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As the Trump administrations crackdown on immigration continues, keeping up with Immigrations and Custom Enforcement can feel like navigating a maze. From stories of agents raiding worksites and taking children in broad daylight to reported plans for new detention centers, the daily onslaught of alarming news makes it difficult to see the full picture of ICEs actions at any given moment. Data journalist Michael Sparks is working on a solution. Sparks is a cartographer and coding editor at the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism organization producing investigative stories about human rights, labor, and environmental concerns at sea. Hes applied skills from that role to create a new investigative database, The Machinery of Mass Detention: A Record of What Has Been Lost, designed as a centralized place to get updates on ICEs movements. The database, which is housed at icetracking.org, includes continuously updating sections that track statistics like the total number of people currently detained by the U.S., the percentage of people held in ICE facilities with no criminal record, and the number of people who have died in ICE custody in the past month and year. The information is presented in succinct sections with citations from major news outlets that are easily fact-checked. Icetracking.org is a devastating but necessary resource to keep the public informed on the state of the administrations immigration crackdown from a macro perspective, rather than simply in constant bursts of new information. [Screenshot: icetracking.org] How one data journalist is keeping track of ICE In his day job at the Outlaw Ocean Project, Sparks uses tens of thousands of government documents, news articles, and social media posts to build databases of environmental and human rights abuses at sea. Before that, he served as a product developer at The New York Times for four years, where he honed his data storytelling skills. Sparks says he felt compelled to use his skillset to hold power to account after Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by ICE officers in January. I knew there was another vast amount of cruelty happening all over the country, and wanted people to realize that, he says. Sparks took a little less than three weeks from starting the site to debuting it this week. Its essentially a database composed of aggregated reports and stories from national outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CBS News, as well as local sources like Tulsa World, Houston Chronicle, and The Minnesota Star Tribune. The tracker’s code is programmed to send Sparks a list of relevant articles from these trusted sites every 48 hours, which he then manually approves or rejects, writes up a summary, and uses to update the site. In a memo at the bottom of the site, Sparks emphasizes the human toll behind the database: What the numbers cannot capture is the texture of individual lives disruptedthe five-year-old taken from his walk home from school, the nurse shot dead while filming a protest, the grandmother detained at a routine government appointment. These cases, documented in the sections that follow, are not abstractions. They are the human particulars of a policy that has reshaped the landscape of American civil liberties. [Screenshot: icetracking.org] “I want people to feel emotion and be motivated to act” Icetracking.orgs true impact rests in the way it displays information. Sparks says he pulled inspiration from The New Yorkers UX for his design, opting for a simple color palette of white and black with pops of red for the most important information, and organizing the whole page into clear sections. When people first open icetracking.org, they see a succinct layout of seven key statistics, including the total number of people currently detained by ICE (around 73,000); the percentage of those being held with no criminal convictions (73.6%); and the number of people who died in ICE custody in 2025 (32, with 2026 expected to be even worse). Sparks says he updates these statistics any time one of his trusted sources publishes a new estimate. Users can then navigate to a header bar, organized by sections, for more information on each of the categories. Each subcategory similarly opens with a layout of the most significant statistics, followed by links to top artcles. For one section, titled Corporate Network: Who Profits From ICE, Sparks created a color-coded chart to track the kinds of companies that have provided funding or support to ICE, as well as the scale of their contributions. These include the detention facility contractor GEO Group, the AI technologies company Palantir, and the tactical communications service CACI International. The corporate network felt super important, Sparks says. These are detention ‘networks.’ Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are not doing this themselves. This section deserves a lot more reporting that, in an ideal world, I could do. So far, Sparks says, the reaction to the tool has been a mix of gratitude and horror at seeing this information presented in one place. To be honest, thats the kind of response Im looking for, he says. I want people to feel emotion and be motivated to act.
