Indholdsfortegnelse for April 11, 2025 i The Week Magazine

You are Donald J. Trump, and you believe you can get away with anything. You have a cult following and a partisan propaganda apparatus that Republicans fear, and you are not bound by any law or the Constitution. No prosecutor, judge, or political opponent can stop you—not for long. You have a mountain of evidence for this belief. Escaping consequences is your life story. In your first run for president, you were seen bragging on a video that as a “star” you could sexually assault women at will. (More than two dozen women said you did just that.) When Russian dictator Vladimir Putin directed his intelligence services to help you win the 2016 election, two extensive investigations found, you eagerly welcomed this foreign interference and tried to cover it…

■ The governor of Idaho has signed a bill expanding the state’s indecent exposure law to include exposed female breasts and the novelty plastic scrotums known as “truck nuts.” The bill passed over the opposition of Democrats, who among other criticisms said banning the public display of breasts would “sexualize” them. “I don’t think we need a bill to do that,” said GOP state Sen. Brian Lenney, a bill sponsor. “That’s been happening since the Garden of Eden.” ■ A proposed ballot measure in California that would bar insurers from denying health-care coverage is currently named the “Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act.” Paul Eisner, the retired lawyer behind the measure, says he does not endorse the alleged tactics of Mangione, 26, who is awaiting trial for the…

New York City Death penalty: Attorney General Pam Bondi directed prosecutors this week to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last year. Bondi said she reached this decision after “careful consideration” and in keeping with President Trump’s executive order instructing the Justice Department to return to using the death penalty. Mangione—who faces federal charges of murder, stalking, and a firearms offense—carried out “a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination,” Bondi said. He became a cult hero to some Americans after he shot dead Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, outside a hotel and fled. Supporters saw his actions as an attack on health insurers for denying and delaying coverage. Karen Friedman Agnifilo, one of Mangione’s lawyers, said the death…

Bob Weir has spent a lot of time contemplating his mortality, said Angie Martoccio in Rolling Stone. The guitarist and singer is one of the last surviving members of the Grateful Dead, alongside drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. Before bassist Phil Lesh died in October, the four bandmates had discussed reuniting for the Dead’s 60th anniversary this year. Now Weir isn’t so sure. “We speak a language that nobody else speaks,” said Weir, now 77. “It’s a look or a motion with one shoulder, something that tips off the other guys where you’re going. There just aren’t enough of us left to do that anymore.” Former frontman Ron “Pigpen” McKernan was the first to die, at 27 in 1973; singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia died in 1995 while…

Aziz Huq The Atlantic “We are witnessing the birth of a dual state,” said Aziz Huq. Through its radical reinterpretation of federal law and appointment of officials more loyal to MAGA than the Constitution, the Trump administration is cleaving off “a domain in which the law does not apply.” Migrants are deprived of due process and shipped to foreign prisons, while Jan. 6 rioters are given pardons and praise. Ordinary spending responsibilities become tools to punish foes, while allies are rewarded with generous government contracts. It’s worth remembering that the Nazis began with a two-track system: a “capitalist economy governed by stable laws” for most Germans, and a “domain of lawlessness and state violence” for Jews and other supposed internal enemies. Of course, a dual state need not end…

Editorial The Times of India When did we all get “extra touchy”? asked The Times of India. Stand-up comic Kunal Kamra is facing legal trouble over a set where he sang a ditty mocking an unnamed Indian politician. The song mentioned a “traitor,” which was seen as a dig at Eknath Shinde, deputy chief minister in Maharashtra state, whose party rebellion toppled the previous state government. After Kamra posted a video of his act, a mob of Shinde followers from the Hindu supremacist Shiv Sena party burst into the Mumbai club where Kamra had performed and trashed it. Police rightly arrested the rioters—but they also booked Kamra, citing him for “statements conducing to public mischief.” They’ve even launched an investigation into him for defamation. “Why are cops filing these…

Don’t google the side effects! An Australian study shows that social media can worsen the “nocebo effect,” the placebo effect’s opposite, in which people are more likely to feel adverse side effects if they are told about them. Several earlier studies had documented the nocebo phenomenon. In one, people who were warned that a drug they were taking could cause erectile dysfunction were disproportionately likely to experience it. Another found that headaches at high altitude were more prevalent in people who had been warned of them. The new study looks at how suffering that may be psychosomatic can spread easily over social media. A surge in cases of facial and body tics—including whistling, clicking, and clapping—was driven by TikTok videos, for example, and people who saw posts about Covid…

