William Barr’s Long Crusade By Mattathias Schwartz June 7, 2020

June 7, 2020

7 Screenland Running Empty By Jody Rosen / 12 The Ethicist Uncle Business By Kwame Anthony Appiah / 14 Diagnosis Tele-Medicine By Lisa Sanders, M.D. /
16 Letter of Recommendation Folger’s Shakespeare Paperbacks By Tana Wojczuk / 18 Eat Lemon Goop and Vinaigrette By Dorie Greenspan

20 The Advocate 26 The College Conundrum 34 ‘We Are Humans’

By Mattathias Schwartz / For more than a Moderated by Emily Bazelon / As universities By Seth Freed Wessler / With ICE facing
generation, Attorney General William Barr has wrestle with how to reopen in the fall, administrators, increased pressure to release vulnerable
been fighting to unshackle the White House professors and a union representative explore detainees during the pandemic, men
from outside oversight — and no president has what life on campus in the midst of a pandemic and women held at a facility in Georgia are
benefited more than Donald Trump. could actually be like. trying desperately to raise the alarm.

William P. Barr at the Department of

Justice in May. A former department official
said that President Trump gives Barr ‘‘a
canvas upon which to paint’’ his conception of
a more moral, top-down society. Page 20.
Photograph by Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

4 Contributors / 5 The Thread / 10 Poem / 12 Judge John Hodgman / 17 Tip / 41, 48, 50 Puzzles / 41 Puzzle Answers

Behind the Cover Kathy Ryan, director of photography: ‘‘This week’s cover image of Attorney General William P. Barr was photographed by Gabriella
Demczuk, a portraitist who always skillfully captures the spirit of her subjects. Barr, rendered in dark shadows, his eyes directed at the camera, is seen looking
stern and resolute, making for an eye-catching contrast with the red banner and headline.’’ Photograph by Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times.

Copyright © 2020 The New York Times 3

Contributors

Mattathias Schwartz ‘‘The Advocate,’’ Mattathias Schwartz is a contributing Editor in Chief JAKE SILVERSTEIN
Page 20 writer for the magazine who lives in Washington. Deputy Editors JESSICA LUSTIG,
BILL WASIK
He is also a contributing editor for Rest of Managing Editor ERIKA SOMMER
Design Director GAIL BICHLER
World and a former staff writer at The New
Director of Photography KATHY RYAN
Yorker, where he won the Livingston Award Art Director BEN GRANDGENETT
for international reporting. In this issue, he Features Editor ILENA SILVERMAN
Politics Editor CHARLES HOMANS
interviews and profiles William P. Barr, whose Culture Editor SASHA WEISS
interventions as attorney general have Digital Director BLAKE WILSON
Story Editors NITSUH ABEBE,
improved the fortunes of the president and his SHEILA GLASER,
allies while drawing broad criticism from CLAIRE GUTIERREZ,
JAZMINE HUGHES,
legal experts. ‘‘Barr’s early years at the C.I.A. LUKE MITCHELL,
during the 1970s taught him something about DEAN ROBINSON,
WILLY STALEY
how to weather controversy,’’ Schwartz says. At War Editor LAUREN KATZENBERG
Assistant Managing Editor JEANNIE CHOI
Associate Editors IVA DIXIT,
KYLE LIGMAN
Poetry Editor NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
Staff Writers SAM ANDERSON,
Emily Bazelon ‘‘The College Emily Bazelon is a staff writer for the magazine
EMILY BAZELON,
Conundrum,’’ and the Truman Capote fellow for creative writing RONEN BERGMAN,
Page 26 TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER,
and law at Yale Law School. Her book ‘‘Charged’’
C. J. CHIVERS,
won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for 2020 PAMELA COLLOFF,
in the current-interest category. NICHOLAS CONFESSORE,
SUSAN DOMINUS,
MAUREEN DOWD,
Dorie Greenspan Eat, Dorie Greenspan is an Eat columnist for the NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES,
JENEEN INTERLANDI,
Page 18 magazine. She has won five James Beard Awards MARK LEIBOVICH,
for her cookbooks and writing. Her newest JONATHAN MAHLER,
DAVID MARCHESE,
cookbook is ‘‘Everyday Dorie: The Way I Cook.’’ WESLEY MORRIS,
JENNA WORTHAM
At War Reporter JOHN ISMAY
New York Times Fellow JAKE NEVINS
Jody Rosen Screenland, Jody Rosen is a contributing writer for the Digital Art Director KATE L A RUE
Page 7 magazine and the author of ‘‘Two Wheels Good: Designers CLAUDIA RUBÍN,
RACHEL WILLEY
The Bicycle on Planet Earth and Elsewhere,’’ to be Deputy Director of Photography JESSICA DIMSON
Senior Photo Editor AMY KELLNER
published next year. He last wrote about interring
Photo Editor KRISTEN GEISLER
bodies of Covid-19 victims on Hart Island. Contributing Photo Editor DAVID CARTHAS
Photo Assistant PIA PETERSON
Copy Chief ROB HOERBURGER
Seth Freed Wessler ‘‘ ‘We Are Humans,’ ’’ Seth Freed Wessler is a reporter Copy Editors HARVEY DICKSON,
Page 34 based in New York and a Puffin fellow at DANIEL FROMSON,
MARGARET PREBULA,
Type Investigations. ANDREW WILLETT
Head of Research NANDI RODRIGO
Research Editors ALEX CARP,
CYNTHIA COTTS,
JAMIE FISHER,
LU FONG,

Dear Reader: Which Would You TIM HODLER,

ROBERT LIGUORI,

Choose to Instantly Master? LIA MILLER,

STEVEN STERN,
MARK VAN DE WALLE,
The magazine publishes the results of a study BILL VOURVOULIAS
Production Chief ANICK PLEVEN
conducted online in March 2020 by The Production Editors PATTY RUSH,
New York Times’s research-and-analytics HILARY SHANAHAN
department, reflecting the opinions of Managing Director, MARILYN McCAULEY
Specialty Printing
2,250 subscribers who chose to participate. Manager, Magazine Layout THOMAS GILLESPIE
Editorial Administrator LIZ GERECITANO BRINN
Editorial Assistant ALEXANDER SAMAHA

Three languages of your choice 60%

Chef skills 12%
NYT MAG LABS
Neuroscience 11%
Oil painting 8%
Editorial Director CAITLIN ROPER
Repairing any home appliance 6%
Art Director DEB BISHOP
Gymnastics 3% Senior Editor ADAM STERNBERGH
NYT for Kids Editor AMBER WILLIAMS
Staff Editor MOLLY BENNET
Associate Editor LOVIA GYARKYE
Designer NAJEEBAH AL-GHADBAN
Project Manager LAUREN M C CARTHY

4 6.7.20
 The Thread

Readers respond to the 5.24.20 issue. and sweetly remembered children’s

book. But how genius of Anderson to
RE: QUARANTINE JOURNAL address our current issues with isola-
We asked several of our writers, artists tion and change in such a manner. It was
and contributors to tell us about the things the perfect ‘‘first thing in the morning’’
they’ve been doing in quarantine. Brian Rea read. Thank you for publishing this uni-
illustrated the issue. versal and, most importantly, humane
and heartfelt story. THE STORY,
Diana Salsberg, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. ON TWITTER

While I’ve been

I started reading this essay as one per- listening to lots of
son, and finished it as another. I am heart- voices during
ened, grieved and deeply grateful to Teju Covid, it’s the work
Cole for writing so much that has been of illustrators
who can capture our
missing and needed to be said. feeling states that
Susan Anderson, Boston gets me every time. Louise are lucky to have such wonderful
@tanyaworkman parents. Wishing Amy and Sam joy with
I have been reading The Times Maga- their family, good heath, prosperity and
zine for 74 years. Your May 24 issue is much theatrical success.
the best I have ever encountered. I read Jessica, New York
it all through and looked at all the imag-
es, from the front cover to the end — The black-and-white photography in the
something I never do. The coherence first piece is breathtaking. What a treat.
I consumed the magazine from cover to and cogency of form was both unified Emma and Luna are charmers. The per-
cover. I shoveled it in, gulped it down, and varied, powerful and beautiful and spectives offered in the remaining article
injected it, smoked it, for fear this pop- surprisingly comical. This issue is, liter- are interesting and reflective of the direc-
up support group for lockdown suffer- ally, a keeper. It’s going on my bookshelf tion a mind can take under this pandemic
ers should self-destruct in 60 seconds. right now! stress. We do what we must to survive.
There’s a soupçon of commonality Hugh Lifson, Cedar Rapids, Iowa This is a wonderful effort. Many thanks.
among the pieces, but of course that’s the Steve, Maryland
point. We’re gathered in this makeshift Sam Anderson gave words and, through
circle of folding chairs (Hey, Sam! Hey, them, some semblance of clarity to the
Helen! Jazmine, you should see my hair! mush of my life these past two months. EDITORS’ NOTE:
Molly, I’m just fine, too!) while Brian Rea This was the best description I’ve read An article on April 19 about an emergency-
sketches on. Worth every second, min- yet about the experience of the pandem- room physician’s experience during
ute, hour, day. ic. When my friends inquire, via email or the coronavirus outbreak in New York
Nadine Hoffman, Laguna Beach, Calif. text, how I’m doing, now I can just send described an account that circulated
them a link to this piece. among doctors in April about a 26-year-
This was truly beautiful. I’m also the Jean A. Freeman, Minneapolis old medical resident training in the city
mother of a toddler, but I’ve wandered who was said to have died of Covid-19
away from the recovery community in Such a brilliant, compassionate article. in a New York City hospital. This account
the last few years. Thank you for captur- It’s incredible to see what ingenuity and was verified with sources involved in the
ing so beautifully the commonalities of resourcefulness are brought to life when patient’s care, but further reporting after
life with a young child, and life in early coping with these scary times. Lee and publication revealed that it was apparently
recovery — the visceral, beautiful expe- a case of mistaken identity. According to a
rience of being so in the moment. After spokeswoman for the American College of
reading this, I’ve gained a greater appre- Emergency Physicians, a 26-year-old man
ciation for both. You’ve inspired me to who died from complications related to the
get back to meetings via Zoom. I’m full coronavirus had the same name as a young
of gratitude. Thank you! ‘It’s incredible medical resident at a different hospital.
Elary, Chicago to see what Health workers involved in the patient’s
ingenuity and treatment mistakenly believed that he was
Cover illustration by Brian Rea

I sat with my morning coffee and a medical resident, but ACEP said it had
thumbed through the paper. I wasn’t resourcefulness subsequently confirmed that it was not the
ready to read a lot of Covid stories, be are brought to same man, and that the medical resident
they tragic or heroic, just yet. Then I hit life when coping with that name was healthy. The reference to
upon Sam Anderson’s story. It grabbed that case has been removed from the article.
me immediately. The caterpillar, a famil- with these
iar story, the comfort of some known scary times.’ Send your thoughts to [email protected].

Illustrations by Giacomo Gambineri 5

Screenland

Running Empty

Professional sports are returning — minus the fans.

⬤ By Jody Rosen ⬤ On Sunday, May 17, soccer fans
who tuned in to the match between Bayern Munich
and F.C. Union Berlin were greeted by a surprising
sound: the thump of a ball being kicked. Most of the
time, that noise is inaudible to television viewers,
swallowed up by the ambient roar of cheers and chants
raining down from the stands or the commentators
6.7.20 7
Screenland

bellowing over the din. But the Bayern- amplified the ubiquitous thwap-thwap- You could hear The game’s key plays accentuated the
Union game was among the first played in thwap of feet striking a ball. You could weirdness. When Bayern took a 1-0 lead
birds chirping.
France-Presse, via Getty Images; screen grabs from YouTube.

Germany’s top division, the Bundesliga, hear birds chirping, the peal of the ref- on a penalty kick, the ball rolled into a net
Above (source photographs): Hannibal Hanschke/Agence

after a two-month layoff because of the eree’s whistle, the occasional shouts of that framed an expanse of desolate bleach-
coronavirus pandemic, and the season players — a pastoral soundscape rem- ers. The shot that sealed Bayern’s victory,
had resumed with a drastic set of new iniscent of a youth-soccer match on a a header by Benjamin Pavard late in the
restrictions in place, including a ban on village green. second half, made a sound that echoed
Opening page: Screen grab from YouTube.

paying spectators. The level of play was of course world- eerily around the building: a resonant
So the 22,000-capacity stadium was class, but the atmospherics made the thud, like a judge slamming down a gavel,
nearly empty, apart from players, staff, game feel absurd. On the bench, play- case closed. Both goals were followed by
security and a smattering of others. ers were spaced several seats apart to oddly muted celebrations — a couple
‘‘Under normal circumstances,’’ one of preserve social distance; coaches yelled of halfhearted fist pumps and scattered
Fox Sports’ play-by-play announcers instructions through surgical masks. It applause from the Bayern sideline. No
said, ‘‘this stadium would be rocking, was a kind of zombie game, a grim paro- handshakes, of course, and no big hugs.
packed to the rafters with some of dy of a typical Sunday in the Bundesliga,
the most passionate fans.’’ Instead, the when the action on the pitch is egged on Professional sports is among the indus-
place was enveloped in a silence that by a seething carnival in the stands. tries hit hardest by the coronavirus crisis.

8 6.7.20 Photo illustration by Najeebah Al-Ghadban

Some other forms of mass entertainment Critics have questioned the decision % of Americans unlikely that fans will be present at any
who told Seton
managed to stagger along: Musicians to resume Bundesliga play, arguing that of these games, in any of these sports.
Hall University
record songs and livestream concerts the move puts the health of players and pollsters they You would think that the sports world
from home, and talk shows have set up others at risk and was compelled mostly would be less would be well positioned to adapt to this
shop in their hosts’ living rooms. But by financial pressures. But more leagues interested in reality. Millions of ardent sports fans
watching sports
sports ceased almost entirely, a loss that may soon follow suit. Europe’s other elite broadcasts
never attend games in person; for most
has rippled through the global economy soccer divisions — in England, Spain and without fans: 16 people, a soccer or football or basketball
and altered the lives of countless fans. Italy — seem poised to return within game is a thing you watch on TV. For
There’s no doubt that soccer lovers world- weeks. The N.B.A. is reportedly plan- % who said decades, television has been at the heart
they would
wide are suffering withdrawal and are rav- ning to restart, possibly heading straight be more of sports culture, with leagues rejiggering
enous for new action. On the weekend the into a 16-team playoff tournament. The interested: 7 game rules to create more gripping TV
Bundesliga returned, broadcasts of the fate of the Major League Baseball sea- spectacles. At the stadiums themselves,
games reportedly set ratings records in son has become entangled in disputes there are jumbo scoreboards, hi-def
Germany, and Fox Sports’ American tele- between team owners and the players’ screens on which fans follow the action
cast of one match on FS1 drew the largest union, but the sides are negotiating in and instant-replay reviews of referees’
market share for a Bundesliga game in the hopes that a shortened schedule can calls. In soccer, there is already a history
channel’s history. begin in July. At the moment, it seems of matches played with no fans: For years,

9
Screenland

the sport’s governing bodies have occa- But fans of Bayern in a tight Bundesliga title is soccer as show business. Fans watching
sionally imposed them as a penalty for race. To watch both teams play in these at home need the fans in the stands; with-
team rule violations or supporters’ acts don’t just love unnervingly silent stadiums is to confirm out them, a crucial life force drains from
of hooliganism or racism. the games. the obvious: Elite athletes will do great the games. The roar of the crowd is not
All this would seem to bode well for They love all things on a field regardless of whether mere background noise. It’s the music of
what may become a protracted empty- supporters are there to cheer them on. sports — the soundtrack that transforms a
stadium era. It might at first be a shock the corny Those spectators are superfluous to soc- ballgame into a melodrama, must-see TV,
to watch a blood-and-thunder sporting stuff that comes cer as a sport — what they’re essential to the greatest show on earth.
event — a UEFA Champions League with them.
final or a World Series seventh game
— unfolding amid the genteel hush we
associate with tournament golf. But fans Poem Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye
will adjust, as they have adjusted to the
many overhauls, aesthetic and other- Right now, everyone wants another day, a different day. In her cleansing litany of
wise, that our pastimes have undergone a poem, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley promises that it is coming. After a wrenching parting,
across the decades. What matters, most it is coming. After seasons of need or fear, it is coming. Here the line ‘‘as mended as
would say, is that the show goes on, that the bridge’’ rests so easy on the soul — what a hope, in difficult days, that you could feel
the games are played. ‘‘as mended as the bridge’’ anytime soon. Kudos to all the hard workers keeping bridges
But is that really what matters? Fans open in our communities and to the poets who offer bridges in words to other people.
like to imagine that they are purists
whose fever for sports derives from a
devout Love of the Game. But fans don’t
just love the games. They love all the
corny stuff that comes with them. They
love the pomp and circumstance. They
love the communal vibe, the combi-
nation of party and riot and religious One Day
revival, that thrives in packed bars and
love song for the newly divorced
teeming stadium stands. This is espe-
By Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
cially pronounced in club soccer, with
its culture of ‘‘ultras,’’ superfans who
attend every game, home and away, One day, you will awake from your covering
wearing team colors and waving flags and that heart of yours will be totally mended,
and singing songs. These tribal rites and there will be no more burning within.
won’t stand in 2020, when we measure The owl, calling in the setting of the sun
our safety in distances of six feet and and the deer path, all erased.
in the dispersal patterns of respirato- And there will be no more need for love
ry droplets. Even the humble, beery
or lovers or fears of losing lovers
gathering to watch the game at home
is deemed ill advised.
and there will be no more burning timbers
Sports lore holds that the relation- with which to light a new fire,
ship between fan and team is symbiot- and there will be no more husbands or people
ic and reciprocal. The heroism of the related to husbands, and there will be no more
players brings cheers from the faithful; tears or reason to shed your tears.
the cheers inspire the heroism. That You will be as mended as the bridge
ecosystem has been disrupted by the the working crew have just reopened.
coronavirus. One of the most-discussed The thick air will be vanquished with the tide
moments of the Bundesliga’s first week-
and the river that was corrupted by lies
end back came at the conclusion of the
Borussia Dortmund-F.C. Schalke match, will be cleansed totally and free.
when Dortmund’s players saluted their And the rooster will call in the setting sun
fans in absentia, standing and applaud- and the sun will beckon homeward,
ing in front of the so-called Yellow Wall, hiding behind your one tree that was not felled.
the 25,000-seat stand where the club’s
famously zealous ultras gather.
It was a nice gesture, but did Dort-
Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young People’s Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Her latest book
mund really miss those fans? The team is ‘‘Cast Away,’’ from Greenwillow Books. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley was born in Tugbakeh, Liberia, and is
thumped Schalke 4-0, an electric perfor- a professor of English, creative writing and African literature at Penn State University’s Altoona campus. ‘‘Praise
mance that kept them within four points Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems’’ was published by Autumn House Press in March.

10 6.7.20 Illustration by R. O. Blechman

The Ethicist By Kwame Anthony Appiah

thing — help heal a rift and enable your

Can I Tell My Uncle That cousin to get the help and support she
needs. Here’s the sticking point: Your
cousin is an adult. Unless you think she’s

His Estranged Gay Daughter so disturbed that she’s not competent to

manage her own life, you have reason
to respect her decision not to share this

Is In Bad Shape? information with the rest of her family.

The fact that your uncle would be grateful
to be told doesn’t make it OK to tell him.
Bonus Advice
From Judge
What counts in favor of telling your John Hodgman
uncle? The fact that you have a good
relationship with him and that he might John writes: I believe
pajamas are meant
expect you to let him know that his for sleeping. My wife
daughter is in serious trouble. Your uncle believes that they
is unlikely to want his daughter dealing are for whenever you
with serious mental-health problems on want to feel comfy.
Lately, she has taken
her own, and he can certainly provide to wearing multiple
relief for his daughter’s financial stresses. sets of PJs in a day.
The violation of privacy involved in your Yesterday, she wore
jeans, then evening
telling your uncle is mitigated by the fact pajamas, then
that your cousin has shared her situation separate nighttime
with all her Facebook friends, presum- pajamas. This is
ably a fairly wide group. It’s possible to too much.
————
wonder whether she’s too proud to ask Good morning.
for help herself but is hoping that some- Having read your
one will pass this information on. letter, I have traded
my own pajamas
The messiness of what confronts you
for my judicial track
is all too typical of ethically fraught deci- pants, and now I don
sions, in which the right choice may be a my athleisure black
little wrong, too. In J. C. Chandor’s 2014 cap to pass my most
withering judgment
film, ‘‘A Most Violent Year,’’ the hero says, against you. There
‘‘I have always taken the path that is most was a time when I,
I come from a large family with beliefs I want to help my cousin but don’t right’’ — and there’s something marvel- like you, considered
across the political spectrum. An older want to invade her privacy or ously precise about the awkwardness of all daytime comfort-
wear to be juvenile
gay cousin of mine recently posted on interfere with her relationship with the formulation. ‘‘Most right’’ suggests and lazy. But this is a
her private Facebook page some sensitive her father. However, I feel I have least wrong, a judgment that’s irreduc- Different Time. Now
information about a recent breakup an obligation to share this information ibly comparative. You can’t easily decide more than ever we
need our clothes (and
and her unstable mental health. In the post, with my uncle and family. between these opposing sets of con- spouses) to go a little
my cousin revealed that she has been In the post, my cousin mentioned siderations without knowing more. But easier on us. And we
working multiple jobs to pay for school and that she would love to get coffee with any nothing stops you from contacting your need more of those
is looking for a therapist to help her cope. of her Facebook friends. Should I cousin and, yes, having that coffee, albeit clothes. Presuming
you’re (lucky enough
This post made me worried. remain loyal to my cousin (who obviously perhaps via Zoom. You can get a sense of to be) stuck at home,
I do not have a close relationship with this had some level of unspoken expectations what shape she’s in. You can tell her that pajamas-to-jeans-
cousin, as she has detached herself when she accepted my friend request) and you’d like to let her father know about to-cocktail-jimjams-
to-sleepwear
from most of my family. While many of not tell anyone and perhaps offer to meet her struggles — and urge her to accept not only seems
us are accepting of her, her father is for coffee? Or do I have an obligation to her father’s help. Finally, if she’s having admirably rigorous;
politically conservative and homophobic. alert my uncle of my cousin’s predicament? suicidal thoughts (and so, in the relevant it may be the only
My cousin severed her relationship with I don’t have much of a relationship with my sense, isn’t competently managing her way to tell time now.
Illustration by Louise Zergaeng Pomeroy

her father and stepmother some time ago. cousin, but I do with my uncle and life), you can legitimately decide to tell
My uncle (her father) is affluent would like to maintain my relationship her family even if she forbids it. To submit a query:
and previously offered to help finance my with him and his family. What is It has been said that a growing number Send an email to
cousin’s education and alleviate some my ethical obligation in this situation? of adult children have been ‘‘divorcing’’ ethicist@nytimes
.com; or send mail
of her financial stress. Also, while my their parents; they decide that their par- to The Ethicist, The
uncle remains a fiscal conservative, Name Withheld ents are toxic and that everything will be New York Times
he has gotten better at keeping an open better with these people out of their lives. Magazine, 620
Eighth Avenue, New
mind, though I’m certain that if You’ve identified the moral consider- I haven’t seen any hard numbers, but one
York, N.Y. 10018.
he were to contact his daughter, things ations that are in tension, and commend- survey found that estrangements between (Include a daytime
would be awkward and rocky. ably, you want to do the compassionate adult children and their parents are much phone number.)

