It was easy to miss amid the tragicomedy of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s security breach, President Trump’s musings about an unconstitutional third term and the sensory assault that is Elon Musk, but last week Trump signed an executive order as potentially chilling as any of the many others.
It concerned elections. More accurately, it concerned his determination to shape them in his favor. And it reaffirmed what has been clear since his prophylactic claims of a “rigged” process in 2016, but becomes more glaringly obvious all the time: He will seize and hold on to power however he must, with no shame about the means.
So while we try to fathom the magnitude of damage Trump is doing — these splenetic, vengeful, bonkers tariffs aren’t even the half of it — we must reckon with a specter every bit as scary: Trump’s resistance to any real referendum on his feral version of governing. He wants to rule. In his mind, he deserves to rule. Democracy is a pretty word but a pesky encumbrance. Best to take it out of the equation.
Then you don’t have to sweat the spasms of the stock market, which plummeted in the first hours of trading today, with the S&P 500 dropping by 4 percent. You can brush off top economists’ utter bafflement about your math and your path. You can survive the pain you’ve inflicted, be it fleeting or forever.
The executive order mandates many changes for federal elections, including, most conspicuously, a requirement that mail-in ballots be received rather than just postmarked by Election Day and that all voters provide not merely a photo identification but proof of citizenship. It’s no coincidence that those revisions align with Republicans’ past concerns that voting by mail hurt them and with a belief that fewer Democratic voters have multiple forms of ID. Trump isn’t after safer, fairer elections. He’s intent on depressing the number of ballots that might not go his and other Republicans’ way.
He’s doing that as he has done so much since his inauguration: in possible defiance of the law, without regard for the prior limits of his position. “The Constitution gives the president no explicit authority to regulate elections,” Nick Corasaniti explained in The Times. “Instead, it gives states the power to set the ‘times, places and manner’ of elections.” Congress can override state legislation. It did precisely that with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But Trump, of course, won’t be relegated to the sidelines. He demands the ball. His order would withhold federal funding from states that don’t follow his new, dubiously legal dictates on federal elections. Oh, it would also give DOGE access to state voter rolls to monitor compliance. Nothing good can come from that.
The Democratic Party has rightly moved to block the order; on Monday, it filed a 70-page lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. But the order is only a part of Trump’s larger scheme, which is to inoculate himself against failure and insulate himself from accountability. He has already gone to great lengths to invalidate or intimidate government watchdogs, journalists, scientists, lawyers and pretty much anyone who ever looked at him the wrong way. Eliminating possible rebukes from the ballot box is but a few baby steps from that.
And rebukes are indeed possible. That was one takeaway from the Tuesday results of two special House elections in Florida, where the Republican winners in solidly red districts fell far short of Trump’s victory margins there just five months ago. And it was the clear, bold message of what happened on the same day in Wisconsin, where Susan Crawford, the Democratic candidate in a state Supreme Court election, prevailed by 10 percentage points despite Musk’s infusion of $25 million on behalf of her Republican opponent and his assertive campaigning against her.
Maybe voters have already had quite enough of Musk. Maybe they’ve noticed that his boasts of efficiency belie a reality of bedlam. Maybe they’ve realized that while stock prices have dropped, grocery prices haven’t, and that Trump isn’t standing up for America but junking America’s standing — by replacing sensible trade relations with made-for-television tantrums, threatening invasions, bullying erstwhile allies and cavalierly deporting people to a hellhole in El Salvador, due process be damned. Sloppiness, stupidity and savagery define the Trump administration. They could also be the seeds of a midterm comeuppance.
If he allows it. And if he accepts it. Remember that even after he won the presidency in 2016, he was so irked by Hillary Clinton’s sizable popular-vote advantage that he attributed it to illegal votes from undocumented immigrants and set up a commission that was supposed to find evidence of such widespread fraud (and failed to). Recall that after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, he rejected the results, pressured various officials to overturn them and fired up the hellions who invaded the Capitol. And ask yourself whether, since then, the inner autocrat in Trump has bloomed or withered.