“I read Perfection in a single hypnotized sitting,” said Alice Gregory in The New Yorker. Vincent Latronico’s slim novel, which in February was long-listed for the Booker Prize, follows Anna and Tom, a young European couple who have moved in the 2010s to hip, artistic Berlin. The book offers little plot and no dialogue. Readers instead get to know this cosseted, upwardly mobile pair instead through Latronico’s impassionate and sometimes sly descriptions of the things they own and the mundane activities that fill their days. “The magic trick of Perfection” is that in describing Anna and Tom, it reveals readers to themselves—“gently, in the way a therapist might encourage a patient to arrive at an unflattering truth.” The curated life that Anna and Tom live is “not without its…

Care and Feeding by Laurie Woolever (Ecco, $29) “Laurie Woolever is great at making bad decisions,” said Ian MacAllen in the Chicago Review of Books. In her new memoir, the former assistant to both Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain offers a window into the worlds of the two doomed celebrity chefs, but also into her own messy life. The Woolever we meet is a flawed chef and a flawed wife, but “she knows how to craft a story.” After her stints beside two stars, she’s “well on her way to becoming a celebrity in her own right.” The Last Manager by John W. Miller (Avid Reader, $30) During Earl Weaver’s long run as manager of the Baltimore Orioles, “the fans got their money’s worth,” said Patrick Sauer in The…

“Isn’t it a little fun, sometimes, to be sad?” asked Aimee Cliff in Pitchfork. On the follow-up to Jubilee, Japanese Breakfast’s 2021 breakthrough album, lead singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner “luxuriates in the aesthetics of the titular emotion.” After opening by singing atop a plush bed of strings, she settles into a sepia-toned country mode for most of these 10 songs that almost theatrically play at sorrow. The record “crackles” with “electric moments of intimacy” that pull you in so close you can “see the tears drying in the stage makeup.” Gone, though, is the alt-pop bounciness that distinguished Jubilee, said Kitty Empire in The Guardian. The “mellow prettiness” of this new record “doesn’t really do Zauner’s best writing justice.” But who can complain that Zauner’s music continues to become…

“Trader Joe’s has mastered the art of offering solid products for bargain prices, and that extends to the beer aisle,” said Pete O’Connell in VinePair. Rumored to at times be sourced from top breweries, its in-house offerings aren’t all great. But the top three in our taste test are worth consideration. Stockyard Oatmeal Stout ($1.42 per bottle on average). Our No. 1 finisher “may not hold a candle to Guinness,” but it is a decent substitute. “Smooth, rich, and decadent,” it offers notes of coffee, vanilla, cedar, and malted milk balls. Boatswain Hazy IPA ($1). “It’d be hard to find a better IPA at this price point.” Ignore the “hazy” descriptor, though, because this beer is “like a slightly sweeter version of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.” Josephsbrau Hefeweizen ($1.34).…

Vermont’s country-store nightlife The Whammy Bar in tiny Maple Corner, Vt., is itself “about the size of a postage stamp,” said Jen Rose Smith in The Wall Street Journal. Tucked behind a curtained doorway inside the Maple Corner Community Store, the pub offers cocktails, dinner fare, and live music on weekends. Like the micro bars inside a growing number of Vermont country stores, it was created for locals yet affords outsiders “a chance to experience an otherwise inaccessible small-town social scene.” To stay “relevant and afloat,” country stories evolve to meet community needs. The Lake Parker Country Store in West Glover has its own pizzeria-bar. A half-century ago, the Fox Market and Bar in East Montpelier might have sponsored a baseball league. Today, it touts itself online as “Your…

■ OpenAI said it closed a $40 billion funding round, which would be the largest private tech funding round on record. The fresh financing values the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion, just behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX, at $350 billion. CNBC.com ■ A record 3,028 people made Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires list, 247 more than last year. They’re worth a record $16.1 trillion in all, more than the GDP of every country besides the U.S. and China. The average fortune now stands at $5.3 billion, up $200 million from 2024. Forbes ■ Wall Street bankers’ bonus pool rose 31.5 percent to $47.5 billion last year, equating to a roughly $244,700 payout on average. That’s about four times the median full-time U.S. worker’s salary. The Washington Post ■ Meta CEO Mark…

