threat from North Korean missiles. “Without memory, there is no logic or chips,” says Nenni. “And North Korea is much more unstable than China.”
Even the boom of chiplets, while economically prudent, isn’t necessarily great for resilience. Hanbury points to how the recent shortage of Nvidia GPUs was not due to a scarcity of wafers from TSMC but the specialized tools needed for advanced packaging. Piecing multiple chips together also means “having more single points of failure,” says Hanbury. “Because if one of those five little chip bolts doesn’t show up, you have an issue.”
Ultimately, existing supply chains were by their very nature already the most cost-effective solution, barring any major contingency, and the friendshoring drive is being driven by politics rather than business. But that shouldn’t—and won’t—prevent nations like Malaysia from doing their darndest to leverage the trend to get a leg-up.
“We have to really work faster,” says Anwar. “And focus on attracting investments, training, and getting skilled workers.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has skyrocketed into the public eye after being named as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. A previous high school social studies teacher, with roots in rural America, Walz is arguably among the more relatable candidates taking center stage during the 2024 election.
During his speech at a Democrat rally in Philadelphia on Aug. 6, Walz contrasted his financial background with that of the Republican presidential candidate. “Donald Trump’s not fighting for you or your family,” he told the crowd. “He never sat at that kitchen table like the one I grew up at, wondering how we were going to pay the bills.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Walz made headlines when it recently came back to light that the former six-term Congressman does not invest in any stocks, bonds, or other securities, according to a U.S. House of Representatives disclosure in 2019. As of August 2024, Walz still does not have any investments of this kind, per Axios. This sets him apart from many of his government counterparts says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania
“I’m not easily surprised by political information. But to see that he owns no stock?” Jamieson told TIME. “I think there are a whole lot of people out there saying, ‘Hey, yeah, that’s kind of who I am. I’ve got a little pension, if I’m lucky.’”
Walz’s limited financial portfolio also extends to his other assets, which contain his state and federal pensions as a former teacher and former Congressman, life insurance and college savings, the House disclosure shared. The disclosure also showed that Walz’s wife, Gwen Walz, earned income from a Minnesota public school and law firm Hogan Lovells.
Read More: Key Moments From Tim Walz’s DNC Speech
As a Governor, Walz earns about $127,000 in salary per year. If Walz and Harris win the 2024 election, he is poised to earn a salary of $235,100 as Vice President. According to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, Walz was offered an increase in his salary, but in August 2023 “the Compensation Council had received communication from the Governor’s office” that he declined the raise and his salary will remain the same. Walz and his wife also sold their home in 2019 for $304,000 after moving into the Minnesota Governor’s Mansion, according to the New York Times
According to the Wall Street Journal, utilizing their 2023 tax returns, the couple had a total income of about $299,000, with $135,000 of that coming from pensions or annuities.
But, theWall Street Journal also recently reported that Walz pulled $135,000 from his retirement savings to pay for his daughter Hope’s college education—something only available to the father-of-two through his accumulated pensions from the National Guard, Congress, and teaching. The publication reported that those pensions could add up to an additional $800,000 to the couple’s net worth, which was originally appraised as between $112,000 and $330,000 in 2019.
Forbes estimates that Walz’s net worth as of 2024 stands at just over $1 million—the least wealthy of all candidates on a major party ticket this election cycle.
Americans believe that you need an average net worth of $2.5 million to be considered wealthy, according to a new survey.
The survey, conducted by Logica Research from March 4-18 and released by Charles Schwab, found that the average net worth Americans think it takes to be “wealthy” has gone up slightly from 2023 and 2022, when they thought that number was $2.2 million.
The survey distinguishes between “wealthy” and “financially comfortable,” finding that Americans think it takes less to live a financially comfortable life: $778,000. Even still, that number is significantly higher than the median net worth of U.S. households in 2022, which was nearly $193,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances released in October.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“‘Wealth’ means different things to different people, whether it’s financial freedom, enriching experiences with friends and family, or a certain dollar amount,” Rob Williams, managing director of financial planning at Charles Schwab, said in a press release about the survey.
The survey also broke down the data by major regions and cities, finding that Californians have the highest threshold of what they think it takes to be rich.
Only about 10% of Americans said they were wealthy now. But when asked if they think they will become wealthy, 21% of Americans said they are “on track, “ the survey found. Younger Americans were the most optimistic about becoming wealthy, with 28% of Millenials and 29% of Gen-Zers saying they were on track.
