James' World 2

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Ads attacking transgender people may have driven votes in the 2024 election, but bans on health care for trans teens are increasingly falling short, both in the courts and in medical reviews. Voices of reason can fight back, it turns out, against a manufactured moral panic.

Around 1.3 percent of middle school students in the U.S., children on the cusp of adolescence, identify as transgender. Acceptance and awareness of transgender individuals has grown, akin to a “Gender Revolution” as National Geographic called it in 2017. The acceptance, in part, triggered politicized attacks, some frankly weird, centered on banning trans people from sports and ending gender-affirming care for them.

Those attacks on trans kids might be effective politics, but they are lousy medicine. Courts and medical reviews are increasingly coming down on the side of gender-affirming care.

Put simply, gender-affirming care supports people’s own views of themselves. If they want changes in pronouns, names, hairstyles, or clothing, puberty blocking treatment as adolescents, or hormone replacement therapy—that’s okay. What matters is they receive comprehensive medical and psychological care along the way, whatever they and their parents decide. In the U.S., this approach is endorsed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society as well as a host of other medical organizations. “Critics of our gender-affirming care policy mischaracterize it as pushing medical or surgical treatments on youth; in fact, the policy calls for the opposite,” wrote the then-president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Moira Szilagyi, in 2022.

Nevertheless, since 2021, 27 states have erected laws or policies limiting minors’ access to this care. These bans are “exacerbating the already high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts among this vulnerable population,” according to the American Psychological Association. Tennessee’s ban is now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Skrmetti, with nationwide implications.

In the meantime, an Ohio appeals court in March blocked that state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, saying it violated the state’s constitution. That court also weighed in on medical standards in its decision: “The medical evidence and clinical experience presented in this case demonstrate that, when provided in appropriate circumstances, gender-affirming care can meaningfully improve the health and well-being of transgender adolescents,” found the judges, noting lower rates of depression and other mental health issues. State medical experts testifying in favor of the ban had cited the usual criticisms of “sufficiency and quality of the research” and European restrictions (but not bans) of gender-affirming care for minors. But the judges didn’t buy that, finding “the state did not present, and the trial court did not find, any contrary evidence-based standards [emphasis theirs] accepted by any nationally or internationally recognized professional medical groups,” in the decision.

Fans of trans-care bans regularly employ arguments about insufficient evidence and European restrictions, spreading disinformation. In 2023, for example, Arkansas attorney general Tim Griffin responded to a federal judge blocking his state’s ban, saying, “There is no scientific evidence that any child will benefit from these procedures,” on X. This echoed his state’s ban, which decried “the lack of any long-term longitudinal studies” on puberty-blocking drugs. In other words, we should wait a few decades, while kids suffer, to see if lifesaving care sufficiently satisfies lawmakers like the ones who believe trans kids are “demons” and “mutants.” This moving-the-goalposts demand for extra evidence for gender-affirming care—embedded in Arkansas’ original 2021 ban—has subsequently been copy-pasted into other state laws pushed by partisan religious activists. “These bans were produced as part of an intentional strategy by social and religious conservatives to demonize and scapegoat transgender people,” said Indiana University constitutional law expert Steve Sanders, speaking last year at a Federalist Society event reported by USA Today.

Of course in reality, plenty of evidence demonstrates gender-affirming care’s benefits, as an Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany review concluded in March. The German review also found “no proven effect treatment alternative,” according to news reports. That joins a French medical review released in December, which also backed gender-affirming care. So much for European resistance.

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Something about your 30s and 40s feels like standing at a professional crossroads. You’ve gained experience, maybe moved up a level or two, and the pressure to “figure it out” once and for all is real. But behind the LinkedIn milestones and polished bios, many professionals in this phase quietly navigate career pivots, burnout, and a desire for meaning, not just momentum.

For many, this stage brings an uncomfortable realization: the ladder you’ve been climbing might be leaning against the wrong wall. What once motivated you—titles, promotions, packed calendars—might no longer feel satisfying. You start questioning what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. And while the outside world may see a seasoned professional, inside, you might be reevaluating everything from your definition of success to your sense of purpose.

Here are 10 career truths no one tells you early on but that every high-achiever eventually learns—sometimes the hard way:

Lesson One

Titles are rented, not owned. Your job title can open doors, but it doesn’t define you. Roles change, companies restructure, and industries shift. Build an identity that isn’t dependent on your business card.

Lesson Two

Working harder doesn’t guarantee you’ll be noticed. Effort matters, but visibility matters more. Too often, we assume that good work speaks for itself. But in most organizations, people are too busy to notice what they’re not explicitly shown. That’s why strategic self-advocacy is critical. This doesn’t mean turning every update into a highlight reel; it means communicating your impact in ways that connect to broader goals.

Lesson Three

Loyalty has an expiration date. Loyalty to a company is admirable until it costs you your growth. If your organization isn’t investing in you, it’s okay to outgrow them. Staying too long for comfort can quietly stall your career. Recognizing when it’s time to move on is professional self-respect.

Lesson Four

Soft skills become your power tools. Technical skills get you in the door in your 20s. By your 30s and 40s, emotional intelligence, communication, adaptability, and self-awareness keep you in the room and move you into better ones.

