Jeb Bladine: A daily flood of consequential surprise stories
Flash floods through the Midwest-South-Appalachian corridor have dominated summer news, often overshadowing a flood of consequential surprises in our daily news feeds.
That thought surfaced this week when I read that the deadliest cases of ovarian cancer may be reduced by nearly 80 percent through removal of the fallopian tubes. The question raised was, why hasn’t that long-recognized option been widely discussed when women already are undergoing some other appropriate pelvic operation?
How many other high-impact stories, I asked myself, flash past with only a brief pause followed by relegation to the scrapheap of old news. A little digging provided some examples from 2026.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act became one of America’s most consequential laws by preventing discrimination against minorities in creation of voting districts. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a major pillar of that law by declaring it unconstitutional to consider race in drawing boundaries of a Louisiana congressional district.
Advanced intelligence helped me identify some of these stories, but these days, story after surprise story involves AI itself.
Even the alleged masters of AI technology paused this year when confronted with progress toward “end-to-end automation of AI research.” AI is learning to execute missions and projects without human direction, even without human involvement.
And by the way, while every AI query seems costless, collectively and nationwide, they are beginning to increase our electric bills. It seems we all will be paying for those giant data centers spouting up across America.
Here’s another medical surprise: Research suggests that blood tests soon will tell us not only if neurological diseases are developing, but when the symptoms will begin. Will people want to know? Will insurers cover treatments before symptoms appear? What happens when the predictions are wrong?
Medical advancements can be a complex combination of science and ethics.
Staying with medicine: The FDA recently approved a freeze-dried plasma product that doesn’t require freezing and lengthy thawing, making it available in ambulances, disaster areas and rural ER departments. There may be significant life-saving treatments coming for people severely injured long distances from a trauma center.
Back to the Supreme Court: Did you notice a story about the Court’s “shadow docket,” used more and more to resolve major disputes without the substantial arguments and explanations of a full merits decision? Many of us never hear about major national policy actions through temporary emergency orders that offer little explanation of the Court’s reasoning.
One-paragraph “temporary” rulings can control events for months, even years, allowing actions that are nearly irreversible before underlying cases are resolved.
Immigration enforcement has been top-of-the-news throughout 2025-26, but behind the scenes there is a vast, newly established series of giant industrial warehouses turned into detention centers holding 1,000 or more people.
Huge warehouses converted into institutional complexes impact water, sewage, policing and roads without the usual planning processes. It is, quoted one source, “an unusually strong intersection of immigration policy, property rights, secrecy and local government authority.”
And the consequential surprise stories just keep coming.
Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.
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