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Is The War on Iran Unlawful And Unfair To U.S. Troops?

Is The War on Iran Unlawful And Unfair To U.S. Troops?

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Partisanship continues to hinder vaccination rates

People in line for the Covid vaccine
Malte Mueller/Getty Images
Sara Swann
By Sara SwannMay 18, 2021
Sara Swann

As a staff writer, Sara covers a variety of democracy reform issues, including voting rights, money in politics, gerrymandering and civic education. Prior to joining The Fulcrum in May 2019, Sara reported on local government on Maryland's Eastern Shore for the USA Today network. She is a native West Virginian and a graduate of Syracuse University.

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Even though more Americans are getting vaccinated against Covid-19, inoculation rates remain significantly depressed in some conservative and rural parts of the country.

More Republicans are opting to get vaccinated, but many remain hesitant due to the polarizing rhetoric that has persisted throughout the coronavirus pandemic, according to research released Monday by Citizen Data. Vaccine hesitancy is particularly high in rural, conservative areas, the nonpartisan research organization found.

Citizen Data's analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Census Bureau data found that vaccine hesitancy is most severe in parts of Georgia, Virginia and West Virginia. And by folding in its own ideology modeling, the research group determined a hesitancy score (0 for least hesitant to 100 for most hesitant) by media market.

At the top of the list is Dothan, Ala., a city of 261,000 that borders Georgia, with a vaccine hesitancy score of 100. Citizen Data determined 3 in 10 adults there are considered "rural conservative" and just 6 percent of its overall adult population is vaccinated.

The rest of the "most hesitant" list includes: Harrisonburg, Va.; Roanoke and Lynchburg, Va.; Albany, Ga.; Clarksburg and Weston, W.Va.; North Platte, Neb.; Macon, Ga.; Charlottesville, Va.; Amarillo, Texas; and Springfield, Mo.

Vaccine hesitancy ratesSource: Citizen Data

Although these areas and others continue to see vaccine aversion from conservatives, polling conducted in April by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows more Republicans are becoming amenable to it.

As of last month, 55 percent of Republicans surveyed said they had already received at least one dose or planned on getting vaccinated as soon as possible — an increase of 9 percentage points from March. Meanwhile the percentage of Republicans who said they would "definitely not" get vaccinated decreased from 29 percent in March to 20 percent in April.

Democrats remained the most enthusiastic about the vaccine, with 80 percent saying in April they had already received at least one dose or planned on getting it soon. This is only a slight increase from 79 percent in March.

Independents also saw a small increase in vaccination enthusiasm, from 57 percent in March to 59 percent in April.


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Is the U.S. at "War" with Iran?

A woman sifts through the rubble in her house in the Beryanak District after it was damaged by missile attacks two days before, on March 15, 2026, in Tehran, Iran.

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Is the U.S. at "War" with Iran?

This question is not an exercise in double-talk. It is critical to understand the power that our Constitution grants exclusively to Congress, and the power that resides in the President as Commander-in-Chief of the military.

The Constitution clearly states that Congress has the power to declare war. The President does not have that power. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 recognizes that distribution of power by saying that a President can only introduce military force into an existing or imminent hostility if Congress has declared war or specifically authorized the President to use military force, or there is a national emergency created by an attack on the U.S.

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Anthropic’s dispute with the Trump administration is no longer just about AI policy; it has escalated into a constitutional test of whether American companies can uphold their values against political retaliation. After the administration labeled Anthropic a “supply‑chain risk”, a designation historically reserved for foreign adversaries, and ordered federal agencies to cease using its technology, the company did not yield. Instead, Anthropic filed two lawsuits: one in the Northern District of California and another in the D.C. Circuit, each challenging different aspects of the government’s actions and calling them “unprecedented and unlawful.”

The Pentagon has now formally issued the supply‑chain risk designation, triggering immediate cancellations of federal contracts and jeopardizing “hundreds of millions of dollars” in near‑term revenue. Anthropic’s filings describe the losses as “unrecoverable,” with reputational damage compounding the financial harm. Yet even as the government blacklists the company, the Pentagon continues using Claude in classified systems because the model is deeply embedded in wartime workflows. This contradiction underscores the political nature of the designation: a tool deemed too “dangerous” to be used by federal agencies is simultaneously indispensable in active military operations.

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