When Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the Supreme Court, she was in some ways an unlikely choice. She was living in South Bend, Indiana, not New York or D.C. She went to Notre Dame Law School, making her the only justice that didn’t go to Harvard or Yale. She’s the mother of seven kids. And, at the time of her appointment, she’d largely spent her care…

It’s Monday, September 8. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Jed Rubenfeld asks whether Trump is acting lawfully; Coleman Hughes talks to Ben Shapiro; Florida parents react to the end of vaccine mandates in the state; will China win the future?; our next livestream; and much more.

But first: Is MAHA fixing things—or making them worse?

It has been a turbulent few weeks for Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He fired his CDC director after just 29 days, which triggered an exodus of other top officials at the agency. CVS and Walgreens pulled vaccines from stores in 16 states because of the “current regulatory environment” (read: public health chaos). RFK faces a growing chorus of calls for his resignation from former CDC directors, from the Kennedy clan, and from Trump’s former surgeon general.

On Friday, RFK Jr. appeared in a fiery Senate hearing—and it wasn’t just Democrats asking the difficult questions. “I’m a doctor. Vaccines work,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the number-two Republican in the Senate. Asked about vaccines on Friday, Donald Trump appeared to put some distance between himself and his HHS secretary when he said “they’re just, pure and simple—they work. They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used.” (The White House says RFK has the president’s full support.) The same day, The Wall Street Journal reported that a forthcoming report on the causes of autism will link the disorder to Tylenol use in pregnancy.

What to make of all these developments? Are they a sign that Kennedy and the movement to Make America Healthy Again is coming unstuck? Or is this simply what the kind of disruption RFK promised looks like?

For clarity on this vital subject, we got in touch with a range of doctors, journalists, and public health experts. The group includes Zeke Emanuel, Emily Oster, Alex Berenson, Mark Hyman, Jillian Michaels, and others.

We asked all of them to answer the same question: Has MAHA so far been a success, a disaster, or a disappointment?

You won’t want to miss this one.

In other MAHA news, Florida’s surgeon general has just proposed ending all vaccine mandates in the state, likening them to “slavery.” What do parents think? Frannie Block found out. Read her report here:

Floridian parents might feel torn about mandating the polio vaccine. We don’t. Read our editorial:

—The Editors

Tune In: The Relentless Information War with Haviv Rettig Gur

As the second anniversary of October 7 approaches, the war in Gaza rumbles on. A second fight is ongoing, too: the information war. How are the serious problems in media culture warping how Westerners see and understand Gaza, Israel, and the world at large? That’s the question Haviv Rettig Gur will be addressing on the next Free Press livestream. Tune in tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET. Add it to your calendar here.

• Russia launched its largest drone strike of the war into Ukraine on Sunday. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia dispatched 805 Iranian-designed exploding drones and decoys across the nation, along with 13 cruise and ballistic missiles. The strikes significantly damaged a key building inside the heavily fortified government district of Kyiv.

• According to internal emails obtained by Axios, officials in the Biden administration raised major concerns over the president’s use of his pardon powers, as well as his decision to sign several measures with an autopen. President Biden granted clemency to 4,245 people—more than any other president—with 95 percent of those decisions coming in the last few months of his presidency, amid increasing reports about his cognitive decline.

• Father Mother Sister Brother, a film starring Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, and Tom Waits, took home the Golden Lion for Best film at the 82nd annual Venice Film Festival this weekend. The Voice of Hind Rajab, a drama by Kaouther Ben Hania set in Gaza, came in second. Following a backlash over the result, jury president Alexander Payne said, “We treasure both of those films equally, each for its own reason. And we wish both of those films a long and important life.”

• President Trump escalated his threats to send the National Guard into Chicago over the weekend. In a Truth Social post, President Trump wrote, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” alongside the tagline “Chipocalypse Now.” “Chicago [is] about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the president added. In response, Illinois governor JB Pritzker called Trump a “wannabe dictator” for his rhetoric.

• On Sunday, South Korean officials reached a deal to return hundreds of workers detained at an ICE raid in Georgia last week. The raid, which took place at a Hyundai plant last Thursday, resulted in the detention of 475 workers, including around 300 from South Korea. “Negotiations for the release of the detained workers have been concluded, after swift responses by the relevant ministries, business agencies, and companies,” South Korean Presidential Chief of Staff Kang Hoon-sik said.

• Pope Leo XIV recognized Carlo Acutis as the first millennial saint on Sunday. Acutis, who died in 2006 of leukemia at the age of 15, was often dubbed “God’s influencer” for his expertise in programming, which he used to spread the Gospel. Early iconography of St. Acutis depicts him holding his laptop.

• Carlos Alcaraz defeated Jannik Sinner in an epic four-set U.S. Open final Sunday. After President Trump showed up to watch the match, Secret Service protection delayed the start time by over 30 minutes, and broadcasters were told to censor the crowd’s reaction to the president’s presence.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro sees the civilizational battle of the modern era as one between the builders and the destroyers—or as he writes it in his new book, between the “lions” and the “scavengers.”

