Opinion | Conversations and insights about the moment. (2024)

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Have Voters Really Forgotten Trump’s Presidency?

Mostly good? Which part? His first impeachment? His second? All the drama at the border (because, yes, there was drama at the border then, too)? All the drama in the West Wing? The revolving door of senior administration officials, his good-people-on-both-sides response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., his wishful musings about violent attacks on journalists and Democrats, his nutty soliloquies at news conferences early in the coronavirus pandemic, his recklessly cavalier handling of his own Covid infection, his incitement of the Jan. 6 rioting, the rioting itself?

Those were the days.

I realize that the “mostly good” camp comprises many MAGA loyalists who will simply answer any Trump-related question in a Trump-adoring way. Tribalism triumphs. I realize, too, that Americans tend to prioritize economic realities in assessments of this kind, and that much of what they’re remembering and referring to are the lower prices of housing, food and other essentials during Trump’s presidency.

But I fear that they’re forgetting too much else in a wash of voter nostalgia. A fresh presidential bid by someone who was in and then away from the White House isn’t just highly unusual. It’s a memory test — and, in the case of a politician as potentially destructive as Trump, a profoundly important one.

Americans unhappy with Biden’s presidency need no reminders about why. They’re living it every day. But their present discontent may be claiming the space on their mental hard drives where their past discontent was stored, purging all the discord and disgrace that created Biden’s opening.

Absence makes the Trump grow stronger.

As History Is Made, Trump Can Only Glare in Silent Fury

This case is about highly credible charges that Trump falsified business records as part of a scheme to silence an adult film star and tilt the outcome of the 2016 election.

The prosecution’s argument that this is a 2016 election interference case is prompting Trump to pursue his usual I’m-rubber-you’re-glue strategy and claim that it’s really the judge and the Manhattan district attorney who are interfering — in the 2024 election. But he won’t be able to make that argument inside the courtroom.

Trump will probably have to settle for sitting silently and glaring at the judge. He is a domineering client, even when it’s not in his interest, and he’ll probably weaken his case by forcing his lawyers to back his ridiculous claim that the whole extramarital affair is made up. They’ll have a better shot arguing that the hush-money payments were not illegal and Trump did not intentionally break tax and campaign finance laws.

Among the witnesses expected to testify are Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer turned major accuser, whose credibility will be a big issue; Hope Hicks, Trump’s former press secretary, who could help corroborate Cohen’s testimony; Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels), the p*rn star who received $130,000 in payments Trump is charged with laundering through Cohen; Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate of the year who also received hush money; and David Pecker, the National Enquirer chief testifying for the prosecution, whose catch-and-kill scheme to bury dirt on Trump will open a window on how tabloid journalism, well, changed world history.

Trump claimed on Friday that he’s willing to testify, but that may be just his usual posturing. If he rejects the pleading of his attorneys and takes the stand, cross-examination about his many lies would be admissible.

I’ll be back on Monday afternoon with a report on how the day went.

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Could These Two Twists Change the 2024 Race?

A Rollicking Requiem for a Pirate

A wild mélange of musical and Hollywood royalty showed up to honor their friend precisely because he refused to allow any hours of darkness if he could help it. Don Johnson, who hung out with Buffett in Aspen in the cocaine-fueled “Miami Vice” days, choked up as he read a Jimmy quote about making life a magical voyage. Even though there were storms and he “bounced across the bottom on occasion,” Jimmy said he relished the thousand ports of call behind him and wanted a thousand more.

Jane Fonda said that “Jimmy has the ability, like Tinker Bell, to spread happiness all over” — his generosity of heart and spirit always at the fore. She, John McEnroe and others paid homage to Jimmy’s love of weed with a running gag about smoking joints with him in outlandish places like the roof of the Vatican and center court at Wimbledon.

The Emperor of Key West, as he was known, was a sunny, magnetic presence in a world where the algorithms are always torquing up conflict and hatred, in a country where no one can seem to get along or even talk to one another.

