On a recent commute to work, I texted my distant family about our fantasy baseball league, which was nice because I felt connected to them for a second. Then I switched apps and became enraged by a stupid opinion I saw on X, which I shouldn’t be using anymore due to its advanced toxicity and mind-numbing inanity. Many minutes passed before I was able to stop reading the stupid replies to the stupid original post and relax the muscles of my face.This is the duality of the phone: It connects me to my loved ones, and sometimes I think it’s ruining my life. I need it and I want it, but sometimes I hate it and I fear it. Many people have to navigate this problem—and it may be at its worst for parents, who’ve recently been drowned in media suggesting that smartphones and social media might be harming their children’s mental health, but who also want their kids to enjoy technology’s benefits and prepare themselves for adult life in a digital age.[Read: No one knows exactly what social media is doing to teens]It was with this tension in mind that I rode a train last week to the town of Westport, Connecticut. There, a parent-led group called OK to Delay had organized an “Alternative Device Fair” for families who wanted to learn about different kinds of phones that were intentionally limited in their functionality. (There would be no frowning at X with these devices, because most of them block social media.) Similar bazaars have been popping up here and there over the past year, often in the more affluent suburbs of the tristate area. Westport’s fair, modeled after an event held last fall in Rye, New York, was set up in a spacious meeting room in the most immaculate and well-appointed public library I’ve ever seen. When I arrived, about 30 minutes after the start of the four-hour event, it was bustling. The chatter was already at a healthy, partylike level.The tables set up around the room each showed off a different device. One booth had a Barbie-branded flip phone; another was offering a retro-styled “landline” phone called the Tin Can. But most of the gadgets looked the same—generic, rectangular smartphones. Each one, however, has its own special, restricted app store, and a slew of parental-control features that are significantly more advanced than what would have been available only a few years ago. One parent showed me her notepad, on which she was taking detailed notes about the minute differences among these phones; she planned to share the information with an online group of parents who hadn’t been able to come. Another mom told me that she’d be asking each booth attendant how easy it would be for kids to hack the phone system and get around the parent controls—something you can see kids discussing openly on the internet all the time.A couple of years ago, I explored the “dumb phone” trend, a cultural curiosity about returning to the time before smartphones by eschewing complex devices and purchasing something simpler and deliberately limited. One of the better phones I tried then was the Light Phone II, which I disliked only because it was so tiny that I constantly feared that I would break or lose it. At the library, I chatted with Light Phone’s Dan Fox, who was there to show people the latest version of the device. The Light Phone III is larger and thicker and has a camera, but it still uses a black-and-white screen and prohibits web browsing and social-media apps. He told me that it was his third alternative-device event in a week. He’d also been to Ardsley, a village in New York’s Westchester County, and to the Upper East Side, in Manhattan. He speculated that kids like the Light Phone because it doesn’t require all the rigmarole about filters and settings and parents. It was designed for adults, and therefore seems cool, and was designed in Brooklyn, which makes it seem cooler. (Fox then left early to go to a Kendrick Lamar concert with his colleagues.)[Read: Phones will never be fun again]The crowded room in Westport was reflective of the broad concern about the effect that social media may have on children and teenagers. But it was also a very specific expression of it. Explaining the impetus for hosting the marketplace, Becca Zipkin, a co-founder of the Westport branch of OK to Delay, told me that it has become the standard for kids in the area to receive an iPhone as an elementary-school graduation present. One of her group’s goals is to push back on this ritual and create a different culture in their community. “This is not a world in which there are no options,” she said.The options on display in Westport were more interesting than I’d thought they were going to be. They reflected the tricky balancing act parents face: how to let kids enjoy the benefits of being connected (a chess game, a video call with Grandma, a GPS route to soccer practice, the feeling of autonomy that comes from setting a photo of Olivia Rodrigo as your home-screen background) and protect them from the bad stuff (violent videos, messages from creeps, the urge to endlessly scroll, the ability to see where all of your friends are at any given time and therefore be aware every time you’re excluded).Pinwheel, an Austin-based company, demonstrated one solution with a custom operating system for Android phones such as the Google Pixel that allows parents to receive alerts for “trigger words” received in their kids’ texts, and lets them read every message at any time. As with most of the others demonstrated at the fair, Pinwheel’s custom app store made it impossible for kids to install social media. During the demo, I saw that Pinwheel also blocked a wide range of other apps, including Spotify—the booth attendant told me and a nearby mom that the app contains “unlimited porn,” a pronouncement that surprised both of us. (According to him, kids put links to porn in playlist descriptions; I don’t know if that’s true, but Spotify did have a brief problem with porn appearing in a small number of search results last year.) The app for the arts-and-crafts chain Michaels was also blocked, for a similar but less explicit reason: A red label placed on the Michaels app advised that it may contain a loophole that would allow kids to get onto unnamed other platforms. (Michaels didn’t respond to my request for comment, and Spotify declined comment.)Beyond the standard suite of surveillance tools, many of the devices are also outfitted with AI-powered tools that would preemptively censor content on kids’ phones: Nudity would be blurred out and trigger an alert sent to a parent, for instance; a kid receiving a text from a friend with a potty mouth would see only a series of asterisks instead of expletives.“The constant need to be involved in the monitoring of an iPhone is very stressful for parents,” Zipkin told me, referring to the parental controls that Apple offers, which can become the focus of unceasing negotiation and conflict between kids and their guardians. That is part of these alternative devices’ marketing. Pinwheel highlights the helping hand of AI on its website: “Instead of relying on parents to manually monitor every digital interaction (because who has time for that?), AI-driven tech is learning behaviors, recognizing risks, and proactively keeping kids safe.”The story was similar at other tables. Gabb, a Lehi, Utah, company, offers a feature that automatically shuts down video calls and sends notifications to parents if it detects nudity. The AI still needs some work—it can be triggered by, say, a person in a bathing suit or a poster of a man with his shirt off, if they appear in the background of the call. Gabb also has its own music app, which uses AI and human reviewers to identify and block songs with explicit language or adult themes. “Taylor Swift is on here, but not all of Taylor Swift’s music,” Lori Morency Kun, a spokesperson for the company, told me.At the next booth, another Utah-based company, Troomi, was demoing a system that allows parents to set content filters for profanity, discussions of violence, and “suggestive” chitchat, on a sliding scale depending on their kid’s age. The demonstrator also showed us how to add custom keywords to the system that would also be blocked, in case a parent feels that the AI tools are not finding everything. (“Block harmful content BEFORE it even has the chance to get to your kiddo!” reads a post on the company’s chipper Instagram account.)Across the room, Bark, an Atlanta-based company that started with a parental-control app and then launched its own smartphone, offered yet another nice-looking slab with similar features. This one sends alerts to parents for 26 possible problems, including signs of depression and indications of cyberbullying. I posed to the booth attendant, Chief Commercial Officer Christian Brucculeri, that a kid might joke 100 times a day about wanting to kill himself without having any real suicidal thoughts, an issue Brucculeri seemed to understand. But false positives are better than missed negatives, he argued. Bark places calls to law enforcement when it receives an alert about a kid threatening to harm themselves or others, he told me, but those alerts are reviewed by a human first. “We’re not swatting kids,” he said.Although everybody at the library was enormously polite, there is apparently hot competition in the alternative-device space. Troomi, for instance, markets itself as a “smarter, safer alternative to Pinwheel.” Pinwheel’s website emphasizes that its AI chatbot, PinwheelGPT, is a more useful tool than Troomi’s chatbot, Troodi—which Pinwheel argues is emotionally confusing for children, because the bot is anthropomorphized in the form of a cartoon woman. Bark provides pages comparing each of these competitors, unfavorably, with its own offering.Afterwards, Zipkin told me that parents had given her varied feedback on the different devices. Some of them felt that the granular level of monitoring texts for any sign of emotional distress or experimental cursing was over-the-top and invasive. Others were impressed, as she was, with some of the AI features that seem to take a bit of the load off of parents who are tired of constant vigilance. Despite all the negative things she’d personally heard about artificial intelligence, this seemed to her like a way it could be used for good. “Knowing that your kids won’t receive harassing or bullying material or sexual images or explicit images, or anything like that, is extremely attractive as a parent,” she told me. “Knowing that there’s technology to block that is, I think, amazing.”Of course, as every parent knows, no system is actually going to block every single dangerous, gross, or hurtful thing that can come in through a phone from the outside world. But that there are now so many alternative-device companies to choose from is evidence of how much people want and are willing to search for something that has so far been unattainable: a phone without any of the bad stuff.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.You don’t hear a lot of good news these days, and you hear even less good news about crime. In fact, this is a consistent structural problem with crime reporting. When crime is rising, it gets a great deal of attention—following the old newsroom adage that “if it bleeds, it leads.”Most news consumers are probably aware that starting in 2020, the United States witnessed one of the most remarkable increases in crime in its history. Murder rose by the highest annual rate recorded (going back to the start of reliable records, in 1960) from 2019 to 2020. Some criminal-justice-reform advocates, concerned that the increase would doom nascent progress, tried to play it down. They were right to point out that violent crime was still well below the worst peaks of the 1980s and ’90s, but wrong to dismiss the increase entirely. Such a steep, consistent, and national rise is scary, and each data point represents a horror for real people.What happened after that is less heralded: Crime is down since then. Although final statistics are not yet available, some experts think that 2024 likely set the record for the steepest fall in the murder rate. And 2025 is off to an even better start. The year is not yet half over, and a lot can still change—just consider 2020, when murder really took off in the second half—but the Real-Time Crime Index, which draws on a national sample, finds that through March, murder is down 21.6 percent, violent crime is down 11 percent, and property crime is down 13.8 percent. In April, Chicago had 20 murders. That’s not just lower than in any April of the past few years—that’s the best April since 1962, early in Richard J. Daley’s mayorship.One of the great challenges of reporting on crime is the lack and lateness of good statistics. The best numbers come from the FBI, but they aren’t released until the fall of the following year. Still, we can get a pretty good idea of the trends from the data that are available. The Council on Criminal Justice analyzed 2024 data from 40 cities on 13 categories of crime, and found that all but one (shoplifting) dropped from 2023. Homicide was down 16 percent among cities in the sample that reported data, and in cities with especially high numbers of murders, such as St. Louis, Baltimore, and Detroit, they fell to 2014 levels. Even carjacking, which suddenly had become more common in recent years, was down to below 2020 levels—though motor-vehicle theft was higher.A separate report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which gathers leaders of police departments in the biggest cities, found similar trends: a 16 percent drop in homicide from 2023, and smaller reductions in rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.Another great challenge of reporting on crime is how vague our understanding is of what drives changes in crime. Even now, scholars disagree about what led to the long decline in crime from the 1990s until the 2010s. One popular theory for the 2020 rise has been that it was connected to the murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests, though that allows for several possible pathways: Were police too occupied with protests to deal with ordinary crime? Were they de-policing as a sort of protest (the “blue flu”)—or were they pulling back because that was the message the protests were sending them and their leaders? Did the attention to brutal law enforcement delegitimize police in the eyes of citizens, encouraging a rise in criminal behavior? Any or all of these are possible, in various proportions.A Brookings Institution report published in December contends that the pandemic itself was the prime culprit. The authors argue that murder was already rising when Floyd was killed. “The spike in murders during 2020 was directly connected to local unemployment and school closures in low-income areas,” they write. “Cities with larger numbers of young men forced out of work and teen boys pushed out of school in low-income neighborhoods during March and early April, had greater increases in homicide from May to December that year, on average.” Because many of these unemployment and school-closure-related trends continued for years, they believe this explains why high murder rates persisted in 2021 and 2022 before falling. The journalist Alec MacGillis has also done powerful reporting that makes a similar argument.Recognizing the real trends in crime rates is important in part because disorder, real or perceived, creates openings for demagoguery. Throughout his time in politics, President Donald Trump has exaggerated or outright misrepresented the state of crime in the United States, and has used it to push for both stricter and more brutal policing. He has also argued that deportations will reduce crime—with his administration going so far as to delete a Justice Department webpage with a report noting that undocumented immigrants commit crime at lower rates than native citizens in Texas.The irony is that Trump’s policy choices could slow or even reverse the positive trends currently occurring. Reuters reports that the Justice Department has eliminated more than $800 million in grants through the Office of Justice Programs. Giffords, a gun-control group founded by former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, warns that this includes important aid to local police departments for preventing gun violence and other forms of crime: “Trump is destabilizing the very foundations of violence prevention programs across the country.” The administration’s economic policies also threaten to drive the U.S. into recession, which tends to cause increases in crime, as it may have done in 2020.Upticks in crime driven by misguided policy choices would be tragic, especially coming just as the shock of 2020 is fading. Good news isn’t just hard to find—it can also be fleeting.Related: What’s really going on with the crime rate? (From 2022) The many causes of America’s decline in crime (From 2015) Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: The mother who never stopped believing her son was still there The visionary of Trump 2.0 An autopsy report on Biden’s in-office decline Today’s News Some Republicans in the House Budget Committee, demanding deeper spending cuts, voted against President Donald Trump’s tax bill. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from using a wartime law to deport a group of Venezuelan immigrants. Israel’s air strikes killed roughly 100 people in north Gaza, according to local health officials. Evening Read Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic.* ‘We’re Definitely Going to Build a Bunker Before We Release AGI’By Karen Hao In the summer of 2023, Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder and the chief scientist of OpenAI, was meeting with a group of new researchers at the company. By all traditional metrics, Sutskever should have felt invincible: He was the brain behind the large language models that helped build ChatGPT, then the fastest-growing app in history; his company’s valuation had skyrocketed; and OpenAI was the unrivaled leader of the industry believed to power the future of Silicon Valley. But the chief scientist seemed to be at war with himself. Read the full article.More From The Atlantic The question the Trump administration couldn’t answer about birthright citizenship The birthright-citizenship case isn’t really about birthright citizenship. The new MAGA world order A different way to think about medicine’s most stubborn enigma Culture Break Illustration by Jan Buchczik Take charge. You may be fine with becoming more like your parents or hate the idea. Either way, it’s something you can control, the happiness expert Arthur C. Brooks writes.Read. Amanda Hess’s new book examines a surplus of experts and gadgets promising to perfect the experience of raising children, Hillary Kelly writes.Play our daily crossword.Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.Explore all of our newsletters here.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Forty-six minutes into the Supreme Court’s oral argument in the birthright-citizenship litigation, Solicitor General D. John Sauer got a question he couldn’t answer. Arguing on behalf of the government, Sauer wants the Court to prohibit nationwide injunctions, allowing President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship—along with many of his other policies—to go into effect. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, wanted to know how, exactly, the government would administer a rule denying citizenship to potentially hundreds of thousands of babies every year.“On the day after it goes into effect,” Kavanaugh asked, “how’s it going to work—what do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states do with a newborn?”“We don’t know,” Sauer candidly told the Court, saying that “federal officials will have to figure that out.” Later, he added, “Hopefully, they will do so.”Really? With this one exchange, Sauer inadvertently revealed why nationwide injunctions are at times the only way to protect the public. The administration has no workable plan for its unconstitutional order, yet it wants to take away the best legal pathway for those affected to challenge the government’s action.[Nicholas Bagley: The birthright citizenship case isn’t really about birthright citizenship]The Trump administration has had plenty of time to prepare for this moment. During his first administration, Trump claimed authority to end birthright citizenship by executive order. Last year, he repeated that threat at rallies across the nation. His campaign website prominently featured a video in which he personally pledged to end birthright citizenship on “day one” of his presidency.On January 20, 2025, Trump delivered on that promise, signing an executive order denying citizenship to all children of undocumented immigrants, as well as all children of immigrants with temporary legal status, who are born after February 19, 2025.That order is at odds with the clear text of the Fourteenth Amendment, the original understanding, long-standing judicial interpretation, and multiple federal statutes. And it would destabilize the citizenship of many of the 3.6 million babies born, on average, in the United States every year—including those born to U.S. citizens. According to the executive order, a birth certificate alone would no longer demonstrate citizenship. All of those parents would have to somehow prove their own citizenship or immigration status before their child could be recognized as a citizen. Additionally, even babies born to lawful temporary immigrants—including temporary workers and students who have been living in the United States for years—would be denied citizenship, losing access to Medicaid, SNAP, and other federal and state benefits. Those children would be born undocumented, some stateless, all at risk of being deported on the first day of their life.Yet Sauer conceded that the Trump administration does not have a plan—does not even have a concept of a plan—to implement this radical change in U.S. law and policy.  “It’s going to produce unprecedented chaos on the ground,” New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum told the Court when it was his turn at the podium. Feigenbaum was speaking for the 22 states, together with the District of Columbia and San Francisco, that had won an injunction prohibiting implementation of the executive order nationwide. Such injunctions—also known as universal injunctions—bar the federal government from applying a challenged policy to anyone, not just the parties to the suit. A federal court in Maryland issued a similarly sweeping injunction in a lawsuit filed on behalf of five expectant mothers and two immigrants’-rights organizations, now also before the Supreme Court in these consolidated cases.The Supreme Court likely granted this unusual oral argument—late in its term, and from a case on its “emergency” docket—because it wanted to rein in the power of a single federal judge to stymie the preferred policies of a democratically elected president. Once rare, such injunctions have become commonplace. A record 40 such nationwide injunctions have already been issued against the Trump administration, though that may be due to Trump’s record 150 (and counting) executive orders. In recent years, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett have all raised concerns about such injunctions.The government is right that nationwide injunctions come with real costs to any presidential administration. They encourage forum-shopping, leading to a pattern whereby red-state judges blocked President Joe Biden’s policies and blue-state judges block Trump’s. They put pressure on the Supreme Court to decide cases quickly and at an early stage of the litigation, when the facts and law have yet to be well developed. They give plaintiffs an unfair advantage: If plaintiffs win, the executive is enjoined from enforcing its policies, but if they lose, a new plaintiff can file another suit before a different judge. And it just seems odd that a judge in Washington State could enjoin the birthright-citizenship executive order (or any order, for that matter) from going into effect in Texas—especially given that Texas (along with 18 other states) filed an amicus brief supporting the executive order.Yet these injunctions are also essential in at least some cases, such as when a patchwork implementation of a law proves unworkable. That is the case here, Feigenbaum told the Court yesterday. Ending nationwide injunctions would allow citizenship to “vary based on the state in which you’re born,” and would “turn on or off when someone crosses state lines.” If the executive order was enjoined in New Jersey but not in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania, Feigenbaum said, then what happens “when you live in Philly and you move to Camden”? Under such a system, pregnant women would be motivated to cross state borders to give birth—a bizarre variation on “birth tourism” incompatible with the fact that the United States is a single nation.The Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1868 in part to overturn Dred Scott v. Sandford, a case that divided the nation by declaring that Black people could not be U.S. citizens. Alluding to that history, Feigenbaum observed: “Never in this country’s history since the Civil War” has citizenship turned “on when you cross state lines.”Perhaps most important, nationwide injunctions are sometimes the only way to protect the thousands, even millions, of people who would be injured by a radical new government policy during the time between the start of litigation and a final judgment by the Supreme Court—typically years. If it weren’t for nationwide injunctions, only those with the wherewithal to file a lawsuit could protect their rights in the interim.  Presumably, that’s why Kavanaugh asked Sauer how the government would implement the birthright-citizenship executive order. Perhaps he wanted to hear that the government had a carefully conceived plan to minimize chaos and injury. Sauer’s nonanswer unintentionally made the case for nationwide injunctions.[Adam Serwer: The attack on birthright citizenship is a big test for the Constitution]If plaintiffs want an immediate universal remedy, Sauer contends, they should file a class action instead of individual cases. But many cases are ineligible for class certification under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, including all cases brought by states. Nor is there a clear mechanism for speedy emergency relief on behalf of such a class—the very relief that plaintiffs argue is essential.Proving that point, Sauer admitted that the government might oppose class certification in this very case. He even claimed that the government did not have to follow the rulings of the federal courts of appeals. The only way to stop a Trump-administration policy once and for all—even one that has lost a dozen times in the lower courts—is a final decision on the merits by the U.S. Supreme Court.As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out, such a rule would allow the government to win by losing. After all, the government could lose case after case in the lower courts—as it has so far in the birthright-citizenship litigation—never seek Supreme Court review, and continue to apply its policies throughout the country. Such a rule would allow all of Trump’s executive orders to go into effect in perpetuity, no matter how flagrantly unconstitutional, save only for those individuals with the capacity to file a lawsuit.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson described the government’s argument in a nutshell. You would “turn our justice system, in my view at least, into a ‘catch me if you can’ kind of regime,” she said, “where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights.” If President Trump was listening, he might have thought that sounded about right.

Updated at 2:50 p.m. ET on May 16, 2025Earlier this week in Saudi Arabia, President Donald Trump delivered what the White House billed as a “major address,” which is a long-standing way to signal that a particular speech is meant to lay down a historical marker communicating the president’s values. Or, in this case, the lack thereof. Trump’s message was that, unlike interventionist Americans of the past, he did not take account of democracy or human rights when dealing with foreign states. His only concern was raw American interest. The host regime, which has had strained relations with the United States over the kingdom’s lack of human rights and its 2018 dismemberment of a Washington Post columnist, no doubt welcomed the moral reprieve.“In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins,” the president announced. “I believe it is God’s job to sit in judgment; my job, to defend America and to promote the fundamental interests of stability, prosperity, and peace.”Trump’s declaration meant that “the United States was done nation-building and intervening,” observed The New York Times. There was “no Wilsonianism in the speech,” noted National Review’s editor in chief, Rich Lowry, who pronounced the administration’s renunciation of moral judgment the “Trump doctrine.”[Read: A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: ‘We’re America, Bitch’]Two days later in Qatar, however, Trump sounded altogether less callous. “We are gonna protect this country. It’s a very special place with a special royal family,” he said. “It’s great people, and they’re gonna be protected by the United States.” The U.S. State Department has previously criticized Qatar’s ruling monarchy for violating human rights and imprisoning journalists, but Trump had looked into their souls, and found them to be special indeed. The tone he struck sounded less like a cold-eyed businessman and more like John F. Kennedy pledging to defend West Berlin.It appears that Trump does care about the internal character of regimes he deals with. Rather than following a foreign policy that ignores values altogether, Trump has a clear preference for values that are, in the American context, historically anomalous or—to put it in less neutral terms—bad. And he wishes to spread those values around the world.Whatever you say about this policy, it is not amoral. The primary difference between the Trump doctrine and traditional American values promotion is that the former, rather than seeking to impose a moral world order, aspires to create an immoral one.In his address to the Saudis, Trump condemned his predecessors for “giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.” It’s true that Trump does not lecture dictatorships for suppressing democracy. But his administration is hardly reticent about denouncing other countries’ internal conduct.Earlier this year, Vice President J. D. Vance scolded Europe for allowing in too many migrants and cracking down too hard on hate speech and far-right parties. “What German democracy—what no democracy, American, German, or European—will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered,” he said. Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and proposed that he hold elections before the Russia invasion is repelled.The administration has in fact made human rights a centerpiece of its diplomacy in one particular country: South Africa. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that he was boycotting a G20 summit because it was held in Johannesburg. “South Africa is doing very bad things,” he wrote. “Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote ‘solidarity, equality, & sustainability.’ In other words: DEI and climate change.” More recently, Trump has claimed: “South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people very badly.”If you were going to take a stand on human rights for only one country, South Africa seems like a strange choice: According to Freedom House, the country has been a “proponent of human rights” since the end of apartheid and, despite some deficits, is rated as “free.” But South Africa fits with Trump’s apparent belief, one reflected in the stream of hysterical rhetoric about the treatment of Afrikaners, that anti-white discrimination is the most pernicious ideology in the world. Trump has therefore granted refugee status to white South Africans even as he has deported other asylum seekers, including those who face prison or death.To claim that Trump is motivated purely by values would be an exaggeration. A strong odor of corruption wafts over his international dealings, especially with allies like Qatar, which gave him a Boeing plane for his personal use.[Read: The Darker Design Behind Trump’s $400 Million Plane]But it’s not as if Qatar had to bribe Trump into placing the country under the American military umbrella. The U.S. has had a major air base there for a quarter century. The difference in how Trump talks about this military presence, in contrast to the resentment he regularly expresses over American bases in Europe and the Pacific, is striking. When describing American commitments to Gulf states, Trump does not insult our allies as freeloaders, or lambaste former U.S. presidents for their stupidity in giving away American protection, or demand that these countries pay what he calls “dues” to retain it.Trump has described the Boeing aircraft not as a form of repayment he demanded, but as a magnanimous gift from Qatar out of genuine friendship. The emirate had decided “very, very nicely” that it “would like to do something” to express its appreciation. He repeatedly praised Qatar as “nice” for repaying American security guarantees worth billions of dollars with one $400 million plane that may or may not be crawling with listening devices.Qatar’s naked bribery is not merely payment for services rendered. It serves as a signal in Trump’s mind that Qatar is one of the good guys—because it does business the Trump way, not the international-liberal-order way. Trump’s method is still to sit in judgment over foreign leaders. He simply prefers the bad ones.

