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<title>26 June, 2023</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Regime type and Data Manipulation: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
Autocratic and democratic leaders have an incentive to misreport data that may reveal policy failure. However, it is easier for autocratic leaders to fabricate data because they are not subject to scrutiny from media, opposition parties, and civil society. This suggests that autocratic governments are more likely to manipulate policy-relevant statistics than democratic governments. It is inherently difficult to test that claim because researchers typically do not have access to data from sources other than the government. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between regime type and data manipulation because of its widespread impact, as well as the ability to compare reported with excess deaths and test for statistical anomalies in reported data. Based on regressions for undercounting and statistical irregularities that take into account unintentional mismeasurement, I find that autocratic governments are more likely to deliberately under-report the impact of COVID-19 than their democratic counterparts.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/dv7q2/" target="_blank">Regime type and Data Manipulation: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Neuropsychiatric disorders as risk factors and consequences of COVID-19: A Mendelian randomization study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background More than 180 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide. It has been proposed that neuropsychiatric disorders may be risk factors and/or consequences of COVID-19 infection. However, observational studies could be affected by confounding bias. Methods We performed bi-directional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to evaluate causal relationships between liability to COVID-19 (and severe/critical infection) and a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders or traits. We employed GWAS summary statistics from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative. A variety of MR methods including those accounting for horizontal pleiotropy were employed. Results Overall, we observed evidence that liability to COVID-19 or severe infection may be causally associated with higher risks of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder (BD) (especially BD II), schizophrenia (SCZ), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and suicidal thought (ST) when compared to the general population. On the other hand, liability to a few psychiatric traits/disorders, for example ADHD, alcohol and opioid use disorders may be causally associated with higher risks of COVID-19 infection or severe disease. In genetic correlation analysis, cannabis use disorder, ADHD, and anxiety showed significant and positive genetic correlation with critical or hospitalized infection. All the above findings passed multiple testing correction at a false discovery rate (FDR)&lt;0.05. For pneumonia, in general we observed a different pattern of causal associations. We observed bi-directional positive associations with depression- and anxiety-related phenotypes. Conclusions In summary, this study provides evidence for tentative bi-directional causal associations between liability to COVID-19 (and severe infection) and a number of neuropsychiatric disorders. Further replications and prospective studies are required to verify the findings.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.29.21259609v2" target="_blank">Neuropsychiatric disorders as risk factors and consequences of COVID-19: A Mendelian randomization study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Adverse outcomes in SARS-CoV-2 infected pregnant mice are gestational age-dependent and resolve with antiviral treatment</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy is associated with severe COVID-19 and adverse fetal outcomes, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Moreover, clinical studies assessing therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy are limited. To address these gaps, we developed a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy. Outbred CD1 mice were infected at embryonic day (E) 6, E10, or E16 with a mouse adapted SARS-CoV-2 (maSCV2) virus. Outcomes were gestational age-dependent, with greater morbidity, reduced anti-viral immunity, greater viral titers, and more adverse fetal outcomes occurring with infection at E16 (3rd trimester-equivalent) than with infection at either E6 (1st trimester-equivalent) or E10 (2nd trimester-equivalent). To assess the efficacy of ritonavir-boosted nirmatrelvir (recommended for pregnant individuals with COVID-19), we treated E16-infected dams with mouse equivalent doses of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir. Treatment reduced pulmonary viral titers, decreased maternal morbidity, and prevented adverse offspring outcomes. Our results highlight that severe COVID-19 during pregnancy and adverse fetal outcomes are associated with heightened virus replication in maternal lungs. Ritonavir-boosted nirmatrelvir mitigated adverse maternal and fetal outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection. These findings prompt the need for further consideration of pregnancy in preclinical and clinical studies of therapeutics against viral infections.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.23.533961v2" target="_blank">Adverse outcomes in SARS-CoV-2 infected pregnant mice are gestational age-dependent and resolve with antiviral treatment</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Changes in Environmental Stress over COVID-19 Pandemic Likely Contributed to Failure to Replicate Adiposity Phenotype Associated with Krtcap3</strong> -
<div>
We previously identified Keratinocyte-associated protein 3, Krtcap3, as an obesity-related gene in female rats where a whole-body Krtcap3 knock-out (KO) led to increased adiposity compared to wild-type (WT) controls when fed a high-fat diet (HFD). We sought to replicate this work to better understand the function of Krtcap3 but were unable to reproduce the adiposity phenotype. In the current work, WT female rats ate more compared to WT in the prior study, with corresponding increases in body weight and fat mass, while there were no changes in these measures in KO females between the studies. The prior study was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, while the current study started after initial lock-down orders and was completed during the pandemic with a generally less stressful environment. We hypothesize that the environmental changes impacted stress levels and may explain the failure to replicate our results. Analysis of corticosterone (CORT) at euthanasia showed a significant study by genotype interaction where WT had significantly higher CORT relative to KO in Study 1, with no differences in Study 2. These data suggest that decreasing Krtcap3 expression may alter the environmental stress response to influence adiposity. We also found that KO rats in both studies, but not WT, experienced a dramatic increase in CORT after their cage mate was removed, suggesting a separate connection to social behavioral stress. Future work is necessary to confirm and elucidate the finer mechanisms of these relationships, but these data indicate the possibility of Krtcap3 as a novel stress gene.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.532439v2" target="_blank">Changes in Environmental Stress over COVID-19 Pandemic Likely Contributed to Failure to Replicate Adiposity Phenotype Associated with Krtcap3</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>MOCHA: Advanced statistical modeling of scATAC-seq data enables functional genomic inference in large human disease cohorts</strong> -
<div>
Single-cell assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (scATAC-seq) has been increasingly used to study gene regulation. However, major analytical gaps limit its utility in studying gene regulatory programs in complex diseases. We developed MOCHA (Model-based single cell Open CHromatin Analysis) with major advances over existing analysis tools, including: 1) improved identification of sample-specific open chromatin, 2) proper handling of technical drop-out with zero-inflated methods, 3) mitigation of false positives in single cell analysis, 4) identification of alternative transcription-starting-site regulation, and 5) transcription factor-gene network construction from longitudinal scATAC-seq data. These advances provide a robust framework to study gene regulatory programs in human disease. We benchmarked MOCHA with four state-of-the-art tools to demonstrate its advances. We also constructed cross-sectional and longitudinal gene regulatory networks, identifying potential mechanisms of COVID-19 response. MOCHA provides researchers with a robust analytical tool for functional genomic inference from scATAC-seq data.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.23.544827v1" target="_blank">MOCHA: Advanced statistical modeling of scATAC-seq data enables functional genomic inference in large human disease cohorts</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>PARP14 is a writer, reader and eraser of mono-ADP-ribosylation</strong> -
<div>
PARP14/BAL2 is a large multidomain enzyme involved in signaling pathways with relevance to cancer, inflammation, and infection. Inhibition of its mono-ADP-ribosylating PARP homology domain and its three ADP-ribosyl binding macro domains has been regarded as a potential means of therapeutic intervention. Macrodomains-2 and -3 are known to stably bind to ADP-ribosylated target proteins; but the function of macrodomain-1 has remained somewhat elusive. Here, we used biochemical assays of ADP-ribosylation levels to characterize PARP14 macrodomain-1 and the homologous macrodomain-1 of PARP9. Our results show that both macrodomains display an ADP-ribosyl glycohydrolase activity that is not directed toward specific protein side chains. PARP14 macrodomain-1 is unable to degrade poly(ADP-ribose), the enzymatic product of PARP1. The F926A mutation of PARP14 and the F244A mutation of PARP9 strongly reduced ADP-ribosyl glycohydrolase activity of the respective macrodomains, suggesting mechanistic homology to the Mac1 domain of the SARS-CoV-2 Nsp3 protein. This study adds two new enzymes to the previously known six human ADP-ribosyl glycohydrolases. Our results have key implications for how PARP14 and PARP9 will be studied and how their functions will be understood.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.24.546374v1" target="_blank">PARP14 is a writer, reader and eraser of mono-ADP-ribosylation</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Infection-induced vascular inflammation in COVID-19 links focal microglial dysfunction with neuropathologies through IL-1/IL-6-related systemic inflammatory states</strong> -
<div>
COVID-19 is associated with diverse neurological abnormalities, which predict poor outcome in patients. However, the mechanisms whereby infection-induced inflammation could affect complex neuropathologies in COVID-19 are unclear. We hypothesized that microglia, the resident immune cells of brain, are centrally involved in this process. To study this, we developed an autopsy platform allowing the integration of molecular anatomy-, protein- and mRNA data sets in post-mortem mirror blocks of brain and peripheral organ samples from COVID-19 cases. Nanoscale microscopy, single-cell RNA sequencing and analysis of inflammatory and metabolic signatures revealed distinct mechanisms of microglial dysfunction associated with cerebral SARS-CoV-2 infection. We observed focal loss of microglial P2Y12R at sites of virus-associated vascular inflammation together with dysregulated microglia-vascular-astrocyte interactions, Cx3Cr1-fractalkine axis deficits and mitochondrial failure in severely affected medullary autonomic nuclei and other brain areas. Microglial dysfunction occurs at sites of excessive synapse- and myelin phagocytosis and loss of glutamatergic terminals. While central and systemic viral load is strongly linked in individual patients, the regionally heterogenous microglial reactivity in the brain correlated with the extent of central and systemic inflammation related to IL-1 / IL-6 via virus-sensing pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) and inflammasome activation pathways. Thus, SARS-CoV-2-induced central and systemic inflammation might lead to a primarily glio-vascular failure in the brain, which could be a common contributor to diverse COVID-19-related neuropathologies.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.23.546214v1" target="_blank">Infection-induced vascular inflammation in COVID-19 links focal microglial dysfunction with neuropathologies through IL-1/IL-6-related systemic inflammatory states</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Germline-encoded specificities and the predictability of the B cell response</strong> -
<div>
