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As the mom to a lively nine-year-old autistic boy, I know how following a predictable routine can make or break our day. When we move through our tasks and chores smoothly, we both feel more confident. Other days it feels like getting my son to walk 10 feet to the car will break me. I want him to put on his shoes, he wants to roll on the floor. I want to go to school, he wants to play one more game on his Pop It—as though we haven’t already done this 900 times.

As we head back to school, here’s what I’m doing to save my sanity.

Routines Help Us All Thrive

Back-to-school season can be especially hard. Summer routines are changing. There are new teachers and after-school activities. Our kids may be waking up earlier or doing homework for the first time. “Kids rely on structure to regulate their emotions and feel safe. When a child knows what’s coming next, they’re calmer and more confident,” says Nathalie Stratton, the co-founder of the digital calendar Hearth Display. And checking the schedule helps me remember that I set an intention, we’re on track, and even though life feels chaotic in the moment, when I step back, I can see we are making progress and meeting our goals. On rushed mornings, that’s almost as valuable as the schedule itself.

I’m not naturally drawn to keeping a strict schedule. I don’t time block my calendar, and I stopped using a planner years ago. But I still have grown-up responsibilities, like helping my son get ready for school, and it’s easy for both of us to spiral when our routine is disrupted. So I’ve found it helpful to surrender to the idea of following a schedule. As Stratton told me, “You’re already running a family calendar. It just lives in your head. The first step is getting it out.”

Transitions are especially hard for my son, but most young kids need help shifting from what they want to be doing to whatever comes next. Speech-language pathologist Lauren Salles Gumpert, says, “Kids move gradually from concrete to abstract thinking during elementary school, which explains why time is so difficult to grasp.” While there are no magic buttons or perfect solutions, using simple visual cues has made it easier for me and my son to follow the daily routine, whether it’s during the chaos of summer or a big transition like the first week back at school.

A visual schedule can reduce the back and forth we all struggle with. Parent coach Shelley Miller uses visual schedules to “break down complicated, multi-step routines for children, like in the morning when kids have to get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, and pack a backpack.” And, she adds, “Visual schedules don’t solve problems that stem from deeper stressors like sensory overwhelm. But they can be an amazing tool that brings stability and structure to the family routines.”

How I Started Creating Schedules For My Kid

I’ve been using the Lil Planner app this summer, which tells us what’s up next on the schedule. For example, this summer my goal was to read and tidy up with my son before iPad time. Opening an app and saying, “The schedule says we need to read” lands differently than me unexpectedly declaring that we need to read. Instead of “Surprise! It’s time to do a hard thing,” it became “Let’s follow the schedule.”

Maybe when my son is older we’ll make the schedule together, but for now he seems to see the schedule more as a guide than as the trigger for a power struggle. Allie Klein, the co-founder of the personalized Charmspring boards notes, “Once a schedule’s in place, it saves countless reminders, negotiations, and repeated directions, because children have a visual tool they can rely on instead of needing a parent to tell them what comes next.” When less energy is directed to predicting what will come next, more energy can be directed to getting ready and following the rules. That feels good for everyone.

I find it helpful to check in regularly and see when the schedule is being used, if it reflects reality, and how it’s being received. I make changes as needed. Stratton says, “Give yourself permission to adjust. Kids can change so much in just three months. A schedule that worked in spring might not fit who they are in September. Treat it like a living document, not a contract.” I don’t update our schedule every day, but I do check in each night to see if it makes sense for the next day. Miller recommends trying a few options and setting up a version a couple weeks before school starts to ease the adjustment.

Back-To-School Doesn’t Have to Feel Like A Daily Emergency

Our current schedule lives on my phone. I open the Lil Planner app when I need to give my son a quick overview of the day. We look at it together throughout the day, and my son taps the checkmark when each task is done. I’ve also used mini schedules when there’s something out of the ordinary, like we’re going to the doctor, then home, and on to a birthday party. In that case, I might just draw something or put a couple pictures on a Velcro strip and take it with us in the car. I keep this dry-erase version on the table in my son’s room, so he can see it as he gets ready for bed. I like that I can customize it with my son’s phrasing and interests. I’ve also had my eye on these Mighty and Bright stay-on-task bracelets too. The Skylight Buddy is designed to make routines feel engaging without being distracting. The truth is that the best visual schedule is the one you’ll actually use. It doesn’t have to be beautiful—it just has to make tomorrow morning a little easier.

