KYIV — Russian forces struck a kindergarten in Kharkiv with killer drones on Wednesday morning, according to top Ukrainian officials. “There was a direct hit on a private kindergarten in the Kholodnoyarkiy district of Kharkiv. A fire started,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said in a statement. Officials added later that one person, an adult male, had died in the kindergarten strike, and all 48 children were distressed — though none were wounded — and had been evacuated from the site. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said seven people were injured in the nursery strike, which triggered a fresh wave of fury at Moscow. “They are receiving medical care. All children have been evacuated and are in shelters. According to preliminary information, many have an acute stress reaction,” Zelenskyy said on social media. “There is and cannot be any justification for a drone strike on a kindergarten. Russia is becoming more impudent. These strikes are Russia’s spit in the face of anyone who insists on a peaceful solution. Bandits and terrorists can only be put in their place by force,” Zelenskyy said. The Russian defense ministry has not yet issued a statements about strikes on Kharkiv.

Sweden’s health minister has urged the EU to push ahead with social media restrictions for kids while insisting it be treated as a pressing matter. “We’re losing an entire generation to endless scrolling and harmful content, and we need to do something about it,” Minister Jakob Forssmed told POLITICO, adding that social media use among youth is the “most pressing health issue there is.” His comments follow those of European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who said Europe could adopt a similar approach to Australia. The country is set to ban social media for all users under 16. In her State of the Union address in Strasbourg earlier this week, she pledged to commission a panel of experts to study the impact of the Australian measure and provide recommendations on how Europe should proceed. Forssmed said Europe should move quickly, warning: “We don’t have the time. We need to move forward fast.” Sweden has already compiled research that demonstrates the impact on young people, he said, and the results are clear. “This is a risk for mental health issues. We see it not least when it comes to eating disorders and harmful self-image,” he added. Health authorities in Sweden issued guidelines last year, stating that children under the age of two should not be exposed to any screens and teenagers should have no more than three hours of screen time per day. The government also announced an inquiry into social media use and age restrictions. In Denmark, Minister for Digital Affairs Caroline Stage Olsen also said she would support stronger measures from Brussels and would make it one of the “main priorities” for the Danish presidency of the Council of the EU. “I see three steps on the EU level: mandatory legal requirement for age verification, a ban on harmful and addictive practices for minors and stronger enforcement,” she told POLITICO. Denmark has imposed a ban on smartphones in schools since February, following France’s lead in 2018. A similar ban in Belgium came into effect this month. Five EU countries — Denmark, Greece, France, Italy and Spain — are testing a European Commission age verification app, a new system designed to protect children online. Last year, Ireland’s Department of Health established an online health task force to examine the links between specific types of online activity and physical and mental health harms to children and young people.  It’s also developing a strategic public health response to these harms, which it will bring forward in its final report next month.  Von der Leyen suggested she would wait to decide on EU-wide measures until she had received analysis of the Australian policy. It’s unclear how long European experts will have to do that, given that it comes into force in Australia on Dec. 10, and she wants the panel’s recommendations by year’s end.

