Walk down your grocery aisle, and you’ll spot many foods containing ingredients you won’t find in Europe. The unusual way the U.S. regulates ingredients is in the news and the hot seat right now, thanks to the recent ban of a food additive—red dye 3, an artificial dye linked to cancer in animals—and the rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). During his confirmation hearing on Jan. 30, Kennedy said that compared to Europe, the U.S. “looks at any new chemical as innocent until proven guilty.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“It needs to end,” he said.
Here’s what to know about some of the most controversial food additives under the microscope and why additives are regulated differently in the U.S.
Titanium dioxide is used to make foods and beverages whiter and brighter. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers it safe for human consumption, but it isn’t found in foods in Europe. In 2022, the European Food Safety Authority banned titanium dioxide, saying that after reviewing thousands of studies, it could no longer consider the additive safe because it has the potential to damage DNA or cause chromosomal damage.
“A chemical that builds up in the body and could harm the immune and nervous systems should not be in candies and treats marketed to children,” says Melanie Benesh, vice president of governmental affairs at Environmental Working Group (EWG), which filed a petition to the FDA in 2023 asking it to ban titanium dioxide.
In the U.S., it’s still found in many confections, including Sour Patch Kids watermelon candies, Hostess chocolate cupcakes and Hostess powdered Donettes, Friendly’s cake singles birthday cake ice cream, Zweet sour belts, and Skittles.
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Potassium bromate is another ingredient banned in the U.K. and many other countries around the world—including Canada, Brazil, and Argentina—but allowed in the U.S. in certain quantities. It has been linked to cancer in humans as well as gut problems, and was listed to be “potentially carcinogenic to humans” in 1999 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is used to improve the texture of dough and bread, and in the U.S., it’s still found in some breads (such as soft heroes from A&M Bronx Baking), frozen pizzas (like Imo’s Pepperoni), and baked goods.
Added to products to extend their shelf life, propylparaben is linked in animals to hormone disruption. Since 2006, it’s been illegal to use it as a food additive in Europe. But in the U.S., it’s a listed ingredient in bread and bakery products , including Chi-Chi’s white corn tortillas and red decorating icing from Great Value, Walmart’s generic brand.
The U.S. has a very different approach to regulating additives than many other countries, says Thomas Galligan, principal scientist for food additives at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group.
“The E.U. says that if they can’t dismiss the possibility of harm, they can’t find an additive safe,” Galligan says. In the U.S., the bar is much lower; companies can add new ingredients to their foods without even informing the FDA. “In the U.S., it feels like the FDA is waiting to act until harm is definitely proven,” says Galligan.
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Companies that include these additives in their products defend their safety. Mars Wrigley, which manufactures Skittles, said in a statement to TIME that all of its ingredients are safe and manufactured in strict compliance with safety requirements established by regulators including the FDA. J.M. Smucker, which owns Hostess, said that titanium dioxide is a common ingredient approved by the FDA and that its products follow the FDA regulations that the quantity of titanium not exceed 1% of the weight of the food. And Walmart, which produces Great Value products like the red icing containing propylparaben, said that food and safety is always its top priority. Several companies did not return requests for comment, including Mondelez, which owns the company that makes Sour Patch Kids; Brix Holdings, which owns Friendly’s; Zweet Shop, which makes Zweet’s; and Hormel, which owns Chi-Chi’s. A&M Bronx Baking and Imo’s also did not return requests for comment.
The FDA said it could not provide comment because the Department of Health and Human Services has issued “a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health.”
The presence of so many additives illuminates what many experts see as a concerning lack of oversight of chemicals in food. When the FDA is considering regulation on a food additive, it will invite public comment, seeking input from scientists, academics, and companies. But for many food additives, companies don’t have to seek that public comment or even specific FDA approval to add new chemicals to their foods.
It can instead convene its own panel to declare the additive as “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS. The company can either notify the FDA that it is adding the chemical, or skip that process and just begin adding it because the panel that it hired deemed it safe. The Government Accountability Office criticized this process in 2010, saying that the FDA “does not help ensure the safety of all new GRAS determinations.” And one study reviewing 403 GRAS notices found that companies often used the same small group of people to make these determinations.
GRAS arose out of a Congressional bill from 1958, but the term was intended for everyday substances like flour or vegetable oil that were frequently used as additives. Galligan worries that there are GRAS substances currently in use that could be contributing to diseases in a way scientists don’t yet know about. “There are chemicals entering the food supply with zero oversight from the FDA,” he says. (This is in contrast to Europe, where a third-party government agency decides what food ingredients are considered safe.)
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Nearly 99% of new chemicals introduced in the U.S. food supply between 2000 and 2021 came through GRAS notices, rather than FDA review, according to EWG. “That’s an enormous number,” says Benesh of EWG.
The GRAS process has gone awry before. In 2022, a company called Daily Harvest started adding a substance called tara flour to its lentil and leek crumbles product, labeling the additive GRAS. That year, nearly 400 people became sick from the product. Some people got so sick that their livers malfunctioned and they had to have their gallbladders removed. The culprit was likely tara flour—yet the FDA did not ban it until 2024. (Daily Harvest did not provide comment for this story.)
One reason companies may choose to label substances GRAS is that the FDA process to approve additives is relatively slow. So is its process to ban them. Red dye 3 has been banned from use in topical drugs and cosmetics since 1990, when the FDA found that the additive causes cancer in animals.
A charitable explanation for the FDA’s slow pace is that it lacks resources, says Benesh. But there are other problems about the way the FDA reviews foods that aren’t only linked to a lack of resources, she says.
“The E.U. made a concerted effort starting in 2010 or so to systematically go back and look through the food chemicals allowed in Europe at the time and determine if they’re still safe,” she says. “We haven’t done anything like that.”
If Kennedy is confirmed as HHS Secretary—which oversees the FDA—he plans to alter this system. He publicly criticized GRAS during his confirmation hearing, and has said he would dramatically change the FDA.
“The FDA allows hundreds of additives into our chemical food supply that are banned in other countries,” he said in a video posted in October promoting his Make America Healthy Again agenda.
