Gary Roush is the kind of progressive who spends his retirement protesting former President Donald Trump. 

On Friday morning, the former technical writer rode the Metro from his home in College Park, Maryland, to the U.S. Supreme Court carrying a poster featuring Mr. Trump’s mug shot and the slogan, “Plotting to overturn an election is not an ‘official act,’ it’s a crime!” Mr. Roush says he “could not be more opposed to having Trump anywhere near the White House again.”

That’s exactly why he’s so unhappy with President Joe Biden.

Mr. Roush calls President Biden’s stumbling Thursday night debate performance an “absolute disaster,” adding it had convinced him that the president must drop his candidacy.

“Biden completely failed his efforts to show the nation that he isn’t a bumbling old man,” he says. 

Sentiments like Mr.  Roush’s are roiling the Democratic Party faithful on Friday, as some voters who desperately want to keep Mr. Trump from returning to the White House hoped that the 81-year-old president would step aside as a candidate and give another Democrat a chance. Many Democratic strategists and elected officials were privately wishing that they didn’t have Mr. Biden as their presumptive nominee as well, with buzz on Capitol Hill and throughout Washington about his abysmal performance. 

But the only person who can keep Mr. Biden from being the nominee at this point is Mr. Biden, who firmly rejected a question from a White House pool reporter after Thursday night’s debate about stepping aside. The president is well known for his pride and has made it clear he thinks he’s the best person to beat Mr. Trump, as he did in 2020. On Friday, Mr. Biden sought to reassure voters with an energetic performance at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.  

Mr. Biden has a famously tight-knit circle of close advisers, led by his wife, first lady Jill Biden, who have stood firmly by him in the past, even in the bleakest of political situations – like his lengthy struggles in the 2020 Democratic primaries before his stunning comeback.

Maria Alejandra Cardona/Reuters

People watch the U.S. presidential debate aboard a Delta Air Lines flight to Miami, June 27, 2024.

And there were few signs Friday that other top Democrats were ready to step up and risk their relationship with the president to call for an unpredictable and chaotic scramble for the nomination, rather than stick with the guy their party has picked.

Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri says that many in his party, including House colleagues, felt “panic-stricken” after Mr. Biden’s debate dud. But he doubts anyone close enough to Mr. Biden to have his ear would push him to drop out. 

“I don’t think anybody’s gonna go there and try to convince him not to run,” Representative Cleaver says. “The only people I think should have any legitimate opportunity to say something to him either way is his family. And I don’t think at this point we need to get involved. This is an overreaction.”

And while many Democrats wish they had someone better than the incumbent, many think the alternative of a free-for-all contested convention in August with multiple candidates battling to get party insiders to back them would be even worse.

“We don’t need an open convention. That’s too messy and dangerous,” Mr. Cleaver says. “That would be the answer to Trump’s prayer. That would be chaos at the highest level. We don’t need it.”

Whoever emerged from that scenario would be scarred by internal strife, picked by party insiders rather than by voters, and have almost no time to turn to the general election.

And even with voters worried about Mr. Biden’s age, he’s still done better in predebate surveys than his likeliest replacements. Polls have consistently shown that Mr. Trump’s lead over Vice President Kamala Harris has been more than his edge against Mr. Biden – and Mr. Trump has led by an even wider margin against other lesser-known potential Democratic candidates like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 

The last time Democrats had a real contested convention was in 1980, when Sen. Ted Kennedy’s campaign against President Jimmy Carter hurt the incumbent and contributed to his fall defeat. Republican Ronald Reagan’s 1976 primary effort against President Gerald Ford hurt the incumbent as well. 

But if Mr. Biden steps down this could be even more of a free-for-all, with warring factions of Democrats and potentially no clear front-runner. Mr. Biden can’t just hand the nomination to Vice President Harris.

If Mr. Biden were to step aside as a candidate this close to the election, it would be unprecedented. The last time an eligible president opted not to run for reelection was in March of 1968. That’s a year Democrats absolutely do not want to relive. After primaries had already begun, President Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for a second full term. In June of that year, front-running candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. 

Evan Vucci/AP

President Joe Biden greets supporters after arriving at Raleigh-Durham International Airport after participating in the presidential debate, Friday, June 28, 2024, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

By August, Democrats were melting down as party bosses warred over weaker options and police clashed with protesters outside the Democratic National Convention. The eventual compromise nominee, Sen. Hubert Humphrey, was crushed by Republican Richard Nixon in the general election.

Memories of the 1968 Democratic convention – in Chicago, as with this year’s – still haunt the party.

Democrats were mostly eager to avoid reporters on Friday, darting through the congressional hallways while studiously avoiding eye contact or holding phones to their ears. Those who did talk mostly closed ranks around their beleaguered party leader.

Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a former member of House leadership and a close Biden ally, concedes that Mr. Biden had a bad night. But when asked what he would say to Democrats who wanted Mr. Biden to step aside, he fired back.

“Stay the course. Chill out. Chill out,” Representative Clyburn says, pointing to a similar (but more profane) comment Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania had posted on social media.

When a reporter asked Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, former Democratic House majority leader, if his party needed a new candidate, he shot back.

“We’ve got a candidate. It’s Joe Biden,” Representative Hoyer told reporters. “He’s got an extraordinary record of accomplishment.”

No less a figure than former President Barack Obama also chimed in Friday on X: “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.” 

