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  • A head-on car crash sidelined a young mom. A rare transplant was the only option to get her life back.

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    For Lacy Cornelius Boyd, March 19, 2024, was an exciting day. She and her husband had taken their 6-year-old daughter to the Grand Canyon as part of a family road trip. Boyd, her husband and their daughter were planning to stop at McDonald’s before heading home to Oklahoma. 

    Everything was well — until their car hit a patch of black ice. 

    “We were spinning. My husband obviously lost control, and he hit another car head-on,” Boyd recalled. Everything else was a blur. 

    Boyd’s daughter had a broken arm. Her husband and the other driver were fine. Boyd had broken bones in her neck and ribs, a collapsed lung, and severe injuries to her intestines. She had six surgeries in five days.

    But the damage to her intestines — caused by a too-tight seatbelt — kept getting worse, Boyd said. 

    “They were trying to save my intestines, and every time they would go back in, they were just dying from no blood flow,” Boyd said. “I was told that most people have 35 feet of small intestine. I was left with about 35 inches.” 

    Lacy Cornelius Boyd, her husband and their daughter at the Grand Canyon.

    Lacy Cornelius Boyd


    “Just going through the motions”

    Boyd was discharged from the hospital after a month. She was diagnosed with short bowel syndrome and had an ileostomy bag attached to her side to collect waste. Her remaining intestines couldn’t process the nutrients from food, so she needed 12 hours of IV nutrition a day. She said her daughter was afraid of the tubes, wires and medical machines that now filled their home. Boyd was always weak and dehydrated, and never wanted to leave the house. 

    “If I went out to eat somewhere, I’d be in the bathroom immediately, or I’d have to go to the bathroom five times at a restaurant, so it was just embarrassing,” Boyd said. “I felt like everyone was enjoying their life and I was just going through the motions.” 

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    Lacy Cornelius Boyd in the hospital.

    Lacy Cornelius Boyd


    Boyd, who had previously worked in healthcare, regularly met with doctors to see if her quality of life could be improved. No one had answers. Finally, she followed up on an unlikely lead. During her hospitalization, a surgeon had told Boyd’s sister she should contact the Cleveland Clinic. 

    Boyd self-referred herself to the hospital system in November 2024. She met with general surgeon Dr. Masato Fujiki and after an evaluation, he suggested something she’d never heard of before: An intestinal transplant. 

    “I started crying. I think he thought I was sad, but I was really happy,” Boyd said. “Everyone had told me that was going to be my life.” 

    A rare, risky transplant 

    Intestinal transplants are a rare procedure, said Dr. Adam Griesemer, a transplant surgeon at NYU Langone. Only about 100 are done in the U.S. every year, compared to the 25,000 kidney transplants done annually, said Fujiki, the director of Cleveland Clinic’s Intestinal Transplant Program. 

    Intestinal transplants have the worst outcomes of any type of transplant, Griesemer said, so there is a “high threshold” for doctors to consider them. They are generally only recommended for children born with intestinal defects and people who will be dependent on IV nutrition for the rest of their lives, like Boyd, he said. 

    Intestinal transplant patients “really struggle with rejection and infections,” Griesemer said. Intestines harbor bacteria inside them, so during cases of organ rejection, the barrier preventing the bacteria from entering the bloodstream breaks down. Fujiki said rejection rates have been improving over the past decade, estimating that it has decreased from 40% of cases to about 8%. Medication can help reduce infections, he said. 

    Only about 50% of patients survive more than five years after receiving the transplant, Griesemer said. In comparison, kidney transplants have a 98% five-year survival rate. 

    “Prepared for the worst”  

    Boyd began the process of getting listed for an intestinal transplant in November. In July 2025, 16 months after the car crash, Boyd received the transplant at the Cleveland Clinic. The day of the operation was filled with emotion, she said. 

    “I was excited. I was nervous. I was sad about leaving my daughter, and I felt for the donor’s family,” Boyd said. “But really, I was prepared for the worst.” 

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    Lacy Cornelius-Boyd (center) with transplant coordinator Erika Johnson (left) and Dr. Masato Fujiki (right).

    Lacy Cornelius Boyd


    The operation took about 12 hours, Fujiki said. Everything went smoothly. But it was just the first step in a long process: Boyd spent the next three weeks recovering in the hospital, followed by three months of outpatient recovery in Cleveland so she could stay near her care team for close monitoring. 

    Boyd had no complications in her recovery, Fujiki said. Her ostomy bag was removed. She no longer needed IV nutrition. The weekend before Thanksgiving, she returned to Oklahoma.

    “It was amazing to be able to come home,” Boyd said. 

    A festive return home 

    Boyd arrived home just in time for beloved holiday traditions. After missing other milestones, like her daughter’s first day of school and Halloween, Boyd was relieved to be a part of the celebrations. 

    “My daughter is six now, but my husband carries her to the Christmas tree every morning to get her presents. I don’t know how much longer she’s going to let him do that,” Boyd said. “I was like, ‘This year might be the last time, and I’ll miss it.’ But I didn’t.” 

