Blake Lively at the LACMA Art + Film Gala in November 2024. | Steve Granitz/FilmMagic The dramatic summer feud among the cast of It Ends With Ustook a darker turn last week when Blake Lively accused Justin Baldoni, the movie’s costar and director, of sexual harassment on set and a subsequent plot to tarnish her reputation. On Friday, Lively filed a legal complaint against Baldoni, his studio Wayfarer, Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath, and others alleging a smear campaign and detailing numerous instances of sexual harassment she allegedly endured while making the film. In addition to the legal complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department — which precedes a lawsuit — the New York Times published a story that detailed allegations of behind-the-scenes texts and a strategy between Baldoni and his crisis PR firm that expressed a desire to “bury” Lively. “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted,” Lively said in a statement. Lively’s legal filing alleges deplorable behavior from Baldoni and Heath and sheds light on what was previously categorized as a feud between the two stars. But it also shows the inner workings of crisis management — the nefarious tactics publicists deploy to shape the narrative around celebrity — and perhaps more strikingly, how incredibly easy their job is when social media users are primed to turn against a female celebrity. Blake Lively’s legal filing alleges a hostile work environment The biggest revelation about the filming experience from Lively’s legal complaint is a January 4 It Ends With Us “all hands” with high-level executives during the middle of production. At the meeting, Lively claimed that Baldoni and Heath, also a producer of the movie, had created a hostile work environment and subjected her to inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment; she and the rest of the cast and crew would not return to set until their behavior was addressed. Among Lively’s allegations were that Baldoni improvised kissing scenes, that Heath had shown her a nude picture of his wife, that both talked about their past porn addictions, and that Baldoni and Heath had each walked into her trailer uninvited while she was changing, nude, or breastfeeding. According to Lively’s filing, the meeting included a 30-point conduct improvement plan for Baldoni and Heath. The points address the aforementioned alleged behavior and include other guidelines like: “No more pressing by Mr. Baldoni to sage any of BL’s (Blake Lively) employees” and “No more inquiries by Mr. Baldoni to BL trainer without her knowledge or consent to disclose her weight.” After the meeting, Wayfarer brought an intimacy coordinator on set and conditions improved enough that Lively finished filming. Lively also asserts that in the final stages of production, she made her own cut of It Ends With Us — a version that Sony and Wayfarer ultimately went with. That decision gave her a producing credit, a bigger role in the making of the movie. The key to understanding this complaint and, seemingly, the fight over this movie is that Lively claims that Baldoni and Heath were worried that Lively’s allegations would eventually surface and damage their reputations. Because they believed that Lively could pull the trigger at any moment, Lively alleges, Baldoni hired crisis PR to effectively smear her. Justin Baldoni allegedly hired a crisis management firm to employ gross tactics against his costar While Lively and Bandoni are the faces of the It Ends With Us debacle, the most incendiary figure of the complaint is Melissa Nathan, the crisis management expert Baldoni hired. Publicists like Nathan are very important in Hollywood because celebrities’ images are so valuable. Actors’ and actresses’ careers depend on how marketable they are, and bad stories about said actors and actresses threaten their livelihoods. Nathan, who has also helped rehab clients like Johnny Depp and Travis Scott, makes those stories go away. Nathan’s connections in the media seemed to help facilitate her work — her sister, Sara Nathan, for instance, is a journalist at the New York Post and the two allegedly coordinated on Page Six’s coverage of the feud, according to the filing. Lively’s filing also alleges — via text messages and emails reportedly obtained through a subpoena— an interaction in which Nathan sent around a Daily Mail article with the headline: “Is Blake Lively set to be CANCELLED? String of ‘hard to watch’ videos that have surfaced following ‘tone deaf’ Q&A to promote It Ends With Us could tarnish 36-year-old star’s golden Hollywood image for good.” To be clear, it is not your imagination nor a hallucination; Daily Mail headlines are almost always that long and almost always find a way to mention an actress’s age in a menacing way. “You really outdid yourself with this piece,” a text from Jennifer Abel appears to read, a PR executive working with Wayfarer and Baldoni, to Nathan. “That’s why you hired me right? I’m the best,” Nathan seemingly wrote back. “You know we can bury anyone,” Nathan appeared to write in another message that surfaced in Lively’s filing. In addition, Nathan also allegedly presented Baldoni with an entire takedown plan that included teams that would monitor and post stories on Reddit and social media, as well as the hiring of Jed Wallace, “a Texas-based contractor” who was in charge of creating “content that appeared to be authentic” but was actually Baldoni PR that was designed to go viral. While Nathan and her team’s communications appear to be incendiary, sometimes stopping just short of a cartoon villain going “Muahahahaha,” the odd wrinkle to this story is that it seems as though Baldoni needs her services more than ever — the allegations of his film’s toxic work environment are out in the open whileNathan, Wallace, and Abel’s allegedmachinations on his behalf have also been made public. How much of Blake Lively’s reputational hit was a smear campaign and how much of it is misogyny Lively’s filing argues that the work of Nathan and her associates is directly responsible for the tarnishing of her reputation. The filing alleges that Nathan delivered a proposal to Baldoni detailing how her team would shift the narrative against Lively — “engage with audiences in the right way, start threads of theories … this is the way to be fully 100% protected.” But it’s a little difficult to parse who was doing what and how much of a hand Nathan, Abel, and Wallace had in public opinion. Aside from a few instances of stories showing up in trade and tabloid publications, the legal filing doesn’t specifically get into what Nathan and Wallace did and didn’t seed. And while Lively’s assertion that Nathan is a master social media manipulator, it is giving a lot of credit to someone who allegedly gave the Daily Mail a tip. Further, Lively’s It Ends With Us promotion was a disaster, partly due to the fact that a film about domestic violence and Lively’s desire to simultaneously promote her other ventures — a hair care company, an alcohol company, her husband Ryan Reynolds’s projects — were always going to be at odds. (The filing alleges that the marketing directive was to focus on the more hopeful and empowering aspects of the movie rather than the film’s serious, domestic violence subject matter.) While Nathan seemingly was, to whatever degree, trying to manipulate the press, she wasn’t responsible for Lively’s conduct or the fact that her reputation already seemed to be on the downturn. Plus, Nathan’s alleged campaign was no doubt helped along by social media’s ingrained misogyny and its habit of cyclically turning on female celebrities. At one point during the initial release of the film, Nathan appeared to express her glee and surprise at how the narrative had shifted. Baldoni “doesn’t realise how lucky he is right now. We need to press on him just how fucking lucky,” Nathan allegedly wrote to Abel in October 2024. “The majority of socials are so pro Justin and I don’t even agree with half of them lol,” Nathan added that same month. The socials Nathan is referring to seem to be, in some part, stan accounts — social media fan accounts run by people online who relentlessly attack others who don’t share their point of view about a given celebrity or cultural property. More details are sure to come out, but for now it appears as though Baldoni paid people to do a smear job — but a lot of people online did a better job for free.

