Affirmative Action

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares99 Views

    Harvard’s Black Student Enrollment Declines After Affirmative Action

    by

    Defying expectations, a Supreme Court decision curtailing race-based admissions still had a relatively small impact at some highly selective schools like Harvard, even as other schools saw big changes.The predictions were dire. In the course of a bitterly contested trial six years ago, Harvard University said that if it were forced to stop considering race in admissions, the diversity of its undergraduate classes would be badly compromised.Now, a year after the Supreme Court struck down the school’s admissions system, effectively ending affirmative action in college admissions everywhere, the numbers are in for the first class to be admitted, and the picture is more nuanced and complex than predicted.The proportion of Black first-year students enrolled at Harvard this fall has declined to 14 percent from 18 percent last year, according to data released by the institution on Wednesday — a dip smaller than the school had predicted, but still significant.Asian American representation in the class of 1,647 students remained the same as last year, at 37 percent. Hispanic enrollment has gone up, to 16 percent from 14 percent. Harvard did not report the share of white students in the class, consistent with past practice, and it is hard to make inferences because the percentage of students not disclosing race or ethnicity on their applications doubled to 8 percent this year from 4 percent last year.The post-affirmative-action demographic breakdowns have been trickling out over the last three weeks, and overall Black students appear to have been most affected. The percentages of Black students declined sharply at some elite schools, although surprisingly, they held steady at others. The suit against Harvard had accused it of discriminating against Asian Americans to depress their numbers, while giving preferences to members of other minority groups. Admissions experts suggested even before the new numbers came out that the most coveted schools, like Harvard, Yale and Princeton, would be best positioned to maintain their Black enrollment because the students who were admitted to them were very likely to accept. So in that view, they are unicorns, part of a highly selective ring of schools that scooped up the top students and remained relatively unaffected by the ban on race-conscious admissions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      If Kamala Harris Is a D.E.I. Candidate, So Is JD Vance

      by

      Ever since speculation began that Vice President Kamala Harris might replace President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, there has been a steady, ugly chorus on the right. The New York Post published a column that declared that Harris would be a “D.E.I. president,” and quickly the phrase ricocheted across the conservative media ecosystem.The invocation of diversity, equity and inclusion programs meant to bring people from underrepresented backgrounds into institutions of power and influence clearly implied that a Black woman got power because of racial preferences. Black achievement, in this narrative, is always unearned and conferred without regard to merit.Listening to JD Vance’s speech at the Republican convention on Wednesday night, as he laid out his remarkable biography — a young man with roots in an economically devastated backwater who scaled the heights of the American elite — I couldn’t help thinking to myself: If Harris is a D.E.I. candidate, so is Vance. It just depends on what kind of diversity you mean. It depends, indeed, on how you understand the role of identity in shaping the opportunities that define anyone’s life.All politics is, at some level, identity politics — the business of turning identity into power, be it the identity of a candidate or demographic group or political party or region of the country. For modern presidential and vice-presidential candidates, one of their most valuable assets is their life story. Some elements of that story are bequeathed at birth, but what makes politicians successful is their talent at narrating that story in a manner that allows voters to see some version of themselves and their own aspirations in the candidate. This kind of storytelling, embedded in American archetypes and ideals, has shaped our politics.Vance’s entire business and political career has flowed from his life story, which is embedded in identities he did not choose: Born a “hillbilly,” of Scotch-Irish descent, he grew up in poverty, son of a single mother who was addicted to drugs. Overcoming this adversity, these disadvantages, lies at the core of his personal narrative. His ascent would hardly be so remarkable if he started from a life of middle-class comfort. But no one is portraying Vance’s elevation to the Republican ticket as the outcome of some kind of illegitimate identity politics, nor is Vance perceived as having benefited from a political form of affirmative action.And yet he almost certainly did. Race is not the only kind of diversity that gets noticed and embraced. Elite institutions love up-by-your-bootstraps Americans, and that archetype is all over Vance’s life story. A promising white candidate from a county that sends few students to an elite college like Yale would get a strong look, even if that person’s grades and test scores were less impressive than other applicants’. (To be clear, I have no idea what kind of grades or scores Vance had.) Regardless of race, applicants from working-class backgrounds, especially if they were the first in their family to attend college, are deemed to add class diversity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Overturning Roe Changed Everything. Overturning Affirmative Action Did Not.

