[월:] 2025년 10월

You do not have to care about climate change to believe that clean energy is an important and strategic resource. Solar and wind power are now cheaper than coal in many places and sometimes cheaper than oil and gas. Clean energy sources help both hold down costs for Americans and prevent the United States from having to import so much foreign oil from countries hostile to our interests.

These advantages help explain why the right energy policy for the United States is an all-of-the-above strategy. The country should continue using fossil fuels like natural gas while shifting toward cleaner energy that does less damage to the planet. The combination can help Americans struggling with slow-growing incomes while also addressing climate change.

President Trump, however, has rejected the all-of-the-above approach in his second term. He is instead waging a war on solar and wind power. It is a mirror image of the strategy that conservatives criticize the fringes of the environmental movement for favoring. Rather than trying to put oil companies out of business, Mr. Trump is going after clean energy, and Americans will face higher bills as a result.

Mr. Trump signed a law in July that repealed the clean energy tax credits enacted by former President Joe Biden, eliminating hundreds of billions of dollars of investment into wind, solar and electric vehicles. Mr. Trump has also directed his administration to enact new regulations on clean energy and start specious investigations into its use, including one looking into bird deaths caused by wind turbines. His administration is trying to cancel wind projects off the coasts of Massachusetts, Maryland and Rhode Island, which would provide enough electricity to power more than a million homes. “Windmills, we’re just not going to allow them,” Mr. Trump recently said. Even some oil executives have criticized these moves as shortsighted.

Mr. Trump ran for president promising to reduce the cost of living and of energy prices in particular. He has failed so far. Inflation remains near 3 percent a year even as economic growth and job growth have slowed. Electricity prices are almost 10 percent higher than they were a year earlier, according to the most recent numbers. The main reasons for the electricity price surge have little to do with Mr. Trump and instead involve demand from A.I. data centers and supply constraints from the war in Ukraine. Yet the Trump energy policies are not helping — and will soon make matters worse.

Energy prices are likely to rise the most in states that have not prioritized clean energy, including Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma, experts say. The repeal of the tax credits alone may push electricity prices almost 10 percent higher than they would be otherwise by 2029, according to National Economic Research Associates, a consulting firm. Gas prices will also increase over the next decade, according to Rhodium Group, a think tank, as consumers who would otherwise have driven electric cars continue using vehicles that burn fossil fuels.

Mr. Trump’s approach to wind and solar is part of a larger story. It is, along with his tariffs, extreme immigration policies and attempt to take over the Federal Reserve, one more example of prioritizing ideology over the interests of American families.

Mr. Trump’s energy policy also weakens America’s global standing by giving a competitive edge to the country’s chief geopolitical rival, China. For years China has meticulously grown its clean energy industry with government subsidies and other policies. Chinese companies now produce 60 percent of the world’s wind turbines and 80 percent of solar panels.

Mr. Biden’s clean energy tax credits were meant to counter China’s moves. He understood that wind and solar would play an important role in the economy of the future, and that the United States should not let China control the global market. Mr. Biden’s approach was working, creating incentives for the private sector to build big clean-energy projects, including Toyota’s E.V. battery production facility in Liberty, N.C., and a Qcells solar panel manufacturing facility in Cartersville, Ga.

Low energy prices are also good for economic growth. If prices are higher here than in other countries, companies will invest less in America. Consider artificial intelligence: Technology companies are building data centers to power their bots’ processing abilities. These data centers use a lot of electricity. If energy supply cannot keep up with demand, America’s A.I. build-out will lag — again to the benefit of China.

The Trump administration argues that wind and solar are not reliable, and that has some truth to it. If the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, power cannot be generated. But this objection is mostly a canard. Advances in battery technology will allow the country to use wind and solar energy during off-hours. Wind and solar also do not have to generate electricity at all times. We have other forms of energy — nuclear, hydro, geothermal and, yes, fossil fuels — to handle the moments that wind and solar cannot. When a country is pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy, varying sources of energy complement one another. They increase overall supply and hold down prices for everybody.

