The Atlantic

For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires. The great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant reaffirmed this link between freedom and goodness. If we are not free to choose, he argued, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness.

Today, the assumption of free will runs through every aspect of American politics, from welfare provision to criminal law. It permeates the popular culture and underpins the American dream—the belief that anyone can make something of themselves no matter what their start in life. As Barack Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, American “values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will.”

In 2006, Donald Trump made plans to purchase the Menie Estate, near Aberdeen, Scotland, aiming to convert the dunes and grassland into a luxury golf resort. He and the estate’s owner, Tom Griffin, sat down to discuss the transaction at the Cock & Bull restaurant. Griffin recalls that Trump was a hard-nosed negotiator, reluctant to give in on even the tiniest details. But, as Michael D’Antonio writes in his recent biography of Trump, Never Enough, Griffin’s most vivid recollection of the evening pertains to the theatrics. It was as if the golden-haired guest sitting across the table were an actor playing a part on the London stage.

“It was Donald Trump playing Donald Trump,” Griffin observed. There was something unreal about it.

One evening in November of 2002, Carol Batie was sitting on her living-room couch in Houston, flipping through channels on the television, when she happened to catch a teaser for an upcoming news segment on KHOU 11, the local CBS affiliate. She leapt to her feet. “I scared the kids, I was screaming so loud,” Batie told me recently. “I said, ‘Thank you, God!’ I knew that all these years later, my prayers had been answered.”

The subject of the segment was the Houston Police Department Crime Laboratory, among the largest public forensic centers in Texas. By one estimate, the lab handled DNA evidence from at least 500 cases a year—mostly rapes and murders, but occasionally burglaries and armed robberies. Acting on a tip from a whistle-blower, KHOU 11 had obtained dozens of DNA profiles processed by the lab and sent them to independent experts for analysis. The results, William Thompson, an attorney and a criminology professor at the University of California at Irvine, told a KHOU 11 reporter, were terrifying: It appeared that Houston police technicians were routinely misinterpreting even the most basic samples.

In recent days, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have criticized Donald Trump as hopelessly old-fashioned. During a rally in New Jersey on Friday, the former U.S. president argued that his wife has a better understanding of today’s interconnected world than her Republican opponent in the 2016 election. The proof was Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent illegal immigration and terrorism.

“The last terrorist incident we had in America was in San Bernardino,” California, Clinton told the crowd. “Those people were converted [to radical Islam] over social media. … You can build a wall across our border with Canada as well. Create giant sea walls along the Atlantic and the Pacific. … We can send the whole U.S. Navy to the Gulf Coast and keep anybody from getting in there. We could use every airplane the U.S. Air Force has got in the air to stop planes from landing. You still couldn’t keep out the social media.”

Under instructions from U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, economist Jim O’Neill has spent the last two years looking into the problem of drug-resistant infections—bacteria and other microbes that have become impervious to antibiotics. In that time, he estimates that a million people have died from such infections. By 2050, he thinks that ten million will die every year.

O’Neill is most famous for another prediction—that by 2050, the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC), would eclipse those of the world’s current richest countries. A former chairman of Goldman Sachs with no scientific training, he was an unorthodox choice to lead an international commission on drug-resistant infections. He was also an inspired one. The problem of drug-resistant microbes isn’t just about biology and chemistry; it’s an economic problem at heart, a catastrophic and long-bubbling mismatch between supply and demand. It’s the result of the many incentives for misusing our drugs, and the dearth of incentives for developing new ones.

Last year’s massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, launched a mass effort to rid the country of Confederate symbols. Local governments voted to remove rebel banners from Southern cities, including Charleston, and people pushed to remove war memorials in towns from Louisville to New Orleans. Now, if California Congressman Jared Huffman’s bill becomes law, the Confederate battle flag could soon be largely barred from some military cemeteries, too.

It would prohibit large versions of the flag—such as those flown from flagpoles and over mass graves, Politico and The Hill report—from being displayed at national cemeteries operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Smaller versions would still be allowed at individual gravesites on two days, Confederate Memorial Day and Memorial Day. And some resting places, like state-owned veterans cemeteries, are exempt. The House passed the amendment Thursday with the support of GOP House leadership, including Speaker Paul Ryan, although roughly 160 Republicans and one Democrat voted against the amendment.

Disasters serve as the crucibles in which leaders are tested, and the disappearance of EgyptAir 804—though less than 24 hours old—is already serving that purpose in the presidential race.

Early Thursday morning, before Egyptian authorities (or anyone else) had made any statements about possible causes for the airplane’s disappearance over the Mediterranean, Trump tweeted this:

Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Paris. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant? Great hate and sickness!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2016

Trump’s tweet is at once totally irresponsible and politically wily. Speculating on the cause of a crash that killed 66 people, in the absence of any particular information—and Trump makes no claim to have inside information—is bad practice. A president shooting from the hip this way could have catastrophic consequences in international diplomacy or management of the economy. (See, for example, Trump’s apparently unconsidered assertion that he’d meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without preconditions, which rattled foreign-policy hands and which even Trump’s closest allies struggled to defend.)

In Spain, soccer is more than just a sport. Over the past century, political battles have been fought on the pitch, including, most notably, over Catalonia’s independence movement.

Police in Madrid have been ordered to search FC Barcelona fans this Sunday night for Estelada flags that are used by Catalan separatists to show their support of an independent state. The yellow- and red-striped flag with a white star and blue triangle is an “inflammatory symbol,” according to Spanish government officials, who told The Telegraph the match between Barcelona and Sevilla at the Copa del Rey, or King’s Cup, in Madrid “must not be made a scene of political struggle.”

FC Barcelona, located in the capital of Catalonia, was outraged by the order, saying in a statement the move would impede the free speech of its 19,000 fans who will attend the match. The club continues:

Few RuPaul’s Drag Race fans could have been surprised Monday night when the show crowned as champion the 29-year-old New Yorker who goes by the name Bob the Drag Queen. Over the course of Logo’s cult-beloved competition’s eighth season, the personable and funny Bob so skillfully met the expectations for what a Drag Race winner should be that, during the finale, RuPaul asked her just how much she’d studied the show before joining it.

But the most memorable moments of the night belonged to a runner-up, Kim Chi, as had many of the most memorable moments of the season. A 28-year-old Chicagoan and first-generation Korean American, Kim Chi’s fantastical outfits had frequently impressed the judges even while her physical clumsiness had become a running joke.

The effort must be all consuming. Now that Donald Trump is the last man standing in the Republican presidential race, Democrats are searching for the best way to convince voters he should never be allowed to set foot in the White House. Hillary Clinton and her allies seem to believe that using his own words against him will prove effective. The question is, Why would that work now when it hasn’t worked so far?

Television ads featuring a variety of statements Trump has made about women—which might reasonably be assumed to offend—started airing this week in the general-election battleground states of Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and Nevada. The ads are paid for by pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA. One shows women—young, old, black, and white—mouthing the words to comments from Trump. “Does Donald Trump Really Speak for You?” the 30-second ad asks ominously. Another starts with Trump proclaiming: “Nobody respects women more than Donald Trump.” It contrasts that with clips of him saying, “There has to be some form of punishment” for abortion and suggesting he would cut funding for Planned Parenthood. If it wasn’t already clear that the presidential election would focus on gender politics, it is now.