Sweden and Belgium want to discuss an EU limit on the number of children conceived from a single sperm donor — to prevent future generations from unwitting incest and psychological harms. Donor-conceived births are rising across Europe as fertility rates decline and assisted reproduction becomes more widely accessible — including for same-sex couples and single women. But with many countries struggling to recruit enough local donors, commercial cryobanks are increasingly shipping reproductive cells known as gametes — sperm or egg — across borders, sometimes from the same donor to multiple countries. Most EU countries have national limits on how many children can be conceived from one donor — ranging from one in Cyprus to 10 in France, Greece, Italy and Poland. However, there is no limit for cross-border donations, increasing the risk of potential health problems linked to a single donor, as well as a psychological impact on children who discover they have dozens or even hundreds of half-siblings.  Sweden, backed by Belgium, is raising the topic with EU ministers on Friday, with hopes of preventing future generations from dating half-siblings and reducing risk of heritable diseases. “This issue has been left unresolved for too long,” an official from Belgium ,granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO, adding that an “international limit is a first step in the right direction.” A limit would prevent high numbers of children conceived from the same donor, reducing risks of hereditary diseases and half-siblings unknowingly getting together. “We don’t want genetic half siblings to … start families,” Carolina Östgren, research officer at the Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics, told POLITICO.  Sweden’s ethics council started looking into the issue in 2023, following an article published in newspaper Dagens Nyheter, which reported that Swedish clinics are selling donated sperm abroad resulting in one donor potentially fathering more than 50 children. In Sweden, each donor can only provide donations to six couples. However, there are no restrictions on how many children a donor may father across different countries. And the clinics are using this to go beyond the national limits.  BOOMING BUSINESS, GROWING RISKS Some cryobanks — sperm and egg banks — set their own voluntary limit for the maximum families or children per donor. The fertility clinic in the Dagens Nyheter article had a voluntary cap of 25 families worldwide per donor; however, while the donors were informed about the exports, many recipient parents didn’t know their children could have up to 50 half-siblings. Most EU countries have national limits on how many children can be conceived from one donor. | Andreas Arnold/Picture Alliance via Getty Images A recent case —  a donor with a rare cancer-causing gene whose sperm was used to conceive at least 67 children, 10 of whom have since been diagnosed with cancer — “is another example of why we have to regulate this on an international level,” Östgren said.  A spokesperson for the European Sperm Bank, one of the bloc’s largest cryobanks providing sperm and egg donations to 80 countries, told POLITICO that donors go through extensive health checks and family history reviews. From a medical perspective, choosing a donor is generally safer than conceiving naturally, the spokesperson argued. However, those screenings would not have detected the cancer-causing TP53 gene mutation that was carried by the donor.  “You can never be 100% sure of detecting everything,” Peter Reeslev, head of Denmark-based Fertility Consultancy, which provides international advice to fertility clinics, said in a written response. “Centralised registry can support and limit donor number of offspring, but imagining no illnesses will occur among donor conceived children is naïve.” “We can’t do whole-genome sequencing for all sperm donors — I’m not arguing for that,” Edwige Kasper, a biologist at Rouen University Hospital in France, who presented the cancer-risk donor case at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics in Milan told The Guardian. “But this is the abnormal dissemination of genetic disease. Not every man has 75 children across Europe.” On average a European man has one to two children. But through donations, the number can rise as high as 550 children, as in the case of a Dutch sperm donor who has been banned from further donations. MIND THE CAP! Cryobanks warn that overly strict limits could reduce supply, which is already running short. The European Sperm Bank argued that only 3-5 percent of men who begin the selection process are approved, warning that if family limits are set too low this would drive up screening costs and wait times, potentially pricing out would-be parents. Cryobanks use one donor for conceiving as many children as possible, because the unit cost is lower, Östgren said. The European Sperm Bank caps the number of would-be parents that can use one donor at 75, allowing one donor to potentially father hundreds of children. Its price for a single-use sperm vial varies from around €700 to €1,100. But this bank also offers prospective parents the chance to opt for an exclusive donor — meaning no other families will ever receive their sperm. But it comes at a cost. Screening fees would be distributed across fewer families which would increase the price, the European Sperm Bank said in written response, without giving a value.  But that logic doesn’t fly with ethicists. “You cannot say that it’s cheaper, and that’s why we should do it,” Östgren said. “We must think of other factors than the business logic here.” The concerns also go beyond hereditary health risks and possible incest. Thanks to the rise of consumer DNA testing and social media, donor-conceived individuals are now discovering dozens — sometimes hundreds — of genetic half-siblings worldwide.  “The psychological impact of discovering that you have dozens of half-brothers and sisters in Europe or even the wider world carries a huge impact,” the Belgian official said. “The world is getting smaller and smaller. People look for each other, find each other faster.” Fertility consultant Reeslev agreed that “due to changes in communicational platforms and transparency e.g. DNA testing, the time has come for a sperm donor limit on a European level.” In some countries, the donor’s identity is kept secret unless the child experiences severe health conditions. Other countries allow donor-conceived children to know who the donor is from a certain age, ranging from 15 to 18 years. Some, such as Denmark, allow the donor to choose whether to be anonymous or open.  Belgium wants to erase the anonymity option. “We also advocate (for) a European central donor register and support the removal of anonymity,” the official said. “This is about the right of the child to know their parentage.” THE CASE FOR EU ACTION To raise attention of the issues in March this year Sweden, together with ethics councils from Norway, Finland and Denmark, published a joint report, calling for the EU discuss issues around international donations.  Donor-conceived births are rising across Europe as fertility rates decline and assisted reproduction becomes more widely accessible. | Lee Sanders/EPA Their call has been heard.  “We’re really happy that they are taking this seriously and discussing it on the broader level, on the European level,” Östgren said.  The European Sperm Bank is also hoping the ministerial discussion will lead to a harmonized cap on the number of families per donor and the establishment of a central EU donor registry to ensure long-term traceability and secure access to vital donor information.  That’s because the EU’s new regulation on substances of human origin, which will apply from 2027, while a step toward harmonizing currently widely varying rules and standards, doesn’t introduce a bloc-wide family limit and central donor registry. In the meantime Östgren believes an EU decision would be a first step toward worldwide guidance. “Sperm is exported … in the whole world,” Östgren said.