We understand why the political right has sometimes been frustrated by the left’s skepticism of energy abundance. In both Europe and the United States, environmentalists who are rightly worried about the costs and dangers of climate change have at times imagined that the transition could happen more quickly than is realistic. In truth, oil and gas will be necessary to keep prices low and power the economy for years to come. But the political left is not the problem today. The Democratic Party under Mr. Biden expanded domestic oil and gas production while making major investments in clean energy.

The Republican Party has long denied the severe risks that climate change presents and stood in the way of sensible policies to address the extreme storms, flooding and heat that are already happening. Under Mr. Trump, Republicans have gone even further. They have become the party that stands in the way of lower energy prices for American households.

Under normal circumstances, Democrats’ fierce internal disagreements, clumsiness with messaging and lack of any megaphone that matches President Trump’s would convince me that they can’t win the government shutdown.

But under circumstances as abnormal as these? They have a shot, because whatever their ineptness, it’s rivaled by Republicans’ incoherence.

Consider a remarkable interview that Senator John Thune, the Republican majority leader, gave to Jordain Carney of Politico last week, as many federal workers were furloughed and many federal services were halted. Pressuring Democrats to shelve their demand that pending Medicaid cuts be restored and Affordable Care Act tax credits continued, Thune warned them that the shutdown was emboldening and unleashing Russell Vought, Trump’s dyspeptic director of the Office of Management and Budget, to proceed with his cherished dream of destroying programs that many voters hold dear.

“We don’t control what he’s going to do,” Thune said ominously.

Work with Republicans in Congress to save America from Republicans in the White House. It defines oxymoronic. Subtract the “oxy” and it fits that bill, too.

While Thune and other Senate Republicans insist that their Democratic colleagues pass legislation to continue funding the federal government and thus reopen it, Trump and Vought veritably cackle with glee about an “unprecedented opportunity” (the president’s words) to emaciate the federal work force and starve federal projects. Trump even posted a taunting, absurd video, set to the tune of the Blue Öyster Cult classic “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” in which Vought is the fearsome emissary of death — cape, hood, sickle and all. Trump taps a cowbell; Vice President JD Vance plays the drums. As I said: absurd.

So Republicans in aggregate are saying that it’s irresponsible of Democrats to interrupt the functioning of government, but that the government should perform many fewer functions. They’re presenting themselves as the protectors of government while staging an assault on it. With one hand, they’re wagging a finger at Democrats for inflicting temporary pain on Americans; with the other, they’re waving a pom-pom at the chance to inflict lasting pain on them. I guess both gestures involve extremities, but that’s where any consistency ends.

And they’re not doing any of the above quietly or slyly. They’re doing it flamboyantly and crudely, by which I mean on social media. They’re doing it punitively, as Trump and Vought exult in sticking it to programs favored by Democrats and states run by Democrats. By just the third day of the shutdown, the Trump administration had announced the elimination of nearly $8 billion for clean-energy projects in 16 states that voted last year for Kamala Harris, the freezing of $18 billion in funds for infrastructure projects in the New York metropolitan area and the freezing of another $2.1 billion for such projects in Chicago.

While such irreverence and vengeance have their ardent MAGA audience, they offer nothing to voters in the middle — you know, the ones who may well decide the most competitive House elections next year and who are smarting from, if not seething about, grocery prices that have not, as Trump promised, come down.

There’s at least some slender hope for Democrats here. I don’t think we’ll know for several days how the shutdown is really sitting with voters, whose feelings about it — including whom they deem culpable — will morph as it grinds on. But in a Washington Post poll last week, 47 percent of respondents blamed the shutdown on Republicans, while 30 percent blamed Democrats; another 23 percent weren’t sure.

A CBS News/YouGov poll published on Sunday showed a less stark difference in the apportionment of responsibility, though Republicans still fared worse. Thirty-nine percent of respondents faulted them, while 30 percent faulted Democrats.

But those numbers shouldn’t give Democratic leaders too much comfort. Recent history suggests that the party that prompts a shutdown — in this case, Democrats — is usually most bruised by it. In addition, the party’s reputation is in tatters. An average of recent polls gives Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, an approval rating of about 26 percent. Trump’s is above 40, and his methodical, mischievous, relentless domination of public attention makes it nearly impossible at times for Democrats to be heard, let alone to make their case.