Start with the Messiest Part of Your Day

Miller suggests “starting with just one routine that feels chaotic or full of conflict because implementing a visual schedule takes effort at first.” I know my kid, and I know that he needs time to get used to a new schedule. If you have a kid like this, and you have time before school starts, try it out now. Salles Gumpert says, “You could even have a pretend school day where you go through what a typical school morning would look like.” Over time, you can encourage your children to begin checking the schedule on their own, building confidence and independence.

All Kids Need Extra Support During Big Transitions

I don’t expect a visual schedule to eliminate rushed mornings or prevent every argument. But if it can shift even one interaction from “Because I said so” to “Let’s see what’s next,” that feels like a win. After all, we need all the support we can get during the back-to-school season.

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Routines and visual reminders keep all of on track.

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President Trump has been impeached twice.

The first time was in 2019, after he was caught trying to extort the Ukrainian government into manufacturing “evidence” to use against Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential race.

The second time was after that race, in 2021, when he led an effort to overturn the election results on Jan. 6, culminating in a riot and assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Much of what Trump has done in his second term either meets or exceeds the threshold of his first impeachment. There is his corrupt profiteering off the presidency, his occupation of American cities with the National Guard, his use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection as a secret police, his attempts to seize the power of the purse, his abuse of the pardon power, his unlawful political retaliation against law firms and universities and his attacks on press freedom — all impeachable offenses.

No, he hasn’t done anything as singularly transgressive as Jan. 6. But in a real sense, the second Trump administration is no less than an authoritarian conspiracy against the constitutional order — a Jan. 6 by other means, including a whole-of-government effort to subvert the midterm elections and preclude any prospect for true democratic accountability.

In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton explained that impeachment covered those offenses that “are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

By that standard, the despotic and anti-republican character of Trump’s presidency is itself an impeachable offense, above and beyond any particular action.

But while there is fertile ground for a third impeachment, it is unclear whether Democrats are willing to make one happen. When asked, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, has been noncommittal, saying that Democrats have neither “ruled anything in” nor “ruled anything out” with regards to a possible impeachment.

The former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has been soft-launching a campaign for president for the last year, says that Democrats should avoid impeachment altogether. Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if Democrats should impeach Trump, he said, “No, because it’s not going anywhere, and it’s going to be a food fight, and it’s just going to be we return to the politics of fighting.” According to Axios, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois has taken a similar stance: “Don’t be impeaching anybody,” she said. “Let’s just get back to work.”

Rather than devote time to an impeachment investigation and a subsequent trial, the idea is that Democrats would pass legislation and attempt to make good on the promise of a more affordable America. But while it is important that Congress get back into the habit of legislating, it seems naïve to the point of delusion to think that Democrats would have anything like a cooperative partner in the White House. If anything, the loss of a supine Republican majority and the prospect of any accountability is quite likely to push Trump to abuse power even further. Think of it as a game of chicken, in which he’s daring the Democratic majority to try to stop him.

We can already see inklings of this. He has basically threatened, for example, a post-election escalation of the war in Iran. It is not hard to imagine a future in which, cornered by defeat, Trump lashes out in ways that only underscore his threat to American democracy.

In that world, it is foolish to take impeachment — the Constitution’s main remedy for a rogue executive — off the table, even if the odds of removal are slim to none. Even in the absence of a conviction, the impeachment process is a valuable political tool. It underscores, for the public, the simple fact that the president is unfit to serve. And an extended impeachment investigation could uncover the kind of pervasive wrongdoing, even criminality, that could lead to real accountability for other figures in the administration.

If nothing else, impeachment would show voters that Democrats were not simply blowing smoke when they accused the president of lawless behavior. It should be said as well that a serious investigation would put pressure on the Republican Party, which would either have to distance itself from Trump or, more likely, bind itself even closer to an unpopular but vengeful and vindictive president. Ahead of the next presidential election, impeachment would put Republican hopefuls between a rock and a hard place.