When I sat down with Ben this week, he explained the way he sees this dynamic play out in American society—across both political parties—as “scav…

JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Emily Frattarelly was chasing her 18-month-old daughter around a jungle gym in the San Marco neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, the day after Florida surgeon general Joseph A. Ladapo announced plans to end all of the state’s vaccine requirements.

She wholeheartedly supported ending the mandate, which Ladapo compared to slavery. “Every last one is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” the surgeon general said. Frattarelly’s views sounded just like Ladapo’s.

“No one except family should have a say over medical things,” said Frattarelly, 24, who called herself a Republican and told me that politics was one of the biggest reasons why she and her husband decided to move to Florida from St. Louis. “I think that, to me personally, is so much more American than what we had in place: just the right to choose that for your own children.”

At parks, playgrounds, and soccer fields across Florida, the announcement that parents could get full control over which vaccines their kids get—and no longer need to vaccinate them at all to send them to public school—provoked a wide range of reactions. While opinions about vaccine mandates were divided along ideological lines, many parents told me that they feel torn about how to reconcile their views on parental rights with their responsibilities as citizens.

When it comes to the president and the law, what used to be once-in-a-generation controversies now seem to happen every other day.

Here are the four biggest recent flashpoints, and my view on where the law stands. I’m a constitutional law professor at Yale, and as my readers know, I try to call balls and strikes without favor or disfavor to the administration. Trump is certainly pushing the boundaries of his authority, but in two of the four controversies I think Trump has the law on his side. On the other two, he may have crossed the constitutional line. Let’s take them one at a time.

It has been a turbulent few weeks for Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

At the end of last month, he dismissed Susan Monarez, Trump’s pick to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after just 29 days. She accused her former boss of firing her for “refus[ing] to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.” A slew of senior CDC officials followed Monarez out the door. Last week, nine former CDC directors called on Kennedy to resign in a New York Times op-ed. The uncertainty at the agency led CVS and Walgreens to pull their Covid vaccines from stores in 16 states. They cited the “current regulatory environment” for the decision.

On Friday, RFK Jr. appeared in a fiery Senate hearing—and it wasn’t just Democrats asking the difficult questions. “I’m a doctor. Vaccines work,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the number-two Republican in the Senate. Asked about vaccines on Friday, Donald Trump appeared to put some distance between himself and his HHS secretary when he said, “They’re just, pure and simple—they work. They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used.” (The White House says RFK has the president’s full support.)

The same day, The Wall Street Journal reported that a forthcoming report on the causes of autism will link the disorder to Tylenol use in pregnancy. Also last week, Florida’s surgeon general announced the end of all vaccine mandates in the state, including for children. (Read our editorial on that change here.) And on Saturday, Trump’s own former surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, said he thought Trump should fire RFK Jr. for “the sake of his legacy.”

RFK defended himself on Sunday on Fox News, saying “I’ve been brought in as a new manager. My job is to shake up the [organization].”

In short, the fight over public health is at a fever pitch—which makes this a pivotal moment for one of the most interesting movements in American politics today: MAHA. The campaign to Make America Healthy Again has mobilized an unlikely coalition of Republicans, crunchy moms, and health activists. Their mission is to replace what they see as a failed and corrupt public health elite that has allowed America to grow sicker and sicker. But now the MAHA crowd, and their leader RFK Jr., are in charge.

So how’s it going? Does all the dramatic MAHA news mean we’re watching a slow-motion car crash? Or is this simply what the kind of disruption RFK promised looks like?

In other words: Has MAHA so far been a success, a disaster, or a disappointment?

That’s what we asked a range of doctors, journalists, and other public health experts. Here’s what they told us.

Five years after Covid-19 hit our shores, its longest-lasting effect is the damage it has done to our trust in America’s public health authorities.

It’s easy to understand the crisis in trustworthiness.

They told us that we had to close the schools to protect our kids, which wasn’t true. They told us that lockdowns would help eradicate the virus. They didn’t. They told us, absurdly, that it was critical to stay six feet away from each other—unless we were joining a protest against racism.

But the biggest lie was that the Covid vaccine was the silver bullet that would put an end to the pandemic.

Instead, we discovered that the vaccine did not completely prevent transmission; that the endless rounds of booster shots were largely pointless; and that it sometimes caused myocarditis in otherwise healthy young men who probably didn’t need to be immunized in the first place. Did the shot save lives? Yes, especially among the elderly and immunocompromised, who were the most likely to suffer complications from the virus. But for any healthy person under the age of 50, getting vaccinated for Covid-19 was always overkill, something most people now well understand. That’s why we support the Food and Drug Administration’s recent authorization of an updated vaccine for those over the age of 65 or people at higher risk because of preexisting health problems.

Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Charlotte Grinberg, a doctor specializing in end-of-life care, wrote an inspiring essay about facing death. This week, we’re bringing you reflections from a man who aged more gracefully than just about anyone we know: legendary basketball coach George Raveling, who died Monday at the age of 88. When Raveling’s book, What You’re Made For, was published in March, Bari interviewed him for an episode of Honestly. She was so impressed that she told me I should enlist him to write an Ancient Wisdom essay. Alas, I didn’t take her advice. I’m hoping to make up for it now with this excerpt from the last chapter of his book. It is titled: “To Live.”

