2026-03-29 19:15:00
2025年12月19日，工人将唐纳德·特朗普的名字添加到华盛顿特区肯尼迪中心的外墙上。| 阿尔·德拉戈/彭博社 通过盖蒂图片社提供。尽管特朗普总统在海外展示美国实力，但他也在试图改变美国首都的面貌。特朗普对华盛顿特区城市景观的改造引发了关注和法律诉讼。目前，华盛顿特区的改造工作已经展开，包括拆除白宫东翼以建造舞厅、翻新白宫玫瑰花园，以及计划对约翰·F·肯尼迪表演艺术中心进行为期两年的翻修关闭。未来还可能有更多变化：在阿灵顿国家公墓附近建造一座250英尺高的拱门，计划在艾森豪威尔总统办公室大楼外粉刷覆盖，以及在国家广场附近建立一座雕塑公园。以往的总统也曾对华盛顿特区的历史核心进行过增建或修改，但特朗普对设计审查程序的无视令许多保护主义者感到不满。今天，Explained节目的主持人肖恩·拉梅斯瓦拉姆与《华盛顿邮报》的资深建筑评论家菲利普·肯尼克特讨论了这些变化。肯尼克特曾发表了一篇关于特朗普对华盛顿特区建筑构成威胁的文章。以下是他们对话的节选，已进行删减和润色。你最近发表了一篇文章，认为特朗普是自1812年战争英国烧毁白宫和国会大厦以来，对华盛顿特区建筑和设计构成最大威胁的人。你为什么这么说？这听起来像是夸张的说法，但事实上，特朗普确实在改变这座城市的面貌。1812年战争中，英国烧毁了白宫和国会大厦，之后不得不重建。而特朗普则拆除了白宫东翼，并计划进行重大改动和新增建筑。他甚至打算在白宫外移除玫瑰花园，建造一座巨大的纪念性凯旋门，这将改变波托马克河沿岸的自然景观。更重要的是，他希望改变华盛顿如何处理城市变迁的方式。他想通过个人意志强行推进，而不是遵循长期的设计审查程序，而这种程序对于保持如今我们所熟知的华盛顿至关重要。你所强调的一个关键点是，华盛顿特区不同于纽约。它不是一座随着时间慢慢发展起来的城市，而是有明确规划的。华盛顿的规划理念使其与众不同。华盛顿特区最初是一个规划城市，很少有美国城市是这样开始的。一位名叫皮埃尔·勒内夫的设计师制定了所谓的“勒内夫计划”，该计划将传统的街道网格（南北走向和东西走向的大块区域，通常用于社区和商业）覆盖上宏伟的街道，连接重要的公共节点，如纪念碑或政府建筑。这些街道的景观体现了国家的雄心壮志——一种远见卓识的象征。多年来，华盛顿一直努力维护这种景观。其中最基本的一点是：我们没有建造摩天大楼，保持了非常低矮的城市天际线。而特朗普计划建造的这座250英尺高的纪念性拱门，将成为华盛顿最高的建筑之一，从根本上改变城市的天际线。特朗普两次当选总统，他的纽约酒店是旅游胜地，世界各地的人们也前往他的高尔夫球场。如果他在弗吉尼亚州靠近阿灵顿国家公墓的地方建造一座凯旋门，位于林肯纪念堂后面，是否有可能像人们喜爱自由女神像和埃菲尔铁塔那样，最终被人们所接受，即使这些建筑最初并不那么受欢迎？这确实是一个很有趣的问题。我一直都在思考这个问题。令我担忧的是，美国人对象征君主制的标志物曾经非常敏感，我们曾经对总统表现出任何帝王般的特质都感到不满。但现在，人们似乎对价值观与政治、美学与建筑之间的联系理解越来越少。因此，我写这篇文章的目的是试图向美国人介绍华盛顿隐藏的历史和美学，这些对华盛顿的形成至关重要。你可能不会在一次双层巴士的快速游览中发现这些，但它们确实存在。这些景观对于使华盛顿成为今天深受喜爱的城市起到了重要作用。如果特朗普如愿以偿，他是否也在暗示未来的总统可以随意改变这座城市的建筑、纪念碑和周边环境，从而为首都创造一种不断变化的美学？我认为这不仅仅是暗示。我认为他是在为未来的总统铺路。在我们谈话的开始，我提到，所有这些变化中，真正受到伤害的是设计审查的理念。华盛顿有一些这样的组织，包括一个成立于1910年的机构，他们有权审查建筑计划，通常由专业建筑师、设计师和景观艺术家组成，他们能够提升城市景观。然而，特朗普却将这些委员会成员替换成了自己的人，包括他的26岁私人助理，据我所知，他对此类问题毫无专业知识。这些委员会基本上只是对计划进行形式上的批准。因此，这为未来的总统提供了一条道路。如果需要一个不愉快的例子，可以回想起古罗马时期，每当新皇帝上台，如果他们不喜欢前任，他们不仅不会拆除前任建造的凯旋门，甚至可能移除雕像并替换为象征自己权力的雕像，不断对罗马的象征性景观进行改造。人们可能会说，“这不过是政治”，但这样的做法会让城市景观失去历史的庄重感和持久性，而这些正是华盛顿长期以来所拥有的。
While President Donald Trump has been flexing America’s might overseas, he’s also working to impose his will on the nation’s capital.
Trump’s urban interventions in DC’s built environment have raised eyebrows and sparked lawsuits.
The changes to DC are already underway, from the bulldozing of the East Wing of the White House to make way for a ballroom, to a makeover of the White House Rose Garden, to the planned two-year closure of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for renovations.
And more changes could be coming soon: a 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery, a plan to paint over the exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and a sculpture park near the National Mall.
Past presidents have added to or modified parts of Washington DC’s historic core. But Trump’s disregard for design review processes has irked many preservationists.
Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram discussed these changes with The Washington Post’s longtime architecture critic, Philip Kennicott, who wrote a column about the threat Trump poses to D.C.’s architectural splendor.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Philip, you recently published a column about Donald Trump’s changes to Washington, DC in which you make a very bold argument. You say that Trump is the most significant threat to the city’s architecture and design since the city was burned down by the British in the War of 1812. Tell us how you justify that argument.
That sounds like hyperbole maybe, but, in fact, he really is turning out to be an amazingly influential force in terms of the design of the city. The War of 1812, the British come through and they burn the White House and they burn the Capitol, and they have to be rebuilt.
Donald Trump has torn down the East Wing of the White House, and he’s making major changes, major additions. He’s taken out the Rose Garden at the White House. He wants to build a new giant memorial triumphal arch at Arlington Cemetery. He’s talking about a Garden of National Heroes that would really change the kind of sylvan landscape along the Potomac River.
It goes on and on. And more important even than those changes is the fact that he wants to change how Washington manages change. He really wants to kind of force this through by personal fiat rather than go through a longstanding process of design review, which has been absolutely essential to keeping Washington the city we know today.
Essential to the argument you’re making here is that DC isn’t New York. It isn’t a city that was slowly built over time, that progressed and evolved with the times. The intention behind Washington, DC sets it apart.
Yes, it begins as a planned city. Very few American cities begin with a plan.
A designer named Pierre L’Enfant created what was called the L’Enfant Plan, and that was to take a typical city grid of streets, ones that run north-south, and east-west of big boxes that were generally for the neighborhoods, for commerce, for the daily stuff of life, and then lay over them these sweeping avenues that connect important civic nodal points. Maybe there’s a statue there, maybe that’s where the Capitol or the White House is. And these create a much grander architecture.
In some ways, the vistas of these avenues stand in for the ambition of the country — a sense of being far-seeing. And Washington has done an awful lot over the years to preserve that. Among the most basic things is: We didn’t build skyscrapers. We’ve kept a very low-slung skyline. And one of Trump’s changes, which is this giant 250-foot-tall memorial arch, would actually be one of the very tallest buildings in Washington and would fundamentally change that skyline.
[The public] voted this president into office twice. His hotels in New York are tourist attractions. People around the world go to his golf courses. If he plants an arch on the edge of Virginia in front of Arlington National Cemetery behind the Lincoln Memorial, is there a chance that people end up loving it the way they ended up loving the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, even though they might not have been clear wins when they were initially built?
Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. I wrestle with that all the time. One of the things that’s disturbing to me is that the impulses and the instincts that Americans had about the markers of monarchy — we used to be really allergic to that stuff. We used to really bristle at the idea of a president being in any way imperial or king-like.
Now, I think there’s less understanding of the connection between values and politics on one side and aesthetics and architecture on the other side. And so, in some ways, the story I’m writing is an attempt to introduce Americans to what is, in a sense, a hidden history and a hidden aesthetics in Washington that are very vital and very important. You may not get that just by taking a quick tour on a double decker bus of the city, but it’s there. And it was extremely important to the people who made Washington into the city that is greatly beloved today.
If he has his way, is he also suggesting to future presidents that you can have your way with this city, and its monuments, and its environs and then creating some kind of aesthetic seesaw for the nation’s capital?
Oh, I think it’s more than just suggesting. I think he’s laying out the roadmap.
I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that one of the real victims in all of this is the idea of design review. There are these groups in Washington, including one that goes back to 1910, that have the ability to come in and look over plans, and they’re usually staffed by professional architects, professional designers, professional landscape artists, and they improve things.
Trump has stacked those committees with his own people, including his 26-year-old personal assistant, who, as far as I can tell, has no expertise in any of these questions. And they’re basically just kind of rubber stamping these things. So that’s a roadmap for any future president coming in.
