Author: Lance Garrison
Nicholas Kristof has spent a lot of time reporting on addiction. “My own community in Oregon has suffered a great deal from it. I’ve lost a lot of friends to it,” he says. In a recent trip to Tulsa, Okla., Kristof visited Women in Recovery, an addiction treatment program showing what’s possible. In this audio essay, he introduces us to a program graduate, Katelyn Fullbright, who struggled with cocaine and meth addiction but now holds a full-time job she enjoys.(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 24 hours of publication in the audio player above.)This episode…
About 18 months ago, Donald Trump suffered one of his worst political defeats, when many of his loyalists and handpicked candidates were defeated in a midterm landscape that clearly favored the Republicans. A lot of people — I was one of them — thought that this might be the beginning of the end for him, a stark indicator of political weakness that would encourage G.O.P. voters to abandon him or set him up for a decisive general election defeat.Instead today Trump arguably occupies a more politically commanding position in American politics than at any other point in the past eight…
My grandmother was tactile and affectionate. She always pulled me onto her lap, kissed the nape of my neck and told me what flavor she tasted — honey, marmalade, lavender. At bedtime, she used her long red manicured nails to compose imaginary paintings on my face. She let me try on all her jewelry, the two of us in front of her mirror, her graceful hands clasping necklaces around my neck, bracelets on my small wrists. She had fake versions of my favorite pieces made for me for Christmas, all perfectly arranged in a red lacquer box.My grandmother was wounded…
This informal cease-fire, though, has not been embraced by the Houthis, who have declared that they will not stop firing at international ships, the U.S. Navy or Israel, at least until there is a cease-fire in Gaza. Last weekend, the Belize-flagged cargo ship Rubymar, which the Houthis hit with an anti-ship ballistic missile on Feb. 18, became the first vessel to entirely sink in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, as a result of a Houthi missile attack. It created a huge ecological mess of leaked fuel and the fertilizer it was carrying. Thank you, Houthis.And that leads to the third dangerous…
On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel and filmed itself committing scores of human-rights atrocities. Some of the footage was later captured by the Israeli military and screened to hundreds of journalists, including me. The “pure, predatory sadism,” as Atlantic writer Graeme Wood described it, is bottomless.Yet Hamas denies that its men sexually assaulted Israelis, calling the charges “lies and slanders against the Palestinians and their resistance.” And Hamas’s fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West, most of them self-described progressives, parrot that denialism in the face of powerful and deeply investigated evidence of widespread rapes, documented most recently in…
In my most recent column I had a bit of fun with Donald Trump making an assertion that shows that he hasn’t flown commercial in a very long time — saying that America’s terrible airports make us look like a third world nation:As it happens, a few days ago I flew into Newark Liberty International Airport’s new Terminal A, which drove home a point that’s obvious to anyone who has been flying commercial over the years: America’s airports have in fact become a lot spiffier. I’d certainly rather fly into Newark than into the many European airports where you still…
March 5, 2024 — Thunderstorm asthma can strike with little warning, leaving people with the symptoms of an asthma attack during or after the dark clouds pass. If you’re unfamiliar, the risk for a thunderstorm asthma attack grows when heavy storms arrive on a day with very high pollen or spores. The storm uplifts these particles, adds water, and causes them to explode into smaller grains. The electrical activity in a storm can do the same. Next, strong winds sweep these particles down and across the ground. People in the path of the storm can experience shortness of breath, coughing, and wheezing.If…
“The perspective, the lens, the representation, the experience of a Black woman from California is badly needed.”That’s what Representative Barbara Lee — a California Democrat vying for the Senate seat held for three decades by Dianne Feinstein — told a television reporter last month about why people should vote for her in the race.On Sunday, before a rally that evening outside a production studio in Los Angeles owned by the former N.B.A. all-star Baron Davis, I asked Lee what she meant by that, since Black people are only about 7 percent of the population of the state.She replied in a…
To the Editor: Re “States Must Keep Trump on Ballot, Justices Rule 9-0” (front page, March 5):Despite the stunning clarity of the 14th Amendment and the well-documented historical record of its intent, the votes of the three Trump-appointed justices and that of Justice Clarence Thomas to allow an insurrectionist to remain on the ballot were a foregone conclusion.The only surprise was the unanimous vote.Daniel FinkBeverly Hills, Calif.To the Editor:The Supreme Court has decided that an individual state cannot decide who can be on the ballot for a federal election. That would seem to be a reasonable decision, but perhaps a…
Masonia Traylor was 23 when she was diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2010.“The first couple of weeks, I just cried every day,” Traylor says. “I was reflecting on my whole life at 23, and I felt really disappointed in myself; questioned a lot of the decisions that I [had] made.”While Traylor was figuring it out, she found out she was pregnant 2 weeks after her HIV diagnosis. More than a decade later, Traylor’s daughter is healthy. But Traylor clearly remembers the tremendous amount of pressure and stress she felt.An HIV diagnosis is life changing. Once you get…