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Most in new poll say overturning Roe is 'step backward'

Over half of the Americans questioned in a new poll say the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is a “step backward” for the U.S.

In the CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday, 52 percent of voters said the decision was a “step backward,” while 31 percent say it is a “step forward.” Seventeen percent said it was neither.

Overall, the poll found that 59 percent of respondents disapprove of the ruling, and 41 percent approve. More than two-thirds of women surveyed — 67 percent — disapproved of the ruling while 33 percent were in favor of it.

A majority of women in the survey — 56 percent — also said the court’s decision will make their lives worse, while only 16 percent say it will make it better. Twenty-eight percent of women said it will not make a difference.

Justices in a 5-4 decision on Friday overturned Roe, sending the future of abortion rights back to states to decide whether they want to ban procedures or tighten restrictions.

The new survey also measured emotions toward the decision, which sparked protests across the U.S., with those who approve of the decision, especially those who identify as conservative or white evangelicals, reporting feeling “both hopeful and happy.”

On the other side, many voters who disapprove of the decision have reported feeling “upset, angry, and many add scared,” pollsters said. They noted that the sentiments are more commonly felt among the women who disapprove of the decision, compared to the men who do.

A majority of respondents — 57 percent — said it is likely that the court will limit same-sex marriage next, while 55 percent said justices will limit access to birth control.

The poll of 1,591 adults was conducted from June 24 to 25 following the ruling. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1

How the Senate broke through 30 years of gridlock to reform gun laws

Except for a relatively modest fix to the federal background check system in 2018, Congress had not passed meaningful legislation to curb gun violence in nearly 30 years when an 18-year-old gunman entered a school in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 children and two teachers.  

It was the worst school shooting since the massacre of 20 kids and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Lawmakers had made almost no progress in the decade since on restricting access to firearms or addressing gun violence.  

Yet senators defied the odds this month by putting together a bipartisan bill that passed the Senate Thursday with 65 votes, a large bipartisan majority, less than five months before a hotly contested election. The House passed the bill on Friday and President Biden signed it into law Saturday.

What seemed unthinkable only a few months ago — passage of significant gun control legislation in an election year — happened because of a perfect storm of events that brought together a handful of key senators together with a single-minded purpose: to pass legislation that would help prevent what happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde from ever happening again. 

The first key moment happened on the evening of tragedy at Uvalde, on May 24, when Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the Senate Democrats’ leading advocate for gun safety, gave a rousing speech on the Senate floor, demanding his colleagues do something to respond to the cold-blooded murder of two rooms of nine-, 10- and 11-year-olds in Texas.  

“What are we doing? What are we doing?” Murphy asked his colleagues on the Senate floor. “There were more mass shootings than days in the year. Our kids are living in fear everytime they set foot in the classroom because they think they are next.” 

As mad and frustrated as he was by his colleagues’ inaction, Murphy wanted to take a different approach to the issue of gun violence this time.

While some of his Senate colleagues were calling for putting legislation on the floor immediately designed to show voters that Republicans opposed expanded background checks or banning assault weapons, Murphy said he wanted to find something that could get to President Biden’s desk.  

“This is all about what can get 60 votes,” he told The Hill the evening of the Uvalde shooting. “Let’s see what public demand for action arises in the next few weeks but we need to work with Republicans.”  

Two days later Murphy convened a bipartisan group of seven senators in his Capitol basement hideaway office for what participants described as an “orientation” meeting to divvy up responsibilities for a negotiation on a gun safety package.  

The other senators in the room were Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) participated by phone.  

But the more important development came later that day when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) announced he would tap Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to lead the negotiations for Republicans.  

Cornyn wasn’t available for the first meeting in Murphy’s hideaway because he was in Uvalde, donating blood and taking briefings from local law enforcement officials.  

Murphy said he met with Cornyn face-to-face upon his return as well as with Sinema and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) who would become the “core four” negotiators.  

McConnell’s decision to give the lead responsibility to Cornyn and Tillis instead of the Republicans who first met in Murphy’s hideaway earlier on May 26 was a signal that he wanted a bill that had a good chance of getting more than 10 Republican votes and passing the Senate.  

