Federal agents who were wrestling a man to the ground in Minneapolis early Saturday secured a handgun he was carrying moments before shooting him multiple times, according to a Washington Post analysis of videos that captured the incident from several angles.
As many as eight agents were attempting to detain Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, videos show. One emerged from the scrum holding Pretti’s gun, and less than a second later, the first of what appear to be 10shots was fired. It is not clear from the video whether the other agents realized Pretti — who local authorities believe had a permit to carry the weapon — had been disarmed.
Pretti was the third person in recent weeks to be shot, and the second to be killed, by federal agents in Minneapolis, the epicenter of nationwide upheaval sparked by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Department of Homeland Security officials have said agents were on NicolletStreet conducting a “targeted operation” against another person when they encountered the man later identified as Pretti. DHS posted to X that “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.” The statement said it appeared the man wanted to “massacre” law enforcement.
“The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said at a news conference. “Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”
Although it is not clear exactly how Pretti’s interaction with federal agents began, bystander footage reviewed by the Post raises questions about that account. A DHS spokesperson did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Early Saturday morning, bystanders gathered to protest the DHS operation, some blowing whistles to warn residents of the agents’ presence and others recording. One video, filmed from a passing car, shows Pretti in the street, speaking to officers and filming them with his phone. He is not holding a gun in either hand. An officer moves him back toward the sidewalk. It is not clear how the interaction began or what words were exchanged.
A second video, filmeda short time later, shows Pretti on the same block. He walks toward the officers, still appearing to film with his phone in his right hand and not holding a gun. The audio does not pick up what was said between Pretti and the officer. One of the officers pushes a person who appears to be a bystander or protester down onto the sidewalk.
Pretti steps between them, and the officer pepper sprays him. Pretti begins to interact with the person who was pushed, an exchange that is inaudible in the footage. An officer appears to try to pull him away and is joined by other agents who attempt to force him to the ground.
Over roughly the next 10 seconds, Pretti never appears to be fully prone on the ground or to yield fully. At times, his knees are tucked under his body, agents holding him down, their hands on his back.
As at least four agents attempt to subdue Pretti, an officer wearing a gray jacket approaches. His gloved hands are empty, video shows.
The agent in the gray jacket crouches down, reaches toward Pretti, and lifts a gun from his back near his waistband, according to videos taken from multiple angles. The agent turns and begins to walk away while holding the weapon, pointing it toward the ground.
Another agent, standing beside the agent in the gray jacket, unholsters his gun at virtually the same moment and points it at Pretti’s back at close range. At least two agents are attempting to hold him down. A split second later comes the crack of the first gunshot, though the videos do not clearly show which agent fired. Pretti gets up on one knee and falls over as the agent who had unholstered his weapon fires in rapid succession.
The agent in the gray coat retreats. The gun, with an optical attachment, is clearly visible in his hand. It appears to match an image that the Department of Homeland Security posted of what it said was the handgun agents recovered from Pretti.
Eleanor Holmes Norton’s campaign filed a termination report with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday, signaling that the 88-year-old will not seek an 19th term as D.C.’s nonvoting delegate in the House.
The lawmaker has faced months of intense public scrutiny about her ability to adequately represent the nation’s capital during an unprecedented period of federal intervention.
The termination filing, first reported by NOTUS, has the practical effect of ending a candidate’s campaign operation, although it does not prevent them from filing to run for office in the future. Her campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The move would bring to a close a three-decade career in which she became known as D.C.’s “warrior on the Hill” and became, to an entire generation of Washingtonians who have known no other House representative, nearly synonymous with the city’s House seat in Congress and its crusade for D.C. statehood.
But her evident decline in recent months and years — appearing less often in public, speaking more haltingly and largely only from scripts, seeming to struggle with candid interactions or to walk without assistance — ignited concerns that she was not the advocate the city needed during a critical time. Her current term ends in January 2027, when she will be 89.
Two D.C. Council members — Robert C. White Jr. and Brooke Pinto — have already launched primary challenges against her, among a host of others. Her closest confidante, Donna Brazile, called on her longtime friend to step aside last year. And an October police case, in which she reportedly fell victim to fraud at her home, as NBC4 reported, only accelerated concerns about her vulnerabilities and mental sharpness as she has aged. A D.C. police report described her as having “early stages of dementia.”
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have unleashed a cascade of efforts to erode D.C.’s already limited right to self-governance while President Donald Trump castigates the city as dangerous and filthy. During his first year back in office, he seized temporary control of local police, surged immigration enforcement, and deployed armed National Guard troops on city streets.
D.C. public officials and politicos began publicly voicing concerns about Norton’s ability to represent the District last year given the tenuous relations between the federal government and the nation’s capital.
Yet Norton (D) has spent months insisting she would seek reelection, raising concern within a party that has had to reckon with the consequences of geriatric leaders clinging to power for too long. While D.C. does not have a vote in Congress, its representative in the House can introduce bills, serve on committees, and spearhead advocacy efforts.
Her exit from the campaign would set the stage for the first competitive race for the seat since Norton first ran for it in 1990.
One of Norton’s top staffers, Trent Holbrook, recently left his job as her senior legislative counsel to run for her seat. White (D., At large) and Pinto (D., Ward 2), though, remain the candidates to beat. Other candidates include Kinney Zalesne, a former Democratic fundraiser who has raised more than $400,000; Deirdre Brown, a Democratic organizer in Ward 3; and Vincent Morris, who works in communications.
MINNEAPOLIS — Alex Pretti, the man fatally shot by Border Patrol on Saturday, was a local intensive care nurse dedicated to caring for veterans, according to his family, friends, and co-workers.
“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” Pretti’s family said in a statement shared with the Washington Post. “Alex wanted to make a difference in this world.”
Pretti, 37, is the third person shot by federal immigration officials in recent weeks.
He was shot outside a popular doughnut shop about a mile and a half from his home by U.S. Border Patrol, according to law enforcement officials. The shooting followed a scuffle between Pretti and Border Patrol agents, andPretti was in possession of a 9mm handgun,according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities believe Pretti was “a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a news conference.
Trump officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi L. Noem, called Pretti a “domestic terrorist.”
Pretti “came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers,” Noem said.
In the statement, Pretti’s family called the administration’s description of the shooting “sickening lies” and “reprehensible and disgusting.” The family said Pretti was trying to protect a woman who had been pushed down by immigration agents.
