Well before political leaders were taking action against cellphones in the classroom, the superintendent of schools in Schoharie, N.Y., a rural district about 40 miles west of Albany, was well along on his crusade against Big Tech’s commandeering of the adolescent mind. By the beginning of the school year in 2022, David Blanchard, who had been appointed as superintendent seven years earlier, had implemented a bell-to-bell policy. This meant that students could not use phones (or smart watches or earbuds) at any point during the school day — not during lunch or study halls or periods of transition from one class to another.

The effort certainly seemed extreme. This was before Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation” spurred consensus about the destructive impact phones were having on teenage mental health, before the former surgeon general’s call for warning labels on social media platforms. Mr. Blanchard was troubled by all the disconnection he was seeing. His experiment yielded benefits right away.

“We found a transformative environment,” he told me recently. “We expected kids to be in tears, breaking down. Immediately we saw them talking to each other, engaged in conversation in the lunchroom.”

One unanticipated outcome was that students flooded counselors’ offices looking for help on how to resolve conflicts that were now happening in person. Previously, if they found themselves in some sort of fight with someone online, they would have called or texted a parent for advice on how to deal with it, Mr. Blanchard told me. “Now students were realizing that their friends were right there in front of them and not the people on social, a few towns away, that they had never met.” Enrollment in elective classes also went up when the option to scroll your way through a 40-minute free period was eliminated.

The success in Schoharie has been a showpiece in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent campaign to ban cellphones in schools across New York. At least eight other states, including Florida and Louisiana, have instituted restrictions of varying kinds. In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Phone-Free School Act requiring every school district in California to devise a policy limiting the use of smartphones by July 2026. This week a suggested cellphone ban was the subject of a public hearing in the Texas State Legislature, where a bill was introduced with bipartisan support a few months ago by a young member of the House who lamented that she had been “born into these devices.”

Governor Hochul’s proposal follows the Schoharie bell-to-bell approach. In a rare instance of agreement between labor and government, it is supported by the United Federation of Teachers, the union representing New York City schoolteachers. As Michael Mulgrew, the president of the U.F.T., put it, “It is simple, and everyone knows what the expectation is.”

Still, the proposal’s all-constraining formulation has not made it an obvious or easy sell. Introduced in January as part of the state’s current budget negotiations, it is opposed by some groups like the state’s School Boards Association. These groups favor an alternate strategy coming out of the statehouse that endorses the notion that local jurisdictions ought to have say in how policy limiting phone use is devised.

Studies comparing students with and without cellphones in classrooms generally show better academic performance among those without. The advantage of keeping devices out of students’ hands for the entire day is that it both reduces the time teachers have to waste policing phone use and also minimizes the possibility that whatever erupts on Snapchat during lunchtime will kill any chance of paying attention to the “Moby-Dick” discussion in the afternoon. In Schoharie, students put their smartphones in a pouch with a magnetic lock — the kind used in stores to prevent theft — which cannot be opened until a school attendant releases them at the end of the day.

In recent years, parents around the country have demanded more and more control over what their children are reading and doing in school. The constituents most opposed to all-day phone bans are the mothers and fathers who seem to be addicted to constant filial contact. Governor Hochul has spoken to aggrieved first-grade teachers who told her that they are overseeing classrooms full of children wearing smart watches. “Mommy and Daddy were checking in all day long saying, ‘I miss you and can’t wait to see you,’” the governor told me. “That’s a parental need,” she said, “not a student need.” The continuation of these patterns, she worried, was bound to keep children from emerging as fully functioning adults.

It is the sadly all too reasonable fear of many parents that something catastrophic could happen at school without their being able to reach their children. It is a fantasy that communication would save them. Throughout the rollout of the proposal, the governor’s office has had law enforcement come in and speak with school groups to explain how misguided a notion that is. In an emergency, phones distract children from remaining focused on whomever has been entrusted to keep them safe; calls and texts create added panic.