Privately, though, Democrats weren’t so quick to defend their president.

When asked what would happen if Mr. Biden were to drop out, a House Democrat asked to remain anonymous so they could be honest: “There’s going to be some hard conversations today.”

Another landmark term at the U.S. Supreme Court neared its end Friday with a trio of decisions expected to transform the lives of millions of Americans.

In rulings described as “profound” and “sweeping,” the high court weighed in on homelessness, government regulatory power, and Jan. 6 prosecutions.

In one decision, the court held that local laws effectively criminalizing homelessness don’t violate the U.S. Constitution. In another, the court overturned a 40-year-old precedent governing how federal agencies can issue regulations. And in its final decision, the justices vacated an obstruction charge the federal government has filed against hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants – including former President Donald Trump. 

The already blockbuster term is not yet over. Arguably the biggest case of them all, concerning whether Mr. Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution, is expected to be decided on Monday. But today’s rulings are momentous on their own terms.

Can cities criminalize sleeping outside? The justices weigh in on homelessness.

The first decision on Friday came in a complex and emotional case concerning homelessness in a small Oregon town.

The town, Grants Pass, had enacted an ordinance that made it criminal to sleep in public – including in your car. In a 6-3 ruling that broke along ideological lines, the Supreme Court said that the ordinance doesn’t constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment.

The case posed hard questions, and it pitted a variety of different interest groups against each other.

The homeless plaintiffs argued that Grants Pass – a town with just one 138-bed overnight shelter – criminalized them for behavior they couldn’t avoid: sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, municipalities across the western United States argued that court rulings hampered their ability to quickly respond to public health and safety issues related to homeless encampments.

The ruling is expected to have broad and immediate consequences for cities, particularly in the West. Hanging over it all, experts say, is the feeling that it brings the U.S. no closer to truly addressing the causes of its homelessness crisis.

“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in the majority opinion.

The Eighth Amendment, he added, “serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this nation’s homelessness policy.”

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized the majority for permitting localities to criminalize sleep, which she described as “a biological necessity.”

“It is possible to acknowledge and balance the issues facing local governments, the humanity and dignity of homeless people, and our constitutional principles,” she added. But the majority instead “focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”

Some see the decision as removing an unnecessary restriction on the multifaceted approaches cities can take to addressing homelessness. In a statement, Timothy Sandefur, vice president for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute, called it “the first step toward a sensible approach to the many problems of homelessness.”

Because of their complexity, “cities can only address these problems on a case-by-case basis,” he added. The Supreme Court decision “enables local communities to find actual solutions for the people who are suffering.”

But legal experts and advocates for the homeless worry that the decision will encourage a more punitive approach to managing homelessness at the expense of other solutions – which could exacerbate the crisis.

“It sets a really dangerous precedent,” says Jennifer Hanlon Wigon, executive director of Women’s Lunch Place, a shelter in Boston.

“It’s shifting the focus to law enforcement from human services,” she adds.

Experts worry that cities will now implement camping bans even when they don’t have to, creating more barriers to getting out of homelessness. Accumulated, unpaid fines and a criminal record make it hard, for instance, to get a driver’s license and can be used by landlords to deny housing.

“There needs to be [a] wider reflection on the causes of homelessness and how we should be addressing this,” says Claire Herbert, associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.

Another consequence may be that homeless populations will move to communities that do not enforce camping bans, or have more resources, overloading them, she says. Police, too, will have to enforce the bans at the expense of other issues.

“The solutions to homelessness have always been clear, and this is not it,” says Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco. The Supreme Court ruling “is sweeping. It is extreme. It is cruel.”

In the guise of saying that judges aren’t the right people to engage in homelessness, “the court is entirely ducking the hard questions about the law,” says Clare Pastore, a law professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

And, she adds, “this is not going to end litigation over homelessness, if that’s what the court thinks it’s doing.”

What is the Chevron doctrine, and why should you care that it’s been overturned?

The Supreme Court’s second decision was decades in the making. Its consequences, which will become clearer in the coming months, have the potential to shape almost every aspect of American life for decades to come. 

In 1984, the high court issued a landmark decision holding that federal courts must defer to a government agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute. That ruling, known as the Chevron doctrine, became a cornerstone for how all federal agencies issue regulations. 

In recent decades, groups seeking to curb the regulatory power of federal agencies have repeatedly challenged Chevron in court. On Friday, in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, they succeeded.

In another 6-3 ruling divided along ideological lines, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine, writing that the doctrine usurped the foundational role of the courts to decide if an agency is acting within its legal authority.

While appreciating that laws may not always be clear, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, the Framers envisioned “that the final ‘interpretation of the laws’ would be ‘the proper and peculiar province of the courts.”

“The only way to ‘ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion,’ is for the Court to leave Chevron behind,” he added.

Importantly, Chief Justice Roberts noted that the decision does not affect past cases, and that courts would need to provide a “special justification” for overturning them.

In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan blasted her colleagues for “destroy[ing] one doctrine of judicial humility” and “making a laughing-stock of a second.” She was referring to settled law, or stare decisis, a doctrine holding that the Supreme Court should respect prior decisions unless they are fundamentally wrong.

With its decision in Loper, “a rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” wrote Justice Kagan. “The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power.”

