James' World 2

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The San Antonio Spurs went into Oklahoma City and knocked off the defending champs on their home court in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals on Saturday.

They’ll play the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals, which begin on Wednesday, a rematch of the 1999 Finals – the last time the Knicks had a chance to win the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy.

The Spurs outlasted the reigning champions, Oklahoma City Thunder, 111-103 in a tense deciding game.

“Back in October, we knew we had a chance to be pretty good,” said head coach Mitch Johnson after the game to the NBC broadcast. He praised his team for “giving themselves to each other, to the program, and everything that we’ve done. Oklahoma City’s a helluva organization, and what a series.”

He alluded to the youth of his team, in their first playoff run since 2019, when he said it wasn’t experience that got them to the Finals.

“There’s been a lot being talked about, just words like competitiveness, resolve, togetherness, execution. … I don’t give a damn about the word experience,” he said.

Led by Victor Wembanyama, who finished with 22 points and seven rebounds, the Spurs clinched a spot in the Finals for the first time since 2014.

It was the kind of dramatic Game 7 that a classic series deserved – one that saw both teams eke out close wins and run away with blowouts as the Spurs and Thunder established their matchup as the premier rivalry in the NBA right now. The physical, rollicking deciding game in OKC on Saturday showed that it might be the rivalry to watch in the league for years to come.

The Spurs came out of the gates hot, quickly taking a 14-point lead, leaving the raucous Continental Coliseum crowd stunned.

But the Thunder stormed back to briefly take the lead just before halftime behind reigning two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous Alexander’s 13 points in the second quarter.

However, OKC’s momentum did not last as San Antonio surged right back to a double-digit lead behind a 16-2 run in the third quarter led by Julian Champagnie’s six three-pointers.

Like all game long, the Thunder could never be counted out.

SGA clawed the team back into the game, only trailing by three points entering the final quarter.

But San Antonio had an answer for every Thunder response down the stretch, securing the victory.

It has been quite the turnaround for the Spurs, a team that drafted Wembanyama first overall in 2023 and finished 13th in the Western Conference last season.

The 22-year-old Wembanyama was emotional, bursting into tears as the final horn blew and again choking back emotions after being named the Most Valuable Player of the WCF.

The French center said the emotions came from “realizing some part” of his childhood dreams will come true.

“Even though we still have one more, this feeling is – I can’t explain it,” Wembanyama told the NBC broadcast while holding the Earvin “Magic” Johnson Trophy. “It’s so powerful.”

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Hmmmm … Sic Semper Tyrannis!

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Before she closed the case, Judge Williams, an Obama appointee, had in fact questioned whether the lawsuit presented an actual conflict that she could adjudicate, given that Mr. Trump was on both sides of the suit, bringing claims against a federal agency that he controlled. When she closed it, she noted there was no “settlement of record,” but shortly after, the Justice Department released its agreement foreclosing the action.

In her brief but stern order on Friday, Judge Williams said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. If she succeeds in moving forward with her inquiry, it could ultimately result in questions being asked of the Justice Department leaders who signed the agreements to settle the suit — chief among them, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official in the department.

In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was “empowered to investigate serious misconduct” in any case before her, and ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because “the court was the victim of a fraud.”

She also wanted Mr. Trump’s lawyers to respond to the question of whether he had colluded with his own government to settle the case “to avoid judicial scrutiny.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Judge Williams pointed to reporting by The New York Times that described how the I.R.S. had prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining defenses against the suit that the Justice Department did not take up in court.

Lawyers for the former judges hailed Judge Williams’s decision.

“The judges and their counsel greatly appreciate the seriousness with which the court is addressing these grievous allegations,” said Norman Eisen, who represented the former judges for the nonprofit group, Democracy Defenders Fund. “We stand ready to work with the court as it investigates this matter.”

Mr. Eisen was joined by the law firms Platkin and Susman Godfrey.

In their filing this week, the former judges claimed that Mr. Trump had improperly used his suit against the I.R.S. as a way to obtain “unlawful private benefits” for himself and his family, and to create a fund that would dole out taxpayer money “without constitutional or congressional authority.”