    Boyd remains on a regimen of anti-rejection medications and will continue to receive follow-up care at the Cleveland Clinic. Otherwise, normalcy reigns, and it feels like the last of the trauma from the crash has been repaired, she said.

    “It’s nice to take my daughter to school, pick her up, not have to worry about anything, to take her and to be able to go out to eat. I couldn’t drink Coke before. I couldn’t do normal things for like, a year and a half,” Boyd said. “It’s so much. Everyone is just a little bit more at peace.” 

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    Lacy Cornelius Boyd and her daughter in matching pajamas on Christmas Eve. 

    Lacy Cornelius Boyd


    Edited by

    Lucia I Suarez Sang

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  • Seasoned Saints: Theodore Britton, Jr.

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    Britton, Jr.’s story of Montford Point is only a fraction of the accomplishments and lives he has touched in more than 36,000 days of living. Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    Seated in a meeting room at the Montford Convention, his back sinks into the chair like an emperor settling onto his throne. No cane or no walker in sight for walking assistance, the man’s calm expression says more than words ever could. Before he even has a chance to introduce himself, the sergeant speaks for him. The weight of history seems to hover around him, a presence that makes a formal introduction almost unnecessary.

    “Meet General Britton,” the sergeant says, and Britton’s smile matches the warmth of the greeting. Theodore Britton Jr., 99, is what some might call a pioneer, a harbinger, a vanguard, a man who has shaken hands with presidents and politicians, and acknowledged by Queen Elizabeth. Yet despite all that, Britton carries himself with humility. He downplays accomplishments that others would broadcast, though his intelligence is impossible to hide. Over lunch, he might casually order a tuna sandwich while giving an intellectual breakdown of a polymath, or mention a book you’ve never heard of but immediately want to Google.

    Some might claim to be the first. But Britton—he truly was one of the first. Before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, before Black and white Americans could sit together on the same bus, Britton had already etched his name into history as one of the first Black United States Marines. For him and thousands of other Black Marines in the 1940s, Montford Point was where their Marine story began—a chapter that, decades later, would earn him the nation’s Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of that service.

    As he nears his centennial, his story of Montford Point is only a fraction of the accomplishments and lives he has touched in more than 36,000 days of living.

    For Britton, Jr. (above) and thousands of other Black Marines in the 1940s, Montford Point, in North Carolina, was where their Marine story began. Britton, Jr. has many fond memories of those times. Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    Life in Blue Heaven

    The middle child of parents, Bessie Britton, and property manager, Theodore R. Britton Sr., Britton spent his earliest years in a small community just outside North Augusta, South Carolina. “We called it Blue Heaven because it was composed of something like eight or ten houses, and they were all painted blue,” said Mr. Britton.

    For a young boy growing up in the segregated South, separation from white neighbors never felt like a burden.  “The fact that I was living in a separate area didn’t bother me. I never assumed it meant anything was wrong or that I was inferior,” he said. Blue Heaven shaped his childhood—from walking to the corner store with his sisters for peanut butter or fresh sugar water, to discovering the joy of learning in the classroom. It was there he met a teacher named Ms. Lina Key, despite juggling four different grade levels, made a lasting impression with her dedication and care.

    Teachers gravitated toward him, drawn to his curiosity and erudition. Even as a child, his head was rarely out of a book. “‘I’ve read over a thousand books,’” he said, glancing at the shelves surrounding his Atlanta apartment today.

    At ten, his father moved the family to New York City, as he found a job building the subway systems. They first settled in Harlem, but after his father lost his job during the Great Depression, they relocated to downtown Manhattan. The move opened young Britton’s eyes to a new world. The North was no utopia, but its racial lines were often more complex than those of the South.

    He recalls seeing a white man in a restaurant collecting scraps of food, a sight that challenged the racial assumptions he’d grown up with. “It made me think that maybe equality or inequality has more to do with circumstances than just race,” he reflected. School introduced him to new experiences, including choir, which led to the glee club, and an early understanding of stocks, which would prove useful later in life. He attended the New York School of Commerce, one of the country’s first trade-focused high schools, planning a future in bookkeeping.

    Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    Pioneer Spirit to Pioneer

    By 18, the world demanded adult responsibilities of him. In January 1944, Britton, his parents’ only son, was drafted into the military during World War II. Britton reflects that his parents didn’t think much of it at the time. 

    Like many Black draftees, he was initially offered only the Navy or the Army, options he declined. “I just rejected the fact that I was only given two choices. Maybe it was part of my heritage. My father left South Carolina to go north into the unknown for his family. Maybe that pioneer spirit runs in me,” he said.

    Unbeknownst to him, Britton was about to make a choice that would etch his name into history. In 1941, after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Fair Employment Practices Commission, Black men were allowed to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. But like most progress of that era, it came with its conditions. They couldn’t train at Parris Island with their white counterparts. Instead, they were sent to a place carved out just for them, a new camp in North Carolina called Montford Point. From 1942 to 1949, every man who passed through those gates carried more than a rifle; he carried the weight of being among the first. They were the Montford Point Marines—the first Black Marines to wear and embrace the uniform, their footsteps marking the start of something larger than themselves.

    Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    Arriving at Montford Point in January 1944, Britton, standing 5’8”, brought a keen intellect that served him well. While Marine boot camp today lasts 13 weeks, he spent five months in training. Some of the first graduates returned as instructors, and Britton recalls, “The Black trainers were convinced we should be better, and they trained us harder.” Montford Point was meant as an experiment. “They expected us to fail. If we failed, the Marines could remain all white. Knowing that pushed us to work even harder.” The Marines who trained there didn’t just meet expectations—they surpassed new standards that reshaped the Corps to this day.

    After graduation, Britton boarded a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, on a 33-day voyage into the Pacific. The first place he docked was Guadalcanal, a place he later reflected on as one that broadened his horizons. Britton worked as a clerk, keeping count of the enlisted soldiers overseas. By April 1945, just months before the bombing of Hiroshima, he and other Marines were sent to Hawaii.

    Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    However, despite the respect and emerging recognition the Montford Point Marines receive today, the regard they earned from their white counterparts back home was nearly nonexistent during the time. “The ones overseas learned to appreciate us, but the ones back home didn’t even know we existed because they had never heard of Montford Point,” Britton said. Many Marines overseas became aware of the accomplishments of Montford Point graduates—sometimes called “Black Angels,” as some described them- as they would serve as backup countless times in WWII and during the Korean War. Despite their omission from many history books, Montford Point graduates stood in the same trenches as the white Marines remembered in history. Some 2,000 Black Marines took part in the bloodiest battles of World War II, including Okinawa.

    In the spring of 1946, Britton returned to the United States with his mind, unsurprisingly, set on educational advancement. After completing his remaining high school credits, he enrolled at one of the country’s highest-ranking schools, on 4th Street in New York City: New York University. He chose to major in banking and finance, which might surprise those aware of his immense vocabulary. Why not English? “I wanted to do something that would be related to diplomacy,” he said. “I first thought about accounting, then I got interested in international trade and foreign exchange, and that’s what drew me to study finance.”

    One year into his studies at NYU, in 1948, he was called to active duty as tensions rose in Korea. During this time, he continued with part of his coursework at NYU. He left the Marines in 1951, a year into the Korean War, after being denied a commission due to his prior opposition to the Marine Corps’ segregation policy—a policy rarely mentioned in history. While Montford Point allowed Black recruits to serve, access to military jobs and resources remained far from equal compared with their white counterparts.

    Around 1948–49, the Marine Corps proposed an all-Black volunteer trucking unit in Harlem. Britton opposed it, arguing that Black recruits deserved access to regular units, not segregation. Although his strong sentiment would later be used against him, it may have sparked a significant change in the racial construct of the Marines. With support from Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the objection reached the Secretary of Defense, prompting Major General O.P. Smith to declare that all Marine units would be open regardless of race. The decision marked a small but significant step toward integration.

    Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    Made His Parents Proud

    After leaving the Marines, Britton obtained his degree from NYU, becoming the first in his family—siblings and parents included—to achieve higher education. “There were no two people more proud of that graduate than my parents,” he recalled. “On the day when 12,000 students graduated from NYU, their son was among them.”

    Despite the rigor of NYU, Britton never felt the challenge was insurmountable. “Keep in mind that I had gone through so many difficult experiences before, so I only felt that I could do well, if not better,” he said.

    After graduating, he worked as a mortgage officer at the Covington Savings and Loan Association in Harlem. Later, his reach expanded into housing development when he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary at HUD.

    In 1974, President Gerald R. Ford nominated Theodore Britton Jr. to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Barbados and Grenada. The position gave him the chance to further broaden the list of countries he had visited. “I’ve probably been close to 170 countries at this point,” he said.

    Nearing 36,525 Days

    Now closing in on 100 years old, Britton shows no signs of slowing down. 

    “Nearing 100, and I am on the go,” Britton texted me from his Forida beach house. Time and again, people ask him the same question: “What’s the secret?” And his answer, surprisingly simple, reflects the wisdom of a man whose knowledge could fill several dissertations.

    “There can’t be a secret because each person is unique, so what helps me might not help someone else,” Britton said.

    As for turning 100 being a milestone—not for him. “I’ve had a lot of birthdays, so it doesn’t mean much.”

    When asked what piece of wisdom everyone should carry with them, he offered this: “It is a small, small planet that we live on, and we can be of help to each other.”

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    Tabius McCoy, Report for America Corp Member

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  • Pro-Palestinian protests erupt on college campuses following Columbia arrests

    Pro-Palestinian protests erupt on college campuses following Columbia arrests

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    CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Protests over Israel’s war in Gaza are spreading at college campuses across the country.

    This includes one right here in the Triangle.

    Last week, students rallied on UNC’s campus. They gathered on the quad outside the South Building, where the Chancellor’s office is located.

