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Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old woman from Georgia who had been declared brain-dead in February 2025, spent 16 weeks on life support while doctors worked to keep her body functioning well enough to support her developing fetus.

(THE CONVERSATION) — Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old woman from Georgia who had been declared brain-dead in February 2025, spent 16 weeks on life support while doctors worked to keep her body functioning well enough to support her developing fetus. On June 13, 2025, her premature baby, named Chance, was born via cesarean section at 25 weeks.

Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she suffered multiple blood clots in her brain. Her story gained public attention when her mother criticized doctors’ decision to keep her on a ventilator without the family’s consent. Smith’s mother has said that doctors told the family the decision was made to align with Georgia’s LIFE Act, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and bolsters the legal standing of fetal personhood. A statement released by the hospital also cites Georgia’s abortion law.

“I’m not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy,” Smith’s mother told a local television station. “But I’m saying we should have had a choice.”

The LIFE Act is one of several state laws that have passed across the U.S. since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision invalidated constitutional protections for abortion. Although Georgia’s attorney general denied that the LIFE Act applied to Smith, there’s little doubt that it invites ethical and legal uncertainty when a woman dies while pregnant.

Smith’s case has swiftly become the focus of a reproductive rights political firestorm characterized by two opposing viewpoints. For some, it reflects demeaning governmental overreach that quashes women’s bodily autonomy. For others it illustrates the righteous sacrifice of motherhood.

In my work as a gender and technology studies scholar, I have cataloged and studied postmortem pregnancies like Smith’s since 2016. In my view, Smith’s story doesn’t fit straightforwardly into abortion politics. Instead, it points to the need for a more nuanced ethical approach that does not frame a mother and child as adversaries in a medical, legal or political context.

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Birth after death

For centuries, Catholic dogma and Western legal precedent have mandated immediate cesarean section when a pregnant woman died after quickening, the point when fetal movement becomes discernible. But technological advances now make it possible sometimes for a fetus to continue gestating in place when the mother is brain-dead, or “dead by neurological criteria”– a widely accepted definition of death that first emerged in the 1950s.

The first brain death during pregnancy in which the fetus was delivered after time on life support, more accurately called organ support, occurred in 1981. The process is extraordinarily intensive and invasive, because the loss of brain function impedes many physiological processes. Health teams, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, must stabilize the bodies of “functionally decapitated” pregnant women to buy more time for fetal development. This requires vital organ support, ventilation, nutritional supplements, antibiotics and constant monitoring. Outcomes are highly uncertain.

Smith’s 112-day stint on organ support ranks third in length for a postmortem pregnancy, with the longest being 123 days. Hers is also the earliest ever gestational age from which the procedure has been attempted. Because time on organ support can vary widely, and because there is no established minimum fetal age considered too early to intervene, a fetus could theoretically be deemed viable at any point in pregnancy.

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Postmortem pregnancy as gender-based violence

Over the past 50 years, critics of postmortem pregnancy have argued that it constitutes gender-based violence and violates bodily integrity in ways that organ donation does not. Some have compared it with Nazi pronatalist policies. Others have attributed the practice to systemic sexism and racism in medicine. Postmortem pregnancy can also compound intimate partner violence by giving brain-dead women’s murderers decision-making authority when they are the fetus’s next of kin.

Fetal personhood laws complicate end-of-life decision-making in ways that many consider violent too. As I have seen in my own research, when the fetus is considered a legal person, women’s wishes may be assumed, debated in court or committee, or set aside entirely, nearly always in favor of the fetus.

From the perspective of reproductive rights advocates, postmortem pregnancy is the bottom of a slippery slope down which anti-abortion sentiment has led America. It obliterates women’s autonomy, pitting living and dead women against doctors, legislators and sometimes their own families, and weaponizing their own fetuses against them.