Rep. Matt Gaetz speaks during the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum on July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images After much back-and-forth, the House Ethics Committee released a bombshell report about alleged sexual misconduct by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), stating that he broke multiple state laws and that he’s previously paid a minor for sex. Gaetz has categorically denied the allegations and on Monday filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing the report’s release. The review, which is the culmination of a years-long investigation, contains multiple allegations of wrongdoing, including that Gaetz spent tens of thousands paying women, and in at least one instance a 17-year-old, for sex or drugs, and that he’s used illicit drugs like ecstasy and cocaine. Although the Ethics Committee concluded that Gaetz had not violated federal sex trafficking statutes, it found that the lawmaker had broken other state laws. “The Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the report reads. There was some question about whether the report would be released, and substantial portions of it leaked before it was formally published. The Ethics Committee, a bipartisan panel that investigates wrongdoing by lawmakers, initially deadlocked when it came to releasing their results in the wake of Gaetz’s resignation from Congress. It’s uncommon for the panel to share its findings after a member is no longer in Congress, though it’s not unheard of. Gaetz abruptly resigned following his nomination to be President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general. After he withdrew from consideration for attorney general when it became clear that he wouldn’t get sufficient Senate support, the Ethics panel ultimately voted to publicize the report. The report contains detailed documentation of the allegations it levies against Gaetz and is the product of contacting more than two dozen witnesses and reviewing 14,000 documents. Whether the report will lead to additional legal consequences or political ramifications for the bombastic former member of Congress is still an open question, however. Here’s what you need to know about the report, and what may come next for Gaetz. What does the report say? The report centers on allegations of Gaetz paying women, and one teenage girl, for sex, his use of illegal drugs, and his acceptance of improper gifts. “Commercial sex”: The report alleges that Gaetz paid women for sex on numerous occasions between 2017 and 2020, and paid a 17-year-old girl for sex in 2017. In the course of its investigation, which included multiple interviews with women who said they had sexual encounters with Gaetz, the Ethics Committee’s report said there were at least 20 instances when he paid women for sexual activity or drugs. They found such payments were made on platforms including PayPal, Venmo, and CashApp, as well as via check and cash. When given an opportunity to explain the payments he made, Gaetz did not provide any information to the committee. Gaetz allegedly met many of these women via his friend Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax attorney who’s now serving 11 years in prison for multiple crimes, including underage sex trafficking and wire fraud. Greenberg connected with the women via a website called SeekingArrangement.com that aims to link older affluent men and younger women. Broadly, the report says there was evidence that women expected payment for their interactions with Gaetz and Greenberg, with the report citing explicit examples including one when a woman noted: “I usually do $400 per meet.” One of the people who Gaetz allegedly had a sexual encounter with was 17 years old at the time of their meet-up in July 2017, the report notes. He allegedly had sex with her at a party that month; she did not disclose that she was under 18 nor did he ask her age. The committee concluded that he was not aware that that person was a minor, though the report also notes that “ignorance” of a minor’s age doesn’t shield an offending adult from being charged with statutory rape under Florida law. Gaetz has repeatedly denied that he paid women for sex and denied that he had sex with a minor. “In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated – even some I never dated but who asked,” Gaetz previously wrote on X. “I dated several of these women for years. I NEVER had sexual contact with someone under 18.” The panel determined that Gaetz’s actions were a violation of Florida state laws addressing commercial sex and statutory rape. It also did not find that Gaetz had violated federal sex trafficking laws, claiming that he did transport women across state lines for commercial sex, but that there was no evidence those individuals were under 18 or that they had been “induced by force, fraud, or coercion.” Illegal drug use: Two women that the committee spoke with also testified to seeing Gaetz repeatedly engage in illegal drug use including that of ecstasy and cocaine, while additional evidence points to his regular use of cannabis. Gaetz has denied allegations of unlawful drug use. The committee found that these actions were a violation of Florida state laws, which bar the use of all three drugs for recreational purposes. Excessive gifts: The panel alleges that Gaetz also accepted gifts in excess of the $250 limit that Congress members are supposed to adhere to (but that lawmakers, in practice, aren’t always held to). This specifically included a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, during which Gaetz allegedly accepted a flight on a private plane as well as lodgings. Gaetz has denied these allegations, but failed to provide the committee with evidence that he paid for these services himself. The committee determined that his acceptance of these gifts was an ethical violation of the House Gift Rule. Obstruction of Congress: Gaetz did not voluntarily participate in an interview with the committee and also did not respond to a subpoena he faced for testimony. He provided some documents in response to the panel’s requests, but little relevant information, according to the report. Gaetz has repeatedly cited the lack of charges levied against him by the DOJ inquiry and argued that the Congressional investigation was targeted. The committee, however, stated that Gaetz was required by federal law to cooperate with a congressional investigation regardless of what the DOJ decided to do with its investigation, or how he may have felt about the House inquiry. Failing to answer the committee’s questions and being unresponsive to its subpoena constitutes “obstruction of Congress,” according to the report. Why is the Ethics Committee report coming out now? The Ethics Committee first began its investigation into Gaetz in 2021, but put it on pause once the Justice Department started its own investigation later that year. It took up its review once more after the DOJ inquiry ended in 2023. The department did not release any details about its findings or why it declined to continue its probe, though the New York Times reported that federal prosecutors were uncertain about their ability to make the case that Gaetz had broken federal law. The panel was scheduled to release its findings in mid-November, right around when Trump announced Gaetz as his AG pick. Gaetz stepped down from Congress swiftly following that announcement, a surprising move as Congress members who are nominated typically haven’t given up their jobs before getting confirmed. Gaetz’s departure raised questions about whether the committee would still publish the report, with some Republicans arguing that it was no longer in its “jurisdiction” since the conservative was no longer a lawmaker. While Gaetz was still under consideration for AG, the committee deadlocked about releasing the report. After he withdrew from the role, the majority — including at least one Republican member — voted on December 10 to release the report. “The Committee has typically not released its findings after losing jurisdiction in a matter,” the report reads. “However, there are a few prior instances where the Committee has determined that it was in the public interest to release its findings even after a Member’s resignation from Congress.” Is the Ethics Committee investigation connected to the DOJ’s investigation? The two investigations aren’t connected in any legal way, though the Ethics Committee noted in its report that it tried to use some of the DOJ’s work in its investigation. DOJ pushed back on that effort and according to the committee, the DOJ failed to comply with a subpoena and FOIA request for information. “The Committee hopes to continue to engage with DOJ on the broader issues raised by its failure to recognize the Committee’s unique mandate,” the report states. The committee hoped to work with the DOJ in part because the two investigations covered many of the same allegations, primarily that Gaetz regularly paid women for sex, had sex with a minor, and transported women across state lines for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex. The DOJ investigation, which started in 2020 during Trump’s previous term, had a more limited scope than the ethics investigation. That’s because the DOJ looks for proof that a federal crime was committed, while the ethics panel is concerned with — as the report put it — “upholding the integrity of our government institutions.” That is, an act can be deemed unethical without being a federal crime. Again, the DOJ’s investigation did not result in any federal charges against Gaetz and is no longer open. Will the ethics report have any legal repercussions? Although the federal government is no longer investigating Gaetz, the ethics report highlights several acts allegedly taken by Gaetz that lawmakers claim are state crimes. And that could lead to further legal entanglements for Gaetz, Donald Sherman, executive director and chief counsel for legal advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Vox. “Of course, the committee no longer has jurisdiction over Mr. Gaetz, but … I would venture to guess that there is some conduct that he engaged in that can and should be investigated by local law enforcement,” dependent on state laws, statutes of limitations, and local willingness to launch an investigation, Sherman said. The ethics report finds that Gaetz violated Florida state law by having sex with the 17-year-old, paying for sex, and using illicit drugs. Florida law enforcement officials have yet to announce any investigations into Gaetz related to either allegation. The DOJ has also made no indication it intends to revisit the matter, and given Gaetz is a Trump ally who was once in line to lead that department, it seems unlikely that Trump’s DOJ would reopen the case into Gaetz.

President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 death row inmates. | Pete Marovich/Getty Images President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all federal death row inmates on Monday, meaning that 37 men who were slated to be executed will instead spend the rest of their lives behind bars without the possibility of parole. The pardons will also help contribute to what has become a notable criminal justice trend — a sharp reduction in the number of executions carried out by the United States.  Biden’s action applies only to federal prisoners — the president does not have the power to pardon or commute sentences handed down by state courts — and it leaves just three prisoners remaining on federal death row. Biden did not commute the sentences of three particularly notorious criminals: Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who murdered Black parishioners at a South Carolina church; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Biden’s action will likely prevent the incoming Trump administration from beginning with a wave of executions. In 2020, the last full year of President-elect Donald Trump’s first presidency, the federal government resumed executions for the first time in two decades, killing a total of 13 people before Trump left office the first time. Biden instructed the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on additional federal executions during the first year of his presidency. Biden’s commutations, moreover, contribute to a longstanding trend on all US death rows, both state and federal: Thanks to a variety of factors, including an overall decline in crime and better criminal defense lawyers for capital defendants, death sentences are on the decline in the United States, and have declined sharply since the 1990s. These trends are most pronounced in state criminal justice systems, which perform the overwhelming majority of executions — again, at the federal level, there have been no recent executions at all except during the later part of the first Trump administration. For much of the 1990s, the United States (at the state and federal levels) sentenced more than 300 people a year to die. By contrast, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), 26 people received a death sentence in 2024, as of December 16.  According to DPIC’s data, 2024 is also the 10th consecutive year when fewer than 50 people were sentenced to die. DPIC’s data also shows a declining trend in the number of people who were actually executed (the particularly pronounced dip in 2020–2022 is likely due to the Covid-19 pandemic).  