12 6.7.20 Illustration by Tomi Um

more likely to be initiated by the children. requirement would have substantially Breaking (The Lakers returned the money in the
We’re all familiar, of course, with appalling slowed down the process of distributing wake of public scrutiny.) I’ll grant that if
stories of people who boot out their gay the money and undermined the aims of contact with you used the loan to expand your work
offspring. Often, though, the story is a lit- the policy. Any government program loved ones force, you’d be more in line with the pro-
tle complicated: Sometimes parents, blin- designed to serve vast numbers of people is easy to do, gram’s aims than some applicants are. Still,
kered by their background, simply need (even programs better crafted than this because the funds are limited — the initial
time to adjust. Breaking contact with loved one) has to use rules that are cruder than but such pool of financing ran out; the second round
ones is easy to do, but such shunning may a policy exquisitely responsive to every shunning may may do so as well — some people who filed
itself be an act of psychological cruelty. nuance of the needs it aims to meet. itself be an after you may end up having to fire people
We’d be better off, in most cases, if we all What matters is whether your applica- whom they would have been able to retain
cut one another a little more slack. tion was factually correct and whether act of had there been money left. In applying,
you were eligible under the rules. Your psychological you say that your plan has been to set aside
I am the president of a medium-size brief account of your situation leaves cruelty. the money for an unknown contingency;
nonprofit. We have a fairly secure income this in question. Given your assessment you should consider that, in the meantime,
stream, but nothing is truly secure these that ‘‘the likelihood of using the funds for you may have helped deplete resources
days. We applied for and received a loan payroll was small,’’ you might ask your- urgently needed by others. Were you to
of nearly $250,000 from the Paycheck self whether you would have been able return the money, there’s reason to hope it
Protection Program, enough to cover our to establish that the loan was ‘‘necessary’’ could be used by applicants whose needs
payroll for eight to 10 weeks. There’s for your continued operations. are clearer and more pressing.
a reasonable chance we won’t need any It’s well known that a number of inap-
of this money to keep operating. If propriate loans have been obtained from
Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy
we don’t spend the money on existing this small-business program — by, for
at N.Y.U. His books include ‘‘Cosmopolitanism,’’
employees, we would use it to expand instance, the Los Angeles Lakers, a team ‘‘The Honor Code’’ and ‘‘The Lies That Bind:
our services and hire more staff. recently valued by Forbes at $4.4 billion. Rethinking Identity.’’
Was it right for us to apply for the loan
when we knew the likelihood of using
the funds for payroll was small? We are
planning to set the money aside until
we are sure we won’t need it for payroll.
If we use it to expand services and
programs, then we are using it to hire more
staff and help achieve the program’s goal of
keeping people in the work force. Assuming
our income stream remains strong, is it
ethical to use the funds for other programs
that will result in the hiring of more
staff, or should we return the funds?

Name Withheld

The essential aim of the Paycheck Protec-

tion Program system is to reduce unem-
ployment in the short term. Applicants
must ‘‘certify in good faith,’’ according to
the Treasury Department’s website, that
‘‘current economic uncertainty makes the
loan necessary to support your ongoing
operations’’ and that ‘‘the funds will be
used to retain workers and maintain pay-
roll or to make mortgage, lease and utility
payments.’’ The loan will be forgiven if
employees are retained for eight weeks
and at least 75 percent of the loan is used
for payroll. There are various asterisks and
addendums, but this is the basic scheme,
unless new legislation comes into effect.
The program hasn’t asked applicants
to prove that the loans were necessary to
keep staff members on the payroll; that
Diagnosis By Lisa Sanders, M.D.

Two young people with a ‘‘I know what Danny has,’’ said the boy’s
aunt to the boy’s mother, her sister-in-
law. Her voice on the phone cracked
rare and mysterious ailment find with excitement. ‘‘I saw someone just
like him on TV!’’

each other — and what This was last fall, and Danny was 18.
He had been a medical mystery since he
was 7 months old. His mother recalled
they share changes their lives. that she had just finished changing his
diaper and picked him up when she
heard him make a strange clicking
noise, his mouth opening and closing
oddly. And then his head flopped back
as she held him. She hurried to the living
room of their Queens home to show her
husband, but by the time she got there,
Danny was fine.
Those sudden episodes of clicking
and collapse happened again and again,
eventually occurring more than 100
times a day. His first doctors thought
these episodes could be tiny seizures.
But none of the antiseizure medications
they prescribed helped.
Then, when Danny was 8, and almost
too big for his mother to catch when he
slow-motion slumped to the floor, his
parents found a doctor who was will-
ing to explore a different diagnosis and
treatment. Could this be a rare disease
known as cataplexy? In this disorder,
patients have episodes of sudden weak-
ness in the skeletal muscles of the body.
In some, cataplexy may affect only the
face or neck, causing the eyelids to
droop or the head to fall forward. But in
others, it can also affect the entire body.
These episodes are often triggered by
strong emotion, which was the case
for Danny. Cataplexy is usually part of
another rare disorder, narcolepsy, in
which the normal control of sleep and
wakefulness is somehow lost. Those
with narcolepsy have sudden episodes
of sleep that invade their waking hours
and transient periods of wakefulness that
disrupt their sleep.

↓
A Medication That Works
The boy was tested for narcolepsy when
he was 5, but the parents wondered if the
negative result could have been wrong.
The doctor and the parents decided to try
treating him with Adderall, an amphet-
amine usually given for attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder but used to treat
cataplexy as well. The parents agreed,
but the drug didn’t do much.

14 6.7.20 Illustrations by Ina Jang

Diagnosis

Undeterred, the neurologist started saw it, too. That’s when she picked up her went back and asked the same doctor to
Danny on a different type of amphet- phone and called her sister-in-law. test their son again, this time specifically
amine, called Vyvanse. And, says the for the KCNMA1 gene — an abnormali-
boy’s mother, it was like a miracle. At ↓ ty unknown at the time he had his first
school her son had an attendant who Not One of a Kind test. It took two months for the results to
stayed with him throughout the day to Danny’s mother fast-forwarded through come back: The boy had a mutation in his
keep him from getting hurt when he fell the first few minutes of the episode until KCNMA1 gene, just the way Kamiyah did.
down during an episode. And he had lots she saw the girl collapse and then recov-
of episodes — up to 20 every hour. After er, just as her son did. She rewound it and ↓
he was on the medication for just three watched from the beginning. The Power of the Crowd
days, she told me, Danny brought home The mother on the screen, Breteni, Danny’s parents found Breteni and her
a note from school, which read: ‘‘Dear described how Kamiyah first started to daughter and told them about Danny’s
Mommy, I didn’t have any episodes have these spells when she was 8 months successful treatment. Kamiyah, too, was
today.’’ She burst into tears. old and learning to crawl. That child first thought to have epilepsy, but the med-
The medication stopped these spells had gone to the National Institutes of icines she was given seemed to make her
completely while it was in his system. Health Undiagnosed Diseases Network episodes even worse. Since then, Breteni
Before he took his pill in the morning, (U.D.N.) — a program dedicated to find- had been reluctant to treat Kamiyah with
and when it wore off at night, he contin- ing answers for patients who did not have any medication. But after hearing what this
ued to have the episodes of jaw clicking diagnoses after a full investigation. Doc- medication did for Danny — allowing him
and collapse. He couldn’t take a second tors at the U.D.N. discovered that the girl to go to school, to learn, to make friends
dose at night because it would prevent had a rare genetic abnormality shared by — Breteni reached out to her daughter’s
him from sleeping. But during the day, only a handful of children in the world. neurologist, and with his approval start-
for the first time Danny was able to have The affected gene, known by the name ed Kamiyah on Vyvanse. The results were
a life like other children’s. KCNMA1, made an aberrant version of a immediate. Within days, Kamiyah went
piece of cellular machinery in the brain. from having hundreds of spells a day to
↓ That abnormality causes episodes of col- having none at all — at least not while the
An Unexpected Answer lapse in which the body simply seems to medication was in her system.
Although the boy had a treatment that Lisa Sanders, M.D., grind to a halt, then start again. After Kamiyah’s story was told,
worked, his father didn’t think he had cat- is a contributing writer The woman called her husband, and researchers began looking for ways to help
for the magazine. Her
aplexy. He’d seen a documentary about a latest book is ‘‘Diagnosis: they watched the show together. He, patients with this unusual genetic muta-
girl who had it, and her attacks didn’t look Solving the Most Baffling too, was convinced that they’d found tion. Andrea Meredith, a neuroscientist
at all like his son’s. The attacks of cataplexy Medical Mysteries.’’ If the cause of their son’s episodes. They’d at the University of Maryland School of
you have a solved case to
were fast — like a switch that clicks off taken Danny to a geneticist early in their Medicine, had spent her career studying
share with Dr. Sanders,
then on again. Danny’s attacks were much write her at Lisa search for a diagnosis, but the genetic this gene in mice. She contacted Brete-
slower — as if he powered down rather [email protected]. analysis didn’t reveal anything. They ni, after hearing about Kamiyah, to share
than switched off. His father searched what she had learned about the gene and
through websites on rare diseases and its diseases and to work with them to find
clicked on YouTube videos of children a treatment. Matthew Might, a researcher
who were filmed having various types at the University of Alabama at Birming-
of spells. None of them looked like what ham School of Medicine, also decided to
happened to his son. What he had seemed look for medications to help those with this
unique — until Danny’s aunt called to say mutation after reading Kamiyah’s story.
she’d seen a child just like him. Might hadn’t even considered Vyvanse
Earlier that day, her teenage daughters until Breteni told him about how well it
watched a Netflix documentary series worked for her daughter and for Danny.
called ‘‘Diagnosis,’’ which is produced by And he’s now looking for other drugs
The New York Times and is based on this that will have the same positive effects as
column. Before filming began, I wrote Vyvanse, but with fewer of the side effects
about patients with undiagnosed cases from taking amphetamines.
in special online versions of this column. Until then, Kamiyah and the handful of
The idea was to use the broad reach of others like her can still enjoy something
the internet to try to find help for them. they never had before — a nearly normal
The daughters watched an episode fea- life. In April, after three weeks on this med-
turing a 6-year-old girl named Kamiyah ication, Kamiyah learned to ride a bike,
who had spells that looked exactly like something her mother never dreamed
Danny’s. They called their mother, told would be possible. She still has the train-
her what they’d seen and stayed on the ing wheels on, but she and her mother are
phone as she watched the show. Twen- looking forward to a day when even those
ty minutes in, they heard her gasp. She might come off.

6.7.20 15
Letter of Recommendation

Folger’s Shakespeare Paperbacks

By Tana Wojczuk

By the time I was a teenager, I had devel- the target of every pretty, popular girl The Bard’s work I needed them most, the Folger Shake-
should be considered
oped a kind of Shakespearean Tourette’s. who now identified me as competition. anything but sacred.
speare Library released slim, accessible
Lines from his plays rattled around ‘‘Nature with a beauteous wall doth oft copies of his plays that I could carry
constantly in my head and, when I was close in pollution,’’ I muttered, quoting around in my back pocket. It was the
excited or stressed, they would occa- Viola from ‘‘Twelfth Night’’ as I cleaned 1990s, and the New Folger paperbacks
sionally spill forth. It was a little like off the tuna fish someone had smeared were published alongside a deluge of
living in an especially manic episode of on my locker. I wished that like Viola I Kenneth Branagh films and other more
‘‘Ally McBeal.’’ This disorder found its could disguise myself as a boy and move mainstream Shakespeare adaptations,
most intense expression in the eighth about the world freely again. both direct (‘‘Romeo + Juliet’’) and less
grade, when I suddenly grew breasts and I was interested in Shakespeare so (‘‘10 Things I Hate About You’’). Shake-
sprouted four inches over the summer, because my parents took me to plays as speare’s work was being treated like the
transforming from a shy preteen into soon as I could walk, but I knew many popular entertainment it was always
a horribly visible teenager. I became of his works by heart because, just when meant to be, and Folger’s inexpensive

16 6.7.20 Photograph by Olivia Locher

editions were a sort of print corollary Looking at an read, the more you realize Shakespeare quarantine, I see the Danish prince as
to these films. is woven into the fiber of the English the lone sane person in the play. He’s
Part of the appeal of the Folger paper- illustration language. Pull any thread, and there he only driven mad by the awareness that
backs is their accessible design: On the in the Folger is. As the British actor Jim Dale puts it: everyone around him is helping to cover
recto page, the original text, uncut; on ‘‘Twelfth Night’’ ‘‘If one of your socks has ‘vanished into up the new king’s crimes. The nation of
the verso, helpful vocabulary words, thin air,’ you are quoting Shakespeare. his childhood is no longer a sanctuary.
often accompanied by tiny reproduc- of a distaff — a If ever you’ve said you ‘refuse to budge ‘‘I could be bounded in a nutshell, and
tions of Elizabethan etchings. Once I long, pointed an inch,’ ’’ he goes on, ‘‘had ‘short shrift,’ count myself a king of infinite space,’’
saw what a harrow looked like, with doz- spindle — I first ‘cold comfort’ or ‘too much of a good Hamlet explains, ‘‘were it not that I have
ens of circles of sharp knifelike blades thing,’ you’re quoting Shakespeare.’’ bad dreams.’’ If he lived in a sane coun-
for clawing the earth, I never heard the understood one The best part about reading Shake- try, Hamlet could be sane, but the rotten-
word ‘‘harrowing’’ the same way again. of Shakespeare’s speare is rereading him. The plays I read ness around him drives him to ‘‘cleave
Looking at an illustration in the Folger raunchy jokes. as a kid are transformed when I read the general ear with horrid speech. Make
‘‘Twelfth Night’’ of a distaff — a long, them as an adult, turning to them par- mad the guilty and appall the free.’’ Pick-
pointed spindle — I first understood one ticularly in times of crisis. Lincoln had ing up one of my battered old Folgers, I
of Shakespeare’s raunchy jokes. (The ‘‘Macbeth,’’ which he studied during the still feel a shock of recognition, like one
foolish spendthrift Sir Andrew Aguec- Civil War. He saw in that play a warn- of those dreams where you open a door
heek asks Sir Toby Belch if he has good ing against ‘‘vaulting ambition, which to discover a new room in your apart-
hair, and Sir Toby replies: ‘‘Excellent. It o’er leaps itself.’’ Rereading ‘‘Hamlet’’ in ment, and realize it was there all along.
hangs like flax on a distaff. And I hope
to see a housewife take thee between
her legs and spin it off.’’) What these
books don’t do is treat Shakespeare like Tip By Malia Wollan mid-90s, they were already playing covers
a sacred text; they help us think of him of classic rock songs at street fairs and
as a popular author, who can be tossed How to Start a office parties in the San Fernando Valley;
in a backpack, read aloud at the park, they called their first band, which their
left in the rain. Family Band parents played in, Rockinhaim.
Today, sliding my finger between the Find a song you collectively love that
pages of the faux-croc-bound, gilt-edged is fun to sing. ‘‘You might start with
Collected Works I got for my 10th birth- ‘Mustang Sally,’ ’’ says Alana, who sings
day, I can feel that many are still uncut. and plays guitar and keyboards. ‘‘It’s
Inside, every page is covered in foot- pretty easy, and there’s a good call and
notes and every play is surrounded by response.’’ Their parents still occasionally
a thicket of dense, nearly impenetrable join the sisters onstage for a rendition.
critical prose. If I hadn’t had the Folg- Learn to harmonize. ‘‘There’s something
er paperbacks, I would have assumed really special when you blend families in
Shakespeare was too hard and would vocal harmony,’’ Danielle says. Whenev-
never have attempted it. I would have er the Haims drove, they sang, often to
never discovered the writer who made music with tight, bouncing harmonies,
me want to be a writer. like that of the Bee Gees. You don’t have
It’s appropriate that these accessible ‘‘Get your hands on an instrument,’’ to become a music theorist to figure out
editions came from the Folger, an Ameri- says Danielle Haim, 31, who sings lead how to harmonize, but the sisters did
can institution. Shakespeare came here in vocals and plays guitar in the Los Ange- learn some basic lessons on consonant
the settlers’ first saddlebags, and he is as les-based band Haim, along with her intervals from an after-school glee club.
American now as the Beatles. According sisters Este, 34, and Alana, 28. It helps ‘‘We figured out that when Danielle is
to one estimate, America has more Shake- to have musical parents who leave instru- singing this note, I sing the third and
speare festivals than anywhere else in the ments around. Growing up in the Haim Alana sings a fifth,’’ says Este, who sings
world. In 19th-century America, where house, the sisters all started with the and plays bass.
everyone from Tammany Hall politicians drums because their father kept a drum To be in a family band, you have to be
to Bowery Boys knew Shakespeare by set in the living room. prepared to spend a lot of time togeth-
heart, his plays were popular entertain- Family-band members will eventually er, actively working on cohesion. Music
ment. And 19th-century audiences had need to differentiate, a process that can can act as a kind of binding agent. When
no problem sampling, burlesquing and happen through individual will, sibling they’re not in quarantine, the Haim sis-
Tana Wojczuk
generally messing around with his work. is an editor at Guernica rivalry and parental nudging. At 5, Dan- ters see, or at least talk to, each other
‘‘Get thee to a brewery’’ was a popular and the author of the ielle could strum chords on the guitar every day. ‘‘Instead of camping as kids,
joke; ‘‘To be or not to be’’ was frequently forthcoming biography with more skill than Este, a fact that made or going hiking, it was like, ‘OK, we’re
‘‘Lady Romeo: The
sung to the melody of ‘‘Three Blind Mice.’’ Este sad; their father suggested she take going to practice a few songs,’ ’’ Danielle
Radical, Revolutionary
Like shaking loose a decoder ring Life of Charlotte up the bass, which has fewer strings. The says. ‘‘It was definitely my parents’ ploy
from a box of cornflakes, the more you Cushman.’’ sisters started their band in 2007. By the to spend more time with us.’’

Illustration by Radio 17
Eat By Dorie Greenspan

The Miracle of Lemon Goop: Sweet,

salty, intensely citrusy and pleasingly tart.
You’ll put it on everything.