California’s insurer of last resort let a nearly $1 million check get lost in the mail, said Jean Eaglesham and Nicole Friedman in The Wall Street Journal. Jewlz Fahn was forced to switch to California’s state-chartered Fair Plan after State Farm “axed her fire insurance in the fall.” Then her Pacific Palisades home burned to the ground. “A $997,500 check sent in February to Fahn by regular mail, with no tracking,” never made it to her address. “She finally received a replacement check last month.” Another homeowner, Susan Spira, said a $562,500 check from Fair Plan for her home “got lost in the mail,” again with no tracking. “It’s been a disaster on top of a disaster,” Spira said. Conceived “as a backstop for hard-to-insure areas,” Fair Plan has…

Rick Newman Yahoo Finance You probably haven’t heard of the “Mar-a-Lago Accord,” but it’s an economic idea that makes Wall Street even more nervous than tariffs, said Rick Newman. Trump and some advisers believe “the U.S. dollar has been overvalued for decades, leading to chronic trade deficits—and the migration of manufacturing out of the United States.” One of those advisers is Stephen Miran, who believes that a grand agreement to devalue the dollar—he suggested “Mar-a-Lago Accord” as a name—would be “one of the marquee events in financial history.” With other countries loath to hurt their own exports, such an agreement isn’t likely to be voluntary. To bring it about, the U.S. would likely have to force foreign bondholders to trade in their holding of U.S. government debt for new,…

John A. Hemingway had a knack for survival. The last known member of “the Few”—the honorific bestowed by Winston Churchill upon 3,000 World War II pilots who staved off a German invasion in the Battle of Britain in 1940—was nearly killed a month into the campaign. An enemy aircraft shot his Hurricane fighter over the English Channel, and as engine oil flooded the cockpit, Hemingway ditched the plane for the jellyfish-infested sea. A friendly rowboat found him and took him home. He had another close call eight days later, when he was forced to land while pursuing a German bomber over southeast England. The British Home Guard was there to greet him. “I could speak reasonable English,” he joked in 2018, “so they didn’t shoot me.” Born in Dublin,…

This week’s question: Researchers have discovered that funnel-web spiders from busy urban areas can weave soundproof webs, allowing them to eat their prey in peace. If a company were to manufacture a scaled-up funnel web for noise-sensitive humans, what name should it give the product? Last week’s contest: Polish researchers have concluded that getting married triples obesity rates among men, but has no equivalent effect on women. Please come up with a medical term to describe the tendency for men to pile on the pounds after saying “I do.” THE WINNER: Hubbesity Jon Eganhouse, Playa del Rey, Calif. SECOND PLACE: Groomatoid girthritis Jennifer and Carol Dillon, South Bend, Ind. THIRD PLACE: Post-bachelor padding Daniel Hicks, Randolph, Mass. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to…

What happened The Trump administration admitted this week that it had shackled a Maryland father and shipped him off to a brutal prison in El Salvador by mistake, as concern grew that other immigrants were also deported erroneously. More than 200 Venezuelans and Salvadorans suspected of gang activity were flown in March to the Salvadoran facility—where shaven-headed inmates are warehoused in crowded, windowless cells for life and never allowed outdoors—after President Trump ordered their removal under the rarely invoked Alien Enemies Act of 1798. One of those caught up in the sweep was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, a Salvadoran immigrant with a union job who has a 5-year-old autistic American son. In a court filing, the Trump administration conceded that Abrego Garcia had protected status barring his deportation and…

Active seniors, after President Trump told NBC News that he is “not joking” about running for a third term in 2028. Although the U.S. Constitution limits presidents to two terms in office, Trump, who will be 82 in November 2028, said “there are methods.” Lovers, after Virginia was named the U.S. state best prepared to withstand an invasion by space aliens. Among other factors in Virginia’s resilience, researchers cited the state’s dense forest coverage and third-in-the-nation prevalence of military personnel. Diversity and inclusion, after the University of Maryland announced that Kermit the Frog, a puppet, will deliver its 2025 commencement address. Kermit’s creator, the late Jim Henson, attended the university. UM president Darryll J. Pines said he was “thrilled” that graduating seniors will experience the “optimism and insight” of…