      by

      What do the strikingly different public responses to two recent Supreme Court rulings, one on abortion, the other on affirmative action, suggest about the future prospects for the liberal agenda?Last year’s Dobbs decision — overturning the longstanding precedent set by Roe v. Wade in 1973 — angered both moderate and liberal voters, providing crucial momentum for Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, as well as in elections earlier this month. The hostile reaction to Dobbs appears certain to be a key factor in 2024.Since Dobbs, there have been seven abortion referendums, including in red states like Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky and Montana. Abortion rights won every time.In contrast, the Supreme Court decision in June that ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions provoked a more modest outcry, and it played little, if any, role on Election Day 2023. As public interest fades, so too do the headlines and media attention generally.There have been no referendums on affirmative action since the June decision, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. Six states held referendums on affirmative action before that ruling was issued, and five voted to prohibit it, including Michigan, Washington and California (twice). Colorado, the lone exception, voted in favor of affirmative action in 2008.Do the dissimilar responses to the court decisions ending two key components of the liberal agenda, as it was originally conceived in the 1960s and 1970s, suggest that one of them — the granting of preferences to minorities in order to level differences in admissions outcomes — has run its course?On the surface, the answer to that question is straightforward: Majorities of American voters support racial equality as a goal, but they oppose targets or quotas that grant preferential treatment to any specific group.In an email, Neil Malhotra, a political economist at Stanford — one of the scholars who, on an ongoing basis, oversees polling on Supreme Court decisions for The New York Times — pointed out that “race-based affirmative action is extremely unpopular. Sixty-nine percent of the public agreed with the court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, including 58 percent of Democrats.”On the other hand, Malhotra noted, “the majority of Americans did not want Roe overturned.”The July 1-5 Economist/YouGov poll posed questions that go directly to the question of affirmative action in higher education.“Do you think colleges should or should not be allowed to consider an applicant’s race, among other factors, when making decisions on admissions?”The answer: 25 percent said they should allow racial preferences; 64 percent said they should not.“Do you approve or disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, which ruled that colleges are not allowed to consider an applicant’s race when making decisions on admissions?”Fifty-nine percent approved of the decision, including 46 percent who strongly approved. Twenty-seven percent disapproved, including 18 percent who strongly disapproved.I asked William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings, about the significance of the differing reactions to the abortion and affirmative action decisions, and he referred me to his July 2023 essay, “A Surprisingly Muted Reaction to the Supreme Court’s Decision on Affirmative Action”:In a marked contrast to last year’s Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the response to its recent decision prohibiting the use of race as a factor in college admissions has been remarkably muted. The overall reason is clear: while voters wanted to preserve access to abortion by a margin of roughly 20 percentage points, they were willing by the same margin to accept the end of affirmative action.“To the surprise of many observers,” Galston writes, citing poll data, Black Americans “supported the court by 44 percent to 36 percent.”Key groups of swing voters also backed the court’s decision by wide margins, Galston goes on to say: “Moderates by 56 percent to 23 percent, independents by 57 percent to 24 percent, and suburban voters, a key battleground in contemporary elections, by 59 percent to 30 percent.”Sanford V. Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin, wrote me by email thatThere has always been a certain ambivalence on the part of many liberals regarding the actual implementation of affirmative action. I thought that it would ultimately be done in by the sheer collapse of the categories such as “white” or “Black,” and the impossibility of clearly defining who counts as “Hispanic” or “Asian.”In contrast, Levinson continued,Abortion has become more truly polarized as an issue, especially as the “pro-life” contingent has revealed its strong desire to ban all abortions. Moreover, it’s become immediately and obviously clear that the consequences of Dobbs are absolutely horrendous for many women in Texas, say, and that the “pro-life” contingent simply doesn’t seem to care about these consequences for actual people.I asked Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at N.Y.U., about the divergent responses to the two decisions, and he emailed his reply:There are two reasons the public and political reaction differs so dramatically between the two decisions. The first is that in public opinion polling, affirmative action has always had significantly less than majority support.Pildes pointed out thatin perhaps the most liberal state in the country, California, 57 percent of voters in 2020 voted to keep in place the state’s ban on affirmative action, even as Biden won the state overwhelmingly. Popular opinion on abortion runs the other way: a majority of the country supports the basic right of access to abortion, and we see strong majorities even in red states voting to support that right, as in recent votes in Ohio and Kansas.Pildes’s second reason involves the advance preparation of the public for the decisions. In the case of affirmative action in college admissions,It was widely expected the Supreme Court was going to ban it. That outcome did not come as a surprise; it had long been discounted into the assumptions of those who follow these issues closely.In the case of the Dobbs, according to Pildes, “there was far more uncertainty in advance, even though the expectation was that the court would uphold Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks.”While the court majority might have decided the case “on narrow grounds, without overruling Roe,” Pildes wrote, it took “the far more extreme path of overruling Roe altogether. That came as a stunning shock to many people and it was the first time the court had taken away a personal constitutional right.”Nicholas Wu reported last month in Politico (in “Why Dems Aren’t Campaigning on Affirmative Action”) that some of the strongest proponents of affirmative action in the House do not see campaigning against the court decision as an effective strategy.Representative Mark Takano, a California Democrat who believes affirmative action helped get him into Harvard, told Wu, “I don’t see it as a rallying point for Democrats.”Representative Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Education and Workforce, told Wu, “This is going to cause some heartburn, but we need to campaign on the fact that we are opening opportunities to everybody, and we’ll do everything we can to maintain opportunities.”