Excerpt: The couple always knew this could happen, he said. But everyone would say not to worry. Jeremy is white.

Other people who are not white and have fled persecution in their home countries are in a much more difficult situation, the men and their friends acknowledge. Those undocumented immigrants do not have friends with the governor’s office in their contacts. They cannot reach a member of the state Senate so easily. They do not have the money for a lawyer or a quick flight to France.

They also cannot risk telling their story. That’s why Rick and Jeremy will keep telling theirs.

Me again: They survived, and Jeremy isn’t being tortured in a Salvadoran prison, so this is good news, or as good as the news gets in 2025. But Trump & the Republicans got what they want — a productive member of society, his family, and his business all driven out of the country.

Excerpt: For many people, this is one of the more baffling aspects of the whole episode. Why would an insurgent right want to remove a director general who was the former deputy chair of Hammersmith and Fulham Conservatives and a head of news who had done so much to tilt BBC output towards a Reform agenda? Why would they want to undermine a leadership that had presided over Gaza coverage that, according to the Centre for Media Monitoring, systematically amplified Israeli narratives and minimized Palestinian suffering? Why would they want to weaken a director general who refused to transmit a documentary on the targeting by Israeli forces of medical staff in Gaza — subsequently shown by Channel 4 — whose removal from the BBC caused significant disquiet, including among BBC staff?

The short answer is that the BBC could never do enough to satisfy its enemies on the right, who are as exercised by what the BBC represents — a ‘public service’ model in an increasingly commercial media landscape — as they are by what it says or does.

Excerpt: The right’s gripe isn’t just that trans people exist, but that their existence is tearing down the old world — of good men, obedient women, traditional family structures — and unleashing a new, godless age of chaos and precarity on you. Never mind that this idealized past of “American values” never existed. Trump and his allies stoke the fear of a false history’s destruction so they can, as Butler writes, “enter as forces of redemption and restoration.”

Excerpt: The rule of law is being killed alongside these men in these boats. Admiral Alvin Holsey — the four-star admiral overseeing these operations — resigned because the boats weren’t showing immediate hostile intent. Colombia says we’re killing their fishermen. Ecuador released survivors for lack of evidence. Congress hasn’t authorized any of this. The Constitution hasn’t been consulted. Just Hegseth ordering strikes and posting videos while the legal framework that makes civilization possible burns alongside the boats.

Excerpt: Despite his braggadocio, Trump appears to have left no substantive mark in the collective memory of his graduating class. Efforts by media outlets — including the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Daily Pennsylvanian and this magazine — to locate Penn classmates with vivid memories of Trump’s tenure proved largely fruitless. He was involved in no known extracurriculars, rarely socialized on campus, and didn’t even submit a yearbook photo. One classmate, Louis Calomaris, told the Boston Globe that he remembered Trump standing up in class and declaring, “I’m going to be the king of New York real estate.” prompting eye-rolls from his classmates. “Sit down, you [expletive],” Calomaris remembered thinking.