If you want an unfortunate example, you might think back to the days of ancient Rome when new emperors would come in, and if they really didn’t like their predecessor, they wouldn’t just necessarily raze down the triumphal arch erected by the predecessor. They might even take the statues off and replace the heads with heads of their own symbolism, a kind of constant retrofitting of the symbolic landscape of Rome to represent the current person in power. And you can say, “Well, that’s just politics,” but that makes for a landscape that doesn’t have the historical gravitas and temporal lastingness that you would want and that we’ve had in Washington for a very long time.
2026-03-29 19:00:00
2017年6月4日，林迪·韦斯特在旧金山的Larkin喜剧俱乐部登台表演。你可能还记得这位女权主义作家林迪·韦斯特，她曾在推特上对性别歧视和反胖言论的网络喷子进行反击，或者她的著作《Shrill》。如今，她推出了新书《Adult Braces》，这是一本回忆录，讲述了她接受丈夫要求开放婚姻的旅程。不过，这并非一次简单的请求，而是一次实际的“旅程”。这次，社交媒体上的用户对此有强烈的不同意见。Slate的高级撰稿人斯卡奇·库尔与Today, Explained的主持人诺埃尔·金一起探讨了网络对韦斯特新书的反应，以及后续的发展。以下是库尔与Today, Explained的对话节选，内容经过删减和润色。完整节目可在Apple Podcasts、Pandora和Spotify等播客平台收听。
你能否谈谈《Adult Braces》这本书？这是一本非常易读的书。《Adult Braces》是林迪的回忆录，这是她的第四本书。她写过很多政治和社会评论，也写过很多个人经历，但这本书是最个人化的。它讲述的是她进行一次横跨美国的公路旅行，同时也在重新定义自己的婚姻，并转向与丈夫的多伴侣关系。你认为为什么多伴侣关系会引发这么多人的不满？
我认为这里有几条争议的线索，其中一些是合理的，一些则不是。那些不合理的批评往往与林迪的体重有关。她是个胖子，经常在书中谈论自己的体重。有些人则认为这与性别有关。她的丈夫阿哈姆（Aham）是跨性别者，使用“他/他”和“他们/他们”的代词。因此，一些人对这个故事的这一方面进行了不必要的攻击。另一方面，林迪在回忆录中讲述的故事，尤其是她与阿哈姆进入多伴侣关系的过程，显得非常痛苦。他们的多伴侣关系并非完全坦诚，很多人用“胁迫式多伴侣关系”来形容。这个词我之前没听过，但其含义是，你告诉伴侣“要么这样，要么什么都没有”。林迪显然一开始并不情愿。他们遇到一个人，阿哈姆先爱上了她，然后她也爱上了这个人——罗亚（Roya）。于是三人在一起了。当我们将这段经历描述为“她被说服”时，就出现了另一种观点：不，阿哈姆从一开始就对她坦诚，而她则希望这一切不会发生。他明确告诉她，婚姻的条件之一就是多伴侣关系。我认为她了解其中的风险，她是个成年人，不想被当作小孩对待。她多次强调自己拥有自主权，这些决定都是她自己的。我相信这些决定是她自己的。我想把罗亚也纳入讨论，因为这段婚姻确实涉及她。请谈谈林迪与罗亚的开始和结束，以及为什么结局也让人感到不适。
当罗亚进入他们的生活时，阿哈姆确实在婚外有多个女友。因此，林迪一开始对了解罗亚并不感兴趣，只是让阿哈姆去做他必须做的事。阿哈姆每月都会去波特兰与罗亚度过周末。当林迪在巡演期间遇到医疗问题时，罗亚就在身边帮助她。这逐渐改变了他们之间的关系动态。林迪经常提到，这真是成为妻子的感觉吗？有一个人如此有条理，能处理医疗细节，还能倾听她。随着时间推移，他们之间发展出友谊，最终演变为浪漫关系。这从根本上改变了他们的多伴侣关系、婚姻以及家庭的性质。之后，罗亚搬到了他们现在居住的地方，也就是森林中。你曾前往他们现在居住的地方，并为林迪写过一篇报道。当你在那里时，有没有试图问她关于“胁迫”这个问题？
她早已预见这个问题。我认为人们早就向她提出过。她明确表示这并不属实，我理解她的立场，即：除了生活在这样的关系中，我如何向你们证明？但如果你试图通过写作来说服别人，尤其是写回忆录，这会让人感到不满足。我对此深有体会。我所能做的有限，只能提供一种视角和事件的叙述。但一旦我开始像在宣传某种理念，如果你不相信我的经历，那我的话就毫无意义。我认为，人们在很多方面都把林迪当作一面单向的镜子。他们看到自己在她身上。当她或者其他人做出与观众期望不符的决定时，观众会感到非常受伤。林迪一直被认为是张扬、自信、风趣且充满活力的。而《Adult Braces》中展现的她却显得焦虑和不自信，甚至被身边的人伤害。作为读者，我们仿佛是她的替身，会为她感到不平。你如何看待有人认为林迪的回忆录《Adult Braces》标志着千禧一代女权主义的终结？
我们有权对任何人的关系产生感受，尤其是当他们以书籍这种商品形式呈现给我们时。但一个人的个人经历，无论其是痛苦、不幸、满足还是幸福，都不足以说明一个社会运动的终结。这更多是林迪在互联网上的一个角落所引发的反应。社会运动是灵活的，会变化的。我不认为这是任何东西的终结，只是某种形式的结束而已。
You might remember feminist writer Lindy West from her days on X (né Twitter) yelling at sexist, anti-fat trolls. Or from her book Shrill. Now, West is back with Adult Braces, a memoir detailing her journey, a literal road trip, to accepting her husband’s request to open up their marriage. Except it wasn’t really a request, as West tells it. And this time, people across social media had very strong opinions about it.
Slate senior writer Scaachi Koul joined Today, Explained co-host Noel King to talk through the internet’s reaction to West’s new book, and all that came after.
Below is an excerpt of Koul’s conversation with Today, Explained, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Tell me about Adult Braces.
It’s a very digestible book. Adult Braces is Lindy’s memoir. This is her fourth book. She’s written a lot of political polemics, social polemics, a lot of personal writing, but this is some of her most personal. It’s a memoir about her taking a cross-country road trip, but also about her reformatting her marriage and turning towards polyamory with her husband.
Why do you think [the polyamory] has got people so upset here?
I think there’s a few trains of controversy here, and some is legitimate and some is really not. So the illegitimate complaints are kind of about this narrative having to do often with Lindy’s weight. She’s fat. She writes a lot about being fat. Or some people are saying that it has a lot to do with gender. Her partner, Aham, who is her husband — Aham goes by he/him and they/them — is nonbinary. So there’s been a lot of needless jabs at this particular facet of the story.
The other side of it is that the story that Lindy tells in this memoir — and all we really have to go on is what she tells us — is pretty brutal to her. Their entry into polyamory is not necessarily honest. A lot of people have been using the word “coercive polyamory.” It’s not a term I’ve ever heard before, but the idea that you kind of tell your partner, “it’s this or nothing.”
She’s clearly a reluctant participant for the first spell of their jaunt into polyamory. They meet someone, he falls in love with her first, and then she also falls in love with this person, Roya. And now the three of them are together.
When we frame this as it was coercive, as she was talked into it. There’s an opposite side of this that says: No, Aham, her husband, was honest with her right from the beginning, and she sort of hoped that it would never come to pass.
It’s clear that he told her, A condition of our marriage will be polyamory.
I think she understood some of the risks. She’s an adult. Lindy does not want to be infantilized. She said that several times — that she had and has autonomy, and these are her decisions. I believe that they are her decisions.
I want to bring the third into this, as the marriage did: Roya. Tell me about where Lindy starts with Roya, where Lindy ends with Roya, and why you think the ending has also made people uncomfortable.
When Roya is brought into the picture, it is true that Aham had more than one other girlfriend in addition to his wife. And so Lindy is a little…I would say she was reticent to kind of learn anything about this person and was sort of like, go do what you must. Aham starts to travel to Portland once a month to spend a weekend with Roya.
He has a big medical issue come up while she’s touring, and Roya is there to help. That starts to change the nature of their dynamic. Lindy talks a lot about — Wow, is this what it’s like to get a wife? Somebody who’s so organized, who takes care of the medical details and listens to me?
Over time, they start to develop a friendship, and then their relationship turns, and it becomes romantic. It fundamentally reshapes the entire nature of their polyamory and of their marriage and of their family. And then after that, Roya, she moves into the woods with them, and that’s where she is now.
You went out to the place where the family lives now. You wrote a profile of Lindy West. When you were there, did you push her at all on the question of coercion?
She preempts that question. I think it’s something that people have already said to her. She says that that’s just not true, and I kind of understand what she’s saying, which is, How can I prove it to you other than living in this life?
But if you try to write anything to convince other people, especially when it comes to memoir, it will feel dissatisfying. And I know that intimately. There’s only so much I can do. What I can offer is a perspective and a version of events. But as soon as I cross a threshold into feeling like I’m evangelizing for something, if you don’t believe me about my own experience, then it doesn’t mean anything.
I think people look at Lindy as a one-way mirror in a lot of ways. They see themselves in her. And when she makes decisions — when anybody in that position, [whether] a celebrity, influencer, writer, [or] creative, makes decisions that their audience doesn’t like, [that audience] takes it really personally.
Lindy is someone who I think a lot of people, especially her fan base, have viewed as bombastic and confident and bawdy and fun. And [then] compare that with the version that we read in Adult Braces — who is anxious and insecure, and being harmed by this person in her life.
As the audience, your proxy is her. You feel defensive of her.
What do you think about this argument that Lindy West’s memoir about coming to polyamory is like the death of millennial feminism?