They also argued that the president had tried to shield the deal from judicial oversight by rushing a settlement and “short-circuiting” Judge Williams’s ability to examine its terms.

The $1.8 billion fund has faced separate legal headwinds. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia temporarily blocked the Trump administration from taking any further steps to set it up or disburse money from it. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including many Republicans, have also been critical of the fund, which upended G.O.P. plans to pass a party-line bill funding immigration enforcement efforts last week.

Mr. Trump, along with two of his sons and the Trump family business, first sued the I.R.S. in January, claiming they were owed at least $10 billion because a former contractor at the agency had leaked their tax returns (and hundreds of others) during the president’s first term in the White House. The Trumps claimed that the I.R.S. should have done more to prevent the contractor, Charles Littlejohn, from disclosing tax information to The New York Times and ProPublica.

Mr. Trump’s suit, as I.R.S. officials laid out in their memo and other lawyers have noted, had clear legal flaws. Potential defenses against it include that it was filed after the statute of limitations, and that it incorrectly faulted the I.R.S. for the actions of Mr. Littlejohn, previously a contractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton. But the Justice Department never made an attempt to contest Mr. Trump’s suit. No government lawyer entered an appearance in the case.

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In a stern order on Friday, a judge said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding President Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Once people understood glucagonlike peptide 1 (GLP-1) drugs’ potential for weight loss, the race among pharmaceutical companies was on. Among the current options, Wegovy can help people lose an average of 10 percent of their body weight in a year, while people taking Zepbound have had about a 15 percent loss, on average, in the same period. Soon, the most powerful GLP-1 treatment to date could hit the market: retatrutide.

Already popular on the online peptide gray market, the new drug, originally developed by Eli Lilly, caused participants in a recent clinical study to lose more than a quarter of their body weight over 80 weeks at the highest dose—results comparable to bariatric surgery. U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval could soon follow.

But bodies don’t just drop weight with no potential adverse effects. Weight loss on its own can change muscle, bone and more. As new-generation GLP-1 drugs promote higher rates of loss, clinicians want to ensure that the desire to shed pounds and see improvements, such as better cardiovascular health are balanced with the very real risks that may come with the treatment.

Fat, Muscle or Bone?

People typically lose weight when they eat fewer calories than their body expends. A common way to cut calories is to diet, while bariatric surgery removes or changes part of the gastrointestinal tract to reduce food—and therefore calorie—absorption.

GLP-1 is a gut hormone released in response to a meal that helps people feel full. It also increases insulin release and reduces glucose in the blood. Semaglutide (sold as Ozempic and Wegovy by Novo Nordisk) binds to the hormone’s receptor for longer periods of time, making people feel fuller for longer and eat less. Newer versions of GLP-1 drugs, such as tirzepatide (sold as Zepbound and Mounjaro by Eli Lilly) and Novo Nordisk’s upcoming drug CagriSema, target more than one type of gut hormone receptor, while retatrutide hits three.

With any weight loss, not everything that comes off is fat. “You can’t just burn fat,” says Caroline Apovian, an obesity medicine specialist at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. (Apovian has previously consulted for both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.)

When someone takes in fewer nutrients than they need, their body begins to utilize fat stores. This metabolic process requires amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. If amino acids aren’t adequately replenished from dietary protein, the body will recycle parts of muscle instead. “Anything that is going to produce robust weight loss,” Apovian says, “there’s going to be a percentage of that that’s muscle.”

Reports suggest that GLP-1 treatments may cause between 25 to 40 percent loss of lean mass, which includes muscle mass—although more studies are needed to understand how this affects strength.

People losing a lot of weight very quickly will also lose bone mass, Apovian says. Losing muscle and fat puts less pressure on bones, she explains, so a lighter body could lead to lighter bones.

For many people, lighter bones might not be an issue. But women, who have higher rates of GLP-1 treatment use than men, may at be at heightened risk of bone weakening during menopause, when bone loss naturally accelerates. Apovian has seen patients who lose weight on GLP-1 drugs develop osteopenia, or low bone mass. “If that gets worse, they fracture,” she says. “These are women, primarily, who have reported back to us that [using GLP-1s] wasn’t worth the weight loss.”