But younger generations also had a lower threshold of what it takes to be rich. The study found that Boomers had the highest threshold of what it takes to be considered wealthy—$2.8 million—compared to the $2.7 million, $2.2 million, and $1.2 million for Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z, respectively.
A hard workout can come back to haunt you. When you wake up the next morning and try to get out of bed, everyday motions like rolling over and standing up can make your muscles whine in pain. You might have wanted to exercise again, but now you’re wondering: Can I still work out if I’m this sore?
Well, it depends.
“Soreness isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” says exercise physiologist Alyssa Olenick. Some degree of soreness is normal when you train hard or challenge your muscles in new ways. It’s a natural effect known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), in which discomfort typically peaks within 48 hours post-exercise, then usually goes away within 72 hours. It happens because putting different or higher demands than usual on our muscles can lead to tissue breakdown, which triggers an inflammatory response. (Don’t worry—that breakdown isn’t bad; the repair process that follows is actually how our muscles grow stronger.)
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“Your body basically brings a ton of immune cells to that muscle tissue, because it wants to go in and clean up that muscle breakdown,” Olenick explains. “And the soreness that you feel is actually just the swelling and all those cells coming in to clean up that breakdown, putting pressure on your nerves in your muscles.”
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The key thing to pay attention to is just how sore you feel. If the pain is up to about a “three” on a scale of one to 10, that’s perfectly fine to push through, according to Rick Richey, faculty instructor for the National Academy of Sports Medicine. You might just need to adjust your workout based on your soreness level, Olenick adds, lifting lighter weights or running a little easier, for instance.
However, if your soreness is more than just a mild ache, take it as a sign to back off. “Your body is smart: It’s telling you that you’re sore so you don’t do it again,” Richey says.
In this instance, it’s best to give your body time to recover—even if your fitness tracker says it’s time to push hard. Some trackers are equipped with a “recovery” or “readiness” score based on your heart rate variability, which picks up on total systemic stress in your body. (A reduced variation between heart beats is a signal that your nervous system is in more of a fight-or-flight mode.) “Your heart rate response doesn’t necessarily know that your muscles hurt,” Olenick says.
If you do try to push through extreme soreness, that could mess with the recovery process, undercutting the work you put in. “The recovery from the workout is [when] the protein synthesis actually takes place and you start to build muscle and build strength,” Richey adds. “If you cut the recovery too short, then you’re not going to get the benefits you want.”
Read More: 7 Metrics Everyone Should Know About Their Own Health
What’s more, working out on super-sore muscles simply isn’t very beneficial. “If you’re very sore, that impacts the strength of your muscles,” says Carol Ewing Garber, professor of movement science and education at Columbia University Teachers College. Sore muscles are not able to produce as much force and will usually fatigue more quickly. So even if you wanted to do 20 push-ups, you might not be able to get through them all or go as deep as usual. Richey adds that intense soreness can throw off your form, so you might not get the intended benefit of the exercises you’re doing—and could even end up injuring yourself.
There’s also a rare but serious condition called rhabdomyolysis—often shortened to “rhabdo”—that can happen. “It occurs when somebody really overdoes it and causes very significant damage to the muscle,” Garber says. Rapid muscle breakdown can lead to kidney damage that, in extreme cases, can be life-threatening.
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So what should you do when you’re so sore you can hardly move? Listen to what your body is craving, and take a rest day. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be stationary, though. It can actually be helpful to do a little light movement like walking, low-intensity cycling, or a gentle yoga flow. Although it might hurt initially to get up off the sofa and start, you’ll likely feel a little better by the time you sit back down. “Getting blood flow to those tissues can help the body do that cellular cleanup it’s trying to do,” Olenick says. Massage might also be useful for the same reason, Garber adds.
If you’re really itching for another hard workout, you can focus on muscles that don’t hurt—for instance, do a leg day if your arms are aching. “If you’re sore in one muscle, it’s localized,” Richey says. “You’ve got a whole different portion of your body that you can start looking at exercising.”
Yet even if you’re following a dedicated workout program or training for something big like a triathlon, taking a day or two off won’t ruin all your hard work. Remember, recovery is where the magic happens. “Some muscle soreness is a good thing in the long-term because then as the muscle repairs, it becomes stronger and becomes more resistant to soreness occurring in the future,” Garber says. So give your body the time it needs to heal. “It’s good to be a little patient.”
