About a decade ago, the social psychologist Sara Konrath led a study that yielded some disturbing results. As a researcher at Indiana University, she’d already found that narcissism rates seemed to be increasing among Americans, and empathy decreasing; that was a combination that didn’t bode well, she feared, for the quality of people’s relationships. So she decided to look more deeply into the state of Americans’ connections—and in order to do so, she turned to attachment theory.

Researchers have identified four basic “attachment styles”: People with a secure style feel that they can depend on others and that others can depend on them too. Those with a dismissing style—more commonly known as “avoidant”—are overly committed to independence and don’t feel that they need much deep emotional connection. People with a preoccupied (or “anxious”) style badly want intimacy but, fearing rejection, cling or search for validation. And people with fearful (or “disorganized”) attachment crave intimacy, too—but like those with the dismissing style, they distrust people and end up pushing them away. Konrath’s team analyzed nearly 100 other studies, completed from 1988 to 2011, that had measured college students’ attachment styles.

They found an unfortunate trend: a 15 percent decrease in secure attachment, along with a 56 percent spike in dismissing attachment and a nearly 18 percent increase in the fearful style—the two types associated with lack of trust and self-isolation. “Compared with college students in the late 1980s,” the researchers wrote in their 2014 meta-review, “a larger proportion of students today agree that they are ‘comfortable without close emotional relationships.’”

[Read: Attachment style isn’t destiny]

The good news: The trends that initially worried Konrath seem to have abated. Since about 2009, narcissism rates have steadily declined and empathy rates have increased. But at a conference in Chicago last year, Konrath and her colleagues found themselves presenting the same bleak findings when it came to attachment. Their poster showed the results of an updated analysis: From 2011 to 2020, secure-attachment rates had dropped even further; fearful attachment had continued to rise. Below those bullet points sat a stock image: a young man alone in a hallway, forlornly looking at his phone.  

These studies have only tracked changes among college students, simply because those are the data that were available—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that discomfort with intimacy isn’t spreading among older people as well. Michael Hilgers, a New Mexico–based therapist who’s been counseling for more than 20 years, told me he’s seen a notable increase in clients—adults of various ages—dealing with dismissing or fearful attachment. “It’s painful to watch just how disconnected people are,” he said. Even when he can sense that these clients do, deep down, want connection, “there’s a lot of confusion and fear in terms of how to get there.”

Perhaps the secure-attachment decline shouldn’t be surprising; surveys show that levels of social trust have been decreasing among Americans for some time. Faith in institutions, for one thing, has been faltering for years: A 2019 Pew Research Center poll showed that public trust in the government never fully recovered from a decline five decades ago, and sits at near-historic lows today. Confidence levels in the media, organized religion, the criminal-justice system, corporations, and the police are all falling. That suspicion seems to have translated to doubt in one’s fellow citizens: Nearly half of the Pew respondents agreed that “people are not as reliable as they used to be.”

[Read: The end of trust]

And yet, attachment trends signify something else—not just distrust in hypothetical, nameless Americans, but in one’s colleagues and neighbors, and even friends, partners, and parents. William Chopik, a Michigan State University psychologist who worked on those studies with Konrath, emphasized that we can’t truly know what’s causing that. But he did note, “People are feeling precarious right now.” He rattled off a list of fears that people may be wrestling with: war in Europe, ChatGPT threatening to transform jobs, constant school shootings in the news. When society feels scary, that fear can seep into your closest relationships. People tend to think of attachment style as a static personality trait; really, Chopik told me, “it’s an evaluation of the broader world.”

Konrath pointed to financial precarity in particular. The 2008 recession seems to have really rocked people; not long after that, she saw empathy start to rise and narcissism start to dip, and some researchers think the recession contributed to an increase in insecure attachment too. People might have started recognizing, more than ever, the difficulty others were experiencing—hence the empathy rise. But trust, on the other hand: “Trust takes time,” Konrath said. Perhaps people have been so busy hustling—trying to perfect their résumé to get into a good college, working, worrying about bills—that they haven’t had as much time to just hang out with people and slowly let their guard down.  

Look at how a typical kid’s time is spent today: Young people are spending less time on play and socializing, and more on homework. And many spend more hours than ever in organized activities, where they might be more focused on nailing their Model UN position paper than on casually, gradually getting to know people. This emphasis on achievement over leisure often continues into young adulthood. Konrath can see how much pressure the students in her college classes are under. “They feel like they have to keep working,” she told me. “They have to kind of get a kind of competitive edge on people. Then they’re not taking the time to care for themselves and to care for others.”

[Read: The trait that “super friends” have in common]

Of course, not every researcher agrees that sociopolitical issues—financial insecurity, climate change, gun violence—are the likeliest suspects behind the rise in insecure attachment. I asked Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University who has studied the pre-2009 rise in narcissism, about that ambient feeling of precarity—the feeling that society is falling apart. “You can make that argument for any decade within the last 50 years,” she told me. (Trust in institutions did start plummeting in the ’60s and ’70s—though, notably, it’s kept getting worse.) Twenge believes that the major change to pay attention to is the rise of social media and smartphones, which some studies suggest is associated with less face-to-face interaction. Yes, trust levels started falling before those developments, but she thinks they compounded the problem.

Researchers have plenty of other theories: More people than ever are living alone. Fewer people are aspiring to marry or have children. American culture is placing more importance on “boundaries,” assuming we need to protect ourselves from others’ bad intentions in relationships. Dating apps allow users to virtually swipe through potential partners so efficiently that they feel disconnected from real people. It could be all of these things, some combination of them, or something else entirely. We can’t determine why people are putting up walls, growing further and further away from one another. We just know it’s happening.

Still, the experts I spoke with were surprisingly hopeful. Hilgers knows firsthand that it’s possible for people with attachment issues to change—he’s helped many of them do it. Our culture puts a lot of value on trusting your gut, he told me, but that’s not always the right move if your intuition tells you that it’s a mistake to let people in. So he gently guides them to override that instinct; when people make connections and nothing bad happens, their gut feeling slowly starts to change.

Konrath, for her part, has “reconstrued her role as a teacher”: Instead of focusing solely on the syllabus, she takes time during each class to ask students how they’re doing or how their weekend was; she follows up on why they’re feeling particularly tired one week, even laughs along with them when they groan about having to come to her class. Knowing that many of them won’t inherently trust her—or one another—she wants to show them that she’s consistent, kind, and safe.

We should all be so lucky to have a therapist or teacher this attuned to attachment. But Chopik reminded me that eventually, change can also happen naturally: Many people grow more securely attached over time. They make friends, go on first dates, fall in love, get heartbroken and survive it. “We all learn from those things, and we try to figure out relationships as we go along,” he told me. The world is a scary place, and our personal lives exist within it. But, as Chopik noted, “there’s a lot of power to a life lived.”

By almost any historic yardstick, President Joe Biden is beginning the reelection campaign he formally announced today in a vulnerable position.

