Indholdsfortegnelse for November 21, 2025 i The Week Magazine

Any week, you can fill a whole morning with reading about the travesties of immigration enforcement. ICE officers ride around Chicago like third-world paramilitary squads. Immigrants married to U.S. citizens are whisked away to detention centers because of a missing document. Christians are deported to Iran. There are random raids on Home Depot parking lots. Border Patrol agents strut around in masks many miles from any border. Once you start putting the list together, it’s hard to know where to end. And yet: We did not get here suddenly. As cruel and erratic as immigration enforcement has become, what we are seeing is the product of 20 years of failure. Sen. John McCain almost got a bipartisan deal—which would have toughened borders and offered legal status to most undocumented immigrants—in…

What happened House Democrats this week released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein suggested Trump was more aware of his sex-trafficking crimes than the president has admitted. “Of course he knew about the girls,” Epstein wrote in a 2019 email to journalist Michael Wolff, “as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” In a 2011 email to longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote that Trump was the “dog that hasn’t barked,” and that although a victim “spent hours at my house with him,” Trump hadn’t “once been mentioned” during an investigation into Epstein. In 2015, Wolff advised Epstein—who died by suicide in 2019—on how to respond if Trump denied flying on Epstein’s plane or visiting his house. “You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you,” he…

■ A Washington, D.C., man is suing the National Guard, claiming guardsmen arrested him for playing the Star Wars “Imperial March” theme on his phone. Sam O’Hara played the stormtrooper anthem to mock the guards but says his musical protest was legal. “The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” states his complaint. “But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests.” ■ A proposed bill in Alabama would bar foreign-born citizens from holding any constitutional office in the state. The bill, from state GOP Sen. Donnie Chesteen, would allow only “natural-born” Americans to serve in the Alabama legislature, or as governor, attorney general, or even local sheriff. Chesteen acknowledged…

Salman Rushdie is feeling pretty good about life these days, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Times (U.K.). On the most basic level, he’s just glad to be breathing, after being almost stabbed to death in 2022 by a man who accused The Satanic Verses author of attacking Islam. “There was a moment when I had no pulse,” Rushdie says. “That’s how close it was. Once you’ve gone through that, it just gives you a sense of the value of every day.” Beyond that, he’s finding that after four previous marriages, his fifth—to poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, 46—is the charm. “This is definitely it. Many people in my family, when Eliza and I got together, said, ‘Finally.’ In the end, she had a T-shirt made for me saying ‘Finally.’”…

Activists say a Supreme Court ruling has given federal agents a green light to racially profile Latinos. What is a ‘Kavanaugh stop’? The name derives from a September ruling by the Supreme Court, which by a 6-3 vote lifted a lower-court order barring immigration agents in Los Angeles from stopping people based solely on several factors, including race. The original case was brought by plaintiffs who argued agents conducting immigration sweeps targeted L.A. residents just for being working-class Latinos. Such profiling has been barred since 1975, when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that California border agents who stopped a car because its occupants looked Mexican violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In the L.A. case, a federal judge ruled that agents needed more than a combination of…

Andrew Sullivan Substack “Dick Cheney pioneered the Trump presidency,” said Andrew Sullivan. Cheney’s relentless efforts to turn the presidency into an all-powerful “unitary executive” have largely been lost amid the tributes to the Machiavellian former vice president last week. Yes, Cheney broke with Donald Trump after Jan. 6, but while playing a dominant role in the George W. Bush White House, he insisted that the commander in chief “could militarily attack anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason.” After the Bush administration ignored CIA warnings before 9/11 that al Qaida was plotting a major terrorist attack, a frantic Cheney helped engineer the false claim that Saddam Hussein was making “weapons of mass destruction” to justify a “pre-emptive” war on Iraq. Cheney always insisted he had “no regrets” about that…

Editorial Punch It’s always “a bad omen” when Donald Trump takes an interest in you, said Punch in an editorial. Having watched a Fox News report on a massacre of Nigerian Christians, the U.S. president is now threatening to invade our country to kill terrorists. It’s true that since the 2014 abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls, tens of thousands of Nigerians have been killed and more than 1,700 children have been kidnapped. It’s also true that the perpetrators are mostly Muslim, members of Boko Haram or an ISIS affiliate. But the victims include Muslims and Christians alike. We’ve also seen deadly clashes between herders and farmers that are motivated by territory, not religion. Our leaders have failed to stem this violence, and that is indeed a crisis. But it’s not…