Jennifer Coolidge’s search for true love nearly ruined everything, said Jonathan Dean in The Sunday Times (U.K.). After being cast in American Pie (1999) as the teen-bedding Stifler’s mom, the then-37-year-old actress suddenly found herself in demand. “I got so many good jobs in a row,” says Coolidge, now 63. She appeared in the mockumentary Best in Show in 2000, and Legally Blonde and Zoolander in 2001. “It was this incredible wave. Then I sabotaged myself.” She turned down jobs so she could pursue relationships with men who, she now realizes, were “unavailable” or “really hate women deep down.” Her moment of movie glory seemed to pass. “I was deeply depressed for a very long time.” Then in 2020 she was cast in HBO’s The White Lotus, and won…

Monica Hesse The Washington Post Is our homeland security secretary auditioning for Real Housewives of Guantánamo? asked Monica Hesse. While powerful women always catch flak for their sartorial choices, “you cannot help but wonder what was rattling around in Kristi Noem’s head” when she visited the CECOT prison in El Salvador last week. That’s the brutal facility where the Trump administration has deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants it claims, on dubious grounds, are violent gang members. In a video posted online, Noem traipses down halls with a “meticulous blowout,” wearing a $60,000 Rolex, a “form-fitting T-shirt, skinny drawstring pants, combat boots, and a baseball hat with an ICE logo.” The inmates, packed by the dozens into multitiered cells they are never allowed to leave, are less fashion-forward. All wear…

“To MAGA true believers, the word ‘hoax’ seems to function like a rhetorical bat signal. When a ‘hoax’ is afoot, populists are expected to rally behind their president, whatever they might privately think. The 2020 election defeat? A Democratic hoax. Jan. 6? An antifa and/or FBI hoax. Concealing classified material at Mar-a-Lago? Definitely a ‘Deep State’ hoax. ‘Hoax’ is essentially an incantation by which Trump’s political operation turns very bad political developments into loyalty tests for their base. The hoax nonsense also works well on die-hard populists because it offers them a way to redirect their anger away from Trump. Confronting the president’s failures is a miserable experience for a hero-worshipping partisan Republican; demagoguing Democrats, the FBI, and the ‘Deep State’ is fun and easy by comparison.” Nick Catoggio…

Editorial The New Times “It hasn’t been easy for African nations to sever ties with colonial powers,” said The New Times. But Rwanda has finally given Belgium the boot. Kigali kicked out Belgian diplomats last month after accusing its former colonial ruler of undermining it in the ongoing Congo conflict. Belgium had been pushing for EU sanctions on Rwanda, saying it was backing the M23 rebels who have taken over much of eastern Congo. That sanctions threat was the “last straw”—but it was not Belgium’s worst act of “neocolonialist destruction,” not by a long shot. Brussels has “positioned itself as Rwanda’s watchdog” ever since we gained independence in 1962, trying to control our finances, our politics, even our military. It made alliances with repressive governments, and its “role in…

Janos I. Szirtes Neue Zürcher Zeitung Europe is already in an undeclared war with Russia, said Janos I. Szirtes. Vladimir Putin knows he’s no match for Europe militarily—even with the U.S. commitment to NATO in question—and he deploys his army only when he thinks “the enemy can be defeated quickly.” That’s why he has opted for cheap, stealthy “hybrid warfare” against the European nations that have been supporting Ukraine. Already we have seen a Russian plot to assassinate Armin Papperger, CEO of German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall, as well as “acts of sabotage disguised as accidents,” such as the fire in Poland that consumed Warsaw’s largest shopping center. Putin is also using more subtle methods to undermine democracy and steer European populaces “toward pro-Russian authoritarianism.” In his arsenal are “cyberattacks,…

“‘Make America Healthy Again’ actually means the opposite,” said Jonathan Cohn in The Bulwark. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week began laying off 10,000 HHS employees, in addition to 10,000 who’ve left voluntarily—a combined 25 percent workforce reduction that will make Americans more vulnerable. Kennedy is gutting the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. Other divisions, handling everything from job safety to toxic substances, are merging into a new unit, the Administration for Healthy America, that will give Kennedy even greater control. We’re losing programs that are working, like federal substance abuse aid that has cut overdose deaths by 24 percent in 12 months, saving 27,000 lives. Instead of curbing overdoses and infectious…