Public places such as beaches, parks and gardens, areas near schools, bus stops and sports facilities will be tobacco-free starting July 1, the French health and family minister Catherine Vautrin said.  “Where there are children, tobacco must disappear,” the minister told Ouest-France on Thursday, adding that the freedom to smoke “ends where children’s right to breathe fresh air begins.” The fine for smoking in such areas will reach €135. Smoking will still be allowed on café terraces and e-cigarettes are exempt from the new ban. Some municipalities have already introduced local bans, but the new rules will apply nationwide from July. No decision has been made on banning cigarette sales to people under 18, but Vautrin said she is “not ruling anything out for the future.” Asked about a possible tax hike on tobacco, Vautrin said that no new increases are planned for now.  The authorized nicotine level and the number of flavors for e-cigarettes should be reduced by the end of the first half of 2026, the minister said, adding that for such measures she needs “scientific and technical opinions to establish the details.” The move comes as part of the measures of the National Tobacco Control Program 2023-2027. The French measures align with the European Commission’s Beating Cancer Plan, which aims to create a “tobacco-free generation” by 2040 — defined as having less than 5 percent of the population using tobacco.

PARIS — French Prime Minister François Bayrou vehemently hit back against allegations that he mishandled a decades-old child abuse scandal during more than five hours of grilling on Wednesday. Bayrou spent much of the marathon hearing attacking the motives of the panel, especially far-left lawmaker Paul Vannier, as lawmakers attempted to nail down just how much he knew about the allegations of both physical and sexual abuse at a Catholic school in his constituency — some of which first surfaced when he was education minister and held local leadership roles in the 1990s.  “I didn’t lie,” Bayrou said. “I never hid anything.” While the prime minister did not commit any notable slip-ups, he did not appear to present strong enough evidence to put the scandal to rest or shake off lingering doubts about his past statements. Bayrou in February told lawmakers in the National Assembly that he hadn’t known about sexual abuse at the school at the time, but seemingly contradicted that statement in the days that followed and then again during the hearing. “The only information I had was what was covered in the press,” Bayrou said.  The scandal is a serious threat to Bayrou, who has been under intense pressure to lay out a credible path to thwart a looming budget crisis. Though Bayrou has managed to survive France’s gridlocked politics longer than his predecessor Michel Barnier, his minority center-right government remains intact thanks only to a fractured opposition, which could coalesce against it in the upcoming budget cycle. French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said Bayrou had “his full trust” but behind the scenes speculation has been mounting over the prime minister’s future. A government adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, said ahead of the hearing that Macron would be able to ask for Bayrou’s resignation “if things get out of hand in the media.” The case came back into the public eye last year when prosecutors announced they would investigate fresh allegations from dozens of former pupils at Notre-Dame de Bétharram, which some of Bayrou’s own children attended. Some 200 people have come forward as of early April to testify about abuse at the Bétharram institution, according to the local prosecutor’s office. Bayrou’s own daughter revealed last month that she was among those physically abused. One of the most serious allegations dates back to the late 1990s when the school’s director, a priest, was accused of child rape by a former student. The judge in charge of the investigations at the time testified under oath that he had met with Bayrou at his request during the investigation phase, and said he had given him details about the allegations.  The priest committed suicide before the case was concluded. French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said Bayrou had “his full trust.” | POOL photo by Lou Benoist/EPA-EFE Bayrou first denied knowing about allegations of sexual abuse and told Le Monde he didn’t discuss them with the judge at the time. He later walked that back, telling lawmakers he “might” have discussed the case with the judge, who was his neighbor.   On Wednesday he said he had “no recollection of this [conversation].” But, he added, “I trust the judge” that it happened. Other aspects of the case centered around multiple allegations of violent physical abuse, including leaving children outside during freezing winter nights as punishment for misbehavior. In one case described at the hearing, a student narrowly escaped amputation as a consequence of frostbite. “Were there methods that were a bit rough? Probably yes. Would they be accepted today? Probably not,” Bayrou said. A former teacher at the school said under oath in a separate hearing that she had reached out personally to Bayrou in the 1990s and alerted him about the physical abuse. The prime minister accused her of fabricating part of her testimony and said “she informed me of nothing.”

