Updated at 5:30 p.m. ET on March 29, 2023.

Several years ago, astronomers pointed a telescope at another star and discovered something remarkable: seven planets, each one about the same size as Earth. The planets were quite close to their small star—all seven of their orbits would fit inside Mercury’s. And yet, because this star is smaller, cooler, and dimmer than our own, at least three of those rocky worlds are in the habitable zone, at the right temperature for liquid, flowing water. Earthlike size and sunniness don’t guarantee that you’ll find ET, but if you were looking for signs of alien life beyond this solar system, this corner of the universe would be a promising place to start.

The system, which orbits a star known as TRAPPIST-1, is unusual; scientists had never found one like it before, nor have they since. We can’t see the exoplanets, which are named b, c, d, e, f, g, and h; from 40 light-years away, they were just tiny blips in telescope data. Artists at NASA have illustrated them, their imaginations guided by details of the worlds in our system, including Earth’s clouds and oceans, but the exoplanets have fundamentally remained a mystery. So when the James Webb Space Telescope, the newest and most powerful telescope out there, was launched, experts and space enthusiasts alike were anxious to point it toward this cosmic alphabet and get a real glimpse of the worlds within.

Now the first results are out: The Webb telescope has observed b, the innermost planet, and found … nothing. No signs of carbon dioxide, a key component of our atmosphere, and which Webb is designed to detect even from many light-years away. And good evidence that there was no significant atmosphere at all. “We’re surprised,” Tom Greene, an astrophysicist at NASA who led the team behind the new research, told me. “I was a little disappointed.”

The good news is that we still have six other planets to check out, and the worlds that are farther away from their star might be more likely to have a substantial atmosphere. That means we have six more chances to find an atmosphere around a rocky world, and perhaps even detect the presence of compounds associated with life as we know it. More observations would also give us a richer understanding of whether stars like the one in the TRAPPIST-1 system, known as red dwarfs, are promising candidates in the search for habitable planets in the cosmos. This has big implications: Red dwarfs far outnumber sunlike stars in the Milky Way, and they’re likely to have rocky planets too. If even one TRAPPIST-1 planet has the conditions that we know are needed for life, it would suggest that the galaxy could be teeming with habitable worlds—and Earth might not be so special.

[Read: There is a planet with clouds made of sand]

Other astronomers I spoke with shared Greene’s disappointment at TRAPPIST-1b’s lack of an atmosphere, but some aren’t surprised at all. Since the existence of the system was announced to the public in 2017, scientists have developed countless models for the planets, and the predictions were split. “Some people thought that the planet would have no atmosphere at all, and some folks thought that it would have maybe a Venuslike atmosphere that was mostly made of carbon dioxide,” Jonathan Fortney, an astronomer at UC Santa Cruz who worked with Greene on the new research on b, told me.

Before Webb came along, the Hubble Space Telescope observed most of the TRAPPIST planets, including b, and found no evidence of light and puffy atmospheres made of hydrogen. This was just fine with astronomers, because such a Neptunelike atmosphere wouldn’t be conducive to the kind of life that arose here on Earth. Scientists wanted to detect heavier gasses such as carbon dioxide, methane, and oxygen—a trio that, at least on Earth, indicates life respiring beneath the clouds—and for that, they needed the Webb telescope.

Greene and his team used Webb to assess b’s atmosphere in a new way: They measured heat in the form of infrared light radiating from the planet. A cooler result would suggest the presence of an atmosphere, circulating the star’s heat around the globe. A hotter one would mean a bare surface, absorbing the energy and then reflecting it back, like asphalt after a warm day. The Webb data revealed the latter case to be true; with a day-side temperature of about 450 degrees Fahrenheit, TRAPPIST-1b is “just about perfect for baking pizza,” as NASA put it, but it’s also an airless ball of rock.

[Read: We’ve found 5,000 exoplanets, and we’re still alone]

The planet might have had an atmosphere many eons ago, but its star likely took it away, Megan Mansfield, an astronomer at the University of Arizona who also uses Webb to study exoplanets, told me. Red-dwarf stars are cool stars, technically speaking—they are far less luminous than the sun—but they love to flare, blasting radiation out into space. “Those kinds of things can strip the atmosphere off a planet,” Mansfield said, especially one orbiting this close. TRAPPIST-1b might still have a very tenuous atmosphere, too ephemeral for Webb to detect, like the wisp of gas that envelops Mercury—but that’s not the kind of Earthlike environment researchers are hoping to discover in that system.