Harrison Ford shared the story of a “boozy lunch” with Buffett and the “60 Minutes” correspondent Ed Bradley. “I saw both of them had earrings, so right after lunch I got my ear pierced,” Ford said of his infamous piercing in his 40s. “That’s how infectious Jimmy’s coolness was.”

Dolly Parton, beaming in on video, reminded everyone that Buffett was more than just a guy in flip-flops. He wrote books and stuff, she said.

That stuff made him rich but he always kept the vibe of a lucky dude from the Gulf Coast who happened to busk his way to monumental success.

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‘Taxi Driver’ and a Year of Radical Revision

The overtones of these projects are obvious. Empowered by years of unquestionable achievement in their respective art forms, Everett, Beyoncé and Jafa can now profitably and critically engage with sacred cultural cows produced by white artists. There is — especially in Jafa’s disorienting and disturbing film — an element of confrontation. But there is also something far more complex than payback or one-upmanship involved.

The tradition of artists messing with icons isn’t new: It is straight out of Dada, whose patron saint, Marcel Duchamp, once decided to draw a mustache on a postcard of the Mona Lisa. Every generation consumes and composts the crops of the previous ones, allowing fertilization and new growth.

For me, “Taxi Driver” is a work that once seemed untouchable. In working-class Staten Island, where I grew up, we saw 1970s New York in the same grim light in which “Taxi Driver” was bathed. In our communities, the film was transgressive because it depicted a reality that could be spoken of only in whispers.

When I finally saw the film, the idea that the rampage scene could be anything other than a cinematic icon set in stone never occurred to me. Watching Jafa’s intervention at the Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea this week cured me of that eerie nostalgia.

In my mind, the best thing about these remakes and remixes is that they are not mere protest. They don’t argue for discreditation, removal or canceling. They invite us not just to consider new art but also to send us back to the original works on our own terms.

Trump and O.J.: Antiheroes in a Cracked Mirror

But the similarities can be misleading and not just because the Simpson trial was for murder and the Trump case is about falsifying business records.

While murder is obviously more serious legally and morally, the fate of a former president of the United States indicted on 88 counts across four criminal cases in four jurisdictions is more serious and important historically than the fate of a former N.F.L. star who did TV ads for Hertz.

Simpson’s epic journey — with its mix of fame, race and violence — was a quintessentially American story. The Trump saga has all of that plus immense political stakes, but the fundamental question remains: Is he un-American or in the American grain?

Trump’s shocking victory in 2016 did not settle the matter. We will learn in this trial what almost every political consultant in both parties agrees on: that Trump would have lost that year and been reduced to a footnote if Stormy Daniels had told her story on the heels of the “Access Hollywood” debacle, which sent his campaign reeling. He won only because the 2016 election ended with the focus on Hillary Clinton’s emails.

So beyond legal culpability and political maneuvering, what’s at stake in this trial and this election is whether Trump is an aberration or the embodiment of a new, darker American identity.

Both Simpson and Trump are mirrors reflecting two images of America — one Black, one white, in Simpson’s case; one Democratic, one Republican, in Trump’s. All of the mirrors are cracked and coming apart, with the shards sharp enough to puncture any remaining illusions we have about ourselves.

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The ‘Golden Bachelor’ Divorce Everyone Knew Was Coming

Answer: everyone.

Admission: I hate reality TV. And I really hate the “Bachelor” franchise. But I found myself mesmerized by this particular variation, with its focus on matchmaking among the over-60 set. The whole display, with the contestants desperate to convey their eternal youthfulness even as they lamented the challenges of growing older, perfectly captured America’s — and especially the boomers’ — awkward relationship with aging.

Alas, not even the wisdom of their years could save Gerry and Theresa from the fundamental phoniness of reality TV. But, hey, at least they got a glam wedding — televised, even! — and some cool gifts out of it. And my faith in the fundamental grossness of the franchise has been fortified.