His job-approval rating has consistently come in at 45 percent or less; in several recent high-quality national polls, it has dipped closer to 40 percent. In surveys, three-fourths or more of Americans routinely express dissatisfaction with the economy. And a majority of adults have repeatedly said that they do not want him to seek a second term; that figure rose to 70 percent (including just more than half of Democrats) in a national NBC poll released last weekend.

Those are the sort of numbers that have spelled doom for many an incumbent president. “Compared to other presidents, Biden’s approval is pretty low [about] a year and a half from Election Day,” says Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, in Atlanta. “It’s not where you want to be, for sure.”

[David A. Graham: Biden’s in]

And yet despite Biden’s persistently subpar public reviews, there’s no sense of panic in the Democratic Party about his prospects. No serious candidate has emerged to challenge him for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. No elected leaders have called on him to step aside. And though some top Democratic operatives have privately expressed concern about Biden’s weak standing in polls, almost every party strategist I spoke with leading up to his announcement said they consider him the favorite for reelection.

There are many reasons for this gap between the dominant views about Biden’s immediate position and his eventual prospects in the 2024 race. But the most important reason is encapsulated in the saying from Biden’s father that he often quotes in speeches: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.” Most Democrats remain cautiously optimistic that whatever concerns Americans might hold about the state of the economy and Biden’s performance or his age, a majority of voters will refuse to entrust the White House to Donald Trump or another Republican nominee in his image, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“I think there’s no question that neither Trump nor Biden are where they want to be, but … if you project forward, it’s just easier to see a path for victory for Biden than for Trump or DeSantis,” says the Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who was one of the few analysts in either party to question the projections of a sweeping red wave last November.

Rosenberg is quick to caution that in a country as closely split as the U.S. is now, any advantage for Biden is hardly insurmountable. Not many states qualify as true swing states within reach for both sides next year. And those states themselves are so closely balanced that minuscule shifts in preferences or turnout among almost any constituency could determine the outcome.

The result is that control over the direction for a nation of 330 million people could literally come down to a handful of neighborhoods in a tiny number of states—white-collar suburbs of Detroit, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Atlanta; faded factory towns in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania; working-class Latino neighborhoods in Las Vegas; and small-town communities across Georgia’s Black Belt. “Never have so few people had such a big impact in deciding the future of American politics,” Doug Sosnik, the chief White House political adviser for Bill Clinton, told me.

On an evenly matched battlefield, neither side can rest too comfortably about its prospects in the 2024 election. But after Trump’s upset victory in 2016, Republicans have mostly faced disappointing results in the elections of 2018, 2020, and 2022. Across those campaigns, a powerful coalition of voters—particularly young people, college-educated white voters, those who don’t identify with any organized religion, and people of color, mostly located in large metropolitan centers—have poured out in huge numbers to oppose the conservative cultural and social vision animating the Trump-era Republican Party. Many of those voters may be unenthusiastic about Biden, but they have demonstrated that they are passionate about keeping Trump and other Republicans from controlling the White House and potentially imposing their restrictive agenda nationwide. Biden previewed how he will try to stir those passions in his announcement video Tuesday: Far more than most of his speeches, which typically emphasize kitchen-table economics, the video centers on portraying “MAGA extremists” as a threat to democracy and “bedrock freedoms” through restrictions on abortion, book bans, and rollbacks of LGBTQ rights.

“The fear of MAGA has been the most powerful force in American politics since 2018, and it remains the most powerful force,” Rosenberg told me. “It’s why Democrats did so much better than the fundamentals [of public attitudes about Biden and the economy] in 2022, and that will be the case again this time.”

After the Democrats’ unexpectedly competitive showing in the midterm election, Biden’s approval rating ticked up. But in national polls it has sagged again. Recent surveys by The Wall Street Journal, NBC, and CNBC each put Biden’s approval rating at 42 percent or less.

Sosnik said the pivotal period for Biden is coming this fall. Historically, he told me, voter assessments of an incumbent president’s performance have hardened between the fall of their third year in office and the late spring of their fourth. The key, he said, is not a president’s absolute level of approval in that period but its trajectory: Approval ratings for Ronald Reagan, Clinton, and Barack Obama, each of whom won reelection, were all clearly rising by early in their fourth year. By contrast, the approval ratings over that period fell for George H. W. Bush and remained stagnant for Trump. Each lost their reelection bid. Economists and pollsters say voters tend to finalize their views about the economy over roughly the same period and once again tend to put less weight on the absolute level of conditions such as inflation and unemployment than on whether those conditions are improving or deteriorating.

With that crucial window approaching, Biden will benefit if inflation continues to moderate as it has over the past several months. He also could profit from more time for voters to feel the effects of the massive wave of public and private investment triggered by his trio of major legislative accomplishments: the bipartisan infrastructure and semiconductor bills, and the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act.

[Read: Biden’s blue-collar jobs bet]

But Biden also faces the risk that the economy could tip into recession later this year, which some forecasters, such as Larry Summers, the former Clinton Treasury Secretary who predicted the inflationary surge, still consider likely.

If a recession does come, the best scenario for Biden is that it’s short and shallow and further tamps down inflation before giving way to an economic recovery early in 2024. But even that relatively benign outcome would make it difficult for him to attract more supporters in the period through next spring when voters traditionally have solidified their verdicts on a president’s performance.

That means that, to win reelection, Biden likely will need to win an unusually large share of voters who are at least somewhat unhappy over conditions in the country and ambivalent or worse about giving him another term. Historically that hasn’t been easy for presidents.

For those who think Biden can break that pattern, last November’s midterm election offers the proof of concept. Exit polls at the time showed that a solid 55 percent majority of voters nationwide disapproved of Biden’s job performance and that three-fourths of voters considered the economy in only fair or poor shape. Traditionally such attitudes have meant disaster for the party holding the White House. And yet, Democrats minimized the GOP gains in the House, maintained control of the Senate, and won governorships in most of the key swing states on the ballot.

In 2022, the exit polls showed that Democrats, as the party holding the White House, were routed among voters with intensely negative views about conditions. That was typical for midterm elections. But Democrats defused the expected “red wave” by winning a large number of voters who were more mildly disappointed in Biden’s performance and/or the economy.

For instance, with Trump in the White House during the 2018 midterms, Republicans won only about one in six voters in House elections who described the economy as “not so good,” according to exit polls; in 2020, Trump, as the incumbent president, carried only a little more than one-fifth of them. But in 2022, Democrats won more than three-fifths of voters who expressed that mildly negative view of the economy.

Similarly, in the 2010 midterm elections, according to exit polls, two-thirds of voters who “somewhat disapproved” of Obama’s performance as president voted against Democrats running for the House; almost two-thirds of the voters who “somewhat disapproved” of Trump likewise voted against Republicans in 2018. But in 2022, the exit polls found that Democrats surprisingly carried almost half of the voters who “somewhat disapproved” of Biden.

