And thank you to my @rand.org colleagues and editors who support this work. The last week has been hard, but I'm happy to have a platform with them to do this work.

Safety inspections like this wouldn’t have helped them, but they form a small part of the ways we try to make sure we don’t have to name more stretches of highway for firefighters. I have no patience for the bad-faith, purposeful misunderstanding of this to score political points.

An engine rollover killed a friend and fellow firefighter in 2016 outside the town where I grew up and near the station I spent my first four fire seasons living and working in. A stretch of Highway 140 in Nevada is named for Jacob O’Malley and Will Hawkins now. They were on their way home.

Thanks to Aaron Clark-Ginsberg for leading this commentary and letting me contribute to it, and thank you to @rand.org and our collaborators outside the organization for the help and support.

It’s so hard to balance. You’re navigating it all gracefully, though