Republican senators were less confident that a bill negotiated by the more centrist group that first met in Murphy’s office could pass muster with enough Republicans to overcome a filibuster.  

McConnell explained his thinking in an interview with reporters shortly before the bill passed Thursday evening.  

“My view is this was time to act. We had a number of these mass shootings over the years. We’ve never been able to ask afterwards because Senate Democrats always insisted on amendments that I and others simply couldn’t support,” he said.  

But he said the bill that Cornyn negotiated included “nothing that we thought infringed on individuals’ Second Amendment rights.”  

He said if Congress could pass “legislation that actually targeted the problems, which is schools and mental health, why would we not want to do that.” 

A Republican senator close to McConnell thought his choice of Cornyn and Tillis to lead the negotiations was a sign that he wanted a result.  

“Thom was interested in getting an outcome and he dealt with John, which I thought made sense. We were trying to get a result here and I think we got an important result for the American people,” he said. 

McConnell also thought that passing a bill that could prevent future mass shootings without making it tougher for law-abiding citizens to buy guns would help Republicans win back suburban voters, a crucial bloc of the electorate.  

“I hope it will be viewed favorably by voters in the suburbs we need to regain in order to hopefully be in the majority next year,” he said shortly before the bill passed.  

Tillis immediately removed from discussion Democratic proposals to raise the minimum age for buying AR-15-style rifles from 18 to 21. He also took a possible federal red flag law off the table at the start.   

Democrats agreed to make those concessions right away.  

“When we started … I wasn’t that optimistic but shortly after the first meeting, I was,” he said.  

Tillis said Democrats agreed to his concerns about giving people who might lose access to their fire arms under state red flag laws due process. He said the final bill included more than two pages of explicit due process provisions. 

The other important boost to the negotiations came from Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who gave space to Murphy and Sinema, despite pressure from activists and progressives to bring a bill to the floor immediately.  

Schumer argued on the floor the morning after the shooting that there was no need to force an immediate vote on universal background checks or an assault weapons ban because voters already knew where Republicans stood on the issue.  

“Americans can cast their vote in November for senators or members of Congress that reflect how he or she stands with guns,” he said. “In the meantime, my Republican colleagues can work with us now. I know this is a slim prospect, very slim, all to slim. We’ve been burnt so many times before. But this is so important.”  

Murphy kept in close touch with Schumer throughout the negotiations and had already spoken to him a few times the day of the shooting in Texas.  

After meeting with Cornyn, Tillis and Sinema in Sinema’s office a few days after the shooting, Murphy continued to talk with them throughout the Memorial Day recess.  

Murphy said “it was clear from that first meeting in Sen. Sinema’s office that we had a chance to do something really important.” 

“We really never wavered from the outline, the set of ideas we talked about in that first meeting. Almost every idea that ended up in the bill was on the table in that meeting and we just worked every single one of them for four weeks to land them on paper,” Murphy said.  

All four core negotiators said the rapport they had with each other was a big reason why the talks succeeded.  

Murphy said he “hit it off” with Tillis when they traveled together on a congressional delegation trip in April to Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Belgium.  

“We left that week with the idea that it would be great to work together on something,” Murphy said. 

But it wasn’t an easy negotiation and Murphy acknowledged “there was a half dozen moments where this could have fallen apart but it didn’t because people were convinced was the time to do something.”  

When senators got back to Washington on Monday June 6 after the Memorial Day recess, Murphy, Sinema and Cornyn met in Sinema’s office for a dinner and discussion that lasted more than two hours.  

“We made slow steady progress from the beginning because everybody realized the space we could operate within and Sen. Murphy was very pragmatic in his approach. Sen. Sinema was a force of nature. She’s very smart and she’s very well prepared and she wants to get something done,” Cornyn said.  

Cornyn described the Monday dinner meeting as a chance for three of the core four negotiators to hash out some of the issues at length.  