Last night, former First Lady Michelle Obama stepped on the DNC stage to deliver her remarks. The energy in the arena was electric. She could barely get a word out. America’s favorite political nonpolitician was about to open her mouth and the country was ready to hang on every word.
For many, Michelle Obama is emblematic of the country’s best values. Smart, dedicated to her family and country, empathetic, and kind, she has earned a reputation of being “exactly what the country needs” despite her ongoing resistance to such a path. In her speech, which many lauded as the best of the night, her words of wisdom, encouragement, and warning cut through the cheers and chants. That said, what was arguably more powerful was the implicit takeaway of Michelle Obama’s speech: Black womanhood matters.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Read More: A Full Transcript of Michelle Obama’s Speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention
Back in 2008, Michelle Obama strolled onto the DNC convention stage dressed in a long-sleeve green dress complemented with a short straight bob. Her speech was praised widely for communicating the values of her family, the party, and the country. She stayed on message, not doing too much, but also not doing too little. The goal here was to not rock the boat because the boat itself was already unsteady. Michelle Obama is a Black woman with a biracial husband and two Black daughters. Any mistake, any slipup would be scrutinized, dissected, and exported as the sole representation of Black women everywhere. The room for error was nil.
At this time, Michelle Obama had reason to subscribe to these thoughts. The headlines, which are hard to forget, chastised her toned arms and compared her to racial caricatures due to her unambiguous Black features. If she wore her braids, that could remind voters that she was indeed Black. If she showed her arms, critics would say she was a man. (It should be noted that other prominent Black women, such as Serena Williams, have faced similar attacks.) The barbs lobbed at Michelle Obama during that time were rooted in racism and sexism or misogynoir and aimed to separate her Blackness from her womanhood while attempting to punish her for both.
Black women know more than anyone what it’s like to be dehumanized and reduced to parts of our whole. We have long been seen as mammies, mules, aesthetics, tokens, and superheroes, oftentimes simultaneously. If we are not in service to someone or something, our value is debated, our competence challenged. What’s more, the obstacles faced by Black women daily are embedded into the structures and systems that line the pockets of the powerful. Despite our struggles being woven into the lives of everyone else, despite fighting for democracy time and time again, we are continually left behind.
Perhaps the Black woman who understands this most is Michelle Obama, a Black girl from the South Side of Chicago whose ordinary life led to extraordinary circumstances. As the first Black woman to enter the White House not as staff or guest, but as a resident, she was constantly disrespected despite her positioning. Those nasty headlines remained long after President Barack Obama won the election. She faced constant scrutiny for simply existing.
Fast-forward to today and Michelle Obama is now seen as the woman who would “save us all” with her wit and commitment to the country. She is viewed as the ultimate uniter of the country. Many noted that if only she attempted to run for President, she would win by a landslide– a Black savior of sorts.
Perhaps that is why her decision to stand unabashedly in her Black womanhood on Tuesday shifted something within me. See, on that stage, Michelle Obama’s evolution was on full display. She proudly wore her hair in a braided ponytail. She showed her famous toned arms by rocking a chic, sleeveless suit. She spoke at length about the influence of a Black woman – her late mother and the family’s matriarch, Marian Robinson – on her life. She referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “my girl” and called the American presidency a “Black job.” She noted Kamala Harris’ education at Howard University, one of the top historically Black universities in the country. All nods to the pride associated with being a Black woman.
What we bore witness to, besides a great speech filled with masterful prose and clear calls to action, was Michelle Obama becoming the physical embodiment of Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ phrase “reclaiming my time.” In this case, Michelle Obama was publicly reclaiming her Black womanhood, on the largest political stage, during a historic presidential run.
To understand the significance of this reclamation, you have to recognize that stages like that require Black women to hide parts of ourselves. Black women and girls are warned constantly not to be too much. I recall my own experiences growing up being told I was too loud or too disruptive. Even today, as a young Black woman studying policy and economics at Harvard, I’m told I’m too opinionated or too assertive.