18 6.7.20 Photograph and styling by Gentl and Hyers

It adds Every afternoon, I get a ping on my com- down to release their juice, then turning ought to preserve some lemons. Maybe I
puter announcing the number of days since the jar upside down and right-side up for will, maybe I won’t. But I’m not giving up
fullness to my hard drive was backed up in Paris, a month, until the lemons’ skins become my goop — it will always have the front-
lean foods where I live part time. That ping means it soft and salty and their fruit, which is not row-center spot on the middle shelf of my
and cuts the has been 128 days since I was in Paris — the as prized as the peel, becomes meltingly fridge door.
longest I’ve been away from that city and tender. The salt intensifies the lemons’ fla-
too-muchness my friends in decades. One hundred and vor, making it a magnified version of itself. Lemon Goop and Vinaigrette
of fatty ones. twenty-nine days since I had a haircut; I It’s technically pickling, but the result is Time: 1½ hours
think the last time I had to push my hair out less crisp, less acidic, more mellow. It’s this
of my eyes, the Beatles were still together. subdued-but-present flavor that made the For the goop and syrup:
And a record 122 dinners and counting jam so memorable, and it’s what I wanted 6 large lemons
that I’ve cooked at home. (I’ve subtracted to capture using what I had at hand: six 1½ cups/300 grams granulated sugar
the three meals we had in restaurants in ordinary lemons. 2 teaspoons fine sea salt
February and the three at friends’ homes What I ended up doing was a combi-
later that month.) nation of pickling and marmalade-mak- For the vinaigrette:
Happily, I don’t mind all that cooking. ing. I took the zest from half the lemons,
6 tablespoons olive oil
I’m used to spending a lot of time in the and the fruit from all of them, and cooked
2 tablespoons goop syrup (from above)
kitchen — my desk is there, and the floor them in a sugar syrup with just enough
2 tablespoons goop (from above)
between it and the oven is scuffed bare. salt to give the blend a savory edge. As is
I’m also used to making meals from what’s almost always the case when I’m working 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

at hand. Because a quick round trip to the on something new, I started with a hunch 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
supermarket can take more than an hour and high hopes. Sadly, after an hour of 1 teaspoon honey
from our Connecticut home, I became poaching and pot-watching, it looked as Salt and pepper, to taste
adept long ago at foraging in my pantry if I’d made a grave miscalculation: All I
and shopping in my fridge. I think of the had was a powerfully fragrant syrup with 1. To make the goop and syrup: Remove
refrigerator as my supermarket, its door lots of raggedy stuff floating around in it. It the zest from 3 lemons, taking care not to
include any white cottony pith. Coarsely
the specialty-foods section. That door is was unpromising, but I carried on with my chop the zest, and set aside.
where I keep ‘‘the transformers,’’ ingredi- plan. I strained what was left of the lemons
ents that can change whatever dish they’re and zest — the amount was paltry — turned 2. You use the segments from all 6 lemons,
added to. There are nut oils to drizzle over it into a mini food processor with some of so cut away any rind and pith on each
warm vegetables; chile sauces, capers, the syrup and whirred away. of the lemons, so that the fruit is exposed.
Slice between the membranes to release
anchovies and olives for salads, pastas and Jam! I actually got jam! It was glossy each segment.
tuna-on-toast; hard-to-find yuzu kosho; and as velvety as the original and so good:
easy-to-get soy sauce; and my homemade more sweet than salty, intensely lemony 3. Add the sugar, sea salt and 2 cups water
lemon goop, which is next to the lemon and pleasantly tart. to a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil.
syrup, which comes along with the goop. And then there was the syrup. A Drop in the segments and the chopped zest,
bring back to a boil, then lower the heat so
(There’s also a vinaigrette that I make with lagniappe. Where the goop was mysteri- that the syrup simmers gently. Cook for about
both the syrup and the goop.) ous, the syrup was brash and, as I came to 1 hour, at which point the syrup will have
The first time I made the lemon con- discover, a surprisingly good team player. thickened and the lemons will have pretty
coction, I offhandedly dubbed it ‘‘goop,’’ The goop can be just what the jam that much fallen apart.
and years later, I haven’t found a better inspired it was, a side-of-the-plate dipper,
4. Strain the syrup into a bowl. Transfer the
name for it. It’s like lemon marmalade, like mayo or ketchup. But I prefer it as a fruit mixture to a mini food processor or a
but not really sweet, though not not-sweet glaze — a swipe of goop over just-cooked blender, or set in a measuring cup if using an
either. It’s salty, and a touch tangy too. My scallops or shrimp, grilled chicken or veg- immersion blender. Add 1 tablespoon of
inspiration was an offbeat lemon jam I etables or anything steamed, increases a the syrup to the fruit mixture, and whir until
you have a smooth, glistening purée. Add
had with fish in a Paris bistro. I think the dish’s delectability. As for the syrup, you
more syrup as needed to keep the fruit moving
fish was mackerel, but I know the jam — can put a little of it in a cocktail or make and to get a goop that’s thick enough to
thick, almost velvety, shiny and as yellow a fruit spritz or a bracing tea with it. You form a ribbon when dropped from a spoon.
as goldenrod — was distinctive because it can add it to marinades for chicken or
was made with an ingredient I find haunt- pork, salmon, sword- or bluefish. Inexpli- 5. Pack the goop in a tightly sealed container,
and use it straight from the jar to glaze cooked
ingly alluring: preserved lemons. cably, it adds fullness to lean foods and
fish, seafood or vegetables. The syrup can
I wanted that jam, but I knew I wasn’t cuts the too-muchness of fatty ones. My be used in marinades, rubs or even cocktails.
going to get preserved lemons, a main- favorite way to use it is to whisk some
stay of Mediterranean cooking, in my little with goop, cider and sherry vinegars 6. To make the vinaigrette: Whisk all the
town. I also knew it was improbable I’d and olive oil to make a vinaigrette that’s ingredients together in a small bowl or shake
in a jar. The goop, syrup and vinaigrette
take the time to cure them myself. Pre- good tossed with beans or grains or sal-
will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator.
served lemons are made by partly slicing ads made with sturdy greens.
lemons, packing them tightly into a jar with These days, with so much time in the Yield: ⅔ cup goop, ¾ cup syrup and 1 scant
a copious amount of salt and pushing them kitchen ahead of me, I keep thinking I cup vinaigrette.

19
For more than a generation, Attorney General The Advocate
William Barr has been fighting to unshackle the
White House from outside oversight — and no
president has benefited more than Donald Trump.

20
By Mattathias Schwartz / Photograph by Gabriella Demczuk

21
On the first Monday in May, wear masks at meetings like this one. President Trump was doing something
else, and so, for the time being, was the White House staff. Vice President
Mike Pence, having been wrong-footed after taking the no-mask custom
to the Mayo Clinic, now seemed to be making it up as he went along. Eight
weeks into the global pandemic, a charitable observer might still have
described the administration’s response as improvisational or misguided, as
opposed to willfully cavalier. But things were about to get worse. That day,
Trump’s projection of the total U.S. death toll (75,000 to 100,000), which was
given the previous evening at the Lincoln Memorial, would be challenged
by an internal Trump-administration document predicting that the number
of daily deaths would rise into June. The reckless faith of the president’s
inner circle would be challenged when two members of the White House
staff tested positive for the coronavirus. Barr and I did not know it then,
but we were enjoying the tail end of the Trump administration’s libertine
phase. On May 27, the official death toll would surpass 100,000, the upper
bound of what Trump predicted on May 3.
One has to assume that Trump is keeping a close eye on the 70-year-
old Barr right now. The powers of the attorney general, as the executive
the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington was on coronavirus branch’s rule interpreter and law enforcer, peak during moments of social
lockdown — or at least it appeared to be from the outside. Signs posted on unrest. Barr knows these powers well: He led the Justice Department
the outer doors facing Independence Avenue admonished visitors to keep through the Los Angeles riots of 1992, when Bush invoked the Insurrec-
out if they had symptoms of Covid-19 or had been ‘‘exposed to any person tion Act and deployed thousands of soldiers and Marines. (Later, Barr said
diagnosed’’ with it. Inside, the guards operating the X-ray machines wore the L.A. riots were ‘‘opportunistic’’ gang activity and not ‘‘the product
masks and gloves. Across the lobby, a free-standing pump of hand sanitizer of some festering injustice.’’) Like Trump, Barr is a stalwart believer in
cast a cautionary shadow down empty marble halls. the righteousness of the police; those communities that fail to give the
But as you drew closer to the fifth floor, where Attorney General William police ‘‘respect and support,’’ he said in a December speech, ‘‘might find
Pelham Barr works out of a suite of offices, things started to loosen up. One themselves without the police protection they need.’’ Last summer, Barr
assistant outside his conference room wore a mask, but the other did not. dropped the department’s federal case against the New York police officer
In the middle of the room, with its oil paintings and vaulted ceiling, the who killed Eric Garner during an arrest in 2014.
long central table had fewer chairs than you might expect, and an appro- Barr’s role also gives him influence over three major political fronts
priate distance between them. But past the next door, inside the attorney heading into November. First, there is Trump’s fight to open the nation’s
general’s smaller personal office, Barr himself was also mask-free. Turning economy, which could depend in no small part on Barr’s interpretation
around to greet his visitors, he moved into the middle of a wide circle of of federal authority and willingness to twist governors’ arms. Then there
four chairs arranged in front of his desk. are the mechanics of the vote itself, a topic of great partisan controversy
Now nearing the end of his career, Barr did not take his current job about which the Justice Department has shown a growing willingness to
for the glory. He had already been attorney general once, in President weigh in. Finally, there is the ongoing investigation led by John Durham,
George H. W. Bush’s administration, winning him a reputation as a wise the United States attorney in Connecticut, into the origins of the F.B.I.’s
old man — a reputation that, in the eyes of some, his tenure in the Trump Russia probe in the run-up to the 2016 election, the findings of which are
administration has tarnished. Nor is he doing it for the money. His time in widely expected to be announced before November.
corporate America earned him tens of millions of dollars in compensation With the election now on the horizon, Barr defended his record in two
and stock options, and his bearing is still that of a Fortune 500 counsel, recent interviews. His critics charge that, since becoming attorney gen-
cozy manners wrapped around a harder core. eral, he has repeatedly steered the Justice Department toward decisions
‘‘I’m not going to insist that you have a mask,’’ Barr said, though I that serve Trump’s interests — particularly around the investigations,
had been asked to bring one. His tone was jokingly conspiratorial, as
though he were making an exception for an old friend. Barr is sometimes
described as ‘‘rumpled,’’ an adjective that also captures his professorial
manner. His speaking voice is very soft, just loud enough to be consis-
tently perceptible; his accent is patrician, with a trace of old New York.
His personality breaks through mostly in frequent moments of humor,
which range from clubby chuckles to tension-breaking eruptions.
‘‘If you want to take it off … ,’’ an aide added. Barr crossed the circle of The powers of the attorney general peak
chairs, grinning away any awkwardness. We bumped elbows. ‘‘I’m not
during moments of social unrest, and Barr
going to infect you,’’ he said in the same joshing tone. The greater risk,
of course, was that I might infect him, given his cabinet-level access to knows these powers well.
regular coronavirus testing, the difference in our ages, Barr’s regular
meetings with the president and the mostly one-way prophylactic value
of masks in general.
‘‘Go ahead and take it off,’’ his aide suggested again. I took it off.

That Monday, the whole country was doing the same dance. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention had recommended that all Americans

22 6.7.20
carried out by the F.B.I. and Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian influence could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in.
over the 2016 election. Barr insists that he acts independently, even as And it’d be very hard to sort out what’s happening.’’
the president often undermines that claim by tweeting out apparent On many election-related issues, the Department of Justice has to defer
instructions for what his attorney general ought to do. to the states. But in the case of Durham’s investigation of the 2016 investiga-
By the time of our first meeting in his office, Barr had already started tors, or the ‘‘witch hunt,’’ as Trump has so often called it, Barr has a greater
looking at how the federal government might intervene in state-ordered degree of control. For years, Trump has been saying that he was treated
coronavirus shutdowns. As Trump accused Democratic governors of deny- unfairly in 2016, particularly at the hands of James Comey, then the F.B.I.
ing citizens their ‘‘freedom’’ and encouraged residents to ‘‘liberate’’ Mich- director. Barr, who is open about his agreement with this premise, is now
igan, Minnesota and Virginia, Barr zeroed in on the nuts and bolts of the in the process of nailing down the details. He won’t rule out the possibil-
legal case for ‘‘liberation’’: When two small churches filed lawsuits, seeking ity that Durham’s findings could undermine a key consensus about 2016,
to hold live services despite state or local regulations, the Justice Depart- the well-established conclusion that Russian interference sought to favor
ment made filings in support of their First Amendment rights. In a signed Trump — a finding of the Intelligence Community Assessment of 2017 that
memorandum sent to the department’s 93 United States attorneys, Barr was later underscored by Mueller, the special counsel, and verified by the
suggested that the federal government’s interest went beyond protecting Republican-controlled Senate intelligence committee.
live worship. It included ‘‘disfavored speech and undue interference with Durham, Barr told me, was looking for ‘‘who should be held accountable
the national economy.’’ for this, and … .’’ He paused, glanced down and fidgeted for a moment with
Three weeks before our interview, Trump bragged that he held ‘‘total’’ his necktie before going on. ‘‘As I’ve said publicly, I think Comey has cast
authority over the states. This went against the prevailing view that the fed- himself as being seven layers above the decision-making. I don’t think that
eral government, while free to enforce a variety of measures during its own holds water. The record will be clear that that’s not the case.’’
emergencies, is more constrained in its authority to compel state or local gov- Barr seems aware at times that he is gambling with his reputation. ‘‘Every-
ernments to lift theirs. When I asked Barr what Trump meant, he responded one dies,’’ he said with a matter-of-fact sigh in a TV interview last year. ‘‘I
by laying out a general view of the president’s pandemic-related powers: ‘‘I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that, you know, immortality comes by, you
think the federal government does have the power to step in where a state is know, having odes sung about you over the centuries.’’ When we spoke in his
impairing interstate commerce,’’ he said, ‘‘where they’re intruding on civil office, he was critical of what he called Comey’s tendency to ‘‘wrap the insti-
liberties, or where Congress under the commerce clause — or some other tution’’ around himself. ‘‘I don’t say, ‘Gee, if you criticize me, you’re attacking
power Congress has — has given the president under emergency authorities the men and women of the department.’ ’’ he said.
that essentially pre-empt the states in a particular area, if he chooses to use ‘‘B.S.,’’ he added. ‘‘I’ll live or die by my decisions.’’
them.’’ The answer sounded so dry and routine that I failed to ask what he
meant by ‘‘other power.’’ Construed broadly enough, Barr’s interpretation William Barr’s entry Barr’s willingness to weather controversy on the
could sanitize and legalize Trump’s claim to ‘‘total’’ authority. in the Horace Mann president’s behalf has not only caused conster-
Mail-in ballots are another domain where Trump had been staking out yearbook from 1967. nation among some former friends and allies; it
turf. He called the distribution of ballot applications in Michigan ‘‘illegal’’ has given rise to considerable speculation about
and warned that voting by mail ‘‘doesn’t work out well for Republicans.’’ his motives. Why would a grandfather in semi-
In a second interview on May 20, when I asked who was going to referee retirement, who had already reached the pinnacle
the 2020 election, Barr replied, ‘‘The voters.’’ He said his department’s role of his profession, sign up for this? Some wonder if Barr might still be hungry
would be limited, as the power belongs to the states and their electors. But for influence, having been attorney general for only 17 months the first time.
when I brought up Trump’s tweet about Michigan, which he posted that Others wonder whether he spent too much time watching Fox News during
same morning, Barr quickly seized the opportunity to float a new theory: the Obama years and came out the other side an ideologue. And there are
that foreign governments might conspire to mail in fake ballots. others who look at Barr’s support for Trump and see more consistency
‘‘I haven’t looked into that,’’ he cautioned, offering no evidence to sub- than contradiction. Barr, they say, hasn’t changed his values. Rather, he
stantiate that this was a real possibility. But he called it ‘‘one of the issues has found in Trump the perfect vehicle with which to move them forward.
that I’m real worried about,’’ and added: ‘‘We’ve been talking about how, ‘‘Those who think he’s a tool of Donald Trump are missing the point,’’
in terms of foreign influence, there are a number of foreign countries that says Stuart Gerson, who led the Justice Department’s civil division during

The New York Times Magazine 23

Barr’s first tour and then succeeded him, serving as acting attorney but his father, William’s grandfather, was born a secular Jew. Upon joining
general during the first three months of Bill Clinton’s presidency. ‘‘If the Army, Donald gave his religion as Dutch Reformed. He converted to
anything, it’s the other way around. Barr is vastly more intelligent than Catholicism after he and Mary wed.
Donald Trump. What Trump gives Bill Barr is a canvas upon which to Donald Barr’s 26-page O.S.S. file, obtained from the National Archives,
paint. Bill has longstanding views about how society should be organized, gives a detailed account of his transition from the military to intelligence
which can now be manifested and acted upon to a degree that they never work. In 1944, he shipped off to Europe. He suffered from hay fever and
could have before.’’ 20/200 vision; much of his time overseas was spent hospitalized with aller-
As far as what Barr is hoping to do with his canvas, Gerson says he gies. The next year, he was assigned to the O.S.S. His interviewer found
is committed to the ‘‘hierarchical’’ and ‘‘authoritarian’’ premise that ‘‘a him to be ‘‘a quiet, unassuming person . . . matured beyond his age.’’ In
top-down ordering of society will produce a more moral society.’’ That late 1945, he moved to Washington to begin work at the Interim Research
isn’t too far away from what Barr himself articulated in a 2019 speech at and Intelligence Service, which would become the State Department’s
the University of Notre Dame. In Barr’s view, piety lay at the heart of the in-house intelligence bureau.
founders’ model of self-government, which depended on religious values William, the couple’s second son, was born
to restrain human passions. ‘‘The founding generation were Christians,’’ in 1950. By age 8, he had taken up the bag-
Barr said. Goodness flows from ‘‘a transcendent Supreme Being’’ through pipes, which would become a lifelong hobby.
Barr with President
‘‘individual morality’’ to form ‘‘the social order.’’ Reason and experience He attended the Horace Mann School in New
George H. W. Bush
merely serve to confirm the infallible divine law. That law, he said, is under after being sworn in as York, where his classmates remembered his
threat from ‘‘militant secularists,’’ including ‘‘so-called progressives,’’ who attorney general in 1991. conservatism, the delight he took in making
call on the state ‘‘to mitigate the social costs of personal misconduct and an argument and his sense of humor. The year-
irresponsibility.’’ At their feet, Barr places mental illness, drug overdoses, book praised him as an ‘‘incomparable master
violence and suicide. All these things, he said, are getting worse. All are of facial contortions.’’
‘‘the bitter results of the new secular age.’’ Barr’s involvement with campus politics continued at Columbia. He
Barr started his career in the C.I.A. as an analyst, working on China and joined the Majority Coalition, which organized against student occupiers
other matters. When I asked about the origin of his interest in the intelli- who had taken over the campus to protest the Vietnam War. Columbia was
gence service, he responded indirectly, with an anecdote about telling his known as a feeder school for the C.I.A. An average of 14 seniors went to
high school guidance counselor that he wanted to be C.I.A. director. It was the agency each year from 1960 through 1966, according to a 1967 article
tempting to link Barr’s career and conservatism with his father, Donald Barr, from the student newspaper, The Daily Spectator, which reported that
who served in the Office of Strategic Services, the C.I.A.’s forerunner, during a majority came in not through the college’s Office of Career Planning
World War II. In 1940, as an undergraduate at Columbia, Donald wrote a and Placement but ‘‘through interviews with various affiliated groups’’ —
controversial editorial for The Columbia Review, defending a speech by the perhaps a reference to the private foundations and student organizations
university president that called upon the faculty to support the American that were receiving C.I.A. funding at that time.
war effort. ‘‘Most liberals,’’ he wrote, ‘‘do not think precisely.’’ As tempting In the late 1960s, this recruiting drew campus protests, which eventually
as it was to see the son as part of some epigenetic chain of old-line con- broadened to take on other issues beyond the war. On the morning of April
servatism, Barr cautioned me not to make such assumptions. ‘‘My father 24, 1968, student demonstrators, many of them affiliated with Students for a
was like: ‘Do what you want to do. Do what you enjoy. Do something that Democratic Society, stormed Low Memorial Library and took over the offices
you’re really interested in, because that’s what you’ll do best in.’ ’’ of Columbia’s president. The protesters were angry that Columbia was build-
Barr’s parents met at the University of Missouri in the early 1940s. Don- ing a gymnasium nearby that would have two separate entrances — one for the
ald, who already spoke three languages, had been sent there by the Army school community and one for neighborhood residents — and also about the
to learn Italian. He spotted Mary Ahern, a young Irish-Catholic woman university’s connection with a think tank that did research for the Pentagon.
who had a master’s degree in English from Yale, through an open doorway, Barr was on the other side, standing shoulder to shoulder with conser-
teaching Shakespeare to undergraduates, and was smitten. Ahern took vatives and athletes to form a blockade around the library. ‘‘We interposed
some courting. She thought Donald was a ‘‘New York wolf,’’ Barr told me, ourselves around them,’’ he told me. ‘‘There was a group of S.D.S. stu-
and his background was also an issue; he was raised without much religion, dents and younger people from Harlem that assembled and tried to break
through. And so there was a huge fistfight. Over a dozen people went to
the hospital, between the two groups, when they tried to rush through.’’
He smiled to himself. ‘‘They didn’t get through.’’
I asked if he was in the fistfight. He adjusted the bridge of his glasses
and glanced down. ‘‘I was in the fistfight,’’ he said, letting out a big laugh. ‘‘I
Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

was lucky. I had big guys around me. I had the football team around me!’’
He later added, ‘‘I picked my opponents carefully.’’
Barr interned at the C.I.A. in the summers of 1971 and 1972. In 1973,
after completing his graduate degree in government and Chinese studies,
he married Christine Moynihan, whom he met at a fraternity party. The
next day, the couple drove to Washington, and Barr began a permanent
job at the C.I.A. the day after that. His mother’s memories of the Great
Depression, he said, had instilled in him a desire for career stability, so he
began taking law courses at night. By then, he had transferred to the C.I.A.’s
Office of Legislative Counsel. ‘‘He was the ultimate straight arrow,’’ says
John Rizzo, who worked down the hall from Barr in the general counsel’s
office, where Rizzo would eventually rise to become the acting head. ‘‘Very
serious. He was a nose-to-the-grindstone guy.’’