Children may face a higher risk of autism and other developmental disorders if their mothers had Covid during pregnancy, a new study suggests. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed more than 18,000 births during the first big Covid wave, between March 2020 and May 2021. They found that 16% of children born to mothers who contracted the disease during pregnancy were diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder by age 3, compared with less than 10% of those whose mothers remained uninfected. The link was strongest in cases where infection occurred in the third trimester and among boys, whose developing brains appear more vulnerable to maternal immune responses. The most common diagnoses included speech and motor delays as well as autism, which was found in 2.7% of exposed children versus just 1.1%…

(Pantheon, $40) “This is a book like a mountain,” said Jacob Brogan in The Washington Post. A 1,200-page adventure story, “and a tremendous one at that,” the latest novel from the author of the 2000 cult novel House of Leaves is set in 1982 Utah and follows 16-year-old Kalin March as he attempts to fulfill his friend Tom’s deathbed request by stealing two horses and leading them to freedom high in the mountains. Kalin is joined in his mission by Tom’s sister and Tom’s ghost, and over five days, “what can go wrong does, and then some,” particularly because the wealthy family that owns the horses tries to frame the teens for a graver crime, intensifying the chase. “Some readers may find Tom’s Crossing ponderous and bloated, with too many…

Taking Religion Seriously by Charles Murray (Encounter, $30) Charles Murray’s surprising new book isn’t “some dry defense of religion in general,” said Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. Instead, the co-author of The Bell Curve has written a “highly personal” account of his gradual embrace of Christianity’s core stories. His reading led him first to conclude that crediting creation to a divine force is sensible, then that the Resurrection is probably not mere invention. Though he’s no full-on convert, “it’s clear that something happened to him.” Ludwig Wittgenstein by Anthony Gottlieb (Yale, $28) Other biographers have taken deeper dives into Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thinking, said Nikhil Krishnan in The New York Times. Author and journalist Anthony Gottlieb instead focuses on the Austrian-born philosopher’s life story in this slim new book.…

Rosalía’s first album in three years “sounds like absolutely nothing else in music right now,” said Julyssa Lopez in Rolling Stone. Already, the 33-year-old Spanish singer, songwriter, and producer had established herself as “pop’s most provocative chaos agent,” proving with 2018’s El Mal Querer and 2022’s Motomami how much pop and reggaeton could be stretched and expanded by an adventurous conservatory-trained flamenco vocalist. Even so, Lux is the two-time Grammy winner’s “most astonishing offer yet,” a “gorgeous, gutting” record that “feels like a timeless work of art” and finds Rosalía singing in 14 languages, tying together opera references, classical flourishes, and the lives of numerous Catholic saints. The album is “not a dopamine machine like Motomami,” said Gio Santiago in Pitchfork. “But it rewards listeners who ache for more from…

(R) Another difficult dad seeks to make amends. Joachim Trier’s “breathtaking” new film “cements his status as one of the working masters,” said Brian Tallerico in RogerEbert.com. The Scandinavian director, best known for 2021’s The Worst Person in the World, has constructed a drama of his own about a father in the film business who’s struggling to reconnect with his previously neglected daughters. But Trier’s version is akin to “great fiction unfolding in feature film form.” Though we know there will be emotional breakthroughs for the central characters, “they don’t come melodramatically; they come gradually, patiently, and believably.” Stellan Skarsgard plays a director who is turned down when he asks his actress daughter to star in his autobiographical new film, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times, and because…

Ford is considering scrapping the electric version of its F-150 pickup after four years, said Sharon Terlep in The Wall Street Journal. The automaker touted the F-150 Lightning as “a modern Model T,” but it has lost billions trying to convince customers to switch from gas-powered trucks. Sales are “expected to plummet in the absence” of the federal EV tax credit, and Ford “already paused production of the truck last month amid an aluminum shortage.” The company may keep the electric F-150 plant idle “as it shifts to smaller, more affordable EVs.” Legends: Buffett writes final shareholder letter Warren Buffett is “going quiet,” said Jordan Valinsky in CNN.com. The 95-year-old Oracle of Omaha wrote his final annual shareholder letter this week as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, ending an era…

