The Summer Games return to the City of Light this month, 100 years after it last hosted the global competition.

Is Paris ready for the Games?
French President Emmanuel Macron says it is, insisting the Olympics will be "a formidable moment of French pride." And coming just weeks after bitterly fought elections that resulted in a hung parliament, France could do with such a unifying event. Organizers say the "revolutionary" Games will bring the nation together, without all the usual wasteful spending. Costing an estimated $9.5 billion, less than any Olympics for 30 years, the Games will kick off July 26 with an opening ceremony in which 10,000 athletes on 100 boats will float down the Seine. At least 300,000 people will watch from the waterside, several times the number who usually get to see an Olympics parade in a stadium. Only two new permanent sports venues have been built: an 8,000-seat arena in the poor northern neighborhood of Porte de la Chapelle and an aquatics center in a nearby suburb. Most sports will be held in existing venues or in temporary facilities next to Parisian landmarks, like the beach volleyball court in front of the Eiffel Tower. "The entire city has been turned into a vast Olympic stadium," said Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris organizing committee.

What challenges do organizers face?
With 15 million visitors expected, security is a major concern. Islamist terrorists have attacked Paris repeatedly over the past two decades, and authorities say they've already foiled one Olympic plot, arresting an Islamic State sympathizer who allegedly planned to target a soccer game. Defending the opening ceremony, which will stretch for nearly 4 miles, will require a "very complex security operation that won't eliminate all the risk," said Bertrand Cavallier, a former commander at France's national military police training school. Drones could strike from the sky, shooters could fire from windows, bombs could be planted in tunnels beneath the river. To minimize the threats, the airspace over and around Paris will be closed for the ceremony. Cars won't be allowed to enter areas bordering the Seine for days, and the 20,000 Parisians who live and work there will need a QR code to enter. Some 45,000 police and military officers will flood the city, about 10 times the typical deployment. Macron has said the ceremony could relocate to a stadium in case of a threat, but officials are reluctant to give up their open-air dreams. "If we don't do it because we're afraid," said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, "then [the terrorists] have won."

What's new at the Games? 
Breaking, better known as break-dancing, will make its Olympic debut some 50 years after it originated in the Bronx. Thirty-two breakers — 16 B-girls and 16 B-boys — will compete, contorting their bodies into gravity-defying shapes as they improvise to a DJ's beat. "There's no doubt in my mind this is a sport," says Team USA breaker Sunny Choi, 35. "Dance, art, sport, all together." Skateboarding, sports climbing, and surfing will return for their second Olympics. But the surfers won't bring their boards to Paris. Instead, they'll hit the waves on Tahiti in the overseas territory of French Polynesia, 10 time zones and nearly 10,000 miles from the French capital.

Could doping taint these Olympics?
The International Testing Agency says it will deploy a raft of new high-tech tools to catch dopers, including artificial-intelligence models that can identify unusual results. But many athletes worry cheaters will get past these safeguards. The World Anti-Doping Agency is under fire after it was recently revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned heart medication before Tokyo's 2021 Olympics but were still allowed to compete. The athletes won three gold medals, and 11 are set to swim in Paris. The WADA never investigated, instead relying on China's explanation that the athletes inadvertently consumed the drug after it got into spice containers in a hotel kitchen. "I think our faith in the system is at an all-time low," said American swimmer Katie Ledecky, a seven-time Olympic champion.

Are there other concerns? 
The Seine is meant to host swimming and triathlon races, but pollution threatens those plans. Despite a $1.5 billion cleanup effort, organizers canceled a ceremony rehearsal last month, citing dangerous levels of fecal bacteria in the water. Samples taken showed E. coli levels 10 times greater than the amount permitted by the World Triathlon Federation. Readings have since improved and Hidalgo and Estanguet took a plunge in the Seine this week to showcase its cleanliness. "The water is wonderful," Hidalgo said, after swimming about 330 feet. "Very cool and very nice."

How are Parisians handling all this?
In typical French fashion: by protesting. Workers at the national mint, tasked with making Olympic medals, have staged a strike to demand higher wages, while police officers have protested about overtime pay and lost vacation days. The greatest pushback has come from residents angry about disruptions to their lives. And despite claims of a "socially responsible" event, police have cleared migrant tent encampments along the Seine. So tourists "won't have to see the bad people," said Ba Dak, a South Sudanese asylum seeker who was displaced multiple times. Activists have called this "social cleansing." But athletes and politicians have urged residents to embrace the Olympic moment. "The moaning has to stop," said French tennis star Yannick Noah. "It's going to be beautiful."