Michelle Obama choosing to be everything she is as a Black woman on a stage like the DNC was an act of defiance. In choosing to be an unapologetic Black woman, Michelle Obama not only did what she was there to do, making the case for a Kamala Harris presidency, but she also showed America what Black womanhood, in its full capacity, can look like at this level of leadership. It can look like joy. It can look like style. It can look like grief. It can look like reflection. It can look like affection. It can look like heritage. It can look like history. It can look like community. It can look like humanity.
Black women, Michelle Obama told us, are human and deserve to be treated as such, whether we’re going about our daily lives or standing among some of the most powerful people in the world. As Kamala Harris continues her historic campaign, we would all do well to keep this message in mind.
On Christmas Eve of 2002, Laci Peterson disappeared from the Modesto, California home she shared with her husband, Scott Peterson. The 27-year-old was eight months pregnant with the couple’s first child.
Four months later, the bodies of Laci and her unborn baby, who was to be named Conner, washed ashore in the San Francisco Bay. Shortly after, Scott Peterson, who said he last saw his wife as he was leaving for a fishing trip at Berkeley Marina, about 90 miles west of Modesto, was arrested and charged with murdering Laci and Conner.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Scott Peterson, who was convicted of murder in 2004 and is currently serving a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole, has always maintained his innocence. In a new docu-series, Face to Face with Scott Peterson, he gives his first on-camera interviews since 2003. Out August 20, Face to Face also features conversations with his sister-in-law Janey Peterson, former Modesto Police Department lead detective Al Brocchini and detective Jon Buehler, Scott’s former defense attorney Lara Yeretsian, and former ABC News Producer Mike Gudgell. The series, directed by Shareen Anderson, who executive produced A&E’s 2017 docuseries The Murder of Laci Peterson, also explores developments in the case since the Los Angeles Innocence Project took it on in early 2024.
Here’s everything you need to know about the murder of Laci Peterson, Scott Peterson’s work with the Innocence Project, and the new revelations in Face to Face.
Just days after Laci and Conner’s bodies were found, Scott Peterson was arrested near a golf course in San Diego on April 18, 2003. He was charged with two counts of murder, and pleaded not guilty to both. At the time, Peterson claimed that he arrived home from fishing to find the couple’s dog on a leash in the backyard and no sign of Laci.
Prior to Peterson’s trial in 2004, a Fresno massage therapist named Amber Frey claimed she had been in a relationship with him and that he had told her he wasn’t married.
The five-month trial began in June 2004 in San Mateo County. Prosecutors alleged that Peterson had faked his wife’s disappearance after dumping her body in the Berkeley Marina on Christmas Eve. However, his defense attorneys argued Laci had been killed in a burglary.
Peterson was ultimately found guilty by a jury and convicted of murdering Laci in the first degree and his unborn child in the second degree. The same jury recommended that Peterson be sentenced to death, a ruling upheld by Judge Alfred Delucchi in 2005.
In 2020, the California Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death sentence due to a “series of clear and significant errors in jury selection.” While they upheld his murder convictions, two months later, the state’s Supreme Court ordered a re-examination, sending the case back to the San Mateo County Superior Court, who would determine whether Peterson should receive a new trial.
The California Supreme Court also said that an original juror named Richelle Nice had committed “prejudicial misconduct” by failing to disclose that she had been involved with a 2000 lawsuit to obtain a restraining order against her then-boyfriend’s ex, whom she accused of stalking and harassment at the time. Nice also had a fight with her ex-boyfriend that resulted in his arrest; neither incident was disclosed to the court when they asked in 2005: “Have you ever been a victim of a crime?”
In addition to sending Scott multiple letters in prison, Nice has been accused by the defense of being a “stealth juror” and attempting to profit from her position on the jury in the 2005 trial (someone who deliberately hides their biases to ensure they are picked for the jury panel, thus ensuring a guilty verdict).
In the years since, Nice granted interviews to 20/20, Dr. Oz, and E! True Hollywood Story, took part in the documentary The Murder of Laci Peterson, and co-wrote a book with six other panelists: We, the Jury: Deciding the Scott Peterson Case. In February 2022, Nice told the court that she did not disclose those two incidents because she did not consider herself a crime victim. (Nice does personally appear in Face To Face.)
In 2021, Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager announced that she would not retry the penalty phase of the trial, which meant that Peterson would be resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Peterson was denied a request for a new trial in 2022.