The Spanish government is banning its embassies and consulates from registering children born through surrogates in foreign countries. Regulations set to go into effect on Thursday cancel all pending registration processes and forbid diplomats from accepting certificates issued by foreign countries in which Spanish citizens are recognized as the parents of a child born through surrogacy. Several EU countries prohibit surrogacy, but citizens routinely skirt the ban by hiring surrogates in foreign countries and registering the children abroad. Opposition to that loophole has become a unifying issue among politicians — both from the far right and the far left — who are usually diametrically opposed. In Italy, right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has cracked down on the practice as part of a broader campaign targeting the LGBTQ+ community. Surrogacy had become an increasingly popular option for the country’s same-sex couples, who are banned from adopting children, but in 2023 Meloni ordered city councils to only register biological parents on birth certificates. Last year her government made traveling abroad to have a baby through surrogacy a criminal act. Surrogacy has been prohibited in Spain since 2006. But for years, Spanish couples have successfully registered children born through surrogacy in other countries by providing foreign court rulings recognizing them as the baby’s parents. Up until now, those documents had been sufficient for diplomats to authorize the child’s inscription in the Spanish Civil Registry, but the situation changed last December when Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that procedure to be illegal. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing governments have moved to tighten the ban because they object to the practice on feminist grounds. In the 2023 revision of the country’s abortion law, surrogacy was described as a form of violence against women, and last year’s Supreme Court ruling condemned the practice as “an attack on the moral integrity of the pregnant woman” and a measure that treats children as “mere commodities.” The new regulations, first reported by the Cadena SER, dictate that the child’s parentage can only be determined once the minor has arrived in Spain. Spanish law only permits the adult who is biologically connected to a child born through surrogacy — usually the father — to be registered as its parent; the other partner must apply for adoption after the surrogate mother has formally relinquished the minor. Spain’s surrogacy ban is expected to be further reinforced in a human trafficking bill set to be unveiled later this year.