“It’s difficult,” Scott added, “to bring back a strategy that the Supreme Court has directly ruled as unconstitutional.”Nicholas Dias, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, responded by email to my inquiry by noting that his “read of the existing data is that Americans care more about equality of opportunity than equality of outcome.”Dias conducted a study asking Americans how they prioritize three social goals in setting policies concerning wealth: “ensuring wealth is determined by effort (i.e., deservingness); providing for basic needs (sufficiency); and ensuring wealth equality.”He found that Republicans overwhelmingly give top priority to ensuring that wealth is determined by effort, at 70.5 percent, while Democrats give top priority, at 51.2 percent, to ensuring that everyone’s basic needs are met.Dias noted that very few Democrats, Republicans or independents gave wealth equality top priority.Dias sent me a 2021 paper, “Desert and Redistribution: Justice as a Remedy for, and Cause of, Economic Inequality,” in which Jacob S. Bower-Bir, a political scientist affiliated with Indiana University, makes the case that:People tolerate grave inequalities if they think those inequalities are deserved. Indeed, if outcomes appear deserved, altering them constitutes an unjust act. Moreover, people who assign a significant role to personal responsibility in their definitions of economic desert oppose large-scale redistribution policies because government intervention makes it harder for people to (by their definition) deserve their economic station.In short, Bower-Bir argues, “people must perceive inequality as undeserved to motivate a policy response, and the means of combating inequality must not undermine desert.”In that context, Dias wrote in his email, it would be inaccurate to say thatpolicies designed to benefit minority constituencies have run their course. There’s plenty of evidence that members of these constituencies lack economic opportunities or cannot meet their needs. However, I think many Americans need to be convinced of that.In a further elaboration of the affirmative action debate, three sociologists, Leslie McCall, Derek Burk and Marie Laperrière, and Jennifer Richeson, a psychologist at Yale, discuss public perceptions of inequality in their 2017 paper “Exposure to Rising Inequality Shapes Americans’ Opportunity Beliefs and Policy Support”:Research across the social sciences repeatedly concludes that Americans are largely unconcerned about it. Considerable research has documented, for instance, the important role of psychological processes, such as system justification and American dream ideology, in engendering Americans’ relative insensitivity to economic inequality.Challenging that research, the four scholars contend that when “American adults were exposed to information about rising economic inequality in the United States,” they demonstrated increased “skepticism regarding the opportunity structure in society. Exposure to rising economic inequality reliably increased beliefs about the importance of structural factors in getting ahead.” Receiving information on inequality “also increased support for government redistribution, as well as for business actors (i.e., major companies) to enhance economic opportunities in the labor market.”The intricacies don’t end there.In their April 2017 paper, “Why People Prefer Unequal Societies,” three professors of psychology, Christina Starmans, Mark Sheskin and Paul Bloom, write thatThere is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies.How can these two seemingly contradictory findings be resolved?The authors’ answer:These two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that, despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness.Human beings, Starmans, Sheskin and Bloom write, “naturally favor fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality.”My interest in the subdued political response to the court’s affirmative action decision was prompted by a 2021 book, “The Dynamics of Public Opinion,” by four political scientists, Mary Layton Atkinson, James A. Stimson and Frank R. Baumgartner, all of the University of North Carolina, and K. Elizabeth Coggins of Colorado College.The four scholars argue that there are three types of issues. The first two types are partisan issues (safety net spending, taxation, gun rights etc.) and nonpartisan issues, like the space program. Public opinion does not change much over time on these two types of issues, they write: “Aggregate opinion moves up and down (or, left and right) but fifty years later remains roughly where it started.”Such stability is not the case with the third category:These are social transformations affecting society in powerful ways, literally shifting the norms of cultural acceptability of a given issue position. These can be so powerful that they overwhelm the influence of any short-term partisan differences, driving substantial shifts in public opinion over time, all in the same direction.Two factors drive these transformations:Large swaths of the American public progressively adopting new, pro-equality positions on the issue, and the generational replacement of individuals with once-widespread but no-longer-majority anti-equality opinions — with younger individuals coming-of-age during a different time, and reflecting more progressive positions on these cultural shift issues.Opinion on these mega issues, Atkinson and her co-authors argue, has been moving steadily leftward. “The overall trend is unmistakable,” they write: “The public becomes more liberal on these rights issues over time,” in what Atkinson and her co-authors describe as the shifting “equality mood.”While trends like these would seem to lead to support for affirmative action, that is not the case. “We cannot treat belief in equality as a normative value as interchangeable with a pro-equality policy preference,” Atkinson and her co-authors write:This is particularly true because many pro-equality policies emphasize equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. And while equality of opportunity is the touchstone of a liberal society (i.e., all Americans are entitled to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness), the right to equality of outcomes has not been equally embraced by Americans. Once equality of opportunity is significantly advanced, or de jure equality is established, public support for further government action focused on equalizing outcomes may not exist, or at least wanes significantly.In other words, there has been a steady leftward movement on issues of equality when they are described as abstract principles, but much less so when the equality agenda is translated into specific policies, like busing or affirmative action.Atkinson and her co-authors point specifically to growing support for women’s equality in both theory and in practice, reporting on an analysis of four questions posed by the General Social Survey from the mid-1970s to 2004:When asked whether women should let men run the country and whether wives should put their husbands’ careers first, the policy responses look nearly identical to women’s ‘equality mood.’ The series trend in the liberal direction over time and reach a level of approximately 80 percent liberal responses by 2004.But when asked whether it is better for women to tend the home and for men to work, and whether preschool children suffer if their mothers work, the responses are far less liberal and the slopes of the lines are less steep. While responses to these questions trend in the liberal direction during the 1970s and 1980s, by the mid-1990s the series flattens out with liberalism holding between 50 and 60 percent.I asked Stimson to elaborate on this, and he emailed in reply:We have long known that the mass public does not connect problem and solution in the way that policy analysts do. Thus, for example, most people would sincerely like to see a higher level of racial integration in schools, but the idea of putting their kids on a bus to achieve that objective is flatly rejected. I used to see that as hypocrisy. But I no longer do. I think the real issue is that they just do not make the connection between problem and solution. That is why affirmative action has such a troubled history. People are quite capable of supporting policy goals (e.g., racial balance in higher education) and rejecting the means.Where does that leave the nation? Galston, in his Brooking essay, provided an answer:In sum, the country’s half-century experiment with affirmative action failed to persuade a majority of Americans — or even a majority of those whom the policy was intended to benefit — that it was effective and appropriate. University employers — indeed the entire country — must now decide what to do next to advance the cause of equal opportunity for all, one of the nation’s most honored but never achieved principles.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Biden Looks for New Ways to Energize Black Voters

