I wonder what, in the end, persuaded Senator Susan Collins that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had the right stuff to be the official steward of Americans’ health.
Was it his past assertion that the coronavirus had been engineered to spare Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews? Or his comparison of Americans being pressured to get Covid-19 vaccines to Jews in Nazi Germany?
Was it his overwrought and irresponsible vaccine alarmism? His failure during a recent Senate hearing to distinguish between Medicare and Medicaid? Or the chilling words of his cousin Caroline Kennedy, who felt so strongly about his nefariousness that she bucked her customary reserve, came out publicly against him, called him a predator and recalled how he made a merry show of putting baby chickens and mice into a blender to feed his hawks?
He’s a crank and she’s a coward. Worse yet, she’s a bellwether. Make that a church bell, the kind that tolls when there’s a death. In this case, it marks the passing of any independence, any dignity, any scruples among Republicans in the Senate, who are letting President Trump have whomever he wants and seem poised to let him do whatever he pleases because it’s the easy path, the one that protects them from his rancor and retribution.
Collins has had a big, subservient week. She joined 51 of her fellow Republican senators in voting on Thursday to confirm Kennedy as the next secretary of health and human services. The previous day, she went along with the same 51 in voting to confirm the despot-loving Tulsi Gabbard as the new director of national intelligence. (Senator Mitch McConnell was the lone Republican to oppose Kennedy and Gabbard, continuing his belated and meaningless rousing of a conscience that slumbered through Trump’s first term in the presidency.)
Collins’s obeisance is especially significant because she was once thought to be a potential holdout against Trump’s most reckless appointments and rapacious behavior, a moderate who would moderate him. I remember conversations just months ago in which political observers speculated that because of her and a handful of other skeptical Senate Republicans, Trump would have to resort to trickery — maybe recess appointments, perhaps the designation of “acting” cabinet members who didn’t need Senate approval — to get any outlandish picks for top jobs across the finish line.
What innocent days those were. Apart from the sacrificial demise of Matt Gaetz’s bid to become attorney general, the auditions of Trump’s other absurd, provocative choices for crucial posts have been successful or seem destined to succeed, thanks to Republican senators’ abject capitulation. Those lawmakers have decided to disregard the Senate’s “advise and consent” role and to ignore what many of them really do recognize — in rare moments of honest reflection — as Trump’s wicked, dangerous ways.
Oh, they have their talking points. Their rococo rationalizations. They tell the world or themselves that they’re simply respecting the will of voters by giving a duly elected president his preferred team. That they’ll be keeping a close eye on how these unconventional department and agency heads perform. That they’ll speak up and step in if such intervention is required. (Pro tip: Don’t hold your breath.)
They say that presidents are typically permitted the cabinets they want. True. Also true: The cast that Trump has assembled for cabinet, cabinet-level and cabinet-adjacent jobs isn’t in the same time zone — the same galaxy — as typical.
Trump’s choice for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, has alleged a “complete Marxist takeover of the country,” extolled Christian nationalism and called for vilifying federal workers to the point where they’re too traumatized to come to the office. The Senate confirmed him last Thursday, with all 53 Republicans — yes, including Collins — voting in his favor.
For director of the F.B.I., Trump named Kash Patel, who sells pro-Trump merchandise, wrote a series of children’s books about “the plot” against “King Donald” and, in a (nominally) adult book titled “Government Gangsters,” compiled an enemies list of Trump’s supposed persecutors. Patel has threatened to put perceived allies of Joe Biden’s, including journalists, in jail. No matter: On Thursday, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send his nomination to the full Senate.
The moral free fall of Senate Republicans has been quite a show, with some especially memorable performances. I think of Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor who flaunted that credential while grilling Kennedy, and denouncing his anti-vaccine activism, during a Senate health committee hearing last month. But after that stirring pantomime of grave concern, Cassidy chose a rubber stamp over a stethoscope and voted to advance Kennedy. Better to inter the Hippocratic oath than to incur Trump’s wrath.