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A medical perspective on rights

Viewed through a medical lens, however, postmortem pregnancy is not violent or violating, but an act of repair. Although care teams have responsibilities to both mother and fetus, a pregnant woman’s brain death means she cannot be physically harmed and her rights cannot be violated to the same degree as a fetus with the potential for life.

Medical practitioners are conditioned to prioritize life over death, motivating a commitment to salvage something from a tragedy and try to partially restore a family. The high-stakes world of emergency medicine makes protecting life reflexive and medical interventions automatic. Once fetal life is detected, as one hospital spokesperson put it in a 1976 news article in The Boston Globe, “What else could you do?”

This response does not necessarily stem from conscious sexism or anti-abortion sentiment, but from reverence for vulnerable patients. If physicians declare a pregnant woman brain-dead, patienthood often automatically transfers to the fetus needing rescue. No matter its age and despite its survival being dependent on machines, just like its mother, the fetus is entirely animate. 
Who or what counts as a legal person with privileges and protections might be a political or philosophical determination, but life is a matter of biological fact and within the doctors’ purview.

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An ethics of anti-opposition

Both of the above perspectives have validity, but neither accounts for postmortem pregnancy’s ethical and biological complexity.

First, setting mother against fetus, with the rights of one endangering the rights of the other, does not match pregnancy’s lived reality of “two bodies, sutured,” as the cultural scholar Lauren Berlant put it.

Even the Supreme Court recognized this entangled duality in their 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade, which established both constitutional protections for abortion and a governmental obligation to protect fetal life. Whether a fetus is considered a legal person or not, they wrote, pregnant women and fetuses “cannot be isolated in their privacy” – meaning that reproductive rights issues must strike a balance, however tenuous, between maternal and fetal interests. To declare postmortem pregnancy unequivocally violent or a loss of the “right to choose” fails to recognize the complexity of choice in a highly politicized medical landscape.

Second, maternal-fetal competition muddles the right course of action. In the U.S., competent patients are not compelled to engage in medical care they would rather avoid, even if it kills them, or to stay on life support to preserve organs for donation. But when a fetus is treated as an independent patient, exceptions could be made to those medical standards if the fetus’s interests override the mother’s.

For example, pregnancy disrupts standard determination of death. To protect the fetus, care teams increasingly skip a necessary diagnostic for brain death called apnea testing, which involves momentarily removing the ventilator to test the respiratory centers of the brain stem. In these cases, maternal brain death cannot be confirmed until after delivery. Multiple instances of vaginal deliveries after brain death also remain unexplained, given that the brain coordinates mechanisms of vaginal labor. All in all, it’s not always clear women in these cases are entirely dead.

Ultimately, women like Adriana Smith and their fetuses are inseparable and persist in a technologically defined state of in-betweenness. I’d argue that postmortem pregnancies, therefore, need new bioethical standards that center women’s beliefs about their bodies and a dignified death. This might involve recognizing pregnancy’s unique ambiguities in advance directives, questioning default treatment pathways that may require harm be done to one in order to save another, or considering multiple definitions of clinical and legal death.

In my view, it is possible to adapt our ethical standards in a way that honors all beings in these exceptional circumstances, without privileging either “choice” or “life,” mother or fetus.

The Supreme Court tends to save its blockbuster orders for the last day of the term – and 2025 was no exception.

By Charles J. Russo
University of Dayton

(THE CONVERSATION) — The Supreme Court tends to save its blockbuster orders for the last day of the term – and 2025 was no exception.

Among the important decisions handed down June 27, 2025, was Mahmoud v. Taylor – a case of particular interest to me, because I teach education law. Mahmoud, I believe, may become one of the court’s most consequential rulings on parental rights.

An interfaith coalition of Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Catholic parents in Montgomery County, Maryland – including Tamer Mahmoud, for whom the case is named – questioned the school board’s refusal to allow them to opt their young children out of lessons using picture books with LGBTQ+ characters. Ruling in favor of the parents, the court found that the board violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion by requiring their children to sit through lessons with materials inconsistent with their faiths.