California is another change agent. Its ban of potassium bromate, propylparaben, red dye 3, and the additive brominated vegetable oil has forced many companies to start to reformulate their foods because it’s difficult to manufacture different foods for California than the rest of the country. And members of Congress are starting to pay attention. In Sept. 2024, Rep. Rose DeLauro from Connecticut introduced a bill, the Toxic Free Food Act, that would alter the GRAS process and require companies to submit more evidence that a food is safe before being used in products.
“There is growing awareness that the system is broken and that the food companies should not be the ones determining whether or not their products are safe,” Benesh says.
When that awareness will reach grocery aisles is an open question.
PALM BEACH, Fla. — New trade penalties against Canada, Mexico and China that President Donald Trump plans to impose Saturday represent an aggressive early move against America’s three largest trading partners, but at the risk of higher inflation and possible disruptions to the global economy.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]In Trump’s view, the 25% tariffs against the two North American allies and a 10% tax on imports from Washington’s chief economic rival are a way for the United States to throw around its financial heft to reshape the world.
“You see the power of the tariff,” Trump told reporters Friday. “Nobody can compete with us because we have by far the biggest piggy bank.”
The Republican president is making a major political bet that his actions will not worsen inflation, cause financial aftershocks that could destabilize the worldwide economy or provoke a voter backlash. AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of the electorate in last year’s election, found that the U.S. was split on support for tariffs.
It is possible that the tariffs could be short-lived if Canada and Mexico can reach a deal with Trump to more aggressively address illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling. Trump’s move against China is also tied to fentanyl and comes on top of existing import taxes.
Trump is honoring promises he made in the 2024 White House campaign that are at the core of his economic and national security philosophy, though Trump allies had played down the threat of higher import taxes as mere negotiating tactics.
The president is preparing more import taxes in a sign that tariffs will be an ongoing part of his second term. On Friday, he mentioned imported computer chips, steel, oil and natural gas, as well as against copper, pharmaceutical drugs and imports from the European Union — moves that could essentially pit the U.S. against much of the global economy.
Trump’s intentions drew a swift response from financial markets, with the S&P 500 stock index slumping after his announcement Friday.
It is unclear how the tariffs could affect the business investments that Trump said would happen because of his plans to cut corporate tax rates and remove regulations. Tariffs tend to raise prices for consumers and businesses by making it more expensive to bring in foreign goods.
Many voters turned to Trump in the November election on the belief that he could better handle the inflation that spiked under Democratic President Joe Biden. But inflation expectations are creeping upward in the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment as respondents expect prices to rise by 3.3%. That would be higher than the actual 2.9% annual inflation rate in December’s consumer price index.
Trump has said that the government should raise more of its revenues from tariffs, as it did before the income tax became part of the Constitution in 1913. He claims, despite economic evidence to the contrary, that the U.S. was at its wealthiest in the 1890s under President William McKinley.
“We were the richest country in the world,” Trump said Friday. “We were a tariff country.”
Trump, who has aspired to remake America by using McKinley’s model, is conducting a real-time experiment that the economists who warn tariffs lead to higher prices are wrong. While the tariffs in his first term did not meaningfully increase overall inflation, he is now looking at tariffs on a much grander scale that could push up prices if they’re enduring policies.
Trump has fondly called McKinley, an Ohioan elected president in 1896 and 1900, the “tariff sheriff.”
Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted on the social media site X that the tariffs “if sustained, would be a massive shock — a much bigger move in one weekend than all the trade action that Trump took in his first term.”
Setser noted that the tariffs on China without exemptions could raise the price of iPhones, which would test just how much power corporate America has with Trump. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook attended Trump’s inauguration last month.
Recent research on Trump’s various tariff options by a team of economists suggested the trade penalties would be drags on growth in Canada, Mexico, China and the U.S. But Wending Zhang, a Cornell University economist who worked on the research, said the fallout would be felt more in Canada and Mexico because of their reliance on the U.S. market.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians that they could be facing difficult times ahead, but that Ottawa was prepared to respond with retaliatory tariffs if needed and that the U.S. penalties would be self-sabotaging.
Trudeau said Canada is addressing Trump’s calls on border security by implementing a CDN$1.3 billion (US$90 million) border plan that includes helicopters, new canine teams and imaging tools.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has stressed that her country has acted to reduce illegal border crossings and the illicit trade in fentanyl. While she has emphasized the ongoing dialogue since Trump first floated the tariffs in November, she has said that Mexico is ready to respond, too.
Mexico has a “Plan A, Plan B, Plan C for what the United States government decides,” she said.
Trump still has to get a budget, tax cuts and increase to the government’s legal borrowing authority through Congress. The outcome of his tariff plans could strengthen his hand or weaken it.
Democrats are sponsoring legislation that would strip the president of his ability to impose tariffs without congressional approval. But that is unlikely to make headway in a Republican-controlled House and Senate.
“If this weekend’s tariffs go into effect, they’ll do catastrophic damage to our relationships with our allies and raise costs for working families by hundreds of dollars a year,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. “Congress needs to stop this from happening again.”
On the night of February 3, 2023, the lives of the residents of East Palestine, Ohio were forever changed. Thirty-eight cars of a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed, erupting into a massive fire that released toxic chemicals into our air, water, and land, just a mile from my home. The sight of a huge fireball from my driveway felt like a scene from an apocalyptic movie. Little did I know, this was only the beginning.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Norfolk Southern released and ignited 115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride, a lethal flammable gas used to make PVC plastic, along with a variety of other chemicals and petroleum products. The smoke wafted for miles, and we braved evacuation orders, health scares, a federal investigation, and a cleanup that is still ongoing. Nearly two years later, my community remains profoundly affected.
East Palestine and Norfolk Southern recently reached a $22 million settlement. And next week, Vice President JD Vance is expected to visit our town.
As we continue to navigate the aftermath of this disaster, now is the time for President Donald Trump and Vance to address the challenges we still face. Their presence in East Palestine, especially in the early days after the disaster, comforted many of us who felt abandoned by government and corporate entities. They gave us hope that even in times of partisan division, leaders could come together to support those in need.
