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April 7, 2022

 

Good morning. We look at “the Putin wing” of the Republican Party.

 
 
 
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Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in 2019.Susan Walsh/Associated Press

Their man in Moscow

Donald Trump turned Vladimir Putin into a popular figure among a significant segment of Republican voters. As a candidate, president and ex-president, Trump has repeatedly praised Putin, calling him “strong,” “savvy” and “genius.” Trump has also echoed Putin’s ideology, by harshly criticizing NATO.

Taking their cue from Trump, some Republican voters began to view Putin more favorably. A YouGov poll in January found that Republicans viewed Putin more favorably than they viewed President Biden, Kamala Harris or Nancy Pelosi.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the situation, damaging his popularity in the U.S., even among Republicans. If anything, many Republican voters say they wish the Biden administration would take more aggressive action to help Ukraine, according to the Pew Research Center. Yet Trump’s effect on Putin’s popularity has not entirely disappeared: There is still a meaningful faction of Republican elites who feel an affinity for the Russian president.

Today’s newsletter looks at this faction. Representative Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican and frequent Trump critic, describes it as “the Putin wing of the G.O.P.” It both admires him as a strong leader and likes his right-wing nationalism, including his opposition to NATO, Western liberalism and L.G.B.T. rights.

For now, this wing remains on the party’s fringe, with little ability to affect policy. Senator Lindsey Graham has called Putin’s defenders “outliers,” while Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, has described Putin as an evil dictator who is murdering people.

But the G.O.P.’s Putin wing still has influence. It is affecting coverage by the most important news source for Republicans voters: Fox News. It seems to be shaping the behavior of another major corporation: Koch Industries. And Trump remains a leading contender to win the 2024 Republican nomination, which suggests the party’s Putin-friendly faction may not remain on the fringe.

In their own words

In the days leading up to the invasion, Trump praised Putin for recognizing Ukraine’s economic and strategic value to Russia. “He’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper,” Trump said. “We could use that on our southern border.”

In recent days, Trump has shifted to a more mixed message, both saying that Putin should negotiate a peace agreement and praising him as “driven.” Trump has also encouraged Putin to release negative information on Biden’s family.

Tucker Carlson, the host of one of cable television’s highest-rated shows, has suggested that American liberals represent a bigger threat than Putin. “It might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about?” Carlson said in February. “Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist?”

Carlson has also promoted a false rumor, popular in Russia, accusing the U.S. of funding biological weapons labs in Ukraine. These comments are consistent with Carlson’s history of arguing that the U.S. should align itself with Russia over Ukraine. “I think we should probably take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine,” he said in 2019.

Koch Industries, the conglomerate whose controlling family is a major funder of Republican candidates and conservative causes, has said it would continue to operate in Russia even as many Western companies have left.

Political advocacy groups affiliated with Charles Koch have also questioned why the U.S. is levying harsh sanctions on Russia and have suggested that a Ukrainian victory is not in America’s interest, as Judd Legum of the Popular Information newsletter has reported. “The United States can and should do very little for Ukraine,” Will Ruger, the president of a Koch-funded group, has said. “Ukraine simply doesn’t matter to America’s security or our prosperity.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Georgia congresswoman, has criticized both Russia’s invasion and Ukraine’s government. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government is corrupt, she claimed (without offering evidence), and is in power only because the Obama administration helped overthrow the previous regime (which is not true). She has argued that the U.S. should not send weapons to Ukraine.

Matt Rosendale, a Montana congressman, called Zelensky “a less-than-forthright president of the Ukraine.”

Former Trump administration officials have echoed their boss’s comments. “I have enormous respect for him,” Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, said of Putin. “He is very savvy, very shrewd.” Peter Navarro, who was a Trump economic adviser, said that Ukraine was “not really a country” because it used to be part of the Soviet Union. Douglas Macgregor, another administration official, said that Russian forces had been “too gentle” with Ukraine.

At least two Republican candidates have made similar comments. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” J.D. Vance, who is running for Senate in Ohio, said. Joe Kent, who is trying to win a primary over a House Republican who voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 riot, called Putin’s demand to control part of eastern Ukraine “very reasonable.”

In some cases, Russian state television has shown its appreciation for these kind words toward Putin. It has aired clips of Carlson’s show, defended Trump from what it calls unfair attacks by the American media and suggested that Trump should become president again.

State of the War

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A disabled Russian tank in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv.Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

More on Ukraine

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Traces of two lives lost this past week in Kharkiv.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
 

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THE LATEST NEWS

The Virus
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Dining inside a Manhattan restaurant last month.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
 
Politics
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Many vaccine-hesitant Americans were persuadable. Both liberals and conservatives failed them, says Ross Douthat.

Jon Shields once opposed campus “safe spaces.” Now he thinks open inquiry requires taking students’ discomfort seriously.

 
 

Journalism like this is only possible with subscribers.

Support the reporting that goes into The Morning. Subscribe to The Times with this special offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Members of the Harvard Black Law Students Association.Lelanie Foster for The New York Times

K.B.J.’s nomination: Black women at Harvard Law School reflect on Ketanji Brown Jackson. “We are literally walking in her shoes.”

Untz untz: Explore Germany’s new museum dedicated to techno.

Unearthed footage: How a local TV station found a clip of Prince at 11 years old.

DALL-E: This A.I. draws anything at your command.

A Times classic: What our critic saw bingeing “Game of Thrones.”

Advice from Wirecutter: Try a muscle-pummeling massage gun.

Lives Lived: Eric Boehlert was a veteran journalist who was a fierce critic of right-wing misinformation and hypocrisy in the news media. He died at 57.

 

SPORTS AND IDEAS

An M.L.B. season preview

The Major League Baseball season, delayed by a labor fight, finally begins today. Three players are especially worth watching:

Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Angels: Ohtani, who draws comparisons to Babe Ruth as a pitcher who hits home runs, is the game’s most exciting player. He may also be the only pitcher to hold a bat with any frequency this season. That’s because the National League has adopted the designated hitter — allowing other players to bat in place of pitchers — nearly 50 years after the American League did.

Max Scherzer, New York Mets: Scherzer, who has been named the league’s best pitcher three times, joined a Mets roster that already had an elite starter, Jacob deGrom. The duo could be fearsome once deGrom returns from an injury. The Mets are now outspending the Yankees. Will they also outplay them?

Wander Franco, Tampa Bay Rays: The normally thrifty Rays signed Franco, a shortstop, to a lucrative deal after only his first season. They will need his preternatural batting talent to compete in the A.L. East: The Yankees, Blue Jays and Red Sox all have strong lineups.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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David Malosh for The New York Times

Tangy, sweet, and scene-stealing, try Melissa Clark’s pomegranate-bathed casserole.

 
What to Read

In a memoir, Molly Shannon recounts her comedy career and the family tragedy that changed her life.

 
What to Do

Go birding with a purpose this spring.

 
Late Night

Jimmy Kimmel tripped out over communicating mushrooms.

 
Now Time to Play
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The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were organizing and razoring. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Inclined (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The U.N. established the World Health Organization 74 years ago today.

The Daily” is about Covid in Africa. On the Modern Love podcast, City Hall marriages.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 10, 2022

 

Good morning. More expensive gas could have lasting consequences.

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Pumping gas at a Shell gas station in Houston.Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Why gas prices are up

If you were hoping for much cheaper gas anytime soon, I have some bad news: Prices probably won’t drop much for at least a few months.

The causes of more expensive gas will most likely be with us for a while. After driving U.S. prices to more than $4 a gallon, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight. Producers so far seem unwilling, or unable, to pump out enough supply to fill the gap caused by the war.

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Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

When I asked whether any good short-term solutions exist, Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, gave a simple answer: “No.”

For Americans, the immediate effect is that life will simply cost more. We will pay more when we fill up our gas tanks or pay energy bills in the next few weeks or months. The price of many other goods will go up, because so many things — food, iPhones, PlayStations, cars — must be transported at one point or another by a truck, a boat or a plane burning fossil fuels.

Higher fuel prices have broader consequences, too. A push to drill more oil and natural gas, or to more aggressively pursue alternative energy sources, could affect climate change (in good or bad ways). A public angry over the cost of living could protest or vote out the politicians in power. People in the U.S. and other countries aiding Ukraine could begin to wonder whether their support is worth pricier gasoline and other goods.

With the Covid pandemic’s retreat, many of us wanted — and expected — some sense of relief after two awful years. Higher gas prices, and broader inflation trends, work against that, as if we are merely trading one crisis for another. And just as with the pandemic, no clear end is in sight.

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A refinery in California.Bing Guan/Reuters

Producers vs. low prices

At the onset of the pandemic, demand for fuel collapsed as people stayed home. Once much of the world reopened, demand returned.

But supply has not kept pace, much like strained supply lines have raised food prices and impaired the flow of cars, electronics and other goods. By turning much of the world against a major oil and gas producer in Russia, the war in Ukraine only made supply problems worse.

Some of the supply issues are by design. OPEC Plus, a cartel of oil-producing countries that includes Russia, has worked to keep prices — and therefore profits — as high as possible by limiting supply. The cartel has held fast to its approach.

But it is not just OPEC. American oil companies have deliberately slowed production after a pair of recent fracking boom-and-bust cycles left them with a glut of supply and plummeting prices. “We’re having the third boom, and these executives don’t want to have the third bust,” Kloza said.

All of that leaves few good solutions in the short term. Even if public pressure or a strained market eventually pushes producers to drill more, new production can take months to spin up, especially given labor and supply shortages. And even if U.S. producers step up, OPEC Plus could decide to cut back — to keep prices high.

Other potential solutions that lawmakers have mentioned or enacted, like a gas tax holiday or direct cash relief, could make inflation worse by putting more money in people’s pockets and keeping demand high without necessarily increasing supply. “We’re not in a position to help households right now because it would cause more inflation,” Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard, told me.

Meanwhile, some experts suggested that the best chance of a quick decline in gas prices is an outcome nobody wants: a new Covid variant or a recession tanking the economy and demand.

A cascading problem

Gas prices tend to get disproportionate attention compared to their actual economic impact, Furman said.

One reason for that: The cost of gas is incredibly transparent, posted on giant signs across the country. The visibility can make rising gas prices a symbol for broader inflation trends.

Rachel Ziemba, an energy expert at the Center for a New American Security, said she was worried that higher gas prices will cause social and political instability. Around the world, inflation has already prompted protests and even riots. Higher gas prices in particular have historically led to lower presidential approval ratings, as voters blame those in charge for inflation and bad economic conditions.

Some experts worry that higher gas prices will eventually hurt Western resolve against Russia, if Americans and Europeans start to ask whether supporting Ukraine is worth the price. Recent polls suggest the public is willing to make some sacrifices for the war effort, but polling also shows increasing discontent with inflation.

So the consequences of rising gas prices are not just to your wallet, but also possibly geopolitical.

 

NEWS

War in Ukraine
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Gen. Aleksandr V. Dvornikov in 2016.Alexei Nikolsky/Sputnik, via AP
 
Other Big Stories
 
The Week Ahead
  • The U.S. government will release its latest monthly inflation data on Tuesday. Experts expect prices to have climbed more than 8 percent.
  • France’s presidential elections today are expected to elevate President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen to a dramatic two-week runoff.
  • The N.B.A. playoffs begin on Saturday. The Miami Heat and the Phoenix Suns are the top seeds.
  • The Christian Holy Week begins today with Palm Sunday. The Jewish holiday of Passover begins Friday night. Here are Times recipes for the occasion.
 

FROM OPINION

 
 

The Sunday question: Is Washington’s Covid outbreak the price of normalcy?

With vaccines widely available, it’s up to individuals to decide whether to attend events like the D.C. banquet that likely became a superspreader event, Dr. Leana Wen argues. Dr. Uché Blackstock disagrees, arguing that mandating precautions would have kept attendees safer.

 
 

Journalism like this is only possible with subscribers.

Support the reporting that goes into The Morning. Subscribe to The Times with this special offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for WarnerMedia

Behind the mic: The actress Laverne Cox asked the questions, for a change.

Advice from Wirecutter: How to clean a bird feeder.

Sunday Routine: A “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” tour guide takes fans to 1950s New York.

A Times classic: The 25 greatest actors of the 21st century (so far).

Don’t call it “kamping”: The budget campground network K.O.A. is going after the luxury market.

 

BOOKS

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Naima Green for The New York Times

Fighting death: Delia Ephron’s new book combines a medical thriller, a cancer memoir, a love story and a heroic journey.

By the Book: Books are like pheromones — they “unite, divide, attract and repel people,” the critic Margo Jefferson says.

Our editors’ picks: “The Candy House,” Jennifer Egan’s sequel to “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” tells more than a dozen related stories and defies neat summarizing.

Times best sellers: Ten Steps To Nanette,” by the comedian Hannah Gadsby, is new on our hardcover nonfiction list. See all our lists here.

The Book Review podcast: The critic Jennifer Wilson talks about new fiction that highlights how conflict has transformed Ukrainian lives.

 

THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE

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Illustration by Andrew Rae

On the cover: It’s the magazine’s money issue. Kick off with nine ways to visualize Jeff Bezos’ wealth.

Recommendation: Make the most of April showers by recording thunderstorms.

Unplug: Fantasize about a simpler life via soothing YouTube videos about building huts and fires.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here’s a clue from the Sunday crossword:

121 Across: Cocktail often made with Tennessee whiskey, ironically

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Spelling Bee. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — German

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 13, 2022

 

Good morning. Inflation is up sharply. We look at why prices might ease — and why they might not.

 
 
 
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Gasoline prices have risen 48 percent since March 2021.Gabby Jones for The New York Times

Rising prices

The overall cost of gas, food and other everyday items is increasing at its fastest rate in more than 40 years. And experts cannot say with confidence whether price increases will speed up or slow down in the coming months.

The accelerating price rate — in other words, inflation — hit 8.5 percent in March over the previous year, according to a federal report released yesterday. That was the fastest increase since 1981.

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Chart shows year-over-year percent change. | Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Rising gas prices drove more than half of the March increase, largely because of the war in Ukraine and subsequent sanctions on Russia, a major oil and gas producer. But costs for other goods, including housing, increased significantly in March, too.

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Chart shows year-over-year changes in select categories of the Consumer Price Index. | Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The problem is the same as it has been for the past year: Supply chains are failing to keep up with elevated consumer demand. “It is really a broader imbalance between supply and demand,” my colleague Jeanna Smialek, who covers the economy, told me.

American life is subsequently more expensive, with increases in prices so far outpacing gains in wages.

In response, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, is raising interest rates to increase the cost of borrowing money. The goal is to slow down the economy and, therefore, inflation.

But some experts worry that the Fed is moving too slowly and that its approach could force it to take more drastic steps to tame prices down the line. The nightmare scenario: The Fed has to tank the economy, as it did in the 1980s by aggressively raising interest rates, to end stubbornly high inflation.

Given these stakes, today I want to walk through the reasons that inflation might stay high, and the reasons it might not, over the next few months.

Why it might get worse

The Federal Reserve aims for an inflation rate of roughly 2 percent a year, trying to strike a balance of high employment levels without runaway price increases. But inflation is running much higher right now, and is also greater in the U.S. than in Europe and other developed countries. There are reasons to believe this will remain a problem for some time.

Unexpected events have disrupted supply lines for the past few years and could again. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already caused gas prices to spike. Because Ukraine is a major food producer, the war has also increased food prices and may continue to do so.

Covid has distorted supply lines since 2020, and future variants and outbreaks could do the same. That is already happening in China, where some places are locking down to try to contain new outbreaks — potentially interrupting the flow of goods from the world’s biggest manufacturer.

“Covid is the root of all evil,” Claudia Sahm, an economist at the Jain Family Institute, told me. “It has been extremely disruptive and tragic in people’s lives. It has also been disruptive in their livelihoods.”

The longer these disruptions go on, the longer Americans may come to expect inflation to become a regular part of life — and the worse inflation could get as a result.

Consider wages: If people expect high inflation, they will demand higher pay. But to pay higher wages, employers are likely to pass that cost to consumers by charging them higher prices. Higher wages could also mean elevated demand, because people will have more money to spend. This “wage-price spiral,” as economists call it, was a major contributor to high inflation in the 1970s.

Why it might get better

Some experts are optimistic. They believe that inflation could start coming down later this year. “The Fed is very capable of bringing down inflation,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group. “That said, I think there is a lot of risk.”

One positive hint, from yesterday’s report: The core inflation index, which measures prices excluding more volatile food and energy costs, increased at a slower rate in March than it did in previous months. That could suggest that inflation is peaking.

Gas prices are also already down a bit from a peak in March. Some of that is driven by China’s lockdowns, keeping many potential consumers home. Over time, the world may also adjust to the Ukraine war’s shock to oil and gas markets. The West, for example, could find alternatives to Russian oil and gas, like more U.S. drilling or clean energy sources, to fill current gaps in supply.

And the war could end, reducing any further impact on global markets.

Meanwhile, Covid cases are declining worldwide. If potential future waves do not cause major disruptions, inflation could cool as supply lines get back to normal.

The Biden administration is separately taking some actions, like releasing oil from strategic reserves and allowing summertime sales of ethanol-based gas. But the effects of those moves are expected to be small.

Consumer demand could drop as well. Higher prices could discourage some spending. And extra cash from the economic stimulus packages of the past few years, which some experts argue helped fuel inflation, is drying up, leaving Americans with less money to spend.

All of that, along with the Federal Reserve’s actions, could put the economy in a better balance between supply and demand in the coming months.

For More

  • At grocery stores, prices are rising for beef, poultry, fish, eggs, flour, fruit and milk.
  • The economist Paul Krugman expects inflation to ease, but that “won’t mean that the inflation problem is over,” he argues in Times Opinion.
 

THE LATEST NEWS

Subway Shooting
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Wounded people at the 36th Street station yesterday.Armen Armenian/via Reuters
 
War in Ukraine
 
Politics
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Brian Benjamin leaving court yesterday.Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
  • Road rage killings in the U.S. have exploded over the past year. “Now instead of throwing up the finger, they’re pulling out the gun and shooting,” the mayor of Houston said.
 
Opinions

Ending America’s support for global vaccinations is unbelievably shortsighted, Michelle Goldberg argues.

Bret Stephens on how the U.S. should respond if Russia uses chemical weapons.

 
 

Journalism like this is only possible with subscribers.

Support the reporting that goes into The Morning. Subscribe to The Times with this special offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Illustrations by Rosemary Mosco

Pigeons: They’re more than rats with wings.

At the Seder table: Need a Haggadah? There’s a QR code for that.

An oasis: This beach in Mexico is an L.G.B.T.Q. haven. Can it last?

A Times classic: Enter the calm place.

Advice from Wirecutter: Stylish coasters to spruce up your table.

Lives Lived: Gilbert Gottfried’s credits ranged from the family-friendly “Aladdin” to the vulgarity of “The Aristocrats” and included a brief stint on “Saturday Night Live.” He died at 67.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

A Renaissance music primer

In “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love …,” The Times asks musicians, critics and experts to recommend a song in a certain musical style. The latest edition explores a lesser-known area: Renaissance music.

“We wanted to shine a light on music you’re most likely not going to hear at your local symphony,” Zachary Woolfe, The Times’s classical music critic, told us. “There’s an incredible variety in the compositions of the 15th and 16th centuries, but this selection focuses on some of the most beautiful choral writing ever made.”

The songs on the list evoke the listener’s imagination of life centuries ago. In many of them, celestial harmonies sound as though they are echoing in a cathedral. Others are fun and surprising: “Come, sirrah Jack, ho,” a jaunty ode to drinking and smoking, is like a night in a tavern. Listen to that one, and many more.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Bryan Gardner for The New York Times

Salmon soba noodles with a tangy sauce is a quick-cooking meal.

 
What to Read

Stefan Al’s “Supertall” is a thoughtful inquiry into the new generation of skyscrapers, which are taller and more widespread than their predecessors.

 
Profile

How Viola Davis drew on a life of private hardship to become one of the greatest actors of her generation.

 
Late Night

Stephen Colbert scoffed at John Eastman, a former legal adviser to Donald Trump.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were loveably and volleyball. Here is today’s puzzle.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: ___ of time (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. Sidney Poitier became the first Black performer to win an Oscar for best actor 58 years ago today.

The Daily” is about the next phase of the war in Ukraine. On “The Argument,” a debate about the challenges facing liberalism.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 14, 2022

 

Today we’re turning The Morning over to Amanda Taub, the author of The Times’s Interpreter newsletter, which explains international news. Amanda wrote this dispatch from Poland.

Good morning. The war in Ukraine has led to familiar, but heightened, problems for women.

 
 
 
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Lubomira Pancuk, center, with her daughter and son.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times

A crisis for mothers

If there’s one thing to understand about the Ukrainian refugee crisis in Poland, it’s this: Approximately 90 percent of the refugees are women and children.

Because of military conscription, Ukraine has barred most men between 18 and 60 from leaving. So although millions of people have fled the Russian invasion, the ones who cross the border are women, children, and some older men.

That has meant devastating separations for the families involved. But it also means that this crisis of forced migration is foremost a crisis for women — particularly for mothers.

A world of women

To understand how that crisis is playing out, I went to Zabki, a small suburb outside Warsaw, which exemplifies the promise and challenges of Poland’s effort to welcome Ukrainian refugees.

The first refugees arrived within days of the Russian invasion, said Malgorzata Zysk, the town’s mayor. Officially, more than 1,500 Ukrainian refugees now live in Zabki, with about 100 registering each day. But Zysk estimated that the real numbers are about twice as high.

In a small apartment lent to her by Zabki’s government, Lubomira Pancuk showed me photographs of her family gathered in January for Orthodox Christmas. In the pictures, she is pregnant, next to her husband and three daughters, all smiling for the camera. “We were all together, happy, waiting for the baby,” she said.