So astronomers will move down the line of planets to c, d, e, f, g, and h. Greene said he was more optimistic about detecting atmospheres around TRAPPIST-1’s other planets—at least before the disappointing discovery on b. But it’s too early to lose hope. Perhaps conditions are more comfortable farther out, where “there’s more space for that intense radiation and flaring from the star to spread out,” Mansfield said.

The Webb telescope has already observed c, and the results should be out soon, Greene told me. If it also turns out to be an atmospheric dud, that might not be a reason for astronomers to worry. Same with d, even, because it orbits at the edge of the habitable zone. But e? Then they’ll be nervous. Planets e, f, and g stand the best chance of being Earthlike, with not only an atmosphere but also an ocean. “Every data point we get, just like the one we just got now, will help to refine those theories of what habitability means for planets in [red dwarf] systems,” Nikole Lewis, an astrophysicist at Cornell, told me. Poor, barefaced b might even help researchers determine whether the more promising planets have water: Lewis said that the lack of atmosphere means that the Webb telescope can study the surface of the planet, searching for the chemical signature of water molecules in the light it reflects. A strong-enough signal would give astronomers hope that the substance exists elsewhere in the TRAPPIST system under better conditions—hope that, perhaps, one of these worlds could be a home.

Not for us, of course. A trek to the TRAPPIST system remains the stuff of science fiction. For the time being, humanity is tied to our calm, bright star, and to the planets and moons around it. We’ll build our fancy telescopes and train them on other worlds in the galaxy, wondering whether they have silky clouds of their own, and something, or someone, gazing up at them from the ground.

A home security camera catches a coyote attack involving a child in Scottsdale, Arizona. CNN affiliate KPNX reports.

England's Georgia Hall loses to France's Celine Boutier in a play-off at the LPGA Drive On Championship in Arizona.

After Donald Trump sabotaged the 2022 midterm elections for Republicans by endorsing unelectable extremists, a comforting narrative took root among GOP elites. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would offer a return to “normal” politics, continuing Trump’s aggressive, unapologetic defense of traditional American culture and values but without all that pesky authoritarianism. He would continue to wrap himself in an American flag, but he wouldn’t invite people to dinner who preferred wearing the Nazi one.

Many on the political left drew the opposite conclusion. DeSantis was the real threat, a smarter, more disciplined version of Trump. Whereas Trump believed in anyone or anything that believed in him, DeSantis was a dangerous ideologue. Trump would tweet like an autocrat; DeSantis would act like one.

Is DeSantis an authoritarian? The governor is the political equivalent of an overly greased weather vane, twisting to follow the winds within his party. In the post-Trump GOP, those winds are blowing in an authoritarian direction. Whether he’s an authoritarian at heart or just a cynical opportunist, what matters is how DeSantis behaves. And as governor, he has repeatedly used the powers of his office in authoritarian ways.

Several political words have taken on an expansive meaning in recent years, drifting from their intended use to serve as a linguistic cudgel against any opponent. On the right, many people have misused the word woke as a lazy shorthand to mean anything they classify as “bad cultural change.” A smaller group on the left has misused authoritarian to describe right-wing policies that are perhaps objectionable but nonetheless compatible with democracy.  

[Adam Serwer: Woke is just another word for liberal]

Authoritarian, in the political-science sense of the word, usually refers to two broad kinds of political action within democracies such as the United States. The first is antidemocratic politics, where a politician attacks the institutions, principles, or rules of democracy. The second is personalized rule, in which the leader uses their power to target specific groups or individuals, persecuting their enemies while protecting their allies.

Wooden rather than magnetic, DeSantis doesn’t engage in the impulsive, stage-based showman authoritarianism of Donald Trump. His antidemocracy politics are calculated and disciplined. In Florida, he has engaged in legislative authoritarianism, replacing rule of law with rule by law. His playbook is now familiar to Floridians: He uses attention-grabbing stunts or changes formal policies to target individuals, groups, or companies he doesn’t like. Then he holds a press conference to tout his ability to take on all the people the Republican base loves to hate.