It’s not just Washington or Bucharest. Albania is coming down on TikTok with a fresh ban — a move that could draw scrutiny from Brussels as the country works to clear the bar on civil rights protections to join the European Union. Prime Minister Edi Rama announced in late December that he would “block TikTok for one year.” His decision was fueled by outrage over the fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old in November following a series of arguments the teen had on social media. After the stabbing, videos surfaced on TikTok showing young people expressing support for the killing. The decision is based on a “very disturbing pattern” on TikTok, Rama told POLITICO in written comments — and taps into growing concerns about how social media impacts the mental health and safety of youngsters. But the incoming ban has raised eyebrows among opposition politicians and human rights watchers. “It’s a pure electoral act and [an] abuse of power to suppress freedom of speech in Albania,” said Ina Zhupa, an Albanian opposition MP. Ruslan Stefanovlan, program director at the the Sofia-based Center for the Study of Democracy, said scapegoating TikTok for the tragedy “is a typical populist move.” The lack of due process or solid evidence underpinning the planned ban is emblematic of the country’s systemic corruption and institutional weaknesses, Stefanovlan said. The planned TikTok ban is likely to draw scrutiny in Brussels, where European Union officials are assessing Albania’s respect for EU standards on rule of law and fundamental freedoms. | Armend Nimani/AFP via Getty Images A spokesperson for TikTok said it had found “no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed [that] videos leading up to these incidents were being posted on another platform, not TikTok.” The planned TikTok ban is likely to draw scrutiny in Brussels, where European Union officials are assessing Albania’s respect for EU standards on rule of law and fundamental freedoms. A European Commission spokesperson said in a statement that the EU executive had “taken note” of Albania’s plan to block TikTok and called it “a sovereign decision.” “In the EU,” the statement stressed, “any ban of digital services can be considered as a last resort and in relation to an infringement of the transparency and accountability obligations of the law, not in response to individual issues and pieces of online content.” The EU is conducting its own investigation under the Digital Services Act, “including in relation to the assessment and mitigation of risk for the physical and mental well-being of users,” the spokesperson added. The European Commission is currently evaluating the rule of law and civil rights in Albania with an eye toward its accession to the EU — one of Rama’s biggest political goals. Albania has been an EU candidate country since 2014 and formally opened its accession process in 2022, with a first round of negotiations taking place last October. Rama is aiming for full EU membership by 2030. Rama insisted that the TikTok ban had not been provoked by a “one-off incident;” was aligned with what the vast majority of parents wanted; and was part of a wider plan to make schools safer that was developed together with schools, teachers and parents. Rama’s office did not provide technical details on how and when the ban will be enforced. The prime minister said in December that his government had done “all the technological research” and would need six to eight weeks to ensure that TiKTok is no longer accessible in Albania. “Freedom of speech and marketing opportunities will not cease to exist without TikTok,” Rama told POLITICO.

Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama announced a one-year ban on TikTok in the country, blaming the Chinese-owned platform for inciting violence after a 14-year-old schoolboy was stabbed to death last month by a fellow pupil. “For one year, we’ll be completely shutting it down for everyone. There will be no TikTok in Albania,” Rama said Saturday. The prime minister accused social media, and TikTok in particular, of fueling violence among youths. Local media reported that the fatal stabbing of a teenager in November followed a series of arguments between the two boys on social media. After the stabbing, videos surfaced on TikTok showing young people expressing support for the killing. “The problem today is not our children, the problem today is us, the problem today is our society, the problem today is TikTok and all the others that are taking our children hostage,” Rama said. TikTok has asked for “urgent clarity from the Albanian government” on the case of the stabbed teenager, the Associated Press reported. The company, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, said it had “found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident were being posted on another platform, not TikTok,” according to the AP report. The ban is expected to come into effect early next year. Additionally, Albanian authorities increased police presence and instituted closer cooperation with parents as part of a series of protective measures at schools. Countries in the European Union have been concerned over social media use by children. Several EU countries, such as France, Germany and Belgium, have enforced restrictions on social media use for youth.  The incoming Polish presidency of the Council of the EU has set mental health of children and adolescents in the context of social media as one of its priorities.

