Corporate America has a message for Donald Trump: We believe what you believe. In the months since the Republican's election victory, Big Business has been working frenetically to erase any evidence of "woke" or un-Trumpy tendencies. Diversity, equity, and inclusion departments have been axed; climate-change groups have been abandoned; and anything bearing a trans flag has been shredded. Executives who once spouted progressive pablum are now talking like MAGA true believers. Just hours after killing his company's DEI programs and fact-check systems last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast to bemoan how society has become "emasculated." It's a positive that America is returning to a culture that "celebrates the aggression a bit more," said Zuckerberg. "Masculine energy is good." He flexed his own masculine energy a few days later, announcing a 5 percent cut to Meta's workforce.

Some liberal Meta employees were stunned by this pivot. "What happened to the company I joined all those years ago?" one wrote on an internal message board. "Wow, we really capitulated on a lot of our supposed values," another posted. Yet you can't capitulate on values you never really held. Zuckerberg has long preached the merits of a connected world, yet is currently building a 5,000-square-foot underground bunker at his estate in Hawaii — complete with blast-proof doors and its own energy and food supplies — to keep that world out. In a 2017 speech to Harvard graduates, he dinged then-President Trump by railing against isolationists who would slow "the flow of knowledge, trade, and immigration." On Jan. 20, he sat on the dais at Trump’s second inauguration and applauded as the new president extolled tariffs and migrant crackdowns. As a surfer, Zuckerberg knows how to read the water and can see the political tide has turned in the Right's favor. But should it shift against Trump in the next few years, you can be sure the Meta CEO will be furiously paddling away, positioning himself for the next big wave.

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

If Donald Trump wins on Nov. 5, it will be partly because the traditional press failed to present the former president as he truly is. That's the argument put forward by many media critics, who accuse The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, and other legacy outlets of "sanewashing" Trump: selectively quoting or editing his rambling, threat-filled, and profanity-laced rally speeches. This habit stems from mainstream news outlets wanting to appear "objective," the argument goes. If they did accurately cover Trump's extremism and bizarre behavior, it would look like they were in the tank for Democrats.

As a result, Trump's repeated pledge to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, whom he has called "animals" and "not human," gets labeled by the Times as "hyperbolic rhetoric" rather than 100-proof authoritarianism. And his weird disquisitions — about whether it's better to be eaten by a shark or to die from electrocution, for example — go unmentioned in many reports on campaign events, which instead focus on sane-sounding policy announcements, such as eliminating taxes on tips.

These are valid criticisms, but they vastly overplay the ability of mainstream media to shape the national conversation. Newspapers and network news have shrinking audiences, while social media is grabbing ever more eyeballs. About 50 percent of Americans now go to platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram to get their news — where they also get a flood of disinformation served up by influencers, hucksters, and propagandists. A Russian-created fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz with abuse allegations has been viewed some 5 million times on X. Millions more have seen bogus AI-generated images of Trump wading through the floodwaters in the wake of Hurricane Helene, feeding a Trump-backed narrative that only he — and not the Biden administration — cares about the storm's victims. Clearly, we have a reality problem, but it's one that traditional media is largely powerless to fix.

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

When people recall the dot-com boom of 25 years back, what comes up inevitably are the dumb mascots, the dumb stocks, the last hurrah of America Online with its inescapable CDs. The late 1990s exist in the collective memory like the punk rock and brown suits of the 1970s — the surface is easy to recall, the feeling much harder. What gets lost is that it was in many ways a time of genuine optimism about technology. I was brought back to that time by an article from musician and writer Elizabeth Nelson. The column takes us back to what can only be called the golden age of music piracy, when everyone quit buying music en masse and instead downloaded their 500 favorite albums for free. A lot of claims were made then about how when everything shook out, music and musicians would be better off without the filter of the rapacious music industry. 

But the corporate music industry did not wither away after all. The business has done fine, as have the superstars. Music probably hasn't done so badly (I don't recall "Livin' la Vida Loca" with special fondness). What did disappear, however, was the tier of working musicians who could make a living selling their music to devoted fans. The hollowing out of the middle is paralleled in many other areas — the end of the midlist book has been the sad story of print publishing. The hope back then was that putting tools and distribution into the hands of many more people would spur a creative outpouring. Instead, success has become ever more concentrated. In so many areas, the promise of technology has not been realized. But disappointed as I have been, I think back to the optimism of the early years of the internet — formative years for me — not with the thought that we were wrong. Rather, I hope technology might still make good on those early promises of advancing creativity and democracy.

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.    

Sports betting has perhaps never been hotter than it is right now. A new report from the American Gaming Association suggests that nearly one in five Americans planned to place a bet on Super Bowl LVII, totaling more than $16 billion and doubling the amount bet on the prior Super Bowl.

The Supreme Court ruled on the legality of sports betting five years ago, and in that time, the practice has spread to two-thirds of U.S. states and an estimated $125 billion in wagers have been placed on all sorts of sporting events.

But just because sports betting is legal in most states now, does that mean it should be? Is sports betting "a net gain to the legal, measured economy," as Oxford Economics writes? Or is it simply a cesspool of often troubled gambling games that should not be allowed to continue?

Sports betting provides a great boost to the economy

While controversy around the practice remains, the most common argument for allowing sports betting is that it provides a significant economic boost. Nevada, the American hub of gambling, generates "generates hundreds of millions of dollars per month from sports betting," the California Business Journal writes, adding that it "seemed inevitable that other states would follow suit."

The current laws allow individual states to determine how they tax sportsbooks, the Journal notes, adding that it allows them to "obtain funds [that] can be utilized for any purpose, including construction and roadwork, schools, and health facilities."

A study by the University of Michigan's Journal of Economics held a similar conclusion, opining, "More money generated by sportsbooks has led to more tax revenue for state governments that have legalized online sports betting." The study also noted that some states, such as Illinois and New Jersey, have brought in more than $1 billion in sports betting taxes.

Sports betting "has and will continue to expand the budgets of state and federal government," the university said, noting that there has been "continuing growth in the market as tax revenue has increased annually in the sports betting market" and that the tax revenues have been beneficial to almost every state that has legalized the practice.

The practice will only feed people's financial troubles and addictions

Despite the economic impact on states from sports betting, individuals can face many of the hardships associated with typical gambling, Kurt Streeter writes for The New York Times. Streeter reached out to a dozen people recovering from gambling addiction and "heard horror stories."

"They told me about shattered families, lost jobs, and foreclosed homes," Streeter writes, adding that he was told of "arrests, convictions, jail time, and suicide." As a result, Streeter adds, the U.S. has gotten to "a point where wagering on sports became so seductive and encompassing," noting that the "bitter truth of addiction is obscured by the smarmy ads and compromising relationships, and yet federal oversight is downright nonexistent."

This type of warning was echoed by Emily Stewart, who argues for Vox that while sports gambling is fun, it is "probably not" good for society. Stewart believes the ideal sports gambler "is someone who's cheap to acquire, who's sticky, and who's likely to expand their wallet as sportsbooks offer them new products," adding that when someone becomes addicted, if they "do manage to get in and get out initially, they sometimes return."

"A new raft of stories warning about gambling addiction are already starting to crop up," Stewart says. "It's hard not to worry about the people who are playing with money they can't afford to lose, or wonder what it says about the state of our economy that so many people are willing to play in an arena where the odds are so obviously stacked against them, all in the hopes of hitting it big."

Betting on sports is no worse than any other type of gambling

Some studies show that sports betting could be five times more likely to lead to addiction than other types of gambling. However, as Jay Caspian Kang writes for The New Yorker, "The idea that it's somehow healthier to place your bets at a racetrack than on your phone doesn't really pass muster."

After all, Kang adds, gambling addiction, like many other addictions, is simply created by compulsions. Whether or not "the apps can match up to the sensations of physical spaces that have been designed to suck the cash out of your pockets" remains up in the air, he writes.

Sports betting could create a bad environment for athletics

Even for those who may not see sports betting as a human-based problem, "gambling has a long history of corrupting sports by incentivizing athletes to rig games," Spencer Bokat-Lindell writes for The New York Times.

In the modern age, this manifests itself in one specific way: advertising for sports betting. As a result, Howard Gensler, CEO of bettorsinsider.com, writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer, "the glut of advertising we're seeing for it is no different than that for tequila, beer, drugs for previously unknown ailments, unhealthy foods, unnecessary beauty products, expensive sports cars dangerously speeding across icy terrain, and more." Gensler goes on to say that while this may be dangerous, it is a fact of life in an America ruled by the dollar.

In addition, with all the money changing hands, especially for large events such as the Super Bowl, there is an "increasing prevalence of gambling ads during games also takes some of the fun out of watching them," Stephen Silver also opines for the Inquirer. He believes that the rampant advertising for sports betting "takes me out of the experience and detracts from the excitement of a close game or rare athletic achievements."

Considering how long Pamela Anderson has been in the public eye, her new memoir, Love, Pamela, released alongside a Netflix documentary, "might feel like overkill," Jessica Pressler says in The New York Times. But Anderson is a "natural storyteller," which shouldn't be surprising since "her ability to sustain a personal narrative is what's kept her in the public eye for going on four decades."

Anderson uses this skill in her book to set the record straight about her small-town upbringing, her rise to fame, and the scandals that rocked her career. In fact, "the most disappointing thing about Love, Pamela is that it doesn't come in a form that can be injected directly into your veins," Pressler says. There are free verse poems intertwined with the prose, which is "not as annoying as it sounds." With so much going on, "you need the extra line breaks to catch your breath."

Anderson recounts her life story, beginning with her childhood in Ladysmith, British Columbia. She describes the idyllic beauty of her childhood home "in lush detail," but "interspersed among these sun-dappled scenes are episodes of harrowing violence," Pressler continues at the Times. The author recalls retreating into her imagination to cope with her childhood traumas, including numerous incidences of sexual assault and her parents' tumultuous marriage. "It's how I learned to control my life," Anderson writes. "One fantasy after another." Anderson then takes readers on what Pressler describes as a "dazzling and occasionally dizzying ride" through the height of her fame, in which "vivid scenes of '80s and '90s decadence bump up against blind items about Russian oligarchs and brief but iconic celebrity cameos."

The memoir "reveals a side of the one-time Playboy Playmate and Baywatch star that feels unexpected," Ashley Fetters Maloy writes for The Washington Post. She reveals herself as a "voracious reader" who "cobbled together a personal philosophy from a curiously wide range of sources." Anderson proves to be "smarter and more thoughtful than the person many late-night hosts of the 1990s thought they were talking to." What her memoir does best, writes Fetters Maloy, is "lay bare the fact that the sexpot caricature of Anderson — the mythic, crushingly larger-than-life idea of her — obscured the charms of the real one." Anderson invites audiences "to laugh with her, not at her," Fetters Maloy says, and refuses to be a victim. Anderson does not linger on the stories of her traumatic experiences. Instead, Fetters Maloy writes, she devotes "the majority of Love, Pamela to joy."

"There is a thesis in her book," Sophie Gilbert writes for The Atlantic, "if an accidental one." Anderson narrates rather than analyzes her life experiences, and what emerges is "a devastating portrait of what it's like to be a person who — almost arbitrarily — drives men wild." The memoir illuminates how "Anderson exposed something feral and monstrous in people, long before she became a model, and for decades after."

This book is an "explosion of a deeply held cultural myth," Los Angeles Times critic Mary McNamara proclaims. Reading Anderson's point of view "illuminates not just her own story, but the often hideous cultural hypocrisy at work in all forms of the entertainment industry and the media surrounding it." Anderson dedicates very little space in her memoir to lingering on her traumatic experiences, unlike the controversial Hulu series Pam & Tommy, which dramatized the fallout after someone stole leaked a sexually explicit video of Anderson and her ex-husband Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. "Pamela Anderson has many interests," McNamra writes, "but dwelling on the past is not one of them." Instead of wallowing, Anderson focuses on the parts of her life by which she'd rather be defined, like her work on Broadway and as an animal activist. Her "minimalism" is a "rare quality worthy of admiration," even though "it leaves you with a limited understanding of who she is."

Anderson "displays a remarkable lack of anger," Kirkus Reviews says. Her memoir is full of crazy, juicy anecdotes, but her "good heart shines through." Anderson's "humility…never fails her" as she recounts her "kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life."

The College Board this week released the official framework for its new Advanced Placement course in African American studies. An early rundown of possible content, initially outlined in August, had drawn sharp criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who has made overhauling higher education in the state and purging what he calls "woke ideology" a priority for his government. The College Board removed much of the material DeSantis complained about from the required curriculum, including the names of many Black writers, scholars, and course units associated with critical race theory, the queer experience, Black feminism, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

David Coleman, the head of the College Board, told The New York Times the changes came in response to "the input of professors" and "longstanding AP principles," suggesting complaints from DeSantis and other conservative politicians didn't influence the decision. "At the College Board, we can't look to statements of political leaders," he said. Civil rights activists disagreed. David J. Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, said the College Board, a nonprofit that oversees AP offerings as well as the SAT testing, "capitulated" to what he called DeSantis's "extremist anti-Black censorship." Is the College Board keeping politics out of the classroom, or letting DeSantis dictate what students learn about Black history?

The College Board let DeSantis bully it

DeSantis' attack on this new AP course's curriculum "was ridiculous and disturbing," says Jess Levin in Vanity Fair, "but not at all surprising given that DeSantis has spent his time in office signing one absurd law after the next." He has pushed through one piece of legislation he says targets "woke" politics that is an "obvious intent is to ban conversations that could result in white people feeling bad about systemic racism," and another that critics have dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" law against teaching young students about sexual identity.

The alarming part of this story is that the College Board "completely bowed to his demands — and extremely quickly at that!" The nonprofit's insistence that politics played no part in the decision is bunk. According to The New York Times, the writers and academics barred from the curriculum include Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a Columbia professor whose work has been "foundational in critical race theory," and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, "who has made a strong case for reparations." More than 200 African American studies teachers said in a Medium post this gutting of the course amounts to "censorship and a frontal attack on academic freedom... Happy Black History Month."

Keeping neo-Marxist nonsense out of this course keeps it free of woke politics

DeSantis is the one trying to keep politics out of the classroom, says Rod Dreher in The American Conservative. He took a stand against the "woke commissars" because he was "not going to allow the AP course to propagandize Florida students for tendentious, highly ideological reads on black history, under the guise of teaching about Black history (which he fully supports)."

The "bad guys" in this clash are the ones trying to intimidate educators, lawmakers, and the College Board by spreading the "lie" that "if you don't give these ideological culture warriors everything they want, then you must be a BIGOT." DeSantis is "doing his job: making sure that the public school students of Florida aren't forced to read neo-Marxist propaganda as history."

Keeping marginalized voices out of the classroom erases history

The silencing of marginalized voices in this course is part of an "unrelenting assault" Florida is leading against "truth and freedom of expression," says Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, in The New York Times. The goal is to "suppress the viewpoints, histories and experiences of historically marginalized groups, especially Black and L.G.B.T.Q. communities." Eliminating any discussion of "queer theory," for example — as DeSantis demanded — denies "the need for future generations to learn about the contributions of queer Black American icons like Pauli Murray, Bayard Rustin, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin."

"The losses to our nation, if this broad attack on our shared history is allowed to continue, are incalculable." Surrendering will "breed a generation of Americans indoctrinated by ignorance" and deprived of "the analytical skills to understand the complex history of this experimental democracy, as well as the historical grounding to sustain it." If high schools are forced to ignore parts of Black history just because they make some people uncomfortable, students will show up at college "wholly ill-equipped to engage with the historical foundations of this country, which include and are inextricable from the history of Black Americans."

The College Board removed radicalism, not history

The final curriculum definitely marks "a major victory" for DeSantis, says Stanley Kurtz in National Review. The College Board has removed "pretty much all of the critical race theory (CRT), and the lion's share of socialist agitation." A proposed topic "devoted to Frantz Fanon's glorification of violence — and its influence on black radicals in America" is gone. So are a topic that "one-sidedly excoriated American foreign policy in Haiti," and units on black queer studies, "reparations, prison abolition, intersectionality," and "the socialist platform of the Movement for Black Lives. It's "still a left-biased course," but at least now the "contemporary political controversies" are just optional topics for a paper, not mandatory material for the exam.

The danger goes far beyond the content of a single AP course

This controversy wasn't just about the lessons to be taught in a single AP course, says Becky Pringle in USA Today. The real agenda of DeSantis and other conservative politicians trying to interfere in the classroom is to "first whitewash and then dumb down public education as an excuse to privatize it. His ultimate goal? The destruction of public education, the very foundation of our democracy." But "parents, students, educators, and yes, voters," won't let this happen. "Preparing students with more knowledge, not less, is essential for an America that prides itself in having a free marketplace of ideas."

A growing number of Americans gave Dry January a try this year, abstaining from alcohol in the first month of the year. Participation in the annual sobriety ritual has risen steadily since the non-profit Alcohol Change UK started it 10 years ago. More than twice as many people tried to go the month without alcohol, or with very little, this year than did in 2020. By some estimates, 1 in 5 Americans of drinking age — or more — gave Dry January a try this year.

This year, the campaign came against a backdrop of a surge in drinking during the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data indicates that November spending on alcoholic beverages was 3 percent higher than the previous year and 15 percent higher than the period right before the pandemic. Richard Piper, the CEO of Alcohol Change UK, told The Washington Post that the "objective of Dry January is not long-term sobriety — it's long-term control." Some people say they took the challenge hoping that cutting alcohol consumption would make them sleep and feel better. Others just wanted to see if they could do it. Did Dry January have any impact on Americans' relationship with alcohol?

It's worth abstaining to remind yourself it's possible

As her first Dry January comes to a close, says Robin Abcarian in the Los Angeles Times, "I am happy to report — as if you didn't already know — that it's possible to stop drinking even when you think you can't." For many of us, drinking has become a "mindless habit" that "interferes with a good night's sleep." Dry January is a reminder that we don't have to drink. We "choose to." And, at least those not fighting addiction, can choose to stop.

Abcarian's full disclosure: It was really a "semiarid January," broken up by wine with a niece one night, and a "couple of vodkas" a few nights later before bed, after which "I felt so lousy the next morning that it was clear why I stopped in the first place." The monthlong sobriety experiment didn't provide any "major revelations, "except that I sleep so much better without alcohol. Oh, and that it's entirely possible" do things that once seemed impossible. "Which, come to think of it, is pretty huge."

The loss of the ritual hurts

For her "damp January," "I've been sober as a nun" at home in the U.K. "with two gin and tonic-soaked nights in Cameroon (long story)," says Cathy Adams in the London Times. "So why do I feel so... awful?" It's not that I found it "boring and difficult." Having done it before, that was a given. "But as the month comes to an end, this enforced sobriety has triggered an existential tsunami I didn't see coming."

"As a working mother to a toddler," I have no "easy-off switch." I have "no clue how to decompress without a cocktail to celebrate my child having finally gone to bed." I miss the "sheer ritualism" of the nights out, the hiss of the air bubbles from a Prosecco bottle. So despite the promises that a dry month would yield "less anxiety and better sleep, I feel worse than I've felt for a long time: unstable, disorganized, emotionally adrift. I knew I liked wine, but I didn't realize how much of my emotional wellbeing derived from the grape."

Looking at your relationship with alcohol is one of many benefits

If Dry January made you ponder what you miss about your evening cocktail, it worked, says Lisa Jarvis in Bloomberg. "The biggest benefit of Dry January seems to be in forcing us all to reflect honestly on our relationship with alcohol: how often and how much we drink, our triggers for drinking more, and how alcohol might be affecting our day-to-day lives."

Emerging from the pandemic, it's important to "more deeply evaluate our habits." U.S. alcohol-related liver disease deaths "rose sharply in 2020," and a "worrisome trend in increased alcohol consumption among women" worsened that first pandemic year. Some people probably tried Dry January as a "feel-good hiatus," but experts in alcohol use disorder say "even that short break can matter for our health. Just a few weeks off from drinking can do wonders for repairing the liver, and can improve insulin resistance and blood pressure in even moderate drinkers. And people typically report tangible improvements to their daily lives, like sleeping better and losing weight."

This could be the start of a 'new Prohibition mindset'

There's no question more people are seeing the wisdom in giving Dry January a try, says Gus Carlson in The Globe and Mail. What started as a way for people to "give up drinking alcohol to atone for overindulging over the holidays" is blossoming into a modern temperance movement with power far beyond what it can do for individual drinkers.

Unlike the tobacco industry, which fought reports of smoking health risks and published ads urging people to walk "a mile for a Camel," the $88-billion-a-year U.S. beer, wine, and spirits industry "is engaging in a sort of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' self-flagellation," "apologizing for, making fun of and otherwise undermining the appeal of their own core products" and pushing their non-alcoholic alternatives in a desperate attempt "to keep up with changing consumer tastes." "In the old days, you may have walked a mile for a Camel." If our "new Prohibition mindset" continues unopposed, "some day you may need to do the same for a cocktail."

Germany reportedly has decided to support efforts to provide Ukraine with German-made Leopard 2 tanks, a potentially critical reversal. Germany had resisted calls to transfer some of the 2,000 Leopard 2s now in the hands of allies across Europe to help Ukrainian forces fight invading Russian troops. But Berlin came under increasing pressure to approve the move as Ukraine faces a likely new spring offensive by Russia. Modern battle tanks are faster than Russia's Soviet-era tanks — with top speeds up to 45 miles per hour — and equipped with more firepower, night vision, thermal imaging, and laser range finders to track targets.

The Biden administration is also finalizing a plan to send Ukraine some of the Army's M1 Abrams tanks, a step Germany had said the U.S. must take before it approves Poland's request to send some of the Leopard 2s. The United States and other countries already have promised armored vehicles like the American Bradley fighting vehicle. The moves are "a significant breakthrough in western efforts to bolster Kyiv's fight against the Russian army," writes the Financial Times. But how exactly will this "breakthrough" change the trajectory of the war?

The modern tanks are essential

The West is determined to "help Ukraine win without starting World War III," says Andreas Kluth at Bloomberg, and the fear is that sending heavy battle tanks will cross a "red line" that could cause Moscow to expand the war, or use tactical nuclear weapons. The U.S., Germany, and France "took a big step forward" in pushing the limit by announcing they would "give the Ukrainians new kinds of tanks," such as the U.S. Bradley, and the equivalent armored fighting vehicles used by Germany and France.

But to call these vehicles tanks is "a stretch." Bradleys "have guns and treads, but their main purpose is to bring infantry soldiers wherever they're needed." Ukraine definitely "needs these vehicles badly," but to win it also must have "main battle tanks" like Germany's Leopard 2, the American M1 Abrams, or France's Leclerc. "Those are the heavy fire-breathing monsters that can punch through Russian lines and retake occupied Ukrainian territory."

Providing tanks won't end the war. It will expand it.

"It is an act of grave stupidity for the West to supply Ukraine with modern tanks," says Peter Hitchens in Britain's Daily Mail. The United Kingdom has already promised Ukraine 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks. "I know what tanks are for, and it is not defense." These powerful machines are for crashing through enemy lines. Ukraine's new tanks might "bog down," or they might "sweep all before them," retaking Crimea or rolling all the way to "a Victory Parade in Red Square."

If Ukraine does use modern tanks to "cross into what Russia regards as its own territory, then do not be surprised by anything which happens." Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "sinister tyrant" who "is probably capable of authorizing the use of battlefield nuclear weapons if cornered." Even if he is deposed, whoever replaces him will be just as likely to "press the red button." At best, these tanks will "prolong the war." At worst, they will result in parts of Europe being reduced to a "radioactive graveyard."

The U.S. should send Abrams tanks, even if just a few, as a symbol

The origin of Ukraine's weapons probably won't be what pushes Putin over his "red lines," says Fred Kaplan in Slate. Still, Germany's chancellor, Olaf Scholz, wants cover for his country by holding off on transfers of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine until the U.S. agrees to send some of its M1 Abrams tanks. Chalk it up to "unease over nightmarish images from history of German tanks rolling through the plains of Europe."

The truth is that the Abrams isn't the tank Ukraine needs, according to U.S. officials. It's "a maintenance nightmare," but if sending "a handful of Abrams tanks, just as a symbol," will speed up the arrival of dozens, or hundreds, of Leopard 2s, the Biden administration is right to send them. An Army can't win a war "fighting strictly on the defensive; it needs to mount a counteroffensive." Modern tanks, which "let soldiers unleash massive amounts of firepower while on the move," will give Ukraine the offensive capabilities it needs to win.

Where are the long-range precision weapons?

Tanks "might not be as important as the political rows suggest," say the editors of The Economist. Ukraine already has "hundreds of Soviet-era tanks," including some it has captured from Russia. Those tanks, coupled with Western infantry fighting vehicles — including the Bradley, the "tank-killers" of the 1991 Iraq war — would "pack a substantial punch" that could do the job.

What Ukraine really needs, though, are long-range precision weapons, such as GPS-guided missiles and the Grey Eagle armed drone, retired U.S. Army General Ben Hodges tells the magazine. These would "strike Russian command posts and logistics hubs deeper behind Russian lines," and, combined with "more and better armor," give Ukraine its best chance at retaking Crimea.

Last year marked a turning point for artificial intelligence, with several new generative AI tools making a splash. OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, an AI text generator, is one of the tools that quickly went viral after being released to the public for free last fall. While some reveled in the program's ability to write poems, news articles, and bizarre short stories, others wondered what it could mean for the future of writing.

Almost immediately, educators began sounding off on the possible threat posed to their field. Could ChatGPT be the end of English class as we know it?

'Expect a flood' of cheating students

Many educators have been vocal about the overwhelming wave of cheating that ChatGPT might trigger, particularly regarding the typical five-paragraph or formulaic essays assigned to high school and undergraduate students. "Expect a flood, people, not a trickle," warned Darren Hick, a philosophy professor at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, in a Facebook post. After discovering that one of his students submitted an alarmingly well-constructed essay they got from the AI tool, Hick vented about how ill-prepared educators are for dealing with AI text generators.

"Academia did not see this coming. So we're sort of blindsided by it," Hick told The New York Post. He says unlike old-school cheating methods, such as asking a friend to do the work or paying someone else to write an assignment, "this is free and instantaneous." The fact that the software is in its infancy and will continue to learn and improve also makes the professor uncomfortable. "I feel the mix myself between abject terror and what this is going to mean for my day-to-day job — but it's also fascinating, it's endlessly fascinating."

Hicks believes that school administrators need to find a way to address what he is sure to be an onslaught of cheating as the technology grows more advanced. Some suggest that teachers return to the tradition of handwritten assignments. As far as his classroom goes, Hick expects to "institute a policy stating that if I believe material submitted by a student was produced by AI, I will throw it out and give the student an impromptu oral exam on the same material."

ChatGPT will be 'the end of writing assignments altogether'

Some teachers think it's too late to combat the threat of advanced AI text generators, leading to the inevitable demise of writing assignments. Daniel Herman has taught high school English for 12 years and is "astounded by what ChatGPT can produce." In an essay for The Atlantic, Herman wrote that ChatGPT "may signal the end of writing assignments altogether — and maybe even the end of writing as a gatekeeper, a metric for intelligence, a teachable skill." He warns that the AI tool will "drastically change" the lives of him and his fellow educators. Herman used to preach that "a basic competence in writing is an absolutely essential skill," but he's unsure if that remains true. "It's no longer obvious to me that my teenagers actually will need to develop this basic skill. "

High school teacher and author Ben Berman also thinks "high school writing, as we know it, is doomed." Instead of trying to combat the use of AI in schools by investing in anti-cheating software or resorting to handwritten assignments, Berman hopes that teachers "let this new technology disrupt the systems that encourage students to think of school as a game."

Others fear that ChatGPT will kill traditional writing assignments in higher education as well. Author and former professor Stephen Marche called the undergraduate essay "the way we teach children how to research, think, and write" in The Atlantic, but believes the "entire tradition is about to be disrupted from the ground up." He predicts it will take at least a decade for academia to catch up: "two years for the students to figure out the tech, three more years for the professors to recognize that students are using the tech, and then five years for university administrators to decide what, if anything, to do about it."

