Author: Lance Garrison

Mr. Kristof is the author of a new memoir, “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life,” from which this essay is adapted.More than three-quarters of Americans say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. This year, for the first time, America dropped out of the top 20 happiest countries in this year’s World Happiness Report. Some couples are choosing not to have children because of climate threats. And this despair permeates not just the United States, but much of the world.This moment is particularly dispiriting because of the toxic mood. Debates about the horrifying toll of the war in Gaza…

“Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” is a frequent chant ringing through pro-Palestinian college protests. Of all the actions one could advocate in the war between Israel and Hamas, protesters at Columbia listed, as their first demand, that it divest from companies and institutions that, in their view, “profit from Israeli apartheid.”Israeli companies aren’t the only target. A proposal Columbia students put forward in December calls for divestment from Microsoft, Airbnb, Amazon and Alphabet, among others. Microsoft is tagged for supplying cloud software services to Israel; Airbnb is targeted for posting rentals in Israeli settlements in…

This is how inbred purebred dogs have become… Sex with your sibling is called incest and is illegal in almost all 50 states. Sex with your sibling or other close relations, if you are a dog, is called inbreeding, and inbreeding is part of the practice of pure-breeding dogs.Breeders are not typically mating siblings, though it is not prohibited by the American Kennel Club and is not unheard of. Any mating within a closed gene pool of candidates will do, as far as breeders are concerned. But according to research published by a team from the University of California, Davis,…

His team sure is trying. “He’s not just our former president,” his lawyer argued during the trial’s opening statements. “He’s a husband. He’s a father. And he’s a person — just like you and just like me.” (Mr. Trump has denied the charges and says he did not have sex with Ms. Daniels.)But consider me, um, skeptical.Mr. Trump’s ability to have any relationship beyond the transactional is one of the great mysteries about him, and the current evidence on the matter is mixed. There have been moments in the trial that have emphasized that Mr. Trump thinks and acts like…

At 3 a.m. one day last December, a 78-year-old volunteer for the British Conservative Party was reportedly woken by a call from Mark Menzies, the Conservative lawmaker she worked for. He said that he was being held somewhere by “bad people” who demanded £5,000, or $6,300, to release him. The volunteer, a former campaign manager for Mr. Menzies, paid the sum out of her own savings. She was later reimbursed out of party funds.Mr. Menzies, who was suspended from the party last month, denies that allegation and others, which include using £14,000 from party funds for personal medical bills. The…

The first sign something was wrong with Curtis Warfield came in 2005, when a lab test found protein in his urine during a routine checkup. In 2012, Warfield was diagnosed with stage 3 kidney disease. Two years later, he started dialysis.“When you get diagnosed, you’re sitting there kind of like a deer in headlights. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know what’s coming next,” Warfield said. “All you know, you have this disease.”Warfield, a Black man, was 52 years old, had been healthy, and had no family history of kidney disease. As his condition worsened and he worked…

To the Editor:Re “Trump Warned of Jail, Again, for His Attacks” (front page, May 7):I applaud the evenhanded and insightful reporting on the hush money case against the former president, especially how it has highlighted the difficult position the recent contempt of court rulings have put the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, in.The defendant, by his words and conduct in and out of court, has shown complete contempt for the rule of law and the authority of Justice Merchan. The judge made clear that he would imprison the defendant, if necessary. This, of course, is exactly what this defendant wants for…

Are many young people distressed about the war in Gaza? Yes.Are they unhappy with President Biden’s approach to the war? Yes.Does this doom Biden’s re-election bid? Not necessarily.First, a Harvard Youth Poll released in April found that the two issues frequently associated with young voters — the Israel-Hamas war and student debt relief — “may not be especially consequential ones when it comes to casting votes,” as The Harvard Gazette reports, because young voters rank them among the least important issues facing the country. Of the 16 issues the poll asked 18- to 29-year-olds about, those two were ranked last…

It’s taken a while for people to start comparing Donald Trump to Grover Cleveland. Cleveland, of course, was the only man to achieve Trump’s current political goal — win the presidency, lose the re-election and then win it again the third time around.Both championed tax cuts and fiscal restraint, although only Cleveland actually tried to balance the budget. And both had sex scandals — which we’re going to compare now just because it’s sort of fun.Cleveland, unlike Trump, was unmarried. He’d never been divorced. And the closest thing he had to a sex scandal before his presidential nomination was a…

Three days after it began, Israel’s operation in Rafah looks like a microcosm of its seven-month-long fight in Gaza: an attempt to check a tactical box rather than a strategic move with a definitive goal in the fight against Hamas.As a limited incursion, it could be the least of Israel’s bad options, and even prove successful if it helps achieve a more favorable hostage deal or a cease-fire agreement. However, judging by the war’s conduct to date, it’s more likely that the operation will, in the end, backfire.So far, the I.D.F. has ordered the evacuation in the eastern outskirts of…