That said, there are two factors that could conceivably reverse this trend. One is that the Supreme Court, with its relatively new 6-3 Republican supermajority, is extraordinarily pro-death penalty and has signaled that it may roll back longstanding precedents interpreting what limits the Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments” places on government executions.  The other is that Florida recently overtook Texas as the state with the most new death sentences — a development that likely stems from a 2023 state law that allows Florida courts to impose the death penalty if eight of 12 jurors hearing a case agree to impose this sentence. Should other states adopt similar laws, that could potentially cause a rapid increase in the number of sentences. Most states require a unanimous jury verdict before a death sentence may be imposed. Still, many of the structural factors causing the death penalty to decline are longstanding, and are unlikely to be reversed unless federal and state law changes drastically. Why has use of the death penalty declined so sharply in the United States? There are many factors that likely contribute to the death penalty’s decline. Among other things, crime fell sharply in recent decades — the number of murders and non-negligent manslaughters fell from nearly 25,000 in 1991 to less than 15,000 in 2010. Public support for the death penalty has also fallen sharply, from 80 percent in the mid-’90s to 53 percent in 2024, according to Gallup. And, beginning in the 1980s, many states enacted laws permitting the most serious offenders to be sentenced to life without parole instead of death — thus giving juries a way to remove such offenders from society without killing them. Yet, as Duke University law professor Brandon Garrett argues in End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice, these and similar factors can only partially explain why the death penalty is in decline. Murders, for example, “have declined modestly since 2000 (by about 10 percent),” Garrett writes. Yet “annual death sentences have fallen by 90 percent since their peak in the 1990s.” Garrett argues, persuasively, that one of the biggest factors driving the decline in death sentences is the fact that capital defendants typically receive far better legal representation today than they did a generation ago. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in 2001, “People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.” The Supreme Court briefly abolished the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972). Though Furman produced a maze of concurring and dissenting opinions and no one opinion explaining the Court’s rationale, many of the justices pointed to the arbitrary manner in which death sentences were doled out. The particular death sentences before the Court in Furman, Justice Potter Stewart wrote, “are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual” because death sentences appeared to be handed down to just a “random handful” of serious offenders. Four years later, in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Court allowed states to resume sentencing serious offenders to death but only with adequate procedural safeguards. Gregg upheld a Georgia statute that allowed prosecutors to claim that a death sentence is warranted because certain “aggravating circumstances” are present, such as if the offender had a history of serious violent crime. Defense attorneys, in turn, could present the jury with “mitigating circumstances” that justified a lesser penalty, such as evidence that the defendant had a mental illness or was abused as a child. A death sentence was only warranted if the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors. This weighing test is now a centerpiece of capital trials in the United States, which means the primary job of a capital defense lawyer is often to humanize their client in the eyes of a jury. Defense counsel must explain how factors like an abusive upbringing, mental deficiencies, or personal tragedy led their client to commit a terrible crime. Doing this well, Garrett argues, “takes a team.” It requires investigators who can dig into a client’s background, and it often requires social workers or other professionals who “have the time and the ability to elicit sensitive, embarrassing, and often humiliating evidence (e.g., family sexual abuse) that the defendant may have never disclosed.” And yet, especially in the years following Gregg, many states didn’t provide even minimally competent legal counsel to capital defendants — much less a team that included a trained investigator and a social worker. Virginia, for example, was once one of the three states with the most executions (alongside Texas and Oklahoma). A major reason is that, for quite some time, Virginia only paid capital defense lawyers about $13 an hour, and a lawyer’s total fee was capped at $650 per case. In 2002, however, the state created four Regional Capital Defender offices. And, when state-employed defense teams couldn’t represent a particular client, the state started paying private lawyers up to $200 an hour for in-court work and up to $150 an hour for out-of-court work. As a result, the number of death row inmates in Virginia fell from 50 in the 1990s to just five in 2017. (Virginia abolished the death penalty entirely in 2021.) Virginia’s experience, moreover, was hardly isolated. As Garrett notes, many states enacted laws in the last four decades that provided at least some defense resources to capital defendants. And in states that did not provide adequate resources to defendants, several nonprofits emerged to pick up the slack. In Texas, for example, an organization called the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE) was formed in response to a notorious case where a capital defense lawyer slept through much of his client’s trial. Capital defendants, in other words, are much less likely to be left alone — or practically alone with an incompetent lawyer — during a trial that will decide if they live or die. And that means that they are far more likely to convince a jury that mitigating factors justify a sentence other than death. The Supreme Court could potentially blow up this trend The largest threat to the trend of fewer death sentences and executions is the Supreme Court’s Republican supermajority, which is often contemptuous of precedents handed down by earlier justices who Republican legal elites view as too liberal. And the Court’s most recent death penalty decisions suggest that a majority of the justices may be eager to roll back constitutional safeguards for capital defendants. Most notably, the Court’s 5-4 decision in Bucklew v. Precythe (2019) suggests that at least some of the justices want to revolutionize the Court’s approach to criminal sentencing altogether, opening the door to far harsher sentences for many offenders.  Decisions like Furman and Gregg are rooted in the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments.” This reference to “unusual” punishments suggests that the kinds of punishment forbidden by the Constitution will change over time, as certain punishments fall out of favor and thus become more unusual. As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in Trop v. Dulles (1958), the Eighth Amendment “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Indeed, under this framework, there is a strong argument that the death penalty has itself become unconstitutional because it is so rarely used. Bucklew did not explicitly overrule the long line of Supreme Court precedents looking to “evolving standards of decency” to determine which punishments are allowed, but it seemed to ignore the last several decades of Eighth Amendment law altogether. Instead, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in Bucklew suggested that the Court’s Eighth Amendment decisions should put greater weight on what legal elites in the 1790s might have classified as cruel and unusual, than on which punishments are out of favor today. “Death was ‘the standard penalty for all serious crimes’ at the time of the founding,” Gorsuch wrote in Bucklew. And, while his opinion does list some methods of execution — “dragging the prisoner to the place of execution, disemboweling, quartering, public dissection, and burning alive” — that violate the Eighth Amendment, Gorsuch argues that these methods of execution were unconstitutional even when the Eight Amendment was written because “by the time of the founding, these methods had long fallen out of use and so had become ‘unusual.’” Warren’s framework, in other words, asks whether a particular punishment has fallen out of favor today. Gorsuch’s framework, by contrast, asks whether a particular punishment was out of favor at the time of the founding. Although four other justices joined Gorsuch’s Bucklew opinion, it is as yet unclear whether a majority of the Court actually supports tossing out decades worth of Eighth Amendment law in favor of Gorsuch’s more narrow approach — since Bucklew, the Court has moved more cautiously, often ruling against death row inmates, but on narrower grounds than the sweeping reasoning Gorsuch floated in Bucklew. Still, Bucklew does suggest that there is some appetite on the Court for an Eighth Amendment revolution. Among other things, Gorsuch’s declaration that death was “‘the standard penalty for all serious crimes’ at the time of the founding” suggests that he would overrule Gregg, with its elaborate procedural safeguards limiting when the death penalty may be used even against murderers. And the Court has only grown more conservative since Ginsburg died in 2020 and was replaced by Republican Justice Amy Coney Barrett (though Barrett has, at times, taken a less pro-death penalty approach than her other Republican colleagues.) If Trump gets to replace more justices on the Court, and especially if he gets to replace some of the Court’s relatively moderate voices, Gorsuch could gain allies for the broader rollback of Eighth Amendment rights that he seemed to announce in Bucklew. For the time being, however, the Supreme Court’s rightward turn has not reversed the broader trend against the death penalty. Both the number of new death sentences, and the number of executions, declined sharply since the 1990s.

Tim Allen in Christmas With the Kranks (2004). | IMDb Something happens to me every December wherein movies and music that are objectively kind of bad suddenly become irresistible simply because they are “about Christmas.” By this I mean I’m spending entire days listening to Michael Bublé and that one Zooey Deschanel album and entire nights watching whatever drivel Netflix has most recently produced — namely, movies in which hot people kiss in towns called “Snow Falls.”  This is how, recently, I found myself pressing play on the 2004 comedy Christmas With the Kranks, streaming on Hulu and starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd, and the kid from Malcolm in the Middle. Of course I’d already seen it, and of course the only thing that stuck out to me was, “How could any college-aged woman love ham that much?” (a key plot point, somehow). Anyway, it was fine. It succeeded in doing its job, which was to turn my brain into a snow globe for an hour and 34 minutes.  This was before my fiancé, an unrepentant Letterboxd snob, decided to look up reviews for Christmas With the Kranks and found that it has a 5 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Five! Meaning that out of 100 reviews, only five of them were good. Incredibly low, I thought, for a movie that I’d consider at the very least watchable. And the reviews themselves were mean: Robert Ebert called it “a holiday movie of stunning awfulness that gets even worse when it turns gooey at the end,” while the Washington Post said it was “a leaden whimsy so heavy it threatens to crash through the multiplex floor.” My first thought was not anger at the critics of 20 years ago for ripping apart a film I had just spent 94 precious minutes watching. It was the overwhelming suspicion that, if Christmas With the Kranks were to come out today, it would have a significantly better critical reception than it did 20 years ago.  So I looked up reviews for similar mid-budget Christmas movies from the 2000s that remain popular on streaming (Kranks is the seventh most popular movie on Hulu right now). Turns out, critics hated many of them, too. 2008’s Four Christmases, starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, has a measly 25 percent rating and was called a “miscast mess” by Empire magazine and “egregious” by the Guardian.  Ron Howard’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, at 49 percent, was dubbed “a dank, eerie, weird movie.” Most shocking of all, The Holiday, an objectively perfect Nancy Meyers film despite the fact that Kate Winslet ends up with Jack Black, was called “soggy, syrupy” and “bloating” by the BBC and was criticized for not “saying much.” Do you remember the last time you read a review of a Christmas rom-com that complained that it didn’t have enough to say? I don’t. That’s because nobody expects them to say anything anymore. And that’s bad for the current state of pop culture. me writing my 5 star Letterboxd review of Christmas with the Kranks pic.twitter.com/OKcCnsx7x8— Ethan Simmie (@EthanSimmie) December 8, 2024 Consider the sorts of reviews that the legions of made-for-streaming Christmas movies are getting these days. Comedies that manage to nab actual A-listers and decent-sized budgets like Spirited and The Christmas Chronicles receive mostly positive reviews for being “fun for the whole family,” while middling romances like A Christmas Prince, Falling for Christmas, and Hot Frosty are praised for being simply passable. One LA Weekly critic called the bafflingly terrible Lindsay Lohan Netflix joint Falling for Christmas “perfect background noise for wrapping presents, or a good reason for a cackling friend-watch and group activity (while getting jolly and juiced).” It’s worth asking what the point of reviewing a movie is if the conclusion is “Sure, it’s bad, but throw it on if you don’t plan on paying attention.” This isn’t a dig at that particular critic (who, to be fair, only included it as a part of a roundup of 2022’s Christmas movies). It’s rather an indictment of the way we’re now expected to engage with film — and TV and music, too. It’s now taken for granted that when we click “play” on a streaming platform, it’s probably not the only thing we’re paying attention to.  