      by

      With much of his racial equity agenda thwarted by Congress or the courts, President Biden is trying to close an enthusiasm gap among the voters who helped deliver him to the White House.During a recent town hall with the Congressional Black Caucus, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a gut check to the 200 people who had gathered to take stock of the state of civil rights in America.“We are looking at a full-on attack on our hard-fought, hard-won freedoms,” Ms. Harris told the crowd, which erupted in applause as she spoke. “So much is at stake,” she said of the 2024 presidential election, “including our very democracy.”In 2020, President Biden promised Black voters he would deliver a sweeping “racial equity” agenda that included a landmark federal voting rights bill, student loan relief, criminal justice reform and more. Three years later, with much of that agenda thwarted by Congress or the courts, the White House is looking for new ways to re-energize a crucial constituency that helped propel Mr. Biden to the presidency.That means describing the stakes of the election in stark terms, as Ms. Harris did over the summer in Boston, arguing that the Republican Party is trying to reverse generations of racial progress in America. But Mr. Biden is also asking voters to judge him on a series of achievements that benefit Black Americans — but that are hardly the marquee promises from the early days of his administration.In recent weeks, the Biden administration has gone out of its way to highlight its economic accomplishments, which include the lowest Black unemployment rate on record and the fastest creation rate of Black-owned small businesses in over 25 years. It has pointed to social policy efforts, such as increased enrollment in Obamacare and closing the digital divide, as examples of real impacts on the Black community.Vice President Kamala Harris has defended the administration’s racial equity policies.David Degner for The New York TimesIn an opinion essay published on Sunday in The Washington Post, marking the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, Mr. Biden said his stewardship of the economy — a top concern among Black voters — was helping to fulfill the nation’s promise of equality.The president wrote that his administration was “advancing equity in everything we do making unprecedented investments in all of America, including for Black Americans.”Administration officials acknowledge that some of those advances may not immediately resonate with a population that sees its constitutional rights under assault. While polls show continued strong support for Mr. Biden among Black voters, there are growing concerns about an enthusiasm gap among the most loyal constituencies in the Democratic Party.Neera Tanden, Mr. Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said the president was focused on dismantling inequities that had been embedded for decades.“I think we’ll have a transformative change,” Ms. Tanden said, pointing to executive orders Mr. Biden signed in his first days in office, which directed federal agencies to consider racial equity when it comes to the distribution of money and benefits.But, she added, “it won’t be something millions of people feel in a minute.”For Black Americans like Maeia Corbett, the promises of future benefits ring hollow.“Looking at these promises that this administration has made, it’s like a whirlwind,” said Ms. Corbett, 27. “What can I grasp onto when all of these things are being taken from me?”Ms. Corbett, who graduated from college just months before the coronavirus pandemic brought student loan payments to a pause, had been banking on Mr. Biden’s promise to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of borrowers.When the Supreme Court ruled in June that Mr. Biden’s plan was unconstitutional, Ms. Corbett, like many Black Americans, felt a familiar sting of disappointment. The fact that the decision came just 24 hours after the court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, a longstanding mechanism for economic and social mobility for Black people, was almost disorienting.“It’s like you get to the steps of equity and the steps are torn down,” she said.Ms. Corbett’s sentiments are a warning sign for the president, who has tied the success of his presidency to racial progress. Mr. Biden has said he would use the power of his office to address inequity in housing, criminal justice, voting rights, health care, education and economic mobility.“I’m not promising we can end it tomorrow,” Mr. Biden said in January 2021. “But I promise you: We’re going to continue to make progress to eliminate systemic racism, and every branch of the White House and the federal government is going to be part of that effort.”Melanie L. Campbell, the president of the nonpartisan National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, said Black women — widely credited with securing Mr. Biden’s win — could see tangible progress in historic appointments of Black women to cabinet positions and the federal judiciary, including Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. But the courts, conservative activists and a bitterly divided Congress have curtailed a lot of Mr. Biden’s agenda. Lawsuits have held up the administration’s efforts to forgive the debts of Black and other minority farmers after years of discrimination. Congress has blocked two signature pieces of legislation Mr. Biden championed, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And conservative groups have vowed to pursue legislation challenging Mr. Biden’s plans to prioritize race-conscious policies throughout the federal government.Now, with aides describing him as frustrated over the setbacks, Mr. Biden is taking pains to cast the election as a choice between his agenda and the extremism of “MAGA Republicans,” or those loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.“My dad used to say: ‘Joey, don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative,’” Mr. Biden says in a common refrain.Cedric Richmond, a co-chairman of the Biden campaign, said the campaign would emphasize that Mr. Biden should not be blamed for the Supreme Court decisions. “It’s the court that just rolled back equity, and we’re going to point to it,” he said.The Biden administration has pointed to social policy efforts as examples of real impacts on the Black community.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesA recent Axios survey of more than 780 college students and recent graduates found that 47 percent of voters blamed the Supreme Court for student loans not being forgiven, 38 percent blamed Republicans and 10 percent blamed Mr. Biden.Still, polls show that Black voters under 30 have far less enthusiasm for Mr. Biden than their elders do.Mary-Pat Hector, the chief executive of Rise, a student advocacy organization that has pushed for student debt relief and college affordability, said the disillusionment among young voters was real. On issues like student loan debt and climate, Ms. Hector said, all the voters see are “things we were told were going to happen that just haven’t happened.”“When it comes to Gen Z,” she said, “they don’t forget, and it’s hard for them to forgive.”In the meantime, the White House says it has not given up on its most ambitious goals.This month, the Education and Justice Departments released guidance for how colleges should navigate the affirmative action decision, urging them to continue to strive for diversity. And the Education Department is preparing to start new loan programs, while delivering billions in loan relief by fixing existing programs that have long disenfranchised Black borrowers. And dozens of federal agencies are working through “equity action plans” tackling everything from disparities in home appraisals to maternal mortality.Stephen K. Benjamin, Mr. Biden’s director of public engagement, said he believed the administration’s economic record would resonate, even as he acknowledged that the White House needed help from Congress to make good on its broader agenda.“I do believe when the rubber hits the road,” he said, “people will pay more attention to these dramatic investments in their quality of life.”Lennore Vinnie, 53, said she felt the administration was looking out for people like her.Having benefited from affirmative action when she entered the white, male-dominated information technology field in the 1990s, Ms. Vinnie, a single mother of two, incurred $280,000 in student loan debt after years of pursuing a doctoral degree to advance to a senior leadership position. Some of the debt was acquired at predatory for-profit colleges.Lennore Vinnie is applying for loan relief through forgiveness programs that were not affected by the Supreme Court ruling.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“I know for me, as an African American woman, you can never have too many degrees or too many credentials,” she said, “because that way I take away all your reasons for not putting me in the position.”Ms. Vinnie, who ultimately obtained her doctorate and her promotion, is applying for relief through loan forgiveness programs that were not affected by the Supreme Court ruling.Ms. Harris’s appearance before the Congressional Black Caucus in Boston encapsulated the administration’s strategy moving forward: highlighting its progress while rallying a community to remember — and repeat — history.In Boston, the crowd was rapt, shouting “preach!” as she called out “extremist so-called leaders” who sought to distract from the nation’s legacy of slavery and systemic racism.Ms. Harris then reminded the room that Black voters drove Mr. Biden to win the presidency in 2020, and made her the first Black vice president. “The future of America,” she said, “has always relied on the folks who are in this room.” More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      How Affirmative Action Changed Their Lives

      by

      Stella Tan, Sydney Harper, Asthaa Chaturvedi and Liz O. Baylen, Lisa Chow and Marion Lozano, Dan Powell and Alyssa Moxley and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicTwo weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, declaring that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful.Today, three people whose lives were changed by affirmative action discuss the complicated feelings they have about the policy.On today’s episodeSabrina Tavernise, a co-host of The Daily.Opponents of the ruling marching this month in Cambridge, Mass.Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesBackground readingFor many of the Black, Hispanic and Native Americans whose lives were shaped by affirmative action, the moment has prompted a personal reckoning with its legacy.In earlier decisions, the court had endorsed taking account of race as one factor among many to promote educational diversity.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Sabrina Tavernise More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Kennedy, Christie and the Supreme Court: Are They Changing the Race?