We can have feelings about anybody’s relationship as it is displayed to us. We are entitled to that, especially when we’re being offered a commodity like a book which you purchase. But one person’s personal story, discomfort, misery, contentment, fulfillment, or lack of fulfillment does not speak to the end of a social movement that was knit together over several decades, and has more to do with Lindy West’s corner of the internet.
Social movements flex. They change. I don’t think it’s the death of anything. It is just where that version of it maybe ended up.
2026-03-28 20:00:00
特朗普是如何失去共和党最激进的伊朗鹰派人物约翰·博尔顿的？原因又是什么？
在过去20年里，共和党政治中几乎一直有一个被称为“伊朗战争派”的人物。多年来，博尔顿一直主张推翻伊朗政权，并让美国采取积极的军事行动来实现这一目标。他曾担任小布什政府的美国驻联合国大使，后来又在特朗普的第一个任期内担任国家安全顾问。然而，他与特朗普的合作并不长久，且两人关系恶化，博尔顿此后一直批评特朗普的政策。他甚至因处理机密文件不当而被特朗普政府的司法部起诉。尽管有这些背景，听到这位美国最坚定的伊朗批评者与特朗普政府决裂，仍让人感到困惑。特朗普是如何失去共和党最坚定的伊朗鹰派人物的？原因又是什么？以下是我与博尔顿对话的节选，已进行删减和润色。完整对话可在Today, Explained播客中收听，包括Apple Podcasts、Pandora和Spotify等平台。
你已成为美国推动对伊朗采取军事行动的最著名倡导者之一。但最近你却成为特朗普政府在伊朗战争中最为尖锐的批评者。我想请你详细说明你的批评。我认为支持推翻伊朗政权的政策是正确的。多年来，我一直持这一观点，因为我认为伊朗政权不会在两个关键方面改变其行为。他们不会放弃发展核武器的计划，而核武器威胁着以色列、美国乃至整个世界。他们也不会放弃支持恐怖主义，比如支持哈马斯、真主党、胡塞武装、伊拉克什叶派民兵，并在全球范围内进行恐怖活动。我们有几十年的证据表明，他们的行为不会改变。因此，面对这种威胁、危险和不可改变的行为，唯一的替代方案就是改变政权。我认为，伊朗政权自1979年掌权以来，处于最脆弱的状态。经济一团糟，年轻人可以看到他们可以拥有不同的生活。伊朗三分之二的人口年龄在30岁以下。女性因马莎·阿米尼的死亡而极度不满，少数民族也感到不满。这些条件为政权更迭提供了良好的机会。问题是，美国在其中能扮演什么角色？我认为特朗普从一开始就在这一问题上犯了严重的错误。请告诉我具体是哪些方面。
首先，特朗普没有做好准备，向美国公众解释采取行动的必要性。通常，当总统要采取像特朗普这样的重大行动时，需要向人民解释为什么这符合国家利益，以避免伊朗的核威胁和持续的恐怖主义威胁。你不需要详细说明具体计划或时间表，但必须尊重公民并让他们明白这符合他们的利益。我认为他本可以做到这一点，但他没有。是的，这确实没有发生。另一个方面是需要与盟友进行协商。通常，你应在战争开始前建立国际联盟，而不是在战争之后。显然，他没有这么做。我们与以色列关系密切，我认为我们的军事计划和准备是无缝衔接的。但还有许多其他国家，不仅仅是北约盟友，还有海湾国家，这些国家显然受到伊朗的影响，我们的太平洋盟友如日本、韩国，以及从海湾获得大部分石油的国家。据我所知，他根本没有为伊朗内部的反对力量做任何准备，没有协调，也没有试图了解他们会采取什么行动，也没有支持他们、提供资源、资金、武器（如果他们需要的话）、电信等。总之，完全没有协调。有一种感觉是，他们希望在四到六周内完成行动，而不是一个完整的政权更迭所需的时间。你是否认为，如果他们不愿意坚持到底，就不应该一开始发动战争？
是的。四到六周可能是五角大楼最初行动的估计时间。但单靠军事行动本身不可能实现政权更迭，即使它偶然成功，也只是一个幸运事件。政权更迭必须来自伊朗内部，是人民、反对派、少数民族、年轻人和女性共同努力的结果。我曾说过特朗普不是一个战略思考者。从你在白宫与总统合作的角度来看，这种缺乏战略思维对政策有何影响？
这使得实现目标变得非常困难。特朗普在第二个任期中几乎完全废除了国家安全委员会的决策机制，而我首先要承认这个机制并不完美。但这是将不同机构和部门的观点集中起来，以便总统做出负责任、有根据的决策的一种方式。我听到你说，这场战争中缺乏计划，这是由于从特朗普第一任到第二任的决策机制发生了变化或崩溃。是的，任命马可·鲁比奥同时担任国务卿和国家安全顾问就是一例——尽管对马可表示尊重，但这两个职位是完全不同的。我不会责怪政府中的其他人，除了特朗普。他认为自己受到了国家安全委员会的限制，认为我们试图迫使他向某个方向行动。显然，国家安全委员会的每个成员都有自己的观点，但这些观点的碰撞对总统来说是有益的，可以帮助他看到哪个观点更有说服力，哪个更符合他的偏好，哪个计划更好。我认为这些讨论通常能增强总统的决策能力。如果没有充分的讨论，或者讨论不够深入，就无法获得这些好处。政府方面声称伊朗的军事力量已经从根本上被削弱，其领导层已被独特地清除，他们还加速了继任危机。但这是否实现了政权更迭的目标？一点也不。据报道，伊朗政权已选出新的国家安全委员会秘书长阿里·拉里贾尼，而他几天前刚刚被杀。据称，他是一位老派革命卫队强硬派。因此，如果他是新的国家安全委员会秘书长，这表明他可能比拉里贾尼更加强硬。只要伊朗政权能够重建，这只是一个时间问题，他们只需恢复霍尔木兹海峡的石油运输。我毫不怀疑他们将很快恢复积极的核武器和弹道导弹计划，并重新集结他们的恐怖组织代理人。我认为，如果你要追求政权更迭的目标，就必须了解你要面对的挑战，并决心克服它们以实现目标。如果你认为无法实现，那就不要开始，尝试其他方法。很明显，特朗普没有做到这些，这也是他现在陷入困境的原因。
For the past 20 years, there’s basically been one guy in Republican politics who was known as the Iran war guy.
For years, even decades, John Bolton has argued for regime change in Iran, and for America to take a proactive military role to make that happen. Bolton served as the US ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush and, later, as national security adviser to Donald Trump during his first term.
The partnership with Trump was fleeting, however. He did not leave the administration on good terms and has been a critic of Trump since. He’s even been indicted by Trump’s Department of Justice for the mishandling of classified documents. Despite that backstory, it is still a bit confusing to hear one of America’s foremost Iran critics break with the Trump administration on this war. How did Trump lose the Republican Party’s biggest Iran war hawk? And why?
Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Bolton, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
You’ve become known as one of the most prominent American advocates for military action in Iran over a set of decades. But in recent weeks, you’ve emerged as one of the sharpest critics of the Trump administration’s actions and how it’s conducting this war. I wanted you to walk me through your critiques.
What I support is a policy of regime change in Iran. And I’ve held that view for many years because I don’t think there’s any chance the current regime will change its behavior on two critical fronts.
It’s not going to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which threaten Israel, the United States, really the whole world. And it’s not going to give up on its pursuit of terrorism, its support of terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Shia militia in Iraq and conducting terrorist operations around the world.
We’ve got decades of evidence that their behavior is not going to change. So when you’re confronted with that kind of threat, danger, and behavior isn’t going to change, the alternative is change the regime. I think the regime is in its weakest position since any time after it took power in 1979. The economy is a mess. The young people are, they can see they can have a different kind of life. Two thirds of the population is under 30. The women are enormously dissatisfied since the death of Mahsa Amini. Ethnic groups are dissatisfied.
Conditions are ripe for regime change as a policy to succeed. And the question is, what role can the United States play? And here, I think Trump has badly misplayed his hand from the beginning, unfortunately.
Tell me how.
Well, Trump initially did nothing to prepare the American public for the steps necessary to affect regime change. Normally, when a president is going to take a dramatic action like Trump has, you explain that to the American people.
You make the case why it’s in our national interest to seek regime change, to avoid the threat of nuclear weapons, to avoid the continuing threat of terrorism. You don’t have to say anything about what your specific plan is. You don’t have to talk about timing, but you have to be respectful of our citizens and make the case to them that this is in their interest. I think he could have done it. I think there’s a very compelling case he didn’t do it.
Yeah, that didn’t happen.
A corollary to that is you need to prepare Congress, certainly on the Republican side, to get their support, but on the Democratic side too. I think there are a number of important steps that Congress is going to have to take, instead of leaving them in the dark. It doesn’t mean they would agree with you necessarily, but at least you’ve stated your case to them and it’s part of making it to the American people.
The other aspect that Trump failed on was consulting with allies. Normally, you try and build an international coalition before the war starts, not after. And he obviously didn’t do that. I mean, we’ve got very close ties with Israel. I think our military planning and preparation has been seamless as far as I can tell.
But there are plenty of others, not just the NATO allies, but the Gulf states in the region who are obviously affected by this, our allies in the Pacific, Japan, South Korea, and others who get most of their oil from the Gulf.
As far as we can tell, he did no preparation of the opposition actually inside Iran. No coordination, no effort to see what they would do, no effort to support them, to provide resources, money, arms if that’s what they wanted, telecommunications, just no coordination at all.
There’s a sense that they want to make this around four to six weeks, not necessarily the timeline that a full regime change could take. Is it your position that if they aren’t willing to kind of see that all the way through, they shouldn’t have started this in the first place?