“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by [President Donald] Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs,” the statement said. “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
The shooting sparked protests and clashes between demonstrators and authorities near the scene, which state investigators said they were barred from accessing Saturday by federal officials.
Pretti had another physical encounter with immigration officers recently, according to a colleague, Joshua Green, who recalled him coming to work with a bandage on his eye. Pretti said he got a small cut after being struck by an immigration agent, Green recalled.
Pretti cared about human rights, Green said, and mentioned protesting in the wake of the shooting of Renée Good, who was killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Green said Pretti was not easily provoked or angry. “He was a very calm, collected person and always had a good demeanor,” he said. “He always had a smile. This is quite the shock.”
Aasma Shaukat said she hired Pretti for a research position at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System about a decade ago. “Alex was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest soul you ever met,” said Shaukat, now a physician and clinical researcher at the Manhattan VA Medical Center.
“He was very bright-eyed, bushy-tailed. He wanted to get into the healthcare field, work with patients and be a nurse,” she recalled. “He did wonderful. Did his work really well, was a team player.”
After finishing nursing school, Pretti returned to the Minneapolis VA as an intensive care nurse, she said.
“He wanted to serve the veterans, just had a high sense of duty and thought they were a vulnerable group in the country who needed our help,” she said.
Dimitri Drekonja, an infectious diseases physician at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, said he was impressed when Pretti secured a job in the ICU fresh out of nursing school. “It is a testament to his abilities that he felt ready for it, that he was up for that challenge and wanted to help,” said Drekonja, who worked with Pretti.
Pretti always greeted him by name, Drekonja recalled, and stood out from other nurses for his distinctive beard. They both loved mountain biking and often rode the same trails, he said.
They never spoke about immigration operations or politics at work, Drekonja said.
“He was really someone that helped,” Drekonja said. “It’s just impossible to imagine a negative interaction with him. And the fact that he was killed on city streets — as an employee of the U.S. government, by the U.S. government — it’s blowing my mind.”
Pretti was a member of a local nurses’ union, and its sister union, AFGE Council 238, issued a statement that called his shooting “appalling.”
“The murder of our union brother Alex Pretti is an unconscionable act of violence and a betrayal of the values federal workers are sworn to uphold,” AFGE Council 238 President Justin Chen said in a statement.
Pretti was excited about his future, said Shaukat. “Being an ICU nurse is tough — it’s pretty intense. But he was looking forward to getting a place, a car,” Shaukat said.
The shooting “feels so wrong,” she said. “Knowing Alex, he was probably trying to protect or help or shield somebody from the agents. He had not a single mean bone in his body; always spoke about doing the right thing.”
His father, Michael Pretti, told the Associated Press that he had warned his son to be careful. “We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” Michael Pretti said. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.”
Pretti attended the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts and graduated in 2011, a university spokesperson said.
Pretti lived in a quiet, tree-lined South Minneapolis neighborhood of single family homes and small apartment buildings, where neighbors gather in the street on lawn chairs with food during the warmer months.
Chris Gray, 41, a special education math teacher, lives in an apartment building near Pretti’s. Gray — who has been patrolling the streets as one of many local volunteers monitoring the federal immigration crackdown — said that while he did not know Pretti well, the shooting felt personal.
“It feels like [these killings] are just what happens now,” Gray said. “That could have been me or anyone. I’ve rarely felt that way, until today.”
Senate Democrats plan to block a sweeping government funding package after U.S. Border Patrol agents killed a man in Minneapolis on Saturday — increasing the likelihood of another shutdown at the end of the week.
Federal law enforcement agents shot and killed a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis on Saturday morning during an immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. Federal officials alleged that Pretti approached officers with a handgun and resisted attempts to disarm him. Videos of the incident show federal agents swarming Pretti, wrestling him to the ground, and shooting him after he attempted to get up.
The shooting prompted protests and clashes between demonstrators and federal agents and drew furious recrimination from Democratic lawmakers who are expected to vote on bipartisan legislation this week that would fund most of the federal government. It is the third shooting by federal agents in Minneapolis this month: Officers also shot and killed Renée Good in her car and shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg as he attempted to evade arrest, according to federal officials.
Democrats said they could not vote for legislation to continue U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s funding without changes to how the agency operates.
“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling — and unacceptable in any American city. Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the [Department of Homeland Security] bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement.] I will vote no,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.) said in a statement. “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”
The legislation set to come to the Senate floor this week includes six government funding bills spanning multiple agencies — including large agencies like the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services — and makes up the majority of discretionary spending. It would appropriate $64.4 billion for Homeland Security, including $10 billion for ICE.
Existing government funding runs out at the end of the day on Friday, and most of the government would shut down if a funding bill is not approved in time. At least seven Senate Democrats would need to vote for the legislation for it to pass in the upper chamber, where 60 votes are needed to overcome the filibuster.
Lawmakers could try to split the Homeland Security bill from the legislation to fund the rest of the government, which has stronger bipartisan support. A spokesperson for Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R., Maine) said she is “exploring all options” to pass the remaining government funding bills in time.
ICE’s immigration enforcement raids in Minneapolis and other cities across the country have enraged Democrats in Congress and brought increased pressure from their voters to block funding for Homeland Security, even though most lawmakers have little appetite for another shutdown. The whole government closed in October for the longest period in U.S. history, as Congress deadlocked over demands from Democrats to extend enhanced healthcare subsidies that expired at the end of the year.
President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem have ramped up ICE operations across the country, arguing it is necessary to deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Agents have been recorded aggressively detaining individuals, including many U.S. citizens or undocumented immigrants without violent criminal records.
Some Democrats were already urging their colleagues not to vote for the funding package even before the Saturday shooting in Minneapolis. The House passed the Homeland Security funding measure last week, largely on party lines.
“I don’t think we will look sincere in our moral outrage about what’s happening in DHS if we vote to fund a budget that puts no constraints on their illegal, inhumane operations,” Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the top Democrat on the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, said Thursday in an interview.
Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), one of a handful of Senate Democrats who voted to end last year’s shutdown in November, said Friday that he would not vote for the Homeland Security bill “without significant amendment” due to concerns over ICE.
By Saturday, it was clear that Democrats wouldn’t support the Homeland Security funding unless it included additional accountability measures for ICE.
The top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), wrote on X on Saturday that she would no longer support the Homeland Security bill. Last week, she had advocated for the legislation, arguing that a funding extension or a shutdown would give the Trump administration more leeway over spending decisions at the agency.
