Author: Lance Garrison

What would it feel like to live through a nuclear attack? A scenario that might have once felt relegated to the Cold War era now feels less and less remote.The world’s nine nuclear powers are believed to be modernizing their arsenals. Today’s generation of tactical nuclear weapons pose an unpredictable threat. And Vladimir Putin recently threatened the United States and Europe with nuclear retaliation if they become more involved in the war in Ukraine.In this fictionalized audio scenario, Times Opinion imagines the aftermath of one nuclear strike, informed by leading research, hundreds of hours of interviews with experts and accounts…

Introduction by Kathleen Kingsbury, Opinion Editor The threat of nuclear war has dangled over humankind for much too long. We have survived so far through luck and brinkmanship. But the old, limited safeguards that kept the Cold War cold are long gone. Nuclear powers are getting more numerous and less cautious. We’ve condemned another generation to live on a planet that is one grave act of hubris or human error away from destruction without demanding any action from our leaders. That must change.In New York Times Opinion’s latest series, At the Brink, we’re looking at the reality of nuclear weapons…

Even after last week’s nuclear threat, few believe that Mr. Putin will wake up one day and decide to lob megaton warheads at Washington or European capitals in retaliation for supporting Ukraine. What Western allies see as more likely is that Russia will use a so-called tactical nuclear weapon, which is less destructive and designed to strike targets over short distances to devastate military units on the battlefield. The strategic thinking behind those weapons is that they are far less damaging than city-destroying hydrogen bombs and therefore more “usable” in warfare. The United States estimates Russia has a stockpile of…

Gail Collins: So, Bret — are you gonna miss Mitch McConnell?Bret Stephens: I guess it all depends on who succeeds him. If it’s a fairly traditional Republican, like John Cornyn of Texas or John Thune of South Dakota, I don’t think it will make much of a difference. But if it’s someone like Florida’s Rick Scott or worse, then we’ll probably remember McConnell’s tenure much more fondly, like Russians who thought better of Czar Nicholas II once they had a taste of the next guys.How about you?Gail: Until the Trump era I always had a deeply negative attitude toward McConnell…

But does he get to tell it? The film leaves Seydou with the thundering helicopter, tailing off precisely where many would have wanted it to continue. Because what happens next to people like Seydou is arrest, interrogation, often lengthy trials and, in most cases, prison. Anyone who assists a boat crossing the Mediterranean with irregular migrants onboard can be accused of people smuggling, whether they are humanitarians on a rescue mission or migrants who, for whatever reason, have taken the responsibility of steering the boat to safety.This is no small issue. There are currently over 1,000 foreigners imprisoned in Italy…

Like many African American professors, I teach at a predominantly white institution (Wheaton College) and live in the largely white small city where it’s located, outside Chicago. I have not experienced serious acts of discrimination, but that doesn’t make life simple.When people think about the difficulty of being Black in largely white spaces in America, they tend to picture overt racism. But many of us who are in the minority at universities encounter a different kind of problem related to our race that may go unnoticed by those in the majority culture. At Wheaton, I am faced with the daily…

She has created an Office of Rural Prosperity within the Kansas Commerce Department. Just before our conversation, I read a transcript of the State of the State remarks that she delivered a few weeks earlier. It focused largely on jobs, and the word “rural” showed up 43 times, including in the characterization of “rural Kansas” as “fundamental to our identity.” The word “abortion” showed up precisely zero times, which I noticed mainly because the issue was front and center in Kansas just a year and a half earlier, when voters there rejected a measure to remove the right to abortion…

To the Editor:Re “It’s Not as Easy as Just Getting Biden to Drop Out,” by Jamelle Bouie (newsletter, nytimes.com, Feb. 24):Mr. Bouie claims that if President Biden were to step aside as the Democratic nominee and the Democratic Party convention were to spurn Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement, this would likely result in “a divisive nominee — who had neither earned the votes of Democratic voters nor weathered the vetting process of a primary campaign — and a fractured coalition.”However, the truth is that Ms. Harris has never been vetted in a competitive primary race at the national…

Many long-termers languish in cells or in substandard prison infirmaries, or even in so-called long-term care units. With labored breathing, they limp to the mess hall and miss their chance to eat, sink deeper into dementia, fall and get seriously injured, and navigate hearing and vision impairment. At the same time, they are under the supervision of guards who lack the training and often the empathy to properly manage the diminished capacity of many older people to follow often senseless prison rules.When I was a commissioner, from 1984 to 1996, it was unusual for me to meet a parole candidate…

This transformation has the effect of further radicalizing the right. There’s a “Can you top this?” dynamic to posting that pushes people to extremes. In the offline world, paranoia is a liability. It inhibits you from seeing the world clearly. In parts of the online world, you’re considered a rube if you’re not paranoid, if you’re not seeing a leftist plot around every corner, if you’re not believing that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s romance is a Biden administration psy-op that culminated with rigging the Super Bowl.Moreover, a social media-centered movement understands what to think — the marching orders, however…