Yesterday, during an oral argument spanning nearly two and a half hours, the Supreme Court justices grilled the newly installed Solicitor General D. John Sauer over the Trump administration’s request that it be allowed to enforce a flagrantly unconstitutional executive order ending birthright citizenship. Sauer repeatedly refused to say how the case could be swiftly resolved. Instead, he suggested that President Donald Trump may wish to enforce the order to the hilt unless and until the justices themselves—no one else—tell him to stop.Still, Sauer may walk away with a narrow win.The central dispute yesterday morning was not about the birthright-citizenship order itself. Instead, it was about the relief that plaintiffs ought to get assuming that the order is unconstitutional. It’s a procedural question. At times, that lent the proceedings a weirdly artificial air. President Trump is moving to deny citizenship to countless newborns and we’re fighting about whether courts can say no?Well, yes. And for good reason. The argument yesterday was about the power of lone federal-court judges to enter what are called “universal” or “nationwide” injunctions. These injunctions prevent the government from enforcing a policy not just on the plaintiffs who filed a given suit, but on anyone and everyone in the United States. As recently as the administration of President George W. Bush, such universal injunctions were very rare. Today, they are a more or less standard judicial response to perceived presidential overreach.Universal injunctions have a distinctly partisan cast. When the president is a Democrat, they are the tools of right-wing judges. During Joe Biden’s presidency, for example, judges in Texas entered universal injunctions against COVID-vaccine mandates, the cancellation of $430 billion in student-loan payments, and expanded protections for transgender students. Democrats cried foul play.Under Republican presidents, the valence shifts. Then, it’s disproportionately liberal judges who deploy universal injunctions. The second Trump administration has already been hit with a couple dozen nationwide injunctions against its actions, including its ban on transgender service members, its cuts to university research funding, and its deportation of gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. And also, of course, the birthright-citizenship executive order.Now it’s Republicans who are outraged. “STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!”[David W. Blight: Birthright citizenship is a sacred guarantee]I don’t say this often about Trump’s Truth Social posts, but he has a point. As the University of Chicago law professor Samuel Bray and I argued in this magazine back in 2018, universal injunctions can’t be squared with the traditional judicial role of the courts, which is to resolve disputes between parties, not to protect theoretical parties who aren’t in court at all. I elaborated on the point in testimony I gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020: They enable opportunistic behavior by politically motivated litigants and judges, short-circuit a process in which multiple judges address hard legal questions, and inhibit the federal government’s ability to do its work. By inflating the judicial role, they also reinforce the sense that we ought to look to the courts for salvation from our political problems—a view that is difficult to square with basic principles of democratic self-governance. Not long after Trump signed the birthright-citizenship order, about half the states and some nonprofit groups sued. Very quickly, several judges blocked the order from taking effect.The judges’ rationale was straightforward: The order is illegal, and wildly so. It contradicts the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” And it violates case law from the Supreme Court, too, including an 1898 decision called Wong Kim Ark. The judges were appalled: “I’ve been on the bench for over four decades,” one wrote. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”For all of the judges who heard the challenge, the question of the order’s legality was not hard. The problem is determining what they can do about it. Three blocked it nationwide. One New Hampshire judge blocked it only in New Hampshire.Sauer wants the Supreme Court to adopt a categorical rule that universal injunctions—or, more precisely, injunctions where relief extends to non-parties to the case—are never okay. But he had trouble answering a series of questions about speed.Justice Elena Kagan, for example, acknowledged that “there are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions.” But without a nationwide injunction, she asked, how could this case get quickly resolved for everyone whose citizenship might be called into question during the pendency of litigation? “If one thinks that it’s quite clear that the EO is illegal, how does one get to that result, in what timeframe, on your set of rules, without the possibility of a nationwide injunction?”[Nicholas Bagley and Samuel Bray: Judges shouldn’t have the power to halt laws nationwide]Sauer said that the plaintiffs could try to certify a class action. Fine, Kagan said. Would he stipulate that a class action would be appropriate in this case? Sauer said no, and insisted on preserving the right to challenge class certification if he won on his core argument. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was incredulous at Sauer’s refusal to make a tactical concession: “Are you really going to answer Justice Kagan by saying that there’s no way to do this expeditiously?”Kagan went further. Assume, she said, that the Second Circuit—the court of appeals covering New York, Connecticut, and Vermont—held that the citizenship order was unconstitutional. Would the Trump administration follow that ruling, even in the absence of an injunction, in those three states?Again, Sauer refused to commit. “Generally, our practice is to respect circuit precedent within the circuit, but there are exceptions to that.” He reserved the right to apply a court of appeals decision only to the parties who filed suit.Now it was Kagan’s turn to be incredulous. “You’re not willing to commit to abiding by the Second Circuit’s precedent. Suppose that there’s a single person who brings a suit and it gets all the way up to us after three or four or five years.” Then the Supreme Court rules in that person’s favor and holds that “your EO is illegal. Is that only going to bind the one guy who brought the suit?”On this, Sauer finally relented: “That would be a nationwide precedent that the government would respect.” Kagan was not mollified. “For four years, there are going to be, like, an untold number of people who, according to all the law that this Court has ever made, ought to be citizens who are not being treated as such.” Sauer had no good answer to that one.The colloquy, and a similar follow-up with Barrett, was fascinating not only for what it said about this case, but for what it indicates about the Trump administration’s attitude toward the courts. At least for the administration’s top priorities, Sauer suggested that the executive branch would pay much less heed to lower courts than previous administrations—and that it would take a ruling from the United States Supreme Court to prevent it from breaking the law.The plaintiffs also faced tough questioning. Their lawyers—one for the state of New Jersey, representing a group of blue states, and the other on behalf of two civil-rights groups—both acknowledged that universal injunctions should be rare. But they had two arguments for why injunctions were acceptable in this case.[Yasmeen Serhan and Uri Friedman: America isn’t the ‘only country’ with birthright citizenship]First, the plaintiffs said that they needed a broad injunction to give them complete relief for their injuries. By way of analogy, think of a lawsuit against a power plant that’s spewing pollutants. If a plaintiff wins, she might secure an injunction to stop the plant from operating. That would incidentally benefit lots of people who live near the power plant, even if they aren’t parties to the case.The same logic applied here, the plaintiffs said. New Jersey’s lawyer, Jeremy Feigenbaum, argued that the executive order would inflict injury on the states because it would require them to abide by burdensome and confusing rules governing citizenship when administering a range of state programs. Confining the injunction to the plaintiff states wouldn’t solve that problem. Why? Because people move.Feigenbaum used the example of someone moving from Philadelphia to Camden and back again: “It’s a very porous part of the country.” Does citizenship toggle on and off? How is a state supposed to manage that uncertainty? Only an injunction that extended to all states could protect New Jersey from “that sort of chaos on the ground.”Some of the justices seemed receptive to the argument, especially Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts, too, used his opening question to emphasize that giving a plaintiff complete relief will sometimes require a pretty sweeping injunction. That may be enough to sustain the injunction here.If that’s the argument, however, then this is not a true universal injunction. Universal injunctions are those that are not necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs, but are needed to protect non-plaintiffs. Here, New Jersey says that it and the other blue states aren’t trying to protect the non-plaintiff red states. They’re trying to protect themselves, and they need an order that covers the whole country to get that relief.Which takes us to the plaintiffs’ second argument. Arguing for two civil-rights groups, Kelsi Brown Corkran said that true universal injunctions ought to be available in narrow circumstances, in particular when a government policy infringed on “fundamental rights” and when there were doubts about “the legal and practical availability of relief to similarly situated parties.” (Corkran and I are old friends, and I participated in an early moot court for her in this case.) She offered the example of when the Trump administration made a midnight attempt to deport Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador.[Amanda Frost: The coming assault on birthright citizenship]Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson were both attracted to an approach along those lines. But several other justices, including Justice Samuel Alito, were skeptical. “All Article III judges are vulnerable to an occupational disease, which is the disease of thinking that I am right and I can do whatever I want. Now, on a multimember appellate court, that’s restrained by one’s colleagues. But the trial judge sitting in the trial judge’s courtroom is the monarch of that realm,” Alito said. It’s tempting, Alito continued, for him or her to say, “This is unlawful and I’m going to enjoin it and I’m so convinced I’m right so I’m not going to stay the injunction.” Kagan and Justice Neil Gorsuch both voiced similar concerns.What’s likely to happen? As always, predicting Supreme Court decisions from oral argument is treacherous. But the swing justices on the Supreme Court—here, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett—both signaled that they’re looking to rein in universal injunctions. The only question is how hard they’ll yank.Sauer did his case no favors by refusing to give an inch on questions pertaining to class certification and the administration’s willingness to abide by circuit precedent. Nonetheless, Kavanaugh and Barrett were sympathetic to Sauer’s argument that the proper way to get classwide relief is to certify a class, not by pushing for a universal injunction. If they hold to that view, Sauer may get what he asked for: a categorical bar on universal injunctions. That would be a big win for the executive branch.At the same time, some of the justices suggested that supplying complete relief in this case might require an unusually broad injunction. In particular, Barrett hinted that the right approach might be to send the case back down so that a judge could decide whether providing complete relief to New Jersey and the other blue states might support an injunction that covered the whole country. Alternatively, or in addition, the Court may clarify that plaintiffs can secure preliminary relief on behalf of a class even before that class is formally certified. If that were to happen, I’d expect the plaintiffs to promptly get relief on behalf of a very broad putative class.In other words, the Trump administration may win the fight over universal injunctions—but lose the fight over this injunction.That, of course, would leave unresolved the constitutionality of the birthright-citizenship order. It’s hard to say how long it will take before that question is squarely presented. Much depends on what the Supreme Court says and what the lower courts do. In the meantime, however, my best guess is that the order will never be allowed to take effect.What will the Supreme Court say when it eventually rules on the merits? On that, it was hard to read the justices as anything but deeply skeptical of the Trump administration’s argument. Barring truly extraordinary events, the Court will one day hold that the birthright-citizenship order is unequivocally unconstitutional. The only question is when its obituary will be written.

Vadim Ghirda / APBismarck the sphynx closes its eyes while being examined by a judge during an international feline beauty competition in Bucharest, Romania, on May 10, 2025.Robert Nickelsberg / GettyA subway passenger reads messages on his phone in front of a mural of the artist William Wegman’s famous Weimaraner at the 23rd Street MTA station on May 9, 2025, in New York City.Ismail Aslandag / Anadolu / GettyA long-eared forest owl attracts the attention of nature lovers and bird-watchers in Beyobasi Village, in Ankara’s Sincan district, Turkey, on May 10, 2025.VCG / GettyA mechanical puppet resembling an ancient mythical beast makes an appearance in Dalian, Liaoning province, China, on May 8, 2025.Athit Perawongmetha / ReutersAn 18-meter-tall art installation titled KAWS:Holiday Thailand, featuring the “Companion” figures and created by the artist Brian Donnelly, also known as Kaws, is displayed in front of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 13, 2025.Dmitri Lovetsky / APThe full moon sets behind St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia, on May 13, 2025.Fadel Senna / AFP / GettyA view of the Abu Dhabi skyline, seen beyond sand dunes, on May 14, 2025Fatih Gonul / Anadolu / GettyA tourist walks on a path through a bamboo forest in the Arashiyama region of Kyoto, Japan.Luis Acosta / AFP / GettyA hummingbird is seen during a bird-watching hike on Mount Monserrate, near Bogotá, Colombia, on May 10, 2025.Kim Kyung-Hoon / ReutersMembers of Cheer Re-Mans, an all-male cheerleading team of active businessmen, perform at “Cheer Up Japan” in Tokyo on March 22, 2025. 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Caivano / APA person peers out of a window atop the Obelisk during a city tour in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on May 8, 2025.Alexander Ermochenko / ReutersA drone view shows the ruins of residential buildings in the abandoned town of Marinka, which has been destroyed in the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in the Donetsk region, on May 15, 2025.Slamet Riyadi / APDevotees fly lanterns during the commemoration of Vesak at the ninth-century Borobudur Temple in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia, on May 12, 2025.Marco Restivo / Etna Walk / AFP / GettyLava flows during an eruption of Mount Etna, in Sicily, seen late on May 12, 2025.Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / GettyThe Latvian group Tautumeitas, representing Latvia with the song “Bur Man Laimi,” performs during the dress rehearsal for the second semifinal of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest at the St. Jakobshalle arena in Basel, Switzerland, on May 14, 2025.Kayla Bartkowski / GettyU.S. Naval Academy freshmen (“plebes”) celebrate after placing the hat during the annual Herndon Monument climb at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, on May 14, 2025. In the annual tradition, plebes attempt to scale the 21-foot greased monument to knock off a “Dixie cup” hat and replace it with an upperclassman’s hat. The 2028 midshipmen's class took two hours, 27 minutes, and 31 seconds to scale the monument and replace the hat.Matthias Schrader / APBayern’s Jamal Musiala is doused with beer after a soccer match between FC Bayern Munich and Borussia Mönchengladbach in Munich, Germany, on May 10, 2025.Lee Smith / ReutersA jockey competes during harness racing in York, England, on May 10, 2025.Mohsen Karimi / AFP / GettyAn Afghan tailor stitches burqas inside a shop in Herat, Afghanistan, on May 13, 2025.Lou Benoist / AFP / GettyPerformers entertain during an operatic parade to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the city of Caen, in northwestern France, on May 9, 2025. The parade brought together 2,000 participants, including artists, circus performers, and musicians.