“I thought it was helpful to have an extended period of time. Everybody’s got five things to do at one time around here. So to have a time where we could sit down and talk for a while, share a meal and see what the lay of the land is” was helpful, Cornyn said. 

A big moment came the following Sunday when Murphy, Sinema, Cornyn and Tillis released a nine-point framework of principles endorsed by sixteen other senators, eight Republicans and eight Democrats. 

The support of 10 Republican senators for the principles meant that any bill based on them had a good chance of winning 60 votes, enough to overcome a filibuster, because all 50 Democrats had signaled they would support any gun package that Murphy endorsed.  

The framework got a political boost two days later when McConnell said he supported it and would vote for a bill based on its core elements.  

McConnell also noted that Cornyn shared a poll at the weekly lunch meeting that showed strong support for the principles of the framework among gun owners.  

The GOP leader later broke down the poll results to reporters right before the final vote.  

He said that 79 percent of gun owners support federal funding for states to implement red flag laws, 86 support prohibiting someone from purchasing or owning firearms who has been convicted of domestic violence against an intimate partner and 87 support giving the National Instant Criminal Background Checks System access to juvenile records.  

McConnell played an active role in the talks behind the scenes, talking to Sinema, one of the lead Democratic negotiators, as well as to the National Rifle Association (NRA), the nation’s preeminent gun-rights group.  

Cornyn said the legislation was negotiated with input from both the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.  

The NRA eventually put out a public statement opposing the bill but didn’t make a lobbying blitz as they have in past years against legislation it wanted to kill, GOP senators said.  

The talks bogged down on Wednesday, June 15 and Thursday, June 16 as lawmakers squabbled over the language of the red flag provision and closing the “boyfriend loophole,” which would prohibit romantic partners convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors of purchasing or owning guns. 

One person familiar with the talks said Democratic staff on the Judiciary Committee who were brought in to help draft the text insisted on language that Republican negotiators felt didn’t represent what they agreed to in the framework of principles.  

The negotiators met in Murphy’s Capitol basement hideaway Thursday afternoon to hash out the differences but made little progress, prompting a frustrated Cornyn to walk out of the room and declare to reporters: “It’s fish or cut bait.”  

Cornyn later said that dramatic move might have lit a fire under some of his fellow negotiators and fellow staff to put aside some of their differences and agree on language.  

“I literally had to catch a plane that was the main reason,” he said. “Maybe that helped give people a greater sense of urgency.” 

The staff worked through the following Juneteenth long weekend and by Tuesday morning they had settled just about every difference except for the thorny issue of how to apply the Hyde Amendment to make sure that none of the money spent would possibly cover abortion services.  

By 6:23 pm on Tuesday, the negotiators finally released the long-awaited final text — an 80-page bill — and both Schumer and McConnell endorsed the legislation with press releases sent out minutes after colleagues got the text of the bill.  

Schumer arranged to use a message from the House as the legislative vehicle to move the bill, allowing senators to vote to proceed to the measure just more than an hour after the legislation and its details became public.  

When 64 senators including 14 Republicans voted to advance the measure, it was clear to everyone that the bill would be on Biden’s desk by the weekend.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Abrams says it is 'very dangerous' for women in Georgia following abortion ruling

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D) on Sunday called a six-week abortion ban now poised to go into effect in her state in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade “horrendous,” arguing that it makes it “very dangerous” for women.

“We know that in Georgia, law has already been proposed that would expand the restrictions in the state,” Abrams told CNN “State of the Union” co-anchor Jake Tapper. 

“We know that Brian Kemp has already signaled his, at least an ambiguity, about how he feels about birth control and the laws that govern birth control access,” she continued, referring to the state’s Republican governor. “And so it is very, very dangerous for women in Georgia right now.”

Kemp signed a law in 2019 that would ban abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, generally at the six-week point in a pregnancy. The law was held up in the courts as the Supreme Court considered Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which it decided on Friday, overturning Roe. Without a constitutional protection to abortion, the law is now likely to soon go into effect.

Abrams on Sunday said she would work to reverse the state’s abortion ban if she defeats Kemp in November.