Let Assange Go Home

Not because Assange is innocent or noble. He was originally wanted in Sweden in connection with a sexual assault investigation that was subsequently dropped, and he has demonstrated a distinct preference for authoritarian regimes over democracies. The deed for which the United States is after him, the publication of an enormous trove of classified documents supplied by a U.S. Army private, Chelsea Manning, was carried out without any of the precautions news organizations normally take to protect individuals or information that could imperil national security.

The case should be dropped, first of all, because the charge of espionage brought by the Trump administration poses a serious threat to the First Amendment and to the fundamental role of a free press in keeping tabs on government, via whistle-blowers and leakers, if need be. President Barack Obama decided against an espionage charge for that reason and charged Assange only with assisting Manning in breaking into government computer systems in 2010, a crime that falls outside the standards of journalism.

But Donald Trump, who famously branded the free press as “the enemy of the people,” had no such compunction and set the stage for a trial that could challenge the distinction between exposing abuse of power and helping foreign adversaries harm the United States.

This is not a case the Biden administration should be prosecuting. Given the time Assange has already been in effective detention — far more than the nearly seven years Manning served before her 35-year sentence was commuted by Obama as “very disproportionate relative to what other leakers have received” — the president can legitimately argue that Assange has been amply punished.

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Arizona May Be Just Purple Enough for Abortion to Matter

Supporters of reproductive rights are aiming to put a measure on the Arizona ballot in November that would enshrine abortion access in the state Constitution. Organizers say they already have more than enough signatures to qualify. This promises to put Arizona in a position very similar to the one in which Florida finds itself.

But politically speaking, Arizona ain’t Florida. It is swingier, more purple. More than a third of its voters are not registered with any political party, and the electorate prides itself on being mavericky. With the proper care and attention, this abortion dust-up could cause Republicans up and down the state ballot some serious heartburn.

Already, Kari Lake, the MAGA front-runner in the Republican Senate primary, has been compelled to execute an awkward flip-flop. Having proclaimed the 1864 ban a “great law” during her 2022 run for governor, she is now running away from it as fast as she can. Like Trump, Lake isn’t so much anti-abortion as she is politically shameless.

And what of the presidential race? For months, Trump has been running an average of four to five points ahead of President Biden in the state. Despite the requisite acknowledgment that November is still four or five political eternities away, those aren’t comforting numbers for Democrats, especially with the border crisis, a rather urgent concern for Arizonans, shaping up to be a prime campaign cudgel for Republicans.

The state’s abortion developments will not fix the border mess — or erase the general disappointment many voters feel toward Biden. But they could stick in the craws of plenty of Arizona mavericks, making them think twice about giving the guy who boasts of killing Roe v. Wade another four years to run amok.

Here’s hoping.

O.J. Simpson’s Legacy Won’t Be the One He May Have Imagined

When the Simpson verdict was announced in 1995, I was standing in the student union of my historically Black college. My peers collectively sighed in relief when he was acquitted. But, if the King verdict was the moment when my generation fell out of love with our country, Black America’s relief at the Simpson verdict was the moment that white America fell out of love with the promise of diversity.

Sadly, a woman paid the ultimate price for the O.J. Simpson legend. By many accounts, O.J. abused Nicole Simpson for years. He got away with it through a kind of carte blanche usually reserved for powerful white men, because his public mythology erased his private abuses. For Simpson, that must have felt like a certain type of moving on up.

In a remarkable ESPN documentary, “O.J.: Made in America,” Harry Edwards, a sociologist and activist, remembers when Simpson declined to join a group of Black athletes who were campaigning for civil rights, saying “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.” That line captures the essence of O.J. Simpson, the man and the public figure.

He wanted to be above the rules not because of what he was but because of who he was. It’s the height of karmic irony, then, that what ultimately made Simpson special was the way his Blackness — that socially constructed distance from the white acceptance he so clearly craved — will forever define his legacy.

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Will an Acknowledgment of Famine in Gaza Save Children’s Lives?