■ Card giants settle swipe-fee lawsuit Good news for small businesses, said AnnaMaria Andriotis in The Wall Street Journal. Visa and Mastercard reached an agreement this week to settle a 2005 lawsuit to reduce their so-called swipe fees, and it gives stores more power over which cards they choose to accept. Under the terms of the deal, the two largest networks will lower the fees they charge merchants, “which are often between 2% and 2.5%, by an average of around 0.1 percentage point over several years.” While it might not sound like much, Visa and Mastercard “collected $72 billion of these interchange fees” in 2023, so the numbers add up. Consumers could now “see big changes at the register.” Merchants that accept one kind of Visa card would no longer…

Beth Kowitt Bloomberg A backlash is coming for Home Depot, said Beth Kowitt. “No company in the United States has become more closely associated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids” than the home improvement retailer. Masked ICE agents camp out in Home Depot parking lots ready to “chase and tackle and detain the day laborers who gather there to look for work.” The raids are so upsetting that employees who witness the scenes “are allowed to go home for the day with pay.” Yet, so far, Home Depot has “offered the same answer after each episode,” saying that it “wasn’t notified” and isn’t involved. That’s not going to fly. Already “customers have started to question whether the company’s silence makes it an accomplice to the sweeps rather than merely the…

What happened President Trump ordered officials to redouble their immigration crackdown in Chicago this week even as federal judges rebuked those agents for using excessive force. Although a court had already barred Trump from sending in the National Guard, the president posted online: “CALL IN THE TROOPS, FAST, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!” Last week, Judge Robert Gettleman demanded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement improve “disgusting” conditions at its Broadview facility, saying that making detainees “sleep on a floor next to an overflowed toilet” was “obviously unconstitutional.” And Judge Sara Ellis curtailed the use of tear gas in the city, saying federal agents’ aggressive tactics “shock the conscience” and that Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino had “admitted he lied” in accusing protesters of violence. Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin credited…

Imperial tributes, after ESPN reported that the White House has lobbied the owners of the Washington Commanders to name the team’s new D.C. stadium after President Trump. “That would be a beautiful name,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, “as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible.” Misspent youth, after an 18-year study of more than 3,000 young Norwegians concluded that those who indulged in regular heavy drinking sessions in their late teens and 20s went on to higher levels of education and income than more abstemious contemporaries. Empty hats, after the AI-generated song “Walk My Walk” by Breaking Rust hit No. 1 on Billboard’s country digital song sales chart. Breaking Rust has more than 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, despite having…

Jennifer Lawrence has long struggled with anxiety, said Lulu Garcia-Navarro in The New York Times. But after her second child was born early this year, she went through something else entirely. “I felt like a tiger was chasing me every day,” says the actress, 35. “I had nonstop intrusive thoughts that I was at the whim of. They controlled me.” What was she fretting about? “It was fear about my child, just picturing every worst-case scenario, and then doubting everything that I was doing,” she said. “I thought he cried because he didn’t like his life, or me. I thought I was doing everything wrong, and that I would ruin my children.” Even now, having pulled back from the abyss, “I live in guilt. Is this the right breakfast? Is…

Mark L. Wolf The Atlantic Forty years after President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge, I’m resigning from the bench, said Mark L. Wolf. President Trump’s relentless “assault on the rule of law” is “so deeply disturbing to me” that I can no longer adhere to judicial restraints on public comments. Trump is perverting justice, prosecuting political adversaries like Letitia James and James Comey on flimsy charges, while pardoning violent Jan. 6 rioters and protecting allies like border czar Tom Homan, who allegedly took $50,000 in a cash bribe in an FBI sting. Trump has fired 18 inspectors general responsible for detecting fraud in federal agencies, eliminated the FBI’s public-corruption squad, and removed guardrails placed on the sleazy cryptocurrency industry after launching his own $TRUMP coin. Recklessly, this…