The New Yorker’s Kyle Chayka argued that homogenous, predictable vibes-based “ambient TV” (think Emily in Paris, Dream Home Makeover, and basically any show about food) that keeps users watching, even when they’re not, is the backbone of the streaming economy. “Like earlier eras of TV, ambient television is less a creative innovation than a product of the technological and social forces of our time,” he writes.  It’s worth asking what the point of reviewing a movie is if the conclusion is “Sure, it’s bad, but throw it on if you don’t plan on paying attention.” The effect has been to diminish the quality we now expect from our film, television, and music. Yet it’s only part of the equation. At the same time that streaming platforms proliferated, so too did social media, which dramatically increased the amount of content people consume that is produced by amateur posters as opposed to creative professionals. Meanwhile, algorithmic social media platforms force-feed the most mediocre content to their users. Now, we’re also contending with the problem of an endless font of AI slop, which synthesizes everything that came before it and churns out versions that are worse.  Bad movies being praised as “good enough” isn’t just a film industry or algorithmic problem, though. In the late 2000s, social media ushered in an era of poptimism: If critics openly trashed a movie or artist who was popular, they were seen as a snob or out of touch with the millions of people who suddenly had just as much power to publish their own opinions. “Now, when a pop star reaches a certain strata of fame,” wrote Chris Richards in the Washington Post in 2015, “something magical happens. They no longer seem to get bad reviews. Stars become superstars, critics become cheerleaders and the discussion froths into a consensus of uncritical excitement.” Poptimism isn’t all bad. One of its effects was that critics suddenly had to take seriously the underrepresented opinions of nonwhite people, young people, and women. But there is also something inherently cowardly about trying to match the tastes of the masses, afraid of being left behind.  Perhaps because social media democratized the role of the culture critic, or perhaps because of the wider collapse of local journalism (and journalism writ large), but today, we have fewer professional critics who are writing film reviews. Which means that critics aren’t going full Roger Ebert-reviewing-Kranks mode like they used to — with one exception. This year’s action-comedy Christmas movie Red One, starring The Rock and Chris Evans, was dubbed “a distinctly joyless execution of a premise” by critics, who mostly seemed annoyed by the gigantic budget ($250 million) and Marvel-wannabe plot.  The reviews are almost refreshingly nostalgic — a sign, maybe, that not every corner of media has devolved into the current state of everything: a culture industry where both producers and audiences would rather obsess over charts, follower counts, and profitability over engaging with the subject matter.  I realize now I’m part of the problem. I was treating Christmas With the Kranks like a film viewer in 2024: something to throw on while looking at my phone, then look up its Rotten Tomatoes score as though its algorithm could synthesize all of the infinite nuances of what a good review entails. I have no interest in litigating whether Kranks is a good movie or not, but reading its terrible reviews reminded me that even the most mediocre Christmas comedy should be taken seriously. We should demand more than just-okay films where recognizable stars follow predictably soothing tropes — even when all you’re looking for is to have a brain that becomes a snow globe.

When Kay’s two best friends — a married couple she met at work — told her they weren’t voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, she believed them. After all, Kay and her friends shared similar values; they all supported issues like reproductive rights and protections for LGBTQ people. But while she was scrolling on social media in July, she saw they had posted the same image to Instagram: the viral photograph of Trump raising his fist in defiance after the assassination attempt on his life, blood trickling down his face, American flag billowing in the background. Kay, 27, sent her friends a message asking about it. Her friends admitted then that they were voting for Trump, because they thought he would better the economy. Kay was shocked: She decided she needed space to reevaluate the relationship and stopped speaking to them. “They’re gay,” she says, “but they were voting for what they think was best because of the media they consume.” Over time, Kay, who declined to share her last name in order to speak about her friendships, grew to miss the couple. It was hard to avoid them: Not only did they all work together, but they were neighbors, too. They were the first best friends Kay made as an adult in their small California town. Although Kay says she cut other Trump supporters out of her life in the past, she ultimately didn’t want to sacrifice this relationship.  “Losing people like that, it’s hard.” The trio agreed to avoid discussing politics in order to maintain the friendship and they’ve since reconciled, Kay says. She was willing to overlook what she considers a misguided decision in order to remain close to people with whom she otherwise agrees. Distancing herself based on their voting record seemed too painful, too shortsighted, she says. “When it’s your family or your really close friends or your coworkers, it’s not that easy to just cut them off,” Kay says. “You have to think about how that impacts you emotionally. Losing people like that, it’s hard.” Over the last eight years, many Americans have distanced themselves from their Trump-supporting loved ones. The Harris Poll recently surveyed a representative sample of Americans and found that 42 percent of adults said politics was the largest cause of estrangement in families. Ahead of the upcoming holiday season, 38 percent of respondents in an American Psychological Association survey said they planned to avoid family members they disagree with politically.  The underlying motivation for these estrangements seems to be self-protective: Many come to believe that a loved one who votes for a candidate who supports policies that endanger their — and others’ — rights is not someone worth keeping around. Some can’t reconcile the fact that relatives they thought they knew agree with such divisive rhetoric. For others, a vote for Trump was the final straw in an already fraying relationship.  While these estrangements are still happening — and with good reason — in the wake of the 2024 presidential election, some are taking an alternative approach. Amid an epidemic of loneliness, some may not have the luxury to cut off valuable connections. Others recognize they can’t change their loved ones’ opinions from afar. More still have wisened to the reality that avoiding varying viewpoints only fuels polarization.  Although we don’t know for sure yet whether more people are reconciling with their Trump-supporting friends and family, therapist Chanel Dokun has observed this shift among her clients. In 2016, Trump’s victory felt like a shocking anomaly, which made people believe they could be more dismissive of those on the alternate end of the political spectrum. Now, those she’s counseled are compelled to engage with these supporters head-on. “It’s not something where I can simply distance myself or cut people off,” she says of client sentiment, “because now I’m looking at a much larger percentage of the population is in favor of this candidate than I thought of before.” In her practice, psychologist Vanessa Scaringi sees many of her clients — primarily women in their 30s and 40s — being more reluctant to turn away from aging relatives. Young women who originally disconnected from relatives in 2016 might have children now, Scaringi says, and they’d like conservative family members to be a part of their lives. “I do think generally the sense of time being lost is a motivator to maintain those relationships,” she says. Sometimes, those relatives are already an integral part of their lives and even provide child care, she says. Mental health professionals stress the importance of safety within relationships and encourage people to set boundaries or create distance with loved ones who say hurtful things or espouse upsetting rhetoric. You do not need to maintain a relationship with someone who condones hate and bigotry. There are thorny moral and ethical questions at play here; the choice of with whom to maintain a relationship — and under what conditions — is an entirely personal one. But tolerating discomfort can help build resiliency, Scaringi notes, and estrangement as a default sidesteps this opportunity for growth and healthy conflict. If you do decide to maintain a relationship with someone with whom you don’t see eye to eye and political talk does arise, avoid the impulse to try to change their mind. The goal of conflict isn’t to solve a problem, Dokun says, but to have empathy for the other side in spite of your differences. To help personalize what can be broad concepts, Dokun suggests sharing how you or people close to you were personally affected — or would be impacted — by specific policies or viewpoints. “When you speak to those more vulnerable places, using language around especially your emotions, that tends to de-escalate those conversations,” she says. “Family members also are able to see you in a new light and that’s much less of an argumentative space.” In group settings, having a sympathetic ally to whom you can subtly share snide remarks or roll your eyes also helps eliminate tension, Scaringi says. For Bryan, a 29-year-old who lives in Florida, that family member is his mom, Donna, 64. (Both are using pseudonyms in order to speak about their family.) Their tight-knit extended family is largely conservative, and over the last eight years, political divisions have strained relationships. “Before Trump, I didn’t care who you voted for, it wasn’t a topic in our home,” Donna says. “But since Trump, watching my two siblings fall in love with this man to a point where my sister says, ‘I love him like an uncle and I would have him at my Thanksgiving table’ hurts my soul, because everything about him is not me.” Donna and Bryan find it hard to reconcile their family’s beliefs with the realities of their experiences: Bryan is trans and his sister hopes to soon have a baby in a state with a near ban on abortion.  Before Bryan came out in 2022, he feared his family wouldn’t accept him based on their conservative views. While his aunt and cousins have been supportive in using his name and pronouns — even going as far to assure him that they’d find a way to source hormones if he was unable to receive gender-affirming care — Bryan says these same family members still express anti-trans views in front of him.  “When you speak to those more vulnerable places, using language around especially your emotions, that tends to de-escalate those conversations.” Despite everything, Donna and Bryan don’t intend on cutting out their family — for now. Bryan doesn’t expect his relatives to change their mind, but he believes offering a trans perspective may give them an opportunity to learn. “I said to myself,” Bryan says, “that if something happens where my health care is taken away, whether it’s because I’m on an Affordable Care Act plan or because the Affordable Care Act stops providing gender-affirming care, and if something actually does happen that’s a direct result of Trump being elected, then I will definitely reconsider cutting these people off forever.” Consistently exposing a loved one to alternative points of view can help to slowly shift their perspective, Dokun says, while estrangement may only push them further into their ideological silos. However, try not to exhaust yourself while championing your side. This might look like setting explicit boundaries like not watching the news together or limiting conversation to certain topics. “I work with a lot of folks who can berate themselves for not being enough of a social justice advocate,” Scaringi says. “I really work with them on trying to just plant seeds with their family.” For others, there are no minds to change, simply resignation toward what’s already happened. While a few people close to him voted for Trump, New Jersey resident Morgan, 32, who declined to share his last name to speak about his relationships, believes they did so for economic and global policy reasons. He doesn’t agree with these motivations, he says, but it’s worth hearing them out. “Now that he’s no longer a fluke, a glitch, some sort of national aberration that we can excuse away,” he says, “I hope the sides can talk more as Trump’s second administration wears on. Because what on Earth is the alternative?”

