[월:] 2025년 10월

The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration has become a campaign of discrimination against Latinos. Federal agents are rounding up people with brown skin, catching both U.S. citizens and legal immigrants in their dragnet. Some Latinos are now afraid to speak Spanish or listen to Spanish music in public. Some are missing Mass and staying home on Sundays, or asking friends to pick up their children from school. American citizens are living in fear of a government that is sworn to protect their liberties and keep them safe.

They have reason to fear. In President Trump’s anti-immigration blitz, federal agents have repeatedly violated civil liberties and humiliated people. Masked officials have shattered car windows and pulled out drivers, leaving children sobbing in back seats. In the middle of the night in Chicago, agents with rifles swarmed an apartment building, broke down doors and dragged people from their homes in handcuffs. Dozens of those taken away were U.S. citizens. Nationwide, immigration officials have detained more than 170 American citizens, including 20 held for more than 24 hours without the ability to make a phone call, ProPublica reported.

These actions are undermining the public trust that is necessary for effective enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. The behavior of federal agents is provoking an angry backlash in many of the communities that Mr. Trump claims he is trying to help. If all of this is supposed to convey a sense of renewed law and order, it is not working.

As is typical for Mr. Trump, he has identified a real problem — illegal immigration — but responded with a destructive solution. For decades, the United States tolerated a level of illegal immigration that fostered a sense of lawlessness at the border and frustrated many Americans, including many Latinos. The Biden administration’s porous policies worsened the situation, making possible the largest immigration surge in American history, with most of the arrivals lacking legal permission to enter the country. Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to reverse those policies, and he has an electoral mandate to do so. At the border, he has succeeded at reducing illegal entries to the lowest levels in decades.

Yet he does not have a mandate to treat people cruelly or to break the law himself. Polls show that most Americans disapprove of his handling of the issue. The country does not need to choose between the chaos of the Biden approach and the chaos of the Trump approach. The best solution remains a comprehensive law that secures the border, deters future illegal entries, expands legal immigration and provides a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized migrants who have made their lives in the United States and are otherwise law-abiding members of society. Short of that — and Congress shows no signs of passing such a law — Mr. Trump can address illegal immigration in ways that are both more humane and effective. This country needs to enforce its laws without terrorizing innocent Americans and abandoning its values.

Of the many problems with Trump immigration policies, two themes stand out: the brutality toward immigrants who are here illegally and the unfairness toward citizens and legal immigrants.

People who entered this country illegally often did so at great risk to themselves, seeking a better life in the United States. They violated the law, yes, but the response should be proportional to their crimes. It should be both firm and humane. Instead, the Trump administration has reveled in harshness. Masked, plain-clothed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have tackled and body slammed people on the streets. Officials have launched raids into homes, destroying people’s property.

In one video, a federal agent said to a group of Latinos, including a U.S. citizen: “You got no rights here. You’re an amigo, brother.” After that encounter, one agent told another, referring to the immigrants, “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.” In another video, an agent yelled “adios” to the concerned wife of a detained migrant before he shoved her into a wall and she collapsed. Other disturbing videos have filled social media.

The tactics violate both the law and human decency. On the legal side, recent court decisions have emphasized that people accused of being here without permission have a constitutional right to some due process. That right is to all of our benefit: If the federal government could simply say that someone is in the country illegally without having to prove the claim, it could deport anyone with impunity. On the human side, a vast majority of these migrants have done nothing worse than come to the country illegally, in search of a better life. Federal agents should respond appropriately, not with the expectation that violence is necessary.

The second problem with the Trump approach is that its breadth inevitably sweeps up U.S. citizens and other legal residents. Federal officials are relying on racial profiling in a country where 20 percent of the population is Latino, most of whom are legal residents or citizens. The administration is able to do so because of Congress’s acquiescence on the topic and a wrongheaded ruling that the Supreme Court issued last month, upholding the use of racial profiling in the raids.

The use of racial discrimination in law enforcement should be an affront to all Americans. Videos show that many federal agents believe that the burden of proof is on Latinos to show they are here legally, not on the government officials who are accusing them of a crime. During a raid in California, officials yanked George Retes, a U.S. citizen who served in Iraq, from his car and held him for three days. Mr. Retes said he had a government ID in his vehicle, but officials did not let him show it to them. Similar treatment befell Javier Ramirez in California, Julio Noriega in Illinois and an unnamed military veteran in New Jersey, among others.

