Mark Schiefelbein/AP

The Supreme Court, shown on June 27, in Washington, on Thursday issued a 6-3 ruling that Idaho doctors may perform abortions in certain medical emergencies.

Doctors in Idaho can perform abortions in certain emergency situations without running afoul of the state’s strict abortion ban, at least for now, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a procedural but emotionally fractured decision.

The 6-3 dismissal of Moyle v. U.S. comes as the country continues to grapple with the legal and medical fallout from the court striking down a constitutional right to abortion two years ago. The majority's decision on Thursday to dismiss the case as improvidently granted surprised some court watchers expecting the justices to further restrict abortion access. However, that surprise mostly landed on Wednesday, when the decision was briefly available on the court’s website and was spotted by Bloomberg reporters.

The unsigned, one-sentence per curiam opinion does not resolve the central question in the case: Does a federal law requiring doctors to perform abortions in certain medical emergencies preempt Idaho’s law, which allows a doctor to perform the procedure only to save the life of the mother? All nine justices put their names to at least one of four separate opinions that accompanied the decision, making clear the sharp divisions on the court over that question.

And this issue, along with other abortion questions, is likely to return to the Supreme Court soon. A majority of the justices don’t appear keen to face them, however.

“It’s pretty clear that ... there are issues in the states, either between the states or between the states and the federal government, that will require Supreme Court intervention,” says Naomi Cahn, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School.

“The court is splintered on this issue,” she adds. And “you just see [it] deferring any further consideration of abortion.”

Kyle Green/AP/File

Jennifer Adkins and her husband, John, from Caldwell, Idaho, are suing the state after they had to travel to Oregon for medical care after their fetus was diagnosed with a fatal abnormality that threatened Ms. Adkins’ health. On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that doctors in Idaho may continue to perform abortions in certain medical emergencies.

What constitutes a medical emergency?

The central question in Moyle is whether a provision of Idaho’s abortion ban is trumped by a conflicting federal law. The case dates from the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to abortion in the 2022 case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.

In the ensuing months, Idaho passed a law prohibiting abortion in almost all circumstances. One exception held that a doctor could perform an abortion if it “was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.” Before that law could take effect, the Biden administration sued the state, claiming that Idaho’s law conflicted with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The government says the federal law requires a doctor to perform an abortion if they believe it’s necessary to “stabiliz[e]” a pregnant woman’s “emergency medical condition.”

A district court judge ruled in favor of the Biden administration, and stayed that provision of the law pending further appeals. An appeals court declined to put that ruling on hold while appeals continued. Before the appeals court issued a ruling on the merits, as is customary, the Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal by Idaho and allowed the law to go into effect in full while it considered the case.

The high court’s maneuvers have caused significant confusion on the ground. For five months doctors in Idaho have not known if or when they can legally perform abortions. The state’s largest hospital system said that in the three months after the court let Idaho’s abortion ban take full, temporary effect, it had to airlift six patients to other states for emergency care. In the 12 months prior, they had only needed to airlift one patient.

“We don't do elective abortions. We treat women who are having pregnancy-related emergencies,” says Jessica Kroll, an emergency medical doctor at St. Alphonse Health System in Boise.

It’s “really strange,” she adds. “Emergency [doctors] are now the center of the abortion battle.”

On Thursday, the justices effectively let both laws temporarily take effect. They punted to the appeals court the preemption question, but not without writing over 40 pages of separate opinions displaying pointed disagreements that will likely need to be resolved in the coming years.

“It's not a win for abortion rights in any kind of meaningful sense,” says Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.

Abortion access in Idaho may change in the short term, but the case is effectively “starting all over at zero,” she adds. “There’s a lot of chaos that's been created in the aftermath of Dobbs. There's a lot of uncertainty about what physicians can and cannot do. And this isn't going to clarify anything.”

So what, if anything, changed?

The clearest explanation for Thursday’s unsigned per curiam opinion can probably be found in a concurring opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

In her concurrence, Justice Barrett wrote that in the months after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, the facts changed to the point that there was no serious conflict left for the court to resolve.

“The parties’ [evolving] litigating positions have rendered the scope of the dispute unclear, at best,” she wrote. “I am now convinced that these cases are no longer appropriate for early resolution.”