Right. Four to six weeks might have been a good estimate of the Pentagon’s initial campaign. But the military action alone was never going to cause regime change, or at least it would have been a lucky event had it done so. This has to come from inside Iran. It’s the people, the opposition, the ethnic groups, the young people, the women that have to have to figure out how to actually accomplish it.
“I think if you are going to go after the goal of regime change, you have to know what you’re getting into and be resolved to work your way through it in order to achieve it.”
And it’s clear they were badly intimidated in January when the regime killed 30 or 40,000 protesters, literally machine gunned them in the streets of Iran simply for protesting against the regime. That needed to be taken into account.
I’ve heard you say in other places that Trump is not a strategic thinker. From your perspective of someone who was in the White House, who was trying to strategize with the president, what was the impact of that lack of strategic thinking?
Well, it makes it very hard to carry through to achieve a given objective. One thing that Trump has done in the second term is all but eliminate the National Security Council decision-making process, which I’ll be the first to say is not perfect. But it’s a way of getting all the different agency and department views together to try and get the facts assembled that would permit a president to make a responsible, well-informed decision.
I’m hearing from you that we should see the lack of planning that has manifested in this war as a result of the change or the collapse in process from the first Trump administration to the second.
Yeah, I mean, making Marco Rubio both secretary of state and national security adviser is another piece of evidence there — with all due respect to Marco, these are two completely separate jobs.
I don’t blame that on anybody in the government other than Trump. He thought he was being constrained by the NSC, that somehow we were trying to — I speak for all these other Cabinet members — that we were trying to force him in one direction or another.
Obviously, each member of the the NSC has his or her own views, but it’s the clash of views that can benefit a president so he can see what the stronger case is, what aligns more with his preferences, what the better plan is, all of these sorts of things I think are generally enhanced by discussion. If you don’t have much discussion or it’s not well-informed discussion, you’re not getting the benefits.
The administration would say that Iran is weakened militarily fundamentally, that their leadership has been eliminated in a unique way, that they have sped up a succession crisis. Is that achieving the objective of regime change?
No, not at all. There’s a report that the regime has selected a new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council held by Ali Larijani, who was killed a few days ago. And this guy is reported to be an old-time Revolutionary Guard hardliner.
So if he’s the new National Security Council secretary, that’s an indication that he’s probably even more hardline than Larijani. To the extent the regime can rebuild, and that’s simply a matter of getting oil flows out through the Strait of Hormuz. I have no doubt they’ll be back to an assertive nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, and lining up their terrorist surrogates again.
I think if you are going to go after the goal of regime change, you have to know what you’re getting into and be resolved to work your way through it in order to achieve it. And if you don’t think you can achieve it, then don’t start it. Try something else. And it’s clear Trump hasn’t done many of those things. And that’s why he’s in the conundrum that he is in now.
Today, Explained publishes video episodes every Saturday tackling key issues in politics and culture. Subscribe to Vox’s YouTube channel to get them. New episodes of Today, Explained drop every day of the week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite listening app.
If you enjoy our reporting and want to hear more from Vox journalists, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/vox. Each month, our members get access to exclusive videos, livestreams, and chats with our newsroom.
2026-03-28 19:00:00
OpenAI宣布今年将通过其非营利组织投资大量资金用于与AI相关的事业，进一步加大慈善力度，这发生在其重组并设立新的营利部门数月之后。OpenAI曾推出AI视频生成应用Sora，但仅数月后就宣布关闭。在10月，OpenAI完成了组织的重大重组，动摇了其原有的基础。OpenAI最初作为非营利组织成立，现在拥有营利部门。根据OpenAI首席执行官Sam Altman的说法，非营利部门仍会指导营利部门的工作，以确保人工智能技术造福“全人类”。此外，OpenAI基金会理论上将掌控高达1800亿美元的资金，使其成为世界上最大的慈善组织之一。
非营利组织Tech Equity的创始人Catherine Bracy认为，这次重组是试图让营利部门像其他AI公司一样运作的明显尝试。她认为，OpenAI的营利部门只会为投资者谋利，而非营利部门只是一个空有其名、缺乏实际权力的“企业社会责任”部门。我们曾联系OpenAI寻求评论，但未收到回复。Bracy与Today, Explained的主持人Sean Rameswaram讨论了OpenAI新结构的合法性及其对社会的潜在影响。以下是他们对话的节选（已编辑，以提高清晰度和简洁性）。
在谈到OpenAI的非营利使命时，Bracy表示，尽管OpenAI设立了营利部门和非营利部门，但其非营利使命仍应优先于一切。然而，由于这种结构存在不可调和的利益冲突，OpenAI实际上每天都在违反加州法律。她认为，OpenAI在挑战法律监管的同时，也试图通过公关和游说活动来确保这些法律不会被严格执行。
Bracy还提到，OpenAI基金会宣布的优先事项之一是阿尔茨海默病研究。她本人的母亲正因阿尔茨海默病而去世，而她携带一个高风险基因。她每天都在祈祷AI能尽快找到治疗阿尔茨海默病的方法，以帮助她和家人。然而，她也指出，如果OpenAI基金会资助的研究发现Anthropic的模型在药物发现或科学突破方面优于ChatGPT或其他模型，那么这些研究的独立性将受到质疑。她强调，不应接受由有利益冲突的实体资助的科学研究，就像我们不会接受烟草公司资助的尼古丁研究或酒精公司资助的酒精成瘾研究一样。
Bracy认为，虽然OpenAI表示要将数十亿美元投入社会公益，但这与Anthropic、Google等公司的承诺相比并不显著。她指出，Google有其自己的企业基金会Google.org，而OpenAI基金会的结构可能与之类似，即作为营销部门的一部分，资助一些无害的组织，但不会挑战Google的核心利益。她认为，OpenAI的非营利使命实际上只是市场推广的手段，而非真正确保AI为全人类造福的保障。
最后，Bracy强调，AI的发展并非不可避免，我们不应盲目相信这些公司能够最佳地管理这项技术。相反，我们应该有更大的想象力，思考AI可能带来的各种可能性。她认为，这应该激发我们更多地关注并修复民主制度中的问题，而不是让亿万富翁掌控我们的未来。至于是否还与Sam Altman有联系，Bracy表示他不再接听她的电话。
Big changes are happening at OpenAI. On Wednesday, the company announced that it would be shutting down their AI video creation app Sora only a couple months after its launch. In October, OpenAI completed a massive restructure of its organization that shakes the very foundations it was built on.
OpenAI, which powers ChatGPT, among other AI products, was originally founded purely as a nonprofit. Now it has a for-profit arm. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the nonprofit will still guide the work of the for-profit side to ensure that artificial intelligence works for the “benefit of all humanity.” On top of that, the OpenAI Foundation, would be in charge of (theoretically) $180 billion, making it one of the largest charitable organizations in the world.
Catherine Bracy, founder of the nonprofit Tech Equity, thinks this restructuring is a blatant attempt to free up the for-profit wing to act like any other AI company. She argues that OpenAI’s for-profit wing will only ever act for the benefit of its investors. Bracy believes the OpenAI Foundation is merely a glorified and toothless corporate social responsibility arm. We reached out to OpenAI for comment and did not receive a response.
Bracy spoke with Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram about the legality of OpenAI’s new structure and her concerns about how this all might shake out. An excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
(Disclosure: Vox Media is one of several publishers that have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting remains editorially independent.)
You used to chat with Sam Altman?
We worked together back in the day and then kind of went out of touch with each other for a few years. Then, when I was writing a book about venture capital, I was really interested in open AI’s nonprofit model. Sam had been very explicit that the reason they founded OpenAI as a nonprofit was to put the technology at arm’s length from investors because they knew investors would exploit it in a way that would make this technology — which they thought was very dangerous — actually live up to that potential danger.
So I wanted to talk to him about the decision-making process behind that. And he was very forthcoming about that being the explicit reason why OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit. They put a lot of thought and capacity and energy into creating this [nonprofit] governance structure that would protect the technology from the whims of investors, the [profit-generating] imperatives that investors put on technology companies.
And a few months later, I saw that all come crashing down.
And when you found out that Open AI was restructuring and going to try to have it both ways — mission-driven nonprofit, but also money-driven for-profit — what was your reaction?
Disappointment. I would say that was my initial reaction. And then the secondary response was, Well, what can we do about this? And many of us came together into this coalition that really started asking questions about the responsibility of the nonprofit and the responsibility of the attorney general of California to enforce nonprofit law. And things kind of went from there.
Tell me more about that. What’s nonprofit law look like as it pertains to, say, OpenAI?
I run a nonprofit. In the tax code, that means that my organization does not need to pay taxes, but in return for that tax exemption, we are required to operate in service of a public service mission. Our mission is to ensure that the tech industry is creating opportunity for everybody. OpenAI’s nonprofit mission is to ensure that AI develops for the benefit of all of humanity. And legally, Sam Altman is required to prioritize OpenAI’s mission above all else.
So when they decided they were going to split the nonprofit from the for-profit, they found that actually legally they could not do that without divesting the intellectual property that the nonprofit owned, including all of the intellectual property that was created that underlies the ChatGPT model, and the equity stake that the nonprofit owned in the for-profit company.
I think they looked at that price tag and they said, That’s not a price we’re willing to pay. And so instead of splitting the nonprofit from the for-profit, they decided to continue down this path of nonprofit ownership, which in my mind is completely untenable, unsustainable, and irreconcilable.
Basically, every day that OpenAI exists, they are violating the law.