While we all felt the immediate effects of this disaster, it is the ongoing recovery that is truly testing our resilience. I am the Chair of the Community Advisory Board for the East Palestine Train Derailment Health Tracking Study spearheaded by Dr. Erin Haynes from the University of Kentucky. One third of study participants show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and these levels have continued to rise through our last reporting period. In addition, around half of the participants indicated they continue to experience upper airway symptoms and non-sinus headaches as well, highlighting the ongoing physical health issues that the community is facing. These findings underscore the severe and lasting impact of the disaster on the residents of East Palestine, emphasizing the urgent need for continued support and intervention.
Both Trump and Vance have criticized the federal response to the East Palestine disaster. “We stand with you. We pray for you. And we will stand with you and your fight to help ensure the accountability that you deserve,” said Trump in 2023. “You have a President going to Ukraine and you have people in Ohio that are in desperate need of help.”
“Biden and FEMA said they would not send federal aid to East Palestine under any circumstance. They’re not going to send aid,” Trump also said. (The situation did not qualify for FEMA disaster relief, although the Environmental Protection Agency, National Transportation Safety Board, and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) all contributed resources in the aftermath of the crash.)
Additionally, Vance also strongly criticized the Biden Administration’s response. “The Biden administration has ignored Ohio’s pleas for help. This is inexcusable: a disaster declaration would guarantee the delivery of resources the community needs to save itself,” Vance wrote in an August 2023 op-ed. “Cleanup efforts overseen by Joe Biden’s environmental protection officials have also been woefully inadequate…Despite the federal government’s vast resources, it appears to be woefully incapable of monitoring the long-term health impacts of a chemical spill.”
Now in their roles as the President and Vice President of the United States, Trump and Vance can address the critiques they lobbed at the previous administration and directly make good on their promises.
Beyond lip service, there are several concrete steps they must take in order to truly support East Palestine.
Impacted residents are still experiencing health effects from chemical exposure and contamination lingering from the 2023 incident, and there is still no organized healthcare guidance nor a funding source for necessary care. It is critical that everyone can access the medical support they need. The President can enact an emergency declaration or urge the HHS to declare a public health emergency to ensure treatment for short- and long-term health impacts for anyone exposed to environmental health hazards from the train derailment and its aftermath.
In 2023, both Vance and his fellow Ohio Senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown, supported an emergency declaration to activate provisions under Section 1881A of the Social Security Act which allows for emergency funding to be distributed to communities affected by disasters. These funds would be a lifeline for many families here who are still grappling with health concerns, economic hardship, and ongoing cleanup efforts. Now as Vice President, Vance needs to ensure federal funds are expediently and strategically allocated to ensure the healthcare needs of our impacted community are safeguarded both in the short term and long term.
Families in East Palestine deserve to understand the long-term health implications of the Norfolk Southern train derailment. Trusted and respected research institutions that were awarded six National Institutes of Health grants to study the short- and long-term impacts of what happened in East Palestine need prolonged funding to help us understand and address the potential health risks faced by our community. Without prolonged funding, these research studies will expire at the end of the year.
The cleanup, monitoring, and testing efforts of our town must continue for decades to ensure that our environment remains safe and habitable. Ongoing support for these efforts is crucial to the health and well-being of our community. This support should include comprehensive environmental testing of our water, land, and air. Additionally, it is essential to regularly test private wells, as they could become contaminated years from now, posing long-term health risks to residents.
Two years ago, Trump promised our community that he would do everything in his power to ensure our safety and well-being, and that he would not rest until the truth was uncovered. And Vance has repeatedly assured us of his unwavering commitment to working with organizations to ensure East Palestine gets the help it desperately needs and that those responsible are held accountable. Their efforts have given us a glimmer of hope that meaningful change can arise from this disaster.
However, we have not yet seen Trump and Vance’s promises turn into action. And we still face a daunting journey ahead in terms of public health, economic recovery, and environmental cleanup. But with the right federal support, I am confident we can implement a comprehensive plan to protect those affected.
Our community demands answers and results, not more excuses. President Trump and Vice President Vance must step up and get East Palestine back on track and set a precedent for how the federal government should support an American community.
The fast-rising Chinese AI lab DeepSeek is sparking national security concerns in the U.S., over fears that its AI models could be used by the Chinese government to spy on American civilians, learn proprietary secrets, and wage influence campaigns. In her first press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the National Security Council was “looking into” the potential security implications of DeepSeek. This comes amid news that the U.S. Navy has banned use of DeepSeek among its ranks due to “potential security and ethical concerns.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]DeepSeek, which currently tops the Apple App Store in the U.S., marks a major inflection point in the AI arms race between the U.S. and China. For the last couple years, many leading technologists and political leaders have argued that whichever country developed AI the fastest will have a huge economic and military advantage over its rivals. DeepSeek shows that China’s AI has developed much faster than many had believed, despite efforts from American policymakers to slow its progress.
However, other privacy experts argue that DeepSeek’s data collection policies are no worse than those of its American competitors—and worry that the company’s rise will be used as an excuse by those firms to call for deregulation. In this way, the rhetorical battle over the dangers of DeepSeek is playing out on similar lines as the in-limbo TikTok ban, which has deeply divided the American public.
“There are completely valid privacy and data security concerns with DeepSeek,” says Calli Schroeder, the AI and Human Rights lead at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). “But all of those are present in U.S. AI products, too.”
Read More: What to Know About DeepSeek
DeepSeek’s AI models operate similarly to ChatGPT, answering user questions thanks to a vast amount of data and cutting-edge processing capabilities. But its models are much cheaper to run: the company says that it trained its R1 model on just $6 million, which is a “good deal less” than the cost of comparable U.S. models, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in an essay..
DeepSeek has built many open-source resources, including the LLM v3, which rivals the abilities of OpenAI’s closed-source GPT-4o. Some people worry that by making such a powerful technology open and replicable, it presents an opportunity for people to use it more freely in malicious ways: to create bioweapons, launch large-scale phishing campaigns, or fill the internet with AI slop. However, there is another contingent of builders, including Meta’s VP and chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, who believe open-source development is a more beneficial path forward for AI.