“Yes, we have good cause to be wary of powerful people,” said Jesse Walker in Reason. But if you want to understand how we arrived at this moment when many Americans believe the worst about their government, Phil Tinline’s “thoughtful, engrossing, and highly readable” new book would make useful reading. In 1967, a book was published that purported to be the final report of a secret government group that had concluded that endless war is necessary to maintain social stability. War creates jobs and promotes patriotism, the thinking went, so peace must be avoided. But while Report From Iron Mountain was a hoax cooked up by left-wing satirists, it was widely embraced as truth even after its authors came clean, and it later helped spawn the right-wing conspiracy theories…

If anyone can be healthily obsessed with tuberculosis, it’s John Green, said Sophia Nguyen in The Washington Post. The author of The Fault in Our Stars and several other young-adult best-sellers has made charitable work part of his brand since he first built his large YouTube following. But he never expected that his new book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, would come out just as the White House’s sudden slash in U.S. funding presented a likely death sentence for hundreds of thousands of TB-infected people overseas. “I would give anything for my book to be less timely,” he says. Instead of adding his influence to a push to finally eliminate deaths from the disease, he finds himself using the sold-out stops on his book tour to build support for reversing a…

“The world needs all the uplifting pop-star love stories we can get,” and that’s exactly what Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco’s new album has given us, said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. The pop icon and the superstar producer are in love. They also “can’t keep their hands off each other,” and they want to share their delirium in songs that the world can enjoy, including a mid-set trio focused almost entirely on sex. This happens to be a romance that arose long after the two first worked together, because Blanco was behind the boards in 2015 for Gomez’s Revival, which distanced her from her Disney past and was also “one of the era’s most influential pop albums.” Thanks to that turning point, Gomez “no longer disguises her…

My Dead Friend Zoe An Afghanistan war vet is haunted in civilian life by visions of her deceased wisecracking platoon mate. This moving dark comedy turns on great performances by leads Sonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales as well as by Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman. $20 on demand Tokyo Cowboy A Japanese salaryman heads to Montana and his company’s unprofitable ranch bearing a bold business plan: convert the ranch to Wagyu beef. The resulting culture clash could be played for cheap laughs, but instead there’s heartfelt comedy here, with great cinematography to boot. $5 on demand Ex-Husbands Three generations of Pearce men are having trouble getting, or staying, married in this family dramedy. Griffin Dunne shines as a graying dad going through divorce who inadvertently books a trip to…

This dish brings back so many memories, says Omid Roustaei in Bitter & Sweet: Global Flavors From an Iranian-American Kitchen (Weldon Owen). I can picture myself at 10, “marveling at my mother’s culinary talents during one of her unforgettable dinner parties,” because her feasts in Tehran routinely featured a colossal fish stuffed with herbs, nuts, barberries, and more. Now one of my favorite dinner centerpieces, the dish brings together a few of the signature flavors of Iranian cuisine, including the “zesty tang” of barberries, the subtle sweetness of dried apricots, and the “rich, earthy flavor” of saffron. Here, every mouthful also delivers “the lively pop of fish roe.” For simpler meals, serve it alongside plain basmati rice or Iranian herb rice (sabzi polo). Stuffed fish with herbs and barberries…

“Seemingly harmless behaviors” can cause real trouble for an unwary traveler, said Andrea Sachs in The Washington Post. Snack on a sandwich outdoors in parts of Florence, for example, and you could be ticketed. Such rules often do have a purpose, but they can be highly unexpected. In Venice’s St. Mark’s Square, you can neither pedal nor carry a bike. In Vigo, Spain, peeing in the ocean can earn you a $785 fine. In Sardinia, removing pebbles or shells from the beach can cost you up to $3,100. On Fremont Street in Las Vegas, you can be written up for gyrating with a Hula-Hoop if it’s more than 4 feet wide. In Calgary, Alberta, putting your feet up on public benches can bring a $200 fine. Want to steer…

Pentagon mandates sex-neutral fitness standards for military Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week ordered the Pentagon to eliminate lower physical-fitness requirements for women in combat units likely to see significant fighting in wartime. The military conducts routine annual fitness tests with requirements varying based on gender and age. However, some of the most demanding roles—such as for special operations, pararescue jumpers, infantry, and armor—already have standardized physical-fitness requirements that don’t take gender or age into consideration. More than 5,000 women serve in the U.S. military in combat roles. Hegseth has long complained about the military’s fitness standards and openly opposed women in combat jobs. The military has tried in the past to develop a general fitness test that was gender- and age-neutral but scrapped the effort in 2022 after…

