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When Tyrese Haliburton shoots, his right hand almost cups the side of the ball. His right elbow is akimbo. He uses odd footwork, jabbing almost randomly, and sometimes skips and hops into his shots. In his shooting stance, his knees sometimes knock. He starts his shot with a quick little dip, then swings around, and barely sets. He flails left, falls right; like a little kid, he seems to chuck the ball toward the basket. It’s an almost embarrassing motion. It’s definitely embarrassing for the guys on the other team, when they see Haliburton skitter past them, jerk into a quick shot, and score.

He perplexes a lot of people. It is not his style to shoot much; he often prefers to direct the Pacers’ high-octane, relentless offense, which is among the best in the league. He touches the ball a lot—he had the second-most touches per game in the N.B.A. during the regular season, and, of the players in the N.B.A. Finals, he has the most touches by far—but the ball doesn’t stay in his hands for long. He doesn’t post up. He rarely looks to isolate a defender or create his own shot. He swings the ball across the floor, pushes the team in transition, and controls the chaos created by his speed and unpredictability. Although he is his team’s biggest star, he is not its leading scorer, and his usage rate—which estimates the percentage of offensive possessions a player is directly involved in while on the floor—wasfourthamong the Pacers’ rotation players this season. In contrast, the usage rate of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s top player, was among the highest in the whole league. Haliburton is no one’s idea of an N.B.A. superstar. He sometimes disappears in big games. And yet, in the most high-pressure moments, he becomes a supernova.

He is from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, as in Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls. He played in college at Iowa State, where, during his freshman year, he was the sixth-leading scorer on his own team.The Ringerhascalled hima “walking analytics experiment” for his ability to space the floor, move the ball, and make everyone around him better. He was drafted by the Sacramento Kings, twelfth over all. In 2022, he was traded to the Indiana Pacers. There has been a lot of consternation lately about whether he is cool. (He is not.) There is some debate about whether he is even very good at basketball. (He is.) His peers famously voted him the league’s most overrated player. He was on the United States Olympic team, but he played the fewest minutes of anyone on the roster—and no minutes at all for half of the team’s six games. Afterward, he posted a selfie with the gold medal andwrote, “When you ain’t do nun on the group project and still get an A.”

During the playoffs, Haliburton has, in the final five seconds of games, tied the score or put his team in front four times. It has been a historic performance of clutch shooting. In that same span, he led his team to five comeback victories of fifteen points or more, including a game when the team was down by fourteen with less than three minutes to play. In the opener of the N.B.A. Finals, he played miserably, then hit a long jump shot to win the game, with less than half a second remaining. After struggling with the Thunder’s devastating defense during the first two games, in Game Three, he shot nine of seventeen from the field, including four of eight from behind the three-point line, in what was a comprehensive victory. He drove into swarming crowds of Thunder players, hit running floaters, and threw long, difficult pinpoint passes to seal the victory. He was one rebound away from a triple double. And in Game Four he and the Pacers had the Thunder—winners of sixty-eight games during the regular season—facing the prospect of going down in the series 3–1, after he drove to the basket and hit a layup to put Indiana up four with only a few minutes remaining, before the Thunder came back to even the series.

The word most often used to describe Haliburton is “corny.” He wears a big, goofy grin in his official photo, outlined by a thin, patchy mustache. On media day he wore Prada loafers with his uniform. He wore a floral suit to draft day; one stylist thought it was so bad he commented “LOL” on Instagram. Now that same stylist dresses Haliburton in Comme des Garçons suits, with bags from the Row. They FaceTime, and the stylist instructs Haliburton to fix his tie or sag his pants.

Haliburton says he doesn’t care when commentators criticize him. “Honestly, like, what do they really know about basketball?” he said after Game Three of the Finals. But it appears that he does, actually, care what people say. His trainer, Drew Hanlen, who has done wonders to help Haliburton elevate his game, has said that he uses trash talk to motivate him. After beating the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, Haliburton posted a lavishly producedvideotrolling Knicks fans. After the Olympics, he admitted that all those tweets counting his smiles hurt a lot. In recent weeks, there has been a spate of think pieces about the N.B.A.’s crisis of cool. Ratings are way down. The surging teams are from small television markets. They reek of earnestness. Everything is derivative. No one wants to take risks anymore.

The definition of risk, of course, is the exposure to danger or loss. No one plays with more risk than the Pacers. It’s possible to argue that they are not, strictly speaking, better than any of the teams they have faced in the playoffs, with the possible exception of the Milwaukee Bucks—and even the Bucks had the best player on the floor, in Giannis Antetokounmpo. It doesn’t matter. The point of a game isn’t to be “better” than the opponent, it’s to finish with the higher score.

The Pacers lost fifteen of their first twenty-five games this season. They seem to improve with every month, every series, even from game to game. They run more miles than other teams, and they play faster than other teams, on both offense and defense. They never seem to slow down, even when victory seems out of reach. That means victory is almost never out of reach. At the end of Game Three, even the young Thunder players, who never look tired, looked exhausted.

For much of Game Four, on Friday night, the Thunder continued to sputter, coughing up the ball and struggling to stay in front of driving players. That’s what the Pacers do: they wear people down. That’s what Haliburton has done to me, too. Is he cool? Does he have “aura,” as the kids like to ask these days? Is he a loser? What do those words even mean? Did they ever mean anything? I can’t help it any longer. When the game is on the line, I want to watch Tyrese Haliburton. With less than a minute to play on Friday, and the Pacers down by four, he darted with the ball above the arc, daring a drive with each step. The game was as good as over, and yet I still expected something miraculous to happen. There’s no more exciting sight right now than him with the ball. ♦

Last week, at a White House meeting with the C.E.O.s of Uber, Goldman Sachs, and Salesforce, Donald Trump touted “a pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of our economy to lift up the next generation.” He was referring to a provision in the tax-and-spending bill that House Republicans pushed through in May, which would establish tax-deferred investment accounts for every child born in the United States during the next four years, with the federal government contributing a thousand dollars to each. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was also present at the White House meeting, described the proposal as “bold, transformative.”

It could more accurately be described as an effort to put lipstick on a pig. As everybody surely knows by now, the House bill—formally called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—is stuffed with tax cuts for corporations and for the rich, and it proposes to slash funding for Medicaid, food assistance, and other programs that target low-income Americans. The proposal for new investment accounts didn’t change the bill’s highly regressive nature. According to a report by the Congressional Budget Office, over all, the bill’s provisions, including the new accounts, would reduce the financial resources of households in the bottom tenth of the income distribution by about sixteen-hundred dollars a year relative to a baseline scenario, and raise the resources of households in the top tenth by an average of about twelve thousand dollars a year. In other words, it’s a reverse-Robin Hood bill.

The new savings vehicles that Republicans are proposing also demand inspection. Johnson and other Republicans are trying to promote them as pro-family and pro-worker, and some media accounts have described them as “baby bonds.” But the proposal bears little resemblance to one of that same name which some progressive economists and elected Democrats have been promoting for years, as a way to tackle gaping wealth disparities in America. Given the way the Republican scheme is structured, it could well end up entrenching existing disparities rather than helping to eliminate them.