Less than two months later, the war forced her to flee to Poland with her children, including her three-week-old son, who was born prematurely and has jaundice. Her husband is still in Ukraine.

Pancuk’s eyes filled with tears as she described the generosity of Zabki’s government and residents.

But the family lives precariously, reliant on a small allowance from the Polish government and the generosity of their Polish neighbors. It is impossible for Pancuk to work because she must care for her baby.

“I don’t know what my plans will be,” she said. “I am just living day to day.”

It’s a story that I heard over and over from women refugees in Poland. They told me that their priorities were simple: a safe place to live with their children, far from the bombs and battles.

But security and stability often cost more than the small allowance the Polish government offers to Ukrainian families. Though thousands of Polish citizens have lent refugees rooms or apartments, soon many refugee mothers will have to work to pay the rent.

That means Ukrainian mothers must solve a higher-stakes version of the problem that working mothers face all over the world: how to find both affordable child care and employers willing to accommodate their needs as parents.

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A family at a refugee center in Zabki, Poland.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times

A system under strain

Family-friendly policies, such as flexible working hours, are relatively rare in Polish workplaces — the legacy of years of high unemployment.

Care for children under 3 is often so expensive that many women find it cheaper to stay home until their children are old enough for preschool. And although the government has expanded state-funded preschools for 3- to 6-year-olds as part of its nationalist campaign to convince Polish women to have more children, spaces were already in short supply in many parts of the country before the war began.

Grazyna Swiezak, the director of a preschool in Zabki, said that she and her staffers were happy for the opportunity to help Ukrainian children.

The school anticipates that some refugee children will need emotional support, and Swiezak said she hoped to find Ukrainian- or Russian-speaking psychotherapists to help them. But on my recent visit there, the scene seemed idyllic. In a row of sunlit classrooms, Ukrainian children played with new friends.

But good will cannot necessarily overcome institutional limitations. The caps on preschool class sizes, for instance, were intended to ensure that children had adequate supervision. Expanding them further could jeopardize children’s education, and perhaps their safety.

And the new spots created for Ukrainian children are filling up. More than half of the new spaces at the preschool are already taken, Swiezak said. New families arrive in town every day.

If the government expands support for Ukrainian mothers without making similar efforts to meet Polish women’s unmet needs, there is a risk of political backlash.

“Some people will have understanding for the fact that these people have suffered so much, and want to help them get safe footing in the Polish territory,” Iga Magda, a labor economist at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, said. “But others will not care as much.”

“The last thing we need is a conflict here,” Magda told me. “This is what Putin wants the most, right?”

To read more from Amanda, sign up for the Interpreter newsletter.

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Denise Lanzisera with Anita Lanza, 6, her granddaughter.Todd Heisler/The New York Times
 
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Snack stands, gift cards and other perks companies are using to lure workers back to the office are no substitute for fair pay and good benefits, says Elizabeth Spiers.

Test your politics knowledge with Gail Collins’s spring quiz.

 
 

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Suspend time: Ambient music doesn’t always have to be a backdrop.

Sheer undergarments: Lingerie for men is here.

Broadway: The playwright David Mamet has embraced conservatism.

A Times classic: Where to find romance in marriage.

Advice from Wirecutter: Tips for bold, bright, dyed Easter eggs.

Lives Lived: Jerry Uelsmann’s surreal prints combined elements of multiple photographs, conjuring dreamlike imagery. He died at 87.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Some of Rihanna’s recent outfits.Victor Boyko/Getty Images For Gucci, Mike Coppola/Getty Images, Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Fenty Beauty by Rihanna

The celebrity bump

Rihanna was already an icon — she’s had more than a dozen chart-topping hits, is known for her trendsetting red-carpet looks, and founded hugely successful cosmetics and lingerie lines. Now, she’s changing what a celebrity pregnancy looks like.

What sets Rihanna’s maternity outfits apart is that they’re not so different from what she wore before. She has embraced her body throughout her pregnancy, showing up to events in sheer tops and bras, skintight dresses, and custom-made jumpsuits designed to flaunt her belly. Rihanna is showing that she is “autonomous, powerful and herself, even while carrying a life,” Renée Ann Cramer, author of “Pregnant With the Stars,” told The Times.

It’s a significant move considering that the pregnant body has long been “policed, hidden away and considered problematic,” our fashion critic Vanessa Friedman writes. Three decades ago, many stores banned an issue of Vanity Fair featuring a naked and pregnant Demi Moore on the cover. The photographer who snapped that cover, Annie Leibovitz, has now photographed Rihanna for the May issue of Vogue. Her outfit: a red lace bodysuit.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Joel Goldberg for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

Slow-cooker kofte in tomato-lime broth is delicious over rice.

 
What to Read

In “Seek and Hide,” the law professor Amy Gajda writes about the complexity of the right to privacy.

 
What to Watch

Revisit “Mississippi Masala,” a love story from 1991 starring Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington.

 
Late Night
 
Now Time to Play
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The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was quoting. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Whole host (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. “When I can’t sleep I’ve been doing Wordle,” Vice President Kamala Harris told Democratic donors last night.

The Daily” is about Twitter and Elon Musk. The Modern Love podcast is about teenage anthems.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Today we’re turning The Morning over to Jodi Kantor and Karen Weise, who have reported on labor issues at Amazon, including the recent successful union drive at a Staten Island warehouse.

Good morning. Amazon and its new union share the same problem.

 
 
 
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Derrick Palmer, an Amazon worker, protesting in 2020.Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Amazon vs. the union

Last Wednesday, Derrick Palmer clocked in for his 7:15 a.m. shift at Amazon’s giant warehouse on Staten Island and spent the day packing boxes with board games, iPhones and mini vacuum cleaners. The following morning, he boarded a train to Washington, D.C., where more experienced labor leaders hailed him and his best friend, Christian Smalls, for doing what had once seemed impossible: unionizing an Amazon facility.

In the past week, their David-versus-Goliath victory has become a symbol of growing worker power. On a recent episode of “The Daily,” the two men relayed the twists and turns of their story, from a fateful misdirected email that rebounded in their favor, to the D.I.Y. tactics they used, like free marijuana and bonfires, to forge a bond with co-workers.

But whether their victory will last is far from assured. In the coming weeks, the fight between the new union and Amazon is likely to become even more heated. Amazon is marshaling its legal might to try to overturn the election. The new union will attempt to win another, more difficult vote at a second Staten Island location. And everyone will be watching to see if similar efforts emerge at other Amazon facilities — and whether the company will be able to extinguish them.

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The original Amazon Labor Union protesters.DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York Times

As this unfolds, here are three questions to watch for:

1. What does this union want?

Smalls and the other Amazon Labor Union leaders won in large part because the Staten Island workers have a long, varied list of frustrations. This week, he said that the A.L.U. was prepared to demand broad changes in Amazon’s working conditions and on safety, pay and benefits. But the campaign lacks the kind of single, galvanizing goal, like a $15-an-hour minimum wage, that has given other labor organizing efforts a focal point.

Amazon, partly responding to the political pressures of the national minimum wage campaign, raised wages to $15 in 2018 and now pays an average starting pay of more than $18 an hour.

2. How will Amazon respond?

To overturn the election, Amazon would have to meet a high bar, proving not only that misconduct occurred but that the problems were so widespread that they tainted the entire vote, Wilma Liebman, a former head of the National Labor Relations Board, explained.

But no matter the outcome, or whether the new group succeeds in negotiating a contract, the company has a larger question to answer: How will it respond to the underlying concerns that allowed the union drive to get this far?

Amazon, in a sense, faces the same conceptual challenge that the new union does: The list of workers’ grievances with the company is just so long.

Our Times investigation last year revealed how strained Amazon’s labor model had become, with a sky-high 150 percent annual turnover rate and a low-trust, management-by-machine approach. In contrast to its precise handling of packages, its human resources systems were so overtaxed that we found a pattern in which the company inadvertently fired its own employees. Injury rates continue to be a serious concern. And there’s more.

On Thursday, in his first letter to shareholders since taking over as chief executive, Andy Jassy acknowledged the breadth of problems. “We’ve researched and created a list of what we believe are the top 100 employee experience pain points and are systematically solving them,” he wrote.

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Palmer speaking to a truck driver about unionizing last year.Dave Sanders for The New York Times

But Amazon, known for its ambition, shows no sign of making fundamental changes. In yesterday’s letter, Jassy said he would continue to take an “iterative” approach — making repeated tweaks — to the company’s year-old goal of becoming “Earth’s Best Employer.”

3. Will other warehouses follow?

Smalls has said that workers at more than a hundred other Amazon facilities have contacted the union, interested in organizing at their locations. In an interview this week, he said that the A.L.U. now plans to go national. If the Staten Island efforts prove contagious, Amazon would start looking more like Starbucks, where more locations are voting to unionize every week.

But it’s too early to tell if anything like that will happen. “Let’s not make a single event a movement,” Andrew Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union, said in an interview this week. “We don’t know whether this is an extraordinary occurrence or a reproducible event.”

Last month, in another contested election, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama appear to have narrowly rejected unionizing, though the margin is close enough that the results will not be known until hundreds of contested ballots are litigated.

The key difference between Amazon and Starbucks is the sheer size of each site, which must individually unionize. For Starbucks, the union needs about 20 votes to prevail in a single cafe; at Amazon, with its enormous warehouses, the union needs more than a thousand, making each election a far harder task.

The stakes of this fight could not be higher for Amazon, whose entire retail model rests on a coast-to-coast chain of manual labor, or for unions themselves. Despite the rapid organizing at Starbucks — and the frequent arrival of high-profile examples of other new organizing efforts — union membership has been on a downhill slope for decades.

If workers at Amazon — the nation’s second-largest employer, and perhaps the most influential one of our time — decide they don’t want or need unions, or cannot overcome Amazon’s resources, it will be an ominous sign for the relevance of organized labor. So expect nothing less than a bitter, messy, drawn-out battle that could help determine the future of American work.

 

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The Moskva was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters
 
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A nurse’s fatal mistake reflects a problem in medicine, Dr. Daniela Lamas writes.

To reduce your carbon emissions, ditch the gas leaf blower, Jessica Stolzberg says.

 
 

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Mysteries: He created the first known movie. Then he vanished.

Climate change: Even the cactus may not be safe.

Modern Love: The loneliness of the locked-down single mother.

A Times classic: How to keep moths off your clothes.

Advice from Wirecutter: Spring cleaning? Here’s how to wash bathroom tile, kitchen countertops and hardwood floors.

Lives Lived: William G. Hamilton spent more than 40 years fixing bone spurs, tendinitis and other dance-induced ailments as New York City Ballet’s first in-house doctor. He died at 90.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Rehearsing “The Scandal at Mayerling” in Glasgow.Emily Macinnes for The New York Times

Bringing consent to ballet

For dancers, touch is routine. Now, when it comes to choreography that simulates sex or violence onstage, some companies are hiring intimacy directors, Laura Cappelle writes in The Times.

In recent years, more films and plays have turned to intimacy directors to choreograph scenes and look after the physical and emotional well-being of performers. But intimacy work for screen and theater doesn’t necessarily translate to dance, where the choreography mostly can’t be altered. And dancers have been discouraged from speaking up when they feel uncomfortable. Tales of boundaries being crossed are commonplace in ballet, where training starts young and most companies maintain a strict hierarchy.

Intimacy coaching sessions offer a space for dancers to voice their concerns. For a production at Scottish Ballet, two intimacy directors gave workshops and had private discussions with dancers. Afterward, the change in the dancers was “instant,” the company’s director said.

In one exercise, the dancers used a drawing of a body to mark the areas that felt vulnerable, and then communicated that to their colleagues. “To see it in black and white, and to speak to your partner, it opens up that whole trust,” one dancer said. “And it wasn’t just me saying it. It was the whole group.”

 

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Matzo crackers replace pasta in this Passover-friendly, ricotta-filled lasagna.

 
What to Watch

Alexander Skarsgard breaks down the mud and blood that went into making “The Northman,” a movie about Vikings.

 
What to Listen to

The culture critic Wesley Morris rethinks his obsessions with best-of lists on the season premiere of “Still Processing.”

 
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The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were hometown and townhome. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Thanksgiving dessert (three letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. Are you a student, parent or teacher who’s experienced anti-cheating software? Our colleague Kashmir Hill wants to hear about it.

The Daily” is about a prisoner who spent decades in solitary confinement.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 17, 2022

 

Good morning. The Brooklyn shooting and other headline-making violence are part of a broader trend.

 
 
 
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A subway station in Manhattan.Brittainy Newman for The New York Times

More mass shootings

A gunman opened fired in a Brooklyn subway, wounding 10 people on Tuesday and injuring others. A mall shooting in South Carolina yesterday wounded 10. A gang shootout this month in Sacramento killed six and wounded 12 more. New Orleans reported its bloodiest weekend in 10 years. Road rage shootings appear to be up in some states.

These are examples of America’s recent violent turn. Murders have spiked nearly 40 percent since 2019, and violent crimes, including shootings and other assaults, have increased overall. More tragedies, from mass shootings to smaller acts of violence, are likely to make headlines as long as higher levels of violent crime persist.

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Sources: Jeff Asher; F.B.I.

Three explanations help explain the increase in violence. The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns disrupted all aspects of life, including the social services that can tame crime and violence. The high-profile police killings of 2020 and the protests that followed strained police-community relations. And Americans bought a record number of guns in recent years.

Another explanation, covered in this newsletter before, ties these issues together: a growing sense of social discord and distrust. As Americans lose faith in their institutions and each other, they are more likely to lash out — sometimes in violent ways, Randolph Roth, a crime historian at Ohio State University, told me.

Besides Covid and police brutality, the country’s increasingly polarized politics and poor economic conditions have also fueled this discord. That helps explain the murder spike, as well as recent increases in drug addiction and overdoses, mental health problems, car crashes and even confrontations over masks on airplanes.

But given the shootings of the past two weeks, I want to step back and focus on violent crime trends in particular, with the help of charts by my colleague Ashley Wu.

Experts pointed to several reasons for concern: not only the headline-making tragedies, but also continued murder rate increases in some cities and the persistence of problems that contributed to more violent crime in the first place. But experts also see some potentially hopeful signs: recent decreases in murder rates in other cities, the easing of Covid-related disruptions and growing distance from the more chaotic police-community relations of 2020.

The bad news

It is too early to draw firm conclusions about 2022’s levels of violence; crime trends usually take shape in the summer. But so far this year, murders are up 1 percent in major U.S. cities, and some places are reporting sharp increases, according to the crime analyst Jeff Asher’s team.

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Sources: University of Chicago Crime Lab; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; city police departments; American Community Survey

The major causes of the 2020-21 murder spike still linger to varying degrees. The guns that Americans bought remain in circulation. While Covid cases have plummeted and lockdowns have ended, new variants are still disrupting social services and life in general.

Community-police relations are also still fraught, especially in minority neighborhoods. “If there is a fundamental breakdown in the community, the police are simply not going to be able to do an effective job,” said Charis Kubrin, a criminologist at the University of California, Irvine.

There are other reasons for concern: The worsening drug crisis could fuel violence between rival gangs and dealers. The end of federal pandemic-era relief programs, like the child tax credit, is already increasing poverty rates.

Inflation is particularly concerning because it could drive people to engage in property crime if they cannot keep up with higher expenses, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. And “some of those robberies end up as homicides,” he told me.

The old and new problems also feed into social discord. In March, 75 percent of adults said they were dissatisfied with the way things were going in the U.S., up from 65 percent three years ago, before the pandemic, Gallup found.

The good news

The data show some bright spots. The rise in homicides reported for 2022 is lower than the 2020-21 increase. In several big cities, murders are actually down.

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Sources: University of Chicago Crime Lab; city police departments; American Community Survey

“It’s too early to say,” Jamein Cunningham, a criminal justice expert at Cornell University, told me. “But it’s nice to have numbers that at least, relative to this time last year, suggest it might be easing.”

Murder rates are still 30 percent lower than they were during the previous peaks between the 1970s and ’90s. “I don’t think the Wild West days of the ’70s and ’80s are coming back,” said John Roman, a senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago.

As Covid cases fall, so will the pandemic’s effects on crime and violence. More distance from the police violence and protests of 2020 could also ease police-community tensions. (This seemed to happen before: Murders spiked in 2015 and 2016 after protests over police brutality, then murder rates leveled off, before spiking again in 2020.) And the social discord wrought by those problems could start to fade.

Federal funding is also flowing to cities and states to combat crime. The specifics and execution matter, but studies broadly suggest that more support for policing and other social services, which many places are now adopting, could help.

For More

 

NEWS

War in Ukraine
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A shopping center in central Kharkiv was struck by what appeared to be guided missiles on Saturday.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
 
The Week Ahead
  • Ukrainian officials are expected to attend meetings in Washington this week to discuss the effects of Russia’s invasion on the global economy.
  • Philadelphia’s newly reinstated indoor mask mandate goes into effect tomorrow.
  • Adults in New Jersey will be able to legally purchase recreational marijuana beginning Thursday.
  • Earth Day is on Friday. President Biden will travel to Seattle to discuss his administration’s plans for combating inflation and climate change.
  • Today is Easter. Celebrate with these stress-free holiday dinner recipes.
 

FROM OPINION

 
 

The Sunday question: Should elected officials be age-limited?

Doubts about the mental fitness of Senator Dianne Feinstein, 88, argue for mandatory retirement ages, The New York Post’s Maureen Callahan says. David Graham makes the counterargument, noting in The Atlantic that some lawmakers stay sharp longer than others.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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Rocco DiSpirito at Balthazar.Janice Chung for The New York Times

Sunday Routine: The chef Rocco DiSpirito lives for the seafood tower at Balthazar.

Love: How it rewires the brain.

Advice from Wirecutter: Get better sound from your TV.

Suffering for fashion: No more, writes Rhonda Garelick.

A Times classic: Now we know where Stonehenge’s stones came from.

 

BOOKS

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Rebecca Clarke

By the Book: The novelist Ocean Vuong will read a book or poem just about anywhere — including at a mixed martial arts fight.

Our editors’ picks: “Lucky Breaks,” by Yevgenia Belorusets, is a newly translated story collection about war’s effects on women in eastern Ukraine.

Times best sellers: “I Color Myself Different,” by Colin Kaepernick and illustrated by Eric Wilkerson, is a children’s picture book best seller. See all our lists.

The Book Review podcast: Elizabeth Alexander, the author of “The Trayvon Generation,” discusses how video technology has changed our understanding of violence.

 

THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE

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Ruven Afanador for The New York Times

On the cover: How Viola Davis became one of the greatest actors of her generation.

Recommendation: Have you considered a pet rabbit?

Eat: Strawberry-glazed chamomile cake. (Pair it with tea!)

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here’s a clue from the Sunday crossword:

27-Across: Apt facial hair for a teacher?

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Spelling Bee. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — German

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 18, 2022

 

Good morning. The West is arming Ukraine and punishing Russia. Today we look at the countries that aren’t.

 
 
 
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Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the U.N. Security Council this month.Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The ‘messy middle’

If you live in most any Western country, your government’s support for Ukraine, including sending weapons and imposing sanctions on Russia, can give the impression of a united global response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

But that isn’t the case. Most of the world’s 195 countries have not shipped aid to Ukraine or joined in sanctions. A handful have actively supported Russia. Far more occupy the “messy middle,” as Carisa Nietsche of the Center for a New American Security calls it, taking neither Ukraine’s nor Russia’s side.

“We live in a bubble, here in the U.S. and Europe, where we think the very stark moral and geopolitical stakes, and framework of what we’re seeing unfolding, is a universal cause,” Barry Pavel, a senior vice president at the Atlantic Council, told me. “Actually, most of the governments of the world are not with us.”

Today’s newsletter offers a guide to some of those countries and why they have committed to their stances.

National interests

India and Israel are prominent democracies that ally with the U.S. on many issues, particularly security. But they rely on Russia for security as well and have avoided arming Ukraine or imposing sanctions on Moscow. “In both cases, the key factor isn’t ideology but national interests,” says my colleague Max Fisher, who has written about Russia’s invasion.

India is the world’s largest buyer of Russian weapons, seeking to protect itself from Pakistan and China. India joined 34 other countries in abstaining from a United Nations vote that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as you can see on the map below. And India appears to be rebuffing Western pleas to take a harder line.

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The United Nations vote took place on March 2. Some countries did not formally submit votes. | Source: United Nations

Israel coordinates with Russia on Iran, its chief adversary, and in neighboring Syria (with which Russia has a strong relationship). Russian-speaking émigrés from the former Soviet Union also make up a sizable chunk of the Israeli electorate. Israel’s prime minister has avoided directly criticizing Putin, and though its government has mediated between Ukraine and Russia, little has come out of the effort.

Several Latin American, Southeast Asian and African countries have made similar choices. Bolivia, Vietnam and almost half of Africa’s 54 countries declined to support the U.N. resolution condemning Russia. Some rely on Russian military assistance, said Bruce Jones, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Others don’t want to risk jeopardizing trade relations with China, which has parroted Russian propaganda about the war.

Those countries “might be more accurately described as disinterested,” Max says, unwilling to risk their security or economies “for the sake of a struggle that they see as mostly irrelevant.”

West skeptics

Some countries, citing the West’s history of imperialism and past failures to respect human rights, have justified opposing its response to Ukraine. South Africa’s president blamed NATO for Russia’s invasion, and its U.N. ambassador criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq during a debate last month about Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis.

Other countries, including some that voted to condemn Russia’s invasion, accuse the West of acting counterproductively. Brazil’s U.N. ambassador has suggested that arming Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia risk escalating the war.

“There’s nothing intellectually incoherent between viewing Russia’s actions as outrageous and not necessarily fully siding with the West’s reaction to it,” Jones told me.