“Federal agents cannot murder people in broad daylight and face zero consequences,” she wrote Saturday. “The DHS bill needs to be split off from the larger funding package before the Senate — Republicans must work with us to do that. I will continue fighting to rein in DHS and ICE.”
Another Democratic senator who voted to reopen the government last year, Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), said in a statement Saturday that the Trump administration is “putting undertrained, combative federal agents on the streets with no accountability” and “oppressing Americans.”
Some Republicans, too, raised concerns with ICE’s actions in Minnesota.
“The events in Minneapolis are incredibly disturbing,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) said on X. “The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake. There must be a full joint federal and state investigation. We can trust the American people with the truth.”
But others defended the federal operation. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) argued that Schumer wants to shut down the government “because he puts illegal immigrants above law enforcement.”
“Instead of bowing to his socialist flank, what Schumer should be doing is telling [Gov. Tim Walz] to stop encouraging violence and let law enforcement do its job,” Hagerty wrote on X. “He must turn the rhetoric down and all the chaos is on his hands.”
WATER VALLEY, Miss. — A crowd turned out to hear a politician talk big about improving schools, but it wasn’t a Republican railing about transgender athletes or school vouchers or any of the issues the GOP has used to put Democrats into a defensive crouch.
On this night, the politician taking questions was a Democrat — former Chicago mayor and President Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — talking about reading. For the past several years, Republicans have dominated the education debate with a focus on culture war politics. Emanuel, who is exploring a 2028 presidential run, makes the case for returning to the education part of education: achievement and learning rather than book bans and gender identity.
That would benefit students and, he says, Democrats, who have not led a national conversation about student achievement since Obama was president. Instead, Republicans have been able to make up ground, capitalizing on anger about school closures during the pandemic and heated fights over transgender rights, race and other subjects.
Emanuel talks about school achievement with a frequency and urgency rarely heard from Democrats in recent years. And he says both parties have wasted time on education culture wars.
“This distracts us from the priorities of education,” he said in an interview. Questions around gender identity, he said, affect “less than 1 percent of the population and yet dominate 99 percent of the conversation. … You want to pick a pronoun? Great. Now can we focus on the other 35 kids that don’t know what a goddamn pronoun is?”
While a dozen or more Democratic presidential hopefuls scramble to carve out their identities in advance of the 2028 election, many of them better known than he is, Emanuel is betting that a renewed focus on education can fuel a Democratic victory — and more immediately, his own prospects.
As Chicago mayor, Emanuel successfully pushed several school reforms, including a longer school day, and saw graduation rates jump. But he had a contentious relationship with the teachers union and his tenure was marred by a seven-day strike. He also angered many Chicagoans by closing 50 schools. He says he has learned from his mistakes and hopes to take some of his successes national.
Emanuel traveled to Mississippi this month to examine and promote the state’s success in teaching reading. On fourth-grade tests, the state moved from 49th in the nation in 2013 to ninth in 2024 by focusing on what’s called the science of reading — instruction built on sound-it-out phonics. The state combined that withincreased funding, a heavy dose of teacher training and support, and a requirement that third graders pass a reading test to advance to fourth grade.
Emanuel argues that Washington should use federal dollars to incentivize other states to do the same. And he is proposing renewed federal standards and accountability, ideas that faded a decade ago.
At the town hall meeting in Water Valley, a tiny town in the north of the state, more than 125 people gathered. There were no questions about race, gender or culture wars, giving Emanuel space to drive home his central thesis.
“We’ve got a 30-year low in reading scores,” he said. “Has a single governor called for an emergency meeting of the governors association?”
Left unsaid was that he might run against some of those governors in a 2028 Democratic primary.
Emanuel brought a film crew with him, and within a day of leaving the state, he had posted video from the visit to his social media accounts.
Rahm Emanuel in 2023, when he served as U.S. ambassador to Japan.
An education evolution
Emanuel likes to hark back to anera when education reform was in vogue. A national movement centered on standards and accountability began in the states and culminated with the bipartisan passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. Schools were required to make progress on annual tests or face escalating consequences.
Eight years later, Obama continued pressing for accountability with the Race to the Top competition that awarded states with extra federal money for adopting favored policies such as Common Core standards and using student scores to measure teacher quality.
But by the end of Obama’s tenure, opposition had built to the high-stakes testing that the accountability system was built on. The Race to the Top program ended, and most of the requirements under the 2001 law were reversed. The bipartisan consensus collapsed, and soon the political parties gravitated to their partisan corners.
Democrats backed increased funding for public schools and racial equity initiatives. They adopted policies in support of transgender students. Today, most Democratic governors continue to focus on new funding — for prekindergarten, community schools, teacher pay, free meals, and other priorities.
Republicans promoted tax dollars for private school vouchers. During the pandemic, they blamed Democrats for keeping schools closed too long and for requiring measures like masks once school buildings reopened. Conservative parent groups that formed around pandemic issues soon used that momentum to build support for book bans and influence how educators address race and LGBTQ+ issues. GOP legislatures and conservative school boards passed laws and policies restricting how those topics could be dealt with in school.
Republicans began eating into Democrats’ commanding lead on education issues. In 2006, a Fox News poll found Democrats with a 17-percentage-point lead when asked whom they trust on education issues, though their advantage was not that big in other surveys. By 2022,Republicans had narrowed the gap significantly – som— polls found the parties virtually tied. (Several newerpolls have found that Democrats regained their advantage following President Donald Trump’s election.)
In the wake of the pandemic, scores on national math and reading exams slid to a 30-year low.
The Trump administration repeatedly cites this data in making the case for closing the Education Department and for backing school choice policies. Now, some Democrats are arguing that their party needs its own response to the slide.
“It is deeply frustrating to me as a Democrat that we completely ceded this issue,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy, education, and politics at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “We have absolutely no ideas on the table.”
In the 2024 presidential election, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who took his place on the ticket, put forward only vague education goals. One day before the election, the Center for American Progress, a leading Democratic think tank, published a set of education recommendations. Even then, there was not muchabout student achievement.
Jared Bass, senior vice president for education at CAP, said the group is now working on a new set of proposals that will squarely address academics.
“There’s a real sense of humility within the party. We used to be the party that was trusted on education,” he said. “We need to get it right.”