Another major concern centers upon data. Some privacy experts, like Schroeder, argue that most LLMs, including DeepSeek, are built upon sensitive or faulty databases: information from data leaks of stolen biometrics, for example. David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar, accused DeepSeek of leaning on the output of OpenAI’s models to help develop its own technology.
There are even more concerns about how users’ data could be used by DeepSeek. The company’s privacy policy states that it automatically collects a slew of input data from its users, including IP and keystroke patterns, and may use that to train their models. Users’ personal information is stored in “secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China,” the policy reads.
For some Americans, this is especially worrying because generative AI tools are often used in personal or high-stakes tasks: to help with their company strategies, manage finances, or seek health advice. That kind of data may now be stored in a country with few data rights laws and little transparency with regard to how that data might be viewed or used. “It could be that when the servers are physically located within the country, it is much easier for the government to access them,” Schroeder says.
One of the main reasons that TikTok was initially banned in the U.S. was due to concerns over how much data the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, was collecting from Americans. If Americans start using DeepSeek to manage their lives, the privacy risks will be akin to “TikTok on steroids,” says Douglas Schmidt, the dean of the School of Computing, Data Sciences and Physics at William & Mary. “I think TikTok was collecting information, but it was largely benign or generic data. But large language model owners get a much deeper insight into the personalities and interests and hopes and dreams of the users.”
DeepSeek is also alarming those who view AI development as an existential arms race between the U.S. and China. Some leaders argued that DeepSeek shows China is now much closer to developing AGI—an AI that can reason at a human level or higher—than previously believed. American AI labs like Anthropic have safety researchers working to mitigate the harms of these increasingly formidable systems. But it’s unclear what kind of safety research team Deepseek employs. The cybersecurity of Deepseek’s models has also been called into question. On Monday, the company limited new sign-ups after saying the app had been targeted with a “large-scale malicious attack.”
Well before AGI is achieved, a powerful, widely-used AI model could influence the thought and ideology of its users around the world. Most AI models apply censorship in certain key ways, or display biases based on the data they are trained upon. Users have found that DeepSeek’s R1 refuses to answer questions about the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, and asserts that Taiwan is a part of China. This has sparked concern from some American leaders about DeepSeek being used to promote Chinese values and political aims—or wielded as a tool for espionage or cyberattacks.
Read More: Artificial Intelligence Has a Problem With Gender and Racial Bias.
“This technology, if unchecked, has the potential to feed disinformation campaigns, erode public trust, and entrench authoritarian narratives within our democracies,” Ross Burley, co-founder of the nonprofit Centre for Information Resilience, wrote in a statement emailed to TIME.
AI industry leaders, and some Republican politicians, have responded by calling for massive investment into the American AI sector. President Trump said on Monday that DeepSeek “should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.” Sacks posted on X that “DeepSeek R1 shows that the AI race will be very competitive and that President Trump was right to rescind the Biden EO,” referring to Biden’s AI Executive Order which, among other things, drew attention to the potential short-term harms of developing AI too fast.
These fears could lead to the U.S. imposing stronger sanctions against Chinese tech companies, or perhaps even trying to ban DeepSeek itself. On Monday, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party called for stronger export controls on technologies underpinning DeepSeek’s AI infrastructure.
But AI ethicists are pushing back, arguing that the rise of DeepSeek actually reveals the acute need for industry safeguards. “This has the echoes of the TikTok ban: there are legitimate privacy and security risks with the way these companies are operating. But the U.S. firms who have been leading a lot of the development of these technologies are similarly abusing people’s data. Just because they’re doing it in America doesn’t make it better,” says Ben Winters, the director of AI and data privacy at the Consumer Federation of America. “And DeepSeek gives those companies another weapon in their chamber to say, ‘We really cannot be regulated right now.’”
As ideological battle lines emerge, Schroeder, at EPIC, cautions users to be careful when using DeepSeek or other LLMs. “If you have concerns about the origin of a company,” she says, “Be very, very careful about what you reveal about yourself and others in these systems.”
In an increasingly digital world, connectivity is a necessity. Yet, nearly a third of the global population remains offline, unable to access the services vital to participating in our global digital economy and society. The Edison Alliance at the World Economic Forum has worked to change that by delivering digital connectivity and access to financial, healthcare, and education services to those who need them most. Our partnerships with governments, industries, and non-governmental organizations drive lasting systemic change.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The World Economic Forum played a pivotal role in launching and guiding the Alliance’s work, providing a platform for stakeholders to come together and commit to a vision with actionable ideas and plans. CEOs, ministers, and heads of international organizations harnessed the power of public-private partnerships and gathered to discuss the barriers to connectivity and identify scalable solutions.
The 1 Billion Lives Challenge, achieved by the Edison Alliance in 2024, one year ahead of schedule, exemplifies what can be achieved when diverse stakeholders work toward a common goal. Through partnerships with telecom providers, financial institutions, technology companies, and policymakers, the Alliance delivers impactful programs worldwide. In India, we are using digital tools to connect rural communities to vital health services. In Africa and the U.S., mobile banking solutions empower millions of unbanked individuals with access to financial services. In Latin America, digital literacy initiatives opened new educational opportunities for often underrepresented populations.
Each of our efforts underscore the profound impact of digital connectivity. For the rural farmer in Kenya, it means access to real-time market information that can increase yield and revenue. For the student in a remote village in Peru, it means access to online learning platforms and global educational resources. For the small business owner in Indonesia, it means the ability to reach new markets and grow. Connectivity, quite simply, is the key to unlocking potential and reducing inequality.
Achieving the 1 Billion Lives Challenge is not just a milestone, as every life touched is a life improved and a call to further action. It demonstrates that global challenges—no matter how complex—can be addressed when we come together with purpose and determination. But our work is far from over. While one billion people have better and more comprehensive access to our digital world, billions more still lack access to these critical digital tools. And, the adoption of AI and Generative AI tools threatens to further widen that gap. The digital divide remains one of the most pressing issues of our time, and the Alliance is committed to continuing its efforts to close it.
