Author: Lance Garrison
Did the American Revolution actually happen? If it did, was it a good thing?This is more or less what Justice Elena Kagan seemed to be wondering during the oral arguments in Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 immunity case at the Supreme Court on Thursday morning. “Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?” she asked.Like her, I had assumed those questions were answered decisively in the affirmative more than 200 years ago. But now, after almost three hours of circuitous debate and bizarre hypotheticals at the Supreme…
On Thursday, the Supreme Court gathered to consider whether Donald Trump, as president, enjoyed immunity from prosecution for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Even if the justices eventually rule against him, liberals should not celebrate the Constitution as our best bulwark against Mr. Trump. In fact, the document — for reasons that go beyond Mr. Trump, that long preceded him and could well extend past him — has made our democracy almost unworkable.For years, whenever Mr. Trump threatened democratic principles, liberals turned to the Constitution for help, searching the text for tools that would either end his political career…
Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law.More astonishing than the former president’s claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court took the case in the first place. It’s not just that there’s an obvious response — no, the president is not immune to criminal prosecution for illegal actions committed with the imprimatur of executive power, whether private or “official” (a distinction…
When Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, Ukrainian civilians were immediately caught in the crossfire. Over the last month, people have been fleeing to neighboring countries, waiting out the nights in bomb shelters, and getting by without running water or electricity.Pregnant people are among those caught in the middle. Some of the most horrific images from the war so far have come from a maternity hospital in Mariupol that was bombed by Russian troops in mid-March. The upheaval spurs a troubling question: Could the stress and condition of war affect a fetus in the womb?Research suggests that the answer is…
[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]I feel as if I’ve always known who Salman Rushdie is. He sat in my consciousness as the author of this eerie-sounding novel called “The Satanic Verses,” a novel so somehow dangerous, he had to go into hiding after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, said Rushdie and anyone involved in its publication should be killed for blaspheming Islam.In August of 2022, more than 30 years after the fatwa, a fanatic with…
As of April 2022, two states have passed bills banning gender-affirming care – health care related to a transgender person’s medical transition – for transgender youth, and 20 states are considering laws that would do so. If passed in all these states, more than a third of transgender teens aged 13 to 17 would live in a state that prohibits them from accessing trans health care. But the meaning of gender-affirming care for young people, and what it looks like on the ground, isn’t always clear. The cloud of politics surrounding these bills has obscured the medical reality of how…
COVID-19 has changed the way we do everything — especially when it comes to doctor visits. Older adults have a higher risk of complications from the coronavirus, so it’s best to avoid unnecessary exposure. But sometimes you need to see the doctor in person. And what if you have to go to the hospital? We asked experts for what to expect and how to get the best care, now that some restrictions have been lifted.What to ExpectEven though COVID-19 guidelines have led to changes in safety restrictions, health care facilities still have a high level of requirement and protections, says…
Last week, employees at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted by almost three to one to join the United Automobile Workers. By the numbers, this wasn’t a big deal: It involved only a few thousand workers in an economy that employs almost 160 million people. But it was an important symbolic victory for a labor movement that even in its heyday never made significant inroads in the South.And it’s not silly to imagine that historians will someday look back at the Chattanooga vote as a milestone on the road back to the more or less middle-class society America used…
Over the past few decades, in a surge of bipartisan national self-confidence, the federal government has borrowed a lot of money, sometimes in response to national emergencies and sometimes to do the things people thought were worth doing. We gave ourselves permission to incur all this debt because interest rates were low and many people assumed that things would stay that way, so the costs of carrying that much debt wouldn’t be too onerous.Unfortunately, that assumption turned out to be incorrect. Interest rates have risen. According to The Wall Street Journal, America is expected to spend $870 billion, or 3.1…
To the Editor:Re “Why We Need to Talk About Teen Sex,” by Peggy Orenstein (Opinion guest essay, April 14):As a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst who has worked for decades with teens and college-age students, I’m disturbed but not surprised by the trend of choking during sex.Choking is obviously very dangerous, and unfortunately, social media has made this once uncommon practice more mainstream.Education is the key with both our youth and parents. Yes, sexual strangulation needs to be part of ongoing conversations about safe sex practices. There clearly needs to be more accountability about this behavior.There is a line, a boundary, where…