Also, what is that case? They haven’t entirely worked out their talking points, in part because opinions differ sharply on what Democrats should emphasize. Their overarching protest against Trump’s authoritarian desecration of the Constitution and consolidation of power? Or their specific fight to preserve affordable health insurance for millions of Americans who could soon lose coverage because of the One Big, Beautiful Bill that Republicans passed several months ago?

I’m noticing more attention to the latter; it’s what Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, stressed on Sunday on the NBC News show “Meet the Press.” And there are risks to that approach, which sounds an alarm about an imminent but still theoretical disaster — only some of the dire consequences of Trump’s showpiece legislation can be felt already — while taking away federal services and federal workers’ paychecks in the messy here and now.

But Republicans can hardly shame Democrats for that when the Trump administration is focused on how many of those services and paychecks are needless. Besides which, Republicans are on the wrong side of public opinion about health insurance, a fact evident in Thune’s and other Republican lawmakers’ assurances (no doubt empty) that they’re willing to negotiate with Democrats about health care once the shutdown ends.

A KFF poll released on Friday showed that 78 percent of Americans supported the extension of A.C.A. tax credits while only 22 percent opposed it. Among independent voters, the split was 82 percent to 18 percent. That doesn’t tell me that Democrats will emerge from this face-off with tangible concessions from Republicans or — an equally important dynamic — that their standing with Americans will be improved by their stand now.

But it does tell me that the sadists in the White House should be doing less feting and more fretting.

Also in The New Yorker, Jessica Winter read the infamous Jeffrey Epstein birthday book so that you and I don’t have to: “Sometimes it’s like you’ve discovered a rich man’s contract with the devil, and next to his signature, he’s drawn a little penis cartoon.” (Matthew Ferraro, East Providence, R.I.)

Rachel Kushner recalled a long-ago episode of tress distress: “I was trying to get my hair to look like Candy Clark’s in ‘American Graffiti,’ poofy and playful. The effect was disastrous, my hair crimped weirdly, with sections shooting out in different directions like the discordant notes of an orchestra tuning up.” (Gail Saiger, Victoria, British Columbia)

And Kelefa Sanneh, reporting from a recent Bad Bunny concert, described an ecstatic fan who “danced so vigorously with a decorative plant that he seemed to be trying to pollinate it.” (Bob Marino, Paris)

In The Los Angeles Times, Christopher Goffard tried to make sense of a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s rambling: “As he sat down to face questions from the feds, his sentences traveled winding paths through vague precincts to fog-filled destinations.” (Robin April Dubner, Oakland, Calif.)

In The Guardian, Bryan Armen Graham commiserated with the polite subgroup of American fans at an annual Europe-versus-United States golf tournament, who were too often “drowned out by the performative tough guys in flag suits and plastic chains who treat the Ryder Cup like a tailgate with better lawn care.” (John LeBaron, Acton, Mass.)

In The Dispatch, Nick Catoggio regarded the marks that President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made to military leaders last week as “a case of two men who radiate neurosis about their own toughness lecturing a roomful of actual tough guys about how to be tough. It had the feel of Pop Warner players scolding a group of N.F.L. linebackers about the importance of hustle.” (Glen T. Oxton, Mamaroneck, N.Y., and John Sabine, Dallas)

In The New York Review of Books, Martin Filler puzzled over a loin-located leitmotif in the memoir of Gene Pressman, the Barneys heir: “Among other quirks, his fixation on male gonads verges on the pathological. This book mentions balls more often than all of Austen, Thackeray, Trollope and major league sports put together.” (Sarah M. Kraaz, Northampton, Mass.)