    UNC-Chapel Hill’s Students for Justice in Palestine (UNC SJP) — who organized the rally — said it was a response to the rally at Columbia University where more than 100 people were arrested last week.

    WATCH | UNC students hold pro-Palestine rally in response to arrests at Columbia University

    Students at the University of North Carolina held a rally on campus Friday.

    Tensions remained high the following Monday at Columbia, where the campus gates were locked to anyone without a school ID and where protests broke out both on campus and outside.

    On the same day, dozens of students at New York University were arrested during pro-Palestinian protests.

    An encampment set up by students swelled to hundreds of protesters throughout the day Monday. NYU said it warned the crowd to leave, then called in the police after the scene became disorderly.

    The university said it learned of reports of “intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents.” Shortly after 8:30 p.m., officers began making arrests.

    WATCH | Over 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrested at Columbia University in New York

    Some 108 people were arrested on Columbia University’s campus for trespass without incident, officials said.

    “It’s a really outrageous crackdown by the university to allow the police to arrest students on our own campus,” NYU law student Byul Yoon said.

    “Antisemitism is never ok. That’s absolutely not what we stand for and that’s why there are so many Jewish comrades that are here with us today,” Yoon said.

    These protests are happening at Ivy Leagues across the country. Groups are demanding universities to divest from companies tied to Israel.

    Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe, and they point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 invasion.

    President Biden, in response to these protests, said:

    “I condemn the antisemitic protests. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Copyright © 2024 ABC11-WTVD-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved – The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Study reveals high social mobility in China’s Tang dynasty.

    Study reveals high social mobility in China’s Tang dynasty.

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    Newswise — In studying social mobility in today’s industrialized nations, researchers typically rely on data from the World Economic Forum or, in the United States, the General Social Survey. But examining the same phenomena from past centuries is a more daunting task because relevant statistics are harder to come by. 

    However, a social science research team has now discovered a way to examine professional advancement in medieval China (618-907 CE) by drawing from the tomb epitaphs during the Tang Dynasty. These epitaphs contain the ancestral lineages, names, and office titles (e.g., Minister of Personnel, Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, and Palace Deputy Imperial Censor) of the deceased’s father and grandfather as well as the deceased’s career history and educational credentials—ample data points for measuring social mobility across generations. 

    Notably, their analysis shows that education during this period was a catalyst for social mobility.

    “Epitaphs written in medieval China, including the Tang Dynasty, tend to be highly detailed descriptions of an individual’s life with stylized prose and poems, and they contain granular information about the ancestral origins, family background, and career history of each deceased individual,” says Fangqi Wen, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University. 

    “This information, to some extent, mirrors what would have been included in a contemporary social mobility survey,” adds Erik H. Wang, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Politics.

    Wang studies historical political economy while Wen examines social mobility in contemporary societies. After recognizing the high level of data quality embedded in these epitaphs, they realized that the artifacts were a vessel that merged their scholarly interests. Later they recruited the NYU professor of sociology Michael Hout, Wen’s dissertation advisor and a leading scholar on social stratification and mobility, to join the project.

    Their findings, which appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show that the patterns of relationships of social origins, education, and adult achievement somewhat resemble the patterns in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. In drawing from 3,640 epitaphs of males as well as other data from reliable historical sources, such as dynastic records and third-party compiled genealogies, the researchers’ analysis revealed a decline of Chinese medieval aristocracy and the rise of meritocracy 1300 years ago.

    The researchers discovered a specific reason for this development: whether or not the deceased passed the Keju, or the Imperial Exam, which was developed during this period for the purposes of selecting officials for civil service posts. They found that the Keju, which was administered until the early 20th century, served as a catalyst for social mobility—much as higher education has done in the U.S. since at least the 1960s.

    “Our statistical analysis shows that coming from a prominent ancient great house or ‘branch’

    mattered less for career success in the bureaucratic system after roughly 650 CE while passing the Keju came to matter more,” the authors write. “Furthermore, passing the competitive exam may have even equalized chances of subsequent success, as a father’s status was not a factor in the bureaucratic rank of men who passed the Keju.”

    “Education is central to our understanding of intergenerational mobility,” observes Hout. “Many think it was a 20th-century development. But, as we can see from centuries-old data, there are phenomena linking origin, education, and careers very much like contemporary patterns.”

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  • What to know about Trump’s decision to not testify again in New York civil fraud trial

    What to know about Trump’s decision to not testify again in New York civil fraud trial

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    Former President Donald Trump was supposed to testify again at his New York civil fraud trial on Monday, but he made a surprise announcement Sunday that he would not be appearing.

    Trump has already testified once in the trial, repeatedly barreling past questions from the New York attorney general’s office to instead attack the judge overseeing his case and the attorney general’s $250 million lawsuit against him.

    The questions on Monday would have been friendlier to the former president, as he had been scheduled to testify under questioning from his own attorneys in an effort to bolster his defense against allegations he fraudulently inflated the value of his properties.