Endowing children with some wealth to help give them a proper start in life isn’t a new idea, of course. Rich families have been setting up trust funds, in some form or another, for centuries. But what about children in families that have little or no wealth to hand down? (According to the Federal Reserve, in 2022, the average net worth of households in the bottom ten per cent of the wealth distribution was one dollar. One.)

In 2010, the economists Darrick Hamilton, who is now at the New School, and William Darity, Jr., of Duke, outlined a plan to create interest-bearing government trust accounts for children who were born into families that fell below the median net worth. Under the Hamilton-Darity plan, the average value of these government contributions, which they described as “baby bonds,” would gradually rise to roughly twenty thousand dollars, with children from the poorest families benefitting even more. Adding in the interest that would accumulate in these accounts over the years, Hamilton and Darity calculated that some of these kids could end up with more than fifty thousand dollars by the time they reached adulthood.

Although the baby bonds would be distributed on a race-blind basis, the fact that Black, Indigenous, and Latino families were (and are) disproportionately represented in the lower reaches of the wealth distribution would have meant that the scheme would have worked to the benefit of their children—with a concomitant impact on the racial wealth gap. (In 2022, according to survey figures from the Federal Reserve, the median wealth of Black households was $44,890, compared with $285,000 for white households.) Indeed, Hamilton and Darity claimed that their proposal “could go a long way towards” eliminating the intergenerational transmission of racial advantage and disadvantage.

This proposal was never put into effect. But a version of it lived on in the form of legislation proposed by Cory Booker, the Democratic senator, in 2018, and subsequently reintroduced, in 2023, by Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley. Under the Booker-Pressley bill, all American children at birth would be given a publicly financed investment account worth a thousand dollars, and the government would make further payments into these accounts annually depending on family income. When the owners of the accounts turned eighteen, they would be allowed to use the money for certain specified expenditures, including buying a home or helping to pay for college. “Baby Bonds are one of the most effective tools we have for closing the racial wealth gap,” Pressley commented when proposing the legislation.

On the Republican side of the aisle, some politicians and policy analysts have long supported tax-advantaged private savings accounts as a way of encouraging thrift and staving off socialistic tendencies. But it was only recently that the Party came around to the idea of seeding these accounts with public money. The Texas senator Ted Cruz promoted it under the label of “Invest America.” In the House bill, it was rebranded as a “MAGAAccount,” with the acronym standing for “Money Account for Growth and Advancement.” Republicans renamed it a “Trump Account” at the last minute. “You can call it anything you like,” Cruz told Semafor. “What is powerful is enabling every child in America to have an investment account and a stake in the American free-enterprise system.”

In political terms, Cruz may be right: duringCOVID, direct federal payments proved popular with voters (and Trump insisted on putting his name on the checks, too). But in socioeconomic terms, the Republican proposal would be much less potent. “It’s upside down,” Darrick Hamilton told me last week. “It amounts to a further subsidy to the affluent, who can already afford to save in the first place.”

The details of the proposal confirm Hamilton’s point. Money in the new Trump accounts would have to be placed in a low-cost stock index fund, and investment gains would be allowed to accumulate tax free until the funds were used. Parents and others would be allowed to supplement the original government endowments of a thousand dollars with contributions of up to five thousand dollars a year. But poor families obviously wouldn’t have the means to provide top-ups. “That means poorer families with no savings will get $1,000 compounding over 18 years while rich families will be able to invest up to $90,000,” Stephen Nuñez, an analyst at the Roosevelt Institute, wrote in a piece about the G.O.P. plan. “That will widen the wealth gap.”

There are other issues, too. It’s far from that clear that banks or brokerages will be willing to administer the new accounts without charging hefty fees that would deplete them. Some financial experts say that most households would earn better returns by contributing to existing 529 college-savings plans. (The limits for contributions to 529 plans are higher, and in many states they aren’t subject to state taxes.) Conceivably, some of these concerns could be resolved by pooling the money in the accounts, by fiddling with the tax code, and by encouraging employers of the account holders’ parents to make additional contributions to them. (At the White House meeting last week, Michael Dell, the C.E.O. of Dell, said the company would be willing to match the government contributions.) But these are only suggestions, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the entire project is largely an effort to divert attention from the true nature of the Republican economic agenda.

“You certainly would want to question the timing of the proposal,’ Hamilton said to me. However, he added, that, “with regard to the Trump Accounts, the idea of a stakeholder society is not bad. That part is valuable, if you ask me.” He said that when he was growing up, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of New York, and attending an élite private school, the role that inherited wealth played in determining people’s life prospects was “vivid” to him. Where Trump and the Republicans have gone wrong in promoting the stakeholder concept, he went on, is “one, by relying on saving, and, two, in the regressive structure of the program.”

To be sure, Hamilton’s “baby bonds” initiative would involve considerable costs, and that is one reason why it has never got off the ground politically. In our conversation, Hamilton cited a figure of a hundred billion dollars a year. That sounds like a large number, he conceded, but he also pointed out that it would amount to less than two per cent of over-all federal spending, and he said that it would be considerably smaller than the sums currently devoted to subsidizing private wealth accumulation by people who already have some wealth, through things like the mortgage-interest deduction and the low tax rate on capital gains.

Hamilton didn’t mention it, but according to the Congressional Budget Office an extension of the soon-to-expire 2017 G.O.P. tax cuts, which is the primary purpose of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, would cost nearly five hundred billion dollars next year—five times the estimated cost of his baby-bonds proposal. Given the Republicans’ dominance in Washington and the gaping budget deficit, there’s obviously no immediate prospect of the U.S. government reorienting its priorities to tackle rampant wealth inequality, in the way that Hamilton and his colleagues recommend or in some similar manner. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be possible. If the commitment to levelling out wealth were broadly shared, the possibilities would be many. ♦

This week, Russia launched one of its largest sustained attacks against Ukraine since Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of the country in 2022. The offensive, consisting largely of missiles and drones, came as President Donald Trump threatened to wash his hands of the conflict. Recently, Trump has expressed annoyance with Putin’s unwillingness to make a deal to end the war, accusing the Russian President of “playing with fire.” But Trump continues to resist increasing sanctions on Russia, or sending new military aid to Ukraine. European leaders, who are more supportive of Ukraine, have pushed for a ceasefire, but Russia has refused to agree to even a thirty-day pause. With Putin’s military making progress on the battlefield and American aid drying up, the Russian leader may see no advantage in backing down.

If Russia and Ukraine do eventually return to negotiations, what might they look like? To talk about that question, I recently spoke by phone with Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the author of “To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power.” Radchenko, writing with Samuel Charap, has published acoupleofarticlesinForeign Affairsover the past fourteen months about why peace talks have failed before, and how they might succeed in the future. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Trump’s desire to get a deal immediately may be pushing Putin away from a settlement, whether the earlier talks between Russia and Ukraine really had a chance to succeed, and what the past several months reveal about Putin’s willingness to ultimately compromise.

Trump has been in office now for more than four months. What has his return told us about the war in Ukraine and the actors involved?