Impeachment might be inconvenient to Democratic leaders and it might carry some political risk, but it is simply not tenable to allow the president to run roughshod over the rule of law and the constitutional order without meaningful, constitutional pushback. As flawed as it is, impeachment is the tool we have for that particular job.

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Just one day ago Hurricane Isaias was a Category 1 hurricane. Overnight, it ballooned into a major Category 3 storm with 120-mile-per-hour winds and is set to slam into the U.S. Gulf Coast Friday evening with “life-threatening storm surge,” “devastating winds” and the potential for tornadoes, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

So how did this storm get so dangerous so quickly?

For one, Isaias’s presence alone is something of an anomaly. As Scientific American previously reported, Isaias is the first hurricane to form in the Atlantic region this season, setting a record for the latest first arrival of any hurricane since satellite monitoring began.

Meteorologists say Isaias’s late formation is largely because of the presence of El Niño, a pattern of unusually warm ocean waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean that can alter weather patterns across the planet. During El Niño years, hurricane activity in the Atlantic typically drops thanks to choppy wind conditions in the atmosphere, or increased vertical wind shear.

But when that wind shear happens to weaken, any burgeoning storm can quickly grow wherever there’s abundant warm ocean water. And there is plenty of that in the Gulf right now.

And the storm may have particularly gotten a boost from a large, deep warm-water eddy in the Gulf of Mexico, hurricane specialist Michael Lowry wrote on Substack. This blob of exceptionally warm water formed by spinning off of the Gulf’s Loop Current that is notorious for boosting hurricane strength. The eddy is giving Isaias a “second wind” as it nears landfall, Lowry wrote.

Warm ocean water fuels tropical cyclones, explains Kim Wood, an associate professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. “The warmer ocean waters are, the more energy is available, especially if those waters are warm through a deep layer,” Wood says. As a storm’s wind pushes the ocean’s surface water, water deeper down swells up to replace it, they add. If that water is warm—as it would be in this eddy—it can serve as “a longer-lasting energy source” for the storm.

A hurricane warning—meaning hurricane conditions are expected—is in effect for parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, with wind, rain and flooding risks expected throughout the wider Gulf Coast region, including in Louisiana and Georgia, and well inland, NOAA predicts. Isaias isn’t expected to weaken until after it makes landfall.

Gulf Coasters in Isaias’s path should look out for local guidance on how to prepare for the storm’s arrival, including any potential evacuation orders, according to NOAA.

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We asked experts to reassure us about the loyalties of the internet’s favorite animal.

Occasionally, I’ll ask my cat Cheddar a question, particularly when he’s buried himself deep into the crevice between my neck and pillow while on the bed: “I love you, do you love me?” Cheddar will typically respond as only a cat can: either by remaining perfectly still—the sole sign of life his diesel-truck purring—or by ramming his head into mine, often making sure to rub his cheek all over my face, too.

For me, that’s more than a satisfactory response. Many people, including animal behavioral experts, say that headbutting (also called bunting) can be a sign of a cat showing trust and affection toward you. Bunting and cheek-rubbing also allows them to leave their scent on you, which can be used to communicate ownership or familiarity.

Cheddar has been a part of my life for almost a decade now. My friend found him abandoned and worm-ridden inside a carrier at a park in Queens, and I offered to take him to my local vet for a checkup. Over the course of the lengthy subway ride back to Brooklyn, his constant pitiful meowing melted my heart, and he would end the day at my apartment, which he’s called home ever since. He was only a few months old at the time and scared of anything he came across, myself very much included. These days, he’s still afraid of a lot of things, but not so much me. People familiar with cats might say that Cheddar chose me to be his person, and I have never regretted accepting the honor.

Still, cats are not people. And as someone who routinely reports on the intricacies of animal behavior, I try to be careful about over-anthropomorphizing Cheddar and other animals. To be clear, I’m not saying that cats don’t have complex cognitive processes or social behaviors. If anything, recent research shows that we’ve been underestimating just how capable many non-human animals are at such things. It’s more that humans are very good at wrongly assuming that other animals see or navigate the world the exact same way we do.