    Trump’s about-face on his testimony comes as he has relentlessly attacked the civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is seeking $250 million in damages and to bar the former president from doing business in the state.

    Trump has also attacked the judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, and Engoron’s principal law clerk leading to a gag order barring talk about the clerk. The former president’s lawyers are appealing the order.

    “President Trump has already testified,” Trump attorney Chris Kise said in a statement Sunday following Trump’s announcement on his social media platform that he would not testify. “There is really nothing more to say to a Judge who has imposed an unconstitutional gag order and thus far appears to have ignored President Trump’s testimony and that of everyone else involved in the complex financial transactions at issue in the case.”

    While Trump is not facing criminal charges in this case, the allegations against his business are personal for the former president, and he’s spent several days attending the trial outside of his testimony.

    The civil trial is a preview of what could play out next year as Trump runs for president at the same time one or more of his four criminal trials are ongoing.

    Here’s what to know about Trump’s trial and his decision not to testify:

    Trial and campaign trail converge

    Trump attended the civil trial Thursday to hear the testimony of New York University accounting professor Eli Bartov, an expert witness for his defense.

    Trump didn’t have to be there – Bartov is one of several expert witnesses his lawyers have called during their defense – but his presence increased the attention on the trial testimony and gave the former president the chance to speak to television cameras just outside the courtroom at every break.

    “We’ve proven this is just a witch hunt,” Trump said at one point. “It cannot be more conclusive.”

    Trump also complained that he was in New York instead of one of the early swing states for his 2024 campaign, even though he was attending voluntarily.

    “I should be right now in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina. I shouldn’t be sitting in a courthouse,” Trump said.

    Trump’s comments showed how he took the opportunity to attack the trial for interfering with his presidential bid, but the reality is that the two have effectively converged – Trump’s trials have become part of his pitch to his base, arguing that his own legal peril is a key reason voters should return him to the White House.

    Judge has ruled Trump liable for fraud

    James alleges that Trump and his co-defendants – including his two adult sons, the Trump Organization and several company executives – committed fraud in inflating assets on financial statements to get better terms on commercial real estate loans and insurance policies.

    Engoron already ruled before the trial began last month that Trump and his co-defendants were liable for “persistent and repeated” fraud. Now the judge is considering how much the Trumps will have to pay in damages for the profits they’ve allegedly garnered through fraudulent business practices.

    An expert witness for the attorney general testified last month that the ill-gotten gains totaled $168 million, though a defense witness disputed that analysis.

    The attorney general’s office is also looking to prove six other claims: falsifying business records, conspiracy to falsify business records, issuing false financial statements, conspiracy to falsify financial statements, insurance fraud and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.

    The trial has played out over the past two months with an appeal looming, as Trump’s lawyers have already appealed Engoron’s initial decision. Engoron’s ruling in the rest of the case – which is a bench trial, meaning there is no jury – is also sure to be appealed if it goes against Trump.

    While there are no criminal charges in the case, its outcome has serious implications for the former president, as the attorney general is seeking to bar Trump from conducting business in New York.

    Engoron’s summary judgment ruling canceled Trump’s business certificates, though that has been placed on hold while it’s appealed.

    A New York appeals court last week agreed to stop the cancellation of Trump’s business certificates until after the civil fraud trial and any appeals are completed – a continuation of an earlier ruling by a single appeals court judge at the start of the trial.

    Trump brand under scrutiny

    Trump’s attorneys have argued the former president’s statements of financial condition were not fraudulent, and that Deutsche Bank, which loaned Trump money for several properties, conducted its own analysis and didn’t rely on the statements anyway.

    The defense lawyers have called expert witnesses to testify there was not fraud and that Deutsche Bank would not have acted differently had Trump’s net worth been lower than what he reported at the time of the transactions.

    They’ve also argued that valuations are subjective, that differences in valuations are common and that Trump’s net worth is higher than what was listed in his statements because it didn’t take into account the value of his brand.

    Had he testified Monday, Trump would likely have amplified those arguments about his brand and net worth, based on his prior testimony. When he wasn’t attacking the trial, Trump was boasting about his properties and golf courses.

    He claimed Mar-a-Lago was worth more than $1 billion, and that his golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland, was “the greatest golf course ever built.”

    When Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., testified, the defense lawyers walked through a sleek PR presentation touting the Trump Organization, in what could be a sign of how they plan to approach the former president’s testimony, too.

    Tensions between Trump and the judge

    Trump’s earlier testimony – in which he attacked the attorney general, the judge and the entire trial with bombastic rhetoric – repeatedly exasperated Engoron, who at one point threatened to have Trump removed as a witness.

    “This is a political witch hunt and I think she should be ashamed of herself,” Trump said of James at one point in his testimony.

    “It’s a terrible thing you’ve done,” he said at another point to the judge.

    Had he testified Monday, Trump could have taken the chance on the stand to level the same attacks he’s been making in comments outside court or on his social media – just as he did in his lengthy, all-caps statement on Truth Social Sunday when he wouldn’t testify.