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Case history

The parents in Mahmoud challenged the use of certain storybooks that the board had approved for use in preschool and elementary school. “Pride Puppy!” for example – a book the schools later removed – portrays a family whose pet gets lost at a LGBTQ+ Pride parade, with each page devoted to a letter of the alphabet. The book’s “search and find” list of words directs readers to look for terms in the pictures, including “(drag) queen” and “king,” “leather” and “lip ring.” Other materials included stories about same-sex marriage, a transgender child, and nonbinary bathroom signs.

Initially, school administrators agreed to allow opt-outs for students whose parents objected to the materials. A day later, however, educators changed their minds. School officials cited concerns about absenteeism, the feasibility of accommodating opt-out requests, and a desire to avoid stigmatizing LGBTQ+ students or families.

In August 2023, a federal trial court rejected the parents’ claim that officials had violated their fundamental due process right to direct the care, custody and education of their children. The following year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed in favor of the board, finding that officials did not violate the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religious beliefs, as protected by the First Amendment.

On appeal, a 6-3 Supreme Court reversed in favor of the parents. Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the court’s opinion, was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, plus Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

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Supreme Court

In brief, the court held that by denying the parental requests to opt their children out of instruction inconsistent with their beliefs, school officials violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

Alito largely grounded the court’s rationale in a dispute from 1925, Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary, and even more heavily on 1972’s Wisconsin v. Yoder. Both cases recognize the primacy of parental rights to direct the education of their children. According to Pierce’s famous dictum, “the child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

In Yoder, Amish parents – an Anabaptist Christian community that avoids using many modern technologies – objected to sending their children to school after eighth grade because this would have violated their religious beliefs. The justices unanimously agreed with the parents that their children received all of the education they needed in their communities. The justices added that requiring the children to attend high school would have violated the parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing.

Accordingly, the court acknowledged that the parental right “to guide the religious future and education of their children” was “established beyond debate.”

Similarly, in Mahmoud the court declared that “the Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion.”

Thomas agreed fully with the court, yet wrote a separate concurrence, which emphasized “an important implication of this decision for schools across the country.” Citing Yoder, Thomas contended that rather than support inclusion, the board’s policy “imposes conformity with a view that undermines parents’ religious beliefs, and thus interferes with the parents’ right to ‘direct the religious upbringing of their children.’”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, feared “the result will be chaos for this Nation’s public schools. Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools.”

She maintained that “simply being exposed to beliefs contrary to your own” does not violate a person’s free exercise rights. Insulating children from different ideas, she wrote, denies them of an experience that is crucial for democracy: “practice living in our multicultural society.”

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Implications

After the decision was handed down, Montgomery County’s Board of Education issued a statement promising to “analyze the Supreme Court decision and develop next steps in alignment with today’s decision, and as importantly, our values.”

Mahmoud raises challenging questions about the scope or reach of how far parents can question curricular content.

On the one hand, parents should not be able to micromanage curricular content via the “heckler’s veto,” because this can lead to larger issues. Moreover, while Mahmoud concerns religious rights, what happens if parents question teachings based on another type of sincerely held belief – discussing war if they are pacifist, for example, or capitalism if they are socialists? While Mahmoud dealt with free-exercise rights, it may open the door to other types of First Amendment challenges from parents wishing to exempt their children from lessons.

On the other hand, Mahmoud highlights the need to take legitimate parental concerns into consideration. While educators typically control instruction, how can they be respectful of parents’ rights as primary caregivers of their children when conflicts arise?

Mahmoud may go a long way in defining parents’ free-exercise rights in public schools. Still, such disputes are likely far from over in America’s increasingly diverse religious culture.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, nationality tends to be defined by a set of legal parameters. This may involve birthplace, parental citizenship or procedures for naturalization.

(THE CONVERSATION) In the U.S. and elsewhere, nationality tends to be defined by a set of legal parameters. This may involve birthplace, parental citizenship or procedures for naturalization.