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E-Commerce
On February 10, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would ditch its endangerment findingthe mechanism that allows the government to regulate climate pollution. It’s “the single biggest attack in U.S. history on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis,” Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a recent press briefing. Here’s a brief primer on what the rule is and what the repeal might mean. What is the endangerment finding? In 2009, the EPA issued a ruling saying that six greenhouse gasesincluding carbon dioxide and methanewere a danger to public health and welfare, citing a mountain of scientific evidence. The EPA issues similar endangerment findings for every pollutant it regulates, from mercury to ozone. (In the case of greenhouse gases, its known as the endangerment finding because it was a landmark decision.) Once an endangerment finding is in place, the EPA is required to regulate the pollutant and propose emission standards. What led up to it? When the Clean Air Act passed in 1970, it tasked the EPA with regulating pollutants that threaten health or welfareincluding the climate. The agency didn’t initially regulate greenhouse gases, but in the late 1990s it acknowledged it had the authority to act. In 2003, the Bush EPA reversed course, declaring that CO2 and other greenhouse gases werent air pollutants. The Supreme Court overruled that four years later, calling greenhouse gases unambiguously pollutants and ordering the EPA to act on science and set vehicle standards. What regulations did it help create? In 2023, the EPA finalized a rule to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at oil and gas plants. In 2024, the agency created rules to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which are responsible for around a quarter of the countrys climate pollution. The EPA also finalized clean cars standards to reduce pollution from passenger cars, light trucks, and vans, and new standards for heavy-duty trucks; transportation accounts for around 28% of U.S. emissions. Now what? The repeal is specifically tied to vehicle emission standards, so that’s what the administration will try to ditch next. Although the methane and power plant regulations also rely on the endangerment finding, those will take extra steps to undo. (Its worth noting, however, that the EPA has already proposed getting rid of the power plant regulations and delayed implementing the methane rule.) It’s likely that the changes could eventually fail in court; since 2009, the impacts from climate change have become even more obvious, from more extreme heat waves to more destructive wildfires, storms, and rising seas. The Trump administration is recycling the Bush administration’s arguments that CO2 and other greenhouse gases aren’t air pollutants, which the Supreme Court already rejected. What do the changes mean for business? Some automakers, including Ford, have argued for stability in greenhouse gas regulations and supported the EPAs vehicle emission standards. Regulatory uncertainty makes it harder for companies to plan. “Undermining the endangerment finding would create more chaos, risk, and uncertainty for businesses already grappling with rising costs, extreme weather, and market volatility,” says Sean Hackett, a senior manager for energy transition at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “We’re thinking about it within the bigger context that this rollback is just the latest in the series of actions that threaten business stability, investment, and innovation.” The American Petroleum Institute has said that although it supports the repeal of emission standards for vehicles, it believes that the EPA has the authority to regulate climate pollution from power plants and other stationary sources. (Legal experts from the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that there isn’t a distinction, and that both types of pollution can be regulated.) API supprts methane regulations and says that the industry is working to reduce emissions. For automakers that are already dealing with the loss of EV incentives, it’s one more factor that could push American companies further behind global competitors that are moving to electric cars. “Repealing the finding doesn’t remove climate risk or investor expectations or global market demandswhat it does do is it removes that stable federal reference point that companies use to plan,” Hackett says. “The regulatory whiplash from removing the endangerment finding would make it harder to sequence their investments in things like engines, batteries, supply chains, and workforce training. Then that uncertainty itself becomes a material financial risk.”
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E-Commerce
We talk constantly about agein politics, in leadership, in debates about retirement and the future of work. Yet we rarely stop to ask a simple question: What is age, exactly? Most of us rely on a single number, as if people were stamped with a vintage year like bottles of wine. But age is far from a fixed or universal metric. It is multidimensional, deeply unequal, and increasingly misleading when used as a shortcut for ability, potential, or readiness. As people live longer, change careers more often, and experience work in different conditions, understanding what age actually measures is becoming essential for companies trying to build fairer workplaces and adapt to demographic shifts. The future of work will not be shaped by older workers alone. It will be shaped by widening age gaps. And by how organizations respond. Chronological age: The number of years since birth This most familiar kind of age governs everything from school entry and voting rights to retirement policies and workplace norms. Yet this way of organizing human life is a relatively recent bureaucratic invention, made possible by modern administrative systems. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/PhotoLVitaud-169.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/PhotoLVitaud-11.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Laetitia@Work\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Women power the worlds productivity its time we talked more about it. Explore a woman-centered take on work, from hidden discrimination to cultural myths about aging and care. Dont miss the next issue subscribe to Laetitia@Work.