Seth Rogen swears he doesn’t take himself too seriously, said Emma Brockes in The Guardian. But the 42-year-old comic actor, writer, and director can’t help but get a little defensive when people dismiss his profession. “I’m involved with an Alzheimer’s charity,” says Rogen, whose wife has lost several family members to the disease, “and we go to a lot of galas. And I’ve been bothered by how little regard doctors have for what I do for a living.” Yes, he knows he doesn’t save lives. “It’s a comedically incorrect mental place to be, and I understand I’m wrong, but I would go home and say I feel I deserve to be on the same level as these people. Because if you make movies, you convince yourself you’re doing the…

■ The head of a charity co-founded by Prince Harry accused the British royal of “harassment and bullying at scale” this week, after he and other trustees quit the organization, citing her “untenable” leadership. Sophie Chandauka claimed she received no advance notice of the Duke of Sussex’s resignation from Sentebale, launched in 2006 to help young HIV patients in Lesotho. A Zimbabwe-born lawyer, Chandauka alleged that U.K.-based trustees had resisted a move to shift more decision-making to southern Africa. She also claimed to have rejected a request by Harry that she speak up in defense of his wife, Meghan Markle, over negative media coverage. “Not because I didn’t care about the duchess,” she said, but because “we are not an extension of the Sussexes.” Some trustees said they didn’t…

Noah Rothman National Review President Trump isn’t “playing around” with Iran, said Noah Rothman. He has given Tehran two months to agree to a deal that will end the Iranian nuclear weapons program or, he said last week, “there will be bombing.” As a natural isolationist, Trump would prefer a peaceful settlement. But “a methodical buildup of American forces in Iran’s neighborhood” suggests he’s deadly serious about the military option. Last week, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier was sent to join the USS Harry S. Truman carrier in the Middle East. And up to seven B-2 stealth bombers have been deployed to a base in the Indian Ocean that’s been used to stage strikes in the region. B-2s are among the only aircraft capable of carrying the 30,000-pound…

Delia Rodríguez El País Until recently, I was afraid people would think I was crazy if they knew I had a home survival kit, said Delia Rodríguez. Now I feel like the prescient one. The EU last week announced a citizen preparedness strategy, telling all 450 million bloc residents they should be equipped for anything from a flood to a pandemic to a military invasion. Every household is instructed to stockpile enough food, medicine, and supplies to get through the first 72 hours of a disaster. “Europe cannot afford to remain reactive,” the plan said. Don’t we know it. In the past five years, Spain has been smacked with the Covid pandemic, “floods that have left hundreds dead, a storm that nearly collapsed access to the capital, overflowing rivers,…

President Trump’s “oh-so-fragile ego” compels him to “cast any vote won by an opponent as fraudulent,” said Chris Brennan in USA Today. So it’s no surprise that he signed an expansive executive order last week that would “rig elections in his favor.” Most significantly, the order directs the Election Assistance Commission—a small federal agency—to require citizens who register to vote via a federal form to show proof of citizenship. That would put more than 21 million mostly low-income Americans who lack a passport or other approved document at risk of disenfranchisement. Trump’s order “addresses no pressing problem in America,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. “Voting experts have routinely demonstrated that illegal voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare.” Georgia, for example, audited its voter rolls last year and…

“Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace.” Flannery O’Connor, quoted in Smithsonian “Every human being is an unprecedented miracle. One tries to treat them as the miracles they are, while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they’ve become.” James Baldwin, quoted in Liberal Currents “Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.” Mark Twain, quoted in The New York Times “Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: They must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.” Philosopher Russell Kirk, quoted in the Midland, Mich., Daily News “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” Virginia Woolf, quoted in the Nigerian Tribune “I…

■ Waymo’s enviable safety record After 50 million miles, Waymo’s self-driving cars seem to be a lot safer than the ones driven by humans, said Timothy B. Lee in Ars Technica. In its two biggest markets, San Francisco and Phoenix, Google-owned Waymo has reported 13 “crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag” and 36 crashes causing an injury. Based on insurance data, human drivers on the same roads “would get into 78 airbag crashes” and “190 crashes serious enough to cause an injury.” Moreover, a review of the incidents found that in the crashes involving Waymo, the self-driven vehicle was usually not at fault. A fatal crash in January, for instance, involved a stationary Waymo that was rear-ended by a human-driven SUV, creating a six-car pileup. Three other times,…