I’m going with bloomed. And I’m basing that on his evisceration of federal agencies and functions without any assent from Congress, which is supposed to decide such matters; on executive orders so audacious that they seem to invite a showdown with the courts; on the free rein he has given Musk, at least so far; and on those third-term reveries, which are wholly consistent with his contempt for constraints and his grandiose self-image.
Ask yourself, too, whether his fellow Republicans have grown more or less likely to contain him. Yes, there are sudden rumblings of upset about the tariffs among Republican senators, but that meek crew waved even Trump’s most preposterous cabinet members on through. That’s a sign of a system that’s not working. And Trump’s furious assault on it isn’t anywhere close to over.
For the Love of Sentences
In The New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz mulled preschool and pathogens: “As you know if you have a kid of your own, the collective noun for ‘toddler’ is ‘superspreader.’” She later added, “Like air travel and Coachella, young children are optimized for spreading disease.” (Thanks to Joan Reisman-Brill of Manhattan for nominating Schulz’s article.)
In The Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay weighed in on a football play for gaining yardage by having the quarterback’s teammates shove him forward from behind. “The tush push could be banned for aesthetic reasons,” he wrote, later adding: “It looks like rugby played in quicksand, or the remains of the C group trying to board a Southwest flight.” (Barb McQuade, Ann Arbor, Mich.)
In The Washington Post, Sally Jenkins made a case against the tush push: “It’s duller than cataracts, duller than home insurance, duller than Ed Sheeran and all the other tediums that creep unbidden into your life.” She feared its proliferation if the National Football League doesn’t ban it. “That would make the league duller than people who recount their dreams at dinner parties, duller than half-zip sweaters, duller than mugs.” (Todd Lowe, Simpsonville, Kentucky)
In The Athletic, Tyler Kepner marked the odd and auspicious start of the New York Yankees’ season: “Austin Wells became the first catcher ever to hit a leadoff homer on opening day, which is sort of like being the first school bus to win the Daytona 500. There just aren’t many catchers who have the chance.” (Jodi Goalstone, Tucson, Ariz., and Jon Shenker, Melbourne, Fla.)
In The Times, Kim Severson wondered why chefs herald spring’s imminent arrival with ramps versus a better alternative: “Ramps are garlic’s murky younger cousin, the one who spent some time in juvie. Green garlic is the bright, younger sister who spent a summer interning at an organic farm collective.” (Lori Pipczynski, Jamesport, N.Y., and Barbara West, Rochester, N.Y., among others)
Also in The Times, Jonah Weiner identified the documentarian Alex Braverman’s special challenge in putting together his new movie about the comedian Andy Kaufman: “Throughout this process, Braverman delighted in, and agonized over, the vexing task of trying to tell a satisfying story about Kaufman — a man who rigged trap doors beneath everyone’s understanding of who he ‘really’ was.” (Ann Madonia Casey, Fairview, Texas)
Anna Salinas began dating a man almost a decade her junior: “Jacob said he worked ‘in music,’ which I took to mean he sometimes played the guitar.” When they went clubbing, she was above the average age and “the other women wore low-slung pants with tiny crop tops, oozing the kind of confidence you feel when you’re still on your parents’ health insurance.” (Jane Parker, Manhattan)
John Leland charted many customers’ defection from Elon Musk’s electric cars: “New Yorkers once embraced Teslas as that rare signifier of liberal green virtue that actually had some giddyap under the hood — an anti-S.U.V. that didn’t drive like a cup of herbal tea.” (Sandra McManus, Bozeman, Mont., and Bonnie Welch, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., among many others)
James Hamblin parodied — or maybe just mimicked? — the typical message and script of a television drug ad: “You will frolic on the beach at sunset psoriasis-free, with a golden retriever, smiling into the distance. You also may experience sudden loss of cardiac function, seizures of the arms or intermittent explosive ear discharge. Talk to your doctor.” (Susan Casey, Palm City, Fla.)