When asked if businesses should pull their operations from Georgia if the abortion ban goes into effect, Abrams said they “should be accommodating.”

“I would tell anyone, whether you are a business or a citizen thinking about being in Georgia, to take into very real consideration the danger that Brian Kemp poses to the life and welfare of women in the state,” she said.

Abrams also called for legislative protections at the federal level, saying she supports lifting the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation in the Senate, to pass abortion protections.

She also left the door open to expanding the Supreme Court but called the issue a “long-term question.”

“​We have to recognize there’s nothing sacrosanct about nine members on the United States Supreme Court,” she said.

Source: TEST FEED1

South Dakota governor says she will ban abortion pills prescribed online

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) on Sunday said she will ban telemedicine appointments with abortion care providers who prescribe pills online in the GOP-controlled state in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Noem told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that she brought a bill forward in her state to ban the telemedicine appointments in order to block women from getting prescription abortion pills online and receiving them through the mail.

“These are very dangerous medical procedures,” Noem argued. “We don’t believe it should be available because it is a dangerous situation for an individual without being medically supervised by a physician.”

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, punting the future of abortion rights back to states to decide whether they want to ban abortion procedures or tighten restrictions.

South Dakota passed a trigger law that went into effect immediately after Roe was overturned.

The state’s law bans abortions except in the case of saving a mother’s life and makes it a felony to perform the procedure.

Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol, a legal fight is likely to ensue between GOP states pushing to restrict access to the pills and the federal government under the Biden administration.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday said the Department of Justice will protect women’s abortion rights and their ability to get the pills.

Noem on Sunday said the Biden administration has “been overstepping its authority” and states will now decide what restrictions on abortions they wish to pass.

“The constitution does not give a women the right to an abortion,” Noem told Brennan on CBS. “The power to make these decisions really goes to each individual state.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The end of a life: One doctor’s view of abortion

As a physician, I consider my essential role to be prolonging life and relieving suffering. I am bound by the oath of the great rabbi, prophet and physician, Moses Maimonides, who said that he sees in a patient nothing more than a fellow creature in pain.

This is why I was so disturbed this past week to see a close relative of mine, paralyzed and semi-comatose in an ICU, continue to be poked and prodded while remaining hooked to a ventilator despite clear continued suffering and zero quality of life.

Conversely, I am forced to contrast that in my mind to the reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade, a decision that at least some legal scholars believe was based on a strict interpretation of the Constitution which, they argue, does not give a woman — or her doctor — an automatic right to perform an abortion procedure.

I confess I can see both sides of this. I have seen abortions performed on women whose lives, I knew, would have been ruined if they had kept the children, and at least as many who weren’t counseled properly and who regretted their decisions afterward and for the rest of their lives. I understand that Roe was based on public health data of women who had dangerous abortions performed illegally because they had no way to have them, but at the same time I am swayed by the words of Dr. Ben Carson, the great neurosurgeon turned politician, who told me in an interview a few years ago that once he had operated on a fetus and saved it, he could never again see a blastocyst as simply a clump of cells.

My religion does not assert that life begins at conception, though at some point a fetus does become a viable being. Exactly when that point — viability — is reached has continued to be the subject of much debate, and medical technology has altered our perceptions since 1973, when the court handed down its Roe ruling. 

Ultrasound shows us a formed fetus with a beating heart in the first trimester while, at the same time, the abortion pill RU-486 has provided doctors and their patients since the 1980s with the opportunity to induce abortion without a surgical procedure for up to 13 weeks; that now accounts for more than 50 percent of abortions. I am okay with this, though I have never prescribed it. 

Meanwhile, so-called viability, by which you can keep a premature baby alive in a neonatal ICU, becomes earlier and earlier in the second trimester (23 or 24 weeks). I am definitely not comfortable with abortions performed beyond this point during a pregnancy except for strict medical purposes. 

I don’t know where I stand overall on abortion, although, as a non-obstetrician physician, I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of performing one myself, a position which I believe should be respected. At the same time, I do not believe physicians should be prosecuted for performing one.