Eli Lilly’s recent retatrutide clinical trial did not evaluate participants’ changes in muscle or bone mass, a company spokesperson tells Scientific American; “however, Lilly is continuing to evaluate body composition and long-term outcomes.”

Mind Your Gallbladder

People who lose large amounts of body fat in short periods of time may also be at greater risk of developing gallstones, says Rozalina McCoy, an endocrinologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Speedy weight loss increases bile acids, which are used to break down fat during digestion. As this happens, “there’s cholesterol saturation of the bile, so the bile becomes much more thick and gooey,” she says.

GLP-1 drugs also slow gastric emptying—the movement of food through the gastrointestinal tract—which stops the gallbladder from dispensing bile. “It kind of stays there and forms these gallstones,” McCoy says. Obesity raises the risk of gallstones in general, but data from clinical trials have shown that people on GLP-1 treatments have a 37 percent higher relative risk of developing gallbladder disease, which can include the formation of gallstones.

People considering GLP-1 treatments often worry about rare side effects, such as increased risk of thyroid cancer, “but gallstones happen in a decent subset of these patients,” says Armen Yerevanian, an endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Weight Loss, Fast and Slow

The recent retatrutide trial found people on the drug lost 28.3 percent of their body weight—about 70 pounds—in a year and a half. Though this is comparable to long-term results from bariatric surgery, McCoy says the rate of weight loss from retatrutide isn’t actually as fast as with surgery. “With metabolic surgery, people lose a lot of weight in the first month. We don’t see that with the drugs,” she says.

Retatrutide’s results are also not as fast-acting as methods like the protein-sparing modified fast, a medically monitored diet in which people take in around 800 calories per day, Yerevanian says. (A sedentary adult generally needs to take in between 1,600 and 2,400 calories to maintain their current weight). “I don’t think weight loss from retatrutide is fast enough to be worried from that perspective,” he says.

People who might otherwise use modified fasts or bariatric surgery could be candidates for retatrutide, and some scientists think certain individuals could see health benefits from greater weight reductions than the drug provides. Retatrutide and other new-generation GLP-1 drugs might also aid people who don’t respond to the GLP-1s currently available.

Doctors need to closely monitor people on these drugs to ensure they aren’t losing too much weight or suffering from nutrient deficiencies, Yerevanian says. GLP-1 medication doses are “pretty easy to readjust, because if you pull back, they’ll gain the weight back,” he adds.

Preliminary evidence suggests that weight regained after stopping a GLP-1 treatment is more likely to come back as fat than as lean mass. The benefits to cardiovascular health and diabetes also appear to reverse. Experts, including McCoy, have suggested that such weight rebounds could leave people in an unhealthier state than they were before treatment.

Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Lost Muscle

There are ways to reduce muscle and bone loss while taking a GLP-1 drug, Apovian says. Calcium and vitamin D supplementation can help prevent bone loss. For muscle, protein is key. “It seems that most Americans eat enough protein,” she says, but “if you’re on a GLP-1, or you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re on a lower calorie diet, that’s when you need to be cognizant.”

That protein intake must be paired with resistance training, Apovian says. Weight training, even with light weights, can help prevent muscle loss, though she notes most of the patients she treats probably aren’t doing enough resistance training.

As these drugs become more effective and accessible, clinicians need better guidelines around who qualifies for which medication, Yerevanian says. People in larger bodies face significant societal stigma, which may cause some people to feel pressure to lose a lot of weight, fast. But some clinicians say that prescribing these drugs is about balancing risk and benefit, not about a person’s body size. “We never had the ability to lose this much weight in a healthy way before,” McCoy says. “I think as a society, we need to make sure that the focus of all these treatments remains on better health and not on the weight number on a scale.”

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Over the last several weeks, the United States has engaged in a long-overdue reckoning with the racist symbols of the past, tearing down monuments to figures complicit in slavery and removing Confederate flags from public displays. But little scrutiny has been given to the cultural institutions that legitimized the worldview behind these symbols: white Christian churches.