Should the governor’s proposal pass, it would take effect in September. Parents in Schoharie were quite resistant to the ban at first, Mr. Blanchard told me. But they came around when they realized that with the addiction broken, it became much easier to manage their children’s digital lives at home — and much more gratifying to see them engage with the world without staring at their hands.

Yeshiva University said on Thursday that it would recognize an L.G.B.T.Q. student club on campus, bringing to an end a bitter yearslong legal battle over whether the school could deny the group official recognition on religious grounds.

Yeshiva, a Modern Orthodox Jewish institution with campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx, had refused for years to recognize the club, which had been known as the Yeshiva University Pride Alliance. The case made its way through state and federal courts, even reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, and was closely watched by religious organizations and religious freedom groups.

But on Thursday, its administration said in a statement that it and the students had “reached an agreement, and the litigation is ending.” As part of the settlement, the students said the Pride Alliance would be renamed Hareni, a religious term they had suggested.

In a statement, the school said the club “will seek to support L.G.B.T.Q. students and their allies and will operate in accordance with the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis.”

It added: “The club will be run like other clubs on campus, all in the spirit of a collaborative and mutually supportive campus culture.”

The battle at Yeshiva University had brought one of the country’s most liberal cities to the front line of a nationwide debate over religious freedom and civil rights and whether houses of worship, religiously affiliated organizations or even pious individuals could be compelled to provide public accommodations to people with differing views.

Yeshiva’s decision came at a time when L.G.B.T.Q. rights appear under threat across the country from the Trump administration, which has fiercely attacked elite universities and mounted a campaign against the participation of transgender people, in particular, in public life.

Throughout years of legal wrangling, the school took sometimes extreme steps to deny the club official recognition, including imposing a brief ban on all on-campus clubs. The dispute drew the attention of state lawmakers, who criticized the university’s position and suggested it might have imperiled its ability to access public funds.

The announcement on Thursday represented a notable reversal for Yeshiva, which did not explain why it decided to change its approach.

In a statement, Hanan Eisenman, a university spokesman, said that the students who filed the lawsuit had actually agreed to a proposal Yeshiva made in 2022, when administrators surprised the students by forming a club “grounded” in Jewish religious law that they called “an approved traditional Orthodox alternative to YU Pride Alliance.”

“Our students’ well-being is always our primary concern,” he said. “We are pleased that our current undergraduate students will be leading the club announced today which is the same club approved by our senior rabbis two and a half years ago.”

But Zak Sawyer, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the settlement went far beyond what Yeshiva proposed in 2022, which he said “was created without student input, had no members, held no events and never existed outside of a press release.”

“Hareni has secured written guarantees ensuring it has the same rights and privileges as other student clubs, including access to campus spaces, official student event calendars and the ability to use ‘L.G.B.T.Q.’ in its public materials — none of which existed under YU’s prior ‘initiative,’” he said.

In interviews, members of the new club said they hoped the settlement would ensure that L.G.B.T.Q. students felt valued.

“I think this will really show to other people that there is no separation between being queer and being a Jew and that you are allowed to be a queer Jew on campus at Yeshiva University,” said Hayley Goldberg, 21, one of the club’s co-presidents.

Indeed, Ms. Goldberg and Schneur Friedman, 22, another co-president, said the club’s new name emphasized the importance of Judaism in their lives.

It was taken from a phrase recited before prayer, which they thought had special meaning for L.G.B.T.Q. acceptance: “I hereby take upon myself to fulfill the commandment of loving your fellow as yourself.”

The university’s administration had for years rejected student demands to recognize an L.G.B.T.Q. club because it said doing so would conflict with Orthodox Jewish religious teaching. While many Jewish congregations support L.G.B.T.Q. rights, many Orthodox leaders interpret the Torah as promoting traditional ideas of gender and sexuality.