Yet in many Americans’ minds these objective notions of citizenship are a little fuzzy, as social and developmental psychologists like me have documented. Psychologically, some people may just seem a little more American than others, based on factors such as race, ethnicity or language.

Reinforced by identity politics, this results in different ideas about who is welcome, who is tolerated and who is made to not feel welcome at all.

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How race affects who belongs

Many people who explicitly endorse egalitarian ideals, such as the notion that all Americans are deserving of the rights of citizenship regardless of race, still implicitly harbor prejudices over who’s “really” American.

In a classic 2005 study, American adults across racial groups were fastest to associate the concept of “American” with white people. White, Black and Asian American adults were asked whether they endorse equality for all citizens. They were then presented with an implicit association test in which participants matched different faces with the categories “American” or “foreign.” They were told that every face was a U.S. citizen.

White and Asian participants responded most quickly in matching the white faces with “American,” even when they initially expressed egalitarian values. Black Americans implicitly saw Black and white faces as equally American – though they too implicitly viewed Asian faces as being less American.

Similarly, in a 2010 study, several groups of American adults implicitly considered British actress Kate Winslet to be more American than U.S.-born Lucy Liu – even though they were aware of their actual nationalities.

Importantly, the development of prejudice can even include feelings that disadvantage one’s own group. This can be seen when Asian Americans who took part in the studies found white faces to be more American than Asian faces. A related 2010 study found that Hispanic participants were also more likely to associate whiteness with “Americanness.”

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Language and nationality

These biased views of nationality begin at a young age – and spoken language can often be a primary identifier of who is in which group, as I show in my book “How You Say It.”

Although the U.S. traditionally has not had a national language, many Americans feel that English is critical to being a “true American.” And the president recently released an executive order claiming to designate English as the official language.

In a 2017 study conducted by my research team and led by psychologist Jasmine DeJesus, we gave children a simple task: After viewing a series of faces that varied in skin color and listening to those people speak, children were asked to guess their nationality. The faces were either white- or Asian-looking and spoke either English or Korean. “Is this person American or Korean?” we asked.

We recruited three groups of children for the study: white American children who spoke only English, children in South Korea who spoke only Korean, and Korean American children who spoke both languages. The ages of the children were either 5-6 or 9-10.

The vast majority of the younger monolingual children identified nationality with language, describing English speakers as American and Korean speakers as Korean – even though both groups were divided equally between people who looked white or Asian.

As for the younger bilingual children, they had parents whose first language was Korean, not English, and who lived in the United States. Yet, just like the monolingual children, they thought that the English speakers, and not the Korean speakers, were the Americans.

As they age, however, children increasingly view racial characteristics as an integral part of nationality. By the age of 9, we found that children were considering the white English speakers to be the most American, compared with Korean speakers who looked white or English speakers who looked Asian.

Interestingly, this impact was more pronounced in the older children we recruited in South Korea.

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Deep roots

So it seems that for children and adults alike, assessments of what it means to be American hinge on certain traits that have nothing to do with the actual legal requirements for citizenship. Neither whiteness nor fluency in English is a requirement to become American.

And this bias has consequences. Research has found that the degree to which people link whiteness with Americanness is related to their discriminatory behaviors in hiring or questioning others’ loyalty.

That we find these biases in children does not mean they are in any way absolute. We know that children begin to pick up on these types of biased cultural cues and values at a young age. It does mean, however, that these biases have deep roots in our psychology.

Understanding that biases exist may make it easier to correct them. So Americans celebrating the Fourth of July perhaps should ponder what it means to be an American – and whether social biases distort your beliefs about who belongs.

Richard David Weber (“Dick”) of Bloomfield Hills, passed away on June 24, at the age of 87 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. He died peacefully in the embrace of his loving wife of 56 years, Mary Ellen Weber, and their five children.