When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in a major fight over Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, conservatives defending the law plan to point to an unexpected place as a model: Europe. Two decades ago, Republicans appeared allergic to foreign influence on the U.S. legal system, decrying Supreme Court decisions that looked abroad — often to Europe — for guidance on culture-war issues like gay rights and the death penalty. Now, that aversion seems to have eroded. Lawyers and legislators on the right are embracing recent moves to restrict some types of care for transgender minors in four European countries. And these American conservatives are using them as evidence that new bans or limits on such treatment in Tennessee and 25 other states are not only prudent — but also consistent with the U.S. Constitution. “Systematic reviews by national health authorities in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Norway have all concluded that the harms associated with these interventions are significant, and the long-term benefits are unproven,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti wrote in defense of the state’s ban on transition-related medical care for minors. The law, passed last year, bans hormone treatments or surgeries for minors that would allow them “to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” Challengers to the law, along with the Biden administration, asked the high court to declare the measure unconstitutional after a federal appeals court upheld it. The challengers say the law discriminates on the basis of gender in violation of the 14th Amendment. A brief from Tennessee state officials defending the law quotes no fewer than three times a passage from the appeals court ruling that upheld the law, saying: “Some of the same European countries that pioneered these treatments now express caution about them and have pulled back on their use.” The conservatives’ sudden affection for European medical standards and judgments rankles some transgender advocates, who say it’s a hypocritical about-face. “I think it’s rich that folks that don’t look to Europe for anything, especially socialized medicine, for the guideposts on how to move forward with public policy, are citing any kind of medical policy” from Europe, said Sasha Buchert of Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group. CONSERVATIVES COMBAT FOREIGN INFLUENCE ON U.S. LAW The conservative crusade against U.S. judges taking note of legal developments overseas reached a fever pitch in the 2000s. “It certainly was extreme for a while,” said Austen Parrish, dean of the University of California at Irvine law school. “You had Supreme Court justices that were being threatened with death threats. … There was this great pushback on anything foreign, because somehow it was giving up on American sovereignty, and we had to chart our own path.” In 2005, as the anti-foreign-law frenzy was at its height, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) suggested at confirmation hearings for John Roberts as chief justice that U.S. judges who cited foreign precedents should be subject to impeachment. Roberts pledged not to rely on foreign law himself but said removing judges who did would be a step too far. “I’d accuse them of getting it wrong on that point, and I’d hope to sit down with them and debate it and reason about it,” Roberts said. That same year, Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer even faced off in a public debate that aired arguments for and against its use. Justice Clarence Thomas also weighed in, declaring in a 2002 opinion a distaste for foreign influence that seemed to extend beyond legal rulings. “This Court … should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans,” he wrote in a death penalty case. In the court’s seismic 2022 ruling overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion, the conservative majority tiptoed around the foreign law issue. Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion noted that the Mississippi legislature that passed the abortion restriction at issue in that case found that the U.S. was one of only seven countries that permitted elective abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. He then relegated further discussion of that issue to a footnote. The court’s liberal minority unapologetically embraced international practice as a reason to preserve Roe v. Wade. “American abortion law has become more and more aligned with other Nations,” Justices Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote, adding that the nuances of those laws are important. “Most Western European countries impose restrictions on abortion after 12 to 14 weeks, but they often have liberal exceptions to those time limits, including to prevent harm to a woman’s physical or mental health.” SOME EUROPEAN COUNTRIES RETHINK GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE Complaints that some doctors were handing out puberty-blocking medication too widely have triggered reexamination of treatment practices in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and Norway in recent years. The highest-profile retreat came in the U.K., following a broad review of gender-affirming care by the National Health Service. The head of the review, Dr. Hilary Cass, concluded that studies about treatment for gender dysphoria were unreliable, that doctors were often not tending to patients’ other issues and there was a lack of attention to patients seeking to “detransition.” “This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint,” Cass wrote. “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.” After the findings in the so-called Cass review, released in draft form in 2022 and finalized in April, NHS stopped prescribing puberty blockers for those under 18 and closed the main