I don’t think we have learned all that much about the war. But we have learned something about what Trump wants to accomplish, and we have perhaps learned why he’s not going to be able to accomplish it. Trump rolled into office with the expectation that he would be able to put an end to this war in no time. I think he ignored the complexity of the conflict. The people he appointed to run his Ukraine portfolio—people, in particular, like Steve Witkoff, who has been charged with negotiating with the Russians—don’t seem to have the necessary experience to understand the underlying issues, which is why I think Trump was ultimately surprised. He did not expect the negotiations to be so difficult. Also, Trump is very impatient, and Putin is playing a long game. This is the main reason why negotiations have become so protracted. What I find surprising is that Trump ever thought that it would be different.

I was maybe naïve too, because my thinking when Trump came into office was that this actually would be a good time for negotiations. Not negotiations that would be good for Ukraine, but negotiations. You had Trump make clear that American support was drying up, and you had Trump incredibly anxious for a deal with Putin. I thought,Oh, Putin’s going to get the deal that he wants.So it has surprised me that Putin has seemed so resistant. What was I missing?

Putin is interested in a better relationship with the United States, but not at any price. He wants Trump to help him get there by arm-twisting Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to conditions that Zelensky would never otherwise agree to. Trump is really in a negotiating mode. He clearly doesn’t like Zelensky for a variety of reasons, but he doesn’t want to be put in a situation where public opinion will say, “Trump is basically just doing Putin’s bidding and he’s just selling out Ukraine and he’s not getting anything in return.”

So Putin expected that he could perhaps get more from Trump. I don’t know how much he expected on that front, but the bottom line is that he has his goals that he wants to achieve in Ukraine, which relate to Ukraine’s non-aligned status and demilitarization. He also wants control of the territories that he has annexed but does not yet totally control, as well as protection for Russian speakers and for the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. But Putin can still hold out for a considerable length of time to see if he can bargain for better conditions.

And the reason you think Putin can hold out is that the war is going better for him?

For two reasons: First, when you’re negotiating with someone who’s desperate to make a deal, you feel like you would effectively stand to get better conditions by waiting. Imagine if you’re in a situation of selling a house and you’re dealing with a buyer who’s absolutely desperate to buy and will go out of his way to give you the best conditions. You could try to extract even more by holding out. Now, there’s of course a possible downside to the strategy, which is that Trump has repeatedly said he might walk away or impose new sanctions. But Putin feels that perhaps the sanctions that could be imposed would not be particularly dangerous.

Or perhaps they won’t get imposed at all.

Or perhaps they won’t get imposed at all. There’s also no clarity about what Trump means by “walking away.” It’s been very interesting to watch the Kremlin’s reaction to Trump’s threats, saying he’s becoming too emotional or he’s not getting enough information, or he should be more patient, and so on—the way that you would perhaps talk about a child or someone deeply incompetent. And maybe they are right, frankly.

And then the other aspect that you’ve alluded to is that Putin feels that he has the wind at his back militarily. This war has not progressed very far in three years, but the Russians have been making some progress in recent months. And so the longer you wait the better your chances, because you’ll get more territory before a ceasefire.

Let’s turn to previous negotiations in Istanbul, in 2022, because one of your pieces wascalled“The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine.” But, reading it, I wasn’t sure that you really thought that, or that the reader should think it. What were the talks and how close were they to succeeding?

The title is never chosen by authors. If you read the actual article, it was more about trying to understand the talks. The two sides were trying to agree on a number of issues relating to Ukraine’s permanent neutrality. So one of the things that we did in the article was to try to understand what were the main issues of disagreement. And what was very clear was that there was a discussion about security guarantees that would be given to Ukraine, but they never agreed on the mechanism for offering guarantees, because the Russians tried to introduce an ability to veto them. That was an interesting element, because if you want to actually get a real agreement, presumably you will not want to introduce a clause—which is what the Russians did at the last moment—about trying to kill the whole process for Ukraine acquiring its security guarantees. So that was one thing, but it does not mean that this was a negotiating position that could not be changed later. We don’t know whether it was something that the Russians would insist on.

You make clear in the piece that this negotiation wasn’t all that close to succeeding. You write, “The two sides skipped over essential matters of conflict management and mitigation (the creation of humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire, troop withdrawals) and instead tried to craft something like a long-term peace treaty that would resolve security disputes that had been the source of geopolitical tensions for decades. It was an admirably ambitious effort—but it proved too ambitious.”

The issue—and this is where we were criticized by various commentators—was whether the Russians were negotiating in good faith. And it’s not just about the Russians, but also about Zelensky. Was he negotiating in good faith or was he just basically dragging his feet to see if he could actually change the situation on the ground? And we could not answer this question fully. What we could say, by talking to people involved in those talks, is that the delegations themselves seemed like they were negotiating in good faith, but it’s impossible to know what Putin was thinking. And it’s very difficult to know what Zelensky was thinking.

But here’s an interesting thing that came to light after the article was published. There was another draft that was leaked from the Russians, from 2022. They started out with an absolutely crazy capitulation ultimatum that they were trying to impose on Ukraine. And it had no security guarantees. It was basically like a country signing away its very existence. If you compare that to what was actually worked out toward the middle of April, 2022, you’ll see that there was a lot of genuine back and forth, and it seemed like some sort of a framework was arranged. So that shows that there was negotiation, and that concessions were being made by both sides.

But we argue in the article that negotiations ultimately failed because President Zelensky understood that he could potentially win this war on the battlefield. And, given that fact, he did not want to sign on to what could be a humiliating treaty for him. The Russians had been beaten back at Kyiv, right? They were struggling, And so, under those circumstances, it seemed like you could actually try to win the war.

In your follow-up piece this year, you say that the 2022 negotiations “serve as a reminder that Putin and Zelensky are capable of entertaining significant concessions. Both men have gained a reputation for maximalism in the past three years. But Istanbul showed that they could be open to the kind of politically risky compromises necessary for peace.” I guess it comes down to the meaning of the word “entertaining,” but I wasn’t sure that we actually do know this.

The question is: Are they dogmatically determined to not change their positions at all, or are they willing to change their positions and potentially agree to something? And the argument that we make is that, in the process of negotiating, both sides were willing to make concessions. Zelensky felt that he could actually win the war, but let’s say the situation unfolded in a different way. Perhaps he would have felt that the talks should continue and they would have reached an agreement. Would that be a great agreement for Ukraine? Probably not.

Obviously the status quo is not great either.

The status quo is not great either. But the question is really: Is Zelensky ultimately willing to make concessions? In his steps since Istanbul, you can see that he has been willing to entertain certain ideas. For example, the notion that Ukraine will not try to reclaim the territories that are internationally recognized as Ukrainian from 1991. He has basically acknowledged that Ukraine will not do that, but he has been insisting on security guarantees. And that’s why, in our second piece, we raised that as a major obstacle. Ukraine needs real security guarantees.

One of the interesting points you make in that follow-up piece is this:“The lack of Western willingness to provide Ukraine security guarantees has been a major challenge to reaching a settlement; it remains an impediment.”What I thought you were saying here is that, even if we can blame the war on Putin, the West has not decided what it wants to offer Ukraine. And obviously, with Trump in office, this situation becomes even more difficult.