Specifically, she noted the government’s claims during oral argument that federal conscience protections allow hospitals and doctors to refuse to perform abortions, even in the EMTALA context. She pointed to another government concession that EMTALA doesn’t require abortions as a means to stabilize a pregnant woman’s mental health.

On the other side, she noted concessions made by Idaho during oral argument that its abortion ban does permit abortions for certain specific medical conditions, even if the threat to the woman’s life isn’t imminent.

“Idaho represents that its exception is broader than the United States fears, and the United States represents that EMTALA’s requirement is narrower than Idaho fears,” wrote Justice Barrett.

“The dramatic narrowing of the dispute,” she added, means that “Idaho’s ability to enforce its law remains almost entirely intact.”

Some of her colleagues disputed, in strong terms, the notion that the dispute has been narrowed. In a dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, described the court’s “about-face” as “baffling.”

“Nothing legally relevant has occurred” since the court agreed to hear the case, he wrote, and the government’s preemption theory is “plainly unsound.”

The preemption question “is as ripe for decision as it ever will be,” he added. “Apparently, the court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents.”

Meanwhile, writing separately, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed that resolving the EMTALA preemption question “remains as imperative as ever.”

“Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay,” she wrote. “This court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation, and we have squandered it.”

Idaho “changed [its] tune about the exact types of medical care that fall in the gap between state and federal law,” she added.

“Some of my colleagues appear to view this convenient rhetorical maneuver as a material change that (also conveniently) reduces the conflict between state and federal law to the point that a ruling from this Court is no longer warranted,” she continued. “But the fundamentals of this dispute remain the same.”

Are the justices ready for another Dobbs?

On the actual preemption question, the justices divided into a triad. While Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch agreed that the Idaho law isn’t preempted by EMTALA, Justice Jackson and Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor concluded the opposite. In her concurrence, Justice Barrett posited that the two laws can co-exist.

How courts will come down on the issue is unclear, but the division between the justices – and some immediate reactions to the ruling – suggest that complex, confusing debates lie ahead. 

“It’s going to become continually clear that pro-life laws allow for women to get critical medical care,” says Stephen Billy, vice president for state affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

Meanwhile, in a statement, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said he “will continue my outreach to doctors and hospitals across Idaho to ensure that they understand what our law requires.”

What does this mean for doctors? And for pregnant women with medical complications? In Idaho, Thursday’s ruling has brought a degree of clarity to emergency rooms that they have been sorely lacking in the past five months, says Dr. Kroll, who is also president of the Idaho College of Emergency Physicians.

“We [were] on the phone with risk [management] and lawyers, while our patient right there needs immediate medical care, not legal mediation,” she recalls.

With the high court’s ruling “we get to go back to just taking care of patients [and] getting people appropriate standard of care,” she adds.

“The bad part of it is that it is like we're back in a waiting pattern again. ... It kind of puts me back on the edge of my seat.”

A federal appeals court will now pick up the Moyle case. Whatever that court decides may be appealed back to the Supreme Court. In a separate case out of Texas, the Biden administration is challenging a Texas abortion ban it claims is preempted by EMTALA.

Whether the high court has the appetite for resolving these issues is unclear, however. The justices heard two abortion cases this term – the other concerned an effort to ban a widely used abortion pill – and both cases were resolved on procedural grounds without confronting the more contentious merits questions.

“The court is really struggling with this issue,” says Professor Cahn. “Dobbs was a major decision. It simply might not be ready to issue another major decision like that.”

Makiya Seminera/AP/File

Students sit inside an encampment protest at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April 29, 2024. The university's board of trustees has since approved a change that would divert $2.3 million of diversity funding to go toward public safety and policing.

When trustees at North Carolina’s flagship public university voted last month to divert $2.3 million from diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to its police department they were pushing on an open door. In state capitals and on university boards, a conservative-led rollback of DEI policies and practices in higher education has gained fresh momentum after a tumultuous year of student protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. 

U.S. corporations are also cutting back on diversity initiatives and laying off DEI staff, following a wave of hiring and pledges after nationwide protests in 2020 over the murder of George Floyd. A LinkedIn study of senior executive hiring found that “chief diversity officer” was the fastest-growing category in 2020 and 2021 but fell off a cliff in 2022. At some Wall Street banks, the cooling interest in DEI and threat of litigation on grounds of reverse discrimination have led managers to stop prioritizing women and minority candidates in recruitment and promotions. 