And actually what they’re doing is just daring the attorney general to hold them accountable for it. I think they think they’re too big to be held accountable and they need the AG [of California] to assume that he will not win a case. And that’s what they’ve done. They’ve loaded up on lawyers and they are making a bet that the AG will not pursue this in any way that’s actually meaningful.
Okay. So if I’m following you, despite the fact that OpenAI has split itself into a for-profit arm and a not-for-profit arm, their not-for-profit mission still overrides everything they do. And because of that, they are violating California law — because there’s no way that the nonprofit interests are ever going to be primary in their business.
Right. I think, as the kids would say, they’re playing in our faces. They expect us to take their word that as they operate, as they make deals with the Defense Department to develop autonomous weapons and surveillance systems on American citizens, as they battle parents in court whose children have committed suicide due to conversations that these kids were having with their chatbots, they expect us to believe that the nonprofit mission is being prioritized over the profit motivation of the company.
We all know that OpenAI’s overriding priority is to “win” the AI race. It’s to beat out the competition in the marketplace, and it’s to establish the biggest AI company they can create. To the extent that the nonprofit mission ever comes into tension with that, the company will always prioritize profits over the mission.
A law is only as good as its enforcement. And I think if there’s one rule of Silicon Valley, it is to ask forgiveness and not permission. I think they said, You know, this is worth it. There’s enough money on the line for us to just break the law and do the PR work and the lobbying work and the other work that we need to do to ensure that these laws will never be enforced against us.
And when you talk about PR work, lobbying work, are you talking about, like, saying we’re going to give away this $180 billion eventually?
Well, here’s the thing. They announced this week a list of priorities that the foundation would be investing in. They listed as one of their priorities, Alzheimer’s research. My mother is currently dying of Alzheimer’s. I have one copy of the gene that puts me at extreme risk of developing Alzheimer’s when I’m older. So I pray every day that AI helps us find a solution to Alzheimer’s fast enough that I can benefit from it, that my family can benefit from it.
But let me ask you a question. What happens, do you think, if the research that’s funded by OpenAI’s Foundation finds that actually Anthropic’s models are better at drug discovery or scientific breakthroughs than ChatGPT or any of OpenAI’s other models? What does it mean for the independence of scientific research, if all of this research is funded by an entity that has an irreconcilable conflict of interest?
“We do not have to take these companies at their word that they know best how to govern this technology. We should have bigger imaginations about what’s possible.”
We would not accept the science around nicotine that tobacco companies were funding. We do not accept the science around alcohol addiction that the alcohol companies fund. We do not accept the science around sugared beverages from the soda industry. And we should not accept that this scientific research is funded by an entity that has a vested financial interest in the outcome.
And that is why it is so critically important that the OpenAI Foundation actually be independent, that it have an independent board, that it can deploy its resources independently, that the research that it is funding is independent.
Do you still think that we’re maybe better off that OpenAI says that they want to give billions away to better society — than say Anthropic, Google, maybe having some pledges to give money away, but not nearly as much?
Well, Google has a corporate foundation. It’s called Google.org. And I expect in this structure with the tension and the conflict of interest that the OpenAI Foundation has, that it will operate much more like Google.org, which is essentially an arm of the marketing department, a corporate social responsibility program that gives money to innocuous groups — but will never do anything that undercuts Google’s priorities.
I think if you read between the lines of open AI’s press release, the work they say they want to continue doing with community funding is all about convincing people about the importance and value and benefit in using AI. I mean, that’s a market building opportunity for them. That’s not actually anything that’s going to ensure that AI is developed for the benefit of humanity. And so, no, I don’t think that they’re going to operate any differently than any of the other companies’ corporate social responsibility arms. That’s essentially what they have built here.
This is the fight of our time. AI is not inevitable. The way it develops is not inevitable. And we do not have to take these companies at their word that they know best how to govern this technology. We should have bigger imaginations about what’s possible. And if anything, this should give us more energy and motivation to fix what’s broken about our democracy than to just sit back and let billionaires control our future.
Do you ever talk to Sam Altman anymore?
He doesn’t return my calls.
Well, thanks for talking to us.
2026-03-28 18:00:00
本周，加州和新墨西哥州的陪审团对美国社交媒体巨头作出了两项具有里程碑意义的裁决。在洛杉矶，陪审团裁定一家年轻女性因声称Instagram和YouTube损害了她的心理健康，向她赔偿了600万美元。而在圣达菲，陪审团则认定Meta设计的社交媒体平台对未成年人造成了伤害，并要求公司赔偿3.75亿美元。这些裁决标志着将社交媒体公司视为“新式烟草公司”的法律运动取得了突破，也代表了“儿童在线安全”倡导者的一次胜利。然而，这些裁决也引发了大量自由言论倡导者的担忧。像FIRE组织以及《理由》杂志的作者伊丽莎白·诺兰·布朗等人都认为，这些裁决更可能削弱在线言论自由，而非真正保护未成年人的心理健康。
为了更好地理解并探讨这一观点，我采访了诺兰·布朗。我们讨论了这些裁决可能如何导致更广泛的审查，社交媒体对心理健康的实际影响证据，以及在没有政府帮助的情况下，父母是否能够有效保护孩子免受网络问题的影响。
你曾写道，这些裁决是“对开放互联网和言论自由的坏兆”，这是为什么？
其中一项关键的在线言论保护措施是《联邦通信法》第230条，它规定在线平台不会因发布的内容而承担法律责任。然而，这些案件中，原告试图绕过第230条，将言论问题重新定义为“产品责任”问题。他们不是说“我们正在追究平台发布有害言论的责任”，而是说“我们正在追究平台在产品设计上的过失”。换句话说，他们关注的是社交媒体公司如何选择内容推荐算法、鼓励用户互动，以及设计无限滚动的界面。
一些原告抱怨的内容包括“无限滚动”（即用户不断下滑，页面不会停止）、推荐算法（鼓励用户观看更可能引起兴趣的内容）以及美颜滤镜。但归根结底，他们所针对的仍然是言论。例如，当人们说TikTok或YouTube“令人上瘾”时，实际上是在谈论内容：无论算法如何设计，如果内容本身不吸引人，人们也不会沉迷其中。同样，在加州的案件中，原告认为Meta允许美颜滤镜是产品设计上的过失，因为这些滤镜推广了不切实际的审美标准，导致她产生身体形象问题。然而，这种说法其实还是围绕言论展开的：使用滤镜是用户表达自我的一种方式，而提供这些工具本身就是一种言论行为。
有人可能会辩称，这些产品设计选择本质上是内容中立的。支持这些裁决的人可能会说：社交媒体公司通过推送通知、自动播放视频和无限滚动内容等方式，诱导未成年人沉迷，从而损害其心理健康。因此，我们是否可以合法限制这些功能的使用，而不影响平台允许的言论类型？
一些人可能会说：“为什么不能限制未成年人的推送通知，或者让他们在使用一定时间后被强制下线？”但要实现这样的限制，平台必须能够准确识别未成年人和成年人，这就意味着需要进行年龄验证，比如检查政府发放的身份证件或使用生物识别数据等。这将导致用户必须在上网时提交身份信息，从而增加数据泄露、黑客攻击和诈骗的风险。此外，这还会使用户的身份与他们在网络上的所有行为紧密相连，这在涉及敏感话题或政府抗议时尤其危险。匿名在线交流和组织的能力非常重要。
如果这些产品设计限制适用于所有用户，而不是仅限于未成年人，那是否能避免年龄验证的问题？例如，如果禁止所有平台发送推送通知，那就能避免年龄验证的需要。事实上，许多平台已经提供了这些功能的关闭选项。用户可以关闭自动播放，选择按时间顺序显示内容，或者调整设置以避免这些功能。如果我们说“政府应该强制要求这些选项”，那我认为这将是一个危险的滑坡。虽然表面上看，限制推送通知似乎并不影响言论自由，但其背后的逻辑却可能引发更广泛的言论管控。这种逻辑认为，只要某些人可能受到负面影响，政府就必须介入并控制产品的设计方式。然而，人们可以以各种方式使用各种产品，比如健身计划、流媒体服务、食品等，我们并不认为政府有权介入并规定这些产品如何运作以避免对所有人造成伤害。
这种态度在涉及言论的产品时尤其危险。一些怀疑者可能会认为，这种滑坡其实并不那么明显。毕竟，政府已经展示了如何在不引发广泛审查的情况下，对言论进行有针对性的、内容中立的限制。例如，自1990年以来，美国政府对儿童节目中的广告数量和广告内容与节目内容的区分进行了限制。这些措施可能比禁止社交媒体上的自动播放视频对言论自由的影响更大，但《1990年儿童电视法》并未导致对第一修正案权利的重大限制。
我认为，是否对未成年人进行言论限制与是否对成年人进行限制之间的区别非常关键。我所提到的限制适用于所有人，而不仅仅是未成年人。此外，我对这些案件中原告提出的具体因果关系指控持怀疑态度，特别是他们声称社交媒体直接导致了他们的心理健康问题。然而，许多社会心理学家，如乔纳森·海德特，认为这些平台对儿童的心理健康有腐蚀性影响。那么，为什么我认为这些指控被夸大了？
在加州的案件中，这位年轻女性声称，因为她从小就在社交媒体上，所以导致了心理健康问题。但有大量证词表明，她的生活中还有许多其他问题，比如家庭暴力和与父母、学校的关系紧张。因此，将她的心理问题归因于社交媒体，而非这些已知的有害生活压力，我认为是站不住脚的。此外，在关于社交媒体对心理健康影响的更广泛研究中，也经常出现这种相关性：抑郁症状与大量使用社交媒体之间存在关联，因为那些在家庭和学校中遇到困难、社交孤立的人往往比处境较好的人更频繁地使用社交媒体。
你对社交媒体监管的看法是否很大程度上依赖于对这些平台实际危害的怀疑？
如果我们获得了确凿的证据，证明这些平台确实对未成年人造成了重大影响，比如自动播放和美颜滤镜显著恶化了他们的心理健康，你会支持对这些功能进行法律限制吗？还是说，无论证据如何，第一修正案的考虑都会优先于公共健康问题？
证据的强度对于指导个人、家长、社区和学校决策非常重要。然而，即使我们知道美颜滤镜对某些人造成了伤害，政府也不应因此禁止它们，因为它们是言论表达的工具。事实上，很多用户并不会受到这些功能的负面影响。有很多事物会对某些人造成伤害，但对其他人却很有用。因此，我认为不能因为存在不当使用就对所有人都进行禁止。将社交媒体称为“成瘾”可能并不恰当，因为这种说法暗示它对所有人都是有害的，而事实并非如此。很多人使用社交媒体的方式是健康的，就像很多人可以适量饮酒而不受伤害，或者吃一袋薯片而不至于暴饮暴食一样。我认为社交媒体也是如此，它对某些人（尤其是已有心理问题的人）可能有害，但并不是一种所有人都会受到伤害的“毒药”。我认为这种观点赋予了智能手机一种近乎神秘的属性。
当然，也有一些案例中，我们选择对某些物质或行为进行严格监管，不是因为它们对所有人有害，而是因为它们对某些问题用户造成了巨大伤害。例如，赌博和酒精就是这样的例子。即使对于阿片类药物，也有很多人只是偶尔使用而不会上瘾，但有些人却因此成瘾甚至死亡。因此，我们对阿片类药物的使用进行了严格限制。因此，我认为问题的关键不在于社交媒体是否对所有人有害，而在于它是否对某些问题用户造成了真正的严重伤害。
确实，有一些人持这种观点，但也有其他人将社交媒体描述为一种人们无法抗拒的力量。不过，我认为我们并没有足够的证据证明社交媒体的危害性与成瘾物质相当。事实上，相关研究结果是混杂的。一些研究表明，适度使用智能手机反而与更好的心理健康结果相关。
This week, juries in California and New Mexico dealt a pair of landmark verdicts against America’s social media giants.