I don’t doubt that I mean something to Cheddar, nor do I doubt that many cats share a unique bond with their owners. But I have always wondered how that something differs from the something we feel toward cats. So for this Giz Asks, I reached out to feline behavior experts, both housecat and wild, to explore the nuances of the millennia-old relationship that modern-day humans have forged with the domestic cat (Felis catus). The following responses may have been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.

From a scientific perspective we don’t use the term “love” since it’s subjective and means different things to different people, but in animals we study the strength of the human-animal bond through things like affiliative interactions (e.g., rubbing), proximity seeking (e.g., time spent in close contact), social preference, vocal communication, and physiological responses, including hormone changes such as oxytocin release.

For example, research suggests that high oxytocin release can occur during cat-owner interactions, particularly in cats categorized as having a “secure attachment style” based on their behavior during a cat-owner separation and reunion test. Oxytocin release is involved in social bonding and affiliation across a variety of species, including humans, and similar oxytocin responses have been observed during positive social interactions between parents and their kids. So we have evidence that cats can form meaningful social relationships with people. That doesn’t necessarily allow us to say that a cat experiences “love” in the same way a human does, but an animal’s emotional experience doesn’t have to be identical to ours for the relationship to be meaningful.

One thing I think is particularly important when we’re talking about cats is individual variation in social behavior. Cats differ widely in how social they are, both towards people and other cats. Genetics, early socialization, previous experiences, management, and the living environment, as well as the behavior of the humans and animals they live with, can all influence these relationships. So there isn’t one single way that a strong cat-human bond should look.

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Cheddar “Chiz” Cara in one of his usual locations: on top of his owner’s body. © Ed Cara

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The stakes in November’s midterms aren’t merely about who will hold power over the next two years. Some of this year’s elections will also determine who oversees the presidential election in 2028.

The races with perhaps the greatest significance for election security two years from now are contests for governor — and in more than one battleground state, Republicans have nominated candidates who’ve expressed skepticism about, or who have outright denied, the results of the 2020 presidential election.

These states include Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and my home state, Wisconsin.

It would be bad enough for an election-denying Republican to lead one of those states. What’s worse, a G.O.P. victory in one of those governor’s races could create a potential opening for President Trump’s party to subvert the 2028 election.

Democrats are right to feel bullish about their odds in a slew of this year’s congressional races, and to lean into those contests. But to avoid another Jan. 6 scenario, they should devote just as much attention to — and sufficient resources toward — electing Democratic governors.

Perhaps nowhere is this more important than in Wisconsin, where the 2026 Republican cash advantage is extremely worrisome.

In Wisconsin, the Republican nominee for governor is Representative Tom Tiffany. After the 2020 election, Mr. Tiffany was the only member of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation to sign onto a legal brief supporting a lawsuit to overturn the results in Wisconsin and other battleground states. Then he announced that he would vote in Congress against certifying Wisconsin’s Electoral College votes. On Jan. 7, 2021, Joe Biden’s election as president was certified, despite Mr. Tiffany’s votes against certifying the results from both Pennsylvania and Arizona. Perhaps to appeal to concerned voters, he now concedes that Mr. Biden won. But as recently as August, Mr. Tiffany said he didn’t regret those votes.

Mr. Tiffany’s Democratic opponent this year is David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive. According to one analysis, Mr. Tiffany and his allies are outspending Mr. Crowley and his supporters $54.8 million to $21.6 million.

How? Much of the money being spent to elect Mr. Tiffany comes from one multibillionaire couple, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. Mr. Uihlein was reportedly among the largest funders of the rally that morphed into the Capitol riot. The Uihleins have given more than $30 million to the Republican Party of Wisconsin this year. By late last month, the party had transferred close to $35 million to Mr. Tiffany’s campaign. And Mr. Uihlein is the main contributor to the Restoration of America PAC, which has reported spending more than $12 million in support of Mr. Tiffany.

Wisconsin’s governor signs the certificate naming the state’s presidential electors, and transmits it to Washington. In theory, a governor could refuse to do so in 2028 — very likely triggering a court battle that could slow the process of determining who becomes our next president. In Wisconsin, the last three presidential elections came down to margins of less than one percentage point, making the state attractive to those fraudulently claiming that chicanery has affected election results.

The Wisconsin governor’s race isn’t the only one Democrats should keep their eyes on.

