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      My Sister Chose the Day She Wanted to Die

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      Should terminally ill people be able to choose how they die? Six years after being diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer, Julie Petrow-Cohen decided to use medical aid in dying — or MAID, as it is often called — to end her life. But for many Americans in similar circumstances, this is not an option. In this audio essay, the writer Steven Petrow shares the story of his sister’s last day and why MAID should be a right for everyone.Read Steven’s guest essay on Julie’s decision here.(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available by Monday.)Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Steven PetrowThe 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, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones, Carole Sabouraud and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Joanna Pearlstein, Hans Buetow and the “Modern Love” podcast team. More

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      A Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights

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      As 2023 slouches to an ignominious end, some news came Friday that gave me an unexpected jolt of hope. I have spent much of the year watching with horror and trying to document an unrelenting legal assault on queer and trans people. Around 20 states have passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary people, and several have barred transgender and nonbinary people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.So it was shocking — in a good way, for once — to hear these words from Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, as he vetoed a bill that would have banned puberty blockers and hormones and gender-affirming surgeries for trans and nonbinary minors in Ohio and blocked transgender girls and women from participating in sports as their chosen gender:“Were House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most — the parents,” DeWine said in prepared remarks. “Parents are making decisions about the most precious thing in their life, their child, and none of us, none of us, should underestimate the gravity and the difficulty of those decisions.”DeWine, by situating his opposition to the bill on the chosen battlefield of far-right activists — parents’ rights — was tapping into an idiom that is at once deeply familiar to me and yet has almost entirely disappeared from our national political discourse: that of a mainstream, Midwestern Republican. It is a voice I know well because it is one I heard all my life from my Midwestern Republican grandparents.I did not agree with all of their beliefs, especially as I got older. But I understood where they were coming from. My grandfather, a belly gunner in the Pacific Theater in World War II, believed a strong military was essential to American security. My grandmother was a nurse, and she believed that science, medicine and innovation made America stronger. They made sure their children and grandchildren went to college — education was a crucial element of their philosophy of self-reliance. And above all, they believed the government should be small and stay out of people’s lives as much as humanly possible. This last belief, in individual freedom and individual responsibility, was the bedrock of their politics.And so I am not surprised that defeats keep coming for anti-transgender activists. At the ballot box, hard-right candidates in swing states have tried to persuade voters with lurid messaging about children being subjected to grisly surgeries and pumped full of unnecessary medications. But in race after race, the tactic has failed.Legally, the verdict has been more mixed, which is unsurprising given how politically polarized the judiciary has become. This week a federal judge in Idaho issued a preliminary ruling that a ban on transgender care for minors could not be enforced because it violated the children’s 14th Amendment rights and that “parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children.” The state is expected to appeal the decision.In June, a federal court blocked an Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for minors. “The evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients,” the ruling said, “and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing” of protecting children and safeguarding medical ethics. In 2021, Asa Hutchinson, then the governor, had vetoed the ban for reasons similar to DeWine, but the Arkansas Legislature overrode his veto. (The Ohio Legislature also has a supermajority of Republicans and may decide to override DeWine’s veto.)In other states, like Texas and Missouri, courts have permitted bans to go into effect, forcing families to make very difficult decisions about whether to travel to receive care or move to a different state altogether. The issue seems destined to reach the Supreme Court soon. The A.C.L.U. has asked the Supreme Court to hear its challenge to the care ban in Tennessee on behalf of a 15-year-old transgender girl. Given how swiftly and decisively the court moved to gut abortion rights, it seems quite possible that the conservative supermajority could choose to severely restrict access to transgender health care for children or even adults.But maybe not. After all, the overturning of Roe has deeply unsettled the country, unleashing a backlash that has delivered unexpected victories to Democrats and abortion-rights advocates. Ohio voters just chose by a wide margin to enshrine the right to end a pregnancy in the state Constitution.This is why I think DeWine’s veto speaks to a much bigger truth: Americans simply do not want the government making decisions about families’ private medical care. Polling on abortion finds a wide array of views on the morality of ending a pregnancy at various points up to viability, but one thing is crystal clear: Large majorities of Americans believe that the decision to have an abortion is none of the government’s business.Rapidly changing norms around gender have many people’s heads spinning, and I understand how unsettling that can be. Gender is one of the most basic building blocks of identity, and even though gender variations of many kinds have been with us for millenniums, the way these changes are being lived out feel, to some people, like a huge disruption to their way of life. Even among people who think of themselves as liberal or progressive, there has been a sense that gender-affirming care has become too easily accessible, and