I think of Joni Ernst, a combat veteran who supposedly cares deeply for the U.S. miliary, who talks frequently about being a survivor of sexual assault and who has made advocacy for other abused women a cornerstone of her political identity. No matter: She backed Pete Hegseth to become defense secretary despite many reports (including his own mother’s) of his misogyny and despite his utter lack of preparation for the job. That’s what Trump wanted. And Ernst dares not displease Trump.
I think of Collins. She in fact did vote against Hegseth, but that was apparently less a bold stand than a last gasp. She’s no doubt nervous about next year, when she’s up for re-election: mustn’t motivate the MAGA brigade to come after her. But what’s the point of the office if you’ve junked your principles to cling to it? And what’s to become of a Congress — of a country — that watches a disaster unfold and convinces itself that submission is the prudent response?
For the Love of Sentences
At the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, blondes do not have more fun. And gentlemen (judges) don’t prefer them. If those dad-joke groaners haven’t repelled you, here’s what inspired them (and deserves much better): a recent article in The Times by Sarah Lyall about the apparent impossibility of securing the Westminster crown as a golden retriever. Not one has ever prevailed. In contrast, Sarah wrote, “Pekingese, who to the untrained eye look less like dogs than majestic ambulatory hairpieces, have won six times.” (Thanks to Maureen Mayer of Montclair, N.J., and Dottie McFalls of Earlysville, Va., among others, for nominating this.)
In subsequent commentary on the Westminster competition as it unfolded, Sarah introduced the Lagotto Romagnolo breed, “whose name could be that of a type of pasta, but is not.” Gazing out at all the furry specimens around her, she added, facetiously: “There are six retrievers over in the retriever section, including the delightfully named Duck Tolling Retriever,” who “likes to extort money from ducks when they try to cross the pond.” (Howard J. Radzyner, Manhattan)
Also in The Times, Clay Risen memorialized the writer Tom Robbins, who died on Sunday: “Though he was often identified as a Seattle writer, he was born and raised in the South, and even 50 years after moving to the Pacific Northwest, a bit of a twang remained — long i’s becoming ahs, g’s droppin’ like mayflies.” (James F. Wood, Golden, Colo., and Dan Humiston, McKinleyville, Calif.)
Kevin Roose worried that when it comes to regulations, the stately metabolism of institutions is no match for the velocity of A.I.: “It feels, at times, like watching policymakers on horseback, struggling to install seatbelts on a passing Lamborghini.” (Conrad Macina, Landing, N.J.)
And Mia Leimkuhler mulled culinary marriages: “With all due respect to steak and lobster, I think the best surf ’n’ turf combination is chicken and anchovies. It’s an opposites-attract situation: The chicken is large and plump with a soft-spoken umami; it says: ‘How nice to meet you. I’m looking forward to working together.’ Anchovies, scrawny and electric with salty savoriness, kick in the door, press play on the boombox and say: ‘I’m here. Let’s do this.’” (Jo Wollschlaeger, Portland, Ore., and Sandy Shroyer, Montpellier, France.)
In The Washington Post, Tom Sietsema enjoyed the end of his meal at the restaurant Elyse: “Both desserts are light, not too sweet and as easy to like as pandas and Dolly Parton.” (Harry Goll, Lutherville, Md.)
Also in The Washington Post, Sally Jenkins tallied the virtues of the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback (and Super Bowl M.V.P.) Jalen Hurts: “You want a guy who can throw deep to a receiver half a field away and drop the ball gently into the hamper of his arms? Check.” (Dan Kelly, Daly City, Calif.)
Erik Wemple used the occasion of a MAGA hallucination about government funding of Politico Pro to explain that news services’ nature and market: “Politico Pro stories are so inside baseball that they could be made of cork.” (Jeff Herzbach, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and George Gale, Peru, N.Y.)
And Matt Bai doubted DOGE: “Everything about its mission seems squishy and suspect, like a bargain hotel pillow.” (Ann Walker, Philadelphia)
In National Review, Philip Klein did not foresee a Gaza Riviera: “President Trump has developed a reputation for zigging when everybody else says it’s time to zag. But when it comes to the plan he just outlined for Gaza, it’s more like one side is zigging, another is zagging, and he just busted into the White House East Room and shouted ‘hippopotamus!’” (Linda Hoffman, Georgetown, S.C.)