Antibodies result from the competition of B cell lineages evolving under selection for improved antigen recognition, a process known as affinity maturation. High-affinity antibodies to pathogens such as HIV, influenza, and SARS-CoV-2 are frequently reported to arise from B cells whose receptors, the precursors to antibodies, are encoded by particular immunoglobulin alleles. This raises the possibility that the presence of particular germline alleles in the B cell repertoire is a major determinant of the quality of the antibody response. Alternatively, initial differences in germline alleles’ propensities to form high-affinity receptors might be overcome by chance events during affinity maturation. We first investigate these scenarios in simulations: when germline-encoded fitness differences are large relative to the rate and effect size variation of somatic mutations, the same germline alleles persistently dominate the response of different individuals. In contrast, if germline-encoded advantages can be easily overcome by subsequent mutations, allele usage becomes increasingly divergent over time, a pattern we then observe in mice experimentally infected with influenza virus. We investigated whether affinity maturation might nonetheless strongly select for particular amino acid motifs across diverse genetic backgrounds, but we found no evidence of convergence to similar CDR3 sequences or amino acid substitutions. These results suggest that although germline-encoded specificities can lead to similar immune responses between individuals, diverse evolutionary routes to high affinity limit the genetic predictability of responses to infection and vaccination.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.16.508315v3" target="_blank">Germline-encoded specificities and the predictability of the B cell response</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Optimal Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions Considering Limited Healthcare System Capacity and Economic Costs in the Republic of Korea</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Due to the relatively low severity and fatality rates of the omicron variant of COVID-19, strict non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) with high economic costs may not be necessary. We develop a mathematical model of the COVID-19 outbreak in Korea that considers NPIs, variants, medical capacity, and economic costs. Using optimal control theory, we propose an optimal strategy for the omicron period. To suggest a realistic strategy, we consider limited hospital beds for severe cases and incorporate it as a penalty term in the objective functional using a logistic function. This transforms the constrained problem into an unconstrained one. Given that the solution to the optimal control problem is continuous, we propose the adoption of a sub-optimal control as a more practically implementable alternative. Our study demonstrates how to strategically balance the trade-off between minimizing the economic cost for NPIs and ensuring that the number of severe cases in hospitals is manageable.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.24.23290452v2" target="_blank">Optimal Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions Considering Limited Healthcare System Capacity and Economic Costs in the Republic of Korea</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Psycho-social factors associated with mental resilience in the Corona lockdown</strong> -
<div>
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is not only a threat to physical health but is also having severe impacts on mental health. While increases in stress-related symptomatology and other adverse psycho-social outcomes as well as their most important risk factors have been described, hardly anything is known about potential protective factors. Resilience refers to the maintenance of mental health despite adversity. In order to gain mechanistic insights about the relationship between described psycho-social resilience factors and resilience specifically in the current crisis, we assessed resilience factors, exposure to Corona crisis-specific and general stressors, as well as internalizing symptoms in a cross-sectional online survey conducted in 24 languages during the most intense phase of the lockdown in Europe (March 22nd to April 19th) in a convenience sample of N=15,970 adults. Resilience, as an outcome, was conceptualized as good mental health despite stressor exposure and measured as the inverse residual between actual and predicted symptom total score. Preregistered hypotheses (osf.io/r6btn) were tested with multiple regression models and mediation analyses. Results confirmed our primary hypothesis that positive appraisal style (PAS) is positively associated with resilience (p&lt;0.0001). The resilience factor PAS also partly mediated the positive association between perceived social support and resilience, and its association with resilience was in turn partly mediated by the ability to easily recover from stress (both p&lt;0.0001). In comparison with other resilience factors, good stress response recovery and positive appraisal specifically of the consequences of the Corona crisis were the strongest factors. Preregistered exploratory subgroup analyses (osf.io/thka9) showed that all tested resilience factors generalize across major socio-demographic categories. This research identifies modifiable protective factors that can be targeted by public mental health efforts in this and in future pandemics.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/4z62t/" target="_blank">Psycho-social factors associated with mental resilience in the Corona lockdown</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>PCR data accurately predict infectious virus: a characterization of SARS-CoV-2 in non-human primates</strong> -
<div>
Researchers and clinicians often rely on molecular assays like PCR to identify and monitor viral infections instead of the resource-prohibitive gold standard of viral culture. However, it remains unclear when (if ever) PCR measurements of viral load are reliable indicators of replicating or infectious virus. Here, we compare total RNA, subgenomic RNA, and viral culture results from 24 studies of SARS-CoV-2 in non-human primates using bespoke statistical models. On out-of-sample data, our best models predict subgenomic RNA from total RNA with 91% accuracy, and they predict culture positivity with 85% accuracy. Total RNA and subgenomic RNA showed equivalent performance as predictors of culture positivity. Multiple cofactors, including exposure conditions and host traits, influence culture predictions for total RNA quantities spanning twelve orders of magnitude. Our model framework can be adapted to compare any assays, in any host species, and for any virus, to support laboratory analyses, medical decisions, and public health guidelines.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.23.546114v1" target="_blank">PCR data accurately predict infectious virus: a characterization of SARS-CoV-2 in non-human primates</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A benchmark study of data normalisation methods for PTR-TOF-MS exhaled breath metabolomics</strong> -
<div>
Background: Volatilomics is the branch of metabolomics dedicated to the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath for medical diagnostic or therapeutic monitoring purposes. Real-time mass spectrometry technologies such as proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) are commonly used, and data normalisation is an important step to discard unwanted variation from non-biological sources, as batch effects and loss of sensitivity over time may be observed. As normalisation methods for real-time breath analysis have been poorly investigated, we aimed to benchmark known metabolomic data normalisation methods and apply them to PTR-MS data analysis. Methods: We compared seven normalisation methods, five statistically based and two using multiple standard metabolites, on two datasets from clinical trials for COVID-19 diagnosis in patients from the emergency department or intensive care unit. We evaluated different means of feature selection to select the standard metabolites, as well as the use of multiple repeat measurements of ambient air to train the normalisation methods. Results: We show that the normalisation tools can correct for time-dependent drift. The methods that provided the best corrections for both cohorts were Probabilistic Quotient Normalisation and Normalisation using Optimal Selection of Multiple Internal Standards. Normalisation also improved the diagnostic performance of the machine learning models, significantly increasing sensitivity, specificity and area under the ROC curve for the diagnosis of COVID-19. Conclusions: Our results highlight the importance of adding an appropriate normalisation step during the processing of PTR-MS data, which allows significant improvements in the predictive performance of statistical models.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.22.546053v1" target="_blank">A benchmark study of data normalisation methods for PTR-TOF-MS exhaled breath metabolomics</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Effective vaccination strategies to control COVID-19 outbreak: A modeling study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
OBJECTIVES Three years following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global health emergency of international concern. As immunity levels in the population acquired through past infections and vaccinations have been decreasing, booster vaccinations have become necessary to control new outbreaks. This study aimed to determine the most suitable vaccination strategy to control the COVID-19 surge. METHODS A mathematical model was developed to simultaneously consider the immunity levels induced by vaccines and infections, and employed to analyze the possibility of future resurgence and control using vaccines and antivirals. RESULTS As of May 11, 2023, a peak in resurgence is predicted to occur around mid-October of the same year if the current epidemic trend continues without additional vaccinations. In the best scenario, the peak number of severely hospitalized patients can be reduced by 43% (480) compared to the scenario without vaccine intervention (849). Depending on the outbreak trends and vaccination strategies, the best timing for vaccination in terms of minimizing the said peak varies from May to August 2023. CONCLUSIONS Our results indicate that if the epidemic continues, the best timing for vaccinations must be earlier than specified by the current plan in Korea. Further monitoring of outbreak trends is crucial for determining the optimal timing of vaccinations to manage future surges.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.18.23291573v2" target="_blank">Effective vaccination strategies to control COVID-19 outbreak: A modeling study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Discovering Social Determinants of Health from Case Reports using Natural Language Processing: Algorithmic Development and Validation</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Social determinants of health are non-medical factors that influence health outcomes (SDOH). There is a wealth of SDOH information available via electronic health records, clinical reports, and social media, usually in free text format, which poses a significant challenge and necessitates the use of natural language processing (NLP) techniques to extract key information. Objective: The objective of this research is to advance the automatic extraction of SDOH from clinical texts. Setting and Data: The case reports of COVID-19 patients from the published literature are curated to create a corpus. A portion of the data is annotated by experts to create gold labels, and active learning is used for corpus re-annotation. Methods: A named entity recognition (NER) framework is developed and tested to extract SDOH along with a few prominent clinical entities (diseases, treatments, diagnosis) from the free texts. Results: The proposed NER implementation achieves an accuracy (F1-score) of 92.98% on our test set and generalizes well on benchmark data. A careful analysis of case examples demonstrates the superiority of the proposed approach in correctly classifying the named entities. Conclusions: NLP can be used to extract key information, such as SDOH from free texts. A more accurate understanding of SDOH is needed to further improve healthcare outcomes.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.30.22282946v5" target="_blank">Discovering Social Determinants of Health from Case Reports using Natural Language Processing: Algorithmic Development and Validation</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Enhanced real-time mass spectrometry breath analysis for the diagnosis of COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Although rapid screening for and diagnosis of COVID-19 are still urgently needed, most current testing methods are either long, costly, and/or poorly specific. The objective of the present study was to determine whether or not artificial-intelligence-enhanced real-time MS breath analysis is a reliable, safe, rapid means of screening ambulatory patients for COVID-19. Methods: In two prospective, open, interventional studies in a single university hospital, we used real-time, proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry to perform a metabolomic analysis of exhaled breath from adults requiring screening for COVID-19. Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques were used to build mathematical models based on breath analysis data either alone or combined with patient metadata. Results: We obtained breath samples from 173 participants, of whom 67 had proven COVID-19. After using machine learning algorithms to process breath analysis data and further enhancing the model using patient metadata, our method was able to differentiate between COVID-19-positive and -negative participants with a sensitivity of 98%, a specificity of 74%, a negative predictive value of 98%, a positive predictive value of 72%, and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.961. The predictive performance was similar for asymptomatic, weakly symptomatic and symptomatic participants and was not biased by the COVID-19 vaccination status. Conclusions: Real-time, non-invasive, artificial-intelligence-enhanced mass spectrometry breath analysis might be a reliable, safe, rapid, cost-effective, high-throughput method for COVID-19 screening.