In functioning democracies, the law is a great equalizer—political allies and adversaries are treated the same. But in “the free state of Florida,” that’s not true. After DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say ‘Gay’” bill, Disney denounced it. That’s part of democratic politics; citizens and companies are free to speak out against legislation without fear of retribution. But DeSantis retaliated forcefully, using his formal political power to punish a perceived political enemy. He signed a law revoking Disney’s control over a special district in the state.

DeSantis made clear that the legislation specifically targeted Disney because of its political speech. “You’re a corporation based in Burbank, California,” DeSantis said before signing the bill. “And you’re going to marshal your economic power to attack the parents of my state? We view that as a provocation, and we’re gonna fight back against that.” Lest anyone misread his intent, he also assured his supporters: “We have everything thought out … Don’t let anyone tell you that somehow Disney’s going to get a tax cut out of this. They’re going to pay more taxes as a result of it.” This was legislative authoritarianism in action.

Last summer, DeSantis developed a flimsy pretext to remove a Democratic prosecutor, Andrew H. Warren. In a subsequent lawsuit, a judge reviewed an extensive array of evidence and concluded that DeSantis’s goal had been “to amass information that could help bring down Mr. Warren, not to find out how Mr. Warren actually runs the office.” The judge suggested that this was a political move. Decide whom to fire first; figure out how to justify it later.

More broadly, DeSantis has repeatedly used the law for purely political ends. In one instance, DeSantis used state funds to fly a group of bewildered migrants to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt. He wasn’t advancing a broad-based policy change. He was targeting a specific group of vulnerable people to score headlines that would benefit him personally, which isn’t how legal authority is supposed to operate in a democracy.

[Ronald Brownstein: The contradictions of Ron DeSantis]

DeSantis has also taken aim at freedom of the press, hoping to weaken existing legal protections for reporters. And he has signed legislation that reduces legal liability for drivers who injure or kill protesters with their cars on public roads. Critics say the legislation, which has been blocked by a judge, could expose protesters to the risk of prosecution.

Of course not everything DeSantis does merits the authoritarian label. He has proposed that hospitals be required to collect data on patients’ immigration status. This, as critics argue, is likely to worsen public-health outcomes and put an undue burden on doctors and nurses to become Florida’s frontline immigration police. But it’s not authoritarian. It’s just a run-of-the-mill bad policy idea.

Sometimes, context determines whether a political action is authoritarian. Cracking down on voter fraud is certainly not authoritarian; it’s just enforcing the law. However, if the crackdown is supposed to undermine public confidence in democracy while targeting a specific group of people who are unpopular in your own party, then it may deserve the label.

What should we make of DeSantis’s high-profile task force to tackle voter fraud in Florida? Twenty-six cases of voter fraud have been verified in the state since 2016. In that time frame, voters have cast roughly 36 million ballots in general federal elections. That’s a nonexistent problem, but the Republican base, thanks to Trump’s lies about fraud, believes it’s widespread. DeSantis was likely trying to score political points while diminishing faith in the democratic process. Last summer, this stunt culminated in a Black man being arrested at gunpoint for illegal voting. (He had cast a ballot because he mistakenly believed that Florida’s restoration of felon voting rights applied to him. Similar cases have been dismissed when they reach the courts.)

In Florida’s public schools, DeSantis has sought to make book-banning easier. Again, governors have the legal right to sway educational policy, and doing so is not authoritarian. What’s worrying about DeSantis’s role in education is that he’s trying to muzzle classroom speech that differs from his worldview. House Bill 7, sometimes referred to as the Stop WOKE Act, prohibits educators from teaching students about systemic racism. This has had the predictable effect of eroding freedom of expression in the classroom. One publisher even removed references to race in a textbook entry about Rosa Parks. Parks’s story became about stubbornness, not racism. “One day, she rode the bus,” the post–H.B. 7 text reads. “She was told to move to a different seat. She did not.” Why was she asked to move? For Florida’s students, that will remain a mystery.