Even with a hunger for action among Democrats, Emanuel’s ideas are likely to face pushback inside his party and beyond. Many progressives argue that racial inequity and racism are to blame for the low achievement rates of many students of color, and they may resist leaders who want to pivot away from those topics. Teachers unions, who are active in the Democratic Party, strongly oppose the accountability systems that rely on standardized testing that Emanuel hopes to bring back.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a longtime power in the Democratic Party, said she would oppose a return to accountability systems that too often, in her view, devolved into blaming teachers. Still, she agrees that Democrats need a new vision.
“Democrats are all too reactive and as a result they have lost ground on education,” she said. “It’s very frustrating.”
A new Race to the Top
Emanuel is betting that while other Democratic presidential candidates concentrate on standing up to Trump, voters will want a candidate more focused on their daily concerns.
On his trip to Mississippi, Emanuel toured an elementary school in Hattiesburg, crouching beside children’s desks to peek at their work and hearing from the principal about what has succeeded. And he met with Jim Barksdale, whose $100 million donation beginning 25 years ago set Mississippi on its path to a new reading program.
“When do we get to geek out?” he asked Barksdale as they took seats in his living room with a trio of people involved in education in Mississippi. He turned to the group and asked, simply, “How did you do it?”
After a long conversation about the reading program, Barksdale told Emanuel that a lot of people say they want to learn from Mississippi’s success. “They say, ‘I’m all for it. How’d you do this?’” he said. “And then they don’t do it because it costs money.”
“It also costs guts,” Emanuel replied.
Emanuel, long known as a partisan brawler, says he is ready to fight for this.
In an interview, Emanuel sketched the outlines of the federal program he would like to see. He suggested a new version of Obama’s Race to the Top that would incentivize states to adopt science of reading curriculums — what Mississippi uses — and other policy changes.
The program, he said, also could encourage high schools to offer more college courses, and he favors a policy he advanced in Chicago requiring all seniors to have a plan for college, trade school or the military to graduate from high school. He also wants to incentivize states to replicate Chicago’s promise of free community college for students who graduate from high school with a B average.
States would have to adopt these types of changes to get the new federal money, he said. He contrasted that approach with the unprecedented $130 billion in COVID funding that went to K-12 schools under the Biden administration, which Emanuel slammed as having too few requirements. For instance, the program was sold as a way to reopen schools, but districts were not required to reopen.
He argues that the No Child Left Behind system was too test-driven, but that the country “overcorrected.” The right answer, he said, lies somewhere in between.
As for the culture wars, he is trying to stay far away. He dismisses some of the racial equity efforts that swept through schools, mocking San Francisco’s effort to rename schools, including one named for Abraham Lincoln.
He also opposes allowing trans athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, saying it’s not fair to other competitors. But he said he does not know whether he would, if elected president, pull federal funding from schools that resist, as Trump has done, and he said he is not interested in discussing the finer points of these policies. The entire debate, he said, has been a “dead-bang loser” — both politically and for the young people involved.
As Democrats begin to rethink their positions on education, they will need to weigh whether Emanuel’s prescriptions are the right ones and also whether he is the right messenger for them. For now, though, Emanuel is one of the fewpeople making this case.
At the town hall meeting, a questioner asked what he had done right and wrong as mayor, and Emanuel replied that he mishandled his relationship with the teachers union at first, specifically by unilaterally canceling a scheduled pay raise.
“It created a lot of animosity,” he said, describing his first term as “hand-to-hand combat.” He said he should have tried to work with the union president to find a solution together.
“You can’t drive reform if people don’t feel part of it,” he said. “That’s like 101, and I screwed it up — Mr. Smarty Pants over here. And I learned a lot.”
Jim Mooney has launched a high-wattage campaign to elevate the flamingo to Florida’s state bird.
The Republican has handed out flamingo lapel pins and 11-by-16 prints of flamingo artwork to his 119 colleagues in the state legislature. He sported a suit with a pink shirt, a pink pocket square, and a tie festooned with flamingos to testify on behalf of his legislation.
But the gangly pink bird must unseat the mockingbird, which has been Florida’s official bird for 99 years, to gain the distinction Mooney says it deeply deserves.
To accomplish this, the lawmaker is hoping to reach a political compromise with supporters of the sprightly and charming Florida scrub jay, who have torpedoed his legislation in the past. The scrub jay would be honored as the state’s songbird under Mooney’s bill, while the flamingo would become the state bird.
“It’s unbelievable how this has taken on a life of its own,” said Mooney, a retired high school sports coach and former mayor of Islamorada. “I’m seeing flamingos everywhere I go. Across the state, everywhere I turn around, it’s a flamingo here and a flamingo there. People are sending me texts and letters about it. Everybody is on board for the flamingo.”
He quickly added, “And the scrub jay.”
Florida struck a similar deal in 2022 when strawberry growers lobbied the state to honor the strawberry shortcake. Many in the state especially in Mooney’s Florida Keys district — were outraged at the prospect that the key lime pie, the official state pie, could be pushed aside. Instead, state lawmakers just created a new category — state dessert — and awarded it to the strawberry shortcake.
“There’s room for both, just like there’s room for both the flamingo and the scrub jay,” Mooney said.
At stake are mostly bragging rights, though supporters also hope to secure more money for the study and conservation of flamingos. The American flamingo is already protected by the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but conservationists say it should also be considered a threatened species, offering it even more protection after it was nearly wiped out in Florida in the past century by plume hunters and, later, habitat loss.
Audubon Florida Executive Director Julie Wraithmell refuses to choose a favorite among the flamingo, mockingbird, and scrub jay — “we don’t choose between our kids” — but hopes the bird competition will lead to them all receiving more recognition.
“If you’re Team Flamingo, you should put your influence and your support where your loyalty lies and really support Everglades restoration,” Wraithmell said. “If you’re Team Scrub Jay, you need to be paying attention to if the state is appropriating enough funding for upland land management for our parks and preserves.”
Supporters have been campaigning for flamingos, one of the state’s most celebrated symbols, for years. But a debate among scientists about whether the wading bird, which on average can stand five feet tall, is native to the Sunshine State has hampered those efforts. Skeptics noted that few were seen in the wild, or outside a zoo, for more than 100 years.
But Mooney, who has sponsored pro-flamingo legislation for four years, said a new University of Central Florida study may finally settle the dispute. Flamingos are native to the state and “genetically fit for restoration,” according to the study released in December. Audubon Florida also found that more than 101 flamingos landed in the state during Hurricane Idalia in 2023 and didn’t leave.