Kevin Bryan, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, tweeted in shock over ChatGPT's capabilities, declaring, "You can no longer give take-home exams/homework." After testing the tool's ability to write graduate-level responses, he concluded, "the OpenAI chat is frankly better than the average MBA at this point."

AI is the future, and teachers should embrace it

Despite the pervasive fear of AI phasing out writing, some educators believe that it will force them to reimagine the writing process. In a guest post for Inside Higher Ed, Marc Watkins, a University of Mississippi professor, wrote that students and teachers "will come to use this technology to augment the writing process, not replace it." Watkins said that it is imperative that educators "teach our students about these models, how to use them ethically, and what it will mean for their writing process." He warns against letting fear dictate educators' response to the tech. He asked, "What message would we send our students by using AI-powered detectors to curb their suspected use of an AI writing assistant, when future employers will likely want them to have a range of AI-related skills and competencies?"

In an essay for Chalkbeat, Ben Talsma, a learning solution specialist for Van Andel Institute for Education, agrees that it is best to prepare students "for the world they'll inherit." He believes "it will become increasingly important for humans to edit AI-generated work" over the next few years. He recounts similar pushback from math teachers when the calculator first emerged and said it's human nature to fear technology that "renders previously important skills obsolete." Still, he remains convinced that if educators let their fears cloud their thinking, they will "ignore the history of technology and the possibilities offered by AI."

New York Times columnist Kevin Roose urges educators to resist the urge to ban ChatGPT in their classrooms. "Instead, I believe schools should thoughtfully embrace ChatGPT as a teaching aid — one that could unlock student creativity, offer personalized tutoring, and better prepare students to work alongside AI systems as adults."

ChatGPT doesn't mark the end of English class, but it should make teachers rethink the traditional essay

"ChatGPT doesn't mark the end of high school English class, but it can mark the end of formulaic, mediocre writing performance as a goal for students and teachers," writes Forbes contributor Peter Greene. Greene, who taught English for 39 years, said, "ChatGPT should kill a certain type of writing, of which the college admission essay is one conspicuous example." Greene believes "high school writing instruction has drifted in the direction of performative faux writing" and welcomes the end of the formulaic essay as "long overdue."

Adam Stevens, a longtime teacher based in New York City, argues that the best way to discourage students from using ChatGPT to cheat is to move away from formulaic writing based on rubrics. "We've trained a whole generation of kids to pursue rubric points and not knowledge," he said in an interview for Chalkbeat. Instead, he encourages "assigning them work that is inviting them to explore things worth knowing." He believes ChatGPT is only a threat to educators who push rubric-based assignments over innovative approaches to nurture critical thinking.

In a blog post, educator Trevor Muir wrote, "ChatGPT is not going to end English class, but I think it will change it." He also sees the rapidly advancing generation of AI tools as an opportunity for teachers to change the type of assignments they typically give students. "We all know that writing five-paragraph essays is not part of the daily routine for most adults. So maybe it's time that ship sails off into the sunset."

Alec Baldwin is facing involuntary manslaughter charges in connection with the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on the set of his film Rust after a gun he was holding accidentally went off. Baldwin has denied responsibility for the shooting, and his attorney says the charges represent a "terrible miscarriage of justice." So are prosecutors justified in charging Baldwin, or did they overreach? Here's what legal experts, those in the film industry, and more are saying about the decision:

Prosecutors were 'well within the law'

Prosecutors announced Thursday they will charge Alec Baldwin, as well as Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Santa Fe district attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies told CNN this was justified based on the "lack of safety and safety standards" on the film's set, and she argued that when Baldwin was handed the prop gun, "he didn't do any of the things that he was supposed to do to make sure that he was safe or that anyone around him was safe." The DA also alleged Baldwin did pull the trigger of the gun, though he has strongly denied this.

"Every person that handles a gun has a duty to make sure that if they are going to handle that gun, point it at someone, and pull the trigger, that it is not going to fire a projectile and kill someone," Carmack-Altwies said.

Baldwin was a producer on Rust in addition to starring in the film. So actor Ethan Embry argued the ​​involuntary manslaughter charges seemed "appropriate" because "he was a producer/authority figure on the production, which involves culpability." (Carmack-Altwies told CNN that Baldwin is being charged both as an actor and a producer, and he had a "duty to make sure the set was safe" in his latter role.)

"He's the producer, so he actually does have responsibility, both morally and criminally, for what happened on the set," Harmeet Dhillon, attorney and Republican National Committee chair candidate, told Fox News.

In an emailed statement to The Week, Los Angeles personal injury attorney Miguel Custodio argued that because Baldwin allegedly "pulled the trigger, he has to be accountable, plain and simple," adding, "You have to charge the person who pulled the trigger. The DA's office made the right call." Because Baldwin was a producer on the movie, "there is a higher degree of responsibility on him for this," Custodio argued. Former Los Angeles County prosecutor Joshua Ritter also said in an email that Baldwin has "some built-in defenses with the fact that he wasn't the person responsible for making sure the gun was cleared and that there were multiple people on set whose job was to ensure everything was safe," but "at the end of the day, the gun was in his hands."

On Twitter, Fox News co-host Geraldo Rivera argued prosecutors were "well-within the law" to charge Baldwin. "I feel badly for all, but his gun had a live round, he should have checked [the] weapon before he pulled the trigger, and it was criminally negligent not to do so," Rivera said.

The charges are 'wrong and uninformed'

But the actors union SAG-AFTRA slammed the charges against Baldwin, arguing in a statement that the death of Halyna Hutchins was "not a failure of duty or a criminal act on the part of any performer."

"The prosecutor's contention that an actor has a duty to ensure the functional and mechanical operation of a firearm on a production set is wrong and uninformed," the union said. "An actor's job is not to be a firearms or weapons expert. Firearms are provided for their use under the guidance of multiple expert professionals directly responsible for the safe and accurate operation of that firearm. In addition, the employer is always responsible for providing a safe work environment at all times, including hiring and supervising the work of professionals trained in weapons."

Baldwin has repeatedly said he was told the gun did not contain live rounds before it was handed to him.

The Good Fight co-creator Robert King argued that charging Baldwin "as an actor seems to misunderstand the chain of responsibility on" a film set. "If you're charging the actor, you should be charging the director, all producers, prop master, many others," King continued. "The fact the DA didn't seems to suggest she's trying to make a name for herself." Actor Paul Scheer agreed. "He's a professional who has a job and his focus on that job like the rest of the crew and that is why the responsibility of safety of the gun doesn't fall on his shoulders," Scheer tweeted, arguing it's "not right" that the film's armorer would be charged "at the same level as the actor who was given a gun and told it couldn't fire."

Similarly, actor Steven Pasquale tweeted that for "an artist to be handed a prop gun, and told [it's] completely safe, and then held responsible when it's not, is outrageous." And on CNN, criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson slammed the charges as "ill-advised" and "ill-informed," adding they set a "very dangerous precedent."

"The fact that you're going to criminalize this is very problematic," Jackson said, as actors like Baldwin should be able to "reasonably" rely on other members of the crew, e.g. those in charge of handling weapons, "to do their job."

As far as Baldwin being a producer on the movie goes, Los Angeles entertainment attorney Tre Lovell noted in an emailed statement to The Week, "We need to remember that the title 'producer' is just a credit and doesn't necessarily reflect production responsibility. … The DA may be convinced that his role as a producer factors into his criminal liability, but a jury may see it differently." Lovell added, "Will this prosecution set us on a slippery slope where every time there's an accident on set because an actor is operating equipment, the actor will have to worry about being charged with a crime?"

Prosecutors may face an uphill battle

ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams noted on Good Morning America that prosecutors "had the book thrown" at Baldwin, but he argued that the second, more severe involuntary manslaughter charge — which includes a firearm enhancement that could result in a mandatory five-year sentence if Baldwin is convicted — was an "overcharge," so he "wouldn't be surprised" if that's thrown out. Abrams also told Law & Crime prosecutors will have a "hard time getting a conviction," assuming the case goes to trial. "Everyone agrees this was a mistake," Abrams said. "Everyone. It's just a question of whether it was a criminal mistake."

But Fox News co-host Geraldo Rivera disagreed, arguing Baldwin already "convicted himself" when he claimed he didn't point the gun at Hutchins and pull the trigger, only for an FBI forensic report to conclude the gun could not have fired without the trigger being pulled. "You have a case here that is as close to a slam dunk as you're going to get," Rivera concluded.

On NBC News, though, legal analyst Danny Cevallos wasn't convinced this "hurts Alec Baldwin that much," as the actor can still make the case that he "believed this was a cold gun" even if he did pull the trigger. Indeed, former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said in an emailed statement to The Week that Baldwin "has a good defense, because he had every reason to believe the gun that was handed to him was safe," and if the case goes before a jury, he "will garner a lot of sympathy."

Regardless of the outcome, criminal defense attorney Rachel Fiset said in an email the case sends an "incredibly strong message to Hollywood," underlining why everyone from actors to directors and producers must "recognize that they need to make safety a first priority."

The narrow new Republican majority took control of the House this week and, as its first order of business, fulfilled a campaign promise by voting to rescind much of the funding boost for the Internal Revenue Service included in last year's Inflation Reduction Act. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the legislation, if it became law, would eliminate $71 billion of the $80 billion in new IRS funding, which is intended to help the agency hire 87,000 employees in the next decade, some to replace retiring workers. The new hires would include revenue agents, customer-service workers, information-technology specialists, and others who could help the agency collect more taxes. Under the legislation, the IRS would keep some of the money, including $3.8 billion for taxpayer services and $4.2 billion for updating old technology.

Next, Republicans plan to present legislation calling for abolishing the IRS outright. The bills have no chance of passing in the Senate, still controlled by Democrats. But the White House Office of Management and Budget said House Republicans were "making clear that their top economic priority is to allow the rich and multi-billion dollar corporations to skip out on their taxes, while making life harder for ordinary, middle-class families that pay the taxes they owe." Republicans countered by saying that reining in the Internal Revenue Service would prevent the agency from using its new resources to overburden honest taxpayers with unnecessary audits. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) told Fox News that "the average American cares about defunding 87,000 IRS agents." What did this opening salvo by House Republicans accomplish?

Cutting IRS funding would swell the deficit and benefit the rich

"The current system to ferret out wrongdoers is terrible," says Alexis Leondis in Bloomberg, and House Republicans' effort to block the IRS' new funding "would only make it worse." The tax gap — "the difference between what taxpayers owe and what they actually pay" — was $496 billion a year from 2014 through 2016, and even after audits and enforcement the agency was only able to collect $68 billion, or 14 percent of taxes "owed but not paid." The agency just doesn't have the resources to conduct enough audits on "the people who owe the most," and the funding boost Republicans are trying to rescind is intended to help fix that.

Depriving the IRS of resources benefits the richest taxpayers. A big share of the tax gap is attributed to "sophisticated" sole proprietors who report "well above $400,000 in business income on personal returns pass-through business owners, according to a former IRS commissioner. And the audit rate on individual taxpayers making $1 million or more has "dropped from 8.4 percent in 2019 to just 2.4 percent in 2019." And the lost opportunity to make sure wealthy taxpayers are paying their fair share is only part of the problem with the GOP attempt to block this new money. The Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that the House bill "would cut government revenue by almost $186 billion and increase the budget deficit by $114 billion over the next 10 years."

Democrats say a beefed-up IRS will target the rich. Don't believe them

Curbing IRS power would help more low-income Americans than rich ones, says the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an editorial. "Democrats insisted that only wealthy Americans would face an increase in audits," but recent IRS data cited in a recent report by Liz Wolfe of Reason showed that in 2022 the tax man, as Wolfe put it, "continued historic trends of hassling primarily low-income taxpayers..., with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep."

Even if the IRS gets the entire funding boost, there's no reason to believe anything will change. Public bureaucracies tend most to take the path of least resistance. "In the case of the IRS, that means concentrating on simpler returns rather than putting the microscope on wealthy taxpayers with their bevy of accountants and attorneys." Even if the IRS starts targeting the wealthy more aggressively, "workers of more modest means" will continue to get squeezed, because their simpler returns are easier for auditors to handle.

This is the start of a wave of GOP 'demagoguery'

The "supposedly tight-fisted House Republicans" shrugged off the impact of their bill on the deficit, says Ed Kilgore in New York magazine's Intelligencer. "The opportunity to strike a rhetorical blow at the hated tax man, whom conservatives believe has persecuted them for many years, was richer than any dollar amount saved or squandered." This was not a serious effort to govern. It was "pure demagoguery."

And this "clawback bid" is "the first of many 'messaging' votes" the House will be taking, "with the assurance that the Democratic-controlled Senate will ignore or kill their handiwork (with President Biden serving as the ultimate executioner, if necessary)." The fact that the GOP's slim House majority is powerless to pass any partisan legislation that will become law "gives McCarthy and his troops the freedom to be as reckless as they want, cutting capers for the entertainment of conservative 'base' voters watching their antics on Fox News and other friendly outlets."

The GOP might get its way, eventually

The Republican bill isn't expected to become law, says Richard Rubin in The Wall Street Journal. But this isn't the last time Republicans in this Congress will put the IRS "under the microscope." Republicans will keep the pressure on when Biden's nominee to run the agency, Danny Werfel, has his confirmation hearing in the Senate soon. "And the IRS is scheduled to release an implementation plan for the $80 billion as early as next month."

Democrats might win this round, but "Republicans will have other opportunities to try to cut the IRS' funding." Democrats intended the $80 billion to come on top of regular IRS budget increases of about $12 billion a year. But Congress has to approve those annually. "If Republicans use yearly spending negotiations to keep that number flat or cut it, the IRS would have to use the $80 billion for routine operations rather than expansion."

A stadium stunned, a team shaken, and a life on the line — the scene at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati on Monday night was nothing short of devastating as Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin was rushed away in an ambulance after collapsing on the field. While the public awaits further updates on his condition, sports pundits and fans have turned their attention to the NFL and the violent-but-beloved game it so fervently promotes. What might Hamlin's injury mean for the league and the nation's insatiable appetite for football in general? Here's what the experts are saying:

Jerry Brewer: We can still love the game so long as we care for its players

Football is an "intrinsically vicious sport"; that is something its spectators accept, love, and quite infrequently reckon with, writes Jerry Brewer, a sports columnist for The Washington Post. Often, the game goes on when a player goes down — "the action seldom stops for long," and audiences have always returned to watch, no matter the trauma. But the takeaway there "shouldn't be to hate football or feel guilty about loving it," Brewer argues. Rather, it's more "a warning to balance the obsession with appropriate concern for the human risk involved."

In the case of Hamlin, the return to "normal" — or at least to convenient ignorance — could take a bit longer. And "until further notice," football and those who govern it must defer to the sanctity of human life and the anguish that follows when we snub those who put their very being on the line.

Alex Kirshner: The NFL can only bend the narrative so far

That the world is so shocked by what happened to Hamlin is a "testament to how the NFL has maintained a bubble over itself," Alex Kirshner writes for Slate. Football used to be "gorier than it is now," but "equipment advances, rule changes, and a lot of luck" have kept teams playing and audiences happily engaged despite that danger. For the league, this narrative-bending approach has worked — the NFL is the "constructor of its own reality." And "until Monday night, it was unclear if the league's world-building abilities even had a limit." Now, Kirshner says, "that threshold is obvious."

Crucially, however, the broader NFL ecosystem is a "machine with only one speed." It isn't built to look inward or reckon with itself. And even in the case of Damar Hamlin, "reckoning means getting sports' biggest ocean liner back in the water."

Will Leitch: The league's reaction represents progress

What happened to Hamlin is tragic, terrifying, and all-around horrible — but perhaps the reaction to the incident represents progress within the sport, posits Will Leitch at Intelligencer. Only one player has ever died on the field during an NFL game — Chuck Hughes, "a 28-year-old wide receiver for the Detroit Lions who had a heart attack while running back to the huddle during a would-be game-winning drive in 1971." Quite morbidly, play resumed once responders got Hughes off the turf. Not only that, "but it didn't even occur to anyone to stop."

For the most part, such has remained the ethos of the NFL: Our show continues through famine, fire, and flood. But "that's why Monday night actually represented some progress," Leitch argues. Most everybody "stopped, took a step back, and thought about something other than football." Yes, the bigwigs took an hour to rightfully call off the game, but that they would opt to do so was, unfortunately, not a foregone conclusion. It was all too "easy to imagine a different reaction to [Hamlin's collapse] just a few years ago, before we all knew just how dangerous football was."

On Monday, "[i]t seemed obvious that they had to stop the game, for Hamlin, for his teammates, for all of us," Leitch writes. "But for most of football history, it wouldn't have been obvious at all. Monday night was a deeply emotional moment that (almost) everyone involved handled with grace and compassion. And that's different. That's progress."

Ernest Owens and Jacques Berlinerblau: To back the NFL is to support the distress it causes

"At this point," Ernest Owens begins at The Daily Beast, "to unapologetically support the National Football League is to be woefully complicit in the harm it has caused its players." The hourlong gap between Hamlin's collapse and the official call to postpone the game was too long — and, if the reports claiming the league actually did intend to continue play, only for both teams to join hands in protest, are true, well, the whole thing is just "another reminder of how incompetent this multibillion-dollar institution has been to its players, who are mostly Black." Bottom line? "Change starts with us," Owens concludes. After Hamlin's fall, "there should be no going back to NFL business as usual. Enough is enough."

"Along with tens of millions of others in America, I lustfully consume a shiny, colorful and savage spectacle," Jacques Berlinerblau adds for MSNBC. And "our participation in this spectacle raises an uncomfortable moral question: At what point are we who are obsessed with football enabling the destruction of young men's bodies and by association their lives?" If the goal moving forward is to prevent something like what happened to Hamlin from happening again, "then football in the United States is unreformable," largely because "it is a lucrative business that is an integral part of American culture."

Simply put, the game cannot protect its players if fans remain interested in the game. "Until we stop cheering, tweeting about, gambling on, and watching these games, horrific injuries are going to occur." You can pray for those that get hurt and you can donate to their charities (a toy drive, in Hamlin's case), but "it might be better" in the end if "all of us who watch football on any level somehow find a way to divest from a game that we, and the men who play it, love too much."

Southwest Airlines canceled more than 15,000 flights last week in an operational meltdown that disrupted holiday plans for tens of thousands of holiday travelers. Even Monday, after the company said it had returned to nearly normal operations, Southwest canceled another 160 flights, more than any other U.S. airline, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. One passenger has already sued, accusing the airline of failing to provide refunds to stranded passengers.

Southwest blames the chaos on a massive winter storm that hammered much of the United States last week. But Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote in a letter to the airline that many of the problems weren't due to the weather. He said other airlines affected by the storm "recovered relatively quickly, unlike Southwest," and vowed to hold the company accountable. Should the federal government impose changes to protect passengers from a repeat of this holiday-season disaster, or is this Southwest's problem alone?

The federal government should enforce, and expand, passenger rights

Nobody's perfect, says the Dallas Morning News in an editorial. "Mistakes and bad luck are part of life and business." But it will take a lot of "responsive and compassionate customer service" for Southwest to bounce back from such "a reputation damaging moment." In the meantime, Southwest and the entire commercial aviation industry "should rekindle a much overdue discussion of the rights of stranded passengers."

We've been through this drill before. In 2021, Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights over four days in October, and the much smaller rival Spirit canceled thousands of flights over a brief period that summer. "A federal airline passenger bill of rights covers bumping of passengers from flights, obligations to seat young children next to a parent, ticket price transparency, baggage rules, and a wide variety of rights cloaked in a lot of mitigating and confusing fine print." Then as now, regulators have to step in to help "passengers obtain refunds with threats to take enforcement action." It's only fair.

Putting Buttigieg in charge would make things worse

Southwest is already going to pay a steep price for this mess "in damaged reputation," says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. "The only worse result for seething passengers would be to put Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in charge." After all, government meddling contributed to last week's mess, because companies that received COVID aid couldn't lay off employees, which prompted them to "offer retirement and buyout packages to preserve cash, leading to a pilot and crew shortage."

Southwest's problems stemmed largely from "outdated technology that failed to match crews to planes." But Buttigieg has been pushing for mandatory refunds when flights are delayed more than three hours, and a group of 34 state attorneys general want "new power to enforce airline consumer-protection laws." A regulation squeeze forcing airlines to "add unnecessary employees" is "a recipe for higher fares." Air travel opened up after "Washington receded from airline management in the 1970s." Getting politicians involved again "will make air travel worse and more expensive."

Sorry, but we can't count on Southwest to fix itself

"Southwest, we hope, is now committing millions of dollars to upgrading its technology so it will never fail at this level ever again; it has promised as much," says the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. "And it should be held accountable." But we can't simply sit back and trust "Southwest to fix itself." It's perfectly reasonable to require prompt rebookings on other airlines when necessary, and "proactive additional compensation" for "innocent people" subjected to travel hell.

And there are regulation changes that even "our Grinchy friends at The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board" will like. The government should consider dialing back "the draconian federal regulations that cover crew workdays" in an emergency. "Safety must be the first priority, of course." But that can be a more complex matrix than people realize: Is it safer for 160 stressed-out passengers to decide instead to drive through the snow — consider what happened in Buffalo, New York — rather than to allow a single flight attendant an extra hour or two of work so that a flight can take off?

It's fair to ask whether Buttigieg's slow response contributed to the fiasco

Buttigieg might be part of the problem, says Karen Townsend at Hot Air. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who sits on the House oversight committee, "questions Transportation Secretary Buttigieg's slow response, waiting four days into the crisis before weighing in." Her teenage children were "stranded in Baltimore" during this mess, and she's calling for an investigation to learn what happened.

Members of the pilots union and other employees "blame an antiquated communications system and scheduling software" for the chaos. Mace and her colleagues will be "asking for accountability for the billions of dollars in aid given to the airline during the pandemic and the funds included in the Biden infrastructure bill. What has all that money been used for, if not to update aging communication equipment and scheduling software?"

The least Southwest can do is submit to federal scrutiny

We should all be able to agree that something must be done to prevent another debacle like this one, says the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in an editorial. Buttigieg has vowed to investigate, and Southwest CEO Bob Jordan has pledged to do better. The bottom line is that "if Southwest Airlines and the rest of the industry is happy to take billions of dollars from the government in relief, they should be willing to submit to close scrutiny from the Department of Transportation. We deserve more than an examination, we deserve oversight."

Whether you've made a resolution to read more or just want to refresh your to-be-read, the new year is a great time to figure out your upcoming book schedule. Luckily, 2023 promises to be a fantastic year for book lovers, with plenty of new releases and highly anticipated returns to look forward to.

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Here are a few options worth considering:

January:

Ghost Music by An Yu (Jan. 10)

If you enjoyed An Yu's enchanting debut novel Braised Pork, her follow-up should definitely be on your TBR. In Ghost Music, Yu tells a semi-surreal tale of music and mysterious mushrooms centered around Song Yan, a former concert pianist who longs to have children (unlike her husband). But as she deals with the rising tension in her home, Song Yan begins to have recurring dreams about mushrooms native to her mother-in-law's birthplace in China. Soon, a package of those same mushrooms leads Song to a mysterious house where she discovers a world-famous pianist who disappeared a decade ago. Kirkus Reviews says Yu's story "contrasts the immediacy of daily life in Beijing with a mesmerizing dreamscape." Pre-order here.

Maame by Jessica George (Jan. 31)

Jessica George's forthcoming debut Maame has been generating buzz since 2021, when it was acquired in an eight-way auction. Bestselling author Celeste Ng calls it "an utterly charming and deeply moving portrait of the joys –– and the guilt –– of trying to find your own way in life." George's "pitch-perfect" novel follows Maddie, a Londoner of Ghanaian descent, as she tackles the complexities of modern life. Maddie is saddled with a dead-end job where she's often the only Black person in the room. She is also left to care for her sick father while her mother is away in Ghana for a year, all the while grappling with familial duty and struggling to find where she truly belongs. Maame has been described as "funny, heartbreaking, utterly relatable, and powerfully authentic," making it clear why it's one of the year's most anticipated releases. Pre-order here.

Other books to read in January:

The Stolen Heir by Holly Black (Jan. 3); Spare by Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex (Jan. 10); Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo (Jan. 10); Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey (Jan. 17); The Faraway World by Patricia Engel (Jan. 24); Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson (Jan. 31)

February:

Victory City by Salman Rushdie (Feb. 7)

Critically acclaimed author Salman Rushdie's 15th novel Victory City is set to come out in 2023, less than a year after he was viciously attacked during a lecture in New York. Rushdie has already proven himself of his generation's most adept literary stars, and his forthcoming epic fantasy novel promises to be one of the best releases of the year. Set in 14th-century India (and stylized to mimic a translation of an Indian epic myth), Victory City follows a young girl who becomes the earthly host body for a goddess following a divine encounter. Over the next 250 years, the girl builds a magical empire ... only for the city to eventually turn on her. Time Magazine calls Victory City an "awe-inspiring saga that looks at what it's really like to be the center of the universe." Pre-order here.

A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak (Feb. 14)

Framed as an exploration of the author's mystifying death, A Mystery of Mysteries will surely fascinate even the mildly-curious Edgar Allan Poe fan. Former film and T.V. critic Mark Dawidziak explores the rumored causes of Poe's demise and offers a poignant analysis of the writer's prolific work, even dispelling some myths about his subject. A Mystery of Mysteries has "revelations to spare," says Publisher's Weekly, thereby earning it a place on reader's bookshelves this year. Pre-order here.

Other books to read in February:

When Trying to Return Home by Jennifer Maritza McCauley (Feb. 7); The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi (Feb. 14); Sink: A Memoir by Joseph Earl Thomas (Feb. 21); I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (Feb. 21)

March:

What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez (March 7)

This debut novel by newcomer Claire Jimenez has been named one of the most anticipated books of 2023 by Goodreads. What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez follows a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island struggling to cope after their fiercely-independent sister Ruthy disappears. But when a woman who looks a lot like Ruthy crops up in a reality TV show commercial, the family comes together to search for its long-lost member. Today calls What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez "a funny and heartbreaking examination of sisterhood, generational trauma, and the bonds that hold families together." Pre-order here.

Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood (March 7)

Internationally acclaimed author Margaret Atwood is releasing her first collection of short stories since 2014's Stone Collection. The fifteen short stories in Old Babes in the Wood, some of which appeared in The New Yorker, offer a fresh collection of tales inspired by the uncertainty of the pandemic era. Atwood's typical wit and creativity should be on full display in this collection; there's even a story where she imagines herself conversing with iconic sci-fi author George Orwell during a seance. Expect "seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love — and what comes after," per the book's blurb. Fans of the author of The Handmaid's Tale should pre-order this one before it's released in the spring. Pre-order here.

Other books to read in March:

Who Gets Believed?: When the Truth Isn't Enough by Dina Nayeri (March 7); Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (March 14); Birdgirl: Looking to the Skies in Search of a Better Future by Mya-Rose Craig (March 28); Evil Eye by Etaf Rum (March 28); The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer (March 28); Above Ground by Clint Smith (March 28)

April:

Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (April 4)

This next release should pique your interest if titles like Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale are more your vibe. Chain Gang All Stars is the highly anticipated debut novel from Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the author of the New York Times-bestselling story collection, Friday Black. Adjei-Brenyah's new book depicts a dystopian future where female prisoners fight in gladiator-style battles for a chance to be free. Goodreads calls it "a ferocious attack on America's for-profit prison systems," a description echoed by the book's back-cover blurb: "a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration." Pre-order here.

A Living Remedy: A Memoir by Nicole Chung (April 4)

Nicole Chung is back with a follow-up to her 2018 memoir All You Can Ever Know, a touching ode to her experiences growing up as Korean American adopted by a white family. Chung's newest project, A Living Remedy: A Memoir, chronicles the heartbreaking loss of her adoptive parents to a broken healthcare system, following the author as she navigates her grief and contemplates American inequality. "In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them," Chung writes, per a snippet on the book's back cover. Pre-order here.