Richard David Weber (“Dick”) of Bloomfield Hills, passed away on June 24, at the age of 87 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. He died peacefully in the embrace of his loving wife of 56 years, Mary Ellen Weber, and their five children.

Weber was born in Detroit, Michigan, on January 4, 1938, to the late Paul and Ramona Weber. The young family soon moved to Lansing, where Paul served in the administration of Governor G. Mennen Williams. Dick graduated in 1956 from Lansing Resurrection High School (now Lansing Catholic Central), where he was a top student and a star athlete. He captained both the basketball and football teams and was especially proud of winning the city championship in basketball during his senior year. Weber continued his basketball and scholarly pursuits at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, where he earned four varsity letters, and the Joseph Baker Student Athlete Award before graduating in 1960.

Shortly after graduation, Weber enrolled in law school and received his law degree from Wayne State University Law School in1963. It was during law school that he met his first love, Donna Marie Maher. They were married in 1962 and were blessed with three children. Tragically, Donna died unexpectedly in the summer of 1966. 

Everything changed a few years later when he met the love of his life, Mary Ellen Kotcher. They were married on June 21, 1969, at St. Paul’s in Grosse Pointe. They were blessed with two additional children which made their family complete. 

Weber spent his entire 42-year legal career at the Detroit law firm that eventually bore his name: Kerr, Russell, & Weber. For the last 20 years of his career, he served as the firm’s managing partner. He was an experienced and skilled litigator, with a focus on commercial and professional liability. He represented a broad variety of clients, including companies operating in the manufacturing, 
technology, and construction industries, along with medical, dental, and engineering professionals. 

Weber served as General Counsel to the Michigan State Medical Society and the Michigan Dental Association for many years. He authored numerous articles in legal publications and was instrumental in drafting several of the medical tort laws in Michigan that remain today. He also took great pride representing the Michigan Catholic Conference for decades.

Weber was passionate about fly fishing for wild trout and hunting big game in beautiful places. He loved recounting adventurous tales of moose hunting in Canada, elk hunting in Montana, and catching giant tarpon in Boca Grande, Florida. He treasured spending time with his family at Windigo, the family hunting and fishing camp built by his father in northern Michigan many years ago. His favorite of all was dry fly fishing for big browns on the Rifle and AuSable Rivers with his dad, brothers, sons and grandsons.

Weber is survived by his beloved wife of 56 years, Mary Ellen Weber; his five children: Stephanie Walbridge (Jay), Rich Weber (Mary), Craig Weber (Sue), Katie Walther (Pete), and Mike Weber (Kristen); his dear sister, Susan Chrysler (Bob); his sisters-in-law: Mary Weber, Dorothy Wasinger (Steve), Ann Carolan (Terry), and Deanna Maher; his brother-in-law, Chuck Kotcher;seventeen grandchildren: Joe Walbridge, Sarah Naylor, Jake Walbridge, Elizabeth Weber, Margaret Barbier, Caroline Weber, Annie Walbridge Riccio, Kurt Weber, Janie Weber, John Paul Weber, Grace Walther, Charlie Weber, Megan Walther, Allyson Weber, Mac Walther, Chloe Weber, and Tess Weber; and one great-grandchild, Charlotte Walbridge. In addition to his first wife, Donna Maher Weber, he was predeceased by his parents, Paul and Ramona Weber, and his brothers, Jack and Paul Weber.

Funeral mass will take place Monday, June 30, 11 a.m. at St. Hugo of the Hills Stone Chapel in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Visitation at church begins 10 a.m. Funeral arrangements are being coordinated by A.J. Desmond & Sons Funeral Directors. 

In lieu of flowers, donations to Gigi’s Playhouse Detroit, gigisplayhouse.org/detroit, are suggested.

Owen James Cummings

Owen J. Cummings passed away on June 24 at the age of 91. Cummings was the founder of the law firm of Cummings, McClorey, Davis, & Acho PLC.