In a separate concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch disputed the notion that the high court is accruing more power for itself, writing that the court “has refused to apply Chevron deference since 2016.”

But critics see the ruling as part of a broader effort by conservative activists – aided by a sympathetic Supreme Court – to transfer regulatory power from federal agencies to the courts. On Thursday, for example, it rolled back the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to impose civil penalties for fraud. Instead, federal regulators would need to seek a jury trial.

The high court has sided with federal agencies on occasion, including earlier this term when it upheld the funding mechanism of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But the prevailing trend has seen the court chip away at the powers of the so-called “administrative state.”

With the overturning of Chevron, “the primary impact would be to make the powerful more powerful and make the powerless more powerless,” says David Doniger, the Natural Resources Defense Fund attorney who argued the original Chevron case 40 years ago.

Two years ago, the court issued a decision that fleshed out what it calls the major questions doctrine. The doctrine holds that federal agencies can’t take major actions without clear direction in law from Congress, with courts deciding which actions are “major.”

Critics of the administrative state argue that it puts too much power in the hands of unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucrats.

“Today’s decision is a decisive victory for the separation of powers, ending a doctrine that impermissibly granted the Executive Branch the power to judge the scope of its own authority,” said Thomas Berry, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute, in a statement.

Supporters of the administrative state claim that power is now being put in the hands of unelected and unaccountable federal judges.

Overturning Chevron is a “convulsive shock to the legal system,” says Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund.

“The implications of the Supreme Court’s decision here would mean it is far more difficult for our country to protect the millions of people who want to ensure that our food is safe to eat, that we have clean air for our children, safe water, that aircraft and automobiles are safe. It is a really serious pivot from having the ability to ensure basic protections for people’s lives.”

The Loper decision represents the heaviest blow yet to the regulatory power of federal agencies. It has the potential to have sweeping effects on American life – evidenced by groups as varied as the AFL-CIO and Washington lobbying firms expressing concerns about it.

The ruling “is profound,” says Rachel Weintraub, executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards.

“It impacts all regulations from our federal government,” she adds. “It means toy safety, it means those things impacting our financial markets ... every agency that promulgates rules could be impacted by this decision.”

John Minchillo/AP/File

Rioters breach the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with one defendant who said the government improperly used the charge of obstructing an official proceeding against him and several hundred other defendants.

A Jan. 6 defendant gets a bipartisan win

In its final decision Friday, the Supreme Court weighed in on the second of three cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

This term represents the first time the justices have had to grapple with the fallout from that day, when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol while Congress was certifying the results of the 2020 election.

Earlier this term, the court ruled unanimously that Mr. Trump could remain on the 2024 presidential ballot despite his alleged involvement. On Friday, the court vacated an obstruction charge that the Justice Department had filed against hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, including Mr. Trump himself. 

The provision of the law at issue, enacted as part of a 2002 financial reform law responding to the Enron scandal, imposes criminal charges on anyone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” A conviction carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

In another 6-3 ruling – though one that didn’t fall along ideological lines – the Supreme Court said that the government “must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so.”

While the case stemmed from Jan. 6, Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that the government’s interpretation of the law would criminalize not only serious conduct but also “a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison.”

In a concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – a member of the court’s liberal wing and a former public defender – wrote that the mob “inflicted a deep wound on this nation,” but that the case “is not about the immorality of those acts.”

“Our commitment to equal justice and the rule of law requires the courts to faithfully apply criminal laws as written, even in periods of national crisis,” she added.

In a dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett – a member of the court’s conservative supermajority – countered that the obstruction law is intentionally “a very broad provision.”

“Events like January 6th were not its target. (Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?) But statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them,” she wrote.

The majority, she added, “does textual backflips to find some way – any way – to narrow the reach of” the law.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. U.S. may have a limited impact, however.

About a quarter of the roughly 1,400 Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with breaking the obstruction law, according to a Just Security analysis of NPR data. Only 26 defendants have been convicted solely of breaking that statute, and 71 charged under the statute are awaiting trial, according to Just Security.

Furthermore, federal judges and prosecutors have already been planning for this development, The New York Times reported. The Justice Department says there are no defendants currently facing solely the obstruction charge. Some judges have signaled that they would increase sentences for other charges if the obstruction charge weren’t available.

“On the whole, I think it’s a fairly muted impact on the Jan. 6 cases,” says Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor at the Georgia State University College of Law.

“There will be a handful of Jan. 6 defendants who all possibly have new trials or will [have their cases] resettled,” he adds, “but it is a very small sliver.”

Editor's Note: Claire Herbert's title has been corrected. She is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

Harvard student Samaga Pokharel (far right) and other activists rally in Washington as the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on a pair of cases that could decide the future of affirmative action in college admissions, Oct. 31, 2022. Eight months later, the court banned the use of race-conscious admissions.

In the year since the Supreme Court banned the consideration of race in college admissions last June, students have had to give more thought to how they present themselves in their application essays.

Previously, they could write about their racial or ethnic identity if they wanted to, but colleges would usually know it either way and could use it as a factor in admissions. Now, it’s entirely up to students to disclose their identity or not.

Data from the Common Application shows that in this admissions cycle about 12% of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups used at least one of 38 identity-related phrases in their essays, a decrease of roughly 1% from the previous year. The data shows that about 20% of American Indian and Alaskan Native applicants used one of these phrases; meanwhile 15% of Asian students, 14% of Black students, 11% of Latinx students, and fewer than 3% of white students did so.

