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historians of Vichy France suggest that collaboration is a problematic term. It tends to obscure — or, worse yet, judge — the actions and events it is meant to describe. The word is too broad in scope and too burdened by history to reflect the complex experience of everyday life in an occupied country.

“Accommodation” underscores the simple fact that whereas one chooses to collaborate, one does not at first choose to accommodate

many Republicans do not like having Mr. Trump in charge of their party, and will say so in private. But their political identity as Republicans runs at a level almost as deep as their national identity as Americans.

South Dakota is on the cusp of becoming the first state in the nation to require public school students to use facilities like bathrooms based on their “chromosomes and anatomy” at birth.

The so-called “bathroom bill,” which passed the state House in early February and is being debated by the state Senate Tuesday, marks a revival of the charged fights that played out in states across the country in 2015.

At least five other states have considered similar “bathroom bills” this session, and scores of other measures that LGBT rights advocates consider discriminatory are pending in legislatures around the U.S.

Ezra Klein: There used to be this idea that it was the Democratic Party that was chaotic and unpredictable in who it would nominate, in whether or not it would listen to its own governing or organizing institutions.

And now it’s Republicans where this anti-institutional force has overwhelmed the institutions. Do you think that’s true, and if so, why is it that Republican institutions are proving weaker?

Even people who get elected to high office on the right tend to be sort of inherently anti-institutional in the way they approach their voters. And I think it’s a problem.

Trump is not just winning; he is also redefining how politics is done. Out: policy speeches, white papers, paid media, the ground game. In: monologues, social media, free media, advance work on big rallies. Few politicians in history — Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mastery of radio and Ronald Reagan’s use of television come to mind — have more instinctually and effectively adapted to new communication methods.

justifications are not insane, but they are ultimately not persuasive. Trump has little history of changing or refining his views through study and policy advice. Many of his goals, while too foolish to implement, are too vivid to revise. Try to imagine President Trump backing down on building the great wall or halting Muslim migration.

On these matters, Trump is entirely unmoored and unpredictable. It is hard to justify a presidency, which would be dangerous and destabilizing in other ways, on odds this long

Sikh Soldier Allowed to Keep Beard in Rare Army Exception

On his first day at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Simratpal Singh sat in a barber chair where new cadets get their hair buzzed short, forced to choose between showing his faith and living it.

“Your self-image, what you believe in, is cut away,” he said in an interview. For a long time after, he would shave without looking in the mirror.That was almost 10 years ago. The cadet graduated, led a platoon of combat engineers who cleared roadside bombs in Afghanistan and was awarded the Bronze Star.

JEFF FLAKE, Senator from Arizona: At a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord and our dysfunction than by our own values and principles, let me begin by noting the somewhat obvious point that these offices that we hold are not ours indefinitely. We are not here simply to mark time. Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office and there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret because of the state of our disunion. Regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics. Regret because of the indecency of our discourse. Regret because of the coarseness of our leadership. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our, I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the new normal.

“Ambition counteracts ambition,” he wrote. But what happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition? What happens if stability fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability? If decency fails to call out indecency? Were the shoe on the other foot, we Republicans — would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats?

When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country, and instead of addressing it, goes to look for someone to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society. Leadership knows that most often a good place to start in assigning blame is to look somewhat closer to home. Leadership knows where the buck stops.

Full Transcript: Jeff Flake’s Speech on the Senate Floor

At a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord and our dysfunction than by our own values and principles, let me begin by noting the somewhat obvious point that these offices that we hold are not ours indefinitely.

Regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our, I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the new normal.

it’s true that trans-exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs, as they are known, are one minority that is actively not tolerated by the LGBTQ establishment, and often demonized by the gay community. It’s also true that they can be inflammatory, offensive, and obsessive

what interests me is their underlying argument, which deserves to be thought through, regardless of our political allegiances, sexual identities, or tribal attachments. Because it’s an argument that seems to me to contain a seed of truth.

the proposed Equality Act — with 201 co-sponsors in the last Congress — isn’t simply a ban on discriminating against trans people in employment, housing, and public accommodations (an idea with a lot of support in the American public)

the story of the convergence between Russia’s political culture and our own.

an essay from 2000 by Yuri Levada, a pioneering Russian sociologist, called “The Wily Man.” The essay was Levada’s attempt to understand why so many pathologies of the Soviet era — the propensity for double-think and an adaptive, accommodating response to power — persisted so powerfully in modern Russia.