that impressionable children are making life-changing decisions based on social media trends.It has become a throwaway line in some media coverage of transgender care in the United States that even liberal European countries are restricting care for transgender children. But this is a misleading notion. No democracy in Europe has banned, let alone criminalized, care, as many states have done in the United States. What has happened is that under increasing pressure from the right, politicians in some countries have begun to limit access to certain kinds of treatments for children through their socialized health systems, in which the government pays for care and has always placed limits on what types are available. In those systems, budgetary considerations have always determined how many people will be able to get access to treatments.But private care remains legal and mostly accessible to those who can afford it.Republicans are passing draconian laws in the states where they have total control, laws that could potentially lead to parents being charged with child abuse for supporting their transgender children or threaten doctors who treat transgender children with felony convictions. These statutes have no analog in free Europe, but they have strong echoes of laws in Russia, which is increasingly criminalizing every aspect of queer life. These extreme policies have no place in any democratic society.Which brings me back to my Midwestern Republican grandparents, Goldwater and Reagan partisans to their core. My grandfather died long before Donald Trump ran for president, and 2016 was the first presidential election in which my grandmother did not vote for the Republican candidate. But she did not vote for Hillary Clinton, choosing another candidate she declined to name to me. Like a lot of Republicans, she really didn’t like Clinton, and one of the big reasons was her lifelong opposition to government health care. She didn’t want government bureaucrats coming between her and her doctors, she told me.I think many, many Americans agree with that sentiment. Transgender people are no different. They don’t want government bureaucrats in their private business.“I’ve been saying for years that trans people are a priority for enemies and an afterthought to our friends,” Gillian Branstetter, a strategist who works on transgender issues at the A.C.L.U., told me. “I’ve made it my job to try and help people understand that transgender rights are human rights, not just because transgender people are human people, but because the rights we’re fighting for are grounded in really core democratic principles, like individualism and self-determination.”Those are core American values, but 2024 is an election year, and even though transphobia has proved to be a loser at the ballot box, many Republicans are sure to beat that drum anyway. Mike DeWine has me hoping that some Republicans will remember what was once a core principle of their party, and embrace the simple plain-spoken truth of my heartland forebears: Keep the government out of my life, and let me be free to live as I choose.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      He’s No Jack Kennedy

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      Let’s just go ahead and say the quiet part out loud: Robert Kennedy Jr. — the nephew of John F. Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy — is a bit of a crank.This is not breaking news. The 69-year-old scion of America’s most famous political family has been peddling anti-vaccine hysteria since long before Covid-19 made it trendy, along with a spicy stew of other conspiracy theories. Notable offerings: that the 2004 presidential election was stolen by Republicans, psychopharmaceuticals are responsible for mass shootings and the C.I.A. had a hand in the assassination of his uncle.But now Mr. Kennedy is looking to take his screwball act prime time, challenging President Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. The troubling part is that this guy has a non-negligible degree of support.Multiple polls from recent months show backing for Mr. Kennedy hovering around 20 percent among Democratic-inclined voters — not enough to pose an existential threat to Mr. Biden, but sufficient to give some in the party the jitters. The last thing Democrats want is some conspiracy-mongering fringe dweller highlighting the vulnerability of the party’s re-election-seeking incumbent. And the last thing the American public needs in this twitchy political moment is another high-profile circus act.It’s no mystery what’s going on. The only reason anyone cares what Mr. Kennedy thinks or says is because of his political pedigree. The Kennedy name ain’t what it used to be, but it still speaks to plenty of voters. (Sooo much Camelot nostalgia lingering out there.) In a recent CNN poll, 64 percent of Democratic voters and leaners said they would support or at least consider supporting Mr. Kennedy’s White House run, with 20 percent of those who would consider it citing his political lineage as the top reason.This is about more than one overromanticized family. The American electorate has a long-running, if tortured, romance with political dynasties in general. We love to grumble about them. Another Bush running for office? Another Clinton? Come on. But we also love to embrace them, up and down the political ladder. Just ask the Roosevelts or the Udalls or the Sununus or the scores of other clans for whom politics has become the family business.There is nothing inherently wrong with this inclination. In many ways, voters going with the devil they think they know makes perfect sense — but only if they avoid letting a candidate’s familiar name become a lazy substitute for a real measure of the person.Many Americans find the whole concept of political dynasties distasteful. Legacy politicians can carry a whiff of inherited power and entitlement that seems downright undemocratic. Way back in 2013, when the political world was waiting for Jeb Bush to become the third member of his family to run for president, his doting mother, Barbara, shared her reservations: “I think it’s a great country, there are a lot of great families, and it’s not just four families or whatever,” she told the “Today” show. “There are other people out there that are very qualified, and we’ve had enough Bushes.”This maternal wisdom proved painfully on point for poor Jeb. And, several years on, the Republican Party has gone all in on trashing “professional politicians” — or pretty much anyone with a clue about or an interest in how government works. The more ignorant and unqualified you are, the