The World Economic Forum will remain a critical organization for advancing our work. It is a place where leaders are not only inspired to think big but are also held accountable for delivering on their commitments. The Forum’s unique structure, which emphasizes multi-stakeholder collaboration, ensures that progress is not just discussed but achieved. It is in this spirit that the EDISON Alliance was born, and this is the spirit that will launch further efforts to expand access to vital resources and opportunities. Our work will continue through new initiatives like the World Economic Forum’s AI for Prosperity and Growth in Africa, launched at this year’s Annual Meeting.
Looking ahead, we see a world where connectivity is available to all who want it. This vision requires sustained effort, innovation, and investment. It requires us to address the structural barriers that perpetuate the digital divide, from affordability and infrastructure to digital literacy and policy frameworks. It requires us to keep asking tough questions and pooling our resources to push the boundaries of what is possible. We call on the public and private sectors to increase their collaboration so we can meet these bold ambitions. Together, we will build a world where no one is left behind in the digital age.
When President Donald Trump delivered his second inaugural address on Monday, January 20, he preserved a tradition of national mythmaking that has only served Americans poorly. Beyond the expected theatrics, Trump declared the U.S. to be “history’s greatest civilization,” despite its fixture as the most unequal nation with the lowest life expectancy, even just among Western democracies of today. And, despite his record-thin margin of victory in November’s election, the President claimed that “the entire nation is rapidly unifying behind our agenda.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]What’s actually noteworthy about this moment, however, is that there is a rare current of agreement among Americans today. The consensus comes in the form of a deep pessimism about our most cherished national story. One recent poll of American voters conducted by WSJ/ NORC found that only 36% still believe in an American Dream broadly defined by the idea that hard work begets success and upward mobility. This finding represents a big tumble downward from 2012 when, even in the shadow of the Great Recession that cleaned millions of families out, 52% of Americans still held fast to the story of the dream.
The far-reaching senses of despair and disenchantment in the U.S. aren’t solely the results of bad trade deals or corporate concentration or the American retreat from social and civic engagement. They can’t be described strictly through the failure of the government to protect citizens and consumers from the exploding cost of necessities like housing, healthcare, education, and childcare. The national gloom stems from something deeper, specifically the torment of a supposedly cohering national story about opportunity that is encoded in culture, policy, and civic life.
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Historically, to be American (for some at least) meant the chance to live free of the titles, class static, and feudal baggage of the Old World. Even before the term was coined, an American Dream of being socially mobile by means of hard work dusted industriousness with a special merit-driven magic that has seduced and frustrated millions. From the Pilgrims and founding fathers through the frontier and all the way to today’s hustle culture, gig economy, and ragged-by-design safety net, the essential American folk tale has plaited hard work with destiny, self-reliance with self-actualization, and success with moral worth.
The trouble with that story is that it makes struggle feel shameful. Take the nation’s kludgy public assistance programs, which are purposefully gummed up with red tape. A 2020 audit by the Government Accountability Office, for example, found that roughly 8,000 Americans file for bankruptcy and another ten thousand people die every year while waiting for a disability benefit decision (or an appeal) to be decided by the Social Security Administration. “The administrative burdens themselves are, in some sense, a deliberate test of deservingness,” Dr. Heather Hahn, an associate vice president at the nonpartisan think tank Urban Institute, explained of America’s social insurance programs. “It’s this assumption that only someone truly, desperately needy, who really has no other options, is going to put up with all that is required. That adds to this deservingness.”
Meanwhile, in public retellings, the Americans who don’t make ends meet while providing care work for loved ones or battling at terrible jobs are just people without sufficient ambition. “I don’t think hard-working Americans should be paying for all the social services for people who could make a broader contribution and instead are couch potatoes,” former Florida representative Matt Gaetz once argued in 2023 while lobbying against anti-poverty programs.
Similarly, an individual drowning in student debt is never someone who took out loans to go to nursing school or dropped out of an engineering program to care for a sick parent. It’s always some loafer or wastrel who, in the words of Senator Ted Cruz, “studied queer pet literature” or a “slacker barista who wasted seven years in college” and can’t “get off the bong for a minute.” On the other hand, those who make it are upheld as virtuous and enlightened. Calling up the 2016 electoral map, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued that, “All that red in the middle, where Trump won, what the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”
While the narrative around opportunity has largely remained fixed, the American experience has degraded from one of bootstrapping to one of white-knuckling. Over the past 45 years, the U.S. economy has doubled in size and American workers have grown 81% more productive while their wages have only grown 29%, according to the Economic Policy Institute . (Workers of color and workers without college degrees have seen their real wages decline.) Today, medical debt is the biggest cause of bankruptcy in America and baby formula is one of the most shoplifted items. According to a Brookings Institution study, 44 % of Americans work jobs that qualify as low-wage.
“I did everything I was supposed to do,” Nakitta Long, a single mother of two with a Master’s degree in North Carolina, told me about the impossibility of finding a job that might sustain her family. “Why is this not simple?”
These are some of the mad-making, faith-shredding headwinds that made arguments about preserving democracy fall flat for people already failed by a democracy where hard work doesn’t pay off.
They are the same winds that have rustled President-elect Donald Trump back into power. And we’re learning again, from Capitol rotunda to the displaced communities of Southern California, winds can very easily carry fires.
Adapted excerpt from 99% PERSPIRATION by Adam Chandler. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c) 2025 by Adam Chandler.
Economic fears have metastasized into grievance—this is the core finding of the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer. We observe a profound shift in popular sentiment, a move beyond political polarization to aggressive advocacy for self-interest. Throughout the elections of the past year, citizens have raised their voices against business, government, and the wealthy across the globe. Incumbent parties have been ousted in Western democracies, including the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Canada. Business has been pushed back on for its involvement in societal issues, from DEI to sustainability.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Such grievances stem from a conviction that the system is unfair, business and government make things worse, and the rich keep getting richer. A growing sense of alienation is so profound that nearly two-thirds of respondents now fear being discriminated against, up 10 percentage points from the previous year. Even high-earners are increasingly worried about being made a victim—up 11 points to 62%. Three quarters of respondents worry about their pay not keeping up with inflation. And there is deep concern about job loss due to the impact of innovations like automation, which 58% of employees worry about, and of globalization—62% of workers worry about international trade conflicts affecting their livelihoods.