In summer 2023, Peterson contacted the Los Angeles Innocence Project with a request for its attorneys to investigate his case.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, L.A.I.P. Director Paula Mitchell, said Peterson had “a claim of actual innocence that is supported by newly discovered evidence.” The nonprofit cited a mattress that was found in a burning van near the Peterson home shortly after Laci’s disappearance as grounds for a new forensic examination.
“Mr. Peterson’s been waiting for 20 years for police reports and audio recordings and video recordings that should have been provided,” Mitchell added. “We are eager to get our investigation underway.”
In a November 2023 statement included in the L.A.I.P.’s discovery motions, Peterson said: “I believe this additional information will assist in determining what happened to my family and prove that I am innocent and had nothing to do with these horrible crimes that were committed against my wife and son. In 2004, I was wrongfully convicted of murdering my wife, Laci, … and our unborn son, Conner.”
The L.A.I.P. will focus on a few key pieces of new evidence, which include witnesses who may have seen Laci walking her dog after Scott left to go fishing, a burglary across the street from the Petersons’ occurring around the same time Laci disappeared (the burglars, later caught and interviewed by police, have denied having anything to do with Laci’s disappearance), and a suspicious van with a blood-stained mattress that caught on fire less than a mile from the Petersons’ home one day after Laci’s disappearance. The L.A.I.P. also points to the fact that a Croton watch, possibly belonging to Laci, had been sold at a pawn shop a few days after she went missing.
Face To Face mostly excavates existing information around the Laci Peterson case and speaks to parties within the prosecution and defense. Viewers have the opportunity to hear from Scott Petersonhimself, as director Shareen Anderson questions him on camera about his affair with Amber Frey, his choice not to testify in his trial, the circumstances surrounding his 2003 arrest (Peterson was arrested 30 miles from the Mexico border with 10K in cash and his brother’s ID), and what he makes of the prosecution’s argument that he killed Laci because he didn’t want to be a father or lead a domestic life.
“Don’t trust me. Look at the evidence,” Peterson says in the series.
In addition to interviewing various neighbors who claim they witnessed Laci walking the family dog after Scott had already left to go fishing, Face to Face builds a narrative that Modesto police were too focused on Scott – and only Scott – during the initial investigation. In a new interview, present-day Scott Peterson accuses Modesto police of having confirmation bias against him. “I just don’t get that argument [that I didn’t want to be a father], “that’s just not true.” Additionally, former neighbors and a private investigator hired by the Peterson family describe a lack of follow up from Modesto Police during the investigation.
Speaking on his affair with Frey, who did testify during the 2005 trial, Peterson reasons that he withheld those details from police because he “wanted the search [for Laci] to continue… I guess I understand why she tried to turn it into a relationship after the fact and made claims that it was something more. But it simply wasn’t. That’s a massive misconception, I think. And I was absolutely wrong. But I embrace the truth on that. It’s a horrible truth.”
As to why he had his brother’s ID and thousands in cash near the Mexico border upon being arrested, Peterson notes that he had been spending time with his family in San Diego. Any evasive maneuvers he’d committed while driving ahead of police (leading to his arrest) were because he’d allegedly mistaken them for paparazzi. He adds that he had his brother’s ID in order to get a discount on the golf range. “I guess I was gonna scam the golf course a little bit.” Finally, he tells Anderson that he thought the police would realize they’d made a mistake after his arrest.
Present-day Peterson also wonders out loud what would have happened if he’d let his defense team waive time on his trial in order to present more evidence around his claimed innocence. “I would not waive time on my trial, and I look back on that now and I wonder if that was the right decision,” Scott says. “They had the evidence of my innocence… [but] It was a nightmare being stuck in county jail… Now I look back on some of the things we learned, some of the things we were still learning during trial, and wondered, gosh, if I had been more prudent or patient or whatever, maybe things would have been different.”
Face To Face also parses newer pieces of evidence currently under examination by the L.A.I.P. and illustrates the likelihood that Laci may have confronted a burglary happening across the street from her home in Modesto. Though the convicted burglars Steven Todd and Donald Pearce claimed that they were not involved with Laci’s case (police also determined that they had alibis for Christmas Eve), investigative journalists and Peterson’s sister-in-law Janey, and members of Peterson’s defense team who were interviewed for Face To Face, point to a larger criminal network based out of Modesto’s high-crime Airport district that may have been involved in Laci’s disappearance.