“Donald Trump himself may not be an antisemite, even as he harbors some antisemitic notions (e.g., Jews are money-grubbing) and regularly repeats some antisemitic tropes (e.g., Jews hold dual loyalties). But he has been a prime force fostering a political climate in which all forms of hatred—very much including antisemitism—flourish. He’s been a facilitator of vicious antisemites via his associations and appointments, and remains on good terms with the openly antisemitic Tucker Carlson. Trump commands a vast audience. If there has been a normalization of antisemitism in America, it comes in no small part from the very top.” Gabriel Schoenfeld in The Bulwark…

Priesnell Warren Jamaica Observer The “economic obliteration” Hurricane Melissa wrought across Jamaica was staggering, said Priesnell Warren. Winds gusting to more than 200 miles per hour ripped roofs off 120,000 homes and other buildings, and floodwaters swept away roads. Dozens of people were killed, and at least 25 communities are still cut off by landslides. The damage was estimated at $7 billion, nearly a third of our gross domestic product. This will “set our development clock back by years, if not decades.” And yet, it could have been even worse. Kingston, the capital and home to nearly a million of our 2.8 million citizens and Jamaica’s “economic heart,” escaped a direct hit. “Had Melissa’s eyewall made landfall there”—rather than 95 miles to the west—“Jamaica as a functioning state would have…

David Abulafia The Spectator Sorry, Egypt. The Rosetta stone belongs right where it is, in the British Museum, said David Abulafia. Now that the long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum has opened, Egypt’s antiquities ambassadors are knocking on the doors of museums that host Egyptian collections, and they have a “shopping list.” On it is that “beautiful head of Nefertiti” housed in Berlin as well as a famous statue of Ramses II in Turin. In London, they’re after the Rosetta stone. The slab from 196 B.C., inscribed with three translations of a decree, was “the key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs” and is by far “the most visited object in the British Museum.” But in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza—the “final resting place of Tutankhamen,” glittering with golden treasures—it would…

There’s a battle raging inside the Heritage Foundation, said Michael Warren and John McCormack in The Dispatch, and it could determine the future of the GOP. The nation’s leading conservative think tank has been in crisis since late October, when its president, Kevin Roberts, posted a video that decried a “venomous coalition” for trying to cancel his pal Tucker Carlson over a softball interview with Nick Fuentes, a white-supremacist influencer and self-declared Hitler fan. Multiple senior Heritage staffers resigned in outrage, accusing Roberts of inviting neo-Nazis into the Republican establishment. In an all-hands Heritage meeting, Roberts called the video a “mistake,” denounced Fuentes, and listened as multiple Heritage employees read him “the riot act” for embracing bigotry. But one research assistant said she and other young staffers found nothing wrong…

After nearly 40 years, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi is exiting Congress—and leaving “some huge stilettos to fill,” said Erika D. Smith in Bloomberg. The 85-year-old Pelosi, who announced last week she won’t seek reelection after her current term ends in 2027, will depart the lower chamber as “one of the most powerful politicians in American history.” Her tenure as the first woman speaker was marked by her use of strategy, guile, and brute strength to bend the House to her will. Pelosi secured major “legislative achievements” for presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden by marshaling the votes to pass the Affordable Care Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and other major bills. Pelosi won a “legion of new fans” by overseeing both impeachments of President Trump, and by standing up…

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have found an ancient, supermassive black hole with a mass about 100 million times that of the sun, a discovery that could help explain how such black holes grew so quickly in the early universe. Nicknamed BiRD, short for Big Red Dot, the black hole existed around 4 billion years after the Big Bang, during a period known as “cosmic noon.” Its light has been traveling toward Earth for 10 billion years. Although it appears very bright in infrared, BiRD is oddly absent from X-ray and radio surveys, an anomaly that suggests it may be cloaked in thick layers of dust and gas that trap high-energy radiation while allowing infrared light to escape. BiRD appears to belong to a mysterious class of compact…

(Liveright, $35) The sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald is a story that’s been told many times before, “but never has it been told better,” said John J. Miller in The Wall Street Journal. In his current best seller, author John U. Bacon “blends the talents of a narrative historian with the skills of a journalist,” using interviews with family members of the 29 men who died on the enormous freighter to give the tragedy fresh resonance. The wreck wouldn’t be as widely remembered if not for Gordon Lightfoot’s doleful 1976 hit ballad about the recent Lake Superior disaster, and Bacon details the song’s origins too. Mostly, though, he brings to life the world that the men lived in—with lakes as vast as seas connecting the ports that established the…