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.21.23291712v1" target="_blank">Enhanced real-time mass spectrometry breath analysis for the diagnosis of COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Probiotic and Colchicine in COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Colchicine 0.5 MG;   Dietary Supplement: Probiotic Formula;   Other: Standard protocol<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Ain Shams University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Influence of Manual Diaphragm Release on Pulmonary Functions in Women With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: manual therapy;   Other: breathing exercise and prone position alone<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study Evaluating SHEN26 Capsule in Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: SHEN26 capsule;   Drug: SHEN26 placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Shenzhen Kexing Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Clinical Trial of Recombinant COVID-19 Bivalent (XBB+Prototype) Protein Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) in Booster Vaccination</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 Bivalent (XBB+Prototype) Protein Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) (WSK-V101C);   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 vaccine(Sf9 Cell) (WSK-V101)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase Ⅲ Clinical Trial of Recombinant COVID-19 Trivalent (XBB+BA.5+Delta) Protein Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) in Booster Vaccination</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: High dose of Recombinant COVID-19 Trivalent (XBB+BA.5+Delta) Protein Vaccine (Sf9 Cell);   Biological: Low dose of Recombinant COVID-19 Trivalent (XBB+BA.5+Delta) Protein Vaccine (Sf9 Cell);   Biological: control group;   Biological: Placebo group<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Impact Of Sensory Re-Education Paradigm On Sensation And Quality Of Life In Patients Post-Covid 19 Polyneuropathy</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: sensory re-education training;   Other: traditional treatment<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>UNAIR Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine as Heterologue Booster (Immunobridging Study)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic;   COVID-19 Vaccines<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Vaksin Merah Putih - UA SARS-CoV-2 (Vero Cell Inactivated) 5 µg;   Biological: CoronaVac Biofarma COVID-1 9 Vaccine 3 µg<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Dr. Soetomo General Hospital;   Indonesia-MoH;   Universitas Airlangga;   Biotis Pharmaceuticals, Indonesia<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Investigate the Safety, Immunogenicity of Bivalent mRNA Vaccine RQ3027 and RQ3025 as a Booster Dose in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: RQ3013;   Biological: RQ3025;   Biological: RQ3027<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Affiliated Hospital of Yunnan University;   Yunnan University;   Kunming Medical University<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Evaluate the Safety and Efficacy of COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma (CCP) Transfusion to Prevent COVID-19 in Adult Recipients Following Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: COVID Convalescent Plasma<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Institute of Hematology &amp; Blood Diseases Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cupping Therapy on Immune System in Post Covid -19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid-19 Patients<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Combination Product: Cupping therapy with convential medical treatment;   Drug: Convential medical treatment<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluating the Efficacy of Remdesivir for Long COVID Following a Confirmed COVID-19 Infection.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection;   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Derby;   University of Exeter;   Peninsula Clinical Trials Unit;   University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity and Safety Study of SARS-CoV-2 DNA Vaccine (ICCOV)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 DNA Vaccine (ICCOV)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Immuno Cure 3 Limited;   The University of Hong Kong<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Open Label Extension of Efgartigimod in Adults With Post-COVID-19 POTS</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Efgartigimod<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   argenx;   Iqvia Pty Ltd<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>NC Testing in LC &amp; POTS</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome;   Post Acute Sequelae of SARS CoV 2 Infection<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: IV normal saline (1 Litre)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Calgary<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>To Investigate Efficacy, Pharmacodynamics, and Safety of BC 007 in Participants With Long COVID</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Long Covid<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: BC 007 or matching placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Berlin Cures GmbH<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Exploring the inhibition mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 main protease by ebselen: A molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation and DFT approach</strong> - The main protease (Mpro) of SARS-CoV-2 plays an essential role in the virus life cycle and is considered a key target for therapeutic development. This study explores the inhibition mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro by ebselen, an organoselenium drug that shows potent inhibitory activity. By using a combination of multiple computational methods including molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulations, and density functional theory calculations, the complete covalent inhibition process of ebselen…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Characterization of immune responses to two and three doses of the adenoviral vectored vaccine ChAdOx1 nCov-19 and the whole virion inactivated vaccine BBV152 in a mix-and-match study in India</strong> - Infections with SARS-CoV-2 variants and declining immunity after primary vaccination, encouraged the use of booster doses. Some countries changed their immunization programmes to boost with vaccines different from the ones in their original schedule, based on results from immunogenicity and effectiveness studies. This study reports immunological analysis of samples collected in a phase 4 randomized trial, where participants who had previously received two primary doses of ChAdOx1 nCov-19 (ChAd)…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inhibitory effect of lactoferrin-coated zinc nanoparticles on SARS-CoV-2 replication and entry along with improvement of lung fibrosis induced in adult male albino rats</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome 2019-new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is a major global challenge caused by a pandemic disease, named ‘COVID-19’ with no effective and selective therapy available so far. COVID-19-associated mortality is directly related to the inability to suppress the viral infection and the uncontrolled inflammatory response. So, we investigated the antiviral efficiency of the nanofabricated and well-characterized lactoferrin-coated zinc nanoparticles (Lf-Zn-NPs) on SARS-CoV-2…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cathepsin inhibitors nitroxoline and its derivatives inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - The severity of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the recurring (re)emergence of viruses prompted the development of new therapeutic approaches that target viral and host factors crucial for viral infection. Among them, host peptidases cathepsins B and L have been described as essential enzymes during SARS-CoV-2 entry. In this study, we evaluated the effect of potent selective cathepsin inhibitors as antiviral agents. We demonstrated that selective cathepsin B inhibitors, such as the antimicrobial…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 protein ORF8 limits expression levels of Spike antigen and facilitates immune evasion of infected host cells</strong> - Recovery from COVID-19 depends on the ability of the host to effectively neutralize virions and infected cells, a process largely driven by antibody-mediated immunity. However, with the newly emerging variants that evade Spike-targeting antibodies, re-infections and breakthrough infections are increasingly common. A full characterization of SARS-CoV-2 mechanisms counteracting antibody-mediated immunity is therefore needed. Here, we report that ORF8 is a virally encoded SARS-CoV-2 factor that…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Jingfang granules ameliorate inflammation and immune disorders in mice exposed to low temperature and high humidity by restoring the dysregulation of gut microbiota and fecal metabolites</strong> - The dramatic changes in global climate on human health have been extremely severe. The immune disorder caused by low temperature and high humidity (LTHH) have become a severe public health issue. Clinically, Jingfang granule (JF) has the effect of dispelling cold and eliminating dampness, and is widely used in the treatment of cold caused by wind and cold, autoimmune diseases, and COVID-19 with cold-dampness stagnating in the lung pattern. Our study aims to elucidate the effect of JF on…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>VANGL2 inhibits antiviral IFN-I signaling by targeting TBK1 for autophagic degradation</strong> - Stringent control of type I interferon (IFN-I) signaling is critical to potent innate immune responses against viral infection, yet the underlying molecular mechanisms are still elusive. Here, we found that Van Gogh-like 2 (VANGL2) acts as an IFN-inducible negative feedback regulator to suppress IFN-I signaling during vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) infection. Mechanistically, VANGL2 interacted with TBK1 and promoted the selective autophagic degradation of TBK1 via K48-linked polyubiquitination…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mpropred: A machine learning (ML) driven Web-App for bioactivity prediction of SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) antagonists</strong> - The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic emerged in 2019 and still requiring treatments with fast clinical translatability. Frequent occurrence of mutations in spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 led the consideration of an alternative therapeutic target to combat the ongoing pandemic. The main protease (Mpro) is such an attractive drug target due to its importance in maturating several polyproteins during the replication process. In the present study, we used a…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Synthesis, characterization and identification of inhibitory activity on the main protease of COVID-19 by molecular docking strategy of (4-oxo-piperidinium ethylene acetal) trioxonitrate</strong> - In this investigation a single crystal of (4-oxo-piperidinium ethylene acetal) trioxonitrate (4-OPEAN) was synthesized by modifying the mechanism of gradual evaporation at ambient temperature. The operational groupings are found in the complex material in the elaborate substance, according to the infrared spectrum. Single crystal X-ray diffraction suggests, (4-OPEAN) with the chemical formula (C(7)H(12)NO(2))NO(3) belongs to the orthorhombic space group Pnma and is centrosymmetric in three…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of the efficacy and safety of TREM-1 inhibition with nangibotide in patients with COVID-19 receiving respiratory support: the ESSENTIAL randomised, double-blind trial</strong> - BACKGROUND: Activation of the TREM-1 pathway is associated with outcome in life threatening COVID-19. Data suggest that modulation of this pathway with nangibotide, a TREM-1 modulator may improve survival in TREM-1 activated patients (identified using the biomarker sTREM-1).</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Reconsideration of interferon treatment for viral diseases: Lessons from SARS, MERS, and COVID-19</strong> - Periodic pandemics of coronavirus (CoV)-related pneumonia have been a major challenging issue since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002 and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2012. The ongoing pandemic of CoV disease (COVID-19) poses a substantial threat to public health. As for the treatment options, only limited antiviral agents have been approved hitherto, and clinicians mainly focus on currently available drugs including the conventional antiviral…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two Novel Adenovirus Vectors Mediated Differential Antibody Responses via Interferon-α and Natural Killer Cells</strong> - Recombinant adenovirus vectors have been widely used in vaccine development. To overcome the preexisting immunity of human adenovirus type 5 (Ad5) in populations, a range of chimpanzee or rare human adenovirus vectors have been generated. However, these novel adenovirus vectors mediate the diverse immune responses in the hosts. In this study, we explored the immune mechanism of differential antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 S protein in mice immunized by our previously developed two novel simian…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 nsp13 Restricts Episomal DNA Transcription without Affecting Chromosomal DNA</strong> - Nonstructural protein 13 (nsp13), the helicase of SARS-CoV-2, has been shown to possess multiple functions that are essential for viral replication, and is considered an attractive target for the development of novel antivirals. We were initially interested in the interplay between nsp13 and interferon (IFN) signaling, and found that nsp13 inhibited reporter signal in an IFN-β promoter assay. Surprisingly, the ectopic expression of different components of the RIG-I/MDA5 pathway, which were used…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 hijacks p38β/MAPK11 to promote virus replication</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, drastically modifies infected cells to optimize virus replication. One such modification is the activation of the host p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway, which plays a major role in inflammatory cytokine production, a hallmark of severe COVID-19. We previously demonstrated that inhibition of p38/MAPK activity in SARS-CoV-2-infected cells reduced…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Accelerating drug target inhibitor discovery with a deep generative foundation model</strong> - Inhibitor discovery for emerging drug-target proteins is challenging, especially when target structure or active molecules are unknown. Here, we experimentally validate the broad utility of a deep generative framework trained at-scale on protein sequences, small molecules, and their mutual interactions-unbiased toward any specific target. We performed a protein sequence-conditioned sampling on the generative foundation model to design small-molecule inhibitors for two dissimilar targets: the…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Justice John Paul Stevens’s Papers Reveal About Affirmative Action</strong> - Twenty years ago, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, in a draft opinion, that white applicants could not be favored over Asian Americans. Why did she delete those lines—and why did Justice Clarence Thomas adopt them in his own opinion? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-justice-john-paul-stevenss-papers-reveal-about-affirmative-action">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How Trump Compares with Presidents Who Burned Their Papers</strong> - The Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore sees historic parallels—as well as willful and unprecedented behavior by the freshly indicted ex-President. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-trump-compares-with-presidents-who-burned-their-papers">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Can Joe Biden Do About Benjamin Netanyahu?</strong> - The President is clearly displeased by the Prime Minister’s anti-democratic turn but seems wary of testing his influence. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-can-joe-biden-do-about-benjamin-netanyahu">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Wagner Group Is a Crisis of Putin’s Own Making</strong> - For a decade, the Russian President outsourced his military ambitions to the mercenary force and its pugnacious leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin—then they turned against him. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-wagner-group-is-a-crisis-of-putins-own-making">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Rebellion: Putin’s Weakness Unmasked</strong> - How Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed the Russian President. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/vladimir-putins-weakness-unmasked-yevgeny-prigozhins-rebellion">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>What wellness means for Black women</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="An illustration of a young Black woman doing stretching exercises on a yoga mat, surrounded by plants and in front of a window." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZliWNsHyoGad7qRrlxwcMd_3dmM=/58x0:2001x1457/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72402010/GettyImages_1252249385.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Getty Images/iStockphoto
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</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Capitalism, white supremacy, and yoga pants: An interview with DeJa Love, CEO of the Black Women’s Wellness Agency.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zIsQ1P">
My relationship with wellness is more complicated than running into a guy I ghosted at an office party. I began my journey in 2017 as a lot of people do — dressed in Lululemon and sipping green juice on my way to a yoga class. (I had chosen <a href="https://www.shondaland.com/live/body/a30243253/getting-down-at-trap-yoga/">trap classes</a> because I was much more comfortable hearing “Mouth Full of Golds” during child’s pose than risking <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aishamirza/until-white-women-ruined-it">stepping on a white woman’s yoga mat</a>.) Soon, wellness became a capitalistic pursuit I held near. I loved grabbing a blue spirulina smoothie while out on a run — but only dressed in head-to-toe Nike gear. Lulu was for the gym and yoga. I became obsessed with rings, namely, closing the ones on my Apple Watch.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x84a2r">
By 2020, after spending thousands of dollars on this journey without seeing any measurable improvement in my mental health — <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8716594/">which people do experience from wellness efforts</a> — I began to interrogate why I expected this effort to cure my anxiety and depression. I was sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic and, like many others, began to question what actually mattered to me. Still, I did yoga, strength trained, cycled, and meditated at home to keep myself mentally afloat during the pandemic, and during the antiracism protests over the murder of George Floyd — an immensely triggering moment for Black folks. Having a routine was helpful until it wasn’t.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M5EM26">
By 2022 I was experiencing weekly panic attacks that slowly increased to I-don’t-know-how-many-days a week. I wasn’t sleeping or moving much farther than from my bed to the couch. When I was eating, I wasn’t choosing nutritious foods. I’d run out of motivation to care for myself — and all of it felt like it shouldn’t be happening to <em>me</em> because <em>I</em> should be tougher.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xtlCNK">
Mainstream wellness was, to lean further into cliches, a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. I was actively pursuing better mental and physical health, a key piece of a wellness journey, but I wasn’t taking the time to establish what felt good to me. I was trying to fit into the trendiness of wellness, and I desperately wanted the freedom it proclaimed I could have if I bought enough stuff. Nowadays, I define wellness as, “Doing what feels good and aligns with what I believe I need in this moment.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jycKxv">
My burnout story is a quintessential narrative among Black women. Many of us have been raised to be “strong” despite the systemic factors that make such an ideal impossible to uphold. The Strong Black Woman trope demands that we swallow our pain for the greater good of others, and it comes with <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0361684319883198">grave psychological consequences</a>. It can make us more susceptible to depression, anxiety, and feelings of isolation. For some Black women, we rarely forgive ourselves for our mistakes and relentlessly seek to meet others’ expectations. This is more harrowing when we consider that <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/body">stress</a> compounds. Besides causing headaches, chest pain, fatigue, and stomach issues, heightened stress levels can make sleeping impossible. Your breathing can quicken. You could develop high blood pressure, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, Type 2 diabetes, or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579396/">memory loss</a> — adverse health outcomes that Black people are more likely to experience.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dQ56GX">
The systemic conditions that prevent Black women from being able to take proper care of ourselves is one of our nation’s most significant health injustices. And to add insult to our spiritual injury, wellness practices, which can be a useful tool to fight poor mental health, are presented to us through a Eurocentric, capitalist lens, encouraging us to spend money many of us don’t have on products we don’t need to care for ourselves.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k9G59V">
I discussed these conditions and the role wellness plays in navigating them with DeJa Love, the CEO of the <a href="https://www.thebwwa.com/">Black Women’s Wellness Agency</a>. Love’s agency supports Black women who are stressed, burnt out, and overwhelmed by connecting them to Black women wellness providers. This could be a yoga teacher, meditation or life coach, personal trainer, or any non-clinical wellness service that helps manage stress.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="93gxcw">
“We have to go deeper because the world in which we’re living in, it’s not sustainable for us to keep at this pace,” Love says. “I really view this as a fierce urgency, as life or death. When Black birthing persons are dying at three times the rates of white folks, that’s a crisis. We are dying, across the board, at higher rates. This is why it’s so important.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dKJy54">
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AsmVTQ">
<strong>Explain your personal approach to wellness. Is it more spiritual? Or is it more political? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sxyMqe">
For Black women, our wellness is infinite. That it is not a $200 yoga mat or yoga pants. Since, especially in the mainstream context of the United States — which is incredibly racist with white supremacist undertones — wellness is generally capitalistic. It’s about the doing, and the purchasing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WBiaV7">
Infinite wellness is knowing that maybe wellness for me in one moment is sitting in silence, sensory deprivation, not on social, not logged in, but sitting, connecting to breath, connecting to the divine spirit that guides us, whatever folks identify with. In the context of America, wellness is rest. It’s challenging a toxic grind culture that tells us we need to constantly produce, that we’re not enough, that we’re not doing enough. I’m guided by Tricia Hersey and her work. She leads <a href="https://thenapministry.com/">The Nap Ministry</a>, and her book <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/rest-is-resistance-a-manifesto-tricia-hersey/18255493?ean=9780316365215"><em>Rest Is Resistance</em></a> has really shifted my paradigm and informs a lot of what I view as wellness.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qTxjFA">
<strong>What are some of those white supremacist undertones to wellness? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gbe8FS">
It’s really this notion of, “I have to do something. I have to purchase something. I have to buy something. I have to keep performing.” And that can look like, “I need to buy the expensive mask. I need to buy expensive face serums. I need to go to the gym classes.” It’s still a perpetuation of grind culture and hyper-productivity. Whereas the Black Woman’s Wellness Agency and I challenge that and say, “Black women, you are enough by just being!” It seems so simple, but the brilliance is in the simplicity of being — not doing. Wellness is shifting our minds away from what we have been indoctrinated with, such as: “I have to be a certain weight, I have to look a certain way, I have to have this.” No. We have to be on the path of unlearning.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KYdcOE">
Those are some of the undertones. It’s about this aesthetic, and that’s what we get. But wellness is not an aesthetic. Wellness is being connected to our breath, our bodies, and calming the mental fluctuations that happen constantly.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NHH6K9">
This multibillion-dollar wellness industry that says you have to drink this or take this supplement or be in this intricate yoga posture just creates more work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ue6hnf">
<strong>Why isn’t wellness binary for Black women? I was looking on your website, and I saw that. I think I know what that means, but I’m very, very intrigued.</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QeixJx">
It’s not binary because we, as Black women, are so robust. We have had to be. We’ve had to be the heads of households, to be cooks and cleaners, to raise children and make sure the finances are handled — we’re constantly wearing so many hats. Our healing and our wellness are not going to be boxed in. It can’t be because we have to do so much.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="05DK57">
Black women are the largest demographic of advanced degree holders and business owners post-2020. We’re doing so much, and that’s why we’re proponents of wellness being whatever it is you need.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GBFufx">
If wellness is saying, “I’m just really tired, and I don’t need to push through,” then that’s wellness. If wellness is saying, “My family is expecting me to do something, and I say I can’t do that because I need to uphold my boundaries, and I can’t keep pouring from this empty cup,” then that’s wellness. That’s the journey that I’m still on. We’re all still on it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3XfAeE">
It has to be full-spectrum and incredibly inclusive. It has to counter the mainstream approach to wellness — the skinny white woman in Lululemon doing an intricate yoga posture. That is not true wellness; that is a capitalistic approach that we have been fed, and we have to keep pushing back because that image may not serve us. Now, we are not a monolith, so maybe that image serves some Black women. I know for many, though, that it does not.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Efr4K6">
<strong>One thing that I think most Black women can all relate to is the pressure to fit into these spaces, whether it’s work or a yoga studio, where you’re the only Black person there, and people are looking at you crazy. So when we reclaim and reframe wellness — meaning we stop looking at it through this billion-dollar lens — how do we reconnect with our power? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3CrTaH">
It’s multifaceted. It will take many different approaches. One of them is going for a walk and doing a walking meditation, not having your AirPods in, just listening to the sounds of nature so you can get out of your head and connect with the many thoughts that are going to come into your mind. I don’t want to demonize social media. It’s an amazing tool that connects us, but part of reclaiming is having healthy sabbaticals from social [media].