To better understand how students were making this decision and introducing themselves to colleges, The Hechinger Report asked newly accepted students from across the country to share their college application essays. The Hechinger staff read more than 50 essays and talked to many students about their writing process, who gave them advice, and how they think their choices ultimately influenced their admissions outcomes.

Here are thoughts from a sampling of those students, with excerpts from their essays. 

Jaleel Gomes Cardoso of Boston: A risky decision

As Jaleel Gomes Cardoso sat looking at the essay prompt for Yale University, he wasn’t sure how honest he should be. “Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected,” it read. “Why is this community meaningful to you?” He wanted to write about being part of the Black community – it was the obvious choice – but the Supreme Court’s decision to ban the consideration of a student’s race in admissions gave him pause.

“Ever since the decision about affirmative action, it kind of worried me about talking about race,” says Mr. Cardoso, who grew up in Boston. “That entire topic felt like a risky decision.” 

In the past, he had always felt that taking a risk produced some of his best writing, but he thought that an entire essay about being Black might be going too far. 

“The risk was just so heavy on the topic of race when the Court’s decision was to not take race into account,” he says. “It was as if I was disregarding that decision. It felt very controversial, just to make it so out in the open.” 

Courtesy of Jaleel Gomes Cardoso

In the end, he did write an essay that put his racial identity front and center. He wasn’t accepted to Yale, but he has no regrets about his choice.

“If you’re not going to see what my race is in my application, then I’m definitely putting it in my writing,” says Mr. Cardoso, who will attend Dartmouth College this fall, “because you have to know that this is the person who I am.”                       

 – Meredith Kolodner

Essay excerpt:

I was thrust into a narrative of indifference and insignificance from the moment I entered this world. I was labeled as black, which placed me in the margins of society. It seemed that my destiny had been predetermined; to be part of a minority group constantly oppressed under the weight of a social construct called race. Blackness became my life, an identity I initially battled against. I knew others viewed it as a flaw that tainted their perception of me. As I matured, I realized that being different was not easy, but it was what I loved most about myself. 

Klaryssa Cobian of Los Angeles: A seminomadic mattress life

Klaryssa Cobian is Latina – a first-generation Mexican American – and so was nearly everyone else in the Southeast Los Angeles community where she grew up. Because that world was so homogenous, she really didn’t notice her race until she was a teenager.

Then she earned a scholarship to a prestigious private high school in Pasadena. For the first time, she was meaningfully interacting with people of other races and ethnicities, but she felt the greatest gulf between her and her peers came from her socioeconomic status, not the color of her skin. 

Although Ms. Cobian has generally tried to keep her home life private, she felt that colleges needed to understand the way her family’s severe economic disadvantages had affected her. She wrote about how she’d long been “desperate to feel at home.”

She was 16 years old before she had a mattress of her own. Her essay cataloged all the places she lay her head before that. She wrote about her first bed, a queen-sized mattress shared with her parents and younger sister. She wrote about sleeping in the backseat of her mother’s red Mustang, before they lost the car. She wrote about moving into her grandparents’ home and sharing a mattress on the floor with her sister, in the same room as two uncles. She wrote about the great independence she felt when she “moved out” into the living room and onto the couch.  

“Which mattress I sleep on has defined my life, my independence, my dependence,” Ms. Cobian wrote. 

She’d initially considered writing about the ways she felt she’d had to sacrifice her Latino culture and identity to pursue her education, but said she hesitated after the Supreme Court ruled on the use of affirmative action in admissions. Ultimately, she decided that her experience of poverty was more pertinent. 

Courtesy of Klaryssa Cobian

“If I’m in a room of people, it’s like, I can talk to other Latinos, and I can talk to other brown people, but that does not mean I’m going to connect with them. Because, I learned, brown people can be rich,” Ms. Cobian says.  She’s headed to the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall.

– Olivia Sanchez

Essay excerpt: 

With the only income, my mom automatically assumed custody of me and my younger sister, Alyssa. With no mattress and no home, the backseat of my mom’s red mustang became my new mattress. Bob Marley blasted from her red convertible as we sang out “could you be loved” every day on our ride back from elementary school. Eventually, we lost the mustang too and would take the bus home from Downtown Los Angeles, still singing “could you be loved” to each other. 

Oluwademilade Egunjobi of Providence, Rhode Island: The perfect introduction

Oluwademilade Egunjobi worked on her college essay from June until November. Not every single day, and not on only one version, but for five months she was writing and editing and asking anyone who would listen for advice.

She considered submitting essays about the value of sex education, or the philosophical theory of solipsism (in which the only thing that is guaranteed to exist is your own mind). 

But most of the advice she got was to write about her identity. So, to introduce herself to colleges, Oluwademilade Egunjobi wrote about her name.

Ms. Egunjobi is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who, she wrote, chose her first name because it means she’s been crowned by God. In naming her, she said, her parents prioritized pride in their heritage over ease of pronunciation for people outside their culture. 

And although Ms. Egunjobi loves that she will always be connected to her culture, this choice has put her in a lifelong loop of exasperating introductions and questions from non-Nigerians about her name. 

The loop often ends when the person asks if they can call her by her nickname, Demi. “I smile through my irritation and say I prefer it anyways, and then the situation repeats time and time again,” Egunjobi wrote. 