Helen DeWitt is finally ready to move on, said Alexandra Alter in The New York Times. The book that was supposed to get her unstuck, Your Name Here, has just been published, nearly 20 years after she and a younger collaborator started it. “I thought we could write something in a few weeks, sell it off, get some money,” she says. In 2006, the Maryland native was in her 40s and coming off a difficult few years. After her first novel, The Last Samurai, was published in 2000 to great acclaim (it remains New York magazine’s choice for best book of the century), her publisher stalled a follow-up, and she had a breakdown and attempted suicide. Following psychiatric treatment, she remembered a 20-something journalist she’d met in a London pub…

“Even if we don’t always deserve Mavis Staples, we need her,” said Andrew Gulden in Americana Highways. As has been true for more than seven decades, the 86-year-old gospel, soul, and rock icon is singing with hope on her latest album, but she’s “not sugarcoating a damn thing about the backward mess we somehow find ourselves in.” The opening track, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan’s “Chicago,” finds Staples’ voice “grittier than it’s ever been, but still just as beautiful.” Backed by guitarists Derek Trucks and Buddy Guy, she transforms the song into her own family’s story of migrating from the South to the Windy City. Kevin Morby’s “Beautiful Strangers” catalogs tragic gun violence and police brutality, but the track here also extends the album’s “beyond stellar” guest list by way…

While Kentucky makes 95% of the world’s bourbon, “that still leaves quite a few barrels in need of sampling from the other 49 states,” said Wayne Curtis in Garden & Gun. Bourbon, a name that can only be used for a U.S.-made whiskey, is produced in most states, and the standouts offer “a rainbow of taste profiles,” as these three suggest. Wiggly Bridge Bottled in Bond ($70). This rye-heavy bourbon from York, Maine, “seems to capture the state’s rugged maritime character.” You get “waves of black pepper spice” that “dance with golden honey,” plus touches of clove and cracked leather. TX Straight Bourbon Port Finish ($80). Distilled in Fort Worth, Texas, this “raucous” bourbon delivers notes of dark chocolate, cracked pepper, and charred oak. High West Bottled in Bond ($80).…

A night dive on the Great Barrier Reef “There’s still hope for the world’s largest reef system,” said Jessica Vincent in National Geographic Traveller (U.K.). Though the Great Barrier Reef is struggling to cope with rising ocean temperatures, remote stretches of the 1,500-mile-long reef are in robust health, and visiting them can help the entire ecosystem. I recently joined a three-night expedition on the 24-passenger Spirit of Freedom, which carried us from the Queensland, Australia, coast to Lizard Island, home to a reef research station. I was assured by the crew that divers who visit the reef with an accredited operator are beneficial because they increase funding and help gather data. The waters near Lizard Island teemed with life, revealing why the island is David Attenborough’s favorite place on Earth.…

The collapse of Airbnb competitor Sonder this week was so sudden that it stranded guests mid-stay, said Jordan Valinsky in CNN.com. Patrick M. D’Aoust missed the complimentary breakfast and was told he had to end an anniversary trip early when he was given “just 15 minutes to vacate his room” at a Sonder property in Montreal. D’Aoust, who tried and failed to negotiate staying until an 11 a.m. checkout time, was “one of many travelers effected by Sonder’s shutdown following the sudden end of a deal with Marriott, which had let guests book and earn loyalty points at Sonder’s 9,000 furnished apartments and boutique hotel rooms.” Marriott said that a 20-year licensing deal signed in 2024 was terminated 19 years early on Nov. 9 because Sonder defaulted. Once considered “a…

Thousands of wolf dogs are born across the U.S. every year. For-profit breeders often misrepresent these exotic pets—intentionally interbred from other canines with partial wolf DNA—to new pet owners, who end up unable to manage their wild instincts. By the time they turn 3 years old, more than 65% of wolf dogs are moved to shelters, where many are euthanized. Since 2013, the Tennessee nonprofit Wolf PAWS (wolfpaws.org) has provided an outdoor permanent sanctuary for abused and abandoned wolf dogs. Although it generally discourages ownership, the sanctuary hosts tours to educate the public, introducing visitors to its 11 resident wolf dogs, who roam half-acre enclosures and participate in enrichment activities. Each wolf dog is available for sponsorship, and their online profiles feature their rescue stories, personalities, and photos. Each charity…