24 6.7.20
 The battle between conservative hard-liners and a Democratic-led Con-
gress would continue through the late Cold War. Inside the C.I.A., there
was a sense of victimization. ‘‘The Church Committee period was a horror
for the agency,’’ Frederick Hitz, the agency’s first presidentially appointed
inspector general, told me. ‘‘We got batted around.’’
In 1976, the job of defending the agency in public passed to the new
director, George H. W. Bush, who had served as a special U.S. envoy to
China. On at least one occasion, Barr sat behind Bush during a congressio-
nal hearing, giving him legal advice. Congress wound up making oversight
‘I was in the fistfight,’ Barr said, a permanent thorn in the C.I.A.’s side by establishing two intelligence
letting out a big laugh. He later added, oversight committees. That May, Barr drafted two letters, each signed by
‘I picked my opponents carefully.’ Bush, asking Congress if the C.I.A. could resume the routine destruction
of documents. The request was denied.
‘‘The culture of the agency was passive resistance,’’ says Michael Glennon,
now a law professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University, who dealt with the C.I.A. as legal counsel of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. ‘‘You’re never talking to the right person. You never
had exactly the right document. They had a dozen different bureaucratic
obstacles in their arsenal, and they used every one of them.’’
Rather than accept post-Watergate congressional limitations, the hard-
liners decamped from the C.I.A. and became floaters, bureaucratic nomads
The new job put Barr on the C.I.A.’s seventh floor, not far from the who sought out underused and low-visibility pockets of the federal gov-
director’s office and near the center of what was shaping up to be a ernment from which to wage their war over executive power. The largest
historic fight with Congress. In the aftermath of World War II, the pres- battle was fought around the Iran-contra affair. A covert group operating
idency was endowed with vast new powers — mass surveillance, covert out of the Reagan White House had used money gained by selling arms to
operations, proxy wars and nuclear weapons. The young C.I.A., spurred Iran to fund anti-Communist rebels in Central America, flouting a congres-
on by the imperative to win the Cold War, abused its own new powers sional prohibition. Much of the operation was organized by Lt. Col. Oliver
to an astonishing degree. Despite a statutory ban on its involvement in North of the National Security Council. Many of the Iran-contra plotters
either ‘‘police’’ or ‘‘internal-security functions,’’ the C.I.A. surveilled and were dragged into the public eye and indicted by a special prosecutor,
surreptitiously engaged with countless American citizens. The agency another post-Watergate innovation. Evidence pointing to the involvement
reported to the president and often took action based on informal con- of President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush was
versations, without ever committing much to paper. Secrecy around the inconclusive. The hard-liners felt that foreign policy and covert opera-
agency’s transgressions held until the 1970s, when antiwar sentiment tions were an exclusively presidential domain. ‘‘The business of Congress
began to peak. The scandals around the Pentagon Papers (1971) and the is to stay the [expletive] out of my business’’ is how Reagan’s first C.I.A.
Watergate break-in (1972), culminating in the long-anticipated Vietnam director, William Casey, put it in an interview with the political scientist
defeat, convinced much of the public that the federal government should Loch K. Johnson.
no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. In 1973, Richard Helms, Around this time, conservative thinkers of Barr’s generation began to
the longtime C.I.A. director, ordered the destruction of internal C.I.A. coalesce around an idea they called ‘‘the unitary executive.’’ The president’s
documents regarding MK-Ultra, an experimental mind-control program. right to his powers under Article II of the Constitution, they argued, was
‘‘The program was over,’’ Helms later recalled. ‘‘We thought we would undivided and absolute. Post-Watergate reforms — independent prosecu-
just get rid of the files as well, so anybody who had assisted us in the tors to investigate high-level wrongdoing, requirements to get warrants for
past would not be subject to follow-up, or questions, embarrassment, if national-security wiretaps, and more — were unconstitutional incursions
you will. … We kept faith with the people who had helped us, and I see into the president’s rightful powers.
nothing wrong with that.’’ In June 1977, Barr left the C.I.A. upon his graduation from George Wash-
In 1974, the journalist Seymour Hersh, who had already broken the story ington University Law School, eventually landing as a policy lawyer in the
of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, revealed that the C.I.A. had developed Reagan White House. Bush, running for president, took Barr to the 1988
a sprawling domestic-spying operation, keeping dossiers on thousands of Republican National Convention to help vet potential running mates and,
American citizens. Congress created two special committees — a Senate after winning the election, appointed him to lead the Justice Department’s
committee, led by Senator Frank Church, and a House committee that Office of Legal Counsel, where his duties included determining the legal
would eventually be led by Representative Otis Pike — to investigate. For limits of C.I.A. activities. Rizzo, who was still at the C.I.A., recalls that Barr
years, the C.I.A. would be consumed with negotiations over the limits of kept his independence from the Oval Office. Two of Barr’s opinions on clas-
what Congress could oversee. sified C.I.A. operations ‘‘didn’t give the White House and C.I.A. everything
‘‘We had, like, seven different committees investigating, and the Pike that they wanted,’’ while a third operation, Rizzo says, was rejected entirely.
commission,’’ Barr told me in his office. ‘‘This was for excesses during the One of Barr’s public opinions, though, effectively authorized the invasion
Cold War.’’ of Panama. Later, as acting attorney general, he impressed Bush further by
I asked if there had indeed been excesses. Barr’s poker face came to life. defusing a delicate prison-hostage crisis. As attorney general in 1992, Barr
He grinned, turned his palms out and shrugged. ‘‘Some,’’ he said. He burst signed off on a mass-surveillance program that collected billions of call
out laughing. Then he pulled back to give the matter some more thought, records for the Drug Enforcement Administration. At the end of Bush’s pres-
adjusting his glasses as he settled back into seriousness. idency, he successfully pushed for a pardon of six Iran-contra defendants.
‘‘I don’t want to be quoted as saying they were not excessive,’’ he said. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director, says Barr reminds
‘‘There were some that clearly were excessive.’’ him of David Addington — the former C.I.A. lawyer (Continued on Page 42)

The New York Times Magazine 25

The COLLEGE CONUNDRUM
 As universities wrestle with how to reopen in the fall,
administrators, professors and a union representative explore what
life on campus in the midst of a pandemic could actually be like.
Moderated by Emily Bazelon Photo illustrations by Matt Dorfman

27
 With THE THREAT THE PANELISTS STUDENTS RESPOND
The magazine asked
OF THE CORONAVIRUS college students around the
country for their reactions

CONTINUING CARLOS ARAMAYO is president of the Boston chapter

to the panelists’ ideas. Here’s
what some of them said.
(Local 26) of the union UNITE HERE, which represents
INTO THE FALL AND 14,000 dining-hall staff members at colleges and univer- Adam Bassi, rising

NEXT YEAR, sities and other workers in industries including hotels,

gaming and food service.
sophomore, University of
Massachusetts Lowell. Major:
environmental science.
DR. MICHAEL V. DRAKE is president of Ohio State Univer-
I think social distancing
sity and a physician. He previously served as chan- will only be a reality for rich
cellor of the University of California, Irvine, and vice schools. My school has
president for health affairs for the University of Cali- been handling things well, but
fornia system and was a professor of ophthalmology it would be impossible
colleges and universities across the country are strug- at the University of California San Francisco School for Lowell to enforce the
gling with whether to reopen their campuses — and if of Medicine. six-feet recommendation and
not have mass tardiness to
so, how. On one side of the ledger are the health risks of MARY DANA HINTON is the incoming president of Hol-
class. The sidewalks are simply
density if students return to the dorms and classrooms lins University in Virginia and emerita president of not wide enough. One of
and facilities, especially to older faculty and staff mem- the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota. Both are the best things about college
bers and surrounding communities. On the other side are liberal-arts schools. is being close to others
disruption and derailment, concern about the isolation RICHARD LEVIN, an economist, is a former president of your age. There were no
of online learning and economic loss for institutions, Yale University and co-author of a report on gradually special memories from when
college towns and regions. reopening higher-education campuses in Connecticut, I was distant from others.
In an ongoing survey of more than 800 schools in The written for Gov. Ned Lamont.
Elle Satterthwaite,
Chronicle of Higher Education, two-thirds said at the end DAVID WALL RICE is a psychology professor and associate
rising sophomore,
of May that they were planning for an in-person semester provost at Morehouse College, where he also directs Bucknell University,
in the fall. As colleges and universities make decisions the school’s Identity, Art and Democracy Lab. Lewisburg, Pa.
now about their operations over the next academic year, DR. PARDIS SABETI is a biology professor at Harvard Uni- Major: biomedical
what are the conditions for trying to reopen campuses? versity and a member of the Broad Institute and the engineering.
If students return, what changes to college life will be Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her work focuses When this quarantine started
needed to contain and suppress the virus? on comprehensive approaches for detecting, contain- in March, my family’s
housing situation was very
We brought together by video conference six partici- ing and treating deadly infectious diseases. Her team unstable. We are still
pants in higher education to talk about these questions. was recently awarded funding from the TED Audacious housing-insecure, and I can’t
One panelist, Richard Levin, a former president of Yale Project to build Sentinel, a pandemic pre-emption and afford to stay home and
University, helped lead a state committee that early in response system. not be working. If my school
May presented recommendations for higher education is able to host students in
in Connecticut that could be a model for other states the fall semester, I want to be
IF SCHOOLS there, at least to take some
as well. First, the report said, governors in consultation
REOPEN, WHAT WILL CAMPUS of the burden and uncertainty
with public-health experts should establish ‘‘gating con-
LIFE LOOK LIKE? off my family.
ditions’’ for bringing students back to campus. These
include deciding that the prevalence of Covid-19 is low
enough to resume operations; ensuring that schools EMILY BAZELON: The Cal State system recently
have the capacity to test students upon arrival and at announced that its 23 campuses will do most instruc-
other intervals, as well as faculty and staff members tion online in the fall. On the other hand, other uni-
who come to work on campus, and to conduct contact versities, like Purdue in Indiana and New York Uni-
tracing; and providing guidance about masks, physical versity, have said they are inviting students back to
distancing and density for dorms, dining halls and class- campus. Schools like the University of South Carolina
rooms. The report also recommends giving schools that have decided to bring students back from August until
comply with the applicable state regulations immunity Thanksgiving and then end the semester online, to
from lawsuits for infections that occur on campus. (The avoid a second trip back to campus before the winter
report suggests treating community colleges, which holidays. Pardis, what does the science on infectious
account for about a third of undergraduates nationwide, disease teach about how to minimize risk if students
like offices or other nonresidential settings, because come back to campus?
close to 99 percent of students commute rather than PARDIS SABETI: With any virus, a big fear is the spread
live in dorms.) you get when an interwoven community mixes with a
If these conditions are met, the hope is that colleges larger population — like a college campus in a city. You
and universities could follow hospitals and essential can try to prevent spread by creating closed circuits
businesses that have figured out how to continue their with a certain number of individuals. Say up to 10 stu-
work without seeding an outbreak in their communities. dents live together in a suite or on a hallway and ideally
How realistic is that? take classes together. They don’t have to social distance
from each other as long as if one of them gets infected,
This discussion has been edited and condensed for clarity. everyone in the group quarantines. And they can see

28 6.7.20
 Sarah Waters, rising
freshman, Indiana
University Bloomington.
Intended majors: journalism
and environmental studies.
I’ve been anticipating
the classic college-freshman
experience for as long
as I can remember. With
online learning, the teacher’s
Zoom feed cuts out,
students’ dogs are barking
and your family’s making
noise downstairs. None of
that happens in a classroom.
In elementary school, they
put our desks in groups, and
we had lab partners in science
throughout high school.
There’s a reason for that; I’ve
learned just as much from
my classmates over the years
as I have from my teachers.

Tom Cohen, rising sophomore,

Ithaca College, Ithaca, N.Y.
Major: theater production
and design.
The reality is once we’re all
at college, people will want to
see their friends. I think
the school can say, ‘‘Please
be careful, follow our social-
distancing recommendations,’’
but if they have to strictly
enforce, it probably isn’t a
good idea to open the campus.
I mean, there will be hugs.
C.G. work by Justin Metz. Opening pages, pennant: Mega Pixel/Shutterstock.

Photo illustration by Matt Dorfman The New York Times Magazine 29

other students outside the group if they are careful Alex Cramer, rising traditional rooms on hallways. It’s easier to figure out
to social distance, especially outdoors, which is safer. junior, Brown University, family units for the apartments or suites; we are also
Providence, R.I.
Some schools, especially small colleges in rural thinking about grouping students on hallways so they
Major: political science.
areas, could try to enlarge the closed circuit, per- Brown sent a survey about can share a bathroom that other people don’t use.
haps even encompassing the whole campus. This different options for returning, We’re also thinking a lot about the importance of
could really only be done if some staff and faculty and one question asked shifting the culture. When we reopen, it’s no longer a
are within the closed circuit, while others work at a how we’d feel about coming time of unlimited freedoms. It will be a time of mutual
greater distance. The point is to reduce risk as much back to campus if we accountability and collective responsibility for the
as possible. Some of that involves testing and asking had to download an app well-being of one another. That’s one place where small-
that would contact trace if
people to self-report any symptoms, including minor er institutions like Hollins may have some advantage.
someone has the virus.
ones. And also, maybe you have mostly teaching fel- That’s a great idea, but it Healing and the safe re-establishment of community
lows or graduate students, rather than older faculty, also sparks questions about has to be the priority for student life on campus.
closely interacting with students. And younger staff the university intruding DAVID WALL RICE: At Morehouse, as a historically black
who don’t have pre-existing conditions, and who can on students’ personal lives. college for young men, there is a culture of tethering
travel safely, can come to campus. I’d love the reassurance education to responsibility. Now we have to redefine
I think the students most likely care more about the app can work without that. From the president to faculty to staff to students,
identifying me, unless it shows
being with each other than being with us, when it that I’ve come in contact with
why are we here? What is our purpose?
comes to our physical presence, so there’s some room someone positive. We have a weekly community meeting called Crown
for exploration there. Forum, based on chapel, where the campus comes
RICHARD LEVIN: In our report for Connecticut, we Rozie Fero, University together, and we bring in activists and academics to
explored some of the ideas that Pardis is suggesting. of Pittsburgh, rising junior. talk about pressing current issues. This spring, we took
We’re in a global pandemic, and the idea that college life Major: Chinese. it online and used it to talk about what students were
is going to be normal if we do reopen is just a fantasy. If you treat suites like going through at home, what faculty were dealing with,
households, then you could
Our recommendation is to treat groups of students how the original sin of slavery and the history of black
combine the suites that
who share rooms or live in suites, in units of four are next to each other for people in this country relates to the greater impact
to eight, as a family unit. Single rooms would go to some small gatherings. Covid is having on our community.
immuno-compromised students if they want to be on It’s not the best, but I think If students come back to campus, we have to keep
campus. It does mean that if one person in the group having no parties would really pursuing this thread of discussion so we can commu-
gets sick, the others get quarantined. suck. Parties break up the nicate the rules in a way that students say, OK, that
Most students are less likely to get seriously sick struggle of schoolwork. You makes sense, it’s related to this greater purpose and
don’t want it to be just stress
from this virus. And fortunately, fatalities are a very stress stress.
responsibility. We can say, ‘‘You’re going to die if you
small percentage of those infected. But that’s not the don’t do this, or other people are going to die,’’ but
case for people over 65 or people with comorbidities, young folks often think that’s not going to happen to
and students are often silent carriers, because many them, or it’s not going to happen tomorrow. Making the
people in their age group who have the disease are campus safe has to be about people coming together
completely asymptomatic. and coming through for each other.
CARLOS ARAMAYO: At the end of the day, among the most HINTON: We’ll update our codes of conduct, but I can’t
likely people to die, frankly, if there is an outbreak on imagine this working if it’s top down. The community
campus, are vulnerable populations like dining-hall has to collaborate.
workers and the communities that they come from. I MICHAEL DRAKE: At Ohio State, we’re a large commu-
think this is an extremely serious question that needs nity of about 100,000 people, with 16,000 students who
to be looked at with extreme caution. usually live in the residence halls.
MARY DANA HINTON: At Hollins, as at a lot of schools, I teach a freshman seminar, and when I looked at my
we have a mix of housing — apartments, suites and students on camera, in the same arrangement that I’m
seeing all of you now, and asked them how they were
doing, they were all yearning to come back to campus.
‘The idea that college Not so much to see me, but they really wanted to see each
other; they really love the experience of being together
life is going to be in the collegiate environment. What we’re weighing is
whether that’s prudent, appropriate and safe.
normal if we do reopen One idea is to group students in family units in resi-
is just a fantasy.’ dence halls. We might also have players on a team live
and eat together. Of course, there’s some tension there:
We know from studies that students learn more from
people who hold different views, so a big value of a
residential college is getting to know a wide range of
people who come from a variety of backgrounds and
have a variety of interests. So I’m speaking of limiting
students to smaller groups as an intermediate step.
And we have to think about our athletics program.
Our football games draw over 100,000 people. Our hope
and intention is to make football reasonably safe, with

30 6.7.20
an audience of 20,000 to 50,000 that’s spaced out in tracing and isolation as we can be. And we have over- Lelia Smith, rising freshman,
our stadium, but we haven’t made any final decisions. flow spaces, separate for isolation and for quarantine. Spelman College, Atlanta.
Intended major: economics.
BAZELON: Part of what many students love about the We may use floors of residence halls for this or perhaps
I’ve heard people talk about
experience of college are large gatherings, parties, mix- small residence halls kept vacant for that possibility, going to school with masks.
ing with lots of new people. What you’re all describing and we’ve also been talking to local hotel operators, I’m OK with that. You’d still get
is very different. Will students want to be in school in who have space because travel is down. The idea is for to go to campus. But after
these circumstances, and will they rise to the challenges a person who is infected to have a single room with a a while, the mask could morph
they present? private bathroom. into a new norm — don’t
DRAKE: I’m thinking as we’re speaking about my job as BAZELON: Recently in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande,
touch me, don’t get near me.
That’s kind of scary because
a medical-school professor, going back a few decades, who is a surgeon, described how his hospital system
it creates walls between
at U.C.S.F. I was there at the time when the AIDS epi- in Massachusetts has worked to suppress the virus. He people. And if you have to
demic began. We had all sorts of policies and practical says they’ve been on a learning curve but have had few social distance with everyone
approaches to dealing with it. We had great massive workplace transmissions. Are there lessons here for outside a small group, that
socially conscious movements to try to do things to other institutions? could turn into exclusion, a
help people behave more safely. But the epidemic kept LEVIN: Gawande focuses on four kinds of behavior more clique-ish kind of society.
spreading. What worked was developing a highly effec- — sanitary hygiene (washing your hands frequently);
Jessica Simanjuntak, rising
tive antiretroviral therapy. Nothing else honestly worked. reporting your symptoms, including the most minor
freshman, the George
symptoms; social distancing; and wearing masks. Washington University,
We did some modeling to estimate how much social Washington. Intended major:
‘The first time they cough, distancing is needed to prevent widespread infection international affairs.
in colleges and universities. Suppose we start the My parents’ getting sick
you want them to tell you. school year on Sept. 1 with one student out of 1,000 has been my biggest fear
throughout this pandemic,
unknowingly infected with the disease. You can think
You do that by making of this as the fraction of the population that falsely
and being away from them
at school would actually
the app useful to them.’ tests negative on arrival to campus. Further suppose
that the number of people to whom an infected per-
console me because I
know that I am taking away
son will on average transmit the disease (the R0, or the risk of giving them the
“reproductive ratio”) starts at 2.26, which is within virus. If following rules on
the range of numbers calculated in the first month of social distancing means we
the outbreak in Wuhan, China. If the population is 100 can be on campus this fall,
I’m sure most students will
percent susceptible to the disease — in other words,
oblige. There could be a
students arrive with no immunity — and there is no 14-day quarantine for those
social distancing, 85 percent of the students will have who break the rules, but
experienced infection by Dec. 18. But if social distanc- anything like probation
ing is practiced 50 percent of the time that individuals or kicking them off campus
have potential for close contact, only 0.9 percent of the is too harsh.
We want to do everything we can to have students population will be infected in the same time period.
champion the best behaviors. I would love it if that And if there were 60 percent social distancing, the R0
would possibly be enough. I will say, we’ve done that would be less than 1, and only a very tiny fraction of
with sexual violence as much as we possibly could, with the population would become infected — 0.2 percent
the efforts of thousands of people. And we’ve watched in four months.
only gradual changes. The moral of the story is: You don’t have to be per-
HINTON: As a first-generation college student, I had one fect with social distancing, but you have to be pretty
shot to get an education. I do think that some of our good. I think, realistically, it’s hard to expect a pop-
students, who understand what is at stake for them, will ulation of 18-to-22-year-olds to be perfect. One solu-
do anything to be on campus. Compliance may not be tion is to actually police this social behavior in order
100 percent, but students can behave in ways that point to protect others. I think you have to say to people
to the fact that college is a big opportunity for them, who misbehave chronically, you’re being sent home.
and they don’t want to risk that opportunity. And that would take a lot of courage. It’s not what we
DRAKE: The virus waits for opportunities to exploit human normally do.
behavior to allow people to infect other people. We expect SABETI: To help detect symptoms early, so we can then
that there will be those who will not follow the guidelines isolate people who have them, we can also use technol-
and that the virus will swoop in. We have to know how ogy. In 2016, we had a mumps outbreak on Harvard’s
we’ll react when things fail and try to limit and curtail the campus. We began developing an app then that we’ve
brush fires that will break out. been testing with the students. The idea is that the first
Today, after speaking with you, I’ll be on a call with time they cough, you want them to tell you. You do
our people about which testing algorithms we should that by making the app useful to them, and you don’t
use — whom to test when — which cohorts, or how to do want them going to a waiting room for diagnostics and
sampling so we can monitor the university population. infecting everyone there. We named the app House
We’ll do surveillance, starting with the normal health Call, because if you sign up and report symptoms, we’ll
screens that people do on themselves, and we’re going come to you. We can bring you a testing kit along with
to do the best we can to be as close to perfect in contact honey and tea. Then, through the app, we can trace