Autocratic leaders — including in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Nicaragua — may also feel threatened by Ukraine’s resistance and the West’s framing of the invasion as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, experts said. “They’re concerned that this could inspire opposition movements in their own countries,” Nietsche said.

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Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing in February.Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Russia’s friends

China, with all its economic and military might, has seen the war as a chance to enhance its own geopolitical standing as a counterweight to the U.S. while still maintaining ties to Russia. The countries recently issued a joint statement proclaiming a friendship with “no limits.” But China has struggled with the delicate balancing act of honoring that commitment without fully endorsing Russia’s invasion: Beijing has denounced Western sanctions but has not appeared to have given Russia weapons or economic aid.

“China’s support for Russia, while very important, is also carefully hedged and measured,” Max says.

Four countries — North Korea, Eritrea, Syria and Belarus — outright voted with Russia against the U.N. resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine. Belarus is a former Soviet state whose autocratic leader asked Putin to help suppress protests in 2020 and allowed Russia to launch part of its invasion from within Belarus.

Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war on behalf of the Moscow-aligned government there, and Syria is sending fighters who may aid Russian forces in Ukraine.

What’s next?

It’s not unusual for countries to avoid picking sides on big global issues. Several stayed neutral during World War II; dozens sought to remain free of both U.S. and Soviet influence during the Cold War.

But if the war in Ukraine drags on, Jones said, neutral countries could come under stronger international pressure to condemn Moscow. And for countries with close ties to Russia, even neutrality can be an act of courage.

More on Ukraine

  • The fate of Mariupol, in the southeast, hinges on a battle at a steel factory, where Ukrainian forces are holding out.
  • Capturing Mariupol would create a land bridge between Russia’s stronghold in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
  • Russian forces fired missiles at Lviv, in western Ukraine, killing at least six people. It’s part of a pattern of attacking cities even as they prepare for an offensive in the east.
  • In Russia, brutal crimes by soldiers are rarely investigated or acknowledged — let alone punished.
  • A Ukrainian village is haunted by the disappearance of five men who went to feed the cows.
 

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  • The White House recommended that Americans over 60 get a second Covid booster shot. (Anyone 50 or older is eligible.)
 
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Opinions

To win the next election, Democrats need to deliver on their promises from the last one, Senator Elizabeth Warren argues.

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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Devon Henry and his company have taken down 23 monuments in the South.Sanjay Suchak

Monuments: A Black contractor has become Virginia’s go-to Confederate statue remover.

The future: A.I. is mastering language. Should we trust what it says?

Soul mates: More than 50 years after Otis Redding’s death, Zelma Redding hasn’t stopped loving him.

Scene report: A casual dinner series has become one of the most coveted invitations in Los Angeles.

Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 9.3. Can you do better?

A Times classic: Actually, cats like people!

Lives Lived: Kevin Lippert began by selling reprints of classics from the trunk of his car and became what one architect called an “impresario for the culture of architecture.” He died at 63.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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A Barnes & Noble store in Hingham, Mass.Cody O'Loughlin for The New York Times

Books’ big-box embrace

Once upon a time, Barnes & Noble was the nemesis of indie booksellers across America. Now, it’s important to their survival, The Times’s Elizabeth Harris reports.

Many book enthusiasts and writers used to see the chain as “strong-arming publishers and gobbling up independent stores,” Elizabeth writes. But in today’s book landscape, upended by online sales, Barnes & Noble helps readers discover new titles and publishers stay invested in distributing in physical stores, a boon for booksellers of all sizes.

“It would be a disaster if they went out of business,” a literary agent said. “There’s a real fear that without this book chain, the print business would be way off.”

Barnes & Noble’s success stemmed from offering big discounts on best sellers and an enormous variety of books. Amazon supersized that formula: Its discounts are steeper, it has a seemingly endless selection of books, and it now sells more than half the physical books in the U.S.

What’s lost in that process are the accidental finds — the books that readers pick up in a store. Such discovery in chain and indie bookstores is crucial for writers who aren’t established names. “The more Amazon’s market share grows, the less discovery there is overall, and the less new voices are going to be heard,” the founder of an independent publisher said.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Bobbi Lin for The New York Times

Citrus-dressed salmon roasted over potatoes is a flavorful one-pan meal.

 
What to Listen to

Get to know Tokischa, a gleefully raunchy Dominican rapper who has collaborated with J Balvin and Rosalía.

 
What to Read

Jennifer Grey, the “Dirty Dancing” star, opens up about rhinoplasty gone wrong, the implosion of her career and more in a memoir.

 
Late Night

“Saturday Night Live” featured Easter greetings from political figures and a flute solo by Lizzo.

 
Now Time to Play
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The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was chemical. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Team (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. A 1949 cartoon in The Times depicted Stalin as the Easter Bunny.

The Daily” is about student loans. “Sway” features the playwright Tony Kushner.

Claire Moses, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 19, 2022

 

Good morning. Coronavirus cases have risen in major cities. Hospitalizations have not.

 
 
 
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A coronavirus testing site in Brooklyn.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

‘Big screaming headlines’

A couple of weeks ago, the news was full of stories about high-profile people contracting Covid-19. The list included Attorney General Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other members of Congress (like Joaquin Castro, Susan Collins, Adam Schiff and Raphael Warnock), New York Mayor Eric Adams and several Broadway stars (like Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Daniel Craig).

Some of these infected celebrities were not exactly young. Collins and Garland are both 69. Pelosi is 82.

So far, however, none of their cases appears to be severe. As David Weigel, a Washington Post reporter, noted yesterday:

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These anecdotes are part of a trend. In several places where the number of cases has risen in recent weeks, hospitalizations have stayed flat. (In past Covid waves, by contrast, hospitalizations began rising about a week after cases did.)

Consider New York:

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Charts show 7-day averages. | Source: New York Times database

Or Washington:

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Charts show 7-day daily averages. | Source: New York Times database

Similar patterns are evident in Chicago and Seattle, as well.

How could this be? As is often the case with Covid, the answer is not completely clear. But at least some of it reflects the changing nature of the pandemic, many experts believe. The share of cases that turn into severe illnesses seems to be declining, for three main reasons:

  • Vaccines and booster shots are effective and universally available to Americans who are at least 12. (Covid continues to be overwhelmingly mild among children).
  • Treatments — like Evusheld for the immunocompromised and Paxlovid for vulnerable people who get infected — are increasingly available.
  • Tens of millions of Americans have already been infected with the virus, providing them with at least some immunity.

To be clear, these trends will not eliminate severe Covid. The number of nationwide hospitalizations will probably rise in coming weeks, especially if cases continue to rise. The official number of cases has already increased 43 percent in the past two weeks, and hospitalizations have risen in a small number of states, like Vermont. Nationally, though, hospitalizations have not yet risen, probably for the same three reasons I listed above.

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Charts show 7-day averages. | Source: New York Times database

Even if hospitalizations do rise in coming weeks, a declining share of coronavirus cases that result in serious illness would be very good news, Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at Columbia University, has pointed out.

“I haven’t seen a Covid patient in the E.R. in weeks and go to work now expecting not to,” Spencer told me, “despite a swirl of Covid in the community.”

Among other things, a decoupling of cases and severe illness would mean that hospitals were less likely to become overwhelmed during future Covid surges. When hospitals avoid getting swamped, they can provide care to every patient who needs it — which becomes another factor that reduces bad health outcomes.

‘Misleading’

Going forward, this newsletter will begin to pay less attention to statistics on coronavirus cases and more attention to statistics on hospitalizations. “Looking at the data in the same way we’ve been accustomed over the past two years can be misleading,” Spencer said.

We won’t completely ignore the case numbers, because they still have some relevance. But the cases data has become both less reliable and less meaningful than earlier in the pandemic.

It is less reliable because of the recent closure of many testing clinics and the shift toward at-home testing. The data on Covid hospitalizations and deaths doesn’t suffer from these problems and appears to be as accurate as it was earlier in the pandemic.

The cases data is less meaningful than it used to be because vaccines are universally available to U.S. adults — and vaccines tend to turn Covid into an illness of similar severity to a flu, including for the elderly and the immunocompromised. More recent treatments like Paxlovid play a role, too.

One telling comparison: In the county that includes Seattle (which keeps detailed data), the daily Covid death rate for boosted elderly people has recently hovered around two per million. That’s higher than the national flu death rate during a mild influenza season and somewhat lower than the rate during a heavy influenza season.

For boosted people (and children), the odds of severe Covid really do resemble the odds of severe influenza. And you don’t tend to see news stories every time a member of Congress or a Broadway star contracts the flu.

I understand why the country is still treating Covid as a much bigger deal. For one thing, the large number of unvaccinated people means that Covid is still killing about 500 Americans a day. For another, Covid has dominated life for more than two years, and we can’t simply flip a switch and return to our 2019 habits.

But nor would it be rational to treat the 2022 version of Covid as if it were identical to the 2020 version. It isn’t. Vaccines, treatments and even natural immunity have transformed the impact of the virus, especially for Americans who have chosen to protect themselves.

More on the virus

 

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THE LATEST NEWS

State of the War
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A missile hit a tire-fitting plant in Lviv yesterday.Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
  • Russia started its large-scale offensive in Ukraine’s east, said Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president. The region is bracing for its full force.
  • Russia claimed its missiles hit hundreds of targets, including fuel and weapons depots, to weaken Ukraine’s supplies.
  • The U.S. will soon train Ukrainian troops to operate the howitzers that Washington is sending.
 
More on Ukraine
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This Italian parish has severed ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
 
Politics
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Germany claims to be comfortable with World War II reckoning. So why does it keep celebrating car tycoons with Nazi ties? David de Jong asks.

“No happy endings”: Margaret Renkl on the books that taught her about death — and about how to live.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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Families greeting Mickey Mouse at Disneyland yesterday.Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Disneyland: It’s been two years, but they’re back. “Hugs for everyone!”

Start-up land: The tech bubble hasn’t burst. Instead, things got bubblier.

Talk: Julia Roberts hasn’t changed. But Hollywood has.

A Times classic: The island where people forget to die.

Advice from Wirecutter: The best road-trip gear.

Lives Lived: DJ Kay Slay, the New York D.J. for Hot 97, broke artists and stoked beefs that gave fuel to the careers of Nas, Jay-Z, 50 Cent and others. Slay died at 55.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Yuka, 3, goes shopping by herself on the show.Netflix/Nippon TV

Little kids in the big world

Netflix’s latest hit seems designed to turn American parents into nervous wrecks. “Old Enough!,” a Japanese series, follows young children, between 2 and 5, as they leave home for their first solo journey to run an errand.

The show is a delight, with each episode running around 10 minutes. Kids pick up groceries, visit grandma’s house or fetch a cabbage from a farm. They often forget their instructions or get distracted by the big world around them. Camera crews and safety teams covertly follow along, and a narrator provides excited commentary.

While “Old Enough!” is new to U.S. audiences, it has been airing in Japan since the 1990s. Its popularity there reflects Japan’s parenting culture, which views independence as a central part of a child’s life, Hisako Ueno and Mike Ives write in The Times. “It’s a rite of passage,” one filmmaker explained. “These errands have been a very symbolic mission for decades.” — Tom Wright-Piersanti, a Morning editor

For more: In the On Parenting newsletter, Jessica Grose writes that the show made her consider how overprotective American parenting has gotten.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Stephen Scott Gross for The New York Times

Spring is here, and asparagus has appeared.

 
What to Watch

In the show “A Very British Scandal,” Claire Foy plays a duchess whose sex life became the subject of salacious tabloid stories in the 1960s.

 
What to Read

Grant Ginder’s fifth novel, “Let’s Not Do That Again,” is about a woman whose adult children alternately help and threaten her political aspirations.

 
Late Night

The hosts condemned Florida’s ban on some math books.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were complicit and impolitic. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Do a great job (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. A data scientist, a bar trivia host and more. Meet The Times’s first Diverse Crossword Constructor fellows.

The Daily” is about dissidence in Russia.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 20, 2022

 

Good morning. As a new phase of the war begins, we look at Russia’s advantages — and Ukraine’s.

 
 
 
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A bombing in Kharkiv yesterday.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Can Ukraine keep winning?

Ukraine has defeated Russia in the first phase of their war, and a second phase has begun.

Having failed to topple Ukraine’s government, Russia has narrowed its ambitions and is concentrating on the eastern part of Ukraine known as the Donbas region. Vladimir Putin’s new goal appears to be severing Donbas from the rest of Ukraine and creating puppet republics there.

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The New York Times

This new phase brings some big advantages that Russia did not have when it was attempting to conquer all of Ukraine. But Putin and his military also face some of the same challenges — including low morale — as before. The outcome remains highly uncertain.

(Here’s a Times overview of the coming battle.)

Today’s newsletter explains the battle for Donbas, with help from Times reporters around the world. We will start by looking at Russia’s new advantages and then consider Ukraine’s continuing advantages.

Russia’s edge …

When I was talking with Eric Schmitt — a Times senior writer who has been covering military issues for most of the past three decades — he offered a useful analogy for thinking about the war’s new phase.

Until now, much of the fighting has occurred in parts of Ukraine that roughly resemble an American suburb, Eric explained. There are houses, office buildings and side streets where Ukrainian forces can hide and then attack Russian soldiers. This physical geography leaves civilians vulnerable — but benefits troops that are using guerrilla warfare to defend territory against an advancing army.

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A ravaged suburb of Kyiv.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Much of the Donbas region is different. Its geography more closely resembles the plains of Kansas than a New York City suburb. “It’s much more wide open,” Eric said. “There are fewer places for Ukrainians to pop out from.”

Today, there are actual trench lines in Donbas, stretching over hundreds of miles and sometimes separating areas controlled by Ukraine from those controlled by Russia. This terrain will allow Russia to use its many tanks, large missile systems and other heavy weapons systems; Ukraine’s military has far fewer of these. The shoulder-fired missiles that Ukraine has been receiving from the West, and using to great effect over the past two months, will probably be less helpful in Donbas.

The newly focused battlefield has other tactical advantages for Russia, too:

  • It can concentrate its troops in Donbas, and a direct conflict between the countries’ armies seems to favor Russia. When the war began, it had more than twice as many troops as Ukraine, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
  • The Donbas region borders Russia, allowing Putin’s generals to build shorter and less exposed supply lines than they needed elsewhere in Ukraine.
  • Russia is familiar with the territory. It began fighting sporadic battles in Donbas in 2014 and has since been supporting separatist rebels there. The new head of the war effort, General Aleksandr Dvornikov, has overseen Russian operations in Donbas since 2016, after commanding Russian troops in Syria.

In addition to military tactics, public opinion in Donbas also appears to be more favorable to Russia than it is elsewhere in Ukraine. Shortly before the war, about 30 percent of the region’s residents wanted it to become part of Russia, while about another 10 percent favored independence, according to a poll by academic researchers.

In areas currently controlled by Russian-backed separatists — which make up more than one-third of Donbas — a slight majority favored leaving Ukraine. That’s very different from the situation in the rest of the country, where Ukrainian patriotism is widely shared.

… and Ukraine’s edge

Together, Russia’s advantages offer reason to believe that it may fare better in the next phase of the war than during its humiliating defeat and withdrawal in the initial phase.

But before you assume that’s inevitable, it is worth remembering something: On paper, Russia also seemed likely to win the first phase of the war. Military planners in Moscow expected that they would be able to topple Ukraine’s government within days or weeks. Many experts in the U.S. and Western Europe — and many westerners in Ukraine when the war began — assumed the same.

It didn’t happen. Russia’s military proved far less effective than most observers expected.

Its air force was not able to dominate the skies over Ukraine. Its military units rarely communicated over encrypted lines, allowing Ukraine to intercept its messages. Many Russian troops did not expect to invade Ukraine and were not happy their superiors ordered them to do so.

“The vehicles are still poorly maintained, troop morale will remain low,” Michael Repass, an American major general who has worked with Ukraine for years, told The Times.

Even if winning control of Donbas is an easier task than overwhelming all of Ukraine, it is not easy. Ukraine has highly motivated troops, more of whom can now shift to Donbas. And the West is racing to supply Ukraine with tanks and heavy, longer-range artillery, as well as the shoulder-fired missiles that proved so effective around Kyiv. “How this logistical race goes could well shape the outcome of the war,” this Times story explains.

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A body in the street in Kharkiv after a Russian artillery strike.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Public opinion in Donbas may also be shifting away from Russia, because of the invasion. “If a bomb falls on your house, latent sympathies change into hard antipathies,” Michael Schwirtz, a Times reporter in Ukraine, said. At the start of the war, he was reporting from Kharkiv, an eastern Ukrainian city where — as in parts of Donbas — the primary language is Russian. Yet the invasion nonetheless made many Kharkiv residents “viciously, viciously angry,” Michael said.

The Institute for the Study of War, a military research group in Washington, offered this summary:

Russian forces may be able to gain ground through the heavy concentration of artillery and numbers. However, Russian operations are unlikely to be dramatically more successful than previous major offensives around Kyiv. The Russian military is unlikely to have addressed the root causes — poor coordination, the inability to conduct cross-country operations, and low morale — that impeded prior offensives.

The bottom line: A quick victory — by either side — seems unlikely. Then again, war is often very difficult to predict.

More on Ukraine

 

THE LATEST NEWS

The Virus
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An Amtrak train to New York yesterday.Hilary Swift for The New York Times
 
Business
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Dean Baquet and Joe Kahn.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Marine Le Pen has softened her image during her latest run for president of France, but she’s as dangerous as ever, Rim-Sarah Alouane writes.

Air pollution is killing us. And that’s a better political argument for curbing greenhouse gas emissions than climate change, Binyamin Appelbaum argues.

 
 

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MORNING READS

Microwave smells: The office is probably more annoying than you remember. Here are tips to get through your return.

Breaking heartbreak: Ways to fall out of love with an ex.

Frugal traveler: Strategies to beat rising prices.

Ask Well: How to tell when menopause is over.

A Times classic: Tales from the teenage cancel culture.

Advice from Wirecutter: Heels that convert to flats are too good to be true.

Lives Lived: Kathryn Hays had a brief turn in “Star Trek” but found enduring appeal as a soap opera star on “As the World Turns.” She died at 87.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Coachella, last weekend.Amy Harris/Invision, via AP

Coachella is back

The music festival Coachella, held over two weekends in the California desert, is back from a two-year pandemic hiatus. And this year’s event serves as a bellwether for the live music industry, The Times’s Ben Sisario writes.

During its first weekend, many B-list celebrities, influencers and festival enthusiasts flooded social feeds with #CoachellaContent. Some highlights:

Standouts: Doja Cat’s set made a case for headliner status, Vulture writes, and Billie Eilish became the youngest headliner in the festival’s history.

Surprises: Harry Styles and Shania Twain — both draped in sequins — belted her hit “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” “This lady taught me to sing,” Styles said.

One more thing: The composer Danny Elfman — who took his shirt off during his set — performed a wild mishmash of his works, including the theme from “The Simpsons.”

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Laurie Ellen Pellicano.

Adding an orange, rind and all, to this cake imparts a wonderful flavor, pleasantly bitter and sweet.

 
What to Watch

Jerrod Carmichael’s HBO stand-up special “Rothaniel,” which explores family secrets and sexual orientation, is “remarkable,” Wesley Morris writes.

 
What to Read

Louisa Lim’s “Indelible City” is an unapologetically personal book about Hong Kong.

 
Late Night

The hosts discussed masks.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was beatific. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Confronted (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Michael Bender is joining The Times from The Wall Street Journal to cover Donald Trump and Trumpism.

The Daily” is about transgender care. On “The Argument,” a debate about the state of unions.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 21, 2022

 

Good morning. The American Rescue Plan is huge and yet little noticed.

 
 
 
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A home for sale at reduced cost in Richmond, Va.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York Times

Biden, submerged

More than a decade ago, the political scientist Suzanne Mettler coined the phrase “the submerged state” to describe a core feature of modern American government: Many people don’t realize when they are benefiting from a government program.

“Americans often fail to recognize government’s role in society, even if they have experienced it in their own lives,” Mettler wrote. “That is because so much of what government does today is largely invisible.”

Her main examples were tax breaks, including those that help people buy homes, pay for medical care and save for retirement. The concept also included programs so complex or removed from everyday life that many people did not understand them, like federal subsidies for local governments.

Mettler’s thesis is both a defense of government’s role and a criticism of the modern Democratic Party’s preference for technocratically elegant and often invisible policies. It wasn’t always this way, she points out. Social Security, Medicare and the G.I. Bill — as well as New Deal parks, roads and bridges, many with signs marking them as federal projects — helped popularize government action because they were so obvious. If voters don’t know what the government is doing to improve their lives, how can they be expected to be in favor of it?

My colleague Alex Burns, reporting from Richmond, Va., has just published a story about the latest example of the submerged state: the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 rescue plan that President Biden signed last year, known officially as the American Rescue Plan.

Alex writes:

Unlike the New Deal, however, this $1.9 trillion federal investment in American communities has barely registered with voters. Rather than a trophy for Mr. Biden and his party, the program has become a case study in how easily voters can overlook even a lavishly funded government initiative delivering benefits close to home.

Mr. Biden’s popularity has declined in polls over the past year, and voters are giving him less credit for the country’s economic recovery than his advisers had anticipated. In Virginia, Democrats got shellacked in the 2021 off-year elections amid the country’s halting emergence from the depths of the pandemic.

Ambivalence among voters stems partly from the fact that many of the projects being funded are, for now, invisible.

Examples in the American Rescue Plan include community center renovations, housing initiatives and health programs. Collectively, the projects may be valuable. Individually, many may be so modest as to go unnoticed. Americans also may not realize that the projects are connected to a federal law.

“Generally speaking, political leaders don’t get much credit for such federally financed, locally administered initiatives,” Mettler told me yesterday.