The exact number of flamingos in Florida is unknown — the state doesn’t keep track — but residents regularly report sightings, including Mooney, who likes to show everyone he encounters a video of nearly three dozen flamingos serenely feeding in the Florida Bay in early January. A scientist spotted a flamboyance of 125 flamingos in the Everglades in July.
The proposal, being debated during the current legislative session, isn’t as weighty as some of the other topics Florida lawmakers are expected to tackle, including the cost of property insurance, Mooney said, but is still important.
“We seldom have bills that make you feel good,” he said. “This bill does, and it also has some real intrinsic value. It shows that our restoration projects are bearing fruit, and that flamingos are here to stay.”
He was thrilled when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave the birds a shout-out during his State of the State address Jan. 13. “Even the flamingos have returned,” DeSantis said while touting the state’s Everglades restoration work.
Efforts to elevate the flamingo have overtaken a decades-long pro-scrub jay campaign. The friendly blue-and-white bird has fans among Florida schoolchildren, who have formed clubs and written lawmakers in support of the scrub jay being named state bird. It also has a devoted following among environmentalists who often argue against overdevelopment that would disturb their habitats.
In 1999, Marion Hammer, the first female president of the National Rifle Association and considered among the most formidable lobbyists in Tallahassee, helped derail scrub jay supporters. They are “evil little birds that rob the nests of other birds and eat their eggs and kill their babies,” she said.
A northern mockingbird keeps a keen eye out for intruders in 2015 n Houston. After nearly a century on its lofty perch, the northern mockingbird may be singing its last melodies as the state bird of Florida.
Hammer was on Team Mockingbird and in an op-ed in 2016 noted that they are good parents and also remarkable songbirds, while the scrub jay “can’t even sing — it can only squawk.”
The scrub jay lets out a soft trill during courtship but is often lumped in with songbirds, like blue jays, that it is related to. Flamingos, meanwhile, make squawky sounds.
The mockingbird should remain the state bird, just as it has been since 1927, Hammer argued. (It’s also the state bird in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas.)
Hammer couldn’t be reached for comment on the latest bird competition, but the scrub jay also has adversaries among Florida developers. It is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed in 2024 over homeowner rights in southwest Florida, where Charlotte County officials charge a fee to build in the bird’s habitat.
“The scrub jay has just been commandeered to really violate property rights across Florida, and I just cannot allow it to be elevated to this level,” state Rep. Monique Miller, a Central Florida Republican, said during a committee meeting in December. “I wish these were decoupled because I want to make the flamingo your bird so badly.”
Jackson Oberlink, a third-generation Floridian, has testified on behalf of the flamingo for the past three years, only to see his hopes dashed. He’s not nearly as optimistic as Mooney that it will succeed this time.
“Every year, there seems to be a few more flamingo props in a committee room, and it seems like there’s a bit more enthusiasm. And then every year, it kind of peters out,” said Oberlink, the former legislative director for Florida for All, a liberal lobbying group.
But he’s not ready to give up.
Oberlink said he became enchanted with the gangly pink birds when he encountered Pinky, a flamingo that was blown into the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in north Florida by Hurricane Michael in 2018.
“I have a tattoo of Pinky and the St. Marks Lighthouse. So it definitely left a mark on me, and I’ll always be rooting for the flamingo in Florida.”
Artificial intelligence is supposed to make your work easier. But figuring out how to use it effectively can be a challenge.
Over the past several years, AI models have continued to evolve, with plenty of tools for specific tasks such as note-taking, coding, and writing. Many workers spent last year experimenting with AI, applying various tools to see what actually worked. And as employers increasingly emphasize AI in their business, they’re also expecting workers to know how to use it.
“I think 2025 was just a taste of what’s to come. Folks were figuring out how to deploy AI for productivity,” said Wade Foster, CEO of workflow automation platform Zapier.
The number of people using AI for work is growing, according to a recent poll by Gallup. The percentage of U.S. employees who used AI for their jobs at least a few times a year hit 45% in the third quarter of last year, up five percentage points from the previous quarter. The top use cases for AI, according to the poll, was to consolidate information, generate ideas, and learn new things.
The Washington Post spoke to workers to learn how they’re getting the best use out of AI. Here are five of their best tips. A caveat: AI may not be suitable for all workers, so be sure to follow your company’s policy.
Automate your inbox
Managing your email is a pain. And while email providers offer tools to help, AI can do even more, Foster said.
Create an AI agent or use an AI app that can sort, organize, and prioritize your inbox based on simple commands. Think of it as creating a complex set of rules that automate which folders emails go to, how they’re labeled, and whether they’re marked as urgent. Instead of creating a rigid list of keywords or contacts, use natural language to identify topics or issues you need to track.
AI can also automatically draft responses to specific types of emails you regularly get. For example, AI can draft a response directing people to the career website anytime someone asks about job openings, Foster said.
“You can get pretty darn close to an automated inbox,” he said.
To automate, you’ll need tools by services like Zapier, which offers limited free versions and premium options, or SaneBox and Superhuman, both of which have tiered pay options.
Create a personal assistant
AI can be particularly useful in getting you up to speed, prioritizing tasks, and tracking progress, several workers said.
Helen Lee Kupp, cofounder and CEO of virtual community and nonprofit Women Defining AI, said she built an “AI chief of staff” at the beginning of the year to prioritize tasks. She speaks to Claude voice mode in the mornings, which then structures her day. To build it, she asked the bot to create an AI assistant and provided a list of parameters and attached work documents. She then edited the instructions and pasted it into a Claude Project, generating a customized bot she can reuse.
“It’s really nice in the morning to be able to dump whatever’s on my brain and have a first draft of here’s how we think of priorities,” she said.
Another option: Build a daily briefing agent that sends an email with a to-do list and important updates from your email and calendar, Foster said. To do this, make a custom GPT (you’ll need ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 a month) by clicking “explore GPTs” on the sidebar and then “create.” To automate your briefing, connect ChatGPT to your email and calendar, but beware of security and privacy risks. Prompt it to email you every morning with specific details around the information you want, Foster said. You can also create a daily to-do app. You may need additional tools or a hosting service to do this, but ChatGPT canprovide instructions.
To avoid giving ChatGPT access to your accounts, manually upload your calendar, task list, or select communications and prompt it to prioritize from there.