    Trump is also operating under a gag order, which Engoron put in place after the former president attacked his law clerk, Allison Greenfield, on social media, posting a picture of her with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat.

    Engoron has fined Trump twice for violating the order, including $10,000 for comments he made outside of court during former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony. That resulted in an extraordinary scene in which the judge called Trump to the stand to answer questions about whether he was referring to Greenfield or Cohen when he complained about the “person who is very partisan sitting alongside” the judge.

    Enrogon said Trump’s claims that he was referring to Cohen were “not credible” as he levied his fine. Trump’s attorneys have appealed.

    Last week, Trump attorney Alina Habba said Trump was testifying despite her advice not to because the gag order is in place.

    “He still wants to take the stand even though my advice is at this point you should never take the stand with a gag order. But he is so firmly against what is happening in this court,” Habba said Thursday.

    This story has been updated to reflect that Trump said Sunday he would not be testifying in his civil fraud trial on Monday as previously expected.

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  • Gender, Race Gaps in Democrats Voting: New Study

    Gender, Race Gaps in Democrats Voting: New Study

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    Newswise — The enduring gender disparity in voting preferences between Democrats and Republicans stems, in part, from a greater percentage of female voters being Black and the historical trend of Black voters favoring the Democratic Party, as indicated by a recent study conducted by a group of sociologists.

    “The connection between gender and racial disparities in voting has been recognized for some time, but the exact interplay between the two has remained uncertain,” states Paula England, the Dean of Social Science at NYU Abu Dhabi and the primary author of the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “These discoveries highlight that approximately one-fourth of the gender gap in favoring the Democratic Party can be attributed to the fact that a larger proportion of female voters are Black compared to their male counterparts.”

    In every U.S. presidential election since 1980, women have consistently demonstrated a greater tendency to vote for the Democratic candidate compared to men. Importantly, prior studies have revealed that Black men face disproportionately higher rates of mortality, incarceration, and disenfranchisement resulting from criminal convictions. These disparities contribute to a reduced representation of Black men among the voting population, leading to a higher proportion of Black voters being women in relation to other racial groups.

    The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) aimed to enhance our understanding of the relationship between gender, race, and partisan voting disparities. The research team, comprising Michael Hout, a sociology professor at NYU, as well as NYU doctoral students Karyn Vilbig and Kevin Wells, conducted the study in order to shed light on the dynamics between gender and race as contributing factors to differences in voting preferences between political parties.

    To accomplish this, the authors of the study analyzed data from the General Social Survey (GSS) spanning the period from the 1980 to the 2016 presidential elections. Additionally, they replicated their analysis using data from the American National Election Surveys to ensure the robustness and consistency of their findings across different datasets. By utilizing these sources, the researchers aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between gender, race, and partisan voting gaps over several decades.

    The findings of their analysis revealed that the discrepancy in racial composition between genders accounted for 24% of the gender gap observed in favoring the Democratic Party. In simpler terms, since around 90% of Black voters tend to support Democrats, which is a considerably higher proportion compared to other demographic groups, the fact that a larger percentage of female voters are Black influences women’s voting preferences in favor of the Democratic Party.

    According to Paula England, a professor of sociology at NYU and the lead author of the study, while a gender gap in voting exists among White voters as well, approximately 25% of the total gender gap can be attributed solely to the variation in racial composition between male and female voters. This statement highlights the significant impact of racial demographics on the observed gender disparity in voting preferences.

    In order to eliminate the influence of another potential factor contributing to the gender gap, the researchers examined the role of income. Specifically, they focused on unmarried voters and investigated whether the higher likelihood of single women being economically disadvantaged compared to single men could explain why women tend to vote more Democratic.

    Interestingly, the study revealed that the gender gap in favoring the Democratic Party was particularly pronounced among unmarried individuals. It was observed that unmarried women, despite experiencing a higher poverty rate compared to unmarried men, displayed a stronger tendency to vote Democratic. However, the researchers also noted that although lower-income voters do exhibit a slightly higher inclination towards voting Democratic, the difference in voting preferences between lower-income and more affluent voters was not substantial. These findings suggest that while income disparities may contribute to the gender gap in voting, they do not fully account for the magnitude of the difference observed.

    The study’s authors reached the conclusion that no matter how they examined income and accounted for its influence, it had no mitigating effect on the gender gap in voting preferences. They highlighted the importance of the racial makeup of the voting population as a key factor contributing to this gap. These findings imply that although income disparities do contribute to the gap, they are not the exclusive explanation for the observed differences in voting preferences. The racial composition of the population significantly influences voting disparities as well.

     

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    New York University

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  • A Lesson for Colleges on Student Mental Health: Try New Things on a Small Scale

    A Lesson for Colleges on Student Mental Health: Try New Things on a Small Scale

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    Everyone is worried about students’ mental health. What can colleges actually do to help?

    During a Friday session at the American Council on Education’s annual meeting, three researchers offered lessons learned from new research focused on eight colleges. Their core message was that administrators should start small, experiment with interventions, frequently assess how students feel about the interventions, and change course as needed.

