No one notices when a fresh stem of baby’s breath
falls into a pool. Instead, contention among the fangs
simmers with rolling eyes, laughter, and barbecue.
Everyone is testing each other. Backhanded comments
clamor for attention. The egg timer is on, ticking until
another fight breaks. As time ticks, the first escape,
a splash, goes undetected. The girl descends to where
light stops reflecting secrets tanning beneath the sun.
She falls away from shadows pointing fingers.

In October 2006, an early winter storm buried western New York under two feet of snow, knocking out power to more than 300,000 homes as temperatures plunged below freezing. Local agencies were overwhelmed. That was the first time I mobilized with the National Guard for domestic-disaster response. We did what Americans expect the Guard to do: Neighbors in uniform arrived with trucks, generators, and training to help our communities recover.

It’s rare for grand juries to refuse to indict. It’s even rarer for grand juries to refuse to indict multiple times in a single month—in significant part because prosecutors usually know better than to present shaky cases that might not gain jurors’ approval.
But Donald Trump’s desire to crack down on crime in Washington, D.C., seems to have come at the cost of that good judgment. Over the past month, federal prosecutors in D.C.

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When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced earlier this month that he would return a Confederate memorial to Arlington National Cemetery, he blamed “woke lemmings” for it having been taken down. Created by the sculptor Moses Ezekiel, the statue in question, which Hegseth described as “beautiful and historic,” features sentimental images of Confederate soldiers and loyal Black slaves.