Other books to read in April:

The People Who Report More Stress by Alejandro Valero (April 4); A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan (April 4); Homecoming by Kate Morton (April 4); Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (April 4); The Trackers by Charles Frazier (April 11); You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith (April 11); The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro (April 18)

Tesla's stock price has plummeted. The year 2022 will end up being "the worst year ever for Tesla Inc. shares," Bloomberg reports, thanks to a steep drop in the stock price that coincides roughly with the decision of its leader, Elon Musk, to acquire Twitter and wade straight into America's culture wars. "The drop had, at one point, made it the third-worst performer in the S&P 500 Index this year."

Tesla's problem isn't just Twitter: The company is reportedly having manufacturing problems at a Shanghai plant, and worries about a recession have battered the stock prices of other notable companies. But Musk's engagement on the social media site is definitely a concern for some investors. "I don't care if you're selling pizza or popcorn or whatever you sell — getting into politics with customers never wins," one analyst tells The New York Times. Musk seems unconcerned: "Long-term, I believe very much that Tesla will be the most valuable company on Earth!" he said in an email to employees. Are Musk's adventures in social media damaging the company he built? And if so, what can investors do to fix the problem?

Driving a Tesla is embarrassing

"I'm starting to worry about what sort of political statement the car is making," Tesla owner John Blumenthal writes in the Los Angeles Times. The car used to be a statement — not just of style, but of commitment to the environment. With climate change ravaging the planet, driving a gas-fueled car meant "at least one polar bear was wandering around homeless and hungry because of me." Buying a Tesla was virtuous — but maybe not anymore. Musk has turned Twitter into an "unsupervised playground for neo-Nazis and other random hatemongers" and that makes it embarrassing to be seen in one of the company's cars. While a Tesla remains a "beautifully designed car with no carbon emission," Musk's "political descent into the dark side" has Blumenthal considering selling his Tesla. It might not make much difference, but driving one of Elon's vehicles just feels icky now. "I do know that I'm just not as comfortable driving it anymore."

Competition is coming in the electric car market

Actually, the problem isn't so much Twitter — it's that Tesla no longer has a monopoly on the electric car market, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. points out at The Wall Street Journal. "Tesla won't have the electric-vehicle market to itself," now that other big companies are getting into the business. Musk was always going to be challenged, sooner or later, when it came time to sell vehicles "into a crowded and competitive car market." That time has come, and at a bad time for Tesla thanks to an "expected recession to China's COVID chaos, spiking minerals prices and declining consumer confidence." While Musk "gets blame from his most loyal investors for triggering the selloff because of his Twitter engagement" the truth is that Tesla's stock "is still richly priced for a car maker with its growth prospects." The electric car market is still growing, but that market "will be fought over fiercely with other companies."

But competition isn't Tesla's real challenge

Sure, there are other great new electric vehicles out there, Farhad Manjoo writes for The New York Times, but Musk's "chaotic and polarizing tenure as Twitter's chief executive" is also taking a toll on the brand. Surveys show that perceptions of Tesla started falling right about the time Musk started his pursuit of Twitter. Tesla's sales remain strong, and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — with its incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles — should actually help the company reach new heights. "But its success could get sidelined by Musk's tweets." While rising interest rates and the likelihood of recession are also propelling Tesla's stock decline, those are just "side issues." If Musk can somehow discipline himself on Twitter, the company "could quickly recapture its former glory." With great new electric cars from Ford, Chevy, Mercedes, and Rivian hitting the market, "Musk's recent role as the town crier for the red-pilled online right [is] especially puzzling and, for his car company, perilous."

Time for an activist investor to shake things up

Part of Tesla's problem is that it has no one to rein in Elon Musk, Liam Denning writes at Bloomberg. The publicly traded company has a board of directors that technically oversees Musk, "but the fact that, apart from Musk himself, the longest-serving member on that board is his own brother rather says it all." Compare Tesla to Exxon, an oil company that seemed to be in decline while the carmaker was ascending. Now it's Exxon that appears to be in a strengthening position while Tesla falls. Why? Because activist investors leveraged the grumpiness of investors with Exxon's weak stock returns to "force board and strategy changes." While oil prices have also rallied, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, "renewed capital discipline has also been crucial" to Exxon's resurgence. Tesla could use that kind of discipline. But it's not clear that any such challenger is in the offing: "Any activist seeking to actually remove him would have to ask: How much is an electric car maker shorn of Musk's aura really worth?"

With 2022 fading into the rearview, it's time to revisit the songs that kept us company on this long 12-month drive. Grab your headphones — these are the best tracks of the year, according to the critics:

The big picks

'Titi Me Preguntó,' Bad Bunny

Bad Bunny's smash "Titi Me Preguntó" has unsurprisingly dominated a number of year-end lists, including round-ups from Esquire, Pitchfork, and Time. The tune marks Benito Martinez Ocasio's first solo foray into dembow, a Dominican genre reminiscent of reggaeton, and offers listeners a tongue-in-cheek look at the rapper's "amiable disregard for monogamy" as disclosed to his stereotypically concerned Latin American aunt, writes Pitchfork's Alfred Soto. Producer MAG treats the track "like a coming-out party, lavishing [Bunny] with keyboard swirls, sampled camera effects, a beat switch-up in the outro, and, terrifyingly, his aunt to shake her finger at her nephew." The star is all too happy to share his sexual exploits, though "what really wants is … love."

"Titi Me Preguntó" is "a hilarious tirade of salacious puns" that "unexpectedly morphs into moody self-reflection," adds Ernesto Lechner for Rolling Stone, which ranked the song its No. 1 for the year. "More than any other track off Un Verano Sin Ti, 'Tití Me Preguntó' showcases Benito's unbridled creativity, his eccentric pop genius."

'Cuff It,' Beyoncé

If you're shocked to see "Cuff It" among the best songs of the year, you probably weren't paying attention. A standout from Beyoncé's club-ready Renaissance, the funky beats and disco-inspired production of "Cuff It" have made for perfect party listening (even for those unaware of the accompanying TikTok trend). The song's impact is "undeniable," Mankaprr Conteh writes for Rolling Stone. "Beyoncé reached the pinnacle of the modern throwback."

"Born out of the stillness of the pandemic," "Cuff It" dazzles with Bey's "inimitable command of melody, dizzying and enchanting with each clever phrase," Paolo Ragusa adds in Consequence of Sound. And over at NME, where "Cuff It" is ranked No. 1 of the year, Hannah Mylrea declares this "funk-laden earworm" an "unexpected gift to the pop canon of all time, let alone 2022."

'As It Was,' Harry Styles

"As It Was," the synth-filled lead single from Harry Styles' Harry's House, is, among other things, an ode to change and vulnerability. "It's a quietly beautiful thing, then, that ["As It Was"] became [Styles'] biggest hit to date, proving that opening yourself up to the world doesn't always have to be a risk," says Sophie Williams for NME, who slated the track at No. 3 for the year.

And though upbeat, Styles' lyrics are "self-referentially melancholic as he accepts the reality of change that even he is not quite ready for," adds Kristin M. Hall for The Associated Press. "Thank you to the year's leading man for giving everyone a lot to talk and sing about." (Well, someone should probably thank Olivia Wilde, too.)

'N95' and 'The Heart Part 5,' Kendrick Lamar

The king is back. Following the atmospheric success of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Damn., Kendrick Lamar returned this year with the potent Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, which contains two tracks that have dominated 2022 best-of lists: "N95" and "The Heart Part 5."

On "N95," Lamar "uses a now all-too-familiar token of the pandemic as a metaphor: Take off our 'masks' and start being real with our people and with ourselves," Marcus Shorter writes at Consequence. Lamar "rebelling for a cause isn't anything new, but he never sounds better than when he goes against the grain and calls out his peers for being fake."

And on "The Heart Part 5," the rapper continues what's seen as his long-running "Kendrick State of the Union" by adding another chapter to "The Heart" series that began in 2010, muses Vulture's Alex Suskind. The song and lead album single is "drenched in paranoia and death" as Lamar works to "hold a mirror up to himself, his peers, and his community — for what they've built, where they have to go, and what he needs out of them." But Kendrick should not be "ashamed to indulge his ambitions to moral superheroes" — in fact, that's "exactly what the world wants," adds Adlan Jackson for Pitchfork, "and it's what Kendrick wants, too."

'Spitting Off The Edge of the World (feat. Perfume Genius),' Yeah Yeah Yeahs

If there's one thing music critics have in common, it's a unified joy at the return of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the quintessential indie rock group behind legendary tracks "Heads Will Roll" and "Maps." Thankfully, the trio's comeback is just as triumphant as one would hope, delivering "the kind of fist-pumping energy that Karen O and company are known for," writes AP's Hall. "Spitting Off The Edge of the World" is a "great return to form for a band that has always pushed the boundaries."

The "cavernous" track, which serves as a big ol' "screw you" to the powers that be, is "grand and ruined, wracked and comforting, furious and hopeful, adding new shades to O's already kaleidoscopic palette," says Laura Snapes for The Guardian. It's "cinematic" and "quietly epic," muses Pitchfork's Jenn Pelly, and "the frustrated yet defiant end credits song for the previous generation," adds Consequence's Ben Kaye. BuzzFeed News' Estelle Tang concludes similarly: "Deceptively simple and unadorned, it's what the end of an era sounds like."

The breakouts

'American Teenager,' Ethel Cain

Hayden Anhedönia — or Ethel Cain, as she's stylized herself — has had quite the year. This indie breakout, with a sound somewhere between Florence + The Machine and rock bands of years past, cemented her title as a 2022 critics' darling after her Americana pop tune "American Teenager" earned a spot on a number of prestigious best-of round-ups, including those from The New York Times, Pitchfork, and The Guardian.

"Midwest emo as refracted through Southeastern parchedness under a filter of radio pop-rock," "American Teenager" delivers "devastating sentiment about the emptiness of the American dream and the hopelessness of those subject to its whims," writes the Times' Jon Caramanica. It's a "relatable rush of youth" with an "arena-rock reverb that wouldn't sound out of place on Born in the USA," muses Vulture's Suskind. And further, it's "the story of a kind of American girl so often overlooked," adds Paste's Jacqueline Codiga. Perhaps that's a reference to Cain's identity as a transgender woman; or perhaps it's just an homage to the Southern Gothic-loving, religion-infused music that Cain, unlike anyone else, can create.

'Bad Habit,' Steve Lacy

An unlikely viral hit, Steve Lacy's multi-genre "Bad Habit" has taken both the charts and the internet by storm. The "noncommittal" tune, which "mumbles and drags its feet … through flirtation and forlorn glances," captures "all the brilliance of Lacy's outstanding second record Gemini Rights," but also "represents the apex of a few trends that have been percolating over the last few years," notes The Guardian's Shaad D'Souza. To that end, it's probably the best song to come out of the "TikTok-beloved lo-fi bedroom pop" genre, while simultaneously scratching the same itch as elders Rihanna, SZA, or Frank Ocean.

"While the lyrics sound like cheeky ad-libs, tailor-made for TikTok soundbites, Lacy's songwriting packs a deeply emotional impact," writes Time's Cady Lang. "[D]on't be surprised if it gets at your feelings with each listen."

'F.N.F.' and 'Tomorrow 2 (feat. Cardi B),' GloRilla

Memphis-based rapper GloRilla hit big this year with "F.N.F. (Let's Go)," her "boisterous and thrilling crunk anthem for single ladies everywhere," says Time's Lang. On "F.N.F.," GloRilla mainlines "​​the sound of reckless abandon, dancing with your friends in a parking lot on a summer day while chugging from the same bottle of Old E," Suskind continues for Vulture. It's a bare-bones production, and for good reason: "Glo's voice does all the heavy lifting 'F.N.F.' needs, her syrupy drawl serving as both announcement and taunt." In short, the track is a "carefree, turn-up anthem for anyone who could also use clarity in their lives," per Consequence's Eddie Fu.

But Glo then furthered that success with "Tomorrow 2," a follow-up to the July-released "Tomorrow." Featuring Cardi B, the "Tomorrow 2" remix allows Glo to spar with one of rap's best, each demonstrating "their respective lyrical prowess over sparse, piano-led accompaniment," writes NME's Hannah Mylrea. The song also helps "continue construction of a new pathway for female allyship in hip hop," adds the Times' Caramanica — there's some "big BFF energy" with this one.

Honorable mentions

'This Is Why,' Paramore

In a win for pop-punk kids everywhere, Paramore has returned. And "This Is Why," the trio's first single in five years, was worth waiting for. "After witnessing society's lack of empathy — even through a global pandemic — Hayley Williams and company are over the bulls--t," says Fu at Consequence, where the track is ranked No. 1 of the year. Still, "at least they've given us something to dance to."

'Part of the Band,' The 1975

"Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke? / Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke / Calling his ego imagination?" 1975 frontman Matty Healy asks listeners on the band's lead album single, "Part of the Band." Well, of course he is — but that's just "what [Healy] does best," writes Vulture's Justin Curto.

'Belinda Says,' Alvvays

Yet another triumphant comeback — that of indie-pop rockers Alvvays, who packed quite the punch with "Belinda Says," "a heartbreaking sketch of an unexpected pregnancy that's also a modern power-pop classic," muses Pitchfork's Jamieson Cox. The song's finale — which offers listeners a sense of hope, albeit disguised in sonic mess and discord — is an appropriate one for "a song about the moments in people's lives that defy clear articulation, when your only choice is surrender to a swirling maelstrom of emotion."

The world is full of intractable problems and hotly contested ideas. Climate change, COVID-19, the nature of capitalism. Whether Elon Musk should replace himself as the leader of Twitter. And then there is the question of whether the 1988 action thriller Die Hard is a Christmas movie. A debate that is only slightly more resolvable than whether The Dress is white and gold or black and blue, the Die Hard discourse can be traced back to a 2007 Slate article by Michael Agger, who when informed by The Atlantic's Kaitlin Tiffany in 2021 of the cultural babadook he had unleashed with his throwaway post said, "I'm the guy who threw a cigarette out the window and accidentally burned down the forest!"

Christmas elements make it a Christmas movie

The most straightforward case for Die Hard as a Christmas movie is that it takes place on Christmas Eve, which seems like a deliberate choice. Screenwriters can set a movie whenever they want! Bruce Willis plays John McLane, a Big Apple cop who flies from New York to Los Angeles to attend his estranged wife Holly's (Bonnie Bedelia) fancy office holiday party in a downtown skyscraper. It's there that a rogue group of international terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) takes the partygoers hostage shortly after McLane arrives. McClane, of course, spends most of the next 132 minutes in a tank top, takes matters into his own hands, and (spoiler alert!) ultimately foils the plot after two hours of quip-flecked action that defies various laws of physics in ways that we have come to accept as a movie-watching society.

Christmas is brought up a number of times in the film. This very thorough data analysis by Stephen Follows shows that the word Christmas itself is uttered 18 times over the course of the film, more than the words "die" or "hard," among others. McLane's urge to reconcile with Holly is rather clearly motivated by the holiday, and he and his limo driver listen to Run D.M.C.'s "Christmas in Hollis" on the way from the airport to the soon-to-be-besieged Nakatomi Tower. The first ludicrously weird terrorist that Willis kills is sent back down to his paymasters in an elevator wearing a Santa hat and a sweatshirt that reads "I have a machine gun now. Ho ho ho." Willis himself at one point dons a Santa hat, and the soundtrack features four Christmas songs. Apparently, more than a million people watched Die Hard on Christmas Eve in 2016.

It's not Christmas without warm fuzzy feelings

Christmas movies, it is safe to say, are not generally released in July. But that's when the now-iconic thriller splashed movie screens across the country, on July 15th. Nothing about the plot would be remotely different if the film had been set during the Nakatomi Corporation's Halloween party instead. No one involved in the making of the film has ever said that they intended it to be a Christmas film, and polling (yes, this has become a big enough thing that reputable national polling firms have weighed in) suggests that the film lacks a public opinion majority behind the premise that it is an interchangeable choice with, say, A Christmas Story for holiday viewing. It is also not a film to be watched with small children, unless you want to do grievous and irreparable harm to their psyches.

The terrorist plot to steal $640 million in untraceable bonds from the Nakatomi Tower's basement has nothing to do with Christmas. No one on the mostly taciturn heist crew full of hilarious-accented bad marksmen and bad decision-makers feel the holiday spirit, nor do they appear to have any resentment toward Gruber, their leader, for making them work on Christmas Eve. The law enforcement officers called to the scene also never complain about having their family time interrupted by homicidal thieves. Most damningly, we don't even get to see McClane reunited with his kids at the end of the movie in some kind of It's a Wonderful Life tear-jerking scene. Die Hard, in fact, completely lacks the ability to elicit tears even from the most sensitive of viewers.

What is a Christmas movie for, after all, if not to make us wistful and wet-cheeked?

The Christmas question is beside the point

After watching all 2+ hours of Die Hard for the first time in 30 years in pursuit of a serious answer to this serious question, one thing emerged clear: the question of whether it is a Christmas movie is the least interesting thing about it. This flick has it all — McClane coming to appreciate his wife's career and her need to pursue it, an early critique of the militarization of metropolitan police departments (at one point the cops send an armored personnel carrier to storm the building and it gets blown up by missiles that the terrorists have smuggled in), journalists with Enemy of the People vibes, cocaine.

There's the wonderfully bizarre scene where the passenger next to McClane on the flight tells him that the way to survive air travel is to take off your socks and ball up your toes on the carpet of your final destination. There are more Chekhov's guns strewn throughout the movie than there are in the collected works of Anton Chekhov. Hart Brochner's portrayal of Holly's massive sleazeball colleague Ellis is the stuff of pure legend, like he's acting in a totally different movie than everyone else around him. And Willis' virtuoso performance as John McClane deserves to be appreciated as the pinnacle of plot-hole-ridden action schlock that it is.

In other words, Die Hard is as incredible as the day it was released. If you want it to be a Christmas movie, that's ultimately between you and your preferred holiday deity.

It seems the market has been hit with a bit of a cryptocurrency crisis. Crypto exchange FTX recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a towering fall from grace for a company once valued at $32 billion. The assets of thousands of customers were wiped out in an instant, and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is now facing federal charges. Beyond this, the industry was just hit with another major loss, as one of crypto's top lending companies, BlockFi, has similarly filed for bankruptcy. The companies were preceded in similar bankruptcies this past summer by two other companies, Celsius and Voyager.

Given all of these events, is it still a good idea to invest in cryptocurrency? Or is it a market on the way out, whose demise has been in the works?

Cryptocurrency has been a poor option for a long time

Volatility in the crypto market is hardly a new concept, Taimur Hyat, COO of Prudential's asset management arm, writes for CNBC. "The most profound risks to cryptocurrency investing may still lie ahead, rather than in the rear-view mirror," he says, adding that investors looking to invest in cryptocurrency for the long term "should remain wary."

Hyat adds, "Despite all the hype about their being digital gold, cryptocurrencies have failed to demonstrate either 'safe haven' or inflation-fighting properties when faced with actual market volatility or the first real bout of serious inflation in developed markets." He noted that, between 2010 and 2022, Bitcoin had "29 episodes of drawdowns of 25% or more. By comparison, equities and commodities recorded just one each."

Hyat adds, "cryptocurrencies remain deeply problematic from an environmental, social, and governance perspective. Most troubling are the governance issues that have been highlighted by the FTX implosion."

Investing in cryptocurrency could have lasting negative effects

Allison Schrager, a Manhattan Institute fellow and economic opinion columnist for Bloomberg, writes that she'd "been rooting for the crypto market to crash and burn. Not because I never invested in it ... but because I don't understand it, what value it serves or what problem it solves."

Schrager also writes that "it doesn't seem that FTX.com or even the entire crypto market poses a systematic risk — by design, crypto is supposed to lie outside the traditional financial markets." Despite this, she believes "there are still reasons to worry about what the FTX situation portends for investors." Schrager believes the whole market is in trouble and people are losing money, and adds, "That's never good. It's especially worrying that many of the newest investors to crypto, the ones who bought high and watched it fall, tended to be lower-net-worth investors, some new to financial markets."

This opinion was echoed by noted economist Paul Krugman, who writes in an op-ed for The New York Times, "Recent events have made clear the need to regulate crypto ... but it also seems likely that the industry couldn't survive regulation." Krugman does note, though, that falling prices don't necessarily mean cryptocurrency is doomed, as assets fluctuate all the time. However, he adds, "Even if the value of Bitcoin doesn't go to zero (which it still might), there's a strong case that the crypto industry, which loomed so large just a few months ago, is headed for oblivion."

A similar warning was given in 2021 by economist Eswar Prasad, who tells CNBC in an interview, "Cryptocurrencies may contribute to monetary and financial instability, especially if they were to spawn a large and unregulated financial system that lacks investor protection." Prasad adds, "[Cryptocurrency] could end up worsening inequality" due to people having a poor sense of financial literacy, and that "any financial risks arising from investing in cryptocurrencies and related products might end up falling especially heavily on naïve retail investors."

Even with market volatility, investing in cryptocurrency is still a good option

However, even with the cryptocurrency market in its current state, USA Today columnist and investor Alex Kellogg writes that "the current turmoil represents a right-sizing of the space that will look more like a bump in the road in the long run." Despite the volatility of the industry, Kellogg adds that the actual promise of cryptocurrency "feels more real today than even a few years ago, and with some institutional investors getting on board, it seems unlikely that the entire ecosystem will collapse, even if a right-sizing was overdue."

In Kellogg's column, he also reaches out to Ariel Zetlin-Jones, the director of the Blockchain Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. Zetlin-Jones compares the cryptocurrency market to the early days of the digital age, and says it's "very reminiscent of the internet in the late 1990s. Lots of individual stocks and companies were over-valued and collapsed, but Amazon and Google are still around."

Cryptocurrency may be down, but it's not out

Even amid evidence that cryptocurrency is nearing its end, some people still believe it may have a heartbeat. Maria Bustilla, a journalist, blockchain expert, and founder of Popula, writes for The New York Times, "The crypto market is wildly volatile not because of cryptocurrency's underlying technology, but because of the uneasy and often dangerously unstable junction between emerging technologies and regular money," something that she says is not new.

However, Bustilla adds, even as cryptocurrency may be crashing, blockchain itself looks primed to live on. "Responsible players in the crypto market have been calling for and helping to develop sensible regulatory frameworks for many years," she says. "A bedrock of crypto regulations already exists."

Bustilla uses the example of the dawn of the internet age as a precursor to blockchain, writing, "Today's internet is deeply woven into the world's economies, media, politics, industry, and social life, in good ways and bad, [and] a similar evolution is in the works for crypto." She adds, "Blockchain, the technology that makes cryptocurrency possible, has the potential to be just as transformative as the internet innovations on which we depend every day."

In the post-FTX world, staffers at Forbes' investment brand Q.ai write that some crypto could be "more of a black swan event rather than the start of an era." However, Q.ai notes, as most other experts have, that investments are always risky. "The key takeaway remains the same — if an investment seems too good to be true, it is," Q.ai adds. "Investors who are bullish on crypto should still be cautious about investing too much of their savings into these volatile assets ... diversification is still the best strategy."

Qatar's hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup is highly controversial: The nation has been accused of human rights violations related to its use of migrant labor to erect the tournament's infrastructure. Qatar hired more than 30,000 workers, mainly from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and the Philippines, to build its World Cup stadiums. It's estimated that about 6,500 laborers died in the decade since Qatar won its bid to host the sporting event, per The Guardian. Same-sex marriage is also illegal in Qatar. This has prompted many to shun the World Cup in solidarity with the victims and the oppressed. But others argue the whole situation is being overblown and the criticisms are misplaced. Who's right?

The boycotts are purely performative

The pro-boycott narrative is nothing more than "liberal storytelling," Fawaz Rob, CEO of Bangla Bari, an architecture firm in Bangladesh, argues in the Daily Star. If Western countries really wanted to take a stand against human rights abuses, they could take major collective action, like issuing sanctions or pulling out of the World Cup entirely. Yet Europe and America still do business with human rights violators, betraying their own hypocrisy in the process. So now "average citizens think boycotting the World Cup would solve the labor problem," when really their actions will have little effect. On the flip side, the World Cup brings the world together. It's "a chance to celebrate humanity. Why should we boycott it?"

They're also prejudiced

The issue of migrant labor in Qatar is concerning and deserves to be scrutinized, but "some of this discourse plays on Orientalist tropes that treat Qatar and other Gulf countries as exceptional," when really they are just one "locus in a global flow of capital and labor," writes historian Abdullah Al-Arian, author of Football in the Middle East: State, Society and the Beautiful Game, for The New York Times. Let's not forget the colonial roots of the United Arab Emirates' "kafala" sponsorship system, which gives employers draconian control over migrant workers. "One would hope that future World Cup hosts — and their labor practices — are given the same kind of scrutiny."

Let's not overlook Qatar's improvements

"Mega sporting events" like the World Cup can pave the way for social change, argues Danyel Reiche, an associate professor at Georgetown University Qatar's Center for International and Religious Studies. Qatar has already made some recent labor reforms, for example introducing a minimum wage. So when compared not to Western nations but to its regional neighbors, "Qatar comes out ahead" as a reformer on employee rights. We want to encourage these changes rather than "disparage" them, Reiche says, and boycotting the World Cup can "actually serve to undermine Qatar's ongoing reform process in the labor market."

Boycott, boycott, boycott!

Qatar's hosting is a clear example of sportswashing — hiding questionable actions behind a highly revered tournament, argues Katharina Fuchs in Vogue. The violations of Qatar cannot be ignored because "if we don't fight discrimination in sports, we don't need to fight it at all." While it's true this is not the first sporting event to have human rights violations, "the inaction of the past in no way justifies the inaction of the present — or even that of the future," and "makes it all the more important to send [a message] now."

This is an opportunity to raise awareness

If you're going to be mad at anyone, be mad at FIFA for choosing Qatar despite its abuses, writes Nick Rewcastle wrote at SportsPro. But take heart in knowing that the controversy "provides a significant moment and platform to drive conversation and change." All the discourse around Qatar will inevitably lead to "talk of social and humanitarian issues and sport's role for good." He adds: "If brands do this well, key figures aren't afraid to have a voice and the world comes together ... driving purpose-led action through sport."

The 2022 FIFA World Cup begins in just two days, and the eyes of the sporting world will be upon Qatar as soccer's most prestigious tournament takes to the field once again. For all of the controversies surrounding Qatar's hosting of the World Cup this year, the country is still preparing to see record revenues for the event, with soccer fanatics from around the world descending to watch their nation compete.

That begs the question, then — who will win the World Cup? There will be 32 teams competing, but only one will claim the title of World Champion. A number of key contenders are likely to battle it out for the top prize in soccer.

One of two South American teams will hoist the World Cup

While the Europeans have a number of strong national clubs again this year, "the 'real' final will come in the semis, with this time it being rivals Brazil and Argentina dueling in a classic," predicts Avi Creditor for Sports Illustrated. "But in the end, it's Brazil returning to glory, ending a 20-year wait with a win over a resurgent Germany in a proper final."

Creditor adds that the Brazilians "have solved their problem of being too Neymar-dependent, and while the [Paris Saint-Germain] star will break Pelé's all-time national scoring record at the tournament, the talk of Qatar will be young Real Madrid stars Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo and the budding of another Brazilian dynasty."

Sports Illustrated's Andrew Gastelum agrees, writing, "All signs point to this being Brazil's World Cup to lose, which it very well could do given all the pressure the team is under. But other than France, Brazil enters as the most complete and balanced squad in the tournament ... Brazil's attack is teeming with talented options that could give it a new formidable front three for every group-stage match and still see it compete for the title."

Don't count out Argentina though, another strong South American contender. "What a send-off as Messi opens the scoring early and Argentina add a late insurance goal ... After being runners-up in 2014, Argentina will be able to capture their first World Cup title since 1986 in Mexico," writes Chuck Booth for CBS Sports.

Ben Snowball for Eurosports also sees Argentina emerging victorious, writing, "It's hard to look beyond Argentina. They aren't just a bunch of strikers and a fire extinguisher-wielding Javier Mascherano anymore. It's a proper team, one that have conceded just twice in their past 14 matches, and one that look set to elevate Messi to true GOAT status."

France could emerge as unlikely winners

France won the 2018 World Cup and is looking to defend their title, and Kyle Bonn for The Sporting News writes that the French "are still considered one of the favorites to win the 2022 World Cup. Depending on the bookmaker, they're either second-favorite or third-favorite to lift the World Cup trophy."

