Author: Lance Garrison
Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicWhen the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Republican Party declared victory.But the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision last month that frozen embryos are considered “extrauterine children,” which prompted hospitals to suspend I.V.F. procedures, has complicated that victory. Given Americans’ overwhelming support for in vitro fertilization, conservative politicians have tried to distance themselves from the ruling.This week on “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts discuss that political scramble and ask whether the Republicans have made up their minds over what it means to be “pro-life.” The hosts…
Perhaps the most important thing about her right now, though, is her fierce defense of abortion rights and her comfort talking about the subject at a time when it’s moved to the molten center of American politics. When the Supreme Court decision scrapping Roe, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, came down in June 2022, Michigan still had a 1931 abortion prohibition on the books. Whitmer led the way in making sure it never went back into effect, campaigning hard for a 2022 ballot measure making abortion a state constitutional right. Jessica Mackler, interim president of Emily’s List, said that…
Maybe your child hates sports, or gets more excited about video games than the kickball field. Or maybe they feel too out of shape to keep up with other kids their age. Whatever the reason, it can be tough to motivate a kid to exercise when they just aren’t interested.You know that nagging doesn’t work. And you might worry that if you push too hard on that evening walk or little league sign-up, you’ll turn your child off of exercise for good.But you have more power than you realize, says Blaise A. Nemeth, MD, associate professor at the American Family…
There was a lot of breathless speculation before Tuesday’s presidential primaries in Michigan, but the actual results didn’t clarify the two most important questions: How many “uncommitted” voters angry about President Biden’s approach to the war in Gaza will abstain in November, even though Donald Trump would surely be much more supportive of Benjamin Netanyahu than Biden? And how many blue-collar workers will support Trump in the false belief that he’s on their side?But we can at least say with certainty that Trump is not now and never has been pro-worker — while Biden is.Naturally, that’s not the way Trump…
Ronald Reagan gets most of the credit, but it was Ike, not Reagan, who transformed the G.O.P. from an anxious, inward-looking party into a confident, outward-facing one. He and his internationalist successors believed that the only way to prevent more world wars was to build a multilateral democratic world order. They had the confidence to believe America could lead such an order. The key to success in any political conflict, the political theorist James Burnham argued in 1941, is spirit and willpower: “All history makes clear that an indispensable quality of any man or class that wishes to lead, to…
The Supreme Court has never squarely resolved whether a president’s in-term conduct is immune from criminal prosecution because, before Donald Trump, there were no indicted ex-presidents.But there are four such indictments now, including Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution in Washington, D.C. — a case built around Mr. Trump’s fraudulent attempt to subvert the 2020 election and extend his presidential term. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided to review a decision from a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which rejected Mr. Trump’s claim of presidential immunity in an opinion that was thorough and…
Rife has been widely dissed on social media for this habit. People find it fake. A part of me did, as well, the first time I caught him on TV. However, I’m not sure we should, in Rife’s case or in that of other non-Black celebrities (such as the Asian American rapper and actress Awkwafina) who dip into Black English. This is something non-Black people under about 40, celebrity and otherwise, seem increasingly to be doing in ordinary life. My students have written papers attesting to this tendency both in speech and texting.It is Human Language 101 that people style-switch…
To the Editor:Re “Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Immunity Case” (front page, Feb. 29):The Supreme Court has decided to consider Donald Trump’s immunity case on a purportedly expedited basis, with oral arguments set for the third week of April. Did the court really need to hear the merits of this case at all? Is the question of whether Mr. Trump is immune for inciting an insurrection and trying to overturn an election really up for debate?The D.C. Circuit Court’s exceedingly well-reasoned, comprehensive and unanimous decision definitely answered that question. And yet, the Supreme Court has now granted Mr. Trump another…
Growing up, Carol Gee saw the side effects of type 2 diabetes firsthand. “One family member had to get a limb amputated, and another always came down with yeast infections,” says Gee, who lives in the Atlanta area. She was told that too much sugar was the culprit, so she always watched how many sweets she ate.So it came as a shock when she was diagnosed with diabetes herself in 2009, when she was in her 50s. “First, I had a pity party,” she laughs. Then she worked with a diabetes educator to learn how she could avoid the same…
Nonetheless, determined that our own children wouldn’t make the same mistakes, all too many of us overcorrected, to the point where parents who let their kids explore their own neighborhoods are now sometimes viewed as negligent or reckless. My wife and I adopted a relatively “free range” parenting philosophy, but we knew to explain our approach to other parents when their kids came to visit. “We let our kids roam the neighborhood,” we’d say, “but we’ll keep them here if that makes you uncomfortable.” A high percentage of the parents we told this to didn’t want their kids to leave…