In Levada’s telling, the wily man or woman “not only tolerates deception, but is willing to be deceived.” Indeed, says Levada, he even “requires self-deception for the sake of his own self-preservation.”

It has been more than two months since Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States, a historic moment for the country, as Harris is the first woman and the first woman of color to hold the second highest office in the land. Yet, Harris -- along with her husband, Georgetown Law professor Douglas Emhoff -- is still, ostensibly, living out of suitcases, unable to move into the private residence reserved for the vice president because it's still undergoing renovations.

It's unclear why the renovations are taking so long, said one administration official, but it's a situation that has left Harris increasingly and understandably bothered, according to several people who spoke to CNN about her situation. "She is getting frustrated," said another administration official, noting with each passing day the desire to move in to her designated house -- a stately, turreted mansion two-and-a-half miles from the White House -- grows more intense.

CNN has looked at various government contracts, awarded for myriad issues at the vice president's residence over the last few years, many of which detail intensive foundational work. From recently wrapped projects on a retention pond to a replaced tank system for $164,000 from last September, repairs and upkeep appear constant. There's also an ongoing $3.8 million contract for "plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors," according to the contract on the United States government spending website.

Trigger warnings migrated from feminist websites and blogs to college campuses and progressive groups. Often, they seemed more about emphasizing the upsetting nature of certain topics than about accommodating people who had experienced traumatic events. By 2013, they had become so pervasive—and so controversial—that Slate declared it “The Year of the Trigger Warning.”

he issue only got more complicated from there. Around 2016, Richard Friedman, who ran the student mental-health program at Cornell for 22 years, started seeing the number of people seeking help each year increase by 10 or 15 percent. “Not just that,” he told me, “but the way young people were talking about upsetting events changed.

He described “this sense of being harmed by things that were unfamiliar and uncomfortable. The language that was being used seemed inflated relative to the actual harm that could be done. I mean, I was surprised—people were very upset about things that we would never have thought would be dangerous.” Some students, for instance, complained about lecturers who’d made comments they disliked, or teachers whose beliefs contradicted their personal values.

while I freely acknowledge that there was more racism on the right than I was willing or able to see before the rise of Trump, there has been a distinct change in young right-wing culture. It is dramatically different from what it was when I was in college, in law school and starting my legal career.

As I survey the right — especially the young, so-called new right — I see a movement in the grip of some rather simple but powerful cultural forces. Hatred, combined with masculine insecurity and cowardice, is herding young right-wing men into outright bigotry and prejudice

they’re not strong or tough or courageous. They’re timid sheep in wolves’ clothing, moving exactly where the loudest and most aggressive voices tell them to.

Starmer’s course has been consistently set towards winning an outright Commons majority in 2024. When he was elected leader, he never settled for the two-term recovery many assumed he would need after the hammering Labour received at the 2019 election

Equally important is that the progressive prospectus he intends to offer is a national one, based on reunifying the class base of the Labour electorate rather than accepting its irresistible divergence into a delta of different political parties and traditions.

his is indeed Starmer’s aim, and that it is remarkably bold. It flies in the face of a considerable amount of conventional wisdom about 21st-century British electoral behaviour

in an effort to help, Dr. Paul the campaign psychologist is here to walk you through your five stages of political grief. And don’t worry about paying me. I’ll be reimbursed by Obamacare because a) Obamacare is not going to be repealed; and b) the GOP’s loss was a pre-existing condition.

you have to accommodate the rising American electorate. Face it: today is not the 50s you long for—(and for some right-wingers the 50s they long for is the 1850s). Latinos, African-Americans, younger voters, unmarried women: these are the pillars of the Obama majority. Why not pull one of those pillars out?

The voters rejected you. They’re just not that into you. They’re the pretty cheerleader and you’re the angry Goth kid. They are not going to date you—especially if you keep being so creepy to them. Accept that you had an historic opportunity and you blew it. Accept that in the worst economic environment in nearly a century you still couldn’t do what Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton did in milder recessions: defeat an incumbent president. And accept that you need to change. That’s right, just like in the bad teen movie, you, the angry Goth kid, can become the wholesome all-American teen.

middle-class neighborhoods do not really exist in Manhattan

“When we got here, I didn’t feel so out of place, I didn’t have this awareness of being middle class,” she said. But in the last 5 or 10 years an array of high-rises brought “uberwealthy” neighbors, she said, the kind of people who discuss winter trips to St. Barts at the dog run, and buy $700 Moncler ski jackets for their children.