After graduating from Detroit College of Law, Cummings became a solo practitioner at Owen J. Cummings, Attorney at Law in 1964. At that time, his law office was located on Five Mile Road in Livonia. 
As the firm steadily added more attorneys and support staff, the practice moved to a large three-level building built on the northwest corner of Schoolcraft and Stark in Livonia in the 1970s. Over time, CMDA grew to become the largest law firm in western Wayne County.

The firm’s Livonia office continued to grow and relocated to its current location on College Parkway in Livonia in 2017. Cummings reluctantly agreed that relocating to the firm’s present location was the correct business decision, although it was not easy for him to walk away from a building where he had proudly served thousands of clients for many decades. The move was a bit easier on him when he realized his new office had the best view of Schoolcraft College’s campus. Cummings was a generous donor to the college and always very proud of the college’s accomplishments. 

One of the firm’s numerous accomplishments is the formation of Michigan Municipal Risk Management Authority (MMRMA). In 1980, Cummings and Bernard McClorey, a grade school friend and co-founder of the firm, created an organization that joined local governmental entities together to secure insurance coverage that promised stability of premium and far-reaching protection. MMRMA started with three Michigan municipalities. Today, MMRMA is the largest liability and property public entity risk pool in Michigan with more than 400 members. 

Ronald Acho, co-founder and equity partner of the firm, shared his thoughts on Cummings, who he, and many others, affectionately referred to as OJ. “When I met OJ as a young man, little did I know that he would be my mentor and friend for over 50 years,” said Acho. “He had such an outstanding reputation with judges and clients that I became the beneficiary of that reputation. At times it was funny because he would ask me to handle a client matter for him, and his clients would ask ‘Can I have Owen instead?’ Nonetheless, he was the heart, soul, and consciousness of the firm. Rarely in the legal profession do we find people as great as OJ.”

Cummings retired from practicing law several years ago and greatly enjoyed spending his retirement years with the people he cherished most: his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and his loving wife of 68 years, Ruth.

Visitation will be held on Sunday, June 29, at 2 p.m. at Harry J. Will Funeral Home, 37000 W Six Mile Road in Livonia. A scripture service will be held at 7 p.m.

Funeral in state will be held on Monday, June 30, at 10 a.m. at St. Edith Church, 15089 Newburgh Rd. in Livonia. The funeral mass will be held at 11 a.m.

American democracy runs on trust, and that trust is cracking.

(THE CONVERSATION) American democracy runs on trust, and that trust is cracking.

Nearly half of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, question whether elections are conducted fairly. Some voters accept election results only when their side wins. The problem isn’t just political polarization – it’s a creeping erosion of trust in the machinery of democracy itself.

Commentators blame ideological tribalism, misinformation campaigns and partisan echo chambers for this crisis of trust. But these explanations miss a critical piece of the puzzle: a growing unease with the digital infrastructure that now underpins nearly every aspect of how Americans vote.

The digital transformation of American elections has been swift and sweeping. Just two decades ago, most people voted using mechanical levers or punch cards. Today, over 95% of ballots are counted electronically. Digital systems have replaced poll books, taken over voter identity verification processes and are integrated into registration, counting, auditing and voting systems.

This technological leap has made voting more accessible and efficient, and sometimes more secure. But these new systems are also more complex. And that complexity plays into the hands of those looking to undermine democracy.

In recent years, authoritarian regimes have refined a chillingly effective strategy to chip away at Americans’ faith in democracy by relentlessly sowing doubt about the tools U.S. states use to conduct elections. It’s a sustained campaign to fracture civic faith and make Americans believe that democracy is rigged, especially when their side loses.

This is not cyberwar in the traditional sense. There’s no evidence that anyone has managed to break into voting machines and alter votes. But cyberattacks on election systems don’t need to succeed to have an effect. Even a single failed intrusion, magnified by sensational headlines and political echo chambers, is enough to shake public trust. By feeding into existing anxiety about the complexity and opacity of digital systems, adversaries create fertile ground for disinformation and conspiracy theories.