Courtesy of Oluwademilade Egunjobi

She was nervous when she learned about the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision, wondering what it might mean for where she would get into college. Her teachers and college advisors from a program called Matriculate told her she didn’t have to write a sob story, but that she should write about her identity, how it affects the way she moves through the world and the resilience it’s taught her. 

She heeded their advice, and it worked out. In the fall, she will enter the University of Pennsylvania to study philosophy, politics, and economics. 

– Olivia Sanchez

Essay excerpt:

I don’t think I’ve ever had to fight so hard to love something as hard as I’ve fought to love my name. I’m grateful for it because it’ll never allow me to reject my culture and my identity, but I get frustrated by this daily performance. I’ve learned that this performance is an inescapable fate, but the best way to deal with fate is to show up with joy. I am Nigerian, but specifically from the ethnic group, Yoruba. In Yoruba culture, most names are manifestations. Oluwademilade means God has crowned me, and my middle name is Favor, so my parents have manifested that I’ll be favored above others and have good success in life. No matter where I go, people familiar with the language will recognize my name and understand its meaning. I love that I’ll always carry a piece of my culture with me. 

Francisco Garcia of Fort Worth, Texas: Accepted to college and by his community

In the opening paragraph of his college application essay, Francisco Garcia quotes his mother, speaking to him in Spanish, expressing disappointment that her son was failing to live up to her Catholic ideals. It was her reaction to Mr. Garcia revealing his bisexuality. 

Mr. Garcia said those nine Spanish words were “the most intentional thing I did to share my background” with colleges. The rest of his essay delves into how his Catholic upbringing, at least for a time, squelched his ability to be honest with friends about his sexual identity, and how his relationship with the church changed. He said he had striven, however, to avoid coming across as pessimistic or sad, aiming instead to share “what I’ve been through [and] how I’ve become a better person because of it.” 

He worked on his essay throughout July, August, and September, with guidance from college officials he met during campus visits and from an adviser he was paired with by Matriculate, which works with students who are high achievers from low-income families. Be very personal, they told Mr. Garcia, but within limits. 

“I am fortunate to have support from all my friends, who encourage me to explore complexities within myself,” he wrote. “My friends give me what my mother denied me: acceptance.”

He was accepted by Dartmouth, one of the eight schools to which he applied, after graduating from Saginaw High School near Fort Worth, Texas, this spring.

– Nirvi Shah

Essay excerpt:  

By the time I got to high school, I had made new friends who I felt safe around. While I felt I was more authentic with them, I was still unsure whether they would judge me for who I liked. It became increasingly difficult for me to keep hiding this part of myself, so I vented to both my mom and my closest friend, Yoana ... When I confessed that I was bisexual to Yoana, they were shocked, and I almost lost hope. However, after the initial shock, they texted back, “I’m really chill with this. Nothing has changed Francisco:)”. The smiley face, even if it took 2 characters, was enough to bring me to tears. 

Hafsa Sheikh of Pearland, Texas: Family focus above all 

Hafsa Sheikh felt her applications would be incomplete without the important context of her home life: She became a primary financial contributor to her household when she was just 15, because her father, once the family’s sole breadwinner, could not work due to his major depressive disorder. Her work in a pizza parlor on the weekends and as a tutor after school helped pay the bills. 

She found it challenging to open up this way, but felt she needed to tell colleges that, although working two jobs throughout high school made her feel like crying from exhaustion every night, she would do anything for her family. 

Courtesy of Hafsa Sheikh

“It’s definitely not easy sharing some of the things that you’ve been through with, like really a stranger,” she says, “because you don’t know who’s reading it.”

And especially after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action, Ms. Sheikh felt she needed to write about her cultural identity. It’s a core part of who she is, but it’s also a major part of why her father’s mental illness affected her life so profoundly. 

Ms. Sheikh, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants, said her family became isolated because of the negative stigma surrounding mental health in their South Asian culture. She said they became the point of gossip in the community and even among extended family members, and they were excluded from many social gatherings. This was happening as she was watching the typical high school experiences pass her by, she wrote. Because of the long hours she had to work, she had to forgo the opportunity to try out for the girls’ basketball team and debate club, and often couldn’t justify cutting back her hours to spend time with her friends.  

She wrote that reflecting on one of her favorite passages in the Holy Quran gave her hope:

“One of my favorite ayahs, ‘verily, with every hardship comes ease,’ serves as a timeless reminder that adversity is not the end; rather, there is always light on the other side,” Ms. Sheikh wrote.

Her perseverance paid off, with admission to Princeton University.

-- Olivia Sanchez

Essay excerpt: 

Besides the financial responsibility on my mother and I, we had to deal with the stigma surrounding mental health in South Asian culture and the importance of upholding traditional gender roles. My family became a point of great gossip within the local Pakistani community and even extended family. Slowly, the invitations to social gatherings diminished, and I bailed on plans with friends because I couldn’t afford to miss even a single hour of earnings.

David Arturo Munoz-Matta of McAllen, Texas: Weighing the risks of being honest

It was Nov. 30 and David Arturo Munoz-Matta had eight college essays due the next day. He had spent the prior weeks slammed with homework while also grieving the loss of his uncle who had just died. He knew the essays were going to require all the mental energy he could muster – not to mention whatever hours were left in the day. But he got home from school to discover he had no electricity. 