In Los Angeles, jurors awarded $6 million to a young woman who alleged that Instagram and YouTube had damaged her mental health. A day earlier, a jury in Santa Fe ruled that Meta had designed its social media platforms in a manner that harmed minors — and ordered the company to pay $375 million in recompense.
These decisions constituted a breakthrough for a legal movement that sees social media companies as the new “Big Tobacco” — an industry that knowingly peddles harmful and addictive products. And it was a triumph for advocates of “child online safety,” who believe that social media is corrosive to minors’ psychological well-being. With thousands of similar lawsuits pending, the California and New Mexico verdicts could prove to be transformative precedents.
Yet the decisions have also raised alarm bells for many free speech advocates. To organizations like FIRE — and civil libertarian writers like Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown — these decisions will do more to undermine free expression online than to safeguard young people’s mental well-being.
To better understand — and interrogate — this perspective, I spoke with Nolan Brown. We discussed how the recent verdicts could open the door to broader censorship, the evidence for social media’s psychological harms, and whether parents can sufficiently protect their kids from problematic internet use without the government’s help. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and concision.
You’ve written that these verdicts are “a very bad omen for the open internet and free speech.” How so?
One key protection for online speech is Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act, which prevents online platforms from being held liable for speech they host but don’t create.
What we’re seeing in these cases is an attempt to get around Section 230 by recharacterizing speech issues as “product liability” issues. Instead of saying, “We’re going after platforms for hosting harmful speech,” the plaintiffs are saying, “We’re going after them for negligent product design.”
In other words, the choices that social media companies make about how to curate their feeds or encourage engagement.
Right. Some of the things they complained about were “endless scroll” (where you keep going down and the feed doesn’t stop at the end of a page), recommendation algorithms that promote content that a user is more likely to engage with, and beauty filters.
But ultimately, if you look at what they’re actually going after, it comes down to speech. When you talk about TikTok or YouTube being so engaging that it’s “addictive,” you’re talking about content: No matter how TikTok’s algorithm is designed, it wouldn’t be compelling to people if the content wasn’t compelling.
Similarly, in the California case, the plaintiff argued that Meta allowing beauty filters on images was a negligent product design, since they promote unrealistic beauty standards, which caused her to develop body image issues.
But that really just comes back to speech: The choice to use a filter is something that individual users do to express themselves. Providing those tools for users is a form of speech.
But aren’t many of these product design choices content-neutral? A defender of these verdicts might argue: Social media companies are manipulating minors into compulsively using their platforms, in a manner that’s bad for their mental health. And they’re doing this, in part, through push notifications, autoplaying videos, and endlessly scrolling feeds. So, why can’t we legally restrict their use of those features — without constraining the kinds of speech they’re allowed to platform?
Some people will say, “Why don’t we limit notifications — or kick people off after an hour — if they’re minors?” But in order to implement any set of rules or product design choices just for young people, these platforms would need to have a foolproof way of knowing who is a minor and who is an adult.
And that means age verification procedures, where they’re either checking everyone’s government-issued ID, or they’re using biometric data — or something else that requires everyone to submit identification before they can speak anywhere on the internet.
And that creates a lot of problems. It makes people’s data more vulnerable to identity theft, hackers, and scammers. It also means that your identity is tied to everything you do online. And that can be dangerous, especially for people who are talking about sensitive issues or protesting the government. The ability to speak and organize online anonymously is very important.
What if the product design restrictions applied to adults and minors alike? If we barred social media companies from issuing push notifications for everyone, that would avoid the age verification issue, right?
Many platforms give people the tools to do these things already. You can turn autoplay off. You can have a chronological feed. You can tailor your settings so that you don’t have these features.
If we’re saying, “Why can’t the government mandate these options?” I think that’s a very slippery slope. You might think, “Okay, who cares about push notifications? Why can’t the government just mandate that they not do push notifications?” But the rationale for that gets us into much broader territory.
It’s effectively saying: Since some people will have a problem with this, the government must micromanage the way that the product is made. Yet people can use all sorts of products in a problematic way: Fitness regimes, streaming services, food. And we’re not saying like, okay, the government gets to step in and tell these companies exactly how to do business in the way that would be least harmful to people. And that attitude is particularly dangerous when we’re talking about products involving speech.
A skeptic might argue that the slope here isn’t actually that slippery. After all, the government has already shown that it can enact targeted, content-neutral restrictions on speech without triggering a cascade of censorship.
For example, since 1990, there have been limits on the amount of advertising that can air during children’s programming in a given hour — and also a requirement that ads and content be clearly separated. Those measures are arguably more intrusive on speech than, say, banning autoplay of videos on a social media platform. And yet, the Children’s Television Act of 1990 didn’t lead to any really sweeping constraints on First Amendment rights.
I just think it makes a big difference if you’re talking about restricting speech for minors and restricting it for adults. And what you were just mentioning were restrictions that would apply to everybody.
Beyond the First Amendment issues, you’ve expressed some skepticism about the specific causal claims made by plaintiffs in these cases: Specifically, that social media caused their mental health difficulties. Yet many social psychologists — most prominently Jonathan Haidt — have argued that these platforms are corrosive to children’s psychological being. So, why do you think the allegations here are overstated?
In the California case specifically, this young woman is alleging that, because she was on social media since she was very young, she developed mental health issues. But there was a lot of testimony showing that there were many other things going wrong in her life. She was exposed to domestic violence. She had troubles with her parents, troubles at school.
So the idea that social media directly caused her difficulties — rather than these life stressors that are well-known to cause harm — I think that’s kind of suspect.
And I think you see this problem in the broader research on social media’s mental health impacts. There’s often a correlation between depressive symptoms and heavy social media use because people who are having a difficult time at home and at school — people who are socially isolated — tend to use social media more than people in better circumstances.
How much do your views on the regulation of social media hinge on skepticism about the actual harms of these platforms? If we acquired evidence that there really were major impacts here — that autoplay and beauty filters were dramatically worsening kids’ mental health — would you support legal restrictions on these features? Or would First Amendment considerations override public health concerns, irrespective of the evidence?
The strength of the evidence is important for guiding the decision-making of individuals, parents, families, communities, and school districts. But even if we knew that beauty filters caused a lot of harm, the government still would not be justified in banning them, since they are avenues for speech. Plenty of people are not harmed by them.
There are so many things that harm some people, but that are useful to others. And I don’t think the existence of problematic use justifies banning those things for everyone.
I think talk of social media “addiction” can be unhelpful on this front. That language suggests that this is something that’s automatically harmful for everyone. And that just isn’t the case. Plenty of people use social media in a healthy way, in the same way that countless people can drink alcohol without it harming them, or eat a bag of chips without bingeing on them.
I think it’s the same way with social media. This is a technology that can harm some people, particularly those who already have psychological issues.
But it isn’t this addictive substance or a poison where you can’t even be exposed to it, or else. I think that view imbues smartphones with an almost mystical quality.
There are many cases, though, where we choose to heavily regulate a substance or practice — not because it harms everyone who engages with it — but rather, because it imposes massive harms on a minority of problem users. Gambling and alcohol are two examples. But even with opioids, many people can pop some pills and never develop a dependency. Yet some end up addicted and dying of overdoses. And for that reason, we heavily restrict access to opioids.
So, I feel like the question here might be less about whether social media is bad for everyone than whether it has truly large harms for problem users.