David Segal paid tribute to thick, starchy steak fries: “So totally have they lost the war for the American palate that every encounter with a steak fry is like meeting a Visigoth. One gapes and wonders, how are you still here?” (Ranga Parthasarathy, Emigrant, Mont.)
Tressie McMillan Cottom recounted a frequent impulse: “Behold the decade of mid tech! That is what I want to say every time someone asks me, ‘What about A.I.?’ with the breathless anticipation of a boy who thinks this is the summer he finally gets to touch a boob.” (Walter Bagley, Bronxville, N.Y., and Steve Chalmer, Redwood City, Calif.)
And Bret Stephens gazed into the future: “I suspect historians will one day remember the Department of Government Efficiency the way we now remember lobotomies. It seemed, to some at the time, like a good idea.” (Marianne Stecich, Ardsley, N.Y., and David Sherman, Arlington, Va., among others)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Watching and Listening To
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There are reasons galore to watch “Adolescence,” on Netflix, including its chilling examination of social media and the manosphere; my Times Opinion colleague Jessica Grose recently reflected on that aspect of the series. But what impressed me most was the acting. It’s dazzling. In the third of the show’s four hourlong episodes, Erin Doherty captures a therapist’s warring currents of emotion — and messy tangle of motives — with peerless subtlety, while Owen Cooper, playing the troubled child whom she’s evaluating, orchestrates a crescendo from irritation to agony that shreds your heart. Could a performance be any more devastating? Stephen Graham’s as that boy’s father is. If Graham, who also co-wrote “Adolescence,” doesn’t win every honor for which he’s eligible, acting awards mean nothing.
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At the end of the second, weakest episode of “Adolescence,” as the camera floats heavenward, a song slowly gathers force, at first just vaguely familiar and then wholly recognizable. It’s “Fragile” by Sting, but performed at an even slower tempo, by a children’s chorus. It sent me back to the piercingly lovely original. If you haven’t listened to it in a while, do.
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After “Adolescence,” I needed some laughter. “The Studio” gave me plenty of it. A new cringe comedy on Apple TV+, it plucks low-hanging fruit — the commercial desperation of the modern movie industry — but with frequent cleverness and satisfying cameos. While the most recent, third episode was a letdown, the first two showed great promise.
On a Personal (And Only Partly Regan) Note
Even when it’s stiflingly hot or numbingly cold, even when I could have used some extra sleep or am seriously pressed for time, I cherish my early morning walk with Regan and try not to hurry it. That’s not mainly because it keeps her healthy and happy. Or because nature always has gifts in store: the perfume of autumn leaves, the blooming and birdsong of the present season, the graceful white-tailed deer all year round.
It’s because of the opportunity that those walks provide for a kind of psychological cleansing, a cognitive clarity. Away from the laptop that whispers to me of unanswered emails, from the domestic and professional messes that demand cleanup, from the various people who metaphorically tug on my sleeve, I can hear my thoughts. I can think them in the first place. I realize the solution to a problem that was vexing me. I find the language for a sentence that wouldn’t come.
All it took was some calm and some concentration.
Modern life is the enemy of both, as Kevin D. Williamson observed recently in an excellent essay, “The Gift of Concentration,” in The Dispatch. The rich merchants of cheap stimulation have made sure of that. “Commercially speaking, the hardest thing to do is to leave people alone with their own thoughts — hence the bloopity-bleepity toys, the constant screens and smaller screens to distract us from the larger ones, the too-loud restaurants, the too-wired and too-plugged-in libraries, the debased liturgies and abandoned churches, the ‘Three Stooges’-level political discourse,” Williamson wrote.
I nodded as I read. I resolved to increase the books and decrease the web surfing in my life. And I longed for the next dawn — for grabbing Regan’s leash and tucking doggy treats into one of my pockets, for the metronome of my steps, for the refuge of the woods and the minutes and miles of unpolluted, undiluted thinking.
Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Age of Grievance” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter. Instagram Threads @FrankBruni • Facebook
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