Happy Monday and welcome to Monday Reads!

From around the web:

Our Summer of Complicated Mothers by Shannon Palus in Slate

Is Ocasio-Cortez Ready for the Glass Cliff? by Tressie McMillan Cottom in the New York Times

Trump’s new attorney general poses a huge threat to abortion rights by Moira Donegan in the Guardian

Why Do Rich Kids Love Socialism? by Tyler Austin Harper in the Atlantic

Why Is Pete Hegseth Purging Women From Command? Doug Wilson Is Why. by Kiera Butler in Mother Jones

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From here and there:

Did Texas Really Protect a Surrogate Mother from a Forced Abortion?

No More Child Stars

Happy reading!

xx Jill + Tamar

Welcome to The Week in Women, a rundown of this week’s major women’s rights stories from around the world.

A federal judge ruled that parts of Idaho’s abortion ban is unconstitutional because it does not provide exceptions to preserve a pregnant woman’s health.

Lichtenstein changed its succession rules to allow women to become the country’s monarch.

President Trump nominated anti-abortion White House aide and physician, Heidi Overton, to serve as commissioner of the FDA.

Representative Cory Mills lost his reelection campaign in Florida amid allegations of dating violence and misconduct.

The FBI raided former Congressman Eric Swalwell’s home in a sexual misconduct investigation.

…and that’s it for now. Have a great week ahead!

xx Tamar + Jill

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The Week in Women comes to you thanks to research from Tamar Eisen (she/her/hers), an advocate for reproductive justice and gender equity.

It’s a heartrending story that has been making headlines across the country: A nurse from Alaska was working as a surrogate for a California couple when the fetus was diagnosed with a serious heart condition that would require multiple surgeries and would likely impact his health for the rest of his life. The biological parents demanded an abortion. The surrogate fought them, making her way to anti-abortion Texas for maximal protection. The parents said they would withhold medical treatment if the surrogate didn’t go through with the abortion; she defied them. Baby Gabriel has now been born, and while the surrogate has not succeeded in claiming parental rights, he is getting the treatment he needs in Dallas.

Heartrending indeed. And basically none of it is true.

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The baby’s name is not Gabriel; it’s Rumi. His parents, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, did not demand that the surrogate, McKenna West, terminate or else they would allow a newborn baby to suffer without treatment; they in fact want him getting treatment at a top-rate facility in Los Angeles, not at a less-excellent one in Texas. The parents legally could not have forced West to terminate in the first place, no matter which state she was in, and when she said she didn’t want to have an abortion they said that was fine. She didn’t decamp to Texas because it bans abortion, but because Texas often confers parental rights onto whoever gives birth. Rumi’s parents are in fact getting him the treatment he needs, which has been complicated by the fact that West insisted on birthing in Texas instead of in California, where Rumi’s care would have been better. And it strikes me as… interesting… that the anti-abortion movement gave the baby a strongly Christian-coded name without having any idea of what his actual parents planned to call him.

The story is a story because it’s a mess, but it’s also a story because the anti-abortion movement has latched onto it and exploited it. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is currently running against James Talarico for a US Senate seat, has put himself in the middle of the whole debacle in order to score campaign points. Some of the country’s most prominent “pro-life” activists have made this their latest cause as a way of demonizing both abortion and surrogacy. The degree to which abortion opponents have manipulated and outright invented facts in this case is stunning, even from a movement rife with dishonestly and manipulation.

They have, however, succeeded in directing the public’s attention to this case, and by extension to commercial surrogacy. And defenders of women’s rights are perilously off-guard. Unlike our counterparts across most of Europe, American feminists have not deeply grappled with the surrogacy issue, instead layering it onto American abortion politics, if we think about it at all. That winds up with simplistic and unsatisfying conclusions, like “her body her choice” — when commercial surrogacy is complicated by money, contracts, power, biology, and truly complex ethical questions about paying for reproduction and whether something can even be fairly considered paid work if it comes with no seconds let alone days off, no labor protections, no way to simply quit, and significant physical risk up to and including death.