Four preconditions, which have been building for the past decade, have exacerbated these grievances. First is a pervasive lack of belief in a better future. Only one-third of respondents believe that the next generation will be better off. In every Western democracy 30% or fewer believe so. In Germany, just 14% of people believe that the next generation will be better off. And in France, just 9% believe so.
There has also been a widening divide in trust among top and bottom income brackets. Low-income respondents have profoundly less trust in institutions than the top quartile. For instance, 48% of low-income respondents trust institutions, averaged across business, government, media, and NGOs—compared to 61%, on average, among high income respondents. Business sees the greatest divergence of any institution, with a 16-point trust gap between high- and low-income groups.
Institutional leaders themselves may have also dropped the ball. Globally, two-thirds of respondents worry about journalists, government officials, and CEOs intentionally lying to them.
And there are fewer and fewer agreed-upon facts. Nearly two-thirds of respondents find it difficult to differentiate between news from a reliable source and disinformation. The decision by social media networks to move away from fact-checking will further complicate an already messy media context.
Our collective grievances are broad-based, extending from economic to electoral to societal. Most people hold a sense of grievance against elites and institutions. Sixty one percent of respondents have a moderate (41%) or high (20%) sense of grievance, defined as feeling business and government make their lives harder and serve narrow interests, and the system benefits the wealthy while regular people struggle. Such a belief is more prevalent among those on the Left than the Right (69% on the Left compared to 57% on the Right) and among older people than younger people (66% among those aged 55 and up compared to 58% among those between the ages of 18 and 34). The majority of high-grievance people adopt a zero-sum mindset: If something gives you a win politically, it comes at a cost to me.
The wealthy are seen as playing a malign role in society. Two-thirds of respondents believe the wealthy fail to pay appropriate taxes and laws that serve the wealthy come at the detriment of “people like me.” Add all of these grievances up, and many think that capitalism has failed. Over half of respondents believe that capitalism does more harm than good—53% among the general population, including 55% of 18 to 34-year-olds.
Many also feel that the prevailing political systems are broken. Only one-third of respondents believe that those with different political views “play by the rules” and fewer than half (44%) trust those with different political beliefs. Government is distrusted in 17 of the 28 countries we measured. And to many, violence may be necessary. Over half of young people approve of one or more of the following methods of hostile activism to bring about change: attacking people online, intentionally spreading disinformation, or threatening or committing violence to persons or property.
Low-trust nations reflect aggravated levels of grievance and repairing that trust enables belief in a brighter future. In Germany, 41% of people, on average, trust institutions in society and 69% of respondents feel a moderate or higher sense of grievance. In Singapore, 65% are trusting of institutions and just 39% hold grievances. This illustrates a powerful inverse relationship: The greater trust that people have in their institutions, the less grievance a society has.
Business has emerged as the default solution on societal issues given that many people believe businesses are more competent (+48 points) and more ethical (+29 points) than their government. But businesses lack the authority to lead alone because views of business ethics plunge as people become more aggrieved. Business has the potential, and much of the publics’ permission, to address societal issues.
The other three major institutions also have the potential to address grievances in society. This is NGOs’ moment as the ethical leader, the only institution seen as a unifying force among those with a high sense of grievance and the institution with the highest trust among that group. Government needs to prove its competence again, to deliver results that benefit the individual citizen. And media outlets must successfully provide quality information that enables people to make proper decisions.
We need to move back from the precipice of a grievance-based society where violence is seen as a viable option. All four of the major institutions must play a role. Businesses will have an opportunity in the coming months to work with the new governments in major democracies on important issues such as trade, energy supply, and reskilling.
All of this will be debated in the more chaotic, free-wheeling media, putting a premium on speed and facts. Our goal must be to give people a sense of control over their destiny, and to drive change that is positive instead of threatening to society.
My only son, Hersh, was kidnapped from a music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, after having his dominant forearm and hand blown off. He was held captive, tortured, starved and then, after 328 days, shot in the hand (his only one), shoulder, neck and twice in the head in a dark and airless tunnel in Gaza on Aug. 29, 2024.
Hersh’s name had been on the list, in July, who would be released in a deal between Hamas and Israel. But that deal did not happen, because decision makers did not want it to happen. And Hersh, along with five other beautiful young people, with whom he was being held hostage, are now all dead.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]My husband Jon and I, after having suffered more than 300 days of every parent’s nightmare of utter and indescribable torment, continued advocating and pushing for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. We did not want anyone else to go through what we are and will continue grappling with for the rest of our lives. At this time there are 98 hostages still in Gaza. The live hostages must come home to be physically and psychologically rehabilitated, and the deceased must return to have proper and respectful burials.
Finally, on Wednesday, the news came that a deal was reached and will begin to be implemented imminently.
Over 200 messages flooded my phone. People seemed confused that Jon and I are relieved and happy that so many of our hostage community, with whom we feel like family, will finally be reunited with their loved ones. This does not mean we are not in agonizing mourning and oozing with grief for our beloved Hersh, who we buried 135 days ago. It means we can hold two truths; we can even hold more.
Humans are fascinating creatures. We can experience a multitude of diverse feelings simultaneously. So we can experience suffering while still having the capacity to laugh, we can be longing for someone and capable of celebration, we can be weeping and resilient, we can be yearning and hopeful.
What is essential to us at this moment is that we make sure this phase of the deal is the beginning of the end, and not the end. Getting out 33 cherished human beings is critical. BUT, there are still going to be 65 hostages left in captivity. This remains a microcosm of failure of all of humanity.
The remaining hostages represent 23 different nations. They are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. The youngest is Kfir Bibas, who will turn two years old on Saturday, Jan. 18. And the oldest is Shlomo Mansur, who is 86 years old. They are both slated for being released in this first phase of the deal. Yet back in November 2023, they were also supposed to be released (as was my son Hersh), but the deal broke down and now Hersh is dead. I pray Kfir and Shlomo come home as planned, alive and able to recover.