The same pattern persisted across many of the key swing states likely to decide the 2024 presidential race: Democrats won the governors’ contests in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and Senate races in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, even though the exit polls found a majority of voters in each state said they disapproved of Biden’s performance. Winning Democratic gubernatorial candidates such as Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, and Katie Hobbs in Arizona each carried at least 70 percent of voters who described the economy as “not so good.”

Why did Democrats so exceed the usual performance among voters dissatisfied with the country’s direction? The answer is that many of those voters rejected the Republican Party that Trump has reshaped in his image. The exit polls found that Trump was viewed even more unfavorably than Biden in several of the swing states, including Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And nationally, more than two-fifths of voters who expressed negative views about the economy also said they considered the GOP “too extreme.” Particularly on social issues such as abortion rights and gun control, the 2022 results demonstrated that “Trump and these other Republicans have painted themselves into a corner in order to appeal to their base,” Abramowitz told me.

Biden may expand his support by next year, especially in the battleground states, if economic conditions improve or simply because he may soon start spending heavily on television advertising touting his achievements, such as new plant openings. But more important than changing minds may be his ability to replicate the Democrats’ success in 2022 at winning voters who aren’t wild about him but dislike Trump and the GOP even more. “While there are not an overwhelming number of people who are tremendously favorable to Biden, I just don’t think there is an overwhelming number of persuadable people who hate him,” says Tad Devine, a long-time Democratic strategist. “They hate the other guy.”

Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at UCLA, told me that dynamic would likely prove powerful for many voters. Even Democratic-leaning voters who say they don’t want Biden to run again, she predicted, are highly likely to line up behind him once the alternative is a Republican nominee whose values clash with their own. “The bottom line is that on Election Day, that Democratic nominee, even the one they didn’t want to run again, is going to be closer to most people’s vision of the world they want to live in than the Republican alternative,” she said.

In both parties, many analysts agree that in a Biden-Trump rematch, the election would probably revolve less around assessments of Biden’s performance than the stark question of whether voters are willing to return Trump to power after the January 6 insurrection and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “President Biden by every conventional standard is a remarkably weak candidate for reelection,” the longtime Republican pollster Bill McInturff told me in an email. But “Biden’s greatest strength,” McInturff continued, may be the chance to run again against Trump, who “is so terrific at sucking up all the political oxygen, he becomes the issue on which the election gets framed, not the terrible economy or the level of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the direction of the country.”

On both sides, there’s greater uncertainty about whether DeSantis could more effectively exploit voters’ hesitation about Biden. Many Democrats and even some Republicans believe that DeSantis has leaned so hard into emulating, and even exceeding, Trump’s culture-war agenda that the Florida governor has left himself little chance of recapturing the white-collar suburban voters who have keyed the Democratic recovery since 2018. But others believe that DeSantis could get a second look from those voters if he wins the nomination, because he would be introduced to them largely by beating Trump. Although Devine told me, “I do not see a path to the presidency in the general election for Donald Trump,” he said that “if DeSantis were to be able to get rid of Trump and get the credit for getting rid of Trump…I think it’s fundamentally different.”

One thing unlikely to change, whomever Republicans nominate, is how few states, or voters, will effectively decide the outcome. Twenty-five states voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and the strategists planning the Biden campaign see a realistic chance to contest only North Carolina among them. Republicans hope to contest more of the 25 states that voted for Biden, but after the decisive Democratic victories in Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2022, it’s unclear whether either is within reach for the GOP next year. The states entirely up for grabs might be limited to just four that Biden carried last time: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. And as the decisive liberal win in the recent state-supreme-court election in Wisconsin showed, winning even that state, like Michigan and Pennsylvania, may be an uphill battle for any Republican presidential nominee viewed as a threat to abortion rights.

[Read: The first electoral test of Trump’s indictment]

In their recent book, The Bitter End, Vavreck and her co-authors, John Sides and Chris Tausanovitch, describe hardening loyalties and a shrinking battlefield as a form of electoral “calcification.” That process has left the country divided almost in half between two durable but divergent coalitions with antithetical visions of America’s future. “We are fighting at the margins again,” Vavreck told me. “The 2020 election was nearly a replica of 2016, and I think that largely this 2024 election is going to be a repeat of 2020 and 2016.” Whatever judgment voters ultimately reach about Biden’s effectiveness, or his capacity to handle the job in his 80s, this sorting process virtually guarantees another polarized and precarious election next year that turns on a small number of voters in a small number of states.

Whenever I want to avoid work, Google Maps is my go-to. The point is not to hunt for a bite to eat or plan a trip—it’s pure entertainment. I glide over a digital rendering of the Earth, spin it like a globe, and zoom in. Cities and rivers and streets and businesses begin to come into focus, colored with millions of user-uploaded images and reviews. It’s a bit like Where’s Waldo?, but at the world’s scale. Among the treasures to discover are blurry photographs of late nights in dive bars, ratings of obscure colonial-American-life museums, and selfies on a mountain I’ll never visit. There are the juiciest one-star restaurant reviews, such as this one from a café in my neighborhood: “totally unwarranted douche energy from ownership, expired motor oil passed off as coffee, and price-gouged food that is prepared and sourced as terribly as their coffee.” Brutal. In Ecuador, I found half a dozen businesses that appear to be Simpsons-themed.

Google Maps’ main purpose is to enable people to get directions and look up businesses. But along the way, it has become a social space too. Sort of. To fill out the world map it created, Google invited people to add snippets to all the digital places. You upload your photos; you leave your reviews; you look at the artifacts others have left behind. The pictures of a restaurant on Google Maps are often a mismatched succession of interior-design shots, flash photos of messy plates, and outdated menus. There’s plenty of detritus too: irrelevant photos, businesses that don’t exist, three-star reviews without an explanation.

The result is random and messy in a way that is different from the rest of the social web. Instagram and TikTok, after all, are dominated by hyper-curated influencer content, served through feeds geared precisely to specific tastes. Sometimes, pulling up TikTok’s “For You” page and getting sucked in by the app’s selections feels amazing. But especially as algorithmic content has taken over the web, many of the surprises don’t feel fresh. They are our kind of surprises. Google Maps offers something many other platforms no longer can: a hodgepodge of truly unfamiliar stuff that hasn’t been packaged for your taste or mine.

Not that Google necessarily deserves any praise for the delightful weirdness of Google Maps. The platform has become a refuge from the internet that Google itself had a heavy hand in sculpting. By turning its search engine into the internet’s front page—and deciding what appears on it—the company may be the culprit most responsible for ending unexpected encounters. Algorithms are also part of Google Maps: It does plenty of window dressing in its depictions of places, using its Your Match score to present establishments it anticipates you’ll enjoy. “It’s trying to match you with things that it thinks you’re going to like,” Kath Bassett, a sociologist at the University of Bath, in England, who studies map-based media platforms, told me. But “you can get past that.”

Because zooming out and scrolling around are so easy, you can bump into little treasures at every turn that would never land on an Instagram feed. Exploring Google Maps for kicks is not especially common, but I’m not the only one who does it: A community of people keen on these digital impressions has existed for some time. And GeoGuessr, a game in which players are dropped into a random location on Google Maps’ street view and try to guess where they are, has garnered a cult following.