Americans have responded to these problems with protests. As if to prove the protesters’ point, federal agents have reacted with more abuses of power, using tear gas and pepper balls on peaceful demonstrators. Even after a federal judge demanded an end to these practices, they have continued.

Federal agents’ masks exacerbate the problems. Agents with masks know they are more likely to get away with violence and abuses of power because they are anonymous. To the community, masks signal that the government cares more about protecting its agents’ identities than democratic accountability. They create a sense that the government is sending faceless storm troopers to terrorize families.

Despite its aggressiveness, the crackdown has not even been effective at dealing with the millions of people who are in this country without legal permission. The administration is missing its own deportation benchmarks. It is on pace to deport fewer people than the Obama administration did in some years. The Obama administration’s approach made sense. It focused on people who arrived recently and on those who had committed crimes since arriving in this country — and it typically respected people’s rights to due process. It did not resort to masked agents and violent raids.

What separates democracy from authoritarianism, the rule of law from lawlessness and a decent society from an indecent one is not just the goal but the process. The government can, and should, reduce illegal immigration, but it should do so in a way that upholds American ideals.

President Trump has demanded that the Department of Justice prosecute his political enemies. He has ordered his aides to use the fearsome tools of the law to investigate fund-raising by the Democratic Party and liberal groups who oppose him. He has spared his own supporters from the consequences of law breaking. And now, in a breathtaking act of self-dealing, he wants the department to hand over nearly a quarter-billion dollars of taxpayer money and place it in his personal bank account as payment for his personal grievances.

Given the eagerness of Justice Department officials to do his bidding, there is reason to expect he may get that money. One official authorized to approve the payment worked on Mr. Trump’s personal legal team, and another represented Trump allies. His Justice Department has already proved itself willing to put his interests above law and country.

Mr. Trump claims he is owed $230 million from the Justice Department as compensation for previous federal investigations of him, The Times reported on Tuesday. Those investigations looked into his refusal to turn over classified government documents he had taken from the White House and the contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.

The president’s conflict of interest in this situation is so broad as to have no parallel in American history. One ethics expert called it a “travesty.” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, called it “head spinning chutzpah.” Even Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge the bizarre nature of the demand that the government he controls pay him a fortune. “I’m the one that makes the decision, and that decision would have to go across my desk, and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself,” he said. But no sense of shame seems likely to stop his demand for payback. His promise to give the Treasury cash to charity adds to the outrage, given his record of exploiting philanthropy for personal gain.

He claims that he deserves the money because the investigations were unfair and he suffered great damage from them. But the inquiries were legitimate (unlike the two prosecutions he initiated against the former F.B.I. director James Comey and the New York attorney general, Letitia James).

Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference helped uncover at least 140 instances of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian nationals, WikiLeaks and their intermediaries. Mr. Mueller did not bring charges against Mr. Trump, but the report that Mr. Mueller wrote made clear that the investigation was a worthy one: Mr. Trump’s conduct “presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.”

The classified-documents case was also serious: Unlike other officials accused of improper handling of classified material, Mr. Trump repeatedly refused to return the documents when asked to do so and concealed how many he had kept. After leaving office, he also shared apparently classified information about American nuclear submarines with an Australian businessman during conversations at Mar-a-Lago, his private club.

The larger point is not about the two investigations or the supposed damage to him. Even if the cases against him had been weaker than they were and even if he could point to personal damage, he should not be using his power as president to award himself damages. Ordinary citizens can rarely obtain damages from the government even when they have been treated unfairly. And the Constitution bars the president from receiving any compensation from the United States other than salary and modest expenses. Having his appointees rubber-stamp a compensation claim is essentially giving him a blank Treasury check to sign.

His demand for a $230 million payment from American taxpayers fits with an unconscionable pattern of self-dealing by the president and his family. He hosted a dinner for people who bought the most Trump-branded cryptocurrency. His company, the Trump Organization, is collaborating on real estate projects with Middle Eastern countries that rely on the United States in many ways. He has engaged in similar conflicts of interests with Serbia and Vietnam. The list goes on and on.

Mr. Trump should not profit from his presidency. He should pay a political price for his brazen corruption. Instead, he is telling American taxpayers to pay a price, directly to him.