In addition, the innocent Gazans who have suffered terribly since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 also severely and critically need relief and recovery immediately. So this deal must happen, to the very end, with everyone in the region finally able to quench our common desperate need for solace.
While I remain ever optimistic and cautiously sanguine, a deal is not a deal until it is successfully completed.
Godspeed to us all.
U.S. regulators on Wednesday banned the dye called Red 3 from the nation’s food supply, nearly 35 years after it was barred from cosmetics because of potential cancer risk.
Food and Drug Administration officials granted a 2022 petition filed by two dozen food safety and health advocates, who urged the agency to revoke authorization for the substance that gives some candies, snack cakes and maraschino cherries a bright red hue.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The agency said it was taking the action as a “matter of law” because some studies have found that the dye caused cancer in lab rats. Officials cited a statute known as the Delaney Clause, which requires FDA to ban any additive found to cause cancer in people or animals.
The dye is known as erythrosine, FD&C Red No. 3 or Red 3. The ban removes it from the list of approved color additives in foods, dietary supplements and oral medicines, such as cough syrups. More than three decades ago, the FDA declined to authorize use of Red 3 in cosmetics and externally applied drugs because a study showed it caused cancer when eaten by rats.
“The FDA is taking action that will remove the authorization for the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs,” said Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for human foods. “Evidence shows cancer in laboratory male rats exposed to high levels of FD&C Red No.3. Importantly, the way that FD&C Red No. 3 causes cancer in male rats does not occur in humans.”
Food manufacturers will have until January 2027 to remove the dye from their products, while makers of ingested drugs have until January 2028 to do the same. Other countries still allow for certain uses of the dye, but imported foods must meet the new U.S. requirement.
Consumer advocates praised the decision.
“This is a welcome, but long overdue, action from the FDA: removing the unsustainable double standard in which Red 3 was banned from lipstick but permitted in candy,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, director of the group Center for Science in the Public Interest, which led the petition effort.
It’s not clear whether the ban will face legal challenges from food manufacturers because evidence hasn’t determined that the dye causes cancer when consumed by humans. At a hearing in December, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf suggested that’s a risk.
“When we do ban something, it will go to court,” he told members of Congress on Dec. 5. “And if we don’t have the scientific evidence, we will lose in court.”
When the FDA declined to allow Red 3 in cosmetics and topical drugs in 1990, the color additive was already permitted in foods and ingested drugs. Because research showed then that the way the dye causes cancer in rats does not apply to humans, “the FDA did not take action to revoke the authorization of Red No. 3 in food,” the agency has said on its website.
Health advocates for years have asked the FDA to reconsider that decision, including the 2022 petition led by CSPI. In November, nearly two dozen members of Congress sent a letter demanding that FDA officials ban Red 3.
Lawmakers cited the Delaney Clause and said the action was especially important to protect children, who consume more of the dye on a bodyweight basis than adults, the lawmakers said.
“The FDA should act quickly to protect the nation’s youth from this harmful dye, used simply to give food and drinks a bright red color,” the letter said. “No aesthetic reason could justify the use of a carcinogen in our food supply.”
Red 3 is banned for food use in Europe, Australia and New Zealand except in certain kinds of cherries. The dye will be banned in California starting in January 2027.
The International Association of Color Manufacturers defends the dye, saying that it is safe in levels typically consumed by humans. The group points to research by scientific committees operated by the United Nations and the World Health Organization, including a 2018 review that reaffirmed the safety of Red 3 in food.
Some food manufacturers have already reformulated products to remove Red 3. In its place they use beet juice; carmine, a dye made from insects; and pigments from foods such as purple sweet potato, radish and red cabbage, according to Sensient Food Colors, a St. Louis-based supplier of food colors and flavorings.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Severance is a complex tale of corporate conspiracy, scary scientific advancements, and the sheer boredom of working a desk job. In the show, an ominous company named Lumon experiments with a technology that splits employees’ memories between their work lives and home lives.
The two sides of a severed person’s personality are colloquially referred to as their “innie” and “outie.” The outie clocks into work at Lumon each morning, at which point the innie takes over. The outie doesn’t remember anything about what transpires during the work day. The innie, by contrast, is never able to leave the windowless “severed floor” of Lumon or see the light of day.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The practice obviously raises several ethical questions: Are innies separate people with their own desires and rights? What happens to a severed person’s “innie” when they leave Lumon for good? Does the innie die?
Read More: How the Team Behind Severance Made the Second Season Worth the Wait
And though the first season of Severance takes place mostly inside Lumon’s walls, the few glimpses we get of outie life suggest that the company is preying on vulnerable people. The main character Mark, played by Adam Scott, agreed to the process of severance after his wife died in a car crash. He suffers from depression and uses severance as a means of escape.
Throughout the first season’s nine episodes, it becomes clear that there is something special about Mark: Lumon keeps an extra close eye on him. And Mark, in turn, begins to suspect that something shady is happening at Lumon. Season 1 took many twists and turns, culminating in one of the most shocking finales in recent television history. The delayed second season will finally arrive on Jan. 17, nearly three years after the first premiered. Here’s everything you need to remember about the sci-fi story.
At the beginning of the series, Mark, a worker bee at Lumon, finds out that his best friend in the office, Petey, has suddenly quit, which means Mark will never see him again. Petey’s replacement is a firebrand named Helly (Britt Lower) who does not respond well to the innie initiation experience.
Lumon keeps its employees in line with silly perks like a dour party in which everyone can nibble on some balled honeydew and cantaloupe, all of which are coveted by Mark’s coworker Dylan (Zach Cherry). The company also tries to instill the creepy mythos of Lumon and its founder Kier Egan into its employees, turning some of them into something like corporate-religious zealots. Mark’s other coworker Irving (John Turturro) is one of these Lumon devotees.
Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving work in a department called Macrodata Refinement and spend their days sorting a screen of random numbers based on the feelings the numbers inspire in them. They’re overseen by Mrs. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) and Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) who do not reveal the purpose of this data refinement.