One fall day in 1856, a family of Eastern gray squirrels in rural New York uncurled from a cozy nest in a chestnut tree, looked around, and joined half a billion other squirrels on a multi-state walkabout. Waves of fur, claws, and sharp incisors swarmed like locusts in squirrel armies that could be up to 150 miles long, “devouring on their way everything that is suited to their taste,” wrote John Bachman, a 19th-century naturalist. Walls of Sciurus carolinensis pulsing across the landscape befuddled naturalists and frustrated farmers, but these movements were a survival strategy, says John Koprowski, the dean of the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming and a longtime squirrel expert. “Squirrels have an amazing sense of smell. They often find fruiting trees, trees with good crops, from miles away,” says Koprowski. “When you had continuous forests with acorns or chestnuts that are all blooming or fruiting at the same time or producing seed crops, that had to be a pretty powerful smell moving through the forest.” The strategy worked. By taking these mass rodent odysseys, squirrels settled new areas, found higher-quality munchies, and, in turn, made more squirrels. At one point, naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton estimates Eastern gray squirrels likely numbered in the billions. This is almost impossible to imagine today. But this emigration wasn’t the only odd feat of dispersal by wild animals. The now-extinct Rocky Mountain locusts once migrated across the country in waves. Passenger pigeons, also extinct, moved in flocks so thick they darkened the sky. Jackrabbits — still abundant today but more sedentary — once moved en masse, ripping through crops so severely during the Dust Bowl that people drove them into pens and killed them by the thousands. Some species, especially birds and some large mammals like deer and elk, still make pilgrimages. But many more, including the Eastern gray squirrel, have lost their ability to move long distances, lacking large connected forests and unable to navigate through industrial parks and parking lots, over six-lane interstates or subdivisions. “We don’t have millions of animals in those places anymore,” Koprowski says. “They’re giving us an early warning that these aren’t functioning the way they have historically, in the ways that animals have evolved to be using these spaces.” And that warning is becoming more dire. A 2024 United Nations Report found that 44 percent of the world’s migratory species are declining, a result of overhunting paired with habitat destruction largely due to agriculture, sprawling housing and commercial development, pollution, and, increasingly, climate change. Yet as wildlife lose the freedom to move, biologists say the ability to shift from one place to another to find food or escape threats will become even more necessary as our planet continues to change. There are still some incredible feats of migration that are hanging on. These epic tours serve as a reminder that not all is lost. Arctic hares that run ultras North of those once-abundant Eastern forests with their once-abundant Eastern squirrels, there’s another small mammal with a surprising penchant for long-distance quests: the Arctic hare. Protected by a special adaptation — a dazzling coat of thick fur that turns white in the winter and thinner and blue-gray or brownish in spring and summer to camouflage to its surroundings — the Arctic hare can survive frigid temperatures. But when the thermometer in the polar desert dips to below negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit, they begin hopping southwest — sometimes for nearly 200 miles. This marathon feat was a surprise to scientists who discovered the journeys in 2019. Previously, researchers largely believed Arctic hares were “sedentary species with little dispersal capacity.” Researchers at the University of Quebec at Rimouski knew hares could travel quickly — up to 40 miles per hour — but they wanted to see just how far they could go. They were stunned to discover that the creatures regularly traveled hundreds of miles — likely headed for warmer pastures with more abundant plants and glacial meltwater, says Ludovic Landry-Ducharme, a PhD student at the University of Quebec at Rimouski who is continuing the research. The Canadian researchers published their work in the journal Nature and underscored that climate change may well disrupt these patterns as snow comes later and spring melts come earlier, shifting where and when — and how abundantly — important plants grow. The propensity to look for good food and escape bad weather conditions is one of wildlife’s oldest adaptations and most often documented in more visible species like mule deer in the American West, wildebeest in Sub-Saharan Africa, and caribou in northern Canada. Indigenous people long knew wildlife moved with the seasons, and many followed those movements, taking advantage of the weather and trailing along with a consistent food source. But it was only more recently that researchers with modern satellite technology began to map exactly where the wildlife moved. Those results made headlines with stories of mule deer faithfully following the same 150- or even 250-mile migrations up and over mountain ranges. Many animals — from Arctic hares to mule deer — use what researchers call stopover points. These are areas along the way where species can rest, take a breather, and eat. Wyoming migration researcher Hall Sawyer once described stopovers as pit stops on a long interstate road trip. Drivers who stop for gas, a cup of coffee, and a meal make better decisions and arrive better rested than those who power through. For animals, it’s no different. Their cross-country trips can look meandering and erratic, but according to scientists, they are critical and increasingly threatened by everything from highways and fences to drought, fires, and floods worsened by climate change to energy developments, subdivisions, and agricultural fields. A newt’s year (or seven) of self-discovery Anyone who has gone for a walk through a pocket of Eastern forest has likely spotted a burnt-orange eastern newt. Next time you see one, thank it not only for its mosquito-killing capabilities but also wish it well on what amphibian researcher JJ Apodaca likens to its Rumspringa. When a newt enters its eft stage, it experiences a fundamental physiological change. The newt starts its life journey in a pond looking like an olive salamander with feathery gills and a narrow tail before it crawls out onto land, turns orange, and swaps out its gills for a set of lungs as an eft. Once on land, the newt sets out for parts unknown, spending two to even seven years meandering — sometimes for miles — on its tiny legs to what it surely considers faraway lands. After years of roaming, it returns to a pond or wetland, dives back into the water, and looks for a mate. Those eft walkabouts are a critical time to look for the best food while the juvenile newt grows and matures. And the more fragmented their habitat, the less cover they can find on leafy, forested floors and the higher the chance for a run-in with a car tire. They’re not the only amphibians that require room to roam. Instead of skittering horizontally, the green salamander looks upward for greener pastures. The salamanders climb trees for better food (and also likely to avoid becoming food). But as humans continue to chop down some trees — and pests and disease targets other trees — fewer and fewer salamanders remain. The ability to seek out new territory isn’t just critical for a species’ overall population, but will become even more important as habitat shrinks and the climate changes. In March 2018, a female Arctic fox wearing a tracking collar traveled from a research site on a Norwegian archipelago to the Canadian Ellesmere Island, paddling more than 2,700 miles from start to finish in the span of just four months. And she’s certainly not the only one. According to a study by Eva Fuglei, a Norwegian Polar Institute researcher, Arctic foxes have the ability to bridge continents, have crossed ice sheets, and have connected to distant populations — keeping their genetics spanning generations robust. But as sea ice melts, those populations will likely become isolated. The problem with animal islands Eastern gray squirrels continued their periodic decampments, fewer and fewer each year, until naturalists reported some of the last major ones in the 1960s. Humans’ desire for timber and space for parking lots and shopping centers eventually proved too much for even the most industrious squirrel, and the long emigrations eventually ended. Today, a much smaller relative population of Eastern grays live in piecemeal habitat, islands locked in by roads or development. Wildlife, even those as small as salamanders or as big as wildebeests, don’t function as well on islands as they do in connected landscapes. A 1987 paper published in the journal Nature showed that more specieswent extinct in 14 westernAmerican national parks than were naturally reestablished there. The island effect, as it’s called, shows that even if animals live in protected areas like national parks, those parks are often too small. “The effect of habitat loss and fragmentation on populations, going from intact to fragmented, is as close as we have to a golden rule in conservation,” says Matthew Kauffman, Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit leader and longtime migration researcher. “Populations will be less robust when you go from a large, intact habitat to the same habitat but fragmented, where animals can’t move.” Fortunately, in recent years, there have been promising moves to reconnect habitat, even within an increasingly fragmented landscape. Across the country, states, nonprofits, and the federal government have worked together to install wildlife crossings — over- and underpasses that provide safe passage for everything from salamanders to mountain lions from the forests of Massachusetts to the multi-lane interstates of Southern California. Apodaca’s organization, the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, recently completed work on a culvert under a highway to usher the increasingly endangered bog turtle from one side to another, giving the creature access to varied habitat it would otherwise seek by perilously waddling across the road. States like Wyoming and Colorado are using maps of deer, elk, and pronghorn migrations to tweak locations of oil and gas development or potentially even modify subdivisions. Wildlife managers also now understand the importance of those long-distance pit stops to wildlife abundance. Conservationists also praised efforts like President Biden’s plan to conserve 30 percent of the country’s land, freshwater, and ocean by 2030 as a way to maintain critical habitat and migration pathways. The future of those efforts under the incoming Trump administration, however, remains murky. Eastern North America may never again see swarms of half a billion squirrels skittering through forests en route to lush acorn crops, but for other species, researchers say, it’s not too late.