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Testing cyber fears

To test this dynamic, we launched a study to uncover precisely how cyberattacks corroded trust in the vote during the 2024 U.S. presidential race. We surveyed more than 3,000 voters before and 
after election day, testing them using a series of fictional but highly realistic breaking news reports depicting cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. We randomly assigned participants to watch different types of news reports: some depicting cyberattacks on election systems, others on unrelated infrastructure such as the power grid, and a third, neutral control group.

The results, which are under peer review, were both striking and sobering. Mere exposure to reports of cyberattacks undermined trust in the electoral process – regardless of partisanship. Voters who supported the losing candidate experienced the greatest drop in trust, with two-thirds of Democratic voters showing heightened skepticism toward the election results.

But winners too showed diminished confidence. Even though most Republican voters, buoyed by their victory, accepted the overall security of the election, the majority of those who viewed news reports about cyberattacks remained suspicious.

The attacks didn’t even have to be related to the election. Even cyberattacks against critical infrastructure such as utilities had spillover effects. Voters seemed to extrapolate: “If the power grid can be hacked, why should I believe that voting machines are secure?”

Strikingly, voters who used digital machines to cast their ballots were the most rattled. For this group of people, belief in the accuracy of the vote count fell by nearly twice as much as that of voters who cast their ballots by mail and who didn’t use any technology. Their firsthand experience with the sorts of systems being portrayed as vulnerable personalized the threat.

It’s not hard to see why. When you’ve just used a touchscreen to vote, and then you see a news report about a digital system being breached, the leap in logic isn’t far.

Our data suggests that in a digital society, perceptions of trust – and distrust – are fluid, contagious and easily activated. The cyber domain isn’t just about networks and code. It’s also about emotions: fear, vulnerability and uncertainty.

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Firewall of trust

Does this mean we should scrap electronic voting machines? Not necessarily.

Every election system, digital or analog, has flaws. And in many respects, today’s high-tech systems have solved the problems of the past with voter-verifiable paper ballots. Modern voting machines reduce human error, increase accessibility and speed up the vote count. No one misses the hanging chads of 2000.

But technology, no matter how advanced, cannot instill legitimacy on its own. It must be paired with something harder to code: public trust. In an environment where foreign adversaries amplify every flaw, cyberattacks can trigger spirals of suspicion. It is no longer enough for elections to be secure - voters must also perceive them to be secure.

That’s why public education surrounding elections is now as vital to election security as firewalls and encrypted networks. It’s vital that voters understand how elections are run, how they’re protected and how failures are caught and corrected. Election officials, civil society groups and researchers can teach how audits work, host open-source verification demonstrations and ensure that high-tech electoral processes are comprehensible to voters.

We believe this is an essential investment in democratic resilience. But it needs to be proactive, not reactive. By the time the doubt takes hold, it’s already too late.

Just as crucially, we are convinced that it’s time to rethink the very nature of cyber threats. People often imagine them in military terms. But that framework misses the true power of these threats. The danger of cyberattacks is not only that they can destroy infrastructure or steal classified secrets, but that they chip away at societal cohesion, sow anxiety and fray citizens’ confidence in democratic institutions. These attacks erode the very idea of truth itself by making people doubt that anything can be trusted.

If trust is the target, then we believe that elected officials should start to treat trust as a national asset: something to be built, renewed and defended. Because in the end, elections aren’t just about votes being counted – they’re about people believing that those votes count.

And in that belief lies the true firewall of democracy.

Katie Workman
Associated Press

On a recent visit to see my son at the University of California, Davis, I wandered into a lab at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science … as one does. A bunch of students were preparing for a tasting to evaluate some of the strawberry breeds they have been developing.

My food nerd heart swelled, and for the first time in decades, I missed school.