It has been a long-standing problem. Let’s start with the American policy toward Ukraine, going back to 2008, and the promise to have Ukraine inNATOwithout providing any real, viable path toward that. That, to me, seemed like a really bad policy that leaves Ukraine in the lurch. Something has been done, but not enough to make Ukraine secure. Now, fast-forward to the time of Istanbul. The Ukrainians are negotiating in Istanbul with the Russians. They’ve negotiated security guarantees that involve Western interests—the West would have to come to Ukraine’s aid if Ukraine is reinvaded. This is then presented to Western powers and they’re saying, “Wait a second, we are not going to sign anything like that.” The problem was that the security guarantee in the draft treaty was even stronger than the language of the collective-security provision ofNATO. And so if you are an American policymaker, if you’re a British policymaker, are you able then to say, yes, “We’re going to commit to go to war with a nuclear power if Ukraine is reinvaded? The answer is no. It was not on the agenda. The only thing that the Biden Administration could do was to continue providing weapons. And do that very carefully.

And so then we fast-forward to where we are today. Again, the Americans are clearly not willing to come to Ukraine’s rescue in case of Russian reinvasion. That’s just clear. Are the Europeans willing to do that? And here we’ve had uncertain noises. Witkoff criticized this, and he’s right, because you ultimately do not have a commitment to come to Ukraine’s defense from Europe. You have some sort of uncertain promise that there will be troops that might be sent. But for peace to be achieved you have to provide security guarantees.

One of the things that the former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett asked Zelensky during one of their meetings, back in 2022, was: Why do you want those security guarantees? Do you think the Americans will actually come to your rescue? You have to use the Israeli model. But, of course, the thing that Naftali Bennett omitted from his discussion with Zelensky was, first of all, Israel is not surrounded by enemies that are as powerful as Russia. And, second, Israel has nuclear weapons. So Ukraine finds itself in an absolutely impossible predicament.

Just to bring the story up to the present day, I saw youtweetrecently that Trump saying that Putin is “playing with fire” while not actually providing Ukraine aid is “painfully bad diplomacy.”

It’s painfully bad because it’s so different from the well-known method, which is to tread softly and carry a big stick, right? Trump shouts very loudly, and there is no real stick there. The stick that has been discussed is economic sanctions, but this threat doesn’t seem credible.Where the United States could make a difference is that it could actually provide weapons to Ukraine. Is Trump willing to go that way? He’s not even talking about that. If he actually did it, he would get much better results with Putin. The way you negotiate with an adversary like Putin is, basically, you indicate that you have a greater commitment to defend Ukraine than Putin has to carry on with this war. And because you have greater economic resources, military resources, by making this commitment, you will prevail in negotiations, because Putin will understand that time is not on his side.

In the piece on the 2022 negotiations, you write, “And then there is the Russian side of the story, which is difficult to assess. Was the whole negotiation a well-orchestrated charade, or was Moscow seriously interested in a settlement?” It does seem like the simplest explanation remains that Putin just doesn’t want a deal. We know that wars can become hard for aggressor states, as America was in Vietnam, to wind down, too. TheWall Street Journalhad apiecethis week about how the Russian economy has completely switched to a war footing, and it would actually be very difficult to switch it back to a peacetime footing. So these things take on a life of their own.

Well, if we accept that Putin does not want peace, then we have to accept that Putin just wants perpetual war. Is that what he wants? Or does he actually want to bring this to some kind of a reasonable conclusion? The question for me isn’t whether Putin does not want a deal but what kind of deal does he want? At the moment, he feels that he can get a better deal than the one that is on offer. And the challenge is to change his calculus and to make him think that the deal that he can get now is actually better than the one that he could potentially get in the future. I don’t think Putin is a mindless expansionist. I think there is a method to his madness, and there’s a certain limit to his ambitions. But, at the moment, he feels that the wind is in his sails. ♦

Last week, Ehud Olmert, a former Prime Minister of Israel, publicly denounced his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the war Netanyahu has been waging in Gaza. In apieceforHaaretz, titled “Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes,” Olmert referred to the current government as a “criminal gang” led by Netanyahu. He wrote, “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.” Olmert’s comments follow Israel’s decision to finally allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, after a near-total blockade for more than two months led the United Nations and even the Trump Administration to issue warnings that the population was facing starvation. But Israel has tried to distribute the aid under a new scheme that humanitarian organizations and the United Nations have warned is insufficient and dangerous, in part because it requires many Gazans to travel long distances to receive aid. In the last several days,scoresof Gazans have been killedby Israeli forceswhile trying to get food and other necessities at the few locations where they are on offer.

Olmert, who served as Prime Minister between 2006 and 2009, was once a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, before joining and then leading the more centrist Kadima Party. As Prime Minister, he took steps to reach a peace accord with Palestinians, but failed to do so; allegations of corruption cut short his political career. (Olmert eventuallyservedmore than a year in prison, starting in 2016.) I recently spoke by phone with Olmert about his criticisms of the war. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed his understanding of Netanyahu’s motivations, whether the Israeli government has a plan for Palestinians in Gaza, and why the crisis in Israel is about more than Netanyahu’s ability to stay in power.

In your recentHaaretzpiece, you write, “I took every available opportunity to distinguish between the crimes we have been accused of, which I refused to admit, and the carelessness and indifference regarding Gazan victims and the unbearable human cost we’ve been levying there. The first accusation I rejected, the second I admitted to. In recent weeks I’ve been no longer able to do so.” What did you mean, and what changed?

Look, no government, not even Bibi’s government, which as you know I don’t support, and certainly not the high command of the Army, gave explicit orders to kill indiscriminately, to shoot indiscriminately wherever, whatever, doesn’t matter. That’s not the case. For a long period of time, the war was perceived as legitimate, and I defended the government on that ground. The Israeli counteroffensive was recognized as just considering the brutal attack of Hamas on the 7th of October. There was a need to find Hamas leaders wherever they were hidden, sometimes underground, and in public facilities. And, even when there was a relatively high number of victims among the people living in Gaza, the understanding was that you can’t, on the one hand, recognize Israel’s right to find the leaders and the fighters of Hamas and, on the other hand, deny that they are embedded in the most densely populated areas, where there are many, many civilians. And you can’t find them without causing collateral damage, which was not liked, but which was not a purpose of the military effort. And therefore, regardless of the high number of victims, it was accepted by the international community.

What has happened lately is that it is obvious to everyone that there is no purpose that can justify the expansion of these military activities. There is not any goal that can justify continuing the military operation at the risk of losing the hostages, at the risk of losing the lives of Israeli soldiers, and the risk of losing the lives of many of the non-involved people in Gaza. There is not any purpose. The perception in Israel is that this is a personal war or illegitimate war that is being conducted exclusively because of the political interests of the Prime Minister. This is a crime. This is not something that can be defended. And the fact that there are so many victims can’t be justified. It’s as simple as that.

At the beginning, the war had more international legitimacy, but pretty early on, in, say, December of 2023, President Biden, who was a supporter of the war and was in fact arming Israel, called Israel’s bombing “indiscriminate.” Israel at various times cut off aid and caused a real humanitarian crisis, too.