One thing I am certain of ethically is that an abortion should never be performed based on convenience, or because of external pressures on a woman, or because a woman cannot afford to raise the child. A woman is in charge of her body, including and especially when pregnant, but at some point, the growing life in the womb must be considered, too. 

Consider that we live in a country where hospitals spend millions of dollars each day keeping alive people like my relative, who has no viability beyond artificial life-support. Certainly we can extend that courtesy to an unborn child who hasn’t seen life outside of the warmth of the womb.

Marc Siegel, M.D., is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health. He is a Fox News medical correspondent and author of the new book, “COVID; the Politics of Fear and the Power of Science.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Six protesters arrested in South Carolina after abortion ruling

Six people were arrested Saturday evening after protesters opposing and supporting the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade gathered in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.

The Greenville Police Department said in a statement that officers monitored the protests and separated the opposing sides. About 100 protesters were initially expected for an hour-long demonstration, the department noted, adding that about 400 to 500 people came out and the protest stretched beyond an hour.

“On several occasions, officers had to address people in the roadway and parties from one side trying to go over to another,” the department said.

After multiple warnings, officials said, officers reported arrested a protester, which led to other demonstrators interfering and being arrested.

Overall, six people were arrested with charges including interfering with police, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, according to the department.

“The picket was deemed an unlawful assembly, and officers dispersed both sides,” officials said, adding that there will be a review of the incident, which is standard procedure.

The protest was one of several across the country following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion. The 5-4 decision gave states the authority to drastically limit or ban the procedure.

Source: TEST FEED1

Two ways Democrats can turn the tide with voters

By all indications, Democrats are on track to lose a historic number of U.S. House seats in November. 

Based on four key national mood indicators, Democrats are worse off in 2022 than they were in 1994 and 2010 — the two worst midterm election years for the party in recent history, when they lost 53 and 63 seats respectively, per Gallup.

Indeed, President Biden’s approval rating is lower than both Obama’s and Clinton’s at the same points in their presidency, and Americans in 2022 are less satisfied with the way things are going in the country, more negative about the state of the economy and more disapproving of Congress.

While Democrats likely won’t be able to reverse their political fortunes before November, the party can significantly cut their losses by pursuing achievable, bipartisan legislative wins that address voters’ main quality-of-life concerns — the most notable of which are the economy and rising prices.

Contrary to popular belief, bipartisan compromise is in fact attainable, even in today’s hyper-polarized political climate. After years of gun safety legislation being a non-starter for Republicans, this week, the Senate passed a bipartisan gun control bill in light of the string of recent mass shootings around the country, especially last month in Uvalde, Texas at Robb Elementary School.

The Senate’s bill has effectively isolated some of the most popular gun control policies among voters in both parties — as at least three-quarters of Americans support expanding background checks, creating “red flag laws,” and raising the age to purchase a firearm to 21, per recent polling by Fox News. 

Even though this legislation is not as comprehensive as Democrats were hoping for, the bill represents a major step forward on an issue where gridlock has persisted for decades, and ultimately proves that both parties can work together to enact important change when reform has wide-ranging public support.

To be sure, concern about the economy and rising prices is even more widespread than concern about gun violence, which has made this issue Democrats’ greatest political vulnerability in the midterms.  

In just the last few weeks, inflation hit a 41-year-high, the average price for a gallon of gas reached $5, and stocks entered a bear market. Voters are struggling with higher prices every day, and fair or not, will take out their economic frustrations on Democrats in November — as 64 percent of Americans find President Biden’s policies to be responsible for the drastic rise in inflation, according to a recent I&I/TIPP poll.

Given the unlikelihood that prices stabilize before the midterms, Democrats need to notch one or two bipartisan wins on reforms that result in direct savings for Americans.

Advancing legislation to lower the cost of prescription drugs clearly fits the bill. Americans — especially seniors and those with chronic conditions — are feeling the financial strain of high prescription drug costs now more than ever.