Arizona is another swing state with a race that features an election-denying Republican candidate for governor, Representative Andy Biggs, who backed the same lawsuit that Mr. Tiffany did. The Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, is favored against Mr. Biggs, but Democrats should take nothing for granted.

The same is true in Michigan, where Representative John James has called the 2020 election “rigged and manipulated.” And in Pennsylvania, where the state treasurer, Stacy Garrity, has said “we know” that Mr. Trump won in 2020. Neither of them is favored against their Democratic opponents, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in Michigan, and Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania.

Then there’s another category in Georgia, where the Republican running for governor and the billionaire funder of his campaign are the same person: Rick Jackson. He has conceded Mr. Biden’s 2020 win, but his stance on that election is more cryptic. In August, CNN reported that in one recording, Mr. Jackson said, “What happened in 2020 is just unconscionable.” In his successful primary campaign against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who famously declined to “find” enough votes to hand Mr. Trump a victory in Georgia — one of Mr. Jackson’s campaign ads tags Mr. Raffensperger as “Brad ‘Judas’ Raffensperger,” presumably a reference to Judas Iscariot.

Mr. Jackson, the founder of Jackson Healthcare, has put more than $100 million of his own money into his race. In September, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that “pro-Jackson groups have spent or reserved nearly $76 million in airtime ahead of the general election.” That is almost 10 times as much as his Democratic opponent, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former mayor of Atlanta.

If any one of these Republican candidates wins, it’s not hard to imagine election subversion attempts taking place again in that state.

Understandably, Democrats across the country have their sights set on retaking one or both houses of Congress. But we can’t neglect these races for governor, particularly those with election-denying candidates, close polling or huge Republican cash advantages — or, in Wisconsin, all three.

The Constitution puts election administration in the hands of the states. In more than one race this year, voters aren’t just deciding between a Democrat and a Republican. They’re deciding whether their states should be run by people who don’t stand firmly for free and fair elections. For Americans concerned that Mr. Trump and his movement pose a danger to the security and legitimacy of future presidential elections — the sanctity of the vote — the time to stop them is now.

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The world’s oldest known land animal – Jonathan the giant tortoise – has had his genome probed for the first time. This has revealed that parts of his genome to do with mitochondrial function are as efficient as those of a 5-year-old member of his species. Efficient mitochondria may give his DNA repair systems more energy to fight off the effects of ageing, enabling him to live to an estimated age of 194.

What’s more, some of his genetic changes seem similar to those of supercentenarians. “This study adds to the body of evidence that the mechanisms of ageing may be conserved across species,” says Stephen Clark at the Kallel Foundation, a non-profit organisation focused on interventions to extend human healthspan, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Jonathan, an Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), and Napoleon Bonaparte are the two most famous residents of St Helena island in the South Atlantic. Napoleon arrived at the remote British territory after he was exiled in 1815, while Jonathan is thought to have been shipped there, possibly from Aldabra Atoll, in 1882. Jonathan arrived as a fully grown adult that was thought to already have half a century under his belt, putting him at around 194 years old today.

The researchers calculated that Aldabra tortoises have an average lifespan of around 80 years, but they can live much longer. To understand the mechanisms behind Jonathan’s extraordinary longevity, Clark and his colleagues have studied his genome.

“I firmly believe we can learn about the global mechanisms of ageing by looking at the exceptions,” says Manel Esteller at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain, who led a study into a 117-year-old woman, once officially the world’s oldest person.

Esteller and his team found that the woman had exceptionally efficient mitochondrial function, which led Clark and his colleagues to suspect Jonathan similarly had “very efficient and very young” mitochondria, says Clark.

They had to study his genome via saliva samples and cheek swabs. This was because St Helena authorities refused their requests to draw Jonathan’s blood, given his fame and the risk of infection.

This was a major limitation, because it meant the researchers were unable to isolate large pieces of DNA, which are more stable in blood. Instead, they had to assemble fragments from Jonathan’s saliva, where DNA is more prone to bacterial contamination, and fill in the gaps using DNA from another Aldabra tortoise.

Once they had made the best possible composite of his genome, they compared it to the DNA of four other Aldabra tortoises. “We found 287 genes that had changes in them that were unique to him,” says Clark.