The New York Times Magazine 31

 C.G. work by Justin Metz

Photo illustration by Matt Dorfman

32 6.7.20
students’ contacts. We may not be able to stop every and all our student-facing staff, including faculty, prior Oscar Manuel Gonzalez,
spark of infection from lighting, but we can catch it to opening schools for residential purposes. That is rising freshman,
Northwestern University,
before it becomes a fire. absolutely a precondition.
Evanston, Ill. Intended major:
BAZELON: What about making an app like that a condi- SABETI: To reduced the number of diagnostic tests they
civil engineering.
tion for coming back to campus? need, schools could use pooled testing. That means I’d oppose being assigned to
HINTON: I wouldn’t be comfortable mandating an app combining several samples and then doing one test a suite and then that being
like that because of the privacy concerns. Students would on them. If the test is positive, then you’d test each treated as a family unit.
have to understand why it would be beneficial to opt in. individual sample separately. One idea a colleague, Having friends from different
I think there are other ways we can ensure reporting of Michael Springer, who is a biologist, had recently is areas is refreshing. Being in
the same place with the same
symptoms. I think we could look at students screening to pool testing for a group of students who are living
people for a long period, it
each other, like a buddy system, or self-screening when together. This helps address the problem of false nega- gets repetitive and can make it
they go into a dining hall, for example. tives — you could miss one positive case and probably hard to tolerate people. That’s
RICE: I think requiring students to disclose their location, still catch the virus in the group because others in the not what I’m going to college
or other highly personal information, could backfire. group will most likely be positive. for, though I can see how
It can certainly be problematic in thinking about the BAZELON: Is getting tests the area in which the schools it could be a resolution for the
surveillance and policing of black bodies, black men are the most dependent on the government? short term.
in particular. LEVIN: We impressed upon the governor that testing at
Kaitlin Slepian, rising senior,
SABETI: How long would forced use sustain itself ? The the opening of school would have to be truly prioritized. the University of Arizona,
more data people enter voluntarily, the more useful In Connecticut, that means a bank of what we estimate Tucson. Major: family studies
the app is. You want people to see it as a service to to be 200,000 to 300,000 tests at the beginning of school. and human development.
themselves and to other people. Which is as much as is expected to be available in the My roommates and I are
whole state in a one-week or two-week period. It’s going already paying rent for a
to be a big challenge nationally, if you think about the house, so we decided we
WHAT ABOUT number of students in residential education. There are would live there even
WORKING about 11 million undergraduates enrolled in four-year
if classes start out online.
I know that I have antibodies,
ON CAMPUS? colleges, and that doesn’t include staff who are essential and even though we don’t
to campus operations. necessarily know what that
BAZELON: Carlos, the folks in your union are employed Let’s say you want to test everyone twice or perhaps means yet, I hope that when
in food services and dining halls. Among people who even on a regimen of some sampling through the year, people our age are living
have to work on campus, they may be at particular risk, maybe it’s four or five tests a year per capita, that’s a lot together at school, it will be
easier to create herd immunity
given the small kitchens they sometimes occupy and of tests compared to where even public-health experts
without putting other people
the fact that to do their jobs they have to interact with at the national level were forecasting we’re likely to be. in danger.
people pretty closely. But major layoffs are obviously Per capita, the number of tests available in the United
not what you’re looking for. States, even what’s projected now for September, is
ARAMAYO: The members in our local are 85 percent vastly behind what China or South Korea or Taiwan
black and brown and often live in multigenerational has been able to do.
households, and many of them have comorbidities for Now, the fortunate few leaders like Ohio State and
the virus. They feel two contradictory things. One is: Harvard that have medical centers will probably be able
People are very afraid to go to work. They are very afraid to produce enough tests for themselves. But that’s just
of the public-transit system. They’re very afraid that the another manifestation of inequity, and it shouldn’t be
institutions may not take the level of responsibility that’s the way we do this.
necessary to keep them safe. And I think they’re frankly ARAMAYO: Testing is really the entry-level benchmark
very afraid of the unknown. to reopen any industry. When it comes to screening,
On the other hand, people really want to get back to you can talk about people being honest about reporting
work. Income security is a really important issue for our symptoms via their cellphone, for staff as well as stu-
members. Also, with an overwhelmingly private health dents. But I could see situations with certain supervisors
care system, if people stop working for enough time, putting pressure on workers, even implicitly, who then
they can fall off their health care plan, and depending on feel like, Oh, I just have a runny nose, I’m going to
what state you’re in, you may have no access to health say I’m fine. The culture around being sick at work is
care. The last thing we need is for people to lose health you go to work anyway, particularly in the food-service
care in a health care crisis. industry. Even when you get contract language that is
LEVIN: One of our chief recommendations to schools, in the best, the platinum standard, you still end up in griev-
our report, is to engage with unions. Dining-hall work- ance meetings because some supervisor thought they
ers, and to some degree custodians who have to clean were doing the right thing by forcing somebody to go
bathrooms, face significant risks. Anyone over 60 to to work sick.
65 years old, anyone with comorbidities, accommoda- We have one model for reducing risk, for people
tion needs to be made for people in these categories, who choose to work, from an agreement we reached
for both staff and faculty, and especially for those who to provide food for health care workers with the food
interface with students. provider at the Boston convention center, which was
The most important thing to protect our staff and our converted to a field hospital. To begin with, we set a
vulnerable populations is testing. We have to have ade- much higher wage rate for folks to come in on a vol-
quate numbers of tests so we can test all our students untary basis. Workers received (Continued on Page 46)

The New York Times Magazine 33

 With ICE facing increased pressure to release
vulnerable detainees during the pandemic, men and
women held at a facility in Georgia
are trying desperately to raise the alarm.

By Seth Freed Wessler

Illustrations by Señor Salme

35
 For weeks, many of the 700 people locked up in the facility, including
Barahona, a 39-year-old father of a 6-year-old boy, had been asking offi-
cials for protection — masks and temperature checks for detainees and a
requirement that guards, who entered and exited the facility daily, wear
masks — as well a promise to stop bringing new detainees into their units.
But as entire states were shutting down, life inside Irwin, which is run by a
Louisiana-based private company called LaSalle Corrections, had scarcely
changed, except for some additional cleaning and temperature checks for
new arrivals. ‘‘We are depending totally on the authorities here and what
they do,’’ Barahona told me. ‘‘And they are not doing much.’’
In the face of that inaction, Barahona and the men in Echo were trying
to communicate with people in other units of the facility. They hoped to
consult about a protest to demand changes and their release, but they
had failed to make contact. Then the note from the women arrived. ‘‘They
already thought of it,’’ Barahona said. The Irwin County Detention Center
was about to erupt.
Since mid-March, I’d been in regular contact with a group of 20 detained
immigrants in Irwin, calling them in $3.50 14-minute intervals via video
he tightly rolled piece of visitation software inaptly named ‘‘GettingOut.’’ I was present, digitally, as
their voices and images streamed to my computer while they used tablets
in their detention units. We talked in English or Spanish for hours at all
hours of the day, or I would silently watch as guards entered the detain-
ees’ living areas, unmasked, seemingly unfazed by the virus. I listened as
detainees coughed, and watched as others fashioned masks out of scraps
of torn clothes, or from broken disposable meal containers. I could see,
in real time, that the protections being imposed on the rest of the country
were being ignored here.
In March, the agency began a proactive review of the 38,000 people it
was detaining in facilities across the country, and it released 693 elderly or
otherwise vulnerable detainees, saying in mid-April that no more would
lined notebook paper had ‘important’ be let out at the time. The federal government had effectively sealed the
borders to asylum seekers during the pandemic, and ICE was still deport-
ing immigrants; some were discovered to be infected with Covid-19 after
their deportation. According to a news release by the House Committee
on Oversight and Reform, ICE’s acting director, Matthew T. Albence, told
the committee in a closed session on April 17 that broad release would
written on the outside in Spanish. risk sending the message to Americans and potential migrants that the
country was ‘‘not enforcing our immigration laws.’’ He warned that if ICE
slowed its efforts, or released detained immigrants, it would cause a ‘‘rush
at the borders,’’ and that its orders under the current administration — to
detain and deport immigrants, as many as possible — would be imperiled.
Across the United States, when the virus has hit carceral facilities, it has
spread ferociously. In one Ohio prison, a staff member tested positive for
Covid-19 on March 29; a month later, around 2,000 inmates at the facility
had tested positive; as of May 28, 14 people had died. For months in ICE’s
detention centers, nobody really knew how many immigrant detainees had
Covid-19, because the agency was scarcely testing, even as public-health
experts warned of a pending crisis: One model by a group of academics
Nilson Barahona-Marriaga, almost six feet tall with a scruffy beard and a published in The Journal of Urban Health in May projected that the virus
shaved head, an immigrant from Honduras who had lived in Georgia for 20 would soon infect a majority of ICE’s detainees. Once testing did slowly
years, unfurled it as if it were a precious scroll and began to read: ‘‘We wanted begin, in the middle of March, the numbers soared. As of May 28, about
to tell you that we are going to go on a hunger strike. We ask you to join us.’’ 2,600 of ICE’s detainees have been tested, and more than half have been
Hours earlier on April 9, a woman on her work shift in the laundry room positive. A detainee in a California facility with an outbreak died in the first
slipped the letter into the fold of a clean piece of clothing bound for the Echo-7 week of May; days later, another man died in Ohio, weeks after his release
unit, a men’s section of Irwin County Detention Center, in south Georgia, from ICE detention, where he appears to have been exposed. Two guards
where Barahona and 30 other immigrants detained by ICE were held. A man in an immigrant-detention center in Louisiana died in late April.
discovered the note in his laundry bag, drafted by a group of detained women In response to the pandemic, immigrants in at least a dozen ICE facil-
held on the other side of the facility. The women, it said, would refuse to ities have announced protests and strikes. Irwin was about to join them.
show up for $1-a-day shifts in the laundry room, kitchen and commissary and ‘‘Our lives have a lot of value, as mothers, fathers, children, grandpar-
would stop accepting meals from the kitchen. ‘‘We ask you to write back to ents, spouses, siblings,’’ Barahona read from the letter in Spanish. ‘‘We are
us. If you all have another plan, let us know.’’ They were demanding that the humans, and we have the right to live.’’ He began to cry. He has diabetes
immigrant detention center take measures to protect them from Covid-19 and hypertension, and knows he is at risk. ‘‘They want to be certain that
and that ICE release the sick, elderly and high-risk among them. they are not alone,’’ he said. ‘‘Nobody wants to be fighting by themselves.’’

36 6.7.20 Illustration by Señor Salme

 decision over their claim and any undocumented immigrant, no matter how
long they’d been here or what led ICE to find them.
The federal government’s commitment to detention has not meaningfully
shifted since the pandemic, and so advocates have been waging a war in the
The United States courts, filing case after case in the last three months to demand that detainees
with medical vulnerabilities be released immediately. ‘‘I have never seen con-
ditions, with respect to desperation and grave urgency, at this level before,’’
says Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the A.C.L.U.’s National Prison
Project who has for years litigated against unsafe ICE detention conditions.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a relatively new invention, a result In early April, just two days before the note appeared in Barahona’s
of the bureaucratic reordering after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. dorm, lawyers with the Southern Poverty Law Center and Asian Americans
A part of the new Department of Homeland Security, its mission was to Advancing Justice filed a habeas petition in federal court on behalf of Bara-
target ‘‘terrorist and criminal activities,’’ but the agency has instead become, hona and seven other detainees in Georgia, all of whom were medically
through consecutive administrations, Republican and Democratic, a means vulnerable with conditions that include diabetes, hypertension, asthma
to ‘‘catch’’ immigrants that has no historic parallel. In 1994, fewer than 7,000 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The filing was one of dozens
people were held on average per day in immigration detention. That number across the country to demand the release of the elderly and people with
more than quadrupled by the end of the George W. Bush presidency and medical conditions. In at least 18 federal court districts, judges have acceded
then kept rising, reaching nearly 40,000 under Obama. By last summer, ICE to these petitions, ordering the release of detainees. As of May 28, federal
detained more than 53,000 immigrants and asylees. The Trump administra- courts have ordered 392 people be let out.
tion now detains anyone it can, including, since a 2017 policy was enacted, But while the total detainee population has fallen significantly since the
asylum seekers who previously would have been free while waiting a court start of the pandemic, a majority of the 12,000-person decline in the popu-
lation since late February is a direct result of the Department of Homeland
Security’s decisions to constrict the introductions of new arrivals. In March,
ICE said it would limit arrests of immigrants on the streets, and then the
agency effectively closed the border, halting legal asylum petitions, severing
a major flow of detainees into the system.
The Department of Homeland Security achieved in the pandemic what
the administration, led by the White House adviser Stephen Miller and
other anti-immigrant DHS and White House officials, had been trying
to do in piecemeal fashion for three years: effectively ending American
compliance with obligations under domestic and international law to allow
people fleeing persecution in their home countries to make legal claims
for protection in the United States.
In California, a federal judge ordered ICE to reopen its review to iden-
tify older and medically vulnerable detainees, writing that in delaying any
meaningful response to the pandemic, the agency had ‘‘likely exhibited cal-
lous indifference to the safety and well-being of’’ detainees. This resulted in
ICE’s identifying 4,409 more people who were at ‘‘heightened risk of severe
illness and death.’’ But as of the end of May, the agency had proactively
released only 200 more ‘‘at risk’’ detainees, for a total of 900. In an emailed
response to questions, an ICE spokesperson wrote that ‘‘additional reviews
could be conducted if the circumstance related to Covid-19 and/or C.D.C.
guidelines change,’’ and that it would review people ‘‘at the time of arrest.’’
The agency, the spokesperson wrote in the same email, has taken
‘‘extensive steps to safeguard all detainees, staff and contractors, includ-
ing: reducing the number of detainees in custody by placing individuals
on alternatives to detention programs, suspending social visitation, incor-
porating social distancing practices with staggered meals and recreation
times, and through the use of cohorting and medical isolation.’’
But as the pandemic has spread from one ICE facility to the next, the
agency has repeatedly played down the risk. In response to Barahona’s
habeas petition and many others like it, ICE has said fears of infection were
‘‘purely speculative’’ and ‘‘conjectural,’’ that detainees would be no safer
outside than they were inside. When it has been forced to release detainees,
the agency has often claimed that there are dangerous criminals among the
newly freed. ICE lawyers cited a past arrest on charges of drinking and driv-
ing in response to Barahona’s habeas petition. After Barahona was pulled
over in the D.U.I. stop last fall, the local judge gave him a bond and said he
could return home and to his job at a stucco company, but ICE picked him
up at the county jail before he could leave. Barahona is undocumented, even
though he has lived in Atlanta since he was a teenager, when he followed his
mother, who is now a permanent resident, and is married to an American
woman, who began the process of petitioning for his green card before

The New York Times Magazine 37

he was detained. When he asked for release, an ICE officer wrote, ‘‘He has because his meds were out of whack or because the news about the virus
not established that he is not a danger to the community.’’ had sent him into a spiral. ‘‘I’m going to try to calm myself down,’’ he said.
But the agency’s reluctance to release detainees seems to stem less from The next day, April 10, the federal judge in Barahona’s habeas case held
any public threats posed by the people it detains than from an existential sort a dial-in hearing, in compliance with court social-distancing rules. In court,
of anxiety about its own future. In response to one federal lawsuit filed on the warden said he had implemented additional cleaning measures; he
March 26 in California on behalf of two detained men, ICE lawyers wrote, wrote in the affidavit that detainees are ‘‘repeatedly advised by staff to
‘‘The disruptive effect of ordering petitioners released on this slim, hypotheti- practice social distancing measures in addition to C.D.C. recommended
cal basis would long survive the Covid-19 pandemic, and the precedent would hand-washing procedures.’’ ‘‘Unfortunately,’’ he noted, ‘‘detainees often
serve to release many aliens eligible for removal back into the general public.’’ choose not to follow this protocol.’’
For most of American history, though, immigration laws were enforced ICE’s assistant field-office director for Atlanta wrote in a separate statement
without sending hundreds of thousands of people each year to pens to wait that detainees entering facilities were screened and asked whether they’d had
out their cases for weeks or months or years. Before the 1980s, when the contact with anyone with Covid-19. If they said they had, they were separat-
Reagan administration opened thousands of immigration-detention beds ed from other detainees for 14 days. Hand-cleaner dispensers, he said, had
to send a hard message to Haitian and Cuban asylees, immigration deten- been added to the bathrooms, and the facility was routinely cleaned. (Several
tion was used primarily for brief, several-day periods to process entrants detainees in the women’s unit told me the dispensers were sometimes empty.)
and effectuate removals. Over the past decades, detention has grown into The judge, Clay D. Land, denied the request for the detainees’ release.
a sprawling empire of hundreds of facilities scattered across the country. The facility, he wrote, could fix the problems and alleviate any constitutional
John Sandweg served during the Obama administration as the D.H.S.’s violations without letting these eight people out. ‘‘This is a terribly hard
acting general counsel and as ICE’s interim director. To immigrant-rights loss,’’ Sánchez, Barahona’s lawyer, told me. ‘‘Nobody can with any honesty
advocates, Sandweg, who is now in private practice, was a target of aggressive say people there are safe.’’
campaigns to fight Obama-era detention policies. While he was at ICE, the Immigration detention is an administrative hold, designed to ensure that
agency detained what were then historically high numbers of people. But people facing deportation don’t disappear. Because detained immigrants
during his seven months as the organization’s director, Sandweg says now,
he began to question the need for mass detention. For him it became morally
intolerable when, during his tenure, a detained woman committed suicide
in a detention center, and he learned that the agency could have allowed her
to wait out her legal case from home. ‘‘She had a history of mental illness,’’
Sandweg told me. ‘‘She should have never been detained.’’
Now, during the pandemic, Sandweg has been calling on the agency, in
op-eds and in statements with human rights groups, to release a majority
of detainees. ‘‘Why would we continue to put people in crowded facilities
where they can be exposed to a virus like this, where they are under tre-
mendous strain, and they are separated from their family?’’ Sandweg asked.
‘‘If ICE now has some deep-seated fear that a pandemic like this could
demonstrate there are alternative ways of enforcing immigration laws,
that is an absolutely terrible reason not to take common-sense steps to
reduce the threat to detainees and everyone who works in these facilities.’’

At about the

very moment on April 9 that a detained woman in the Irwin County Deten-
tion Center was secreting a note in the newly cleaned laundry bag bound
for Barahona’s unit, David Paulk, the Irwin warden who had run the facility
for nearly two years, was filing an affidavit to the court in response to Bara-
hona’s habeas petition. The declaration disclosed that a detained man — a
55-year-old Colombian recently brought to the facility, I later learned — had
tested positive for Covid-19. A contracted transportation guard had the
virus, too. Only three of the 699 people the facility held at the time had
been tested, according to court testimony. Paulk didn’t report how many
staff members had been checked for the virus.
I called Barahona’s dorm immediately after I learned the news. ‘‘There
was one person who tested positive,’’ Barahona said, right away. ‘‘It’s here.’’
Barahona’s lawyer from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Diego Sánchez,
had told him, and Barahona had told the other men in his unit. The news
was less a revelation than a confirmation of what the men already expected.
Barahona’s hands were shaking. The officers hadn’t given him his diabe-
tes medicine that evening, he said, and he didn’t know if he was shaking