American politics today can seem to be dominated by extremes. President Trump is carrying out far-right policies, while some of the country’s highest-profile Democrats identify as democratic socialists. Moderation sometimes feels outdated.

It is not. Candidates closer to the political center, from both parties, continue to fare better in most elections than those farther to the right or left. This pattern may be the strongest one in electoral politics today, but it is one that many partisans try to obscure and many voters do not fully grasp.

The evidence is vast. Republicans have frittered away winnable races in Alabama, New Hampshire and elsewhere over the past decade by nominating extremist candidates, while Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican, is the only sitting senator who represents a state that reliably votes the other way in presidential elections. On the Democratic side, there are no progressives in the mold of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders who represent a swing district or state. Instead, the Democrats who win tough races work hard to signal to voters that they are less progressive than their party.

One way to see the pattern is to examine the 17 Democrats — 13 in the House, four in the Senate — who last year won in places that Mr. Trump also won. Moderation dominated their campaign messages. Ruben Gallego of Arizona mocked the term “Latinx” and was hawkish on immigration. Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas and Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada criticized other Democrats’ tolerance of illegal immigration. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Representative Pat Ryan of New York emphasized public safety and their national security backgrounds. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin bragged about taking on federal bureaucrats who had imposed needless regulation. Representative Jared Golden of Maine spoke of “opening up oil and gas production to lower fuel costs.” No progressive won a race as difficult as any of these.

Even Mr. Trump highlights the pattern. Extreme as he is in many ways, he moved the Republican Party toward the center on several key issues. He won the party’s nomination and the general election in 2016 partly by rejecting unpopular conservative positions on Social Security, Medicare and global trade. Last year he broke with prominent Republicans and said he would veto a national abortion ban. He also focused his 2024 campaign on areas in which the Democratic Party had moved left over the previous decade and was out of step with public opinion, such as immigration, transgender issues and parts of education policy. Voters noticed. Polls in 2024 showed that most voters considered their policy views to be closer to Mr. Trump’s than to Kamala Harris’s.

Mr. Trump’s victory over Ms. Harris was telling in another way. The moderation that has worked best in recent years is not a sober, 20th-century centrism that promises to protect the status quo. It is more combative and populist. It tends to be left of center on economics and right of center on social issues (with abortion being an exception). “Angry centrism is a very potent way to run,” said Lakshya Jain, a founder of Split Ticket, a political data firm. Rather than locating itself midway between the two parties, this new centrism promises sweeping change while criticizing the two parties as out of touch.

As Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio, said in a campaign ad last year, “America has gotten off course.” She cited “the far left ignoring millions illegally crossing the border and trying to defund the police” and “the far right taking away women’s rights and protecting greedy corporations at every turn.” Although Mr. Trump won her district by seven percentage points, voters re-elected her.

Apart from individual issues, many voters understand the importance of political independence for its own sake. A diverse, pluralistic nation depends on mutual understanding and regular compromise. Our political system works best when it includes politicians who are not beholden to either side’s orthodoxy and instead build coalitions to tackle major challenges. It is no coincidence that as the number of heterodox, compromise-oriented Democrats and Republicans has declined in Washington, Congress has become less functional.

These lessons are especially urgent for Democrats. Despite Mr. Trump’s rhetorical nods to the center, he is governing as a radical who rejects longstanding governing constraints and uses the power of the presidency to enrich his family, protect his allies and punish people he dislikes. He threatens American democracy, and congressional Republicans have been complicit. The Democratic Party, as a result, has become the only party of the country’s two major ones that respects basic republican traditions like the sanctity of elections and the constitutional system of checks and balances.

Yet many Americans see the Democratic Party as too liberal, too judgmental and too focused on cultural issues to be credible, and voters are moving away from it. “Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot,” The Times reported this summer. Perhaps most worrisome for Democrats, younger voters, nonwhite Americans and immigrants, all growing parts of the electorate, have shifted from the party.

Many progressives have tried to wish away these warning signs and insist that they can win by quietly retaining all their unpopular positions and emphasizing economic issues. But they cannot point to a single member of Congress or governor from swing districts or states who has pursued this strategy and won. Their favorite examples are all from deep blue parts of the country. The failure of the motivate-the-base approach is hiding in plain sight.