Cutting aid is a different aspect. You didn’t ask me directly about Biden, but I have an enormous positive emotional attitude to President Biden. Personally, I like him. I know him. We’ve been kind of friends for many years. I think that there couldn’t be a better friend, a more dedicated Zionist in the White House than Biden was, and the criticism against him is outright arrogance and something that can’t be accepted, and can’t be tolerated.

O.K., well, we don’t need to debate President Biden.

O.K., I don’t want to debate, but I want to be on record saying it about him.

I just want to be clear that the concerns about Israel’s conduct in the war did not arise recently.

No, no, it’s true that criticism about the conduct of the war didn’t arise recently. But between criticism and an outright accusation of war crimes, there is still a certain distinction, and I think that even those who criticized Israel from overseas were careful. I’m not talking about N.G.O.s, pro-Palestinian organizations. I’m talking about governments that were friendly to Israel, like the U.S. government, like the British government, like the French government. Macron criticized Israel for a considerable time. He didn’t speak half a year ago the way he speaks now. The difference is a result of what is perceived to be a non-legitimate expansion of the military operation, and the understanding that Netanyahu doesn’t want to reach an agreement with Hamas for the release of the hostages.

Right, but people have been saying that Netanyahu wants to drag the war on for political reasons for well over a year.

I’ve been saying it. I called to end the war more than a year ago.

You also write, “I do not share the opinion of former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, who said that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing. But we are nearing the point when it will be undeniable that such is the unavoidable result of what the government, the military and our brave soldiers have been doing in practice.” Can you expand on that, and why you don’t share Yaalon’s opinion?

I think that the present policy of the government is not yet an active effort to deport the people of Gaza from where they live. However, when you hear [the right-wing ministers] Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich—they’re not bystanders, they’re not outsiders. They are the key members of this government. They are the key spokesmen of this government. When they say that all of Gaza is Hamas and therefore there is no one that deserves to be given food and that they all have to be deported, this is what it is. [Smotrich and Ben-Gvir proposed denying aid to Gazans and expelling them from the Strip in the first months of the war.] It can be interpreted as ethnic cleansing. It’s not that we are really forcing hundreds of thousands of people across the border. But when you hear these things, you can’t remain indifferent, you can’t overlook it. You can’t just hear it and say, “O.K., let’s move on.” No, no. This is something that is totally intolerable. Anyone that has any position that doesn’t draw the inevitable conclusion is potentially a partner to a crime of a very, very serious manner.

This makes me think of something that comes up later in your piece. You write, “Yes, we’ve been denying Gazans food, medicine and basic living needs as part of an explicit policy. Netanyahu, typically, is trying to blur the type of orders he’s been giving, in order to evade legal and criminal responsibility in due course. But some of his lackeys are saying so outright, in public, even with pride: Yes, we will starve out Gaza.” So, you believe the starvation is intentional, but cleansing Gaza—even if it may happen in practice, and ministers in Netanyahu’s government want it—is not? It seems like you’re making a distinction between Israel’s intent in terms of starvation and the intent in terms of ethnic cleansing. Is that accurate?

Let’s put it this way. First of all, for a period of time, starvation was the practical policy of the Israeli government. Humanitarian supplies were denied. Denied. Actively denied and stopped and held. There was not yet, at any period of time, an active policy of deporting people. [Ethnic cleansing is not by itself a crime in international law, but usually refers to the intentional forcible displacement of an ethnic population from a certain area regardless of whether it includes crossing a border.] But on both the humanitarian needs and the deportation or cleansing of Gaza of its residents, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are on record advocating for them, pushing for them, supporting them, calling for them, and also threatening the government that they will break it down if it does not accomplish them.

Netanyahu is trying to avoid direct contact. But this is his government; he’s the Prime Minister. In my government, no one would’ve been able to say such a thing and remain a member of the Cabinet for another minute. And he’s making every possible effort to keep them. He’s actively a partner to these statements and to the possible ramifications of these statements.

Early in our interview, and in your piece, you said that this was a war “without purpose, without goals.” It seems like what you’re saying is that, essentially, on humanitarian aid and starvation, there was an intentional policy in place, but that there wasn’t one on ethnic cleansing. Are the goals of this military operation, at this point, simply to keep Netanyahu in power or do you think of it as having some larger political objective?

If you ask Netanyahu, he will argue heatedly that he wants to eliminate Hamas completely, and in order to reach a total victory, you have to carry on. You can’t have a deal that may save the remaining hostages at the cost of ending the war. However, there is not one single person that has any experience or understanding or knowledge of what’s going on that agrees that there is any serious chance of eliminating completely every single person that holds a gun or an R.P.G. or a hand grenade in Gaza.

It’s ridiculous. A year ago, he said we are almost on the verge of total victory. Now he says we have to expand the war with five ground divisions. And we know that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich said in the most explicit manner that if there is another deal for a ceasefire, they will resign and they will bring down the government. There is no way that you can avoid the inevitable conclusion that what bothers Netanyahu is his personal survivability and the political stability of this Cabinet over anything else.

So the upshot of what you’re saying is that if the political incentives demand that Netanyahu ethnically cleanse Gaza, then that may happen. If the political incentives demand something else, then we may go there. It’s all just driven by those incentives.

That’s right. And, at some point, even when it’s not an explicit policy of his government to ethnically cleanse and kill indiscriminately, it is inevitable. Even if it is not his stated policy, at some point the events on the ground can’t be interpreted in any other way.

In an earlieressay, you wrote about the settler community: “Many of them justify the continuation of the fighting in Gaza and call to expand the fighting in the north, so they can continue the work of destruction and obliteration in the West Bank.” It seemed like you were trying to say that, in the minds of people like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, there may be a connection between the war in Gaza and the situation in the West Bank. What did you mean?

You must have a good sense of humor. I’m not suggesting that there “may be” a certain connection. These are the same people, and they advocate what is happening in the West Bank explicitly, publicly, continually, all the time, in the most obvious manner. I mean, there is no question about it. A settlement leader, when eulogizing a woman who was murdered when she was about togive birtha few weeks ago, asked why a nearby Palestinian village was still standing. This is also what they want to do in Gaza.

In your piece, you say, “The military, charged with and duty-bound to execute government orders, acted in many cases rashly, incautiously, over-aggressively. However, it did so without any order or instruction or directive from military top brass to hit civilians indiscriminately. Therefore, as I understood it at the time, no war crimes had been committed.” I just want to clarify this, because you were once the Prime Minister and oversaw military actions. It is possible to commit war crimes without an order from top military brass to commit those crimes, yes?

Yes. But as I said, when I spoke to international media earlier in the war, everywhere in America, in Europe, everywhere, I kept saying there is not a policy of genocide or of war crimes. Why? Because there was not such a policy in any meeting or command session between the political leadership and the military leadership. There was never an order that, even by gross exaggeration, could be interpreted as permission to kill indiscriminately.