more the base loves you. (See: Marjorie Taylor Greene.)Still, no one is entitled to any elective office by virtue of their birth. That said, there is a case to make in appreciation of candidates who hail from families that take public service seriously and who are familiar with the weird world of politics. Exhibit A is Nancy Pelosi, the most formidable and effective House speaker in more than 60 years, who learned much about her craft growing up in a local Democratic dynasty in Baltimore.Plenty of Americans follow their families into a particular field, be it the military, law enforcement, teaching, acting or journalism. So if George P. Bush wants to run for this or that office in his home state of Texas, more power to him. And if voters choose to smack him down, as they did in the Republican primary for state attorney general last year, good on them. (Although sticking with Ken Paxton instead? Really?)But there is a dark side to all of this. Certain dynastic players can begin to feel — and behave — as though they are entitled to elected office, treating the honor as if it is not something to be earned so much as handed down like a family heirloom or a dry-cleaning business. That way inevitably leads to trouble.Just as problematic, and far more common, is when voters treat a well-known political name as a substitute for seriously vetting a candidate’s fitness for office. As one poll respondent mused to CNN about the colorful Mr. Kennedy: “I liked his dad (R.F.K.) and his uncle (J.F.K.) a lot. I would hope he has a similar mind-set.” Woo, boy. Cross your fingers that this voter does some due diligence before casting a ballot.Being born into a political family doesn’t magically make you qualified for office. As the scholar Stephen Hess, who literally wrote the book on America’s political dynasties, has pointed out, the offspring of these high-powered clans all too frequently turn out to be extremely … problematic. At the risk of sounding harsh, for every Beau Biden, there is a Hunter.Seriously, if you think Mr. Kennedy’s presidential aspirations are troubling — and you should — best start trying to wrap your mind around what a Trump dynasty could look like. Governor Ivanka? Senator Jared? President Don Jr.? Mock if you must. But spend a minute on the campaign trail with Don Jr. and it’s clear he has developed a taste for it. And voters in the Republican base love him.As chilling as this thought may be, it points to the democratic twist that America has put on political royalty. Our dynasties are not fixed. As Mr. Hess has noted, they are forever shifting and expanding. Influential families fall out of favor even as new ones rise up. And anyone can aspire to start their own power clan. Which makes it all the more important for voters to pay attention and refuse to give an easy pass to any candidate, no matter how storied his or her family tree.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

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      Trump Is Back, to Tear Our Families Apart Once More

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      My cousin back in rural Illinois, where I grew up and where most of my family still lives, sent me a nice note over Facebook the other day. She saw I had a novel coming out and told me she was proud of me and couldn’t wait to read it. I thanked her and said I’d love to catch lunch the next time I’m in town. She said that would be nice.Then she added: “And no politics … I promise!”I promised as well. We’re going to do our best to honor that promise. But it’s getting harder. Again.Families across America that were so divided by the Trump era have only started to heal in the last couple of years — and now we’re facing the real possibility of a sequel.I’m dreading, and I sense that she and many other Americans are dreading, having to go through this gantlet so soon again. Politics have divided families in ugly ways, and I do sense that the Biden era, for many, has been a chance to try to heal. But the wounds may be about to be reopened.One of the implicit, but central, selling points of a Joe Biden presidency was that, if he did his job right, the average American wouldn’t have to pay much attention to him. The “normalcy” Mr. Biden vowed to return us to was partly about making the executive branch a functioning arm of government again, and about no longer being the (very scary) joke that the country had become globally during the Donald Trump presidency.But at home, for many Americans, it was about something simpler than that: It was about returning to a world where we did not have to talk and fight about politics all the time. It was about being in your own home, among your own family and being able to forget, if just for a little while, that politics were happening at all — or at least assume that reasonable people were taking care of it.The Trump years made this impossible, and the ubiquitousness of politics, the sense that you had to be screaming about the state of the world at all times, fractured families across the country. What had once been merely some awkward moments at Thanksgiving became constant fissures pitting kids against parents, siblings against siblings, generation against generation.Some of these fissures became ruptures, or even chasms: I have one friend who clashed with his in-laws over Mr. Trump so dramatically that they still haven’t met their 3-year-old granddaughter. The constant and inescapable political discourse of 2015 to 2021 frayed every bond of American society, perhaps family most of all.But there has been a quiet change the last couple of years. These disagreements have not gone away: The world is as perilous and fraught as it has always been. But since Mr. Trump left office, you’ve been able to find moments of escape and respite, and even, yes, normalcy. There have not been constant presidential tweets; there has not been a ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries; whatever verbal gaffes Mr. Biden might make, you have felt fairly confident he’d never refer to another country with a scatological vulgarity.Things have not been perfect, and there are still people desperately trying to fight about everything — there’s always that relative who insists on making sure you saw his “Let’s Go Brandon” hat. But with the easing of a pandemic that scrambled the planet, you have been able to walk around in the world for at least a few minutes at a time without worrying that it would explode. Maybe you even mended some fences with the people who, no matter how much you may disagree with them, you love. (My friend’s daughter finally has a meeting with her grandparents