After a group of students and alumni sued Yeshiva in 2021, its administration argued in court that its refusal was legally protected because it was exempt from New York’s civil rights laws as a Jewish religious institution.

Religious exemptions to such laws are common, but in recent years have increasingly been used to deny equal treatment to L.G.B.T.Q. people.

Yeshiva is structured as a modern American university with graduate programs in law and business that enroll many non-Jewish students. The university is home to roughly 6,000 students on four campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx.

Critics of the school’s legal argument that it was a religious institution said Yeshiva had more in common with religiously affiliated colleges and universities, like Fordham or Notre Dame, than it did with Christian seminaries, which are exempt from nondiscrimination laws because they train priests.

Judges in New York rejected the university’s religious freedom arguments, which led the school to file an unusual emergency stay to the Supreme Court in 2022. The court ruled in a 5- to-4 decision that Yeshiva must abide by lower court rulings and pursue any challenges in state court before it appealed to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Friedman said the university had approved a number of events that the club could host, including movie nights, panel discussions and holiday events.

But it declined to specify what sort of activities might not be approved. Still, Mr. Friedman described Thursday’s agreement as “a massive step.”

“The fact that this is happening very much within the guidelines of Yeshiva is significant,” said Mr. Friedman.

“If this can happen here, it has wider implication for the Orthodox Jewish community as a whole,” he said. “Even if there are compromises, it has a wide effect, which is very exciting.”

Foreign defendants brought to the United States almost never face capital punishment, no matter how grave the allegations against them.

But when a notorious drug lord arrived from Mexico in Brooklyn federal court last month on charges that included killing a federal agent, prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York said that he might face the death penalty.

Prosecutors would still have to formally seek capital punishment for the drug lord, Rafael Caro Quintero, in advance of a trial that could be months or years away. But whatever becomes of Mr. Caro Quintero, the episode represents a sea change for both countries, reflecting how Mexico is responding to President Trump’s aggressive foreign policy in the Americas and beyond.

Before this, Mexico had historically released criminals to the United States only on the condition that they not be executed, a provision of its extradition agreement with Washington.

However, rather than going through the cumbersome extradition proceedings, Mexico simply expelled Mr. Caro Quintero and 28 other drug cartel figures, as allowed by a national security law. The measure gives the Mexican government flexibility to speed up removals and it means that Mr. Caro Quintero and at least four other prisoners sent north last month could also face the death penalty.

For Mexico, the decision is a break from the country’s longstanding policy of protecting its citizens from capital punishment. For the United States, it enables Mr. Trump’s punitive vision of justice, of which the death penalty is an essential tool.

Mexico has fought bitterly for decades to stop the U.S. government from executing its citizens. The extradition treaty, a form of which has been in place since the 1970s, stipulates that whichever country requests a defendant cannot impose the death penalty if it is not present in the defendant’s home country. Mexico has not used capital punishment since the 1960s, though it wasn’t officially abolished until 2005.

The two countries’ differing views have strained relations. In 2002, Mexico’s president, Vicente Fox, canceled a trip to visit President George W. Bush in protest of the impending execution of a Mexican citizen. In 2003, Mexico appealed to the United Nations’ highest court over death sentences that the U.S. government had imposed on 51 Mexican citizens.

In 2017, Mexico agreed to extradite the drug lord Joaquin Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, under the condition that Eastern District prosecutors not pursue the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2019.

Emily Edmonds-Poli, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of San Diego, said that the decision of Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to expel the cartel members would ordinarily carry political risk. But Ms. Sheinbaum, who is enjoying high approval ratings amid a wave of nationalism, may have the freedom to act boldly, she said.

“It’s a watershed moment,” Ms. Edmonds-Poli said. “It opens a door that had previously been firmly shut.”

Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sought to end violence through less confrontation with the cartels and addressing root causes. But his strategy, coined “hugs, not bullets,” has fallen out of favor in Mexico.

