The Congressional Progressive Caucus has rescinded a letter, signed by 30 House liberals and sent to the White House on Monday, that urged President Biden to negotiate directly with Russia to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

The withdrawal comes a day after the letter, led by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), triggered fierce pushback from many Democrats. The retraction was also a stunning misstep for a prominent House liberal who has expressed interest in seeking a leadership position in the party.

In the wake of the letter’s release, Democrats and Ukrainian officials argued that it was unrealistic to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Those officials also worried the letter could create more pressure on Biden as he tries to sustain domestic support for the war effort, at a time when the region is heading into a potentially difficult winter and Republicans are threatening to cut aid to Ukraine if they retake Congress......

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has rescinded a letter, signed by 30 House liberals and sent to the White House on Monday, that urged President Biden to negotiate directly with Russia to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

The withdrawal comes a day after the letter, led by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), triggered fierce pushback from many Democrats. The retraction was also a stunning misstep for a prominent House liberal who has expressed interest in seeking a leadership position in the party.

In the wake of the letter’s release, Democrats and Ukrainian officials argued that it was unrealistic to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Those officials also worried the letter could create more pressure on Biden as he tries to sustain domestic support for the war effort, at a time when the region is heading into a potentially difficult winter and Republicans are threatening to cut aid to Ukraine if they retake Congress.

In April, Florida enacted a law that sharply restricted abortion access in the state and banned most abortions after 15 weeks. That law, known as HB 5, is now encountering some exciting and innovative legal opposition, not only from groups that fight for civil liberties and reproductive freedoms, but from religious groups as well. The challenges in Florida — and somewhat similar ones in Kentucky and Indiana — may signal subtle but significant shifts in how activists across the country are contesting a recent string of conservative Christian legislative triumphs.

Even if these cases don’t immediately succeed, the plaintiffs are helping to transform the debate on the meaning of secularism in America by exposing a false division between “religious” and “secular” citizens. Ideally, these interventions will foster a much more sophisticated political dialogue about the promise of secular governance. For at some point these cases are going to force a district or circuit court judge, or maybe even a gaggle of United States Supreme Court justices, to confront some of the neon-light-blinking religious inequalities that HB 5 and similar laws create.

The reality is that abortion restrictions don’t just infringe on the rights of secular people — they also suppress the rights of many religious people outside the Christian right.....

The Rev. Tom Capo of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami, whose motion now rests with Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit, has skillfully pointed out that HB 5 fails “to account for the diverse religious views of many Floridians. . . whose faith leads them to take a very different view of when life begins and to counsel abortion.” Capo’s motion argues that the state’s legislation favors a particular Christian theology, and that this act of non-neutrality violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from establishing a religion. (As if to prove how little he cared about the optics of neutrality, Gov. Ron DeSantis owned the libs yet again by signing the bill into law at a conservative, Spanish-language church.) Second, it contends that HB 5 trespasses upon the religious free exercise of those citizens who don’t abide by conservative Christian worldviews......

Equal protection is what the Florida plaintiffs are seeking; the right to make personal decisions according to their, not someone else’s, religious scruples. Their intervention will ultimately force the courts to confront the reality, and constitutional implications, of religious diversity. Their intervention pierces through the untenable us-vs.-them logic of the Christian right by demonstrating that when it comes to abortion, there is no unified “us.” Instead, there are lots of religious people who, like nonreligious people, find shelter and solace in secular policies