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July 2, 2026

Will Matsuda for The New York Times

Notable

Amy Coney Barrett is the lightning rod. “Not only is it antidemocratic to leave agencies — which possess enormous lawmaking and law-enforcement powers — in the hands of unelected bureaucrats who aren’t accountable to elected officials; we don’t even get the benefit of nonpartisan, technocratic expertise.”

— David French, an Opinion columnist, in conversation with Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for Opinion

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The Court’s transgender sports decision is about something deeper. “They are arguing about who should be seen, whose story ought to be heard and who deserves to be protected.”

— M. Gessen, Opinion Columnist

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Can’t Madonna just grow old? “Madonna, who for so long was pushing the boundaries of what women could and should be able to do, has instead become the most powerful avatar of our terror of aging.”

— Glynnis MacNicol, a contributing Opinion writer

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Spotlight

Martin Schoeller for The New York Times

13 Ways to Be George Washington

How a coterie of men are trying to bring one of America’s founding fathers into the present.

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ICYMI

We need to retrofit the whole planet. The heat wave proves it. “One lesson of these pummeling, sequential extreme temperature events — one heat dome after another after another — is that we’re going to have to do an awful lot to make a future punctuated by so many more of them manageable. Air-conditioning is not a cure-all for the problems of extreme heat.”

— David Wallace-Wells, an Opinion writer

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More in Opinion

Guest Essay The World Has Failed the Uyghurs If the global community can’t stop China’s atrocities against the Uyghurs, it must help us keep our culture alive in exile. By Tahir Imin

Guest Essay You’re Going to Get Hacked. The Only Solution Is to Abandon Your Shame. “So what?” needs to be our response to the salacious, titillating and terrifying hacks that could come our way. By Juleanna Glover

Guest Essay LeBron Can Go Home Again James doesn’t need another championship ring or another record. He needs to be loved more. By Kevin Merida

Jessica Grose The Gap Between the Families We Have and the Ones Conservatives Want It makes absolutely no sense to create a definition of marriage that excludes the desires and ideals of a substantial majority of Americans. By Jessica Grose

Nicholas Kristof U.S.A.I.D. Cuts Killed People. That’s the Truth. Musk insists that his demolition of humanitarian aid didn’t cost lives. So I propose he take a trip with me. By Nicholas Kristof

In Your Words

Re: “Is Kidmaxxing the Ultimate Status Symbol for Ultimate Wealth?”

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