    Students don’t view their campus experience as a collection of offices and departments, like administrators often do, said Jennifer Maltby, director of data, analytics, and planning at the Rochester Institute of Technology. That should inform colleges’ approach to troubleshooting students’ mental-health challenges, Maltby said.

    Improving student mental health is as complex as raising a child, said Allison Smith, director of health strategy and outcomes at New York University, and both tasks require constant adaptation to fit shifting needs.

    Two other key findings were that colleges should pinpoint which student demographic groups are disproportionately failing to thrive, and that institutions should tailor their goals to improve the experiences of specific student populations, rather than attempting to create a blanket solution that will work for every student.

    “For a trans student, that means being called the right name and right pronouns in class,” Smith said. “For a student of faith, that means being able to observe their religious holidays without getting penalized.”

    Researchers also discovered that having a “core team” of four to eight individuals working to change an institution’s systems was an ideal management structure.

    It’s impossible for one administrator, such as a vice president for student well-being, to reach every student and make the necessary changes that can improve students’ mental health, Smith said.

    Inside the Research

    The research followed Case Western Reserve University, New York University, Cornell University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, Stanford University, the University at Albany in the State University of New York system, and the University of California at Los Angeles.

    The study examined whether a concept known as “Triple Aim” — the idea that, simultaneously, a population can become healthier, health-care costs can decrease, and the quality of care can improve — could apply to student well-being. Smith is a co-founder of the Action Network for Equitable Wellbeing, a new collaborative of organizations dedicated to improving students’ mental health that aims to expand the effort to more colleges.

    The colleges involved in the study frequently collected data through a survey called the Wellbeing Improvement Survey for Higher Education Settings, allowing researchers to get a clear picture of what was working.

    Maltby said one intervention at RIT focused on professors and students. Three professors were encouraged to include statements on their syllabi saying they cared about mental health and knew college was challenging.

    Feedback from students was initially positive, and the initiative grew. But when the statement was included in the syllabi of 30 professors, the results changed. Students didn’t always feel that professors who included the statement on their syllabus acted in a way that showed they genuinely cared, ultimately causing more harm for students than good. Maltby’s team later discovered that marginalized students were disproportionately experiencing this harm.

    “We were able to really pull back and say we’re not going to try and implement this statement universitywide because we understand that there are potential impacts on that for our students that are going to be negative,” Maltby said.

    While it might seem resource-intensive to talk individually with students to get a better understanding of their lives and to collect data so frequently, Maltby believes the study’s approach could work for a range of colleges.

    “Oftentimes folks will say it’s not possible or we can’t do it that way, and I think one of the things we’ve learned, especially through Covid, is that we can do lots of things that we previously thought were impossible when we have the will and interest to do that.” Maltby said.

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    Kate Marijolovic

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  • What Does It Take to Be a ‘Minority-Serving Institution’?

    What Does It Take to Be a ‘Minority-Serving Institution’?

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    A group of researchers has recommended a new classification system for minority-serving institutions that they hope will ultimately direct more money to colleges that are serving minority students well, and not just enrolling them in large numbers.

    The MSI Data Project, the researchers said in a news release Sunday, is a response to “inaccurate and inconsistent data used to identify minority-serving institutions (MSIs) for funding and analysis.”

    “Our hope is … for MSI leaders, advocates, and policymakers to use this body of research, as well as our data dashboards, to make better informed decisions that promote equitable educational outcomes for students,” said Mike Hoa Nguyen, the principal investigator and an assistant professor of education at New York University.

    The data project, launched this month, examines 11 categories of minority-serving institutions. It includes dashboards that detail individual campuses’ eligibility for federal funds, institutional characteristics, enrollment, and graduation metrics over a five-year period, from 2017 to 2021.

    For instance, the dashboard shows, 219 Hispanic-serving institutions received funding from the U.S. Department of Education in 2021, but 462 were eligible for such money. Colleges still have to apply for competitive grants from a limited pool of money. Some applied and were denied, while other colleges may not have even known they were eligible.

    The researchers hope their recommendations will spur changes in how colleges are designated as MSIs and clear up confusion about who should be able to claim that status, and the federal money that can come with it.

    In an accompanying article in Educational Researcher, titled “What Counts as a Minority-Serving Institution?” Nguyen and two of the project’s co-creators raise the concern that federal money isn’t necessarily going to the most deserving institutions.

    “For example, perhaps an institution, not identified as an MSI under the federal statute, is found to serve students of color much better than those that are identified. Such findings could offer important suggestions for policy changes. Additionally, if institutions are receiving federal MSI funds but are not serving students of color well, this would be an important consideration to amend practices and policies so that federal funding is used in the manner in which it was intended.”

    “The MSI landscape is so unbelievably complex, in the way all 11 designations were created over a long period of time, using a patchwork legislative process,” Nguyen said in an interview. By getting everyone “speaking the same language” in how they examine minority-serving institutions, “our hope is that we can find out how well those students are being served” by the federal money set aside and where equity gaps exist.