      by

      A painful ruling from the court can sometimes free a party from an unpopular stance.A recent Supreme Court decision won’t necessarily hurt Democrats politically. J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressWhen I returned from a trip to China almost exactly eight years ago, I found my inbox full of requests from editors to write about two huge stories that unfolded while I was gone: the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage and the emergence of a surprising candidate who entered the race after my departure, Donald J. Trump.Needless to say, my inbox this week after a couple of weeks off in the Pacific Northwest does not have nearly as many requests as it did in the wake of the Obergefell decision and Mr. Trump’s trip down the escalator. But the requests I do have nonetheless center on a similar set of topics: a major Supreme Court decision, this time to end affirmative action programs, and two upstart candidates who weren’t receiving a lot of attention before I left, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Chris Christie.Court gives Democrats some coverAs I wrote at the time, the Supreme Court’s decision to make same-sex marriage a fundamental right was probably politically advantageous for Republicans. Yes, the court decision was popular and the Republican position on same-sex marriage was increasingly unpopular, but that’s precisely why that decision did them a favor: It all but removed the issue from political discourse, freeing Republicans from an issue that might have otherwise hobbled them.In theory, something similar can be said for the court’s affirmative action ruling, but this time with the decision helping Democrats. Here again, the court is taking a popular position that potentially frees a political party — this time the Democrats — from an issue that could hurt it, including with the fast-growing group of Asian American voters.It’s worth noting that this would be nothing like how the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade helped Democrats. Then, the court ruling sparked a backlash that energized liberals and gave Democrats a new campaign issue with appeal to the base and moderates alike. If the most recent case were to help Democrats, it would do so in nearly the opposite manner: To take advantage of the ruling politically, Democrats might need to stop talking about it.It was fairly easy for Republican elites to stop talking about same-sex marriage in 2015, as many were already keen to move on from a losing political fight. It is not as obvious that Democratic elites are keen to move away from the fight over affirmative action or whether they even can, given their base’s passion for racial equality.About those other candidatesObviously, any analogy between the first few weeks of Mr. Trump’s campaign and the slow emergence of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie will be much more strained. For one, Mr. Christie and Mr. Kennedy were already making ripples in the race when I left, and I did think I might need to write about them at some point. In contrast, Mr. Trump couldn’t have been further from my mind in mid-June 2015. Upon hearing about his bid on my return, I thought he might fade so quickly that I would never even have to write about him. Whatever you think about Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie, there’s not much reason to think they simply might go “pop.”Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie don’t have much in common — other than their unequivocally low chance of actually winning — but they have, in their own ways, become factors in the race simply by being the best or even only vessel for expressing explicit opposition to their party’s front-runners, Joe Biden and Mr. Trump.Chris Christie has been direct in his criticism of Donald Trump.John Tully for The New York TimesUsually, willingness to oppose a front-runner isn’t enough to distinguish an aspiring candidate. This year, it is. No current or former elected official has challenged the incumbent president thus far in the Democratic primary. And while many prominent Republicans appear willing to enter the race against Mr. Trump, few appear willing to directly, forcefully and consistently attack him. When they do attack him — as Ron DeSantis recently did for supporting L.G.B.T.Q. people a decade ago — it’s often from the right, and not on the issues that animate the base of any hypothetical not-Trump coalition: relatively moderate, highly educated Republicans.Of the two, Mr. Christie is probably the one who is most effectively fulfilling this demand for direct opposition to the front-runner. There may not be a large constituency for anti-Trump campaigning, but it exists and Mr. Christie is feeding it what it wants. Just as important, directly attacking Mr. Trump ensures a steady diet of media coverage.All of this makes Mr. Christie a classic factional candidate, the kind that doesn’t usually win presidential nominations but can nonetheless play an important role in the outcome of the campaign. If he gains the allegiance of those outright opposed to Mr. Trump, he’ll deny an essential not-Trump voting bloc to another Republican who might have broader appeal throughout the party — say, Mr. DeSantis. This is most likely to play out in New Hampshire, where fragmentary survey data (often from Republican-aligned firms) shows Mr. Christie creeping up into the mid-to-high single digits.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been a critic of vaccination.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy is a more complicated case. With the help of a famous family name, he’s nudged ahead of Marianne Williamson for the minor distinction of being Mr. Biden’s top rival in Democratic primary polls. On average, Mr. Kennedy polls in the mid-teens, with some surveys still showing him in the single digits and one poll showing him above 20 percent. That’s more than Mr. Christie can say.But unlike Mr. Christie, Mr. Kennedy is not exactly feeding Biden skeptics what they want. Instead, he’s advancing conspiracy theories, appearing on right-wing media and earning praise from conservative figures. And unlike Mr. Trump, whose most ardent opposition is probably toward the center, Mr. Biden is probably most vulnerable to a challenge from the ideological left. This is not what Mr. Kennedy is offering, and it’s reflected in the polls. While Times/Siena polling last summer showed Mr. Biden most vulnerable among “very liberal” voters and on progressive issues, Mr. Kennedy actually fares much better among self-described moderates than liberals. He doesn’t clearly fare better among younger Democrats than older ones, despite Mr. Biden’s longstanding weakness among the younger group.It’s too early to say whether Mr. Kennedy’s modest foothold among moderate and conservative Democrats reflects a constituency for anti-modernist, anti-establishment liberalism, or whether Mr. Kennedy’s family name is simply getting him farther among less engaged Democrats, who are likelier to identify as moderate. Either way, his ability to play an important role in the race is limited by embracing conservatives and conspiratorial positions, even if he may continue to earn modest support in the race because of the absence of another prominent not-Biden option. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Supreme Court Decisions on Education Could Offer Democrats an Opening