In The Atlantic, James Parker reflected on the disparate poetry of Louis Ginsberg and his son Allen, a Beat Generation icon: “It’s as if the father, with care and quiet formality, has chiseled open this discreet portal to the divine, only to watch his son go rocketing through it with his buttocks on fire.” (Nancy Qasim, Chicago, and Roberta Hatcher, Pittsburgh)

In The Times, Dwight Garner weighed in on “Shadow Ticket,” Thomas Pynchon’s first novel in 12 years: “Alongside Émile Zola’s ‘The Belly of Paris,’ it is perhaps Western literature’s Great Cheese Novel. (Though Pynchon often spells it ‘cheez.’) It’s as if he’s out to make America grate again. Whereas Zola sang of Brie ‘like melancholy extinct moons’ and compared a round of Gruyère to ‘a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot,’ Pynchon finds in the industrial production of curds and whey enough paranoia, satirical and otherwise, to power a midsize city, perhaps one in Wisconsin.” (Harry Kloman, Pittsburgh, and Mike Donohue, Wickford, R.I.)

Also in The Times, Sam Anderson evoked the magic when the movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s face lights up: “It is a smile that makes you feel as if the sun is setting over an undiscovered tropical beach on which 10,000 baby sea turtles are about to hatch.” (Kai Schmoll, Asheville, N.C., and Chris Watson, Barrington, R.I., among others.) Sam was equally dazzled by the bulking up that the already bulky star did for “The Smashing Machine,” his new movie: “His thickness here is unbelievable. Each of his thighs should probably be listed separately in the final credits.” (John FX Keane, New Providence, N.J.)

Tom Friedman despaired over Trump opponents who tell themselves that merely ranting on X or pressing “the like button on a post from their favorite liberal influencer” is effective: “Thank God social media was not around for the women’s rights or civil rights movements.” (Conrad Macina, Landing, N.J.)

And John McWhorter analyzed the president’s loopy language: “Even Trump’s most positive-sounding coinages are acts of a certain kind of verbal aggression. I sometimes stop to marvel that the House passed something with the actual official title the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act. That goofy bark of a name is a boisterous clap back against opposing views, an attempt to drown out inconvenient facts with braggadocio. It is a linguistic snap of the locker room towel.” (Matt Masiero, Richmond, Mass., and Sue Hudson, Simi Valley, Calif., among many 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.

The newsletter recently went on hiatus for two weeks because I joined my Times colleague Bret Stephens for the Times Opinion feature The Conversation. Bret and I have had three of these online chats so far; this was the most recent one, preceded by this and this. We’ll most likely be back with more later this month.

On Oct. 21 at Duke University, at the invitation of the Duke Disability Inclusion group, I’ll be discussing my 2022 memoir, “The Beauty of Dusk,” about my diminished eyesight after a rare stroke. You can find more details about the 11 a.m. event — which is free, open to the public and can be attended by Zoom — here.

On Nov. 10 at Duke University, as part of my “Independent Thinkers” series of conversations, I’ll interview Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat with an increasingly big profile in his party. You can find more details about the 6 p.m. event, which is also free and open to the public but has no Zoom option, and register for it here.

I tell myself that she and I are moving — or, rather, shuffling — in tandem, our weaknesses paradoxically forging a stronger bond. I tell myself that she’s acting, in an aptly doggy way, as my scout, my sentry, previewing for me the adjustments that growing older calls for, the patience it demands.

She’s closer now to 12 than to 11. For a 55-pound mix of Australian shepherd and Siberian husky, that’s getting up there. She has twice in the past year suffered serious leg injuries, twice had surgery, twice endured exacting recovery regimens of just so many minutes of walking this week and just so many more the next. She has shown remarkable resilience: On days when the mercury dips below 60 degrees, she can happily manage woodland hikes of three or so miles.

But a year ago it was five or even six. And she’d sprint this way and that, chasing a squirrel, chasing a phantom. That speed is gone. She paces herself.

When she walks upstairs at night for bedtime, she goes slowly, carefully, insisting that I be right behind her, one of my hands on her rear, a human guardrail against slippage. Downstairs, I’ve added several small rugs and carpet runners that have nothing to do with décor and everything to do with canine traction. Wood floors and old dogs don’t mix.

I look for signs that Regan is saddened or frustrated by all of this. I see none. Maybe that’s a function of my imperfect vision. Or maybe it reflects her perfect grace.