These claims are bolstered by a tip from Modesto resident Tom Harshman, who says in the series that he called the police twice in 2002 to report seeing a pregnant woman being “forced into the back of a van.” The tip was not followed up on. John Buehler, former Modesto detective, says that they got a lot of “phantom sightings” at the time and didn’t remember hearing about Tom Harshman’s tip.
When asked about the L.A.I.P. taking up Peterson’s case, Buehler tells Face To Face that it’s “not totally unexpected,” while former detective Al Broccini calls it “bullshit… There is absolutely no reasonable doubt he did it. [The] jury got it right.”
“Anybody who says they saw Laci walking the dog got interviewed,” Broccini says. Buehler adds: “Eyewitness testimony is very subjective. It would be very easy for a witness to want to be helpful, to claim later that they saw Laci, when actually they didn’t, it was a mistaken identity thing. Or, more sinister, they wanted to get involved in this because it was high-profile, it was in the news. We had a few things like that that popped up.”
“If we had the wrong guy in prison, we’d want to know about it,” Buehler concludes.
A judge denied the majority of the L.A.I.P.’s DNA testing requests in May 2024. Only the duct tape found on Laci’s body will be tested. If someone else’s DNA is discovered, it may be enough to grant Petersona new trial.
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown said he would consider suing former President Donald Trump in an interview with CBS News this week. His comments come amid a continued struggle over whether the two endured a treacherous helicopter ride together—something the former President and current Republican presidential nominee says did happen, but Brown says did not.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“Somebody has got to make sure that he stops lying,” Brown is quoted as saying. “If he keeps it up, at some point, I’m going to give him a taste of his own conduct. If he sues the New York Times for printing that I said he lied, I’m going to sue him.”
During a press conference on Aug. 8 at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump was asked about Vice President Kamala Harris—the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in the upcoming election—and her past relationship with Brown. (It’s understood that Harris and Brown dated for some time in the mid-1990s. In 2020, Brown authored an opinion piece for the San Francisco Chronicle titled: “Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?”)
In response, Trump told a story, describing him and Brown as passengers of a helicopter that had an emergency landing.
“Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump said. “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this was the end. There was an emergency landing.”
Trump went on to say that Brown told him “terrible things” about Harris.
In his 2023 book Letters to Trump, in which he published his letters to a number of influential people—the former President discussed the alleged helicopter incident in the caption of a photo of him with Brown.
“We actually had an emergency landing in a helicopter together. It was a little scary for both of us, but thankfully we made it,” the caption read.
However, as reported by the New York Times soon after Trump’s press conference, Brown has denied this ever took place.
“You know me well enough to know that if I almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it,” Brown, who also denied any ill-will between himself and Harris, told the publication. Current theories suggest that Trump may have mixed up Brown with other politicians. For example, former California Gov. Jerry Brown once rode with Trump in a helicopter in 2018 to survey wildfire damage, yet no emergency landing was reported. On Aug. 9, Politico also reported that former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator Nate Holden claimed he once rode with Trump in a helicopter heading to New Jersey, which a fellow passenger said ended in an emergency landing
After the New York Times posted the story on Aug. 8, Trump fought back the next day, reportedly calling Maggie Haberman, a reporter at the paper. According to Haberman, Trump shouted that he had proof of the alleged helicopter ride, and that he was “probably going to sue” over the article.
Now, Brown has responded to Trump’s threat to sue.
In his interview with CBS News, Brown is also quoted as saying that Trump’s story is “a deliberate misrepresentation” and is just “a distraction from the magnificence” of Harris’ “ascendancy” in the past weeks since President Joe Biden endorsed her run for presidency, with most of the Democratic Party following suit.
TIME has reached out to the Trump campaign and the Willie Brown Institute for comment and further information.
Some lucky sleepers climb into bed, close their eyes, and are out cold within five minutes. Others stare at the ceiling for an hour, check the clock, try to find a fresh angle of the ceiling to observe, and then toss, turn, and repeat, every night, week after week.