Contraceptive implants last for years and can be much more convenient in preventing pregnancy than a daily pill or an every-few-months injection. But the devices have a drawback: They must be inserted into a woman’s arm through a small surgical procedure. Now researchers are developing a way to inject an implant, which would be as easy as getting a vaccine. The injection contains microcrystals of a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone, and these little bits clump together inside the body to form a slow-releasing, solid implant. Such a combination of long-lasting birth control and nonsurgical administration could be particularly useful in regions with poor medical infrastructure, reports The Guardian. Notably, the technique could also be adapted as a method for delivering treatments for other conditions, including HIV, tuberculosis,…

Colum McCann’s new novel, Twist, tracks a group at sea tasked with repairing the underwater cables through which we all communicate. Below, the National Book Award–winning author of Let the Great World Spin recommends six other ocean tales. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952). I read this novel to my father when he was sick and lay dying in his hospital bed in Dublin. It was a profoundly cathartic experience for both of us. He understood perfectly the metaphors at hand: Sometimes he was the old man and sometimes it was me. I think the grand search at sea was gorgeously entwined with his journey to come. And we were both dreaming of lions. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818). This might,…

“There’s no box big enough for Steve Reich’s music,” said Michael Andor Brodeur in The Washington Post. Yet the composer’s longtime label, Nonesuch, has assembled a 27-disc set covering six decades of his work, from the tape loops he made of human speech in the 1960s to everything else that has emerged as his music grew “more operatic in scope.” Though he’ll always be labeled a minimalist and though his music is characterized by the constant presence of a pulse, he consistently finds ways to achieve “kaleidoscopic” effects from systematic variations in rhythmic patterns, often creating music of “outsize emotional impact.” Reich, who’s still active at 88, “has become a lodestar visible to many younger musicians,” said Rob Young in Uncut. His music builds so gradually that “it…

Oscar Wilde’s famed 1891 novel has just landed on Broadway as an “immaculately choreographed, theater-meets-film” extravaganza, said Tim Teeman in The Daily Beast. Australian actress Sarah Snook “makes a witty meal” of 26 roles, including Dorian Gray himself, who maintains his youth while a portrait of him ages hideously. But Snook is rarely the only person on stage. Camera operators mill around her, and moving screens that surround her beam out both pretaped and live images of her many performances. While “this is amazing to watch,” the approach “can overshadow the story.” Then again, the production’s visual games “mirror the central themes of the material,” said Adam Feldman in Time Out New York. Dorian is a collection of performances, until he’s not, and when Snook at last appears…

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company has acquired his social media company, said Lauren Thomas in The Wall Street Journal. The unusual merging of the “X’s”—xAI and X—“fuses two of the billionaire’s biggest technology bets” under one large holding company. In last week’s announcement, Musk put the value of the combined company at $113 billion. X is already “a powerful distribution tool for xAI’s products,” such as the Grok chatbot, and it can be the source for “valuable real-time data to power the startup’s models.” Markets: Stock slide ends weak first quarter Stocks posted their worst quarter since 2022, said George Steer in the Financial Times. “The S&P 500 dropped 4.6 percent in the first three months of 2025,” while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell into correction territory with a 10.6…

■ More adults rely on parental support The share of parents who financially support adult children has reached 50 percent for the first time, said Jessica Dickler in CNBC.com. That is up from 47 percent last year and 45 percent in 2023, according to Savings.com. “From buying food to paying for a cellphone plan or covering health and auto insurance or even rent,” parents are shelling out an average of about $1,474 per month to support their over-18 kids. Roughly 1 in 3 people between the ages of 18 and 34 in the U.S. still live in their parents’ home. Savings.com said that “more than 60 percent of the parents” it spoke to “said they have sacrificed their own financial security for the sake of their kids.” ■ 54…

Michael Waters and John Gittelsohn Bloomberg Businessweek A single billionaire real estate developer has constructed an entire city to his own specifications, said Michael Waters and John Gittelsohn. Only this one isn’t some utopia out in the desert. It’s Irvine, Calif., a city of over 300,000 people. Donald Bren’s real estate empire, Irvine Co., “owns about 75 percent of the apartment units” in the city. “It also owns almost every shopping center in Irvine, as well as many of the city’s office spaces,” and even the Irvine Standard newspaper. Bren, 92 and worth an estimated $17.4 billion, still operates his business “like a one-man homeowners association.” He sets strict home design standards, down to the types of trees and shrubs allowed. His attention to detail trickles down to “his…