Even Lionel Messi, the captain of the Argentine club, thinks France has a decent shot at winning the title. "Brazil, France, England (are above the rest). Today, they are a little above the rest but anything can happen," Messi said in an interview, per The Athletic.

England could become a toss-up

England has not won the World Cup in more than half a century, but Ryan Sanders for DraftKings Nation writes, "After 56 years they'll feel that it's past due to earn another one. They've got the talent to make a very deep run with the likes of Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Phil Foden, Mason Mount, and Trent Alexander-Arnold on the roster."

"[English manager] Gareth Southgate's side have loads of talent and could have a real shot at winning, though they'll have to get past the likes of France, Belgium, and Spain in the knockout rounds," Sanders adds.

However, The Athletic UK staff published an op-ed with reader opinions, in which they write, "Only five percent [of those polled] tipped 2018 semi-finalists and Euro 2020 runners-up, England, to go all the way." The op-ed adds, "Despite recent tournament successes, 43 percent are expecting to be most let down by… England."

An African team will swing an underdog victory

President of the Cameroonian Football Federation and soccer legend Samuel Eto'o had a more unusual prediction, telling ESPN that "Cameroon will win the World Cup final against Morocco."

"Africa has always had the potential to achieve a successful World Cup, but we haven't always shown our best face up to now," Eto'o continued. "During the years, African teams have acquired more and more experience, and I think they're ready not only to participate in a World Cup, but also to win it. I don't see why [Cameroon] can't win. I believe that to win the World Cup you don't need to be monsters or aliens, you just need good preparation, a strong mentality, and a pinch of madness."

"Many would argue that 2022 is the time to change Africa's World Cup story," Wycliffe W. Njororai Simiyu writes for The Conversation. "There's been stability in the coaching ranks and for the first time, all teams will be led by home-grown coaches on the technical bench. Looking at the pedigree of the African teams, and their respective opponents, Cameroon and Senegal stand the best chance to qualify for the second round and possibly beyond."

Oluwashina Okeleji thinks the African teams will have a challenging time, though, writing for Al Jazeera, "There has been an unmistakable glass ceiling over Africa at football World Cups ... The inability of African teams to cross this rubicon is connected to the continent's economic disadvantages relative to Europe and South America."

"According to 1994 African Footballer of the Year Emmanuel Amuneke, Senegal and Morocco represent the continent's best chance of success in the Middle East," Okeleji adds. "The challenge before Africa's representatives has never been tougher. If they are to break that glass ceiling, they will certainly have to earn it."

How can a franchise move forward after an "unimaginable loss"?

Director Ryan Coogler was faced with that question when crafting Marvel's Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which hits theaters this weekend more than two years after the original film's star, Chadwick Boseman, died from colon cancer in August 2020 at the age of 43. But is it really possible to make a successful Black Panther sequel without the franchise's main star — or main character?

According to critics, the answer is yes, as Wakanda Forever has been described in early reviews as an emotional, satisfying follow-up that pays tribute to Boseman and his legacy (even if an overstuffed plot keeps it from soaring to its predecessor's heights). Here's what the writers are saying:

Chadwick Boseman forever

A sequel to Black Panther was already in the works when Boseman died in 2020 after a battle with cancer that no one at Marvel was reportedly aware he was fighting. In the wake of his death, the sequel film's script was drastically rewritten, and Marvel made the decision to not recast Boseman's character, the titular Black Panther. Instead, Wakanda Forever opens with a sequence depicting the off-screen death of T'Challa (Black Panther) due to an unidentified illness, and his ensuing funeral. We see his coffin being lifted into the sky before cutting to a montage of Boseman that RoberEbert.com's Robert Daniels describes as "earnest" and "emotional." With a start like that, it's no wonder Variety claims "there wasn't a dry eye in the theater during the film's 160-minute runtime." Bleeding Cool's Kaitlyn Booth agreed: "This is a movie looking to do an Up, which is 'make you cry before the title credits.'"

Much of Wakanda Forever deals with T'Challa's loved ones, including his sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), and his mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), as they cope with the tragedy — a tragedy the actors were coping with too. Boseman's family was consulted during the filmmaking process, and the resulting movie does a "delicate" job of "acknowledging its hero's death while keeping the Black Panther flame — not to mention its multibillion-dollar revenue stream — alive," Bloomberg's Ella Ceron writes.

There was some resistance to the idea of not recasting T'Challa, with certain fans arguing the character was too meaningful to too many people that he shouldn't live on through a new actor. But for most critics, the decision to directly reflect on Boseman's passing and the legacy of his time as Black Panther worked quite well: A "vein of exquisite sorrow … ripples through" the "epic" and "thrilling" sequel, The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney raves, and the "triumphant" and "moving" film serves as a "mournful farewell to an actual hero," The Verge's Charles Pulliam-Moore says.

Others, however, said Boseman's absence is felt to a degree that is detrimental to Wakanda Forever. "With no Chadwick Boseman, it's missing a measure of magic," Time's Stephanie Zacharek says, "a sad reality that's no one's fault." But that's not to say the rest of the cast doesn't deliver: As Shuri, Wright is "excellent in a performance strong enough to earn her an ongoing place in the Marvel pantheon," IndieWire's David Ehrlich says. And the stand-out may be Bassett as Queen Ramonda; she delivers such a humdinger of a performance as a mother who has lost everything that it wouldn't be surprising to see her snag an Oscar nomination for it. "They fill the void, all right," Variety's Owen Gleiberman says of the cast.

Under the sea

Not all of Wakanda Forever is about T'Challa's death, though. After T'Challa revealed Wakanda to the United Nations in the first film, countries around the world — the United States included — are now on the hunt for the ore Vibranium, and it turns out Wakanda isn't the only source of this precious metal. But the search for Vibranium under the sea enrages Namor (Tenoch Huerta), the king of an underwater civilization called Talokan (changed from Atlantis in the comics), which puts him in conflict with Wakanda.

Just like Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger was arguably the highlight of Black Panther, critics heaped praise on Namor, who is similarly presented as a sympathetic antagonist fighting against colonialism. "Huerta gives one of the most impressive, star-making performances in MCU history, instantly elevating himself to a top-tier baddie," io9's Germain Lussier says. Get ready for a wave of "Namor was right!"

Coogler also captures some stunning and technically complicated underwater visuals as he takes the audience into Talocan, and Deadline's Pete Hammond praises the "rip-roaring" action throughout (though if Avatar: The Way of Water has anything to say about it, this won't be the year's best movie featuring the ocean and blue people).

The next generation

Another newcomer to the Marvel universe in Wakanda Forever is Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), a.k.a. Ironheart, who is set up as a sort of young Tony Stark. She is an inventor who comes onto Wakanda's radar after she builds an advanced machine that can detect Vibranium — not to mention a very Iron Man-esque suit — and she's paired with Shuri as Namor seeks to hunt her down. Thorne, who's set to lead the Disney+ show Ironheart next, clearly has a bright future in the MCU, and the studio's casting is once again on point: "I frankly can't wait to see more of her," Mashable's Kristy Puchko says.

But if Wakanda Forever isn't on the level of the original, some critics felt that's because it's a bit overstuffed and occasionally burdened with having to set the stage for Marvel's upcoming movies and shows, including with the introduction of Ironheart. "Some portions feel more worried about setting up Phase Five of the MCU than telling a singular story," ScreenCrush's Matt Singer says, adding that the film struggles to service "too many characters," while Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson notes some viewers may "miss the tight focus" of the original.

All in all, though, critics widely agreed Wakanda Forever effectively balances various tones and plot lines, delivering a thoughtful meditation on grief that still functions as a thrilling popcorn movie. It's worth noting Boseman's death wasn't even the only way Wakanda Forever's production was troubled, as filming also had to be halted at one point after Letitia Wright, who faced backlash for spreading an anti-vaccine video in 2020, was injured.

But leave it to Ryan Coogler to take the tricky and tragic hands he was dealt and somehow deliver one of the strongest films of Marvel's Phase Four anyway.

Elon Musk tweeted "the bird is freed" when he took over Twitter last week. Musk, who has vowed to make Twitter a haven for absolute freedom of speech, promptly fired the company's top executives. He has said he plans to roll back policies against offensive and misleading posts, and establish a system to start reinstating many banned accounts. He has said he would probably clear the way for a return to Twitter for former President Donald Trump, who was permanently banned after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack for violating Twitter's policies against inciting violence.

Celebrities and other users have announced they were quitting Twitter because they don't like where Musk plans to take it. Advertisers, who account for 90 percent of Twitter's revenue, are spooked by Musk's plans to loosen rules on hate speech. IPG, one of the biggest advertising companies in the world, this week urged clients to pause Twitter ad spending. Musk said he was considering using subscriptions for verified users to help bring in more revenue, but that will take time. Is this the beginning of an exodus that will leave Musk in charge of a much smaller Twitter?

It's time to leave Twitter

Elon Musk is not responsible enough to be in control of Twitter's enormous power to inform, or misinform, says Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. Right after Musk took over Twitter, a man broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home and bashed her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. The alleged attacker had been writing blog posts praising "far-right personalities and writing diatribes against Jews, Black people," and Democrats. Musk could have condemned the violence and pledged "to use his powerful medium to advance a more civil society." Instead, he retweeted, then deleted, a post smearing Paul Pelosi.

Racial slurs increased 500 percent on Twitter in the first 12 hours Musk owned the platform, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute. The world needs a grown-up to be "culling hate speech" on Twitter, not a guy "with the impulsiveness of a child" who seems determined to make matters worse. High-profile celebrities, including Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, took this as their cue to quit Twitter. "Maybe more regular folks will abandon Twitter altogether and return to human exchanges with neighbors and friends. It's what we need."

Ignore the liberal grandstanding

The "hysterical response" by "left-wing celebrities and pundits" to Musk's Twitter takeover was entirely predictable, says Piers Morgan in the New York Post. It's like when "Donald Trump became president in 2016 and the likes of Chelsea Handler, Snoop Dogg, Miley Cyrus, and Cher all vowed to leave America in fury and despair, but then all stayed." And so will all the B-list Twitter users, like WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, "currently screaming 'I QUIT!'" They'll be tweeting again soon enough. "They're too addicted to the slavishly approving echo-chamber attention and sound of their own permanently whiny voices."

Still, this "ridiculous overreaction to Musk taking over Twitter has exposed a lot of the very issues that the Tesla and Space X genius has identified and wants to resolve." Many on the left resolutely refuse "to even countenance being confronted with contrary opinions without wanting to shame, vilify, and cancel those who express them." Musk knows there are too many bots, bullies, and racists spreading garbage on Twitter. He's trying to fix this. Twitter will survive. "It's an unparalleled source of news and commentary, and if you like a good argument as much as I do, it's debate Utopia."

Twitter won't become a wasteland, but it might change

We've seen this movie before, says Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic. Think back to 2018, "when #DeleteFacebook trended in response to the Cambridge Analytica data-collection scandal. Although people's frustration was clearly real, it wasn't obvious whether they would actually follow through on their commitment to abandon a major social-media platform they'd spent years using." Google Facebook. It survived.

"As someone who has spent at least several hours on Twitter nearly every day for the past eight years, I find it hard to imagine myself leaving the site unless things devolve into total chaos or worse — unless everyone else leaves, and only brands and Musk fans remain." But social media platforms do sometimes "go through major moments of transition," when big chunks of users migrate elsewhere all at once. "This could be such a turning point for Twitter." When Musk made his Twitter plans public in April, for example, right-wing users rushed back to the site and left-leaning users fled. As a result, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gained more than 96,000 followers practically overnight, and former President Barack Obama lost more than 300,000.

What matters is whether advertisers leave

Twitter, like many digital platforms, gets its revenue from advertisers, not users, says Rob Norman, a senior executive at advertising giant WPP, in The New York Times. And Twitter's income from ads "may be under significant threat very soon." Right after closing his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, Musk sent a note to advertisers that the platform "cannot become a free-for-all hellscape." Then he contradicted his own message with misinformation about the Paul Pelosi case, amplifying the question ad buyers already were asking: "Is Twitter in the Musk era a safe place for advertisers?"

As a Twitter user, Musk "has placed no limits on his own speech." Under his ownership, the platform "seems likely to enable the inflammatory, provocative, and sometimes verifiably untrue speech of others." As a representative of one of the world's biggest ad buyers, I can tell you advertisers worry about these things. "In this case, advertisers' worries could lead them to flee en masse, costing Twitter almost all its current revenue. Without that revenue, Twitter could be a calamitous acquisition for Mr. Musk, and the very future of the platform could be at risk."

In March, the Senate approved the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent across the U.S. The law passed the upper chamber unanimously, but still needs to pass the House and be signed by the president, CNN reports. The unanimous Senate support, however, suggests widespread bipartisan agreement.

With the clocks "falling back" on Sunday, Nov. 6, the question of the necessity of changing our clocks twice a year returns. While the government seems to agree that clocks should stay on daylight saving time, the scientific community holds a different opinion. Is keeping daylight saving time permanently a good idea?

Daylight saving should be permanent

Many people view turning the clocks back as unnecessary, preferring to preserve the late-afternoon sunshine that daylight saving time affords us. "Making daylight saving time permanent would, almost certainly, give the people what they want," argues Helaine Olen, a columnist for The Washington Post.

She explained how COVID-19 illuminated (no pun intended) people's need for sunshine in the afternoon saying, "students and workers alike slept later in the morning and stayed up longer at night — a schedule that resembles the later-day start of daylight saving time."

That opinion is shared by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who wrote in an opinion on CNN that "the biannual transition of 'spring forward' and 'fall back' disrupts circadian sleeping patterns, causing confusion, sleep disturbances, and even an elevated risk to heart health." One thing Democrats and Republicans can actually agree on? "We could all use a bit more sunshine."

Daylight saving goes against science

While the Senate may be in agreement, scientists have a different view. In an opinion in Scientific American, writer Randyn Charles Bartholomew explained how "[l]ess sunlight in the morning makes it harder for us humans to get started in the day, and more sunlight in the evening makes it harder to get to sleep."

This debate has come up before when, during the 1970s, the U.S. attempted to enshrine daylight saving time. The result was an increased number of accidents and injuries among school children because they started school in the dark, Bartholomew writes. "Our wakefulness is governed by a circadian rhythm inside us linked to the solar cycle."

Many believe the inconvenience of changing a clock twice a year is worth it for the opportunity to start the day in the sun. As Philip Bump argued in the Post, "Nowadays, many of the clocks you refer to most often — on your computer or phone or even a smartwatch — make the time adjustment automatically."

"Congress will do what it does and one should certainly not assume that its decisions will uniformly be to the public's benefit."

We should stick to standard time instead

Sleep experts believe the real answer lies neither in changing the clocks, nor sticking to daylight saving, but in adopting permanent standard time, which is the "fall back" time that begins on Nov. 6. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) released a statement shortly after the Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act saying "making daylight saving time permanent overlooks potential health risks that can be avoided by establishing permanent standard time."

A study in 2019 found that an extra hour of sunlight in the evening leads to 19 fewer minutes of sleep on average — and while that seems small, it could lead to chronic sleep deprivation, reports The New York Times. And as Michael Herf notes at Medium, "scientists have shown that seeing light in the morning is essential to health, and without it, we get more cancer, diabetes, and obesity."

Ken Wright, a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, shares the same opinion: "Yes, we should be getting rid of the time change. But the science suggests we should be sticking with standard time, not daylight saving time."

The Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments on whether colleges and universities can continue to consider race when they decide what applicants to admit. Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), led the challenges, saying Harvard's admissions policy discriminates against Asian Americans, and UNC's gives Black and Hispanic applicants unfair advantages. Chief Justice John Roberts, long skeptical about affirmative action, and other members of the newly strengthened 6-3 conservative majority appeared open to ending the policies, questioning whether letting colleges consider race is legal and constitutional.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that overturning court precedents allowing schools to view race as one factor in admissions decisions would have "profound consequences" on "the nation that we are and the nation that we aspire to be," and make it harder to educate diverse new national leaders. Liberal justices defended affirmative-action policies, noting the benefits of diversity on college campuses and the importance of countering historic discrimination. The court is expected to rule next June. What will happen if the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions?

Ending affirmative action in college admissions would be disastrous

The Supreme Court's landmark 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision established that "the University of Michigan's law-school-admission policy was constitutional because it was narrowly tailored" to help the school attain a diverse student body, say Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone in The Atlantic. The court found that affirmative action was constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment's equal-protection clause. The efforts to "create equal opportunity and remediate past injustice through affirmative action" have worked, driving progress for Black Americans who now hold senior positions in "courts, universities, and corporations." But let's admit "the irrefutable truth that in contemporary America, Black students' educational opportunities vis-à-vis other groups remain separate and unequal."

Striking down affirmative action in college admissions now will leave the job of establishing a fair system undone. Black students still are less likely than their white counterparts to have access to college-preparatory math and science classes. Black males are twice as likely as white males to quit school. "Consequently, getting into college, competing once there, and graduating four years later is a harder slog for Black students." If the court guts affirmative action and stops schools from valuing things like "leadership qualities, personal talents, race and ethnicity, and family circumstances" to build diverse student bodies, "Black students won't just remain at the back of the line in American life; they will be pushed even further back."

The damage will extend far beyond college campuses

A ruling against considering race in college admissions won't just mean "major changes for higher education, but for private corporations as well," says Noah Feldman at Bloomberg. "Elite employers recruit from elite universities. If those universities become less racially diverse, then the companies that recruit heavily from them — particularly those in tech, finance, law, accounting, and consulting — may as well." And companies pursuing diversity will no longer be chasing an objective "blessed by the courts. Rather, racial diversity will be an objective the Supreme Court has rejected."

This could be a problem for companies, many of which have come to believe that "more diverse companies achieve better financial results." If the Supreme Court throws out affirmative action in higher education, "an employer that seeks diversity along the lines of any category protected by Title VII workplace anti-discrimination law — which includes race, sex, religion, and national origin — will be running the risk of being held liable for unlawful discrimination."

Taking a step toward a colorblind society would help everyone

If the high court rules that race-based college admissions "violate the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws and the 1964 Civil Rights Act's prohibition of racial discrimination by recipients of federal funding," says George Will in The Washington Post, "the court can bolster the wholesome belief held by a large, diverse American majority: that the nation's laws should be colorblind." This would be a balm to "a nation saturated with the racial obsessions that identity politics encourage, especially on campuses."

As Chief Justice John Roberts put it in a 2006 congressional redistricting case, what this nation needs is to move beyond the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race." But don't expect a ruling against affirmative action to stop universities from trying to tip the scales, like the University of Michigan's law school did by considering race as part of a "'holistic' evaluation of applicants." "If SFFA wins, universities will accelerate their abandonment of standardized tests (e.g., the SAT). This will help institutions hide discriminatory practices in an opaque 'holistic' process."

This will affect admissions at elite schools the most

There is no exhaustive list of how much every college and university uses affirmative action in their admissions programs, says Donald E. Heller in Politico. But the practice is most common at the nation's most selective public and private universities. "Universities will likely attempt to find race-neutral ways to maintain their enrollments of historically underrepresented students. But there is only so much that can be done."

Under the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, universities are supposed to "use race-conscious admissions to promote student body diversity" only if "race-neutral alternatives don't work," says Renu Mukherjee in The New York Times. Ignoring this step puts a university on the wrong side of the Constitution. Harvard and UNC could try to meet their goals with race-neutral options, such as eliminating preferences for legacies and the children of donors, or increasing preferences for low-income applicants, but they "have never seriously tried to meet this burden."

Upending "decades of precedent on affirmative action" would have a big impact on college admissions, say Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Zoha Qamar at FiveThirtyEight, but it won't trigger the same public outrage that erupted when the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade's abortion protections. An early October Washington Post/Schar School poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans support both promoting diversity on campus and banning colleges and universities from considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions. "That's because affirmative action is unpopular, even though Americans do want there to be diversity in higher education."

Elon Musk owns Twitter now. Months after he agreed to buy the social media site — and after an embarrassing lawsuit when he tried to back out of the deal — Musk took control of the company on Friday and immediately fired most of its senior management.

Other changes are coming, quickly. Musk and his new advisers "reportedly floated various trial-balloon ideas, including asking Twitter's power users and big accounts to pay for their blue-checkmark badges," Damon Beres and Charlie Warzel write at The Atlantic. And Musk's reputation as an advocate of free speech seems to have invited "a tide of slurs and racist memes" on Twitter over the weekend, Bloomberg reports. (That could invite a regulatory crackdown from the European Union, which limits such things.) But concerns about Musk's move range beyond misinformation and hate speech. "The world's richest man, worth more than the GDPs of many countries, is now in control of one of the world's most influential social networks," Seth Fiegerman writes at CNN. Can Musk make Twitter profitable, and can he do it while ensuring it remains a social media network that people want to use? Or is this just an out-of-control power trip?

Twitter is now a rich man's plaything

Elon Musk is rich and famous, which means he is "the exact type of person for whom Twitter is poison," Hamilton Nolan writes at The Guardian. The billionaire could let his works — PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX — speak for themselves but instead, he uses social media to reveal he's just another reply guy "easily seduced by the same sorts of ideas that grab the minds of Reddit-scrolling 13-year-old boys." But Musk isn't any different from Jeff Bezos who bought The Washington Post, or media barons like Rupert Murdoch and William Randolph Hearst, who created empires to bend public opinion to their will. "In truth, Musk probably bought Twitter for the same reason that sickeningly rich people throughout history have become press barons: to try to control the conversation."

Does Elon have too much power now?

There's a term for when oligarchs and big tech companies amass the power of nation-states: "Technopolarity." That's what Musk's purchase of Twitter signifies, Greg Sargent writes at The Washington Post: "The sovereignty that tech giants are carving out in international digital space is getting increasingly entangled in conflicts among sovereign nations." Musk's purchase of Twitter comes right after he threatened to pull the plug on Starlink internet service that Ukraine forces are using to repel Russian invaders from their territory, revealing his power to intervene in and upset international politics. His control over Twitter could have the same consequences. "One possibility is that Twitter becomes more hospitable to disinformation and online influence operations." Musk has done good things for humanity — his work at Tesla, making electric vehicles popular and desirable, is a genuine contribution to fighting climate change. So maybe good will come from his control over Twitter. "But it sure looks like we'll face seriously messy complications along the way."

Liberals are overreacting

"On the left, the reaction has been like something out of the Book of Revelation," The Wall Street Journal says in an editorial. But Musk faces genuine challenges in trying to make Twitter a healthy and profitable company. The deal saddles Twitter with $1 billion a year in debt interest payments — up from $50 million — which means Musk must figure out how to wring revenues from his new business. (Layoffs to cut costs have already started.) And there's another big decision: Whether to allow Donald Trump to reclaim his place on the platform, something that would be a "headache for Republicans" if the former president starts commandeering public attention again. But Musk would do well to start by making clear that unpopular opinions won't be "throttled" by the platform as misinformation. It's going to be a wild ride no matter what happens next. "Fixing Twitter might be Elon Musk's biggest challenge yet, and this is a guy who hopes to die on Mars."

Twitter won't become a free-for-all. Probably.

"Despite claiming to be a 'free speech absolutist', Musk has already conceded that some degree of content moderation is needed," Richard Waters writes for the Financial Times. So it's unlikely that the platform will suddenly run rampant with misinformation and hate speech — or at least, not more than usual. But Musk hasn't explained how Twitter could handle those issues better, and by firing most of the company's senior management "he seems doomed to repeat lessons Twitter has already spent many years learning." And he still has to figure out how to make Twitter into a profit-maker — the company has never been able to "break out of a relatively narrow business niche" aimed at information junkies. But the signs aren't great. After all, Musk overpaid for Twitter "in the midst of a tech stock downturn." Maybe he can turn to users to do content moderation, like Reddit, or perhaps companies that build their own services on Twitter could use the platform. It's clear in any case that Musk needs answers, and fast. "The reputation of the era's most successful entrepreneur is riding on the outcome."

The U.S. public education system has been a hot political topic as of late. Whether it be widespread book bans or the dismal results of post-pandemic test scores, legislators are giving increased attention to what's happening in the classroom.

One particularly thorny issue has been the question of teaching critical race theory in schools. Parent groups have mobilized to address whether discussions of race, gender, and sexuality belong in the curriculum. Some politicians are responding by introducing laws that restrict what some consider divisive topics.

A report from PEN America, a literary and free expression rights organization, counted 36 states that have introduced 137 "educational gag order bills" — a rate that is 250 percent higher than it was in 2021. Of the seven states that have passed these kinds of laws, six of them prohibit discussions of race.

Critical race theory is a graduate-level academic framework that existed for years before it became the center of political polarization and a catch-all phrase to describe teachings that reference systemic or historic racism. UCLA and Columbia Law professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, widely considered the originator of the term, defines it as a tool for examining race relations in the U.S. "It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced," she said, "the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities."

Arguments on both sides of the debate have increased over the last year as more states look to introduce legislation to bar educators from implementing curriculums influenced by the theory. The question at the heart of these discussions is, should critical race theory be allowed in public school classrooms?

Democracy depends on uncensored teaching

Critical race theory proponents believe it is integral to adopt the framework as an important step in ensuring a more equitable future and improving the state of democracy in the nation. Aside from the actual theory, it's important to allow schools to select their own curricula, proponents argue.

"A healthy and thriving democracy depends on this type of uncensored scholarship," writes retired university professor Edward Renner for the Tampa Bay Times. "It is something that needs to be cherished, supported, and protected. Critical race theory is not an indoctrination of individuals, it is the foundation for creating improvements and lasting change toward eliminating racism in the United States. It is the political censorship of critical race theory that is a dangerous form of indoctrination."

Christiane Calixte, a high school junior at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, agrees. In The Washington Post, she opines, "The right to discuss and speak up against discrimination has been long fought for. So please, adults, if you're listening: Don't reverse centuries of progress in favor of promoting ignorance. If the goal of schools is to create a well-informed populace, then nuanced discussions of historical racism must be held in classrooms. It is the only way young people will learn to think critically about our country's institutions, and the only way to create an inclusive America for future generations."

Critical race theory is 'state-sanctioned racism'

Critical race theory is divisive, teaches children to be anti-White, and purposefully projects America's history in a negative light, critics say.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who recently passed the "Stop WOKE Act," reiterated his opposition to including discussions of race in classrooms if they framed one race as the oppressor over others. In his recent debate against Democratic gubernatorial rival Charlie Crist, he argued, "What I think is not good is to scapegoat students based on skin color. What I think is not good is to distort American history by saying the American Revolution was fought to defend slavery." He continued, "I don't want to teach kids to hate our country. I don't want to teach kids to hate each other, and the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

After the Florida Department of Education rejected some math books they considered indoctrinating, DeSantis commented, "It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students."

In a letter responding to an Observer-Reporter op-ed titled "Republicans misrepresenting CRT," Marty Sloan warns that certain books "unambiguously equate white people with the devil himself." He declares, "CRT is simply a false religion, and its evangelists are laser-focused on pushing anti-white racism to convert our children into obedient believers via our public schools. This is nothing short of state-sanctioned racism and a radical reversal of the separation of church and state."

Allowing critical race theory in K-12 classrooms encourages indoctrination

Teaching young students critical race theory promotes left-wing indoctrination, other opponents argue, and parents should have control over what their children are exposed to in school.

In an op-ed for the Washington Times, Republican candidate for Pennsylvania senate Kathy Barnette encouraged legislators to step up and take action against the implementation of CRT.

"From critical race theory and radical gender ideology to sex-ed classes for kindergartners and drag shows in classrooms, the radical left is more determined than ever to turn schools into indoctrination chambers for their sick and perverse worldview, all while silencing parents who try to do anything about it," she wrote. "With Election Day just weeks away, every candidate has a responsibility to make clear how they plan to take action to stop this madness, safeguard parents' rights, and restore trust and integrity in our education system."

Conservative writer Christopher Rufo recently tweeted about a "bombshell study" that revealed that 93 percent of recent high school graduates reported being "taught at least one of the basic principles of critical race theory and radical gender theory."