Photographs by Sarah BlesenerThe Toyota pickup hit the tree that May morning with enough explosive force to leave a gash that is still visible on its trunk 39 years later. Inside the truck, the bodies of three teenage boys hurled forward, each with terrible velocity.This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.One boy died instantly; a second was found alive outside the car. The third boy, Ian Berg, remained pinned in the driver’s seat, a bruise blooming on the right side of his forehead. He had smacked it hard—much harder than one might have guessed from the bruise alone—which caused the soft mass of his brain to slam against the rigid confines of his skull. Where brain met bone, brain gave way. The matter of his mind stretched and twisted, tore and burst.When the jaws of life freed him from the wreckage, Ian was still alive, but unconscious. “Please don’t die. Please don’t die. Please don’t die,” his mother, Eve Baer, pleaded over him at the hospital. She imagined throwing a golden lasso around his foot to keep him from floating away.And Ian didn’t die. After 17 days in a coma, he finally opened his eyes, but they flicked wildly around the room, unable to sync or track. He could not speak. He could not control his limbs. The severe brain injury he’d suffered, doctors said, had put him in a vegetative state. He was alive, but assumed to be cognitively gone—devoid of thought, of feeling, of consciousness.Eve hated that term, vegetative—an “unhuman-type classification,” she thought. If you had asked her then, in 1986, she would have said she expected her 17-year-old son to fully recover. Ian had been handsome, popular, in love with a new girlfriend—the kind of golden boy upon whom fortune smiles. At school, he was known as the kid who greeted everyone, teachers included, with a hug. He and his two friends in the car belonged to a tight-knit group of seniors. But on the day he would have graduated that June, Ian was still lying in a hospital bed, his big achievement being that he’d finally made a bowel movement.“What kind of life is that?” Ian’s brother Geoff remembers thinking. When he first arrived at the hospital, he had looked around the room for a plug to pull. The two brothers had talked about scenarios like this before, Geoff told me: “If anything ever happens to me and I can’t wipe my ass, make sure you kill me.” Angry that their mother was keeping his brother alive, Geoff fled, moving for a time to St. Thomas.Three months after the accident, when doctors at the hospital could do no more for Ian, Eve took him home. She was adamant that he live with family, rather than under the impersonal care of a nursing home. That she had ample space for Ian and all of his specialized equipment was fortuitous. A few weeks before the accident, Eve’s husband, Marshall, had stumbled upon the Rainbow Lodge, an old hotel for hunters and fishers, for sale near Woodstock, New York. He loved the idea of a compound for their big blended family—his two grown children plus nieces and nephews, as well as Eve’s four kids, of whom Ian is the youngest. The sale was finalized while Ian was in the hospital.At the lodge, Eve and a rotating cast of caretakers kept Ian alive: bathing him, pureeing home-cooked meals for his feeding tube, changing the urine bag that drained his catheter. She also devised a busy schedule of therapies, anchored by up to six hours a day of psychomotor “patterning”—an exercise program she’d read about in which a team of volunteers took each of Ian’s limbs and moved them in a pattern that mimicked an infant learning to crawl. Friends and acquaintances came to help with patterning; some started living in the lodge’s guest rooms, staying for months or even years. They formed a kind of unconventional extended family, with Ian at the center. Every Sunday, Eve cooked big dinners for the crowd.Sarah Blesener for The AtlanticThe tree Ian struck with a pickup truck in 1986 still bears a scar from the accident.The patterning exercises, which are not based on science, ultimately did not really help Ian. But his mother didn’t dwell on this. She made regular calls to the National Institutes of Health to inquire about the latest brain-injury research. And where mainstream medicine failed, Eve—who had moved to Woodstock in the ’60s as a “wannabe bohemian slash beatnik”—turned enthusiastically to alternatives. Ian was treated by the spiritual guru Ram Dass; a “magic man” with a pendulum; a craniosacral therapist; a Buddhist monk; Filipino “psychic surgeons”; and a healer in Chandigarh, India. Eve and Marshall took him on the 7,000-mile journey to India themselves, pushing him in a rented collapsible wheelchair. When, after all of this, Ian’s condition still did not improve, Eve became angry. It was one of the rare times that she allowed disappointment to puncture her relentless optimism.Still, like so many other family members of vegetative patients, she held on to a mother’s belief that Ian could understand everything around him. She took care, when shaving him, to leave the wispy mustache he had been trying to grow. When his high-school friends went to see the Grateful Dead, she brought him along in his wheelchair and a tie-dyed shirt. She kept believing for herself as much as for Ian: If her son was aware, it would mean her gestures of love were not unseen, her words not unheard.Science would take decades to catch up with Eve, but she turned out to be right in one crucial respect: Ian is still aware. Doctors now agree that he can see, he can hear, and he can understand, at least in some ways, the people around him.Over the past 20 years, the science of consciousness has undergone a reckoning as researchers have used new tools to peer inside the brains of people once thought to lack any cognitive function. Ian is part of a landmark study published in The New England Journal of Medicine last year, which found that 25 percent of unresponsive brain-injury patients show signs of awareness, based on their brain activity. The finding suggests that there could be tens of thousands of people like Ian in the United States—many in nursing homes where caretakers might have no clue that their patients silently understand and think and feel. These patients live in a profound isolation, their conscious minds trapped inside unresponsive bodies. Doctors are just beginning to grasp what it might take to help them.Sarah Blesener for The Atlantic; Courtesy of the Baer familyAfter Ian was discharged from the hospital, Eve and a rotating cast of caretakers and alternative healers tried to help him recover. Throughout, Eve held on to a mother’s belief that Ian could understand everything around him.For Ian, the signs were there, if not right at the beginning, at least early on. Three years after the accident, he began to laugh.Eve was in the kitchen with him, idly singing the Jeopardy theme song in a silly falsetto when she heard it: “Ha!” Laughter? Laughter! “Other than a cough, it was the first sound I heard from him in three years,” she told me. In time, Ian started laughing at other things too: stories Eve made up about a cantankerous Russian named Boris, the word debris, pots clanging, keys jangling. Fart and poop jokes were a perennial favorite; his brain seemed to have preserved a 17-year-old’s sense of humor. His friends and family took that to mean the Ian they knew was still in there. What else might he be thinking?At the time, Ian was not regularly seeing a neurologist. But even if he had been, most neurologists in the ’80s would not have known what to make of his laughter; it flew in the face of conventional wisdom.Doctors first defined the condition of the persistent vegetative state in 1972, less than a decade and a half before Ian’s accident. Fred Plum and Bryan Jennett coined the term to describe a perplexing new class of patients—people who, thanks to advances in medical care, were surviving brain injuries that used to be fatal, but were still left stranded somewhere short of consciousness. This condition is distinct from coma, a temporary state in which the eyes are closed. Vegetative patients are awake; their eyes are open, and they may be neither silent nor still. They can moan and move their limbs, just without purpose or control. And while their bodies continue to breathe, sleep, wake, and digest, they seem to have no connection to the outside world. Today, experts sometimes refer to the vegetative state as “unresponsive wakefulness syndrome.”Back then, the two doctors also distinguished it from locked-in syndrome, which Plum had helped name a few years prior. Locked-in patients are fully conscious though immobile, except for typically their eyes. (Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote his famous 1997 memoir about locked-in syndrome, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by blinking out one letter at a time.) In contrast, Plum and Jennett considered the vegetative state “mindless,” with no cognitive function intact.What, then, could the laughter mean? By the ’90s, some of the most prominent experts on consciousness—including Plum and Jennett themselves—had begun to realize that they had perhaps too categorically or hastily dismissed patients diagnosed as vegetative. Researchers were documenting flickers of potential consciousness in some supposedly vegetative patients. These patients could utter occasional words, grasp for an object every now and then, or seem to answer the odd question with a gesture—suggesting that they were at least sometimes aware of their surroundings. They seemed to be neither vegetative nor fully conscious, but fluctuating on a continuum.This in-between space became formally recognized in 2002 as the “minimally conscious state,” in an effort led by Joseph Giacino, a neuropsychologist who specializes in rehabilitation after brain injury. (Coma, vegetative, and minimally conscious are sometimes collectively called “disorders of consciousness.”)Sarah Blesener for The AtlanticOne day in spring 2007, Marshall, Ian’s stepfather, slipped on a mossy stone and fractured his hip. As he and Eve waited for an ambulance, the phone rang. Giacino had heard about Eve’s NIH inquiries, and he was interested in meeting Ian—he wondered if the minimally conscious diagnosis might apply to him. If so, Ian could qualify for a new experimental trial.Giacino didn’t make any promises. Still, after all those years, Eve told me, “he was the first voice of positive possibility that I heard.” So even as Marshall lay next to her with his broken hip, neither of them dared hang up the phone.Around this time, in 2006, an astonishing case report came out from researchers led by Adrian Owen, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge; it suggested that even vegetative patients could retain some awareness. Owen found a 23-year-old woman who had been in a car accident. Months later, she still had no response on behavioral exams. But in an fMRI machine, her brain looked surprisingly active: When she was asked to imagine playing tennis, blood flowed to her brain’s supplementary motor area, a region that helps coordinate movement. When she was asked to imagine visiting the rooms of her house, blood flowed to different parts of her brain, including the parahippocampal gyrus, a strip of cortex crucial for spatial navigation. And when she was told to rest, these patterns of brain activity ceased. Based on the limited window of an fMRI scan, at least, she seemed to understand everything she was being asked to do.“Unsettling and disturbing” is how one neurologist described the implications of the study to me. Also: controversial. Another doctor recounted a scientific meeting soon after where the speakers were split 50–50 on whether to accept the results. Was the fMRI finding just a fluke? Owen did not inform the woman’s family of what he found, because the study’s ethical protocol was ambiguous about how much information he could share. He wishes he could have. The woman died in 2011, without her family ever being told that she might have been aware.[Read: I know the secret to the quiet mind. I wish I’d never learned it.]Over time, Owen and his group identified more patients with what they came to call “covert awareness.” Some were vegetative, while others were considered minimally conscious, based on behaviors such as eye tracking and command following. The researchers found that outward response and inner awareness were not always correlated: The most physically responsive patients were not necessarily the ones with the clearest signs of brain activity when asked to imagine the tasks. Covert awareness, then, can be detected only using tools that peer at a brain’s inner workings, such as fMRI.In 2010, one of Owen’s collaborators, the Belgian neurologist Steven Laureys, asked a minimally conscious patient, a 22-year-old man, a series of five yes-or-no questions while he was in an fMRI machine, covering topics such as his father’s name and the last vacation he took prior to his motorcycle accident. To answer yes, the patient would imagine playing tennis for 30 seconds; to answer no, he would imagine walking through his house. The researchers ran through the questions only once, but he got them all right, the appropriate region of his brain lighting up each time.It is hard to say what experience of human consciousness some colored pixels on a brain scan really depict. To answer intentionally, the patient would have had to understand language. He would also have needed to store the questions in his working memory and retrieve the answers from his long-term memory. In my conversations with neurologists, this was the study they cited again and again as the most compelling evidence of covert awareness.A few years later, using the same yes-or-no method, Owen found a vegetative patient who seemed to know about his niece, born after his brain injury. To Owen, this suggested that the man was laying down new memories, that life was not simply passing him by. In yet another case, Owen used fMRI not just to quiz a 38-year-old vegetative man, but to actually ask about the quality of his life 12 years post-injury: Was he in pain right now? No. Did he still enjoy watching hockey on TV, as he had before his accident? Yes.Most researchers I spoke with were reluctant to speculate about the inner life of these brain-injury patients, because the answer lies beyond any known science. The brains of minimally conscious patients do activate in response to pain or music, Laureys told me, but their experience of pain or music is likely different from yours or mine. Their state of consciousness may resemble the twilight zone of drifting in and out of sleep; it almost certainly differs from person to person. Owen believes that some of his vegetative patients may actually be “completely conscious,” akin to a locked-in person who is fully aware, but cannot move even their eyes. Until that is proved otherwise, he sees no reason not to extend them the benefit of the doubt.Several months after the phone call from Giacino’s office, Ian’s family made the trip to New Jersey to meet the researcher. In the exam room, Giacino put Ian through an intense battery of tests. He found that Ian could intermittently reach on command for a red ball. He laughed at loud noises, such as keys jangling, which Giacino said could be a simple response to the sound. But Ian also laughed appropriately at jokes, especially adolescent ones, as if he understood humor and intent. These behaviors were enough to qualify Ian for a brand-new diagnosis two decades after his accident: not vegetative, but minimally conscious.Giacino’s collaborators were eager to put Ian in an fMRI machine, to see what might be happening inside his brain. On a separate trip, this time to an fMRI facility in New York City, his family met Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell and a protégé of Fred Plum’s. Schiff, too, was intrigued by Ian’s laughter, and the possibility that he understood more than he could physically let on. Schiff’s team showed Ian pictures and played voices—to see whether his brain could process faces and speech—and asked him to imagine tasks such as walking around his house.Ian’s brother Geoff was also at this scan, having by then returned to New York. Crammed into the small fMRI control room with all the scientists peering at Ian’s brain, he remembers being incredulous at the things they wanted his brother to imagine. “You really think he can understand you?” he asked.Sarah Blesener for The AtlanticLeft: Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell, was intrigued by the possibility that Ian understood more than he could physically let on. Right: A brain scan of Ian’s.The scientists did. They believed Ian still retained some kind of consciousness. They also thought there was a chance, with luck and the right tools, of unlocking more. This had happened before. In some extraordinary patients, the line between conscious and unconscious is more permeable than one might expect.In 2003, Terry Wallis, in Arkansas, suddenly uttered “Mom!” after 19 years as a vegetative patient in a nursing home. Then he said “Pepsi”—his favorite soft drink. After that, his mother took him home. Wallis couldn’t move below his neck and he struggled with his memory and impulse control, but he began to speak in short sentences, recognized his family, and continued to request Pepsis. In retrospect, he probably had not been vegetative at all, but minimally conscious during those first 19 years. His mom had seen signs that others at the nursing home had not: Wallis occasionally tracked objects with his eyes, and he became agitated after witnessing the death of his roommate with dementia.[Read: How people with dementia make sense of the world]Slowly, over time, Wallis’s brain had recovered to the point of regaining speech. When Schiff and his colleagues later scanned him, they found changes that suggested neuronal connections were being formed and pruned decades after his injury. “Terry changed what we thought about what might be possible,” Schiff told Ian’s family.There was also Louis Viljoen, in South Africa, who in 1999 began speaking when put on zolpidem, better known as Ambien, a sedative that was, ironically, supposed to put him to sleep. He, too, had been declared vegetative—a “cabbage,” according to one doctor—after being hit by a truck. Within 25 minutes of taking zolpidem, his mother recalled, he started making his first sounds, and when she spoke, he responded, “Hello, Mummy.” Then the effects of the drug faded as rapidly as they’d come on.Viljoen would continue taking zolpidem every day; he eventually recovered enough to be conscious even without the drug, but a daily dose reanimated him further. “After nine minutes the grey pallor disappears and his face flushes. He starts smiling and laughing. After 10 minutes he begins asking questions,” a reporter who met him in 2006 wrote. Several other drugs, including amantadine and apomorphine, can have similarly arousing effects, though none has worked in more than a tiny sliver of patients. In certain people, for reasons still not understood, they might activate a damaged brain just enough to kick it into gear, “like catching a ride on a wave,” Schiff, who has studied patients on Ambien, told me.Greg Pearson, in New Jersey, had electrodes implanted in his thalamus in 2005 as part of a study by Schiff and Giacino. The thalamus is a walnut-size region of the brain that sits above the opening at the bottom of the skull, where the spinal cord meets the brain, a position that makes it particularly vulnerable during injury: When a bruised brain swells, it has nowhere to go but down, putting tremendous pressure on the thalamus. Because the thalamus usually regulates arousal—Schiff likens it to a pacemaker for the brain—damage to this region can induce disorders of consciousness. Schiff wondered if stimulating the thalamus could restore some of its function. And indeed, when the electrodes were turned on during surgery, Pearson blurted out his first word in many years: “Yup.” He was eventually able to recite the first 16 words of the Pledge of Allegiance and tell his mother, “I love you.”A damaged brain, in some cases, might be more like a flickering lamp with faulty wiring than a lamp that has had its wiring ripped out. If so, that circuitry can be manipulated. The neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield realized this decades ago, when he discovered that he could make a conscious patient fall unconscious by gently pressing on a certain area of the brain.That our consciousness might actually be dynamic, that it can be dialed up and down, is not so strange if you consider what happens every day. We become unconscious when we sleep at night, only to reanimate the next day. Could this dialing back up be artificially controlled when the brain is too damaged to do so itself?After the publication of the study on Pearson, in 2007, Schiff couldn’t keep up with all the calls to his office. He and his colleagues were now looking for more patients, including people who were even less responsive initially than Pearson—people whose condition would test the extent of what deep-brain stimulation using electrodes could do.Given his limited but still discernible responses, Ian seemed like the perfect candidate. The researchers were careful not to make guarantees. But Eve harbored hope that Ian could one day tell her, “I love you.” His family agreed to join the trial.I’ll cut to the chase: Ian’s deep-brain stimulation did not work. At one point during the surgery to implant the electrodes, he said the only intelligible word he’s uttered since 1986—“Down,” in response to being asked, “What is the opposite of up?” Then he lapsed into silence once again. In the months that followed, therapists spent hours and hours asking Ian to move his arm or respond to questions, to no avail.Geoff, who worked in video production at the time, captured the process on film. He had intended to make a documentary about what he hoped would be his brother’s recovery. In addition to filming Ian in the trial, he’d taped interviews with family members, asking what hearing Ian speak again would mean to them.He never did make the documentary. Without a miraculous recovery, he felt, the story was just too sad. This past winter, Geoff dug up the old camcorder tapes, and we watched the footage together on the living-room TV. He hadn’t seen it since he filmed it nearly 20 years ago. “Tough to watch,” he said more than once.Sarah Blesener for The AtlanticAt the time of his accident, Ian—seen here in a video from a high-school class—was a month away from graduation.After Ian went home, life at the Rainbow Lodge went on largely as it had before. Something did change, though—specifically for Geoff. Knowing that scientists now believed Ian retained some awareness transformed how he related to his younger brother. He started spending more time with Ian, and the two regained a brotherly intimacy. “Ian, are you conscious or are you a vegetable?” Geoff teased during one of my visits. “I think you’re a vegetable. I think you look like a kumquat.”Geoff eventually took on more and more of Ian’s care; he is now paid through Medicaid as a part-time caregiver, helping Eve, who is 86. Geoff is the one who puts Ian to bed every evening, smoothing out the sheets to make sure he does not lie on a wrinkle all night long. He tucks an extra pillow on Ian’s left side, as his head has a tendency to droop that way.For Eve, caregiving came naturally; she told me her ambition in life was always to be a mother. She had married at 18 and had three children in quick succession. When their marriage became strained, she and her first husband decided to try an open relationship. In 1964, Eve got a job waitressing at a Woodstock café whose owners let a singer named Bob Dylan live upstairs. She flirted with men. She flirted with Dylan, who took her to play pool and showed her pages of his book in progress, Tarantula. (“Bob was much cuter,” she says of Timothée Chalamet, who starred in the recent Dylan biopic.) Eventually she got divorced; her second husband was Ian’s father. Her third, Marshall, was an artist with a successful marketing career in New York City. Eve and Marshall planned to spend more time there after Ian graduated. The car crash upended everything.Afterward, Eve threw herself back into the role of devoted mother. (Marshall helped take care of Ian until his death in 2011.) Even now, with Geoff and two nurses who cover five days a week, Eve has certain tasks she insists on carrying out herself. She trims Ian’s nails and hair, now thinning on top to reveal the faint scars from his deep-brain-stimulation surgery. She shaves him. When she speaks to her son, she leans over close, their matching Roman noses almost touching. In these moments, Ian will vocalize—“Aaaaaahh ahhhhhh”—like he is trying to talk with his mother.Sarah Blesener for The Atlantic; Courtesy of the Baer familyIan’s stepfather, Marshall, cared for him alongside Eve until his death in 2011.“I think Ian lived for my mom,” Geoff told me at one point, thinking back to the hospital, where Eve pleaded over his unconscious body, holding on to Ian with her imagined golden lasso. She had promised Ian then that she would do anything for him if he lived—hence the healers, the studies, and her devotion to him for the past 39 years.While Ian was recovering from the deep-brain-stimulation surgery, Eve came across a poem by E. E. Cummings that affected her so deeply, she took to reading it aloud to him in a morning ritual. The second stanza goes:(i who have died am alive again today,and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birthday of life and of love and wings:and of the gaygreat happening illimitably earth)Schiff kept probing the outer limits of consciousness in patients with severe brain injuries. Last year, he, along with Owen, Laureys, and other researchers in the field, published the largest and most comprehensive study yet of covert awareness. This is the New England Journal of Medicine study that included Ian, and found one in four vegetative or minimally conscious brain-injury patients to have covert awareness. (Schiff prefers the term cognitive motor disassociation, to highlight the disconnect between the patients’ mental and physical abilities.) “Our experience was Wow, it’s not so hard to find these people,” Schiff told me.The researchers do not believe that everyone with a disorder of consciousness is somehow cognitively intact—a majority are probably not, according to this study. The most important takeaway, researchers say, is simply this: People with covert awareness exist, and they are not exceedingly rare.[From the June 2015 issue: Hacking the brain]These findings raise profound questions about our ethical obligation to people with severe brain injuries. In his 2015 book, Rights Come to Mind, Joseph Fins, a medical ethicist at Cornell who frequently collaborates with Schiff, argues that such patients deserve better than to be “cast aside by an indifferent health care system,” or left to languish as mere bodies to feed and clean. “For so long, I’d been stripped of any identity,” one brain-injury patient, Julia Tavalaro, wrote in her memoir, Look Up for Yes. “I had begun to think of myself as less than an animal.” She was able to write the book after a particularly observant speech therapist finally noticed, six years after her injury, that she could communicate with her eyes. But too often, Fins told me, patients are shunted into long-term-care homes that cannot provide the attention and rehab that could uncover subtle signs of consciousness.These patients are also especially vulnerable to abuse. In 2019, staff at a facility in Phoenix called 911 in a panic after a patient—who was reportedly vegetative but may have been minimally conscious—unexpectedly gave birth. No one at the facility, where she had lived for years, even knew she was pregnant until a nurse saw the baby’s head. She had been raped by a male nurse.In some cases, patients with covert awareness may never make it to long-term care—they simply die when life support is withdrawn at the hospital. “If you went back 15, 20 years, there was a tremendous amount of nihilism” among doctors, says Kevin Sheth, a neurologist at Yale. Even as medicine has become less fatalistic about brain injury, hospitals still rarely look for covert awareness using fMRI. ICU patients may be too fragile to be moved to an fMRI machine, and the technology is too cumbersome and expensive to bring into the ICU.Varina Boerwinkle, a neurocritical-care specialist now at the University of North Carolina, believes the technology should be routinely used with brain-injury patients. She told me about a 6-year-old boy she treated at a previous job in 2021, who had been in a car crash. Her initial impression was that he would not survive, and his first fMRI scan showed no signs of awareness. Boerwinkle began to wonder if doctors were prolonging his suffering. But the team repeated the test on day 10, in anticipation of discussing withdrawal of care with the boy’s parents. To Boerwinkle’s astonishment, his brain was now active: He could respond when asked to perform specific mental tasks in the fMRI.At first, Boerwinkle wasn’t sure what to say to the boy’s family about the fMRI. Though it implied that he still had cognitive function, it did not guarantee that he would ever recover enough to respond physically or verbally. Her colleagues have seen families struggle to care for a child with a severe brain injury, Boerwinkle told me, and everyone was wary of providing false hope.The doctors ultimately did inform the boy’s parents about their findings; his mother told me the fMRI gave them the confidence to agree to another surgery. It worked. Four years later, the boy is back in school. He uses an eye-gaze device to communicate and zoom around in his wheelchair, and his reading and math skills are on par with those of other kids his age.Scientists are now looking for simpler tools to test for covert awareness. Patients who show signs of awareness early on, it seems, tend to have better recoveries than those who don’t. Owen, now based at the University of Western Ontario, recently published a study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which shines a light through the skull. A group at Columbia University, led by Jan Claassen, is experimenting with EEG electrodes that sit on the head.But even after 20 years of research, little has changed in terms of what doctors can do to help patients found to have covert awareness long after their injury—which is still, in most cases, nothing. On his office wall, Schiff has taped the brain scans of five patients to remind him of the human stakes of his work. He is now exploring brain implants, which are already helping certain paralyzed patients control cursors with their mind or speak via a computer-generated voice. The next several years could prove crucial, as a crop of well-funded companies tests new ways of interfacing with the brain: Elon Musk’s Neuralink, perhaps the best-known of these, uses filaments implanted by a sewing-machine-like robot; Precision Neuroscience’s thin film floats atop the cortex; and Synchron’s implant is threaded up to the brain through the jugular vein.Getting any of these implants to work in people with severe injuries like Ian’s will be particularly challenging. Ian’s age and the electrodes already implanted in his brain also make him an unlikely early candidate. This technology—if it ever works for people like him—may arrive too late for Ian.Even in 1972, when Plum and Jennett first described the vegetative state, the doctors foresaw that they were barreling toward a “problem with humanitarian and socioeconomic implications.” The vegetative patients they described could now be kept alive indefinitely—but should they be? At what cost? Who’s to decide? Soon enough, Plum himself was asked to weigh in on the life of a 21-year-old woman.In 1975, Plum became the lead witness in the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, who’d recently fallen into a vegetative state. She had collapsed after taking Valium mixed with alcohol, which temporarily starved her brain of oxygen. Her parents wanted her ventilator removed. Her doctors refused. In the ensuing legal battle, Quinlan’s family and friends testified that she had said, in conversations about people with cancer, that she wouldn’t want to be “kept alive by machines.” But there was no way to know what Quinlan wanted in her current condition. Plum categorically pronounced that she “no longer has any cognitive function”; another doctor likened her, in his court testimony, to an “anencephalic monster.”In the end, a court granted her parents’ request to remove Quinlan’s ventilator. The controversy surrounding her case fueled interest in then-novel advance directives, which allow people to spell out if and at what point they want to die in the event of future incapacitation. In recognizing that life might not always be worth living, the court’s ruling also inspired a nascent “right to die” movement in the U.S.By the time Terri Schiavo, in Florida, made national news in the early 2000s, resurfacing many of the same legal and ethical questions, the science had become more complicated. Schiavo had also been diagnosed as vegetative after she collapsed—from cardiac arrest, in her case. When her condition did not improve after eight years, her husband sought to have her feeding tube removed. Her parents fought back, fiercely. Although most experts found her to be vegetative, those aligned with her parents seized on the newly defined minimally conscious state to argue that Schiavo was still aware. The family released video clips purporting to show her responding to her mother’s voice or tracking a Mickey Mouse balloon with her eyes. If she was still conscious, they argued, she should not be made to die.Schiavo became a cause célèbre for the religious right, and opinions hardened. Where one side saw parents honoring their daughter’s life, the other saw them clinging to illusory hope. Giacino told me that because of his key role in defining the minimally conscious state, he was asked to examine Schiavo by the office of Jeb Bush, then Florida’s governor. The behavioral exam he planned to perform, Giacino said, could have helped discern whether Schiavo’s responses were real or random. He never did go to Florida, though, because a court proceeding made another exam moot.Schiavo eventually died when her feeding tube was removed in 2005. The general consensus now holds that she likely was vegetative—an autopsy later found that her brain had atrophied to half its normal size—but Giacino still wonders how that correlated with her level of consciousness. Because he never examined her himself, he personally reserved judgment.If Schiavo—or let’s say a hypothetical patient diagnosed as vegetative, like her—were in fact minimally conscious or covertly aware, would that tip the calculus of keeping her alive one way or the other? Which way? On one hand is the horrifying proposition of snuffing out a human consciousness. On the other hand is what some might consider a fate worse than death, of living imprisoned in a body entirely without choice, without freedom. In memoirs and interviews, brain-injury patients who regained communication—Tavalaro among them—speak of despair, of abuse, and of sheer, uninterrupted boredom. They could not even turn their head to stare at a different patch of wall paint. One young man described the particular agony of being placed carelessly in a wheelchair and forced to sit for hours atop his testicles. Some have tried to end their life by holding their breath, which turns out to be physically impossible. The classical notion of a totally mindless vegetative state offered at least meager solace: a person devoid of consciousness would not experience pain or suffering.One-third of locked-in patients, who can communicate only using their eyes, have thought of suicide often or occasionally, according to a survey of 65 people conducted by Laureys, the Belgian neurologist. But a majority of these patients have never contemplated suicide. They say they are happy, and those who have been locked in longer report being happier, which squares with other research showing that people with disabilities are in fact quite adaptable in the long term. Of course, those who responded to the survey are not entirely representative of everyone with a brain injury; for one thing, they could still communicate, albeit with difficulty.What about covertly aware patients, with total loss of communication—are they happy to be alive? As far as I know, only one such person has ever had the opportunity to answer this question. In the 2010 study, after the 22-year-old man answered five consecutive yes-or-no questions correctly, Laureys decided to pose a last question, one to which he did not already know the answer: Do you want to die?Where the man’s previous responses were clear, this one was ambiguous. The scan suggested that he was imagining neither tennis nor his house. He seemed to be thinking neither yes nor no, but something more complicated—exactly what, we will never know.I posed a version of this question to the researchers who have devoted their career to understanding disorders of consciousness. Would you choose to live? “If no one was coming to the rescue, if help was not on the way, I wouldn’t want to be in any of these situations,” said Schiff, who has a practical eye toward brain-implant research that could one day help these patients.Owen was more philosophical. He told me that when people learn about his research, many say they would prefer to die; even his wife says that. But he is less certain. He does not have an advance directive. Perhaps the only thing worse than wanting to die and being forced to live, he said, is to watch everyone let you die when you have decided, in the moment of truth, that you actually want to live.On one of my trips to the Rainbow Lodge this past winter, Geoff rigged up Ian’s foot switch—one of countless assistive devices his family has tried—to play a prerecorded message for me. “Hey, Sarah, thanks for coming!” it went in Geoff’s singsong voice. “I’m glad to see ya.” His family had hoped, at one point, that Ian’s left foot, which waves back and forth, unlike his permanently fixed right one, could become a mode of communication. But Ian has never been able to push the switch reliably on command. Still, occasionally, he hits the big green button just hard enough to set it off.Sarah Blesener for The AtlanticIan’s brother Geoff has become one of his caregivers, despite his earlier misgivings about their mother’s decision to keep Ian alive. I cannot know to what extent, if any, this movement is voluntary. But Ian’s foot is certainly more active at some times than others. While his family and I chatted over lunch at the kitchen table one day, it went tap, tap. “Hey, Sarah, thanks for coming!” Was he trying to join the conversation? “Hey, Sarah, thanks for coming!” If so, what did he want to say?There was one other instance when I saw his foot moving that much—during a previous visit, when we spoke in detail about Ian’s car crash for the first time. The crash took place in the early morning, after the boys had been together all night. Ian was driving. When Eve was asked to identify the body of the boy who died, Sam, she recognized the white shell necklace Ian had brought back for him from a recent trip to Florida. The third boy—the one who survived—eventually stopped keeping in touch with high-school friends, a disappearance they attributed to survivor’s guilt.I wondered if our conversation would distress Ian, if we should be replaying these events in front of him. To me, it seemed as though his face had turned especially tense. His foot was going tap, tap, tap. Or was I projecting my own thoughts, as it is so easy to do with someone who cannot respond? “Ian knows he killed his best friend,” Geoff said at one point that night. “By accident.”The next day, Ian was grinding his teeth. It happens sometimes, Eve told me. Perhaps something hurt. Or his stomach was upset. Or an eyelash was stuck in his eye. They tried to rule out causes one by one, but it’s always a guessing game. I thought back to our conversation the night before, and wondered whether the presence of a stranger probing the traumatic events of his life might have agitated him.Ian could not walk away from a conversation he did not want to have, nor could he correct the record of what we got wrong. If his memories and cognition are more intact than not, then he has had time—so much time—to live inside his own thoughts. Has he come to his own reckoning over his friend’s death? Does he feel his own survivor’s guilt? Does he ever wish for the fate of one of his friends in the car over the one he was actually dealt? Perhaps being incapable of these thoughts would be a mercy in itself.At one point, Geoff decided to reprogram Ian’s foot switch, in part to cheer up Molly Holm, one of Ian’s nurses since 2008, who had bruised her ribs slipping on ice. Molly had known Ian back in high school; he was friends with her older brother. She started coming to patterning sessions at the Rainbow Lodge after the accident, taking a position at Ian’s right hand. She later became a nurse. Her first job was at a head-trauma center, where she looked after young men with injuries like Ian’s. In some of the vegetative patients, she would see flashes of what seemed like awareness. But who was she, a very green nurse, to question a doctor’s diagnosis? Some of the men at this facility rarely had visitors, Molly says, their isolation so unlike the warmth of Ian’s home.[From the April 2024 issue: Sarah Zhang on the cystic-fibrosis breakthrough that changed everything]That’s what originally drew her, a deeply unhappy 14-year-old, to the Rainbow Lodge all those years ago. (Okay, she admits, she’d also had a huge crush on Ian before the crash.) It drew other people too, including those who temporarily moved into the lodge’s guest rooms during the patterning days: Ian’s girlfriend, Valerie Cashen; a friend of Geoff’s, Karen McKenna, who was 21 and pregnant, and had recently split from her boyfriend; and, perhaps most unexpectedly, the mother of the boy killed in the car crash, Renee Montana. Eve had overheard her primal scream of grief in the hospital, and when they later met, the mothers felt connected rather than divided by their respective tragedies.Sarah Blesener for The AtlanticIan, Eve, Geoff, and Geoff’s partner, Molly—also one of Ian’s nurses—gather for cards after dinner at the Rainbow Lodge.Valerie, Karen, and Renee all arrived at the Rainbow Lodge overwhelmed by their own life circumstances. The two younger women stayed for a year or two and became close friends. Karen hadn’t known Ian at all before his injury. She first came to the hospital as a friend of the family; she offered to watch over Ian for Eve because, well, she didn’t have much else to do. She gave birth to her baby while living at the lodge, Eve by her side as her Lamaze coach. Karen’s time caring for Ian helped inspire her to enroll in nursing school, and she eventually became a nurse at the very ICU where she first met Ian.Renee stayed for a few years. She did not blame Ian for Sam’s death, though she knew that others did. When I asked her if she ever thought about what might have happened if their fates had been switched, she had an immediate answer: “My poor boy would have been institutionalized.”She didn’t have the means to care for him at home; she didn’t have the Rainbow Lodge. She was a single mom, living with a boyfriend in a disintegrating relationship. Eve and Marshall’s welcoming her into their community kept her from going adrift. “They just saved my life,” she said. Her life took an unexpected turn there too: Renee ended up having another child—her daughter, Morganne—born in 1988, after Renee had a brief affair with Eve’s brother.Out of these chaotic circumstances, Eve and Renee found their bond as new friends cemented into that of family. Eve was present at this birth as well; she cut Morganne’s umbilical cord. Back at the lodge, they put the newborn girl in Ian’s lap, letting him hold a new life that would not exist had his own not been thrown off course. Morganne, now 37, told me that her earliest memories are of curling up at Ian’s feet to watch TV.Reflecting on life after Ian’s accident, Eve prefers to speak not of loss but of gains: a new niece, lifelong friends, the entire Rainbow Lodge community. She decided long ago that she could carry others forward—Ian most of all—on her brute optimism. And in our hours of conversation, I never heard her linger on a negative note.In this respect, Geoff does not take after his mother. “Geoff’s more like, I see your suffering, brother,” Molly told me. He and Ian have a different kind of bond, she added, “because Geoff recognizes that, sometimes, this sucks.”“No, I mean, it definitely sucks, right?” Geoff said. “Not to be able to communicate sucks.”Geoff’s coping mechanism is humor, at times dark, at times juvenile. It helps that Ian’s most reliable response is laughter. When he really gets going, his chuckle turns into a full chest shake. Geoff still dreams about the technology that might help his brother communicate. For now, they have the foot switch.The message Geoff recorded after Molly’s fall was meant to make her, and everyone else, laugh: He blew a fart noise, scattered objects on the ground, and shouted, “Oh my God! What happened there?” Then he slipped the switch under Ian’s left foot.Sarah Blesener for The AtlanticMolly and Geoff care for Ian together, and will continue to do so after Eve is gone.Geoff was so keen to lift Molly’s spirits because they are a couple, together since 2000. Over the course of their relationship, Geoff had grown close to another of her patients, a spunky boy who eventually died of epidermolysis bullosa, also known as butterfly-skin syndrome, in his 20s. They don’t have children of their own but they had become a caretaking unit, their relationship deepening over their shared love for the boy. Now they care for Ian together, and they will continue to care for him when Eve is gone.When I was leaving the Rainbow Lodge for the last time, Eve impressed upon me what she hoped people would take away from Ian’s life: “It’s not a sad story.” On this, Molly concurred. Yes, it sucks sometimes. But Ian has been continuously surrounded by people who love him, people who took that love and made something of it.As if on cue, Ian’s foot switch went off. Fart noise. Objects scattering. “Oh my God! What happened there?” Maybe it was just a random movement of his foot. Maybe he wanted to disagree with his mother’s assessment. Or maybe he agreed that his is not a sad story. If only he could tell us in his own words.This article appears in the June 2025 print edition with the headline “Is Ian Still In There?” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