Billy Witz The New York Times A new Ohio senator learned a hard lesson about the challenge of a Rust Belt revival, said Billy Witz. Republican politicians flocked to Chillicothe, Ohio, in April, when the local paper mill’s owner, a private-equity firm called H.I.G. Capital, “announced it was closing the plant in 60 days.” Sen. Bernie Moreno, a fresh-faced MAGA standard bearer, responded “with a fire-breathing letter” hitting on a populist theme: “Regular folks are losing out—in this case, to rich guys in Miami.” After threatening a federal investigation, Moreno told 850 cheering workers that H.I.G. had agreed to keep the facility “open until the end of the year,” enough time to find a new owner. The senator then personally summoned “some of the biggest names in the paper industry”…

Diane Ladd always spoke her mind, whether lambasting Hollywood greed or spouting New Age beliefs about psychic healing and reincarnation. An entrancing presence onscreen, she garnered Oscar nominations for 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1990’s Wild at Heart, and 1991’s Rambling Rose. That final nod marked the first time a mother and daughter were nominated for the same film—she for best supporting actress and her daughter, Laura Dern, for best actress. Yet while her varied work earned her respect, it never brought her movie-star status, and she complained of being asked to play mothers of actors her own age. But she didn’t mind being considered a bit wacky in her personal life. “I like to joke that when Shirley MacLaine was out on a limb, I was already out…

Rule lets GOP senators sue over phone-records search Senate Republicans this week added a provision to the shutdown-ending spending package that will let senators sue the government if it secretly seizes or subpoenas their data. The language was added at the instruction of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, responding to complaints from eight GOP senators who had their phone records analyzed by the FBI in 2023 as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack. Retroactive to 2022, the provision will let the eight senators sue for at least $500,000 for each violation; authorities have up to 60 days to notify a senator if the lawmaker is the target of an investigation. Republicans have accused Smith of tapping their phones; the records Smith…

Growing up in Wales, Anthony Hopkins didn’t seem like a star in waiting, said Steve Rose in The Guardian (U.K.). The only son of a family of bakers, he was useless in school; Hopkins says one teacher called him “a brainless carthorse.” He was often bullied and had few friends. “I couldn’t understand anything intellectually or academically, and that drove me into a kind of loneliness and resentment.” But Hopkins found he had “one small gift,” and it changed his life: “I could remember things.” When he saw Laurence Olivier in 1948’s Hamlet, hearing Shakespeare hit him like “a punch in my head,” and he began memorizing speeches from Hamlet and Julius Caesar. It steered him toward acting, and his knack for memorizing entire scripts remains a secret weapon. “That…

■ Jeremy Renner last week sent a cease and desist letter to a Chinese filmmaker who accused The Hurt Locker actor of sending her “unsolicited pornographic images” and making deportation threats. Yi Zhou, 38, claims Renner sent her the images “out of the blue” this summer, after which the pair began a romantic and working relationship, with Renner agreeing to collaborate on her documentary, Chronicles of Disney. But the pair’s relationship soon soured, Zhou said, with Renner committing “domestic aggressions” and then threatening “to call immigration/ICE on me.” An attorney for Renner, 54, called the allegations “false, outrageous, and highly defamatory,” saying the pair met only once in July. After a “brief consensual encounter,” the attorney said, Renner “rejected her romantic advances,” leading Zhou to harass the actor via text…

Renée Graham The Boston Globe Vice President JD Vance might have disrespected his wife’s Hindu faith to please conservative Christians, said Renée Graham, but don’t fall for the “poor, poor Usha routine.” Usha knows she married a “political opportunist and shape-shifter” who hopes to inherit the MAGA movement, and she’s going along for the ride. People felt sorry for Usha after her husband, a Catholic convert, recently told a cheering crowd at a Turning Point USA event that he hoped that his wife would convert to Christianity. When Vance combined that affront with an “uncomfortably intimate hug” with Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, the internet exploded with “You in danger, girl” memes. Usha, however, is no helpless dummy: She’s a Yale-trained lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.…