Hopscotching around Google Maps unleashes surprise after surprise. According to one reviewer, the second-largest Union Jack in the British empire is at a museum called Cupids Legacy Centre, in Newfoundland, earning the facility four stars from the user. For only $6, one reviewer claims, you can “take in a tour of the local archeological dig site.” Seems like a steal. Several clicks away is the Tashkent Television Tower, in Uzbekistan’s capital, where scores of users have posted photos from the observation deck, some 300 feet up. The tower is well rated, but the café inside is not. “The service was slow. Our seats were wet,” wrote one visitor.

Thousands of miles west, in the Albanian town of Elbasan, a man in purple poses coolly—hands pocketed, sunglasses activated—by the coat rack at “Supermarket Koli.” A moment later, I am out in the Delaware Bay, many miles away from land, where the Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse juts out of the ocean. A few people have been kind enough to upload images of the 136-year-old haunted metal hulk; how else would I possibly encounter this thing? The strange moments you dig up are typically encased in blandness—drab photos, anodyne reviews, useless information that bores—but that contrast is what gives the weird little bits their value, like a diamond enshrined in stone.

Still, Google Maps hardly presents an entirely accurate depiction of our world. Fewer businesses seem to be indexed in rural areas and the global South, and Street View mode becomes more sparse. Reality is sometimes ugly, and to some degree, the platform moderates its content. According to its website, content reflecting more abrasive realities—bigotry, violence, anything sexually explicit—is pulled, often abetted by machine learning. In some cases, Google Maps itself affects reality: The platform has assumed so much power that its decisions about what to name neighborhoods can have major ramifications.

But as a repository of moments, it can offer depth that other sites, and even perhaps reality, cannot. Happenstance moments at my laundromat posted online aren’t the same as the ones I experience when I’m out of socks, but they give the place a greater dimensionality. It becomes more vibrant in my mind—even if by way of confusing, warped photos of rickety dryers. Other sites, such as Reddit and Wikipedia, are also full of odd curiosities, with devoted fans, but none lets such a random potpourri collect with easy visibility for users. Whereas Wikipedia has a base of meticulous contributors fleshing out structures of information, Google Maps is flavored by masses of people from everywhere throwing up ad hoc content—its ubiquity unlocks possibilities. More than 1 billion people use Google Maps every month.

Compare that with the rest of the social web: Any possible travel destination, for example, is now paired with an endless supply of TikTok videos and Instagram foodie listicles. Look and think no further; we have your Mexico City trip all planned out. Such a polished depiction of a place is sometimes genuinely helpful, but predicting what will resonate with us can be difficult. And what does might be too small or unconventional for selection by an algorithm or an influencer. Because it’s so huge, Google Maps has you looking under a lot of rocks for something good—more so than a “For You” feed delivering amusing content into your hands. But when you uncover something special on Google Maps, it’s like finding $100 on the sidewalk. You so easily could have missed it, but you found it. That kind of satisfaction is tough to replicate on social media today. Recently, I spent 20 minutes looking at this picture of a troop of Siberian teenagers in red berets watching an old man ambiguously stand next to an orange hazmat suit. What is happening here?

Most people won’t end up treating Google Maps as a form of unfiltered entertainment. But even using the platform in the most functional way can influence how you perceive the world. Looking up a pharmacy or the nearest rest stop, you can’t help but bump into off-kilter stuff other users have shared. Google Maps remains an open door to “strange places where all kinds of things are still happening,” Christian Sandvig, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information who studies algorithms, told me. “There was a period where everyone was excited about a kind of shaggier internet, where everyone could put stuff up.” For better or for worse, “it was this free-for-all. And it definitely feels like it’s going away,” he said. The site carries on the legacy of an earlier internet tasked with connecting the world to itself rather than pushing all of us into silos. It is among the internet’s last bastions of unfiltered weirdness.

On a recent Google Maps scrolling expedition, I ended up in Westernpark Nemesvita, a cheesy, artificial little cowboy town near the northern shores of Lake Balaton, Hungary’s largest body of water. There’s archery, a small trampoline, and an inflatable water slide labeled Grand Canyon. A peacock appears to walk the grounds. One glowing review reads, “If you are in Hungary you have to stop by there.” Maybe one day.

“How many different ways are you gonna ask the same fucking question, Mark?” Chris Christie asked me. We were seated in the dining room of the Hay-Adams hotel. It’s a nice hotel, five stars. Genteel.

Christie’s sudden ire was a bit jolting, as I had asked him only a few fairly innocuous questions so far, most of them relating to Donald Trump, the man he might run against in the presidential race. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, was visiting Washington as part of his recent tour of public deliberations about whether to launch another campaign.

Color me dubious. It’s unclear what makes Christie think the Republican Party might magically revert to some pre-Trump incarnation. Or, for that matter, what makes him think a campaign would go any better than his did seven years ago, the last time Christie ran, when he won exactly zero delegates and dropped out of the Republican primary after finishing sixth in New Hampshire.

But still, color me vaguely intrigued too—more so than I am about, say, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. If Christie runs again in 2024, he could at least serve a compelling purpose: The gladiatorial Garden Stater would be better at poking the orange bear than would potential rivals Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley, who so far have offered only the most flaccid of critiques. Over the past few months, Christie has been among the more vocal and willing critics of Trump. Notably, he became the first Republican would-be 2024 candidate to say he would not vote for the former president again in a general election.

[Read: Just call Trump a loser]

Christie makes for an imperfect kamikaze candidate, to say the least. But he does seem genuine in his desire to retire his doormat act and finally take on his former patron and intermittent friend. Which was why I found myself having breakfast with Christie earlier this week, eager to hear whether he was really going to challenge Trump and how hard he was willing to fight. Strangely, he seemed more eager to fight with me.

It was a weird breakfast. Shortly after 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Christie strolled through the ornate dining room of the Hay-Adams, where he had spent the previous few nights. He was joined by his longtime aide Maria Comella. We sat near a window, with a view of the White House across Lafayette Square, and about 100 feet from the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, where Trump had staged his ignominious Bible photo op three springs ago.

I started off by asking Christie about his statement that he would not vote for Trump, even if the former president were the Republican nominee. “I think Trump has disqualified himself from the presidency,” Christie said.

So what would Christie do, then—vote for Joe Biden? Nope. “The guy is physically and mentally not up to the job,” Christie said.

Just to be clear, I continued, this hellscape he was currently suffering under in Biden’s America would be as bad as whatever a next-stage Trump presidency would look like?

“Elections are about choices,” Christie said, as he often does. So whom would he choose in November 2024, if he’s faced with a less-than-ideal choice? “I probably just wouldn’t vote,” he said.

Interesting choice! I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a politician admit to planning not to vote, but it’s at least preferable to that cutesy “I’m writing in Ronald Reagan” or “I’m writing in my pal Ned” evasion that some do.