38 6.7.20
are held neither as consequence of being charged or convicted of a crime
nor on orders of a judge, ICE has vast authority to simply release nearly
everyone it holds — to grant detainees parole. Even detainees with specif-
ic past criminal convictions, whom the agency is required, by statute, to
detain after their criminal sentence ends, can be released on humanitarian
exigencies. The agency can, if it chooses, find other, noncustodial forms of
supervision — requiring check-ins with officers, say, or forcing detainees to
pay a bond, or attaching an electronic monitor to their ankle. Studies show
more than 95 percent of immigrants in these release programs comply.
ICE told me that it ‘‘continues to encourage facilities to follow C.D.C.
guidelines’’ and requires detention centers to comply with a set of federal
standards, including ‘‘plans that address the management of communica-
ble diseases.’’ But just last year, a report by the Department of Homeland
Security’s inspector general found ‘‘egregious violations of detention stan-
dards,’’ including for medical care. Inspectors hired to perform a review of
Irwin County Detention Center in 2017 wrote that the facility was failing to
comply with basic standards, noting, among other things, that the medical
area and patient examination tables were filthy.
Barahona had heard on TV news reports that most of the people dying ven after the
of Covid-19 were either old or had health conditions like his. None of the
facility workers had told him anything about how to protect himself, he
said. ‘‘My biggest concern is my son. You know, the deepest wish of my
heart is to be able to be with him for as long as he needs me.’’
For weeks before the first positive Covid-19 test in Irwin, detainees had
been trying to demand stricter safety protocols. Barahona introduced me
to a gravel-voiced 33-year-old Cuban man named Reydel Sarria-Gondres, revelation on April 9
who had been in detention for more than a year while waiting for an appeal
of his asylum case. Sarria-Gondres had taken to confronting officers who
entered the unit without masks. ‘‘Why are you guys not taking this seriously?’’
Sarria-Gondres said he was almost ready to do something to get himself that Covid-19 had arrived at Irwin, ICE and LaSalle Corrections continued
sent to solitary confinement, which, dreadful as it would be, would be to minimize the threat of the pandemic. In the court filing that day, Warden
better, he thought, than sitting in a unit with 30 other men. Paulk wrote that Irwin County Detention Center ‘‘is and will remain capable
Earlier attempts at major protests in Irwin faltered. One of my most of taking all adequate safeguards to protect staff and the inmate population
regular contacts was with Andrea Manrique, a 34-year-old Colombian from a Covid-19 outbreak.’’ An ICE public-affairs officer for the region told
asylum-seeker who was detained by ICE when she landed at the airport me at the time that the low rate of infection vindicated whatever the agency
in Los Angeles. The women in Manrique’s unit slept in beds no more was doing. But the revelation unified detainees in Irwin. Unit by unit, notes
than three feet apart. Some had cold symptoms. One reported a fever. spread, while detainees’ relatives messaged other detainees’ relatives to
‘‘We have contact directly with people who are sick,’’ Manrique said. They get the word out: Strikes were beginning in the facility.
worried that the sick people were infected with the coronavirus. In late Manrique told me that the women in her unit would join the strike; no
March, Manrique and a group of other women huddled together amid one would leave the dorm, and no one would eat meals from the kitchen.
the bunks and talked in hushed voices, telling a suspicious guard that they They would get by on food they had stashed from the commissary. ‘‘Tomor-
were merely praying. They decided they would stop going to work shifts, row it’ll be a year since I’ve been in here,’’ Manrique said. She missed her
and that they would refuse meals from the kitchen. But just a day later, son’s 19th birthday two days before. ‘‘I am afraid for my life.’’
they called off the protest. The women realized that unless they could find The men in Echo-7, Barahona’s unit, were mobilizing, too, preparing
some way to communicate with the rest of the facility — to persuade other signs in English and in Spanish to hold up for their relatives and reporters
detainees beyond the 70 or so women in their unit to join them — their to record through the GettingOut app. One read, ‘‘We Are Not Safe Here.’’
protest would be quickly crushed. The men were talking about a hunger strike.
Barahona and the men in Echo had already tried and failed, too. At the In another unit, a 62-year-old man named Elias Garcia, who grew up in
start of April, guards had tried to move the men to the Alpha dorms, where the United States after he followed his mother from Mexicali, Mexico, when
as many as 100 slept in rows of bunk beds bolted to the floor a few feet he was 10 and who had a green card (ICE cited a 15-year-old drug conviction,
from each other. In Echo, at least, there was a modicum of separation: two for which he had been sentenced to probation, to justify his lockup), met
stories, each with eight double-occupancy cells. with other men in a cell, away from the intercom system that they worried
When an officer ordered them to pack their things because the space allowed officials to overhear. They had heard about the women’s strike. ‘‘If
was needed, the men, determined not to move, actively resisted. ‘‘You we are going to do this, we are going to do this together,’’ he said.
think we’re all going to fit in the hole?’’ Barahona said. ‘‘No, they can’t put The boyfriend of a woman in Manrique’s unit recorded a video from a
us all into solitary.’’ video chat, which soon began circulating online. Manrique appeared at
‘‘You all are making a mistake,’’ a guard yelled. The video feed I was the start, wearing a mask she had fashioned from a piece of fabric. ‘‘We are
watching cut off. When Barahona finally picked up again, an hour later, raising our voices so our petitions can be heard,’’ she said. Other women,
he was still in Echo, cleaning the empty unit. The officers had pulled the some faces bare, held signs that read in Spanish, ‘‘We don’t have protection’’
men out two by two. Many were taken to Alpha. Barahona and a group of and ‘‘There are sick people here.’’ ‘‘We are afraid of infecting one another,
others were sent to a nearby dorm still on Echo, with one- or two-person by breathing, coughing, anything,’’ another woman said.
cells. Barahona assumed they were trying to keep the suspected instigators Other dorms also began to act. Elias Garcia held up a sign that read,
away from the rest of the men. ‘‘I’m Human,’’ and another that disparaged the use of ‘‘alien’’ to describe

Illustration by Señor Salme The New York Times Magazine 39

human beings, reading ‘‘E.T. Is the Alien.’’ A line House and C.D.C.,’’ adding: ‘‘It really is disgusting an ICE official told them that if they persisted on a
of men walked to the camera and held signs, to me, the whole situation, it really is. The people hunger strike for more than 72 hours, the agency
drawn in bubble letters, asking to be let free, to responsible for this information are nowhere to could go to a federal judge to request permission
be protected. A Nigerian man who said he had be found. They’re all sitting at home somewhere to force-feed them. By April 16, the other four
been detained after failing to renew his green barking orders telling people like me what to say men had agreed to eat. As they were taken out
card and who had stopped eating spoke: ‘‘I am to you. I can give you as much information that’s of the Delta unit, the men passed Barahona’s cell.
68. I do not want to die.’’ available. I can’t go kick down the warden’s door, ‘‘Just let everybody know I’m OK, bro,’’ he said
you can’t even begin to imagine.’’ to one of them. ‘‘I understand why you all want
On the morning of April 13, CNN en Español The officer prepared to leave. A detained to come off of it. I’m going to continue.’’ Nilsen
interviewed Barahona for a story about people man yelled over a buzz of voices: ‘‘Last question. had stopped consuming food, water, even his
protesting in detention: ‘‘I know that by our stop- Where the hell have you been for the last 10 days?’’ diabetes medication.
ping eating, the officials will get to a point where A 30-year-old Ghanaian immigrant who had lived Manrique said that although the women had
they’ll have to pay attention to the situation,’’ he in Atlanta for more than a decade spoke: ‘‘I want stopped going to work, most hadn’t lasted long
said in Spanish. ‘‘If we don’t do anything, this to tell you, right now, we are on a hunger strike.’’ refusing meals. ‘‘I try to put a strong front for the
will continue.’’ None of the men had eaten since the morning. other women here, but I am really tired,’’ she told
Later that afternoon, an ICE officer came to ‘‘We’re trying to bring attention to it, right?’’ He me. In dorm after dorm, where four days earlier
speak with the men in Barahona’s unit. ‘‘Good asked whom they should speak to. women and men were rallying and protesting,
afternoon. Does anyone at this time speak The officer responded: ‘‘The facility is going detainees were deflated. ‘‘I am afraid that some-
English?’’ he asked, as the tablet captured the to continue addressing issues as they arise. What thing catastrophic will happen inside of here,’’
conversation. To Barahona and the others, the that entails, I have no idea, OK? That’s the facility. Manrique said through tears.
man’s arrival felt like a sign of success. A cen- That’s the warden’s choice.’’ On April 18, Barahona called me from a phone
tral grievance inside the facility — and a routine Nilson returned to the tablet to talk with me brought by a guard to his cell. He was one of only
refrain on many of my calls — was a sense, born again; other men stood on the second-floor plat- a few detainees still protesting. He spoke slowly,
out in experience, that nobody with any power form, watching the officer leave. ‘‘I think they exhaled deeply. ‘‘I haven’t eaten for five days.’’
was sharing any meaningful information with haven’t taken us seriously yet,’’ he said. ‘‘I think Reydel Sarria-Gondres, the gravel-voiced Cuban
the people detained inside. As Manrique told me a few more hours have to pass by for them to man, had been delivered to this same cell two
soon into our first conversation in late March: realize that this is not a game for us.’’ days earlier, and both men said they wouldn’t
‘‘We are scared, and nobody is giving us answers. end their hunger strike until their demands were
Do you know anything about what is happening?’’ The video calls in Irwin stopped working on met and they could talk with a senior ICE official.
In many ways, what the detainees had been ask- April 14. Manrique called using the phone that ‘‘Nothing has changed,’’ Barahona said. Just that
ing for was information about how to protect afternoon. She sounded frantic. ‘‘Today they took day, an officer had walked into the Delta unit
themselves. They wanted to talk to someone the tablets and TV,’’ she said. ‘‘They’re punishing with no mask on. ‘‘I’m not suicidal, you know,
who could make actual decisions about their us. They found out we made the video.’’ but I think this has a solution, and I think the
lives. Now, an officer from the agency that could Lindsay Williams, an ICE public-affairs officer solution is to talk to the right people.’’
release them stood before them. for the region, told me he had no knowledge of Later that night, I learned from another detain-
‘‘Here’s the deal,’’ he said. ‘‘First of all, I can’t any protest, or whether tablets being turned off ee that guards at the facility had finally started
answer any questions. There’s a process that was in response to a strike. Maybe some detain- taking the temperatures of people inside. A
works.’’ The officer kept talking: ICE ‘‘officers are ees were not going to eat a few meals, he said, 19-year-old Bangladeshi man held on the Alpha
not working in the office, everybody’s working but under ICE rules a hunger strike had to last unit, the part of Irwin that Barahona had resisted
from home, the courts are not running as nor- at least three days. Warden Paulk told me to call being moved to, had a fever, and was removed to
mal, OK?’’ The officer rattled through a list of LaSalle; the corporation did not reply. an isolation cell. He tested positive for Covid-19.
ways the virus had derailed the normal system Later that evening, Manrique called again. This Detainees say the entire Alpha dorm was held in
— grounded deportation flights, slowed courts, time she was calmer. Just listen, she told me. In the lockdown for 14 days.
nearly moribund visa processing. ‘‘What it leads background, a guard was singing a gospel song, Two days later, Sarria-Gondres called me.
to is this [expletive] basically.’’ ‘‘Victory Is Mine.’’ ‘‘Victory is not losing yourself, ‘‘Yesterday they took Nilson trembling to medi-
‘‘There is nobody infected in this facility,’’ the is not giving up hope,’’ the guard told the women cal,’’ he said. Barahona had told Sarria-Gondres
officer continued. The men erupted. Just that day, after she stopped singing. ‘‘And it’s keeping the he didn’t feel well, was dizzy. Sarria-Gondres had
ICE had updated its website to include the Irwin fight.’’ The women took it as a gesture of solidar- called for a doctor. He himself had not eaten for
case in its list of positives. ‘‘They said there was!’’ ity — many detainees, including Manrique, had seven days. ‘‘I am not doing well. My kidneys
Nilson bellowed in response. expressed concern about the staff members, who hurt. When I pee it burns a lot. I get really dizzy.
‘‘There is not,’’ the officer replied. Nilson spoke were just as vulnerable to the disease’s spread as I woke up today with chest pain. I thought I was
again, his voice measured and low: ‘‘OK. Let me they were. The guard eventually stopped talking, going to have a heart attack.’’ He was still deter-
tell you something. My name is Nilson Barahona, and an ICE officer arrived. He told the women mined not to eat, he said. ‘‘The sergeant came
I put a lawsuit to this facility, both of the wardens their protest would lead to nothing. wearing a mask on her chin while talking to the
were in the federal court on Thursday’’ — he was By then, Barahona had been moved from Echo. detainees. They’re still not taking this seriously.’’
referencing Paulk and the Stewart detention cen- He said officials had threatened the 30 or so men On April 21, when I tried to reach the detain-
ter warden. ‘‘They declared that they have tested in his unit that they would be locked up. Half ees through the tablets, I was unable to sign in.
three people and one came positive.’’ the men ended their protest and were sent to A notification on my cellphone said my access
‘‘Not in this facility,’’ the officer said. ‘‘The a different dorm. Most of those who remained, had been blocked. I dialed GTL, the company that
information that you’ve been given, all right, who said they would continue their hunger strike, operates the platform, and was told the facility had
it’s not accurate. First of all, this is a multimil- were locked in cells. Five men, including Bara- suspended my account. I was banned until 2025.
lion-dollar operation.’’ He continued, ‘‘The grand hona, were moved to what detainees called the That same day, Manrique was locked for 14
authority over all of this comes out of the White punishment cells in the Delta unit. He said that days in a double segregation cell, I later learned

40 6.7.20
from her lawyer. Four other women from the in Irwin had tested positive. Elias Garcia, the Answers to puzzles of 5.31.20
same dorm were moved there as well. All had 62-year-old man who’d held up the ‘‘E.T.’’ sign, WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN
appeared in the video posted on the internet. was among them. ‘‘We were trying to protect
E T C S P E C K I C E D S H U I
Manrique said an official told her they were being ourselves,’’ he said over the phone from the iso- G O E S H E L L O M I L E C E N T
punished for the video, because, she told her law- lation cell where he had been moved. ‘‘We were G E L T E N I A C P A I L C E L L O

yer, ‘‘we spoke badly of the institution,’’ and the just asking for masks.’’ His voice was weak, his T I A R A S S H O O T I E O N E O N
M O B R A R I E S J U V E N Q U E N C Y
women ‘‘were abusing the resources that they breath obviously short. He said that his whole I T A L Y O P S S N O E U R A K A
were giving us.’’ body ached and that he was feverish; he felt as if N O T I S N A I L D A D A I S T
Barahona was returned to Echo-7, rolled in by a heavy weight were on his chest. He said this was T E E N P O P Z E A L I T P E O P L E
G I L L E N D O R S E C L U E S
wheelchair, on April 23. He had decided to end the loneliest place to be in quarantine. A T E E T A S A Z T E C R E M A P
his hunger strike on the 10th day, when he learned On the morning of May 14, Barahona said he M E D I C I N T S C O M M E T A R Y
the young Bangladeshi man with Covid-19 was was loaded onto a bus with 40 other men from dif- O P I N E R O P E S S U E D S Y S
N E C C O S A B R I N A H A I L
being held in the medical unit nearby. A nurse ferent dorms, including Jackson, the young Salva-
G E T A F L A T O N I T A N T E D U P
told him, ‘‘It is better for you to leave this place.’’ doran man who’d told me he had lost his sense of S P Y F I L M T O M M Y G E N E
smell. Barahona sat next to Sarria-Gondres, who F A R A S A S E N N A M M A T T E
Within a few weeks, detainees told me that sever- ended his hunger strike after more two weeks. A I N O P P O R T U N T E L A B O R A I L
N O B L E L I E A H E M D A M M I T
al people inside the Alpha unit were acutely sick. few hours later, they were unloaded at the Stewart A R B O R H E R D R E L A Y O N L Y
A local charity had delivered a pile of masks to Detention Center. ICE told me it moved detain- L A I D A M I E A N G L E R E E D
the facility that were handed out to the detained, ees to ‘‘stem the potential spread of Covid-19’’ by E K E S T S P S S T A I D D D S

but the virus had already begun to spread. One reducing populations in facilities where people
young man named Jackson Arevalo-Callejas, are infected. But by the day of the men’s arrival, KENKEN
originally from El Salvador, told me he had lost 16 Stewart detainees and dozens of staff members
his sense of smell. A 65-year-old Cuban man told had already tested positive.
me he was scarcely moving from his bed, but When Barahona called me from Stewart,
there was nothing he could do to maintain six he was furious that ICE had moved him and
feet of distance. None of the men in the dorm the other men from one facility to another. He
had been tested for the virus. said he still hoped that the judge would order
On May 7, the judge presiding over the habeas his release, or that ICE might reconsider and
petition on behalf of Barahona agreed to allow grant him parole. ‘‘At the end of the day, all of
a correctional-medicine expert to evaluate over this is run by ICE,’’ Barahona said. ‘‘They are
video whether Irwin and Stewart were operating the ones responsible for us, the ones who keep
PUNS AND ANAGRAMS
in a way that could keep detained people safe. us detained.’’
A R C A D E P O P S T A R S
In the days that followed, detainees say the staff On May 24, a 34-year-old Guatemalan man
L E A V E N E N A T U R A L
at Irwin began to clean the facilities and hang named Santiago Baten-Oxlaj became the first A S S E R T D E T O N A T E
small signs on the walls that instructed detainees Stewart detainee to die of Covid-19. The same day, S T E R E O A S C R I B E D

to stay six feet apart. After his video inspection, the lawyers on Barahona’s habeas petition were S K U L L H E N

the expert concluded that the facilities were not back in court. On the question of the detainees’ A C A I R A S P G A R B
C O R O N A S L A M M I L
complying with C.D.C. guidelines. release, Judge Land said: ‘‘I have not heard any- I R O N A G E A V A R I C E
By May 13, ICE reported a total of six detainees thing terribly persuasive to change my mind.’’  D A M P E R G A R A G E S
S L A P S O U L T O S S
H A L R E A R S

KENKEN
Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each heavily outlined
D
E
V
A
C
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T
O
R
N
O
E L
O M
N
I

I
N
I
C
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C
A
N
C
H
O

E
L
N
E
S
F
A
T
A
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box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, as indicated in the box. O D O M E T E R E X T E N D
A 5x5 grid will use the digits 1–5. A 7x7 grid will use 1–7.

HEX NUTS GAS LINES

P
D I
A R C D
B R A U A
B T S L S
A H A T
E O E N
D L R A S
W L P T H
I D I C

Answers to puzzle on Page 48

feel free to include them in your score.
found other legitimate dictionary words in the beehive,
cabby, cerebra, crabby, crybaby, cyber, nearby. If you
bayberry, beanery, bearer, beery, berry, brace, cabana,
banana, banner, banyan, barber, barer, barre, barren,
Cranberry (3 points). Also: abbey, aberrance, abeyance,
SPELLING BEE

KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. © 2020 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved. 41
Barr other branches since Watergate. Congress had an exchange would be a crime. He also men-
(Continued from Page 25) burdened the president with oversight, while tioned his long friendship with Mueller. Barr’s
the courts were interfering with Trump’s travel wife attends the same Bible study as Mueller’s
who became Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief ban on certain countries and his termination wife; Mueller attended the weddings of two of
of staff and played a major role in pushing the of President Barack Obama’s DACA program Barr’s daughters.
limits of conduct, including torture, that the for young immigrants. Barr seemed to suggest Barr was confirmed by a vote of 54 to 45. He
White House and the C.I.A. determined to be that when it comes to foreign policy, the only had barely served one month as attorney general
legal in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. legitimate check on presidential behavior is the when his friendship with Mueller was tested by
Barr ‘‘wants the president to be in charge,’’ next election. Months later, this argument would the special prosecutor’s delivery of his report, on
Hayden says. ‘‘People who believe that if the become the foundation of Trump’s impeach- the afternoon of Friday, March 22. Trump’s Twit-
president wants it, most times he gets it and ment defense. ter account then went dark for nearly 40 hours.
it’s legal — those people usually go far in the That Sunday, Barr sent a letter to Congress that
White House.’’ On Dec. 5, 2018, Barr attended George H. W. he would later describe as giving Mueller’s ‘‘bot-
Barr’s intellect and experience made him Bush’s funeral. While waiting in line for the shuttle tom line,’’ and Trump’s feed came back to life.
appealing to the private sector. For eight years, bus that would take him to Washington Nation- ‘‘No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and
he served as general counsel at Verizon, at al Cathedral, he and his wife ran into a friend, Total EXONERATION,’’ he tweeted. In his first
a time when the company was working out C. Boyden Gray, who was Bush’s White House public comments that same day, Trump said the
secret arrangements with the National Securi- counsel during the Reagan years. The two men words ‘‘no collusion with Russia’’ three times.
ty Agency to turn over its customers’ data. In spent most of the day together. Barr sounded out ‘‘Hopefully someone is going to be looking at
September 2001, a legal trade publication noted Gray about the attorney-general job. Gray knew the other side,’’ he added.
Barr’s $1.5 million salary and compared him to from following the news that Barr was under con- Trump’s tweet, Barr’s letter and Mueller’s
a ‘‘powerful amphibious vehicle’’ for the depth sideration, but Barr never tipped his hand about report said three different things. Neither Barr
of his connections in both political Washington how close he was to being tapped, and Gray never nor Mueller exonerated Trump. Barr quoted
and corporate New York. At that time, he said, asked. Later that week, when Trump announced Mueller’s own words that his complicated finding
he had no interest in returning to officialdom. Barr’s nomination, Gray was not surprised. ‘‘I on obstruction ‘‘does not exonerate’’ the presi-
‘‘The opportunity to pick up the phone and talk don’t think he felt totally fulfilled by the limited dent. But Barr omitted Mueller’s conclusions that
to policymakers, to kibitz — without worrying time he had’’ under Bush, Gray says. ‘‘I think he Russian interference sought to favor Trump; that
about what the newspaper is going to say the felt he had another round left in him.’’ Trump and his campaign welcomed the interfer-
next day about you — is a great luxury,’’ he said. At the time of his nomination, Barr’s support- ence and believed they would benefit from it; and
‘‘I have the best of all worlds.’’ ers presented him as a trustworthy and sensi- that the ‘‘links’’ and ‘‘contacts’’ between Russians
By the 2016 presidential election, Barr was ble conservative, a known quantity within the and the campaign were substantial, even though
a player in Republican politics and active in Washington establishment who would restrain the evidence Mueller was able to gather fell short
conservative Catholic causes. He gave nearly Trump’s worst impulses. James Comey called of a criminal conspiracy.
$50,000 to a PAC affiliated with Jeb Bush. His him ‘‘an institutionalist who cares deeply about Mueller fired off two letters complaining
annual holiday parties, traditional Scottish the integrity of the Justice Department.’’ Ben- that Barr had misrepresented his work. In the
cèilidhs with music and singers, drew hundreds jamin Wittes, a legal commentator who is now second letter, dated March 27, he asked Barr to
whose friendships he had maintained over the one of Barr’s harshest critics, tweeted at the immediately release the report’s introductions
years. He wrote and sold a screenplay about time that he had been ‘‘a very fine A.G.’’ under and executive summaries. But the public would
World War II. He spent time traveling abroad Bush and that his confirmation would be ‘‘a very not get to read Mueller’s work until April 18,
and hunting birds. His three daughters all decent outcome.’’ when Barr released a redacted version of the
became accomplished lawyers, working on Cap- During the confirmation hearing, Senator full report. Before doing so, Barr gave a news
itol Hill or as federal prosecutors. The eldest, Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Dem- conference in which he tilted further toward
Mary, moved to the Treasury Department’s ocrat on the Judiciary Committee, questioned declaring Trump innocent, something Mueller
financial-crimes unit after Barr’s nomination Barr at length about a memorandum he wrote bent over backward not to do. ‘‘As he said from
as attorney general; one of Barr’s sons-in-law to the administration the previous summer, out- the beginning,’’ Barr said of Trump, ‘‘there was
left the Justice Department for the White House lining why he believed that Mueller had no legal in fact no collusion.’’
Counsel’s Office. right to investigate Trump for obstruction of jus- Barr’s distortions drew wide criticism. Dem-
Last year, shortly after his Notre Dame tice. The president, Barr argued, has ‘‘complete ocrats were also frustrated by the report’s
speech, Barr gave a second major address at authority to start or stop’’ investigations and can content. It lacked the thunderous revelations
the annual convention of the Federalist Soci- ‘‘give direction’’ on individual cases, including about Russia that had long been promised by
ety, an organization of conservative lawyers those that touch on his political or financial inter- Trump’s opponents, and it suffered from legal-
founded during the Reagan administration. ests. ‘‘The Constitution itself places no limit on istic inconclusiveness on the most fundamental
The subject was executive power. Again Barr the president’s authority to act on matters which questions. Mueller, having been given a chance
criticized progressives, this time for making concern him or his own conduct,’’ Barr wrote. to put the 2016 election to bed for good, had
politics ‘‘their religion.’’ The presidency, in his Law enforcement, he argued, was a power exclu- carefully avoided doing so.
view, handled ‘‘sovereign functions … which sively held by the president, because ‘‘he alone is Democrats’ hopes for the promised collusion
by their very nature cannot be directed by a the executive branch.’’ bombshell now turned to the unredacted version
pre-existing legal regime but rather demand In the hearing, Barr seemed to say that he of the Mueller report, which Barr refused to give
speed, secrecy, unity of purpose and prudent did not believe the unitary executive’s powers them. In an echo of his C.I.A. work during the
judgment to meet contingent circumstances.’’ to be infinite. When Senator Patrick Leahy, a Church Commission years, the Barr-led Justice
Part of the core function of the presidency was Vermont Democrat, asked if it would be lawful Department has taken a very hard line regard-
the ability to act swiftly and without constraint, for a president to trade a pardon for a promise ing what information Congress and the courts
but this capability had been diminished by the not to incriminate him, Barr answered that such are entitled to get from the White House. It has