planned for this summer.)You could take those first steps, because, for the first time in a long time, politics hasn’t been the center of American life. But the recent CNN town hall with Mr. Trump was a reminder of storm clouds on the horizon — and these clouds look very familiar.A majority of Americans do not want to see another matchup between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. There are many reasons for this, yet I wonder if a big one for many people is the fear that those tumultuous times that we just went through and unceasing torrent of political battles that invaded our holiday dinner table are about to return. Trump versus Biden? This is what we just went through. We have to go through that again?And what if Ron DeSantis gets the Republican nomination over Mr. Trump? Maybe that will just lead to entirely new fights. Though considering how bruising any nomination battle that Mr. Trump loses would be — if such a battle ends at all — I suspect it won’t leave the country in a healing mood, either.My cousin and I disagree on many things, and there have been times — as when I saw her on Facebook cheering on the buses of “patriots” on their way to Washington on Jan. 5, 2021 — when I thought our relationship was essentially over. This was not long after she, someone who detasseled corn in the vast Illinois fields alongside me when we were both children, called me an “elitist deep stater.” It was difficult to wrap my mind around how much had changed: I had gone from affably disagreeing with her about Mitt Romney to wondering if she’d lost touch with reality entirely.But the fact remains: I love my cousin, and my cousin loves me. It is impossible to imagine my life, who I would be, without her place in it, and I’m sure she feels the same way. She has known me forever in a way so few people have. I’ve enjoyed reconnecting and have even thought, “If our relationship can survive 2020, it can survive anything.” But can it survive that twice? I am not sure. I suspect many families across the country are wondering the same thing.We can avoid talking about it, but it’s coming. It lurks, waiting to blast us all apart again. If you want to know why millions of Americans are so wary of a Trump-Biden sequel, that gathering storm is a big part of the answer.Will Leitch is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Time Has Come,” and is a contributing editor at New York magazine.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

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      The Vice President Question: The Stakes Are High

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      More from our inbox:Mike Pence, It’s Time ‘to Do the Right Thing’What Chris Rock Gets to BeStains Left on a Rare TextFamily Values? We Need to Talk About School Shootings. Illustration by Zisiga Mukulu/The New York Times; photograph by Leigh Vogel/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Voters Should Pick the Vice President,” by Greg Craig (Opinion guest essay, March 5):Mr. Craig’s article raises a larger question. The vice-presidential nominees of the two major parties are too often chosen largely or entirely because of their perceived ability to help elect their presidential running mate, rather than an apparent ability to act as president if needed.Considering the stakes, the main or sole criterion in selecting a vice-presidential nominee should be that person’s capacity to immediately and competently step into the president’s shoes, if required.Just in the last century, Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan all labored under the specters of age, infirmity or both. This clearly demonstrates the national interest in vice-presidential nominees having the qualifications, experience, health and ability to competently represent the country as a whole.If a vice-presidential nominee is also a plausible national candidate in her or his own right, all the better, and having a nominee of such stature should benefit his or her party and the ticket.Over the last 50 years, some vice presidents, such as Spiro Agnew (crook), Dan Quayle (lightweight) and Dick Cheney (unelectable) were unqualified, and Mike Pence seems marginal. Lyndon B. Johnson, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore and Joe Biden were clearly qualified, reflecting positively on those who chose them.The question for whoever chooses vice-presidential nominees should always be “Can this person competently lead the country?” — not “Will this person help our party get elected?”Anders I. OuromVancouver, British ColumbiaTo the Editor:I’m very grateful for “Voters Should Pick the Vice President.” Greg Craig has raised perhaps the most significant and worrying issue, however delicate, of the Biden candidacy.Given the entirely realistic concerns over President Biden’s age and chances of dying in office in a second term (and I write as an 87-year-old in decent health), the choice of a running mate shouldn’t be a reflexive decision.It should be one requiring a great deal of thought, consultation and polling about who could handle the most demanding of offices in these difficult and perilous times — and whom a wide spectrum of Democratic voters see as the most convincing possibility as their next president.Barbara QuartNew YorkTo the Editor:As our octogenarian president ponders another presidential run, he needs to consider replacing his 2020 running mate. It’s a delicate subject, sure to arouse fierce opposition within the Democratic Party (however it’s accomplished).Forget loyalty, tradition or popularity. In 2024, the top priority for selecting the second-highest elected official in the country should be proven foreign policy experience.President Biden has an age problem that he can’t control. It will be a major campaign issue that will only place greater emphasis on who would be next in line for the presidency.Continued support for Ukraine (including maintaining the broad coalition of European and NATO nations forged by President Biden) and other brewing major-power standoffs demand a vice president with longstanding, first-rate diplomatic skills.Replace Kamala Harris with Susan Rice, the longtime diplomat and policy adviser. It’s time to dispel conventional wisdom and go bold.Carl R. RameyGainesville, Fla.Mike Pence, It’s Time ‘to Do the Right Thing’ Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Asks Judge to Block Pence’s Testimony to Grand Jury” (news article, nytimes.com, March 4):There is no doubt that former Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing (and his constitutional duty) by certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden.Now