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President Biden at an elementary school in Philadelphia last month.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

Biden himself seems to recognize the problem. Speaking to Democratic House members last month about efforts to publicize the plan to voters, he said, “You tell them about the American Rescue Plan, and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”

Even some potential counterexamples in the law may end up being undermined by their modest size. In Boston, Michelle Wu ran for mayor last year — and won — while promising to eliminate fares from mass transit. That’s a big, easily understood idea that could change how people think about public transportation.

But the details are murkier and less ambitious: With a small portion of its money from the American Rescue Plan, Boston is making only three city bus lines free to ride. It hardly seems like the kind of program that all of Boston will be talking about.

And in Washington

Many Democrats know that voters remain unsure about how their party has used its control of government over the past 15 months to help people. With their poll numbers sagging, Democrats in Congress are trying to figure out what new pieces of legislation they may be able to pass in coming weeks.

“Democrats win elections when we show we understand the painful economic realities facing American families and convince voters we will deliver meaningful change,” Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote this week. “To put it bluntly: if we fail to use the months remaining before the elections to deliver on more of our agenda, Democrats are headed toward big losses in the midterms.”

It’s a reasonable argument. But the party still does not seem to be reckoning with the problems of the submerged state.

Which raises the question: If a policy passes in Washington and nobody can hear it, does it make any political noise?

 

THE LATEST NEWS

State of the War
  • Russia test-launched a new intercontinental missile that it said could carry several nuclear warheads, a warning to the U.S. and Europe.
  • Some in the White House worry it’s a sign that Putin’s isolation is making him reckless, The Times’s David Sanger writes.
  • In Ukraine, Russia said it had fired artillery, missiles and bombs at more than 1,100 targets. It also made probing attacks along the eastern front but has not started a full assault.
  • The U.N. said five million people have fled Ukraine — out of a prewar population of 43 million — and more than seven million people are displaced inside the country.
  • Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen walked out of a G20 meeting as Russia’s finance minister spoke.
 
More on Ukraine
 
The Virus
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Union Station in Washington this week.Kenny Holston for The New York Times
 
Politics
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The two top Republicans in Congress, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.Doug Mills/The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

“Destruction’s happening. And we’re just kind of sitting back.” Ten Americans discuss the war in Ukraine.

We need more protected bike lanes, signals and other features to make roads safer for nondrivers, says Farhad Manjoo.

 
 

Your support makes The Morning possible.

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MORNING READS

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A picture-perfect breakfast in Joshua Tree.Angie Smith for The New York Times

Voyages: Caity Weaver tried the #VanLife. It wasn’t pretty.

Drugs, planes, bail: The wild story of George Jones’s lost recordings.

Stress hormones: How loneliness can damage your health.

A Times classic: Improve your memory.

Advice from Wirecutter: Make your wool coat look new.

Lives Lived: The Romanian-born pianist Radu Lupu wove spells over his listeners and induced awe in his colleagues. He died at 76.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Miriam Martincic

The new tipping fatigue

You buy a coffee and a muffin, and the barista directs you to a touch screen that asks how much you’d like to tip: 15, 20, 25 percent? The growing prevalence of automated checkouts has made prompts like this so common that some customers say they have gratuity fatigue, Christina Morales writes in The Times.

Many people increased tipping early in the pandemic, acknowledging the heightened risks for food workers. But as the world returns to a semi-normal state, and as inflation pushes prices up, some customers feel as though employers are passing the responsibility of caring for workers onto them.

“It is our social duty to make sure that the person that is feeding us feeds themselves,” Gabriel Ramirez, a smoke shop employee in Los Angeles, said. “Employers shouldn’t be looking at the tip jar and saying, ‘This is how my employee is going to make it this month.’”

Everyone in the Times article expressed support for tipping in places where it’s customary, like sit-down restaurants. But the touch screens are also bringing tipping to businesses where they make less sense. How much should you give at, say, a self-service food counter or when picking up takeout?

Janhavi Bodkhe, a college student in Iowa, said the touch screen at a local movie theater prompted her for a tip. She left 15 percent. “It speaks on your character how much you tip or not,” she said, adding, “I want to be perceived as a good customer.”

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Bryan Gardner for The New York Times

Transform fresh zucchini into a rich, sweet pasta sauce.

 
Fashion

Take a look at the clothes in “The First Lady,” the Showtime series about Michelle Obama, Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt.

 
Dance

Ashton Edwards, an apprentice at Pacific Northwest Ballet, is part of a rising generation of gender nonconforming ballet dancers.

 
Late Night

The hosts celebrated 4/20.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was bedfellow. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Japanese dog breed (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. “The Murdochs: Empire of Influence,” a documentary series based on a Times Magazine investigation, is now on CNN+.

The Daily” is about transgender care in Texas. “Sway” features Jimmy Kimmel.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 22, 2022

 

Good morning. What might a more effective mask mandate look like?

 
 
 
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Waiting to board a plane in Atlanta.Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

The part-time mandate

On Sunday, I spent nearly five hours on an airplane, flying home from the West Coast. For long stretches of the flight, whenever the crew was serving food and drinks, many passengers were not wearing masks. Even when people did have their masks on, many wore them below their noses.

My flight was the day before a federal judge threw out the C.D.C.’s transportation mask mandate, but my experience was typical, as any recent flier can attest. The mandate was already more of an aspiration than a reality, which indicates that the ruling may be less important than the furor over it suggests. The Covid-19 virus, after all, doesn’t take a break from spreading so that you can enjoy the in-flight beverage service.

As Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota epidemiologist, puts it, a mask mandate with as many exceptions as the airline mandate is like a submarine that closes three of its five doors.

On the other hand, research shows that, when used correctly, masks can be a valuable tool for reducing the spread of Covid. How, then, should the country be thinking about masks during the current stage of the pandemic? Today’s newsletter tries to answer that question.

Broad and lenient

The trouble with the transportation mask mandate was that it was both too broad and too lenient.

Its breadth required people to muzzle their faces for long periods of time, and most people don’t enjoy doing so. (If you doubt that, check out the gleeful responses of airline passengers and school children when told they didn’t have to wear masks anymore.)

A central lesson of public health is that people have a limited capacity to change their routine. They’re not machines. For that reason, the best responses to health crises depend on triage, with political leaders prioritizing the most valuable steps that people can take. Whenever politicians impose rules that are obviously ineffective, they undermine the credibility of the effective steps.

The transportation mandate had so many exceptions that many Americans understandably questioned its worth. Travelers took off their masks to eat and drink. Some flight attendants removed their masks to make announcements. Some passengers wore their masks on their chins. The mandate also did not require N95 and KN95 masks, which are more effective against the virus than cloth masks or standard medical masks.

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Penn Station this week.Hilary Swift for The New York Times

These problems — the open doors on the mask-mandate submarine — help explain a pandemic conundrum: Rigorous laboratory tests show that masks reduce Covid transmission, but supporting real-world evidence tends to be much weaker.

The most glaring example in the U.S. is that liberal communities, where masks are a cherished symbol of solidarity, have experienced nearly as much Covid spread as conservative communities, where masks are a hated symbol of oppression. Another example is school mask mandates, which don’t seem to have had much effect. A third example is Hong Kong, where mask wearing is very popular (although often not with N95 or KN95 masks, Osterholm notes); Hong Kong has just endured a horrific Covid wave, among the world’s worst since the pandemic began.

Osterholm, who spent 15 years as Minnesota’s state epidemiologist and has advised both Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington, argues that much of the U.S. public health community has exaggerated the value of broad mask mandates. KN95 and N95 masks reduce the virus’s spread, he believes, but mandates like the one on airlines do little good.

“Public health advice has been way off the mark, all along, about mask protection,” he told me. “We have given the public a sense of a level of protection that is just not warranted.”

Osterholm added: “Let’s just be honest.”

Narrow and strict

A more effective approach to mask mandates would probably be both narrower and stricter. It would close the big, obvious loopholes in any remaining mandates — but also limit the number of mandates.

The reality is that masks are less valuable today than they were a year or two ago. Covid vaccines are universally available in the U.S. for adults and teenagers, and the virus is overwhelmingly mild in children. Treatments for vulnerable people are increasingly available.

And consider this: About half of Americans have recently had the Omicron variant of Covid. They currently have little reason to wear a mask, for anybody’s sake.

Together, vaccines and treatments mean that the risks of severe Covid for boosted people — including the vulnerable — seem to be similar to the risks of severe influenza. The U.S., of course, does not mandate mask wearing every winter to reduce flu cases. No country does.

Another relevant factor is that one-way masking reduces Covid transmission. People who want to wear a mask because of an underlying health condition, a fear of long Covid or any other reason can do so. When they do, they deserve respect.

“One-way masking works,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University, said. When he is treating tuberculosis patients, they are typically maskless, and he wears an N95 mask to protect himself.

Still, if Covid illness begins surging again at some point, there may be situations in which mandates make sense. To be effective, any mandates probably need to be strict, realistic and enforced. Imagine, for example, that a subway system mandated KN95 or N95 masks inside train cars — but not on platforms, which tend to be airy.

Or imagine that the C.D.C. required high-quality masks in the airport and aboard a plane on the runway — but not in flight when people will inevitably eat and when a plane’s air-filtration system is on. “When I travel, I’m always more worried about in-airport exposures than I am the plane,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Brown University epidemiologist, said.

Unfortunately, the U.S. has spent much of the past two years with the worst of all worlds on masks. People have been required to wear them for hours on end, causing frustration and exhaustion and exacerbating political polarization. Yet the rules have included enough exceptions to let Covid spread anyway. The burden of the mandates has been relatively high, while the benefits have been relatively low. It’s the opposite of what a successful public health campaign typically does.

Related:

  • Rather than bickering about masks, the country should enact less divisive policies — like better ventilation — that can protect people, Dr. Aaron Carroll of Indiana University writes in Times Opinion.
 

THE LATEST NEWS

War in Ukraine
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A funeral for a Ukrainian soldier this week.Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
 
Politics
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Protesters at Disney World this month.Octavio Jones/Reuters
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

In our criminal justice system and our personal relationships, we have become unwilling to forgive, Rebecca Solnit writes.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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The symbol for recycling is on many things. That doesn’t always mean they’re recyclable.Rinee Shah

Earth Day: Is it trash or recycling? Play our garbage-sorting game.

Inspired: Artists, including Yo-Yo Ma and Uzo Aduba, share wisdom for a creative career.

Modern Love: If a rat falls into your bed, call your lover’s boyfriend.

Advice from Wirecutter: 36 Mother’s Day gifts.

Lives Lived: Robert Morse’s impish grin and comic timing won him a Tony for the 1961 musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” A run on “Mad Men” capped his career. He died at 90.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Nicolas Cage at the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times

Playing themselves, but more so

In Nicolas Cage’s new movie, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” the actor plays himself. Specifically, a version of himself “who seems eager at any moment to set fire to something,” Sarah Lyall writes.

The movie riffs on Cage’s eccentric persona, and fans will find inside jokes, including homages to “Face/Off” and the infamous “Not the bees!” scene from “The Wicker Man.” Here are some other memorable moments when actors played themselves.

  • Though the 2012 sitcom “Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23” was canceled far too soon, fans got many episodes featuring James Van Der Beek as an over-the-top, egotistic version of himself.
  • Similarly, Keanu Reeves plays an obnoxious movie-star version of himself — complete with a slow motion entrance and glasses with no lenses “for a part” — in the rom-com “Always Be My Maybe.”
  • In a meta moment in “Ocean’s Twelve,” Julia Roberts’s character, who is the wife of George Clooney’s con artist character, pretends to be Julia Roberts for a heist.
  • The former N.B.A. player Kevin Garnett, who had no acting experience, was a standout in “Uncut Gems,” where he becomes interested in a mystical rare opal he believes helps him play better. — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer
 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Dress up chicken with crème fraîche and fancy mushrooms.

 
What to Watch

The enchanting French film “Petite Maman” centers on a young girl who discovers a friend in a storybook forest.

 
What to Read

Patrick McCabe’s “Poguemahone” is set in hippie-era London, where an Irish brother and sister struggle against society and their own worst natures.

 
Late Night
 
Take the News Quiz

Test your knowledge of this week’s headlines.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were eventful and uneventful. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Make an attempt (three letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Americans commemorated the first Earth Day 52 years ago today, The Times reported.

The Daily” is about the French election.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 23, 2022

 

Good morning. A good weekend is one in which you break with the routines of the week.

 
 
 
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Rosie Barker

Weekends well spent

Consider the weekend, two entire days uncharted and unblemished, if you’re lucky, blanks to fill in however you wish. That is the view of the weekend from afar — from Thursday, say — when the demands of work or school chafe and you fantasize about how you’ll fill those unscheduled hours.

On Saturday mornings, I’m raw ambition. The bounty of 48 hours seems almost too much. What errand won’t be run? What household chore won’t be conquered? Let’s stack social engagements one on top of the other, brunch to soccer game to your cousin’s bar mitzvah, let’s sleep when we’re dead! Or let’s sleep now, squeeze in a cat nap, perhaps a leisurely lie-down with a book? Surely there’s enough time.

Sometimes I’ll devise a list of things I plan to do on a Saturday and then observe myself not doing any of them, almost as if absurdly proving to some invisible taskmaster that no one, not even me, will decide what I’m going to do today.

The best weekends, I’ve found, are not the ones where I try (and often fail) to squeeze in a lifetime’s worth of fun and productivity, but the ones where I deliberately do something that would be impossible during the week. This might be going to a museum, or out to breakfast. It might be sleeping in or going offline, taking a day trip or just doing several loads of laundry.

I try to plan my weekends with my Sunday-night self in mind: What will future me be glad to have done? What can I do to minimize the feeling that the tick tick tick of the “60 Minutes” clock is counting down my final seconds of freedom?

One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is cook something a little more elaborate, or at least different from what I usually make during the week. It’s a double gift: You get the pleasure of the cooking accomplishment, then the delight of a special meal. So I’m thrilled that, starting this week, my colleague Melissa Clark will be dropping in each Saturday with a recipe of the week, a dish she’s selected for this week that I hope you will join me in trying. This week, it’s roasted chicken Provençal. Let me know how it goes.

For more:

 

WEEKENDS ARE FOR …

? Documentaries: A new film chronicles the rise of the rap group Cypress Hill.

? Action movies: A Polish crime thriller is among our recommendations.

?‍♀️ Indoor bouldering: It’s more doable than you think.

 

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

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The Netflix offices in Los Angeles.Hunter Kerhart for The New York Times
 

THE LATEST NEWS

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Bombs struck shopping and residential areas yesterday in Kharkiv, Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
 
 

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Help our journalists continue to bring you the facts. Subscribe today with this special offer.

 

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

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Craig Lee for The New York Times

Roasted Chicken Provençal

If your weekend ambitions include cooking a festive meal, consider a roasted chicken Provençal. When Sam Sifton wrote about the dish in 2015, he told readers to put the chicken in the oven, pour everyone a drink and be nice — words to live by. And that is exactly what I did, recently, when friends came over for dinner. I cranked the oven to 425 degrees (a tip from the recipe notes) and filled our wine glasses as the chicken sizzled and browned, exuding schmaltz onto shallots and garlic roasting alongside. I served this with crispy potatoes, but wished I had a baguette to scoop up the caramelized chicken-y goo from the bottom of the pan. Happily, a spoon worked nearly as well.

 

REAL ESTATE

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Howard Grossman with friends at Stonewall House in Brooklyn, an L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly housing development.Todd Heisler/The New York Times

“I made friends here”: Older L.G.B.T.Q. adults found support they have sometimes lacked at a home created specifically for them.

What you get for $850,000: A 1938 cottage in Richmond, Va.; a 13-acre retreat in Abita Springs, La.; or a Craftsman bungalow in Denver.

The hunt: Empty nesters wanted to downsize. Which home did they choose? Play our game.

 

LIVING

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Central Park, ManhattanRuth Fremson/The New York Times
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Clockwise from left: Cherokee Park, Louisville, Ky.; Central Park, Manhattan; the Arnold Arboretum, Boston.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

A public parks vision: Frederick Law Olmsted, born 200 years ago this month, is behind many of America’s most enduring public spaces: Central Park in Manhattan; the Emerald Necklace in Boston; Belle Isle in Detroit; Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, Calif. Olmsted saw access to vast green space as a democratic ideal. “In his view, parks were imbued with an exquisite kind of healing power,” The Times’s Audra D.S. Burch writes.

 
 

Checking in: Nashville kept growing during the pandemic, adding retro bowling halls and a new African American music museum.

Travel budget: Here’s how to save while prices are soaring.

“Every detail matters”: Painting, giggling and getting high in New York City.

 

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

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Houston Gamblers quarterback Clayton Thorson.Butch Dill/Associated Press

The U.S.F.L., a new (old) football league: Part nostalgia play, part technological test grounds, the U.S.F.L. had its grand reopening under new management last weekend. The league first appeared in the 1980s as an off-season alternative to the N.F.L. It launched the pro careers of Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie, and Donald Trump owned a team.

In its new form, the U.S.F.L. is a showcase for emerging football technology. Trackers can spot where a ball is down. Camera angles include first-person views from helmets and aerials from drones flying around the field. And next season, the league says, that glowing first-down line, standard on N.F.L. broadcasts, may actually appear on U.S.F.L. fields. Noon Eastern today on Fox, and 3 p.m. tomorrow on NBC.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was volatility. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

Here’s today’s Wordle. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
Before You Go …
 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 24, 2022

 

Good morning. We answer a common reader question about the opioid crisis and legalizing drugs.

 
 
 
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Youngstown, Ohio, has struggled with addictions during the opioid crisis.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A cautionary tale

Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. reached their highest point ever recorded last year, with more than 100,000 deaths over 12 months. Deaths are up nearly 50 percent since the start of the Covid pandemic.

Whenever I write about deadly overdoses, some readers ask: Why not legalize and regulate drugs? They argue that the government causes more harm by outlawing drugs and enforcing those bans through policing and incarceration. They suggest that legalization and regulation could better minimize the risks involved.

So today I want to explain why that argument goes only so far — and why many experts are skeptical.

“Drug warriors said we should have a drug-free nation, which was totally bogus,” Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, told me. “But it is totally bogus on the other side to say we can legalize and all the problems will go away.”

In fact, we are living through a crisis that shows the risks of legalization: the opioid epidemic.

The problem began with a legal, regulated drug: prescription painkillers. Pharmaceutical companies promised the drugs would help address pain, a major public health issue. But when the pills were made widely available in the 1990s, their use skyrocketed — along with addiction and overdoses. And instead of carefully regulating the drugs, officials consistently gave in to profit-minded pharmaceutical companies, which sold opioids to millions of people.

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Chart shows provisional figures. | Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The crisis has evolved from its origins, with street drugs like heroin and fentanyl — and, increasingly, stimulants like cocaine and meth — behind most overdose deaths. But as I previously wrote in this newsletter, opioid painkillers are at the root: Many of the people now using heroin or fentanyl began with painkillers. And drug cartels started to more aggressively ship heroin and fentanyl to the U.S. once they saw a promising customer base in the growing number of painkiller users.

Instead of constraining addiction and overdoses, U.S. regulators enabled the current crisis.

Bad regulation

America is poorly poised to legalize and regulate drugs, some experts said. It tends to resist regulation and favor free-market solutions more than other developed nations. It is one of two countries to allow direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads. The First Amendment protects some commercial speech, making drug marketing hard to regulate.

“The policy has to match the culture,” Caulkins said. And “we are not good at having bureaucracies that view their mission as defending the people against the industry.”

The painkiller saga illustrates this. Aggressive marketing and messaging from companies like Purdue Pharma persuaded not just doctors but also regulators of the drugs’ safety and effectiveness. That enabled the approval of Purdue’s OxyContin in 1995.

As we now know, those opioids were not as safe or as effective as claimed.

But federal agencies consistently failed to act as painkiller overdose deaths quadrupled, the drug policy historian Kathleen Frydl argued:

  • After approving OxyContin with faulty data, the Food and Drug Administration did not explicitly restrict its use until the 2010s.
  • The Drug Enforcement Administration sets limits on how many opioids can be produced, but it increased those limits for years, until the mid-2010s. The quota for oxycodone was nearly 13 times higher at its peak in 2013 compared with 1998. Without higher quotas, “we wouldn’t have an opioid crisis,” Frydl told me.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not publish guidelines calling for stricter prescription of opioids until 2016, more than two decades after OxyContin was approved.

A spokeswoman said the F.D.A. is using “a comprehensive, science-based approach” to limit painkiller misuse and expand addiction services. An official said the D.E.A. is changing its process for setting quotas with advances in data and information technology. The C.D.C. did not respond to a request for comment.

But federal regulators have done too little, Frydl said: “None of these agencies have been asked to perform any sort of introspection and accountability process such that we could be confident in their decision making going forward.”

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The Missouri Network for Opiate Reform and Recovery uses a retrofitted ambulance to help opioid users.Whitney Curtis for The New York Times

A policy spectrum

Experts widely agree that the U.S. government failed to properly regulate opioids. But that does not justify the prohibition and criminalization of drugs, argued Kassandra Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group. “That’s a false binary,” she told me.

Many options exist between commercialized legalization and criminalized prohibition, experts said. Portugal decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs in 2001, but not manufacturing and distribution. Canada prohibits drugs, but allows for facilities where trained staff supervise drug users and may even provide substances to use.

Different drugs can also warrant different approaches. Marijuana is much safer than cocaine and heroin, and laws can reflect that.

And while the opioid crisis has shown the perils of legalization, it has also exposed the risks of prohibition. People who die from a fentanyl overdose often believe they are consuming heroin, cocaine or some other drug, not knowing it is actually fentanyl or contaminated with fentanyl. That is a problem of unregulated supply.