Insomnia affects 10% to 15% of the U.S. population, and it’s usually caused by a variety of biological and behavioral factors, says Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy, director of the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center for Sleep, Circadian and Neuroscience Research. Women, people who work nights, and seniors are among those most at risk. It often runs in families, and recently, experts concluded that COVID-19 can trigger new insomnia.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]While everyone will experience the occasional sleepless night, usually brought on by stress or lifestyle changes, chronic insomnia occurs three or more nights a week, lasts more than three months, and can’t be fully explained by a health problem. “For those who are in the ‘very severe’ category, it can be debilitating and incapacitating,” Parthasarathy says. “We see people where it’s crippling, and then there are some where it’s been annoying them for years”—and when they retire or otherwise have more free time, they finally decide to do something about it.
There’s good reason to work on putting your insomnia to sleep: The sleep disorder is associated with an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack, and stroke. And it can make you miserable.
Fortunately, resetting your sleep schedule can help the majority of people recover from insomnia—and cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I, is a proven way of doing it. But it takes time, and it’s not always an easy process.
CBT-I is like “a brain retraining program,” says Dr. Jing Wang, clinical director of the Mount Sinai Integrative Sleep Center and an associate professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Over the course of weekly sessions for around four to eight weeks, you’ll work with a sleep doctor or psychiatrist to target the behaviors and habits perpetuating your insomnia.
One of the cornerstones of treatment is sleep restriction therapy, which helps reset and create new habits around what happens when you’re in bed. Patients generally keep a sleep diary tracking what time they get into bed, when they wake up, and how many hours they actually sleep, Parthasarathy says. Then, doctors use that information to create a temporary schedule. Imagine, for example, that someone goes to bed at 8 p.m. and gets up at 6 a.m., but they’re only actually asleep for six of those hours. The rest of the time? They’re lying there in agony, stressed over the fact that they’re still awake—or they’re rummaging through the fridge, and then turning their laptop on to at least make that sleepless time productive.
With sleep restriction therapy, Parthasarathy would work backward from that hypothetical patient’s wake time (6 a.m.), since it’s probably non-negotiable due to work. Then he would instruct the person to get into bed at midnight—with the idea that they’d fall right asleep and get the same six hours of sleep before getting up at 6 a.m. Other patients will have different get-into-bed times, based on how many hours they’re currently sleeping per night, and what time they need to get up. (Doctors never set a schedule that drops someone below 5.5 hours of sleep per night, however.)
No matter how tired a person feels leading up to midnight—or whatever other sleep time they’ve been assigned—they’re not allowed to climb into bed. “We’re trying to consolidate the sleep period, and take off the time where sleep is not actually happening in the person’s bed,” he says. “By making them go longer without sleep, their brain becomes thirsty for it. So when they go to bed at 12, they’re not tossing and turning for an hour. They fall asleep in 5 or 10 minutes.”
Read More: What’s the Least Amount of Sleep You Need to Get?
After one week, Parthasarathy assesses how well his patients are sleeping. While sleep diaries aren’t always 100% accurate, he’s found that patients generally do a good job estimating how long it took them to fall asleep, and how much they were awake during the night, especially given that many watch the clock. If someone’s sleep efficiency was greater than 90% every night—meaning they slept for more than 90% of the time they were in bed—he’ll relax their sleeping window by 15 minutes, so they get to go to bed slightly earlier. He’ll continue adjusting the sleep window by 15-minute increments weekly until the person’s sleep efficacy drops to 85% to 90%. “If it falls below 85%, that means there’s a lot of them lying around in bed, and we don’t want that,” he says. With time, patients’ sleep schedules are adjusted to their ideal bedtime—and by then, their body has learned that as soon as they get into bed, it’s time to fall asleep. “There’s subliminal programming that happens in our brain,” Parthasarathy says.
Though CBT-I is considered safe and effective for most people, sleep restriction can be exhausting; as Parthasarathy acknowledges, things often get worse before they get better for people with insomnia. That’s why he advises people with conditions like a seizure disorder or bipolar disorder to avoid CBT-I—lack of sleep can be triggering. It’s not always the right choice for people in jobs that require vigilance, either, like public-transportation drivers.
In general, even if you proceed with CBT-I, it’s important to be safe in those hours before you’re allowed to get into bed. “The first week or two after starting sleep restriction, people will feel sleepier,” Parthasarathy says. “Some of them are like, ‘Why am I doing this to myself?’” In addition to avoiding risky behaviors like driving, experts recommend filling the hours before you’re allowed to get into bed with relaxing activities: maybe journaling, taking a bath, or meditating.