The report states, "Publicly funded schools that teach and pass off left-wing racial-ideological theories and concepts as if they are undisputed factual knowledge — or that impart tendentiously curated readings of history — are therefore engaging in indoctrination, not education. The question before us, then, is not whether or to what extent public schools are assigning the works of Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and other critical race theorists. It is whether schools are uncritically promoting a left-wing racial ideology."

The National Assessment of Educational Progress this week confirmed that American students fell behind in school when classrooms were shut down after the coronavirus crisis hit in 2020. The report, also known as the Nation's Report Card, showed that math and reading scores dropped significantly among fourth and eighth graders in nearly every state, across demographic groups. The decline in math scores was particularly jarring, with 26 percent of eighth graders scoring as proficient, compared to 34 percent in 2019. The New York Times called the decline "the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic's impact on millions of schoolchildren."

The most vulnerable students fell farthest behind — many lacked the devices and high-speed internet connections needed to keep up in remote learning environments. "The results in [the] nation's report card are appalling and unacceptable," said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. "This is a moment of truth for education. How we respond to this will determine not only our recovery, but our nation's standing in the world." The federal government last year invested a record $123 billion, or about $2,400 per student, to help public school students catch up. Given the cost — to taxpayers and to students — was closing schools the right thing to do?

Democrats kept kids out of classrooms way too long

"This is not the first result or study showing that school closures caused massive learning loss — it is only the latest," says the Washington Examiner in an editorial. There is no question distance learning was the reason so many children fell behind. Just look at Catholic schools: Almost everywhere, they had opened full-time by fall 2020, "and on aggregate, the data show that they avoided the worst of the learning loss, avoiding declines in proficiency in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading."

The lesson here is obvious: "Once it was clear that COVID was not a major threat to children, that they were neither likely to suffer severe symptoms nor to pass the disease to others, every schoolhouse in America should have reopened immediately for in-person instruction."

Remote learning wasn't the problem

"It turns out that all the bitter back-and-forth between red and blue states about how quickly to reopen schools during the COVID-19 pandemic was nothing but political theater, as far as test scores are concerned," says Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. "Student performance suffered across the board." California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, opened schools more slowly that his Republican counterparts Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas, who "made a big show of reopening their states' schools in the fall of 2020." But fourth and eighth graders' math proficiency dropped a point less in California than in Florida and Texas.

"Political posturing might have mattered to governors who'd like to be president someday, but it made no difference to the millions of children in the nation's schools." Enough already. Instead of politicizing education, let's join forces and help students make up for two lost years. "Our students need to learn reading and math — and they're losing ground."

Admitting mistakes is the first step toward correcting them

Some people just can't admit when they're wrong, says Scott McCaffrey in the Northern Virginia Sun Gazette. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the federal government's COVID response, with all its lockdowns, recently acknowledged that "excessive school lockdowns following COVID's arrival were, on balance, a bad thing for students." Fauci, of course, insists he didn't tell anyone to lock down schools. But if he can at least admit the strategy was unnecessary and harmful, can't local school districts concede that mistakes were made? "Will they ever admit a massive miscalculation in judgment"? Don't bet on it. We live in a world where everything is "hyper-politicized," even the education of our children.

Nobody should be boasting about these scores

Plenty of states that reopened early had dismal test results, says Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times, "including Kansas, Maine, and Idaho in reading and Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, and Idaho in math." Nobody has anything to "brag about." We should take an honest look at things that worked, like the efforts that some states, including California, "put into remedial programs during the pandemic and after it ebbed." And things that didn't: "There's little evidence that reforms such as charter schools are an answer; according to the NAEP report card, average scores in math, reading, and science are worse in charter schools than in conventional public schools, and the gap grows larger from fourth grade to eighth grade to 12th."

It didn't have to be this bad

It is indeed "hard to compare scores by the degree of lockdowns," says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. But it's clear that keeping schools closed so long in so many places was a mistake, given children's limited COVID risk. "Sweden kept its schools open and avoided the catastrophic learning loss of the U.S." Some of our districts that struggled before the pandemic, like Detroit, had the toughest lockdowns, and "some of the worst learning loss." That's an argument for school choice. And don't forget that teachers' unions influenced many of the districts that closed classrooms. Politicians endorsed by American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten should be the first to face a backlash over these scores.

We should focus on how to fix this, not how it broke

The pandemic didn't create the problems with our education system, says the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. It just made them worse. It's "no surprise that educational achievement suffered after two chaotic years of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic." The "most troubling" thing about the Nation's Report Card was that "low-performing students' scores declined at much higher rates than higher-performing students." Los Angeles kids eligible for the free lunch program, for example, were 35 points lower than other students. The gap was just 14 points in 2002.

The good news is that now "educators have the funds and the data to help guide them." The results "offer concrete proof that K-12 students need more focused attention and resources in the form of tutoring or extended instruction time, depending on specific circumstances." The math backsliding suggests "one-on-one tutoring or more teacher instruction" could help. Let's make good use of the lessons of the pandemic, and the money approved to help students catch up. "Our children's future depends on it."

It was the splash heard 'round the world — last week, activists from climate group Just Stop Oil hurled a bevy of tomato soup onto Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers," an iconic, 13-decades-old painting worth more than $80 million. The pair of protesters responsible for the head-scratching stunt then glued themselves to the wall, shouting, "What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of a planet and people?" They continued: "The cost-of-living crisis is part of the cost-of-oil crisis. Fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can't even afford to heat a tin of soup." See the connection now?

Just Stop Oil is "demanding that the U.K. government halts all new oil and gas projects," it said in a press release, and opted to target "Sunflowers" only because it's "an iconic painting, by an iconic painter," and an attack on it would draw attention, a group spokesperson told The New York Times. The protesters were later arrested, and the National Gallery of London said the painting was unharmed save for a bit of damage to the frame. Still, the headline-grabbing incident begs the question: Was this a worthwhile, or damaging, form of protest? And will it even make a difference?

It safely got your attention — so what's really the harm?

Just Stop Oil activists later confirmed they never would've gone through with their soup-slinging plan had the 134-year-old painting not been protected behind glass. So if nothing and no one was hurt … was there really any harm in their performance?

"Safe, creative activism needs all the support it can get after the protest crackdown in the [U.K.] government's Public Order Bill," writes The New Statesman's India Bourke. "This particular protest has of course caused some minor cost and disruption to the gallery, but the shock factor is what makes a good stunt. I imagine the National Gallery will more than recoup in free publicity the cost of the frame repair." What's more, Bourke notes, van Gogh himself, who famously understood the connection between art and the struggles of everyday life, would have probably loved it. "Those who complain that the Just Stop Oil protesters are immature, misguided, or simply too cryptic, need to think about the bigger picture," Bourke continues. "Safe protests such as this alert us to the urgency of our ever-worsening climate crisis, and the complacency and complicity of our government. So let them throw soup."

To some extent, Mother Jones' Jacob Rosenberg agrees: "[A]s far as protests go, this one could be considered ordinary, even staid," he writes. "Young people enraged about the climate crisis sought to garner media attention to fight it." Even Just Stop Oil's basic demand — that the government commits to ending new fossil fuel contracts in the U.K. — is "rather basic" when taken among "the grand scheme of protests for climate action." (Rosenberg also argues that if some tomato soup got your goat, well, "get used to it. The world is getting hotter; the kids are getting angrier. Protests will erupt that seem cringe, annoying, and dumb. If this small episode bothers you excessively, you may need to buckle up. It will be a rough ride when it's time to blow up a pipeline.")

Ultimately, the stunt was "successful in raising global awareness for a local campaign against fossil fuels," adds Joe McCarthy for Global Citizen. "And if you look a little deeper, you can see that it was a well-planned critique of the status quo." The fine art world "represents the excesses of a global economy that's fueling the climate crisis," he continues, and "Sunflowers," with its name recognition and accessibility, proved a "smart way to get a message out there." If you felt compelled, at least initially, to "discredit the protest as misguided," imagine those involved as "throwing cold water on a person sleepwalking off a cliff," McCarthy suggests. "Startled awake, the person might, at first, be angry at the intrusion. But take a second to gather yourself, and notice the closeness of the edge."

Soup won't save us

Just Stop Oil got our attention — but its theatrics are unlikely to pay off, especially not in the current context of rising costs and energy prices, Eric Levitz argues for The Intelligencer. "The public's tendency to prioritize issues that immediately and clearly impinge on their personal finances over ecological sustainability can't be attributed solely to conservative propaganda, misinformation, or lack of awareness," Levitz posits. "For working-class families on tight budgets, an increase in the cost of gas or electricity" — a result of minimizing fossil fuel dependency — "has immediate consequences for how they live their lives."

So though Just Stop Oil did commendably tie the fossil fuel crisis to voters' wallets ("the cost-of-living crisis is part of the cost-of-oil crisis"), the group will be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to endure short-term pain for a long-term benefit they might not even be alive to enjoy; and surveys and polling back that up. In other words, the solution these activists seek is not one that "works at the speed of politics, which, in democratic countries, operates on short time horizons."

"In sum: You are not going to make the typical voter in Britain or the U.S. more acutely aware of climate change than they are of their household energy bills," Levitz writes. And "in the absence of other policies," restricting fossil fuel extraction "risks increasing those energy bills, thereby creating political opportunities for the least climate-conscious parties and actors in Western societies." So what we actually need, more than soup and more than stunts intended to just "raise awareness," are "climate-conscious young people to dedicate themselves to tackling the technological barriers to decarbonization and formulating industrial policies that erode the political ones."

The mess overshadowed the point

Yes, the planet and its people are more important than art. "But this is not an either/or situation. And this was the wrong target," muses Marsha Lederman for Canada's The Globe and Mail. Climate change is, of course, a worthwhile cause, but "the issue needs to be addressed in a way that doesn't overshadow the point."

"So much of the response generated by the London protest was highly critical – not of Big Oil, but of Just Stop Oil's tactics, and by extension, the environmental movement as a whole," she writes. "Has this led to meaningful conversation about the climate catastrophe? Or just a bunch of finger-pointing at these Gen-Z activists who are being painted as having no respect for fine art and the institutions that preserve it?"

"Indiscriminate vandalism" won't further Just Stop Oil's crusade and it won't curry public favor, she concludes. "We can and should be fueled by anger, but we need to choose the way forward productively."

University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann made a similar point on Twitter. "To be clear," he wrote, "the vast majority of [the] public will only see a headline," like that of The Associated Press, which titled its write-up of the incident "UK: Climate protesters throw soup on van Gogh's 'Sunflowers.'" "Some will read further and learn the painting wasn't actually destroyed," Mann continues. "But even many of them will conclude that just luck. So the overall impression the public gets of this event will be highly negative."

The war in Ukraine hasn't exactly been going Russia's way for the past six weeks. After making slow but steady advances in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region over the summer, Russian forces lost ground quickly in a Ukrainian counteroffensive first in northeastern Kharkiv province, then in southern Kherson, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to launch a deeply unpopular and shambolic mobilization effort to generate new forces.

Even as Russian troops are trying to regroup behind new defensive lines in Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Kherson provinces, however, private mercenaries from Russia's Wagner Group plus troops from the separatist Donetsk People's Republic have been slowly battling their way toward the city of Bakhmut, in Donetsk province, between Moscow's losses in Kharkiv and Kherson.

"There once may have been a logic to Russia's focus on capturing Bakhmut," the next step westward after Moscow took nearby Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, BBC News reports. But that was in the summer, and now "Russia has largely been forced to change from being an offensive to a defensive army." Presumably, the forces trying to break through entrenched Ukrainian lines into Bakhmut could be better used elsewhere. So why is Russia still so intent on capturing Bakhmut?

Bakhmut is the key to the rest of Donetsk

Bakhmut, with a prewar population of about 70,000, is a hub of roads and railway lines in a war where control of supply routes has been of critical importance. "Russia likely views seizing Bakhmut as a preliminary to advancing on the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk urban area, which is the most significant population center of Donetsk Oblast held by Ukraine," Britain's Ministry of Defense assesses.

Russia is desperate for a win

"Bakhmut is one of the few places where Russia is on the advance — incremental, small gains," BBC News correspondent Jonathan Beale reports from Bakhmut. "They're trying desperately to change the narrative here — and the reality that most Russian forces in Ukraine are on the retreat."

"Perhaps Russia's military is desperate to claim any sort of offensive victory," Sebastien Roblin writes at Forbes, but it's certainly true that "pro-Russian bloggers and propagandists excitedly seize on reports of progress toward Bakhmut, emphasizing the rosy news (from their perspective) amidst grim reports coming from all other fronts. On multiple occasions, pro-Russian sources have falsely reported the fall of Bakhmut."

Russian sources claimed Monday "that Ukrainian forces are experiencing heavy losses in the Bakhmut area and discussed the possibility of Ukrainian withdrawals from settlements surrounding Bakhmut," but Ukraine's military says "such Russian claims are not true" and Ukrainian forces are holding the line, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) research group reports. "Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin also reportedly stated that Russian speculations about Ukrainian withdrawals were just rumors and that Wagner units continue to fight Ukrainian forces in and around Bakhmut."

This is a Wagner power play

Prigozhin may have ulterior motives for highlighting Russia's one offensive fight in Ukraine and even for offering a "realistic portrayal of the situation in Bakhmut, noting that Ukrainians are unwilling to surrender," ISW assesses.

"Prigozhin and Wagner-affiliated social media outlets are increasingly commenting on the ineffectiveness of traditional Russian military institutions and societal issues," and his "narratives have the ingredients to appeal to the Russian President Vladimir Putin's nationalist constituency that has long called for oligarchs to finance supplies for the armed forces, demanded transparency about what is really going on at the front, and criticized Russian higher military institutions for their failures on the frontlines," ISW writes. "While Prigozhin does not directly oppose or criticize Putin, his growing notoriety within the nationalist community may undermine Putin's 'strongman' appeal by comparison."

You won't hear Prigozhin or other Putin lieutenants "criticizing the 'commander-in-chief' himself," but "anger at Putin is the next logical step if the military defeats continue," Leonid Bershidsky writes at Bloomberg Opinion. In the end, "this is Putin's war, but different people have different ideas about how to fight it for him — and, of course, for themselves. That is hardly conducive to victorious action, and it undermines Putin's control — not just of events on the battlefield, but also of the propaganda space, which he has owned for years."

"Prigozhin and the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, have openly declared war against the defense minister, Putin loyalist Sergei Shoigu, and his top generals," seeing "opportunity in the chaos" of the Kremlin's "failing war" and "botched mobilization," The Guardian reports.

One former senior defense official told The Guardian that Shoigu and Prigozhin have been feuding since at least 2014, and that Shoigu recently fired a deputy defense minister who had reportedly funneled lucrative contracts to Wagner. "Prigozhin will now be out for revenge against Shoigu," the official said, describing Prigozhin as "a machine in the bad sense of the word," a person with "no morals, no conscience, and no hobbies."

Ukraine will take the win — or loss

Ukraine's military points out that whoever's leading the Kremlin's forces, Russia isn't assured to capture Bakhmut. Col. Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukraine's Eastern Command, told BBC News he doesn't think Russia has the numbers or equipment to take the city, but even if they do, Ukrainian defenders will make them pay a high price. "When we retreated from Lysychansk we exhausted the enemy," he said.

"Despite the huge strain on Bakhmut's defenders, Ukraine's military seems to believe Russia's assault there is a barbed lodestone bleeding resources away from more critical fronts," Roblin writes at Forbes. "Some commanders have admitted they're willing to risk losing the city if it comes at sufficiently heavy cost to Russian forces and tolerable casualties for its own," and if their effort frees up Ukrainian forces for a successful offensive elsewhere, "it may finally compel Russia's military to give up its ceaseless assaults, giving Bakhmut's defenders brief respite."

Alex Jones is likely the most visible and well-known conspiracy theorist in the United States, and his self-founded, alt-right platform InfoWars has become a bastion for a number of debunked myths and bizarre plots. Jones' luck finally ran out last week, though, when he was ordered during a defamation trial to pay $965 million to families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, which Jones has previously referred to as a fake "drill" perpetrated by crisis actors.

During the trial, Jones eventually admitted to understanding the massacre was "100 percent real," but by then he had been promoting Sandy Hook as a false flag operation for years on InfoWars. As a result, this conspiracy theory was propagated to a massive audience, as InfoWars reportedly had a larger audience than mainstream publications such as Newsweek and The Economist.

With Jones now financially liable for his rhetoric on Sandy Hook, many believe he should be held responsible for the spread of other misinformation, too, given the reach of his platform and the fact that his baseless claims often receive significant media attention. However, others believe the spread of misinformation has been a wider problem for years, and say it's unfair to simply blame Jones for the rise in conspiratorial thinking. Just how much lasting damage has Jones caused, and how culpable is he for the spread of misinformation?

Alex Jones brought conspiracy theories into the mainstream

Alex Jones is directly responsible for bringing conspiracy theories out of the fringes over the past decade due to InfoWars' massive following, many argue. "As his audience grew, Jones popularized a vocabulary for pernicious doubt: not just that officials and media are hiding the truth, but that tragic events are being engineered for nefarious purposes," Shannon Bond wrote for NPR. Beyond this, Jones' lies about Sandy Hook "created a template to cast doubt on subsequent mass shootings," and these lies had "real-world consequences" for the victim's families, many of whom testified about death threats and instances of harassment.

Some may find it hard to understand how so many people could believe in these debunked conspiracies, but Sarah Mullins wrote an op-ed for NBC News describing how her mother began to have her beliefs twisted by Jones' rhetoric. "Alex Jones sold my mother a pair of glasses, a lens into the world," she wrote. "But through them, the world doesn't look dirty — it is black and white. For her, the glasses reveal order within chaos, a world where no violence is random. When she's looking through them, she's on the right side of an epic battle between truth and lies."

This leaves the future of American misinformation looking grim, per Mullins: "[My mother], and the millions of other everyday Americans like her, will never take [their glasses] off."

The Alex Jones case will not stop the spread of misinformation

Even as Jones is now required to pay nearly $1 billion in restitutions, misinformation may now be too ingrained in American society to ever take a backseat again. "The verdict against [Jones] is unlikely to put much of a dent in the phenomenon he represents: Belligerent fabulists building profitable media empires with easily disprovable lies," said Kevin Roose in The New York Times. Even as mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter have banned Jones, his reach is still massive.

"Jones still appears as a guest on popular podcasts and YouTube shows, and millions of Americans still look to him as, if not a reliable chronicler of current events, at least a wacky diversion," Roose added. "But a bigger reason for caution is that, whether or not Mr. Jones remains personally enriched by his lies, his shtick is everywhere these days."

Roose noted the influence of the provocateur in right-wing media and at the highest levels of power, even in Congress. "You can see and hear Jones' influence on Capitol Hill, where attention-seeking Republican politicians often sound like they're auditioning for slots on Infowars," he wrote. Roose pointed to Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.), who claimed the slate of recent mass shootings in the U.S. could be a plot to get GOP politicians to support gun control, something Jones said extensively about Sandy Hook.

Alex Jones is not only to blame, and conspiracies go far beyond him

Jones is simply one symptom of a larger problem, others argue, and any issues arising from conspiracies can't solely be placed on his shoulders. In fact, Jones could even be considered a proponent of free speech.

In The Arizona Republic, EJ Montini wrote about Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers (R), who defended Jones online following a separate defamation lawsuit and tweeted that he "should be able to criticize the official story whenever he wants." Rogers also said she hoped Jones appealed the verdict, and that his actions and words should be covered under the First Amendment.

Some of Jones' claims have also been spread as a result of mainstream media outlets giving their proponents loud voices. This includes people like Jerome Corsi, the D.C. bureau chief for InfoWars, who had an op-ed published in USA Today in which he argued for arming teachers and staff as a way to prevent school shootings. CNN's Oliver Darcy said it was "surprising the third largest U.S. newspaper by circulation would lend its platform to someone as radical as him," and noted that USA Today has a daily readership of more than three million, helping to dramatically increase the number of eyes landing on conspiratorial news.

Alex Jones will be a cautionary tale to conspiracy theorists

Jones' financial punishment may be the beginning of a reckoning for others who spread misinformation. For the families of the Sandy Hook victims, the hope is "that they will be able to establish that conspiracy profiteering off the tragedy of others is not an acceptable business model," the editorial board of The Washington Post wrote in an op-ed. "Let's hope that others in this age of increasing misinformation get that message."

There have also been calls for lawmakers to step into the picture. After the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Matt Rosoff opined for CNBC that social media companies should be held liable for misinformation spread on their platforms. "Congress should pass ... legislation saying that social media networks can be held liable for damage caused by incitements to violence and libelous false information shared on their platforms," Rosoff wrote.

"The health of American democracy is more important than allowing these companies and their shareholders to continue to profit from allowing propagandists to spread lies and groups to organize violent actions on their platforms," he wrote.

The Biden administration this week sent a delegation to Haiti to discuss ways to help Haiti's police confront gangs that have taken control of most of the struggling nation's capital, Port-au-Prince, deepening a humanitarian crisis in the struggling Caribbean nation. The U.S. is considering Prime Minister Ariel Henry's appeal for an international force to help Haiti's outgunned police fight the gangs, one of which has blockaded the country's main fuel terminal, crippling transport and worsening shortages of food and potable water as Haiti faces its first cholera outbreak in three years. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged foreign leaders to answer Henry's call for an international force of specialized troops.

Anti-government protesters are calling for Henry's resignation, and some rights advocates argue against intervention, saying the foreign troops have only added to Haiti's problems. France, Haiti's former colonial ruler, demanded massive reparations in the 19th century that crushed the country with debt. The U.S. occupation from 1915 to 1934 stifled dissent and benefited American businesses. United Nations peacekeepers were blamed for bringing cholera to Haiti and sparking a 2010 outbreak that killed 10,000 people. And some of the U.N. peacekeepers were accused of sexually exploiting and abusing Haitian women and girls. "History has shown us more than once that foreign forces bring us more problems than solutions," Rosy Auguste Ducena, a lawyer and program director at the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights in Haiti, told Al Jazeera. Will a foreign intervention help Haiti, or make matters worse?

Sending a U.N. security force would be a good start

Something must be done to stop "Haiti's convulsive descent into pandemonium following the assassination" of President Jovenel Moïse last year, says The Washington Post in an editorial. The country's "breakdown of infrastructure and public order" has not stopped accelerating since Henry took power, "largely owing to Washington's puppeteering," 15 months ago after Moïse's death. Henry's "unelected, illegitimate government" has "either enabled or promoted the country's dissolution into criminal gang fiefdoms allied with the country's elite," and made "no serious attempt" to curb the violence and prepare for elections to restore some semblance of democracy.

The "descent into pandemonium" is killing people. "Water and fuel supplies have been blocked, schools are closed, grocery stores are mostly shuttered, and a resurgence of cholera is taking its toll." Interventions by the Clinton administration and the United Nations "provided few long-term improvements," and any armed mission to Haiti risks provoking more violence. The world also must remember the "cautionary tale" of the spreading of cholera and sexual abuse by members of the U.N. peacekeepers deployed in Haiti for 13 years, ending in 2017. "Yet weighed against the cratering prospects of a failed state whose main export is asylum seekers, many Haitians would support — if with misgivings — the chance at restoring some semblance of normal life."

What Haiti needs is support controlling its own destiny

"Haiti is in free fall," says Lydia Polgreen in The New York Times. We can agree on that. A gang leader known as Barbecue, whose real name is Jimmy Chérizier, has had his men block the distribution of fuel and food with flaming barricades. Gangs, many linked to political and business leaders, "have all but shut down Haiti's economy," and "hunger is bearing down on many families." Cholera is back. But that doesn't mean letting the "deeply unpopular" prime minister invite yet another armed intervention is the solution. What the world owes Haiti is "First and foremost to leave it alone," and "give Haitians the time, space and support to imagine a different future for their own country."

Dan Foote, a former U.S. special envoy to Haiti, put it this way: "It is time to give the Haitians a chance. What's the worst that can happen? They make it worse than we have?" Fortunately, a broad group of Haitian political parties, trade unions, grassroots groups, and human rights activists has already proposed a "detailed framework for political transition" known as the Montana Accord. It "calls for an appointed interim president" who would lead the country to new elections. The interim leader they chose, former Haitian central bank governor Fritz Jean, has pledged not to run for the presidency. That would be a refreshing change in a country long plagued by "politicians seeking to line their own pockets." The first step toward helping the first Black republic fulfill the promises of its revolution "may be for the rest of us to get out of the way."

Force is a necessary part of any solution

"The failure of Haiti's state is likely imminent," says Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in The Hill. The country faces a humanitarian crisis and a political disaster, it's true, but sending medical aid and helping to organize elections won't fix anything. "The gangs are the root cause and have increasingly grown in power since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse a year ago. They have now virtually seized Port-au-Prince, most recently blockading the entrance to the Varreux fuel terminal." The apparel industry, Haiti's largest formal-sector employer, "has shuttered factories and faced great operating difficulties due to insecurity." The violence is disrupting food shipments.

"The solution, though not simple, is manageable," Cassidy continued. The United States should respond to the prime minister's request for security assistance by getting the Organization of American States to field "a multilateral force to maintain order in Haiti." Chile and Brazil have experience in Haiti and could pitch in. "The United States, while not sending troops, would support with training, logistics, and funding repurposed from USAID and State Department aid programs in Haiti rendered ineffective in large part due to the environment on the ground." The security forces could secure "critical infrastructure such as the ports, the industrial sector, the electric grid, and the government offices." Once "a semblance of peace has been restored," Cassidy envisions, Haitian leaders could "resume seeking a solution to the political impasse which is exacerbating the security and humanitarian crisis."

Replacing Henry with legitimate leaders is crucial

Haitians do have a lot of decisions to make, says Rosy Auguste Ducena at Just Security. "What kind of international support is needed to restore basic security? How can Haiti effectively mount elections that will inspire trust and participation? How should the country regulate gas prices?" One thing is certain: Ariel Henry is "not the person to decide these questions." He "lacks legitimacy and popular support," and his leadership has been a disaster, leading to a collapsed economy, "daily terrors and privations, and in recent weeks, a new level of crisis and demonstrations in the streets."

"Haiti must return to democratic order, but elections are impossible now, without security and public trust." If the U.S. really wants to help, argues Ducena, it should "stop propping up an illegitimate government preying upon the Haitian people and support the establishment of a representative transitional government. Only a transitional government with broad support will have the legitimacy to stabilize the country and eventually mount participatory elections that can install more effective leaders." And helping to prevent the concentration of power in Henry's hands isn't the only thing Washington can do. A lot of the weapons gang members are using have come through Haitian ports illegally, from the U.S. So, please, "stop the illicit arms flow from the United States to Haiti."

Gas prices are probably going to start rising again. OPEC and some of its fellow oil-producing countries in the expanded alliance known as OPEC+ — a group that includes Russia — this week announced they will be cutting oil production by 2 million barrels a day starting in November, part of "a bid to raise prices," The New York Times reports. That won't just affect drivers. The move should also undercut moves to deprive Russia of oil revenues as it conducts its war against Ukraine. Other possibilities: Europe may be driven into recession. And Democrats may falter in the November midterm elections if rising prices anger voters.

OPEC's move has sparked a backlash against one of the alliance's most powerful members, Saudi Arabia. U.S. leaders have long courted the kingdom's leaders. Perhaps no more. "From unanswered questions about 9/11 & the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, to conspiring w/ [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to punish the US w/ higher oil prices, the royal Saudi family has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) tweeted on Thursday. "It's time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without their alliance." How will OPEC's action affect American politics — and what does it mean for the future of the Middle East?

Domestic energy policy needs a big revamp

"In all its history, OPEC — and its new incarnation, the OPEC+ alliance — has never curbed output so much, and so quickly," Javier Blas writes for Bloomberg. There will be two major consequences of this act. First, rising oil prices "will keep inflation elevated for longer" which in turn means the Federal Reserve will keep raising interest rates which in turn means the American economy is more likely to face recession. Second, "it channels more money to the Kremlin" and lets it keep alive the war against Ukraine." It's also not a good look for American power, because the production cut "signals that Riyadh is in the Russian camp, willing to publicly snub Washington." That means it is time to boost every domestic means of energy production — oil and gas, yes, but also nuclear, wind, and solar. The lesson we should have learned by now? "Energy security is as important today as it was nearly half-century ago when the Arab oil embargo started. But security starts at home."