To conservatives, and to some on the left, the push in recent years for greater diversity on campuses and in boardrooms has gone too far. They say it elevates racial and gender identities over individual merit, and imposes ideological boundaries, making DEI programs their own form of discrimination. Defenders argue that diversity should be a shared goal and that historic discrimination has produced inequities that require action. 

Even some supporters of efforts to serve a diverse student body welcome a recalibration of DEI policy. “There is some necessary element of correction that’s going on,” says Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “My hope is that we can get to a place where we have a reasonable balance between prioritizing diversity and prioritizing other things.”

The pushback on DEI policies comes a year after the Supreme Court ruled that race-conscious admissions of students at public and private universities were unconstitutional, upending how selective colleges and universities decide whom to admit. Conservative activists who filed this case and others have begun to put pressure on business leaders over their diversity initiatives. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court blocked a grant program for Black women entrepreneurs after a lawsuit claimed that it was discriminatory.  

Timothy D. Easley/AP

Members of the Kentucky House of Representatives listen during a floor discussion of a House bill in Frankfort, Feb. 1, 2024. The Kentucky House voted on March 15 to end funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public universities.

While pro-Palestinian protests and incidents of antisemitism have shined a spotlight on student politics, the pushback to DEI on campuses predates the war in Gaza. Conservative groups began circulating model anti-DEI legislation last year, part of a broader ideological battle over how issues like race, gender, and sexuality are taught. Republican lawmakers in 20 states have filed bills to restrict or ban DEI initiatives, and some have become law. 

One flash point has been the requirement for job applicants at selective universities to provide a diversity statement, which critics compare to an ideological loyalty pledge. Both Harvard’s largest faculty and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently said such statements are no longer mandatory, joining some public universities that have ended their use, often under political pressure.  

Impact on campus 

Still, even as universities scramble to revise their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, the immediate impact on campus culture may be limited. 

On the right, the idea that DEI stands in the way of free speech, and imposes progressive groupthink, has become a mantra. But while one study found a positive correlation between larger DEI bureaucracies and reduced tolerance of conservative speakers, the author, a political scientist, argued that the effect was likely too small to move the needle on illiberal attitudes among students. Social justice activists often arrive on campus armed with political ideals that percolate online, not in the classroom. 

Cutting DEI programs also offers a way to reduce head count at universities that face budget pressure after a long period of expansion in administrative spending. While DEI offices only represent a small percentage of this spending, they present a tempting target. 

“There’s a real need to tackle administrative bloat as well as mission creep at universities,” says Marty Kotis, a trustee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He applauds UNC-Chapel Hill’s decision to divert DEI funding to public safety and a separate vote on May 23 by the governors of the broader 17-institution UNC system to rewrite its diversity and inclusion policy. 

The new policy, which replaced a 2019 one that required all schools to submit an annual diversity and inclusion report, requires that UNC schools must “ensure equality of all persons & viewpoints.” 

Mr. Kotis and other conservatives say identity-based DEI programs for certain groups and not others can undermine cohesiveness on campuses and discourage intermingling. “Sometimes when you bring people in and you say you want them to learn and come together, then you separate them into these separate groups ... it can create more divisiveness,” he says. 

John Hanna/AP

Students walk down Jayhawk Boulevard through the main University of Kansas campus, April 12, 2024, in Lawrence. The Kansas Board of Regents, which oversees higher education, has drafted a new policy against requiring diversity, equity, and inclusion statements on applications for students and those seeking jobs or promotions.

Diversity officials say this misconstrues their work and misses the bigger picture, which is that access to higher education isn’t equally distributed. An emphasis on equity, as opposed to on equality, is a way to give students from communities that are underrepresented a chance to participate fully and to flourish, in ways that a meritocracy, or what some call colorblind admissions, doesn’t always allow. 

“We can provide them the support that they need to be successful here. There’s a culture that we want to create that is a supportive culture that acknowledges differences and addresses the way in which we engage with each other across differences,” says Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.

