[This is Part 2 of 2; in the first part, I argued that a future Republican Congress would be likely to pass legislation banning or greatly restricting abortions nationwide. If you haven’t read that yet, start there.] Democrats Should Pass a Federal Law Protecting Abortion Despite the Possibility the Supreme…

I’ve seen a fair amount of discussion about to what extent the Democratic Party should push to pass federal legislation protecting a right to abortion and a small amount discussing how much people should be concerned about a prospective future Republican majority passing a federal law restricting access to abortion…

Yesterday, I wrote the first part of an essay analyzing the likely legal, political, and institutional effects of the publishing of a draft opinion of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. That covered the legal effects. Today, I turn to the political and institutional issues. …

Yesterday, Politico published a draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization by Justice Alito for a majority of the Supreme Court that would overturn, in its entirety, Roe v. Wade. Today, Chief Justice Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the draft. I want to provide some analysis of the…

So, there’s a lot of challenging stuff going on in the world, and there are a lot of things that I’m feeling pessimistic about, so I thought I’d share a couple of related things that I’m feeling optimistic about. …

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued an injunction prohibiting New York from enforcing rules limiting the number of people who can gather in a religious place of worship. Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. ____ (Nov. 25, 2020) (available at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20a87_4g15.pdf). Many people view this decision as…

For people interested in college policies re: COVID in the fall, I strongly recommend reading this preprint article draft analyzing the effects of different test regimes: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.06.20147702v1.full.pdf The authors (people at the Yale School of Public Health) model different frequencies of universal student screening for COVID-19, with different assumptions about…

Many people claim that there is a paradox in increasing COVID-19 case counts throughout much of the United States as daily COVID-19 death tolls continue to drop. Is this indicative of a new, less dangerous variety of COVID-19 outcompeting the earlier more dangerous version? Is this about shifting demographics, where…