is the time for Mr. Pence to do the right thing by honoring the Justice Department’s subpoena to testify about his knowledge of the events before and after Jan. 6. Mr. Pence says he will fight the subpoena, citing specious legal arguments. But why?Mr. Pence, you know what former President Donald Trump did and did not do. Tell us. It is your duty as a citizen, and it is the right thing to do.William D. ZabelNew YorkThe writer is a lawyer, the chairman of Immigrant Justice Corps and the chairman emeritus of Human Rights First.To the Editor:Re “Pence Says That History Will Judge Trump” (news article, March 13):The shortcoming of former Vice President Mike Pence’s pronouncement that “history will hold Donald Trump accountable” for the former president’s lead in fomenting the violent Capitol insurrection is obvious.History’s verdict takes a long while, and it is rarely unanimous and subject to revisionism.Mr. Trump and his minions must pay the price now, and Mr. Pence should render an unequivocal verdict to that end, instead of punting into history.Justice delayed is justice denied, especially in this case.Lawrence FreemanAlameda, Calif.What Chris Rock Gets to Be Illustration by Shoshana Schultz/The New York Times; photograph by Kirill Bichutsky, via Netflix, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Chris Rock Looks Very Small Right Now,” by Roxane Gay (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, March 11):Chris Rock’s recent Netflix special certainly deserves critique, but Ms. Gay’s article gets one thing very wrong. As the target of another man’s violence, Mr. Rock is not responsible for entertaining us with his response to that attack, nor redeeming himself with the right joke.He gets to just be angry.Catherine HodesFlorence, Mass.Stains Left on a Rare TextTo glove, or not to glove? For rare book librarians, there’s no question. The best option is (almost) always clean, dry hands.Chris Ratcliffe/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:“For Rare Book Librarians, It’s Gloves Off. Seriously” (Arts, March 11) notes that stains left on a rare book tell us something about who has used it in the past.I was once privileged to see the original Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest extant Passover Haggadahs. It dates to the 14th century.I was deeply moved to see this ancient text. But what I remember best were the wine stains on some of the pages. Clearly, long before this book had become a priceless object listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World register, someone had used it at a Seder and had, as still happens in the 21st century, spilled their wine on it.Deborah E. LipstadtWashingtonThe writer is the professor of Holocaust history, currently on leave from Emory University.Family Values? We Need to Talk About School Shootings. Illustration by The New York Times; Photographs by Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Party of Family Values Should Truly Value Families,” by Patrick T. Brown (Opinion guest essay, March 9):The idea of a political “parents’ party” may be a good one, but the total absence of any discussion regarding school shootings is glaring. Republicans won’t be much of a parents’ party if they can’t figure out how to deal with an issue that parents and their children think about every day.Jeff WelchLivingston, Mont. More

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      In Post-Roe World, These Conservatives Embrace New Benefits for Parents

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      Some conservative thinkers are pushing Republicans to move on from Reagan-era family policy and send cash to families. A few lawmakers are listening.Sending cash to parents, with few strings attached. Expanding Medicaid. Providing child care subsidies to families earning six figures.The ideas may sound like part of a progressive platform. But they are from an influential group of conservative intellectuals with a direct line to elected politicians. They hope to represent the future of a post-Trump Republican Party — if only, they say, their fellow travelers would abandon Reaganomics once and for all.These conservatives generally oppose abortion rights. They’re eager to promote marriage, worried about the nation’s declining fertility rate and often resist the trans rights movement.But they also acknowledge that with abortion now illegal or tightly restricted in half the states, more babies will be born to parents struggling to pay for the basics — rent, health care, groceries and child care — when prices are high and child care slots scarce.“A full-spectrum family policy has to be about encouraging and supporting people in getting married and starting families,” said Oren Cass, executive director of the American Compass think tank. “It has to be pro-life, but also supportive of those families as they are trying to raise kids in an economic environment where that has become a lot harder to do.”The idea of spending heavily on family benefits remains an outlier within the Republican Party, which only recently rejected Democrats’ attempts to extend pandemic-era child tax credits.But a number of conservative members of Congress have embraced new benefits for parents, including Mr. Cass’s former boss, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, as well as the senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri and J.D. Vance of Ohio.And in President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, he called on Republicans to join him in providing families with child care, paid leave, child tax credits and affordable housing.Some conservative thinkers believe that many young children are better off at home and are skeptical of policies that would place more in center-based care.Jason Henry for The New York TimesNow, Mr. Cass and conservative allies are hoping to shape ideas for the 2024 Republican presidential primary and beyond, targeting ambitious governors who have emphasized making their states family-friendly, such as Ron DeSantis of Florida, Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.A key priority for this new network of conservative thinkers is for the federal government to send parents cash monthly for each child, a sea change from decades of Republican thinking on family policy. They hope the cash could encourage people to have more children, and allow more parents to stay home full- or part-time when their children are young.The Run-Up to the 2024 ElectionThe jockeying for the next presidential race is already underway.Education Issues: Donald J. Trump and possible Republican rivals, like Gov. Ron DeSantis, are seizing on race and gender issues in schools, but such messages had a mixed record in the midterms.No Invite for Trump: The Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group, has invited a half-dozen potential G.O.P. presidential candidates to its annual donor retreat — but not Mr. Trump.Falling in Line: With the vulnerabilities of Mr. Trump’s campaign becoming evident, the bickering among Democrats about President Biden’s potential bid for re-election has subsided.Harris’s Struggles: With Mr. Biden appearing all but certain to run again, concerns are growing over whether Kamala Harris, who is trying to define her vice presidency, will be a liability for the ticket.