Biden's fist bump looks bad. So do his anti-oil policies.

Remember when President Biden fist-bumped Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in July? That didn't really work out to America's benefit. "Like all his predecessors, Biden traveled to the kingdom to kiss the ring," David Harsanyi writes at The Federalist. The idea that Biden is a master of foreign policy "has been relentlessly debunked by reality. Even worse: His energy policy. While "Biden can't control prices," he could've alleviated the coming gas crunch by doing more to promote U.S. oil production. Instead, he revoked permits for the Keystone pipeline and halted oil-drilling leases on public lands. OPEC's move reveals the folly of "transitioning" to clean energy sources. "You can have windmills, or you can have affordable and reliable energy. You can't have both."

Are the Saudis siding with Russia?

OPEC's move seems to put Saudi Arabia in Vladimir Putin's camp, "a major change for a kingdom that has been a solid member of the U.S. camp since the 1940s," Jim Krane writes at Barron's. While the alliance has always had "hawks" who "perpetually push for production cuts that would raise prices," it is only now that the hawks are in control. Americans — not just their leaders — are partly responsible for this state of affairs: If more of us "drove Priuses or EVs than F-150s, these sorts of diplomatic spats wouldn't hurt as badly." Now, though, it looks as though Saudi Arabia is allying with Russia at the precise moment Putin is threatening the world with nuclear weapons. Assuming we survive that, "the question now is whether Saudi Arabia's tilt toward Russia will hold over the longer term, or whether it is a temporary response to mutual Saudi-Russian disdain for the Biden administration." In the short term, though, it sure looks bad for the United States. "Biden is certainly iced out."

It's time to end the 'alliance' with Saudi Arabia

"The U.S. gets very little out of these relationships" with Saudi Arabia and its neighboring oil kingdoms in the Middle East, Daniel Larison writes at Eunomia. While the U.S. provides Saudi Arabia with weapons for its defense — and which are used for its morally "atrocious" war in Yemen — it's difficult to see what America is getting in return. "Whatever benefits the U.S. may get from this arrangement are so paltry that they are barely worth mentioning." New legislation that would withdraw American troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is a good step toward clarifying the costs and benefits of those arrangements. It's necessary for American leaders to demand OPEC countries to "take actions that prove that they can be reliable. It is long past time for their governments to reassure us."

Christianity is on its way to minority status in the U.S., according to a recent study from Pew Research. But what if Christianity is already losing its religion?

A new biennial survey of U.S. Christian beliefs from Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research found a lot of heretical beliefs — notably Arianism, a 4th-century belief that Jesus was the son of God but not divine like him — even among evangelical Christians who otherwise take the Bible quite literally.

For example, 43 percent of evangelicals said Jesus was "not God" and 65 percent seemed to disagree with the doctrine of original sin. On hot-button social issues like abortion and sex outside of heterosexual marriage, however, evangelicals were nearly unanimous that they are sins. White American evangelicals are overwhelmingly Republican and live largely in the South. Has this most American of religions become less a religion and more a political culture?

Yes, evangelicalism is becoming a political club

White U.S. evangelicals were more politically heterogeneous until the 1980s, when they started flocking to the Republican Party, but "evangelicals' beliefs are often molded by political and cultural allegiances, not just biblical texts," Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University, writes in The Washington Post. And "over the past half-century, conservative evangelicals have reoriented their views to champion strong masculine protectors who fight for faith, family, and nation."

That largely explains why white evangelicals are among the loyalist supporters of former President Donald Trump, who does not share their professed morality or fealty to scripture, Kobes Du Mez writes. "Increasingly, those who identify as evangelical are aligning not primarily with a theological system but with a cultural and political identity."

With this new Ligonier survey, "Kobes Du Mez's argument that evangelicalism is a culture rather than a set of beliefs has never looked stronger," writes Jacob Huneycutt, a student of Baptist history at Baylor University. "This problem could be remedied, friends, if we actually catechized our kids. How many of these evangelicals grew up doing 'True Love Waits' campaigns and watching pro-life films but have never heard of the word 'catechism,' even still?"

Extramarital abstinence and opposing abortion are important, Huneycutt adds. "Jesus' divinity and original sin are more important, though. They are the foundations of our belief."

Evangelicals are religious but too focused on sexual purity

The term evangelical "has become so laced with politics that millions of Christians identify themselves as 'evangelicals' simply because they're Republican and they're Christian," David French writes at The Atlantic. "The word has become such a tribal signifier that, in many households, evangelical Christianity is little more than a God-and-country lifestyle brand." But the Ligonier/LifeWays survey winnows those cultural evangelicals out, and it turns out even American "theological evangelicals" have "a Jesus problem."

"A traditional, orthodox evangelical sexual ethic" is good, but "the core of the faith is not its moral codes but rather faith in the person of Jesus Christ," French writes. "When the church leads with its moral code — and elevates that moral code over even the most basic understandings of Jesus Christ himself — the effect isn't humility and hope; it's pride and division. When the church chooses a particular sin as its defining apostasy (why sex more than racism, or greed, or gluttony, or cruelty?), it perversely lowers the standards of holy living by narrowing the Christian moral vision," leaving "a weaker religion" populated by millions of Christians who, "in the quest for morality" have "lost sight of Jesus."

American culture is corrupting evangelicalism

The State of Theology survey "reveals that the overwhelming majority of U.S. evangelicals have accepted a view of human identity that aligns more with American society than the teaching of the Bible," Ligonier Ministries argues. "While positive trends are present, including evangelicals' views on abortion and sex outside of marriage, an inconsistent biblical ethic is also evident, with more evangelicals embracing a secular worldview in the areas of homosexuality and gender identity."

What's wrong with cultural evangelicalism?

Growing up evangelical, "I was taught that a cultural Christian was one of the worst things a person could be," Jenell Williams Paris, a sociology professor at Messiah College, writes at CBE International. "They were nominal and lukewarm," using "church as a social club," while we "committed Christians" were "born again, pursued a personal relationship with God, attended church, and did good works in the world."

Now, "I remain evangelical for cultural reasons, which I suppose makes me a cultural evangelical," Williams Paris writes. I'm still a "committed Christian," but "my evangelicalism is embedded in American culture," and "I'm glad American culture socialized me for gender equality, educational success, and a life that includes service in the public sphere."

"Being a cultural evangelical in this sense is not a weak attachment to tradition or to God," Williams Paris goes on, "but a recognition of how deeply we are shaped by culture, and how successful evangelicalism can be in molding individuals into a Christian way of life."

What's wrong with political evangelicalism?

White evangelical Christianity is actually undergoing a sort of schismatic split between one camp that favors Trump-style messaging, politics, and conspiracy theorizing, and those who follow the traditional evangelical path of avoiding politics as antithetical to biblical, University of Illinois Chicago sociologist Michael Emerson tells The New York Times.

"There's a great separation taking place," agrees Wade Lentz, "patriot" pastor of Beryl Baptist Church in Vilonia, Arkansas. "A lot of people are getting tired of going to church and hearing this message: 'Hey, it's a great day, every day is a great day, the sun is always shining.' There's this big disconnect between what's going on behind the pulpit in those churches and what's going on in the real world."

"This mindset that Christianity and politics, and the preacher and politics, need to be separate, that's a lie," Lentz tells the Times. "You cannot separate the two."

Evangelicals can't serve both God and mammon

"There's this line I hear from evangelical pastors these days — 'I get them for one hour a week and Fox gets them for 10 hours,'" New York Times reporter Ruth Graham recounts on The Daily, in a look at how one conservative Arkansas pastor was driven from his church because his congregants wanted Trumpist affirmation more than Christian transformation. "Now people might be getting an extra hour of exactly what they're hearing the rest of the week, and now it's from their pastor. So the person who is at the center of their religious life now is feeding them more of the politics and reinforcing their political beliefs."

Ed Stetzer, the executive director of Wheaton College's Billy Graham Center, offered a similar assessment to The Atlantic but said this is a "cultural convulsion" that cycles through American evangelicalism every few decades.

Evangelicals certainly haven't cornered the market on making self-righteous, cherry-picked claims about the Bible, but their support for "neo-pagan warlords like Donald Trump" and other Christian nationalists "has less to do with Christianity in any recognizable form than with the sanctification of entirely secular cultural passions with the unshakable faith owed only to God given to politicians," Ed Kilgore writes at New York magazine. "You can choose to follow your culture wars into partisan politics or even authoritarianism and insurrectionary violence, like the not-so-spiritual warriors of Jan. 6. But please, please, be honest about your motives and leave your savior and mine out of it."

"From one perspective, the Christian embrace of populist politics is understandable," Michael Gerson writes in The Washington Post. "The disorienting flux of American ethical norms and the condescension of progressive elites have incited a defensive reaction among many conservative religious people," and "anxious evangelicals have taken to voting for right-wing authoritarians who promise to fight their fights," including "the oddest of political messiahs — one whose deception, brutality, lawlessness, and bullying were rewarded with the presidency."

"In the present day, the frightening fervor of our politics makes it resemble, and sometimes supplant, the role of religion," Gerson adds. "Nowhere did Jesus demand political passivity from his followers," but "Christians seeking social influence should do so not by joining interest groups that fight for their narrow rights — and certainly not those animated by hatred, fear, phobias, vengeance, or violence. Rather, they should seek to be ambassadors of a kingdom of hope, mercy, justice, and grace. This is a high calling — and a test that most of us (myself included) are always finding new ways to fail."

Russia this week stepped up its crackdown on protests against President Vladimir Putin's order for a "partial mobilization" to bolster his war effort in Ukraine. Putin last week ordered 300,000 military reserves onto active-duty status, prompting crowds to pour into the streets of Moscow and other cities, with many chanting, "Send Putin to the trenches!" and "Let our children live!" There were 17 attacks on conscription centers, including one in Siberia where a young man who was upset his friend had been drafted allegedly shot and gravely wounded a chief recruiter. Young men desperately trying to avoid conscription rushed to the border or to board planes to get out of the country.

The unpopular mobilization came after a Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian troops into an embarrassing retreat from parts of eastern Ukraine they seized early in the war. Western officials say Russia has suffered a staggering 70,000 to 80,000 casualties since invading Ukraine in February. Russian media reports have said young men who have never served in the military, not just reservists, now are being drafted, as are some men beyond draft age, fueling suspicions that Putin is trying to mobilize more than a million new soldiers. The Kremlin denies that, but the draft is even upsetting some Putin allies. "They're infuriating people, as if on purpose, as if out of spite," Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of state-backed RT media outlet, told Radio Free Europe. Has Putin miscalculated so badly that his political survival is at risk?

Putin has put himself at risk

Vladimir Putin's effort "to mobilize Russian men to fight has turned into a debacle," says The Washington Post in an editorial. After managing to keep the Russian public calm about his unprovoked war "through a combination of propaganda, lies, censorship, and harsh punishment of criticism and dissent," Putin has shattered the quiet with his unpopular mobilization, sending young men dashing for the exits and awakening a suddenly angry population.

"Behind the upheaval is a deeper fissure." Putin for years could do what he wanted thanks to an unspoken agreement under which "people agreed to stay out of politics in exchange for the government not interfering in their daily lives." After the war started, most Russians carried on as before, ignoring the invasion as the casualties and economic costs mounted. Now, as sociologist Greg Yudin has noted, "Russians are quickly snapping out of lethargy and asking questions that they hadn't for a long time." This "might weaken" Putin just when he needs the public on his side to pull off his "desperate grab for cannon fodder" as his war effort falters.

Putin has angered allies as well as critics

Putin has provoked increasing pressure from all sides in Russia, say Michael Kimmage and Maria Lipman in Foreign Policy. There are the war opponents, of course, but Putin also getting pushback "from those dismayed by the military's startling incompetence and seeming lack of determination. The first group has almost no political power. The second, however, has the potential to coalesce into a challenge to Putin" from even some of his "most ardent supporters."

To limit the "risk to Putin's power and the threat of large-scale resistance," the Kremlin will have to intensify its crackdown on dissent. The danger for the Kremlin is that the repression, which has already started with the arrests of thousands of antiwar protesters, "can take on a chaotic momentum of its own. It can generate disgust and outrage." It has already provoked unrest at conscription centers. "Such incidents could well multiply and become difficult for the Russian government to manage." The world shouldn't count on "a revolution or a palace coup," but it "should gird itself for a long war" now that the conflict has become "existential" for "Putin and his entourage."

Putin has options, but not good ones

He expected a quick war, but Putin has "blundered" into a conflict with no end in sight, says The Guardian in an editorial. Now he's "making cannon fodder of his own citizens" in "a desperate strategy that relies on a demoralized, poorly coordinated, and corrupt Russian army outlasting Ukraine's will to fight for its survival. That has been a formula for the humbling of bullying powers in the past. So it is proving again."

Ukraine's counteroffensive has forced Putin to "downgrade his ambitions from regime change in Kyiv to 'liberation of the entire territory of Donbas.'" He's hoping that the sham referendums he just held in occupied Ukrainian border regions will let him annex these regions and argue that they belong to Russia. "Rebadging Ukrainian territory as part of Russia is part of a strategy to present the war as self-defense, with Kyiv as a front for the aggressor, NATO. That is a monstrous inversion of reality, but one that has a purchase on the Russian nationalist imagination."

Putin is threatened and more dangerous than ever

Now that Putin is desperate, we all should be worried, says David Sacks at The American Conservative. "Putin has proved himself a ruthless, calculating killer when threatened." Just look at how many of his opponents "have mysteriously died falling down stairs, or out of windows, or by the inadvertent ingestion of rare poisons." Now that he's facing protests and increased pressure from President Biden and the West, "Putin only faces greater threats to his survival."

Russian hardliners argue that "he has fought this war with insufficient troops, weaponry, and ferocity, and consider the partial mobilization of 300,000 troops to be a half-measure." The West now dreams of a total defeat of Putin, sending Russia back to the February 23 borders, and making it give back the previously annexed Crimean Peninsula. But "Putin would likely face a violent coup if he accepted such a defeat," so the danger is that he will "use every weapon at his disposal," even tactical nukes, to ensure his survival now that he's "backed into a corner."

Russian President Vladimir Putin's "partial mobilization" of some 300,000 reservists to bolster withering Russian forces in Ukraine was not a popular move. Cities around Russia saw their biggest anti-war protests since Putin launched his invasion in late February, and panicked Russian men rushed to the border or scrambled to buy the remaining exorbitantly priced airplane tickets to the few destinations still welcoming Russians.

"Google search trends showed a spike in queries like 'how to leave Russia' and even 'how to break an arm at home,' raising speculation some Russians were thinking of resorting to self-harm to avoid the war," The Washington Post reports.

Russian pro-war nationalists, meanwhile, wanted universal conscription, but "even this limited mobilization is likely to be highly unpopular with parts of the Russian population," Britain's Ministry of Defense assessed Thursday. "Putin is accepting considerable political risk in the hope of generating much needed combat power. The move is effectively an admission that Russia has exhausted its supply of willing volunteers to fight in Ukraine," the Defense Ministry added, and the new muster of conscripts is "unlikely to be combat effective for months" or numerous enough to reverse Russia's flagging fortunes.

Putin has built up an iron grip on power over his two decades leading Russia. Could Ukraine end up being his Waterloo?

Putin will lose this high-stakes gamble

Putin "asking young men to commit their lives to a flagging war effort is risky — not only because it might not bring benefits on the battlefield, but because it is likely to provoke many of those men into outright opposition to the war itself," Samuel Greene, professor of Russian politics at King's College London, writes in The Washington Post. "For the war's opponents, on the other hand, appealing to young married men looks like the clearest route to stymying Putin's plans."

Public opinion won't tumble right away, says R.Politik political consultant Tatiana Stanovaya. "Mobilization will be gradually expanded. Society will slowly become irritated and indignant — do not expect mass protests, but rather waves of indignation," she tells the Financial Times. "This is the erosion of Putin's power in its purest form."

Putin's partial mobilization was the "careful balancing act of a leader under pressure, who is trying to: 1. please hardliners and Russian milbloggers; 2. not displease the general populace; 3. appease the military; [and] 4. give the impression he is not losing a war," says retired Australian Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan. But what it really tells us is "Putin and his military privately accept that they could lose this war," and his "gamble here" just "prolongs the agony of the Ukrainian people without providing any real chance of a Russian victory."

Be careful what you wish for

"The whole world should be praying for Russia's victory, because there are only two ways this can end: either Russia wins, or a nuclear apocalypse," nationalist Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev tells the Financial Times. "If we don't win, we will have to use nuclear weapons, because we can't lose," he added. "Does anyone really think Russia will accept defeat and not use its nuclear arsenal?"

The cut is probably not deep enough to rock Putin's standing

"Putin's latest escalation in Ukraine is no show of strength," and it will probably only "mollify his hard-line critics in Russia for a while," The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. But as "Putin's announcement shows, the war isn't over," and his partial call-up "falls far short of the full war footing, or a military draft, that would enlist the sons of Moscow and St. Petersburg elites" and clarify for Russians that they can lose "far more than the chance to eat at the now shuttered McDonald's."

"Over the past six months, an adaptation has taken place to the new conditions, people calmed down," Denis Volkov, director of Moscow pollster Levada Center, tells the Financial Times. The partial mobilization may agitate people again, and "I think if the Kremlin could have avoided it, it would have," he added. "But the conflict has its own logic, and it has led them to take an unpopular decision."

And we don't know this mobilization won't work out for Putin, notes Michael Kofman, chief Russia analyst at CNA. "It won't solve many of the [Russian] military's challenges in this war, but it could alter the dynamic" and "extend Russia's ability to sustain this war," he added. "Fair to say that these are uncharted waters, and so we should take care with deterministic or definitive claims."

And he can always pin the blame on someone else

Putin's gamble that he can stanch the bleeding with, at most, 300,000 poorly trained and equipped unwilling conscripts won't work, but he "will likely wait to see if these efforts are successful before either escalating further or blaming his loss on a scapegoat," the Institute for the Study of War writes. "His most likely scapegoat is Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian Ministry of Defense," and the fact that he had Shoigu lay out the details of the mobilization suggests he "intended to make Shoigu the face of the current effort."

Interestingly, in his speech, Putin "doesn't describe it as his order, rather 'I find it necessary to support the proposal of the Defense Ministry and the General Staff on partial mobilization,'" notes Australia's Ryan. "This sets up the military for eventual blame in the war." But at the same time, "the partial mobilization is unlikely to appease hardliners and will probably scare the general population," he adds. "Perhaps this is why airfares out of Russia are selling so quickly."

Putin is in deep trouble, and not just from the mobilization

Putin's decision to swap leaders of Ukraine's Azov Battalion for Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian businessman and politician who's a close friend of Putin, "is an even bigger blow to Russian nationalists than the Kharkiv retreat," Belarusian journalist Tadeusz Giczan writes. "The retreat could be explained by the mistakes of the military, while the release of the Azov command undermines the very idea of 'denazification,'" which was Putin's rationale for invading in the first place.

Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Ukraine traded Medvedchuk and about 54 other prisoners or war for 215 Ukrainian POWs, including 108 members of the Azov Battalion that defended Mariupol against overwhelming odds for 80 brutal days. "Zelensky gave a clear order to return our heroes. The result: our heroes are free," Yermak said. "We exchanged 200 of our heroes for Medvedchuk, who had already given all the testimony he could."

"One of the main aims of denazification was the elimination of Azov, and the fall of Mariupol and their capture was the main triumph of the war to date," Giczan argues. "Their trial and execution were supposed to be the culmination of the 'liberation' of Ukraine. And then suddenly, when the cages for the tribunal were ready, they are swapped for the father of Putin's goddaughter."

Between Putin "making it clear to everyone that the idea of 'denazifying Ukraine' was just a bluff" and destroying "Russia's main social contract of the last 30 years — you let us get rich and we stay out of your private life" — with his mobilization, Giczan writes, anger will spread from activists to "a huge apolitical part of the population, something completely unprecedented. It's still too early but I'm pretty sure future historians will mark 09/21/22 as one of the key days in the fall of Putin's Russia."

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, 83, announced last week that he was giving away the $3 billion outdoor-apparel company he founded to help fight climate change. He said he and his family were giving 100 percent of the company's voting stock to the Patagonia Purpose Trust, which the family will oversee to make sure Patagonia remains socially responsible and honors its environmental commitments. Chouinard said 100 percent of Patagonia's nonvoting stock, equivalent to about 98 percent of the company, would go to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to "fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature." The family will pay $17 million in taxes connected to the transfer. "Earth is now our only shareholder," the unconventional entrepreneur wrote in a letter posted on the company's website.

Chouinard told The New York Times in an exclusive interview that he never wanted to run a business in the first place. Patagonia sells more than $1 billion worth of jackets, hats, ski pants, and other outdoor apparel every year. This arrangement will direct all the company's profits into buying up sensitive land and fighting climate change, ensuring that it keeps pushing Chouinard's mission long after he's gone. "Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn't end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people," Chouinard told the Times. "We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet." Is this as good for Earth as Chouinard makes it sound?

This could be a game-changer

Chouinard's gift is a "groundbreaking act of philanthropy," says David Gelles in the Times. With a stroke of the pen, "the Chouinards are renouncing their status as one of the wealthiest families in America." Channeling Patagonia's $100 million in annual profits into the new nonprofit, the Holdfast Collective, "immediately established an entity that will become one of the nation's biggest funders of climate causes." They're not the first billionaires to do something like this. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has pledged $10 billion to his Bezos Earth Fund, and Laurene Powell Jobs, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' widow, is pitching in $3.5 billion to another group to support climate action.

But "the Chouinard gift stands apart" from these and other big gifts, because instead of endowing a school or handing over a pile of cash, "the Patagonia founder has relinquished the company and pledged its future profits toward things like protecting undeveloped land and supporting regenerative agriculture." Plus, the Holdfast Collective is a 501(c)(4) group under tax rules, which means it "can spend money on political efforts" and help drive the climate debate for generations.

Patagonia won't save the world unless it changes

In "a world ravaged by the climate crisis," it's nice to think a billionaire could swoop in and save the day, says Rachel Donald at The New Republic. A third of Pakistanis have been displaced by deadly floods, while other parts of the planet are, quite literally, on fire. But the media now calling Chouinard a hero should take a look at Patagonia's history of "misleading consumers over sustainability claims." Patagonia partnered with Walmart in 2009 to create the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. The group developed the "dodgy" Higg Materials Sustainability Index, which critics say tried to "greenwash" the use of fossil fuels in manufacturing by rating "polyester, a fiber derived from petroleum, as the most sustainable of all fibers." This masks the "true environmental costs" while helping the companies maximize profits, "since polyester is also the cheapest fiber available."

It's crucial to "encourage billionaires to redistribute their wealth" for the good of all. But it's also important to hold them accountable, no matter how generous we think they are. The fawning media coverage about how Chouinard is using capitalism to solve the climate crisis praises the same "economic system and neo-imperial globalization that has allowed Americans like Chouinard to amass billions in the first place." It sends the message "that billionaires could save us from ourselves if only more of them had the Patagonia spirit. Yet given the raw data on billionaires' emissions, it's clear that far more people need to be saved from billionaires than are saved by them."

Chouinard gets more than you think out of this

Chouinard, who's reportedly worth about $1.2 billion, got the world to see him as a selfless billionaire, says Jim Geraghty in the National Review. But what he failed to make clear is that this route, instead of a sale of the company or a stock offering, allowed the "self-described socialist" to avoid paying the U.S. Treasury what he otherwise would have owed for inconvenient things like capital gains, gift, and inheritance taxes. And what changes for Patagonia? It "keeps making and selling all of its goods, and after everyone gets paid — including CEO Ryan Gellert, who was making $7.7 million per year back in 2013 — the rest of the profits" go to Chouinard's environmental efforts. A smart move worthy of a guy who wants you to think he got rich accidentally, by "selling $299 backpacks, $519 sleeping bags, $549 wading boots, and $699 parkas."

It's good, but scary, that billionaires are doing what governments won't

The "widespread admiration" is easy to understand, says Carl Rhodes in The Guardian. "It is great that Chouinard is putting his company to work for the future of the planet," especially since "governments worldwide have failed for decades" to take effective action against the climate disaster that is now upon us. "The rub, however, is that this is all part of a well-developed global system where responsibility for dealing with public and social problems is increasingly taken on by private interests. And, as we see with Chouinard, it is an empowered elite who are able to call the shots."

Ukrainian forces are continuing their quick-paced counteroffensive in northeastern Kharkiv province, crossing the Oskil River — a natural break Russia had been using as a fallback defensive barrier — and securing the eastern bank, Ukraine's military command says. At the same time, Ukrainian forces in southern Kherson province are inching forward, severing Russian supply lines and striking Russian military strongholds.

"Perhaps it seems to someone now that after a series of victories we have a certain lull," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday. "But this is not a lull. This is preparation for the next sequence."

But between Kherson and Kharkiv, Russian forces are still fighting toward Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk province that is "critical to Russia's objective of taking the rest of the mineral-rich Donbas region," The New York Times reports. "There seems an unending supply of soldiers around Bakhmut attacking Ukrainian forces," and most of the Russian soldiers are mercenaries from the Wagner Group, some of them prisoners recruited and deployed to the front lines, according to Ukrainian soldiers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced a "partial mobilization" of up to 300,000 Russian reservists, but they aren't expected to deploy to Ukraine for months. Can Russia halt its embarrassing military setbacks and replenish its attrited ranks with hired soldiers and inmates-turned-fighters?

Wagner mercenaries are bad news for Ukraine

Russia clearly needs more troops in Ukraine if it hopes to keep the territory it has seized already, much less continue making gains in the Donbas region, and if Putin won't institute a national draft, offering inmates in Russia's brutal penal colonies a shot at freedom will give him quite a few "shock troops," as reputed Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video released last week.

In the evidently leaked video, a man believed to be Prigozhin, a close Putin ally, tells the potential recruits that they will probably die — and they will be shot if they refuse to fight — but if they survive six months in Ukraine, their debt to Russian society will be paid and they will be free.

"Can't think of a reason why not to arm thousands, ideally tens of thousands of antisocial recidivist murderers who would suddenly be expected to follow the strictest social order conceived — an army. With an AK47 in hand," deadpanned Bellingcat's lead Russia investigator Christo Grozev.

"Wagner is not the only private military company participating in Russia's war in Ukraine," but even before it started recruiting among felons in April, it stood apart for its "exceptional brutality and cruelty," as well as its resources, Aleksandra Klitina writes at the Kyiv Post. With inmate mercenaries, "their atrocities cross all human boundaries," but the Russian military appears to consider Wagner "the most professional" of its contract armies, and its expendable mercenaries have played key roles in several pivotal operations against Ukrainian troops going back to Russia's 2014 shadow invasion.

Paroled Russian inmates won't help Russia

Putin's increasing reliance on "irregular volunteer and proxy forces rather than conventional units and formations of the Russian Federation Armed Forces" suggests a "souring relationship with the military command," the Institute for the Study of War think tank assesses. "The formation of such ad-hoc units will lead to further tensions, inequality, and an overall lack of cohesiveness between forces," and it "adds little effective combat power to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine."

"Professional military staff are likely to confront behavioral issues among recruited prisoners, especially considering the likely prevalence of prisoners convicted of violent crimes, narcotics, and rape," ISW reports, but the other ad-hoc militias also have problems that will make "conflict and poor unit coordination more probable. The one thing they have in common is wholly inadequate training and preparation for combat." In other words, ISW says, "the reported arrival of increasing numbers of irregular Russian forces on the battlefield has had little to no impact on Russian operations."

Moreover, the Kremlin's reliance on Wagner and its prisoner recruits, plus accelerated training and cadet graduations at Russian military academies, show that "the impact of Russia's manpower challenge has become increasingly severe," Britain's Ministry of Defense says. "The acceleration of officer cadets' training, and Wagner's demand for assault troops suggests that two of the most critical shortages within the military manning crisis are probably combat infantry and junior commanders."