“I was like, ‘What am I gonna do?’” says Mr. Munoz-Matta, who graduated from Lamar Academy in McAllen, Texas. “I was panicking for a while, and my mom was like, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna drop you off at Starbucks and then just call me when you finish with all your essays.’ And so I was there at Starbucks from 4 until 12 in the morning.” 

The personal statement he agonized over most was the one he submitted to Georgetown University.  

“I don’t want to be mean or anything, but I feel like a lot of these institutions are very elitist, and that my story might not resonate with the admissions officers,” Mr. Munoz-Matta says. “It was a very big risk, especially when I said I was born in Mexico, when I said I grew up in an abusive environment. I believed at the time that would not be good for universities, that they might feel like, ‘I don’t want this kid, he won’t be a good fit with the student body.’”

He didn’t have an adult to help him with his essay, but another student encouraged him to be honest. It worked. He got into his dream school, Georgetown University, with a full ride. Many of his peers were not as fortunate. 

“I know because of the affirmative action decision, a lot of my friends did not even apply to these universities, like the Ivies, because they felt like they were not going to get in,” he says. “That was a very big sentiment in my school.”                       

– Meredith Kolodner 

Essay excerpt:

While many others in my grade level had lawyers and doctors for parents and came from exemplary middle schools at the top of their classes, I was the opposite. I came into Lamar without middle school recognition, recalling my 8th-grade science teacher’s claim that I would never make it. At Lamar, freshman year was a significant challenge as I constantly struggled, feeling like I had reached my wit’s end. By the middle of Freshman year, I was the only kid left from my middle school, since everyone else had dropped out. Rather than following suit, I kept going. I felt like I had something to prove to myself because I knew I could make it.

Kendall Martin of Austin, Texas: From frustration to love

Kendall Martin wanted to be clear with college admissions officers about one thing: She is a young Black woman, and her race is central to who she is. Ms. Martin was ranked 15th in her graduating class from KIPP Austin Collegiate. She was a key figure on her high school basketball team. She wanted colleges to know she had overcome adversity. But most importantly, Ms. Martin says, she wanted to be sure, when her application was reviewed, “Y’all know who you are accepting.”

Courtesy of Kendall Martin

It wouldn’t be as simple as checking a box, though, which led Ms. Martin, of Kyle, Texas, to the topic she chose for her college admissions essay, the year after the Supreme Court said race could not be a factor in college admissions. Instead, she looked at the hair framing her face, hair still scarred from being straightened time and again. 

Ms. Martin wrote about the struggles she faced growing up with hair that she says required extensive time to tame so she could simply run her fingers through it. Now headed to Rice University in Houston – her first choice from a half-dozen options – she included a photo of her braids as part of her application. Her essay described her journey from hating her hair to embracing it, from heat damage to learning to braid, from frustration to love, a feeling she now hopes to inspire in her sister.  

“That’s what I wanted to get across: my growing up, my experiences, everything that made me who I am,” she says.

– Nirvi Shah

Essay excerpt: 

I’m still recovering from the heat damage I caused by straightening my hair every day, because I was so determined to prove that I had length. When I was younger, a lot of my self worth was based on how long my hair was, so when kids made fun of my “short hair,” I despised my curls more and more. I begged my mom to let me get a relaxer, but she continued to deny my wish. This would make me so angry, because who was she to tell me what I could and couldn’t do with my hair? But looking back, I’m so glad she never let me. I see now that a relaxer wasn’t the key to making me prettier, and my love for my curls has reached an all-time high. 

This story about college admission essays was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s higher education newsletter. Listen to Hechinger’s higher education podcast.

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

First lady Jill Biden (right) arrives with Ashley Biden (left) to speak at a Pride Month celebration on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, June 26, 2024.

When patrons of a now-famous New York City gay bar resisted a police raid 55 years ago, they catalyzed a rights movement that has spread far beyond the United States.

At the time of the Stonewall Uprising, same-sex relations were explicitly outlawed in all but one U.S. state. Today, millions of people attend annual Pride festivals in over 100 countries, and average public acceptance of LGBTQ+ people has risen globally since 1980, according to a report from the UCLA School of Law.

Yet advocates have sounded the alarm in recent years, as countries around the world have sought to curb LGBTQ+ rights. Iraq, for example, now punishes same-sex relations and gender transition surgery with jail time. The Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest LGBTQ+ rights group, issued a state of emergency – the first in the organization’s 40-year history – after an uptick in antigay and antitransgender bills hit statehouses last year. And Chatham House, a British think tank, declared in a 2023 report that the “global assault on LGBTQ rights undermines democracy.” 

Andrew Flores, a professor at American University who authored the UCLA report, says these alarming headlines are only half of the story. In recent decades, 56 countries have seen an increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance – and on average, those countries have progressed more than other countries have declined. That shift in attitude has allowed new rights and legal protections to be introduced around the world. This progress can sometimes get lost in the noise. 

“We have a negativity bias,” he says. “We focus on the bad things, and we tend to downplay the good things. And I think that what gets lost in that story is that, within the U.S. and also abroad, there have also been places that have expanded rights for LGBTI people.”

SOURCE:

Global Acceptance Index from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Legislation landscape

Same-sex relations are legal in about two-thirds of United Nations member states – a noticeable upturn from 1969, when over half of all member nations criminalized same-sex acts. 

