Excerpt: What has changed is simple: people are scared of crossing Trump this time. In researching this piece, I interviewed dozens of figures, including lawmakers, private sector executives, retired senior military figures and intelligence chiefs, current and former Trump officials, Washington lawyers and foreign government officials. Such is the fear of jail, bankruptcy or professional reprisal, that most of these people insisted on anonymity. This was in spite of the fact that many of the same people also wanted to emphasize that Trump would only be restrained by powerful voices opposing him publicly. At times, it has felt like trying to report on politics in Turkey or Hungary.

Excerpt: Before the 1970s, vague anti-loitering and anti-vagrancy laws widely allowed police officers to arrest people in public spaces — often people of color or the homeless — on a whim.

The laws were used to regulate the movements and public behaviors of Black people and immigrants across the country, said Michael Benediktsson, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College and the author of “In the Midst of Things: The Social Lives of Objects in the Public Spaces of New York City.”

But in the early ’70s, the Supreme Court ruled that these laws were unconstitutional. “That’s when you see more of a turn to hostile urban design and planning as a means of achieving the same objective,” Dr. Benediktsson said.

Excerpt: My rules were simple: without being rude, I would quickly deflect all questions about wellbeing, weather, transport or children’s academic achievements and offer instead something I found genuinely interesting.

When a barista asked, “How are you enjoying the sun?” I pivoted to, “I like spring, but autumn is my favorite season. What about you?” At a writer’s event, when a woman commented that her kids were out of school, I asked: “What was your favorite subject to study?”

The results were astonishing. Most people weren’t just willing to play along; they seemed relieved. It turned out I wasn’t the only one who felt like small talk was an awkward and forced ritual.