The anti-surrogacy movement, which overlaps significantly with the anti-abortion movement, has an easy answer: Babies shouldn’t be commodities; surrogacy should be banned. It’s tempting for supporters of women’s rights and abortion rights to simply negatively polarize ourselves here — if “pro-lifers” are against surrogacy, then we should probably be for it. That would be a mistake. And it’s women who will end up paying the price.

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I will tell you up-front that I have no ideal legal framework to regulate commercial surrogacy. It is banned in almost all of Europe. Countries that allow it with little regulation have found themselves turned into hubs for human trafficking, as women from poor nations are moved to surrogacy-friendly ones to turn out babies for foreigners. It is hard to overstate what a total nightmare a whole lot of international commercial surrogacy is for the women who are coerced into it.

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Earlier this week, actress Hayden Panetierre was found dead in a South Carolina apartment. She had been in front of the camera since she was just 11 months old, acting in soap operas, Disney shows and movies, and beloved television shows including Heroes and Nashville. She died at 36, leaving behind a young daughter.

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Panetierre is one of many, many child stars who have struggled into adulthood, with everything from eating disorders to substance abuse to sexual abuse to rocky relationships. She did not have custody of her daughter; she had been open about her addiction issues; it seems she likely died of a drug overdose. Addiction, abuse, and dysfunction are also struggles faced by plenty of people who were not child stars. And there are of course a number of actors who began as children and seem to have grown into functional adults (Natalie Portman, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe). But former child stars who turn into functional adults also seem to be the minority of former child stars.

Which should make us question: Why are we making “stars” out of children in the first place?

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Happy Monday and welcome to Monday Reads!

From around the web:

The Endless, Maddening Wait for a Woman President by Ana Marie Cox in the New Republic

Are You a Human? by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker

Todd Blanche, the Latest Tool: How Autocrats Use Personal Lawyers by Ruth Ben-Ghiat in Lucid (Substack)

The women India’s biggest river project forgot by Diwash Gahatraj and Chandra Pratap Tiwari in Al Jazeera

Jason Arday’s Death and the Age of Digital Racial Terror by Karen Attiah in the Golden Hour (Substack)

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From here and there:

AOC Announced She Is Freezing Her Eggs. Of Course Everyone Got Weird. (Slate)

Happy reading!

xx Jill + Tamar

Welcome to The Week in Women, a rundown of this week’s major women’s rights stories from around the world.

Massachusetts expanded abortion access to any point in pregnancy, removing restrictions on late-term care.

The Trump Administration banned Medicaid funding for gender affirming care for transgender minors.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced that she was freezing her eggs and documented the process on her social media.

A UN survey revealed that half of Afghan women rarely leave home five years after the Taliban took over control of the country.

California failed to prevent hundreds of sexual assaults at women’s prisons, according to a report by the Department of Justice.

Karoline Leavitt announced she is leaving her role as White House press secretary.

…and that’s it for now. Have a great week ahead!

xx Tamar + Jill

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The Week in Women comes to you thanks to research from Tamar Eisen (she/her/hers), an advocate for reproductive justice and gender equity.

Happy Monday and welcome to Monday Reads!

From around the web:

Conservatives Are Using a Trojan Horse to Try to Kill RBG’s Greatest Legacy. It Might Just Work. by Reva Siegel and Mary Ziegler in Slate

A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants by Kate Manne in More to Hate (Substack)

The Explosive Failures Fueling the Cyclospora Outbreak by Gregg Gonsalves in the Nation

Ariana Grande and the Disappointment of Diagnosis by Lauren Michele Jackson in the New Yorker

The Best Parenting Hack Is Being Rich by Olga Khazan in the Atlantic

When sex education funding is taken away, young people lose a safe space by Ebony JJ Curry in the 19th

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From here and there:

The Trump Administration Is About to Step Up Its War on Abortion Access (Slate)

Democrats Must Unite

Maybe We Should Not Shrug as Celebrities Kill Themselves in Front of Us

Happy reading!

xx Jill + Tamar

Welcome to The Week in Women, a rundown of this week’s major women’s rights stories from around the world.

Voters in Kansas and Missouri overwhelmingly rejected anti-abortion backed ballot initiatives on supreme court elections and ballot amendments that would make it easier for the states to ban abortion.

Rep. Max Miller was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife and faces calls to resign, including from fellow GOP politicians.