“That is — yes,” she replied.

The official arbiter of famines, an international group of specialists, has not yet designated a famine underway in Gaza using its technical criteria, but the official declarations are based on lagging indicators. So Power’s statement should be taken mostly as a sign of the general seriousness of the food crisis and the risks of widespread death if it continues.

Malnutrition is already killing children in Gaza; 28 deaths have been officially reported so far. When an area is teetering on the edge of famine, deaths can escalate very rapidly.

Famines primarily kill children under the age of 5. I’ve covered hunger crises around the world, and the scenes are horrible to witness. Dying children are passive, expressionless, silent, not crying — because the body is using every calorie to keep the major organs functioning.

Conflicts in poor countries often kill far more people through hunger and disease than through bombs and bullets. What is unusual about Gaza is this hunger crisis is unfolding in a small, accessible area where 3,000 to 7,000 trucks are reportedly waiting at the border with food. Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.

Israel has repeatedly denied that it obstructs aid. But in the past few days, after a threat by President Biden to put conditions on arms transfers, Israel has allowed far more trucks to enter Gaza. That aid also needs to be distributed, which requires a well-functioning infrastructure that is not now in place.

The importance of the word “famine” is that it can light a fire under international officials and groups to act urgently to save children’s lives. The test of Power’s warning is whether, for America and Israel alike, this actually leads to steps on the ground.

Understanding the Racial Divide Over O.J. Simpson’s Acquittal

Many Black people, however, saw it quite differently. O.J. Simpson — who died on Thursday at 76 — was no paragon of Blackness; in fact, he wanted to transcend racial categories. He told The Times in 1994 that his biggest accomplishment was being seen as a man first, not a Black man.

It’s not that most Black people thought him innocent or another Rosa Parks. For them, it was the system itself that was on trial. The question wasn’t whether the justice system would work equally in the service of justice but whether its inherent and inveterate injustices would also be applied equally.

The Simpson trial came in the shadow of the trial of the police officers who savagely beat Rodney King and were still found not guilty. Los Angeles exploded in riots. Scores of people were killed. Buildings were reduced to ashes. It was one of the costliest riots, in terms of property damage, in American history.

People had exhaled their frustration in a language of death and destruction, but the violence was ultimately injurious to their own communities, and it brought no gesture or symbol of rectitude from the justice system itself.

The Simpson trial, in a strange way, held promise of closure in the ancient eye-for-an-eye sense. Could a Black man, with evidence stacked against him, be acquitted in the same way that those white men, with evidence stacked against them, were?

The answer was yes.

Paradoxically and, quite frankly, depressingly, the verdict proved that injustice was an equal opportunity offender, at least in this rarest of cases.

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Can the Japanese Royal Family Start to Loosen Up?

But if you look hard enough at the page, there are glimpses through the veil: The royals stand before bonsai trees and seem to smile. They kneel in front of earthquake survivors — a symbolic gesture with decades of precedent. The institution has never been much for outsize personalities, so this may be all we get. But it is progress.

The Imperial Household Agency, the family’s keeper, has tightly controlled its image for decades. In 1990 a photographer caught an informal, if not endearing, moment at a royal wedding: The bride smiled as she brushed aside the hair of the groom. That was too much. The agency reportedly reprimanded the offending photographer.

Does the Instagram page signal a real loosening up of this old institution? Probably not. But seven years ago, Naruhito, then the crown prince, promised change, which seems possible as the first emperor to study abroad. (He spent two years at Oxford and has said he loved the experience.) His father, Akihito, redefined the role over three decades of rule; perhaps Naruhito can do the same.

I am a little doubtful that the monarchy can reach a younger crowd. The family appears too buttoned up on Instagram, much like the institution itself. Still, in a little more than a week, the page has gotten almost a million followers. Perhaps this is a turning point, when the institution begins to transform its image, drawing in a new, younger swath of people.