In higher education, similarly, DeSantis has tried to make it easier to fire professors who teach material that a conservative like him might find objectionable. Palm Beach Atlantic University has already fired a professor who taught about racism, after a parent complained.

Those who argue that DeSantis is not an authoritarian have pointed to his evasive refusal to echo Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. But before the 2022 midterm elections, DeSantis actively campaigned for some of the GOP’s most prominent election deniers, such as Kari Lake of Arizona and Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, even though Mastriano had prayed that Trump would “seize the power” on January 6 and was at the Capitol rally before the attack began.

But would President DeSantis be worse for American democracy than President Trump: The Sequel? To answer that question, you have to understand why DeSantis is behaving like an authoritarian.

DeSantis started his career when the Republican Party was dominated by George W. Bush and John McCain. He was first elected to Congress in 2012, when Mitt Romney defined the GOP. DeSantis, unlike Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, wasn’t drawn to politics by Trumpism; he was comfortable making the case for Romney Republicans.

That party is now dead, its former darlings turned into pariahs. Like so many Republicans, DeSantis recognized the death of the old party in 2016. He enthusiastically rebranded himself, going so far as to make his toddler “Build the Wall” with toy bricks in a cringeworthy 2018 campaign ad.

DeSantis understands that after years of Trump dominating the party, its base has changed. Core Republican voters now crave an authoritarian bully, a culture warrior who will pick fights. DeSantis may not have always been an authoritarian political figure, but he has made clear that he will behave like one to pursue power.

This makes DeSantis dangerous for American democracy. On the political left, opinion is divided as to whether DeSantis is more dangerous than Trump. My take is that DeSantis is more dangerous than Trump was when he became president in 2017, but less dangerous than Trump would be if he took office in 2025.

That’s because Trump changed the Republican Party, winnowing out any remaining principled prodemocracy conservatives, either through primaries or resignations. Many of those who stayed underwent the “Elise Stefanik conversion,” morphing from Paul Ryan supporters into Trump disciples, willing to torch America’s democratic institutions if it aligned with their self-interest. As evidenced by the so-called sedition caucus, many elected Republicans will use their power to undermine democracy.

By contrast, Trump faced some pushback in 2017, when his legislative agenda, including his health-care plan, stalled in a Republican-dominated Congress. DeSantis, a more methodical politician, would face fewer constraints. He could undercut American democracy with a legislative scalpel, all with his party’s fervent support in Congress.

But Trump in a second term, with the Trumpified Republican caucus in Congress, would take a wrecking ball to our institutions. Since leaving office, he’s become even more erratic and unhinged. His current social-media posts make his 2017 tweets appear statesmanlike by comparison.

If you put a gun to my head and forced me to vote for one of these two authoritarians, I’d vote for DeSantis. But his track record in Florida should make us wary. He may not be Trump, but he’s a danger to American democracy nonetheless.

An attorney for Ray Epps, the Arizona man that January 6 conspiracy theorists falsely claim led an FBI plot to orchestrate the insurrection, demanded an on-air retraction Thursday from Fox News and its right-wing talk host Tucker Carlson, and claimed they made "false and defamatory statements" about him.

Sometimes, a profound truth comes from the least-expected place.

Take Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican of Arizona, who’s not typically a good source for reliable information or sound views about democracy. Biggs claimed that there was massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election, supported legal efforts to overturn the election, and blamed antifa for the insurrection on January 6, 2021.

But Biggs got one big thing right in a tweet this weekend, responding to former President Donald Trump’s prediction that he would be arrested today.

“If they can come for Trump, they will come for you,” Biggs wrote.

He’s right. And that’s exactly the point.

[Read: A guide to the possible forthcoming indictments of Donald Trump]

An indictment of the former president, followed by orderly due process, would show that no one is immune to following the law simply because he is famous, wealthy, politically powerful, willing to threaten the justice system, or possessed of intemperate and powerful followers such as Representative Andy Biggs. Biggs has accidentally stumbled on the secret of rule of law, in which no one is above accountability.

Though Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has not revealed any charges, any Trump indictment is expected to involve an allegation that the former president attempted to hide a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actor who alleges a sexual encounter with Trump, in violation of election laws. Trump denies the relationship and any lawbreaking.

