december 1962

Updated on July 23 at 8:35 a.m. ET

Easy to miss amidst the continuing fusillade of racist remarks from the White House was a remarkable Washington Post story this weekend:

President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for sweeping budget cuts if he wins a second term in the White House, five people briefed on the discussions said, a move that would dramatically reverse the big-spending approach he adopted during his first 30 months in office. Trump’s advisers say he will be better positioned to crack down on spending and shrink or eliminate certain agencies after next year, particularly if Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives.

If Trump is really contemplating large cuts in a second term, it’d be very strange. But the idea of a serious fiscal-conservative turn after 2020, no matter how unlikely, does raise a larger question: What exactly would be the point of a second Trump term?

The Vermont lake was the perfect setting for a mother-daughter day. The mother packed water and towels. The daughter, an excitable young girl, shoved cheese sticks into a cooler. When the two arrived at the beach, they swung the cooler between them as they walked to the water.

But the mother’s smile was strained, because the day of family fun would be closely watched. Joining the pair was Sharon Lamb, a psychologist who evaluates parents and makes recommendations to family courts regarding whether their rights to their children should be terminated. The daughter had been in foster care for two years, and her mother was in danger of losing custody permanently. Lamb was there to help determine whether the mother could be considered fit to parent.

Late morning on Tuesday, July 23, the denouement in Boris Johnson’s lifelong quest for political power will be revealed, when the committee that has organized the Conservative Party’s leadership election will announce the winner of the race to replace Theresa May. The following day, the winner—Johnson is the heavy favorite—will be driven to Buckingham Palace for an audience with the Queen, and be formally appointed prime minister.

It will be the culmination of seven weeks of national campaigning in which Johnson has slowly and cautiously closed in on the prize. Yet in reality it has been a 40-year pursuit, relentlessly driving forward, each step a mere prelude to the next on his seemingly unstoppable rise.

Raj Chetty got his biggest break before his life began. His mother, Anbu, grew up in Tamil Nadu, a tropical state at the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. Anbu showed the greatest academic potential of her five siblings, but her future was constrained by custom. Although Anbu’s father encouraged her scholarly inclinations, there were no colleges in the area, and sending his daughter away for an education would have been unseemly.

But as Anbu approached the end of high school, a minor miracle redirected her life. A local tycoon, himself the father of a bright daughter, decided to open a women’s college, housed in his elegant residence. Anbu was admitted to the inaugural class of 30 young women, learning English in the spacious courtyard under a thatched roof and traveling in the early mornings by bus to a nearby college to run chemistry experiments or dissect frogs’ hearts before the men arrived.

In the early 1980s, a group of menacing outsiders arrived at the gates of American corporations. The “raiders,” as these outsiders were called, were crude in method and purpose. After buying up controlling shares in a corporation, they aimed to extract a quick profit by dethroning its “underperforming” CEO and selling off its assets. Managers—many of whom, to be fair, had grown complacent—rushed to protect their institutions, crafting new defensive measures and lodging appeals in state courts. In the end, the raiders were driven off and their moneyman, Michael Milken, was thrown in prison. Thus ended a colorful chapter in American business history.

Or so it seemed. Today, another effort is under way to raid corporate assets at the expense of employees, investors, and taxpayers. But this time, the attack isn’t coming from the outside. It’s coming from inside the citadel, perpetrated by the very chieftains who are supposed to protect the place. And it’s happening under the most innocuous of names: stock buybacks.

Pity Matt Hancock. Until this summer, Britain’s health minister was best known for creating a smartphone app for his constituents—and naming it after himself.

Now he is the most obvious instance of a growing political trend: the self-abasing outrider. No U-turn has been too big to stay in favor with Boris Johnson, the man who will likely be Britain’s next prime minister. This type of abasement is inevitable under a leadership based on charisma rather than strategy: You can see it in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party here in Britain, as well as Donald Trump’s Republicans. Self-abasing outriders are a symptom of a party with an identity crisis. And yet we might still regret their disappearance.

Let’s spend a little time with Matt Hancock, though, because he provides a perfect example of the trend. The moderate Remainer initially ran for the Conservative leadership himself, before pulling out (too few other lawmakers supported him) and quickly swinging behind Johnson, a Brexiteer who is the clear front-runner. Within weeks, Hancock’s reprogramming was complete. Asked why Johnson would not back Britain’s ambassador to Washington in the face of attacks from Donald Trump, Hancock refused to answer the question more than a dozen times. In the hope of getting a promotion, Hancock volunteered to be Johnson’s human shield: the all-but-guaranteed prime minister did not himself give a televised interview until after the ambassador had resigned.

In the 1970s, a time when tens of millions of unwanted dogs were being euthanized in the United States annually, an orthodoxy began to take hold: Spay and neuter early. Spay and neuter everything. It’s what vets were taught. It’s what responsible pet owners were told to do.

A growing body of research, however, suggests that spaying and neutering—especially in some large breeds when very young—are linked to certain disorders later in life. “As time has gone on, vets are starting to question the wisdom,” says Missy Simpson, a veterinary epidemiologist with the Morris Animal Foundation, which recently published a study that found higher rates of obesity and orthopedic injury in golden retrievers that had been fixed. Other studies have linked early spaying and neutering to certain cancers, joint disorders, and urinary incontinence—though the risks tend to vary by sex, breed, and living circumstances. As such, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) now says in a guide for veterinarians, “There is no single recommendation that would be appropriate for all dogs.”

When I was about 5 years old, I learned I was American. I was sitting at a Japanese restaurant a few blocks from my parents’ apartment in Manhattan. I remember the exact moment, though I can’t remember what had led to it. Maybe I’d parroted some comment about what Americans are like that I’d heard one of my immigrant family members make, and my mother felt the need to set the record straight. I’m not sure. But I remember that my mother got a funny look on her face and said, in French, “You know, you’re American, too.”

On the walk home, I cried. Not tears of joy. I wondered if this could really be true, that I was American, and I was told there was no doubt about it, since I was born in New York.

CONCORD, N.H.—Don’t get your hopes up.

That’s the message voters in the nation’s first primary state have for Democrats looking to Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress this week as a game-changing moment in the drive to impeach President Donald Trump.

“I don’t think it’s going to make a difference. I wish it would,” said Lin Van Allen, 66, a retired nurse who saw Elizabeth Warren speak in her hometown of Peterborough earlier this month. “I keep thinking something will happen to change things, and it never does.”

The former special counsel will sit before two House committees on Wednesday, reluctantly appearing under subpoena in what has been billed as one of Congress’s most highly anticipated hearings in years. Democrats have demanded that Mueller appear in person so they can press him to elaborate on the findings in his 448-page report on the Trump campaign’s role in Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by the president. They also want him to answer questions about Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the report. The Mueller investigation found insufficient evidence to conclude that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the election, but it pointedly did not exonerate the president of committing obstruction of justice in his efforts to thwart the probe into the 2016 election.