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ipCwnc">
I’m also a proponent of therapy. Therapy helps us be introspective.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UDgyDa">
Another thing that has helped me is being able to be free. Business ownership has allowed me to feel free. I’ve had an 18-year career in many business sectors, and within all of those sectors, you become indoctrinated, and your truth gets stifled by the dominant group. And even those who look like me can fall into assimilation and respectability. I speak unapologetically, and many people do not connect, and that’s fine. I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I may not get all the business contracts, or I may not gross the revenue that I want. But I can sleep at night knowing that I am speaking for Black women, that I am challenging inequities, the status quo, and a society that perpetuates it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="poLgvq">
<strong>You pointed out that when Black women really start taking care of ourselves, prioritizing our needs, and start centering our well-being, we lose people. It’s always been very interesting to me that when a Black woman starts thinking about her well-being versus how she can be in service to everyone else, people start dropping off. </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eHsmUe">
Earlier today, when I was on my walk, I was thinking about when we’re on journeys of evolution. I don’t want to be the same DeJa I was three years ago, a year ago. I want to be evolving, and learning, and there are folks that will not be there on that journey … it’s hard sometimes. It’s always the folks you don’t expect, the people who were always there. And that just hurts harder. Part of that evolution is releasing that attachment. And the folks that connect to me will find me. I will build a new community.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eAtvTW">
<strong>It’s like my granny used to say, “Everybody can’t come.” Speaking of her — a Black woman who absolutely prioritized her well-being after raising three generations of her family — how does wellness help Black women thrive?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FfApgM">
It helps us because we are able to get reconnected with self. When I’m putting on my public health hat, our life expectancy is reduced in this white supremacist, very racist society. From medical racism in health care, housing, education, transportation — every facet that we intersect with has a huge impact on our outcome. Every facet of being in this country challenges us. Wellness helps us get back to our center when all of these forces that create the inequities we live in challenge us.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oi3J8O">
Sometimes we will question ourselves. We forget the confidence, the power, the self-esteem, the self-efficacy because we have been metaphorically beaten down by all of these systems.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="smPLDD">
We even have to combat the complicity of folks in our own communities and other white-adjacent folks of color. I know that’s a provocative notion. Black people and other folks of color can uphold white supremacy because we’re all stewed in the same society. So people get surprised, for instance, that a Black physician can perpetuate harm to their Black patients. They have been trained in racist medical schools, so they can perpetuate what they have been taught. That’s why wellness is so important. Wellness is whatever a Black woman needs. We know what we need for our healing, to feel grounded, to feel at peace, to feel centered. That is crucial as we navigate this society that we operate in.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QXswtl">
<strong>How does taking care of ourselves challenge hustle culture? Sometimes this strikes me as a conundrum. We’re trying to get out of this capitalistic dynamic of wellness, but we live in a capitalistic society, and we have to survive. And sometimes, for certain wellness practices, you have to buy something. It feels very sticky sometimes to see taking care of yourself as a challenge to capitalism when we live in a society where it’s so deeply entrenched.</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JQM6pU">
It’s so important because grind culture is insidious. We are not even aware of the hold that grind culture has on us. That’s why stepping back transforms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lec0z0">
Again, I’m not immune from it. That’s why I’m so intentional with my unlearning, even as a business owner, challenging myself to not just push through. I’ll say: “DeJa, you’ve been up for how many hours? You’ve been in how many back-to-back meetings? Go out, take a walk, do a guided meditation, go do some yoga, just do something!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KXH6YK">
I want to see a world where all Black women, and I use that term inclusively, are well. Where we’re not burnt out, where we’re not overwhelmed, where we’re not stressed, where employers don’t undervalue our contribution — they’re not even paying us the full dollar! We’re getting what? Sixty-seven cents on the dollar? And working twice as hard to prove ourselves. That is the encapsulation of grind culture and being unwell.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fy81EW">
<em>Julia Craven is a writer covering anything she thinks is cool. She’s the brain behind </em><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__juliacraven.substack.com_&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=7MSjEE-cVgLCRHxk1P5PWg&amp;r=Rg_frVECyHq8RLGpsvHBW3D76DIRpCQrSH_yE2X1iQg&amp;m=Pp_lTxRj3b13d8zOqKI9STNH5DhSONNyiwIt97tczppQl9Uwc_Knp19QCleFB1Q7&amp;s=T5QtS0OqI4dZUEh4gMGEtXlDwa44duUU9S8tVS3CHKc&amp;e="><em><strong>Make It Make Sense</strong></em></a><em>, a wellness newsletter.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xEEMov">
</p></li>
<li><strong>The case for optimism about LGBTQ rights in the United States</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A crowd of people holding signs and waving a rainbow flag in front of the Supreme Court." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KKnRx0LLUdriRrDg111vcIaTWd0=/271x0:4535x3198/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72401933/1175341714.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Protesters rally in front of the Supreme Court as it hears arguments on whether gay and transgender people are covered by a federal law barring employment discrimination on the basis of sex on October 8, 2019. | Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Anti-LGBTQ Republicans are governing like they have no adult supervision. At least for now, the courts aren’t tolerating that behavior.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CLan2o">
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AzQ9DD">
For transgender people and those who care about them, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/23631262/trans-bills-republican-state-legislatures">last several months have been bleak</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zq3oU3">
In the past year, we’ve seen a wave of state laws targeting transgender athletes and even forbidding many trans people from receiving gender-affirming medical care. These laws, moreover, are part of a much broader legal assault on LGBTQ Americans, which includes <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/5/28/23740489/pride-anti-lgbtq-sentiment-laws-desantis-sanders">attacks on drag performers</a>, attempts to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22914767/book-banning-crt-school-boards-republicans">remove queer-themed books from libraries</a>, and a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/15/22976868/dont-say-gay-florida-unconstitutional-ron-desantis-supreme-court-first-amendment-schools-parents">simply</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/23036427/ron-desantis-disney-first-amendment-constitution-supreme-court">astonishing</a> <a href="https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/breaking-gov-desantis-signs-extreme-license-to-discriminate-healthcare-bill">array</a> of anti-LGBTQ laws from the state of Florida alone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vOgkAl">
Not that long ago, LGBTQ rights lawyers could have been fairly confident that these laws would be heavily scrutinized by the Supreme Court. Before then-President Donald Trump remade the Court by appointing a third of its members, an alliance of Justice Anthony Kennedy and four liberal justices struck down an array of laws driven by anti-LGBTQ animus. As Kennedy wrote in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/620/"><em>Romer v. Evans</em></a><em> </em>(1996), the first of these decisions, laws motivated by “a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group” are not constitutional.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Yitaes">
But after Kennedy’s retirement in 2018 — and especially after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in 2020 gave Republican appointees a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court — <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/kennedy-was-a-bad-justice-76e464024d78/">the future of LGBTQ rights looked grim</a>. Many of the architects of today’s moral panic against queer people have spoken quite openly about their belief that the Court will no longer follow left-leaning precedents of all kinds. As Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said about one of the Court’s many 5-4 decisions where Kennedy joined the liberals in the majority, “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/30/23574423/ron-desantis-supreme-court-constitution-death-penalty-execution-sixth-eight-amendment">we do not believe the Supreme Court, in its current iteration, would uphold it</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uKK1VJ">
But the picture that’s emerged since Kennedy let Trump choose his successor is more complicated than many court-watchers — <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/kennedy-was-a-bad-justice-76e464024d78/">including myself</a> — predicted as we watched Trump fill the judiciary with Federalist Society stalwarts. In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf"><em>Bostock v. Clayton County</em></a> (2020), conservative justices John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch unexpectedly joined the Court’s liberal minority and ruled that federal civil rights law prohibits anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the workplace. Meanwhile, lower court judges — including some Republicans — have read <em>Bostock</em> fairly broadly to forbid many of the latest attacks on LGBTQ people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m6BQfg">
Just this week, a federal judge in Arkansas <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/arkansas-transgender-care-ban.html">struck down</a> the state’s new <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/brandt-et-al-v-rutledge-et-al?document=Order-Upholding-District-Courts-Preliminary-Injunction-Ruling">ban on gender-affirming care for transgender teens</a>, and that decision built on an <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/brandt-et-al-v-rutledge-et-al?document=Order-Upholding-District-Courts-Preliminary-Injunction-Ruling">earlier opinion</a> by a bipartisan panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which used similar reasoning to the Supreme Court’s decision in <em>Bostock</em>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ioCgkf">
To be sure, the picture is nuanced, and lawyers challenging certain state laws — such as laws <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/14/23635663/supreme-court-transgender-sports-constitution-stanford-kyle-duncan-protest">banning trans athletes</a> from sports teams that align with their gender identity, or laws <a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201813592.2.pdf">barring trans students from bathrooms</a> aligned with their identity — are likely to face an uphill battle in a Supreme Court dominated by socially conservative Republicans.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l8eA98">
But other anti-LGBTQ laws have thus far not received a very welcome reception even from GOP-appointed judges. Trump appointee Judge Thomas Parker, for example, recently struck down a Tennessee anti-drag law <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/97ca4431-c33d-485c-99df-a63b90efe6f8.pdf?itid=lk_inline_manual_4">targeting “male or female impersonators”</a> in that state. In addition to the Arkansas ruling, courts have blocked <a href="https://twitter.com/joshablock/status/1669805307650793472?s=61&amp;t=TQlk4x44ENcfSu3Y1ke6ew">three other state bans on gender-affirming care</a>.<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i4R6gc">
And even when courts do rule in favor of anti-LGBTQ policies, those decisions are often tempered with doctrinal rulings that will likely benefit queer litigants in the future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FQhoSW">
In <a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201813592.2.pdf"><em>Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County</em></a> (2022), for example, the 11th Circuit split along party lines, with all seven of the court’s active Republican judges upholding a public school policy that prohibited a transgender male student from using the men’s restroom. But even that decision concluded that laws targeting trans people must survive “intermediate scrutiny” — meaning that such laws are <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/14/23635663/supreme-court-transgender-sports-constitution-stanford-kyle-duncan-protest">presumptively unconstitutional</a> and will normally be struck down. That’s a powerful legal weapon that litigants in the 11th Circuit can now use to attack anti-trans laws.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fRQ7vV">
It’s important to be clear-eyed about what the future will look like for LGBTQ litigants. It is unlikely that five of the current justices agree with <em>Romer</em>’s conclusion that laws motivated solely by anti-LGBTQ animus are unconstitutional, for example. And many lower courts have been reluctant to protect transgender rights in contexts like public bathrooms and sports teams, where gender segregation has historically been allowed.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pVjlvz">
Yet the picture for LGBTQ litigants has thus far been more favorable than anyone reasonably could have predicted on the day Kennedy announced his retirement.