Colombia became the first country in Latin America to ban female genital mutilation.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a call to faith leaders that he plans to make Dobbs “permanent in every state” and ban the mailing of medication abortion.

North Carolina Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards dropped his reelection bid after allegations of sexual harassment.

An Indian court sentenced a prominent journalist to ten years in prison for raping a colleague.

…and that’s it for now. Have a great week ahead!

xx Tamar + Jill

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The Week in Women comes to you thanks to research from Tamar Eisen (she/her/hers), an advocate for reproductive justice and gender equity.

On Tuesday, Abdul El-Sayed narrowly squeaked out a win against Haley Stevens to be the Democratic nominee for senate from Michigan, a crucial swing state. The race was a contentious one, with El-Sayed, an anti-establishment progressive, enjoying significant support from roaring crowds and enthusiastic podcast bros, while Stevens, a more moderate candidate with a record of delivering for Michiganders and who was also backed by the Democratic establishment and funded by record donations from AIPAC, billed herself as someone who was more workhorse than show pony. Just before the election, El-Sayed’s team was crowing about polling showing him with a double-digit lead. Instead, he didn’t even clear majority support, and beat Stevens by a single point.

It was, in other words, not the blowout that anti-establishment Democrats wanted. But it was still a win for a candidate who was vastly outspent, and who campaigned not just against the Republican Party, but against mainstream Democrats, too. Either side of the Democratic Party divide over its identity — those who want it to be a populist-leftist party and those who say we can only win if we moderate — can claim some modicum of victory here. But elections have actual winners, and in this one, it was El-Sayed.

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Michelle Goldberg wrote an important column this week about the biggest weakness of El-Sayed and the movement he represents, which is that he does not seem to think that people who disagree with him are genuine in their views. Politicians need to turn out supporters, but they also need to persuade — and to recognize that some people just don’t see the world the same way, and you might need to work with those people, too. Too many on the left seem to believe that their views are the only good and righteous ones, and people who disagree simply don’t understand — or else have nefarious motivations.

I was pleased, though, to see both El-Sayed and Stevens react to the results with grace. Both accepted the results. Both recognized the other’s service. It’s a model I hope Democrats and leftists can emulate going forward.

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Last week, pop star Ariana Grande released the music video for her single “Petal” and set the internet on fire. For several years now, fans and casual observers have worried about Grande’s shrinking size. And in this video, she is painfully gaunt — clearly starving.

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Saying that, though — that this woman is clearly very ill, and very clearly starving herself — is somehow controversial. Grande’s defenders are rolling out body positivity cliches not to argue that Grande is healthy — that seems impossible — but to shut down discussion about her. Grande, too, has taken on a kind of teenage obstinance, declaring her life none of anyone else’s business.

In this discourse, commenting on Grande’s thinness is “body shaming.” Expressing concern is inappropriately diagnosing her when we don’t know her life or medical history. Saying that maybe ultra-thinness is not a healthy model for girls and young women is “thin shaming” and a “witch hunt.” Noticing her significant weight loss is prurient “scrutiny,” not genuine concern, because genuine concern apparently can’t be about a person’s body at all.

Sorry, but people have lost their damn minds.

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Happy Monday and welcome to Monday Reads!

From around the web:

Why Is It So Hard to Ban Child Marriage? by Sarah Jones in Intelligencer

She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help. by Kavitha Surana in ProPublica

Listening to Cassandra: Misogyny, Classical and Modern by Rebecca Solnit in Meditations in an Emergency

We Won the Greatest Civil Rights Victory of Our Generation. Here Are Some Lessons for the Next One. by Evan Wolfson in Slate

The Great Romance Slump by Faith Hill in the Atlantic

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From here and there:

The Pro-Teen-Pregnancy Movement Has Taken Over the Trump Administration (Slate)

The War on Women’s Sports

Why Don’t Conservative Men Protect Their Own Daughters?

Happy reading!

xx Jill + Tamar

Welcome to The Week in Women, a rundown of this week’s major women’s rights stories from around the world.

Senate Democrats introduced a bill that would codify women’s right to serve in combat roles.

Ten women accused actor Jared Leto of sexual misconduct, including sex with underaged girls and sexual assault.