And it's not just an issue of troop levels. "The Russians are apparently directing some of the very limited reserves available in Ukraine" to "meaningless offensive operations around Donetsk City and Bakhmut instead of focusing on defending against Ukrainian counteroffensives that continue to advance," ISW writes. That "might indicate that Russian theater decision-making remains questionable."

On the flip side, Ukraine's military has been planning and executing quality operational design, especially against the "bumbling and incoherent Russian defensive scheme to the east of Kharkiv," retired Australian Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan writes. "The concurrent Ukrainian offensives have totally compromised the Russian operations in the Donbas" and introduced "a larger psychological issue with Russian soldiers and commanders fighting in the east."

Russia has few good options in deploying its depleted forces, Ryan adds, and "because of a Russian reinforcement 'shell game', it is possible that we could see cascading Russian tactical withdrawals and failures in various regions as a consequence."

Russia doesn't have to win to cause Ukraine pain

"In the last seven days, Russia has increased its targeting of civilian infrastructure even where it probably perceives no immediate military effect," Britain's Ministry of Defense reported Saturday. "As it faces setbacks on the front lines, Russia has likely extended the locations it is prepared to strike in an attempt to directly undermine the morale of the Ukrainian people and government."

The Ukrainians, with their "incredible bravery" and "incredible determination," are not "losing a war, and they're making gains in certain areas," President Biden told CBS 60 Minutes in an interview that aired Sunday. But "winning the war in Ukraine is to get Russia out of Ukraine completely and recognizing the sovereignty. They're defeating Russia. Russia's turning out not to be as competent and capable as many people thought they were gonna be. But winning the war? The damage it's doing, and the citizens, and the innocent people are being killed, it's awful hard to count that as winning."

President Biden says the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

That's not quite an official medical assessment. But Sunday night on 60 Minutes, the president made it clear that the country is pretty much moving on — culturally, at least — from the havoc that the coronavirus has wreaked on the economy, education, and politics over the last three years. "The pandemic is over," Biden said. "We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over." Stocks for vaccine-making companies immediately dropped on Monday morning.

Is Biden right? "The U.S. government still designates COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency and the World Health Organization says it remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern," CNN notes. On the other hand: Officials report that weekly coronavirus deaths are at their lowest level since March 2020, when the emergency began. On the other other hand: That still means some 400 or more deaths a day.

So, is the pandemic really over? And what does it mean if it is?

The data contradicts Biden

"Public health experts weren't impressed with the president's language," NPR reports, quoting one expert who called Biden's remarks "malarkey." Worldwide, the number of new COVID cases peaked in January and "we've come a long way since then," but it's also the case that "there are still thousands of cases being detected every day," and that doesn't even include all the unreported and undiagnosed cases that officials suspect are out there. What's more, Biden's statement goes against his own administration's actions — the White House has asked Congress to approve $22.4 billion in new funding to fight COVID. Perhaps the most important factor: While the Centers for Disease Control has loosened some of its recommendations to the public, it also "has not publicly declared the end of the pandemic."

It feels over but it's not

"No doubt, the pandemic has receded dramatically from my daily life," Tufts University professor Daniel Drezner writes at his eponymous Substack newsletter. Fewer than 10 percent of students and faculty on his campus are bothering to wear masks these days, after all. But there is plenty of data showing that the COVID virus is persisting. "A quick glance at the Boston wastewater data suggests that the not-so-novel coronavirus is more prevalent now than it was five months ago." And even if COVID deaths are at their lowest point since the pandemic began, the virus is still a major cause of death and illness. So why say the pandemic is over? Because we're tired of it, and because the risks aren't as great as they were before vaccines and antiviral medicines emerged. Bottom line: "Americans are sick and tired of the pandemic and now willing to take greater risks to return to their pre-pandemic lives."

Biden's "emergency" debt order is illegal

The president's 60 Minutes declaration means his recent order canceling billions of dollars in student loan debt is "flatly unconstitutional," Charles C.W. Cooke writes for National Review. Why? Because the "order rested entirely upon there being an ongoing emergency, and because, as Biden has just confirmed, there is no ongoing emergency." The debt order was always on flimsy ground anyway, in part because the president's claim of an emergency was "flatly contradicted" by his long delay in issuing the order — two-and-a-half years after the pandemic began. Now Biden has given us additional proof that his debt order was misguided and wrong. After all, "the powers to which Biden laid claim can be applied only when there is an active emergency, and that the active emergency Biden is citing has now passed."

Premature declarations of victory are dangerous

"We have seen the 'it's over' dismissive nonsense before," Dr. Eric Feigl-Deng, chief of COVID Risk Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute, says in a Twitter thread. The CDC dropped its mask mandate in May 2021 — only for the Delta and Omicron variants to spread devastating illness and death across the country afterwards. There is a similar risk at play even now: Almost 94 percent of U.S. counties are still experiencing "substantial" or "high" transmission of COVID. "The more we let it transmit, the more variants and more #LongCovid" the U.S. is likely to experience. Many of us have started to treat the coronavirus like the flu, but "COVID still kills orders of magnitude more." The roughly 3,000 Americans who die from the virus each week are about the same number that died on 9/11. That's a sign the pandemic isn't really over. "A weekly 9/11 is a very big deal."

Ukraine's counteroffensive gained momentum this week, with the country's forces overrunning Russian forces and retaking more than 20 villages in the northeastern Kharkiv region over a single day. The sudden, unexpectedly overwhelming surge forced the outnumbered Russian troops to retreat in disarray, leaving equipment behind as Ukrainian forces pushed through to the Russian border. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised his troops, saying, "the enemy is panicking," and promised that Ukrainian forces would take back every inch of territory Russia has seized since invading in February.

The battlefield setbacks raised pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The rout of his forces in the northeastern Kharkiv region highlighted miscalculations by Putin and his military leaders. Prominent Russians have started publicly criticizing Putin's strategy. "Mistakes were made," Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed leader of the Russian region of Chechnya, said in a Telegram post, calling for a change in strategy. Ukraine's military chief, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, there is a "direct threat" that Russia could resort to using tactical nuclear weapons, which could drag other powers into a "limited" nuclear conflict that could expand into "World War III." Would Russia go nuclear in response to setbacks on the battlefield?

Putin is capable of anything

"Ukraine's counteroffensive against invading Russian forces is an important turn in the war," says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. In a week-long rush, Ukraine has retaken more territory than Russia has seized since April. This unexpected success, after months of what felt like an impasse, has done wonders for Ukrainians' morale, but it is "not without peril as Vladimir Putin calculates how to respond." So far, Russia has hit back with strikes against Ukrainian power stations in "an attack on electricity for civilians." A greater danger is that Putin will "engage NATO forces in some fashion that he would blame on the West and use to justify the military draft." Worse, he might resort to using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons. Remember, Putin "is capable of anything."

It's time to step up deterrence

Russia's hectic withdrawal is exactly what you'd expect if it was preparing to launch tactical nukes, says Michael Rubin at 1945. The "fear of Russian nuclear weapons" kept the U.S. from acting forcefully to prevent the invasion, and Putin might be banking on the same trepidation to protect him now. If President Biden makes this a "redline" in Ukraine, he mustn't back down the way then-President Barack Obama did when Syrian forces used chemical weapons in 2012. The White House and NATO should make clear "the pain Russia will suffer," economically and militarily, if this retreat is "a feint" leading to tactical nuclear use against Ukrainian soldiers and cities." It is time both to step up deterrence and plan for what comes" next if Russia takes such a dangerous and irresponsible step.

Russia is more likely to freeze its foes than nuke them

There are reasons for Putin to hold his nuclear fire, says Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times, including the fact that "Russia itself would be contaminated by the fallout" from a nuclear strike. "The global political reaction would be very negative and a western military response, probably non-nuclear, would be all but inevitable." But a humiliating defeat is something Putin wants to avoid at all costs. "Like Russian leaders in the past, Putin is hoping that winter will come to his rescue. Russia's recent announcement that it will stop almost all gas supplies to Europe is clearly intended to freeze the western supporters of Ukraine into submission." But for "the gas gambit to work," he'll need "a very cold winter or a surge in political protests," neither of which is a given, especially now that Germany has stockpiled nearly 87 percent of the natural gas it can store.

Putin also could claim a smaller victory

The danger that Russia will escalate the war is real, says David Ignatius in The Washington Post. But Putin also "could define victory downward," and say that his special military operation was always about "protecting Donetsk and Luhansk, the two Russian-speaking cities in the east that Putin captured in 2014," and never about gaining more territory in Kherson and Kharkiv. "Certainly, he could say that it's about Crimea, a sentimental prize for which Putin might actually risk all-out war." Either way, "Zelensky would be wise to avoid strategic overreach" and spreading his forces too thin. The United States has always said it was committed to giving Ukraine the weapons it needs for self-defense, avoiding war with Russia, and ending the conflict through diplomacy. "All three goals should come into sharper focus after Ukraine's successful offensive."

The death of the United Kingdom's long-ruling Queen Elizabeth II and the ascension of her son King Charles III has renewed a debate around the purpose of the monarchy in today's day and age. In a modern world that heralds democratic institutions (or at least tries to), should a royal family — let alone one with an imperialist and colonialist past — even exist?

Below, columnists lay out a number of arguments against the continuation of the crown, and explain how they might stand to square the issue (for which protesters are already mobilizing, albeit in small numbers) with Elizabeth's historic reign:

Abolish the monarchy because the family deserves it

The coverage of Elizabeth's death has been "somber and reverential" — and "we can expect that hushed, respectful mood to persist," Andrew Mitrovica opined for Al Jazeera. But even during a period of national mourning, "it would be deeply irresponsible and an egregious mistake to avoid acknowledging that the imperial institution Queen Elizabeth II led has caused indelible harm and suffering to so many people, in so many places."

As Commonwealth states consider removing themselves from the shadow of the U.K. monarchy (as Barbados did last December), their decision should be made easier "in part because the Windsor family has not only devolved into farce, petty recriminations, and irreparable rifts, but has also been accused of committing vile sexual offences, including rape, against vulnerable children," Mitrovica argued, referencing most overtly the Jeffrey Epstein-adjacent scandal involving the disgraced Prince Andrew.

Relatedly, when Prince Harry and his wife, actress Meghan Markle, conceded in an infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey that "racism remains as present today as it was yesterday within the 'modern' royal family," Mitrovica summarized, "it was a refreshing sliver of honesty and a reminder that the monarchy deserves a burial — not the relentless hagiography that television viewers will be served in the coming days and weeks."

Abolish the monarchy to make reparations

The crown has recently begun coming to terms with its damaging past; in June, for example, speaking before Commonwealth leaders in Rwanda, then-Prince Charles publicly recognized the monarchy's deep ties to slavery. "I want to acknowledge that the roots of our contemporary association run deep into the most painful period of our history," he told leaders of the 50-some countries with roots in the British Empire, per Reuters. "I cannot describe the depths of my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many as I continue to deepen my own understanding of slavery's enduring impact."

Still, such remarks are perhaps just a mere fraction of a step toward the reparations formerly colonized countries might now desire, Nalini Mohabir argued in The Guardian. And appropriate reparations would be "not just an apology, but distributive justice between so-called developed and developing countries. Integral to reparations is the idea of repairing unequal, one-sided relationships."

Moving forward, "what might duty look like if we understood that debts need to be paid and apologists held accountable? What might public service mean if we understood that imperial attitudes and monarchic institutions must be abolished for an alternative future to be born?" Mohabir continued. For that, it's "time to imagine a future without" the crown.

Abolish the monarchy to honor Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth charmed her kingdom — even as scandal tore through the royal ranks, her appeal (and the general spectacle of the monarchy) fed an enraptured public, wrote Kimberly Atkins Stohr in a column for The Boston Globe. Now, with such adoration in mind, "there could be no better tribute" to the late ruler than "making her reign one of Britain's last."

She is the "only reason that the royal family has been able to sustain, let alone have any level of popularity" in Britain, and she single-handedly "kept the monarchy alive largely by the sheer force of personality," Stohr maintained. "Neither King Charles III nor his progeny, who are far less popular and far more scandal-ridden, will ever be able to pull that off. Nor should they try." Rather, they should focus on winding the monarchy down and "[ushering] England into the modern era."

Yes, the royals must first mourn, and should be allowed to do so. "But then King Charles III and his family should make a change," she continued. "The charming spell, at long last, has been broken."

Don't hate the player, hate the game

That there are those who would like to do away with the monarchy, or those that despised the queen, should come as no surprise; Elizabeth "was the symbolic representation of Britain," and it makes sense that "those who have suffered from British imperialism hate her and all that she stood for," Frances Coppola posited for MarketWatch. But what her detractors should remember is that Elizabeth was just one part of a larger, more nefarious system — a system she herself was unable to exit.

"That jeweled crown was borne by a woman who spent her life in a gilded cage, unable to escape without hurting those she loved," Coppola wrote. "And in death, the crown moves on to its next victim, and all that is left is a human being." Yes, all are entitled to "hate the crown and what it stands for." All have the right to call for abolition and encourage reparations. But let those who loved the woman at the heart of an institution she did not create "mourn for her in peace."

Just about everybody agrees: Baseball games are too long. But they don't necessarily agree on what to do about it.

Major League Baseball last week approved sweeping new rules that will go into effect for the 2023 season. The bases will get slightly bigger and defensive shifts will no longer be allowed. But the most significant update is the implementation of a pitch clock that will give pitchers a mere 15 seconds — 20 if a runner is on base — between pitches. Fail, and they get charged with a ball. (Hitters who aren't in the box on time will be charged with a strike.)

That should significantly shorten games, which now run more than three hours on average. "It's the fan-friendliest addition to the game of baseball since the introduction of beer," ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote on Twitter. Some major league pitchers, though, vehemently disagree. "I think it's a bunch of crap," Cubs reliever David Robertson said earlier this year. And some fans have appreciated the literally timeless nature of baseball. Putting players on a timer is "the most insidious alteration to the very fabric of baseball's being that has occurred in over a century," Jeffrey May writes for Diario AS.

These are indeed big changes for a tradition-bound game that is usually slow to adopt new ideas. How might the new rules change the character of America's pastime?

Players don't like the new rules, but fans might

MLB player representatives voted against the pitch clock and defensive shift changes. Why? Because "the guys in the majors have thrived under the status quo," Jon Heyman writes at the New York Post. Yes, baseball lovers tend to "go nuts" when the game evolves. But the league's "heart is in the right place" because the rules are designed to give the fans what they want: Shorter games with "more action, and more athleticism." Will they get that? Experiments at the minor league level suggest that while the pitch clock shortens games, batting averages and runs scored have stayed about the same. That could mean "the games will be just as dull, but end more quickly." History says nobody should panic about the new rules. "We hated the wild card, the expanded playoffs, and anything else new, yet none of those changes hurt the game one iota."

The pitch clock is wrong for baseball

"There are a lot of things that happen on the mound that few fans understand," David Gasper wrote in 2019 for Reviewing the Brew, a Milwaukee Brewers blog. It might look like players are "taking their sweet time," but the wait has a purpose. When pitchers and hitters go to work against each other, the contest "is more of a mental battle than it is a physical one." Speeding up the game might put more fatigue on pitchers' arms, and probably won't do much to grow the game anyway. Kids might enjoy elements of the game that can be converted into online memes, but "you can't do anything with a countdown clock." Instead, the result of a time limit will probably just be sloppier play. "The pitch clock will only diminish the product on the field."

Traditionalists should just chill

There's a temptation to believe that MLB has been "unscrupulously ruined in the service of satisfying TV partners and hooking TikTok-obsessed youth," but that's just "your fear of progress talking," Gabe Lacques writes for USA Today. In fact, baseball has problems, and "it certainly can't hurt to try" some new approaches. The bigger bases should make the game more exciting by increasing the odds of success when players try to steal. And the pitch clock has the support of minor league players — the same guys now showing up in the big leagues — who have already played with it. But if the new rules turn out to be no good, they can always be changed. "More likely, this is a starting point, a momentous shift (no pun intended) toward a different and possibly better game."

Will the changes bring the kids back?

"MLB really had no choice" but to make some big changes to the rule book, Paul Newberry writes for The Associated Press. "Many kids have abandoned the game" and fans in the bleachers "look mostly bused in from a retirement home." So it's good that league leaders "took bold steps to address some of the most obvious problems" in the game. The average big league matchup clocks in at more than three hours these days. But in the minors, where the pitch clock is used, the number is nearly 30 minutes shorter. The MLB's attempt to fix itself "might be a little late," however. Attendance is down nearly 6 percent from 2019. And it's not clear the young fans will come back. "It's probably too late to lure back those who've already found better ways to spend their free time."

Ukraine's military, after months of slowly losing ground to Russian invaders in the eastern Donbas region, went on the offensive in late August, launching a slow counteroffensive to try and recapture the southern Kherson province. A week after starting its attack in the south, Ukrainian forces surprised Russia by striking in the northeastern Kharkiv province and even making limited advances in eastern Luhansk province, Russia's main prize from its summer campaign.

"The dual offensives in eastern and southern Ukraine" are just "the latest sign that Ukraine's defenders are seizing the military initiative" and "increasingly forcing Russia to react" to their military strategies, The Wall Street Journal reports. Has Ukraine actually tipped the scales from defeat — or at least deadlock — to victory in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war?

Ukraine is definitely winning

"The fate of Kherson remains to be determined," but "the larger trend is not in dispute: Ukraine is winning its war of independence," Max Boot argues at The Washington Post. "The major issue now is how much of its territory it can claw back. The existence of a democratic, pro-Western Ukrainian state is no longer in doubt. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's war plans have failed miserably."

Ukraine's "dual offensives" in Kherson and Kharkiv "show how the country's military is increasingly forcing Russia to react to its moves," the Journal reports. "Ukraine's forces are growing gradually stronger as the country receives advanced weapons from the U.S. and other Western countries, while Russia is struggling to deploy extra well-trained manpower after suffering heavy losses since it launched its full-scale invasion in February."

Putin failed to capture Kyiv, then watched his Plan B to capture the Donbas run out of steam and manpower, and now Ukraine's "slow-motion offensive" is eating into Russia's small gains, Boot writes. "More than six months into Putin's 'war of choice,' Russia's probable defeat is coming into focus. What remains to be determined is the magnitude and impact of that defeat."

Don't underestimate Russia's might

Russia still has a big advantage in potential troop strength and the quantity of artillery and shells, and Ukraine is taking heavy losses. Soldiers recovering in hospitals in southern Ukraine recounted to The Washington Post "the lopsided disadvantages their units faced in the early days of a new offensive to expel Russian forces from the strategic city of Kherson."

A group of nine wounded soldiers told the Post how Russian drones flying out of hearing range informed Russia's entrenched forces where to fire on Ukraine's volunteer brigades, Russian tanks would appear from cement fortifications to blast infantry then disappear under cement fortifications, Russian artillery would fire endless rounds using automatic targeting radar while Ukraine had to conserve shells, and Russian hacking tools rendered Ukraine's drones useless.

"They used everything on us," a 33-year-old Ukrainian soldier named Denys told the Post. "Who can survive an attack for five hours like that?"

Russia has "lost nothing and are not going to lose anything" in the Ukraine "special operation," Putin said in a speech Wednesday.

The fate of Ukraine is still up in the air

There is "no certain final outcome in view" in Ukraine's battle against Russia's invaders, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander of Ukraine's armed forces, and Lt. Gen. Mykhailo Zabrodskyi wrote in a strategy paper published Wednesday.

"The Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the best-case scenario, are able to employ outdated launchers and strike no farther than the depth of the enemy's operational rear," and only when Ukraine gets longer-range weapons "can we get to a turning point in the ongoing war," Zaluzhnyi and Zabrodskyi write. "If Ukraine succeeds in receiving the appropriate weapons, operational and strategic prospects for 2023 will look totally different. The very threat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces employing means of destruction of the appropriate range will force Russia to reconsider the nature, course, and outcome of the ongoing confrontation."

"There is no room for complacency," Boot agrees in the Post. "Ukraine can prevail only if it continues to receive substantial Western aid, and it needs even more assistance (fighter aircraft, long-range rockets, and tanks) to complete the liberation of its soil." But Russia is already feeling the cost of Western sanctions, and if Ukraine can retake Kherson or strike another blow against Russian occupiers, he predicts, "it could shake Putin's criminal regime to its foundations."

President Biden is going on the offensive against former President Donald Trump and his MAGA base ahead of the fall midterms, trying to help Democrats hold onto their narrow majorities in the House and Senate. "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," Biden said last week in a primetime speech slamming election deniers. On Labor Day, he doubled down on the attacks, saying in campaign rallies in Midwest swing states that "Trumpies" and "MAGA Republicans" were "coming for your Social Security" and "destroying democracy." Biden stressed that he wasn't referring to all Republicans, just those who embrace the "extreme ideology" of Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement.

Trump responded with broadsides of his own. He wrote on his Truth Social platform that the August FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, part of an investigation into his handling of classified documents, was a "sneak attack on democracy (our Republic!)." Over the weekend, Trump appeared at his first rally since the search, and called Biden's speech "the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president, vilifying 75 million citizens." Trump said Biden had essentially told Trump supporters they're "all enemies of the state. He's an enemy of the state, if you want to know the truth." Is this heated rhetoric just part of the fight for control of Congress, or is the future of the nation, and democracy, really at risk?

America really is in peril

"Biden was right: This is an emergency," says Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. Trump has condoned political violence, saying in a recent interview that, if elected again in 2024, "he will 'look very, very favorably' at pardons for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrectionists." And his allies at the Republican National Committee have shown they feel the same way by trying "to whitewash that bloody attack on the citadel of our democracy as 'legitimate political discourse.'" Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has warned there will be "riots in the streets" if Trump is charged with a crime for "hoarding top secret documents" at Mar-a-Lago. Trump-drunk state legislatures are imposing abortion bans and making it harder for Democrats to vote. If "the MAGA cult prevails," Trump allies in state legislatures and Congress could "disregard the will of their voters" and install "Trump or some puffed-up Trump wannabe to the White House," even if they clearly lose the election. "It was Biden's duty to sound the alarm. We had all better pay attention."

Biden is pushing for one-party rule. Be afraid.

Biden came into office promising to heal the nation, says Matthew Boose at American Greatness, but his "Stalinistic rant" made it clear he really just wants to force "'MAGA Republicans' who comprise a third or more of the electorate" off the political stage, like a "surgeon excising a tumor." Biden is labeling anyone "who might dare to put up any kind of meaningful resistance to himself and his political party" as a traitor. And leftists are lapping up Biden's "authoritarian" offensive, because they're fine with living in a "one-party state," as long as it's their party, and their "Dear Leader," who are in charge. Like any tyrant, Biden is an expert "scapegoater," blaming the unvaccinated for COVID, gas-station owners for high pump prices, and MAGA Republicans for, well, everything. Biden and his allies "believe that anything is justified if it keeps Trump and the 'MAGA Republicans' out of power. It's scary to think what people this self-righteous might do if they are not chastened in November, supposing they can be chastened."

Democrats don't really believe democracy is at risk

Many Americans "may believe that American democracy is threatened as at no other point since the Civil War," says Ross Douthat in The New York Times. But Biden isn't one of them. He and his fellow Democrats "are running a political operation in which the threat to democracy is leverage, used to keep swing voters onside without having to make difficult concessions to the center or the right." If Biden really thought the republic was in peril, he would have offered the "conciliation and cultural truce that a real crisis would require," without easing up on Trump. He could have conceded that "his own party has played some role in undermining faith in American elections, that the Republicans challenging the 2020 result were making a more dangerous use of tactics deployed by Democrats in 2004 and 2016." Or he could have mentioned, when he was condemning political violence, the May and June George Floyd 2020 riots, or the threats against pro-life pregnancy centers and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Instead, he and his party are trying to "boost Trump within the GOP" because they've calculated that making Trump the issue will help them win in November.

MAGA Republicans are the ones who've gone too far

"It is sweet to think, as some do, that if [Biden] tacked right or talked up his Catholicism more, deep-Red America would meet him halfway in a 'cultural truce,'" says Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times. Such fantasies might appeal to swing voters who think Biden has governed too far to the left, but "the militant right" has zero interest in working with Biden, or anyone in his party. "His legitimacy was questioned before he took a single executive decision. And the president who felt the first modern blast of rightwing rage, Bill Clinton, was a budget-balancing southerner and crime hawk." That's why it's wrong to compare Democrats' excesses with those of Trump and the MAGA crowd. "The Democrats are a party with some wild activists and cockamamie ideas," but they are not the "one whose leaders are at odds with the rules of the political game." The United States has to come to terms with the fact "that a third or more of the electorate is simply unreachable. If so, isn't there value in some presidential frankness about the scale of this problem?"

Good news, Amazon: You shall earn passing marks from critics with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

This may be the most crucial week in the history of Amazon Prime Video, as the streamer's highly anticipated series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is about to debut. Set thousands of years before Frodo trekked to Mount Doom, the series is based primarily on J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings appendices, mixing familiar characters with new ones invented for TV. It's a massive bet for Amazon, which bought the rights from the Tolkien estate for $250 million — and the first season cost around $465 million.

So will that bet pay off? Reviews were only based on the first two episodes, so it may be too soon to say for sure. But thus far, critics are mostly liking what they're seeing.

So it begins

Any doubts that The Rings of Power's massive budget would be used wisely are put to rest in its debut episode, which dazzles viewers with breathtaking visuals almost immediately.

"All of that Amazon money is very much up there on the screen," writes Rolling Stone's Alan Sepinwall, who praised the show for offering "one stunning image after another." Indeed, it boasts visual effects "sharper than most movies," BBC's Stephen Kelly says, and Vulture's Kathryn VanArendonk writes the show feels "nearly as huge as its price tag."

The jaw-dropping visuals begin with a gorgeous look at Valinor, the Undying Lands where the Elves reside, and continue all the way through an impressively tense horror sequence in the second episode shot like something out of an Insidious movie.

That being said, some critics noted they were gobsmacked over how incredible the show looked when watching the episodes in a movie theater, but it didn't have quite the same impact at home. "Rewatching the episodes on a smaller screen," wrote The Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Fienberg, "my mind absolutely began wandering almost every time anybody conversed for more than a minute at a time."

The time given to us

The Rings of Power's first episode largely revolves around Galadriel, the Elf played by Cate Blanchett in the Lord of the Rings movies, and centering around her was a wise move that helps establish clear, relatable stakes. Morfydd Clark delivers a strong performance as Galadriel, and Variety's Caroline Framke praised her "arresting gravitas." After the end of the First Age of Middle-earth, the Dark Lord Morgoth has been defeated following a long war with the Elves. But Galadriel suspects his servant, Sauron, is still out there somewhere, even though everyone around her insists the war is over and he won't return. Yeah, about that...

This is all laid out in a Fellowship of the Ring-style opening narration that kicks things off. Some critics felt this first episode goes a bit too heavy on that kind of exposition to get viewers up to speed, though episode two slows down with more focus on the characters. "After the first episode I had some concern that The Rings of Power would become mired in its explanations of the world instead of showing it to us, immersing us in it," IGN's Alex Stedman said. "The second episode, however, left those fears in the dust."

Other critics had more of an issue with the show's pacing, with CNN's Brian Lowry saying the "buildup toward the meat of the story grinds slowly" and it lacks "narrative urgency," while The Atlantic's David Sims said the first two episodes make you feel like you've "barely begun an appetizer course." Sauron is presented as just a vague threat whose location is unknown early on, and it will be a while before the Rings of Power themselves are forged.

The world hasn't changed

Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, isn't involved with The Rings of Power, but the early episodes still do a surprisingly good job evoking his movies — for better or worse.

On the one hand, Vanity Fair's Esther Zuckerman writes that the show "really feels like Lord of the Rings," successfully capturing the "mystical poetry of this specific universe." The dialogue, which The Wrap's Joelle Monique notes feels "deliciously poetic and descriptive, yet accessible when performed with such conviction," is also appropriately Tolkienesque.

Plus, anyone concerned that Howard Shore didn't return to compose the score (beyond the opening theme) will be happy to hear Bear McCreary's music received widespread praise. Don't be surprised if you find yourself humming a few of the motifs as the credits roll.