</p>
<h3 id="jCeoeu">
The current state of LGBTQ rights under the Supreme Court’s precedents
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yAwTos">
Under Justice Kennedy, the Court handed down four landmark decisions protecting gay and bisexual Americans from discrimination by their government: <em>Romer</em>, the decision striking down Texas’s “sodomy” law in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZS.html"><em>Lawrence v. Texas</em></a><em> </em>(2003), and the marriage equality decisions in <a href="https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-windsor-23"><em>United States v. Windsor</em></a> (2013) and <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-556"><em>Obergefell v. Hodges</em></a> (2015).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BXErvs">
Notably, all four of these cases involved anti-gay discrimination, and not trans rights issues. Indeed, if one looks solely at the justices’ published opinions, it’s easy to come away with the impression that they only recently discovered that trans people exist. The first Supreme Court opinion that even used the word “transgender” <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15463722409987547939&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr">wasn’t handed down until 2012</a>, and that case did so only in passing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fWtNdg">
Yet, despite their limited scope, all four of Kennedy’s gay rights decisions appeared to be in grave danger when he retired. <em>Romer </em>and <em>Lawrence</em> were 6-3 decisions with Kennedy, Ginsburg, and long-since retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the majority. <em>Windsor and </em>Obergefell<em> </em>were both 5-4 decisions, with Kennedy and Ginsburg rounding out the majority.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hiXiKC">
Five years later, however, many of the rights gay people secured in the Kennedy era appear safe — at least so long as none of the current justices are replaced by a Republican. Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Court’s decision in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17574779299286033070&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr"><em>Pavan v. Smith</em></a> (2017), which reaffirmed <em>Obergefell</em>’s holding that “the Constitution entitles same-sex couples to civil marriage ‘on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.’” And, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court’s opinion in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf"><em>Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</em></a> (2022), which eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, he wrote a separate concurring opinion emphasizing that his decision “does not threaten or cast doubt” on <em>Obergefell</em>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uk3970">
The fate of the right to sexual autonomy recognized in <em>Lawrence</em>, meanwhile, is a bit more uncertain. But it is noteworthy that, in his <em>Dobbs</em> concurrence, Kavanaugh listed <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/478/186/"><em>Bowers v. Hardwick</em></a> (1986), the anti-gay decision that was overruled by <em>Lawrence</em>, as an example of a decision that demonstrates that the Court’s loyalty to precedent “cannot be absolute.” That list also included other widely reviled decisions, such as <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/163/537/#tab-opinion-1917401"><em>Plessy v. Ferguson</em></a><em> </em>(1896) and <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/198/45/"><em>Lochner v. New York</em></a> (1905), which are taught in law schools as examples of how judges should never behave.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4aHd7P">
Indeed, if anything, the Supreme Court has expanded LGBTQ rights since Kennedy’s departure. <em>Bostock</em> was a landmark decision not only because it held that federal law prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, but also because it <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/6/15/21291515/supreme-court-bostock-clayton-county-lgbtq-neil-gorsuch">announced a new framework</a> that, if applied to all cases alleging LGBTQ discrimination, could prove much more potent than the more cautious approach to gay rights that Kennedy often took in his decisions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f7TLRO">
Admittedly, <em>Bostock</em> is likely to be tempered by the Court’s religious liberty decisions, which frequently <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/3/23472175/supreme-court-303-creative-elenis-first-amendment-lgbtq-religion-website">allow religiously conservative business owners</a> to ignore civil rights laws prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination. But lower courts have thus far read <em>Bostock</em> fairly expansively to also prohibit discrimination by state governments — and the government, unlike a private business owner, cannot make religious liberty claims because the Constitution <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">explicitly forbids the government from establishing an official state religion</a>.
</p>
<h3 id="hcUZz9">
How the <em>Bostock</em> framework could revolutionize LGBTQ rights
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JI0eVC">
<em>Bostock</em> involved Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids “sex” discrimination in the workplace. The Court’s <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf">core insight in <em>Bostock</em></a> is that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” If an employer fires a male employee for dating other men, for example, but does not fire a female employee for also dating men, then that’s just ordinary sex discrimination, because the employer has punished a man for doing something that it will allow women to do.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m8aHlM">
Similarly, if an employer penalizes an “employee who was identified as female at birth” for presenting as a man or otherwise engaging in stereotypically male behavior, but does not penalize “a person identified as male at birth” for the same actions, that is sex discrimination forbidden by federal law.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1PiKUx">
Notably, <em>Bostock</em> explicitly dodged the question of whether the concept of “gender” exists separately from “status as either male or female [as] determined by reproductive biology.” “Nothing in our approach to these cases turns on the outcome” of that question, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for his Court. Indeed, <em>Bostock</em> begins with the assumption that laws prohibiting “sex” discrimination refer “only to biological distinctions between male and female.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1aC8SE">
And yet, even if someone takes the position that a trans man is a woman, <em>Bostock</em>’s framework still forbids employers from discriminating against transgender workers. Your boss cannot assign a gender role to you based on your sex assigned at birth.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MmUakw">
The specific question in <em>Bostock</em>, it is worth reiterating, was only whether federal law prohibits anti-LGBTQ discrimination in <em>employment</em>. But multiple lower courts have applied <em>Bostock</em>’s framework to other contexts, such as health care or education, and the few judges who’ve refused to do so appear to be outliers (such as Judge <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/17/23512766/supreme-court-matthew-kacsmaryk-judge-trump-abortion-immigration-birth-control">Matthew Kacsmaryk</a>, the Christian right activist best known for his failed attempt to ban the abortion drug mifepristone).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RGxJsL">
The Eighth Circuit’s decision in <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/brandt-et-al-v-rutledge-et-al?document=Order-Upholding-District-Courts-Preliminary-Injunction-Ruling"><em>Brandt v. Rutledge</em></a> (2022) is emblematic of this approach. In that case, a bipartisan panel blocked Arkansas’s ban on gender-affirming health care for people under age 18, on the theory that it violates the Constitution’s safeguards against sex discrimination. Applying reasoning very similar to <em>Bostock</em>, the Eighth Circuit reasoned that Arkansas’ ban necessarily discriminates on the basis of “biological sex.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OwA3xj">
Under this law, <em>Brandt</em> explained, “medical procedures that are permitted for a minor of one sex are prohibited for a minor of another sex.” For example, “a minor born as a male may be prescribed testosterone or have breast tissue surgically removed,” but “a minor born as a female is not permitted to seek the same medical treatment.” That’s just ordinary sex discrimination, even if you deny that transgender people actually exist.
</p>
<h3 id="rBAUzb">
Where <em>Bostock</em> has failed transgender litigants
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ra6nLQ">
Recall that <em>Bostock</em>’s core insight is that discrimination against LGBTQ people is a form of sex discrimination. This is a potent tool in the hands of civil rights litigators because the law provides many safeguards against discrimination on the basis of sex. Title VII prohibits such discrimination in employment. The Affordable Care Act <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/17/23512766/supreme-court-matthew-kacsmaryk-judge-trump-abortion-immigration-birth-control">prohibits sex discrimination by health providers</a>. A law known as Title IX <a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201813592.2.pdf">forbids sex discrimination in most schools and universities</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9Septf">
And, on top of all of these statutory safeguards, the Supreme Court has long held that any law or government policy that discriminates on the basis of sex is presumptively unconstitutional, and may only stand if the government can offer an “<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/518/515/">exceedingly persuasive justification</a>” for treating men and women differently.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="djFTxb">
Yet, while sex discrimination is rarely lawful, there are a few areas where it is permitted. Title IX, for example, contains a carveout permitting colleges and universities to maintain “<a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201813592.2.pdf">separate living facilities for the different sexes</a>.” And federal regulations implementing Title IX permit schools to have “separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex,” as long as the facilities “provided for students of one sex [are] comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kkz9tN">
Similarly, other federal bans on sex discrimination have long been understood to permit separate-but-equal bathroom facilities and sex-segregated sports teams. It is not illegal for an employer to have separate bathrooms for men and women. Nor is it illegal for a high school to have one soccer team for boys and another for girls.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="udRPZ5">
These carveouts for certain kinds of sex discrimination make it harder for trans rights litigants to rely on <em>Bostock</em> to challenge laws prohibiting trans students from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, or that prohibit those students from playing on the appropriate sports team. <em>Bostock</em>, after all, said that discrimination against LGBTQ people is not allowed because it necessarily entails treating men differently than women. But <em>Bostock</em> is silent on what should happen to transgender students and workers in spaces where sex discrimination is lawful.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8j43mM">
So lower federal courts have divided on whether trans people may be excluded from bathroom and sports teams that align with their gender identity, with some courts even reaching contradictory results.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3ZlWPN">
In <a href="https://adflegal.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/BPJ-v-West-Virginia-State-Board-Ed-2023-01-05-Order-and-Opinion.pdf"><em>B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education</em></a> (2023), for example, a (Clinton-appointed) federal judge initially halted West Virginia’s trans sports ban. After presiding over a full trial on this issue, however, the judge changed course. While the judge deemed the law to be presumptively unconstitutional, he ruled that West Virginia overcame this presumption because “it is generally accepted that, on average, males outperform females athletically because of inherent physical differences between the sexes” — and therefore a state could prevent athletes who might go through male puberty from playing on a women’s sports team.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xn468q">
Similarly, in <em>Adams</em>, the 11th Circuit also <a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201813592.2.pdf">concluded that a school district’s trans-restrictive bathroom policy is lawful</a>, pointing to the fact that “the privacy afforded by sex-separated bathrooms has been widely recognized throughout American history and jurisprudence.” <em>Adams </em>was not a total loss for transgender litigants, because it also held that any policy that classifies students based on sex is presumptively unconstitutional, including policies that target transgender students. But the Court held that this presumption is overcome within the context of sex-segregated bathrooms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iQpG0O">
It should be noted that at least two other appeals courts — the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/grimm-v-gloucester-county-school-board?document=grimm-v-gloucester-county-school-board-opinion">Fourth</a> and <a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8601339/Whitaker-7th-Circuit.0.pdf">Seventh Circuits</a> — held that schools may not prevent trans students from using the bathroom that aligns with their identity, and <a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201813592.2.pdf">four judges dissented</a> from the 11th Circuit’s conclusion in <em>Adams</em>. So it’s not like the case against trans-inclusive bathroom policies is a slam-dunk.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oL7MNf">
But every circuit judge to vote in favor of a trans-exclusive bathroom policy was appointed by a Republican, and, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilana_Rovner">with only one exception</a>, every circuit judge to vote against such a policy was appointed by a Democrat. So if you are trying to predict how the current Supreme Court will resolve this issue, that partisan breakdown probably tells you everything you need to know.