■ A German museum is offering tours with a “grumpy guide” who berates and insults the public. Inspired in part by the success of “rude waiter” restaurants, the 70-minute tours at the Kunstpalast museum in Düsseldorf feature a combative performance artist, Carl Brandi. He snaps at tourgoers for checking their phones, points fingers in their faces, and berates them for the stupidity of their questions. “I try to make them feel as ignorant as possible,” said Brandi, who also mocks the museum itself. “I thought it was very funny and clever,” said one tourgoer, Lothar Richter, 68. The tours are sold out through next year. ■ An unemployed French salesman financed his wedding by selling ad space on his tuxedo. Eager to marry his fiancée but “completely broke,” Dagobert Renouf…

Dimitris Efthymakis Protagon Greece may “wear the mask of the 21st century,” said Dimitris Efthymakis. But much of it remains stuck in the old ways of petty clan disputes. This time warp was on display recently in the mountains of Crete, where the village of Vorizia “became a battlefield” in a family feud. One family was apparently building a house too close to the other’s turf, and of course, both sides were heavily armed; gun ownership is “an addiction” in Greece. The house was blown up, and the two sides blasted each other with “pistols, rifles, Kalashnikovs,” shooting over 2,000 bullets. Two people were killed; several others badly injured—and the wounded survivors had to be rushed to separate hospitals so the families wouldn’t start brawling in the waiting room. This…

President Trump wants to “make America slim again,” said Kara Kennedy in The Free Press. Standing beside drug execs in the Oval Office last week, Trump announced deals with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that will cut the price of their GLP-1 weight loss medicines, Zepbound and Wegovy, in return for a three-year exemption from his 100% pharmaceutical tariffs. Medicare recipients will pay a $50 monthly co-pay for the drugs, which will also be available on TrumpRx.gov—a government-run site—for $350 a month. That’s a steep discount on current list prices, which top $1,000, and will expand access to the “single most effective intervention we have against obesity,” a disease that kills up to 500,000 Americans and costs the U.S. health care system some $173 billion every year. With Trump, “it’s…

“Fortune knocks but once. Misfortune has much more patience.” Canadian writer Laurence Peter, quoted in The Knowledge “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.” Molly Ivins, quoted in Deseret News “The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used.” John Stuart Mill, quoted in The DePaulia “Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin.” Entrepreneur Victor Kiam, quoted in Elite Business “Neither Pagan nor Mohametan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.” Thomas Jefferson, quoted in The New Republic “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.” Leonardo Da Vinci, quoted in Culture Custodian “Our job is not to solve every problem in the world, but to do our part with grace, integrity,…

■ Anger at Instagram’s PG-13 ratings The Motion Picture Association has a message for Instagram, said Isabella Simonetti in The Wall Street Journal: Stop saying your teen safety effort is “PG-13.” Dogged by criticism over the safety of its platform for teen users, Instagram announced in October it would implement “a new system to limit what young people can see that is consistent with PG-13 movie ratings.” The MPA, which has been administering parental-guidance ratings for films since 1968, says that is “highly misleading.” Its ratings are assigned by a group of parents who have children between ages 5 and 15 when they start their roles. But Instagram-owner Meta’s content moderation, the MPA notes in a cease and desist letter, appears “to rely heavily on artificial intelligence” ■ No foreign…

Walking as little as 3,000 steps a day may help slow the progression of dementia in older people, reports The Guardian. In a 14-year study at Mass General Brigham hospital, researchers tracked nearly 300 adults ages 50 to 90 who were cognitively healthy at the start, using pedometers to monitor activity and PET scans to detect Alzheimer’s-related brain changes. They found that 3,000 steps a day appeared to delay cognitive decline by about three years, while 5,000 to 7,000 steps daily delayed it by roughly seven years. Participants with elevated levels of amyloid—a toxic brain protein linked to Alzheimer’s—experienced slower buildup of another harmful protein, tau, and a slower rate of cognitive decline if they were more physically active. Those who were sedentary saw faster deterioration. Though the researchers cannot…