Georgia and Wisconsin have offered recent case studies. In Georgia, Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams, both Democrats, ran for statewide offices in 2022, making what NBC News called “two markedly different pitches to voters.” She ran a “bold progressive” campaign meant to “turbocharge progressive turnout,” while he put “a greater emphasis on courting the center” by emphasizing his independence and bipartisanship. He won his Senate race. She lost her race for governor, as she did four years earlier. Likewise, in Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes, a progressive Democrat with a history of supporting cuts to immigration enforcement and police funding, lost his 2022 Senate race, while Ms. Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers have won by running to the middle.

In an earlier era, Democrats’ denialism might not have been cause for national alarm. They could lose a few more elections and eventually find a path back to power, as they did after losing five of six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988. Government policy would be more conservative in the meantime, but American democracy would not be at risk.

The situation is different now. Anybody who views Mr. Trump as a threat to American values and the national interest, as this editorial board does, should be rooting for an opposition that can defeat him and his MAGA allies. Indeed, moving to the center would enable Democrats to confront him more aggressively and effectively because voters would see them as credible. To take one issue, most voters disapprove of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies — and nonetheless trust his party on the issue more than they trust Democrats. A more moderate Democratic Party would be better positioned to combat his outrageous violations of civil liberties.

The refusal of many Democrats to grapple with their party’s weakness is a political gift to Mr. Trump, and it should worry anybody who rejects his vision for the country.

We know that some readers will be skeptical of this argument. After all, isn’t Mr. Sanders turning out big crowds for his Fighting Oligarchy speaking tour? Hasn’t Ms. Ocasio-Cortez built a national following? Isn’t Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, favored to become the next mayor of New York City?

All these things are true, partly because millions of Americans are inspired by a bold progressive message. But they account for a small share of the country — disproportionately college-educated and white, according to the Pew Research Center — and are concentrated in safely Democratic areas like New York and California. They are not nearly numerous enough to flip the places required to win the presidency and Congress.

To understand what does win, we analyzed every House election last year. We defined House candidates as moderate, progressive or right wing, based on the groups that supported their campaigns. Candidates who received money from centrist groups like the Blue Dog PAC counted as moderates, for instance, and ones who received money from left-wing PACs like Justice Democrats counted as progressives.

Our main finding was that moderates in both parties fared better, on average, than candidates farther from the center:

This pattern helps explain the chart at the beginning of this editorial, showing that the only 16 House candidates to win in districts that their party’s presidential candidate lost were moderates.

We also analyzed the roughly 100 Senate elections of the past six years, which have produced every current U.S. senator, and found:

Senate candidates running on centrist messages often overperformed their party’s presidential nominees. This group includes the four Democrats who won states that Mr. Trump also won last year: Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Gallego, Ms. Rosen and Ms. Slotkin. It also includes Republicans like Ms. Collins, John Curtis in Utah and Larry Hogan, who lost a Senate election in Maryland but ran far ahead of other Republicans on the ballot.

The Senate’s two best-known progressives, Mr. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, received a smaller share of the vote in their states last year than Ms. Harris did. Mr. Sanders’s arc is instructive. Earlier in his career — when he took just as feisty a stance on the economy but spoke more about his concerns about immigration and support of hunting — he received more votes than the Democratic candidates at the top of the ticket. He no longer does. His story is a microcosm. Heterodox Democrats with some high-profile moderate positions can overperform without moving to the center on every issue.

Some of the strongest recent Senate candidates reject both parties’ labels. They are independents who avoid both Trumpist extremism and elite cultural progressivism. Senator Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, is one of them. He beat his Republican opponent last year by much more than Ms. Harris beat Mr. Trump in the state. Dan Osborn of Nebraska and Evan McMullin of Utah, two other independents, lost their recent Senate campaigns but ran far ahead of Democrats on the ticket. Mr. Osborn, a populist who has praised Mr. Trump’s border wall, resembles the old version of Mr. Sanders.

The researchers making that claim rely on data about candidate ideology that can have little connection to voter perceptions. It includes academic measures that encompass thousands of obscure congressional votes and campaign donations. The data ends up being so messy as to produce bizarre results. One measure rates Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two progressive heroes, as more centrist than the consciously moderate Mr. Warnock. Another index judges Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to be less progressive than Representative Ritchie Torres, whose positions on immigration and Israel anger the left. That these measures suggest ideology is unimportant says more about them than about political reality.