Team USA's medal hopes
Team USA enters with a long legacy to uphold. With only one exception, the U.S. has won the most gold medals and overall medals at every Summer Olympics since 1996. The U.S. left Tokyo three years ago with 113 medals, 39 of them gold. This year's effort will be led by Olympic stalwarts like swimmer Ledecky and four-time Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles, who withdrew in 2021 after getting "the twisties." Other familiar faces include LeBron James, who aims to deliver the U.S. its 17th gold medal in men's basketball, and No. 2–ranked tennis player Coco Gauff, making her Olympic debut. Sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson, who qualified for the last Olympics before testing positive for cannabis, a banned substance, will also make her debut. And there are a handful of new faces gunning for medals: top-ranked women's recurve archer Casey Kaufhold, and transgender and nonbinary runner Nikki Hiltz — assigned female at birth — who last month clocked the U.S.'s second-fastest time ever in the 1500-meter women's race. "This is bigger than just me," said Hiltz, who will become one of the first gender-nonconforming Olympians.

Donald Trump this week "essentially told pro-lifers to take a hike," said Alexandra Desanctis in National Review. Delegates at the Republican National Convention approved a new party platform, but the call for a federal abortion ban — a constant in Republican platforms for the last 40 years — was nowhere to be found. In fact, the word "abortion" appeared only once in the 16-page document. The platform echoes Trump's stance that abortion should be left up to states, which it says are "free to pass laws protecting" the right to life guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The GOP platform also explicitly supports access to contraception and in vitro fertilization, despite the pro-life belief that these procedures kill fertilized eggs. Many anti-abortion activists feel rightly betrayed. Their work to overturn Roe v. Wade is now "being reversed by a Trump-induced effort to be rid of the topic for good" because of the "mistaken notion" that it's an electoral liability.

The platform's moderation is "a lie," said Jill Filipovic in CNN.com. Trump knows abortion remains his party's "weakest" issue, and the near-total bans in red states have proven "wildly unpopular." To avoid alienating swing voters, he wants to avoid the topic — and "to distance himself from Project 2025," the detailed plan for a second Trump presidency that calls for reversing federal approval of abortion medications and severely restricting abortion access. Trump knows that most Americans support abortion rights, and as he recently said about the topic, "You have to get elected." But his core support comes from hard-line Christian conservatives, and once he regains power, he is likely to "do the extreme anti-abortion movement's bidding."

That movement has a specific plan for a national ban, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. Its "lodestar" is using the 14th Amendment — passed to guarantee rights to freed slaves — to provide "a constitutional guarantee of fetal personhood," which would outlaw abortion in every state. In coming years, the right-wing activists on the Supreme Court may adopt that radical reinterpretation, said Susan Rinkunas in Slate. Republicans are also counting on the court or Trump to revive enforcement of the 19th-century Comstock Act, which bans the mailing of abortion tools and medications. Trump and the GOP are engaging in "a long con" to appeal to centrists while "winking and nodding" to anti-abortion activists

Eddie Murphy has experienced plenty of lean periods in his career, said David Marchese in The New York Times. But when he started out in the late 1970s, his success was immediate and explosive. He went from performing stand-up in comedy clubs to the cast of Saturday Night Live to starring in blockbusters like 48 Hrs. (1982), Trading Places (1983), and Beverly Hills Cop (1984). Having grown up convinced he was destined for greatness, Murphy, now 63, took it all for granted. 

As young as 13, "I'd tell my mother, 'When I'm famous....' So when I got famous, it was like, 'See, I told you,'" he says. Even when his celebrity led to surreal moments, he took it all in stride. "After 48 Hrs., Marlon Brando calls my agent and wants to meet me. Now I look back and go, 'Wow, that's crazy: The greatest actor of all time wants to have dinner with you!' But back then I just thought, 'Well, that's the way it is: You make a movie, and Marlon Brando calls.'" When they met, Brando was typically inscrutable. "He was going, 'I can't stand that kid with the gun.' I was like, 'What kid with the gun?' He said, 'He's on the poster!' I was like, 'Clint Eastwood?' 'Yeah, that guy!' He was calling Clint Eastwood 'that kid.'"