A Virginia federal judge ruled that certain FDA restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone are unlawful.

Planned Parenthood of Springfield, Missouri began providing medication abortion again for the first time in over twenty years.

A trial began against a woman who claims postpartum psychosis led her to kill her three children.

…and that’s it for now. Have a great week ahead!

xx Tamar + Jill

Donate Subscriptions

The Week in Women comes to you thanks to research from Tamar Eisen (she/her/hers), an advocate for reproductive justice and gender equity.

Republican Rep. Max Miller is currently running for reelection in Ohio. His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, has just filed another restraining order against him, after, she says, he laid hands on her lawyer — the person she hired to help protect her from him. Moreno also says that Miller threw boiling water at her, held a gun to her head, and broke their baby’s collarbone. “Daddy’s house is scary” and “Daddy kill you,” her daughter allegedly said.

In response, Miller has smeared Moreno crazy, vengeful, and mentally ill.

Emily Moreno’s father, Bernie Moreno, is a powerful Republican senator; you may have seen him this week attacking Anthony Fauci during Fauci’s Senate testimony. Despite a spokesperson telling the New York Times that “Senator Moreno’s top priority is the safety and well-being of his daughter and granddaughter,” Senator Moreno’s actual top priority seems to be the power of his party — he refuses to speak out against Miller or his reelection campaign, because it is in both men’s interests to have more Republicans in Congress.

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Re-read that. The father of a woman who says her ex scalded her with boiling water, held a gun to her head, and fractured her baby’s collarbone is functionally politically supporting the man she says abused her.

Conservative traditionalists who defend patriarchal systems tend to do so by leveraging the claim that women need men to protect us — that there are bad men out there, and we need the good ones (our husbands, our fathers) for provision and protection. If women play by the rules, and we’re submissive and supportive, then we’ll be defended and kept safe.

This story, though, is a more accurate encapsulation of patriarchy: Women are pawns and helpmeets, people who men may sometimes choose to protect, but also perfectly expendable.

Another women has also said that Miller abused her: former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham. She, too, saw the reality of patriarchal “protection” when she needed it. She was close with Donald and Melania Trump, telling them that Miller had physically attacked her as they broke up. “I told the president that this ‘great guy’ had anger issues and a violent streak,” she later wrote in the Washington Post. “I was not some stranger making a wild accusation. I hoped that he would take me seriously, that he would do something.”

Spoiler: He did not take her seriously. He did do something, though: He endorsed Miller for congress.

Wrote Grisham: “A White House staffer accused of assault by a woman whom the president knew and trusted? It didn’t even seem to register on the president’s radar screen as a concern. To the contrary, knowing what he knows, Trump has endorsed my ex’s bid for Congress. The takeaway: Dealing with abuse claims is not in his interest, but having someone in office who will be a rubber stamp for his agenda is.”

And the playbook used against her is identical to the one being used against Emily Moreno. “The usual rumors are being spread that I was a leaker, a liar, mentally unstable and things too painful for me to even recount,” she wrote. And it was familiar, because “I did the same thing to others who saw the Trumps up close and came forward with books or interviews or op-eds to tell the truth.”

It is particularly disgusting that many of the same Republicans who continue to rally behind Miller were quick to demand that Democrats boot Graham Platner after credible allegations that he physically assaulted one woman and raped another. To be clear, it was good and necessary that Democrats booked Platner after those allegations. It’s repulsive, though, that Republicans will use the abuse of women as a political pawn against Democratic candidates, while holding their own to no such standards. Miller is, after all, far from the only Republican who has been credibly accused of serious wrongdoing. Rep. Cory Mills of Florida faces abuse allegations from multiple women. Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina faces multiple sexual harassment allegations.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has said that the accusations against Miller are “troubling,” but that voters should decide. Asked why Republicans refused to ditch Miller after these allegations given that Democrats demanded Platner step aside, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said, “the key word there is ‘allegation.’” If any prominent Republicans have said that Miller should resign, I can’t find it.