The true picture is that moderate candidates fare a few percentage points better, on average, than otherwise similar candidates. The gap grows when comparing moderates with progressive Democrats or right-wing Republicans. In today’s divided America, even a few percentage points can be the difference between victory and defeat.

That said, individual candidates can do only so much to distance themselves from their party’s image. Democrats are in such a weak position today — with Republicans holding the White House, the Senate, the House, most governorships and most state legislatures — largely because of the unpopularity of their brand. Retaking control of the Senate seems particularly daunting, with Democrats needing victories in states where they are often uncompetitive today, like Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. After 2030, the Electoral College may also become harder to win because the population has shifted to purple and red states.

These problems underscore the biggest potential benefit of moderation for Democrats. Polls show that most voters see the Democratic Party as too left wing and too focused on niche issues. Were that to change, the party could start winning in many more places.

Recent history demonstrates that a party can change its image. These transformations typically happen through presidential campaigns. The most successful presidential candidates of the past few decades made concerted efforts to counter what voters saw as their party’s ideological excesses and lifted the entire party in the process.

Bill Clinton was known for triangulation, including through his notorious criticism of the singer Sister Souljah, and he ended the Democrats’ 1980s losing streak. George W. Bush promised “compassionate conservatism.” Joe Biden in his 2020 campaign asked, “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?”

Barack Obama might have spent more time signaling his moderation than any other recent president. He spoke of worshiping an awesome God, criticized companies for undercutting wages by hiring “illegal workers,” said he was open to restrictions on “late-term abortions,” angered teachers’ unions by favoring accountability measures, initially opposed same-sex marriage, argued that his daughters should not benefit from affirmative action, criticized government waste and was hawkish on many military matters. He is also the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a majority of the popular vote more than once. The party has moved significantly to the left since Mr. Obama left office.

Crucially, winning candidates find salient ways to signal to voters that they are not captive to their party’s dogma. They buck it and withstand criticism from their own side — criticism that then conveniently underscores their independence in voters’ minds. Mr. Trump’s rise was possible because he recognized that most voters did not want Social Security cuts or mass immigration (two policies that many corporate Republicans favor), let alone a national abortion ban. The extremism of his second term can shroud the savvy of his politics.

That extremism offers an opportunity to the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump is governing in ways that put the Republican Party out of step with public opinion on taxes, health insurance, abortion, immigration, executive power and more. If Democrats were willing to be less ideological — less beholden to views that many liberal activists, intellectuals and donors genuinely hold but that most Americans do not — they would have the opportunity to build the country’s next governing majority.

Moderates are hardly blameless here. They have too often promoted a bland technocratic centrism and backed uninspiring candidates, including Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris. Political moderation does not need to be boring. Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton and John F. Kennedy — moderates, all — inspired voters with visions for the country that felt fresh and nonideological. They artfully used emerging forms of media. They won over people who were not political junkies. They understood that moderation was both necessary and far short of sufficient.

Ultimately, moderation is about respect. Politicians do not need to heed every bit of public opinion. They can sometimes attempt to forge a new consensus. But they cannot dismiss views held by most Americans as uninformed and insist that one day the ignorant masses will come around. When politicians try that, voters usually choose an alternative, even a destructive one. Today that destructive alternative has arrived. The antidote is a creative, re-energized political center.

Russia has launched a new and dangerous campaign of provocation against NATO. Over the past six weeks, it has sent drones over Poland and Romania and flown fighter jets into Estonia. Russia was also very likely behind drone flights that disrupted activity at airports in Denmark, Belgium and Germany. President Vladimir Putin has unconvincingly denied responsibility for all these acts and in fact seems happy for the world to believe Russia is behind them.

His goals are to scare, exhaust and divide Europeans, causing them to question their support for Ukraine and undermine its efforts to repel Russia’s invasion. Ultimately, he also wants to make the United States look weak and fragment the NATO alliance. Responding wisely to him is vital for Washington and Europe. It is not easy. Striking back hard risks escalating conflict, while doing nothing conveys a weakness that invites future aggression.

NATO allies are aware that Russia is testing them and so far have done a good job of responding. They have denounced the incursions, forthrightly blamed Russia for them and met this month in Copenhagen in a show of unity. “We are not at war,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said recently, “but we are no longer at peace either.”