A close read of history reveals that we white Christians have not just been complacent or complicit; rather, as the nation’s dominant cultural power, we have constructed and sustained a project of perpetuating white supremacy that has framed the entire American story. The legacy of this unholy union still lives in the DNA of white Christianity today — and not just among white evangelical Protestants in the South, but also among white mainline Protestants in the Midwest and white Catholics in the Northeast. 

For more than two decades, I’ve studied the attitudes of religiously affiliated Americans across the country. And year over year, in question after question in public opinion polls, a clear pattern has emerged: White Christians are consistently more likely than whites who are religiously unaffiliated to deny the existence of structural racism.

For example, surveys conducted by PRRI in 2018 found that white Christians — including evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, and Catholics — are nearly twice as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans.

And white Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to say monuments to Confederate soldiers are symbols of Southern pride rather than symbols of racism. White Christians are also about 20 percentage points more likely to disagree with this statement: “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” And these trends generally persist even in the wake of the recent protests for racial justice.

As a white Christian who was raised Southern Baptist and shaped by a denominational college and seminary, it pains me to see these patterns in the data. Even worse, these questions only hint at the magnitude of the problem.

To determine the breadth of these attitudes, I created a “Racism Index,” a measure consisting of 15 questions designed to get beyond personal biases and include perceptions of structural injustice. These questions included the three above, as well as questions about the treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system and general perceptions of race, racism, and racial discrimination.

Even at a glance, the Racism Index reveals a clear distinction. Compared to nonreligious whites, white Christians register higher median scores on the Racism Index, and the differences among white Christian subgroups are largely differences of degree rather than kind.

Not surprisingly, given their concentration in the South, white evangelical Protestants have the highest median score (0.78) on the Racism Index. But it is a mistake to see this as merely a Southern or an evangelical problem. The median scores of white Catholics (0.72) and white mainline Protestants (0.69) — groups that are more culturally dominant in the Northeast and the Midwest — are not far behind. Notably, the median score for each white Christian subgroup is significantly above the median scores of the general population (0.57), white religiously unaffiliated Americans (0.42), and Black Protestants (0.24).

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White Christians are consistently more likely than whites who are religiously unaffiliated to deny the existence of structural racism. Glasshouse Images / Getty Images

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Starting early in the morning on the second Saturday of May, first hundreds and then thousands of people gathered in the square in front of Hungary’s majestic Parliament building to celebrate the start of a new political era. This was the square where tens of thousands gathered in 1956 and 1989 to demand an end to the Soviet occupation, and in 2006 to protest a discredited government. It was the square on which Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s regime imposed a major redesign more than a decade ago — with traffic rerouted away, a large reflecting pool and raised beds installed, narrow pathways laid down — apparently to ensure that no such mass gathering could take place again. Today, it was the square where Peter Magyar, a former Orban loyalist, would be sworn in, promising a rebirth of democracy and liberty after 16 years of autocratic control.

Squeezing into the available spaces and gradually filling up nearby cafes and streets, the crowd absorbed people of all ages: young people who didn’t remember a time before Orban and who had voted in unprecedented numbers; aging intellectuals who didn’t think they’d ever celebrate their country again; multigenerational families who had arrived by bus after seeing Magyar in their hometowns and villages. During his campaign, Magyar had traveled to an estimated 700 locations, turning many of them into “Tisza islands” — outposts of support for his party. By the end, Magyar was holding five or more rallies a day.

It had looked like an impossible quest. Orban and his cronies dominated the media, persecuted and smeared opposition politicians, and changed election laws to benefit his party, Fidesz. Orban had seemed to achieve what the Hungarian sociologist and political theorist Balint Magyar (no relation) calls “autocratic breakthrough” — the point after which it’s impossible to unseat an autocrat using elections. Illiberal politicians from other countries made pilgrimages to Hungary to learn from Orban; CPAC, the gathering for American national conservatives, started staging an annual convention there; and Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest in advance of the election, in a show of support for Orban. And yet Hungarians handed Tisza not just a victory but a constitutional majority, enough power to reverse Orban’s changes to Hungarian laws and institutions. The triumph was stunning — unique in our era of democratic backsliding — and it holds clear lessons for the United States.