</p>
<h3 id="t9wMJh">
So what’s the future of LGBTQ rights in the courts?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oE29Ow">
The state of LGBTQ rights is much better than seemed likely after Kennedy’s retirement. But the future for LGBTQ Americans is still precarious, and things could get much worse in a hurry, particularly for trans people, depending on how the Supreme Court behaves — and on what happens to the Court’s membership.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MBg3Cs">
First of all, <em>Bostock </em><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf">was a 6-3 decision</a>, with the now-late Justice Ginsburg in the majority. That means that there are probably only five votes on the current Supreme Court — the three liberals plus Gorsuch and Roberts, who joined Gorsuch’s opinion — who support that decision. If someone like Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis is elected president in 2024, they could easily replace one or more members of the Court’s pro-<em>Bostock</em> majority with new justices who will vote to overrule that decision.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cTRjkl">
Similarly, if President Joe Biden is reelected, he could potentially replace archconservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both of whom are in their 70s. That would give the Court its first left-leaning majority since the beginning of the Nixon administration, and would most likely ensure robust protections against anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0HRl41">
It’s also worth reiterating that <em>Bostock</em> itself applied solely to employment discrimination — although lower court judges from both parties have applied the decision to other contexts. So, even if the Court’s membership remains the same, there is a risk that the Court’s current majority will not apply <em>Bostock</em>’s sex discrimination framework to every case involving discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w22FJj">
Finally, I want to close by acknowledging that the status quo is demeaning to transgender people. As Judge Robert Hinkle wrote in a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6283b20d7013340d81fd360f/t/647f47d46ffb764593c6a24c/1686063060988/Doc+90+-+Order+Granting+Preliminary+Injunction.pdf">recent decision</a> blocking Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, an “unspoken suggestion” animating so many recent anti-trans laws is that “transgender identity is not real, that it is made up.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="seiAVs">
<em>Bostock</em>, of course, dodged the question of whether the scientific and medical consensus, that some people authentically identify with a gender that does not match their sex assigned at birth, is correct. And the <em>Bostock </em>framework does not allow trans litigants to claim protection as trans people. If anything, it implicitly requires them to identify with their sex assigned at birth. <em>Bostock</em>, after all, ruled that the reason a trans man may present as a man at work is because, as an “employee who was identified as female at birth,” they may not be treated differently than a cisgender man.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7He9kd">
Eventually, the Supreme Court will have to confront the question it avoided in <em>Bostock</em>, most likely in a case involving bathrooms or sports, and it is far from clear that this very conservative Court will agree with the medical and scientific consensus that transgender identity is real.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Guatemala’s elections can’t undo years of government corruption</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A woman with her hair in a black braid, wearing a colorful shawl and a blue medical mask, fills out paperwork behind a room divider." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/16pTPrDShpmirXYDQNK2qmaHim4=/222x0:3778x2667/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72401018/1259052416.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
A woman votes at a polling station in San Juan Sacatepéquez, on June 25, 2023, during general elections. | Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Anti-establishment candidates were barred from running in Sunday’s elections.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PS8zFu">
Guatemala’s Sunday elections are occurring during a period of democratic backsliding — and indeed, increasing authoritarianism — in the Central American country. With leading candidates barred from running, press freedom under serious attack, and many of the country’s institutions co-opted in defense of the political establishment, Guatemala’s democracy, such as it is, balances on a knife’s edge.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="firstHeading">
The current president, Alejandro Giammattei, is limited to one term in office, but <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/perpetuating-corruption-undermining-2023-guatemala-elections/">the system that enabled him will continue</a>, in part because of the active role he and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/guatemala-starts-probe-into-bribery-allegations-linked-president-2021-09-03/#:~:text=GUATEMALA%20CITY%2C%20Sept%203%20(Reuters,general's%20office%20said%20on%20Friday.">his predecessors </a>played in weaponizing it for their own advantage. Guatemala has suffered from violence, poverty, and corruption for decades; now the military, economic, and political establishment, or “<a href="https://www.wola.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/When-Dominoes-Fall-F.pdf">pacto de corruptos</a>,” has effectively captured the state, eroding democratic institutions and the rule of law in Central America’s most populous country.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xEpZgQ">
<a href="https://americasquarterly.org/article/meet-the-candidates-guatemala-2/">Sunday’s elections cover more than just the presidency </a>— Guatemalans will also elect the vice president and all 160 members of the unicameral legislature, as well as mayors and municipal governments in Guatemala’s 340 <em>municipios, </em>and 20 members of the Central American Parliament.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kbXEXD">
Guatemala’s government <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/7722/chapter-abstract/152849448?redirectedFrom=fulltext">has the contours of a hybrid regime</a> in that it holds elections, but they cannot be considered free or fair. Though its mechanisms appear democratic, the underlying practice — how the powerful used those mechanisms and institutions — tends toward autocracy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3NhvTf">
Guatemala’s Constitutional Court prohibited popular anti-establishment candidates like businessman <a href="https://linktr.ee/CpIneda72">Carlos Pineda</a>, Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera, and businessman and political scion Roberto Arzú from running in this year’s elections; <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-guatemala-election-factbox-idUSKCN1TH0A1">Cabrera and Arzú both ran in the 2019 elections</a> but neither received enough votes to move to a runoff. Candidate Edmond Mulet was also threatened with potential exclusion from the race but is currently one of <a href="https://americasquarterly.org/article/meet-the-candidates-guatemala-2/">three frontrunners</a>, along with Zury Ríos and Sandra Torres.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yFs4hW">
All three leading candidates have ties to previous governments; Ríos was a long-time member of Congress and is the daughter of General Efraín Ríos Montt, who took over the government in a 1982 coup and in 2013 was convicted of <a href="https://www.wola.org/analysis/legacy-guatemala-dictator-rios-montt-shows-justice-possible/">ordering acts of genocide to suppress internal dissent</a>, though that conviction was later vacated. Torres is a former first lady who is making her third bid for the presidency; in 2015 and 2019, she finished second. Mulet is a center-right former member of Congress and diplomat whose surprising prominence in this year’s elections was aided by Pineda’s removal from the ballot, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meet-guatemalas-leading-presidential-candidates-2023-06-25/">according to Reuters</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YF0rVf">
Torres and Mulet have both put forth <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy">policies</a> aimed at helping Guatemala’s poor, while Ríos has promised a crackdown on crime similar to that seen in neighboring El Salvador under authoritarian <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/3/5/23621004/el-salvador-prison-bukele-ms13-barrio-18">President Nayib Bukele</a>.
</p>
<h3 id="6dxSRC">
Guatemalan democracy rests on shaky foundations
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jnNFuS">
Like many post-colonial Latin American countries, Guatemala has never had a clear and easy path to a truly democratic system with strong and independent institutions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M8HxOB">
The <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/">US interrupted</a> Guatemala’s initial transition to democracy in the 1950s; the CIA instituted a plan, called Operation PBFORTUNE, to overthrow Guatemala’s elected leftist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz">President Jacobo Arbenz</a>. Arbenz’s land reform project threatened the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chiquita-Brands-International-Inc">United Fruit Company</a>, a US-based fruit concern that had manipulated Central American governments to serve its interests for years. In the Cold War 1950s, the US government was also concerned about Arbenz’s friendly relations with communist bloc countries, though the closeness of those relations, particularly to Soviet bloc nations, was likely exaggerated to support intervention.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lRvWvD">
That meddling likely sowed the seeds for decades of instability and civil war that were only abated by a peace process in the 1990s and reforms in the early 2000s.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cujcOd">
In particular, the 2007 implementation of the Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala, or CICIG, aimed to root out criminal organizations and corruption in the government to bolster the rule of law.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CthXaQ">
Under <a href="https://www.wola.org/analysis/cicigs-legacy-fighting-corruption-guatemala/">CICIG</a>, Guatemalan prosecutors were tasked with investigating crime at the highest levels, even bringing corruption charges against a former president and vice president, among others. It was enormously successful, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/world/americas/guatemala-cicig-aldana-corruption.html">providing a model for other Latin American countries</a> where similar problems — state capture, organized crime, and graft — have been allowed to flourish with impunity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CFTJzX">
That mandate <a href="https://www.wola.org/analysis/cicigs-legacy-fighting-corruption-guatemala/">expired in 2019</a> under former President Jimmy Morales, <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/president-jimmy-morales-guatemalas-original-sin/">who faced his own accusations of corruption</a> and pushed the country further into autocracy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xyzI5a">
Troubling anti-democratic patterns and state capture, where governments significantly cater to the demands of private interests<strong>,</strong> continued under the deeply unpopular Giammattei. Juan Luis Font, a Guatemalan journalist and political analyst who left the country in 2022, told Vox that “Giammatei has spearheaded this capture for the benefit of corruption and the economic elite meekly accepts it.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mO6vnl">
Both Giammattei and Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, who has been sanctioned by the US for “<a href="https://www.state.gov/designation-of-attorney-general-maria-consuelo-porras-argueta-de-porres-for-involvement-in-significant-corruption-and-consideration-of-additional-designations/">significant corruption</a>,” have both been accused of <a href="https://elfaro.net/en/202202/centroamerica/26008/Witness-Accuses-Guatemalan-President-of-Funding-Campaign-with-Construction-Bribes.htm">graft</a>; in 2021, the attorney general’s office opened a probe into allegations that Giammattei had taken a bribe from a Russian businessman in exchange for a dock at one of Guatemala’s primary ports, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/guatemala-starts-probe-into-bribery-allegations-linked-president-2021-09-03/#:~:text=GUATEMALA%20CITY%2C%20Sept%203%20(Reuters,general's%20office%20said%20on%20Friday.">Reuters</a> reported at the time. Juan Francisco Sandoval, the former head of Guatemala’s Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity, raised the allegations publicly, but then was quickly dismissed by Porras.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hrPc5T">
In addition to serious concerns about official corruption, government transparency and accountability, and civil rights violations, Guatemala suffers from serious violent crime. Human trafficking, drug and arms smuggling, and gang violence related to the drug trade all contribute to Guatemala’s high crime levels, <a href="https://ocindex.net/assets/downloads/english/ocindex_profile_guatemala.pdf">according to the Global Organized Crime Index</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8qtVAd">
Those opposed to the government and committed to exposing its wrongdoing have been <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/five-members-guatemalas-anti-corruption-prosecutors-office-quit-2022-02-22/">forced to flee</a> or <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2023/06/22/press-freedom-is-stifled-in-guatemala-ahead-of-an-election">risk prison time</a>, as in the case of José Rubén Zamora, founder of the Guatemalan outlet <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/world/americas/jose-ruben-zamora-journalist-guatemala.html">El Periódico</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GsxENi">
The justice system, however, is beholden to Guatemala’s powerful elites, making it more responsive to their needs — like going after adversaries.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wxdzRg">
Furthermore, according to the Global Organized Crime Index, “organized crime continues to penetrate the country’s political system, particularly via links between drug cartels and members of congress, the army and law-enforcement authorities,” a <a href="https://ocindex.net/assets/downloads/english/ocindex_profile_guatemala.pdf">2021 report found</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t2bwUB">
“Independent media and journalists are currently suffering a permanent attack against our work, freedom of expression, and the right of the population to be informed,” Marielos Monzon, a Guatemalan journalist, told Vox.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qOt8Yu">
“We see a malicious use of criminal law by the justice system and the public ministry to persecute journalists and columnists. And also attacks from social networks with defamation and slander. They want to silence and censor journalists by prosecuting and imprisoning them. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, 22 journalists had to go into exile to protect their freedom.”
