The mystery at the core of the Trump-Russia story is motive.
President Trump certainly seems to have a strange case of Russophilia. He has surrounded himself with aides who have Russian ties. Those aides were talking to Russian agents during the campaign, and some are now pushing a dubious peace deal in Ukraine. Trump recently went so far as to equate the United States and Vladimir Putin’s murderous regime.
But why?
MUNICH — This Munich Security Conference was different. A Frenchman defended NATO against the American president. The Russian foreign minister was here but the phantom American secretary of state was not. An ex-Swedish prime minister had to respond to the “last-night-in-Sweden affair” — an ominous incident in a placid Scandinavian state dreamed up in his refugee delirium by Donald Trump.
Most of us came of age in the last half of the 20th century and had our perceptions of “normal” formed in that era. It was, all things considered, an unusually happy period. No world wars, no Great Depressions, fewer civil wars, fewer plagues.
It’s looking like we’re not going to get to enjoy one of those times again. The 21st century is looking much nastier and bumpier: rising ethnic nationalism, falling faith in democracy, a dissolving world order.
While President Trump talks repeatedly about fixing America’s inner cities, it’s a good bet that in the coming years, New York and other large metropolitan areas will need to be more self-reliant in solving pressing problems, especially low-income housing.
Defenders of globalization are on solid ground when they criticize President Trump’s threats of punitive tariffs and border walls. The economy can’t flourish without trade and immigrants.
But many of those defenders have their own dubious explanation for the economic disruption that helped to fuel the rise of Mr. Trump.
Richmond, Calif. — DeVone Boggan could teach a class on the art of making a statement. In 2010, he invited a group of the most dangerous gun offenders in Richmond, a Bay Area city of about 100,000 residents, to a conference room at City Hall. At each seat was a name card starting with “Mr.” and an information folder labeled “Operation Peacemaker.” Wearing a suit and his signature fedora, Boggan began the meeting by apologizing on behalf of the city for not reaching out to the men sooner. Peace in Richmond, he told them, must come through them.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto about community, released last week on Facebook, wisely analyzed the state of journalism: He decried sensationalism, and declared that “a strong news industry is also critical to building an informed community.” Giving people a voice, he said, “is not enough without having people dedicated to uncovering new information and analyzing it.” He even noted that “reading local news is directly correlated with local civic engagement.”
“Feeling My Way Into Blindness,” an essay published in The New York Times in November by Edward Hoagland, an 84-year-old nature and travel writer and novelist, expressed common fears about the effects of vision loss on quality of life.
How do you transform a dated 400-square-foot studio into a modern home with room to hold a dinner party and welcome an occasional overnight guest?
That was the challenge Kseniya and Ryan Merritt presented to Robert Garneau, an architect in Brooklyn, a few years ago when they decided to overhaul their ground-floor studio in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. Also on the list of demands, said Ms. Merritt, 35, who works in commercial real estate, was “comfortable closet space” and an “open and roomy layout.”
The New York Times reported this month that expectant mothers are taking up marijuana in increasing numbers. We asked women who used marijuana during pregnancy to share their stories.
Hundreds of readers wrote in; most had smoked, while a few vaped or ate marijuana-laced edibles. Roughly half said they had used pot for a medical reason. Most felt marijuana use had not affected their children, or were not sure; just a handful worried the children might have suffered cognitive deficits.