      by

      The decisions this week on affirmative action and student loans give Democrats a way to make a case on class and appeal to voters who have drifted away from the party.Ever since President Bill Clinton advised “mend it, don’t end it,” affirmative action has had an uneasy place in the Democratic coalition, as omnipresent as the party’s allegiance to abortion rights and its promises to expand financial aid for higher education — but unpopular with much of the public.Now, in striking down race-conscious college admissions, the Supreme Court has handed the Democrats a way to shift from a race-based discussion of preference to one tied more to class. The court’s decision could fuel broader outreach to the working-class voters who have drifted away from the party because of what they see as its elitism.The question is, will the party pivot?“This is a tremendous opportunity for Democrats to course-correct from identity-based issues,” said Ruy Teixeira, whose upcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” looks at the bleeding of working-class voters over the last decade. “As I like to say, class is back in session.”Conservative voters have long been more animated by the Supreme Court’s composition than liberals have. But the last two sessions of a high court remade by Donald J. Trump may have flipped that dynamic. Since the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, energized Democratic voters have handed Republicans loss after loss in critical elections.Republicans’ remarkable successes before the new court may have actually deprived them of combative issues to galvanize voters going into 2024. Several Republican presidential hopefuls had centered their campaigns on opposition to affirmative action. And the court’s granting of religious exemptions to people who oppose gay marriage, along with last year’s Dobbs decision, may take the sting out of some social issues for conservatives.In that sense, the staunchly conservative new Supreme Court is doing the ugly political work for Democrats. Its decision last year to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion elevated an issue that for decades motivated religious conservatives more than it did secular liberals.The University of North Carolina and Harvard University were at the center of the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action.Kate Medley for The New York TimesFriday’s decision to strike down President Biden’s student debt relief plan enraged progressive Democrats, who had pressed the president to take executive action on loan forgiveness. A coalition of Generation Z advocacy groups, including Gen-Z for Change and the climate-oriented Sunrise Movement, said on Friday that the court “has openly declared war on young people.”But while the Supreme Court made retroactive higher education assistance far more difficult, it may have boosted the Democratic cause of financial aid, through expanded Pell grants and scholarships that do not saddle graduates with crushing debt burdens. Democrats have long pushed expanded grant programs and legislative loan-forgiveness programs for graduates who embark on low-paid public service careers. Those efforts will get a lift in the wake of the court’s decision.The high court’s declaration that race-based admission to colleges and universities is unconstitutional infuriated key elements of the Democratic coalition — Black and Hispanic groups in particular, but also some Asian American and Pacific Islander groups who said conservatives had used a small number of Asian Americans as pawns to challenge affirmative action on behalf of whites.“They were using the Asian community as a wedge,” said Representative Judy Chu, Democrat of California, after the decision was handed down on Thursday. “I stand with the unified community.”But while they have expressed anger and disappointment over the conservative decisions, Democrats also acknowledge their inability to do much to restore affirmative action, student loan forgiveness and the right to an abortion in the foreseeable future, as long as the 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court holds.“There’s a constitutional challenge in bringing it back,” said Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia, a longtime Democratic leader on the House education committee.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist pressing his party to expand its outreach to the working class, said adding a new emphasis on class consciousness to augment racial and ethnic awareness would fit well with Mr. Biden’s pitch that his legislative achievements have largely accrued to the benefit of workers.Infrastructure spending, electric vehicles investment, broadband expansion and semiconductor manufacturing have promoted jobs — especially union jobs — all over the country but especially in rural and suburban areas, often in Republican states.“By next year, Democrats will be able to say we’ve invested in red states, blue states, urban areas, rural areas,” he said. “We’re not like the Republicans. We’re for everybody.”But bigotry, discrimination and the erosion of civil rights will remain central issues for Democrats, given the anger of the party base, Mr. Rosenberg said. The Supreme Court’s siding on Friday with a web designer in Colorado who said she had a First Amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages cannot be separated from the affirmative action, student loan and abortion decisions.Mr. Teixeira said Democrats were not likely to see their new opportunities at first.“If you want to solve some of the underlying problems of the party, this should be a gimme,” he said of pivoting from racial and ethnic identity to class. But, he added, “in the short term, the enormous pressure will be not to do that.”Representative Judy Chu said conservatives “were using the Asian community as a wedge” against affirmative action.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIndeed, the initial Democratic response to the Supreme Court’s actions was not to elevate economic hardship as a key preference in college admissions. Instead, Democrats seemed focused on striking down other areas of privilege, especially the legacy admission preference given to the children and grandchildren of alumni of elite institutions.“What we’re fighting for is equal opportunity,” said Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas. “If they get rid of affirmative action and leave rampant legacy admissions, they’re making merit a slogan, not a reality.”Republicans saw a political line of attack in the Democratic response to the court’s decision. Even before 1990, when a campaign ad by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina featured white hands crumpling a job rejection to denounce “racial quotas,” Republicans had used affirmative action to their political advantage.Mr. Clinton’s “mend it, don’t end it” formulation came after a 1995 speech before California Democrats in which he said of affirmative action programs: “We do have to ask ourselves, ‘Are they all working? Are they all fair? Has there been any kind of reverse discrimination?’”A June survey by the Pew Research Center found that more Americans disapprove than approve of colleges and universities’ using race and ethnicity in admissions decisions, and that Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters are largely unified in their opposition, while Democratic voters are split.After Mr. Biden expressed his opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision, the campaign arm of the Senate Republicans issued a statement calling out three vulnerable Senate Democrats up for re-election in Republican states: Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.A June survey by the Pew Research Center found that more Americans disapprove than approve of colleges and universities’ using race and ethnicity in admissions decisions.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“Democrats are doubling down on their racist agenda and want to pack the Supreme Court to get their way,” said Philip Letsou, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Will Democrats like Joe Manchin, Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown denounce Joe Biden’s support of racial discrimination and state unequivocally that they oppose packing the court?”The House Republican campaign arm called Democratic outrage “the great limousine liberal meltdown.”But the Supreme Court has offered Democrats a way forward with many of its decisions — based on class. The affluent will always have access to abortions, by traveling to states where it remains legal, and to elite institutions of higher education, where they may have legacy pull and the means to pay tuition.Those facing economic struggles are not so privileged. Applicants of color may have lost an edge in admissions, but poor and middle-class students and graduates of all races were dealt a blow when the court declared that the president did not have the authority to unilaterally forgive their student loans.Representative Marilyn Strickland, Democrat of Washington, said her party now needs to recalibrate away from elite institutions like Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the defendants in the high court’s case against affirmative action, and “respect all types of education and all types of opportunity,” mentioning union training programs, apprenticeships, trade schools and community colleges.Mr. Scott agreed. “This is going to cause some heartburn,” he said, “but what we need to campaign on is that we’re opening opportunities for everybody.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      The Supreme Court’s Rejection of a Disputed Legal Theory on Elections