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"http:\/\/laetitiaatwork.substack.com","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91472264,"imageMobileId":91472265,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Chronological age made sense in standardized industrial societies, where careers were linear, life expectancy was shorter, and work was more uniform. Today, it is a blunt instrument. As a predictor of health, performance, motivation, or longevity, it performs poorly. Two people of the same age can have radically different capacities and trajectories, shaped by education, income, working conditions, stress, and life events. But organizations still lean heavily on this number to make decisions about hiring, promotion, development, and exit. In a world of increasingly unequal aging, this reliance is becoming not just inaccurate but unfair. Biological age: The condition of the body and brain Advances in medicine and epidemiology show that people age at dramatically different speeds. Some 55-year-olds have the physiological profile of someone in their forties. Others show signs typically associated with much later life. These differences are shaped by socioeconomic conditions, education, exposure to chronic stress, environmental factors, and levels of autonomy at work. Long hours, repetitive strain, shift work, and lack of control take a biological toll over time. Thats why for some workers longer careers are perfectly sustainable while for others, worn down by decades of strain, working longer can mean never enjoying a healthy retirement. Biological age forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: Aging is not equal, and work is one of the most powerful drivers of that inequality. Subjective age: All about self-perception Most adults report feeling younger than their chronological age, sometimes by a decade or more. And thats great because feeling younger is often associated with better physical health, cognitive resilience, and emotional well-being. But the gap matters. Feeling moderately younger can be energizing. Feeling dramatically younger can slip into denial, leading people to ignore health signals or overestimate physical limits. Subjective age shapes confidence, ambition, openness to learning, how people interpret feedback, and how they imagine their future. Interestingly, as people age their definition of what counts as old tends to move upward. Its a reminder that age is psychological and cultural, constantly renegotiated. Professional age: The number of years in a company or a craft How long you have been doing a particular role or craft or been working in an industry matters probably more than the birth date on your ID. Its increasingly common to be a beginner at 50, a mid-career experimenter at 60, or a seasoned expert at 30. People retrain, pivot industries, take career breaks, and reinvent themselves in ways that would have been rare a generation ago. Alas, many organizations still assume that chronological age and expertise rise together, which causes a mismatch between talent practices and reality. Experienced beginners are underestimated. Young experts are questioned. The gaps between these different ages tend to grow Gaps grow between chronological and biological age, shaped by inequality and work conditions. Between chronological and subjective age, shaped by health, mindset, and culture. Between chronological and professional age, shaped by career transitions and lifelong learning. Workplaces built on the assumption that age neatly tracks with ability, experience, or stamina are increasingly out of sync with society. As these gaps widen, age-based policies become less sustainable and more discriminatory. And they waste enormous amounts of human capital. Make the workplace more age-agnostic To address these issues, we need to move toward a more age-agnostic approach. For example:1. Stop using age as a proxy for skill, adaptability, or potential. Move away from coded assumptions about being too young or too old. Base decisions on actual competencies, learning habits, motivation, and the cognitive and physical requirements of roles. Chronological age predicts little of this. 2. Redesign work for people who age differently. Introduce more flexibility in schedules and locations, invest in ergonomic improvements, rotate tasks to reduce physical strain, increase autonomy, and offer phased retirement or transitions into mentoring and knowledge-transfer roles. The goal is to reduce the biological cost of work. 3. Treat reskilling as a lifelong process. As career transitions become normal, invest in training without age limits. Support adult apprenticeships and coaching for second- and third-career moves. Fifty-year-old juniors may be among the most underutilized talent pools. 4. Actively audit for hidden age bias. Scrutinize recruiting and promotion practices for coded language (high-energy, digital native) and reluctance to train older employees. Address ageism with explicit guidelines and accountability. 5. Promote intergenerational collaboration. Build mixed-age teams where experience and fresh perspectives reinforce each other through reverse mentoring, cross-generational projects, and shared problem-solving. Age diversity is also cognitive diversity. Age is not a single measure. It is a constellation of biological, psychological, social, and professional realities that rarely align. The companies that will thrive in an aging, unequal, multistage career world are the ones that understand these gaps, reduce the inequalities behind them, and design systems that support people across long, varied working lives. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/PhotoLVitaud-169.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/PhotoLVitaud-11.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Laetitia@Work\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Women power the worlds productivity its time we talked more about it. Explore a woman-centered take on work, from hidden discrimination to cultural myths about aging and care. 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E-Commerce
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