I pressed on, curious to see how committed Christie really was to his recent swivel away from Trump, or whether this was just his latest opportunistic interlude before his inevitable belly flop back into the Mar-a-Lago lagoon. Say Trump secures the nomination, and most of his formal “rivals”—and various other “prominent Republicans”—revert to doormat mode. (“I will support the nominee,” “Biden is senile,” etc.) What’s Christie going to be saying then, vis-à-vis Trump?

We were exactly seven minutes into our discussion, and my mild dubiousness seemed to set Christie off. His irritation felt a tad performative, as if he might be playing up his Jersey-tough-guy bit.

[From the July/August 2012 issue: Jersey boys]

“I’m not going to dwell on this, Mark,” Christie said. “You guys drive me crazy. All you want to do is talk about Trump. I’m sorry, I don’t think he’s the only topic to talk about in politics. And I’m not going to waste my hour with you this morning—which is a joy and a gift—on just continuing talking, asking, and answering the Donald Trump question from 18 different angles.”

I pivoted to DeSantis, mostly in an attempt to un-trigger Christie. Christie has made a persuasive case that DeSantis has been a disaster as an almost-candidate so far, especially with regard to his feud with Disney. But would Christie support DeSantis if he were to somehow defeat Trump and become the nominee?

“I have to see how he performs as a candidate,” Christie said. “I really don’t know Ron DeSantis all that well … I’m going to be a discerning voter,” Christie added. “I’m going to watch what everybody does, and I’m gonna to decide who I’m gonna vote for.” (Reminder: unless it’s Trump or Biden.)

[Read: Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis]

I had a few more follow-ups. “So, I know you don’t want to talk about Trump …”

“Here we are, back to Trump again,” Christie said, shaking his head.

Trump, I mentioned, has been the definitional figure in the Republican Party for the past seven or eight years, and probably will remain so for the next few. Not only that, but Christie’s history with Trump—especially from 2016 to 2021—was pretty much the only thing that made him more relevant than, say, Hutchinson (respectfully!) or any other Republican polling at less than 1 percent.

This was when Christie lit into me for asking him “the same fucking question.” Look, I said, at least 40 or 50 percent of the GOP remains very much in thrall to Trump, if you believe poll numbers.

Christie questioned my premise: “No matter what statistics you cite, what polls you cite, that’s a snapshot in the moment, and I don’t think those are static numbers.”

“It’s been true for about seven years,” I replied. “That’s pretty static.”

“But he’s been as high as 85 to 90 percent,” Christie said, referring to Trump’s Republican-approval ratings in the past. There will always be variance, he argued, but those approval ratings would be much smaller now. Christie then accused me of being “obsessed” with Trump.

[Read: Why won’t Trump’s Republican rivals just say it?]

At this point, Christie was raising his voice rather noticeably again, an agitated wail that brought to mind Wilma Flintstone’s vacuum. I was becoming self-conscious about potentially disturbing other diners in this elegant salle à manger.

A waiter came over again and asked if we wanted any food. Christie, who was sipping a cup of hot tea, demurred, and I ordered a Diet Coke and a bowl of mixed berries. “What a fascinating combination,” Christie marveled.

I told Christie that I hoped that he would in fact run, if only because he would be better equipped to be pugilistic than the other milksops in the field. Obviously, it would have been better if Christie had taken his best shots at the big-bully front-runner seven years ago instead of largely standing down, quitting the race, and then leading the GOP’s collective bum-rush to Trump. But he has grown a lot and learned a lot since then, Christie assured me.

“I certainly won’t do the same thing in 2024 that I did in 2016,” Christie said. “You can bank on that.”

“Well, I would hope not,” I said. This seemed to reignite his pique.

“What do you mean, I hope?” Christie snapped. He took umbrage that I would question the sincerity of his opposition to Trump: “How about just paying attention to everything I’ve said over the last eight weeks?”

I told him that I had paid attention to what he said about Trump over the past eight years. Christie nodded and seemed to acknowledge that maybe I had a point, that some skepticism might be warranted.

[Read: Chris Christie says his new book isn’t an act of revenge]

I asked Christie if he had any regrets about anything.

“I have regrets about every part of my life, Mark,” he said.

Whoa.

“And anybody who says they don’t is lying.”

That said, Christie added, he would not change anything about his past dealings and relationship with Trump. He is always reminding people that he and Trump were friends long before 2016; that they went way back, 22 years or so. Christie told me that he and Trump have not spoken in two years. Did he miss Trump?

“Not particularly,” he said.

Do you think he misses you?

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“I do,” Christie said.

“Has he called, or tried to reach out?”

“No, that wouldn’t be his style,” Christie told me. “That would be too ego-violative.” (I made a mental note that I’d never before heard the term ego-violative.)

“But I do think he misses me, yeah. I think he misses people who tell him what the truth is. I think he misses that.”

Christie had another meeting scheduled at nine at the Hay-Adams, this one with Congressman John James, a freshman Republican from Michigan. From Washington, he would head to New Hampshire, where he had a full two-day schedule planned—a town hall, a few campaignlike stops, some meetings. He told me he would make a decision in the next few weeks whether to run.

Before I left the hotel, I asked Christie whether his wife, Mary Pat, thought he should run. “My wife affirmatively wants me to do it, which is different than 2015 and 2016,” Christie told me. “She thinks I’m the only person who can effectively take on Donald Trump.”

That’s kind of what I think, I told him—that he could at least play the role of a deft agitator. Good, Christie said, but Mary Pat’s vote counted for more than mine. “I sleep with her every night,” he explained. I told him I understood.

“Have fun in New Hampshire,” I said as Christie shook my hand and pirouetted out of the dining room. He seemed to be no longer mad, if he ever was.

Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a package of six expansive gun violence prevention bills into law Thursday that will create universal background checks for all firearms and mandate safe storage requirements around children.

CNN's Andrew Kaczynski lays out the conspiracy theories shared by Michigan's new Republican chair, Kristina Karamo.

On the morning of August 26, 2021, a sweaty young American diplomat named Sam Aronson stood in body armor near the end of a dusty service road outside the Kabul airport, contemplating the end of his life or his career.

Thirty-one and recently married, 5 foot 10 without his combat helmet, Sam surveyed the scene at the intersection near the airport’s northwest corner, where the unnamed service road met a busy thoroughfare called Tajikan Road. Infected blisters oozed in his socks. He winced at gunfire from Afghan Army soldiers who fired over the heads of pedestrians in a crude form of crowd control. He breathed exhaust from trucks that jittered past market stalls shaded by tattered rugs and faded canvas. The withdrawal of American forces after two decades of war, the sudden fall of Kabul to the Taliban, and the mad rush to the airport by tens of thousands of desperate Afghans couldn’t stop street vendors from hawking cotton candy, vegetables, and on-the-spot tailoring.

Eleven days earlier, Sam had been home in Washington, D.C. He possessed only a layman’s knowledge of Central Asia; he’d spent the previous two years at the American embassy in Nigeria, and had been a State Department bodyguard before that, for Ambassador Samantha Power and others. But, ambitious and allergic to inactivity, he’d volunteered to join the skeleton staff in Kabul overseeing the frenzied evacuation.