The lesson is a clear one: Men will not protect you. An ideology that enforces male power and female submission will be one that enforces male power and female submission — and that breaks whatever promises of protection it makes to women the second that protection would require challenging the power of its men. Emily Moreno’s own father won’t protect her. He won’t protect her grandchild. We see iterations of this in ultra-patriarchal practices around the world: The men who kill daughters who tarnish their honor, who sell daughters to protect their interests, who, as is happening here, sell out their daughters to preserve their own power.

This is the conservative “traditional family” patriarchal model in practice. The promise of protection is what women get for compliance — and it’s an empty one.

xx Jill

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The overt right-wing assault on women’s and girls’ sports has begun, and you probably haven’t even heard about it.

Earlier this month, the Heritage Foundation released a report on Title IX, the federal law banning gender discrimination in education. Heritage is the organization behind Project 2025, the conservative agenda that has dictated much of what the Trump administration has done over the past two years. Their Title IX report is written by Scott Yenor, who has previously made the case that employers should be allowed to refuse to hire women in an effort to restore a nuclear family model of a male breadwinner with a stay-at-home wife (career women, Yenor has said, are “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome”).

Now, he’s taking on girls’ sports and the law that protects them — which he says should fundamentally change in order to advantage the “naturally” more competitive boys.

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The purpose and value of women’s sports have always been politicized. But the topic is discussed more often now than at any point in my adult life because of questions raised by the participation of trans girls and women in women’s sports. I’ve seen right-wing misogynists transform themselves into staunch defenders of women’s rights so long as it means keeping trans people out of athletics. I’ve also seen self-styled feminists question whether we even need single-sex sports teams, argue against all evidence that there aren’t significant sex differences when it comes to athletics, or suggest that it’s simply not a big deal if the girls’ teams see some unfair competition (that this isn’t an issue on boys’ and men’s teams tells you something). Unfortunately, too many feminists have ceded the ideological defense of women’s sports to anti-trains conservatives.

I don’t mean that feminists have failed to defend women’s sports from trans women. I think the trans women in sports debate is complex and fair solutions vary significantly depending on the sport, the age of the participants, and the particulars of the participants. Whatever you think about the conversation around trans women in sports, though, you should be advocating for the fair treatment of women’s sports as a category, not questioning whether women’s sports should even exist. And if you’re a conservative who claims you want to defend women’s sports, well, now is your moment. Because the influential and far-right conservatives of the Heritage Foundation are coming — and they are planning to legislate women’s sports largely out of existence.

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Happy Monday and welcome to Monday Reads!

From around the web:

18 Days in Minnesota: The false claims, chaos and coverups behind the Trump administration’s killing of two American citizens by Jake Tapper in CNN

She’s Charged With Killing Her Twins. The Anti-Vaccine Movement Made Her a Martyr. by Anna Merlan in Mother Jones

Call Her Mommy by Angelina Chapin in the Cut

This is What Happens When You Empower Domestic Abusers by Kate Manne in More to Hate (Substack)

Postpartum Psychosis Is Rising. We Are Not Ready. by Uruj Kamal Haider in Times

‘White men get to fail’: Graham Platner collapse illuminates toxic double standard in US politics by Rachel Leingang and Lauren Gambino in the Guardian

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From here and there:

The Nightmare Climate Future Is Now

Happy reading!

xx Jill + Tamar

Welcome to The Week in Women, a rundown of this week’s major women’s rights stories from around the world.

Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in the US after the UK filed 38 new charges against them for rape and sex trafficking.

Liberia lifted its ban on female genital mutilation.

The Women’s Tennis Association will now require genetic sex testing for female athletes.

The Taliban raided a women and children’s rights organization and arrested several of its female employees.

A French modeling scout was connected women to Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in France.

A Texas court found that a state lawsuit brought against a midwife for allegedly violating the state’s abortion ban lacked evidence.

…and that’s it for now. Have a great week ahead!

xx Tamar + Jill

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The Week in Women comes to you thanks to research from Tamar Eisen (she/her/hers), an advocate for reproductive justice and gender equity.

Poisonous air is currently blowing its way across Canada and the northern United States, creating an air quality crisis that has kept millions of people indoors and threatens the health and wellbeing of millions more. The source, this time, is Canadian wildfires. The unhealthy air those fires are spewing, and the hot weather that air is spewing it into, poses serious risks, up to and including death. Most people I know in the high-AQI cities are stressed and stunned by the reality that something we both need to survive and largely take for granted — clean air — can go bad overnight

As someone who lives in one of the world’s most polluted cities and lives in choking air most days of the year, I can empathize.