Petey (Yul Vazquez), it turns out, has gone through the process of “reintegration” to unite his innie and outie thoughts. The surgery is performed by a former Lumon scientist named Regabhi (Karen Aldridge) who has broken from the company and is working to stop severance. Petey hunts down outie Mark to tell him that Lumon is up to no good. Outie Mark does not want to get involved in the corporate conspiracy. But Petey claims Lumon is trying to kill him so Mark allows Petey to hide in his basement.
When Mark goes home we learn that his boss Mrs. Cobel is also his next-door neighbor, who goes by the name of Mrs. Selvig. She quite literally worships at the altar of Kier Egan kept in her closet and is keeping tabs on Mark for unknown reasons. Shortly after contacting Mark, Petey dies of an alleged brain aneurism related to reintegration.
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Helly tries to escape multiple times. She threatens bodily harm until she is allowed to record a video for her outie in which she pleads to be released. The outie sends a video back telling Helly she does not get to make decisions about her life because she is “not a real person.” Helly then attempts to hang herself in the elevator that transforms innies to outies so that her outie wakes up choking to death.
Management prevents Helly from killing her outie and asks the wellness director, Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), to monitor the rebellious worker. Mark is also disturbed by Helly’s outie’s behavior and begins to take a personal interest in Helly. Together, they decide to investigate what is going on at Lumon. They also begin an office romance that eventually culminates in a kiss.
Mark’s brother-in-law Ricken (Michael Chernus) leaves Mark a copy of the silly self-help book he wrote. It is full of corny lines like, “Your so-called boss may own the clock that taunts you from the wall, but, my friends, the hour is yours” and “Machines are made of metal, but man is made of skin.”
Mark brings it to the office, and though management initially confiscates the book, the innies manage to find it. They have never read anything besides the Lumon handbook, and Ricken’s pretentious platitudes seem profound to them and help to incite their rebellion against Lumon.
Macrodata refinement runs into another department, Optics and Design, which is responsible for hanging up paintings of Lumon’s cultish ceremonies and printing seemingly random 3D objects. Among the Optics and Design staff is Burt (Christopher Walken). Burt and Irving bond over their shared love of art and religiosity. They begin an office flirtation.
Dylan warns Irving that there’s a rumor Optics and Design once attacked and slaughtered Macrodata Refinement, and Burt admits that he once heard that Macrodata once attacked Optics and Design. The who conflicting stories prove management is trying to sow discord among the departments.
The Macrodata Refinement team tries to team up with Optics and Design to figure out what is going on at Lumon, but Mrs. Cobel revokes the workers’ privileges to walk the hallways and forces Burt into retirement, abruptly ending the Burt-Irving romance.
There are also hints that severance is being used in other capacities. At one point Mark’s pregnant sister Devon (Jen Tullock) goes to a birthing retreat where she meets the wife of a pro-severance senator who has severed herself so that she won’t have to experience the pains of childbirth. That means this woman’s innie has only ever experienced the pains of birth and having her baby immediately taken from her.
Also, at one point, Mark and Helly wander down the labyrinth of brightly-lit, indistinguishable hallways on their floor, open a door, and find a guy feeding milk to baby goats. It’s unclear what, if anything, these baby goats have to do with severance. But one begins to wonder what exactly Lumon’s business model is.
Dylan’s innie runs across a pile of cards that show cartoons dressed in office garb practicing self-defense. The purpose of these cards is unclear, but Dylan grabs one at random, which sends management into a panic. Mr. Milchick wakes up Dylan in his outie life through a process called “overtime contingency” to demand he give the card back because it contains sensitive information. During his brief look at the outside world, innie Dylan sees that he has a son, which radically changes his perspective on life.
Back inside the Lumon office, Helly earns a “Dance Party Experience” for meeting a quota. The foursome begins to boogey down with Mr. Milchick until Dylan snaps. He attacks Mr. Milchick who quickly ends the party. Dylan tells his fellow coworkers about the overtime contingency. They decide to stage a jailbreak so they can each learn more about their outies. Innie Mark discovers that he has a keycard that will help them accomplish this. (The doctor who performed Petey’s reintegration and tracked down Mark gave him the card and told Mark his innie would know what to do with it.)
Dylan, having hit a quota, gets to stay after work to enjoy a waffle party and watch a weird Eyes Wide Shut-esque orgy. He sneaks away and activates the overtime contingency, waking up innie Mark, innie Helly, and innie Irving to the outside world.
Irving discovers that his outie has been compulsively painting the same dark hallway in Lumon over and over again, one that ends with an elevator that goes down further into Lumon’s depths rather than up to the surface. We’ve already seen Ms. Casey take this elevator. Irving also learns that his outie has been researching severance and tracking down Lumon employees at their homes, including Burt. Irving rushes to Burt’s house only to discover Burt is happily married. Irving decides to bang on the door anyway.
Helly learns she’s Helena Egan, heir to the Lumon fortune, and that her decision to undergo severance was propaganda to help bolster support for the controversial procedure. Helly meets her father, an extremely creepy dude. Helly takes the stage as a keynote speaker at a black tie event celebrating severance and reveals that she is in fact Helena’s innie. She tells the audience that her experience has been hellish.
Mark finds himself at a book party for his brother-in-law. Also in attendance is Mrs. Selvig/Mrs. Cobel: She has been taking care of Devon and Ricken’s baby (scary!). Mark doesn’t realize that this woman goes by the name Mrs. Selvig outside of Lumon and accidentally calls her Mrs. Cobel, tipping her off to the fact that his innie is wandering free in the outie world.
Mrs. Cobel flees and the baby goes missing (even more scary!). Mrs. Cobel had, in fact, been fired by Lumon earlier that day for failing to get Mark and his coworkers under control, but she tries to get her job back by stopping the innie rebellion and shutting down the overtime contingency.
Before Mr. Milchick can turn off the overtime contingency, Mark reveals everything he knows to his sister Devon and pressures her to find out what’s happening at Lumon. While hunting for the baby (the baby is fine, don’t worry!), Mark finds a framed picture from his wedding. He discovers that his supposedly dead wife is, in fact, Ms. Casey, whom he has seen alive and well inside Lumon—though he never recognized her. Mark yells, “She’s alive!” just as Milchick tackles Dylan, ending the overtime contingency. And Season 1 ends.