Of these genes, 41 are though to be functionally significant, meaning they actively contribute to an organism’s biology, survival and regulation. A dozen of them were also found in ageing databases of the genes of other long-lived animal species.

Parts of Jonathan’s genome to do with mitochondrial function were as young as a 5-year-old Aldabra, says Clark. “This, in turn, has helped him manage the effects of ageing by giving the DNA repair systems more energy from the mitochondria to fight off the effects of ageing.”

Kousuke Hashimoto at the University of Osaka, Japan, says the work is “fascinating”, but notes that Jonathan’s genome was compared against that of only a few other tortoises, which may have unique genetic changes themselves.

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New York Fashion Week provides a multitude of excuses to get dressed up on a weeknight, but few come with a cause quite like the Kering Foundation’s annual Caring for Women dinner at The Pool. Its mission? Raising funds for organizations working to end gender-based violence; a global crisis that one in three women will experience in her lifetime. This year, its co-founders Salma Hayek Pinault and François-Henri Pinault co-hosted the evening alongside Pamela Anderson, Simone Biles, Benicio Del Toro, Nacho Figueras, Dakota Johnson, and Lorna Simpson.

It is the house of Kering, after all, so the evening called for a black tie dress code, and no one seemed interested in underdressing. Guests used the occasion to turn out in the glitzy Gucci (Paris Hilton; Alix Earle), leather-forward Balenciaga (Biles; Jordan Roth), and slinky Valentino (Johnson; Colman Domingo). Conversation drifted from the shows and spectacles of the week, to the true raison d’être of the night: championing women through crisis.

“Supporting women is a lifelong feat and effort that I will be working on for the rest of my career,” actress Camila Morrone told Vogue. “It just makes so much sense that Salma is behind it all because she’s been such a champion of women from the start.”

Paris Hilton agreed. “I love Salma. She’s so beautiful inside and out and has such a big heart,” she praised. “I think it’s amazing that she’s bringing together all these people to support such an amazing and really impactful cause.” Hilton added that when she was asked to DJ the evening, “it was an immediate yes.”

Attendees soon funneled through a verdant archway into The Pool’s famed dining room, which seemed to announce itself first by scent, as it had been converted into a meadow in bloom for the evening. Chrysanthemums and alliums rose between feathery ornamental grasses, and the effect was as fragrant as it was lush. At the table, kale and sunchoke salad with Asian pears and goat cheese gave way to filet mignon Florentine with crispy rosemary potatoes and roasted carrots, all served on Ginori 1735 porcelain.

François-Henri Pinault wasted no time getting to the purpose beneath the glamour. From the stage, he pointed to violent social-media trends, deepfakes, and AI-generated abuse as emerging threats. “All these can lead men, and particularly young men, to believe that misogyny is simply part of manhood,” he said. “And this too cannot become the new norm.” Then he turned to his wife. “My love, Salma. Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for being the driving force behind the Kering Foundation. None of this would exist without you.”

What followed brought the work itself into focus, as emotional films introduced the four beneficiary organizations and the women at the center of their efforts before representatives emotively addressed the room themselves.

Then the paddles came out. Among the evening’s auction lots was a trip to Milan with Bottega Veneta, complete with a private session with creative director Louise Trotter—and a $50,000 spending credit to match. Another promised an Argentine polo weekend at world-renowned player and evening co-host Nacho Figueras’s private ranch.

Figueras took the stage to offer a glimpse of what awaited the winner, prompting the kind of collective heart-flutter usually reserved for a rom-com lead. “Martha, you can ride with me. How are you, Martha?” he called to Martha Stewart. Naturally, Stewart’s hand was the first to shoot up when bidding began. “Nacho—oh my God,” Stewart said with a swoon to Vogue afterward. “I’m so glad he called me out.” By the end of the auction, the evening had amassed a staggering sum: more than $5 million for organizations supporting women and children.

Even when dinner was over and guests began filtering toward The Grill to celebrate, Hayek Pinault was not quite finished. She remained behind making introductions to the NGO leaders, speaking emphatically about their work, and continuing conversations long after the rest of the room had cleared. “Awareness is important, but I really think it’s a little boring,” she told Vogue in no uncertain terms. “You gotta do something.” It’s a philosophy she recognized early in Pinault, too. Recalling an emergency that arose when the pair were still “dating secretly,” she remembered how quickly he stepped in to help secure transportation for women who needed it. “It was so easy,” she said. “And he said, ‘Oh my God, we need to do this.’ He cares.”