When you see a movie or read a book that you can’t get out of your head, there’s nothing better than sharing that experience with other people. But in a fractured media landscape — with countless new releases a year and a significant portion of the entire history of human culture at our fingertips — it can be hard to find someone else obsessed with the same thing you are. We asked our newsroom: What captured your attention this year? We’ve pulled together our colleagues’ obsessions, from buzzy new movies and music, to older TV shows and books that feel as relevant as ever. We’ve rounded up the best stuff on our radars during a long, jam-packed year. Here’s everything we couldn’t stop thinking about. Lost Lost, the 2000s mystery drama serial, always seemed like a fool’s errand to me. I knew it was long-winded, sometimes unsettling, and would probably exhaust me with its circularity. When I saw it was on streaming, I tuned in out of curiosity, thinking an episode or two would be an amusing way to spend a weeknight. But I haven’t grown tired of it yet. In fact, I haven’t been so gripped by a television show in a while; one evening has turned into months of obsessive viewing. Watching the castaway characters navigate the unknown, despite its violence and ridiculousness, has been a soothing reprieve from the casual chaos of my own everyday life. On Lost, nothing makes sense, but everything kind of turns out okay even when it doesn’t (unless it really doesn’t? I’m just starting season five, don’t tell me!). (Streaming on Netflix.) —Melinda Fakuade, culture editor The Double Netflix promptly snapped up the hit Chinese drama The Double for a week-by-week release before it was even done with its original run this spring. I know because I was glued to every episode as they released on Chinese streaming platform IQIYI, which I woke up early to stream before work. This fun, fierce palace revenge drama stars the fabulous Wu Jinyan, who broke through in 2018 with the wildly popular, Vox-approved Story of Yanxi Palace. After a murder attempt at the hands of her husband, Wu Jinyan’s character adopts the identity of a friend who suffered a similarly tragic betrayal. The mysterious “Jiang Li” returns to court to enact revenge not just for herself but for her friend, piquing the interest of the incredibly suave Duke Su (newcomer Wang Xingyue in a charming, star-making turn). The Double is pulpy, addictive binge material, with a delightful slow-burn romance between the two leads. It’s also firmly feminist, forever dangling the possibility of sympathy toward its nice-guy husband turned villain, then yanking it back and redoubling its critique of toxic masculinity. (Streaming on Netflix.) —Aja Romano, senior culture writer All things Top Dawg Entertainment If VH1 still did its Best Year Ever television specials, my vote would be for Top Dawg Entertainment. The rap label has been absolutely dominating the music conversation and the charts this year. From ScHoolboy Q’s Blue Lips to Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal, the label’s signees have garnered plenty of critical acclaim. And no one can deny their marquee artist Kendrick Lamar’s influence and commercial success this year. He arguably took down hip-hop’s golden boy with diss track after diss track, topped it all off with a surprise album, and announced a stadium tour for this coming summer with his label-mate SZA. They’ll even be playing next year’s Super Bowl halftime show. Top Dawg, indeed. (Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Doechii, and SZA are all streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.) —Jonquilyn Hill, host of Explain It To Me Castaway Diva A teenager runs away from an abusive home to pursue her dream of becoming a pop star in Seoul but ends up stranded on an island for over a decade before being found — and then fights ageism in the music industry to become a star anyway. Castaway Diva provides lots of glorious musical numbers and soap opera-esque side plots. The premise is totally wild, but lead actor Park Eun-bin (of Extraordinary Attorney Woo) is a joy to watch, making it easy for viewers to suspend their disbelief while rooting for her character, Mok-ha. As K-dramas do, it smacks you with some serious childhood trauma up front, and it doesn’t shy away from gut-wrenching moments; at one point I realized I was crying at every episode! But amid all the pain, the show tilts toward optimism and hope, which is something I needed in 2024, and maybe you do, too. (Streaming on Netflix.)—Kim Eggleston, copy editor Everything Laurie Colwin wrote This year, I wanted an escape from the now, which manifested as reading many books — fiction and nonfiction alike — about an older, though not terribly distant, New York City. A big part of this was making my way through Laurie Colwin’s bibliography. Colwin’s career spanned from the mid-70s to the early ’90s; she experienced a mini-revival a few years ago when her novels and collections of short stories and essays were reissued. I got lost in what’s been referred to as her sneakily deep “romcomedies of manners” and her utterly delightful version of the city I’ve lived in and loved for so long. Start with Family Happiness, and go from there. (Available on Bookshop.org.) —Julia Rubin, senior editorial director, culture and features Hard Truths Mike Leigh’s film Hard Truths is maybe the most radical (and funniest) depiction of female and working-class rage I’ve seen in a long time. It’s like if Nightbitch didn’t try to convince you that motherhood is an innately satisfying experience at the end. Leigh boldly commits to the grouchiness of its lead, played by an excellent Marianne Jean-Baptiste, granting her enough dimension that she never feels like a cartoon. He doesn’t offer an easy answer as to why she can’t enjoy life, or at least pretend to, like her even-keeled relatives. While we’re often fed stories of women overcoming things and finding themselves, it’s surprisingly moving to watch a woman live in her miserable truth. (Now playing in select theaters.) —Kyndall Cunningham, culture writer The God of the Woods by Liz Moore Approximately 300 pages into The God of the Woods, a propulsive literary mystery centered on a teenager who goes missing from her summer camp, I texted the friend who had recommended it in all-caps: “NOVELS ARE SO GOOD, MAN.” Liz Moore’s latest had successfully reminded me that one of the greatest pleasures of a truly well-done piece of long-form textual fiction is that it can feel like magic, in the literal, I-have-had-a-spell-cast-upon-me type of way. Moore demonstrates a mastery of conjuring whole worlds and lives inside your head, and then shifting the perspective just slightly to let you see what was always there but hidden from view. The power and misery of wealth, the awe and darkness of the forest, the strictures and potential of being a woman, the anxiety and thrill of growing up and coming into your own; I don’t want to give anything away, I just want you to read it, and text your friends. (Available on Bookshop.org.) —Meredith Haggerty, senior culture editor Only Connect As Connections became the hottest new puzzle on the New York Times game app, I soaked myself in luxurious superiority, for I knew a secret. Connections is nothing but a flimsy simulacrum of the cult British quiz show Only Connect, a game so fiendishly complicated that it makes New York Times’s Connections look as easy as Strands (iykyk). To work out the average Only Connect category, you have to possess an esoteric combination of knowledge of advanced high mathematics, the topography of South American mountain ranges, and snooker balls, not to mention a high tolerance for truly terrible puns. Watching the contestants make their way through the categories each week under the ironical eye of host Victoria Corin is like watching Olympic athletes attempting death-defying feats — only instead of winning international fame and medals, victors walk away with nothing more than a warm congratulations from Corin. This show is as absurdly, smugly difficult as Jeopardy! on Mensa mode, and I love it with my whole heart. (Available on BBC Two in the UK, and some episodes are on YouTube.) —Constance Grady, senior correspondent Brat It was late July when Jake Tapper inquired, “Is the idea that we’re all kind of brat?” live on a CNN panel. That was just after Kamala HQ went neon green, and well after a million memes threatened overexposure. But Brat has staying power. It didn’t hurt that Charli xcx later dropped a remix album that adds even bigger beats and deeper meaning to already pitch-perfect source material. She didn’t have the biggest tour, and she certainly didn’t have the most streams, but I bet Brat is the album we’ll still be talking about in 10 years, because behind the sunglasses and the club classics is a vulnerable ode to stumbling through life while falling in love “again and again.”(Streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.) —Sean Rameswaram, host of Today, Explained “Bull Believer” by Wednesday In November 2023, I Shazam’d a song I heard playing on the speakers of my local coffee shop. A year and many streams later, I still find myself obsessed with this 2022 alt-rock single. “Bull Believer” by Wednesday is moody and gritty, soft and hard, full of distorted guitar and a vibe I can only describe as a little delirious. And at 8 minutes and 30 seconds, it feels like a journey with a beginning, middle, and an absolutely explosive and wailing end. The song has stuck to me because it’s unabashedly full of rage and despair — emotions that we tend to avoid, even at a time when there’s a lot of reasons to feel them. We all need an outlet for these feelings, and if you’re searching for a raw musical catharsis, this is just the thing. (Streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.) —Sam Delgado, Future Perfect fellow Sami Blood A look into the lives of the Sámi, the Indigenous peoples in Scandinavia, Sami Blood follows a 14-year-old girl struggling with an identity crisis as she faces Sweden’s racist attitudes toward native people. The movie stuck with me because of how little I knew about the Sámi going into it, and still how familiar the story was. It helped me better understand the universality of anti-Indigenous racism in the West and the similar oppressive tactics deployed in country after country, from discriminatory boarding schools to segregation to plain-old mocking and shaming. It’s also a really well-made and compelling film, with powerful characters that are hard to forget. (Streaming on Peacock.) —Abdallah Fayyad, policy correspondent Rachel Bloom: Death, Let Me Do My Special I first saw Rachel Bloom perform “Death, Let Me Do My Special” live back in 2023. I loved it then, but something about watching the show again when it was released on Netflix this October gave me new appreciation for its jokes and themes. It’s tempting to wish for an escape to a time before Covid – as Bloom tries desperately to do over and over again in the show, only to be pulled back to the present by her grief. But something about the way she decides to disarm Death