The bottom line

No one drug policy is perfect, and all involve trade-offs. “We’ve got freedom, pleasure, health, crime and public safety,” the Stanford drug policy expert Keith Humphreys has told me. “You can push on one and two of those — maybe even three with different drugs — but you can’t get rid of all of them. You have to pay the piper somewhere.”

For more

 

NEWS

War in Ukraine
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
 

FROM OPINION

 
 

The Sunday question: Should Finland and Sweden join NATO?

Both are strong democracies that would bolster the alliance’s military, Foreign Policy’s Elisabeth Braw argues. Sara Bjerg Moller notes the risks, including that NATO would have to defend Finland’s 800-mile border with Russia if Moscow responded aggressively.

 
 

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Help our journalists continue to bring you the facts. Subscribe today with this special offer.

 

MORNING READS

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A rescued kangaroo in India.North Bengal Wild Animals Park

Exotic fauna: Why are kangaroos turning up in India?

Allergy season: It’s about to get worse. You can prepare.

Gut health: Those TikTok hacks are usually too good to be true.

Advice from Wirecutter: 5 cheap(ish) things for a lovely front porch.

A Times classic: How to substitute flours.

 

BOOKS

Laughing it off: Randy Rainbow set political commentary to Broadway tunes. His memoir traces his rise from theater kid to YouTube star.

By the Book: For Viola Davis, recording a memoir was a “vulnerable experience” of reliving certain moments.

Times best sellers: The lives of Molly Shannon and Delia Ephron are detailed in new hardcover nonfiction best sellers. See all our lists here.

 

THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE

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Hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan.Photograph by Andrea Frazzetta for The New York Times.

Step inside the magazine’s annual voyages issue. Can you tell the plastic life-size food models from the real in Japan? Or maybe you’ve fantasized about roadtripping out of a van — Caity Weaver (hilariously) advises against it. Hike along the mountains of Kurdistan, or escape to Greece with the novelist Rachel Cusk.

Eat: A coveted Jamaican recipe — crispy fish doused with hot vinegar and wicked Scotch bonnets.

 

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to watch for
  • French voters head to the polls today in a runoff between President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Follow our live updates.
  • President Biden is expected to ask Congress this week to approve more funds to aid Ukrainian forces.
  • The Supreme Court will hear a case tomorrow about a football coach’s prayers. Its ruling could make a major statement about religion in public life.
  • Texas has scheduled its first execution of a Hispanic woman for Wednesday. But new evidence cast doubt on her conviction.
  • The N.F.L. draft begins on Thursday. The Jacksonville Jaguars have the first pick.
 
What to Cook This Week
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Mushroom chicharrón tacos.Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Hadas Smirnoff.

Genevieve Ko’s one constant lately in weeknight cooking? “The meals have to come together quickly,” she writes. “The longer days are lovely, but the later-setting sun makes me lose track of time.” Her suggestions for this week include mushroom chicharrón tacos, green masala chicken and shrimp and tomato pasta.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here’s a clue from the Sunday crossword:

105 Down: Name that’s “all the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word,” on Broadway

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Spelling Bee. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — German

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Good morning. Emmanuel Macron won, but radical politics isn’t going away.

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Emmanuel Macron in Paris yesterday.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

‘The chance to dream’

The world’s democracies have avoided a major new crisis.

Emmanuel Macron, the incumbent president of France, yesterday won re-election over Marine Le Pen by a vote of roughly 58 percent to 42 percent. Macron’s victory means that one of Western Europe’s biggest powers will not be run by a far-right nationalist who wants to distance France from NATO and who has a history of closeness to Vladimir Putin.

The victory is a tribute to Macron’s skill as a politician and policymaker. Although hardly loved by many French citizens, he has managed the Covid-19 pandemic well and helped accelerate economic growth during his first five years in office. In a solemn speech last night in front of a twinkling Eiffel Tower, Macron said the French had chosen “a more independent France and a stronger Europe.”

Still, the campaign offered some new warning signs for Western democracies. Le Pen’s showing was considerably better than in France’s last election, in 2017, when she won 34 percent in the final round versus Macron. And when her father made the final round of the presidential election, in 2002, he won only 18 percent of the vote.

Over the past two decades, a growing share of French citizens have drifted toward the Le Pens’ nationalist politics, with its hostility toward Muslims and skepticism of the institutions that have helped keep Western Europe largely peaceful and unified since World War II.

It’s a common story across Western democracies, including the United States. As many working-class voters have struggled with slow-growing incomes over recent decades — a result of globalization, automation and the decline of labor unions, among other forces — they have become fed up with traditional politicians.

Roger Cohen, The Times’s Paris bureau chief who was previously our foreign editor, said these voters have a sense “of being invisible, of being forgotten, of being the lowest priority.”

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A polling station in the city of St.-Denis.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

A geographic gap

In France, many were angry that Macron raised a tax on diesel fuel in 2018. “Just fine for the hyperconnected folks in big cities like Paris,” Roger says, “much less so for people who have seen train stations and hospitals close in their communities and need to drive to work in some Amazon packaging warehouse 60 miles away.”

Geography is a dividing line, in France and elsewhere. Frustrated working-class voters often live in smaller metropolitan areas or rural areas. Professionals tend to live in thriving major cities like Paris, London, New York and San Francisco; they also tend to be more socially liberal, more in favor of globalization and less outwardly patriotic.

The “cosmopolitan elites,” as the Democratic political strategist David Shor notes, are now numerous enough to dominate the leadership of political parties — but still well shy of a majority of the population in the U.S. or Europe.

As a result, the traditional parties of the center-right and center-left have collapsed across large parts of Europe. In France, those two parties — which dominated politics until recently — won just 6.5 percent of the vote, combined, in the first round of the French election two weeks ago. Macron — a member of a new centrist party that has few other major figures — finished first with 27.8 percent; Le Pen finished second with 23.1 percent, and a far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, finished third with 21.9 percent.

In Britain, these same forces led to Brexit, the country’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union, as well as a decade of poor showings by the Labor Party. In the U.S., working-class frustration allowed Donald Trump to take over the Republican Party with a populist message, while Democrats have lost many working-class votes, partly because of the party’s social liberalism.

In France, Le Pen’s campaign took advantage of anger about recent Islamist terrorism and surging inflation to post the best showing of her political career (as a recent Daily episode described). She still did not win — or even get within 15 percentage points — but it would be naïve to imagine that her brand of politics cannot win in the future.

A generation gap

Macron has retained the presidency in large part because of his strength among older voters. “The French electorate has fractured along lines that are largely generational,” Stacy Meichtry and Noemie Bisserbe of The Wall Street Journal wrote: In the first round, Macron won the oldest group — those 60 and older. Le Pen won voters between 35 and 59, and Mélenchon, the far left candidate, won those 18 to 34.

“Radical politics in France is not about to fade,” Roger said. Le Pen tapped into voters’ disappointment about the course of their lives. Mélenchon offered an idealistic vision of a society where the profit motive does not dominate, inequality is reduced and the environment is protected.

“Nobody else was offering young people the chance to dream,” Roger said. “They will want to continue to do that.”

Related: Jacobin, a socialist publication based in the U.S., argued that Mélenchon “defied the smears — and provided hope for France’s left.” And The Economist, a pro-market magazine, called Macron’s win “a victory for centrist, broadly liberal, pro-European politics” as well as for “tolerance, freedom, respect and the European Union.”

More on the election

  • Turnout was the lowest in two decades.
  • I had no choice”: The voters who didn’t like Macron but did not want to see a Le Pen presidency.
  • European leaders expressed relief. “We can count on France for five more years,” the president of the European Council said.
  • The focus in France now shifts to parliamentary elections in June, which will determine how much leeway Macron has. Le Pen described them last night as “the great legislative electoral battle.”
 

THE LATEST NEWS

State of the War
  • Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a secret visit to Kyiv, and the U.S. will reopen its embassy there.
  • “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said.
  • Russian forces continued attacks on Mariupol, including at a steel plant where Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are sheltering.
 
More on Ukraine
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An Orthodox cathedral in Lviv yesterday.Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
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A blaze in New Mexico on Friday.Eddie Moore/The Albuquerque Journal via AP
 
Opinions

Putin’s aggression is pushing Finland and Sweden toward NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance’s former secretary general, writes.

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Kevin McCarthy, mask mandates and more.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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Akihiko Kondo is in a fictional relationship.Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times

Digital love: He married a fictional character, and he’d like to explain why.

Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 9.6. Can you beat it?

A Times classic: Is “Hamilton” historically accurate?

Advice from Wirecutter: How to secure your Wi-Fi.

Lives Lived: Jim Hartz was a folksy newsman from Oklahoma whose TV career lasted three decades — including two years as co-host of the “Today” show. Hartz died at 82.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Dior’s fall 2022 men’s wear show.Vianney Le Caer/Invision, via Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP

Fashion’s novel trend

In recent years, the worlds of literature and fashion have become more entwined. Dior featured models walking down a runway printed with Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” while Valentino tapped authors like Brit Bennett and David Sedaris to contribute to ad campaigns. Books have become “coveted signifiers of taste and self-expression,” Nick Haramis writes in T Magazine, and it’s an open secret in Hollywood that book stylists suggest reading material for celebrities and influencers to carry — and be photographed with — in public.

Critics wonder if the books are simply being used as props. But stores like the Strand in New York have long provided services in which they’ll fill shelves for clients, celebrity or otherwise, by color, style or subject.

“It could be art and architecture monographs in shades of peach, blue and green, or all leather-bound books for a room with a goth feel,” said Jenna Hipp, who puts together libraries for corporate clients and celebrities. “Clients will say to us, ‘I want people to think I’m about this. I want people to think I’m about that.’”

For authors, if books have become a version of the latest It Bag, it’s good for business. “If you ask any writer, they want to be read, but they also want to keep writing,” said Karah Preiss, who runs Belletrist, an online reading community, with the actress Emma Roberts. “The bottom line for publishers is not, ‘Did your book get read?’ It’s, ‘Did your book sell?’ And famous readers sell books.” — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Dane Tashima for The New York Times

Spinach-artichoke lasagna that deviates from grandma’s recipe.

 
What to Watch

Stream these action flicks, including a Polish gangland film inspired by “A Clockwork Orange.”

 
World Through a Lens

Find inner peace with photos of rural villages in Japan.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was flipflopped. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: More strange (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The Economist spoke with Sam Ezersky about editing The Times’s digital puzzles and facing down Spelling Bee fanatics.

The Daily” is about traffic stop reform. “Sway” features Tina Brown.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 26, 2022

 

Good morning. The world’s richest person, unhappy with the policies of a major social media platform, is buying it.

 
 
 
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Elon MuskPool photo by Patrick Pleul

The billionaires’ world

Two years ago, the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman published a statistic that you don’t normally see. It was the share of wealth owned by the richest 0.00001 percent of Americans.

That tiny slice represented only 18 households, Saez and Zucman estimated. Each one had an average net worth of about $66 billion in 2020. Together, the share of national wealth owned by the group had risen by a factor of nearly 10 since 1982.

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Source: Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman

This wealth conveys vast power on a small group of people. They can attempt to shape politics, as the Koch family has done. They can create a global charity, as Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates have done. They can buy a national media organization, as Jeff Bezos has done.

Or they can buy a social media network when its policies annoy them, as Elon Musk is in the process of doing.

Twitter announced yesterday that its board had accepted a $44 billion bid for the company from Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the world’s richest man. He is using $21 billion of his own cash in the deal.

Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” has suggested that he will be less aggressive than Twitter’s current management about blocking some content — including misinformation, in all likelihood. He plans to take the company private, which will give him tighter control than he would have over a public company.

The deal is the latest example of how extreme inequality is shaping American society. A small number of very wealthy people end up making decisions that affect millions of others. That has always been true, of course. But it is truer when inequality is so high. In the U.S. economy, wealth inequality has exceeded even the peaks of the 1920s, as another chart from Saez and Zucman’s research shows:

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Source: Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman

The Musk deal also recalls the Gilded Age, as my colleague Shira Ovide wrote: “The closest comparison to this might be the 19th-century newspaper barons like William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and the fictional Charles Foster Kane, who used their papers to pursue their personal agendas, sensationalize world events and harass their enemies.”

After news broke yesterday about the Musk-Twitter agreement, I asked Andrew Ross Sorkin for his reaction to it. Andrew, as many readers know, has been covering finance and business leaders for the past two decades at The Times. He created and runs our DealBook newsletter.

Andrew’s response got me thinking about these larger questions of inequality, and I’m turning over the rest of today’s lead item to him. Below his thoughts about the Twitter deal, we include more Times coverage, as well as analysis from elsewhere.

 
 

Friends and foes

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will reignite big questions about the influence of the billionaire class and the power of technology over our national discourse.

This month, Musk was complaining that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder, had too much power, arguing that the way Meta was structured, “Mark Zuckerberg the 14th” would someday be running it.

Now Musk will own Twitter outright as a private company. He will report to himself. So if he decides to allow Donald Trump back on the platform — which seems like the elephant in the room — it will be Musk’s choice and his choice alone. (Trump has claimed he will not return, because he wants to support his own social media platform.)

Washington is atwitter trying to understand Musk’s ideology. He is a self-styled libertarian without an ideology. But is not having an ideology an ideology unto itself?

Musk has said he wants more “free speech” and less moderation on Twitter. What will that mean in practice? More bullying? More lewd commentary and images? More misinformation?

Perhaps a window into Musk’s approach is a tweet he sent on Friday making fun of Bill Gates with a crude reference to anatomy, as a way to get even with Gates, who had admitted to betting against shares of Tesla.

Which raised this question: When conspiracy theorists falsely posted that Gates was paying to develop Covid vaccines to implant chips in people, Twitter down-ranked the content and added fact-check notices. If Musk were running Twitter then, would he have left those posts up to needle his nemesis?

The deal will give Musk enormous influence over politicians, celebrities and the media, with the ability to platform and de-platform them at will.

But some will have sway over him, too, in ways that could distort what the public sees on Twitter. For example, Twitter has no presence in China. Musk does: A huge chunk of Tesla’s growth is dependent on that country. What happens when Chinese officials tell him to remove content from Twitter that they find objectionable?

Back here in the U.S., Musk’s SpaceX business relies, in large part, on contracts with the Defense Department. His Tesla business is in discussions with the U.S. government about a national charging station infrastructure. His Boring Company, which digs tunnels, relies on governments for contracts. If a politician that controls the purse strings for any of Musk’s companies were to publish misinformation, would Musk remove it?

There are no answers to these questions just yet. But we will find out soon. Likely on Twitter.

Times coverage

More commentary

Christine Emba, The Washington Post: “What we have here is a perfect example of ‘peak billionaire’ — the ability of one fantastically rich person to, without accountability, make decisions with potentially life-changing ramifications for many, many people — based on nothing more than their mood and their ridiculously deep pockets.”

Jessica J. González, CNN: “He has used the platform to discredit and disparage those who disagree with him, and he has lashed out at journalists who have written or produced things he didn’t like. Further, he has used the platform to sow doubt about Covid-19 vaccines.” (Musk doubted the need for a second dose last year.)

Anand Giridharadas, The Times: “We’re going to have to learn to see through the fraudulent stories that elevate figures like Mr. Musk into heroes. We’re going to have to legislate real guardrails — perhaps like those created by the European Union’s Digital Services Act — on social media platforms that are too big to entrust democracy to.”

 

THE LATEST NEWS

War in Ukraine
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The ruins of Hostomel, Ukraine.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
 
The Virus
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A supermarket in Beijing this week.Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
 
Politics
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

The subway brings New Yorkers together. Assaults and shootings threaten that, Qian Julie Wang writes.

Progressive sanctimony is fueling reactionary conservatism, Michelle Goldberg says.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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A gummy “charcuterie” board.Melissa Golden for The New York Times

Sweet and squishy: After 100 years, the gummy universe keeps expanding.

What is time? The second just became more precise.

Work Friend: You don’t have to listen to a toxic co-worker.

Advice from Wirecutter: Make at-home cold-brew coffee.

Lives Lived: Laura Hales wrote about polygamy and other issues facing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which she was a lifelong member. She died at 54.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
The Polish PavillionGus Powell for The New York Times

The year’s biggest art show

The crowds are a bit thinner, and there are fewer mega-yachts, but the Venice Biennale remains “art’s most combustible mixture of creative minds, spectacular wealth and a global culture stumbling its way toward the future,” Jason Farago writes in a review.

The Biennale consists of a main exhibition of contemporary art, along with more than 90 pavilions where countries organize their own shows. This year’s main show revolves around surrealism, cyborgism, and animal and plant life, and the majority of participants are women. It’s “a coherent and challenging show, whose optimistic vision of emancipation through imagination feels very rare nowadays,” Jason writes.

A few highlights from the national presentations: Stan Douglas of Canada used photography and video art to delve into the intersecting uprisings of 2011 (the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, the London riots). And Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a Roma artist, created a 12-part tapestry stitched with imagery of Romani migration and everyday life.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Dane Tashima for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

Add potato chips to your tuna sandwich, J. Kenji López-Alt says.

 
Bring the Kids

A children’s book series inspired by Quentin Tarantino films gets the movie treatment in “The Bad Guys.”

 
What to Read

Tina Brown traces the wobbly contours of the House of Windsor in “The Palace Papers.”

 
Late Night

The hosts discussed Musk and Twitter.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were burping and upbringing. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Chap (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred 36 years ago today. The Soviet Union announced it two days later.

The Daily” is about masks. “Popcast” is about Will Smith.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Share on other sites

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April 27, 2022

 

Good morning. Congress is back. Does Biden’s agenda still have a chance?

 
 
 

First, a note to readers: I started writing this newsletter two years ago, with the goal of helping you make sense of the day’s most important stories. My colleagues and I are able to do this only because of the unmatched breadth and depth of The New York Times’s reporting, from a newsroom of 1,700 journalists. Subscribers make this work possible, and I hope you’ll consider becoming one. You can subscribe here.

 
 
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Senator Joe ManchinSarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

‘Manchinema’

Congress has returned to Washington after a recess, and Democrats are trying to come up with a slimmed-down version of President Biden’s domestic agenda that they can pass in coming weeks. If they succeed, they have the potential to slow climate change, reduce drug prices for millions of Americans and raise taxes on the wealthy.

But the basic challenge in passing a bill is unchanged. The party cannot afford to lose even a single Democratic vote in the Senate, and two senators — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — have publicly objected to parts of the agenda. Congressional Republicans remain unanimously opposed to any bill as has often been the case during recent Democratic presidencies.

At first glance, the objections from Manchin and Sinema can seem similar. Both are centrists who say they are worried about government spending and inflation. Some journalists have given the pair a nickname: Manchinema.

But Manchin’s and Sinema’s specific concerns are different. Both have wanted to shrink the bill — yet in distinct ways, which is a major reason that Democrats have been unable to reach a deal. “The clash oddly seems to be between what Manchin will accept and what Sinema will accept,” Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, says. As Emily Cochrane, who covers Congress, puts it, “That’s the compromise that needs to be reached.”

Sinema has generally been more skeptical of the tax increases in Biden’s original proposal, while she has supported sweeping measures on climate and child poverty. She has been more willing to spend than to tax. Manchin, by contrast, has been supportive of the tax increases and skeptical of the spending programs, especially an expansion of the child tax credit and some climate measures.

Still, the outlines of a potential compromise seem fairly clear: It would be a much smaller bill than most Democrats want but could still make major changes to federal policy, likely focusing on climate change and perhaps prescription-drug prices.

Many Democrats are desperate to pass a bill. They understand that their control of Congress and the White House gives them a rare opportunity to pass ambitious domestic policies. They also know that a failure to pass legislation would make the party look incompetent and potentially aggravate the usual midterm losses that the president’s party suffers.

Today’s newsletter focuses on the differences between Manchin’s objections and Sinema’s — and what bill might be able to bridge them.

Sinema’s objections …

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Senator Kyrsten SinemaSarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

For all of Manchin’s Democratic Party apostasy, he has regularly sided with the party’s attempts to raise taxes on corporations and the rich. He opposed the Trump tax cut of 2017, and he has said he supports substantial tax increases as part of Biden’s agenda (even if he does not want to go as far as Biden does).

If Democrats had to worry only about Manchin and not Sinema, they might be able to raise taxes on top incomes, investments and corporations. “You all know, the entire country knows, that I’m opposed to raising the corporate minimum tax rate,” Sinema said at a recent event hosted by business lobbyists in Arizona.

As a result, a compromise proposal that the White House released in October, with at least tentative support from Sinema, dropped the major tax increases on which Biden campaigned. In their place, the proposal included a collection of smaller tax increases, like a 5 percent surcharge on household income above $10 million. Sinema is also more hostile to some forms of corporate regulation than Manchin is.

In the long term, Sinema’s 1990s-style moderation arguably creates bigger problems for the Democratic Party than Manchin’s policy views do. Taxes on the wealthy and corporations are historically low, and raising them is central to paying for Democratic plans for expanding social programs, reducing inequality and lowering the budget deficit.

Sinema’s approach is particularly vexing to many Democrats because a more populist, progressive Democrat could probably win Arizona too, as Matthew Yglesias of Substack has pointed out. Arizona’s other senator, Mark Kelly, is also a Democrat and has largely supported Biden’s agenda — which, polls show, is popular in the state and nationwide.

Manchin, by contrast, represents West Virginia, a state that Biden lost by nearly 39 percentage points. If Manchin didn’t defy his party, a Republican would probably hold his Senate seat. His prominent opposition to the bill has helped his approval rating soar in West Virginia, Morning Consult reported this week.

… and Manchin’s

Despite all this, many Democrats are more frustrated now with Manchin than with Sinema. She is at least willing to negotiate in consistent ways, they say. Manchin seems to have changed his position multiple times over the past several months.