When strawberries are in season, it is incumbent upon us to make the most of those fleeting weeks.

And I can't think of a better way to put them to use than in a classic strawberry shortcake. If you can find wild strawberries, or at least really flavorful ones from a farmers market (or if you are getting your PhD in food studies with a concentration in strawberries in California), this treat is nothing short of heavenly.

There is nothing difficult about strawberry shortcake. A few components come together in a gorgeous stack of sweetness.

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First, the biscuits

I like my shortcake biscuits slightly sweet, but not overly sugary. The natural sweetness in the sliced strawberries will be augmented with a bit of sugar to amp up those ruby red juices. Plus there's the whipped cream, which can be as sweet or restrained as you like.

Cut out the biscuits as close together as you can, with as little dough left behind on the cutting board as possible. Yes, you can roll the scraps up and cut out another couple of circles, but the more you handle the dough the less tender it becomes.

The tops of the biscuits are brushed with a bit of half-and-half or milk and sprinkled with sugar before they go into the oven, resulting in a beautifully browned and slightly crunchy top.
Make biscuits with some height to them, as you will be cutting them horizontally and then filling them with the strawberries and cream.

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The layers

I like a double-decker strawberry shortcake, which definitely requires a knife and fork.

To assemble: The bottom half of the biscuit goes first, then some whipped cream, then strawberries. Then the top half of the biscuit. And then, yes, more whipped cream and more strawberries.

The addition of sour cream to the whipped cream is a pastry chef hack that I learned over the years. It adds more richness, stability and body to the whipped cream, and gives the whole shebang a whole other layer of lushness.

Strawberry Shortcake
Serves 6

Ingredients:

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted

6 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

3/4 cup half-and-half or whole milk

2 tablespoons melted butter

2 pints (4 cups) fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced

For the Whipped Cream:

1 cup heavy cream, chilled

2 tablespoons sour cream, crème fraiche or mascarpone (optional)

2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Very lightly flour a clean counter or work surface.

2. Combine the flour with 2 tablespoons of the granulated sugar, the baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or use your fingers to rub it into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Or, pulse the butter into the flour mixture in a food processor.

3. Add the 3/4 cup half-and-half or milk and stir until just barely combined. Turn the mixture onto the lightly floured surface. Use your hands to lightly mix the dough until it barely holds together. Pat it out into a circle or a rectangle 1/2-inch thick.

4. Use a 3-inch round biscuit or cookie cutter to cut out the shortcakes, keeping them as close together as possible to minimize extra dough. Use a sharp biscuit cutter rather than a glass, and press down and pull straight up, without twisting; twisting will hinder their rising as they bake. If you dip the biscuit cutter in flour between each biscuit cutting, it will help prevent sticking. Collect the scraps and re-pat them out into a ½-inch disk, and cut out another 2 or 4 circles when you are done. Try to handle the dough as little as possible.

5. Butter a baking sheet or spray it with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer half the biscuits to the sheet. Brush the tops with a bit of the melted butter. Top the butter-brushed dough with the remaining cut-out biscuits. Brush the tops with a bit of milk or half-and-half. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of sugar over the shortcakes.

6. Bake for about 15 minutes, until light golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

7. Meanwhile, put the berries in a medium bowl and sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar, or to taste. Toss with a fork, and lightly crush some of the berries so you have some different textures going on and some of the juices are released. Let the berries sit for at least 15 minutes.

8. Once the berries are macerating, make the whipped cream. Place the heavy cream, sour cream, confectioners' sugar and vanilla in a clean bowl (if you chill it first, the cream will whip up faster.)

9. Use a whisk or a handheld electric mixer on high speed to beat the cream until it starts to form stiff peaks. Refrigerate until ready to use.

10. Just before serving, cut each biscuit crosswise. Place the bottom halves on plates, layer on some strawberries, then some whipped cream. Replace the top of the shortcake, then spoon over some more strawberries and whipped cream. Serve immediately.