with a few jokes before confronting him head-on feels really cathartic, like a good cry or a big laugh. Fair warning: It’s highly likely you’ll do a fair amount of both as you watch. (Streaming on Netflix.) —Carla Javier, supervising producer, Explain It to Me Hacks There are few shows I love more these days than Hacks. It’s hilarious, heartwarming, fresh. I love that it focuses on the intergenerational relationship between two women, and once you get hooked on Hannah Einbinder, you can go watch her also great comedy special on HBO. I can’t wait for season four. (Streaming on Max.) —Rachel Cohen, policy correspondent My Brilliant Friend — The Story of the Lost Daughter The final season of this Italian series, like the three seasons before it, is a marvel on every level. Based on the novels by Elena Ferrante, this whole series is stunning; the filmmaking, acting, storytelling, all of it is extraordinary. At the center are two complicated, angry, unpredictable women who are so marvelously depicted you’ll feel like you know them. Plus, you’ll learn a lot about 20th-century Italian politics, and this season features some spectacular ’80s fashions. (Streaming on Max.) —Ellen Ioanes, reporter Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman America’s pantheon of sad cowboy poet crooners — a list that includes Bill Callahan, David Berman, Stephin Merritt — got a new member this year. And somehow, he’s only 25. MJ Lenderman announced himself as one of the greats with an album in September, Manning Fireworks, a collection of catchy, heart-achingly good songs with sometimes poignant, often tragicomic lyrics. I listened to “Wristwatch” and “You don’t know the shape I’m in” an embarrassing number of times already. (Streaming on Apple Music and Spotify.) —Marin Cogan, senior correspondent Rebel Ridge Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier is a pro at luring opposing parties into cage matches — one will escape and the other won’t. In Saulnier’s suffocatingly tense Green Room, that entrapment is literal; it’s legal in this year’s Netflix thriller Rebel Ridge. The film opens with Terry, a Black ex-marine played with simmering intensity by Aaron Pierre, pedaling into a small Alabama town with a backpack full of cash to post bail for a wayward cousin. He’s sent flying off his bicycle by a cop, part of the predictably crooked department that stymies Terry’s attempts to work within the town’s labyrinthine legal system. What choice does he have but to respond like John Rambo’s harassed veteran before him? The police chief (a terrifically tyrannical Don Johnson) and Terry’s verbal sparring escalates into a brutally elegant showdown, concluding a film as taut and satisfying as the First Blood it echoes. (Streaming on Netflix.) —Caity PenzeyMoog, senior copy editor Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte If you’ve ever felt angry or lonely or resentful or like the world’s hugest loser, take solace in the world of Rejection, where everyone is constantly getting fucked (except, of course, when they can’t). Incels, porn addicts, Twitter freaks, hustle bros, and desperate romantics populate Tony Tulathimutte’s sad, hilarious world in this short story collection where all the characters connect in the cringiest ways possible. Reading this book made me want to physically crawl out of my skin (complimentary). Consider it a refreshingly bleak antidote to the upcoming deluge of try-hard New Year’s resolution content. (Available on Bookshop.org.) —Rebecca Jennings, senior correspondent Shōgun My husband and I traveled to Japan in February, and afterward immersed ourselves in Shōgun. I found it to be not only culturally competent but also a faithful depiction of James Clavell’s 1975 novel. (I’m actually re-reading that now because I can’t get enough of this story!) After so much crappy TV for so long, FX’s remake was refreshing, with excellent acting and casting, pacing, and dialogue. It all hit. (Streaming on Hulu.) —Paige Vega, climate editor Movies of Hollywood’s pre-Code era In 1930, sound films became widespread in Hollywood; in 1934, Hollywood studios agreed to heavily censor their films under the Hays Code. The brief window in between is the Pre-Code Talkies Era, a rich and inventive period in which the idea of just what a movie could and should be was in flux. Unfolding during the Great Depression, movies got far bolder in what they dared to say and show, defying what we think of as Old Hollywood’s clichés. My favorites of the period include classy auteur films (Trouble in Paradise, Shanghai Express), fun trashy romps (Baby Face, Night Nurse), social critiques (Heroes for Sale, Wild Boys of the Road), and dazzling extravaganzas (42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933). If you’re interested in challenging your preconceptions for what “old movies” are like, this is the era to look at. (A list for your perusal here.) —Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent Messy Star by chokecherry I miss being a teenager just before streaming services were a thing, when that visceral, desperate pull to scavenge for illegal downloads formed my identity. With their debut EP Messy Star, Bay Area-grown band chokecherry gives me that feeling again. Their siren-esque vocals, fearlessly heavy guitars, and pop-grunge hypnosis are exactly what our inner teens need. Especially in the deflated liminal space between the election and the next administration, where it feels like all efforts to scream and fight for change amount to nothing, we need women riling up mosh pits. Chokecherry is going to take over the world. (Streaming on Apple Music and Spotify.) —Celia Ford, Future Perfect fellow Industry Few things captured my attention this year more than Industry. Living under the shadow of Succession for its first two seasons, HBO’s hot business-drama delivered a landslide season three. The copious sex, drugs, and wealth hooked me, but it was the exploration of nepotism, aristocracy, and relationships that kept me coming back. Each character is deeply flawed and equally cunning. I am still trying to understand the individual jobs within the firm, and the esoteric language they speak may require homework. But hate to watch, love to hate watch: you simply must watch Industry. (Streaming on Max) —Claire White, senior manager of network development Star Wars: Andor Andor came out in 2022 but I rewatched it this year with joy and awe. I think a lot of people who would love this show have stayed away because it’s Star Wars, even though it also never really caught on with Star Wars fans because it’s not really Star Wars. You could barely call it sci-fi; it’s basically a show about how political movements form and how one’s politics can change, from the director of Michael Clayton. Fine, if that still sounds bad to you, I get it. (Streaming on Disney+.) —Adam Freelander, supervising story editor, video “Caravan” by Van Marrison with The Band I found myself retreating into the music of the past this year, particularly live instrumental performances — and none transfixed me the way Van the Man’s appearance with The Band during Martin Scorsese’s concert documentary The Last Waltz did. Writer Nick Hornby once described Morrison’s live performances of “Caravan” like this: “In the long, vamped passage right before the climax Morrison’s band seems to isolate a moment somewhere between life and its aftermath, a big, baroque entrance hall of a place where you can stop and think about everything that has gone before.” He was referring to the showstopper on Morrison’s own live album, It’s Too Late To Stop Now, but I think it applies just as aptly to his rendition with The Band, a fusion of their Celtic and Ozark blues. Something about the connectivity and immediacy of these old live performances resonates with me in our disconnected age. I crave it. (Streaming on Spotify.) —Dylan Scott, senior correspondent 1000-lb Sisters I am not a complicated woman: I enjoy television that is charming and makes me laugh. Amy and Tammy Slaton of TLC’s 1000-lb Sisters check both of those boxes. Earlier this year, a friend introduced me to the show, which chronicles the sisters’ incredible weight loss journeys. But Amy and Tammy are more than their struggles. Frankly, they’re hilarious. Viewers are invited into their small Kentucky hometown and are eventually introduced to their three older siblings, who join Amy and Tammy in transforming their health. This season, the show’s sixth, Amy gets adventurous with cooking, adding white chocolate to her alfredo sauce; Tammy experiments with fashion and burlesque dancing. In a culture where reality TV seems less and less “real,” Amy, Tammy, and their entire family feel like a relic from the genre’s glory days: They’re loud, they fart on-camera, and they’re not at all concerned with personal branding. (Streaming on Max and TLC GO.) —Allie Volpe, senior reporter Dropout Dropout is a comedy channel offering a wide mix of content — some D&D/roleplaying stuff, but also a lot of Whose Line Is It Anyway-style improv. I got into their stuff this year after seeing some clips on TikTok and enjoyed the rapport between the recurring comedians. There are episodes where the players improvise a whole musical based on a few wacky prompts, and it’s pretty jaw-dropping to watch people so witty and quick on their feet. The channel is also a lesson on how smaller media companies can survive the era of Big Streaming. It charges $6 per month for a big collection of high-quality, regularly updated content, and as far as I know, the business is thriving. (Available on YouTube.) —Whizy Kim, senior reporter My Old Ass I went into the theater thinking My Old Ass would be a lighthearted, quirky comedy. I left determined to double down on my gratitude for the most important people in my life. Actors Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella do a fantastic job of invoking a bittersweet nostalgia while reminding us just how precious the present moment is. (Available on Amazon Prime.) —Lauren Katz, senior newsroom project manager The Later Daters The world fell in love with The Golden Bachelor, and rightfully so — watching seasoned singles find their mate was the feel-good content we didn’t know we needed, especially for those of us who might feel already disillusioned by the dating pool in our 20s and 30s. Later Daters is another take on dating for golden singles, but with, in my opinion, more nuance, heart, and personality than The Golden Bachelor. It employs more of a polished docuseries tone, chronicling the lives of several older men and women looking for love the second (or third or fourth!) time around. Michelle Obama is a producer on this show, which makes sense; it presents a poignant mix of humor and heartfelt charm that made it hard for me to turn off. (Streaming on Netflix.) —Elizabeth Price, director of grants & foundation development The joys of Pinterest In a world full of cursed algorithms, my tried-and-true social platform is Pinterest. For the past 11 years, I’ve built my homepage brick by brick. From the board “cool pools” of — you guessed it — cool pools I created in high