Many Democrats aren’t sure that he will agree to any deal. He may instead see blocking a bill as his best path to re-election in 2024. “There’s real fear inside the building that Manchin’s stonewalling will run out the clock,” one White House adviser told The Washington Post.

To be fair, other Democrats deserve some responsibility for the lack of Senate passage. Party leaders wasted time on an obviously doomed voting-rights bill this year, and they have sometimes seemed to ignore Manchin’s objections to Biden’s agenda.

Manchin, for example, has made clear that he opposes a large increase in the child tax credit, viewing it as a disincentive to work. Other Democrats have responded by repeatedly arguing that he is wrong on the merits rather than recognizing that they are not going to change his mind — and that they need his vote.

What’s next

The Senate will be in session until Memorial Day weekend, and Democratic leaders and White House officials are quietly trying to negotiate a bill.

If they can succeed, the final version would likely resemble what Manchin has sketched out in recent weeks: tax increase that are large enough to reduce the deficit (and, he hopes, reduce inflation); a measure to reduce prescription-drug prices; and spending to expand the use of clean energy and lower the cost of health insurance.

“Given the failed effort last year, I think there’s a lot of skepticism that a deal can be struck that appeases both centrists like Manchin and Sinema as well as liberal lawmakers, given how thin the margins are,” our colleague Emily Cochrane said. “But there’s an increasing appetite to just get something into law, to deliver some compromise for voters ahead of the November election.”

 

THE LATEST NEWS

War in Ukraine
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Hiding in a basement shelter in Orikhiv.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
 
The Virus
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Getting a shot in Washington last year.Kenny Holston for The New York Times
 
Politics
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Rolling back Twitter’s moderation policies would hurt its business, Elizabeth Spiers argues.

The Biden administration should emulate Emmanuel Macron’s centrist governance, Bret Stephens says.

 

MORNING READS

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Making challah in February in Dubai.The New York Times

Baking challah in Dubai: A Jewish community heads out into the open.

Basketball: The Nets and the Lakers didn’t win. But superteams never die.

Ask Well: Do carbs cause headaches?

Advice from Wirecutter: Money-saving tips.

Lives Lived: For more than a decade, Geraldine Weiss wrote her investment newsletter under a pseudonym to conceal her identity in a male-dominated industry. She died at 96.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Mi-Sant Banh Mi Co. in Brooklyn Park, Minn.Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

Fast food of the future

Drive-throughs, an American innovation that went mainstream in the 1970s, are often associated with burgers and fries. Some Vietnamese restaurants are aiming for that same fast-food success, Priya Krishna writes.

In Houston, which has a large Vietnamese population, several drive-through Vietnamese restaurants have opened in recent years, and others are popping up around the country. Americans’ increasing familiarity with the cuisine also helps the trend, one owner said.

Cassie Ghaffar, an owner of Saigon Hustle — with plans to expand nationally in a few years beyond the one restaurant — said that she hoped to mimic the success of Panda Express. Saigon Hustle serves banh mi (sandwiches), bun (vermicelli bowls) and com (rice bowls). “The drive-through is less intimidating,” Ghaffar said. “It is giving more people an opportunity to try Vietnamese cuisine.”

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Make Vietnamese rice noodles with lemongrass shrimp (or beef, pork or chicken).

 
What to Read

A mysterious suicide, PTSD and a folkloric antihero: Four novels explore different kinds of haunting.

 
What to Watch

“Roar,” a surreal series, tells eight tales about women, including one who is mansplained to by an aggressive duck.

 
Late Night

The hosts discussed Twitter.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was megaplex. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Waffle topping (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. What does your school’s curriculum look like? Let The Times know.

The Daily” is about the Supreme Court. On “The Argument,” why Republicans are focusing on L.G.B.T.Q. issues.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 28, 2022

 

Good morning. Tonight, America begins an annual festival celebrating hubris.

 
 
 
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The Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen in 2021.Sam Navarro/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

The power of humility

Tonight at the Caesars Forum Conference Center near Las Vegas, thousands of people will gather for an annual demonstration of human overconfidence.

The official name of the gathering is the N.F.L. draft. There, with millions of Americans watching on television, executives of the N.F.L.’s 32 teams will choose which college players to add to their rosters.

And the executives will almost certainly make a lot of decisions that they later regret.

I recognize that many readers of this newsletter are not football fans. Still, I think the draft is worth a few minutes of your attention, because it turns out to be a delightful case study of human hubris, one with lessons for other subjects, like the economy and Covid-19.

Fundamentally, N.F.L. teams tonight will be doing something that every employer does: choosing which workers to hire. A major difference is that the teams will have more information than most employers do. A hospital or manufacturer generally can’t study videotape and statistics documenting the record of job candidates.

Yet even with all this information, teams can do a miserable job of predicting who the best players will be. “The track record is pretty dismal,” Richard Thaler, a Nobel laureate in economics who has studied the draft, told me.

The confident Jets

Consider this chart, which shows the quarterbacks picked in the draft’s first round four years ago, alongside their career touchdown totals:

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Chart shows selection of quarterbacks drafted in the first round. | Source: sports-reference.com

As you can see, there is little relationship between performance and draft order. Were the 2018 draft held again today, Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills would almost certainly go first. Besides Allen and Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, the other three might not even play much next season.

It’s a common story: Tom Brady, the most successful player in N.F.L. history, was the 199th pick in 2000. Most top quarterbacks today — including Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, Justin Herbert, Dak Prescott and Russell Wilson — were drafted after quarterbacks who haven’t done as well.

(Related: When teams defy the conventional wisdom to make a surprise first-round pick, it rarely works out, an analysis by The Times’s Nate Cohn shows.)

Predicting performance is unavoidably hard, even in the country’s most popular form of mass entertainment, where executives can devote lavish resources to research. “There’s no crime in that,” Cade Massey, a University of Pennsylvania economist, said. “The crime is thinking you can predict it.”

The real mistake that the executives make is hubris. They believe that they can forecast the future and design draft strategies based on their confidence. In 2018, for example, the New York Jets traded away four picks for the right to move up only three spots in the draft — to the third pick from the sixth. With that third pick, the Jets executives thought that they would draft a quarterback so great that he would be gone by the sixth pick.

The quarterback they chose was Sam Darnold, who (as the chart above also shows) has been a disappointment. Imagine if the Jets had instead kept the sixth pick, taken Allen and also kept their other picks. It could have transformed the team.

The most successful N.F.L. teams have adopted a version of this anti-Jets strategy. They have embraced the power of humility. The Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s and New England Patriots built Super Bowl winners by exchanging high picks for a larger number of lower picks. In recent seasons, the Los Angeles Rams have exchanged early picks — whose value league executives tend to exaggerate, as a 2005 academic paper by Massey and Thaler showed — for established players.

With those players, the Rams won last season’s Super Bowl. The Jets failed to make the playoffs, for the 11th straight season.

Five-dimensional chess

What is the broader lesson here? The world is frequently messier and harder to understand than people acknowledge. We tell ourselves artificially tidy stories about why something happened and what will happen next.

The stock market rises or falls, and analysts proclaim a cause; in truth, they are often just guessing, as Paul Krugman, the economist and Times columnist, likes to point out.

On the subject of Covid, both experts and journalists have imagined it to be more predictable than it is. When schools reopened or certain states lifted mask mandates, you heard confident predictions that cases would rise. Often, they didn’t. The invisible, mysterious ebbs and flows of virus transmission overwhelmed every other factor.

In her latest column, The Times’s Zeynep Tufekci argues that public health officials have given flawed Covid guidance based on a paternalistic belief that they could see into the future. Zeynep’s main example is the F.D.A.’s refusal to allow young children to be vaccinated, based on what she calls a “five-dimensional chess” prediction that allowing childhood vaccinations will undermine vaccine confidence.

The most direct analogy to the N.F.L. draft is the hiring process elsewhere. Most employers still put a lot of weight on job interviews, believing that managers can accurately predict a candidate’s performance from a brief conversation. Research suggests otherwise.

Interviews can help people figure out whether they will like another person — which has some value — but not how effective that person will be at a job. If you think you’re a clairvoyant exception, you are probably making the same mistake the Jets did.

To be clear, the implication is not that nobody knows anything. Structured job interviews, which mimic the tasks that a job involves, can be helpful. And at the draft tonight, N.F.L. teams won’t be totally clueless: Higher draft picks have historically performed better than lower picks, but only somewhat.

The trouble is that human beings tend to overstate their ability to predict events. People who can resist that hubris — who can mix knowledge with humility — are often at a competitive advantage.

For more: The Athletic created an N.F.L. draft preview for beginners. The Times wrote about Ikem Ekwonu, a speedy offensive lineman, and about the trouble of predicting the draft’s No. 1 pick.

 

THE LATEST NEWS

War in Ukraine
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Floodwaters in Demydiv, in western Ukraine.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
  • As explosions have spread to Russia and Moldova, American and European officials said they were worried the war could escalate beyond Ukraine.
  • As it wreaked havoc to foil Russia, Ukraine deliberately flooded a village outside Kyiv. “Everybody understands and nobody regrets it for a moment,” one resident said.
  • In a strategy shift, Russia is making slower advances in eastern Ukraine.
  • More than half of the 90 howitzers the U.S. is sending to Ukraine have been delivered, the Pentagon said. President Biden will deliver a speech this morning.
 
Politics
 
Other Big Stories
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Debanhi Escobar, 18, was found dead in Monterrey, Mexico. Alejandro Cegarra for The New York Times
 
Opinions

Elon Musk is hard to like, but he has made major contributions to humanity, Farhad Manjoo writes.

Europe is regulating social media without impinging on free speech and America can, too, Frances Haugen argues.

Pamela Paul became her worst self on Twitter. She says she’s better without it.

 
 

Stay informed on the topics you care about most.

For the best in news, tech, culture, arts and more, subscribe to The Times with this special offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Michael James Brody Jr., an heir to a margarine fortune, and his wife, Renee, in 1970.Getty Images

Time capsule: In 1970, a 21-year-old heir said he would give away $25 million. Tens of thousands of letters poured in (and most stayed unopened).

Girl power: Twenty-five years later, the legacy of the Spice Girls is still being written.

A Times classic: The great climate migration has begun.

Advice from Wirecutter: Tips for spring cleaning.

Lives Lived: The artist Cynthia Albritton became known as the “Plaster Caster” for her sculptures of famous rock musicians’ genitals. She died at 74.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

Baby’s first Bitcoin

Through dance challenges and summer camps, kids as young as 3 are beginning to learn about cryptocurrency. But behind the cartoon characters, Amanda Hess asks, are the children being used to hype a tech bubble?

Crypto camps are popping up around the U.S., selling themselves as a way to prepare children for jobs in technology, Vox reported. One app encourages children to create videos, with an adult’s help, and rewards them with digital currency they can use to “invest” in unique digital assets called NFTs.

“Traditional children’s entertainment has long angled at extracting maximum cash from its little consumers,” Amanda writes. But, she adds, “the slick language suggesting that kids should spend money to make money feels new.”

For more: On “The Ezra Klein Show,” the essayist Dan Olson deflated the hype around NFTs.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.

Braised greens and a package of potato gnocchi become a vibrant one-pot meal.

 
Soak Up the Sun

Sheryl Crow has long worked against sexism in the music industry. At 60, she’s telling her story in a documentary.

 
What to Watch

On “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” Robin Thede and her castmates bring a light, joyful touch that often descends into the absurd.

 
Late Night

Jimmy Kimmel discussed Truth Social.

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were coefficient, confection, confetti and infection. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Elevator choice (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Charles de Gaulle stepped down as president of France 53 years ago today.

The Daily” is about Covid. “Sway” is about Musk’s Twitter deal.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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April 29, 2022

 

Good morning. The federal government is telling us two different stories about Covid vaccines for young children.

 
 
 
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A Moderna vaccine trial last year.Emma H. Tobin/Associated Press

Truth and trust

Why hasn’t the F.D.A. approved a Covid-19 vaccine for children under 5? Government officials have given two conflicting answers in recent days — one that places responsibility on vaccine manufacturers, another that casts the lack of approval as a deliberate federal policy.

It’s the latest instance of what has been a recurring problem during the pandemic. Public health officials have sent confusing messages about Covid policy. They have done so on masks, tests, adult vaccines and basic Covid statistics.

Sometimes, the confusion has been intentional: Officials haven’t trusted Americans with the truth. Other times, the confusion has been an accidental byproduct of a messy public-health bureaucracy where no one person has responsibility for delivering clear messages to the public.

Either way, the situation has bred frustration among many Americans — such as parents of young children who are desperate to vaccinate their children. These parents listen to the public statements of government officials and the news coverage but fail to find comprehensible answers.

“I feel like the goal posts have been moving,” Rachel Perera, the mother of an 8-month-old in Los Angeles, told The Times. Dr. Jessica Snowden of Arkansas Children’s Hospital said: “I hear from lots of parents every day, asking, ‘Do you know, do you know? When’s it going to be approved?’” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, describing parents in her state, said, “They’re frustrated, they are confused, and I am too, and they really do deserve some clarity on this.”

The confusion has become one more factor contributing to Americans’ distrust of major institutions like the government, the media and the medical system. People think they are not getting straight answers, and they’re right about that.

Two stories

When F.D.A. officials have spoken publicly about the lack of a vaccine for young children, they have put the onus on Moderna and Pfizer, the vaccine makers. The officials have suggested that the companies have not completed their portion of the regulatory process.

During a Senate hearing this week, Dr. Peter Marks — the F.D.A. official who oversees vaccine approval — declined to give a direct answer about why the agency had not authorized the vaccine for young children. But he did say this: “Just remember that we can’t actually finish our reviews until we actually have complete applications.”

An announcement yesterday from Moderna seemed consistent with his suggestion. The company said that it would finish submitting data from its research trials by May 9 and that it hoped the F.D.A. would subsequently approve the vaccine for young children.

Together, Moderna’s announcement and Marks’s comment seem to suggest that the F.D.A. is eager to approve a vaccine for young children as soon as possible. Other evidence, however, indicates the opposite.

On CNN last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top Biden administration Covid adviser, suggested that the F.D.A. would not approve a Moderna vaccine for young children until it could simultaneously approve one from Pfizer. Approving two vaccines at different times, he said, could “confuse people.” An article in Politico offered the same explanation, reporting that regulators wanted to postpone any action until it could approve both vaccines at once.

This planned delay raises two big questions. One, why does the government think Americans are incapable of handling different approval dates? (Zeynep Tufekci, a Times columnist, argues that Americans can handle it.) Two, why is the federal government telling us conflicting stories — one in which the F.D.A. is deliberately delaying approval and another in which the agency is merely waiting for Moderna and Pfizer to submit the necessary information?

Rare clarity

I posed these questions to Biden administration officials yesterday, and the answers were fascinating. Although the officials did not want to be identified, they offered a much clearer answer than I have heard them give in public.

At the moment, the F.D.A. is indeed waiting for more data from both Moderna and Pfizer. And the agency would prefer to make decisions about the two vaccines at the same time, partly to allow parents to decide which vaccine is best for their young child.

“If the stars align, we would like that to happen,” an administration official told me. “However, we are not going to put ourselves in a situation where we sit on data.” If one company’s timetable is only a few days or weeks ahead the other’s, the F.D.A. will wait to act on both at once. If the gap is longer, the agency will act on either Moderna or Pfizer without waiting for the other.

“We don’t want to delay anything unnecessarily,” the official said.

I told him that his answer was the clearest one I had yet heard from the administration and asked why officials were not providing the same clarity in public. He said he hoped that soon it would.

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Getting a test in Oklahoma.September Dawn Bottoms for The New York Times

For now, the F.D.A. has been speaking in bureaucratic jargon and leaving people confused. “The messaging,” Dr. Jennifer Lighter, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at N.Y.U., told me, “has been so poor.”

It’s a repeat of what happened when the agency’s leaders simultaneously urged adults to get vaccinated but initially refused to give the vaccines full regulatory approval — or when public health officials discouraged people from wearing masks early in the pandemic, despite abundant reason to think masks could slow Covid’s spread.

Public health officials in this country are often uncomfortable trying to convey the full truth. They worry that people will misunderstand the details and behave dangerously. Instead, the officials provide only partial truths and hope that Americans won’t notice. The strategy hasn’t been very successful.

For more: The health risks that Covid presents to young children remain very low — lower than those of many other everyday activities, like riding in a vehicle. But a vaccine for young children would still be beneficial, reducing illness and keeping children in school, with few downsides, many experts believe.

 

THE LATEST NEWS

The War in Ukraine
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After a missile strike in Kyiv yesterday.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
  • Russian missiles struck Kyiv, a few miles from where the U.N. secretary general had met with Volodymyr Zelensky.
  • Fighting is continuing in the east of the country, where Russian forces are still having logistical problems.
  • President Biden asked Congress for an additional $33 billion to aid Ukraine, which would more than triple U.S. spending on the war.
  • Ukraine’s Holocaust survivors are escaping war once more. Now, they are seeking safety in Germany.
 
Politics
 
Other Big Stories
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Breaking the fast of Ramadan in Khartoum, Sudan.Abdulmonam Eassa for The New York Times
 
Opinions

If oil and gas companies want government help, they should have to be more climate conscious, Kate Aronoff writes.

Societal breakdown is fueling antisemitism, Michelle Goldberg argues.

 
 

Stay informed on the topics you care about most.

For the best in news, tech, culture, arts and more, subscribe to The Times with this special offer.

 

MORNING READS

Bagels: From Connecticut? Yes!

Need for speed: Enter the world of competitive typing.

Different breeds: They’re all good dogs.

Modern Love: From Russia with mixed feelings.

A Times classic: Jimmy Buffett doesn’t live the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle.

Advice from Wirecutter: Consider a Wi-Fi extender.

Lives Lived: Earl E. Devaney pushed back against abuse in federal agencies as one of American government’s most feared internal watchdogs. He died at 74.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Daniel Craig in the title role of “Macbeth.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Superstitions of the stage

Don’t say “good luck,” don’t wear green, don’t give flowers, don’t whistle, always leave a light on. And definitely, never say the Scottish play’s name, or you risk personal catastrophe.

Theaters are superstitious places. When the new Broadway revival of “Macbeth” canceled performances because its lead, Daniel Craig, had tested positive for Covid, there was chatter of the curse again, Alexis Soloski writes.

The “Macbeth” superstition is an invention of the critic Max Beerbohm. In 1898, Beerbohm wrote a column falsely claiming that a young actor had died before the play’s debut. His words took hold, and stories of “Macbeth”-adjacent injuries, accidents and deaths began pouring in.

A lot can go wrong during a live performance, Anjna Chouhan, a Shakespeare lecturer, pointed out. Actors may subscribe to superstitions and various rituals as a way to “enforce your control over things that can’t be controlled.”

The Times spoke to Broadway performers — believers and skeptics — about whether they had experienced supernatural moments in the theater.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Dane Tashima for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

Mashed avocado keeps these chicken burgers tender and light.

 
What to Watch

Loved “Call My Agent!”? In addition to an Indian remake, there’s “Ten Percent,” a British take on the French comedy about showbiz.

 
Dance

The New York City Ballet is celebrating the collaboration between the choreographer George Balanchine and the composer Igor Stravinsky.

 
Late Night
 
Take the Quiz

How well did you follow this week’s headlines?

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was walkout. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: The “D” of F.D.A. (four letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Times Opinion is expanding its Opinion Today newsletter to Saturdays. Sign up to receive analysis, essays and interviews.

The Daily” is about the U.S. approach on Ukraine. “Still Processing” is about the decline of method acting. On “Popcast,” Machine Gun Kelly’s pop-punk pivot.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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May 1, 2022

 

Good morning. Many Ukrainians are in mobilization mode.

 
 
 
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Valentina Mutyeva, 72, has been living in a basement shelter under constant shelling in Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

‘A grim existence’

Our colleague Michael Schwirtz has covered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from its beginning. He has reported from the front on military developments, destruction inside villages and cities in the eastern part of the country and more.

We wanted to give you a glimpse of what day-to-day life has been like for Ukrainians since the war upended their country, so we asked Michael to speak with us. He did while he ate dinner after a day of reporting this past week in Zaporizhzhia, an industrial city of about 750,000 people, 20 or so miles from heavy fighting. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Michael, hi. Thanks for talking during dinner.

When I’m eating, I’m good. It’s a Greek salad. And I’m drinking a beer — it’s a small thing, but in the beginning of the war there was an alcohol ban in the entire country. People were really disciplined about it. Everyone thought Russia was going to attack at any moment and they had to be ready to fight, and the ban was part of that. A lot of people had acquired guns.

I’m not sure why they decided they don’t need a ban on alcohol right now. Maybe it’s because the war has slid into a rhythm that people have grown to understand.

What else was the invasion like in the beginning?

It was terrifying and eerie and confusing. There were airstrikes and artillery attacks, and no one knew what was going on. Cities shut down. On the first day, I was in Sloviansk, in the east. I was looking for food around 8 p.m. Immediately, everything went black, possibly to make targeting harder for Russian artillery and aviation.

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Michael Schwirtz, center, in Ukraine not long after the war began.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

What do Ukrainians do with their time now?

Many people aren’t working. There are volunteers everywhere. There’s a huge volunteer operation to make sure troops are comfortable, providing food, sewing flak jackets and clothing and bedding. Some people are donating their cars. They’re raising money for night-vision goggles and drones. It’s a massive operation.

There’s also this whole countrywide effort to help out people who can’t help themselves. I came across these teenagers packing boxes that city officials were delivering to people holed up in basements. It’s really impressive to see.

This is how people spend their days. There’s nothing in this country other than war. If you turn on the TV, it’s about the war around the clock. Occasionally, the news takes a break for patriotic songs performed by Ukrainian singers.

That sounds very patriotic.