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Defeat Trump

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Humans have chased immortality perhaps for as long as we have known we will die. But merely persisting forever may not be all it’s cracked up to be—especially if you are reduced to just lying there, unable to eat or do much of anything at all. That grim reality may be the eternal condition of severed sea cucumber tissue, according to a new study.

When humans lose a chunk of flesh, it dies and decays. That isn’t so with Psolus fabricii, a sea cucumber that is native to the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Its amputated bits just keep living. These lost pieces of tissue even repair their wounds and continue to grow—although not into new organisms. After observing tissues that survived in natural seawater tanks for more than three years, researchers declared them biologically immortal in a paper published today in Science Advances. “Something like this has never been seen before,” says lead author Sara Jobson, a doctoral student at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Sea cucumbers are masters of regeneration. But so are many lizards and salamanders, and yet, when detached, their limbs and tail deteriorate just like human tissue would. With the amputated pieces of P. fabricii, Jobson says, it’s “as if the tail dropped off and healed and wiggled around in the wild on its own.” She and her colleagues don’t entirely know what enables this feat, but they have a few clues: The severed tissues retain a strong immune system and chemical defenses to ward off microbial infection; their cells keep dividing to form new tissue; and, for fuel, they either absorb dissolved amino acids or cannibalize their own muscle.

These are all hallmarks of living systems, but severed P. fabricii tissue sits in a biological gray zone. “We often call them, lovingly, our little lab zombies,” Jobson says. “Because we don’t know: Do they count as alive? Do they count as dead?” They don’t reproduce. They don’t have a mouth or a gut. Yet they are complex biological structures enduring, somehow, apart from their original organism—perhaps indefinitely. “We haven’t seen any signs that they’re degrading or dying,” Jobson says. Whether this is an immortality worth living is another question.

Still, Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, a molecular biologist and president of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Missouri, says it’s “quite likely premature” to call this immortality. To further show that these tissues likely live forever, researchers will have to investigate whether their telomeres—DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes that shorten with age—stay the same length after many rounds of cell division. Sánchez Alvarado adds, however, that “what is remarkable here is not infinite time per se but the sustained coordination” of so many biological processes for so long in an animal’s discarded parts.

Even if the zombie P. fabricii tissues are in fact slowly succumbing to entropy, they’ve outlasted the severed tissue of other sea cucumber species tested for this study by a long shot (the silver medalist perished before three and a half months). Their extreme longevity poses an evolutionary mystery: If reproduction is the basic imperative of life, why should the nonreproductive scraps of an organism remain viable at all, let alone for years? “It doesn’t regrow into a new sea cucumber, as far as we can tell,” Jobson says, “so the purpose of it is very unclear.” It’s possible the whole bizarre situation is just a by-product of P. fabricii’s regenerative powers.

Whatever the case, Jobson reckons that self-sufficient sea cucumber fragments—immortal or not, with or without a purpose in this world—are drifting through Earth’s oceans right now. “Maybe,” she says, “there’s a ton of zombies out there.”

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Leave it to Queen Latifah to turn a major career milestone into a full-on family affair. The legendary musician, actress, producer, and entrepreneur hosted the 2026 American Music Awards on Monday, May 25, 2026, and she did not come alone. Latifah brought her partner, Eboni Nichols, and their 6-year-old son, Rebel, to the show, making it one of the sweetest moments on the red carpet for the night.

This year’s AMAs carried extra special significance. The year 2026 marks 30 years since Latifah first took hosting duties at the show, and she returned to welcome audiences to what remains the world’s largest fan-voted awards show. Only a legend gets to celebrate that kind of anniversary on that kind of stage, and she wore every one of those 30 years like a crown. 

The family outing took on an even warmer dimension with the addition of a very special guest. Kaayia James Union Wade, the 7-year-old daughter of Gabrielle Union and NBA legend Dwyane Wade, joined the group for the evening. Formerly known to millions of fans online as the “Shady Baby,” Union Wade has already built her own cultural footprint, charming the internet with her unshakeable confidence. Seeing her step into a night this big, surrounded by people who clearly adore her, was a reminder that this next generation is already something special. And she was not the only young star making her presence felt.