</p>
<h3 id="1zrs2s">
What are Guatemalans’ choices in such a flawed system?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="03eRZw">
Without an independent media and strong institutions, this year’s elections don’t offer much for a more resilient and democratic Guatemala — nor a safer, more prosperous one — given the choice of candidates. As much as 13 percent of voting Guatemalans are so fed up with their country’s politics that they plan to cast a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/guatemala-election-corruption-immigration-103df143728f037404c32a8ba0b89504">“null” vote</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SYHKz4">
As of Sunday afternoon, Torres and Mulet appear to be the front runners, though Ríos cannot yet be discounted.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ttcAYR">
Ríos, the daughter of former dictator Ríos Montt, has campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, but Font told Vox she “represent[s] the most accurate continuity of the system.” Ríos has also embraced the strongman tactics of Bukele in dealing with organized crime, calling his system of jailing thousands of people for suspected affiliation with gangs “<a href="https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/zury-rios-campaigns-to-lead-guatemalas-faltering-democracy/">a model</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AnTMxQ">
Mulet and Torres have both denounced what they have said are voting irregularities. “There are worrying reports that the ruling party is using the coercion of money and power,” Mulet said this afternoon as he cast his ballot, according to <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Guatemala-Update-Torres-Denounces-Anomalies-in-Elections-20230625-0005.html">TeleSUR</a>. “These elections are key opportunities to put a stop to corruption.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5M3DP2">
Mulet has also campaigned against corruption; however, he has come out against CICIG during his campaign despite his past support for the commission. “CICIG never again in Guatemala,” <a href="https://twitter.com/Edmondmulet/status/1661734829547995141?s=20">he tweeted in May</a>. “We’re not going to revive something that’s in the past,” he added in an accompanying video, in which he also said that corruption is “destroying Guatemala” and his party would “be determined in this fight.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eUe19k">
Mulet’s political party, Cabal, “is less of a bloc and more of an alliance of convenience,” according to a report by <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/cabal-caciques-and-compromises/">InSight Crime</a>, and includes politicians and parties accused of widespread, significant corruption. Mulet has implied that he would oust Porras should he win the presidency — a critical step in the fight against corruption, and seems to be less caught up in the general web of corruption in Guatemala’s political system than those currently in power.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fOtX7f">
Torres’s party, <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/guatemala-elections-2023-unes-one-pronged-strategy/">Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza or UNE</a>, is deeply entrenched in Congress and though it’s an important power, it reportedly trades favors like government jobs and contracts for votes. That tactic makes the party — and Torres as its head — more vulnerable to corruption. Furthermore, UNE is heavily involved with the executive branch, the judiciary, and the country’s elites; should Torres win Sunday’s vote or a potential runoff, those facts don’t bode well for a major change in Guatemala’s politics.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6UNPHk">
Should no candidate win 50 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/guatemalan-ex-first-lady-torres-polls-first-crowded-field-ahead-sunday-vote-2023-06-22/">the top two will face each other in an August 20 runoff</a>.
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Daily Quiz | On 1983 World Cup</strong> - A quiz on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of India’s momentous World Cup triumph orchestrated by ‘Kapil’s Devils’</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Chess has taught me to stay patient with my cricket, says Chahal</strong> - Yuzvendra Chahal finds time to indulge in a round of chess on the internet every now and then</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>F1 team Alpine secure €200m backing from investors including Wrexham owners Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney</strong> - “This association is an important step to enhance our performance at all levels,” said Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hasaranga becomes first ODI spinner to take three consecutive 5-wicket hauls</strong> - With Hasaranga’s remarkable performance of 5-wicket hauls, Sri Lanka bundled out Ireland at 192 to secure the Super Six spot after defeating Ireland by 133 runs in their ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 Qualifiers match</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Will fight against WFI chief in court, not on the roads, say wrestlers</strong> - Minutes after posting the statement, Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik tweeted that they are taking a break from social media for a few days.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Many Indian passengers stranded at Paris airport after Air France cancels connecting flight to Toronto</strong> - Air France responded to a series of tweets by a Twitter user highlighting the issues being faced by the stranded Indian passengers at Paris airport</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Police launch rally for drug-free Chittoor</strong> - The police said they are giving top priority to educating the students about the debilitating effects of drugs</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Centre clears ₹56,415 crore to 16 States for capital investment under special assistance scheme</strong> - Capital investment projects in diverse sectors have been approved, including health, education, irrigation, water supply, power, roads, bridges, and railways</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Delhi HC modifies jail term of 5 men in gang-rape case, awards life imprisonment</strong> - “Thus, appellants’ sentence of imprisonment under Section 376(D) IPC is modified from ‘life for the remainder of convicts natural life’ to ‘life imprisonment’,” a Bench of Justices Mukta Gupta and Poonam A Bamba said in a 35-page judgment.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>MBBS student hangs self in Kurnool</strong> -</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Steve Rosenberg: Instability ratchets up pressure on Putin</strong> - Vladimir Putin’s mixed messages on the Wagner mutiny have been raising eyebrows and changing perceptions of him.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Greek elections: Mitsotakis hails conservative win as mandate for reform</strong> - Kyriakos Mitsotakis says his party is now the most powerful centre-right party in Europe.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Wagner, Prigozhin, Putin and Shoigu: Bitter rivalries that led to a rebellion</strong> - The Wagner mutiny was years in the making, as Russia’s system of competing powers finally collapsed.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Wagner chief’s 24 hours of chaos in Russia</strong> - Wagner’s mercenary boss threatened an armed rebellion but pulled back from marching on Moscow.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Gröna Lund: Rollercoaster accident in Sweden leaves one dead</strong> - Nine others were injured when the ride at a Stockholm amusement park partly derailed, witnesses say.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Context is everything: Why key developments often sit unused</strong> - The book <em>Sleeping Beauties</em> looks at everything—biology, skills, ideas—that lies latent. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1949578">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>It’s summer and that means disturbing swim advisories. Here’s our top 5</strong> - Behold the most nauseating and mesmerizing swim advisories floating around. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1949894">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Employee finds SSD stolen last year from corporate data center for sale on eBay</strong> - How can third-party marketplaces prevent stolen goods from being listed? - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1949673">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>X-ray “light echoes” hint at outburst from Milky Way’s central black hole</strong> - The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy hasn’t always been quiet. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1949885">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>“Stunning”—Midjourney update wows AI artists with camera-like feature</strong> - Midjourney v5.2 features camera-like zoom control over framing, more realism. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1949715">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself). Read more in the comments.</strong> - submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/JokeSentinel"> /u/JokeSentinel </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://i.redd.it/1j5nee06kx5b1.png">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1490rmv/reddit_is_killing_thirdparty_applications_and/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Not NSFW: How many Apple engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
None. They no longer make that socket, you just buy a new house.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/lovejo1"> /u/lovejo1 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14iypao/not_nsfw_how_many_apple_engineers_does_it_take_to/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14iypao/not_nsfw_how_many_apple_engineers_does_it_take_to/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A man is sitting for a job interview when the question is asked by the interviewer,</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“What is your biggest weakness?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The job candidate thinks for a moment and answers “honesty. Honesty is my biggest weakeness.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The potential employer replies “I don’t think honesty is a weakness!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The man replies “I really don’t give a fuck what you think!”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ezbnsteve"> /u/ezbnsteve </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14j0fww/a_man_is_sitting_for_a_job_interview_when_the/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14j0fww/a_man_is_sitting_for_a_job_interview_when_the/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A chemist froze himself at -273.15°C.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Everyone thought that he was crazy, but he was 0K.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Mohamad_AAA"> /u/Mohamad_AAA </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14j0bie/a_chemist_froze_himself_at_27315c/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14j0bie/a_chemist_froze_himself_at_27315c/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Dog Joke</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
A guy is driving around the back woods and he sees a sign in front of a broken down, shanty-style house: <strong>Talking Dog For Sale.</strong> He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“You talk?” he asks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I sure do,” the Lab replies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says “So, what’s your story?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Lab looks up and says, "Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
"I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running. But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I’m just retired.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Ten dollars,” the guy says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap??”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Because the dog’s a damn liar. He never did any of that shit.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/iaintprobitches"> /u/iaintprobitches </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14jcqm0/a_dog_joke/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14jcqm0/a_dog_joke/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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