    Nguyen’s fellow authors were Joseph J. Ramirez, an institutional research and assessment associate at the California Institute of Technology, and Sophia Laderman, an associate vice president at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO).

    About one in five postsecondary institutions are eligible for federal money as MSIs, but more than half of all undergraduate students of color attend these colleges, the authors wrote. President Biden has pledged significant increases in the amount of money directed toward minority-serving institutions.

    Researchers, including Gina Ann Garcia, an associate professor of educational foundations, organizations, and policy at the University of Pittsburgh, have pointed out that the nation’s demographic changes have resulted in hundreds of campuses being designated as Hispanic serving based on numbers alone. The data-project researchers acknowledge that some colleges engage in “the strategic manipulation of enrollment trends in order to meet eligibility requirements.”

    Hispanic-serving institutions, which were first designated by the federal government in 1994, are among the minority-serving institutions that get that designation based on share of enrollment. For HSIs, the threshold is 25 percent of the undergraduate population.

    By contrast, Historically Black and Tribal-Serving colleges achieve that designation based on their histories and missions. Colleges that weren’t designated in those categories can’t join their ranks, regardless of their own changing demographics. That has caused longstanding tensions between Historically Black and predominantly Black institutions over who should have access to the federal money set aside for minority-serving institutions.

    Among the minority-serving institutions the database tracks are those representing Hispanic students, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, both tribal and non-tribally-controlled Native American colleges, and colleges that are either Historically Black or predominantly Black.

    Many colleges are designated in more than one category, but they may only be able to receive funding under one. Designating their multiple identities is important, the authors write, because it “recognizes the diversity and complexity of the institution, and does not render invisible the students of color who attend that institution.”

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    Katherine Mangan

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  • U.S. unprepared for dangers posed by zoonotic diseases, new analysis concludes

    U.S. unprepared for dangers posed by zoonotic diseases, new analysis concludes

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    Newswise — The United States, the largest importer of wildlife in the world, is not prepared for future spread of animal-borne, or zoonotic, diseases due to gaps among governmental agencies designed to combat these threats, concludes a new analysis by researchers at Harvard Law School and New York University. The authors call for a “One Health” approach, integrating multiple agencies in order to better govern human-animal interactions.

    The editorial, “Blind spots in biodefense,” which appears in the journal Science, is authored by Ann Linder, a research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program, and Dale Jamieson, a professor at New York University’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection in the Department of Environmental Studies.

    Linder and Jamieson note that the Biden administration’s recent release of its National Biodefense Strategy (NBS-22), the first update since the COVID-19 pandemic began, frames threats as largely external to the United States. 

    “NBS-22 focuses primarily on bioterrorism and laboratory accidents, neglecting threats posed by routine practices of animal use and production inside the United States,” they write. 

    This oversight is significant, Linder and Jamieson observe, given the United States’ past and present when it comes to human-animal interface:

    • More zoonotic diseases originated in the United States than in any other country during the second half of the 20th century. 
    • In 2022, the U.S. processed more than 10 billion livestock, the largest number ever recorded and an increase of 204 million over 2021.
    • The ongoing H5N1 avian influenza outbreak has left 58 million animals dead in backyard chicken coops and industrial farms in the U.S.
    • Since 2011, the U.S. has recorded more swine-origin influenza infections than any other country. Most occurred at state and county fairs, which attract 150 million visitors each year and where an estimated 18% of swine have tested positive. 

    Moreover, they add, the current patchwork of siloed agencies and authorities is marked by a lack of coordination, leaving significant gaps and areas of underregulation. In fact, of the many agencies that govern food animal production, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is the most important, but it has no authority to regulate on-farm animal production.

    The authors call for rebuilding from the ground up the U.S. regulatory system in order to combat zoonotic disease risk.

    “What is needed is not simply for agencies to do their jobs better or to paper over the gaps, but a fundamental restructuring of the way that human–animal interfaces are governed,” Linder and Jamieson urge. “A One Health approach, which NBS-22 claims as its guiding principle, would take the health of other living things not merely as the occasional means or obstacles to human health, but as continuous with it. The first step in implementing such an approach would be to create a high-level process for integrating the broken mosaic of multiple agencies, with their unclear and sometimes competing mandates, into an effective, comprehensive regime.”

    The editorial is based on research from the Live Animal Markets Project, which is examining global policy responses to animal markets and their role in zoonotic disease transmission. The project includes 15 individual country case studies involving local collaborators, partner institutions, and members of the core research team. The project aims to provide a comprehensive assessment that will aid policymakers, contribute to public education about zoonotic risks, and support the human health and animal protection communities. The project is led by researchers from Harvard Law School’s Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program, and New York University’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, and involves researchers and institutions from around the world. Kristen Stilt, Arthur Caplan, Chris Green, Bonnie Nadzam, and Valerie Wilson McCarthy contributed to this editorial.

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    New York University

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