Teyana Taylor also brought her two daughters, Iman “Junie” Tayla and Rue Rose, to the show where she was a performer, making it clear that the 2026 AMAs was as much a celebration of family as it was of music.

As for Latifah, it’s not every day that she opens the door to her personal world. She has long been intentional about keeping her relationship with Nichols and their family out of the spotlight, which made the moment feel all the more significant. Choosing to mark this particular milestone with the people she loves most was a statement in itself.

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LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MAY 25: EDITORIAL USE ONLY (L-R) Kaavia James Union Wade, Eboni Nichols, Rebel Nichols Owens and Queen Latifah attend the 52nd American Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 25, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

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Ball State University in Indiana has agreed to pay $225,000 to a former administrator who was fired for her Facebook post accusing Charlie Kirk of spreading fear, the latest legal settlement awarded to a worker dismissed for criticizing the conservative activist after he was assassinated.

“As a public university, Ball State cannot fire an employee for protected speech made as a private citizen,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which sued on the administrator’s behalf, said in a statement this week announcing the settlement.

Employers in several states have also settled with or reinstated workers.

Scores of people — health care workers, lawyers, journalists, waiters and waitresses — were fired or faced other repercussions for their negative comments about Mr. Kirk, igniting a debate over how far employers can go in restricting employees’ political expression that occurs outside the workplace. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said it was tracking 13 lawsuits in federal court from people who had been disciplined or terminated for their comments about Mr. Kirk.

The Ball State case involved a health care administrator for the university named Suzanne Swierc (pronounced “swirtz”). She became one of many Americans targeted in a campaign by Mr. Kirk’s followers, including Vice President JD Vance, to expose and retaliate against those who had spoken critically of Mr. Kirk after his assassination last fall on a Utah university campus.

“If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends,” she wrote on her Facebook page several hours after he was killed. Her post expressed disdain for Mr. Kirk’s loyal fans but also condemned his death as the kind of violence she said was too common in American politics.

Her settings were private, but one of her followers took a screenshot without her knowledge and sent it to others.

Ms. Swierc’s post spread widely after it was publicized by Indiana’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, who had urged people to alert his office to anyone “celebrating or glorifying the tragedy,” according to her lawsuit.

Mr. Rokita’s action — together with a post by Libs of TikTok, a social media account known for mocking left-wing politics — prompted a deluge of phone calls, texts, voice mail messages, and threats to both Ms. Swierc and the university. Even Elon Musk weighed in.

The university, which admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement, said that after Ms. Swierc posted her comment, on Sept. 10, 2025, the university’s operations were seriously impeded. Though the First Amendment broadly protects political expression, the right to free speech is not as absolute as many assume — especially when a workplace is involved. The Supreme Court has established that a public institution like Ball State can restrict employee speech on matters of public concern if the comments interfere with the institution’s ability to function.

Ball State’s president, Geoffrey S. Mearns, wrote in an email to university leadership this week that “disruptive and disturbing” phone calls, as well as “more than 130 emails,” including from donors threatening to withhold contributions, “prevented our staff from performing their usual responsibilities.”

Some staff members who fielded the calls said they had been threatened with violence and felt uncomfortable being on campus, he said.

Ms. Swierc’s post, he added, had damaged her credibility to interact with students who did not share her views about Mr. Kirk. “I concluded that I had the legal authority to terminate Ms. Swierc’s employment,” he said in his email.

But the First Amendment makes such cases difficult to defend, as the recent spate of settlements in Kirk-related cases has shown. Florida officials agreed last week to pay $485,000 to Brittney Brown, a biologist, after the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission terminated her over a meme she reposted to her private Instagram account. In Tennessee, a professor at Austin Peay State University received a $500,000 settlement and was reinstated after posting about Mr. Kirk’s support for expansive gun rights. Clemson University in South Carolina rescinded its firing of an assistant professor in another case.

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Suzanne Swierc was fired from her job as a health care administrator at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. Credit…Kaiti Sullivan for The New York Times

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