school, to a board of dinner recipes I share with my partner so we can take the guesswork out of what to make for dinner, Pinterest is both the perfect place to ignite inspiration and a hilarious time capsule. Whatever the opposite of doomscrolling is, I’ve found it on this social platform. (Located at Pinterest.com.) —Gabby Fernandez, associate director of audience Evan Baggs Live @ Watergate Berlin This year, when Spotify Wrapped came out, my listening minutes were a fraction of previous years; I had moved to the long-forgotten SoundCloud, where my playlists have been replaced with roving DJ mixes. What I like so much about the DJ mix format is that they remind me of the mixtapes and CDs of my youth. My most-streamed mix was made in 2011 by New York/Berlin DJ and producer Evan Baggs. The synthesizers are sparse, the bass lines are minimal, the drums are somehow loose and sturdy at once, while the energy shifts from melancholic to serious to hypnotic to playful in the span of an hour. Even though it’s a decade old, it remains a great introduction to, for lack of a better phrase, what the modern “underground” house music scene has to offer. (Streaming on SoundCloud.) —Kenny Torella, Future Perfect staff writer Immortal John Triptych games Attempts to describe Joe Richardson’s indie video games often invoke Monty Python. One look at them, and it’s easy to see why: The three games included in his Immortal John Triptych — the last of which, The Death of the Reprobate, he released on Steam in November — are intricate pastiches of Renaissance art and classical music, but they are also wildly irreverent and very funny. Nothing in these point-and-click worlds is sacred, even if their soundtracks are, and Richardson’s bonkers collages make magnificent backdrops for solving satisfyingly complex puzzles. Fans of stunning visuals (did you ever imagine you’d see a masterwork move?) and self-aware humor will find each of these a high-low delight to the end. (Available on Steam.) —Keren Landman, senior health reporter All of Us Strangers (2023) This British fantasy movie set in the peripheries of London tells a story of modern loneliness that has haunted me since the frigid January night I went to see it in theaters. Andrew Scott, playing a gay screenwriter entering early middle age, channels angst in a tenor that will resonate with anyone who has ever confronted the fear of dying alone. And yet, this movie offers so much hope. It set me on an existential spiral for the following days that culminated with a reinvigorated appreciation and special gratitude for chosen family. Think of it this way: This movie can be a tear-wrenching, cathartic experience, a comforting companion to get you through at least one cold winter night.-(Streaming on Hulu.) —Christian Paz, senior politics reporter Robert Caro’s LBJ biographies I know I am not the first person to say, “Hey, did you know that Robert Caro is really good at what he does?” But Robert Caro is really, really good at what he does. I did not come into his four-part series on Lyndon B. Johnson with any interest in the subject matter. I didn’t even come into it with a particular interest in biographies. But these books read like novels and made me care deeply about LBJ and his myriad machinations. Each book is full of mini-dramas with clear stakes that all layer together to create a full and fascinating picture of how power works in politics. I found myself rooting for LBJ sometimes, rooting against him at other times, and thoroughly disgusted with him much of the time (Justice for Lady Bird!), but I was never, never bored. (Available on Bookshop.org.) —Byrd Pinkerton, senior producer

Protesters outside the Spanish Parliament, calling for Spain’s president to resign after floods killed hundreds of people in Valencia. The protester’s sign reads, “It wasn’t a climate catastrophe. It was a murder.” | Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images 2024 is on track to become the hottest year since humans have been keeping track, beating out 2023. The extraordinary back-to-back record-breakers amplified disasters like heat waves, hurricanes, and torrential downpours around the world, claiming thousands of lives and causing billions in damages. Few countries have emerged completely unscathed over the past two years, but one place known for its welcoming climate, was especially wounded. In 2023, Spain experienced a searing early-season heat wave with temperatures topping 101 degrees Fahrenheit in Córdoba in the south of the country, followed up by more severe heat across the country in July and August. It led to more than 8,000 heat-related deaths, the second-highest toll in Europe behind Italy. The high temperatures worsened an ongoing drought, depleting water supplies and causing its economically vital olive oil production to fall in half. Intense wildfires ignited across the country, including the Canary Island of Tenerife and on the mainland in Gandia. The Asturias region in northern Spain suffered the single-largest wildfire in its history, torching more than 24,000 acres. Record rainfall in Toledo triggered flash floods that killed at least three people. Dangerous heat, fire, and drought continued to rage this year. But in October, Spain experienced a disaster that still managed to shock the climate change-wracked country. The Valencia region in eastern Spain suffered an unprecedented downpour, receiving a year’s worth of rain in just a few hours. It triggered flash floods across a vast expanse and killed at least 224 people, making it the deadliest flood on the continent since 1967. And warming clearly played a role: Climate research groups reported that these storms were stronger and more likely to occur due to warming caused by humans.

In the last issue of this newsletter, I wrote about what went wrong with public housing in the United States — how it didn’t necessarily fail, but was routinely sabotaged because of bad policy choices that contributed to neglect and mismanagement. So this week, I want to look at what successful public housing can look like. Oftentimes, when looking for models to emulate, many Americans look abroad for answers — Austria, Denmark, and Singapore, for example, are frequently cited as places to learn from. But one of the problems with turning to other countries is that their politics and governments are fundamentally different, and simply copying them isn’t always an option. That’s why I’m particularly interested in looking at examples of public housing models that have worked quite well here in the United States. After all, if one American city or county can pull off an ambitious program, then what’s stopping others from doing the same? What we can learn from the DC suburbs Earlier this year, my colleague Rachel Cohen highlighted a place where local leaders are expanding public housing: Montgomery County, Maryland. Montgomery County has long prioritized affordable housing. Developers, for example, are required to make at least 15 percent of units in new housing projects available for people who make less than two-thirds of the area’s median income. But the county got creative with how it could provide public housing: It set aside a fund to finance and develop housing projects. And while the county partners with private developers, its investment makes it a majority owner of a given project. As the New York Times put it, the county, as an owner, becomes “a kind of benevolent investor that trades profits for lower rents.” For background, the county’s Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC) is not just a public housing authority, but a housing finance agency and public developer as well. “We have these three different components that ultimately work together to help us really advance a very aggressive development strategy that we have deployed over 50 years,” said Chelsea Andrews, executive director of HOC. Historically, public housing projects in the United States have only been available to people making very low incomes. That’s by design: In 1936, the federal government set income limits for eligibility. While that might seem like it makes sense — shouldn’t public housing units be available to those who most need them? — the reality is that this rule limited housing authorities’ ability to raise revenue by charging closer to market-rate rents for middle- or higher-income earners. As a result, public housing projects have been overly reliant on government subsidies and constantly underfunded. But Montgomery County is addressing that problem by opening public housing up to mixed-income renters. “Mixed income accomplishes so many goals,” Andrews said. “It allows for housing authorities to ensure that they are creating inclusive communities. It takes away the concentration of poverty.” Andrews added that mixed-income housing doesn’t discourage people from advancing their careers since they don’t have to worry about losing their eligibility to stay housed in an HOC property. And by making the developments mixed-income, the local government can use profits from some renters to subsidize others and keep the buildings in good condition. In many ways, this model is a rebrand. “They are very clear about not calling it ‘public housing’: To help differentiate these projects from the typical stigmatized, income-restricted, and underfunded model, leaders have coalesced around calling the mixed-income idea ‘social housing’ produced by ‘public developers,’” Cohen wrote. But in effect, the model is still publicly owned units being rented to residents at subsidized rates. Montgomery County has seen plenty of success. The Laureate, one of these types of developments in the suburbs of Washington, DC, had leased out 97 percent of its 268 units within a year of opening in 2023. It’s not just Montgomery County Across the country, housing advocates and local governments have taken note of Montgomery County’s example and are keen on trying it out for themselves. In Massachusetts, state Rep. Mike Connolly introduced legislation last year to create a $100 million fund to finance social housing projects. While that specific legislation hasn’t passed yet, the governor recently signed a housing bond bill that includes funding for a social housing pilot program. “We got a lot of enthusiasm and support around us now doing the work of mapping out what these initial projects will look like. It could result in perhaps one or two local, mixed-income social housing-type projects in the coming years,” Connolly said. “If we can develop something and build it, people can see it, and then we can point to it and look to expand it. And, of course, Montgomery County, Maryland, has been the contemporary national leader here.” As local governments struggle to deal with soaring housing costs, this model is providing a good solution by both building more units (which is very much needed) and providing below market-rate rents. And with more and more lawmakers approving these projects, America could be on the brink of a new era of public housing — and this time, it might actually be a success. This story was featured in the Within Our Means newsletter. Sign up here.