“The work of the family is real work,” said Erika Bachiochi, a legal scholar who calls herself a pro-life feminist and has written influential essays and books.She and others debate to what extent benefits should be tied to work requirements, but even the more stringent proposals do not require full-time work. These conservatives believe that many young children are better off at home and are skeptical of policies that would place more in child care centers. And they point to polls that show many parents would prefer to cut their work hours and take care of their babies and toddlers themselves.In a Republican Party hoping to become the party of parents, these conservative intellectuals do not share the outraged tone of right-wing activists like Christopher Rufo, the “parental rights” crusader battling what he sees as leftist ideology in school curriculums.While they may agree with much of that cultural critique, supporting families financially, they say, is a pragmatic way to prop up conservative values alongside new restrictions on abortion..Oren Cass said that his ideas on policy had been shaped by his own family life.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesIn arguing this, Ms. Bachiochi, Mr. Cass and others in this network are making a big ask: for Republicans to reject what they call the outdated, rigid agenda of the Reagan era, which not only cut working parents from welfare programs, but also vilified mothers receiving public benefits, often in starkly racist terms. If Republicans are to grow support among working-class, multiethnic voters, they say, the party must match pro-family rhetoric with pro-family investments.The group has founded think tanks, published statements of principle and organized discussions with policymakers to push its cause. Mr. Cass, 39, said his ideas on policy had been shaped by his own family life. His wife has her own career, and they both work from home in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.Mr. Cass served as the domestic policy director for Mr. Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign; in 2020, he founded American Compass, a think tank that has tried to build conservative momentum for more generous government support to working families. Its priorities include child cash benefits, wage subsidies and even reviving the labor movement.That some conservatives have landed on what amounts to a new entitlement program seems to speak to the economic plight of many families. The pressures of wage stagnation, low marriage rates and the opioid epidemic have helped erode Republican anti-government orthodoxy, said Seth Dowland, a historian of the family values movement and professor of religion at Pacific Lutheran University. “There are some Republicans looking at this and saying, ‘We need to invest in rebuilding families and rebuilding communities, because it’s dire in some places — and it’s our voters,’” he said.Ms. Bachiochi, the mother of seven children, 4 to 21, is a fellow at two think tanks, the Abigail Adams Institute and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her husband is a tech executive and, she said, much more of a baby person than she is. In an interview, she recalled struggling to get reading and writing done while her babies were napping.Left to right, Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida introducing their paid family leave legislation in 2019. Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesShe celebrates mothers finding paid work that adds meaning to their lives, but believes government should help parents of both sexes spend more time on child-rearing.The job of parents, in her view, is to create “adults with virtue who can go out and be good friends, spouses, good employees, good citizens.”The primary problem, she said, is that “the family is so overtaxed economically that they don’t have time with one another to do that work” of raising children, which is, by nature, time intensive.Her own ideas have shifted radically over time. In the mid-1990s, as a student at Middlebury College in Vermont, she volunteered for Bernie Sanders, then a congressman. But she also interned for a Washington bipartisan group hoping to shape President Bill Clinton’s welfare reforms, which curtailed cash payments to single mothers, while tying remaining benefits to strict work requirements. Through that experience, she said, she came to appreciate that some members of both parties shared a sincere commitment to alleviating poverty.Since then, Ms. Bachiochi has embraced her Catholic roots, in part through Alcoholics Anonymous. She now considers herself “center right,” she said, but more often argues with Republicans than with Democrats.“The libertarian right is a little bit blind” to the economic conditions families live under, Ms. Bachiochi said, noting that many parents struggle with the low pay and irregular hours of service jobs, working long days while leaving their children with less-than-ideal care.Patrick T. Brown, 33, a former congressional staffer and current fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, previously cared for his children full-time. Now, he works part-time from home in Columbia, S.C., and takes charge of his four children after school while his wife works as a college professor. He supports child cash benefits, expanding Medicaid to more mothers and increasing the supply of affordable housing.“There are definitely some conservatives who still point to the 1950s as a normative vision for family life,” Mr. Brown said, referencing the “Leave It to Beaver” white, suburban family with a stay-at-home wife.