Notice that Biggs isn’t claiming that Trump is obviously innocent of any possible charges against him. In fact, he has implicitly acknowledged the payment, likening it to former President Bill Clinton paying a woman who alleged an affair. (The question, again, is whether this violated election laws, though as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis notes, no one wants to be caught paying hush money to a porn star.)

Biggs’s complaint appears to be the very fact of an investigation and potential charge. His implication is that prosecutors are going after Trump merely because they don’t like him or because it’s politically expedient. “This type of stuff only occurs in third world authoritarian nations,” he added. Yet as The Washington Post’s Philip Bump outlines, plenty of democracies have seen high-ranking elected officials arrested. Of course, everyone would prefer that elected officials be incorruptible and spotless, but because they are human like every other citizen, the fact that they are subject to justice is an indication that the rule of law remains in place.

[David A. Graham: Trump gets a taste of his own medicine]

This would not be the case if they were subject to show trials, deprived of the same protections as other citizens, or excluded from due process. But no serious person with power is suggesting that Trump should not be entitled to a trial, a jury of his peers if he chooses, and a vigorous defense. Like any other citizen, he would have to be booked and fingerprinted if he is indicted; unlike any other citizen, he’ll then return to Secret Service protection.

As the possibility of a former president being indicted has been normalized from far-fetched to all but inevitable, many observers have emphasized the importance of moving carefully in such a politically sensitive case, both to avoid inflaming tensions in the public and to avoid setting a precedent in which a new government tries to lock up the leaders of its predecessors.

Prosecutors should be careful—but at the same time, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t act. Whether Trump committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt is a question for a jury or judge, but the evidence that he may have committed several is blatant and public enough that allowing him to escape scrutiny would represent a genuine blow to the legitimacy of the justice system. If they can come for you, you’d better hope they can come for the former president too.

Breaking: Taylor Swift is not simply a voice in our ears or an abstract concept to argue over at parties, but a flesh-and-blood being with a taste for sparkling pajamas and the stamina of a ram. All concerts are conjurings, turning the audience’s idea of a performer into a real thing, but last night’s kickoff of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in Glendale, Arizona, heightened the amazement with Houdini-escapes-handcuffs physicality. After years of having their inner lives shaped by Swift’s highly mediated virtual output, 63,000 individuals can now attest to the vibrancy of Taylor Swift the person. Somehow, seeing her up close made her seem more superhuman.

Every aspect of the night felt shaped by the Ticketmaster-breaking reality that she has not shared air with masses of mortals since touring in 2018, and that she released six albums in the interim (four original, two rerecorded). The emotional brew was excess and gratitude, cut with nostalgia for time lost, and made chaotic by physical circumstances. The structure was unwieldy yet urgent: 44 (yes, 44) songs over more than three hours. Swift created the vibe of an ecstatic cram session, like an epic outing with a far-flung bestie visiting for one night only. “So, uh, is it just me or do we have a lot of things to catch up on?” Swift asked early on, sitting behind a piano whose mossy encrusting gave it the look of long-submerged treasure and helped underscore her point.

Going into the night, fans speculated about how Swift would bring her perfectionism to bear on the tricky question of which songs to perform. Maybe she would swirl her albums together into a sleek playlist, reframing a now-sprawling catalog around some thematic through line. But she instead decided to segment the night by album, leaving the big lessons of her trajectory to emerge from the juxtapositions already present in it. And really, any expectations of a focused fireside chat fell away at the beginning of the set, when the onstage clock struck midnight (though really it was only 8 p.m.).

No space on earth could’ve handled the hype released at that moment. Her opening pick was unexpected: a woozy, truncated “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince,” a somewhat deep cut from 2019’s Lover (key refrain: “It’s been a long time coming”). Then came the hugely awaited live debut of the fan favorite “Cruel Summer,” a track emblematic of Lover’s careening, happy-go-lucky maximalism. Overlapping waves of sound—fans wailing like emergency sirens, the thump and bump of Swift’s live band and backing tracks—ricocheted around the Super Bowl venue into an awful din. Everyone was singing along but no one, at least where I was sitting, could hear Swift. She was facing a physics problem: How do you tell a story in a literal echo chamber?