While pursuing drug pricing policy changes gives Democrats an opportunity to realize a meaningful legislative win before November, reforms must be done correctly — not the way that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the bipartisan Senate HELP Committee are approaching this issue.

The foreign drug imports policy proposed by Sanders is an illogical solution to the problem at hand. Most nations do not hold their drug and food manufacturers to the same standards as we do in the U.S. with our own Food and Drug Administration, and opening up trade between the U.S. and international pharmaceuticals poses an unnecessary risk to American patients.

Alternatively, a specific, safe, and popular reform that Democrats can lead the way on is a $35 insulin cap. Passing legislation that caps insulin at an affordable level is an achievable undertaking that would cut costs for millions of Americans with diabetes and would show voters that the Democratic Party is working to alleviate their financial burden.

In that same vein, Democrats can also pursue pharmacy benefit manager reforms, which would reduce costs for millions of Americans by delivering the benefits of rebates directly to the patients, not middlemen — i.e., pharmacy benefit managers — or pharmacies. Americans would be able to purchase their prescriptions and medicines straight from the supplier, thus eliminating markups or unnecessary price hikes by pharmacies and insurance companies.

This commonsense approach to drug pricing policy is currently being deployed in the private sector. Billionaire Mark Cuban’s latest business endeavor is an online pharmacy that offers more than one hundred generic drugs at affordable prices by cutting out the middlemen in drug pricing.

Notably, if Republicans do oppose either measure — the insulin cap or pharmacy benefit manager reforms — these representatives would be forced to go on record voting against it, which would enable Democrats to weaponize the issue against the G.O.P. in the midterms.

Similar to Sanders’ drug pricing proposal, it would also be a mistake for Democrats to make massive student loan relief a core facet of their economic approach. Instead, the party should turn its focus to true economic engines and begin promoting the job training programs outlined in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

In doing so, Democrats can stimulate the economy amid record-high inflation, soaring gas prices, and a looming recession. Advanced job training programs that bring the workforce into the 21st century is the right type of countercyclical policy that sets up the economy generally — and working and middle-class people specifically — for success.

By pursuing bipartisan reforms that will reduce drug prices in a responsible way and focusing on realizing the promise of last year’s infrastructure bill vis-à-vis high-skilled job creation, Democrats can demonstrably improve their prospects in the midterm elections.

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an adviser to former President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. He is the author of “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Colleges should do more to slow down ‘fast thinking’

Last week, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll reported that a majority of Americans oppose allowing transgender women and girls to compete against other women and girls in high school, college, and professional sports. At least 18 states have passed legislation to that effect, with more on the way.

And yet, less than 1 percent of Americans identify as transgender, and the number of cases in which the participation of transgender athletes has raised concerns is vanishingly small. Almost every news story — and there have been many — starts and ends with a single example, that of Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who competed for three years on the men’s team with only modest success, then won a national championship after transitioning and joining the women’s team.

Citing Thomas’s success, critics claim that transgender women athletes in general have an unfair advantage in size, muscle mass, bone density, and heart and lung capacity. This week FINA (the International Swimming Federation) banned trans athletes who have experienced male puberty from entering its women’s events, proposing instead a third (“open”) category that will allow them to compete. Transgender advocates respond that trans athletes have a right to compete on a team that aligns with their gender identity. They view the FINA policy as “discriminatory, harmful, unscientific,” and “the result of a moral panic because of Lia Thomas.”

The debate over transgender athletes illustrates a larger problem that affects all aspects of American culture, society, and politics: jumping to partisan conclusions based on isolated incidents taken out of context.

Colleges and universities should do more to teach us how to slow down “fast thinking.”

No matter how one views cases like that of Lia Thomas, context is important. By one estimate, “out of 200,000 women in college sports at a given time, about 50 are transgender.” And participation is by no means automatic. NCAA guidelines, in keeping with the Olympic framework, follow a “sport by sport approach,” intended to preserve “opportunity for transgender student-athletes while balancing fairness, inclusion and safety for all who compete.” To ask, as the Washington Post-University of Maryland poll did, whether “transgender women and girls should or should not be allowed to compete” on women’s teams contributes to the misleading narrative that trans athletes inevitably constitute unfair competition and threaten the viability of women’s sports.