The opening act of Donald Trump’s second term was defined by the theatrical dismantling of much of the federal government by Elon Musk and his group of tech-savvy demolitionists. Everywhere you looked in those first 100 days, it seemed, Musk’s prestidigitation was on display. Look there—it’s Elon in a black MAGA hat waving around a chain saw onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Look here—it’s Elon introducing Fox News viewers to a teenage software engineer nicknamed “Big Balls” whom he’d hired to help slash the government. The performance had a certain improvised quality—pink slips dispersed and then hastily withdrawn, entire agencies mothballed overnight—and after a while, it started to feel like a torqued-up sequel to Trump’s first term: governance replaced by chaos and trolling.But that version of the story misses a key character: Russell Vought.Behind all the DOGE pyrotechnics, Vought—who serves as director of the Office of Management and Budget—is working methodically to advance a sophisticated ideological project decades in the making. If Musk is moving fast and breaking things, as the Silicon Valley dictum goes, Vought is taking the shattered pieces of the federal government and reassembling them into a radically new constitutional order.“I’m not going to say it’s a misdirection play, but they’re the trauma-inducing shock troops,” Steve Bannon, who worked with Vought during Trump’s first term and remains in touch with him, told me of DOGE. “Russ has got a vision. He’s not an anarchist. He’s a true believer.”Vought’s agenda includes shrinking the government, but it goes deeper than that. His vision of state power would effectively reject a century of jurisprudence and unravel the modern federal bureaucracy as we know it. A devotee of the so-called unitary executive theory, he wants to see the civil service gutted and repopulated with presidential loyalists, independent federal agencies politicized or eliminated, and absolute control of the executive branch concentrated in the Oval Office.[Lila Shroff: It’s a model of government efficiency, but DOGE wants it gone]Despite having been a Trump adviser for nearly a decade, Vought has not cultivated the political celebrity of high-profile White House officials such as Stephen Miller and Karoline Leavitt. Vought rarely gives interviews (he declined my request), and when he does speak in public, he is usually explicating the wonkish intricacies of the federal government in a nasal voice. His job title is dull and opaque. Even his physical bearing is forgettable: Bald and bespectacled, with a graying beard, he looks a bit like a middle-school social-studies teacher.But whereas Musk’s influence already seems to be waning, Vought remains among the most powerful figures in today’s Washington. As a co-author of Project 2025, and later a chair of the Republican National Convention’s platform committee, he drew up detailed plans to “tame the bureaucracy” once Trump returned to power. Now, as head of an agency that touches every aspect of the $6.8 trillion federal budget, Vought is in position to enact his vision. And he’s wasted little time.In his early days as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—an independent agency that was designed to be insulated from partisan pressure—Vought sent layoff notices to 1,500 employees, closed the office, canceled contracts, and declined funding for the agency from the Federal Reserve. Across hundreds of other federal agencies, he is spearheading an effort to simply stop enforcing many regulations. And last month, Trump proposed a rule that would convert 50,000 federal workers into Schedule F employees, whom the president can fire at will—a policy that Vought has championed since the first term. Vought’s ideas, once seen as radical, are now being realized.Vought’s critics have warned that elements of his agenda—for example, unilaterally cutting off funding for congressionally established agencies such as USAID—are eroding checks and balances and pushing the country toward a constitutional crisis. But in interviews over the past several weeks, some of his allies told me that’s the whole point. The kind of revolutionary upending of the constitutional order that Vought envisions won’t happen without deliberate fights with Congress and the judiciary, they told me. If a crisis is coming, it’s because Vought is courting one.Bannon told me that mainstream Republicans have long complained about runaway federal bureaucracy but have never had the stomach to take on the problem directly. Vought, by contrast, is strategically forcing confrontations with the other branches of government. “What Russ represents, and what the Romneys and McConnells don’t understand, is that the old politics is over,” he said. “There’s no compromise here. One side is going to win, one side is going to lose, so let’s get it on.”[Anne Applebaum: There’s a term for what Trump and Musk are doing]The White House did not respond to a list of questions I sent them for this story. But in a statement, Communications Director Steven Cheung called Vought a “patriot” and told me, “There is nobody more qualified or better suited to lead OMB in order to implement President Trump’s goals and priorities.”Vought himself has written that we are living in a “post-Constitutional time.” Progressives, he argues, have so thoroughly “perverted” the Founders’ vision by filling the ranks of government with unaccountable technocrats that undoing the damage will require a “radical” plan of attack. “The Right needs to throw off the precedents and legal paradigms that have wrongly developed over the last two hundred years,” he wrote in an essay for The American Mind, a journal published by the Claremont Institute.What exactly would such an approach look like in practice? Mike Davis, a Republican lawyer and a friend of Vought’s who helped steer judicial nominations in Trump’s first term, told me that he expects an escalating series of standoffs between the Trump administration and the judicial branch. He went so far as to say that if the Supreme Court issues a decision that constrains Trump’s executive power in a way the administration sees as unconstitutional, the president will have to defy it. “The reptiles will never drain the swamp,” Davis told me. “It’s going to take bold actions.”Vought’s radicalization was not a foregone conclusion. He grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut, with a devout family who sent him to a private Christian school and Bible camp in the summers. At Wheaton College, the evangelical university where he studied history and political science, Vought was bookish and a bit “nerdy,” according to one fellow graduate who knew him at the time. The former student, who requested anonymity to recount personal interactions, told me that Vought was a target of periodic pranks on their floor in Traber Hall. On one occasion, some of Vought’s dorm mates took a putrid-smelling bin that had been collecting dirty dishes in the common bathroom and hid it under his bed.On Wheaton’s conservative campus, Vought didn’t stand out as particularly ideological. He made a brief foray into electoral politics with a failed bid for student-body vice president, during which he campaigned, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, on improving the school’s recycling program. His views began to take on a sharper edge when he got to Washington. He spent a decade working on Capitol Hill, including as a policy aide to the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman Mike Pence, and became the executive director of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus founded to exert pressure on House GOP leadership from the right. In 2010, he left Congress to join the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying arm.[Elaine Godfrey: Federal workers are facing a new reality]Vought earned a reputation in Washington’s right-wing circles for his deep knowledge of how the federal government actually works. “There’s a category of conservative activists who say, ‘This is what should be done,’ and there’s a much smaller group who actually know how to make it happen. Russ is one of them,” Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative pressure group Judicial Watch, told me.The early years of Barack Obama’s presidency inspired a wave of libertarian energy on the right. Tea Party activists railed against excessive federal spending and bloated bureaucracy. The popular rallying cry of the moment was to shrink the government down to the size where one could “drown it in a bathtub,” as Grover Norquist famously put it. But Vought wanted to go further than the Norquists of the world.After Republicans failed to recapture the White House in 2012, Vought joined a small group of activists and operatives who began gathering a few blocks from the Capitol, at the Judicial Watch offices, to strategize. They called themselves Groundswell, and their stated mission, according to leaked documents, was bold if a bit grandiose: to wage a “30 front war” that would “fundamentally transform the nation.” The weekly meetings drew a who’s who of influential insurgents, including Ginni Thomas, Dan Bongino, Leonard Leo, and Bannon, who was then running Breitbart News. Their agenda was diffuse, but they were united in a shared conviction that the Republican establishment and much of the conservative movement were insufficiently radical. They were impatient with the standard small-government activism of the era—they wanted more confrontation, and were open to more extreme ideas.The conservative commentator Erick Erickson, who first met Vought in 2004, recalls his friend explaining to him early in Obama’s first term the mechanisms by which the purportedly nonpartisan civil service had come to be teeming with Democrats intent on thwarting right-leaning policies and pushing left-wing ones. It was a prototype of the “woke and weaponized bureaucracy” rhetoric that Vought and his allies would deploy in the Trump era.The unitary executive theory had been circulating in GOP circles since at least Ronald Reagan’s first term. The idea held that Article II of the Constitution gives the president absolute control over the executive branch, including nonpartisan civil servants and independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Republicans had periodically experimented with ways of applying this principle: After Reagan took office in 1981, the Heritage Foundation lobbied the new administration to recruit partisan supporters to fill 5,000 new jobs created by the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.There was, during the Obama years, limited intellectual appetite on the right for a return of the imperial presidency. But Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office in 2017—and his running claims that the “deep state” was sabotaging his presidency—changed all of that. Suddenly, Republicans were eager to discover new and creative ways to tighten the president’s grip on the executive branch. Vought, who joined the administration as deputy director of OMB before eventually becoming director, was happy to offer his services.[Michael Scherer, Ashley Parker, Matteo Wong, and Shane Harris: This is what happens when the DOGE guys take over]Unlike most OMB directors, whose only forays into political controversy are in drafting the president’s budget proposals, Vought quietly played a role in some of the Trump era’s most combustible moments. In 2019, when Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, it was Vought’s office that withheld military aid to the country, eventually triggering Trump’s first impeachment. And when Congress refused to fund the border wall, it was Vought who convinced the president to declare a state of emergency so that he could redirect $3.6 billion from a military construction budget to the project.Vought has expressed pride in his record of pushing boundaries in ways that unsettle less dogmatic Republicans. Whereas many religious conservatives distance themselves from the “Christian nationalist” label, Vought wears it proudly. At a Heritage event, he sarcastically derided some of the Cabinet officials in Trump’s first term, whom he described as “a bunch of people around him who were constantly sitting on eggs and saying, Oh my gosh, he’s getting me to violate the law.”And in a 2023 speech at the Center for Renewing America, the think tank he led after Trump’s first term, Vought touted the virtues of cruelty as he held forth on his plans for the federal civil service. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said at a closed-door meeting, according to a video that was later leaked to ProPublica. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.”As disruptive as Vought’s early moves have been, his most dramatic provocations are likely still to come. Vought has been a vocal champion of reviving the presidential “impoundment” power, which would allow the president to effectively circumvent Congress to unilaterally withhold appropriated funds. Congress outlawed the practice in 1974, and the Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional. But Trump has publicly rejected this interpretation of the law, and Vought has called impoundment “a necessary remedy to our fiscal brokenness.”Earlier this month, the White House released its proposed budget to Congress, calling for $163 billion in reductions to federal spending, and making many of DOGE’s cuts permanent. In a letter to Congress, Vought wrote that the proposed cuts aimed to root out “niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.” The proposal included slashing the budget for the CDC by nearly 40 percent, dramatically scaling back rental-assistance programs, and cutting aid to international-development banks.[From the May 2025 issue: I should have seen this coming]In a typical year, the president’s budget proposal is little more than a messaging document, with virtually no chance of becoming law as written. Congress has the power of the purse. But given Trump’s stated indifference to such conventions, this year’s White House budget could be less a proposal than a warning shot. It doesn’t require much imagination to envision how the coming budget fight could spiral into the kind of constitutional crisis that Vought’s allies are rooting for: Congress declines to enshrine Trump’s spending cuts as law. Trump cuts the funding anyway. Legal challenges follow, court orders are issued, and Trump defies them, claiming a decisive mandate from voters and sweeping power under the unitary executive theory.Some conservatives, wary of concentrating so much power in the Oval Office, question the path that Vought is taking. Philip Wallach, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who recently wrote a book called Why Congress, told me that he generally supports Vought’s effort to rein in the so-called administrative state. But he is alarmed by what he considers to be Vought’s disregard for core constitutional principles such as separation of powers. “For those of us who care about constitutional government,” Wallach said, “this administration is creating a lot of moments of truth.”Of course, partisan enthusiasm for executive power rarely outlasts the loss of the White House. But Vought’s allies trust that he knows what he’s doing. “He’s mindful enough to understand that eventually a Democrat will become president again,” Erickson told me. “So how do you make the bureaucracy responsive to the president of the day without making it powerful enough to work at cross-purposes with conservative goals when a Democrat is in there? One of the easiest ways is to downsize.”In other words, the durability of Vought’s ideological project might depend on just how much of the federal government Trump can unravel before he leaves office.