“That debate is stale,” he added. “We shouldn’t expect we can turn back the clock — and we shouldn’t really want to.”Mr. Brown, Mr. Cass and Ms. Bachiochi are well known on Capitol Hill.Their influence can been seen in Mr. Romney’s bill to expand the child tax credit, which would provide families earning up to $400,000 with $350 in cash per month for each child under 6, and $250 per month for children 6 to 17.Mr. Romney and Mr. Rubio, Republican of Florida, have a separate proposal to allow workers to draw from future Social Security payments to fund parental leave.And last year, Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, introduced a bill that would subsidize child care for families earning up to 150 percent of their state’s median income, which in some states approaches $200,000 for a family of four.These proposals have attracted criticism from both conservatives and liberals.Scott Winship, director of the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, applauded any attempt to move away from conservative social policy based in “cultural grievance.” But he argued that many of the proposals were overly generous to middle-class and upper middle-class parents.“I’d focus much more strongly on low-income families,” he said. “We have this huge deficit, and we need to start husbanding our resources in a more serious way.”A cost-conscious approach has also been embraced by many Republican governors, who over the past year have tried to address child care shortages primarily through deregulation — increasing class sizes in child care programs, for example.Both parties are still deeply divided over whether benefits should be tied to work requirements — a core belief of centrists like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, and conservatives like Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a Republican.When Senator Romney first introduced his Family Security Act in 2021, it offered cash to parents no matter their work history. After an outcry from Republicans and Mr. Cass, he revised the proposal in 2022 to require $10,000 in family income to receive the full benefit.Senator Hawley of Missouri, a close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, has also proposed monthly cash payments to parents of children younger than 13 who meet a modest work requirement.Progressives have criticized these plans for favoring married couples and leaving out caregivers without earnings, such as college students, parents with disabilities or retired grandparents.The family policy ideas in the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill were more sweeping. But none became law.Now, some Republicans and Democrats say that a bipartisan deal on family policy would likely require Republicans to rally around proposals like Senator Romney’s — a difficult goal.Senator Romney is committed to building support for “federal policies to be more pro-family,” he said in a written statement. “This includes earning support from Republican colleagues.” More

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      Some Women Fear Giorgia Meloni’s Far-Right Agenda Will Set Italy Back

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      Some fear that the hard-right politician, whose party is expected to be the big winner in the election on Sunday, will continue policies that have kept women back.ROME — Being a woman, and mother, has been central to the political pitch of Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right politician who is likely to become Italy’s prime minister after elections on Sunday.She once ran for mayor seven months pregnant because she said powerful men had told her she couldn’t. Her most famous speech includes the refrain “I am a woman. I am a mother.” She often talks with pride about how she started a party, Brothers of Italy, and rose to the top of national politics without any special treatment.But as happy as women’s rights activists are about that fact that a woman could finally run Italy, many wish it was essentially any other woman in Italy. They fear that Ms. Meloni’s hard-right agenda, her talk about preventing abortions, opposing quotas and other measures will set back the cause of women.“It’s not a gain at all and, indeed, a possible setback from the point of view of women’s rights,” said Giorgia Serughetti, who writes about women’s issues and teaches political philosophy at Bicocca University in Milan.More than in neighboring European Union countries, women in Italy have struggled to emerge in the country’s traditionally patriarchal society. Four out of 10 Italian women don’t work. Unemployment rates are even higher for young women starting careers. Female chief executive officers lead only a tiny percentage of companies listed on Milan’s stock exchange, and there are fewer than 10 female rectors at Italy’s more than 80 universities.And for many Italian women, finding a suitable work-life balance becomes nearly impossible once children enter the equation. Affordable, all-day, public child care is nonexistent in many areas, and women paid the highest price during the pandemic, staying home even after periods of lockdown when schools were shut.All national and international indicators suggest that if women in Italy worked more, gross domestic product would largely benefit and increase.“Half of Italian women do not have economic independence,” said Linda Laura Sabbadini, a statistician and director of new technologies at Italy’s National Institute of Statistics. “That can’t just be cultural; politics clearly hasn’t done enough for women so far.”Ms. Meloni has presented herself as someone who will help, but on key issues to women, the coalition has been vague and short on details. And a coalition partner, Matteo Salvini of the anti-immigrant League party, has admired Victor Orban, the conservative prime minister of Hungary, and his family policies. The League’s leader recently said that Mr. Orban had drafted the “most advanced family policy” giving “the best results at the European level.”Matteo Salvini, right, then the Italian interior minister, next to Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary at a news conference in Milan in 2018.Marco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Orban has encouraged Hungarian mothers to procreate prolifically to counter the dropping birthrate. This month, the Hungarian government passed a decree that would require women seeking an abortion to observe fetal vital signs before moving forward with the procedure.Concerns have emerged in Italy that Ms. Meloni’s center-right coalition could make it harder for women to have abortions in a country where the procedure has been legal since 1978 but is still very difficult to obtain.Asked about the law, Ms. Meloni, who has said her mother nearly aborted her, vowed in an interview that she “wouldn’t change it” as prime minister, and that abortion would remain “accessible and safe and legal.” But she added that she wanted to more fully apply a part of the law “about prevention,” which, she said, had been effectively ignored until now.Critics fear that approach would allow anti-abortion organizations to play a more prominent role in family-planning clinics and encourage even more doctors to avoid the procedure. Only about 33 percent of doctors perform legal abortions in Italy, and even less, 10 percent, in some regions.Laura Lattuada, an actress in Rome, said she was concerned that the abortion law could be chipped away with Ms. Meloni in power.