Patriotism became more intense after 2014, but now it’s inescapable. For example, I can’t get the Ukrainian national anthem out of my head. You hear it in cars, in shops, in the grocery store. It’s not like people stop and put their hands on their hearts. But I’m going around humming it.

What about electricity, heat, basic needs?

It depends on the place. On the front, in the east, there’s very little — no power, no gas, no water. I was in Avdiivka recently, a town on the front line, where a lot of people were in basements all day long. Everyone’s pooling all their resources. For power, people have generators.

In those places, how do people shower or use the bathroom?

In Avdiivka, there’s no running water. Officials have to ship it in. I went to this one apartment complex where 200 people were using one toilet, and they flushed it by taking water and doing it manually. It’s a grim existence. And that’s not even talking about the constant shelling.

What about niceties many of us take for granted, like Wi-Fi?

In a lot of places, the internet is still working; phones are still working. In Avdiivka, city officials have put up solar-powered charging stations where people charge their phones.

There’s nothing you can do in your apartment. When people did come out, they’d stay in their buildings’ courtyards. They are one of the few places left to socialize in frontline cities and villages. People were cooking food over an open fire for all the neighbors.

How would you describe the mood of Ukrainians?

People miss their former life — the lives they’ll probably never get back, at least not in the same way.

They’re in mobilization mode. Either they’re volunteering or fighting or taking care of their relatives. I don’t know what people are doing in moments of self-reflection. But when they’re out and about, you don’t see a lot of despair. Everyone’s so stoic, even in the midst of a bombing.

They seem focused.

Nobody is really talking about anything else. At one point, I was at this volunteer distribution point at an ice rink. A local official was overseeing it. He’s a fan of American football, and he asked me how to get tickets for the Super Bowl. It’s his big dream to go; he’s turning 50 next year. That was the first conversation I had with someone making plans, and he was making big plans. It was jarring to be reminded of life outside war.

State of the War

More on Ukraine

 

NEWS

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FROM OPINION

 
 

The Sunday question: Should Biden cancel student debt?

Many people with debt lack degrees, says Astra Taylor, and cancellation would reduce the racial wealth gap. The Washington Post’s editorial board counters that across-the-board forgiveness would be regressive, subsidizing doctors, lawyers and other high-income earners.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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Evie Hantzopoulos, right, takes a selfie with New York City council member Sandra Ung.Dieu-Nalio Chéry for The New York Times

Sunday Routine: For the director of the Queens Botanical Garden, a big meal of grilled fish or souvlakis is a nod to her Greek heritage.

Mother’s Day gifts: Why not a framed photo?

Fit for all: Jewelry designers are listening to customers who want larger-size rings.

Advice from Wirecutter: Ten ideas to declutter a small home entryway.

A Times classic: The power of positive people.

 

BOOKS

Wedding favors: For guest giveaways, try a best seller.

By the Book: “How do you organize your books?” is a touchy question in the novelist Adriana Trigiani’s home.

Our editors’ picks: A novel by Emily St. John Mandel that confronts existential questions and eight other new books.

Times best sellers: Randy Rainbow’s memoir takes a first bow as a hardcover nonfiction best seller. See our lists.

The Book Review podcast: Jennifer Egan discusses her new novel.

 

THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE

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Ken Lubas/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images

On the cover: The L.A. riots, 30 years later. See photos, and read a firsthand account.

Recommendation: Sports betting.

Hair: Children speak out against hair discrimination — and how they’re fighting to keep other kids from facing it.

Eat: Gooey, cheesy enchiladas.

 

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For
  • Primaries are Tuesday in Indiana and Ohio. A Senate seat is up for grabs in each state.
  • The Federal Reserve is expected to increase interest rates by more than usual on Wednesday to try to tame inflation. And the U.S. employment report for April comes out Friday.
  • The Met Gala is tomorrow. The dress code: “gilded glamour.” Here’s what else you need to know.
  • The N.H.L. playoffs begin tomorrow, and the Kentucky Derby is on Saturday.
  • Cinco de Mayo, on Thursday, is a chance to make any of these 93 recipes.
 
What to Cook This Week
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Dane Tashima for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

In nearly every part of the world, breaded cutlets are “a full meal, and a perfect one at that,” Emily Weinstein writes. This week, she recommends trying a nontraditional fish Milanese. Among her other weeknight dinner picks: pasta with chopped pesto and peas.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here’s a clue from the Sunday crossword:

53-Across: Good people to ask for directions

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Spelling Bee. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Claire

Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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May 2, 2022

 

Good morning. Why did U.S. schools make so much progress in the 1990s and early 2000s?

 
 
 
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Students’ reading and math skills have improved since the 1990s.Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

Learning more

Readers of this newsletter know that we try to avoid bad-news bias. My colleagues and I cover plenty of worrisome stories here, but we also want to make sure we’re covering encouraging ones. The world is full of both, after all.

Today, I’m going to focus on a positive and mostly overlooked trend in American education. For years, you’ve probably been hearing that our schools are in crisis. And K-12 education in the U.S. certainly has problems. But it has also been improving for much of the past few decades, according to several crucial metrics.

Starting in the late 1990s, the math skills of students in elementary and middle schools began to improve. A few years later, reading skills started improving, too.

Here are the average results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress for fourth graders and eighth graders since 1996:

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Source: NAEP, via Brookings Institution

And here are measures of racial inequality from the math portion of the same test. As you can see, gaps between white students and students of color declined in the 1990s and early 2000s:

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Source: NAEP, via Brookings Institution

Racial gaps in reading skills also shrunk during this period.

As Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor of education and economics, says about the recent educational progress, “It may be the most important social policy success of the last half century that nobody seems to be aware of.”

Accountability and money

There appear to be two main causes.

First, many states began to emphasize school accountability starting in the 1990s. Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas and other states more rigorously measured student learning and pushed struggling schools to adopt approaches that were working elsewhere. The accountability movement went national in the 2000s, through laws signed by George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The timing of the test-score increases is consistent with this story, as researchers at the Brookings Institution have noted. As you can see in the charts above, the biggest gains came shortly after states began holding schools more accountable for student learning. In more recent years, the gains leveled off. This pattern suggests that schools made some important changes in response to accountability policies but then struggled to maintain the pace of improvement.

A second major cause of increased learning seems to have been school funding: It rose during the 1990s and early 2000s. States with especially sharp increases included Michigan, Nebraska, New York and Vermont, according to Kenneth Shores of the University of Delaware and Christopher Candelaria of Vanderbilt.

Typically, the funding increases were larger for low-income schools than for high-income schools. That may help explain why racial gaps in reading and math skills declined.

“Exposure to higher levels of public K-12 spending when you’re in school has a pretty large beneficial effect on the adult outcomes of kids,” Kirabo Jackson, an economist at Northwestern University, has said. “Those effects are much more pronounced for children from low-income families.”

Of course, there are caveats to the recent trends in educational progress. The racial gaps, while smaller, are still large. Reading scores did not rise as much as math scores (perhaps because reading is more heavily influenced by students’ lives outside of school, while math is mostly taught at school). High-school test scores did not rise as much as middle-school or elementary-school scores. And some forms of accountability backfired, leading schools to focus more on test-taking than on actual learning.

Better lives

Yet the overall trend — American children learning more — was enormously positive. Education often changes people’s lives. One study in Texas, for example, found that improvements in previously struggling schools led students there to become more likely to graduate from both high school and college and to earn more at age 25.

Broader research offers a similar message. The pay gap between college graduates and everybody else is near a record high. More educated Americans are more likely to be in stable relationships and to be happy with their lives and less likely to suffer from loneliness, chronic pain and alcohol and drug abuse.

These differences have long existed, but they have widened significantly in recent decades, as the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented in their 2020 book “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.”

That’s why the improvement in American schooling during the 1990s and early 2000s was a cause for celebration, as Kane says. It deserved to be a major news story, even if it wasn’t one.

By now, I imagine that some of you are thinking: But what has happened to these trends during the pandemic? In another newsletter this week, I will try to answer that question.

 

THE LATEST NEWS

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Natalia Popko fled attacks in Mariupol.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
 
War in Ukraine
  • About 100 civilians have been rescued from the bunkers beneath a steel plant in Mariupol.
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made an unannounced visit to Kyiv this weekend. She will meet with Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, today.
  • Long lines are forming at Ukraine’s gas stations, which may signal a coming fuel crisis.
  • A Russian oligarch criticized Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. Retribution was swift.
  • Flowers for the fallen: A country under invasion takes time to mourn.
 
The Virus
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A nearly empty highway in Shanghai last week. The New York Times
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A real-estate agent showing a home in Spokane, Wash., where housing prices have risen significantly.Rajah Bose for The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Robert Rubin and Jacob Lew, two former Treasury secretaries, make the case for a narrower child tax credit.

Neglecting rural America is hurting the Democratic Party, Chloe Maxmin, a Maine state senator, and Canyon Woodward write.

If Republicans want fewer abortions, they should support more family-friendly policies, Margaret Renkl argues.

 
 

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MORNING READS

Hector: A dinosaur skeleton that inspired the raptors in “Jurassic Park” is up for auction.

Metropolitan Diary: Guerrilla performance art, and a doppelgänger on Willoughby Street.

‘Gender Queer’: A debut graphic memoir is America’s most banned book.

Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 9.0. Can you beat it?

A Times classic: How much sugar is in a glass of wine?

Memorable meals: 18 recipes to learn by heart.

Lives Lived: When Régine opened her basement nightclub in Paris in 1957, she could not afford live music. To avoid awkward silences, she replaced her jukebox with two turntables, and so began the world’s first discothèque, which she expanded to a $500 million empire. Régine has died at 92.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Serena Williams at the 2021 Met Gala.Nina Westervelt for The New York Times

The Oscars of fashion returns

The first Monday in May means it’s time for the Met Gala. Officially, the event is a black-tie fund-raiser for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. Unofficially, the gala is the Super Bowl of fashion, where famous people attempt to one-up each other on the red carpet. (Their efforts are often trumped by the presence of Rihanna, who is the event’s sartorial queen.)

If it feels like the last Met Gala was only yesterday, that’s because 2021’s edition was held in September (blame the pandemic). That event unveiled part one of an exhibition on American fashion at the Costume Institute. This year’s gala — co-hosted by Regina King, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds — opens part two of the show. The dress code is “gilded glamour.”

“Think Astors, Vanderbilts, Whitneys and Edith Wharton books,” Vanessa Friedman writes. Expect a lot of people to show up dripping in gold. — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
 
What to Read

The golden age of air travel gets a reality check in two new books by industry insiders.

 
What to Watch

In the sitcom “I Love That for You,” the “Saturday Night Live” veteran Vanessa Bayer draws on her experience of childhood cancer.

 
Now Time to Play
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The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was munchkin. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and a clue: Thumbs-down votes (four letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The Times’s Peter Baker will discuss Russia’s war with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, today at noon Eastern.

The Daily” is about the revival of union membership in the U.S. On “Sway,” Ray Dalio discusses China’s economic rise.

Natasha Frost, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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May 3, 2022

 

Good morning. Roe v. Wade seems to be on the cusp of falling.

 
 
 
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Protesters at the Supreme Court last night.Kenny Holston for The New York Times

A Supreme leak

The Supreme Court has decided to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to outlaw abortion, according to a written draft of the justices’ decision obtained by Politico.

Other publications have not confirmed the authenticity of the draft, and Supreme Court justices sometimes change their minds during the writing of opinions. But many legal observers are treating the draft as authentic and assuming that abortion policy in the U.S. is about to be transformed.

Among the reasons: The tone and style of the draft match those of earlier court decisions. The outcome also matches an outcome that seemed plausible based on the justices’ questions during arguments in December. After Politico published its story last night, the Supreme Court declined to comment.

If the court overturns Roe, many conservative states would likely outlaw nearly all abortions. One estimate suggests that the numbers abortions in the U.S. would decline by about 14 percent, The Times’s Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz explain.

Today’s newsletter walks through the case and its implications.

The vote

Every Republican appointee on the court other than Chief Justice John Roberts has voted to overturn Roe, Politico reported: Samuel Alito (who wrote the draft), Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. The three Democratic appointees will evidently dissent. Roberts had not made up his mind at the time of the draft’s writing, but his vote is not crucial.

The biggest caveat is that justices sometimes change their minds, while they are reading and circulating draft opinions among themselves. In 2012, for example, Roberts changed his stance on whether to overturn Obamacare, as CNN’s Joan Biskupic later reported.

But such a switch seems unlikely now. Because of the leaked draft — a leak with no modern precedent at the court — any justice who switched sides would become notorious as the conservative who saved Roe.

This Times story reviews the competing theories about who leaked the draft. Some observers think it might have been a conservative justice or clerk, to lock in the majority. Others think it might have been a liberal justice or clerk, to undermine the court’s reputation as a high-minded body above the partisan fray; the leak makes the court look more like other Washington institutions.

The arguments

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito writes in the draft. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

The draft says that the Constitution is silent about abortion and that nothing in its text or structure supports a right to abortion. Roe, the draft continues, is so egregiously wrong that it does not deserve to be retained as a precedent; the proper approach is to return the question to the states.

The draft’s assertive and sometimes slashing tone reads very much like other major opinions from Alito, The Times’s Michael Shear and Adam Liptak note.

Politico apparently did not obtain a draft of the dissent. But during oral arguments, the liberal justices argued that such a radical change coming so soon after a change in the court’s membership would undermine its claims of nonpartisanship.

“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked. “If people actually believe that it’s all political, how will we survive?”

How we got here

Roe has been law for almost 50 years, and Democrats — who almost universally support it — have won five of the past eight presidential elections. How, then, did an anti-Roe Supreme Court majority happen?

Circumstance plays a role. Donald Trump was able to appoint three justices, because of retirement or death — the most appointments in a single term in decades. But two specific decisions also loom over the potential repeal of Roe:

  • In 2016, after Justice Antonin Scalia died, Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans refused to allow Barack Obama to appoint a replace during his final year in office. It was an aggressive power grab with little precedent, and it worked, after Trump won that year’s election.
  • In 2013 and 2014, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg decided not to retire, even though Obama could have appointed her replacement and Democrats controlled the Senate. She was enjoying her job as a justice, and she ignored pleas from other progressives, who specifically warned that she could be threatening abortion access.

Barrett now occupies Ginsburg’s old seat, and Gorsuch occupies Scalia’s. Without both of those votes, Roe would probably not fall. During oral arguments, Roberts appeared to prefer a compromise that would have allowed states to ban abortion at 15 weeks; such a decision would have outlawed only a small percentage of abortions.

The politics

Public opinion on abortion is complicated. Most Americans support at least some access to abortion, and most support at least some restrictions. (A previous edition of The Morning goes through the details.)

If Roe falls, the U.S. would likely be split between blue states with greater access to abortion than most Americans favor and red states with substantially less access than most Americans favor.

Many Democrats have long believed that the politics of abortion help the party during elections — and that a court decision overturning Roe could help them retain Congress this year. That seems conceivable but hardly assured. It does seem like the country is about to find out.

Commentary

  • Jill Filipovic, Substack: “I thought this decision would have a lighter touch, that the Court would functionally overturn Roe without formally overturning Roe. I underestimated their radicalism.”
  • Dahlia Lithwick, Slate: “The results will be catastrophic for women … particularly for young women, poor women, and Black and brown women who will not have the time, resources, or ability to travel out of state.”
  • David French, The Dispatch: “If the Alito opinion is real, it represents a restoration, not a rupture of our constitutional fabric … Roe was the rupture, and our nation has been dealing with the legal and political consequences ever since.”

For more

 

THE LATEST NEWS

State of the War
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Residents fleeing a town near Kharkiv yesterday.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
  • Russia may try to annex the Donetsk and Luhansk regions through sham elections, U.S. officials said.
  • But Russia’s military campaign in eastern Ukraine has become “anemic” and “plodding,” a senior Pentagon official said.
  • Ukraine used drones to destroy two Russian patrol vessels off the Black Sea port of Odesa. Russian missiles struck the city shortly after.
 
More on Ukraine
 
Politics
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Twitter gets its power from the communities who use it. Musk’s money can’t buy that, Tressie McMillan Cottom argues.

“A face can tell so much,” Steven Fraser, who lives with face blindness, says in this Times Opinion video.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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An extraordinary moment during the 1972 American Psychiatric Association convention.Kay Tobin/Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library

Henry Anonymous, M.D.: He spurred a revolution in psychiatry. Then he “disappeared.”

Trilobites: Why did an anaconda’s play date with dolphins take a strange turn?

The richest man: How Elon Musk wings it.

A Times classic: Meet Argentina’s frozen mummies.

Advice from Wirecutter: Mother’s Day gifts.

Lives Lived: Ron Galella was relentless in chasing the famous, particularly Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But his pictures also came to be admired. He died at 91.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Dancers at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.Lexey Swall for The New York Times

The changing art world

Museums are including more diverse artists and forms as they try to find audiences in a distracted world, according to a Times special section exploring the changes. Here are some examples:

The Guggenheim Museum, New York: The Guggenheim now has a poet in residence, the first at an institution devoted to visual art. The museum will soon have “poem signs” in stairwells, the rotunda and the columns in the cafe, and poetry readings over a bullhorn.

The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.: This Smithsonian institution is using live dance performances to explore overlooked subjects like immigration and racial identity, and to rectify a collection that its director said was dominated by “the wealthy, the pale and the male.”

The Minneapolis Institute of Art: How do you expand the reach of a smaller museum? Try a podcast. “The Object,” which tells the stories of works in this Minnesota museum, has attracted listeners in 75 countries.

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Dane Tashima for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.
 
Q.& A.

Oscar Isaac, who has split his career between intimate dramas and mega-franchises, talks about blockbuster fatigue.

 
What to Read

Here are 14 notable books coming this month, including a biography of Anna Wintour and a sequel to Elif Batuman’s “The Idiot.”

 
Late Night
 
Now Time to Play
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The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was flavorful. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Mount where Moses received the Ten Commandments (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Erika Solomon, formerly of The Financial Times, will be The New York Times’s new Berlin correspondent.

The Daily” is about Mar-a-Lago.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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May 4, 2022

 

Good morning. We look at last night’s election results.

 
 
 
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J.D. Vance after winning the Ohio Republican Senate primary.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Still around

Most one-term presidents recede from the political scene, with their party’s voters happy to see them go. But Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican Party a year and a half after he lost re-election.

Yesterday’s Republican Senate primary in Ohio confirmed Trump’s influence. J.D. Vance — the author of the 2016 book “Hillbilly Elegy” — won the nomination, with 32 percent of the vote in a primary that included four other major candidates.

Vance trailed in the polls only a few weeks ago, running an uneven campaign that suffered from his past negative comments about Trump. But after apologizing for them, Vance received Trump’s endorsement two and a half weeks ago. Vance quickly surged in the polls and will now face Representative Tim Ryan, a moderate Democrat, in the general election this fall.

“J.D. Vance’s win shows that Donald Trump remains the dominant force in the Republican Party,” Blake Hounshell, who writes The Times’s On Politics newsletter, said.

Finishing second, with 24 percent of the vote, was Josh Mandel, a former state treasurer who has drifted toward the far right since Trump’s election. Matt Dolan, a member of a wealthy Ohio family and the least pro-Trump candidate in the race, finished third with 23 percent.

Vance’s victory continues his own shift toward a Trumpian far-right nationalism. After Vance’s book came out six years ago, detailing his family’s struggles in rural southern Ohio, he became a conservative intellectual whom liberals liked to cite. More recently, he has turned into a hard-edged conspiracist who claimed President Biden was flooding Ohio with illegal drugs — a blatantly false claim.

(This Times essay by Christopher Caldwell explains Vance’s rise in an evenhanded way.)

The winner of the Vance-Ryan contest will replace Rob Portman, a fairly traditional Republican, who served in both the George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush administrations. In the coming campaign, Ryan will likely emphasize Vance’s time as a Silicon Valley investor and celebrity author. (My colleague Jazmine Ulloa recently wrote about Ryan.)

Ohio is obviously only one state, and other primaries over the next few months will offer a fuller picture of Trump’s sway. More than two-thirds of Republican voters in Ohio yesterday did not back Vance, which suggests — as Blake Hounshell notes — an appetite among many Republicans to make their own decisions.

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Donald Trump in Ohio last month.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Still, Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist, argues that endorsements understate his influence. “He has remade the Republican Party in his image, and many Republican voters now crave his particular brand of combative politics,” Longwell writes in The Times. Even Republican candidates whom Trump has not endorsed mention him frequently.

The rest of today’s newsletter looks at other results from last night and looks ahead to upcoming primaries.

The other primary

Indiana also chose nominees last night. More than a dozen incumbent Republican state legislators faced challenges from candidates who were even more conservative on issues like abortion and gun rights.

But as of late last night, more than 10 of those Republican incumbents had won their races, with just one losing. Jennifer-Ruth Green, an Air Force veteran who attacked her top Republican opponent as a “Never Trump liberal,” did win her primary for a U.S. House district. Democrats have held the seat for nearly a century, but it could be competitive this fall.

Ohio and Indiana are both useful bellwethers for the Republican Party. Ohio used to be a national bellwether, voting for the winner of the presidential race between 1964 and 2016, but has shifted right recently. Indiana, which has fewer large cities, has leaned Republican since the Civil War.

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Chart shows two-party vote margins. | Sources: Dave Liep’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections; Edison Research

Left vs. center left

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has won some high-profile congressional victories in recent years. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman and Rashida Tlaib all serve in the House today, invigorating the political left.

But the left has now twice failed to win the Democratic nomination for a House seat in Cleveland.

Nina Turner, a Bernie Sanders supporter and former state senator, won only 34 percent of the vote, in her effort to unseat Representative Shontel Brown. Biden, as well as some House progressives, supported Brown.