Build what you need
To solve specific problems, several workers said they built custom apps and tools using chatbots and simple commands to generate code, a concept known as vibe coding. Michael Frank, co-founder and CEO of agentic AI risk platform Radiant Intel, said he’s used Claude Code and app builders like Google Antigravity to build an app that aggregates local news for him. But people can build apps to help them learn a new skill or provide feedback on their work to improve, he said. Think about your mistakes or time-intensive tasks and build something for that, he said.
“These are not going to radically transform anyone’s life, but can it make you 5, 10, or 15% more productive? Absolutely,” he said.
Lee Kupp said she’s used AIplatform Gumloop, which has a limited free option and doesn’t require coding knowledge, to build an AI agent that monitors a Slack channel for website feedback and logs problems into a tracker. For Alexander K. Moore, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Replit and Claude Code helped him quickly build customized webpages to more efficiently conduct surveys.
You can also build a customized dashboard on Claude to track sales, customer satisfaction, the performance of a product or feature, or other key metrics, said Jhalak Rawat, chief operating officer at manufacturing AI start-up Soff. Tell it to provide action items to improve them. Use the dashboard to help get your next promotion, she added.
“It’s a good way to show the work you do,” she said. And “it takes one prompt, which takes 10 minutes to write.”
Warm your cold intro
Before pitching a new client or connecting with a new colleague or other professional contacts,use AI to find commonalities to break the ice, Rawat said.
She uses Comet, Perplexity’s AI browser, to find commonalities between her and another person based on their LinkedIn profiles and information available on Google. She once was able to connect to the CEO of a company she wanted to target because Comet told her that he was a pizza lover who once led a pizza company — a detail buried in a podcast. That tasty tidbit provided a way to warm her cold intro. This can also help when people are trying to meet new contacts for a career switch.
Enhance your meeting notes
Meeting notes and transcriptions from video meeting providers usually fall by the wayside, several workers said. But they’re more likely to refer to their notes if they actually take them.
So they use Granola, an AI-powered notepad that enriches meeting notes without an AI bot showing up as a participant (there’s an option to notify others it’s in use). It transcribes the meeting and follows the structure of your notes, adding detail and action items. You can even write notes before the meeting or ask questions about a meeting or explore trends within your meetings. Foster said he’s used it to identify topics for social media posts within his conversations. Granola can also coach people, he said.
“People take it as face value,” he said. “With AI, it has a neutrality to it.”
One bonus tip: Make your AI chatbots less sycophantic, which Moore says results in straightforward feedback. In ChatGPT, go to personalization options by clicking your name in the lower left corner of the screen. In the “custom instructions” and “more about you” sections, emphasize accuracy, clear reasoning, and explanation over flattery, praise, and agreeing with you. Tell it to push back and be blunt. Moore offers a sample prompt on his Substack post, “Tell me the truth! or How to get your AI to stop telling you what you want to hear.”
The toughest part about learning how to effectively use AI at work is starting, workerssaid. But once you get going, it gets easier.
“Don’t overthink it,” Lee Kupp said. “Pick one [large language model] and get started.”
Dean Baker has earned a reputation for predicting economic catastrophe, andhe tries to follow his own advice.
After the economist warned of a stock bubble in the late 1990s, he rebalanced his investments to reduce exposureto the market. Several years later, he became concerned that soaring home values would fall to earth, so he and his wife sold theircondo in Washington.
He was right both times: The dot-com bubble burst in March 2000, and D.C.-area home prices crested in 2006 before slumping toward the depths of the Great Recession in 2009.
Now Baker, who’s a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research,has that foreboding feeling again.
Investment in artificial intelligence has propelledthe stock market to record highs, but he’s shifting his investments to be less exposed to what he considers to be an AI bubble edging closer to popping. “I don’t make a point of coming up with a negative forecast,” he said. “I just try to have open eyes on the economy, and sometimes I see something that other people don’t.”
Baker is among a select group of people with track records of foreseeing majoreconomic train wrecks. These provenprophets of doom are winning attention in online posts and media interviews, as more people begin to wonder if the AI boom is too good to be true. That’s giving economic groundhogs like Baker a chance to spread their market wisdom more widely or actively cultivate big new audiences.
Michael Burry, whose mid-2000s bet against the housing market inspired Michael Lewis’ 2010 book, The Big Short, triggered headlines across financial news outlets in November when his hedge fund Scion Asset Management disclosed it was betting that the stock prices of AI darlings Nvidia and Palantir will fall significantly over the next few years.
The same month, Burry, who didn’t respond to a request for an interview, started a Substack newsletter that often predicts an AI-catalyzed market implosion. It has more than 195,000 subscribers and is called Cassandra Unchained, after the princess of Greek myth cursed to foresee the future but to always be ignored.
“OpenAI is the next Netscape, doomed and hemorrhaging cash,” Burry wrote in a post on X last month that was viewed more than 2 million times, likening the maker of ChatGPT to a casualty of the dot-com bubble. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
Although voices of caution are having a moment, that doesn’t mean they’re winning the argument. James Chanos, the founder and managing partner of Kynikos Associates,who bet on the fall of energy giant Enron, said in an interview that market contrariansare often disregarded.
Short-sellers like himself are often viewed “as the village idiots or Dr. Evil,” he said, either wrongheaded or trying to manipulate the market. “There’s kind of no in-between,” said Chanos, who prefers to see himself and others as “financial detectives” hunting for bad actors, fraud or froth that should be cleared away.
A 2025 Harvard and Copenhagen Business School study of the beliefs of market experts during periods of boom and bust suggeststhat questioning market optimism is a good idea.“Optimism portends crashes: the most bullish forecasts predict the highest crash risk,” the authors found. In most cases, the authors said, “optimism remained unchecked until well after the crash.”
Other economists have identified key factors that indicate a crisis could be around the corner.A 2020 study of postwar financial crashes around the world by economists at Harvard, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Copenhagen Business School found that “crises are substantially predictable.” When credit and asset prices grow rapidly in the same sector — conditions the researchers term a “red zone” — there was a probability of about 40% of a financial crisis starting in the next three years, they concluded.
A tech-fueled surge in share prices over recent years has driven the total value of the stock market to far outweigh U.S. economic input, an imbalance that has come before previous downturns.But a report issued Jan. 9 by Goldman Sachs Research said many features of past bubbles are absent.
Corporate debt is relatively low in historical terms, and most of the S&P 500’s 18% returns last year came from increased profits, not investors marking up valuations, the report said. Double-digit earnings growth is “providing the fundamental base for a continued bull market,” wrote Ben Snider, chief U.S. equity strategist. The report forecast that U.S. stocks would continue to grow in value this year.