Halfway through King Lear, storm clouds gather, and Shakespeare’s protagonist rages, “You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, / As full of grief as age; wretched in both.” And so, the mental unraveling of one of literature’s greatest characters begins. That Lear starts to lose his mind in this moment, in Act II, is important: If he were mad from the jump, the cause of his eventual downfall would be medical, not moral, and the king would bear no responsibility for the catastrophe that greets his kingdom. Precisely because the aging ruler is of sound mind in Act I, during which he sets into motion the events that threaten his sanity and his life, the blame is his to bear in Act V, when he has lost both.Last year, the United States went through a presidential election filled with Shakespearean echoes. As Joe Biden tottered and fell (literally as well as metaphorically), more than a few pundits compared him to Lear, a man who was ruined by age, pride, and the flattery of sycophants. That analogy is picked up by Original Sin, the latest and most significant book to date about Biden’s cognitive decline, which was written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson and draws on hundreds of interviews. It features an epigraph from Lear, and its first chapter gives airing to the view that, like Lear, Biden bears responsibility for his country’s fate. Quoting a senior adviser to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, the title of that chapter is simply: “He Totally Fucked Us.”Tapper and Thompson’s exposé joins a growing list of post-election appraisals blaming Biden for Harris’s loss. (I wrote one of these myself.) Yet the curious thing about the experience of reading Original Sin is that one comes away unable to lay the blame, or the majority of it anyway, at the feet of Scranton Joe. Here, the Lear analogy falls apart.Original Sin suggests that, unlike Lear, who begins his rule flawed but with his mind intact, Biden may have been losing his grip before he took his oath of office. If this is true, Americans unwittingly voted for and were then led by a president who was not up to the job, a state of affairs that certain among the Biden faithful seemed committed to concealing. Tapper and Thompson studiously avoid saying this outright; to their credit, they do little editorializing. The book is written not unlike an autopsy report, describing a gruesome political car crash in dispassionate, clinical detail. The American people, however, must confront the possibility that the book raises: that we may not have had a president capable of discharging the office since Barack Obama left the White House, in 2017.One might debate whether the former president can be held fully responsible for his disastrous reelection bid given his seemingly shaky mental acuity (which he continues to deny, saying that reports of his decline in office are “wrong”; Original Sin does not include his responses to any of the book’s allegations). Biden’s claims that he would have won a rematch with Donald Trump—which he reiterated in an appearance on The View last week—suggest that he is not fully tethered to political reality. But Original Sin leaves little doubt that his enablers, at least, understood what they were doing.  (Former first lady Jill Biden denies this as well. She said on The View that her husband was a “a great president”; though she did not mention Original Sin by name, she said, “The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us.”)[Franklin Foer: How Biden destroyed his legacy]In an author’s note, Tapper and Thompson offer a forewarning: “Readers who are convinced that Joe Biden was little more than a husk from the very beginning of his presidency, barely capable of stringing two sentences together, will not find support for that view here.” But rejecting the most extreme claims made about Biden’s acuity hardly puts to rest the question of whether he should have run in 2020. And the idea that Biden was fully capable of doing the job when he first took office is quite hard to square with the 300-odd pages of meticulous reporting that follow.It is of course literally true that Biden could string two sentences together at the start of his presidency (and can now). But Original Sin makes clear that even before he launched his first campaign against Trump, Biden was struggling. The authors write, “Those close to him say that the first signs he was deteriorating emerged after the death of his beloved son Beau in 2015”—a decade ago. Tapper and Thompson point to recordings from 2017 of Biden speaking with Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of his memoir. These tapes, which came to light six years later as part of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation into Biden’s inappropriate handling of classified information, suggested that the president had lost a mental step, or several. “He grasped to remember things, he sometimes had difficulty speaking, and he frequently lost his train of thought,” the authors write, describing the recordings and the special counsel’s sense of them. “Biden was really struggling in 2017,” Tapper and Thompson write, adding, “His cognitive capacity seemed to have been failing him.”Three years later, on the presidential campaign trail, Biden’s struggles became more obvious to those around him. Tapper and Thompson report that, in 2020, members of Biden’s inner circle gave the candidate a teleprompter with scripted questions for a local-news interview. It was an apparent effort to work around his dwindling communicative and cognitive abilities: Aides lamented that even then, “they couldn’t rely on him to stay on message, and he often had a very short attention span.” The book’s most astounding previously unreported story from Biden’s 2020 campaign concerns his staff’s attempts to create videos of the candidate speaking with voters over Zoom. Tapper and Thompson’s description of this is worth quoting at length: Biden would sit in a room with several monitors beaming the face of real Americans in front of him so that they could discuss issues of importance. The videos came back, hours of footage. Some on the team couldn’t believe their eyes. “The videos were horrible,” one top Democrat said. “He couldn’t follow the conversation at all.” “I couldn’t believe it,” said a second Democrat, who hadn’t seen Biden in a few years. “It was like a different person. It was incredible. This was like watching Grandpa who shouldn’t be driving.” A special team was brought in and told to edit the videos down to make them airable, if only a few minutes worth. They had to get creative. The authors go on to write, “Edited, the videos likely appeared fine to viewers, Biden no worse than any other senior on Zoom. But two of the Democrats who were involved in the films’ production together were dumbfounded. ‘I didn’t think he could be president,’ the second Democrat said. After what they’d seen, they couldn’t understand how Biden could be capable of doing the job.” (Two other top Democrats blamed the lousy footage on the awkwardness of Zoom.)The idea that this same man, only a short time later, was able to reliably prosecute the duties of the position to which he was elected is hard to believe. Indeed, some incidents cataloged in Original Sin suggest that Biden may have been struggling to do the job even early in his term. Cabinet meetings were “terrible and at times uncomfortable,” one Cabinet secretary told the authors. “And they were from the beginning.” Biden relied on note cards and canned responses. (Some Biden aides told Tapper and Thompson that Cabinet meetings are stilted in every administration, and that Biden was more engaged in smaller meetings.)In his term’s first year, the authors write in the book, the president met with the House Democratic Caucus, ostensibly to ask its members to vote for a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package. But after delivering prolix remarks that one congressperson characterized as “incomprehensible,” Biden did not make the ask—which many of the politicians present thought was a strategic decision. Later that month, then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked him to address the caucus once more, hoping that this time he would push for the package. Yet again, Biden dithered and prattled. And yet again, a Democratic congressperson told Tapper and Thompson, Biden’s address was “meandering and incoherent.” Biden did finish with a strong demand: “That’s all I gotta say … let’s get this done.” The only problem? The assembled politicians weren’t sure what exactly the president wanted done because he had, once more, neglected to ask them to do anything. According to Tapper and Thompson, Pelosi believed that this was another strategic omission on Biden’s part. A different member of the Democratic leadership told Tapper and Thompson that it might have been a memory lapse: “We wondered: Did he forget to make the ask, or is this just him being a super-safe politician? Between his stutter and aging, we were never quite clear on what, exactly, was going on.” The next year, he did seem to have trouble with his memory; in 2022, according to one witness, Biden found himself unable to remember the name of his own national security adviser, Jake Sullivan—“Steve,” he called him at least twice—or his communications director, Kate Bedingfield, whom he once resorted to calling “Press.”[Read: Why ‘late-regime’ presidencies fail]Biden’s limitations were also clear during a rambling interview with Special Counsel Hur in October 2023. It took place during the two days after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which means that when Biden was ostensibly in charge of directing American foreign policy during a moment of profound geopolitical tension, the president was incapable of sitting through an interview without forgetting words and dates and going on rambling tangents. Rather than reacting with alarm to this fact, the White House mounted a pressure campaign against Attorney General Merrick Garland. As first reported by Politico, Biden insiders were furious that Garland hadn’t edited Hur’s observations about the president’s shoddy memory out of the classified-documents report, and most of Biden’s senior advisers reportedly believed that Garland would not continue in his role as AG during the president’s hypothetical second term.One Biden campaign consultant referred to in the book, who was conducting focus groups around this time, found that voters were concerned that Biden’s apparent decline would put the country at risk: “Many of them were worried,” Tapper and Thompson write. “What if an international crisis unfolded in the middle of the night?” These voters were not the only ones having these morbid thoughts. “The presidency requires someone who can perform at 2:00am during an emergency,” Tapper and Thompson write. “Cabinet secretaries in his own administration told us that by 2024, he could not be relied upon for this.”As some high-ranking Democrats quoted anonymously in the book put it to Tapper and Thompson after Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump last June: “Just who the hell is running the country?” At least one unnamed source close to the Biden administration was willing to provide the authors with an answer. “Five people were running the country,” this insider said, seemingly referring to the president’s closest advisers. “And Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”Near the end of their book, Tapper and Thompson offer a glimpse into how powerful Democrats responded to the grim spectacle of Biden’s early-summer face-off with Trump. The authors describe a scene at the home of James Costos, an ambassador to Spain under Obama, where celebrities and politicians gathered to watch the debate. As a doddering Biden tanked onstage in front of some 50 million Americans, the film director and Democratic donor Rob Reiner became scared, then furious. “We’re going to lose our fucking democracy because of you!” he screamed, seeming to direct his ire at the closest thing to a Biden official in the room: Second gentleman Doug Emhoff.What Reiner apparently failed to consider, but what Original Sin prompts readers to ask, is whether America’s democracy was already meaningfully diminished. Describing how some in Biden world justified propping him up for reelection in 2024, a longtime aide told Tapper and Thompson: “He just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years—he’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while.” In other words, before Biden stepped down from the race, the plan for some aides seemed to be to Weekend at Bernie’s a cognitively impaired president in the hopes that, upon winning a second term, he could be hidden from the public while unelected staff took care of the real business of governing. “When you vote for somebody, you are voting for the people around them too,” this aide offered as a way of justifying what was, by any reasonable metric, an effort to undermine democracy and defraud the American people.The members of Biden’s staff weren’t the only ones comfortable with abandoning democratic norms. The former president enjoyed the support of the Democratic Party, which at his behest blew up the old primary schedule, putting South Carolina in the first slot. The ostensible justification was anti-racism and elevating voters of color in a heavily Black state. According to Tapper and Thompson, aides at both the White House and the Democratic National Committee admitted that “the main motivation was helping Joe Biden, not uplifting Black voters.” South Carolina was a strong state for Biden, and the thinking seemed to be that a steady performance there might put primary challengers to bed early. In other words, the DNC appeared to try its level best to tip the process in favor of reelecting a man who a majority of the public thought could not do the job.[Mark Leibovich: The lie Democrats are telling themselves]“Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,” asks Kent in King Lear, “When power to flattery bows?” The nobleman is one of the only characters in Shakespeare’s play who gives the king honest advice, and who warns Lear that the course of action he has chosen is dictated by pride, the result of following those who tell him what he wants—not needs—to hear.Perhaps the most striking aspect of Original Sin is how few Kents populate its pages. Dozens of people in Biden’s orbit suspected that he was not physically or mentally equipped to be the president of the United States, yet they helped him seek that office and keep it when he couldn’t reliably perform its duties. These people then sought to return Biden to that office for four more years, even if that meant the country would most likely have been quietly run by unelected aides. In a rational world, Congress would hold bipartisan hearings about how this happened and whether and to what extent Biden’s aides hid the truth from the public. Then again, in a rational world, neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump—who has spent his first months back in office intentionally dismantling core institutions, flouting the law, and threatening the Constitution—would have been elected president in the first place.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Unemployment rates are near historical lows, and finding good help is hard. Perhaps that’s why Donald Trump keeps turning to the same group of officials to fill multiple positions.Todd Blanche is the deputy attorney general, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department—a big and important job. As of this week, he’s also the acting Librarian of Congress. Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, is also the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—though because he’s effectively frozen the bureau’s work, that may not be much of a lift. Kash Patel is the head of the FBI but also served as acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives until he was replaced by Daniel Driscoll, who happens to be the secretary of the Army as well.Still, no one is working as hard as Marco Rubio, who now has four jobs. His main gig is serving as secretary of state, but in February he was appointed acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Days later, he also became the acting archivist of the United States. And earlier this month, after Trump sacked National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, he named Rubio to fill that role on an acting basis as well. (A State Department spokesperson has said he’s receiving only one salary.) The administration is also relying on acting officials—temporarily appointed but not Senate-confirmed—in other key roles, including FEMA’s head and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.The government has a term for this: dual-hatting. Or rather, a term exists for what Blanche, Vought, and Patel are doing. Rubio is breaking new ground in both semantics and government. Some dual-hat roles exist by design. The head of the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency are the same person, to increase agility when dealing with cybersecurity threats, though some people believe that the roles should be split.In these other cases, however, Trump either can’t or won’t find someone to actually fill the role. Neither possibility is encouraging. If he can’t, at this early stage in his administration, find enough qualified people willing to do these jobs, then the rest of his term will be a continuous struggle to execute. If he simply won’t, because he would rather stick with a small circle of figures he trusts, the administration will also be beset by dysfunction, as leaders pulled in too many directions drop balls, as well as by dangerous incompetence and conflicts of interest.The dual-hatting reflects Trump’s attempts to learn from his first term. In Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document that has been a blueprint for the administration, the authors lamented that Trump was very slow to appoint people to fill administration roles. “This had the effect of permanently hampering the rollout of the new President’s agenda,” they wrote, because “much of the government relied on senior careerists and holdover Obama appointees to carry out the sensitive responsibilities that would otherwise belong to the new President’s appointees.” As Trump’s presidency continued, he came to rely on acting appointments, in part because the Senate declined to confirm some of his less-qualified nominees.Project 2025 recommended using more acting appointments but, more important, sought to solve this problem by identifying and training a corps of loyal operatives ready to be appointed on day one. That doesn’t seem to have worked so far. Trump has more confirmed picks than at the same point in his first administration and the Joe Biden administration but is just keeping pace with Barack Obama, and he seems to have a particular problem filling positions that are very important but below Cabinet rank.Whether the dual-hat wearers are qualified to do the work seems to hold little importance for Trump. The White House’s rationale for firing Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was nonsensical: She was accused of acquiring books inappropriate for children, which makes little sense when discussing a non-lending library with a wide collection. She holds a doctorate in library science and served as president of the American Library Association. Blanche, by contrast, has spent his career as a white-shoe lawyer (including defending Trump in his criminal trials).Rubio’s roles at USAID and as national security adviser at least have some overlap with his work as secretary of state (if not with one another), but they require a broad range of managerial skills and knowledge. As my colleague Tom Nichols recently wrote, “Rubio is the only person besides Henry Kissinger to have ever run the National Security Council and State Department simultaneously, and it is both a criticism and a compliment to say that Marco Rubio is no Henry Kissinger.”As for the fourth role, it makes no sense except as an attempt to weaken the Archives. “I don’t think it’s possible to have an effective Archives without an archivist,” David Ferriero, the archivist from 2009 to 2022, told me. Ferriero remains in frequent touch with former colleagues, and told me that Rubio had only recently made his first appearance at the National Archives, about 100 days into the administration. That means the Archives are without a full-time leader at a crucial moment.“The first 100 days are very important,” Ferriero told me, because 4,000 new people typically enter the government in that period. “Those incoming folks need to be trained about what the rules and regulations are regarding recordkeeping. That’s the piece that I know isn’t taking place now. All the former guidelines, principles, and following the rules are out the window. That means a huge hole in our history.”In an emailed statement, the National Archives and Records Administration said, “The National Archives’ core mission is preserving the records of the United States Government and making those records available to the American people.” The statement cited the recent release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. The statement did not address how often Rubio has been at work at the Archives.Rubio might also have an incentive to not preserve records. As secretary of state, he was part of a Signal group discussing strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels, to which Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added. These discussions are too sensitive to happen over Signal, an off-the-shelf application, but once they did take place, they became subject to public-records laws. How and whether the administration was preserving them remains unclear, though, and they may have been deleted. Is Archivist Marco Rubio likely to raise a fuss about violations of the law committed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio?Conflicts of interest like this one, as well as cases of simple neglect, will proliferate the longer the administration keeps using the same group to fill many jobs. Trump owes it to his agenda and to the nation to doff the dual hats.Related: Tom Nichols: A crisis is no time for amateurs. Inside Mike Waltz’s White House exit Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Trump’s real secretary of state The day Grok told everyone about “white genocide” 24 books to get lost in this summer Today’s News The Supreme Court heard arguments about the Trump administration’s attempt to ban birthright citizenship. Russian President Vladimir Putin elected to skip the peace negotiations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Istanbul. Cassie Ventura, who accused the rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs of rape and abuse, is undergoing cross-examination at Diddy’s trial. Combs has denied the allegations. Dispatches Time-Travel Thursdays: Should children’s literature have rules? Shirley Li on the blurry line between education and entertainment. Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening Read Illustration by Jan Buchczik How to Take Charge of Your Family InheritanceBy Arthur C. Brooks The idea of becoming like your parent is rarely offered as a compliment and even more rarely taken as one. People naturally resist the idea that some kind of genetic or environmental vortex is sucking them into being a version of someone else, especially when that someone is an immediate forebear about whom they probably harbor some ambivalent feelings … With knowledge and commitment, you can take a great deal of the good from Mom and Dad, but mostly leave behind the parts you don’t like. Read the full article.More From The Atlantic The MAGA-world rift over Trump’s Qatari jet America is having a showboater moment. What really happened when OpenAI turned on Sam Altman DOGE is bringing back a deadly disease. Culture Break International Church of the Foursquare Gospel Read. What happened when a mega-famous evangelist went missing? A new book probes an eerily familiar 20th-century hoax.To watch or not watch. Oscar voters must now view all of the nominees before casting their ballots. “I can only watch the things I’m interested in. Otherwise, for me, it’s a waste of my time,” one Academy member told Amogh Dimri.Play our daily crossword.Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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Prosecutors said a statement purportedly made by the defendant claimed that the hack of the Securities and Exchange Commission X account "was an inside job."

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JPMorgan sees this action cutting billions from American's spendable cash pile each month.

Year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 7.3% from 6.5% last month, according to a University of Michigan survey.

Nvidia said it is not sending GPU designs to China following report of new Shanghai center in light of recent U.S. export curbs.

Apple users experienced problems with a range of the company's payment features on Friday.

Boeing agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges tied to its troubled 737 Max crashes last year.

The Trump administration may have paused its 145% tariffs on China, but now there is a whole new set of challenges.

Charter Communications and Cox Communications, two of the largest cable companies in the U.S., have entered into an agreement to merge. 

President Trump's pause on the steepest China tariffs masks the true cost many importers are facing from stacking of trade taxes.

In general, what college students choose to major in has significant implications for job prospects and future earnings potential.

Harbinger Sports Partners says it will focus its investments on acquiring minority stakes in pro sports franchises across all U.S. leagues.

Mike Novogratz’s crypto firm Galaxy Digital began trading on the Nasdaq, completing a four-year effort to secure a U.S. listing despite regulatory hurdles.

Tesla announced a change to its corporate bylaws that will limit shareholders ability to sue the company.

Prosecutors said a statement purportedly made by the defendant claimed that the hack of the Securities and Exchange Commission X account "was an inside job."

The staff cuts could result in more than 2,000 fewer jobs at the U.S. central bank.

The posts showed Trump refocusing on a range of domestic issues and grievances following his whirlwind tour of the Middle East.

CoreWeave's stock price has had by far its best week since joining the public market in March.

Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI research executives, launched its Claude chatbot in March 2023.

Boeing agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges tied to its troubled 737 Max crashes last year.

Tesla said in a regulatory filing that longtime Chipotle executive Jack Hartung is joining its board of directors and audit committee.

President Donald Trump fired James Comey as FBI director in 2017 amid an investigation by the bureau into Trump campaign ties to Russia.

President Donald Trump wants automakers to build more vehicles in the U.S. with American parts, but it's not as easy as it might seem.

Elon Musk's xAI said an "unauthorized modification" to its Grok chatbot led to unprompted responses about "white genocide" in South Africa.

Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman said his hope is that the AI chipmaker goes public in 2025 after a delay last year.

Trump has wanted to stage a military parade through D.C. stretching back to his first term as president, and he recently defended the cost of doing so.

According to a filing on Thursday, chipmaker Nvidia owned about $900 million worth of stock in AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave at the end of March.

One defendant allegedly sent shipments of $25,000 in laundered currency hidden in squishmallow stuffed animals around the United States.

Other restaurant companies have reported same-store sales declines and falling traffic as consumers have pulled back their restaurant spending.

Sen. Susan Collins joins a growing number of Republicans questioning President Trump's plan to accept a $400 million jet from Qatar to use as Air Force One.

The FBI has said that criminals are using generative artificial intelligence to carry out new financial fraud schemes on a larger scale than previously.

China's lifting of export controls on 28 U.S. firms was part of a preliminary 90-day tariff pause.

Shares of UnitedHealth Group are down about 49% this year following a string of setbacks for the company.

Three federal district court judges have issued injunctions blocking Trump's executive order, which would end the right to birthright citizenship in many cases.

The housing shortage is finally easing, but even with more listings available, the market still historically unaffordable to a huge swath of buyers. Here's why.

Powell said Thursday that longer-term interest rates are likely to be higher as the economy changes and policy is in flux.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks Thursday morning to the Thomas Laubach Research Conference.

Speaking in Qatar, U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. was getting close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran.

"The thing that people have missed is that there is zero chance that this will not happen," Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company, told CNBC by video call.

Amazon is cutting jobs in its devices and services unit, which was previously hit with layoffs in 2022 and 2023.

CoreWeave's revenue growth slowed from the feverish pace in 2024, but is still benefiting from the artificial intelligence boom.

Cisco exceeded estimates for the latest quarter and offered guidance that was also ahead of analysts' predictions.

A new lawsuit alleges that Elon Musk's America PAC didn't pay swing state voters as promised for signing a pro-Trump petition ahead of the election.

• Fox-Dominion trial delay 'is not unusual,' judge says • Fox News' defamation battle isn't stopping Trump's election lies

The judge just announced in court that a settlement has been reached in the historic defamation case between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

A settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation case against Fox News, the judge for the case announced. The network will pay more than $787 million to Dominion, a lawyer for the company said.

• DeSantis goes to Washington, a place he once despised, looking for support to take on Trump • Opinion: For the GOP to win, it must ditch Trump • Chris Christie mulling 2024 White House bid • Analysis: The fire next time has begun burning in Tennessee

• 'A major part of Ralph died': Aunt of teen shot after ringing wrong doorbell speaks • 20-year-old woman shot after friend turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, officials say

Newly released body camera footage shows firefighters and sheriff's deputies rushing to help actor Jeremy Renner after a near-fatal snowplow accident in January. The "Avengers" actor broke more than 30 bones and suffered other severe injuries. CNN's Chloe Melas has more.

It's sourdough bread and handstands for Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Lee Curtis.

A tiny intruder infiltrated White House grounds Tuesday, prompting a swift response from the US Secret Service.

Jamie Foxx remains hospitalized in Georgia nearly a week after his daughter revealed the actor experienced a "medical complication," a source with knowledge of the matter told CNN on Monday.

A 13-year-old in Ohio has died after "he took a bunch of Benadryl," trying a dangerous TikTok challenge that's circulating online, according to a CNN affiliate and a GoFundMe account from his family.

Pizza guy delivers more than a pie, taking out a fleeing suspect. CNN's Jeanne Moos shows him putting his best foot forward.

Netflix is officially winding down the business that helped make it a household name.

Artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT could lead to a "turbocharging" of consumer harms including fraud and scams, and the US government has substantial authority to crack down on AI-driven consumer harms under existing law, members of the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday.

Gobbling up too many refined wheat and rice products, along with eating too few whole grains, is fueling the growth of new cases of type 2 diabetes worldwide, according to a new study that models data through 2018.

At some middle and high schools in the United States, 1 in 4 teens report they've abused prescription stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder during the year prior, a new study found.

CEO Tim Cook personally welcomed customers to the new Apple store in Mumbai as the tech company opens its first retail stores in India. CNN's Vedika Sud reports.

Senate Democrats railed against Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday amid reports that the Supreme Court conservative failed to disclose luxury travel, gifts and a real estate transaction involving a GOP megadonor, but their plan to investigate the conservative jurist remains unclear.

• Jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich denied detention appeal in Moscow • Putin visits Russian troops at military headquarters in Kherson • Watch moment WSJ journalist appears in Russian court

Two Russian men who claim to be former Wagner Group commanders have told a human rights activist that they killed children and civilians during their time in Ukraine.

CNN panelists react to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis floating the idea of building a competing theme park next to Disney World in Orlando.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that he hopes to replace Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee with Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland and aims to set up a floor vote on the issue this afternoon, which Republicans are expected to block.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy traveled to Wall Street on Monday to deliver a fresh warning that the House GOP majority will refuse to lift a cap on government borrowing unless Biden agrees to spending cuts that would effectively neutralize his domestic agenda.

The US has sensitive nuclear technology at a nuclear power plant inside Ukraine and is warning Russia not to touch it, according to a letter the US Department of Energy sent to Russia's state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom last month.

Atiq Ahmed, a former lawmaker in India's parliament, convicted of kidnapping, was shot dead along with his brother while police were escorting them for a medical check-up in a slaying caught on live television on Saturday. CNN's Vedika Sud reports.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration amended the terms of its emergency use authorizations for the Pfizer and Moderna bivalent vaccines on Tuesday, allowing people ages 65 and older and certain people with weakened immunity to get additional doses before this fall's vaccination campaigns.

Maine authorities have detained a person of interest and continue to investigate after two shooting incidents that appear to be connected left at least four people dead and three others injured, state police said.

• Delta Air Lines reports record bookings for summer travel • Air France and Airbus acquitted in trial over 2009 plane crash

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who has been cleared to resume football activities, said Tuesday his cardiac arrest during an NFL game in January was caused by commotio cordis.

Polish pilot Lukasz Czepiela made history after landing a plane on a helipad at the top of a 56-story hotel in Dubai.

The top US Navy admiral ardently defended a non-binary sailor on Tuesday amid some criticism from Republican lawmakers, saying he is "particularly proud of this sailor."

The Fulton County District Attorney's office said some fake electors for Donald Trump have implicated each other in potential criminal activity and is seeking to disqualify their lawyer, according to a new court filing.

High speed trains have proved their worth across the world over the past 50 years.

It's April 18, the official deadline to file your federal and state income tax returns for 2022. (It is also, apparently, National Animal Crackers Day for those who celebrate.)

It's a surprising fact that's often overlooked in the immigration debate.

Tuesday is Tax Day in America, one of the most stressful days of the year, when many taxpayers will finally end their procrastination, file their federal returns, and hope for a refund from the IRS. But for many of the nation's wealthiest, it's just another Tuesday.

There are many ways to explore the seven mountains that surround the picturesque UNESCO World Heritage city of Bergen on Norway's fjord-studded west coast. The newest, however, might well be record-breaking.

A German artist has rejected an award from a prestigious international photography competition after revealing that his submission was generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society has found two of three ships that sank in the same Lake Superior storm more than a century ago, locating one in 2021 and the other in 2022.

What does intimacy look like for seniors? There's no end to sex scenes and other steamy content featuring the young and unwrinkled, but past a certain age, popular culture largely draws a blank — or treats sex as a punchline.

China's economy is off to a solid start in 2023 following its emergence from three years of strict pandemic restrictions.

• Four out of the five US metro areas with the lowest unemployment are in Florida. Here's why • Opinion: The overlooked problem with raising the retirement age for Social Security

McDonald's, which has been focusing on upgrading its core items to boost sales, is rolling out a series of changes designed to improve its signature burgers.

Shares of Google-parent Alphabet fell more than 3% in early trading Monday after a report sparked concerns that its core search engine could lose market share to AI-powered rivals, including Microsoft's Bing.

The ruling earlier this month by a Texas federal judge to suspend the US Food and Drug Administration's approval of a drug that is used frequently for medication abortions, is very personal for me.

On Monday, the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee — chaired by Donald Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan — is set to hold a field hearing in New York City called "Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan." A statement bills the hearing as an examination of how, the Judiciary Committee says, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's policies have "led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents."

In 1917, British analysts deciphered a coded message the German foreign minister sent to one of his country's diplomats vowing to begin "unrestricted submarine warfare" and seeking to win over Mexico with a promise to "reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona" if the US entered the world war. When it became public, the Zimmerman Telegram caused a sensation, helping propel the US into the conflict against Germany.

Four years ago, almost to the day, the people of Sudan were celebrating a revolution after overthrowing longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Now the East African country faces the possibility of a complete collapse similar to the chaos we see today in Yemen or Libya.

Live long and prosper, Michelle Yeoh.

After the shock came the aftershocks, the power vacuum, and perhaps most significantly and impressively, the laughs, as "Succession" pivoted to face life after Logan Roy, in an episode that finally put the HBO show's title into full flower.

Of the many dark gifts Showtime's eerie hit series "Yellowjackets" serves up for us, the juiciest this season is by far the music.

Jeremy Renner is continuing his recovery after his devastating snowplow accident in January, and recognizing those who've helped him along the way.

"Barry" has taken chances from the very beginning, which is certainly true of a fourth and final season that picks up where the third left off, with its hitman-turned-wannabe actor getting arrested. That paves the way for an even darker season that accentuates the show's ensemble aspect while leaning a little too heavily on blurring lines with flights of fancy.

Today is Saturday, May 17, the 137th day of 2025. There are 228 days left in the year. Today in history: On May 17, 1954, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, which held that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. Also on this date: In 1792, the Buttonwood Agreement, a document codifying rules for securities trading, was signed by 24 New York stockbrokers, marking the formation of the New York Stock Exchange. Related Articles Today in History: May 16, China’s Cultural Revolution begins Today in History: May 15, police kill two students during Jackson State protests Rockies strike out 14 times in 8-3 loss to Rangers, slide to 7-36 Today in History: May 14, Jamestown becomes North America’s first English settlement Today in History: May 13, Pope John Paul II shot and wounded In 1875, the first Kentucky Derby was held; the race was won by Aristides, ridden by jockey Oliver Lewis. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman seized control of the nation’s railroads, delaying — but not preventing — a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen. In 1973, a special committee convened by the U.S. Senate began its televised hearings into the Watergate scandal. In 1980, rioting that claimed 18 lives erupted in Miami after an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of fatally beating Black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie. In 1987, 37 American sailors were killed when an Iraqi warplane attacked the U.S. Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf. (Iraq apologized for the attack, calling it a mistake, and paid more than $27 million in compensation.) In 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to allow same-sex marriages. In 2015, a shootout erupted between members of motorcycle clubs and police outside a restaurant in Waco, Texas, leaving nine of the bikers dead and 20 people injured. Today’s Birthdays: Musician Taj Mahal is 83. Boxing Hall of Famer Sugar Ray Leonard is 69. Sports announcer Jim Nantz is 66. Singer-composer Enya is 64. TV host-comedian Craig Ferguson is 63. Musician Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) is 60. Actor Sasha Alexander is 52. Basketball Hall of Famer Tony Parker is 43. Screenwriter-actor-producer Lena Waithe is 41. Dancer-choreographer Derek Hough is 40. Former NFL quarterback Matt Ryan is 40. Actor Nikki Reed is 37.