“She’s constantly saying she wants to improve it, but I am not sure that her conception of protecting women and the family corresponds to the improvement of women’s rights,” she said.Abortion is hardly the only issue that has given activists pause. Italy introduced and has progressively extended the so-called pink quotas, a mandated percentage of female representation in politics and boardrooms. Many women say quotas in politics better reflect the population, while quotas in companies help overcome “old boys” networks, giving women equal access to higher paying jobs. They also give women greater visibility, they said.A mural in Rome painted by a street artist known as Harry Greb showing Ms. Meloni and other Italian politicians.Fabio Frustaci/EPA, via ShutterstockMs. Meloni is against the quotas. She argues that as a woman, she climbed the political ladder on her own and is now poised to run the country. She says that she is proof that women don’t need government interference to enforce diversity.Her supporters agreed.“They never gave her anything, she took it. She won on her own,” said Lucia Loddo, 54, who was waving a banner supporting Ms. Meloni at a rally in Cagliari. She said that for women, Ms. Meloni’s ascent “is the most beautiful thing. All of the men have been disasters. She is prepared.”About 25 percent of Italian woman voting on Sunday are expected to cast their ballots for Ms. Meloni, though pollsters failed to ask women whether her gender was a factor in their vote, which is itself telling of the attention given to women voters here. Ms. Meloni is polling at least 25 percent nationally, the highest of any candidate.Ms. Meloni has won voters over with her down-to-earth and straight-talking manner (she often speaks in Roman dialect). But the secret to her popularity has less to do with her personality or policy proposals than that she was essentially the lone leader of a major party to stay in the opposition during the national unity government of Mario Draghi.That allowed her to campaign in a country that is perennially looking for someone new as a fresh face, even though she has been in Parliament for nearly two decades and was a minister in a past government.In that time, Italy has had a lackluster track record in empowering women in the work force, and experts say something else needs to be done.“We have to create the conditions for employment because we are at the bottom of the list in Europe,” said Ida Maggi of Stati Generali delle Donne, an association working to get women’s issues on the electoral agenda. It makes Italy “look bad,” she said.One area where Ms. Meloni and even her most committed critics agree is the need for more nursery schools. The government of Mr. Draghi last year allocated billions of euros to build nurseries and extend child care services. But the problem is by no means solved.In many Italian regions, a shortage of free nursery schools, along with short school days and three-month vacations, make sit difficult for working mothers to juggle their schedules. Even though many women are staying at home, the country has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe, something Ms. Meloni’s center-right coalition has pledged to redress.Speaking to supporters in Milan this month, Ms. Meloni said that she and her allies would work toward getting free child-care services, part of “a huge plan to boost the birthrate, to support motherhood.” With only 400,000 births last year, Italy was going through more than a demographic winter, she said: “It’s an ice age.”Ms. Meloni addressing supporters in Piazza Duomo in Milan in September.Piero Cruciatti/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I don’t want this nation to disappear,” she said, adding that the problem should not be solved through immigration. “I want our families to have children,” she added to a roar of applause.But critics are not convinced her party, or likely coalition, is entirely committed to the cause of women.Polls carried out last year show that while the majority of Italians said more should be done to reach gender equality, those numbers were considerably lower among supporters of Brothers of Italy and the League.One campaign video for a candidate from the Forza Italia party, another coalition ally, was roundly mocked for promising a salary to women who don’t work outside the home. The party is led by Silvio Berlusconi, who, Ms. Meloni said in the interview, put her “in difficulty as a woman” with his sex scandals when she was a young minister in his government.After decades of unfulfilled campaign promises, there is skepticism writ large that any of the parties will really champion women’s causes.Promises about “the needs and priorities of women” — including free day care and subsidies for families — tend to vanish once it’s time to actually put measures in place, said Laura Moschini, whose organization, the Gender Interuniversity Observatory, has drafted a “handbook for good government” highlighting women’s concerns.Those issues have discouraged women from voting, and the possibility of electing Ms. Meloni as the first female prime minister is not motivating women. Heading into the election on Sunday, polls suggest that more than a third of Italian women probably won’t vote.Ms. Meloni with Mr. Salvini, left, and Silvio Berlusconi at the center-right coalition’s closing rally in Rome on Thursday.Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press“I’m disgusted by the entire political system,” said Laura Porrega, who described herself as a “desperate housewife” because she wasn’t able to find a job. “When they want your taxes, they remember your name, but I’ve gotten nothing from the country at all.” she said.Ms. Serughetti, the Bicocca professor, said that women “don’t see their interests being represented,” so they’d rather abstain.“The decision of women not to vote is a sort of protest to this order of things,” she said.Jason Horowitz More

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      Jill Biden Is a Teacher. And She’s Not About to Change That.

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