      by

      More from our inbox:Race and ClassDemand Tax Relief‘Make Reading Fun Again’The German Far Right Should Worry Us AllThe case will have no practical impact in the dispute that gave rise to it, involving North Carolina’s congressional voting map. The state has waged many battles over redistricting.Gerry Broome/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Court Rules State Control of U.S. Voting Has Limits” (front page, June 28):Several high-profile cases were decided by the Supreme Court this month, but only one, Moore v. Harper, had the potential to affect the very lifeblood of our democracy — voting. This election law case considered, in part, a controversial constitutional theory known as the “independent state legislature” doctrine.At issue was whether or not state legislatures had absolute power with no electoral oversight authority by state courts to regulate federal elections. With unchecked power, state legislators in key swing states could have rejected the voters’ slate of electors and appointed their handpicked substitutes.The Supreme Court has an obligation to protect our democracy. By rejecting the dangerous independent state legislature theory, the court safeguarded state-level judiciaries, shielding the will of the voters in the process.Jim PaladinoTampa, Fla.To the Editor:In the 6-to-3 Supreme Court ruling Tuesday in Moore v. Harper, the fact that a supermajority including both Democratic and Republican appointees reaffirmed the American constitutional order is the latest example that the Republican-appointed justices are not in the hip pocket of Donald Trump and the extreme right of the Republican Party.This should provide comfort for those who believe in the separation of powers as prescribed in our Constitution.John A. ViterittiLaurel, N.Y.To the Editor:Adam Liptak writes about the Supreme Court’s ruling that soundly dismissed the “independent state legislature” theory.The article quotes Richard L. Hasen, a U.C.L.A. law professor and leading election law scholar, who said the ruling giving the Supreme Court the ultimate say in federal election disputes was “a bad, but not awful, result.”It seems globally accepted that legal disputes, including election disputes, should be decided by courts, and that in federal democracies, the highest national courts are best suited to have the last word in federal election cases.While it is common for politicians and lawyers worldwide to dismiss international best practices based on the uniqueness of their legal systems, in the U.S., too, only the Supreme Court can ensure consistency across all states and thus protect the integrity of federal elections.Jurij ToplakNew YorkThe writer is a visiting professor at Fordham University School of Law.To the Editor:In your article the Supreme Court justices whose opinions pose a threat to voting rights and democracy are referred to as “conservative.” The justices’ positions are not “conservative,” if conservative refers to those who are committed to preserve traditional institutions, practices and values.I would ask that The Times consider a better word to describe these justices, whose positions on legal issues are heavily influenced by considerations of preserving Republican rule, class structures and Christian ideological dominance.Cindy WeinbaumAtlantaRace and Class Pablo DelcanTo the Editor:Re “Reparations Should Be an End, Not a Beginning,” by John McWhorter (Opinion, June 26):Providing support for those who have been hurt by past discrimination is an important step in alleviating the harm caused by America’s long history of racism.However, including all who are economically disadvantaged in any initiatives, as Professor McWhorter suggests, will broaden support for affirmative action programs while assisting more people who need a hand up.Ignoring this slice of the populace is what has led to simmering resentment in many communities and to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.Rather than pitting groups against one another, we should strive to lift up the fallen, regardless of the origin of people’s suffering.Edwin AndrewsMalden, Mass.Demand Tax ReliefHomeowners 65 or older with income of less than $500,000 could qualify for a property tax cut of as much as $6,500 a year.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Property Taxes Could Be Cut in Half for Older New Jersey Homeowners” (news article, June 22):As a suburban homeowner in Nassau County in New York, I find it reassuring to see neighboring New Jersey working hard to address the problem of high property taxes. It just approved a property tax reduction program for homeowners 65-plus called StayNJ, designed to offset some of the highest property taxes in the country.The people of New York State must demand that their elected officials pass similar relief for their constituents, who also live in a state with high property taxes. We are still suffering from a $10,000 state and local taxes deduction cap on our federal income tax that was passed under former President Donald Trump.Congressional Democrats promised to repeal this as one of their legislative priorities and have failed to keep their promise so far. So it is up to us to demand action from the New York State Legislature.Philip A. Paoli Jr.Seaford, N.Y.‘Make Reading Fun Again’To the Editor:Re “13-Year-Olds in U.S. Record Lowest Test Scores in Decades” (news article, June 22):The latest data is out on reading scores for 13-year-olds in the U.S., and it’s not good. Children’s reading levels are at their lowest in decades.In your article, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics states, “This is a huge-scale challenge that faces the nation.”Indeed, we see this challenge every day in the faces of children in our homes, schools and communities. We are responding by bolstering instruction, tutoring and summer learning, all of which offer reason to hope.But what stood out to me most in this story was that fewer kids report reading for fun, with 31 percent saying they “never or hardly ever” read for fun, compared with 22 percent in 2012.Could reigniting a love for reading and the joy of books be an answer we’re missing to this problem? Imagine every child with an abundant home library, cuddled up with a parent or under the covers reading a book, starting from birth.At a time when our education system is struggling, and life is hard for so many children, let’s make reading fun again!Mary MathewDurham, N.C.The writer is director of advocacy for Book Harvest, which provides books and literacy support to children and families.The German Far Right Should Worry Us AllAn AfD demonstration on energy security and inflation, outside of the Reichstag in Berlin in October.Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “As German Worries About Future Rise, Far-Right Party Surges” (news article, June 21):The expanding and emboldened far-right element in Germany is not solely a concern for Germans; it is also troubling for the international community in general and Jews in particular.Extremism fueled by xenophobia and a deep sense of nationalism in a country that carried out the systematic murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust is foreboding and a grave threat to democracy.With global antisemitism increasing at an alarming rate and Nazism experiencing an unsettling resurgence, the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the political gains that it has made are a proverbial red flag.When extremism becomes normalized and gains a foothold in the mainstream political arena and people flagrantly fan the flames of fanaticism, we have a societal and moral obligation to sound the alarm.N. Aaron TroodlerBala Cynwyd, Pa. More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      While We Wait for the Supreme Court to Make Up Its Mind …