Arizona Republicans Are in an Absolute Panic on Abortion

Juan Ciscomani, a Republican congressman from the state, who had supported a 15-week abortion ban and has repeatedly voted to restrict abortion access, called the court ruling “a disaster.” His Arizona colleague David Schweikert, who has an A+ rating from anti-abortion groups, said the issue shouldn’t be “legislated from the bench” and demanded the legislature take action.

But Democrats — and hopefully state voters — aren’t going to let Republicans run away from their own records. As a beautifully made Biden campaign ad on the terrible dangers of abortion bans said this week, “Donald Trump did this.” And so did his party.

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Europe Is Making Progress on Gender Medicine. The U.S. Should Catch Up.

For those who have followed the medical research, and for parents concerned about the quality of care for their children, this was overdue and welcome news. Parents and caregivers have been frustrated by activists and a compliant medical establishment that insist medically and surgically altering their kids’ bodies and brains, sometimes primarily based on a child’s self-diagnosis, was the proper course of treatment. And that to raise any questions was akin to child abuse and transphobia.

To quote from the review: “There are few other areas of health care where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views.” The vilification and bullying, it said, “must stop.”

Fortunately, England has recognized the problem. But the American Academy of Pediatrics has dug in its heels. Last summer, despite finally ceding to a systematic review (with no results yet), it reaffirmed its commitment to “gender-affirming care,” describing such treatment as essential.

Why has the United States remained so stubbornly behind?

One reason is that American medical institutions have largely relied on sporadic studies conducted in the United States or on the guidelines of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an organization whose mission, based on criticism and leaked files, has slipped from transgender medical care into advocacy.

Instead of demanding strong, evidence-based medicine, the Biden administration and the medical establishment have left a vacuum for ideologues, activists and politicians to dictate protocols. Republican lawmakers have stepped in with bans of gender medicine in ways that have also threatened rights and protections for transgender adults. Instead of a dispassionate assessment of evidence, we have a partisan culture war.

It’s hard to imagine any other childhood condition, illness or disorder being treated with such cavalier indifference to the human beings in question. Children deserve progress and proven health care, not political gamesmanship.

Why Does Inflation Persist? Nobody Knows for Sure.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday that the Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent in March from February, above the 0.3 percent that many economists had predicted. Monthly core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, was also 0.4 percent. Over the past year, the index for all items rose 3.5 percent.

Each inflation report is fresh fodder for the argument between economists who worry that inflation will persist at well above the Fed’s target and those who expect it to resume its downward trend soon.

Nervous investors may be overreacting to Wednesday’s data, according to David Rosenberg, the president of Rosenberg Research, based in Toronto. In a client note, he wrote that “the report showed plenty of deflationary thumbprints where it matters — in demand-sensitive areas.” Prices of sporting goods, toys, appliances and vehicles fell in March, he noted.

There’s always a lot of noise in the monthly data. Over the longer term, the mystery isn’t why inflation is high but the opposite: why it fell so much from its pandemic peak, even though labor markets have remained tight. Conventional wisdom is that when workers are scarce, they use their bargaining power to demand higher wages, which fuels inflation. That hasn’t happened much.

Servaas Storm, a senior lecturer of economics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, wrote this week in an article for the Institute for New Economic Thinking that the behavior of inflation has discredited conventional New Keynesian theories about why prices rise and fall.

Storm wrote that central bankers such as Powell “are clear that standard macro models are of little use to them in the current macroeconomic environment.”

That’s a strong claim — perhaps too strong — but it does fit with Powell’s Jackson Hole metaphor about navigating by the stars under cloudy skies. Inflation remains poorly understood.

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For Muslims, It’s Hard to Celebrate This Eid

As the war in Gaza roiled communities across the United States, this year’s Ramadan gave Muslims an opportunity to gather at mosques or at iftar dinners when we broke our fasts. If the rest of the world felt hostile, there we could openly share our anguish and talk about how we have navigated our workplaces and social lives. I almost didn’t realize how often I had my guard up until I walked into these spaces.

