A Faithless Remedy for Gun Violence

Reflecting on the Nashville school shooting. Plus: the rise of Christian nationalism; revisiting the Brock Turner case; and how A.I. is trained. View in browser | Update your preferences Wednesday, March 29, 2023 In today’s newsletter, the greatest threats to children, and then: • The rise of Christian nationalism • Revisiting the Brock Turner case • How A.I. is trained After the Nashville School Shooting, a Faithless Remedy for Gun Violence “I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly,” Representative Tim Burchett, of Tennessee, said. “We gotta change people’s hearts.” Photograph by Benjamin Hendren / Anadolu Agency / Getty We’ve grown accustomed to a kind of shrugging acceptance of the status quo from conservative elected officials in the aftermath of mass shootings in the United States. And so the remarks on Monday from Representative Tim Burchett, a Republican of Tennessee—made just hours after the school shooting at the Covenant School, in Nashville—were unsurprising, if perhaps a bit more pointedly nihilistic than usual. “We’re not gonna fix it,” he explained, “criminals are gonna be criminals.” But it was what he said next, when he noted that his own daughter is homeschooled, that caught the attention of Jessica Winter. As she writes in a searing new essay, “It is easy to sympathize with parents, regardless of their political or religious affinities, who might be tempted to retreat from the outside world, to hunker down, in a brutally divided country with more guns than people.” But there’s a catch, Winter explains—the greatest threats to children still come from inside the home. Read the story From the News Desk Our Columnists Revisiting the Brock Turner Case In the midst of the #MeToo movement, California voters recalled a judge for being lenient on sexual assault. As a new documentary argues, that recall campaign had unintended results. By Jeannie Suk Gersen Daily Comment What We Still Don’t Know About How A.I. Is Trained GPT-4 is a powerful, seismic technology that has the capacity both to enhance our lives and diminish them. By Sue Halpern Our Columnists If Alvin Bragg Indicts Donald Trump, What Will the Case Look Like? The trial could hinge on the “catch and kill” practices at the National Enquirer. By John Cassidy Editor’s Pick Annals of Religion How Christian Is Christian Nationalism? Many Americans who advocate it have little interest in religion and an aversion to American culture as it currently exists. What really defines the movement? By Kelefa Sanneh National Magazine Awards Photograph by Elena Mudd The staff writer Jia Tolentino won a National Magazine Award yesterday, in the Columns and Essays category, for three pieces published during the tumultuous months before and after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Read Tolentino’s insightful and deeply urgent writing on abortion below: • The rise of fetal personhood: “Every year, there are about a million miscarriages in the United States. Under the doctrine of fetal personhood, these common, complicated, and profoundly intimate losses could become legally subject to surveillance and criminalization.” • Life in the post-Roe era: “We’re not going back to the time before Roe. v. Wade. We’re going somewhere worse.” • Is abortion sacred?: “Abortion is often talked about as a grave act that requires justification, but bringing a new life into the world felt, to me, like the decision that more clearly risked being a moral mistake.” The New Yorker also received two ASME Awards for Design, Photography, and Illustration: Best News and Entertainment Photograph, for “Waiting for the School Bus in Uvalde,” by Greg Miller, which captured the aftermath of the school shooting in the small town in Texas, and Best News and Entertainment Story, for “A Harrowed Land,” by James Nachtwey, which documented the brutality and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We count on your support to pursue our award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » Fun & Games Dept. Name Drop Play Today’s Quiz Can you guess the notable person in six clues or fewer? By Will Nediger Daily Shouts Transit: The Timeless Game of Strategy When needed for a game-winning play, all taxis must be removed from the board and routed to any one of the three major airports servicing the greater N.Y.C. area. By David Ostow Crossword A Lightly Challenging Puzzle Shape on Ghana’s flag: four letters. By Erik Agard Daily Cartoon Wednesday, March 29th By Anjali Chandrashekar P.S. Before he was famous for not actually wearing a gigantic white puffer coat, Pope Francis was merely the head of the Catholic Church. Paul Elie recently appraised Francis’s decade in charge at the Vatican, noting that “he has made it clear that a humble, personal search for the right way to live one’s life is a good fit with twenty-first-century Catholicism all the way to the top.” Today’s newsletter was written by Ian Crouch. Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up for The Daily. 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