Now, as a U.S. Foreign Service officer and vice consul, Sam had the power to grant U.S. entry to people with American passports, visas, and green cards, as well as to the nuclear families of qualified Afghans who had helped the United States and might face Taliban reprisals. Once approved, evacuees were assigned seats aboard military cargo planes whose takeoffs and landings created a white noise that hummed in Sam’s ears. By the morning of the 26th, the emergency airlift had already evacuated more than 100,000 people. In two more days, the operation would end.

Sam felt like a lifeguard in a tsunami. He and a few colleagues could review the documents of only a tiny fraction of the thousands of people pressed against the airport walls. State Department rules handed down from Washington required him to deny entry to extended families—men, women, and children who clutched at him and begged for their lives. The improvised, chaotic screening process forced Sam to make quick decisions that might be reversed at subsequent checkpoints.   

Then Sam discovered a loophole: a secret airport entrance, nicknamed “Glory Gate,” that had been created by CIA paramilitary operatives, the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force, and Afghan Army soldiers. The service road where he stood was a hidden-in-plain-sight path that led from Tajikan Road to a gap in the airport wall. If he could bring people in through that back door, Sam realized, he could approve them himself in freelance rescues that skirted the bureaucratic process entirely. That is, if he could avoid getting himself or anyone else killed.

Sam faced a terrible choice: follow the State Department’s shifting, confusing, infuriating policies about whom he could save, or follow his conscience and risk his life and career to rescue as many imperiled people as he could.

As the morning heat rose toward 90 degrees, Sam concluded that he had no choice after all.  

To surreptitiously bring in evacuees on foot, someone would need to go beyond the end of the service road, cross Tajikan Road, walk more than 100 meters through the bustling street market, and collect at-risk Afghans at the Panjshir Pump, a 24-hour gas station used by the CIA and others as a transit point for evacuees. Then they’d need to retrace their steps without drawing hostile attention from the street crowds or the Taliban fighters who regularly cruised past in pickup trucks.

Unarmed, Sam was not allowed to step beyond the end of the Glory Gate service road. Even being that far outside the airport walls exposed him to danger of kidnapping or death. He needed an accomplice.

Upon his arrival in Kabul, Sam had befriended a 20-year-old Afghan man with a California-surfer vibe who could have passed for his younger brother. Asadullah “Asad” Dorrani had spent two years working as a translator for the U.S. Special Forces. Asad had been offered seats on multiple flights, but he refused to leave without his sister, her husband, and their two young children.

Unlike Sam, Asad wasn’t bound by U.S.-government limits on where he could travel. Then again, involving Asad in Sam’s Glory Gate plan would put the young man’s life at risk.

They connected over WhatsApp and made a deal: Sam would help Asad save his sister’s family, and Asad would escort Sam’s rescue targets from the Panjshir Pump to the service road.  

Sam and Asad’s test case was an Afghan teenager. His older brother and guardian, Ebad, had worked for the U.S. embassy in Kabul, which qualified Ebad, his wife, and their children for evacuation—but not his brother. “I take care of him,” Ebad pleaded. “He doesn’t have anyone else. He’s all alone.” It pained Sam to imagine the fate of a 17-year-old on the cusp of manhood in a city under Taliban control.

With Asad translating, Sam spoke by phone with Ebad’s brother and directed him to the Panjshir Pump. Sam told Ebad’s brother to whisper “devils” when approached by a young Afghan man in body armor. Asad had chosen the password because he thought it sounded like something from a movie.

Sam needed the cooperation of the covert American operator who ran Glory Gate, a combat-hardened, thick-bearded man in his 40s whose call sign was Omar. He explained the plan, and Omar agreed to help. On Omar’s signal, Afghan paramilitary guards under his command created a distraction by firing their weapons over the heads of passersby. At a break in traffic, Asad sprinted from the service-road entrance into Tajikan Road. He cut through an opening in a median strip, crossed to the far side, and wove through the restless crowd east toward the gas station.

Days earlier, Asad had seen Afghan soldiers fired on by a sniper at the North Gate, an incident that left one dead. But risking his life for Ebad’s brother might enable Asad to do the same for his sister’s family. He told himself, If there is a chance, I’m going to take it.

Sam waited anxiously at the edge of Tajikan Road. He knew that Asad could find himself with a bull’s-eye on his back, if for no other reason than his American-issued body armor.

Sam also worried about his career. No one in the State Department knew that he’d recruited a young Afghan interpreter. For all practical purposes, Asad was “this random Afghan guy I met in the passenger terminal.” Now Sam had sent him outside the wire to grab some other random Afghan guy who didn’t qualify as a nuclear-family member of an embassy staffer.

What if he gets taken by the Taliban? Sam thought. Ultimately, the State Department, the White House, is responsible, but I will have caused that disaster. If anything goes wrong, Asad is fucked. I’m fucked. My career is over.  

Sam with Asad (Photograph courtesy Sam Aronson)

After long minutes of waiting, Sam saw Asad sprinting toward him with a wide-eyed young man in tow. Sam and a security contractor pulled them behind Hesco bastions, dirt-filled barriers that looked like huge hay bales.

The security contractor searched Ebad’s brother for weapons or explosives. Finding none, the next challenge was getting the teenager past diplomatic and military security, then reconnecting him with Ebad. First, Sam realized he needed to do one more thing.

“Hold up, let’s take a picture,” Sam said. Shortly after 9:30 a.m., Sam texted it to Ebad with a two-word caption: “Got him.”

Ebad replied: “I will remember your kindness for ever.”

Goosebumps rose on Sam’s sunburned forearms. He recognized that he’d crossed a line.  

Once inside the passenger terminal, Sam faked his confidence, adopting a don’t-bother-me demeanor. He didn’t want to explain what he’d done, and he didn’t want anyone to learn that the young man wasn’t part of an embassy staffer’s nuclear family. If that happened, Ebad’s brother would be thrown back into the crowds, and Sam might be relieved of duty and ordered onto the next plane.

Sam rushed Ebad’s brother past the State Department screening officials stationed outside the terminal. He muttered “special-interest case,” to falsely suggest that he was acting under a higher government authority. It worked.

So Sam began plotting to bring others through Glory Gate.

A diplomatic-security officer who’d been in the military gave Sam a ride back toward Tajikan Road. Having seen what Sam had accomplished, the officer turned to him with a question: “Can you help me with my old interpreter? He worked with me up in Mazar-i-Sharif”—the scene of fierce battles—“and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get his family in this whole time.”

Sam thought, Why are you asking me for permission? If the officer wanted to pull in his onetime interpreter, Sam thought he could simply do it himself. Then it dawned on Sam: The security officer understood the system. Only a State Department consular official like Sam had the authority to designate someone as an at-risk Afghan eligible to enter the airport. Sam nodded. He told the officer to give his interpreter directions to the Panjshir Pump.