The number of countries allowing same-sex marriage or civil unions has risen gradually since 2001, when the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, but they remain in the minority. In Africa and Asia, only three jurisdictions – South Africa, Taiwan, and, as of last week, Thailand – comprehensively allow same-sex couples to marry or enter civil unions. 

Countries have also introduced a variety of protections for LGBTQ+ people over the years. Conversion therapy, which the American Psychiatric Association condemns as harmful and ineffective, is illegal in 16 countries. Adoption rights are another bright spot. At least on paper, same-sex couples can jointly adopt children in most of the jurisdictions where marriages or civil unions are legal.

Yet “it’s not a falsehood to think” that some places have drawn back on protections and rights for LGBTQ+ people in recent years, Dr. Flores says. 

SOURCE:

Human Dignity Trust

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

In the U.S. this year, state legislatures have introduced at least 275 anti-LGBTQ+ bills, many of them targeting transgender youth and adults. Politicians in Europe have upped their use of transphobic rhetoric. Uganda last spring passed a draconian law that imposes the death penalty in cases of “aggravated homosexuality.” 

“The concern is real,” says Dr. Flores. “Social change and policy change around LGBTQI rights is not a one-way ratchet, or always going to be expanding equality.” 

Public opinion divided

Globally, public opinion toward LGBTQ+ people has grown more polarized. Between 1980 and 2021, the most accepting countries grew more accepting and the least accepting became less so. 

Peoples’ attitudes can vary largely depending on the issue at hand. Same-sex marriage, for example, enjoys generally high rates of public approval. And in a 2024 survey of 26 countries by Ipsos, nearly three-quarters of respondents said that transgender people should be protected against discrimination. 

At the same time, just over half of Americans said they don’t support transgender athletes competing based on the gender with which they identify. Across 23 countries, including the U.S., 40% of people felt similarly. The only other survey questions that garnered such high opposition were also related to transgender rights, such as whether or not adolescents should have access to gender-affirming care.

SOURCE:

Global Acceptance Index from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

But that isn’t the story everywhere. In Southeast Asia, transgender people can in some cases find higher levels of societal acceptance than lesbian, gay, and bisexual people can, Dr. Flores says.

“From a Western perspective, you’re kind of thinking that trans is very new and very controversial,” he says. “But if you go to other regions of the world, particularly Southeast Asia, the discussion around trans people has been more developed, and transgender rights have actually moved sometimes more quickly ... before, say, gay rights.”  

Overall, Thai respondents were the most likely to profess support for transgender rights. In that country, 82% of respondents to the Ipsos poll supported transgender people using bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity – the highest of any country surveyed.  

Chadia Jarrahi can still taste the sting of embarrassment she felt when the principal sent her young sons home from school, their clothes too wet and muddy to attend class. From that day on, whenever the river was high, Ms. Jarrahi took the two boys piggyback across the ravine separating her village from the main road on the other side. 

“I would get home soaked,” she says under the shade of a tree overlooking the river she used to see as her daily adversary. Some days, the water was too high for anyone to cross at all. 

It’s a common story in the mountainous, interior regions of rural Tunisia, where fewer government resources are directed to infrastructure and services than along the more urban coast. The residents of Al Taraiya, in the northwestern province of Béja, had been fighting since the 1990s for a bridge connecting their community to the only nearby school, mosque, grocery store, and hospital. They had cut off traffic on the main road countless times in protest. But local officials deemed the project too expensive.

Then Karim Arfa caught wind of the residents’ plight. In recent years, the building and painting contractor has made it his mission to take on just that sort of impossible-seeming project. Using mainly scrap metal and his own creativity in his workshop in Tunis, he has built much-needed infrastructure and equipment, from furniture for schools to pedestrian bridges. 

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Karim Haboubi crosses the bridge built by Karim Arfa in Al Taraiya, June 8, 2024. The sign on the bridge reads in Arabic, “Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle.”

Mr. Arfa’s work serves to assure those who have long felt abandoned by their national and local governments that regular people can come up with solutions to entrenched problems – even where resources are scarce. “With work, you can make anything from nothing,” he says. 

Today, a bright pink bridge stretches from the winding highway to the rolling hills on the other side of the river. Ms. Jarrahi’s children play with other kids along the walkway; neighbors lead donkeys and motorcycles to and from the homes that are just visible across the valley. Residents no longer worry about missing work, running out of places to buy food, or not being able to go to the hospital when rain makes the river swell.

“It saved us and our children,” says Ms. Jarrahi. 

The bridge will help reduce absenteeism and school dropouts in the area, predicts Mohamed Jouili, a professor of sociology at the University of Tunis, over email. He also says Mr. Arfa’s initiative “encourages other members of the community to recognize their own agency and actively contribute to improving their environment.”

Going where “the government doesn’t”

Mr. Arfa himself grew up in a rural area of Tunisia, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Al Taraiya. He nearly dropped out of school because of the difficulty of getting to and from class. 

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Karim Arfa works in his workshop in El Mourouj, June 4, 2024.

“I felt like I was being punished,” says Mr. Arfa, who moved to the capital as a young adult to train as a painter. He eventually opened his own workshop on the outskirts of Tunis. But he never turned away from his rural roots. “I wanted to do something to repair their situation, as if I was repairing something for myself,” he says.