I’ve seen American Muslim spaces become a refuge this way before. During the height of the war on terrorism, when our faith felt so fundamentally misunderstood by the country we lived in, our community felt like a place of respite. I’ve thought about those days often during this war. As much as I cherish the ability of Muslims to come together in times of conflict, I also remember how the hostility of those years led many Muslims to retreat into tradition and community rather than engage with the outside world.

I don’t see the same shift happening this Ramadan. While Islam offers me community, it also has given me the strength to engage with those who aren’t like me.

So often, we’re made to remember how we are different from others. But Islam teaches us not just how to be Muslim among other Muslims but also how to live and engage with the world outside the ummah. My hope for this Eid is that other Muslims — and non-Muslims — take this lesson with them.

A Useful Guide to the History of U.S.-China Relations

One useful guide to the subject is Jane Perlez, a former New York Times Beijing bureau chief, who has spent much of her time in recent years producing podcasts about the hidden history that has led to the current moment.

In 2022, Perlez created “The Great Wager,” a five-part podcast series from NPR about President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China. And on Tuesday, she dropped a new eight-part series called “Face-Off: U.S. vs China,” available on Apple and Spotify.

Want to know how China managed to uncover a network of American spies in 2010, and the ramifications that reverberate to this day? Ever wondered about the personal chemistry (or lack thereof) between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping? Or how one of the most important companies in the United States — Apple — came to rely so heavily on the Chinese Communist Party? The podcast has you covered.

I’ve known Perlez since my days as an unpaid intern in the Nairobi bureau of The Times in the 1990s, and there are few people I consider more knowledgeable about China. An old-school reporter, Perlez avoids inserting her own opinion into her podcasts, but her devotion to unearthing hidden gems from this rapidly evolving relationship reveals a point of view that is rarely heard in Washington these days: History matters, and Americans ought to get far more familiar with it.

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The Global Competition at the Heart of ‘3 Body Problem’

This is the new Needham question: Which country is poised to beat the other to the next scientific revolution of computing, A.I. and space travel?

The San-Ti launch subatomic supercomputers at Earth to keep Earth’s technology stunted; the Biden administration has a similar strategy to keep China’s semiconductors several generations behind those of the United States. The Netflix series’s imagery of a hidden but all-seeing alien supercomputer conjures fears of Chinese surveillance infiltrating Western research institutions.

However, the most important conflict in the story unfolds between the two rival human approaches to defeating the aliens. The first camp is ruthless, willing to sacrifice the few for the perceived benefit of the many. The second camp represents a more humanistic approach, seeing value in all human life.

In Liu’s telling, the ruthless rationalists win out. The story has become a popular text among Chinese nationalists who revel in authoritarianism as a justification for scientific development. The Netflix show has not taken a firm side in this debate, though it has been more sympathetic to the humanists.

Ursula Le Guin has framed science fiction as a thought experiment better suited to describing the present than to forecasting. But what does Liu, a shrewd engineer-turned-novelist, make of bleak moral and geopolitical interpretations of his work? His first edition’s postscript offers a clue. He wrote, “It’s just science fiction, no need to take it seriously. :)”

Havana Syndrome and Russia’s Unit 29155

Drawing on interviews with victims and an impressive mastery of online snooping, the investigative reporters found various links between the attacks and Unit 29155, a division of the Russian military intelligence agency G.R.U., known to U.S. intelligence agencies for conducting lethal operations and sabotage the world over. Operatives of Unit 29155 were placed at sites of several anomalous health incidents; more damningly, the reporters discovered that senior members of the unit had received awards for work on “nonlethal acoustic weapons,” which in Russia refers to directed-energy devices based on sound or radio frequencies.

One of the key pieces in the puzzle was supplied by the wife of an official at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, who was struck with acute pain in her head while doing laundry at home. Spotting a car on the house’s security camera, she managed to get to the street in time to see a tall, thin man and to photograph his car. She subsequently identified a photograph of Albert Averyanov, an operative of Unit 29155 and the son of the founding commander of the unit, Gen. Andrei Averyanov.