Ms. Granberry Russell says state legislators are using the backlash to DEI to assert greater control over public universities, not simply on diversity initiatives and hiring. “They’ve characterized higher education almost as though it is the enemy,” she says. 

Even some skeptics of DEI say higher education institutions still need to find ways to support a diverse student body. Calls for a return to meritocracy overlook the fact that colleges have historically chosen whom to include and whom to exclude, and dismantling diversity offices could turn the clock back, they say. 

“I fear that taking away these programs may also impact the graduation rates and success rates of our underrepresented folks,” says a senior diversity officer at a private university in a Republican-run state, who asked not to be identified. “I think their educational experience is diminished by the rollback.” 

Partisan divide

As with many issues, there’s a growing partisan divide on higher education: In 2015, a majority of Americans expressed confidence in colleges and universities, according to Gallup. By 2023, that had fallen to below half, led by sharp declines among Republicans, whose confidence levels fell by 37 percentage points. Previous Gallup polls found that Democrats unhappy with higher education cited rising costs, while among Republicans the main complaint was liberal bias. 

The use of diversity statements in hiring has only added to this sense of exclusion of views that don’t align rigidly with progressive ideas on equity. The University of California system was among the first to adopt this practice and has faced litigation as a result, but in January a federal judge dismissed a case against UC Santa Cruz. Diversity officials say potential hires need to demonstrate they can teach a diverse student body and that such statements are just one part of a properly structured search process. But they concede that Harvard’s decision to drop mandatory statements will likely lead others to follow suit. 

The row over diversity statements speaks to a wider unease among some faculty members over the application of DEI policies and doubts about their overall efficacy, says Professor Rosenberg. But most have been reluctant to speak publicly and risk being attacked as hostile to diversity and in bed with right-wing activists, he says. “People are always sensitive to the company that they keep and the way that they’re perceived.”  

Protestors clashed with police on the streets of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, again on Thursday, as demonstrations that began in response to a proposed tax hike morphed into a more general outpouring of anger against the country’s leadership. 

Thursday’s standoff came after a week of violence that has left the country reeling. On Tuesday, demonstrators stormed Parliament, setting part of the building alight and causing lawmakers to flee. Security forces then opened fire. The death toll over the past week has reached 23 protesters killed by police.

President William Ruto announced Wednesday evening that he would not sign the controversial finance bill that set off the protests. But some protestors vowed to continue, and on Thursday, the crowds chanted their next demand: “Ruto must go!” 

What triggered these protests?

In May, Mr. Ruto introduced a finance bill in Parliament that included tax hikes on essential goods including bread, cooking oil, diapers, and sanitary products. His government argued the increases were necessary to raise $2.7 billion to help pay off Kenya’s debts and keep the government running.

John Muchucha/Reuters

People run after police officers used tear gas to disperse protesters during a demonstration in Nairobi, Kenya, June 27, 2024.

However, the bill immediately provoked an outcry in a country where many are struggling to make ends meet as prices rise faster than incomes. Many Kenyans argued that instead of further taxing citizens, the government should stop corruption and curb its own excessive spending. In May, for instance, President Ruto spent $1.5 million to charter a private jet to the United States for an official visit. 

“This is an issue of extreme poverty and the fact that [many Kenyans feel] there is no future for them,” says John Mukum Mbaku, chair of the program committee at the Nairobi-based African Economic Research Consortium.

In response to the controversy, Mr. Ruto’s government dropped many of the proposed taxes, forging ahead with a modified version of the bill. 

But the damage was done. Anger spread widely on social media – particularly TikTok – and last week, demonstrators, most of them young and working-class, began taking to the streets in Nairobi and other cities to protest the remaining tax hikes.  

“They believe that the government, which came into power with the promise of putting poor people at the center of economic policy, has reneged on those promises and is doing exactly the opposite,” Dr. Mbaku says. 

How did a youth-led antitax movement turn so deadly? 

Protests began early last week and quickly built momentum across the country. There were scattered clashes with police, who used tear gas and water cannons to disperse crowds.

Then on Tuesday, lawmakers passed the revised finance bill. Defiant demonstrators forced their way into Parliament in Nairobi and set parts of the building on fire. Police began to fire live bullets into the crowds, killing 19 people. 