When Sam returned to the edge of Tajikan Road, he learned that Asad’s sister, Taiba Noori, was too afraid to make a run for the airport. On a teary phone call, Taiba had told Asad: “I’m sorry, I can’t do it … My children might get hurt.”

“Call her again,” Sam insisted. “Tell her we just made this work. We did the proof of concept. She’s not going to be the first one. This will work!”

Asad called back. Worn down, Taiba and her husband, Noorahmad Noori, agreed to go to the Panjshir Pump with their 5-year-old son, Sohail, and 3-year-old daughter, Nisa.  

The Noori family reached the Panjshir Pump at about the same time as the security officer’s former interpreter, his wife, and their two young children. Sam decided that on this second run, they should attempt to bring in both families at once, a total of eight people, an exponential leap from the single target of Ebad’s brother. Sam filled in Omar, who again signaled Afghan paramilitary guards to scatter the crowd with gunfire. Asad ran into Tajikan Road.

Sam paced with anxiety. As the minutes passed, he noticed several Afghan men edging toward a cement wall 150 meters to the west, apparently intending to climb over and sprint toward the airport, even if it meant risking gunfire. Two of Omar’s Afghan soldiers opened fire low above the men’s heads. The would-be wall jumpers retreated.

Amid the gunfire, Sam spotted Asad running toward him, breathing heavily, carrying Sohail. Taiba ran toward Sam, screaming as she dragged Nisa by the hand. Noorahmad carried their bags. As bullets from the Afghan guards buzzed low over their heads, Sam put himself between danger and the people he needed to protect.

He yelled at Taiba to pick up Nisa, then  spun the mother and daughter around and placed himself squarely behind them. He hoped the steel plates in his body armor would shield them if anyone shot in their direction from the street. Explosions of gunfire and stun grenades mixed with Taiba’s cries.

“Okay,” Sam shouted, “let’s move!”

Sam led them down the service road into a protective alcove within an alley of cement blast walls.

“Sit down, sit down,” he told them.  

Sam grabbed water bottles that felt as warm as toast and gave them to Asad and his sister’s family. The interpreter and his family took cover nearby. Sam exchanged fist bumps with Sohail and Nisa, which made the children smile. Asad radiated relief. Still Taiba wept.

“You’re safe now,” Sam said.

Back inside the airport, Sam’s off-book evacuation initiative came under sudden threat from his bosses, who still didn’t know what he’d been doing.

His supervisor cornered Sam as he entered the barn-shaped building that the State Department and the U.S. military used as a command center. “Good, there you are,” she said. “I need you for a special project. I’ve got to run out for 10 minutes. Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared, and Sam tried not to lose what remained of his cool. Earlier that day, the last official gate to the airport had been closed for security reasons. I’m just getting this thing going, he thought. Now she’s going to pull me for something else? If I’m not out there doing this, nobody will be.  

He thought about disobeying her order to wait, but that didn’t seem wise. He could tell her what he’d been doing and ask permission to continue, but she might order him to stop. Shit, Sam thought. How am I going to get out of this?

He texted a colleague on the small State Department team and asked for help. He explained his unsanctioned evacuations at Glory Gate. “She’s trying to pull me for some bullshit project, but I’m getting people off the road right now. If she pulls me, we’re not getting anybody else in.”

Sam’s colleague, older and more experienced in the art of bureaucratic avoidance, calmed him down. He also recognized a way he could capitalize on Sam’s enterprise.

“Dude, you’re getting people in? I’ve got a family I’ve been trying to get in this whole time.”  

Sam’s colleague wanted to help a former interpreter from his Army days, to repay the man for saving his life more than a decade earlier. Sam told him: “If you can do damage control to distract her or something so she doesn’t realize I’m gone, I’ll go get your interpreter’s family in, plus others.”

The colleague agreed to provide cover.  

As more people learned what he was doing, Sam’s list of target names grew longer.

To keep track, he used a Sharpie to write descriptions and coded names on his left forearm and the back of his left hand. For instance, the security officer’s former interpreter and his three family members from Mazar-i-Sharif became “4 Mazar.” Each time Sam and Asad brought in another group, Sam drew a line through the code. The skin on his arm soon looked like the work of an amateur tattoo artist, covered with crossed-out names of ex-lovers.

(Photograph courtesy Sam Aronson)

During one van ride back to Tajikan Road around 2:30 p.m., Sam realized that he hadn’t eaten anything all day except two Nutri-Grain bars. He found a brown plastic bag of military rations on the van floor marked Menu 4: Spaghetti With Beef and Sauce and shoveled the cold gruel into his mouth.

Sam’s frenetic pace put him in conflict with an embassy email sent that day to all the State Department team members in Kabul. With the tone of a wellness letter, it told them to stay “hydrated, fed, and rested,” and noted that the team was already short-staffed because of illness and fatigue. The email sounded an ominous note as well, instructing them to keep their bags packed and to be ready to leave within 30 minutes in case of emergency.

Back at Tajikan Road, Sam learned that Glory Gate’s intelligence operators had received a warning of a terrorist car bomb heading their way. If it wasn’t intercepted, they expected it to arrive sometime in the next two hours.

Ignoring an impulse to run as far and as fast as he could, Sam sent a voice message to the colleague who was helping him, cautioning that a car bomb might complicate plans to rescue his old interpreter. “I’m going to try to get your guys,” Sam said, shouting over low-flying planes, “but things are really fucking fluid, and we’ve got to move fast because they’re probably going to shut this gate and boot us pretty soon.”

Sam and Asad brought in two more families, again using his “special-interest case” swagger in the terminal. Next, eight Afghan women who were American citizens or green-card holders. The women were members of Afghanistan’s Hazara population, a persecuted ethnic and religious minority who feared genocide under the Taliban.  

Meanwhile, Sam watched American covert operatives take defensive action to prevent any terrorist vehicles from entering Glory Gate. They moved blast walls with a forklift and positioned an armored personnel carrier sideways across the service road. When Sam asked one of the gatekeepers for details, he said: “Be ready to pull back. If we say run, run.”

Sam could only hope that if he got that message, he would have time to call Asad and bring him in. Sam told himself this mission would be Asad’s last, no matter what. Asad would be on a plane with his sister’s family by nightfall, even if Sam had to drag him on personally.

When they reached the passenger terminal on the day’s final trip, Sam handed off the Hazara women and the interpreter and his family to another State Department colleague. Sam noted the time: 5:08 p.m. As he looked at his watch, he could see that he’d crossed out every Glory Gate target name on his left forearm.

On that one day, August 26, Sam, Asad, and a pair of State Department security officers—with help from American intelligence operatives, Special Operations Forces, and Afghan paramilitary troops—personally brought 52 people, from 13 families, through Glory Gate. (Several hundred Afghans who’d worked at the U.S. embassy also passed through the gate on buses.)

But there were others Sam had turned down. A United Nations program officer whose family they’d rescued texted him in the afternoon: “My sister and family 4 people are also waiting if possible can you plz help them. She has two kids.” His sister worked at the Afghan presidential palace, and her husband was a contractor for the Americans and the British.