Improving sleep hygiene is an essential part of CBT-I, Wang says. That includes adopting new habits around screens: Wang recommends turning off phones, computers, and even the TV at least one to two hours before going to bed. Part of the problem with screens, she says, is the light they produce: It suppresses melatonin, the hormone that helps prepare you for sleep.
The content on your screens can also be problematic. People have heightened reactions to, for example, watching the news, Wang points out—while some stay up late to catch whatever’s going on in politics or around the world, the scenes they see playing out can upset them to the point that they’re unable to sleep. Watching a horror film before bed can have a similar effect.
In addition to keeping your bedroom as dark as possible, consider ditching your alarm clock. “Cover it, or take it out of the bedroom,” Wang advises. “That act of looking at the time is activating. You’re taking a mental check: ‘OK, it’s midnight, I need to be up in five hours.’” That kind of stress certainly does not encourage sleep.
Wang also urges patients to ditch the sleep trackers—or at least look at them less frequently. Some people get fixated on combing through data, she’s found, obsessing over every slight change in their sleep patterns. “There’s always night-to-night variability,” she says. “So for somebody for whom looking at that data is causing a lot of anxiety, and that’s getting them more worked up, I really encourage them not to check it.”
What you eat and drink before going to bed can play a role in how soundly you sleep. Doctors generally recommend not eating right before bed—late meals are linked with more frequent wake-ups during the night. And it’s a good idea to cut off caffeine intake by 12 p.m., says Dr. Emerson Wickwire, section head of sleep medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Proceed carefully, too, with alcohol intake. “Alcohol makes everything about sleep worse,” Wickwire says, “with one exception—you’ll fall asleep faster.” After that, things take a turn. Alcohol is a muscle relaxant, which means it relaxes the muscles in the upper airway, potentially causing symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, even in people who aren’t diagnosed with the condition. “The second reason that alcohol can impair sleep is that it changes the distribution of sleep stages across the evening, or what’s called sleep architecture, and that can negatively impact brain function,” he says. You might find that you experience more fragmented sleep after drinking, waking up frequently and having trouble falling back asleep.
Read More: How to Stop Procrastinating at Bedtime and Actually Go to Sleep
People with a napping habit also need to make adjustments while undergoing CBT-I. The sleep drive is influenced by how long you’ve been awake and how active you’ve been, Wickwire says. While napping is OK for people who don’t have insomnia, it can thwart progress during CBT-I, because it means someone won’t be as tired when it’s time to go to bed. For example, if you get up at 7 a.m., you’ve been awake for 16 hours by 11 p.m.—which means your body should be craving sleep. “But if you take a nap at 6 p.m., by 11 p.m. you’ve only been awake for four or five hours,” he says, which could sentence you to a night of tossing and turning.
Clinical practice guidelines from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine consistently recommend CBT-I as the first-line treatment for chronic insomnia. “There are multiple studies that have compared outcomes between behavioral treatments and medication treatments,” Wickwire says. “And in general, CBT is equally effective in the short term, with gains better maintained over time.” Research suggests that CBT-I leads to fewer side effects than medication, a lower chance of relapse, and a tendency for sleep to continue improving long into the future.
“No pill can teach your body how to sleep,” Wickwire says. “At the same time, that’s not to say that all sleep medications are bad.” Patients should talk to their provider; sometimes, like in especially severe cases, it makes sense to combine CBT-I with a prescription sleep medication.
Read More: How to Get Your Partner to Stop Snoring
Over-the-counter sleep supplements are a different story. It’s important not to rely on products like ZzzQuil, Benadryl, melatonin gummies, or Advil PM, Wang says. “If you’re sick and need to take one, that’s fine.” But with melatonin especially, “There’s a lot of variability and potential for misuses, or inadvertently causing the reverse effect. We really discourage self-medicating for insomnia.”
People with insomnia often start to see improvement in how much sleep they’re getting within a couple weeks. Exactly how quickly people respond varies, Wang says; some might need six to 12 weeks before noticing a meaningful difference.
Wang likes to remind patients—who are often stressed and exhausted—that change is possible. “Oftentimes it’s very slow. We don’t expect that tomorrow, these issues will all go away,” she says. “It’s the little steps and consistency—and encouraging people who feel like this is too hard that, yes, it may get worse before it gets better.” But if you keep at it, she adds, long, peaceful nights of slumber will be more than a sweet dream.