When Andrew Odlyzko — an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Minnesota who has studied economic bubbles and has a history of recognizing warning signs before a crash — started getting calls from journalists asking about a potential AI bubble in 2024, he dismissed the idea. At the time he reasoned it wouldn’t be systemically devastating if a big company like Google, Microsoft, or Meta madean expensive technological bet that flopped.
But things have changed in the past year and a half, Odlyzko said. “Now the investments are exceeding the capacity of these platform companies to finance them out of their cash flow, and they are drawing in other sectors of the economy,” he said.
He pointed to Meta’s recent deal to develop a $30 billion data center project in Louisiana, in which the project’s debt is held in a separate entity off Meta’s books. Such deals remind Odlyzko of the creative financing that led to the Great Recession in 2007.
“If — or more precisely, I’m pretty confident when — things collapse, the spillover effects will be much more substantial, much more deadly,” he said.
Today’s rush to build AI data centers also reminds Odlyzko of the 19th-century railway mania in Britain, a bubble of speculation on new railroad infrastructure. Both frenzies are creating “big infrastructure … that’s actually drawing on other parts of the economy,” he said.
Chanos makes comparisons between today’s AI fever and the 1990s tech boom, as both bull markets have centered on big ideas: AI today and the internet’s beginnings decades ago. In the short term, many early internet businesses cratered, even though the technology worked out in the longer term.
Artificial-intelligence technology “is real and probably will be very important, but lots and lots of companies that claim they’re a great business … are probably not going to be great businesses,” Chanos said.
What’s different is that it’s now mucheasier for retail investors to jump into the stock market with the rise of stock-trading apps like Robinhood. Chanos said he’s “seeing more and more speculation in terms of retail investors who only know markets that generally go up, and if they go down, they go down for just a short period of time.”
Baker is one of those retail investors who’s preparing for the worst, as he has before — although he hasn’t always had perfect timing. He pulled back his portfolio a couple of years before the dot-com bubble burst in March 2000 and sold his D.C. condo in 2004, about two years before home prices started falling in the region.
Although discussion about predicting market slumps often frames the events as bad, Baker thinks an AI crash could do the U.S. some good.
A slump could lead to a reallocation of resources in the economy, perhaps towardother sectors like manufacturing or healthcare, he said. “There’s all sorts of things you could better use those resources for if the AI really doesn’t make sense,” Baker said.
Nearly a year ago, the Education Department sent universities and K-12 school districts scrambling with a sweeping but vague directive. The “Dear Colleague” letter said schools may be in violation of federal law if they consider race in virtually any way — hiring, discipline policy, scholarships, or programming.
After a lawsuit and a defeat in court, however, the Trump administration says it is dropping the matter entirely.
That means an August federal court order blocking the “Dear Colleague” letter will stand. The Trump administration had also demanded that schools certify that they are in compliance with the letter, and that demand is now dead, too.
Still, it is unclear how significant the impact will be. The Trump administration, which made sweeping changes to education over its first year, can still work to impose its view of the law on schools through enforcement actions and other pressure. For instance, in July, the Justice Department published a memo that included many of the same ideas that were in the Education Department’s letter.
Further, many schools have already changed their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, wary of running afoul of the administration’s anti-DEI stance.
In a statement, Education Department spokesperson Julie Hartman said the agency will continue to interpret Title VI of the Civil Rights Act as barring “impermissible DEI initiatives” that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin.
“Title VI has always prohibited schools from racial preferencing and stereotyping, and it continues to do so with or without the February 14th Dear Colleague Letter,” Hartman said. She said the agency’s civil rights office “will continue to vigorously enforce Title VI to protect all students and hold violators accountable.”
The letter, issued by the department last February, laid out the agency’s interpretation of civil rights law and argued that schools at every level had embraced “pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination.”
It said that efforts to consider race in staffing, programming, and other aspects of campus lifewere unlawful, and that even race-neutral policies aimed at diversity could result in schools, colleges, and universities losing federal funding.
Soon after, the American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit challenging the directive.
In court, the government argued that it was simply clarifying and reaffirming that schools may not practice racial discrimination. But in August, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland struck down both the guidance and the certification requirement, saying the department was trying to “substantially alter the legal obligations” of schools without going through proper procedures.
“The government did not merely remind educators that discrimination is illegal: it initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct, causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished,” she wrote.
The judge pointed to the letter’s suggestion that teaching about “systemic and structural racism” would be discriminatory. That, she wrote, is “textbook viewpoint discrimination” and contrary to law.
The government appealed Gallagher’s ruling, and the case was proceeding until Wednesday, when the administration informed the court that it was dropping its challenge. That left the August ruling in place.
The American Federation of Teachers and Democracy Forward, which brought the case, hailed the legal victory as a “final defeat” for the administration’s attempt to enforce what they see as an unlawful interpretation of civil rights law.
“With the stroke of a pen, the administration tried to take a hatchet to 60 years of civil rights laws that were meant to create educational opportunity for all kids,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the lead plaintiff, said in a statement.
The government’s decision to drop its appeal should put an end to the assertions in the original guidance since it was so thoroughly rejected by the court, said Michael Pillera, who worked for a decade at the Education Department’s civil rights office before becoming director of the educational opportunities project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
“The Dear Colleague letter was really their opening volley in their campaign of chaos against DEI, and what we have now is a spectacular failure,” he said. “They could not defend their positions in court. They had no argument to stand on.”
But he conceded that it’s possible nothing will change and said the administration’s behavior “is often untethered to law.”
Many schools may continue to comply with the anti-DEI directive in an effort to stave off attention from the administration, said Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
“One of the things we have seen is how reluctant institutional leaders are to get crosswise with the federal government, whether or not it’s clearly aligned with the law,” he said.
Either way, Hess said, he was pleased that the February letter is no longer in force. That’s because he does not think those types of guidance documents should be used to make policy — something that both Democratic and Republican administrations have done in the past.
“Dear Colleague letters have become a blunt instrument to move thousands of postsecondary institutions or 10,000-plus school districts in one direction or another, and I don’t think that’s an appropriate use of them,” he said. “I don’t think that’s good for anybody.”
Long before “brain health” became a buzzword, Rudolph E. Tanzi was rewriting the science behind it.
The Harvard neurology professor and co-director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital is known for discovering three key Alzheimer’s genes. He has also written hundreds of journal articles in his 46-year career that helped shape modern understanding of neurodegenerative illness.