NHS clinic in England offering gender-affirming care for minors. Sweden, Finland and Norway have guidelines that reject certain treatments, such as surgery, for adolescents. But all three countries have some means for teenagers to access puberty blockers, often through clinical trials, according to briefs filed by outside parties with the Supreme Court. “None of those countries have banned care in the way that Tennessee has,” said Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is set to argue against the law at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. “None of those countries have taken away every pathway for adolescents to access the medical care that they need.” While some transgender advocates have been highly critical of the Cass review and other steps that have limited treatments, Strangio was relatively positive about efforts by the European medical community to refine standards for gender-affirming care. “I think the examples of Europe are often very distorted in the press,” Strangio told reporters on a video conference Monday. “What they’re actually showing us is tailored responses to ensure that people who need treatment get it.” Strangio acknowledged some risks to puberty blockers and other treatment, but said that alone doesn’t justify an all-out ban on the use of those drugs for minors with gender dysphoria. He noted the same drugs remain available for use in other situations. “In all other contexts, what Tennessee does and what other governments do when there is beneficial care that carries risk is to inform patients and to attempt to minimize risks. That is what is going on in Europe. That is not what is going on in Tennessee,” he said. SOME JUDGES WERE UNIMPRESSED BY EUROPE EXAMPLES U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, who blocked Tennessee’s law last June, found similar flaws in the state’s arguments about new limits on transition-related medical care abroad. He said the recalibration of treatment in various countries isn’t akin to the flat prohibition on hormone treatment for transgender minors that Tennessee and other states have imposed. “Defendants’ reliance on the practices of European nations is not an apt analogy where none of these countries have gone so far as to ban hormone therapy entirely,” Richardson said. Richardson, an appointee of President Donald Trump, used language that harkened back to earlier conservative skepticism about the relevance of foreign examples to a U.S. court case. “There is the additional problem that the Court can put only so much weight on the practice of other nations,” he wrote. “After all, the Court cannot outsource to European nations the task of preliminarily determining … the extent to which the treatments at issue are safe.” Federal judges in Indiana and Florida also rejected similar arguments as they blocked gender-affirming care bans in those states. A spokesperson for Skrmetti declined to comment for this story, but in a recent op-ed the Tennessee AG repeatedly and prominently invoked Europe’s moves on transition-related medical care. “Medical research and practices in Europe support a cautious approach,” Skrmetti wrote. ARE CONSERVATIVES INVOKING FOREIGN LAW, OR EXPERIENCE? One scholar who has criticized some efforts to banish foreign law from the U.S. legal system noted that Tennessee isn’t invoking foreign statutes or court rulings. “There has been this kind of hardcore talk of ‘no foreign law in American courts,’ which I think mostly stems from people not really thinking very hard about when it is you need to use it,” said Eugene Volokh of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Volokh said he views the conservative states’ claims as more factual than legal. “If the question is: Is youth gender medicine really likely to be effective? That’s something that you shouldn’t ignore … If the English and the Swedes and the Dutch say one thing, then that’s certainly evidence. It’s not dispositive evidence, but it’s certainly evidence,” he said. Conservatives’ references to Europe at the Supreme Court in the current legal fight point not to court rulings or laws, or to facts or studies, but to medical practice guidelines and standards. Those amount to national policy in some countries — particularly those with government-run health services, some legal experts say. And they note that urgings from judges like Thomas that U.S. courts ignore “foreign moods, fads or fashions” expressed a sentiment that appeared to go beyond rejecting black-letter law or judicial rulings. “I definitely see the same thing playing out,” Seattle University law professor Sital Kalantry said. “There was a big debate where conservatives freaked out about it when the liberals were using it. But now, if it seems to be conveniently supporting their ends, then they’re willing to make reference to international practice. … We’re now at this place that both perspectives are selectively using international law and practice to support their predetermined end point.”

