On parental rights, the contrast between red and blue states couldn’t be starker

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this February released its Youth Risk Behavior Survey, covering the years 2011-2021. The data were alarming. Almost 3 of every 5 teenage girls reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless in 2021, and nearly a third of them said they had considered suicide, up 60% from a decade ago.

So children, particularly young girls, are suffering an epidemic of depression. The two main political parties have vastly different diagnoses of the problem. This is reflected in solutions that states are putting forward to address it, which tell us much about which direction each party would take the country as a whole. The stakes could hardly be higher.