However, we all served in the Army, we all were in wars, and this is a very tight and demanding and challenging and sometimes scary situation for many. And sometimes the soldiers can do things which are totally unacceptable and can be called crimes. But it was not a policy. There was not a decision. No one told them to do it. In the heat of the battle, in the exchange of firing and shooting, there was sometimes a reckless reaction, disproportionate, which may have caused unnecessary victims, but not killing for the sake of killing. That doesn’t mean that there were not many victims, a disproportionate number of victims that regrettably should have been prevented, maybe by a better or more effective military operation. But this is not a war crime or genocide or anything close to it.

Well, those can be war crimes. It wouldn’t be genocide necessarily.

It could be a crime. There could be a defense explaining it and somehow providing the proper framework for understanding it. Not to justify it.

You say in your piece that war crimes are in fact going on now, while still claiming there is not a “policy” of war crimes. So what war crimes do you acknowledge are happening?

Look at the West Bank. The daily attacks against Palestinians in their homes and olive groves and properties amount to war crimes, particularly when the police fail to arrest the attackers, and arrest the Palestinian victims instead.

When everyone says that there is not any basis for continuing the war and it’s only the political considerations of Netanyahu, and that means the loss of Israeli soldiers and hostages and Palestinians, it’s a crime.

But you have been arguing for a very long time that he has been continuing the war for political reasons.

Yes, but now it doesn’t have the legitimacy of a military operation.

Haaretzreported that, according to a recent poll, eighty-two per cent of Israeli Jews “support ‘the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries.’ ” The report went on, “When asked directly whether they agreed with the position that the IDF, ‘when conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, namely, to kill all its inhabitants?’ nearly half, 47 percent, agreed.” Do you find these numbers credible, and does it feel like that describes the bleak situation politically in Israel that any non-Netanyahu leader would face?

I just don’t know. However, I do want to say one thing. There is a man in the Knesset who is close to Ben-Gvir and Smotrich named Zvi Sukkot who says “nobody cares” that Palestinians were killed. So there is this attitude of revenge that does exist among a considerable number of people in Israel, and this is something that has to be fought against with all the power that is needed, because this is very dangerous. I’m fighting for the soul of Israel. The fact that there are Israelis that can say this stuff publicly—“nobody cares”? No. I care.

It seems like what you’re saying then is that this isn’t just about dislodging Netanyahu from power, if you’re talking about the soul of Israel. Even if Netanyahu were to be dislodged from power, the problem is much deeper.

Yeah, but the change has to start somewhere. Israel was not like this. Israel was not like this. Definitely the shock of the 7th of October had an enormous impact on the attitudes and emotions of many Israelis. And of course everything comes along with the memories and the fears, the historic fears and the expressions of antisemitism spreading across the world. But before this Israel was a much safer, more self-confident society. What Netanyahu did in the last few years, starting before October 7th, was to create an environment of hysteria. We can’t talk with the Palestinian Authority. We have to fight all of them. Iran is about to destroy the state of Israel. Hezbollah is about to destroy the state of Israel. A certain spirit of desperation was cultivated in a very calculated manner by the Prime Minister, because the only way to possibly unite Israeli society against all enemies is by creating a sense of lack of confidence in the very existence of the state of Israel, which is, in non-polite language, bullshit.

One has to understand something. We had to react to the 7th of October. But there was not one second that the existence of Israel was in danger, not even on the 7th of October. And to say that the empire of the state of Israel, with all the power that we possess, was in danger or is now in danger, and that that justifies expanding the military operations, is nonsense. It is a policy that has been developed and elaborated by the Prime Minister in order to justify the attitude that there is not any chance to have peace. So we continue forever. ♦

Following the collapse, in early March, of the temporaryceasefirebetween Israel and Hamas, Israel essentially shut down all aid entering the Gaza Strip. The territory had already been facing ahumanitarian crisisfor nearly eighteen months. During that time, Israel allowed in a fluctuating, almost always insufficient number of aid trucks. The food and medicine that arrived on those trucks was then distributed by local groups across the Strip. In May, when the full blockade was partially lifted—after European leaders, and even the Trump Administration, warned of starvation—the old system of aid delivery, which was operated in part by the United Nations, was largely phased out in favor of a new organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was set up in coördination with Israeli authorities to deliver supplies to Gazans at just four locations.

Before the G.H.F. began its operations, the United Nations and a number of humanitarian organizations warned that the new system would lead to chaos, with people being forced to travel long distances to receive aid, potentially leading to dangerous crowds and violence. And indeed, during the last several weeks, Israeli forces have killed scores of Gazans at these sites, and injured hundreds more, as the death toll among those seeking aid from the G.H.F. has surpassed a hundred and twenty people. (Israel has acknowledged firing warning shots, as well as firing further shots at people who ignored the warnings.) The G.H.F., whose decision-making structure is opaque, has already changed its leadership and temporarily shut down operations to reëvaluate its procedures. At one point last weekend, G.H.F. said that it could no longer continue its work because of threats to its staff from Hamas. (Hamas has denied the accusation, and G.H.F. resumed operations the next day.)

I recently spoke by phone with Salma Altaweel, who lives in Gaza and works for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian N.G.O. I wanted to get a sense of how her organization was dealing with the new aid system, and exactly what had changed on the ground since it was put in place. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed how she talks to her daughter about the current situation, her concerns about the G.H.F., and what Gaza needs besides food and medicine.

Can you tell me what your job consists of right now and what your day is like?

Yes. I’m working as the field-office manager in the northern part of Gaza City. [Someone begins talking to her in the background.] Excuse me, it’s my daughter. Sorry. And now, since the ceasefire collapsed, we are working in hibernation mode. It’s very hard to move in Gaza City. But we are still providing support to people. We are providing drinking water to much of the population in the central part of the city. And we are providing clothes, through e-vouchers, to hundreds of families. There is not enough cash for people to buy merchandise, so we have been giving out vouchers to families in need. We make arrangements with certain venders, and then beneficiaries will receive a code that they can use to redeem clothes. We also have some learning spaces that provide informal education to kids. Also, we have a legal section that is providing some legal support and offering consultations.

How is drinking water accessed?

There are still some plants here in Gaza City that are working to provide drinking water. Trucks are moving around, travelling to shelters and providing water to people inside, and outside, too. We are covering a good number of people. And there are some other N.G.O.s doing this. All of them are collaborating with each other to try to cover most of Gaza.

I know that even before the blockade began in early March, there was never enough aid reaching the people of Gaza. But there was some aid. Can you talk about how aid reached Gazans under that system?

Before the collapse of the ceasefire, U.N. agencies and international N.G.O.s were working to try to coördinate aid. Not all items were allowed to enter Gaza, but as you mentioned there were some items that were entering. Trucks would cross the border, and the aid would enter the warehouses of the U.N. agencies and the N.G.O.s. After that, each local organization had its identification criteria to provide aid to people. The people were receiving text messages so they could come and collect it from the warehouse of the U.N. agency or the N.G.O. with dignity, and without a crowd. Also, aid would arrive to different neighborhoods, and people were not forced to move long distances or go to an insecure place to collect food, or shelter items, or hygiene kits, or whatever they were allowed to take. The quantities were not enough to cover people all the time, but at least there was some food that was entering. The bakeries were also functioning at some points—not all the time, but sometimes there was bread.