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Happy Monday and welcome to Monday Reads!

From around the web:

The Blueprint to Save America’s Moms by Jennifer Klein and Stephanie Ogorzalek in Ms. Magazine

Locked Away by Jonathan Blitzer in the New Yorker

A City Bigger Than a Bomb: Dispatch from Beirut by Jacob Russell in the Paris Review

The Supreme Court Has Gone Off the Rails. There’s Actually a Fix. We Just Have to Go Through With It. by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate

Children in This Church Were Sexually Abused. Then They Began Abusing Other Kids. Some Continued as Adults. by Jeremy Kohler and Andy Mannix in ProPublica

11 Rounds of IVF, $250,000, and No Baby by Erica Schwiegershausen in The Cut

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From here and there:

Someone Finally Made Trump Pay for a Lifetime of Mistreating Women (Slate)

Don’t Melt Your Brain into the Machine

Happy reading!

xx Jill + Tamar

Welcome to The Week in Women, a rundown of this week’s major women’s rights stories from around the world.

Protests erupted in West Bengal, India after the sexual assault and killing of an 11 year old girl.

Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of women and people of color for Navy leadership roles. He also announced screening of all troops for testosterone, including women.

European Athletics released new guidelines to prevent the sexualization of female athletes through camera angles and replays.

Idaho allowed for a ballot measure that would establish a right to reproductive freedom to be voted on this November.

E. Jean Carroll received more than $5 million from Trump in a sexual abuse and defamation case.

Warren Buffett cut off donations to the Gates Foundation following revelations about ties between Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein.

…and that’s it for now. Have a great week ahead!

xx Tamar + Jill

Donate Subscriptions

The Week in Women comes to you thanks to research from Tamar Eisen (she/her/hers), an advocate for reproductive justice and gender equity.

You have hopefully by now read the Atlantic cover story The End of Reading. It says more or less exactly that: Americans are reading much, much less than they used to. We actually take in more words than we used to, thanks to algorithmic social media and doing everything on our smartphones, but actually reading things like books or even full magazine articles or news stories has become rarer and rarer.

The story contains many troubling anecdotes: The Harvard undergraduate who complained about a book written in Old English, and had to use Chat GPT to translate it; the book was A Clockwork Orange, written in 1962. The three-year-old who started preschool and cried every day for weeks — not for her mother, but for her tablet. It also contains some observations I haven’t seen as well-articulated anywhere else: That writing transformed the human brain and our consciousness, allowing for logic, rationality, analytical thought, deduction, complexity, and focus. This anecdote particularly stands out:

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Ong cited case studies by the neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, who traveled to remote villages in Uzbekistan and Kirghizia in the 1930s, when peasants were starting to receive rudimentary reading and writing instruction. Luria met his subjects at teahouses, in field camps, and around evening fires. There, he posed a number of questions designed to elucidate differences in how illiterate and literate peasants thought. Luria told the peasants: “In the Far North, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North.” He then asked them the color of bears in Novaya Zemlya. The literate peasants were able to complete the syllogism. But the illiterate ones refused to try, explaining that they had never been to the north and thus couldn’t answer. Achieving literacy seemed to have conveyed an ability to think logically and abstractly, not simply to read words.

Without reading and writing, the Atlantic piece argues, we wouldn’t have “philosophy, modern science, history as an academic enterprise, art criticism.”

Reading — really reading, and mucking through complex ideas, not just being spoon-fed single-sentence directives on social media or by AI — sharpens the mind and allows us to develop more complex cognition. Not reading, or decreasing how much we’re reading, allows those skills to atrophy, or never develop in the first place. Our current reality of social media outrage-baiting, easy-to-digest short-form videos, communication via text, reliance on AI to solve every-day problems (“using these ingredients, tell me what to make for dinner;” “make me a work-out plan for this week”), TV shows that have changed to meet our attention deficits — all of this adds up to brains that are more distracted but less engaged. We are more stimulated but less challenged.

This has political consequences.

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