—Joe Nocera

In 1994, at the age of 57, I was driving through the streets of Los Angeles on my way to pick up a recruit for the University of Southern California basketball team, which I’d been coaching since 1986. It was a route I had taken countless times before, one that allowed me to avoid the freeway and, as is usually the case in Los Angeles when you avoid the freeways, to get there faster. As I approached an intersection, I looked both ways, saw it was clear, and proceeded. The next thing I knew, a car slammed into me, propelling my car into the front yard of a house on the corner.

The impact was so severe that I blacked out instantly. The first thing I remember is hearing a police officer’s voice: “Coach, can you hear me? Coach?” As I regained consciousness, the severity of the situation began to dawn on me.

As the police prepared to take me to the hospital, one officer turned to me and said, “Coach, I’ve been on the force for 25 years. You don’t know how lucky you are. Ninety-five percent of the time, when I get to a scene like this, the person is dead.”

I had suffered a broken pelvis, nine broken ribs, a broken clavicle, a collapsed lung, and bleeding in my chest. I spent two weeks in intensive care and a considerable amount of time in the hospital after that. The doctors later told me that when I first arrived, they weren’t sure I was going to make it.

The pain was excruciating, but it was managed by the steady stream of medication I was given. What I remember most about my time in the hospital are the endless hours I spent lying in bed, thinking.

Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, our weekly column in which writers share a poem or a paragraph that all of us should commit to heart. Thursday marks 24 years since September 11, 2001, and this week native New Yorker Will Rahn reflects on that day, its aftermath, and the poem by W.H. Auden that helped him put himself back together. 

The best views of the New York skyline are from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a narrow, bench-lined park along the East River. I came to this conclusion the first time I sat there, on my first day of high school, having lunch with schoolmates I’d just met. 

The date was September 10, 2001. I’d never seen the Twin Towers from the Brooklyn side, and I remember thinking—for whatever morose, anxious reason—that they dwarfed the rest of Lower Manhattan to such a degree that, should they fall to the side, they would wipe out all of downtown. In 1993, a group of terrorists had tried to do just that, detonating a massive truck bomb in the garage under one of the towers.  

Although the attack killed six people, it also reinforced the view, common at the time, that the buildings were effectively indestructible. On the morning of the 11th, huddled around a radio in the school basement, my new classmates and I learned that, like every other structure made by man, they could indeed fall. 

Much has been written about the days and weeks following 9/11 in New York City. The terrible smell caused by fires that would burn for months. The photos of the missing, posted all over by families who hoped that their loved ones had somehow made it out of the towers but not yet made it home. 

New Yorkers didn’t know how to respond to the attacks. The city had never been friendlier; people would say hello to strangers on the sidewalk like they were old friends. But we all expected more attacks were coming, that 9/11 wasn’t a one-off but mere prelude to a siege. New Yorkers of a historical bent turned their minds to The Blitz of London, to the way the British stood up against oblivion.  

The much-emailed poem of that moment was “September 1, 1939,” W.H. Auden’s reflections—written as a British expat in New York—on the start of World War II. Auden wrote of the end of “a low dishonest decade” (the 1930s for him, the ’90s for us) and “the unmentionable odour of death” that “offends the September night.” 

Welcome back! This week we’re talking about back-to-school season. Because whoever decided that the New Year starts in January never cracked open a brand-new college-ruled notebook, smelled a fresh pack of Bic pencils, and thought to themselves, “This time, it’s all going to be different.” 

For me, September will always mean the start of the year. It’s been awhile since I stepped foot in a classroom, but there’s something about the nip in the air and everyone coming back from sojourns in Europe that tells me it’s time to get serious. About work, about that bag of clothes I’ve been meaning to donate for months—and about working out. Let’s be honest, there’s really no time for exercise in the summer months, between eating ice cream and eating soft-serve ice cream. Another good excuse: It’s too hot to go for a jog in July.  

The good news is that when I finally lace up my sneakers, I’ll be joining a thriving cohort. We’re in a fitness boom, according to Derek Thompson, who dug into the numbers for his excellent, must-read Substack and found that Americans, especially young ones and older women, are working out more than ever. And they prefer low-impact exercises like yoga and Pilates. Lately, it’s not about doing a high-intensity group class that leaves you panting over a spin bike after getting David Guetta music piped into your eardrums for an hour, all to burn some calories—calories are so 2023. Instead the focus is on building muscle, and, I think, having more fun. Thompson credits the pandemic for this health boom, since it “made people more aware of their mortality in ways both healthy and neurotic.” 

Whatever the reason, we seem to be in an era of exercise where you might hit the reformer for 20 minutes before grabbing a matcha with friends, followed by a long walk home. And the woman who sold this exact lifestyle, and the clothes to wear for it, has reemerged to provide the oversize striped button-down in guava to tie around your waist.