In 2023, he teamed up with holistic health guru Deepak Chopra to write Super Brain, challenging conventional thinking about the limits of the brain. Their work argued that the mind’s potential for growth and creativity far exceeds everyday use, and that people can consciously shape their brains to have superhuman capabilities and improve their own well-being at the same time.
Tanzi is also the architect of a lifestyle intervention plan for brain health known as SHIELD that emphasizes the importance of sleep, handling stress, interaction with others, exercise, eating well, and learning.
Now 67, Tanzi credits his research with helping him stay mentally sharp, physically active, and deeply engaged with his work.
“I’m doing more work and having more fun and excited than ever in my life,” he said. “Your world can be a young world or stable world completely based on the health of your brain. People don’t realize that.”
Here’s what SHIELD is, what it looks like in Tanzi’s daily life and his tips for continuing to age well.
Sleep: Aim for 7-8 hours of high-quality sleep each night. Adequate rest is essential for brain function and memory.
“When you sleep, you not only consolidate memories, but you drain toxins out of your brain,” Tanzi said. “You actually clean amyloid toxins — that’s the sticky material that triggers Alzheimer’s disease, and it usually does so two decades in advance of symptoms. … Every time you go into a deep sleep, it’s a rinse cycle for your brain.”
Tanzi doesn’t have a fixed bedtime, but he calculates backward from when he has to wake up to make sure he gets a minimum of seven hours of sleep. An hour before he needs to sleep, he turns off the TV and stops scrolling through Reels on his phone. “I am almost religious about seven hours of sleep or more.”
People often ask him for advice about what to do if they only got five or six hours of sleep, and he recommends power naps. “Even a short one in the office that results in a little drool on your desk — that’s good.”
Handling stress: Minimize chronic stress, which has been linked to accelerated cognitive decline.
“It induces cortisol, which is a toxic chemical in the brain.” Tanzi worries that the constant demands of modern life — such as from staying current on social media or responding to a steady stream of emails — have created unprecedented levels of stress.
His strategy of choice for handling stress is meditation.
Public health experts and physicians have pointed to stress as a major reason Americans live shorter lives than peers in nations with similar resources.
“Many people are stressed out because of the constant monologue in their heads — the monkey chatter. We as humans, to communicate with words, often have words going through our heads, so one trick you can do is sit back, close your eyes, and gently keep words and sentences from entering your brain. Just think of images … I have gone out of my way in my life to turn off internal monologue and dialogue as much as possible. … Every hour or two, close eyes, and whatever comes in your head is fine, as long as you’re not hearing words.”
“Obsessing over something that happened in the past or feeling anxious about the future, instead of being in the now,” can also be problematic, he said.
Tanzi traces some of his thinking to the philosophy of anthropologist and writer Carlos Castaneda, whose books Tanzi discovered early in his scientific career. Modern neuroscience, Tanzi argues, supports the idea that the constant need for validation can overstimulate stress pathways in the brain, eroding mental clarity and long-term brain health.
“He said if you want more intuitive flashes and creativity and just feel more mental power, turn off the internal dialogue,” Tanzi said. “I feel more excited now than in my 20s because I don’t let the words and what society thinks cause me stress.”
Interaction with friends: Maintain an active social life. Loneliness is associated with a higher risk of neurodegenerative conditions.
“That’s the stimulation that the brain likes. … Make sure it’s people you like. If it’s people you don’t like, that’s stress. … Ask yourself, how often each week do you interact with people who are not co-workers or household family members?”
Research has shown that social interactions have positive effects on our lives.
Due to his busy work schedule and because many of his friends do not live in the area, Tanzi isn’t able to see his friends in person very often. But talking via text or phone is enough, he said.
“I have different text friend groups, and I just take time to interact with two to three of them per day, but not being obsessive about it.” They include college friends such as his old fraternity brothers and a basketball group. “This is one way you use social media to benefit your brain.”
Exercise: Engage in regular physical activity to boost blood flow to the brain and support the growth of new neural connections.
“It does two things for the brain. It induces the birth of new nerve cells, a process called neurogenesis, and it happens in a part of the brain first affected by Alzheimer’s. It also gets muscles and blood flowing faster to release a hormone that breaks down amyloid.”
Tanzi points to a study, published in November in Nature Medicine, from Mass General that found that for every 1,000 steps a person takes, they stave off Alzheimer’s by one year.
Tanzi has an exercise bike in his office and normally uses it 30 minutes every other day at 80 to 90 rpm. On the other days, he takes a walk in his neighborhood at home, or if he’s in the office by Boston Harbor’s Charlestown Navy Yard.
Learning new things: Challenge your brain by trying new activities to strengthen neural pathways.
“Learning new things makes new connections called synapses. There are tens of trillions of them they make up a neural network that stores all your memories. … What leads to impaired cognition or dementia is when your synapses go downhill, and what you are doing is building up your synaptic reserve,” Tanzi said.
“As you get older, you become less secure and less adventurous and take less chances, and it’s my way or the highway. You are using the same synapses, and that’s bad for the brain,” he said.
Tanzi is a serious keyboard player on the side, and he’s always learning new music. (He’s so good, he’s even played professionally with Aerosmith!) He writes his own music, which he describes as “an ambient jazz that’s kind of chill.”
He also likes to learn by watching documentaries, reading books, both fiction and nonfiction, and listening to podcasts.
Diet: Follow a brain-healthy diet to support long-term cognitive health.
“This is the most important … to have a diet that makes the bacteria in your microbiome happy. When they are balanced in the right ratios, they actually create gut metabolites in your brain to get rid of amyloid plaque and quell neuroinflammation. We used to say what’s good for the heart is what’s good for the brain, and it turns out that’s true.”
Tanzi favors a Mediterranean diet full of fruits, vegetables, and olive oil. “I’m mostly vegan, but if there’s a good pizza around, I’m going to have it.”
“Every single day, I need to take my medicine in terms of vegan food,” he said. When he snacks, it’ll usually be a piece an apple or pear, granola, nuts, or seeds. “Bacteria in your gut love crunchy things that are not potato chips.”
Recently, Tanzi has been turning his attention to emerging research on how other external forces beyond food shape brain health. His next book, expected late this year or in early 2027, will explore the impact of diet and environmental exposures — what he calls the “killer P’s”: plastics, pollution, and periodontal bacteria, as well as processed foods.