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Meaningful success comes from knowing yourself first, then designing a career that matches   getty

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Being struck by lightning is something humans generally try to avoid. But for at least one tropical tree species, this doesn’t hurt—and might even be a good thing.

Scientists have long believed that being hit by lightning could have only negative effects on trees. “Your best-case scenario is that you’re kind of okay, and your worst-case scenario is: you explode in a million bits,” says Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York State. But after spending many years studying the effects of lightning on rainforests, Gora began wondering whether trees could not only survive this usually deadly event but also actually get some kind of advantage from it.

To find out, he and his colleagues spent several years following the fate of 93 trees from various species in the rainforest of central Panama when they were directly struck by lightning. Nine were from a species known as the almendro (Dipteryx oleifera), a forest giant native to Central and South America that can grow up to 165 feet tall. After the trees were struck, the researchers continued to monitor the ones that survived the shock, checking their overall condition and noting whether the lightning killed neighboring trees and any parasitic vines growing on them.

The results showed that the almendro trees were very resistant to lightning and minimally damaged compared with almost all the other tree species, which were severely damaged—64 percent of the latter trees died within two years of being struck. A few other large species also survived the strikes and might have benefitted as well, but lightning had not struck enough of these species for the researchers to be certain.

Many of the trees that had surrounded the almendros—competing with the species for water and nutrients—were killed by lightning that spread through their branches after it hit the D. oleifera trees. This left more resources and space for the latter. Lightning strikes on the almendros also reduced the average number of parasitic vines on a tree by 78 percent, by killing them. These vines climb on top of the trees to “steal” light.

Equipped with data on lightning strike frequency and the trees’ survival rates after reaching a certain size, the team used computers models to estimate that a typical almendro is likely struck by lightning about five times during its 300-year lifespan. Then, by running simulations using data on details such as how the trees grow and reproduce, the researchers showed that lightning strikes seem to be almost a necessity for the trees. Without the benefits the strikes bring, “they would not live as long,” Gora says.

The researchers also speculate that the almendro might have evolved to attract lightning—or at least not to avoid it, as most other trees have. D. oleifera’s wide crown and tall height, which enhance its chance of being hit, make it a living lightning rod. And it might resist damage by being more electrically conductive than other tree species around it. Gora thinks similar abilities to benefit from lightning might be widespread across other species and types of forests.

Allan Carroll, a disturbance ecologist at the University of British Columbia, who wasn’t involved in the research, says, “The findings of the study are quite novel and make a significant contribution to our knowledge of plant evolution.”

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One of the most surprising things to me about interviewing people for jobs has always been how frequently candidates profess not to have any questions for me when prompted. After all, this is a job they’re considering spending a large chunk of their waking hours at for the next however many years, and it’s likely to have a significant impact on their day-to-day quality of life and progression in their career. Surely there’s something they’d like to know about.

Undoubtedly, part of the reason people tell their interviewers they don’t have questions is that they’re unsure of how to ask about the things they really want to know, like “Are you a nightmare of a boss?” or “Am I going to get work calls at 9 p.m., or be expected to work all weekend?” or “Is everyone here miserable?” They also worry that interviewers will read negative subtext into perfectly reasonable questions, for example, looking like a slacker if they ask about what sort of hours people work, or not appearing sufficiently interested in the position they’re interviewing for if they ask about advancement potential. But when you don’t take advantage of the opportunity to ask your interviewer questions, you risk coming across like you’re not that interested in the job or not thinking critically about whether it’s one you’ll do well in.

It’s true that some of the information you want to know is best sought outside of a formal interview (more on how to do that here), but you can still learn a lot by asking your interviewer the right questions. Here are ten strong questions that will get you useful insights into whether the job is right for you.

Questions About the Position

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“How will you measure the success of the person in this position?”

This gets right to the crux of what you need to know about the job: What does it mean to do well, and what will you need to achieve in order for the manager to be happy with your performance?

You may think you already understand this from the job posting, but it’s not uncommon for employers to post the same job description year after year, even if the job has changed significantly during that time. Companies often post job descriptions that primarily use boilerplate language from HR, while the actual manager has very different ideas about what’s most important in the role. Also, frankly, most employers just suck at writing job descriptions (which is why some are written by AI and so many more sound like they

were), so it’s useful to have a conversation about what the role is really about. You may find out that while the job posting listed 12 different responsibilities, your success in fact hinges on just two of them, or that the posting dramatically understated the importance of one of them, or that the needs of the role are expected to change significantly in the next year, or that the hiring manager is battling with her own boss about expectations for the role, or even that the manager has no idea what success would look like in the job (which would be a sign to proceed with extreme caution).

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“What are some of the challenges you expect the person in this position to face?”

Job descriptions usually just lay out a list of activities and responsibilities. But it’s also important to know what it really looks like to operate on this particular team and in this particular culture. Maybe you’ll find out that the role’s most important client is notoriously hard to please, or there’s been a sticky political history with partner organizations that will complicate the work you’d be taking over. You might find out there’s tons of organizational support for the role, or that it’s a battle to keep the position’s work funded. Things like that often aren’t listed in written job descriptions but can have a profound impact on what it’s like to be in the job and how happy you’re likely to be if you take it.

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