The pattern of the attacks suggested the targeted American intelligence officers and diplomats were working or had worked on Russia matters, including C.I.A. officers who worked with Ukraine.

The full report of The Insider is a gripping read. The question it leaves unanswered is whether the U.S. government knew what the reporters discovered and, if so, whether the government was hiding it. Either way, the victims, many still suffering, deserve a thorough investigation.

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More College Men Should Do What Caitlin Clark Did

That’s the nature of the one-and-done men’s college game. Transcendent talents don’t stay, and teams with longstanding rosters don’t have transcendent talents. And so you’re left with a sport that both lacks stars and (relatedly) puts an inferior product on the court.

There are obvious economic reasons for the current reality. Young men have immediate access to huge professional salaries. The average N.B.A. salary is more than $10 million. The W.N.B.A. average barely tops $100,000. It’s financially irrational for a young man to stay in the N.C.A.A. when vast wealth awaits him for turning pro. But the cost to the N.C.A.A. and the N.B.A. is real. If players stayed, college ball would benefit from having better play on the court, and pro ball would benefit from drafting players who are already household names and bring a fan base with them into the league.

With the advent of compensation for name, image and likeness, one wonders: Can the N.B.A. and the N.C.A.A. recreate that Caitlin Clark magic, but for men? Let’s have the players stay in college longer, compensate them fairly while they’re in school, and then let them loose on the N.B.A. after they’ve built their game and their name. The women have shown the way.

Pope Francis Finds a Limit to His Liberalism

In the first two cases, divorce and the death penalty, the pope’s pushing and prodding mostly survived objections from the church’s conservatives. In the third case, the recent document that maybe, sort-of allowed for blessings of gay couples, his fingers got burned; there was a conspicuous revolt by bishops worldwide (not just his reliable foils among American conservatives), a hasty attempt at clarification and water-calming, and a sense that the pope had gone too far.

That’s the background for the Vatican document issued on Monday on human dignity, Dignitas Infinita, apparently many years in the making but probably not coincidentally timed to the current moment in the Francis papacy. The document is prolix enough to contain multitudes, but it comes across as an unusually sharp condemnation of transgender identity, surrogacy and abortion, a clearer-than-usual line against developments in progressive thought and culture.

It’s still very much a Francis-era document: His condemnation of the death penalty is especially emphasized, his rhetoric of inclusion and critiques of anti-gay discrimination are still present. But the fact that it’s attracted more praise from conservative-leaning theologians and more disappointment or “whiplash” from groups seeking changes around issues of sexuality is pretty clearly an intended outcome.

Francis has spent years balancing between conservatives and progressives but favoring the latter. This document puts a limit to that favoritism, a this-far-no-further, at least when it comes what the Vatican teaches. What it will tolerate, from the more liberal branches of the church especially, is the key question that remainder of his pontificate will answer.

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The Greatest Lesson of the Solar Eclipse

Totality struck at 3:16 p.m. A thin white glow pierced out from the edge of a clean black circle. The colors of the sunset eerily bloomed in the distance. Clamoring sea gulls took a haphazard flight. I could spot solar prominences (regions of intense magnetism) jutting from the sides of the sun in tiny hints of bright red and pink. Jupiter and Venus made cameos. It felt like bearing witness to something close to a miracle.

Four minutes later, totality ended. The sun brightened again. And the clouds returned with a vengeance, swallowing up the moon and the sun and sky in gray. But for four incredible minutes, the universe seems to have made good on a promise to my mother.

To Remember the Eclipse, Share It With Someone Close

Just three months later, my mother was found dead. I rushed back to Istanbul to comfort my grandmother and for the funeral. While I was in my mother’s flat, I felt another rumble. It turned out to be a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Duzce, Turkey. I went there too, but I didn’t stay long.