By contrast, Ms. Sheinbaum has so far adopted a decidedly more aggressive approach to fighting the cartels. In addition to approving the expulsions, she sent more than 10,000 troops to the U.S. border and to Sinaloa, a hub for fentanyl trafficking where her administration says it has made more than 900 arrests since October.

It is not clear how the Mexican government will respond should U.S. prosecutors seek the death penalty against the cartel members. Alejandro Gertz Manero, Mexico’s attorney general, told reporters in Mexico that the cartel bosses cannot be executed in the United States, as reported by the Spanish-language outlet El País.

Negotiations to have the drug lords expelled from Mexico under this streamlined process began during the Biden administration, according to two people familiar with the talks. The Biden White House renewed those discussions with Ms. Sheinbaum when she took office in October, and the final expulsion deal was hashed out by the Trump administration after Inauguration Day.

“It’s a short circuiting of an important legal procedure,” said Austin Sarat, a professor at Amherst College who has studied the death penalty for decades. “What Trump is doing is resetting the conversation around capital punishment.”

Mr. Caro Quintero was a particularly prized catch for American prosecutors. He was convicted in Mexico for orchestrating the 1985 torturing and killing of Kiki Camarena, an undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, which transformed the agency and U.S.-Mexico relations.

Mr. Caro Quintero served decades in Mexican prison, but was released in 2013 in the middle of the night thanks to a legal loophole. He was recaptured by the Mexican authorities in 2022. Michael Vitaliano, a lawyer for Mr. Caro Quintero, said in a statement that should his client face the death penalty, his legal team was “fully prepared to meet that challenge procedurally and substantively,” from “the moment of his seizure and expulsion from Mexico to the end of trial.”

It could be months before prosecutors announce whether they are seeking the death penalty. A spokesman for the Eastern District declined to comment.

Prosecutors would first have to clear hurdles, including an intense review inside the Eastern District office and a Justice Department committee in Washington that considers capital cases. During this time, defense attorneys may make appeals to prosecutors and then to the Washington committee.

Opponents of the death penalty have long pointed to racial disparities in its application, along with the more fundamental moral question of whether the state has the right to take a life.

Critics have also pointed to the high cost of administering the death penalty, which can be tens of thousands of dollars more expensive than life imprisonment, as well as the fact that the United States executes far more people than countries in its peer group. Among the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States and Japan are the only two that use the death penalty.

Ken Montgomery, a lawyer for Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, another cartel member expelled from Mexico who could face death, said in an interview that the United States should not be in the business of executing people.

“For a civilized society, I don’t think executing people is ever a civilized thing to do,” Mr. Montgomery said.

Just over half of Americans support the death penalty, according to an October poll from Gallup, compared with 80 percent three decades ago. Nationally, 25 people were executed in 2024, compared with 85 in 2000, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who campaigned in 2020 on ending capital punishment, placed a moratorium on federal executions and commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 inmates on death row before leaving office.

By contrast, Mr. Trump and his allies favor a more punitive approach to administering justice, with Mr. Trump himself long harboring an affinity for the death penalty. In 1989, he placed newspaper advertisements calling for New York State to adopt the death penalty after the brutal attack of a Central Park jogger, for which five Black and Hispanic teenagers were wrongfully convicted. (The ads did not directly call for the execution of the teenagers.)

In 2017, shortly after an Uzbek terrorist, Sayfullo Saipov, drove a truck through a crowded bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people, President Trump said on Twitter that Mr. Saipov “SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!” During his first term in office, Mr. Trump restarted federal executions after a 20-year pause. And throughout his 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump said that “drug dealers and human traffickers” should be put to death.

In January, Mr. Trump signed an executive order calling for the death penalty in cases involving “the murder of a law enforcement officer” and “a cap­i­tal crime com­mit­ted by an alien illegally present in this country.”

In a Feb. 5 memo, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, lifted the moratorium that Mr. Biden had placed on executions.

Alan Feuer contributed reporting.