Franklin D. Roosevelt famously illustrated with a simple metaphor the need for a healthy transatlantic alliance. Justifying his decision to lend Great Britain warships and other military supplies in the early days of World War II, Roosevelt likened it to loaning a neighbor a garden hose to put out the fire consuming his house. Sure, Roosevelt charitably wanted to help a neighbor in need. But it was self-interested too; if the neighbor could extinguish the blaze, it wouldn’t spread to FDR’s home.

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Donald Trump retains the ability to shock; the day he loses that, he will, like the biblical Samson—another man notable for his coiffure—lose his power entirely.

In Princeton, New Jersey, a short stroll from the university you have heard of, there lies a little campus home to the Institute for Advanced Study. It was founded in 1930 not to confer degrees nor—God forbid!—to make money, nor even to conduct research toward any end in particular. The institute proclaims that its purpose is “the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

For two decades, the United States and Canada have struggled with a drug epidemic. From 2003 to 2022, annual overdose deaths in the United States rose from less than 26,000 to nearly 108,000—becoming the leading nonmedical cause of death, surpassing car accidents and gun violence combined. In Canada, overdose deaths increased almost tenfold in the same period.

For the past year, the United States has gone without its doctor. Ever since Vivek Murthy resigned as surgeon general last January, the role has remained empty despite President Trump’s attempts to fill it. He first nominated the physician Janette Nesheiwat but withdrew her nomination in May after reports that she completed her M.D. not in Arkansas, as she had claimed, but in St. Maarten. In her place, Trump nominated Casey Means, whose background is odd, to say the least.