42 6.7.20
fought in court against the release of Trump’s tax anybody,’’ he said in an interview with ABC The post-Mueller case that has arguably
returns; argued that Congress did not need to see News. But the department’s interventions on received the most attention among Trump’s
the Ukraine whistle-blower’s complaint, because behalf of Stone and Flynn have raised questions supporters is that of Flynn, the lieutenant gen-
it was not a matter of ‘‘urgent concern’’; and has about the supposed Trump-Barr firewall. ‘‘Even eral who briefly served as Trump’s national secu-
challenged congressional requests for Mueller’s assuming that Bill Barr is acting with integri- rity adviser. The dueling narratives around the
secret grand-jury materials. ty, it is impossible for people to believe that, Obama-to-Trump transition crystallize around
After Barr refused to turn over the fully unre- because the president is making him look like Flynn, and the question of whether he or those
dacted Mueller report to the House Judiciary his political lap dog,’’ Jack Goldsmith, who led who investigated him were in the wrong. In
Committee, citing executive privilege, the com- the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. addition to drawing scrutiny for his Russian
mittee voted to hold him in contempt. The Dem- Bush, told The Times in February. Barr has said contacts, Flynn had initially failed to report, as
ocratic chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler he doesn’t pay attention to Trump’s tweets and legally required, that his company was effectively
of New York, claimed that this was the beginning doesn’t take seriously the ones he is made aware on the payroll of the Turkish government during
of a ‘‘constitutional crisis.’’ Barr seemed untrou- of. ‘‘The president says a lot of things which he the 2016 campaign. Obama himself tried and
bled. ‘‘Madam Speaker, did you bring your hand- doesn’t follow through on, and doesn’t actually failed to talk Trump into dropping him. Many
cuffs?’’ he reportedly quipped to Nancy Pelosi mean, probably,’’ says Gray, Barr’s friend and of Trump’s own problems hinged on his asking
at an event a few days later. But concerns about former colleague. Comey if he could ‘‘see your way clear’’ to drop-
Barr’s handling of Mueller’s investigation have Vanita Gupta, the former head of Obama’s ping the Flynn investigation. Trump’s adversaries
not been confined to Democrats. Judge Reggie B. civil rights division at the department, articulat- consider Flynn to be a loose cannon and possible
Walton of the United States District Court for the ed a prevailing view of Barr among Democrats, Russian pawn who needed to be rooted out. His
District of Columbia, a George W. Bush appoin- telling me that the attorney general has ‘‘since supporters depict him as the second coming of
tee, recently criticized Barr’s ‘‘lack of candor’’ and Day 1 operated as the president’s defense law- Oliver North — a good soldier who was martyred
questioned whether ‘‘Barr’s intent was to create yer.’’ Gupta says Barr’s interventions on behalf in public for his loyalty to the executive.
a one-sided narrative.’’ of Trump associates have far-reaching conse- On May 4, the day of my first interview with
At his first meeting with President Trump in quences. ‘‘Barr is overturning decisions made Barr, Flynn was still awaiting sentencing, hav-
2017, Barr later recalled in his confirmation hear- by career prosecutors to placate the president,’’ ing pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. From
ing, he told Trump that ‘‘the Barrs and Muellers she says. ‘‘It’s insulting to federal prosecutors time to time, Trump had been tweeting about
were good friends and would be good friends who have given their time to build cases with the Flynn case in ways that seemed to cross
when this was all over.’’ In the end, he was half honor and integrity. It has a destructive impact the line that Barr had drawn about public com-
right. ‘‘I haven’t talked to him since March 5, on morale.’’ ments from the White House about matters
when he came over to talk about his report,’’ Barr In February, a federal judge recommended pending before the Justice Department. Trump
said in one of our interviews. That would have that Stone be sentenced to seven to nine years in said Flynn had been victimized by the ‘‘same
been March 2019 — more than a year ago. prison for witness tampering and other crimes. scammers’’ as Stone.
‘‘My wife and his wife still talk, and they’re The following day, the Justice Department filed I asked Barr, in light of his statement on ABC
friends,’’ Barr continued. I asked if they still saw a second, revised sentencing memo asking that News, whether these were the kind of tweets that
each other at Bible study. ‘‘Yup,’’ Barr replied. Stone’s sentence be reduced. Eighty-seven to made his job ‘‘impossible.’’
108 months, the memo argued, ‘‘could be con- ‘‘I’ve already made my position on the tweets
Attorneys general are chosen by the president; sidered excessive’’ given Stone’s ‘‘advanced clear,’’ Barr said. ‘‘I don’t have anything further
no law prohibits them from doing the presi- age, health, personal circumstances and lack to say about it.’’
dent’s bidding. Many presidents have occasion- of criminal history.’’ Trump had recently been tweeting about
ally asked the attorney general to intervene in On the same day the department revised its Flynn, I said. ‘‘I haven’t seen any of his tweets
individual prosecutions. John Mitchell, President sentencing recommendation, all four of the about Flynn, so I’m not sure what he’s saying,’’
Richard M. Nixon’s attorney general, went much prosecutors responsible for the case announced Barr replied.
further, helping to plan the Watergate burglary their withdrawal. One, Jonathan Kravis, left the I asked if he would like to see them. ‘‘Not par-
and then working to cover it up. But the Justice department entirely. ‘‘I am convinced that the ticularly,’’ Barr said. ‘‘I don’t pay any attention. I
Department’s guidelines do enjoin prosecutors department’s conduct in the Stone and Flynn don’t even know what he tweets.’’
not to comment about ongoing investigations, cases will do lasting damage to the institution,’’ I handed Barr a printout of an April 29 Trump
something Barr does regularly. They also cau- Kravis wrote later in an op-ed in The Washing- tweet. It read:
tion that legal judgments ‘‘must be impartial and ton Post.
insulated from political influence’’ and that the On Twitter, Trump said the Stone prosecutors @CNN doesn’t want to speak about
department must respect Congress’s ‘‘legitimate ‘‘cut and ran after being exposed.’’ He tweeted their persecution of General Michael
investigatory and oversight functions.’’ out congratulations to Barr for ‘‘taking charge Flynn & why they got the story so
None of this has stopped Barr from overrul- of a case that was totally out of control.’’ Barr wrong. They, along with others,
ing his subordinates to the benefit of Trump’s pushed back in the ABC interview, insisting that should pay a big price for what they
friends and associates — most notably Roger he reached the Stone decision independently. ‘‘To have purposely done to this man & his
Stone, Trump’s longtime political mentor, and have public statements and tweets made about the family. They won’t even cover the big
Michael Flynn, his former national securi- department, about our people in the department, breaking news about this scam!
ty adviser. In both cases, Trump has tweeted our men and women here, about cases pending in
about what he sees as the unfairness of their the department and about judges before whom ‘‘Take it for what you will,’’ Barr said with cool
legal troubles, and the Justice Department has we have cases make it impossible for me to do indifference. ‘‘The thing that I reacted to with
subsequently pushed for leniency. my job and to assure the courts and the prosecu- Stone, was him [Trump] saying what the depart-
Barr has repeatedly said that Trump has never tors that we’re doing our work with integrity,’’ he ment should do.’’
asked him to do anything in a criminal case: said, adding, ‘‘I think it’s time to stop the tweeting I asked how it was that Flynn’s supposed
‘‘I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by about Department of Justice criminal cases.’’ antagonists could be punished — ‘‘pay a big price’’

The New York Times Magazine 43

— without involvement from the department. ‘‘much more to come,’’ he most likely has in could help Durham. In the case of Italy, where
‘‘That doesn’t have to do with the Flynn matter, mind the ongoing investigation by John Durham Barr and Durham met with political leaders and
does it?’’ Barr asked, referring to the particular and its long-expected report — although it is intelligence chiefs in person, his visit provoked
case that was now before Judge Emmet Sullivan. also possible that Durham’s public work product concern among U.S. diplomats, who told The
He had found the right hair to split, and he split will take the form of indictments, or perhaps Times that Barr circumvented protocols in set-
it so cleanly and decisively that I couldn’t say this nothing at all. Barr, who assigned Durham the ting up the trip. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia,
wasn’t his position from the beginning. task of investigating the Russia probe in May who is the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence
The tweet, Barr said, was nothing new. Trump, last year and met with him several times imme- Committee and helped write its five-volume
he said, ‘‘has been calling for justice and for hold- diately after the conclusion of Mueller’s investi- report, said there were ‘‘concerns’’ about Barr’s
ing people to account since the very beginning.’’ gation, is overseeing Durham’s work and briefs trips. ‘‘There is queasiness among our allies about
Three days later, on the afternoon of May 7, Trump on his findings regularly. Based on Barr’s the kind of activities Barr is engaged in,’’ he said.
the Justice Department filed a motion to dis- public statements, we can see the rough con- Timothy Flanigan, a former colleague of
miss its own prosecution of Flynn. The govern- tours of Durham’s findings beginning to take Barr’s from the George H. W. Bush years, said he
ment argued that Flynn’s false statements were shape. The government’s conduct during the thought Durham could come back with some-
not ‘‘material’’ to the investigation of Flynn, Obama-to-Trump transition, Barr has said, was thing more. Mueller’s investigation ‘‘was limited
because the investigation was itself unjustified. ‘‘abhorrent.’’ Surveillance of Trump’s campaign to the president and the campaign,’’ he told me.
The argument relied in part on the contents of amounted to ‘‘spying.’’ Then there was the all- ‘‘No one has looked at the whole intelligence
handwritten F.B.I. notes that had been turned important question of whether the F.B.I. was community and asked, ‘Was there something
over to Flynn’s attorneys by the department and justified in opening the initial Crossfire Hurri- amiss here?’ ’’
released to the public by mutual agreement. cane investigation into the Trump campaign’s Durham’s investigation is not the only means
One of the prosecutors assigned to the case Russia ties. through which Barr’s decisions could affect the
immediately withdrew. Under ordinary circumstances, Justice election. If the F.B.I. wants to open a criminal
A few days later, Sullivan decided he wouldn’t Department prosecutors do not comment on investigation into either campaign, it will first
rule on whether to accept the department’s anything connected to an ongoing investiga- need Barr’s personal approval. Barr has estab-
motion until he had heard from friends of the tion, but on the day that Horowitz released his lished a special ‘‘intake process’’ to deal with
court and a special counsel. Flynn’s lawyers report, both Barr and Durham decided to do materials that Rudolph W. Giuliani says he has
appealed, asking a higher court to force the just that. The F.B.I.’s interest in Trump, Barr said, obtained from Ukrainian sources, which, Giuliani
judge’s hand. Again, the department took Flynn’s was based ‘‘on the thinnest of suspicions’’ and has claimed, implicate Joe Biden, the presump-
side. Trump took to Twitter, celebrating ‘‘a BIG ‘‘insufficient to justify the steps taken.’’ ‘‘We do tive Democratic presidential nominee. In the
day for Justice in the USA. … I do believe there not agree with some of the report’s conclusions interview, Barr did not dispute the notion that
is MUCH more to come!’’ as to predication,’’ Durham said in his own state- the Russian government had interfered in 2016,
ment. Horowitz had found that the investigation but he made it sound as though the assumption
The definitive Sept. 11 Commission-style his- was justified, so these sounded like sweeping that it favored Trump would be coming under
tory of the 2016 election remains unwritten, words of dissent. But over the coming months, some pressure.
though not for lack of trying. In addition to the as attention drifted elsewhere, they shrank. By One also would expect Barr to play a role in
Mueller report and voluminous criminal indict- the time I sat down with Barr, the only dispute deterring and punishing foreign interference in
ments, we have the Intelligence Community with Horowitz he’d voiced was whether the the 2020 election, but that could get complicated.
Assessment, the Horowitz report (by the Jus- F.B.I. had enough evidence to open a full inves- Trump’s camp continues to deny the intelligence
tice Department’s inspector general, Michael tigation. (Barr and Durham believe that there community’s consensus view, one strongly reit-
Horowitz) and four volumes of the Senate Intel- was only enough to open a preliminary investi- erated by Mueller and the Senate intelligence
ligence Committee’s report, a fifth volume of gation, not a full one.) committee, that the Russians favored Trump over
which is on the way. In our first interview, Barr mentioned the Hillary Clinton. Some, including Republicans on
The major episodes of the story may now dossier of salacious anti-Trump claims that had the House Intelligence Committee, claim to have
seem like familiar terrain to those who have kept been gathered and circulated by Christopher unreleased evidence that points the other way.
up, and a hopeless mess to everyone else. But Steele, a former British intelligence agent who Based on what Barr told me, Russian intentions
zoom out a bit, and the stakes could not be high- was working indirectly for the Clinton cam- will most likely emerge as the key retrospective
er. Many of Trump’s critics, like Representative paign. The possibility that the Russian gov- battlegrounds as Durham’s work continues and
Adam Schiff of California, the Democratic chair- ernment intentionally seeded the dossier with the election draws closer.
man of the House Intelligence Committee, and misinformation was one of the issues Mueller ‘‘There was definitely Russian, uh, interfer-
James Clapper, Obama’s director of national ignored and Durham was looking at, Barr said. ence,’’ Barr said. ‘‘I think Durham is looking at
intelligence, go further than saying that the Rus- Nor had Mueller gone back and looked at the the intelligence community’s I.C.A. — the report
sians put a thumb on the scale for Trump. They investigative steps taken as Crossfire Hurricane that they did in December. And he’s sort of
have suggested that the extra boost was decisive accelerated, he continued. Horowitz had done examining all the information that was based
— that Trump would not have been elected in that, but unlike Barr and Durham, he had no on, the basis for their conclusions. So to that
2016 but for Russian interference. The crucial access to the C.I.A., the N.S.A. and the foreign extent, I still have an open mind, depending
legacy of 2016 is that the question of Trump’s governments that were involved. on what he finds.’’
legitimacy was never settled. And without any To facilitate what later became a criminal But what Barr did not address directly was
consensus on what happened in 2016, the rules investigation, Trump ordered the heads of the the fourth volume of the report from the Senate
of the road for 2020 are up in the air. intelligence agencies to cooperate with Barr. He intelligence committee. That report reviewed
But first, armed with the powers of law delegated to Barr the power to order the declas- much of the same intelligence underlying the
enforcement and presidential access to clas- sification of secret documents. Barr has spoken Intelligence Community Assessment. It affirmed
sified material, Trump is getting ready to roll with intelligence officials from Italy, Australia that Russia’s pro-Trump position and President
out his account of 2016. When Trump promises and Britain to reportedly solicit information that Vladimir V. Putin’s direct involvement were