Even the local restaurants give Ms. Azeez the sense that she is now living as an economic minority in her own neighborhood. “There’s McDonald’s, Mexican and Nobu,” she said, and nothing in between.

How much do Americans typically walk in a day? A study published in 2010 rigged up 1,136 Americans with pedometers, and concluded that we walk an average of 5,117 steps every day. (No surprise: that was significantly less than in other countries studied — both Australians and the Swiss walked around 9,600 steps daily, and the Japanese 7,100.)

It’s also widely assumed that we walk far less than our forebears, but that’s tough to prove — you won’t find much in the way of pedometer studies from the 19th century. But we can draw some conclusions from other information — like how many kids walk to school today versus the past. In the 19th century, of course, everyone walked to school, since buses didn’t exist and districts were designed to accommodate walking. By 1969 more than half of all school kids still walked to school. Today, it’s about 13 percent.

That 5,000 steps we take each day translates into about two and a half miles every day, or 900 miles per year. That’s not insubstantial. But I’m pretty sure the quality of our walks has also changed — when we move by foot today — at least in my experience and what I hear from others — it always seem to involve brief, intense tromps motivated by a single purpose. We walk to the garage to get to the car. We walk from the mall parking lot to Best Buy. We walk from Gate 4 to Gate 22 in Terminal B.

electric cars are currently a bit greener than gasoline cars — per mile. Driving one hundred miles in a Nissan Altima results in the emission of 90.5 pounds of greenhouse gases. Driving the same distance in an all-electric Nissan Leaf emits 63.6 pounds of greenhouse gases — a significant improvement. But while the Altima driver pays 14 cents a mile for fuel, the Leaf driver pays less than 3 cents per mile, and this difference, thanks to the law of supply and demand, causes the Leaf driver to drive more.

What do you expect when you put people in cars they feel good (or at least less guilty) about driving, which are also cheap to buy and run? Naturally, they drive them more. So much more, in fact, that they obliterate energy gains made by increased fuel efficiency.

The real problem with cars is not that they don’t get enough miles per gallon; it’s that they make it too easy for people to spread out, encouraging forms of development that are inherently wasteful and damaging … The critical energy drain in a typical American suburb is not the Hummer in the driveway; it’s everything else the Hummer makes possible — the oversized houses and irrigated yards, the network of new feeder roads and residential streets, the costly and inefficient outward expansion of the power grid, the duplicated stores and schools, the two-hour solo commutes.

The issue is not just whether the French model, which emphasizes integration or assimilation into a single identity, is succeeding or not these days. The question is also why the British and American experience with immigration is viewed through such a skewed lens.

Both countries have long traditions of tolerating multiple identities and community-based politics, which produces candidates who represent ethnic groups and their concerns.

what is it that makes the Anglo-Saxon model so scary to the French today? Emile Chabal, a professor of modern French history at the University of Edinburgh, traces it to France’s deeply held faith in a single, indivisible republic that makes no distinction among its citizens.

Fukuyama, you see, believed that just because we'd reached the end of history didn't mean we'd stay in the end of history. That peace and prosperity might not be enough for some people who would, "struggle for the sake of struggle" simply "out of a certain boredom" from living in a world that doesn't seem to have meaning or identity any more.

the white working class is letting out a wail across the Western world against a political system they don't think recognizes them, and a society they don't recognize themselves. Add in the monotony of day-to-day life—why not smash it up just to see what happens?—and you've got a global revolt against the global order.

the first 25 years of the postwar liberal order had maybe the best and most broadly-shared growth in all of human history. We built the UN to keep the peace, NATO to defend Europe, the IMF to help countries out of economic trouble, and a middle class that, if you were white, got the help it needed to own a home and go to college.

There is a serious prospect, however, that Democrats will choose No. 1. There would be many reverberations for our politics. But chiefly, the United States would cease to have a center-left party and a center-right party. Both radicalized institutions would exaggerate our national differences, becoming the political equivalent of the hard-left and hard-right media. And the cause of national unity would be damaged even further.

Democrats should not overlearn the lessons of a close election. Option No. 3 is the Democratic future on the presidential level.

But for the foreseeable future, Democrats will also need a dash of No. 2, including a more accommodating attitude toward religion and associational rights.