It’s the second straight primary in which Brown has beaten Turner, following a special election last year. Then, Brown won by only 6 percentage points.

The Democratic Party’s left wing will have another chance to win a high-profile election soon. In Pennsylvania’s May 17 Democratic primary for a Senate seat, John Fetterman — a tattooed Sanders supporter and the current lieutenant governor — is leading in the polls over Representative Conor Lamb, a centrist. If Fetterman can win in the general election, he would become one of the few Sanders-style Democrats to win a swing state or House district.

Up next

Primary season is about to get much busier, with at least two states holding elections every Tuesday between now and the end of June, except for a break on the day after Memorial Day.

On the Republican side, the races will bring more tests of Trump’s influence, including:

The May 10 primary in a West Virginia congressional district, where Trump has endorsed one candidate and the Republican governor has endorsed another.

The May 17 primary for Senate in North Carolina. Trump has endorsed Representative Ted Budd, and the other candidates include the state’s former governor, Pat McCrory.

The May 17 primary for Senate in Pennsylvania, where Trump is supporting the television star Mehmet Oz over David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive.

The May 24 races for both governor and senator in Georgia, where Trump is trying to oust officials who refused to support his attempts to overturn his loss to Biden. Trump is backing candidates who echo his lies about voter fraud.

For more

 

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Protesters outside the Supreme Court yesterday.Leigh Vogel for The New York Times
 
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A woman and her baby after fleeing Mariupol.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
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Removing turf in Las Vegas.Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times
 
Opinions: Abortion

Post-Roe America will be a worse place to live, Michelle Goldberg says.

The leaked ruling opens the door to dismantling marriage equality and other rights, Roxane Gay argues.

Roe was a bad decision. But overturning it would be, too, Bret Stephens writes.

Ross Douthat weighs the possible motives of the leaker, concluding it was likely a liberal.

 
 

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MORNING READS

ZenLedger: The story of a Crypto executive who wasn’t who he said he was.

Behind the scenes: The stories behind some of the weird stuff on “Severance.”

Tiny Love Stories: “We slow-danced on the sidewalk.”

A Times classic: Try really short workouts.

Advice from Wirecutter: How to back up your computer.

Lives Lived: Interned as a boy during World War II, Norman Y. Mineta later became the first Japanese American cabinet official, serving under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Mineta died at 90.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Jeffrey Jay, center, during production of “Being Trans.”Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Podcasting meets reality TV

Can the theatrics and engrossing nature of reality television translate to podcasts? That’s what “Being Trans,” a show that follows the lives of four transgender cast members in Los Angeles, is attempting.

Many podcasts use a documentary format, or are improvisational and unscripted. But “Being Trans” hopes to immerse audiences in its subjects’ lives by recording in the field and forgoing hosts and external narration. “You’re just hearing people existing,” said Stephanie Wittels Wachs, a co-founder of the studio behind the show.

There are upsides to an audio-only show: Each episode costs less than a quarter of what a typical hour of reality TV does, and the format allows for flexibility. “We don’t have to deal with lights or makeup,” said Kasey Barrett, an executive producer of the podcast and a veteran of reality television. “And we can do things on a much smaller scale, which lends to the intimacy.”

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Salad isn’t boring when you add spicy shrimp (or scallops) and fresh herbs.

 
What to Listen to

Five minutes that will make you love the horn.

 
What to Read

Is Anna Wintour really a tyrant, or something else entirely? Read a review of a new biography about her.

 
Late Night

The hosts reacted to the Supreme Court leak.

 
Now Time to Play
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The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was docility. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Moon-related (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The word “nontweeters” appeared for the first time in The Times yesterday.

The Daily” is about Roe. “The Argument” is about the draft abortion ruling.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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May 5, 2022

 

Good morning. New research is showing the high costs of long school closures in some communities.

 
 
 
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Heaven Shaw, 11, doing remote school work in Atlanta.Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

‘Not good for learning’

When Covid-19 began to sweep across the country in March 2020, schools in every state closed their doors. Remote instruction effectively became a national policy for the rest of that spring.

A few months later, however, school districts began to make different decisions about whether to reopen. Across much of the South and the Great Plains as well as some pockets of the Northeast, schools resumed in-person classes in the fall of 2020. Across much of the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, school buildings stayed closed and classes remained online for months.

These differences created a huge experiment, testing how well remote learning worked during the pandemic. Academic researchers have since been studying the subject, and they have come to a consistent conclusion: Remote learning was a failure.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll cover that research as well as two related questions: How might the country help children make up the losses? And should schools have reopened earlier — or were the closures a crucial part of the country’s Covid response?

A generational loss

Three times a year, millions of K-12 students in the U.S. take a test known as the MAP that measures their skills in math and reading. A team of researchers at Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research have used the MAP’s results to study learning during a two-year period starting in the fall of 2019, before the pandemic began.

The researchers broke the students into different groups based on how much time they had spent attending in-person school during 2020-21 — the academic year with the most variation in whether schools were open. On average, students who attended in-person school for nearly all of 2020-21 lost about 20 percent worth of a typical school year’s math learning during the study’s two-year window.

Some of those losses stemmed from the time the students had spent learning remotely during the spring of 2020, when school buildings were almost universally closed. And some of the losses stemmed from the difficulties of in-person schooling during the pandemic, as families coped with disruption and illness.

But students who stayed home for most of 2020-21 fared much worse. On average, they lost the equivalent of about 50 percent of a typical school year’s math learning during the study’s two-year window.

“We have seen from this recent study just how large the gaps are,” Roberto Rodríguez, an assistant secretary in President Biden’s Education Department, told me.

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Sources: Harvard University; NWEA; AIR

The findings are consistent with other studies. “It’s pretty clear that remote school was not good for learning,” said Emily Oster, a Brown University economist and the co-author of another such study. As Matthew Chingos, an Urban Institute expert, puts it: “Students learned less if their school was remote than they would have in person.”

One of the most alarming findings is that school closures widened both economic and racial inequality in learning. In Monday’s newsletter, I told you about how much progress K-12 education had made in the U.S. during the 1990s and early 2000s: Math and reading skills improved, especially for Black and Latino students.

The Covid closures have reversed much of that progress, at least for now. Low-income students, as well as Black and Latino students, fell further behind over the past two years, relative to students who are high-income, white or Asian. “This will probably be the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation,” Thomas Kane, an author of the Harvard study, told me.

There are two main reasons. First, schools with large numbers of poor students were more likely to go remote.

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Sources: Harvard University; NWEA; AIR

Why? Many of these schools are in major cities, which tend to be run by Democratic officials, and Republicans were generally quicker to reopen schools. High-poverty schools are also more likely to have unionized teachers, and some unions lobbied for remote schooling.

Second, low-income students tended to fare even worse when schools went remote. They may not have had reliable internet access, a quiet room in which to work or a parent who could take time off from work to help solve problems.

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Sources: Harvard University; NWEA; AIR

Together, these factors mean that school closures were what economists call a regressive policy, widening inequality by doing the most harm to groups that were already vulnerable.

A catch-up effort

Congress has tried to address the learning loss by allocating about $190 billion for schools in pandemic rescue bills. That amounts to more than $3,500 for the average K-12 student in public school.

Rodríguez, the Education Department official, said he was encouraged by how schools were using the money. One strategy with a documented track record is known as high-dosage tutoring, he noted. Sessions can involve three or four students, receiving at least a half-hour of targeted instruction a few times a week.

Kane is more worried about how schools are using the federal money. He thinks many are spending a significant chunk of it on nonacademic programs, like new technology. “I’m afraid that while school agencies are planning a range of activities for catch-up, their plans are just not commensurate with the losses,” he said.

By the time schools realize that many students remain far behind, the federal money may be gone.

What might have been

Were many of these problems avoidable? The evidence suggests that they were. Extended school closures appear to have done much more harm than good, and many school administrators probably could have recognized as much by the fall of 2020.

In places where schools reopened that summer and fall, the spread of Covid was not noticeably worse than in places where schools remained closed. Schools also reopened in parts of Europe without seeming to spark outbreaks.

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PS 25 in the Bronx last year.Anna Watts for The New York Times

In October 2020, Oster wrote a piece in The Atlantic headlined “Schools Aren’t Superspreaders,” and she told me this week that the evidence was pretty clear even earlier. By the fall of 2020, many people were no longer staying isolated in their homes, which meant that reopened schools did not create major new risks.

The Washington Post recently profiled a district in Colorado where schools reopened quickly, noting that no children were hospitalized and many thrived. “We wanted it to be as normal as possible,” Chris Taylor, the president of the school board, said.

Hundreds of other districts, especially in liberal communities, instead kept schools closed for a year or more. Officials said they were doing so to protect children and especially the most vulnerable children. The effect, however, was often the opposite.

Over the past two years, the U.S. has suffered two very different Covid problems. Many Americans have underreacted to the pandemic, refusing to take lifesaving vaccines. Many others have overreacted, overlooking the large and unequal costs of allowing Covid to dominate daily life for months on end.

 

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Protesters with the faces of the conservative Supreme Court justices in New York this week.Caitlin Ochs for The New York Times
 
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Ukrainian armored vehicles in Kharkiv.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Biden must do more to improve life in prison, John J. Lennon, who has been incarcerated since 2002, says.

 
 

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MORNING READS

Photos: It’s like ComicCon, but “Golden Girls”-themed.

Squash: No American has been No. 1 in the sport. Amanda Sobhy can change that.

Nobility: An artist shines light on Black aristocracy.

A Times classic: Why CBD is everywhere.

Advice from Wirecutter: Coat racks declutter your entryway.

Lives Lived: Judy Henske became a star of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s but dropped out of music. She made a triumphant comeback 30 years later. Henske died at 85.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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A Panda Express delivery in Anchorage.Kerry Tasker for The New York Times

Delivery to the Tundra

Robert Golike said he feels like the world’s most expensive food-delivery driver — probably because he uses a plane.

On a recent morning, Golike, a pilot for Alaska Air Transit, was loading up a nine-seater plane with mail, produce, diapers and other essentials, bound for a remote region of Alaska where there are no grocery stores or restaurants. Also on board: two DoorDash orders, including steak tacos and Chinese takeout.

Dozens of small regional airlines fly people and cargo to remote communities across the state. Once or twice a month, residents may order “city food” to break the monotony of meals. “It’s not hot. It’s not fresh,” a resident said. “But at the same time, it has the flavor you’re wanting.”

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food stylist: Simon Andrews.

Brighten your week with Melissa Clark’s strawberry scone loaf.

 
What to Read

The filmmaker John Waters’s first novel, “Liarmouth,” features “crotch punching, exploding televisions, geysers of blood, deviants, wackos and reprobates,” Molly Young writes.

 
Better Than the Real Thing?

In The Cut, read about rich New Yorkers who treasure their fake Birkin bags.

 
Late Night
 
Now Time to Play
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The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were carping, crapping and prancing. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and a clue: Intended (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Jeff Sommer, a Times business columnist, wants to hear your money questions.

The Daily” is about a post-Roe America.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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May 6, 2022

 

Today, my colleague German Lopez looks at President Biden’s low approval rating, and his struggles to get Americans to believe government can work again. — David Leonhardt

Good morning. Covid helps explain why Biden is unpopular.

 
 
 
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President Biden at the White House yesterday.Doug Mills/The New York Times

A failure to deliver

Shortly after taking office, President Biden called on the government to do better. “We have to prove democracy still works,” he told Congress. “That our government still works — and we can deliver for our people.”

Most Americans seem to believe Biden has not done so: 42 percent of Americans approve of his job performance, while 53 percent disapprove, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls.

In today’s newsletter, I want to use Covid as a case study for how Biden failed to persuade Americans that the government delivered and instead cemented perceptions that it cannot.

Polling suggests that Covid — not the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — jump-started Biden’s political problems. His approval rating began to drop in July, weeks before the withdrawal.

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: FiveThirtyEight

That timing coincides with the rise of the Delta variant and reports that vaccine protection against infection was not holding up. Both came after Biden suggested for months that an “Independence Day” from Covid was near, setting up Americans for disappointment as it became clear that his administration would not fulfill arguably its biggest promise.

The Covid example

At first, the Biden administration’s pandemic response helped highlight how government can solve a big problem. Millions of Americans were receiving shots a day — a campaign that Biden compared to wartime mobilization.

But then things went awry, culminating in the disappointment many Americans now feel toward Biden’s handling of Covid.

Biden’s administration gave mixed messages on boosters and masks that at times appeared to contradict data and experts. As we have covered before, U.S. officials often have not trusted the public with the truth about Covid and precautions.

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Getting a booster in Jackson, Ala., last year.Charity Rachelle for The New York Times

Congress also lagged behind, with pandemic funding caught in intraparty squabbles and partisan fights — the kind of gridlock that has often prevented lawmakers from getting things done in recent years.

“American government is fairly slow and very incremental,” said Julia Azari, a political scientist at Marquette University. “That makes it very difficult to be responsive.”

Perhaps Biden’s biggest mistake was, as Azari put it, “overpromising.” He spent early last summer suggesting that vaccines would soon make Covid a concern of the past — a view some experts shared at the time, too.

Biden could not control what followed, as the virus persisted. But he could have set more realistic expectations for how a notoriously unpredictable pandemic would unfold.

Another problem preceded Biden’s presidency: the political polarization of the pandemic. It made vaccines a red-versus-blue issue, with many Republicans refusing to get shots. Yet the vaccines remain the single best weapon against Covid.

Given the high polarization, Biden’s options against Covid are now limited. His support for vaccines can even turn Republicans against the shots, one study found.

“There is more that could be done, but the impact would probably only be at the margins, rather than transformative,” said Jen Kates of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Even if Biden cannot do much, the public will likely hold him responsible for future Covid surges; voters expect presidents to solve difficult issues. “People blame the administration for problems that are largely outside its control,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.

Lost trust

Biden framed his call to deliver as a test for American democracy. He drew comparisons to the 1930s — “another era when our democracy was tested,” then by the threat of fascism. He pointed to new threats: Donald Trump challenging the legitimacy of U.S. elections and China’s president, Xi Jinping, betting that “democracy cannot keep up with him.”

There is a historical factor, too. Since the Vietnam War and Watergate, Americans’ trust in their government has fallen. If Biden had succeeded, he could have helped reverse this trend.

But Covid, and the government’s response to it, did the opposite. Trust in the C.D.C. fell throughout the pandemic: from 69 percent in April 2020 to 44 percent in January, according to NBC News.

Distrust in government can turn into a vicious cycle. The government needs the public’s trust to get things done — like, say, a mass vaccination campaign. Without that support, government efforts will be less successful. And as the government is less successful, the public will lose more faith in it.

Given the polarization surrounding Covid and the government’s mixed record, skepticism seems a more likely outcome than the renaissance of trust that Biden called for.

 

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War in Ukraine
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The Russian ship Moskva off Havana in 2013.Adalberto Roque/AFP via Getty Images
 
The Virus
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A mass cremation for Covid victims in New Delhi last year.Atul Loke for The New York Times
 
Politics
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Karine Jean-Pierre will take over from Jen Psaki.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

The end of Roe v. Wade will worsen America’s cultural wars, Michelle Goldberg argues.

Biden should cancel student debt — but only for those in precarious situations, says David Brooks.

The Supreme Court lost its legitimacy long before the draft abortion ruling leaked, Jamelle Bouie writes.

NFTs and cryptocurrencies were meant to liberate the internet. Instead, they’re polluting it with scams, Farhad Manjoo writes.

 
 

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MORNING READS

Handle with care: Peek into Bob Dylan’s archive, including notebooks and fan mail.

Ancient relic: Goodwill sold a Roman bust for $34.99. Its 2,000-year journey to Texas remains a mystery.

Great gowns: They’re the dry cleaners to the stars.

Modern Love: For a family scattered by war, a group chat is everything.

A Times classic: How gender stereotypes are changing.

Advice from Wirecutter: The best anti-mosquito gear.

Lives Lived: Marcus Leatherdale captured downtown Manhattan in the AIDS-darkened 1980s, photographing Andy Warhol, Madonna and others. Leatherdale died at 69.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Products from the show “CoComelon.”Alexander Coggin for The New York Times

Parents dread it. Kids love it.

With vivid colors, ear-worm songs and simple animation, the cartoon series “CoComelon” has an almost hypnotic effect on toddlers. The show is the second-largest channel on YouTube and holds a firm spot on Netflix’s top 10.

This is all by design — “CoComelon” is a production of Moonbug Entertainment, a London company that produces several of the world’s most popular online kids’ shows.

Moonbug treats children’s shows like a science, where every aesthetic choice or potential plot point is data-driven and rigorously tested with its target audience. Should the music be louder or more mellow? Should the bus be yellow or red? The answer is yellow — infants are apparently drawn to yellow buses, as well as minor injuries and stuff covered in dirt.

“The trifecta for a kid would be a dirty yellow bus that has a boo-boo,” a Moonbug exec said during a company story session. “Broken fender, broken wheel, little grimace on its face.”

Read more from inside one of the pitch sessions for a kids’ show juggernaut. — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

 

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
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Dane Tashima for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

This veggie burger uses cabbage and mushrooms for crunch.

 
Profile

He has sampled Fergie in his music, vacationed with Drake and has been co-signed by Kendrick Lamar. Meet Jack Harlow.

 
Spring Cleaning

Marie Kondo is here to help you tidy up your pandemic clutter.

 
Late Night

Trevor Noah has thoughts on interest rates.

 
Take the News Quiz

How well did you follow the headlines this week?

 
Now Time to Play
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was offhanded. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and a clue: Bagel variety (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. The Times’s Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns discussed their reporting about Jan. 6 on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”

The Daily” is about anti-abortion activists. Still Processing” is about “Fatal Attraction.”

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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May 7, 2022

 

Good morning. Our time and attention are valuable resources, and we’re in control of how — and on whom — we spend them.

 
 
 
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Allie Sullberg

Good friends

I got together this week with an old friend I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. Before meeting up, I was seized with a now-familiar apprehension. Would we find our old dynamic? Or would we sit across from one another awkwardly, unable to reclaim the rhythms and repartee that used to come so easily?

Only after the reunion went off without a hitch did I realize that I’d feared that if we hadn’t regained our groove, this could have been our last meeting for a while.

Perhaps it’s the clarity that comes from enduring a difficult period, but I’ve noticed, in myself and others, a diminishing tolerance for uncomfortable or unfulfilling social interactions. Seeing my old friend was thrilling. It felt nutrient-dense, almost like our connection was refueling my personality. But I’ve also experienced the opposite: a quick drink with an acquaintance that feels unduly exhausting.

My colleague Catherine Pearson spoke to experts to determine how many friends a person needs in order to stave off loneliness. (A 2010 meta-analysis found that loneliness is “as harmful to physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”) While no consensus emerged on an optimal number, Catherine did find that more isn’t always better: “Spending time with friends you feel ambivalent about — because they’re unreliable, critical, competitive or any of the many reasons people get under our skin — can be bad for your health.”

Our time and attention are valuable and finite, and we’re in control of what we do with them. We forget this sometimes. We reflexively say yes to invitations because we happen to be free. We go to events out of a vague sense of obligation. We say, “Let’s meet for drinks,” because it’s socially easier than just saying, “Take care.”

In “The Writing Life,” Annie Dillard writes: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” It’s an encouragement to live with intention. It’s good wisdom to keep in mind when deciding whom we spend our time with as well.

How are you spending your days? Let me know.

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WEEKENDS ARE FOR …

? Movies: An Argentine heist thriller is among our international streaming picks.

? Podcasts: Six that go deeper on news and history.

 

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

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THE LATEST NEWS

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RECIPE OF THE WEEK

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Sheet-Pan Pancakes

Here’s a confession: I hate having breakfast in bed. All those toast crumbs, syrup drips and tea spills make me too tense to enjoy it — on Mother’s Day or any other morning. But I do love it when my family makes me breakfast. So I’ve put in a request for Jerrelle Guy’s terrific sheet-pan chocolate chip pancakes. This easy, satisfying recipe has become a favorite in our house, with two tiny tweaks. Instead of baking the batter in one large sheet pan, we divide it across two smaller, quarter-sheet pans (measuring 9-by-13 inches) so there are more crispy edges. It’s a tip pinched from the recipe notes, and it works. The second is nixing the chocolate chips, because that leaves more room for loads of softened butter, blueberries and a downpour of maple syrup. (Want more satisfying recipes? Check out my column this week.)

 

REAL ESTATE

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Clockwise from left: Aspect Six/Florian Marschoun; Sarah Strunk for Sage Sotheby’s International Realty; Hampton Roads Real Estate Photography

What you get for $475,000: A cottage in Amherst, Mass.; a Prairie-style house in Oklahoma City; or a 1913 home in Norfolk, Va.

The hunt: They wanted to buy in Los Angeles without a bidding war. Which home did they choose? Play our game.

In Dallas: After two midcentury renovations, why not a third?

Museum living: An art collector’s home overlooking Central Park is listed for $19.5 million.

 

LIVING

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Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

Making up for lost time: Europe’s club scene is back.

Wedding registries: There’s a right way to ask for cash.

A luxury look: The $200,000 face-lift is here.

Netflix for beaches: Subscription vacation services target frequent travelers and bargain shoppers.

Reminiscent: Virtual reality therapy helps older adults visit their pasts to boost well-being.

 

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

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Xavier Burrell for The New York Times

The Kentucky Derby: Grab your fanciest hat and mix some mint juleps: It’s Derby Day. The mile-and-a-quarter horse race is referred to as “the most exciting two minutes in sports,” and the winner gets a shot at horse racing’s premiere prize, the Triple Crown. For many, though, the party is the main draw. Coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. Eastern today on NBC, with the race set for 6:57 p.m.

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NOW TIME TO PLAY

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The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was weighty. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

Here’s today’s Wordle. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

 
Before You Go …
 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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