Recent news has made it plain that President Trump intends on going through with his much discussed plan of implementing tariffs on many sources of steel and aluminum imports to the US. This seem as good a time as any to ask a question that begs for evidence: Are trade wars good, and who benefits?

There is good reporting out there that analyzes the likely impact of this particular steel tariff, so feel free to find it and use it in your own argument (there are figures the administration has produced and figures that other studies have produced using the same source material). There are also plenty of other tariffs out there throughout history that have been studied and discussed. Because these sources can sometimes conflict, please be aware that your choice of what sources to use may need to be justified.

As an Ontarian in the Oshawa riding, I’m undecided. I really don’t see that any of the big three (NDP, Liberal, PC) deserve my vote. I wonder what other Canadians in Ontario think of the upcoming election.

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• Polling details like this CBC aggregate site suggest the PC Party is leading as of June 2nd.
• The Toronto Star has endorsed the NDP Party.
• The Ontario Liberals have given up on winning.

One of the stress points that seems increasingly correlated with modernity is a rise of obesity in many developed nations (most notably the United States, but also the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Mexico, and elsewhere). Japan instituted a fat tax that requires periodic weight measurements as a way to combat obesity. Denmark and India have taxed certain foods. New York City, while Michael Bloomberg was mayor, famously taxed soda as part of a policy package to address weight gains.

Meanwhile, groups have organized to attempt to reduce the amount of stigma associated with being fat, arguing that stigmatizing obesity and arguing for aggressive dietary change often creates runoff mental health issues among fat people, or worse that doctors' obsession with weight blinds them to other more serious health issues whose symptoms are being reported by fat patients.

This question is for everyone hailing from a nation dealing with some form of rise in obesity: What is the right balance to strike with public policy when it comes to dealing with the rise of obesity?

Yesterday, Ireland passed a referendum that will repeal a constitutional amendment that banned abortions. The government of Ireland will now have the explicit authority (as soon as the results are certified) to legislate matters of abortion directly. This seems likely to lead to a substantially less restrictive stance toward abortion in one of the most restrictive member nations of the EU. It would still likely end up being slightly more restrictive law than in the United States.

Ireland's history regarding abortion's legality is explicitly tied as a counter-reaction to Roe V. Wade, the American supreme court case that found abortion legal until the third trimester under a rights-balancing test under the 9th and 14th amendments (which--implicitly--enshrines a right to privacy and--explicitly--expands that right to the state level, respectively). While this balancing test was later changed to a standard requiring "fetal viability," states and activists through the United States organized against the Supreme Court's decision to create new limitations on abortion.

So today, I'm seeking to sidestep some of that history to wrestle with the core underlying balancing test Roe v Wade and other similar legal frameworks have tried to answer: when is a pregnant woman's rights more or less important than the life of the living being growing inside of her? In what circumstances (if any) should a woman be allowed to choose to end her pregnancy?

One of my frustrations with political threads generally is that they are often too broad to be meaningful in terms of policy discussion. So I thought I'd narrow the topic of discussion. I am quite interested in political discussion and this seems a fine enough place to have it as any.

So let's talk: Nuclear energy policy!

With the Paris accord attempting to have countries pledged to reduce their carbon footprint to keep the globe from warming past 2 degrees above industrial era temperatures, it seems like a lot of countries have a whole lot of work to do in a rather short period of time. Maybe the US decides to commit to some informal reduction in carbon emissions eventually. Maybe it doesn't. Here we're talking about shoulds.

So for non-US people: how should a given country go about meeting their commitment to the Paris Accord?

For the US peeps: 1.) should the US bother trying to reduce carbon emissions and 2.) how should it go about doing it?

For everyone: What place does nuclear energy have in an energy portfolio that reduces carbon emissions?

On the heels of President Trump pulling out of talks with North Korea over nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula, the United States' pending withdrawal from the Paris agreement (coming soon! ... the day after the next presidential election), and the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, combined with ongoing Russian and Iranian leadership in resolving the Syrian civil war and Chinese leadership in talks with North Korea, we seem to be heading toward an ambiguous point in international geopolitics.

So this question is simple and nasty: Is the United States on its way to losing its status as the unquestioned dominant world power in the international order?

If it is on its way off the top of the food chain, who will challenge it? Are we returning to a cold war-style era or are the lines shifting and different? If the United States is not on its way to losing its dominant status, how might it maintain its footing in a world that seems increasingly disillusioned with it?