(Doubleday, $35) “Book of Lives might as well be one of Margaret Atwood’s novels,” said Robert Allen Papinchak in the Los Angeles Times. A 624-page “tour de force,” it’s “populated by a large cast of beguiling characters” and is “grounded by a compelling storyline,” that of a brilliant writer who has lived 86 years on this earth while channeling her response to that life into more than 70 books in all genres. Born in Ottawa in 1939, Atwood was raised by two accomplished and resourceful parents, including an entomologist father whose insect studies pulled the family out into the wilds for six months of every year. By 6, “Peggy” Atwood had written her first poetry collection. When she finished high school, her yearbook reported that “Peggy’s not-so-secret ambition is to…

Louise Penny’s award-winning Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series now spans two decades and 20 novels. The latest, The Black Wolf, is a New York Times No. 1 best seller and finds an injured Gamache leading a covert probe into a growing terrorist threat. The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves (2025). It’s her new series, bringing back Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez from her Shetland series. I loved the character and was so anxious to know what was happening in his life. Here’s the answer, brilliantly realized. Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon (2012). I met Andrew at the Nantucket Book Festival. At the time I hadn’t read any of his works, but I went to his talk and was struck by how thoughtful, gentle, fearless he was. And his writing…

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, through Feb. 22 “She was, she is, a cultural punch line,” said Christopher Borrelli in the Chicago Tribune. But before anyone started blaming Yoko Ono for breaking up the Beatles, she was several years into what’s become a seven-decade career of creating conceptual art “so original and challenging,” and eventually so influential, that “the joke is really on the know-nothings.” The career retrospective of her work now showing in Chicago after stops in Düsseldorf and London gathers more than 200 pieces, and it’s at once “epic but intimate, impossibly earnest but full of irony.” Ono’s work often encourages participation, so one piece invites you to step into a sack and another asks you to stick your arm through a canvas and shake hands with anyone…

(R) A movie star looks back on his flawed life. George Clooney’s newest film is “the definition of a movie that goes down easy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. Clooney plays the title character, an aging, George Clooney–like movie star, and director Noah Baumbach brings “a great deal of care and affection” to the task of showing how screen fame shapes a life. “But as much as I enjoyed a lot of Jay Kelly, on some level I didn’t buy it,” because the story demands that we believe Jay has a hidden cold side that Clooney is simply too warm and engaging to sell. The whole endeavor feels like “celebrity navel-gazing on an Olympian scale,” said Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post. Jay, realizing that he’s been so focused…

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore Diane Ladd, who died Nov. 3, wasn’t a megawatt star, but she was a versatile actress whose performances were unfailingly powerful. She earned her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Flo, a sharp-tongued Southern waitress, in this early Martin Scorsese feature. $4 on demand Wild at Heart Ladd did some of her best work alongside her daughter, Laura Dern. Take this fantastical black comedy from David Lynch, in which she’s out-of-the-box terrific as the overbearing, unhinged mother to Dern’s character. $4 on demand Rambling Rose With this 1991 Depression-era drama, Ladd and Dern became the first mother and daughter ever nominated for Oscars for the same film. Ladd plays the matriarch in a Southern family who takes in a damaged young woman as a…

When you book your next distant overseas vacation, “don’t forget to inform your family doctor,” said Andrea Sachs in The Washington Post. Visiting some countries can require an array of inoculations, and “the expense can really balloon.” A traveler to India could pay up to $4,000 for immunizations against typhoid, Japanese encephalitis, hepatitis A, chikungunya, cholera, and malaria, depending on insurance coverage and which medical recommendations are heeded. Start by consulting your primary doctor, who may have travel medicine experience. But you’re likely to be directed to a specialized travel clinic, which will typically charge a minor consultation fee plus a fee for each shot. Some for-profit clinics charge hefty markups for vaccines compared with a clinic tied to a university hospital. Online resources can help, including the Centers for…

Dick Cheney turned the vice presidency from a punch line into a powerhouse. Having been a right-hand man to multiple Republican presidents before running with George W. Bush in 2000, he knew his worth. When a former veep, Dan Quayle, warned him the job mostly involved attending openings and funerals, Cheney replied, “I have a different understanding with the president.” A proponent of a strong executive branch, he rejected the idea that protecting civil liberties outweighed the imperative to prevent another 9/11. Instead, he became the architect of the War on Terror, crafting and promoting the administration’s rationale for invading Iraq in 2003. That conflict, in which nearly 5,000 U.S. service members and some 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, grew increasingly unpopular once it became clear that Iraqi dictator Saddam…