44 6.7.20
supported by ‘‘specific intelligence.’’ The N.S.A.’s history.’’ When asked what crime he thought ‘‘I was just qualifying it simply as any lawyer
disagreement was ‘‘reasonable, transparent and they were guilty of, Trump declined to answer. would qualify an absolute statement,’’ he said. ‘‘I
openly debated.’’ Unlike the committee’s ground- In a news conference two days before I went to have nothing in mind like that.’’
breaking 2012 Torture Report, the fourth volume see him, Barr was asked indirectly if Durham’s Whether he realized it or not, the line Barr had
was unanimously approved by a bipartisan vote investigation might lead to criminal charges drawn at the news conference was getting blur-
of the Republican-led committee. ‘‘The commit- being filed against Obama or Biden. ‘‘I have a rier with every word, just as Trump had hoped.
tee found no reason to dispute the intelligence general idea of how Mr. Durham’s investigation ‘‘You never say never,’’ Barr went on. ‘‘Things
community’s conclusions,’’ said Senator Richard is going,’’ he said. ‘‘Based on the information I could pop up that change the world.’’ He pulled
Burr, a Republican from North Carolina and the have today, I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work back from the conversation and thought for a
chairman of the committee. will lead to a criminal investigation of either moment. ‘‘But I have a pretty good grasp of what
Warner, for his part, dismissed Durham’s man. Our concern about potential criminality went down and what was happening, and I don’t
investigation as ‘‘a fishing expedition,’’ he told was focused on others.’’ expect that.’’
me. ‘‘I will be very surprised if Durham finds Later that same day, Trump, asked about Barr’s After keeping tabs on Durham’s investigation
anything new.’’ statement, replied, ‘‘I’m a little surprised.’’ He for more than a year, Barr did not think it was
went on: ‘‘I don’t think he said it quite the way likely that he would have to prosecute a former
I brought up the Durham investigation again in you said it. I think he said ‘as of this moment,’ I president. But neither, at that moment, was
my last interview with Barr, on May 20. The fifth guess. But if it was me, I guarantee that they’d he willing to rule it out. He made this position
floor of Justice Department headquarters now be going after me.’’ Trump then said he had ‘‘no sound reasonable, even as it served to support
felt different; some older, lawyerly looking men doubt’’ that Obama and Biden were ‘‘involved’’ the unsupported ‘‘Obamagate’’ theory that the
walking around wore masks. Two younger men in in what he now called a ‘‘scandal.’’ As to whether president was floating at the time.
suits with lapel pins, who were most likely secu- or not it was criminal, he said, ‘‘I would think it In the end, the substance of Durham’s find-
rity, did not. Barr himself still wore no mask, but would be very serious — very, very serious. It ings might not matter. Whatever he turns up will
there were no more polite entreaties for visitors was a takedown … and in my opinion, it was an become a major theme of Trump’s 2020 cam-
to take theirs off. One could see two crumpled illegal takedown.’’ paign; the less time there is before an election,
blue surgical masks lying amid the papers on In Barr’s office two days later, I brought up the greater political impact of even the smallest
Barr’s desk. With disarming familiarity, Barr sat how Trump seemed to have heard only what he apparent revelation. All Trump needed from Barr
down on a sofa and offered me my ‘‘usual place’’ wanted to hear, that Barr’s prediction about not was the glimmer of a possibility, a slight shadow
in a tufted leather chair. prosecuting the former president was only valid of official uncertainty in which his wild theories
By then, Trump had seized on the ‘‘Obama- ‘‘as of this moment.’’ could flourish. And for now, Barr was giving him
gate’’ meme, accusing the former president and Barr said I shouldn’t read too much into those that. How much more he would give the presi-
Biden of ‘‘the biggest political crime in American words. dent before November, it was hard to say.
Education it will get more difficult as we head toward the workplaces, there are groups of people who
(Continued from Page 33) opening of the economy. We’re not advocating need child care. So why not match one group
for a university paying over the government with one child care provider, and then they’re a
temperature checks and were surveyed about paying. Our guiding principle has been, if we’re unit? If that sounds too complicated or expen-
symptoms daily. And they had 14 sick days. We going to remove people from the work force, we sive, think about all the economic loss when
also had people agree to working in teams where have to find a way that they don’t have extreme parents can’t work.
they choose their schedule and their team, and income insecurity.
then they’re not allowed to move to a different Bazelon: Some schools, including Morehouse, What Will Learning Be Like?
team, which is unusual for us. So imagine, for have cut pay or laid off or furloughed employees
example, Team A is breakfast, Team B is lunch, because of the losses from the spring, when they Bazelon: The safest way for colleges to operate is
Team C is dinner. And if you’re on Team A, you gave students partial refunds for room and board, online, the way they did this spring. Why not sim-
work your Team A shift; you can’t ask to switch or because they’re anticipating fewer students ply continue that approach until we have a vaccine?
and work Team B one day. in the fall. Hinton: You know, the transactional part of
The idea is to keep the same team of workers Rice: Nobody is happy about a pay cut, and I know education can be online. We can conduct a class
together so that if someone does get sick, and that faculty members want to be in front of stu- technically and cover content. But especially
people have to go home and quarantine, you’ll dents in the classroom. I know I do. But I also see for students whom we want to have social and
just have to replace that team. It’s less flexibility senior colleagues who are real gems for the institu- economic mobility, it’s not just the transac-
for the workers, but it’s good for them in terms tion committed to figuring out Zoom. I have faith tional parts of education that matters. It’s the
of reducing infectious spread. that we can figure out a hybrid of some in-person transformational component. And we hear from
We were also able to redesign the kitchen to and some video classes. Whatever needs to work, our students that the development of critical
maintain social-distancing protocols. Now, that we’ll make work, because the stakes are so high. thinking, problem solving and leadership skills
would be impossible in some small kitchens. But Levin: Talking to faculty in Connecticut, we heard — skills that are so important in this search
so far, with the model for the convention center, from some who are truly worried about coming for equity and mobility — happen within and
we’ve been able to keep the work force healthy. in and others who are raring to go. I suspect that outside the classroom. Being together, being
Bazelon: To add one more level of detail to food, many institutions will let faculty decide. The seen and heard, really matters. Also, for some
which is important to college students, do you issues could be trickier for courses that would of our students, they need the housing, they
imagine much more grab-and-go, like boxed seem to require an instructor to be present, like need food, they need safety, they need to be
lunches? I would imagine that if there’s less hot a lab, or a dance class, or drama or art. in community.
food, then you might be able to space the shifts Bazelon: What about child care for staff and fac- We are economic engines in our communities
of the dining-hall workers out more? ulty with young or school-age kids? as well. Think about the numbers of people we
Aramayo: All the institutions that I know of are Rice: My younger kid is going to be in kindergar- employ — for example, Virginia’s private col-
operating on a grab-and-go system. You could ten next year. This spring has taken a ton of coor- leges have over 23,000 employees in the sector,
also develop a delivery system for your dining dinating with my wife. My default is that if my son and nationally many higher-ed institutions are
hall, where you order on your phone and a run- has to learn online, and I have to be in my office, among the largest employers in our regions.
ner brings the food to your dorm. That would be then he’ll be with me if necessary. And there will It’s important for us to reopen, to keep people
good for jobs. I think that’s in development. But be some things I just won’t be able to do. employed, to keep the economic engine run-
there are some real logistical challenges around ning. And I would also say, for some institutions,
doing some of this stuff to scale. A lot of the there is an existential threat that’s out there if
residential dining halls are designed around
the kind of service they provide. They weren’t
‘Especially for students they’re not allowed to reopen.
Levin: There’s a very good piece by Michael
built around, you know, cook-to-order, indus-
trial-scale production.
whom we want to Sorrell, the president of Paul Quinn College, a
historically black college in Dallas, that basically
Bazelon: As you were discussing earlier, some have social and economic said if you’re thinking about reopening because
employees will be at higher risk or live with oth- you are worried about the college going out of
ers who are at high risk. Do you imagine that
mobility, it’s not just the business, think again, because it’s human lives
everyone should be able to say, I can’t come to
work until there’s a vaccine or the infection level
transactional parts we’re dealing with.
We learned this spring that online education is
is way, way down? of education that matters. not a perfect alternative to the residential experi-
Aramayo: We strongly feel that work needs to be ence. But people can grow intellectually and work
voluntary in some way, meaning that people do It’s the transformational toward credentials that are going to be valuable
not get fired if they’re saying, ‘‘I’m 65 years old
and have diabetes, I don’t want to do a job right
component.’ to them in terms of upward social mobility.
Bazelon: In the town-gown relationship, there is
now that has to be done in person.’’ We’ve had a risk to the town from reopening and another
a couple flare-ups here in the Boston area with Aramayo: If child care or school doesn’t open, kind of risk from shutting down. The tension is
hotels trying to reopen, where people literally it’s going to be very difficult for staff to work on real. Can one of you explain the existential threat?
are being told, ‘‘You’re going to be reported and the schedules they’re going to be expected to Levin: I’ll take a crack at that. I think the colleges
taken off unemployment if you don’t report to work on. most threatened economically by this down-
your station.’’ Sabeti: We have all these child care folks who turn are the smaller or midsize private institu-
Right now, we have some schools continuing are out of work right now, and then we have all tions. State governments have the responsibil-
to pay people who are not working, and we have these people who need child care. Ever since ity to keep their state institutions alive. There
an unemployment bonus of $600 a week from Ebola, I’ve thought there should be a system may be severe budget cuts following from the
the government for people who don’t stay on where you can see on a map who you can work downturn that we’ve experienced, but I don’t
the payroll. It’s been relatively easy so far. I think and partner with easily. On city blocks or in think we’ll see very many permanent closures

46 6.7.20
of state institutions. But for many small liber- the use of classrooms that allow for social dis- Planning for an Outbreak
al-arts colleges, and even midsize schools that tancing. I think you will see a lot of schools
are private that have some graduate programs, end the on-campus portion of the semester at Bazelon: What do you do if infections spike on
I think they’re definitely in much bigger trou- Thanksgiving. campus? Do you keep the students or send them
ble because they rely primarily on tuition for Levin: If universities offer in-person instruc- home, as everyone did in March?
revenue. Unlike the elite private schools, they tion, they will also have to have enough classes Sabeti: One of my lab members, Molly Kemball,
don’t have large endowments; they’re basically available online that any student can choose to went to Middlebury College in rural Vermont as
tuition dependent. And without doing massive continue their educational program online and an undergraduate, and this spring she wondered
layoffs, they can’t adjust their costs fast enough whether Middlebury should have closed when it
to offset what would be a precipitous decline in did. There weren’t known infections on site. The
revenue, if they go online, because my assump- college is 34 miles away from the nearest major
tion is that they couldn’t charge the regular level
of tuition for a long time. Many schools charged
‘If any institution is seen city. It became a thought exercise we have kept
coming back to in considering college re-entry.
full tuition for the spring semester. But some to be trying to open for Bazelon: Mary, imagine an outbreak at or near Hol-
are facing lawsuits demanding partial tuition lins. Would there be a situation where you would
refunds, and I think it would be a harder prop- financial purposes and it want or allow the students to stay? Are we going to
osition for a whole year or longer. I think these repeat this spring, or are there different options?
schools would have to lower tuition or face a
ends with an outbreak, and Hinton: If there were a manageable number
steep decline in enrollment. From talking to
small liberal-arts colleges in Connecticut, I
that outbreak spreads to a of cases, I don’t think we would see the same
wholesale movement nationally to send students
know many of them feel that they are existen- community, I think that’s home and move all classes online again. In the
tially threatened by a possibility of having to be spring, no one wanted to be the first campus to
online for an entire year. going to be a pretty serious get a case and to have an outbreak, so there was
Bazelon: Pardis, you teach a big lecture class.
How do you want to do that in the fall?
stain on that institution.’ an element of reputational risk that drove some
institutions to say, Oh, no, we’ve got to move
Sabeti: Even if we reopen, it will be some time them off campus immediately.
until we come back to a lecture hall. I teach intro Now we know that one of the keys to
to genetics to 500 students at Harvard, main- successfully weathering and containing an out-
ly freshmen. We’ve always put all our lectures not come back. And that would have a decrowd- break is to be able to test, trace and isolate imme-
online as a resource for people who miss class. ing advantage on campus. diately. Planning for that must be a condition of
So this spring, we used that same framework. Sabeti: Another way to have less crowding is a reopening, so we should be prepared accordingly.
And I’ve been doing a number of regular meet- staggered schedule, where some people spend Levin: Talking to public-health officials in Con-
ings with smaller groups of students online. the first half of the semester on campus and necticut, we concluded that in a full-blown out-
For lecture classes, this could even be an then another shift comes for the second half. break, you don’t send home students who are sick
improvement. You could have a recorded lecture Or we could extend the school year and make or in quarantine because they were in contact with
that you develop and really make tight, and then the summer a full session. sick people. That would be a public-health risk, so
you spend your classroom time with blocks of Hinton: I know there is a lot of talk of students you wait until they’re not infectious. But you might
say 10 to 30 students, and it’s more interactive. taking gap years if school is all online. I have a test the rest of the students and send home the
You work through the material and do the think- child who might do that. But what about that people who were negative.
ing together. That’s what section is for now, with youngster who comes from a family with very Aramayo: If any institution is seen to be trying
teaching fellows, but we could put much more little money and who can’t find a job? What’s to open for financial purposes and it ends with
faculty attention into it. that young woman going to do? A gap year is an outbreak, and that outbreak spreads to a com-
Hinton: I’m grateful that the Hollins faculty not a thing for her. What happens to her? munity, I think that’s going to be a pretty serious
recently voted to limit class sizes to a maxi- Rice: On the other hand, why am I going to be stain on that institution. I’ve seen this in the hotel
mum of 25, which I know many larger schools convinced, as somebody who is in a vulnerable industry. We had the Biogen conference at the
can’t do. population, to trust that going back is the best Marriott Long Wharf, which turned out to be a
We’ve done an assessment of all of the class- thing for me to do? I’m not going back during superspreader event. The entire hotel industry in
room spaces to see what it would take to observe this uncertain time just to get credentialed to go the city of Boston has been painted with that stain.
a six-foot radius around all students. We found to graduate school or to get a job. Going back Levin: Everyone — students, faculty, staff — all
we may have to use the rooms that allow for right now has to mean something. are going to have to make compromises with
social distancing for more hours of the day, elim- Drake: We have finished receiving our state- the ideal world we wish we were all in, and the
inate classrooms that are too small and also use ments of intent to register and nonrefund- world we will be in again someday when we have
spaces that have traditionally not been classroom able deposits for next fall for freshman. We’d a vaccine or a therapy. In the meantime, if you’re
spaces, like a conference room in an administra- increased our admissions offers a bit to prepare going to make that choice to come to college, I
tive office suite or a performance space. for the negative impacts the pandemic could think you need to be prepared to accept that the
Levin: Some West Coast schools are thinking have on enrollment. terms are going to be different. It isn’t going to
about holding a lot of classes outdoors in the Instead, we are up 20 percent for Ohio stu- be the same kind of fun, and you aren’t going
fall. Put up temporary partitions outside, without dents, 25 percent up for students who live out of to have the same kind of parties. But you are
roofs, for the natural ventilation, and install some state. We had a 21 percent drop in international going to have great educational opportunities,
sound barriers. students, but we had anticipated that it would and there will still be a lot of benefits to take
Drake: Yes, we’re looking at how classes can be much greater. We were very pleased and away from it. I think we’re in a world of imper-
meet outside in the early fall and also at consid- actually a bit surprised at how eager students fect choices. And I think everyone has to be a
ering more evening classes so we can maximize are to come. grown-up and recognize that’s where we are.

The New York Times Magazine 47

Puzzles

SPELLING BEE FOR STARTERS GAS LINES

By Frank Longo By Patrick Berry By Thinh Van Duc Lai
How many common words of 5 or more letters can The answers in this puzzle are all six-letter words Connect each home (circled number) to a gas utility
you spell using the letters in the hive? Every answer reading across or down. Clues are not given in order. (black circle) by a line that follows the dots. The line
must use the center letter at least once. Letters may Use the answers’ unique starting letters (shown must have the number of straight segments indicated.
be reused in a word. At least one word will use in the grid) to determine which answers go where. No lines can touch.
all 7 letters. Proper names and hyphenated words are
not allowed. Score 1 point for each answer, and 3
Ex.
points for a word that uses all 7 letters.
L O P B A
Rating: 9 = good; 16 = excellent; 23 = genius
>
R
J
A
G
Y C
C
B
S
R E Clues
At no cost • Cross the threshold (2 wds.) • Hos-
N pital section for patients recovering from surgery
(hyph.) • Painter Pierre-Auguste ___ • Recorded,
as old conversations (2 wds.) • Regard lustfully
(2 wds.) • Skimpy swimsuit • “The Untouchables”
Our list of words, worth 26 points, appears with last week’s answers. villain • Up • Watercraft brand (2 wds.)

ACROSTIC
1 K 2 S 3 V 4 D 5 F 6 B 7 N 8 T 9 G 10 H 11 Q 12 M 13 E 14 W 15 A 16 O 17 C 18 D 19 Y 20 F 21 I 22 B

23 J 24 V 25 H 26 U 27 P 28 E 29 T 30 R 31 C 32 K 33 L 34 Q 35 I 36 J 37 A 38 U 39 F 40 V 41 X 42 N 43 T

By Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon 44 H 45 G 46 R 47 C 48 O 49 E 50 I 51 J 52 Y 53 U 54 P 55 K 56 D 57 A 58 B 59 Q 60 F 61 X 62 C 63 E 64 G 65 I

Guess the words defined below 66 T 67 Y 68 W 69 H 70 R 71 U 72 J 73 V 74 D 75 M 76 Q 77 G 78 X 79 E 80 L 81 I 82 K 83 S 84 U 85 A 86 W 87 C

and write them over their numbered
dashes. Then transfer each letter to 88 O 89 B 90 F 91 M 92 Y 93 H 94 G 95 E 96 Q 97 T 98 I 99 N 100 D 101 P 102 L 103 A 104 F 105 S 106 B 107 V 108 U 109 Y
the correspondingly numbered square
in the pattern. Black squares indicate 110 H 111 O 112 G 113 J 114 D 115 I 116 N 117 Q 118 T 119 E 120 X 121 L 122 P 123 W 124 M 125 R 126 K 127 Y 128 F 129 U 130 J

word endings. The filled pattern will

131 C 132 N 133 H 134 V 135 O 136 S 137 G 138 E 139 B 140 I 141 W 142 A 143 T 144 P 145 X 146 D 147 R 148 K 149 Y 150 H 151 L 152 Q 153 E
contain a quotation reading from left
to right. The first letters of the guessed
154 I 155 W 156 V 157 S 158 M 159 T 160 P 161 X 162 C 163 R 164 U 165 J 166 O 167 L 168 G 169 B 170 N 171 K
words will form an acrostic giving the
author’s name and the title of the work.

A. Observational slant G. Comprehensive, healthwise N. Small deviation; counterbalance T. Part of the White House built atop a
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ bunker (2 wds.)
85 37 57 142 15 103 94 77 9 137 168 64 112 45 42 99 116 7 170 132 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
B. Ronald Reagan and George H. W. H. Saying of few words 66 8 159 43 29 118 143 97
O. Quantum with a mass of zero
Bush, ironically ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ U. Failure to agree; discrepancy
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 10 110 44 93 25 133 150 69
48 16 111 135 88 166 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
58 22 139 89 6 169 106 I. Holder of dowry items (2 wds.)
108 129 53 38 26 71 84 164
C. Old syndicated talk show that TV P. Instrument once used in astronomy
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
Guide once named one of the 50 65 115 81 140 35 154 21 98 50 and navigation V. Forgiveness
greatest television shows of all time J. Eye-opening realization ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 101 144 160 54 122 27 107 73 156 3 134 24 40
17 31 87 62 131 47 162 165 113 23 72 130 51 36 Q. What “bossa nova” means (2 wds.) W. 180° divided by pi
D. Superannuitant K. Softly glowing or flickering ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 96 34 11 76 59 117 152 141 155 123 14 68 86
100 18 114 146 4 74 56 82 148 55 32 126 171 1
R. Electronic dance music X. Caligula, to Claudius
E. Strong desire to travel (2 wds.) L. Preventer of clear passage
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 163 70 46 125 147 30 41 61 78 161 145 120
95 28 153 13 49 138 119 79 63 151 80 167 33 121 102
F. River plied by Boston’s duck boats M. Opine online S. Beat around the bush; bushy border Y. Intrinsic quality
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
60 104 39 20 128 5 90 124 12 91 158 75 2 105 136 157 83 92 127 67 52 149 19 109

48
Puzzles Edited by Will Shortz

SURPLUS STORE 1

20
2 3 4 5 6 7 8

21
9 10 11 12 13 14

22
15 16 17 18 19

By Andy Kravis
23 24 25

Andy Kravis, of Brooklyn, joined The Times as an associate 26 27 28

puzzle editor in April. A 2013 graduate of Columbia Law School,
he previously worked as a Transgender Rights Project Legal 29 30 31 32 33

Fellow for the L.G.B.T. rights organization Lambda Legal before

34 35 36 37 38 39
turning to puzzles full time. In addition to the theme, Andy
tried to include as many fresh answers in the grid as possible 40 41 42
— including 1A, 104A, 4D and 82D, none of which have
43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
appeared in a Times crossword before. — W.S.
51 52 53 54 55 56

ACROSS 72 ‘‘Holy guacamole!’’

57 58 59
1 Sadistic feline character in 73 Response to a breach of
a Scott Adams strip movie-theater etiquette 60 61 62 63 64 65
8 Out 76 Airport monitor, for short
66 67 68
14 Concern for a P.R. team 77 Supports
20 Trembling 78 Island whose name rhymes 69 70 71 72 73 74 75
21 Land, as a fish with 72-Across
22 The Red Baron, for one 79 Chef’s topper 76 77 78 79 80

23 ‘‘The operation was a 81 ____ kebab

81 82 83 84 85
success!’’ e.g.? 83 Tailors’ measurements
25 Unimportant-sounding 85 Be awesome 86 87 88 89 90 91
dessert 86 Got 101 percent on an
26 Novelist/poet Cisneros exam, say? 92 93 94 95

27 Posthumous award? 91 ‘‘Don’t touch that ____!’’

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103
28 Cause of death in many a 92 Really bothered
murder mystery 93 Stuntwoman Kitty known 104 105 106
29 Lampoon as ‘‘the fastest woman in
31 Kidney-related
the world’’ 107 108 109
94 One of a pair on the table

6/7/20
33 Montana, in the 1980s 110 111 112
96 Hotheaded ones?
34 ‘‘Let’s get going!’’
98 Site of a noted oracle
36 People who start
arguments out of 101 How a tandem bicycle is 14 Like some granola bars 56 Stand up at the altar 81 Paste used for home
nowhere? built repairs
15 Amazon predator 57 Biodiverse habitat
40 Metal in galvanization 104 ‘‘Well, all right then’’
16 Dublin alma mater of 58 Gets going, so to speak 82 Frequent result of wearing
41 Comes after 105 Why someone might Oscar Wilde a bike helmet
60 Abbr. that begins some
practice deep breathing
42 Embedded design 17 ‘‘Don’t worry, that only entry-level job titles 83 Getting three square meals
every five minutes?
43 Stud fees? looked painful!’’ 61 Start of a conclusion a day
107 ____ Mae
45 Lighthearted movie 18 Early accepter of mobile 62 Goddess who cursed Echo 84 Office worker
108 Multiparagraph blog payments?
46 Painter Velázquez to just repeat the words of 86 Appetizer often served
comment, maybe
19 Haughty looks others with mint chutney
48 Network that once 109 Nit pick?
advertised its prime-time 24 Doesn’t go straight 63 Ingredient that turns a 87 Pioneer Day celebrant
110 Celsius with a namesake Black Russian into a White
block as ‘‘Must See TV’’ 28 Requiring a lot of 88 Like urban legends, again
temperature scale Russian
51 Bygone car company that attention, say and again
111 Knit pick? 64 Entrance
bore its founder’s initials 30 Go on a rampage 89 Figure out
112 Intrigued by 65 Roman triumvirate?
52 City with views of the 32 Off the beaten path
90 Only state capital that
Mediterranean and Mount 34 Industry magnate 67 German city where
shares no letters with the
Carmel DOWN
35 ‘‘Hands off !’’ Charlemagne was buried
name of its state
54 Officers who woke up on 1 Mama ____ 37 Adidas competitor 68 Do a favor for a
95 Animal whose genus
the wrong side of the cot? 2 Shade similar to turquoise vacationing friend, maybe
38 A.O.C., e.g. name, Phascolarctos,
57 No longer plagued by 3 Makes aware of 70 Four for a grand slam,
39 Grab (onto) means ‘‘pouch bear’’
58 The ‘‘R’’ of the Bay Area’s 4 March Madness tourney,
briefly
44 Any member of the 97 What contacts contact
BART with ‘‘the’’ 71 They often end on a low
Twelver branch of Islam 99 Zest
5 Flip inside out
note
59 Material for some suits 46 Hornswoggled
72 Many a Dickensian child 100 Cache
60 One who’s unfaithful? 6 Put a bluffer in a tough 47 Author Murdoch played
73 Water heater? 102 Direction for one who’s
63 They’re written in chess spot onscreen by Kate Winslet
74 Polynesian performance been in Benin to go to
notation 7 Give a whirl and Judi Dench
75 Last-eaten part of a loaf, Togo
64 Loose and flowing, as a 8 Son of 62-Down 48 Faux pas
often 103 Popular name for a
dress 9 Muppet who sings ‘‘I 49 Begin to develop black-and-white pet
Refuse to Sing Along’’ 78 Women’s History Month:
66 Unit of stamps 50 Quartet that performed at
Abbr. 105 W-2 ID
67 Felt bad 10 Humorist David Woodstock, for short
80 ‘‘Supplies are limited!’’ 106 ‘‘How ____!’’
68 What’s the holdup? 11 One-percenters and the 53 Revenue sources for
69 Soirees where people are like podcasts Puzzles Online Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles:
dressed in their finest 12 ____ Creed 54 Squirrels away nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year). For the daily puzzle
board shorts? 13 Demolition material 55 ‘‘Good to go!’’ commentary: nytimes.com/wordplay.

50