I think there are people who talk about it the way you do. But others describe social media as if it’s something that people are powerless against. But yes, I don’t think we have strong evidence that this is harmful in the way that addictive substances are. In fact, I think the evidence is really mixed. Some studies suggest that moderate smartphone use is actually correlated with better mental health outcomes.
You argue that, instead of seeking government restrictions on social media, parents should exercise more responsibility over their kids’ use of smartphones and apps.
Many parents argue that their capacity to monitor their children’s social media use is really limited and that they lack the tools to protect their kids from the harmful effects of these platforms. What would you say to them?
I think this is straightforward with very young children. Like, why is a 6-year-old having unfettered alone time on a digital device? In the California case, the plaintiff was using social media as a very young child. And at that age, parents definitely have control over what their kids do and see online; you can control whether your kid has access to a smartphone. With adolescents, there are areas where tech companies are working with parents. We’ve seen more parental controls being introduced in recent years. We’ve seen Meta roll out specific accounts for minors that have some restrictions on them. We’ve seen things like the introduction of phones that allow basic texting but not certain apps. So, I think private solutions are possible here. I think we can address people’s legitimate concerns without having the government infringe on free expression.
2026-03-28 02:45:00
2025年10月21日，副总统JD·万斯抵达以色列特拉维夫本古里安机场时，与美国驻以色列大使迈克·哈克比以及以色列驻美大使耶希埃尔·利特进行了会面。| Nathan Howard/Getty Images
在联合美国与以色列对伊朗的战争开始近一个月后，你可能已经听到了关于美国右翼内部似乎爆发的“内战”的消息。尽管民调显示特朗普的“MAGA”基础群体对其支持率依然稳定，但这场战争正在撕裂“MAGA”阵营，使一些不满的MAGA影响者与坚定支持特朗普和以色列的忠诚支持者之间产生对立。
这种分歧的根源早在美国和以色列发动首次打击之前就已显现。当时，Tucker Carlson在自己的播客中采访了美国驻以色列大使Mike Huckabee，后者是坚定的亲以色列活动家。Huckabee认为，作为基督教锡安主义者，他相信《圣经》表明上帝不仅承诺了以色列，还承诺了中东的大部分地区给犹太人。而Carlson则认为这并不是现代国家的合理依据，并指责以色列将美国拖入与伊朗的战争。
关键要点：
特朗普政治联盟中的新兴分歧 直到最近，美国宗教右翼的故事主要围绕着在世俗化世界中捍卫传统价值观的合作展开。这一政治努力促成了共和党内部不同教派之间的联盟：福音派、天主教徒、摩门教徒和正统犹太教徒在诸如同性婚姻、堕胎、教育和宗教异议者保护等问题上团结一致。在布什时期，几乎整个共和党都围绕对抗伊斯兰恐怖主义团结一致，而以色列被视为主要盟友。但近年来，这种关系开始受到质疑。
特朗普的享乐主义个人风格扩大了党派的包容性，吸引了更多世俗选民，他们有着不同的兴趣。他对伊拉克战争的批评以及“美国优先”的口号，帮助催生了右翼中公开批评美国海外介入，包括支持以色列的声音。此外，他削弱了右翼极端言论的限制，使得一些公开反犹的言论得以传播，从而加剧了联盟内部的紧张关系。
这些分歧在最近几周逐渐显现，而伊朗战争很可能会成为引发更多激烈讨论的催化剂。典型例子是Carrie Prejean Boller，一位前模特和选美比赛选手，去年皈依天主教。她曾担任白宫宗教自由委员会成员，但几周前因批评以色列政府对加沙的处理方式、对以色列支持不足以及捍卫她认为“以色列并非圣经预言中唯一实现的民族”的天主教信仰而被解职。Prejean Boller的离职成为右翼基督教思想家和影响者之间紧张关系的导火索，许多原本就对以色列持批评态度的人士和保守派评论员因此卷入争论。
Prejean Boller在一封写给特朗普的公开信中表示，特朗普在推动这场战争并解雇她时，背叛了那些加入其政治联盟并相信其“美国优先”承诺的天主教徒。她写道：“大多数投票支持你的人，都感觉和你一样。你为何背叛我们？”
她的反以色列言论在委员会会议和网络上引发了许多右翼知名人士的谴责，包括评论员Mark Levin、德克萨斯副州长Dan Patrick（委员会主席）、基督教讽刺媒体Babylon Bee的作者Seth Dillon，以及与Ben Shapiro的Daily Wire网络相关的评论员。许多批评者认为她已经越界，陷入反犹太主义，而她则予以否认。她的一些言论聚焦于犹太人“钉死耶稣”的角色，并支持Candace Owens，后者在阴谋论中日益贬低犹太人。
然而，她也获得了一些新兴的、自称天主教的有影响力人物的支持，包括Owens、Megyn Kelly和反犹太主义播客主持人Nick Fuentes，以及一些批评以色列的保守派天主教博客作者和作家。
Carlson，一位成长于圣公会的评论员，邀请Prejean Boller上他的节目，谈论她被解雇一事。这场争论具有神学层面的成分。在右翼，以Huckabee和一些非宗派教会为代表的福音派基督徒普遍持有“基督教锡安主义”观点，即支持现代以色列作为圣经预言中的“以色列”，并认为这是耶稣基督回归和“被提”（Rapture）的先决条件。而Carlson、Prejean Boller以及其他批评以色列的MAGA天主教徒和福音派基督徒则不认同这一观点，他们区分现代以色列与圣经中的“以色列”。
一些传统的、MAGA倾向的天主教徒还推动了一种更为激进、尽管具有历史传统的观点，即基督徒是“新的以色列”，上帝与基督徒之间形成了取代旧约中与犹太人关系的新约。这种观点在神学上被称为“取代主义”（supersessionism），虽然在梵二会议之前是天主教的普遍观点，但也被认为助长了反犹太主义，恶化了犹太人与基督徒之间的关系。值得注意的是，现代教会并不支持这种观点。梵二会议澄清了教会不将犹太人视为“被上帝拒绝或诅咒”的群体，谴责反犹太主义为罪行，并确认犹太人与上帝之间有独特的联系，与天主教会的角色无关。
除了神学争论，这场对话还触及了一些痛苦的历史，这可能促使教会领导层采取更积极的行动。教会与反犹太主义有着长期且不幸的关系，直到20世纪30年代开始通过一代皈依者努力修复。这一努力在1965年梵二会议后达到顶峰，当时发布了《Nostra Aetate》文件，否定了犹太人因“钉死耶稣”而被上帝拒绝的观点。
天主教神学家和作家Massimo Faggioli，来自都柏林洛约拉学院的教会学教授，告诉我，这些分歧正在重新打开旧伤，迫使教会重新审视其与现代以色列的关系。尽管教皇们一直呼吁中东的两国解决方案，坚持反战立场，并试图在“预定论”（dispensationalism）和“取代主义”之间保持中间路线，但这些争论可能让教会重新面对其在现代以色列问题上的模糊立场。
Faggioli表示，他担心这些分歧可能重新唤起天主教会在梵二会议后努力摆脱的反犹太主义。他说：“那些挑战美国保守派锡安主义正统的人，可能看起来像那些想要帮助中东某些政策受害者的人，但他们在无意中可能重新唤起我们曾努力击败的反犹太主义怪物。”
接下来的发展可能取决于这场战争的走向。但如果战争持续并影响中期选举中的共和党联盟，这些紧张关系很可能会加剧。目前尚不清楚这些争论有多少仍停留在精英层面的神学讨论中，有多少会渗透到普通信徒中。但我们可以预见，这些派系斗争可能在2028年总统初选中进一步显现，宗教和信仰将成为冲突的焦点。而目前，亲以色列的共识在右翼看来比以往更加脆弱。
Nearly a month into the joint US-Israeli war on Iran, there’s a good chance you’ve heard something about the apparent civil war on the right over the conflict. Though polling shows steady support for President Donald Trump from his MAGA base, the war has been tearing apart the MAGAsphere, pitting disenchanted MAGA influencers against fervent pro-Trump and pro-Israel loyalists.
The seeds of this split were apparent even before the US and Israel launched their first strikes, when Tucker Carlson, of the America First, Israel-skeptical, anti-interventionist wing of the party, interviewed Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel and fervent pro-Israel activist, on Carlson’s podcast last month. Huckabee argued that, as a Christian Zionist, he believed the Bible showed that God had promised not just Israel, but large portions of the Middle East, to the Jewish people. Carlson argued it wasn’t a valid basis for a modern state, and accused Israel of dragging the US into war with Iran.
As their conversation suggested, there’s a religious dimension to this emerging rift on the right:
Huckabee is an evangelical Christian, a group that is overwhelmingly pro-Israel. Carlson, like many of the biggest critics of both the US relationship with Israel and the Iran war, is not.
Since their interview, this divide has exploded into public view as a political, theological, and policy argument across multiple fronts that’s drawn in everyone from likely 2028 presidential candidates, to popular influencers, to top religious leaders. The most explosive fights have centered on the relationship between conservative Catholics and the GOP’s dominant evangelical base.
How these play out will have implications not just for inter-religious understanding in the US, but for the future of the Republican Party, and by extension American politics.
Until recently, the story of the religious right had largely been about increasing cooperation to defend traditional values in a secularizing world. This political effort created interdenominational alliances within the Republican Party: evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, and Orthodox Jews found each other allied on issues like gay marriage, abortion, education, and protections for religious dissenters. In the Bush years, almost the entire GOP was united around confronting Islamic terrorism, an issue where Israel was seen as a leading ally.
But in recent years, this relationship has come into question. Trump’s hedonistic personal style expanded the party tent to more secular voters with their own divergent interests. His criticism of the Iraq War and embrace of an “America First” message helped build up voices on the right who were openly critical of US entanglements abroad, including support for Israel. And his removal of guardrails around extremist speech on the right helped pave the way for more openly antisemitic figures, which has created new tensions within the coalition.