Moon Alert: Avoid shopping or important decisions after 8 p.m. EDT today (5 p.m. to 11 p.m. PDT). After that, the Moon moves from CAPRICORN into AQUARIUS. Happy Birthday for Saturday, May 17, 2025: You are determined and ambitious. You’re energetic and sensitive to the needs of others. This is a year of building, work and construction for you. Make time to create solid foundations in your life. Simplicity is key. Take charge of your health. You might explore martial arts or yoga. ARIES (March 21-April 19) ★★★ Keep an eye on your money and possessions today, because things are unpredictable. You might find money; you might lose money. Guard what you own against loss, theft or damage. On the upside, you might have an original, moneymaking idea. Who knows? Tonight: New plans. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) ★★★★ Today the Sun is in your sign lined up with wild, wacky Uranus, which means your actions might surprise others. The overall mood of today will be electric, exciting and different. Plans will change. You might feel rebellious. Pay attention to what you say and do to avoid accidents. Tonight: Learn and study. GEMINI (May 21-June 20) ★★★ Today you feel restless. Something might happen that shakes up your daily routine. Or someone might change their plans and you might find this annoying. One thing is certain, nothing is reliable today, because last-minute changes, accidents and new directions are taking place. Tonight: Check your finances. CANCER (June 21-July 22) ★★★★ You might meet someone unusual today, or someone you know might surprise you. You also might be involved in a group or an organization that suddenly changes plans, directions or adopts a new mandate. This is because today is full of sudden changes and unpredictable events. Oy! Tonight: Cooperate with someone. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) ★★★ Tread carefully when dealing with authority figures today. They might do something that surprises you. In turn, you might not like it, or you might feel rebellious about a new decision coming down the pipe. Your boss might suddenly be fired. It could be anything. Tonight: Get organized. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) ★★★★ Travel plans might suddenly change today. Likewise, issues related to legal or medical matters also might change – perhaps an appointment or an event. Anything to do with school and higher education is also subject to a last-minute detour. Stay flexible today! Tonight: Creative productivity. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) ★★★ Make friends with your bank account today, because sudden changes to your assets, your bank accounts or anything to do with agreements about shared property could occur today. Something you thought was stable might be wobbly. You might receive a windfall, or the opposite. (Yikes.) Tonight: Listen to advice. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) ★★★★ Use your diplomatic skills to deal with partners, spouses and close friends today, because this is a fast-changing landscape. Agreements and plans with others might fall through or suddenly change. You might meet someone new who is different and unusual. Today is a crapshoot. (Exciting but unreliable.) Tonight: Share ideas. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) ★★★ Equipment breakdowns, staff shortages, delayed deliveries, computer problems and power outages are just a few things that might dog your steps today at work, or even when dealing with health issues. Stay light on your feet. Protect your pet against accidents or hazards. Tonight: Budget plans. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) ★★★★ Parents should be extra vigilant today, because this is an accident-prone day for your kids. Meanwhile, social plans might suddenly change at the drop of a hat. You might receive an invitation, or a fun event might be canceled. Romance is completely unpredictable. Tonight: You’re practical. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) ★★★ Your home routine will change today. Small appliances might break down or a minor breakage could occur. Someone unexpected could knock on your door. (Get dressed.) Meanwhile, family arguments and emotional outbursts might take place. Stay chill. Be sensible. Do what’s best. Tonight: Research. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) ★★★★ Pay attention to everything you say and do, because this is an accident-prone day for your sign. Think before you act. Count to three before you respond to someone. Guard against knee-jerk reactions when talking to others. New faces, new places and new ideas will energize you. Tonight: Goals. Related Articles Daily Horoscope for May 16, 2025 Daily Horoscope for May 15, 2025 Daily Horoscope for May 14, 2025 Daily Horoscope for May 13, 2025 Daily Horoscope for May 12, 2025 BORN TODAY Singer, composer, musician Enya (1961), TV host Craig Ferguson (1962), actress, director Sasha Alexander (1973)

The Rockies shuffled the deck Friday night at Chase Field. They still folded. Left-hander Carson Palmquist was called up and made his major league debut. Jordan Beck led off, and former leadoff hitter Brenton Doyle hit fifth. Shortstop Ezequiel Tovar returned from a month-long stint on the injured list with a bruised left hip. It didn’t matter. The Diamondbacks romped, 8-0, behind a gem from veteran starter Corbin Burnes. He blanked the Rockies for six innings, allowed just two singles, and struck out 10. He did walk three, but Colorado’s clueless offense could not take advantage. Burnes extended his scoreless-innings streak to 16 innings. “I think we are still pressing a lot,” Rockies interim manager Warren Schaeffer told reporters in Phoenix after his team fell to 0-4 since the club fired Bud Black. “(Burnes) is really good, don’t get me wrong,” Schaeffer continued. “He’s a fantastic pitcher. But 14 punches for the second game in a row? That’s never going to get the job done. “That’s not good enough. I don’t care if it’s Corbin Burnes or somebody else. You tip your hat to him, but we have to take better at-bats.” The Rockies — who had just two hits, none after the fourth inning — have turned strikeouts into an art form. Their 432 strikeouts (27% rate) are the most in the majors. Careening toward the worst season in major league history, the Rockies fell to 7-37, holding tight to the worst start to a season in baseball’s Modern Era (since 1901). They tumbled to 2-21 on the road, where they are hitting .184 and are averaging just 2.04 runs per game, both the worst marks in the majors. Palmquist, selected in the third round of the 2022 draft out of the University of Miami, gave up five runs on six hits over four innings. He walked one and didn’t strike out any. In seven starts for Triple-A Albuquerque before his promotion, the 24-year-old was 2-2 with a 3.82 ERA  with 45 strikeouts vs. 18 walks. “I thought he was really good,” Schaeffer said. “I thought he was poised, I thought he commanded his fastball, I thought his off-speed was good. He competed. That’s a lot to ask for in your first major league game.” Schaeffer said it was “no big deal” that Palmquist failed to strike anybody out. “That’s a good lineup over there,” he said. “They put the ball in play.” Palmquist’s first big-league inning was scoreless, but Arizona punched him for two runs on two hits and a walk in the second. Right fielder Corbin Carroll, having a sensational season for the D-backs, led off the third with a double to right, stole third, and scored on Eugenio Suarez’s sacrifice fly. Arizona salted the game away with a two-run fourth. Former Rockie Randal Grichuk led off with a single, and Gabriel Moreno drove him home with a double down the left-field line. Moreno advanced to third on a groundout and scored on Geraldo Perdomo’s sacrifice fly. Suarez’s two-run single in the seventh off Jimmy Herget added to Colorado’s misery.            

LAKEWOOD — When a devastating sledding crash took away Leeandra Natotschi’s ability to walk, the Platte Valley athlete chose hope and happiness. It wasn’t an outlook that came immediately to Natotschi, a junior at Platte Valley in Kersey, when she was paralyzed from the mid-chest down in January 2024. But by the time her three-month hospital stint ended, she made a decision: She was going to live her new life in a wheelchair to the fullest. This school year, she became the manager for Broncos’ softball and basketball teams, sports she played before her spinal cord injury. Then came a leap of faith this spring, when she started throwing shot put and discus for the Broncos’ track team — a new endeavor that culminated at the CHSAA state track and field meet at Jeffco Stadium on Friday. “The thing that sticks out to me is her resilience,” Platte Valley athletic director Travis Stinar said. “She could’ve just folded, and decided that she didn’t want to be involved in anything. She could’ve pulled back, pulled away from things she loves and the community. “But she’s taken everything in stride. For a young woman to be able to have the perspective that she has, and to be dealt that challenge, she hasn’t let that define her. She’s defined herself, and she’s become a role model for everybody in our school.” Platte Valley High School junior paralympic athlete Leeandra Natotschi, right, talks with friends and fellow athletes, from left, Terrah Fitzsimmons, Mia Koffler and Hayden Hanes before her shot put competition at the State Track and Field Championships at Jeffco Stadium in Lakewood, Colorado, on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post) Natotschi, 16, threw 11 feet, 5 inches in the mixed Special Olympic/Paralympic shot put around midday on Friday, then threw 21 feet, 2 inches in the late afternoon in the mixed Special Olympic/Paralympic discus. Those marks placed her second among female athletes in the shot put and first in the discus amid an overall state meet performance that underscored Natotschi’s refusal to dwell on the snow-day accident that changed her life. Natotschi was riding an inner tube being towed by an off-road vehicle when she slammed into a wooden post that day. The crash split open her skull, leaving a scar that runs from her left eyebrow up to the back of her head after doctors used 26 staples to mend it back together. She also suffered four fractures in her spine, four fractured ribs and a broken nose. With those injuries now healed, her focus on Friday was the equipment in her hand, and, as she emphasized, her family cheering her on. “About the third month in the hospital, I started to be more positive about my situation, thinking that it could’ve been worse and there are people that have it worse than I do,” Natotschi said. “You always have to look for the positives in what you do have, rather than what you don’t have. “As long as I still have my family in my corner, I have pretty much everything. And I’m still able to do things I love and appreciate, just now in a different way. And maybe, by showing people that I won’t let being in a wheelchair stop me, I’ll influence others who might be in a (similar) situation.” Related Articles Colorado state track notebook: Class 3A girls 3,200 final racked with disqualifications, but sportsmanship prevails Big day for ‘The Bens’: Mountain Vista duo goes 1-2 in 3,200, while ThunderRidge star goes back-to-back in 800 Colorado state track meet, Day 2: Live results from Jeffco Stadium Colorado state track: Utah football commit Soren Shinofield cruises to shot put title Cherokee Trail triple jumper Kaeli Powe carries on legacy started by record-setting mom Natotschi’s peers, coaches and teachers say she’s been doing just that since the day she returned to school last spring. Her throwing teammate, senior Amalia Ikenouye, said Natotschi’s ever-increasing personal records throughout the season “made athletes around her more motivated to do better for themselves.” The Broncos’ track coach, Julie Thomas, pointed out how the junior “brings an element of optimism” to each practice and meet. And Natotschi’s PE teacher Shelbi Wagner, who taught her in weight class both semesters this year, recalled the awe she struck into her classmates when she pumped out 111 consecutive push-ups and did multiple one-armed pull-ups at a time. “I’ve watched her show other kids (those feats), and other kids then try to do what she can do,” Wagner said. “That’s been a really amazing thing, because I don’t know if she thought she could do that — inspire people like she has.” But Natotschi didn’t achieve that status, or get to Jeffco Stadium, alone. Platte Valley High School coach Julie Thomas pushes junior paralympic athlete Leeandra Natotschi through traffic at the State Track and Field Championships at Jeffco Stadium in Lakewood, Colorado, on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post) After her accident, the community of Kersey rallied around her, providing both emotional and financial support. Platte Valley held a poker night and silent auction to help her family with medical bills. There were contests to raise cash at halftime of basketball games, and the school’s National Honor Society chapter held numerous fundraising events. The WIN Foundation and the Moser Benefit also funded remodels of the house where she lives with her aunt and uncle. Between the two entities, the house had an elevator installed, an accessible bathroom created and ramp added to the front door, and the basement finished so Natotschi could have her own space. With the community behind her, Natotschi left the fear of her new life behind. “In a way, she has a whole different personality from before the accident, and it’s made her stronger,” explained her aunt Roberta Dill. “To see her smile, helps us as her family smile. There’s still days that it’s tough, because you’re thinking, ‘Why did this happen to her?’ But as long as she’s smiling, it gives us the strength to keep going and pushing her as well.” As a senior next year, Natotschi plans on managing again for the softball and basketball teams and also returning to the track. Further down the road, she’s dreaming bigger, with the career goal of going into criminology or forensics, or possibly becoming a teacher. Whatever road she takes, it’ll be one filled with determination. “I’m going to continue to stay positive, keep moving forward and keep surrounding myself with a good support group,” Natotschi said. “I’ll keep looking for the best in things. And if there’s an obstacle, I’ll find another way around it.” Platte Valley High School junior Leeandra Natotschi prepares to throw during the Paralympic shot put competition at the State Track and Field Championships at Jeffco Stadium in Lakewood, Colorado, on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post) Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.

Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon was diagnosed with a strained left hamstring strain on Friday, a source told The Denver Post, confirming a report by ESPN’s Shams Charania. Gordon’s status for Game 7 of the team’s playoff series Sunday in Oklahoma City is now unknown. He suffered the injury late in Game 6 of the second-round series on Thursday, reaching for his hamstring after a loose ball while Denver was holding off a Thunder comeback. Gordon didn’t finish the game. Nuggets interim coach David Adelman said afterward that concern was “high” regarding the power forward, who also missed a portion of this season with a calf strain. “Aaron is one of our guys,” Adelman said. “He’s the reason why we’ve won games and won series and have a (championship) banner hanging up in there.” Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.

The Nuggets are going into Oklahoma City for a colossal Game 7 against the Thunder on Sunday (1:30 p.m. MT). The winner advances to the Western Conference Finals to face the Minnesota Timberwolves. The loser enters the offseason. Here are three keys to the winner-take-all playoff game, which will air on ABC. 1. Battle of the second options: Non-Joker minutes, you say? The Nuggets have been jeopardized far more by the minutes without Jamal Murray in this series. Through six games, their net rating is 30.7 points better with Murray on the floor than off it. The on/off difference for Nikola Jokic is still staggering (9.1), but somehow seems much less so by comparison. Murray hasn’t been efficient, but he’s been gutsy against the most difficult defense he’s ever faced, averaging 22 points, five rebounds and five assists. Nuggets interim coach David Adelman has pushed back at the notion that playing Jokic the entire fourth quarter of Game 5 enabled Oklahoma City’s comeback, telling reporters after reviewing the film: “The only regret I had was not taking Jamal out to start the fourth quarter.” The Nuggets will need to survive a couple of two-minute respites for their star point guard in Game 7, including one during the fourth quarter in all likelihood. Russell Westbrook has had a rough series off the bench. Meanwhile, OKC’s Jalen Williams has been almost completely neutralized as a secondary scorer, and Denver has been able to get away with cross-matching smaller players on Chet Holmgren for stretches (whether in zone or man). Excluding Game 3, Williams is averaging 13.4 points on 28.4% shooting from the field. The MVP showdown deserves top billing in a game of this magnitude, but teams’ fates are just as often determined by the success or failure of their second options. 2. Will 3-point shooting travel?: Defenses narrow their focus in these moments. More urgently than ever, the goal is to reduce your opponent to the type of shot that you can live with. Denver will probably seek opportunities to trap Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and crowd his driving angles. The Thunder will probably continue to shrink the paint on Jokic, taking away his lobs and denying the pocket pass to him. The Nuggets have two elements working against them. First: Home-court advantage matters, even if the league-wide playoff results indicate otherwise. In the regular season, the Nuggets shot 39% from 3-point range at home and 36% on the road. In the playoffs, they’re 37.8% at home and 33.5% on the road. Oklahoma City is 37.3% at home and 26.5% on the road through 10 postseason games. Lu Dort, Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins have each stuck the knife in Denver’s back at various points. Denver needs at least one role player to provide some of what Julian Strawther brought to Game 6. Easier said than done in an unfriendly and unfamiliar environment. Second: Oklahoma City’s defense is better at recovering to shooters than Denver’s. Even the “open” shots created by Jokic’s gravity might not be completely safe from a solid contest. The Nuggets are more susceptible to being punished for double-teams. Related Articles Nuggets’ Aaron Gordon diagnosed with hamstring strain ahead of Game 7 at Thunder, source says Julian Strawther thought he was out of Nuggets’ playoff rotation. Now he’s an elimination game star Keeler: Nuggets’ Calvin Booth vindicated as Christian Braun, Julian Strawther force Game 7 in OKC Concern for Nuggets’ Aaron Gordon ‘high’ for Game 7, David Adelman says, after hamstring injury PHOTOS: Denver Nuggets top OKC Thunder 119-107 in Game 6 of second-round NBA Playoffs series 3. Can Jokic get OKC’s bigs in foul trouble?: When Jokic is on the court, expect two Thunder big men to be out there with him at all times. Mark Daigneault can rotate between combinations of Holmgren, Isaiah Hartenstein and Jaylin Williams, who has been Oklahoma City’s pleasant surprise of the series. If Jokic can play aggressively through some of the double-teams and get at least one of his defenders into early foul trouble, he’ll open up the game for himself, at minimum, by meddling with Daigneault’s substitution pattern a bit. In Game 6, both Hartenstein and Williams had three fouls before halftime. When OKC plays big, not only can it make life harder on Jokic as an offensive engine, it can threaten to undermine the zone schemes that Denver has been trying on defense. Rebounding out of a zone is already an inherent challenge, made more so if the opposing offense puts more pressure and length on the offensive glass. Especially away from home, the Nuggets can’t afford to give up back-breaking momentum 3s out of broken plays or second-chance scrambles. Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.

Colorado lawmakers vacated the state Capitol more than a week ago, having done extraordinary bipartisan work with the state’s tightening budget. But Gov. Jared Polis’ vetoes have kept some of the Democrats’ more ambitious goals in check. On Friday, Polis struck down an attempt to make Colorado more union-friendly, a bill that would have undone decades of compromise between big businesses and big unions in this state. The veto preserved Colorado’s middle-of-the-road Labor Peace Act, but Polis’ decision is one of the most controversial vetoes in recent history. We had joined Polis in calling for a compromise that respected the importance of organized labor and also the importance of keeping union dues and fees in check. Unfortunately, a compromise could not be found, and Polis was right to veto Senate Bill 5. The entire process of Senate Bill 5 proves that Colorado’s functioning legislative system is good for this state. While Congress refuses to act — on immigration, on the national debt and deficit, on any number of critical measures — Colorado’s General Assembly is having healthy debates and nuanced policy conversations. The disagreement on Senate Bill 5 came down to a few percentage points, illustrating just how important compromise was. Instead, the issue will head to the ballot box. Colorado voters will likely see competing measures on the ballot this November, asking whether to make the state more pro-business and more pro-union. Also, in sharp contrast to Congress, Colorado lawmakers were able to balance the budget, despite having to return millions of dollars collected to taxpayers through the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights refunds. We were disappointed to see that after cutting proposed spending levels, lawmakers dipped into the state’s Unclaimed Property Trust Fund to pay for unfunded projects. While the projects were worthy — funding for safety-net hospitals and fire districts — the move continues a dangerous precedent. Already, the state owes about $700 million to the trust — an unfunded liability. Polis said he was comfortable signing the two bills because the additional amount — $100 million — is relatively small and the claims on the unclaimed property fund are predictable and steady, meaning it is highly unlikely for the fund to become insolvent in the future. This would be one place we would have liked to see Polis use his veto. Related Articles Gov. Jared Polis vetoes pro-union bill backed by Democratic lawmakers, repeating his hope for compromise Gov. Jared Polis’ coming labor bill veto will strain Democrat’s labor ties — and set stage for ballot fight Live updates: Colorado lawmakers pass trans rights, pro-labor legislation; Senate advances ride-hailing bill Live updates: Officials react to killed AI bill, hospitals-pharma fight nears end, immigrant protections finalized Colorado House advances labor bill after negotiations collapse with business leaders, Gov. Jared Polis Lawmakers must stop pulling from this fund, unless it is to make loans that are low-risk and present a return on investment to begin paying off the liability. One such proposal was killed this year and would have given homeowners low-interest loans for solar panels. Aside from our wish for vetoes on those spending bills, we were disappointed in Polis’ veto of Senate Bill 86. The veto rejects reasonable regulation of social media companies, instead allowing Facebook, X, Snapchat, TikTok and others to continue their failure to regulate users who engage in illegal activity like selling drugs or sharing child pornography. The Senate voted to override the veto but the effort to revive Senate Bill 86 died in the House. The governor was also right to strike down an ill-advised attempt to slow public records access for everyone except “real journalists.” Colorado lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis had a good, albeit imperfect, year. Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more. To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Elizabeth McQuitty is a state champion, but her actions afterward were a true measure of her character. McQuitty, a senior from Alamosa, was the official winner in the Class 3A girls 3,200-meter final Friday at Jeffco Stadium. She was in tears after the race because five girls were disqualified, including Eaton sophomore Delaney Reuter, who dominated the race and crossed the finish line nearly half a lap before McQuitty. “It doesn’t feel like a win,” McQuitty said. “I don’t think I’m deserving of it. Delaney ran that so amazingly, and she beat me by so much. That win was completely hers. I just feel like this medal and this title goes to her.” The five girls, including Reuter, were DQ’d because they began on the outside of the track and cut in one lane too far before the point when everyone is allowed to move to the inside. They were allowed to cut into lane 5, but the quintet of runners ran in lane 4. Reuter won the 3A girls cross country state title in November, and her seed time for this 3,200 meters for the CHSAA state track and field meet was nearly 49 seconds clear of the field. She went to the front of Friday’s race immediately and was in total control. One meet official suggested there might have been confusion because this stadium has nine lanes, and some of the girls might be more accustomed to running on eight-lane tracks. Reuter said that wasn’t an issue for her. “I didn’t even know. It was honestly my bad,” Reuter said. “We lined up, and he pointed and was like, ‘OK, you cut to there.’ In my head, I thought that was weird. I thought he pointed to lane 4. “I just ran the whole race. I didn’t have any idea until after I took my spikes off and came over here. I’m a little shocked, disappointed. I’m frustrated with myself. I should know better.” After the conclusion of the race, there were two group photos atop the podium. The first had McQuitty at the top, with the top nine official finishers. The second, unofficial photo included 14 runners. All five girls who were DQ’d were on the crowded podium, with Reuter at the top holding McQuitty’s medal. “Honestly, that was so amazing,” Reuter said. “It just shows how classy all the girls are in this division, in this race. It was so cool.” McQuitty offered her medal to Reuter, but the latter declined to keep it. The Alamosa senior might feel like she didn’t deserve it, but she won plenty of hearts with how she handled the controversial finish. “It was great to see the team camaraderie. We were all upset,” McQuitty said. “We all offered those girls the podium. It was very nice. Even though I don’t know these girls, I feel like they’re part of my team and my family.” Football talent on the track. Cherry Creek’s 800-meter relay team won the Class 5A boys title with a time of 1 minute, 25.57 seconds. Two of the Bruins’ football stars, running back Jayden Fox and wideout Maxwell Lovett, ran the first two legs in the victory. Non-footballers Michael Cai and Wachemo Mindlin-Leitner brought the title home over the final two legs. The Bruins beat Fountain-Fort Carson (1:26.09), which was the top seed coming into the final. The Bruins also have the top-ranked 400 relay team (41.31) heading into Saturday’s finals, where they hope to add another title. That relay is all football players in cornerback Jayden Spencer, wideout Jeremiah Hoffman, Lovett and Fox as the anchor. “You’ve seen Fox’s speed on the football field, where he sees that hole, he hits it and he’s gone,” Lovett said. “And then me at receiver, catching the ball, I’m dangerous in open space as well. And it’s a lot heavier in pads, so the speed on the field correlates well to the track.” Fox, who is seeded fourth entering Saturday’s 100-meter finals with a time of 10.74, said the Bruins went into Friday’s relay with something to prove. “We had a lot of emotions coming in, but we kept those in check and came out, stayed calm, and we saw what happened,” he said. Denver East’s Rosie Mucharsky, right, and Lakewood’s Eliana Angelino battle down the back stretch for the Class 5A 800-meter race during the CHSAA state track and field championships at Jeffco Stadium in Lakewood on Friday. Mucharsky went on to win the race. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post) Beast Mode, one final time: The afternoon Lakewood breeze whipped around Rosie Mucharsky’s frame as she churned around one final bend Friday, willing her arms to slash through a tunnel of wind and toward a goal she’d stamped for a year. Nobody’s going to beat you the last 150 meters, the Denver East senior assured herself, as Lakewood’s Eliana Angelino rode her tail. Mucharsky downshifted one final time, enough of a cushion to separate her from Angelino. She crossed the finish line and collapsed onto nearby grass. Exhausted. Jubilant. Officially a three-peat state champion in the 5A girls 800, a mark that’ll long be imprinted on Jeffco. She’s been known for hitting a self-described “beast mode.” A gear deeper than one’s deepest effort, tapped by pure state of mind. And Mucharsky found it in one last 800 on Friday, off to Notre Dame next year to continue a journey from Colorado. “I’ve definitely wanted it, and thought about it,” Mucharsky said of the three-peat. “Like, when it gets hard in training and stuff, I’m like, ‘This is what it’s gonna take.’” Jumping triple crown loading?: Javin Summers made the most of Swink’s move down from 2A to 1A, cruising to the triple jump crown. He jumped 45 feet to win by nearly three feet. The win atoned for Summers’ second-place finish in the high jump earlier on Friday, when the sophomore lost by an inch. He has the long jump coming up on Saturday, where he is the top-ranked favorite. Related Articles Platte Valley’s Leeandra Natotschi — life forever changed by sledding crash — displays resilience at CHSAA state track meet Big day for ‘The Bens’: Mountain Vista duo goes 1-2 in 3,200, while ThunderRidge star goes back-to-back in 800 Colorado state track meet, Day 2: Live results from Jeffco Stadium Colorado state track: Utah football commit Soren Shinofield cruises to shot put title Cherokee Trail triple jumper Kaeli Powe carries on legacy started by record-setting mom All of which points to Summers eying a trifecta of golds as an upperclassman, as his goal is to sweep triple jump, long jump and high jump titles in 1A the next two years. “I’m planning on putting in a lot of work in the offseason, increase the vertical and the fast-twitch muscles,” Summers said. “My goal is definitely to get that (trifecta) over the next couple of years.” Witt continues to shine in long jump: Last year, it was a set of tooth gems glinting from Zenobia Witt’s pearly whites. This year, it was a pair of Saturn earrings dangling from her lobes as she leapt into the sand. The Eaglecrest sophomore likes planets. She likes “being blingy,” too, she said, to stand out. “I just feel like it adds a little razzle to my dazzle,” Witt said. There was plenty of dazzle already as Witt clinched her second straight 5A long jump title after showing out at Jeffco as a freshman. For a second straight year, too, she was locked in a back-and-forth battle with Cherokee Trail senior Kaeli Powe. And she was stunned, momentarily, when she hit a mark of 18 feet, 7.5 inches on her last jump. An official declared it a tie, as Powe had leapt the same on her fourth attempt. Witt earned the overall win, though, based on her second-longest jump, which beat Powe’s second-longest by half an inch. And Witt, with two long-jump titles in two years of high school track, has greater plans to keep sparkling. “Definitely going after the four-peat,” Witt said. “Most of the girls that are giving me comp right now — they’re seniors. It’s time. It’s time for my rising.” Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.