Now whenever I see photos of rubble or pancaked buildings from an earthquake, I smell the unmistakable stench of corpses trapped in the wreckage, rotting in the summer sun. A hallucination, but of smell.

Last Friday, amid preparations for another trip to see the eclipse, again with my family, I felt another rumble. An unexpected earthquake, this time in New York City, my home.

There are many theories and superstitions about eclipses and earthquakes that geologists don’t put much stock in, but in my case, there had been a very personal triad of eclipse, earthquake and death. I was rattled.

Later, I made tea and spinach pastries, an afternoon ritual that reminds me of my grandmother. Then it hit me. I was trying to clear one association in my head — the eclipse-earthquake-tragedy triad — with another one, my grandmother’s love.

What else is life but building good associations to chase away the bad?

It’s corny but it’s true: It’s not the events themselves that matter but who we are with to share the wonder of how the sun and the moon align to cast an enchanting shadow on our miraculous planet full of life.

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Trump Takes Another Position on Abortion … but It’s Only Monday

C. Somewhere from fifth to 47th.

Yeah, definitely in the whole-bunch arena. Back in the day, he thought it was a woman’s right. “I’m very pro-choice,” he said in 1999. He wouldn’t even denounce those late-term, “partial birth” abortions that people were yelling about at the time. “I hate the concept of abortion,” he said, “but still, I just believe in choice.”

He did, like almost all the folks he’d hung out with in his New York celebrity-keen prepolitics life. But once he started running for president, Trump seemed to notice that people at right-wing political gatherings put ending abortion very, very high on their priority lists.

Suddenly he was a believer; he bragged that his Supreme Court nominations were going to turn the law around. And gee whiz, they did.

Thanks to Trump, there’s no national protection of a woman’s right to choose. The states have started to do their own things, and as abortion access dwindled, Trump discovered that — new surprise! — Republicans were losing elections over the issue. It’s arguably one of the top reasons the House of Representatives, which was supposed to get a big influx of Republicans in 2022, wound up split almost down the middle. Trump’s party now has a majority thinning faster than his hair.

He was reportedly considering a national abortion ban as recently as February and hasn’t ruled out signing one. What else could he do now? How about … try to push the whole issue onto the state legislatures?

Think about this. Maybe, like many Trump Republicans, you believe that human life has to be protected from the moment of conception. Maybe, like many, many other Americans, you believe a decision about continuing or ending pregnancy should be a woman’s personal, private issue.

Or maybe you believe it should all boil down to the state representative from East Kumquat, who chairs one particular subcommittee.

Not that one? Tell it to Donald. I’m sure he’s open to a mind change.

Not Everybody in the Zone of Totality Wants to Rip You Off

Journalists have collected lots of stories about crazy-high rates for lodging in the zone of totality. The Times reported last week on a Super 8 in Grayville, Ill., that was advertising a room for $949 a night for Sunday to Tuesday, 10 times the usual nightly rate.

But it turns out the Cherrys aren’t so unusual in failing to exploit the profit opportunity that fell from the sky into their laps. According to AirDNA, which tracks the posted rates by property owners on Airbnb and VRBO, as of last week the average daily rate for bookings for the eclipse was up only 20.5 percent from the same time a year ago, adjusting for time of week.

I asked Jamie Lane, AirDNA’s chief economist, why lodging owners are leaving $100 bills on the sidewalk. Nothing new, he said: “Most people don’t adjust their rates a lot in response to changes in demand.”

I asked him whether some lodging owners filled up their rooms at the standard rate before they realized why April 7 and April 8 were so popular. Lane said that explanation makes sense to him. “Something as obscure as a celestial event I think caught people off guard,” he said.

That doesn’t explain the Cherrys’ pricing decision, though, since they did know about the eclipse. Maybe, then, the explanation is altruism, or something else that economics doesn’t account for very well. “It’s a personal thing,” Susan Cherry told me. “We want to be affordable.”

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