At the same time, Jackson's trilogy is such a high bar to meet that IndieWire's Ben Travers argues moments when the show echoes them only "undermine the series' own often-well-realized ambitions," and RogerEbert.com's Clint Worthington says it sometimes feels like a "store-brand version" of the Jackson movies. Since we've "seen it all before, and frankly, seen it done better, too," Polygon's Leon Miller wondered why the show isn't "diving into some other, unexplored corner of Middle-earth lore instead," while The Ringer's Alison Herman said the series is "reluctant to trust the audience with anything that strays too far from what they already know."

Other critics disagreed, with Gizmodo's James Whitbrook arguing that "for all those familiarities these stories don't feel like rehashes," and Consequence's Liz Shannon Miller said it "manages to put a fresh coat of paint on what came before."

There and back again

The Rings of Power may be lacking in Hobbits, but it has the next best thing: the Hobbits' ancestors, the Harfoots. The first two episodes introduce a young Harfoot, Nori (Markella Kavenagh), our Frodo of this story. She yearns for adventure and gets her wish when a mysterious man falls from the sky.

Other other central characters include Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), an Elf tasked with watching over humans because their ancestors allied with Morgoth, and Elrond (Robert Aramayo), the half-Elf played by Hugo Weaving in the Peter Jackson trilogy. Many of The Rings of Power's characters, including Nori and Arondir, were created for the show and aren't in the books or movies. Still, The Verge's Charles Pulliam-Moore notes "you can see shades of the personality types and relationship dynamics that made fans fall in love with this world."

The Rings of Power, of course, is coming less than two weeks after the premiere of House of the Dragon. But the large scope is one advantage it may have over the Game of Thrones prequel, which so far is relatively contained and centers around a single central storyline. The Rings of Power, on the other hand, is constantly jumping around the map like Game of Thrones was known to do. And in terms of visuals, The Guardian's Rebecca Nicholson goes as far as to say The Rings of Power "makes House of the Dragon look as if it has been cobbled together on Minecraft."

It remains to be seen which series will be the bigger hit. But based on these dazzling early episodes, perhaps there really is room for two epic fantasy shows to rule them all.

The Rings of Power's first two episodes will hit Prime Video in the U.S. on Sept. 1 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

President Biden last week unveiled his long-awaited plan to forgive some student loan debt. Biden said his administration would cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loans for borrowers making under $125,000 a year, and another $10,000 for Pell Grant recipients under the same income threshold. Biden also extended the coronavirus-sparked repayment moratorium, which was set to expire at the end of August, until Dec. 31. Biden also said the administration would cut from 10 percent to 5 percent the amount of discretionary income that borrowers enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan must pay each month. Biden said he knew people on all sides of the issue would be unhappy with some parts of his plan.

Some progressives have called for bigger cuts in outstanding student loans, arguing that generational wealth disparities saddle Black and Hispanic families with heavier student debt, and the inequities are compounded after graduation because minority graduates typically earn less, making them more likely to default and preventing them from improving their financial situation by starting businesses or buying homes. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), echoing complaints from other conservatives, called Biden's plan a "wildly unfair redistribution" of wealth, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said it amounted to a gift to any "slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things." Is Biden's student-debt policy fair?

It's unfair, and unwise

Biden's student loan forgiveness plan is a mistake, and, with a "mind-boggling" price tag of $330 billion, it's an expensive one, says Althea Cole in the Idaho Gazette. As The Washington Post noted in an editorial, it's regressive, because it takes money from the broader tax base, which is full of people who didn't go to college, and hands it to people with valuable degrees. It also "allows college tuition to continue to rise," and "rewards financial decision-making that is at best naive and at worst flat-out unwise." All that's going to do is "entice a whole new generation of Americans to make the same simple and consequential mistake as borrowers before them: buying an education they cannot afford." And for what? To buy some votes in November? "Regardless of what you feel about the loan recipients who stand to benefit in ways others will not, three things are clear: What's right isn't always fair; what's fair isn't always right; and the actions taken by the President and his Department of Education are neither fair nor right."

Every allotment of federal resources is unfair to someone

"I get that it feels unfair," says Megan Schrader in The Denver Post. It's understandable that many people feel slighted because they sacrificed to pay off their student loans on their own. But Schrader and her husband came from "upper-middle-class families that were able to put us through college debt-free," and when they left college were "able to buy a house in the depressed market of 2010 and get the $10,000 First Time Homebuyers government subsidy." Was that fair to people who didn't qualify for the same government largesse? When banks that bet on bad mortgages were on the brink of collapse in 2008, "(the equivalent of betting big on a college degree that went south), the federal government bailed them out." Wouldn't you rather be "bailing out 18-year-olds for their bad choices" than Wall Street bankers? With their loans forgiven, these borrowers will be able to pump their savings back into the economy, and maybe cover a down payment on a house. "Is it unfair? Yes. Is it good public policy? Absolutely."

This rewards elitist institutions for producing grads without useful skills

Higher education is "supposed to be an investment" in the student's future, says Allysia Finley in The Wall Street Journal. "The real problem is that federal subsidies have distorted this investment and resulted in a misallocation of human capital. America's bureaucratic-educational complex has produced too many young people with too much debt and too few skills that employers want, and not enough workers with skills that they do." We've all heard how college graduates earn more than people with just high school degrees, but that's not always true. A Columbia anthropology major "($85,967 annual sticker price)" would make more working for Deere & Co than doing something related to their degree. Biden's bailout will only benefit "woke" universities and help them lure students who might otherwise get marketable "skills training" in coding boot camps and trade schools that often aren't "eligible for federal aid." This isn't "good for the U.S. economy or democracy."

There's nothing elitist about forgiving student loans

Ted Cruz's claim that Biden is taking money from working-class people to benefit the unworthy "betrays an ignorance of working-class life in this country," says Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. "To work as a truck driver or a medical technician or a home inspector or any number of other similar blue-collar jobs, you need training, licenses, certifications. People go to school to meet these requirements," often relying on the same federal student loans to pay tuition that college students use. And many blue-collar workers also have some college, piling up debt without graduating. Add to that the fact that most people standing to benefit from Biden's plan make less than $75,000, a disproportionate number of them young and Black, and it's clear this debt forgiveness would help people who have suffered most "in the history of capitalist inequality in the United States."

President Biden on Wednesday announced the details of a highly-anticipated plan to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers making under $125,000 a year. For Pell Grant recipients under that same earnings threshold, the benefit is even greater — $20,000 in debt, wiped away. While some progressive Democrats are cheering the long-requested forgiveness, other party members, as well as Republicans, are criticizing the policy as reckless, expensive, and a transparent last-ditch attempt at buying votes before the midterms. Here's a look at how the latest columns and editorials are parsing the news:

It's good!

For many opinion columnists, the administration's decision is one deserving of celebration and praise, even if the relief is not as robust as originally desired.

"Given how likely it seemed that we'd see no action at all before the midterms, or during the Biden administration at all, I'm pleased with this course of action," wrote MSNBC's Hayes Brown. "It lays the groundwork for even more substantial relief in the future" and will unburden — even if slightly — "some of the people who've been ground down the furthest under their student loans. … I'm going to mark this down as a solid B+ on the White House's report card."

Plus, added Gregory Sarafan for The Philadelphia Inquirer, this decision is more so "about the small borrowers," whose "lives are about to be immeasurably changed, for the better." It might not seem fair, or enough, but "forgiveness is what we have for now, and we should be thankful for it, while also recognizing that it is just a starting place for future reforms." That there was suffering in the past is no reason the present must meet the same fate.

The Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman agreed: "What the administration is doing now is at least a start" in solving the college affordability crisis. Even if it's not the $50,000 or more per borrower that other Democrats had asked for, the new plan "will definitely improve the lives of millions."

And that's all also without mentioning that the relief is targeted to those "who really need it," without serving a "big giveaway to those who ran up big debts on expensive and valuable degrees," economist Dean Baker argued for Newsweek. Again, "the Biden administration's debt forgiveness plan is not perfect, but it is a big step that will help tens of millions of people. That's pretty good for government work."

It's very bad

Well, the Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board, for one, was not impressed: "The best that can be said for President Biden's debt-relief plan is that it could have been worse." In one fell swoop, "Biden has undermined any commitment to fiscal discipline, reinforced his party's reputation for catering to elites, created a significant moral hazard, and likely made higher education less affordable for a generation," the board mused. And it seems obvious, given likely legal challenges to the policy, that the administration's goals here are "more political than practical."

The Washington Post Editorial Board saw things similarly: "Widely canceling student loan debt is regressive," the board said. It's "expensive," and "likely inflationary," and "takes money from the broader tax base … to subsidize the education debt of people with valuable degrees."

Worse yet, added the board at The National Review, Biden has, in authorizing the forgiveness, "allowed himself to be bullied into violating the Constitution" on debt relief proponents' behalf. He has "taken what was supposed to be a loan and turned it into a gift," while "yet again" abusing "emergency powers to pursue a reckless and senseless policy." "The U.S. president is not an omnipotent genie placed behind the Resolute desk to grant partisan wishes by the stroke of his pen," the board concluded.

It's suspiciously convenient ...

For some, like Brad Polumbo for Newsweek, the timing of Biden's new forgiveness policy smells an awful lot like a "political bribe for young voters" ahead of the November election. "With the midterms months away and Democrats cratering in the polls, Biden seems to be making the cynical political calculation that his band-aid 'solution' can buy his party a few votes," Polumbo argued. "That's shrewd politicking. But it's no way to run a country."

It's not enough

"With the simple stroke of a pen, President Biden has the unique opportunity to unlock financial freedom for countless Black Americans and low-income communities," the NAACP's Derrick Johnson and Wisdom Cole mused for CNN, just hours before the president's proclamation. But forgiving just $10,000 per borrower will "do little to help."

Student loans disproportionately affect Black Americans, who lack the same intergenerational wealth as white Americans thanks to "discriminatory practices in education, homeownership and employment," Johnson and Cole argued. And forgiveness at a minimum of $50,000 per borrower "is what is necessary to make a meaningful difference."

Further, even if you are in support of the newly-announced $10,000 in forgiveness, the Biden plan "does nothing to address the root causes" of the debt crisis, mused Washington Examiner contributor Kimberly Ross. It's a "short-sighted" bailout that will bring "long-term individual and collective pain" without so much as addressing "predatory university administrations or the exorbitant amounts they charge."

"The focus is entirely off of the parties that should be most on the hook for it," Ross continued. "So, thanks to Biden and his team, the cycle will only continue. No reforms made, no lessons learned, just righteous outrage at the weight that's been repositioned."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is done being the nation's punching bag.

After a brutal and chaotic two years marred by its response to the coronavirus pandemic, the CDC will soon undergo a sweeping and dramatic revamp, Director Rochelle Walensky announced last week. "For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations," Walensky said in a statement. Moving forward, she added, agency culture will emphasize "accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness." At this point, however, with its "pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes" out on the table, can the CDC even be saved? If so … how? And is the admission of incompetence enough to set into motion the overhaul the agency needs? The media weighs in below:

The CDC must go back to its roots

Walensky's apology is a "classic act of contrition theater," Carl Schramm, Syracuse University Professor and member of the COVID Commission Planning Group, wrote for The Hill. "Acknowledging failure" is not enough, and it's not like the issues seen with COVID-19 were "new problems" — just look at how the CDC responded to the HIV-AIDS epidemic.

The agency's real issue is that it "long ago forgot its principal job is preventing epidemics of communicable disease;" instead, its focus is now on things like diabetes, heart disease, and drug abuse — all horrible social problems, yes, but ones "for which the tools of managing real epidemics won't work." In order to regain public trust and rehab the agency's image, "Walensky should ask Congress to cut the CDC down to size, restoring its focus on preventing communicable diseases," Schramm argued. But "without such a drastic move, no apology, however sincere, will save the agency."

Yes, and …

Walensky is correct in recognizing that the CDC must become "more action-oriented, clear in messaging and better grounded in data and laboratory science," mused The Washington Post Editorial Board. But there are also "larger, urgent questions about the nation's public health system" that the CDC cannot ignore if it hopes to "fight the next pandemic more successfully than it has fought COVID."

For one thing, it must find a way to "deliver crystal-clear, action-oriented communications to the American people; sharing vital data "should not be rocket science," the board argued. And furthermore, it should ensure that experts in "retooled public health agencies" — like the CDC — are the ones fighting health crises, not "politicians in the White House." The nation needs genomic surveillance, it needs proactive pandemic funding, and it needs to "finally quit the cycle of public health panic and neglect," the board proclaimed. All in all, it "needs the CDC to be its very best."

The Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board argued similarly to the Post back in May, before Walensky announced a reset, but after she shared news of an external review of the agency. Following a slew of recommendations for potential areas of improvement — such as expedited data collection and reporting, streamlined public communication, and an extensive review of laboratory operations — the Bloomberg board arrived at what seemed to be the central point of its piece: To make good on its job and save its reputation, the CDC must first "rebuild the trust that it had long taken for granted."

Fix the rest of the system, too

The policies and procedures of the CDC certainly deserve a closer look. But even so, the agency represents "just one element in America's public health system — to truly understand the shortcomings of the nation's COVID response, an analysis "must also include other key players at the federal, state, and local level—both public and private," former senior CDC official Ronald O. Valdiserri opined for Health Affairs. Fixing the CDC without a "concomitant investment in state, local, and tribal departments of health, and their attendant workforces, will fail to deliver an improved response to the nation's next pandemic or other desired outcomes in population health."

If a stronger and better pandemic response is what we're after, "the solution is bulking-up the nation's public health system — not whittling away the mission of the CDC," Valdiserri said.

This is an 'inflection point'

An overhaul is exactly what the CDC needs, and the agency gets some credit for admitting that, former White House COVID response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birz recently told CBS. "A lot of directors would have just tried to tweak, and tweaking the agency at this point was not going to be successful," Birx told Face the Nation on Sunday. "This is an inflection point. I think [Walensky] recognizes that, and I think … we all should be proud as Americans, that the director was willing to do this hard work to find the issues, and now they have to be fixed."

Reform is possible, Birx later continued, but those within the CDC must change "how they collect data, how they present data, and how they communicate to the American people."

Dr. Anthony Fauci is retiring from government service. The nation's top infectious disease expert — and the face of the U.S. government's response to the COVID pandemic — said Monday he will leave his role at the end of the year. "I want to use what I have learned as NIAID Director to continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats," he said in a public statement.

Fauci leaves government with more than 50 years in public service, and having served seven presidents, but — for better and for worse — has drawn the most attention of his career during the coronavirus pandemic. For some, he's been a hero. "Without Fauci's steady leadership, the COVID-19 pandemic would have created more havoc on our country than we could possibly imagine," the Kansas City Star said in an editorial. For others, mostly on the right, his role in urging lockdowns and vaccines has made him a villain. "His overgrown ego … led him to promote the most destructive federal and state policies in recent US memory," the New York Post editorialized. What will be Anthony Fauci's ultimate legacy?

Fauci's advice was always on the mark

COVID brought out the "armchair Twitter critics and politicians who considered themselves more knowledgeable and experienced on matters of infectious diseases" than the nation's leading expert on the topic, Paul Brandus writes at MarketWatch. In truth, Fauci's advice to America during the pandemic was pretty simple: "Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. Social distancing." But his many right-wing critics chose to view that advice "through the lens not of medicine but political loyalty." And that criticism distorts Fauci's legacy as "a towering figure in the U.S. medical community, deeply respected both here and abroad" for his work not just on COVID, but HIV and numerous other infectious diseases. "All Americans owe this man a debt of gratitude for his unwavering commitment to public health."

A flawed COVID response is his legacy

Fauci became the "main symbol of the rule by experts" who "brooked no scientific debate on COVID," The Wall Street Journal says in an editorial. Among his sins: A "refusal even to consider" the possibility the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab; smearing "the few brave scientists who opposed blanket lockdowns" during the pandemic's first year; and a mistaken over-reliance on mask and vaccine mandates. That's not entirely his fault: "Dr. Fauci's influence was all the greater because he had an echo chamber in the press corps and among public elites who disdained and ostracized dissenters." It's not Fauci's fault that the pandemic was so unpredictable, but the "certainty of his policy prescriptions" was wrongheaded. In the end, "Dr. Fauci was as much a politician as a scientist."

It's time for Fauci to disappear

Fauci's pandemic-era public relations blitz "harmed the credibility of and respect for the public-health establishment," Timothy Carney writes for the Washington Examiner. That's why the doctor "should gracefully disappear from the public spotlight" in retirement. (And he definitely shouldn't "cash out" by taking a job in private industry.) If he ends up being a talking head on cable news programs, it "will be even more political, more self-aggrandizing, and thus, more corrosive of the public's trust in public health policy." After all, Fauci's own credibility has been harmed by questions about whether the American government was involved in China's coronavirus research, and he has equated criticisms of his actions as attacks on science. Best to simply silence himself: "Fauci should do the country a favor by quietly disappearing and enjoying his retirement."

Don't forget his role in the fight against AIDS

"In the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Fauci never gave up," Dr. Gregg Gonsalves, an AIDS activist and an associate professor of epidemiology at Yale, writes for The New York Times. Fauci was sometimes a controversial figure during the early days of that earlier epidemic — he "took heat from AIDS activists" but emerged with "the impression that science could handle these challenges" through the hard work of research and experimentation. "We fought, and we argued, for sure, but we moved ahead together, never satisfied with the status quo." The development of protease inhibitors that allow people with HIV to live longer, healthier lives was a sign "that at least there could be progress" in the fight against infectious diseases. The COVID era has tested that assumption. American leaders have surrendered to "resignation in the face of the suffering" in the still-ongoing pandemic. That doesn't erase Fauci's legacy, however: "We should all have his resolve and commitment."

An explosion Saturday night killed Darya Dugina as she was driving back to Moscow from a festival she attended with her father, influential Russian nationalist political theorist Alexander Dugin. Dugina was reportedly driving her father's SUV, and witnesses said Dugin was supposed to drive back with her until he decided to switch vehicles at the last minute.

Dugina, 29, was a pro-Kremlin political commentator, vocal supporter of Russia's Ukraine invasion, and editor of an English-language disinformation site. But her father, who started pushing for Russian expansion into Ukraine in the late 1990s, is thought to be so fundamental to Russian President Vladimir Putin's worldview he is sometimes called "Putin's brain." There is widespread speculation that Dugin, not his daughter, was the target of the brazen attack.

Russia is investigating the explosion as a "murder for hire." But it isn't clear yet who planted the car bomb or why — and that could matter, if the killing becomes a flash point in Russia's war on Ukraine. Here are some theories on who killed Darya Dugina.

Blame Ukraine

Some Kremlin loyalists immediately pinned the blame on Ukraine, which has recently started striking into Russian-controlled territory, and maybe even Russia itself. Denis Pushilin, head of the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic, quickly blamed the explosion on "terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to kill Alexander Dugin."

Russian political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter, said the attack was "an act of intimidation." For Kremlin loyalists and supporters of its Ukraine invasion, "this is a symbolic act, demonstrating that hostilities have been confidently transferred to the territory of Russia, which means that this is no longer an abstract war that you watch on TV," he said. "This is already happening in Russia. Not only Crimea is being bombed, but terrorist attacks are already being carried out in the Moscow region."

This smells like an inside job

Ukraine strongly denies involvement in the attack, and while it's possible Ukraine or its allies pulled off a "sophisticated bombing deep inside Russia to eliminate a purveyor of Kremlin disinformation motivating Russians to support invasion of Ukraine," that doesn't really make much sense, U.S. national security researcher Clint Watts argues. "Ukraine has been very good about selecting targets of military significance" inside Russia and occupied Crimea, and not only is Dugin not such a target, killing him is actually more likely to "galvanize support for war" among the "most zealous" Russians.

The idea that Ukraine is behind Dugina's murder is "inane and inconceivable," and whoever is behind the attack, "the origin is obviously internal, not external," French national security expert Nicolas Tenzer wrote on Twitter. Was this an act of "real opposition to Putin that targeted one of his influencers," or "provocation to justify new actions even more (if possible) deadly against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people?" Either way, he added, it's hard to imagine some element of the Russian security services weren't involved.

It does seem more likely "Putin tried to kill off Dugin," maybe because the Ukraine war is going poorly for Moscow and Dugin was one of the pro-war "trolls and propagandists" who were starting to point that out, Watts agrees. Besides, "who has history of killing off dissenters in Moscow with targeted assassinations"? Not Kyiv.

Dugin and other pro-Kremlin war bloggers and nationalists have been publicly pushing Putin to throw even more weapons and troops at Ukraine, and "the calls for vengeance on Sunday underscored how the most fervent supporters of the invasion of Ukraine could become inconvenient allies for the Kremlin, especially if the Russian leader chooses not to escalate the war," The New York Times reports.

"For the Kremlin, any ideologized people can be both useful and dangerous," Marat Guelman, a Russian political expert and early Putin adviser, tells the Times. "Right now, they are useful. But soon, they will become dangerous."

Whoever did it, the message is clear: fear

If U.S. intelligence agencies have a culprit in mind, they haven't shared it with Congress, House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told CNN on Sunday. "I couldn't say who was behind it," he said. "There are so many factions and internecine warfare within Russian society, within the Russian government, anything is possible." At the same time, he added, "I certainly would never want to see anything like an attack on civilians by Ukraine and hope that their representations are correct."

Whoever set those explosives, they appear to want to weaponize fear for their own reasons. "While assassination attempts against Kremlin critics have been common," high-profile Putin supporters are rarely targeted, the Times notes. And this "attack was particularly brazen because the blast occurred close to the glittering suburb of Rublyovka, home to the sprawling villas of Russia's ruling class."

"Rublyovka is shivering," pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov wrote on Telegram. "This act of terror is a message for them: Be afraid, you could be next." The explosion took place in "the very underbelly of Putinism," Leonid Volkov, a close ally of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, agreed on social media. "The night explosion scares very, very many real ideologues of war."

If the goal was to scare critical Russian nationalists back into line on the Ukraine war, it may backfire in the long run, BBC Moscow's Will Vernon writes. "Kremlin propaganda consistently stresses how Vladimir Putin has brought security and stability in Russia following the turbulent 1990s, when car bombs and assassinations were commonplace. This car bomb in the Russian capital undermines that narrative."

A recent New York Times headline proclaimed that "New York's Hottest Club is the Catholic Church." Written by Julia Yost, a senior editor at the conservative Christian intellectual journal First Things, the essay pointed readers' attention to the Manhattan neighborhood known as "Dimes Square," where a 2,000-year-old religion is supposedly the hip new trend. "Reactionary motifs are chic: Trump hats and 'tradwife' frocks, monarchist and anti-feminist sentiments. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this contrarian aesthetic is its embrace of Catholicism," Yost wrote.

Key figures include Honor Levy, who hosts the podcast "Wet Brain" and whose fiction has been published in The New Yorker. Levy "recently converted to Catholicism and lets you know when she has unconfessed mortal sins on her conscience," Yost writes. Another is Dasha Nekrasova, "a Catholic revert and actress with a recurring role on HBO's Succession, who co-hosts "the scene's most popular podcast, Red Scare."

But are these hip urbanite converts sincere? Are they just role-playing? Or are they so many layers deep in irony that they themselves aren't sure?

Are the converts just posers?

Yost concedes that this trendy Catholicism "may be partly a pose" but insists that Dimes Square "is not the first social scene whose Catholicism was dismissed as insincere." If you think about it, they're not so different from Oscar Wilde and his fellow fin de siècle Decadents, many of whom crossed the Tiber.

In the realm of fashion, Catholic iconography and "trad" styles function as "reservoirs of the 'unproblematic exotic,'" Biz Sherbert wrote at i-D. Appropriating Indigenous spirituality is out, but the Church of Rome won't mind if you borrow its look. Sherbert suggests that the trend has some of its roots in the "deviant Catholic schoolgirl" style of the 1990s, but that this "reads more like a salvaging of innocence than an iconoclastic subversion of it." Of course, there's still plenty of subversion going on. Take, for example, the fashion label Praying — famous for its white string bikini that labels the goods "Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit."

Niall Gooch, who converted to Catholicism in 2006, joked in UnHerd that he had never been "at the cutting edge of fashion" before. "We should probably not put too much stock in this supposed mini-revival," Gooch continued, noting that "full-blooded Catholicism is a demanding way of life, not merely a means of sticking up two fingers at a suffocating liberal consensus." Even so, Gooch remained cautiously optimistic. Christianity, he argued, offers a potent antidote for those "alienated from a society which manages to be at once both insistently libertine, and cruelly unforgiving."

The rise of the New Right

Yost's essay drew heavily on James Pogue's April profile of the "New Right." His far-ranging piece touched on an interconnected web of figures including Senate candidates Blake Masters and J.D. Vance, political theorist Curtis Yarvin, billionaire Peter Thiel, Trumpian film director Amanda Milius, and Compact founder Sohrab Ahmari.

Pogue observed that "New Right-ish" politics have become "quietly edgy and cool in new tech outposts like Miami and Austin, and in downtown Manhattan." In these hip enclaves, "signifiers like a demure cross necklace have become markers of a transgressive chic" and — as one of Pogue's friends told him — "casual sex is out." The New Right isn't exclusively Catholic, but Vance and Ahmari are both converts and Pogue writes that "[p]eople are converting to Catholicism" in the Manhattan New Right scene.

Just days after Pogue's profile dropped, New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg published a piece headlined "The Awful Advent of Reactionary Chic." Goldberg doesn't address the connection between the New Right and Catholicism, but she does suggest that the entire fad will come to a screeching halt next time the right takes power nationally. "Eventually, an avant-garde flirtation with reaction will collide with the brutish, philistine reality of conservative rule," she wrote.

Goldberg also argued that the reactionary chic scene "doesn't have a coherent worldview" and is united by nothing more than anti-wokeness and "a desire to épater le bourgeois."

There's no scene to be seen

In response to Yost's claim that Dimes Square's turn toward Rome signals "a culture-wide shift," The Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz tweeted, "No, it literally doesn't and, in fact, it's the exact opposite. This entire 'scene' is composed of maybe 2,000 people with *zero broader cultural relevance* and the media needs to stop falling for it."

Molly Olmstead argued in Slate that the Times was irresponsible to publish a piece treating reactionary Catholicism as a fun, innocuous trend. Traditionalist Catholicism, Olmstead writes, "attracts those who like to post winkingly about the Crusades" and who campaign "for the stripping of rights from women and queer people." At The Atlantic, Daniel Penneton wrote that, for right-wing Catholics, "rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture." Both Olmstead and Penneton noted that these Catholic reactionaries are far outside the mainstream of the post-Vatican II American church.

Atheist Hemant Mehta of the explicitly non-religious publication OnlySky went further, attacking not just traditionalists in the church but the Catholic Church itself as an institution "where child sexual abuse has been a rampant problem for decades ... where abortion rights and the existence of transgender people are both denied, where same-sex marriage is considered immoral, where financial scandals never cease," and so on. "[T]raditional 'values,'" he wrote, "are out of date for good reason."

But what do actual Catholics have to say?

Some Catholics were also skeptical of the trend. Yost herself suggested that plenty of these fashionable Dimes Square Catholics are likely to fall away as the culture war heats up following the fall of Roe v. Wade (1973). "Real-world events will confront young urban Catholics with the full implications of Catholic doctrine, making it hard to view the rosary as a fashion statement. Over time, these developments will sort the converts from the LARPers," she wrote, using the acronym for "live-action role-playing."

Others were offended at the idea that their religion was being treated as a costume. Several commenters on Praying's Instagram page suggested that the label wouldn't get away with appropriating (and sexualizing) the symbolism of any other religion in this way — the classic Piss Christ vs. cartoons of Muhammad debate.

And speaking of Muhammad, Sarah Hagi wrote at Gawker that if the Dimes Square crowd really wanted to be subversive, they'd embrace Islam. "As much as I respect Catholicism, you can't pretend that Lent, 40 days where you decide to not eat chocolate or whatever because it's your vice, is not just a baby version of the 30 days a year I spend starving myself during Ramadan," she wrote. "Catholicism is for the weak. Call me when you're ready for Hajj."