And in The Boston Globe, Christopher Muther recalled someone’s awkward attempt to turn his cruise ship into a love boat: “One night, a female passenger began getting handsy with me, so I informed her that she was barking up the wrong homosexual.” (Eric Van Loon, Concord, Mass.)
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 Reading
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“The Pitt,” a new weekly drama streaming on Max, has so many similarities to — and so much common pedigree with — “ER” that it has been sued by the estate of one of that classic television show’s creators, Michael Crichton. But then it also has elements of “Grey’s Anatomy.” And “Chicago Med.” And “House.” Dramas set in hospitals vary only so much; what matters is whether they’re well written, directed and acted. “The Pitt” easily clears that bar. In her review in The Times, Margaret Lyons nailed its virtues and flaws, but I think I liked it more than she did — it has a stirring humanity, distilled in Noah Wyle’s gorgeously modulated performance as a doctor pushing past all the hurt around and inside him. It also feels utterly of this American moment. The overcrowded, underfunded emergency room at its center is parable and metaphor, a grand promise and noble idea teetering on the edge of complete dysfunction but held together, just barely, by people with no real choice but to make it through the next hour — and then the hour after that.
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I finally had a chance to see “A Complete Unknown” and was as impressed as the next moviegoer with Timothée Chalamet’s lead performance as Bob Dylan. But I was also wowed by how much Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro do with underwritten supporting roles. (Barbaro is up for an Oscar; Fanning should be but isn’t.) Better than any line in the screenplay, their characters’ expressions as they watch Dylan hammer home some of the movie’s central themes — about the distance between person and persona, about Dylan’s maddening remove from the people supposedly closest to him, and about the sudden stardust that a spotlight and a microphone can throw on someone.
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We correct for our excesses until our correction is excessive, then we overcorrect back in the opposite direction. That’s the story — or at least one story — of America, and in the new book “Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back,” which will be released on Tuesday, Marc Dunkelman argues that a current overcorrection is preventing us from completing infrastructure projects and even building basic housing. We’re letting too many people veto such projects; we’ve given them too many kinds of vetoes. Dunkelman is making an important argument with enormous stakes, and he’s not doing so from any rigid ideological perspective. His compass is common sense.
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I ever so occasionally ask you to indulge me in a moment of professorial pride. Here’s one of them. A current Duke student of mine, Jacqueline Cole, wrote this fascinating account — about how she and other undergrads became the unwitting cast in a Chinese public relations campaign — for the terrific North Carolina publication The Assembly. A former Duke student of mine, Sophie Riegel, contributes a regular column to Psychology Today; here’s her latest, on her determination to fail. I had zero to do with either article. I’m just rooting from the sidelines for two talented young people.
On a Personal (By Which I Mean Regan) Note
Regan often refuses to look at me when I bound down the stairs after a shower and tell her, “I’ll be back very soon.” She turns her head away. She’s pouting — and punishing me.
If she does meet my gaze, it’s with a poignant, pleading one of her own. “Why am I not enough?” she’s saying to me, wordlessly. “What could you possibly need out there in the world that we don’t have, the two of us, here in our home?”
Of course I’m inventing her emotions. I’m guessing. A dog is an ambiguous passage of prose open to many interpretations, a Rorschach that says more about the beholder than the blot. Hunger? That’s easy to identify; the dog paces near or noses her empty bowl. Hope? Fear? Maybe that’s what she’s signaling with the odd look in her eyes. Maybe she’s just gassy.
Lately, I’ve been thinking more than I usually do about the unreliability of my read of Regan because I want so badly to get her right. Her knee surgery was three months ago and she has made significant improvement, but to get her closer still to where she once was, do I push her for another quarter mile on our morning walk? Or surrender to her slowing gait? It’s possible she’s in discomfort. It’s also possible she’s loafing.
I study the half-scrutable text of her tics. I split the difference: We’ll do another eighth of a mile. “Does that sound reasonable?” I ask her. I’m resigned to the absence of any answer, and I’m content. Just being with her is, indeed, enough.
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