All of these issues have been coming to a head in recent weeks, and the Iran war is likely to be a catalyst for even more tough discussions.
Emblematic of this crack-up is the case of Carrie Prejean Boller, a former model and beauty pageant contestant who converted to Catholicism last year. She sat on the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission until a few weeks ago, when, she claims, she was booted for criticizing the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, for not being supportive enough of Israel, and for defending her “deeply held” Catholic beliefs that Israel is not a unique nation that fulfills Biblical prophecies.
Prejean Boller’s ouster ended up an inciting event that blew open underlying tensions among right-wing Christian thinkers and influencers — many of whom already are critical of Israel and involved in feuds with other conservative commentators and influencers.
In an open letter to Trump, Prejean Boller argued that Trump, in advancing this war and removing her from the commission, was betraying Catholics who joined his political coalition and believed in his America First pledges. “Most Catholics who voted for you feel the exact same way. Why have you betrayed us?” she wrote.
Those anti-Israel views, which Prejean Boller shared at commission meetings and online, sparked condemnation from many familiar voices within the right: the commentator Mark Levin, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs the commission, the writer Seth Dillon of the Christian satirical outlet Babylon Bee, and commentators aligned with Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire network. Many of her critics argued she had crossed the line into antisemitism, which she denied, by making comments focusing on Jews’ role in crucifying Jesus and defending Candace Owens, a popular influencer who has increasingly denigrated Jews in conspiratorial terms.
But she also drew support from an emerging set of influential, self-described Catholic voices: controversial figures like Owens, Megyn Kelly, and antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes; as well as Israel-critical, conservative Catholic bloggers and writers. Carlson, who was raised Episcopalian, brought Prejean Boller onto his show to talk about her removal from the religious liberty commission.
There is a theological component to this dispute. The predominant view on the right, of evangelical Protestants like Huckabee and some nondenominational churches, is a form of “Christian Zionism” rooted in “dispensationalism”: the belief in supporting the modern state of Israel as the biblically prophesied “Israel,” and a prerequisite for the final period of human history in which Jesus Christ returns and the Rapture happens.
Carlson, Prejean Boller, and other Israel-critical MAGA Catholics and Protestant Christians do not believe this, and hold views that distinguish between the modern state of Israel and the spiritual “Israel” of the Bible. Some traditionalist and MAGA Catholics have also pushed a more radical, though historic, interpretation of Christians being the “new Israel,” of God forming a new covenant with a new chosen people that “supercedes” or replaces God’s relationship with the Jewish people from the Old Testament.
In theological terms, this view is called “supersessionism” — and though it was the common view of Catholics up until the 20th century, it has also been blamed for contributing to antisemitism and worsening relationships between Jewish and Christian peoples. Notably, supersessionism is not the view of the modern Church. The Second Vatican Council clarified that the Church does not blame Jewish people for the death of Christ, condemned antisemitism as a sin, and settled that the Jewish people do have a unique relationship with God, separate from the Catholic Church’s role.
But there’s also a raw politics element to the fight — especially surrounding the next presidential election and which figures will lead the party after Trump. Which is how the Prejean Boller story entered political overdrive when a leading potential contender weighed in.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Southern Baptist whose father is an evangelical preacher, has been picking fights for months with the emerging wing of Israel critics on the right — including Carlson — and delivering speeches warning Republican donors and leaders to step in.
So naturally, he wanted to take a stance on the Prejean Boller dispute. In this case, he did it by sharing an essay from an anonymous MAGA influencer who goes by “Insurrection Barbie” on X. “READ every word of this. It’s the best & most comprehensive explanation of what we’re fighting,” Cruz wrote.
The author, like Cruz, complained that the new right was attacking the evangelical pro-Israel consensus. But the deeper fear it raised was “who controls the ideological and theological DNA of the Republican Party’s base.” “Insurrection Barbie” warned of a conspiracy by a small number of elite “Catholic integralists” and traditionalist Catholics to take over the party by gaining control of its institutions, undermining evangelical theology, and convincing rank-and-file Trump voters to follow along. If nothing was done, the author warned, the party’s activist base would soon become “a coalition dominated by ethnically and religiously defined Catholic and Orthodox nationalism,” with evangelicals relegated to junior status.
Among the accused: Fuentes, Owens, MAGA icon Steve Bannon (“He controls the media infrastructure”), and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts (a “Cowboy Catholic”). But the most important name, who he called “the wild card in this drama” was JD Vance, a conservative Catholic with close ties to the anti-Israel right who has tried to bridge the gap between the party’s warring factions. The author was still hopeful Vance might side with the pro-Israel evangelicals.
Cruz’s decision to share the post sparked immediate backlash from conservative and MAGA Catholic commentators and activists who called it an “anti-Catholic screed,” and “ugly, archaic anti-Catholic resentment” that “risks burning the Trump coalition down.”
But it also spoke to the power battles looming over the party in the immediate post-Trump era. Cruz, Carlson, and Vance have all widely been discussed as presidential candidates in 2028 or beyond. Bannon has also been reportedly weighing a run. Another major potential contender not mentioned in the essay, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is a Catholic pro-Israel hawk with a mixed religious background.
“There’s no doubt that Ted Cruz and the author are using that article to try and subtly discredit the vice president, a notable Catholic, who Cruz probably wants to challenge for the 2028 Presidential nomination,” Gabe Guidarini, the chair of the Ohio College Republican Federation and a former president of the College Republicans of America, told me. “Cruz knows Trump’s victory over him in 2016 was driven by Catholics, and he probably holds some resentment over it.”
Guidarini was among those critical of Cruz’s post. But he also emphasized that, for now, these seem to be elite-level and online feuds not materializing on the ground as they are on social media. “You get some key online players who align a certain way based on niche perceptions of group interest,” Guidarini said. “But it bubbles to the surface sometimes in election [years].”
But the Republican Party isn’t the only institution grappling with this issue. These differing views over what “Israel” means in theological terms have now, in turn, sparked an internal Catholic debate, centered on how to handle rising antisemitism in the US while being critical of Israel.
Since Prejean Boller came to my attention in early February, I’ve been fascinated by her willingness to speak for all Catholics (again, she converted last year), to speak authoritatively about what the Catholic Church teaches, and, more recently, to confront leading conservative Catholic prelates for not supporting her in her fight against the White House commission, and its evangelical leaders. The Catholic Church is politically diverse, and even among its right-leaning adherents there is a wide mix of perspectives, including plenty of Catholic Republicans with strong pro-Israel views, or who support confronting Iran.
In the long run, these tensions will likely escalate if the war drags out and ends up hurting the Republican coalition in midterm elections.
Nor has her claim to represent Catholics writ large gone unnoticed. What has been most surprising, to me and to Catholic thinkers I’ve spoken with, is how much turmoil her spat, and some MAGA Catholics’ pushing of supersessionism, is beginning to cause within the Catholic Church.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the leadership body of the church in the US, weighed in this month, with a video message condemning antisemitism and reasserting the Church’s teachings on religious liberty. Notably, it was delivered by a leading traditionalist voice in the American clergy — the Archbishop of Portland, Oregon, Alexander Sample. His message was echoed, along with more pointed rebukes of Prejean Boller and her wing of conservative Catholics, by two other highly respected Catholic leaders online: Bishop Robert Barron and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, themselves no political progressives.
Prejean Boller, some traditionalist Catholics (unhappy with the Church’s more progressive tilt since Vatican II), and zealous young converts are forcing American church leaders to reckon with this challenge, the Catholic theologian and author Massimo Faggioli, a professor in ecclesiology at the Loyola Institute at Trinity College Dublin, told me.
“Both those who are supporting the alliance between Trump and Israel, and those who say, ‘I’m a Catholic, and therefore I have to be against Zionism’ are [pushing] very dangerously formulated frameworks,” he told me. “These people are being really clumsy…it’s incredibly inflammatory and it ignores the incredible care with which the Catholic Church has talked about these issues so far.”
In addition to the theological debate, this conversation also touches on some painful history that may be encouraging leaders to step in more aggressively. The Church has a long and unfortunate relationship with antisemitism that took decades to repair through the help of a generation of converts beginning in the 1930s. That quest to vanquish antisemitism reached its zenith after Vatican II in 1965 with the publication of Nostra Aetate, a church document that rejected the view of Jewish people as “rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”
Faggioli told me that, in turn, these rifts on the American right are reopening old wounds and forcing the Church to confront the ambiguity with which it has approached its relationship with modern Israel, where successive popes have called for a two-state solution, hold to an anti-war doctrine, and have pursued a middle way between dispensationalism and supersessionism, but try not to make too news.
“There’s something new happening now. I’m terrified by the risk that this is bringing back the monster of anti-Judaism on which the Catholic Church tried very hard to liberate itself from,” Faggioli told me. “These so-called heroes that are challenging the Zionist orthodoxy of American conservatives — they might look like those who want to help the victims of certain policies in the Middle East, but at the real risk of bringing back one of the worst things that we thought we had defeated.”
What comes immediately next may depend on how this war proceeds. But in the long run, these tensions will likely escalate if the war drags out and ends up hurting the Republican coalition in midterm elections. For now, it’s unclear how much of this remains an elite intellectual debate and how much it may filter its way down to the faithful.
But we may also only be seeing an initial preview right now of factional fights that will end up playing out in the 2028 presidential primaries, with religion and belief as a point of conflict. The field of likely contenders is religious and politically at the center of these fights. And the pro-Israel consensus on the right looks more fragile than ever.