Then, in March, Israel announced that there would be a total cutoff in aid. How quickly did things change?

Many of the bakeries remained functioning for one month after March, but they closed by early April, and starting at that time most of the stock from the markets was empty. So by May we faced real starvation. People were not eating for days because there were not any items entering. They have resumed allowing some items, but not enough.

After this new aid system started, the one with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, what did your organization do? And what’s been happening more broadly? The stories we read in the United States are that people have to travel to this small number of sites to get food, and it’s obviously been very chaotic. The Israeli military has shot people. How is your organization trying to operate within this new system, and how do you feel the new system is or isn’t working?

Let me just say that, for the last few weeks, relocation orders have been issued and are covering most of Gaza. The N.R.C. specializes in providing shelter, and people are being forced to relocate to other places without taking their shelter items with them. In most cases, people are forced to flee only with what they can carry. Often, people are only given a few minutes’s notice to leave. So they are in high need of items such as tents, bedding sets, and clothes. They are moving without any of those items because they aren’t able to. And they are finding themselves out in the street without anything. We are trying to provide them support, but unfortunately shelter items are not coming through—until now, Israel was only allowing some specific items, like food and medicine. The U.N. is trying to push to get approval for shelter items, but we are not able to provide support to people who are in the streets sleeping without shelters.

So, just to be clear, the people relocating are relocating because the Israeli military is giving them orders to relocate, not because they are relocating to get food?

Yes, they are getting relocation orders because of military operations.

What are you and your organization telling people in terms of getting aid, and getting food? Are you providing them directions to get to the nearest facility where they are handing out food?

No, we are not giving them any directions like this. We are trying to do our best to support them, but we cannot give them direction to go to these areas. They are so risky. They’re killing people on a daily basis in those areas. There is no humanity in these areas. Humanitarian principles are not being applied. So we are not guiding anyone to go there.

So, for obvious reasons, because of the way the aid is being handed out and because people are getting killed at these distribution sites, you’re not telling people to try and approach the sites in any way?

So what advice are you giving people? I’m sure you must get asked by Gazans, “What should we do?”

Yes. We cannot give people advice to go to these sites. I can tell you that most people are not going. Many of the people who go are looters who are accessing those very risky areas to get items and sell them in the market at very high prices. This is what I can see on the ground.

And I assume there’s been no coördination between the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and groups on the ground like yours?

A few weeks ago, we were hearing very serious warnings about starvation. Has any of the aid that’s come in during the past few weeks been circulating on the ground and at least made the situation a little bit better? Or is it the same situation in terms of lack of food and medicine that we were seeing a few weeks ago?

I think a very limited quantity entered through U.N. agencies. And some of that was looted. [On Saturday, Israeli authorities said that about fifty aid trucks per day had entered the territory during the prior week. According to an Israeli official who spoke toThe New Yorker,that includes aid delivered to the four G.H.F. facilities and aid brought in by other humanitarian organizations, who say that at least five hundred trucks per day are needed.] Because of all the starvation, the situation is not stable. Some people end up looting the aid. It was difficult to open enough bakeries when flour was looted. So, not enough of the aid is distributed. Some of the trucks have brought things that are not aid. This is on the commercial side. They are not essential items. They are like chocolate, cigarettes. Not flour.

Israel has allowed trucks with cigarettes to come into Gaza?

Is there a stated reason for this?

I don’t know. [When asked about chocolate and cigarettes entering Gaza, the Israeli official said, “I don’t know what you mean.” He later called back and said, “Commercial trucks have not entered the Gaza Strip.”]

So I guess your hope is that Israel starts allowing more trucks of humanitarian aid in, because the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation method seems to be failing?

Yes. We are hoping that they open things up, like they did under the previous system, and not only for food. Yes, we are in need of food, but also shelter items. They are not letting fuel enter. The hospitals are in need of fuel. So we have a real need to go back to the previous method.

If you feel comfortable, can you talk to me a little bit about how you personally are dealing with this? Your daughter said something a few minutes ago.

Yes, we are now facing a challenging time. For me personally, I try to push the mealtime as late as I can, so at least they are not sleeping while they are hungry. [Altaweel has three other children.] So I try to push the mealtime. You can only prepare one meal per day. A meal for a family can cost a hundred dollars. So most families are not able to prepare more than one per day. And people are not having meals every day—maybe for some it is every two to three days. They are not eating anything. There is no flour in the market. We are depending on other seeds like lentils and rice, and they all have very high prices. It’s very hard. My daughter, she is always telling me, “I want sweets. I want something sweet to eat.” But there’s no sugar. I can’t prepare much.

What do you tell a seven-year-old about this? How do you explain the situation? How do you talk to her about it?

Sometimes she asks questions that I cannot answer. Sometimes she’s asking me, mostly when there are air strikes around us, “Why are they doing that with us, why they are killing us?” It’s very hard to answer the questions, and mostly I try to say, “Be patient,Inshallah, hopefully the situation will be better soon.” We are praying to God that food will enter. But she asks: why they bombed our house, what we did to them, why I lost all of my toys and all my clothes. Sometimes she’s crying, and sometimes she cries while she sleeps, because she has lost everything. But it’s hard to answer these questions for her.

What does your daughter do while you’re working? What do other kids do while their parents are working?

There are no schools. They’re spending their day at home, doing nothing. Maybe they’re playing with their peers in the same building, but that’s it. But they are feeling very bad, because there is nothing from their previous life that they can do.

When you think back to the way that aid was being delivered in the previous system, was the major problem that there wasn’t enough getting through? Or was the major problem that it couldn’t be distributed as you wanted it to because it was a war zone?

If we return to the previous system, it’ll be better in terms of food. But the problem is that all of the Gaza Strip is destroyed and it needs to be rebuilt and reconstructed, and if it isn’t things won’t be better. They were only allowing food and some lifesaving items to enter, but they were not allowing any other items for the reconstruction or rebuilding of our schools. There weren’t school items, or teaching items. So if we return to the old system, it’ll not be enough for us, because we are aiming to rebuild Gaza, and to live on streets without rubble. They also were not allowing heavy machines in to remove the rubble.

And yet, as you said a few minutes ago, the old system would be a huge improvement on what’s happening now.

It would be an improvement, but it would not be enough. ♦

A soldier in a Revolutionary War uniform was sitting under a tree, vaping and scrolling on his phone. It was the Army’s two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary celebration in D.C., and I was looking for the entrance to their fitness competition and cake-cutting ceremony, before the big parade at night. Walking down Independence Avenue, a little before noon, I heard a din. Behind the Department of Agriculture building, thousands of soldiers were getting in formation. They had spent the night sleeping in the federal agency’s headquarters—workers had been asked to telework to accommodate them—and now they were streaming out into the muggy day for their procession. Each conflict in the Army’s history was to be restaged in a carefully choreographed performance, and so the soldiers were dressed in period costumes: some from the Revolutionary War, others in outfits from the Civil War, the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. The uniforms had been rented and shipped to them from Hollywood.

The LedeReporting and commentary on what you need to know today.

