The Opinions

President Trump’s pick for F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, is no stranger to controversy. And despite a vigorous Senate hearing on Thursday, he appears to be coasting toward confirmation. The New York Times politics correspondent Michelle Cottle spoke to the journalist and author Garrett Graff on what Patel’s F.B.I. appointment could mean for America, and of all of Trump’s nominees, why Patel is among the most dangerous.

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Maureen Dowd got her start in journalism during the Nixon era. Over her decades in Washington, she’s developed a keen understanding of how presidents wield power to further their goals. In this episode of “The Opinions,” she joins the deputy Opinion editor, Patrick Healy, to examine the breathtaking speed with which President Trump is carrying out his agenda.

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What can the 1890s tell us about 21st-century problems and a second Trump administration? According to the Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, quite a lot. In this episode, he speaks with Aaron Retica, an editor in Opinion, about what the 19th century and Donald Trump’s surprising new favorite president can tell us about our shifting culture.

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In 1993, Polly Klaas was kidnapped and murdered at the age of 12. Following her death, Polly’s tragic story became a plotline in true crime podcasts, TV shows and books. In this audio essay, Polly’s sister Annie Nichol argues that the popularization of true crime not only re-traumatized victims’ families but also helped create demand for “tough on crime” legislation. “Our legal system actually became more reactionary and more fixated on punishment and fundamentally less just,” she says.

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President Trump has declared that his second term will begin with the “most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history.” To track, interrogate and challenge his most consequential actions during his first few months in office, Times Opinion’s deputy editor, Patrick Healy, is beginning a weekly series on “The Opinions” focused on Trump’s first 100 days. He kicks things off with the Times writer David Wallace-Wells, exploring the president’s executive orders on climate and energy as Mr. Trump prepares to tour the destruction wrought by the recent wildfires in Los Angeles.

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Opinion's deputy editor, Patrick Healy, was joined by the columnists David French and Michelle Goldberg to makes sense of President Trump’s first day in office. We're learning “how much the American experiment has depended on the honor system,” French says.

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Times columnist Thomas Friedman says this is a rare moment in the Middle East when “everything is in play and everything is possible." In this episode of The Opinions, he speaks to editor Dan Wakin about the forces brewing in the Middle East, what he expects of the relationship between Netanyahu and Trump and the one gig he would give up his column to try to do.

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Donald Trump has promised to severely curtail legal and illegal immigration as he takes office for the second time. In this episode of “The Opinions,” the writer Binyamin Appelbaum argues that while the United States needs to improve its immigration enforcement, the country also desperately needs immigrants for cultural and economic vibrancy. Immigrants, Appelbaum explains, are the country’s “rocket fuel,” and he argues for specific legal changes to ensure the United States’ immigration policy matches its national interests.

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Maine has one of the highest rates of opioid use disorder in the nation. But a program at a rural Maine jail initiated by an addiction medicine specialist, Alane O’Connor, is offering hope and saving lives. She’s spearheading a pilot program that offers a monthly injection of the drug Sublocade to addicted inmates, which curbs opioid cravings continuously for a month. In this episode, she argues, “jails are an incredible opportunity to help people enter recovery.”

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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Kristina Samulewski with help from Caroline Losneck. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Jan Hoffman, and Alice Anderson at Acadia Recording.

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The Los Angeles wildfires offer a stark reminder that we no longer live in an era of reliable home insurance. An exodus of insurance companies from disaster-prone areas has put the American dream of homeownership in peril. In this episode, the climate reporter Nick Mott makes the case for a national climate catastrophe insurance plan that could help protect families from the devastating losses being experienced in California.

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