The tendency to generalize occurs on a wide range of issues across the political spectrum.  Racism, for example, remains a serious problem on college campuses, as it does in society at large. But treating institutions of higher education — among the most progressive in the country — as if they were bastions of systemic racism, “complicit, in countless ways, in the reproduction of white supremacy,” as a 2020 petition to Cornell University administrators alleged, can only harden partisan differences and impede the development of effective policy responses.

In a recent survey, a majority of undergraduates say it is acceptable to shout down speakers to stop them from speaking on campus. When such events occur, as they did earlier this year at Yale Law School and the University of California at Hastings, they are widely publicized and often treated as evidence of a free speech crisis on college campuses. But as Lee Bollinger, the former  president of Columbia University, has observed, “we should be careful drawing conclusions based on a handful of sensationalist incidents on campus.” Instances in which a speaker is actually shouted down are, in fact, extremely rare.

As are the occasions on which a speaker is disinvited for political reasons. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which maintains a “campus disinvitation database,” identified only ten such cases in 2021 from among the many thousands of speaking invitations issued last year. While one denial of free speech is one too many, and there are legitimate reasons to worry about the state of free expression on college campuses, generalizing from unrepresentative cases obscures what is actually happening in higher education, reinforces partisan divides on and off campus, and complicates efforts to identify ways in which a culture of free speech and open inquiry can be fostered.

In the present highly polarized political environment, it is not surprising that zealots on the left and the right seek to exploit isolated incidents, and sometimes view events through a distorting lens, as two DEI advocates did recently when they mistakenly accused a Black DJ of wearing blackface.

The problem is exacerbated, of course, by social media, which “silos people into think-alike bubbles, rewards hyperbole and outrage, and does not support nuanced academic reasoning,” as the Bipartisan Policy Center Task Force on Campus Free Expression notes in the context of campus free speech. If a swastika appears on a residence hall bulletin board, does that indicate rampant anti-Semitism on campus? Does a reference to racial bias in a mathematics textbook indicate critical race theory is running amok?

Institutions of higher education have a special obligation to resist the temptation to jump to conclusions and recommend remedies without adequate review, even when many members of the campus community demand an immediate response.

Administrators and faculty should lay the foundation for slowing down fast thinking in and outside the classroom, at orientations and convocations, and in communications to alumni and parents of undergraduates, before heated controversies arise. When they do, college and university officials should condemn offensive speech and behavior but have the courage — and it will take courage — to distinguish incidents that are unrepresentative from those that indicate a systemic problem, and base policies and responses on a careful assessment of all available evidence, even when that takes time.

Who knows: This approach might also catch on with politicians and the voters who elect them.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Isaac Kramnick) of Cornell: A History, 1940-2015.

David Wippman is the President of Hamilton College.

Source: TEST FEED1

Russia has likely captured Sieverodonetsk, UK military says

Russia has likely taken control of the Donbas city of Sieverodonetsk, the British defense ministry said in an intelligence update on Sunday, noting that most of the Ukrainian forces have apparently withdrawn from their remaining defensive positions in the area.

The ministry noted that the apparent capture of the city comes after Russian forces moved their focus to a more intense offensive on the Donbas region in April.

“Russia’s capture of the city is a significant achievement within this reduced objective,” officials said in a statement on Twitter. “The settlement was a major industrial center and it occupies a strategic position on the Siverskyi Donets River.”

The ministry noted that Russia will need to advance on the major center of Kramatorsk and secure the main supply routes to Donetsk city to occupy the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has also set its eyes on Lysychansk in Donbas, as it and Sieverodonetsk have been the prime focus in capturing the region. If Russian troops are successful in capturing the two, they would control every major settlement in the province.

The announcement comes alongside Russia’s airstrikes on Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv Sunday morning, with at least two residential buildings reportedly being struck. The capital had not seen Russian strikes since June 5.

Source: TEST FEED1