That impulse toward action is also what keeps her hopeful. “I see the heartbreak, but I [also] see the progress,” Hayek Pinault said. “There’s always something else that you can do.”

“Rita’s coming on!” her team urged—one of several attempts to coax her back to the party, evidently no easy feat for someone so engrossed in the work. This one finally did the trick. Waiting there were trays of espresso martinis (a worthy invitation to keep the party going into the wee hours.) Rita Ora had one last request from the evening’s mastermind to fulfill. “What Queen Salma wants, Queen Salma gets!” she declared before opening her set with “I Am Woman,” which was Hayek Pinault’s personal song request for the night. Hilton followed at the DJ booth, throwing a “Love you, sis!” in Ora’s direction before taking over the decks herself. It’s safe to say the girls were having fun.

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Photo: Saskia Lawaks

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To hear President Trump and his aides describe it, the rush to withdraw 12 B-1 bombers from an air base in Britain over the weekend was a prudent precaution, in response to a threat they refused to describe.

It was no big deal, Mr. Trump insisted, and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, tried to wave it away by noting that the Pentagon is “constantly reallocating resources where ​they need to be.”

But to anyone watching the deployment of American power around the globe in the seven months since Mr. Trump decided to attack Iran, it was another glaring example of how, time after time, Mr. Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have been forced into retreat, pulling back military forces that had been deployed to the Middle East and Britain as a deterrent.

Over the past several months, as the conflict has dragged on, the Iran war has come to reveal enormous new American vulnerabilities, forcing changes that the Pentagon was not contemplating a year ago. But it has also proved a bitter lesson in the unintended consequences that have flowed from Mr. Trump’s war of choice.

Mr. Trump intended the attack on Iran as another demonstration of the American military’s extraordinary power, following the successful bombing raid on three Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025 and the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in Caracas in January.

But rather than enhance American power, the war has constrained it. The closing of bases in the Middle East and limiting the use of one in Britain have, at a minimum, vastly complicated the logistics of projecting power. American bombers can still reach their targets, of course, but only by flying from the United States, requiring more time and refueling. American carrier groups can still patrol in the Arabian Sea, outside the Persian Gulf, but now they must be resupplied from Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean 2,200 miles away, requiring additional weeks and huge costs.

But most importantly, the rapid withdrawals have taught a lesson to the Iranians — and potentially to other adversaries — that they hold the power to chase out a superpower. In Europe, Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth are thinking of reducing American forces on their terms and their schedule. In the Middle East and Britain, their hand was forced.

American and British officials said on Monday that the bombers were rushed out of the British base after commanders received specific, credible information that Iran-backed operatives were planning to launch drone strikes against the aircraft and U.S. troops from right outside the fence.

The suspected plotters may have been inspired in part by an audacious attack that Ukraine launched against Russia last year when it smuggled drones deep into the Russian heartland and launched them from semi trucks. The strikes damaged or destroyed at least a dozen aircraft.

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The R.A.F. Fairford air base, from which a dozen American B-1 bombers were withdrawn last weekend, has been a mainstay of U.S.-British military cooperation since it opened in 1944. Credit…@Craigyoungmedia, via Reuters

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Luke Borsten, age 38, has been backpacking and making music since childhood. Today the Portland, Ore.–based filmmaker and musician often combines the two by writing music on the trail. Likewise, Amanda McCracken, a 48-year-old, Boulder, Colo.–based runner and author, finds movement essential to her writing practice.

“There’s something in movement that allows me to better see the things I want to describe,” Borsten says. “There’s an underlying feeling of honesty that creates a through line for writing.”

Borsten and McCracken are not unique in their habit of combining creativity with movement: from Ludwig van Beethoven to Henry David Thoreau, from Maya Angelou to Joyce Carol Oates, creative people are often in motion. And there’s solid science to back up that approach: consistent movement—especially in nature—helps unlock the words, notes or brushstrokes that make artists’ work.