A year ago, when the Army filed a permit requesting to celebrate its anniversary in D.C., the idea was for about three hundred personnel and four cannons, with a little more than a hundred folding chairs. But the institution happens to share its birthday with PresidentDonald Trump. By now, the whole thing had taken on a different context entirely. The parade would cost forty-five million dollars. Uniformed military had entered the streets a week earlier, in Los Angeles, after Trump deployed National Guard troops and the Marines to the city in response toprotests againstICEraids. Trump had said that any protesters against the military parade in D.C., meanwhile, would be met with “very big force.” Around the capital, I had heard people muse about whether Saturday would be something like Tiananmen Square. In other cities, a series of “No Kings” protests were scheduled for the day of the event. Laura Loomer, aMAGAinfluencer, had cautioned her followers to “stay strapped when you’re in public this weekend.” On the day of the parade, in what appeared to be an act of political violence, in Minnesota, two Democratic lawmakers were shot—one killed, the other injured—by a gunman impersonating a police officer, according to officials.

In D.C., near the shipping entrance for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, a group of soldiers booed another passing unit. “It keeps everybody hyped up,” one of the men doing the booing told me. “It’s hard to explain to people on the outside that’s how we keep our unity.” He added, “If I walk by, they’d probably boo me, because I’m the boss.” He told me that many of his men were eighteen or nineteen years old. Most had never been to D.C., and they had explored the city together for the past couple of days, doing tourist activities and then bedding down on the floor at U.S.D.A. or the General Services Administration’s regional office building, which is on a list of buildings that Trump plans to get rid of. When I asked him about Trump, he politely made clear that the question was indecorous. “Our job is to fight the nation’s wars,” he said. “Keep the politics out of it. I told my guys, just focus on the mission. This is huge for us history-wise,” he said of the parade. “We’ve been tasked to do this—focus on executing it. Do the mission, then we go home successfully and safely.” He went on, “Next one of these we’ll do will be a three-hundred-year anniversary, fifty years from now, so I’ll probably be long gone, or near-gone.”

Earlier that week, at Fort Bragg, soldiers had booed when Trump called out his political opponents, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles’s mayor, Karen Bass: “They’re incompetent, and they paid troublemakers, agitators, and insurrectionists,” the President said. He’d sold his own merchandise at the Army base, and the soldiers appearing in his audience had apparently been handpicked to insure appropriate physical appearance and political leanings. As I stood in the crowd with teen-agers in period garb, in D.C., it was a different universe from the viewing stand down the Mall where, in a few hours, Marjorie Taylor Greene andPete Hegsethwould sit with the President behind bulletproof glass. A group of Green Berets walked by, followed by a band unit, practicing their instruments. When I looked up, I could see a woman in a white dress standing at the window of a luxury high-rise apartment, staring down at the scene.

I made my way back to the Mall, where a jumbotron ad for Army recruitment flashed next to a large flag blowing in the wind that read “January 6th was an Inside Job.” I passed a few protesters holding signs with edited photos of Trump and Putin hugging shirtless—“the original Moscow mules.” The city had the eerie, abandoned feel it gets before big staged events, where a giant security apparatus puts most of its federal buildings behind black fencing. The occasional pedicab driver rode down the empty downtown streets, cordoned off from traffic by D.C. trash trucks. Tanks that had arrived from around the country had been sitting idly on the Mall for a few days; a summer thunderstorm was now threatening to rain out the President’s parade. I had seen an ad on Craigslist offering a “flat fee of $1,000 paid in cryptocurrency” to seat fillers in red hats and gold accessories “for space maximization and attendance.”

At dusk, the sky was heavy with wildfire smoke that had blown down from New Jersey. The Army’s Golden Knights, who were meant to be the parade’s grand finale, parachuted almost as soon as the event began so that they would fall from the sky before the rain. There was no line to enter the security perimeter, which was manned by T.S.A. workers. An elderly woman in front of me was told that she couldn’t bring in her mini American flags unless she removed them from their sticks, which were a potential weapon. Along the parade route, the Revolutionary War units were marching by as I entered. “There’s George Washington, straight from the grave!” someone called out. A parade announcer thanked Lockheed Martin and Coinbase for their sponsorship.

A group of several hundred protesters who had gathered for a “Refuse Fascism” demonstration had marched from Logan Circle to the White House. On the sidelines of the parade, a number of attendees held signs with messages like “monarchs are butterflies not presidents,” standing beside onlookers who clapped at the tanks and who occasionally broke into chants of “U-S-A.” There was no friction between them. The crowd was mostly quiet. A baby in a diaper crawled in the grass outside of the Organization of American States building; T.S.A. workers who’d finished their shifts screening attendees congregated around a statue of Simón Bolívar on a horse—“the Liberator.” A woman in a neon “hands off democracy” traffic vest chatted with a family who had come to town to view the parade. Nearby, a man holding a banner that read “practice nonviolence,” who told me that he works with D.C.’s poor and homeless population, said, “A hundred and twenty of them died without a home in this city, and we spent forty-five million on this? America is addicted to military idolatry.” A soldier passing by on a tank made a heart-shaped sign with his fingers. “We love you! Happy birthday!” a woman in a pink Trump hat cried out. “This was never about Trump,” a man in a tank top said. “It’s crazy that the pundits say that. That they would slander our United States Army.”

A few pardoned January 6th rioters had travelled to the city for the celebrations. One was selling Trump merchandise outside the parade gates. “It’s gravy, baby,” he said, of the mood. “Biden and his handlers did everything they could to shame this nation,” his friend told me. “America needed this.”

Most attendees near me streamed out slowly before the fireworks show started. A friend of mine, who grew up in East Germany, had come down from New York to see the tanks in the capital. She said that the scariest thing she saw was a robot dog, at an Army fair that had taken place earlier in the day. “This was nothing like the military parade that I experienced every year until the fall of the wall, in 1989,” she said. “Those were very loud and grim and brutal affairs. Every year I was a child, I thought World War Three was beginning.” She went on, “We would never have gone if we had the choice. But we did not. You can’t imagine how much energy went into getting people to show up for those parades in East Berlin.” The sparse crowds for Trump’s parade were charming to her—you can offer to pay people on Craigslist, but, in the U.S., you can’t force them to attend. Even most Republican lawmakers had sat out the event.

Down the Mall, by the Ellipse, Trump took the podium and delivered the Oath of Enlistment to a group of soldiers who stood in front of the stage. “Have a great life,” he said. As I exited, I passed a man, positioned in a lawn chair under a red umbrella, who calls himself the Truth Conductor. He sat beneath a sign that read “Stop Hating Each Other Because You Disagree.” Parade-goers hoping to avoid the rain streamed past him as he asked for donations. “If I put ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ on this sign—which means Fuck Joe Biden—I’d get rich overnight,” he said into a microphone. “When you do the right thing to bring people together, people just walk right past you. Not even home is safe, as we saw this morning.” A man passing by, in an American Legion hat, told him to go home. The Conductor responded, “Takeyourold ass home. This ismyhome. I don’t even know where you’re from.” “Shut up,” the other guy yelled back. The Conductor started playing “Y.M.C.A.” from a boom box. ♦