“It was hard to see Kenyans dead on Parliament Road,” says lawyer Ian Mbotela, who has spent the past week representing arrested protestors and advocating for their rights during the demonstrations. “We have had our hearts broken seeing the current government breaching the human rights of our fellow Kenyans.”

Brian Inganga/AP

Kenyan antiriot police patrol outside Parliament in downtown Nairobi, June 26, 2024, the day after violent clashes with protestors left 19 people dead here.

On Wednesday, Mr. Ruto announced that he was withdrawing the finance bill. “Listening keenly to the people of Kenya who have said loudly that they want nothing to do with this finance bill 2024, I concede,” he said in a televised address. 

What happens next? 

Mr. Ruto’s reconsideration of the finance bill has not stopped calls for his resignation, and protests continued Thursday nationwide. In Nairobi, some demonstrators attempted to march on the State House, Mr. Ruto’s official residence.

But compared with earlier in the week, their numbers were smaller. Meanwhile, international observers urged the Kenyan government to open a dialogue with the country’s youth. Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, wrote on X that he urged “restraint to facilitate the rights to peaceful assembly & expression, and dialogue to listen to the voices of young people. Investigations & accountability essential.” 

In Kenya, Mr. Mbotela and other lawyers said they plan on suing the police for use of excessive force, as well as what they describe as an illegal deployment of Kenya’s military on protesters during the rallies. 

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, a state-funded watchdog organization, reported that in addition to the 23 people who died in the protests, 300 had been injured as of Thursday.

“Those who have caused harm to peaceful protesters will be held accountable,” he says. 

Phil Noble/AP

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (right) and opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer (left) debate their policies. Mr. Starmer is expected to win July 4 elections handily.

The political experts call them “change elections,” and they often cite two powerful examples: Britain’s 2016 vote to jettison its decadeslong membership in the European Union, and Emmanuel Macron’s out-of-nowhere triumph in France’s presidential election a year later.

Now, however, we are days away from a different kind of change election in both countries.

“Comeuppance election” might be a better term, because voters are poised to deliver a thundering rebuke to Britain’s Conservative Party, the architects of Brexit, and to the centrist party that Mr. Macron created and rode to victory nearly a decade ago.

While the domestic policy implications will become clear only after new British and French governments take shape, there’s a critical international question on which they will have to weigh in sooner: Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine.

Britain and France are key European members of the transatlantic NATO alliance, and neither is suddenly going to reverse course.

The man virtually certain to become Prime Minister in Britain after its July 4 election, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, has been unequivocal in backing Kyiv.

Under the French system, Mr. Macron will remain president until 2027 – and thus retain some influence over foreign policy – even if his Renaissance party gets thumped, as predicted, in the two-round election on June 30 and July 7.

Mr. Macron and a succession of Conservative leaders in London, notably former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have taken increasingly front-line roles in opposing Russia’s invasion.

That has proven especially important in light of waning Republican Party enthusiasm for U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy of support for Ukraine.

A sign of whether Britain and France will still feel ready – or, in Mr. Macron’s case, politically able – to continue to play that pivotal role could come as soon as next month.

Olivier Hoslet/Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron (right) talks to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Polling indicates that Mr. Macron's decision to call a snap election has backfired.

On July 18, Britain will host a meeting of European leaders, with Ukraine topping the agenda.

Yet the conference’s origins lie in the European political landscape before the British and French elections.

It’s a meeting of the European Political Community. The EPC was set up at Mr. Macron’s urging in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion, to bring together leaders from both inside and outside the European Union, crucially including post-Brexit Britain.

The conference was announced by Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak back in March. The venue – Winston Churchill’s ancestral home of Blenheim Palace – was a nod to Boris Johnson’s vision of Britain, unshackled from the EU, playing a Churchillian role in galvanizing Europe’s support for the Ukrainians.

There’s every reason for Mr. Starmer and President Macron to embrace the opportunity for a high-profile reassertion of leadership on support for Ukraine, and they may well do so. But their longer-term calculus will be affected by the results of the British and French snap elections.

In Britain, Brexit is just one reason for the Conservatives’ sorry plight. Polls suggest most voters now believe it was a mistake, but a raft of other concerns – the economy, public services, immigration – and a series of corruption scandals have contributed to a wider sense that, after 14 years of Conservative rule, it’s time for a change.