Sean Payton is the Marlboro Man. He wants all the smoke. After nearly a decade of wandering clumsily through the NFL wilderness, the Broncos feature stability, alignment, direction and bravado. Payton brings swagger. He makes players believe. He manages expectations. He doesn’t minimize them (he called out the Chiefs in his season-ending press conference). That point was further driven home this week when the NFL released the 2025 schedule. If you want to win a ring, you have to learn to play in big games. The Broncos will be featured in four prime-time events and a standalone game in London. The Broncos, through planting stories with sources, could have whined about not having a bye after London, always the preference, especially for a team west of the Mississippi River. Instead, they crunched the numbers, which revealed that teams are 12-5 without one. They could have groused about their late week off in November and returning to play at Washington, also coming off an idle week. Nope. Not when the tilt is on “Sunday Night Football.” This is why the Broncos have a legitimate shot at ending the Kansas City Chiefs’ nine-year run of division titles, the second-longest streak (behind the Patriots) since the 1970 NFL merger. The Broncos are not running from their goals. They are embracing them. Related Articles Renck: Nuggets respond to desperation like champions, force Game 7 at OKC Renck: Ryan Rolison’s dream, interrupted by shoulder surgeries, comes true with big league call-up Renck: Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic deserves better from teammates, David Adelman in fourth quarter Renck vs. Keeler: Can Nuggets beat Thunder if Nikola Jokic can’t shake slump? Renck: Nuggets were not a no-show; they were a no-shoot in ugly Game 4 loss When was the last time a Broncos quarterback, in this case Bo Nix, started a second straight season with the same coach, offensive coordinator and GM? Payton provides creative friction. George Paton, officially dug out of his Russell Wilson hole, has settled into a defined role. Everyone is in the right spot. But no one is comfortable. That is how a team takes the next step from regaining relevance to competing for championships. Rockie reset: Owner Dick Monfort firing Bud Black was a necessary first step. Black was not the reason the Rockies were losing, but he no longer profiled for the position. General manager Bill Schmidt never fit the job description. He shouldn’t have been a candidate when he was promoted, and he will never be a GM again after he is canned. And that is the next step needed. But it cannot stop there. The Rockies must bring in executives from the Dodgers or Rays and allow them to completely restructure the front office and scouting department. Monfort does not want external voices to tell him what to do. But as Colorado stalks history as the worst team of all time, there are only two ways out of his mess: 1) Extract all the “yes” people from the building — that includes president Greg Feasel — and replace them with the brightest minds; or 2) Sell the team after the inevitable labor stoppage following the 2026 season fails to produce a salary cap. Hockey circles: David Carle leveraged interest from the Anaheim Ducks into a well-earned contract extension at DU. It will be interesting to see if the Avs made the right choice to keep Jared Bednar rather than pursue Carle as a fresh voice in the room. Among pro coaches in Colorado, Bednar is the longest-tenured, followed by Sean Payton. But with Michael Malone and Bud Black as proof, it would behoove Bednar to get off to a solid start next season to cement his status. Final thought: One of the things that makes the Nuggets so charming: Even in a season of dysfunction, they find a way to be at their best when their best is required. Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.

A man accused of shoplifting at a Home Depot was shot by Lakewood police on Friday afternoon after he threatened officers who confronted him, officials said. Police officers responded to the store at 7200 W. Colfax Ave. at 2:35 p.m. when employees called 911 about a man who was caught shoplifting and threatened workers who confronted him, police spokesperson John Romero said. The man had crossed the street and was north of Colfax when officers spotted him, Romero said. He used one of the items he shoplifted as a weapon and threatened officers, and one officer shot the man one time. Police started lifesaving measures, and the man was taken to a hospital, Romero said. An update on his condition was not immediately available. Eastbound lanes of West Colfax were closed between Zephyr Street and Wadsworth for the investigation and were closed for several hours, police said. Related Articles Man armed with knife shot, killed by Greeley police Man killed in Aurora police shooting near airport park-and-ride Aurora again tightens public comment rules at City Council meetings as protests of police conduct continue Charges dropped against 3 officers in Christian Glass death in deal for additional training, video Man hospitalized after car chase, police shooting in Lincoln County This is a developing story and may be updated. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

Aurora’s elected officials on Monday night agreed to have the city’s police force coordinate with the U.S. military and the FBI to prevent drone operators from flying unmanned aircraft systems over Buckley Space Force Base. Under the agreement approved by the City Council, the city’s police will “assist, respond, detect, detain and investigate” when people fly drones over the secured military installation in eastern Aurora. The agreement directs Aurora police, in cooperation with the FBI, to deal with any suspicious drone activity outside Buckley’s fence line that could be part of an attempt to fly over the base. The agreement comes nearly a week after federal lawmakers in Washington, D.C., took testimony on the topic at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs. During the hearing, it was revealed that there were 350 detections of drones at 100 American military installations last year alone. Related Articles Aurora eyes partnership with military, FBI to bust illegal drone operations over Buckley Space Force Base In a statement to The Denver Post last week, an unnamed Buckley spokesperson wrote that the agreement was necessary because the base has “limited or no jurisdiction to detain operators located off the installation, or to obtain pertinent information without the assistance of civilian law enforced departments.” Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

The Aurora City Council on Monday night will consider inking an agreement with the FBI and the military “to assist, respond, detect, detain and investigate” anyone flying a drone over Buckley Space Force Base. The agreement, which refers to the devices as unmanned aircraft systems, comes months after a frenzy of sightings of mystery drones along the East Coast dominated media coverage for weeks. “UAS operation over installations and in (Department of Defense) restricted airspace has continued to grow in capability and frequency and poses a threat to the installation and DoD assets,” reads a memo accompanying Monday’s council agenda. In a statement, Buckley said the base has “limited or no jurisdiction to detain operators located off the installation, or to obtain pertinent information without the assistance of civilian law enforced departments.” Enter the FBI and the Aurora Police Department, which operate freely on the other side of the base’s secure fence. “This agreement will foster an effective liaison partnership and will greatly enhance the defense for Buckley Space Force Base,” the Buckley statement says. Base officials didn’t disclose whether there have been any drone incursions over the sprawling facility in eastern Aurora. But at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs last week in Washington, D.C., the message from lawmakers and military officials was one of urgency. U.S. Rep. William Timmons, the chair of the subcommittee, called unauthorized drone flights over U.S. military bases “one of the most complex and serious threats to our national security.” The South Carolina Republican cited a 17-day streak of unidentified drones that breached the air space over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in December 2023, requiring that F-22 Raptor squadrons be relocated to other bases. He also cited the arrest of a Chinese national last November after detection equipment at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California tracked a drone to a public park outside the base. The alleged drone operator was arrested at San Francisco International Airport as he tried boarding a flight to China, federal law enforcement officials said. Overall, Timmons said there were 350 detections of drones at 100 military installations in 2024 alone. Vikki Migoya, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Denver field office, said her agency was given the authority to “counter unmanned aircraft systems” in 2018 with the passage of the Preventing Emerging Threats Act. “This law allows the FBI to act to mitigate the threat that unmanned aircraft pose to the safety or security of facilities or assets,” she said. “It is standard practice for entities with overlapping jurisdictions and common concerns to have an (agreement) in place to facilitate cooperation when it comes to investigation of potential criminal behavior.” Drones last made big news in Colorado five years ago, when a band of them appeared to be flying nighttime search patterns over northeast Colorado. The drones, estimated to have 6-foot wingspans, were seen flying over Phillips and Yuma counties in December 2019. Related Articles What do we know about the mysterious drones reported flying over New Jersey? Colorado public safety’s search for mysterious drones comes up empty Mysterious drones flying nighttime patterns over northeast Colorado leave local law enforcement stumped Then-Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott said the drones were doing a “grid search.” “They fly one square and then they fly another square,” he said at the time. The Colorado Department of Public Safety looked into the drone activity but was unable to provide any definitive information about their origins or purpose. At last week’s subcommittee hearing, the vice director for operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rear Admiral Paul Spedero, testified that drone technology was outpacing counter-drone technology, meaning that relatively unsophisticated drones can circumvent counter-drone and jamming technology. All the more reason that it’s “imperative that we plan for and evolve our defenses in proactive and innovative ways to ensure the safety and security of our personnel and essential missions,” the Buckley base statement says. Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

Boom Technology, the Colorado company working on building the next generation of supersonic jets, has chosen to develop and test its engines of the future just 30 miles north of its Centennial headquarters — at the Colorado Air and Space Port near Watkins. Adams County commissioners this week approved a five-year lease with Boom. The company has pledged to invest $3 million to $5 million over the next year to improve and upgrade the site on the space port’s east side where it will do its testing. Adams County owns the Colorado Air and Space Port, formerly known as Front Range Airport. “We’re absolute thrilled that Boom has chosen Adams County,” Lynn Baca, who chairs Adams County’s Board of Commissioners, said Thursday. “It’s really Boom’s investment in our community that puts us at the forefront of aerospace and Adams County’s commitment to advancing next-generation transportation technologies.” Boom made news earlier this year when its XB-1 jet became the first independently developed aircraft to break the sound barrier, tearing through the air tens of thousands of feet above California’s Mojave Desert. The demonstrator aircraft, a prelude to the company’s commercial jet — dubbed the Overture — accelerated to Mach 1.05 within about 11 minutes of taking off, according to the company and a live video of the test flight. Late January’s test flight was another step toward reviving supersonic commercial travel, which went defunct with the grounding of the Concorde jet more than two decades ago. Boom CEO Blake Scholl has said publicly that the Overture will debut in 2029, with tickets priced from $4,000 to $5,000 for a 3½-hour flight from New York to London. The company says its plane will have a top speed of 1.7 times the speed of sound, or about 1,300 mph, and carry between 65 and 80 passengers. The specter of revived supersonic travel across the globe convinced American Airlines in 2022 to commit to buying 20 Overtures from Boom. The year before, United Airlines committed to purchasing 15 of the aircraft, which will built in North Carolina. A Boom spokesperson on Thursday confirmed the lease with Adams County but said the company didn’t have anything more to say about it immediately. Jeff Kloska, executive director of the Colorado Air and Space Port, also confirmed the arrangement but declined to say more. According to a presentation shown at the commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday, Boom plans to station 10 to 15 engineers and technicians in Adams County to perfect the Overture’s engine, dubbed Symphony — a turbofan engine with a 35,000-pound thrust. The new deal with Boom is not unfamiliar territory for the Colorado Air and Space Port. The same space Boom is moving into was previously leased to Reaction Engines, a British aerospace company that was doing similar research and development for the last seven years. Reaction Engines shut down late last year after running into funding problems. Adams County said it ended the lease with the company last month. Related Articles Officials: Boom aims to build supersonic jets in North Carolina Centennial-based Boom Supersonic unveils new airplane expected to travel at 2 times the speed of sound Centennial’s Boom Supersonic partners with Japan Airlines on orders, $10M investment “It’s a big deal,” said Morgan Alu, director of international business development and special projects with the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation and staff lead of the Colorado Space Coalition. “That capability near a runway is great for the state.” Alu said being so close to population centers, Boom can “access engineering talent” while still roaring its test engines at high decibels without disturbing anyone near the remote space port. According to a new report from the Colorado Space Coalition that focuses on an 11-county region along the Front Range, the aerospace industry employs 56,910 people across 2,260 companies, with an average annual wage of $147,840. “We’re on the cutting edge,” Baca said. “To be on the horizon in that next step in space travel is an exciting adventure to be on.” Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — On a recent morning, I knocked on the front door of a handsome two-story home in Redwood City, California. Within seconds, the door was opened by a faceless robot dressed in a beige bodysuit that clung tight to its trim waist and long legs. This svelte humanoid greeted me with what seemed to be a Scandinavian accent, and I offered to shake hands. As our palms met, it said: “I have a firm grip.” When the home’s owner, a Norwegian engineer named Bernt Børnich, asked for some bottled water, the robot turned, walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator with one hand. Artificial intelligence is already driving cars, writing essays and writing computer code. Now humanoids, machines built to look like humans and powered by AI, are poised to move into our homes so they can help with the daily chores. Børnich is CEO and founder of a startup called 1X. Before the end of the year, his company hopes to put his robot, Neo, into more than 100 homes in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. His startup is among the dozens of companies planning to sell humanoids for homes and businesses. Investors have poured $7.2 billion into more than 50 startups since 2015, according to PitchBook, a research firm that tracks the tech industry. The humanoid frenzy reached a new peak last year, when investments topped $1.6 billion. That did not include the billions that Elon Musk and Tesla, his electric car company, are pumping into Optimus, a humanoid they began building in 2021. Entrepreneurs like Børnich and Musk believe that humanoids will one day do much of the physical work that is now handled by people, including household chores like wiping counters and emptying dishwashers, warehouse work like sorting packages, and factory labor like building cars on an assembly line. Simpler robots — small robotic arms and autonomous carts, for instance — have long shared the workload at warehouses and factories. Now companies are betting that machines can tackle a wider range of tasks by mimicking the ways that people walk, bend, twist, reach, grip and generally get things done. Because homes, offices and warehouses are already built for humans, these companies argue, humanoids are better equipped to navigate the world than any other robot. The push toward humanoid labor has been building for years, fueled by advances in both robotic hardware and AI technologies that allow robots to rapidly learn new skills. But these humanoids are still a bit of a mirage. Internet videos have circulated for years showing the remarkable dexterity of these machines, but they are often remotely guided by humans. And simple tasks like loading the dishwasher are anything but simple for them. “There are many videos out there that give a false impression of these robots,” said Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Though they look like humans, they aren’t always behaving like humans.” Related Articles Gig app agrees to return more than $27K to workers after Denver auditor investigation Denver moves to shut down Diamond Cabaret over wage theft allegations National Trust for Local News sells 21 Colorado publications Indian eatery planned as building in Denver’s Sunnyside sells for $2M Lender seeks receiver for south Aurora office buildings after default Neo said “Hello” with a Scandinavian accent because it was operated by a Norwegian technician in the basement of Børnich’s home. (Ultimately, the company wants to build call centers where perhaps dozens of technicians would support robots.) The robot walked through the dining room and kitchen on its own. But the technician spoke for Neo and remotely guided its hands via a virtual reality headset and two wireless joysticks. Robots are still learning to navigate the world on their own. And they need a lot of help doing it. At least for now. “I saw a level of hardware that I did not think was possible.” I first visited 1X’s offices in Silicon Valley nearly a year ago. When a robot named Eve entered the room, opening and closing the door, I could not shake the feeling that this wide-eyed robot was really a person in costume. Eve moved on wheels, not legs. Yet it still felt human. I thought of “Sleeper,” the 1973 Woody Allen sci-fi comedy filled with robotic butlers. The company’s engineers had already built Neo, but it hadn’t learned to walk. An early version hung on the wall of the company’s lab. In 2022, Børnich logged on to a Zoom call with an AI researcher named Eric Jang. They had never met. Jang, now 30, worked in a robotics lab at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters, and Børnich, now 42, ran a startup in Norway called Halodi Robotics. A would-be investor had asked Jang to gather some information about Halodi to see if it was worth an investment. Børnich showed off Eve. It was something he had dreamed of building since he was a teenager, inspired — like many roboticists — by science fiction (his personal favorite: the 1982 movie “Blade Runner”). Jang was entranced by the way that Eve moved. He compared the Zoom call to a scene in the sci-fi television drama “Westworld” in which a man attends a cocktail party and is shocked to learn that everyone in the room is a robot. “I saw a level of hardware that I did not think was possible,” Jang said. The would-be investor did not invest in Halodi. But Jang soon convinced Børnich to join forces. Jang was part of a Google team teaching robots new skills using mathematical systems called neural networks, which allow robots to learn from data that depicts real-world tasks. After seeing Eve, Jang told Børnich that they should apply the same technique to humanoids. The result was a cross-Atlantic company they renamed 1X. The startup, which has grown to around 200 employees, is now backed by over $125 million in funding from investors that include Tiger Global and OpenAI. “All of this is learned behavior.” When I returned to the company’s lab about six months after meeting Eve, I was greeted by a walking Neo. They had taught it to walk entirely in the digital world. By simulating the physics of the real world in a video-game-like environment, they could train a digital version of their robot to stand and balance and, eventually, take steps. After months spent training this digital robot, they transferred everything it had learned to a physical humanoid. If I stepped into Neo’s path, it would stop and move around me. If I pushed its chest, it stayed on its feet. Sometimes, it stumbled or did not quite know what to do. But it could walk around a room much like people do. “All of this is learned behavior,” Jang said, as Neo clicked against the floor with each step. “If we put it into any environment, it should know how to do this.” Training a robot to do household chores, however, is an entirely different prospect. Because the physics of loading a dishwasher or folding laundry are exceedingly complex, 1X cannot teach these tasks in the virtual world. It has to gather data inside real homes. When I visited Børnich’s home a month later, Neo started to struggle with the refrigerator’s stainless-steel door. The robot’s Wi-Fi connection had dropped. But once the hidden technician rebooted the Wi-Fi, he seamlessly guided the robot through its small task. Neo handed me a bottled water. I also watched Neo load a washing machine, squatting gingerly to lift clothes from a laundry basket. And as Børnich and I chatted outside the kitchen, the robot started wiping the counters. All of this was done via remote control. Even when controlled by humans, Neo might drop a cup or struggle to find the right angle as it tries to toss an empty bottle into a garbage can under a sink. Though humanoids have improved by leaps and bounds over the past decade, they are still not as nimble as humans. Neo, for instance, cannot raise its arms above its head. Neo can also feel a little creepy, like anything else that seems partly human and partly not. Talking to it is particularly strange, given that you are really talking to a remote technician. It’s like talking to a ventriloquist’s dummy. “What we are selling is more of a journey than a destination.” By guiding Neo through households chores, Børnich and his team can gather data — using cameras and other sensors installed on the robot itself — that show how these tasks are done. Then 1X engineers can use this data to expand and improve Neo’s skills. Just as ChatGPT can learn to write term papers by analyzing text culled from the internet, a robot can learn to clean windows by pinpointing patterns in hours of digital video. Most humanoid efforts, including Musk’s Optimus and similar projects like Apptronik and Figure AI, are designing humanoids for warehouses and factories, arguing that these tightly controlled environments will be easier for robots to navigate. But through selling humanoids into homes, 1X hopes to gather enormous amounts of data that can ultimately show these robots how to handle the chaos of daily life. First the company must find people who will welcome an early version of a strange new technology into their homes — and pay for it. 1X has not yet set a price for these machines, which it manufactures at its own factory in Norway. Building a humanoid like Neo costs about as much as building a small car — tens of thousands of dollars. To reach its potential, Neo must capture video of what happens inside homes. In some cases, technicians will see what happens in real time. Fundamentally, this is a robot that learns on the job. “What we are selling is more of a journey than a destination,” Børnich said. “It is going to be a really bumpy road, but Neo will do things that are truly useful.” “We want you to give us your data on your terms.” When I asked Børnich how the company would handle privacy once the humanoids were inside customers’ homes, he explained that technicians, working from remote call centers, would only take control of the robot if they received approval from the owner via a smartphone app. He also said data would not be used to train new systems until at least 24 hours after it was gathered. That would allow 1X to delete any videos that customers did not want the company to use. “We want you to give us your data on your terms,” Børnich said. Using this data, Børnich hopes to produce a humanoid that can do almost any household chore. That means Neo could potentially replace workers who make their living cleaning homes. But that is still years away — at best. And because of growing shortage of workers who handle both house cleaning and care of elders and children, organizations that represent these workers welcome the rise of new technologies that do work in the home — provided that companies like 1X build robots that work well alongside human workers. “These tools could make some of the more strenuous, taxing and dangerous work easier and allow workers to focus on things that only human workers can offer,” said Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which represents the country’s house cleaners, home-care workers and nannies. Soon, Neo began cleaning the towering windows on the side of the house. Then as I turned back to Børnich, I heard a crash on the kitchen floor. After an electrical malfunction, Neo had fallen over backward — fainting dead away. Børnich picked the robot up as if it were a small teenager, carried it into the living room and laid it down on a chair. Even passed out, Neo looked human. Other humanoids I’ve met can be intimidating. Neo, under 5 1/2 feet tall and 66 pounds, is not. But I still wondered if it could injure a pet — or a child — with a fall like that. Will people let this machine into their homes? How quickly will its skills improve? Can it free people from their daily chores? These questions cannot yet be answered. But Børnich is pressing forward. “There are a lot of people like me,” he said. “They’ve dreamed of having something like this in their home since they were a kid.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