The answer was for Swift to slow down and take control as she always has, with her words. With each break to address the audience, Swift’s knack for focusing emotions and maneuvering them helped coalesce a mood. In those overwhelming first few minutes, her first statement was relatable: “I don’t know how to process all of this.” Soon she explained that the concept of the show was to “adventure” through her first 17 years of music, album by album—in unstated, and thereby suspenseful, order. Then came the night’s first true gut punch, the ballads “Lover” and “The Archer.” For the latter, Swift stood alone, listing her vulnerabilities to a pulsing beat, until pyrotechnic sparks fell in a curtain behind her. This was where we all wanted to be: feeling one-on-one intimacy but with spectacular three-dimensionality.

Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for TAS

The turning of one “era” to the next was like the turning of a pop-up-book page, revealing new colors, architecture, and story lines. Swift’s art direction remains intuitive and unfussy, but the detail work is sharp, helping to re-enchant familiar imagery. For the segment devoted to the cozy Folklore, she lazed, catlike, on the slanted roof of a cabin whose frame glowed with what seemed to be starlight. The requisite giant snakes of Reputation, her 2017 armored tank of an album, hung amid stark, vertically imposing scaffolding. By contrast, the urban wonderland of 1989 was horizontal, with the stage becoming a fashion runway for Swift’s lively dancers to stomp across in crisscrossing patterns. On a night this long, little visual surprises went far. At one point, she induced gasps by seeming to dive into the stage as if it were a pond and then swim to the other side.

The ordering of the eras, and of the songs within eras, also kept the suspense high. Swift’s beloved 2010 album, Speak Now, emerged for only the keening “Enchanted,” sung by Swift in a ball gown amid a field of flowers. Her self-titled debut also appeared just once, in a humble, piano-bound performance of her first single, “Tim McGraw.” By contrast, the 2020 album Evermore—seen by some as a glorified B-sides collection—got four tracks with lavish set changes. After spending the past few years letting her work speak for itself while the audience litigated its meaning and merits, she was finally asserting a point of view about her own catalog. Evermore, she said, is “an album I absolutely love, despite what some of you say on TikTok.” She cast a hilariously suspicious gaze across the enormous room. “I see it—I see all of it.”

Her facial expressions were often just as potent, making up for the sonic detail that the stadium’s acoustics swallowed. With her older lyrics achieving the cultural familiarity of folktales, Swift was game for theatrical reinterpretation. Giving fans the “Delicate” performance they’d agitated for on social media, Swift went comedic, delivering “You can make me a drink” as an impatient command, not a come-on. For the 2010 Fearless section, she acted charmingly blasé as she strapped on her guitar, invited us “back to high school,” and made half-hearted cheerleading gestures. These early songs were still great, but, she seemed to say with a wink, she’d grown a lot since writing them. The most stunning performances, however, were dead serious, conveying icy resentment in glistening eyes and a sternly set jaw, as on “Champagne Problems,” “My Tears Ricochet,” and the 10-minute version of “All Too Well.”

Oh yeah, that’s right—that giant set list made time for a 10-minute song. When she donned a glittering robe and began strumming that wounded ballad, it was the prestige of a magic show. The audience could at last wrap their heads around the fact that she was really going for it, not just with this song but with this whole marathon-revue concept she’d been dreaming up for years. Late in the night, she broke from the era-by-era format with an acoustic moment—one whose featured song, she said, would change every night of the tour. For this opening show, she picked Folklore’s “Mirrorball,” clarifying her mission statement: “I’m still trying everything / To keep you looking at me.”

She succeeded in keeping us looking, though it must be said that by the time the culminating Midnights era rolled around, the crowd—at least those who’d survived—had moved from excitement to awestruck submission. Around me, seats where people had screamed at throat-scorching frequencies at the beginning of the night were now empty. Small children who’d been brought to the show were napping in the arms of their chaperones. I felt the sort of happy daze that often precedes deep sleep. The concert had been unbelievable, but so was the fact that this one human woman planned to do it again the next night, and for many after.

A five-year-old was killed and two other juveniles were hurt after a drive-by shooting in Tempe, Arizona, late Friday night, according to Tempe police.

The star plays for three hours as she launches her long-awaited Eras stadium tour in Arizona.