OPTICS THE SOUND OF HOPE: MUSIC SCHOOL OPENS DOORS FOR ROMA YOUTH An accomplished classical violinist is offering an alternative to life in the ghetto. Text by BORYANA DZHAMBAZOVA Photos by DOBRIN KASHAVELOV in Sliven, Bulgaria The school called Music, Not the Street offers classical music education to Roma children. It was set up by musician Georgi Kalaidzhiev in 2008 and provides lessons in a wide variety of instruments, from violin and cello to trumpet, clarinet and piano.  This article is part of the Breaking out: Stories of Roma empowerment special report, presented by the Roma Foundation for Europe. SLIVEN, Bulgaria — The train tracks that carve through the Bulgarian city of Sliven mark more than just the town’s geography; they define a stark divide in its population. On one side is the Nadezhda quarter — or “Hope” in English —  home to roughly 20,000 Roma residents. Along with the population of nearby towns and villages, the Sliven district has the highest concentration of Roma in the country, according to 2021 census data. People in the neighborhood face a reality shaped by poverty, limited access to health care and education, and persistent discrimination. As a result, generations here have been held back by early marriages and high dropout rates from school, with many of them leaving the country to seek seasonal jobs. Yet some have found hope on the other side of the tracks, in a music school just a few blocks away. The school called Music, Not the Street offers classical music education to Roma children. It was set up by musician Georgi Kalaidzhiev in 2008 and provides lessons in a wide variety of instruments, from violin and cello to trumpet, clarinet and piano.  Kalaidzhiev’s initiative has already trained more than 300 children, with around 90 currently enrolled. While some students commute from nearby villages, most live just across the train tracks in Nadezhda, seeing in the school’s offerings an alternative to life in a ghetto. But for some in Sliven, music has offered a path to a different future: Though not every student at the Music, Not the Street school goes on to pursue a professional career, many continue their education in music schools or even at the National Music Academy in Sofia. “If I weren’t playing the violin, I would have aimlessly wandered the streets,” says Tsvetelina Hristova, a 21-year-old violinist who now plays part-time with the Sliven Symphony Orchestra.  After graduating from high school, Hristova came back to work as a trainer at the music school. Her goal is to inspire more Roma girls to “continue their education without any fear, so that they do not need to think about marriage so early.”  In the Roma community, child marriage is an old tradition. While the number of marriages under the age of 16 is slowly decreasing, early matrimony continues to limit the prospects of young women. Only 12 percent of girls and 18 percent of boys are likely to complete secondary education if they marry before the age of 18, according to a 2020 survey on education and employment among Roma in Bulgaria. With the music school, Hristova said, “they can dream big.”  ONCE UPON A TUNE Since it was founded more than 15 years ago, Music, Not the Street has grown from humble beginnings in Georgi Kalaidzhiev’s sister’s basement to taking up an entire building. Kalaidzhiev, 77, was born and raised in the same Roma quarter. As an accomplished violinist, he played in concert halls across the world until he settled down in Germany in 1993 to become a concertmaster in the town of Giessen. But he never forgot where he came from: Since he started the music school, he has traveled back to Nadezhda to visit and tutor the students every few months. The project’s toughest test is to help break down stereotypes about the Roma community, sometimes coming from Roma families themselves. “I was one of those children who grew up in Nadezhda,” he said. “But playing the violin took me all around the country and abroad.”  He added that his talent with the violin eventually landed him a job in the music industry in Germany. “I wanted to pay it forward and introduce classical music to other children in the neighborhood, so it can allow them similar opportunities to the ones I was afforded,” he said. Coming from a family of musicians, 13-year-old Zlatko Angelov is determined to follow in Kalaidzhiev’s footsteps and make a name for himself in the world of classical music. “I always dreamed of becoming a violin player,” he says.  He has already played in some of the biggest concert halls in Bulgaria, joined the Sliven Symphony Orchestra in several performances, and along with other music school students taken part in several concerts in Geneva and Strasbourg in September. “Of all instruments, the violin is the dearest to my heart — from its shape and sound to the beauty of the music it creates,” he said. Zlatko’s teacher Radka Kuseva refers to him as “our big hope,” describing him as a promising young musician with a bright music career ahead of him.  Coming from a family of musicians, 13-year-old Zlatko Angelov is determined to follow in Kalaidzhiev’s footsteps and make a name for himself in the world of classical music. Kuseva has been coaching Zlatko since he was six. And the goal is to train him — and others like him — on more than classical music: The school wants to “teach them about the discipline of learning, to give them confidence, to offer them a chance to leave the neighborhood,” Kuseva said.  “We would like to show them that they are capable, that they can do whatever they want, if they put their minds to it.” FACING THE MUSIC Despite its ambitions and individual success stories, Kalaidzhiev’s school still faces challenges.  The project’s toughest test is to help break down stereotypes about the Roma community, sometimes coming from Roma families themselves. “Some of the participants do not attend classes regularly as they have problems at home or their parents are not so supportive of their music training,” Kuseva explained. Roma families can be quite conservative about allowing their children to study elsewhere — especially girls: For instance, in the beginning, people frowned upon the fact that Hristova, the violinist with the Sliven Symphony Orchestra, went to study in a music high school in Burgas, a Black Sea port.  But the more success stories Roma people encounter, the more inclined they are to let their kids study, according to students like Hristova. “The school … shows us that there really is hope for Hope,” Hristova said. This article is part of the Breaking out: Stories of Roma empowerment special report, presented by the Roma Foundation for Europe. The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.