There is more to do. European leaders should make clear that Russian aggression against NATO countries risks a forceful response, including the shooting down of drones — as the West has already done — and potentially of Russian fighter planes that enter NATO airspace.

The United States and its NATO allies should also use the new Russian aggression as a reason to increase their support for Ukraine, sending the message that Mr. Putin’s attempt to weaken Western resolve has backfired. The visit this Friday of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to the White House is an opportunity for President Trump to commit to new military and economic aid for Kyiv.

All these responses bring risks, including the dangers of escalation. By now, though, the world should know that there are no safe options with Mr. Putin. Ignoring or downplaying his aggressions encourages more of them. If he comes to believe that he can menace Poland, Estonia and other NATO members without consequence, he will become bolder about doing so.

“We must not only react, we must deter,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president. “Because if we hesitate to act, the gray zone will only expand.” She is right. Sometimes, the best way to prevent military escalation is to draw a firm line.

The latest Russian provocations began on Sept. 9 with more than a dozen drones that crossed into Poland after having flown over Belarus and Ukraine. Five days later, a drone crossed into Romania, near two Romanian fighters on patrol. Five days after that, three Russian MiG jets flew into Estonia.

Then came a mysterious intrusion of civilian drones around commercial airports. The week after the Estonian incident, several drones flew near two airports in Denmark in what the country’s defense minister called a “hybrid attack,” and officials briefly closed the airports to avoid the risk of a crash. Drones later disrupted air travel in Belgium and Germany.

NATO responded well to these provocations. The MiGs over Estonia created the thorniest problem because they raised the prospect of a military confrontation between human pilots. But Swedish and Finnish pilots engaged with the MiGs, and the Russian pilots stood down, leaving Estonia escorted by the NATO planes. The response to the drones was even more aggressive. A combination of Polish, Dutch, Italian and German pilots intercepted the drones flying over Poland, shooting down several of them. In Romania, pilots tracked the Russian drone, and it left NATO airspace on its own.

One downside to destroying drones is that it can be expensive. Some of the missiles that NATO used cost $1 million, many times more than a drone. To address this problem, NATO should expand the production of armed drones, develop more effective electronic warfare defenses against them and fund research into other countermeasures. Russian aggression should serve as a reminder that warfare is changing and that defense industries must change with it.

As for future intrusions by piloted Russian jets, some Eastern European countries are arguing for loosening the rules for how and when NATO pilots can confront Russian jets that enter alliance airspace. A mix of caution and firmness is the best course. Nobody wants direct conflict between NATO and Russia, but history shows that the use of force can lead Mr. Putin to pull back. In the mid-2010s, Russian jets sometimes flew over Turkey, and Turkey, a NATO member, told Russia to stop. Only after Turkey downed a jet did Russia retreat.

It is also important to respond in the theater that Mr. Putin cares about most: Ukraine. The incursions appear to have been partly a reaction to recent American equivocation. They came less than a month after an Alaska summit during which Mr. Putin succeeded in getting Mr. Trump to step back from his efforts to pressure Russia into accepting a cease-fire in Ukraine. Europe was rightly disappointed.

Still, if Mr. Putin thought that Alaska provided an opening to further divide the allies, he miscalculated. In response to the incursions, and perhaps thanks to the lack of diplomatic progress, Mr. Trump has expressed growing frustration. He said last month that Mr. Putin “has really let me down.” Mr. Trump also said that NATO planes should shoot down Russian aircraft that enter allied airspace and raised the possibility of new forms of support for Ukraine.

Already, he has authorized more intelligence sharing with Kyiv to heighten the effectiveness of its attacks, including those on Russian oil and gas facilities. Another option involves allowing Ukraine to get Tomahawk missiles. The missiles have a 1,000-mile range, and Ukraine could use them to strike deeper inside Russia.

Mr. Trump’s history of impulsiveness and his long record of coziness with Mr. Putin offer reasons to remain skeptical that this new posture will be a lasting one. On Thursday, the two leaders spent more than two hours on the phone together, and Mr. Trump described the conversation as “very productive.” They plan to follow up by meeting in Budapest soon.

That meeting will be an opportunity to draw a firm line. Russia’s recent aggression toward NATO shows that Russia’s war in Ukraine is about much more than Ukraine. It is about Mr. Putin’s revanchist ambitions in Europe. The only way to contain him is with resolute strength.

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.