      by

      Bret Stephens: Gail, I hope your summer is off to a great start. We’re in the season of Supreme Court decisions, waiting any day for the Harvard and U.N.C. ruling to come down. Assuming the court overturns affirmative action for private and public universities, and maybe beyond that, what do you think the effect will be?Gail Collins: Bret, I guess we’ll have to see the how and the why of the much-dreaded decision before it’s possible to tell.Bret: The fine print is what has really mattered in past affirmative action cases, going back to the Bakke decision in 1978, which ruled that explicit racial quotas were unconstitutional, but that race could be considered a plus factor in admissions.Gail: I’m hoping the court will leave some room for schools and employers to continue taking race into account — and also things like economic background, childhood home environment — factors that help produce a diverse America where people who come from impoverished communities and disadvantaged homes can get some breaks.Bret: I’d have a much easier time accepting affirmative action if the principal criterion was class, not race. If universities thought of themselves more as ladders of social mobility and less as curators of racial rebalancing, they could still give a lot of poorer minorities a lift while also opening their doors to larger numbers of low-income white students who might otherwise have been denied a shot at admission.Gail: You can’t leave race out, but yes, it’s important to mix it with other parts of a biography. We have to protect schools’ right to create a diverse freshman class every year — one that will help students learn the joys and struggles and fun and exasperation that comes from living with people who aren’t like you in color, creed or background.Bret: Or viewpoint. Diversity is also about making sure universities don’t become ideological monocultures where people look different but share nearly all the same opinions and assumptions.Gail: To me, diversity is a very, very important goal — you don’t want to be living in a world in which all the folks of one race or class never interact with folks from another.How about you?Bret: Diversity can be a virtue, but it doesn’t have to apply in every conceivable setting or override other considerations, especially academic excellence. I don’t think it’s any secret that students whose families are from East and South Asia outperform many of their peers in high school academics, just as Jewish kids from immigrant backgrounds did a couple of generations ago. If the end of affirmative action means that top-tier universities will be demographically overrepresented with students of Asian background for the simple reason that they worked that much harder to get there, should that be considered a problem?Gail: Of course we have to include, and celebrate, the many fabulous students with East and South Asian backgrounds. And part of the educational opportunities they deserve is a chance to be in school with kids from other backgrounds. So that they graduate with the ability to work with, supervise and take directions from Black, white and Hispanic colleagues.It’s a win-win.Bret: It would be win-win if universities vastly expanded their enrollments, perhaps by doing more of the coursework online, so that every academically qualified student got in. For now it’s zero-sum: At Harvard in 2013, according to the initial lawsuit, the admission rate for Asian American students was 19 percent, even though 43 percent of the admitted class would have been Asians if based on academic performance alone.Gail: Have a feeling this isn’t going to be the last time we debate this issue. But Bret, we’ve had a busy news week and I want to check in on some of the big developments. Starting with … Hunter Biden! Am I right in recalling he’s not your favorite presidential offspring?Bret: He’s running neck-and-neck with Don Jr. and Eric in that contest, though I hear that James Madison’s stepson, Payne Todd, may have been the worst of them all.Gail: Hunter’s legal issues seem to have been pretty much resolved — he’s pleading guilty to two far-from-major tax crimes, getting probation and pledging to remain drug-free for two years.Bret: For which we wish him well.Gail: Two questions: Is this resolution fair? And what political impact will it have? Some Republicans are acting as if this is gonna be a large cloud over the Biden administration. That the president won’t be able to campaign for re-election without being followed by “Huckster Hunter’s Dad” banners.Bret: Hard to judge without seeing all the evidence. The U.S. attorney in the case, David Weiss, was appointed by Donald Trump and kept in his job by Merrick Garland to complete the investigation, so this hardly seems a case of partisan favoritism. And Weiss says the investigation is “ongoing,” which I have to assume means he’s taking a close look at Hunter’s fishy foreign business deals.But the political timing is lousy and plays into Donald Trump’s narrative that the Biden administration is weaponizing the Justice Department against him while letting off Biden’s son with a slap on the wrist.Gail: I’ve always believed that as long as there was no reasonable evidence that Joe was actually involved in any of Hunter’s smarmy let’s-make-a-deal-did-you-happen-to-notice-my-last-name schemes, the whole thing has no political impact whatsoever. Nobody but desperate Republicans cares about Hunter’s misdeeds, and if anything, I think he stirs sympathy for his father.Bret: Well, desperate Republicans means tens of millions of Americans. But since we keep touching on the subject of errant children of famous politicians, your thoughts on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?Gail: I know the polls suggest he might be a problem for Biden. A good chunk of that is just boredom with the current election picture and name recognition for Junior. Once voters take a serious look at him, his anti-vaccine craziness and overall right-wing loopiness, I’m confident those polls will plummet.Bret: I would call it left-wing loopiness, but go on.Gail: Nevertheless, if he runs as a third-party candidate, he always has the potential to screw things up — just a sliver of votes in a swing state could do the trick. Which is why I’m so hostile to third-party presidential candidates.Bret: I don’t see him running, Nader-like, as a third-party candidate. But I think one reason some Democrats are rallying to him is because they are wary of the idea of a second Biden term, even if they think he’s done a decent job in his first.Gail: We were both hoping Biden wouldn’t run again because of the age issue, but here we are. And he’s still a thousand leagues better than Trump, who’s only a few years younger. So Joe’s the one.Bret: They see him as old and faltering, they don’t think Kamala Harris is up to the job if she needs to succeed him, and they worry that any Republican save Trump could defeat him. If Bobby Jr. wins in New Hampshire because Biden isn’t even on the ballot, it could shake things up, and he could wind up being the Eugene McCarthy of this political season: not the nominee, but the catalyst for change. I’ve been saying this for months, and I’m still willing to bet you a good Zinfandel that Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, is the surprise Democratic nominee next summer. Mark Leibovich seems to agree, by the way.Gail: All I will say is that I am looking forward to the Zinfandel.Bret: And speaking of catalysts, how about that Chris Christie?Gail: He’s not going to be elected president, but gosh I would so love to see him in the Republican primary debate this August. Think there’s a chance he’ll raise enough money to qualify?Bret: For sure. He’ll get it because he’s a bring-the-popcorn sort of candidate who will make the debates interesting and because a lot of the big Republican donors long ago soured on Trump and because all the other Republicans in the race look like a bunch of moral midgets auditioning for cabinet-level jobs in the next G.O.P. administration and because the choice of Ron DeSantis or Trump is starting to look about as appetizing as the choice between Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin — scorpions in the proverbial bottle who really deserve each other.Gail: This is the reason you’re my favorite Republican.Bret: Ex-Republican. Still conservative.Christie’s essential theory of the race is that the only way to defeat Trump is the “They pull a knife, you pull a gun” theory that Sean Connery espoused as the best way to defeat Al Capone in “The Untouchables.” Except Christie aims to bring a .44 magnum, a rocket-propelled grenade and maybe even some HIMARS artillery — rhetorically speaking, of course.Gail: Of course.Bret: Which is all another way of saying that he’ll tell the truth about Trump. It will be a joy to watch, however it turns out.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More