Mr. Starmer, despite his wide lead in opinion polls, has steered clear of radical promises. He has barely mentioned Brexit, beyond saying that he will try to repair ties with the EU, and has instead prioritized bringing the country together, providing good, honest government, and reviving the economy.

In France, President Macron was hoping that the far-right National Rally (NR) victory in recent EU elections would shock voters back to the center when asked to choose a new parliament. Instead, both the NR, led by Marine Le Pen, and a far-left coalition seem set to make major gains.

Christophe Ena/AP

Far-right National Rally party president Jordan Bardella (right) stands with his colleague Marine Le Pen. Their party is expected to top the polls in Sunday's first round of parliamentary elections.

The two-round system makes the final outcome difficult to predict. But it seems certain that Mr. Macron’s supporters will no longer be the largest parliamentary group.

Mr. Starmer’s political calculus could encourage him to maintain the Conservatives’ emphasis on Ukraine. Pre-election, support for Kyiv was one of several issues on which he’d deliberately steered his Labour Party to the political center, marginalizing its left wing.

Mr. Macron may face a trickier challenge. France’s constitution is ambiguous over the extent of his sway over foreign policy. And he will be governing alongside a changed National Assembly.

Both Ms. Le Pen and the main far-left leaders have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But they have shown themselves to be decidedly tepid toward NATO, skeptical about risking too deep a French involvement in Ukraine, and drawn to the notion of a negotiated compromise.

The question facing Britain’s new prime minister and France’s electorally chastened president will not be whether to drop their support for Ukraine altogether.

But the nature of that support is at stake: how high a priority will it be? For how long will the two men use their voices in Europe and beyond to take a lead role in drumming up sustained financial and military support for Kyiv?

And those questions may become critically important to Ukraine’s future because of another election.

The vote in the U.S. this November could bring Donald Trump, openly sympathetic to Russia’s claims on Ukraine, back to the White House. That would test European mettle as never before.

Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump.

The presidential debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump should, in theory, help voters better understand the policy differences between each candidate. Yet just as important is deciding which candidate will better help Americans bridge those differences.

Civility has long been the oil in the mechanics of democracy. It enables people to step out of political bubbles with humility, compassion, and a touch of humor. Take, for example, the lesson a former member of Parliament from Britain’s Conservative Party learned this week.

Back when he was in office, Matthew Parris rarely had a kind word for his political colleagues across the aisle. He spent Monday walking through his old district with the two young candidates who hope to represent it after Britain’s July 4 election. He found them both thoughtful, energetic, and sincere – equally admirable. That startled him.

“A day on the stump, and talking to two decent human beings who aspire to represent us, I see how pinched my us-and-them attitude to politics was,” Mr. Parris wrote in The Times. “Just sometimes, ... a nod towards the humanity of our candidates might be in order.” 

Mr. Parris captured the effect of what Scott Shigeoka, a fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, calls “heart centered curiosity.” His research on healing political and social enmity centers on dissolving fear and hatred through selflessness, generosity, and empathy. Learning to see the good in others, he told the John Templeton Foundation, is about “changing our own mindsets and behaviors and the ways that we interact with each other in the world, rather than trying to change someone else.”

American voters are weary of division. Some 80% disapprove of politicians denigrating their opponents, according to a survey conducted jointly by Florida Atlantic University and Mainstreet Research in February. Some primary results have captured that aversion. In a New York City Democratic primary on Tuesday, for example, one of the most combatively progressive members of Congress lost his bid for reelection. Voters found his centrist challenger more trustworthy.

Voters in India had a similar response. In recent national elections, they rejected the ruling party’s hateful messages against Muslim minorities and ushered in an era of cooperative governance. They demanded “the return of decency, civility and mutual respect,” observed Apoorvanand Jha, a University of Delhi professor, in Al Jazeera.

“Politics is about honesty, about justice, about mercy, about generosity,” said former Tory member of Parliament Rory Stewart in a speech last November. “Happiness, being well ... involves being able to discuss together our shared values, find through dialogue a common purpose. ... It’s not a selfish activity. It’s not an activity primarily about power. It is an activity of community.”

By its ballots, a global community of voters is sending a message to aspiring leaders: True power starts with seeing the good in others, even those with whom they disagree.