He started with a school dormitory that burned down in 2018, redecorating the space and then building a new library for the school in an abandoned room. From there, he began repairing desks and chairs in schools and maintenance hole covers for roads. After hearing about a young girl who died crossing a river on foot in 2019, he and his team of volunteers began building their first bridge, in the province of Kasserine. Steep mountains meant the machinery couldn’t get to the bridge site, so they had to dig out the base by hand.

“Karim goes to the places the government doesn’t go,” says Cherif Ait Daoud, a Tunis-based architect who helped design the bridge. That “gives hope to people that there can be a link between us,” he adds.

The bridge in Béja, Mr. Arfa’s sixth such project, was finished in 2023. “One year, seven days, and two hours ago,” recalls Ahmed Terroui, a resident of Al Taraiya. He and others spent two months helping Mr. Arfa assemble the bridge, often after working long shifts as day laborers on nearby farms.

The bridge’s railings are made of rods from old school desks, refurbished and repainted at Mr. Arfa’s workshop. Three-fifths of the steel is recycled. Only the cement, gravel, sand for the foundation, and the rest of the steel had to be bought. Officials had predicted that construction could total 2 million dinar (about $635,000) for a bridge that would measure 38 meters (125 feet) long. Mr. Arfa and his team pulled it off for 41,000 dinar. The village threw him a party with a slaughtered lamb when it was complete.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Children cross the bridge built by Karim Arfa and his team in the province of Béja, June 8, 2024.

Etched on a sign on the side of the bridge is an old proverb that residents say Mr. Arfa embodies: “Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle.”

It’s a philosophy he applies in his own front yard as well. The curb across the street from his warehouse is unusually tidy. Healthy, trimmed plants in brick planter boxes contrast with the overgrown grass and trash lining the rest of the block.

Inside, makeshift shelves bend under the weight of paint cans, steel rods, wooden planks, and dozens of miscellaneous boxes. A pile of desks donated by a local private school fills one corner in a colorful array of metal. Even the debris that lays abandoned in a barren lot down the road holds potential. Mr. Arfa hopes to use a bus-sized pile of blue scrap steel for the walkway of his next bridge.

“We work with what is available,” he says. What matters is using what is at hand to improve one’s surroundings, he adds.

So far, he has relied on donations alone, either in the form of scrap metal or money. But it has been difficult to secure stable funding. 

“We can do it all”

As trucks and motorcycles whir by, Basma Ammouri rolls dough into a ball, presses it into a wide circle, and sticks it on the inner wall of an open clay oven to bake. She set up her makeshift roadside bakery across the bridge from her home in Al Taraiya, just after it was inaugurated. She now has reliable access to customers who stop along the highway to buy her traditional tabouna bread. That income helps support her young children. 

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Basma Ammouri makes bread to sell, on the side of the highway on the other side of the river from her home.

Her husband, Karim Haboubi, is grateful, too. Before the bridge was built, he had to stay home from work for weeks at a time whenever the river was high. “We were so isolated before,” he says. 

Residents say there is still much to be done. The bridge is not large enough for cars or trucks to cross. During the rainy season, the dirt road leading up to the new bridge fills with mud. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Arfa scrolls through a long list of messages on his phone from people who have reached out with requests for projects in their own towns. He remains undaunted. 

“If everyone does something small, we can do it all,” he explains.

Ahmed Ellali contributed to this report.

Reuters

President Joe Biden walks into the Oval Office, May 6.

Leaders of the Democratic Party are now debating whether to ask U.S. President Joe Biden not to run again based on his performance in Thursday night’s debate with Donald Trump. They are correct in one respect. Asking him is preferable to forcing his exit, if that is what the party seeks. Yet they can also take a cue from Jill Biden. Last year, the first lady hinted that her husband has options other than being president.

“It’s Joe’s decision,” she told CNN. “And we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re there.”

The idea of not setting limits on Mr. Biden’s future reminds us of the late actor Glenda Jackson. After decades of working in film and theater, she went on to a successful career as a politician, only to return to the theater at age 82 playing King Lear on Broadway for eight shows a week. When asked by The New York Times if she feared getting older, she replied, “The essential you is on the inside, it stays the same.”

As the average life span has risen, views have expanded about the potential of older people to keep contributing. “We’ve added a couple of decades, essentially an entire generation, onto our lives, and we haven’t, kind of, socio-culturally figured out how to handle that,” geriatrician Louise Aronson told CBS News.

Dr. Aronson believes public anxiety about aging leaders reflects a fear of aging itself. She suggested in a Wall Street Journal column that people should instead “create the kind of world we want to be old in, one of opportunities and recognition of competence at all stages of life.”

Mr. Biden may decide to stay in the race, as is very possible in coming days and weeks. But if he does bow out as a candidate, it need not be a retirement but rather a “rewirement.”  When George Washington stepped down as military commander in 1783 at age 51, he thought of himself as “gray” and “almost blind.” Yet he went on to be president for two terms. Then at age 66, he agreed to serve in the military again, Maurizio Valsania, a history professor at the University of Turin, wrote for The Conversation.

Had Mr. Biden lived in that age, stated Dr. Valsania, “his value would have likely outweighed his deficits in the eyes” of a country that was “aware of the wisdom that certain old leaders could still provide.” Such wisdom need not be confined to the curved walls of the Oval Office.