Last spring, when my wife and I were preparing to welcome our first child, we started a list of baby gear — a rite of passage for parents. The difference with our list, or so I thought, was that it would contain only the best stuff because it was vetted by me, a tech columnist with 20 years of experience testing products. After our baby arrived in the summer, I learned I was wrong. It turns out there is no best baby gear, because what worked for other parents often didn’t work for us. Even though I had picked a top-rated stroller, its wheels were inadequate for our neighborhood’s pothole-riddled streets. The electronic bottle warmer listed as a must-have by many Redditors was too slow at heating up milk for our vocal newborn. The Snoo, the $1,700 robotic bassinet with a cult following, did nothing to lull our little one to sleep. Now past the sleepless nights of the newborn phase, my wife and I wound up with a well-rested, content child. What helped, in part, was pivoting to a different approach with baby gear, analyzing our particular problems as new parents and looking for ways to solve them. My highs and lows with baby tech may not be every parent’s experience. But the lessons I learned from my misadventures, from internet-controlled night lights to nanny cams, should be universally applicable. Here’s what to know. Upgrading knowledge triumphs over fancy gizmos, including Snoo. When our daughter was first born, she snoozed effortlessly in a no-frills bassinet I bought from another parent through Facebook Marketplace. But when she turned about 3 months old, she began loudly protesting naps. That made me consider the Snoo, the chicly designed white bassinet that automatically sways and plays sounds to soothe a fussy baby. Among parents, the Snoo is a polarizing product not just because of its price ($1,700, or $160 a month for rental). Several of my friends with the privilege of owning one called the device a godsend that saved them from the brink of insanity. Others said their child hated it. I had read the book about soothing newborns written by the Snoo’s creator, Harvey Karp, so I wanted to give it a shot. Fortunately, a friend lent me a Snoo. I downloaded a companion app and paid a $20 subscription for access to some of its extra perks, including a rocking motion that mimicked the bumps and jostles of riding in a car. My baby was initially unfazed when we strapped her in. But when she started crying and the bassinet reacted by swaying and playing white noise, she cried even louder. After a few weeks of experimenting, we reverted to her old-school bassinet. A spokesperson for Happiest Baby, the company behind Snoo, said it was ideal to acclimate babies to the product as soon as they were born because it simulates the movements and sounds a baby experiences inside a mother’s womb. However, the company advertises Snoo as suitable for babies up to 6 months of age, and my daughter fit this criterion. The tech that eventually helped? E-books. One late night, I downloaded a $14 e-book by a pediatrician about infant psychology and sleep. I began to understand why my 3-month-old was fighting sleep and how to anticipate when she would need a nap. We tried the book’s methods, and within a few weeks my baby began napping regularly and sleeping through the night. Knowledge is more powerful — and cheaper to access — than a fancy bassinet. The best tech are those that help parents with broken brains. My wife and I found the most useful baby tech to be smartphone apps that helped us process information in our sleep-deprived state. The free app Huckleberry, a tool for parents to log bottle feedings, diaper changes and sleep durations for their babies, was crucial for my wife and me to communicate the baby’s needs with each other when we took turns working shifts. It also provided useful data for our pediatrician. Also helpful was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s free Milestones app, which shows a checklist of a child’s expected developmental milestones at each age, such as learning to roll at 6 months. When she was about 7 months old, our daughter began to crawl. We could no longer take our eyes off her, so we shifted to consuming more parenting literature through a different medium: audiobooks. Single-task baby tech is unnecessary Lots of popular baby tech are gadgets that serve a single purpose. The $60 Hatch Rest, a night light that plays white noise, is a product on many parents’ lists of must-haves for helping babies sleep. The $250 Nanit Pro, a webcam that can alert you to a baby’s movements and cries, is another. So is the $50 Philips Avent electronic bottle warmer, which heats up a bottle of refrigerated milk with the press of a button in a few minutes. I received all of those products as gifts through our registry. Though I liked using them, I ultimately realized other products I already owned could accomplish the same tasks. Nanit Webcam Price: $250 It had an impressive set of features for monitoring our baby, including a tool that automatically detected what time I put her to bed and what time she woke up. But that feature required the camera to be mounted on a tall tripod against a wall to get a bird’s-eye view of the crib, which was unfeasible with the layout of our bedroom. We used the Nanit just like any webcam for periodically checking on the video feed of our child in her crib. That could also be done with any general-purpose security camera, like the $100 indoor Nest Cam. Hatch Rest’s Night Light Price: $60 Our baby slept better in pitch dark, so the Hatch Rest, the colors of which can be changed through a smartphone app, proved unhelpful. (Maybe when our daughter is older she will appreciate that the light can be set on a timer so it illuminates when it’s time for her to wake up.) We used only the feature for playing white noise. When we traveled, we used a tablet or smartphone to play white noise in the hotel room, making a dedicated sound machine superfluous. Philips Avent Bottle Warmer Price: $50 Related Articles Gig app agrees to return more than $27K to workers after Denver auditor investigation Denver moves to shut down Diamond Cabaret over wage theft allegations National Trust for Local News sells 21 Colorado publications Indian eatery planned as building in Denver’s Sunnyside sells for $2M Lender seeks receiver for south Aurora office buildings after default Initially it seemed useful, but every caregiver for our daughter, including relatives, my wife, myself and now our nanny, stopped using it. We each independently realized that a metal coffee mug partly filled with hot water from the sink was faster. This is not to say that any of the aforementioned products won’t work well for another parent. But the problem with the premise of the best baby gear is that it requires any two infants to be alike, which is rarely the case. It’s best to get to know your baby before starting a list, rather than the other way around. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

By NAA ADORKOR CUDJOE, Associated Press KOFORIDUA, Ghana — Charles Owusu Aseku has traveled across Ghana and beyond in search of care for the large growth of tissue called a keloid on his neck since 2002. The 46-year-old was growing increasingly frustrated after two unsuccessful surgeries and a trip to South Africa that ended with just a consultation. Aseku was preparing for yet another medical trip until late February when he joined others in the first trial of 3D telemedicine technology in Ghana powered through computer screens in the back of a van. Those behind the initiative, developed by Microsoft’s research team in partnership with local doctors and researchers, say the remote assessment will help provide medical consultations for patients awaiting surgery or after an operation, in a region where the doctor-to-patient ratio is among the lowest in the world. The project builds on earlier trials in Scotland and now works as a portable system with enhanced lighting and camera upgrades. Once inside the van, cameras will capture a 3D model of each patient and the image is then projected onto a large computer screen. Multiple doctors can join the consultation session online and manipulate the 3D model to assess the patient. “The idea behind the van is to allow it to travel to those remote villages that don’t have specialized care … to perform a pre or post-surgical consult,” said Spencer Fowers, principal software developer and 3D-telemedicine project lead at Microsoft Research. The initiative also gives patients the opportunity to have multiple opinions. Aseku’s session had doctors from Rwanda, Scotland and Brazil, an experience that he said gave him hope. “I see a lot of doctors here and I am very happy because experience will come from each of them and maybe they will find a solution to my problem,” the 46-year-old said. Researchers hope the trial at the Koforidua Regional Hospital, in Ghana’s eastern region, is the start of a wider project that could expand the service and explore new use cases. Recent years have seen growing use of telemedicine, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts say such digital tools can benefit patients in Africa the most because there are so few specialist doctors for the continent’s 1.4 billion people. George Opoku, 68, was referred to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in the capital Accra — nearly 100 kilometers away from the Koforidua hospital, which is much closer to his home — where he had first gone to seek care for sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that develops in the bones and soft tissues. Upon hearing about the 3D telemedicine trial, his doctor decided to register him for the process, saving him the extra expenses and stress of long-distance travel. “This time I had to sit in a van and to introduce myself and condition to not only one doctor but several of them. I was able to answer all their questions and I am hopeful that they will discuss and cure me of my condition,” Opku said. “I feel well already and I am hopeful.” A key challenge for the project is the lack of stable internet access, a common problem in remote parts of Africa. At the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, the technology is helping patients in need of plastic surgery. An inadequate number of plastic surgeons means that patients often have to consult with different doctors during each visit. Related Articles Gig app agrees to return more than $27K to workers after Denver auditor investigation Denver moves to shut down Diamond Cabaret over wage theft allegations National Trust for Local News sells 21 Colorado publications Indian eatery planned as building in Denver’s Sunnyside sells for $2M Lender seeks receiver for south Aurora office buildings after default Dr. Kwame Darko, consultant plastic surgeon at the hospital and one of the principal investigators on the project, said that 3D telemedicine could give patients the chance to be seen by multiple doctors during one session. The 3D technology could make a difference if replicated in Ghana and elsewhere, according to Dr. Ahensan Dasebre, chief resident doctor at the National Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre at Korle-Bu, who was not part of the project. “We are already behind in terms of how many doctors are available to care for a certain number of the population,” he said. “If somebody is in a remote part of town where he doesn’t have access to these specialized services, but needs it, the referring doctor could actually use this telemedicine thing to get access to the best of care.” Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

A Manhattan judge rejected a majority of motions by OpenAI and Microsoft to dismiss parts of a lawsuit accusing the tech companies of swiping stories from The Denver Post, the New York Times and other newspapers to train their artificial intelligence products. The Post, its affiliated newspapers in MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, the Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting have accused OpenAI and Microsoft of stealing millions of copyrighted news stories to benefit popular AI products like ChatGPT. Manhattan Federal Judge Sidney Stein’s ruling Wednesday preserves the core elements of the lawsuit, which will now go forward to trial. While Stein rejected efforts to dismiss claims related to statute of limitations, trademark dilution and stripping content management information from the content in question, he dismissed CMI claims against Microsoft along with a secondary CMI claim against OpenAI, and one other unfair competition claim against both defendants. The judge dismissed additional claims for the Center for Investigative Reporting and the New York Times. “We get to go forward with virtually all of our claims intact, including all of the copyright filings,” Steven Lieberman, a lawyer for The Daily News and the Times, said. “It’s a significant victory, albeit a preliminary stage of the case.” A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment. In a statement, a spokesperson for OpenAI said “hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on ChatGPT to improve their daily lives, inspire creativity, and to solve hard problems. We welcome the court’s dismissal of many of these claims and look forward to making it clear that we build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner grounded in fair use, and supportive of innovation.” Microsoft and OpenAI don’t deny they depend on copyrighted material, instead arguing that it’s under their rights to do so under the fair use doctrine. Under that doctrine, the use of copyrighted materials are permitted under certain circumstances, including using the materials for educational purposes. The Post and affiliated newspapers filed the suit in 2024, challenging that notion, alleging the companies “simply take the work product of reporters, journalists, editorial writers, editors and others who contribute to the work of local newspapers — all without any regard for the efforts, much less the legal rights, of those who create and publish the news on which local communities rely.” “This decision is a significant victory for us,” said Frank Pine, executive editor at MediaNews Group. “The court denied the majority of the dismissal motions filed by OpenAI and Microsoft. The claims the court has dismissed do not undermine the main thrust of our case, which is that these companies have stolen our work and violated our copyright in a way that fundamentally damages our business.” The Post brought its suit alongside its sister newspapers, MediaNews Group’s The Mercury News, The Orange County Register and the St. Paul Pioneer Press; and Tribune Publishing’s Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, The New York Daily News and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Pine also addressed recent efforts by Big Tech to lobby the Trump administration to weaken copyright protections. Related Articles Gig app agrees to return more than $27K to workers after Denver auditor investigation Denver moves to shut down Diamond Cabaret over wage theft allegations National Trust for Local News sells 21 Colorado publications Indian eatery planned as building in Denver’s Sunnyside sells for $2M Lender seeks receiver for south Aurora office buildings after default “OpenAI lobbying the government to loosen copyright laws to make their thievery legal is shameful and un-American. They have a $150 billion valuation for a product they acknowledge could not have been built without the copyrighted content they stole from journalists, authors, poets, scholars and all manner of creatives and academics. Makers pay for their raw materials, and good businesses bolster their communities by creating economies and industries, not by destroying them.” Microsoft and OpenAI are accused in the litigation of harming the newspapers’ subscription-based business model by misappropriating journalists’ work and providing it for free. The cases allege that the AI models also risk tarnishing reporters’ reputations by sometimes misstating their reporting or attributing it to others. The papers are seeking unspecified damages, restitution of profits and a court order forcing the companies to stop using their materials to train chatbots. “We look forward to presenting a jury with all the facts regarding OpenAI and Microsoft copying and improper use of the content of newspapers across the country,” Lieberman said. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

JUBA, South Sudan — After being gang-raped by armed men while collecting firewood, the 28-year-old tried in vain to get help. Some clinics were closed, others told her to return later and she had no money to access a hospital. Five months after the assault, she lay on a mat in a displacement camp in South Sudan’s capital, rubbing her swollen belly. “I felt like I wasn’t heard … and now I’m pregnant,” she said. The Associated Press does not identify people who have been raped. Sexual assault is a constant risk for many women in South Sudan. Now one aid group is trying to bridge the gap with technology, to find and help survivors more quickly. But it’s not easy in a country with low connectivity, high illiteracy and wariness about how information is used. Five months ago, an Israel-based organization in South Sudan piloted a chatbot it created on WhatsApp. It prompts questions for its staff to ask survivors of sexual assault to anonymously share their experiences. The information is put into the phone while speaking to the person and the bot immediately notifies a social worker there’s a case, providing help to the person within hours. IsraAID said the technology improves communication. Papers can get misplaced and information can go missing, said Rodah Nyaduel, a psychologist with the group. When colleagues document an incident, she’s notified by phone and told what type of case it is. Tech experts said technology can reduce human error and manual file keeping, but organizations need to ensure data privacy. “How do they intend to utilize that information, does it get circulated to law enforcement, does that information cross borders. Groups need to do certain things to guarantee how to safeguard that information and demonstrate that,” said Gerardo Rodriguez Phillip, an AI and technology innovation consultant in Britain. IsraAID said its data is encrypted and anonymized. It automatically deletes from staffers’ phones. In the chatbot’s first three months in late 2024, it was used to report 135 cases. When the 28-year-old was raped, she knew she had just a few days to take medicine to help prevent disease and pregnancy, she said. One aid group she approached scribbled her information on a piece of paper and told her to return later to speak with a social worker. When she did, they said they were busy. After 72 hours, she assumed it was pointless. Weeks later, she found she was pregnant. IsraAID found her while doing door-to-door visits in her area. At first, she was afraid to let them put her information into their phone, worried it would be broadcast on social media. But she felt more comfortable knowing the phones were not personal devices, thinking she could hold the organization accountable if there were problems. Related Articles Gig app agrees to return more than $27K to workers after Denver auditor investigation Denver moves to shut down Diamond Cabaret over wage theft allegations National Trust for Local News sells 21 Colorado publications Indian eatery planned as building in Denver’s Sunnyside sells for $2M Lender seeks receiver for south Aurora office buildings after default She’s one of tens of thousands of people still living in displacement sites in the capital, Juba, despite a peace deal ending civil war in 2018. Some are afraid to leave or have no homes to return to. The fear of rape remains for women who leave the camps for firewood or other needs. Some told the AP about being sexually assaulted. They said there are few services in the camp because of reduced assistance by international aid groups and scant government investment in health. Many can’t afford taxis to a hospital in town. U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to freeze USAID funding during a 90-day review period is exacerbating the challenges. Aid groups have closed some services including psychological support for women, affecting tens of thousands of people. Technology isn’t widely used by aid groups focused on gender-based violence in South Sudan. Some organizations say that, based on survivors’ feedback, the ideal app would allow people to get help remotely. Stigma surrounding sexual assault further complicates efforts to get help in South Sudan. It’s especially hard for young girls who need to get permission to leave their homes, said Mercy Lwambi, gender-based violence lead at the International Rescue Committee. “They want to talk to someone faster than a physical meeting,” she said. But South Sudan has one of the lowest rates of mobile access and connectivity in the world, with less than 25% of market penetration, according to a report by GSMA, a global network of mobile operators. People with phones don’t always have internet access, and many are illiterate. “You have to be thinking, will this work in a low-tech environment? What are the literacy rates? Do they have access to devices? If so, what kind? Will they find it engaging, will they trust it, is it safe?” said Kirsten Pontalti, a senior associate at Proteknon Foundation for Innovation and Learning, an international organization focused on advancing child protection. Pontalti has piloted two chatbots, one to help youth and parents better access information about sexual reproductive health and the other for frontline workers focused on child protection during COVID. She said technology focused on reporting abuse should include an audio component for people with low literacy and be as low-tech as possible. Some survivors of sexual assault say they just want to be heard, whether by phone or in person. One 45-year-old man, a father of 11, said it took years to seek help after being raped by his wife after he refused to have sex and said he didn’t want more children they couldn’t afford to support. It took multiple visits by aid workers to his displacement site in Juba before he felt comfortable speaking out. “Organizations need to engage more with the community,” he said. “If they hadn’t shown up, I wouldn’t have come in.” ___ For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse ___ The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

According to Margo Harrison, the 1911 invention of Midol was the last time a new period pain product hit the market. That was until last week, when her company, Wave Bye, launched its line of supplements to promote cycle regularity and help curb bleeding and cramps. “(Women) are not trying to be superhuman,” the OB-GYN said. “They just want to feel normal.” Wave Bye, which Harrison founded in 2023, sells a “backbone” daily supplement called Bye Irregularity to make periods more predictable. Those are intended to treat several symptoms, including potential migraines, fatigue and irritability that come from premenstrual syndrome. Once you know your schedule, the company’s period-specific products, called Bye Cramps and Bye Bad Cramps, are more effective, she said.  They prevent messengers from telling the uterus to contract and bleed, she added. “You need to take the supplement every day to regulate your cycle, and then what differentiates our (other) products is they need to be taken two days before bleeding,” Harrison explained. “If you block symptoms two days before, you totally change the period experience.” Other medications and remedies are sparse, Harrison said. Though women will use Midol and Tylenol for relief, those pills target the brain rather than the uterus directly, she said. There are also gummies on the market for PMS, but she added that there’s nothing like Wave Bye’s two-pronged, premenstrual attack on irregularity and period pain using its Vitamin E-based product. Heating pads and relief patches only do so much, too, Harrison added. She hopes that Wave Bye can be a more encompassing approach to the menstruation problem about half the population manages for decades of their lives. The company sells the products in four bundles — each for different severities of symptoms – on its website. They cost between $70 and $80 on a monthly subscription, with one-time purchases and three-month and 12-month packs also available. Harrison is also in negotiations to sell Wave Bye at yoga studios and health shops including Bridget’s Botanicals in Littleton. The company also offers revenue sharing or discount opportunities for health care professionals such as OB-GYNs and nurses. “There’s no benefit from bleeding just to bleed. If you cut your hand, are you supposed to just let it keep bleeding? You’re not getting any benefit from not turning off the faucet,” Harrison said. “It’s not necessarily bad – it’s meant to support a pregnancy. But we want to reduce period pain and bleeding and make that period experience better in order to give people their time back.” Harrison was a clinical researcher at Columbia University and the University of Colorado Anschutz, focusing on pregnancy in poor countries. She then went to consult VC-backed women’s health firms three years ago. Through that and her work as an abortion provider for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains over the last two-and-a-half years, she saw the need for Wave Bye. “I’d have patients sit up from an abortion and hear them say, ‘Well, at least that was less painful than my period,’” she said. “People get gaslit, and the OB-GYNs don’t deal with period pain until it’s really profound. It feels like there’s this gap. They just do what their moms or friends or community are doing.” Wave Bye has so far raised $300,000 out of what Harrison hopes is an $875,000 round. Most of that is angel funding, she said, along with one Denver-area institutional investor. She hopes to close the round in the next couple of months. The money will mostly be used to develop another product, which Harrison said will likely take at least two years, and continue work on a yet-to-be-released app to help users schedule their doses. Related Articles Gig app agrees to return more than $27K to workers after Denver auditor investigation Denver moves to shut down Diamond Cabaret over wage theft allegations National Trust for Local News sells 21 Colorado publications Indian eatery planned as building in Denver’s Sunnyside sells for $2M Lender seeks receiver for south Aurora office buildings after default Wave Bye already saw some traction from a small batch of users late last year, so Harrison is confident sales will take off now that her business is officially off the ground. Of the 25 units Wave Bye has sold, she said about half came from three- and 12-month purchases. “If people trust the product,” she said, “they’re gonna get more.” Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

After a few years of writing what she called a “niche newsletter for Washington insiders,” political journalist Tara Palmeri decided she wanted to reach a wider audience. A much wider audience. She’s taking her reporting to YouTube. Palmeri said she is leaving the startup Puck to strike out on her own, focusing much of her effort on the streaming giant. She joins a slew of other journalists who have left news organizations to build their own businesses around podcasts and newsletters. But in politics, the most successful of these independent media stars have strong views and clear allegiances. Conservative hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly remain atop the podcasting charts, and anti-Trump media collectives are rapidly growing; two of them, The Contrarian and MeidasTouch, each have more than 500,000 newsletter subscribers, many of them paid. That is not Palmeri. “I’m not on a crusade,” said Palmeri, 37, the type of political journalist who proudly abstains from voting in elections while she’s covering them in order to maintain objectivity with her audience. “I’m not sold on either party, and that’s why I don’t really have a lot of friends.” In her new venture, Palmeri wants to speak to audiences from the underdeveloped territory of “the middle,” she said, without a political agenda. “There isn’t really anyone there yet, and I want to try.” In focusing on YouTube, Palmeri is also taking a slightly a different tack from many of the journalists who have recently left media companies — whether voluntarily or through layoffs or firings — to release their own content, typically on Substack. (Although she will have a Substack newsletter, too.) YouTube says its viewers want more long-form news analysis, especially via podcasts. It recently announced having more than 1 billion monthly podcast listeners, outpacing any other media platform. (Watching and listening to podcasts is an increasingly fuzzy distinction.) Palmeri is part of a program meant to support “next generation” independent journalists on the platform with training and funding. But whether “news influencers” like Palmeri can succeed at the same scale of popular partisan commentators is still untested. Many people say they want more unbiased news. Do they really? Adam Faze, an emerging-media guru known for producing TikTok shows who is informally advising Palmeri, said he wasn’t aware of other political journalists approaching YouTube quite like her. Related Articles Gig app agrees to return more than $27K to workers after Denver auditor investigation Denver moves to shut down Diamond Cabaret over wage theft allegations National Trust for Local News sells 21 Colorado publications Indian eatery planned as building in Denver’s Sunnyside sells for $2M Lender seeks receiver for south Aurora office buildings after default “Not with her access,” he said. Piers Morgan has been successful, Faze pointed out, but his YouTube channel is largely reminiscent of his cable news days, with cacophonous cross-talking panels and a green-screen cityscape backdrop. “I don’t want you to go to this YouTube page and think, ‘I could have watched that on a cable channel,’” Palmeri said. She aspires to “speak like a normal person,” rather than a news anchor, and also “be more gritty.” Palmeri takes pride in her grit. She often describes herself as “feared and fearless” — a daughter of New Jersey whose parents did not go to universities. Her zeal for scoops has made her variously unpopular among both Democrats and Republicans and occasionally other journalists. Before Puck, while working for Politico, Palmeri reported on an investigation into a gun owned by Hunter Biden, a story that she said had “ostracized” her from her newsroom. In 2021, a deputy White House press secretary resigned after telling Palmeri that he would “destroy” her for reporting on his relationship with an Axios journalist who had covered the president. An old-school tabloid sensibility drives Palmeri, who in her 20s door-knocked a couple of White House gate-crashers for The Washington Examiner and chased a “cop-killer” in Cuba for The New York Post. On her new Substack, The Red Letter, she plans to include blind gossip items, Palmeri said. “She has a cadence that makes you feel like you’re just talking to a girlfriend” rather than a journalist, said Holly Harris, a veteran Republican strategist who encouraged Palmeri to go independent. This disposition can prove “a little dangerous,” Harris added: “All of a sudden you realize you’ve given up the state secrets.” In November, at a cocktail party in Washington, a former congressional staff member approached this reporter with the warning not to trust Palmeri, who was also at the party. (“I love that,” Palmeri later said.) Palmeri has at times struggled to fit in while working at more traditional newsrooms, such as ABC News, where she spent about two years as a White House correspondent — the first of which she appeared infrequently on the air. “I’ve always felt like there’s never really been a place that I’ve been at home,” she said. After ABC, she hosted investigative podcasts for Sony about disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and the wealthy family of his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. She intends to continue making podcasts; her current show, “Somebody’s Gotta Win,” an election collaboration between Puck and Spotify’s The Ringer, is set to end in April, she said. Puck, which she joined in 2022, was more suited to her self-driven (and self-promotional) streak than any other employer. “We’re kind of renegades,” Palmeri said, crediting Puck with helping find her voice. “It was the closest place I had gotten to me writing directly to an audience, but it was still edited in a style that was not me,” she said. The tone was more “elite and impressive” than her natural voice; one example she offered was the frequent use of the word “indeed.” To go independent, she is giving up her $260,000 base salary at Puck and funding her new venture with her savings. The dining table of her one-bedroom New York City apartment in brownstone Brooklyn has become her recording studio. With an initial grant from YouTube, Palmeri bought about $10,000 worth of equipment, and tested and hired editors. (She and YouTube both declined to disclose the size of the grant.) In return, she has committed to publishing about four videos per week. Investors are also interested in Palmeri, she said, though she has not decided whether or when to take their money. She would prefer to accept “squeaky clean” funding from both ends of the political spectrum, she said: “This is a trust business.” She has also considered a new line of credit or a small-business loan. “I’m willing to bet on myself,” Palmeri said. “There’s no one over me telling me, ‘This is the headline, this is the angle.’ You don’t like it? It’s me. There’s no one else to blame.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.