Christian Rominger, a researcher in the department of psychology at the University of Graz in Austria, has spent years studying the link between creativity and movement. In 2022 he led a meta-analysis of 115 effect studies that found a link between motion and creativity. Another 2024 study found that the more movement—in terms of step count—participants engaged in, the greater the creative output they had.

“The empirical data is growing in this field,” he says. “We’re trying to capture this effect in detail.”

David Strayer, a professor of cognition and neural science at the University of Utah, co-authored a 2025 study that investigated how movement in nature influences brain activity. “We took measurements at the trail head, before and after hiking and backpacking trips,” he says. “We found a big boost in creativity after.”

Still, scientists have yet to identify exactly why movement seems to spur greater creative thinking. But there are several hypotheses. “We believe that all our multitasking on a daily basis overloads our mental workspace,” Strayer says. “Time moving outside frees up space to create.”

Another working theory is that movement often boosts mood, Rominger says, and that, in turn, allows you to create. “We know that creativity is related to mood,” he says, “but we can’t definitively tie the two together. It may also be that physical activity enhances brain health and therefore creativity. But these are all theories right now.”

When McCracken encounters writer’s block, she often takes a run or a swim to get the juices flowing again. She makes notes on her phone or on scraps of paper as ideas start popping up. “There’s something about it that shakes things loose,” McCracken says.

There is no clear optimal dose of movement that is guaranteed to boost creativity, but Strayer says that cognitive benefits appear to begin after about three sessions per week of 30 to 60 minutes of activity. “You start to develop new neurons at that dosage,” he says. “You think more clearly and have the mental space to support creative thinking.”

While the research is still nascent, McCracken is unequivocal. “Some of my best ideas have come during movement,” she says.

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Richard Drury/Getty Images

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At 42, Danielle Ripley-Burgess has survived colon cancer three times. She was first diagnosed at 17, then at 25 and then again at 39, making her a part of the trend of colorectal cancer rates surging in younger people. The Kansas City, Missouri, mom shared her story with TODAY.com and urged others to speak up about their symptoms.I had a cancer everyone thought old people get.

Towards the end of my 8th grade year, when I was 14, I started seeing specks of blood in my stool when I’d go to the bathroom. I didn’t know what was happening. I downplayed it and tried to convince myself it was no big deal.

I thought, I’m eating something red and that’s probably what I see. So I put myself on a “no red foods diet” and stopped eating anything that was red in color: everything from candy to pizza to salsa to raspberry Popsicles.

It took me a while to accept that I was actually seeing blood, but I still hid it from just about everybody I knew. I was already embarrassed about puberty changes happening, so that on top of this thing was just too much. I didn’t want to be sick and I didn’t feel sick at first.

But it was nagging at me, so about a year or two later, I did mention something to my mom. We looked it up online, and we saw it was probably hemorrhoids. She said blood in stool could also indicate something more serious, but it was something for people who were my grandparents’ ages.

I was like, “great, I have hemorrhoids,” and went on with my life. In high school, seeing blood in the stool became something very normal, even as it got redder, darker and scarier. Eventually, I had some intense stomach pain, and I was getting fatigued. I couldn’t play volleyball anymore. I just wanted to come home and sleep.

When I was 16, I told my boyfriend I thought I needed to see a doctor, but I didn’t tell him the details. My mom overheard one of our conversations and realized I was still seeing blood. She told my dad and they called the doctor, who sent me to a gastroenterologist right away.

Just a few weeks after I turned 17, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer. I had chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to remove the tumor. I also had surgery to move my ovaries up into my stomach to protect them from radiation. Doctors wanted to save the ovaries to preserve hormone function, but by elevating them, I couldn’t naturally conceive anymore.

I thought I had beaten cancer. I was getting colonoscopies every three years, and after one of them, I woke up and saw the very same look on the doctor’s face that I had seen eight years prior. He saw a polyp that later turned out to be cancerous. I had no symptoms. At 25, I had Stage 1 colon cancer.

Mentally and emotionally, it was way harder this time. I got really angry at a lot of things, but deep down just angry at God — how could you let this happen to me again? By this point, I was married, I had a house, I was working on a career, we’d been talking about adopting a child. All of a sudden, I realized I could lose all of these things.

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