“Sorry,” Sam replied. “I’m on the last group I’m allowed to grab. They’re shutting down this gate.”

This refusal, among others, would haunt Sam: For every at-risk Afghan they’d helped, countless others remained in peril.

Outside the Americans’ command center, Sam stopped in a courtyard to smoke a cigarette, a new habit he’d picked up to calm his nerves. He crushed the butt under his heel and went in. Dehydrated, limping from his blisters, caked in sweat and dust, Sam peeled off his helmet and body armor and sank onto a couch.

At that moment, less than a mile away, a former engineering student named Abdul Rahman Al-Logari walked among several hundred fellow Afghans waiting to be searched by Marines outside the Abbey Gate. Under his clothing, he wore a 25-pound explosive vest. While U.S. officials searched on the ground and from the air for a car bomb, Logari arrived on foot. He drew close to American servicemen and -women clustered near other Afghans.

At 5:36 p.m., he detonated his suicide bomb.

Ball bearings the size of peas tore through the crowd, killing 13 U.S. troops and at least 170 Afghans. The bomb seriously wounded dozens of other U.S. military personnel and many more Afghans seeking evacuation. Bodies filled the open sewage canal that divided the roadway leading to the Abbey Gate. Screams of pain and grief filled the air. Survivors raced to rescue others. Some tried to climb the airport walls. Believing they were under attack by ISIS-K gunmen, Marines opened fire.  

Word of the terrorist attack spread instantly through the command center. A voice boomed: “Attention. Unconfirmed report of a blast at the Abbey Gate. Stand by for more information.”

Sam jolted from the couch to full alert. Warnings sounded about follow-up attacks. One report, which turned out to be mistaken, claimed that a second bomb had exploded at the Baron Hotel, across from the Abbey Gate. Sam heard a report of a grenade tossed over the airport wall. Another alert said terrorists had breached the airport, but soon that report was withdrawn.  

Oh my God, Sam thought. This just keeps going on and on.

The alert system resumed, with a blaring siren warning of an imminent rocket attack. A robotic female voice repeated: “Incoming, incoming, incoming. Take cover.”

As he huddled in a corner, Sam remembered a lesson he’d learned days earlier: If he heard the whirring engine of an incoming rocket, he needed to sing, to save his lungs from the blast pressure.

While he waited for an explosion or an all-clear signal, Sam texted his wife: “You’re going to see something on the news shortly. I’m okay.”

“If they offer you a plane out,” she replied, “do not be the hero who stays.”  

But he did stay, until the very end, and saved more people, in even more harrowing nighttime rescues that took him beyond Glory Gate into the chaos of Tajikan Road.  

He left Kabul late on August 28, on one of the last planes out.

To Sam’s relief, when his bosses in Kabul and back in D.C. learned about his unauthorized actions at Glory Gate, they weren’t angry. He’d helped vulnerable people without triggering a catastrophe, so Sam was hailed for his initiative rather than punished for his defiance. A commendation letter described Sam as a hero amid the “apocalyptic” scene in Kabul.  

A separate letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised Sam for his “commitment, bravery, and humanity.” It concluded: “I am honored to be part of your team.”

And yet, Sam says his supervisor denied his request for a couple of days off to recover. Despite a pledge from Blinken that no one returning from Kabul would be penalized for seeking therapy, Sam was told to inform the medical office that he’d seen a State Department psychologist, which Sam believed could have triggered a career-threatening mental-health review. Sam pushed back and the request was dropped. Eventually, feeling that he needed a bigger change, he resigned from the State Department and took a job on the global-policy team of a tech company.  

Sam remained in regular contact with Asad, who settled in Michigan near his family. When Asad visited Washington, Sam took him to an Afghan restaurant to catch up.  

For several months after his return, Sam had nightmares. He drank bourbon or wine to help him sleep. A woman in a headscarf with two young children begging for money outside a Target sparked flashbacks. He felt the dry air, heard the gunshots, and began to tremble. He broke out in tears on the ride home.

Sam felt proud of what he’d accomplished in Kabul. During the last days of a lost war, in a hostile place where he didn’t belong and shouldn’t have been, he’d put the lives of others above his own. But he also carried guilt for all those he couldn’t help, and for all the people he’d turned away before discovering Glory Gate.

“I followed those orders,” he says. “If I could do it all over again, I’d say screw the rules and let them in.”  

This article was adapted from the forthcoming book The Secret Gate: A True Story of Courage and Sacrifice During the Collapse of Afghanistan.

The former head of Michigan's medical marijuana licensing board and former state House speaker admitted to taking more than $110,000 in bribes to help businesses get medical marijuana licenses, according to a plea agreement filed in federal court.

In the past, I’ve leaned on the great Arab proto-sociologist Ibn Khaldun to explain modern life. “Empires age and decay in the course of three generations,” he argued in the 14th century, and they trace a typical path: First, hardened provincials, working closely in tribal units, claw their way to power; their children enjoy the fruit, ruling in ease during a peak of power; but in the third generation, the scions become dissolute and disconnected and end up farming out their power to others. The empire crumbles.

[Read: The 2016 presidential race: A cheat sheet]

It can seem like a hacky Gladwellian schema, and I cite it only with tongue in cheek, but the framework is fun and awfully adaptable. For example, it might offer some explanation for why on earth Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is apparently running for the 2024 Democratic nomination for president.

A Kennedy Kandidacy will probably generate some headlines because certain factions of the press can’t resist the family, but it’s going to end in ignominious defeat for RFK Jr., who will be lucky to outpace Marianne Williamson for a distant silver medal in the Democratic primary if Joe Biden runs for reelection—and probably won’t do any better if Biden opts out.

Not much about this makes sense, but Ibn Khaldun might not be surprised. The Kennedy dynasty began with the striving, sharp-elbowed Joe Kennedy, who built a fortune and sway in the early 20th century. He propelled his sons to the highest ranks of political power: John was elected president; Robert Sr. was attorney general and a senator, and may well have become president if he hadn’t been assassinated in 1968; Ted was one of the most successful senators in American history. But already the signs of dissipation had appeared. That brings us to the third generation. Many of them are quite accomplished, though the family continues to be haunted by tragedy. But the close family ties have begun to strain; RFK Jr.’s sister and cousins have rightly excoriated his anti-vaccine stance.

And where his father and uncles mounted serious runs for the White House, what does an RFK Jr. candidacy offer a primary voter? Not freshness and youth—he’s 69 and comes from a famous family. Not diversity—he’s a northeastern Irish Catholic boy like Biden. Not a clear policy alternative, either—Kennedy’s political positions are fairly middle-of-the-road for the Democratic Party, with an emphasis on the environment, except for his espousal of conspiracy theories around voting machines and vaccines, which have little purchase in the party.

One answer, as reported by CBS’s Robert Costa: The conservative saboteur Steve Bannon has apparently been urging Kennedy to run, and “believes RFK Jr. could be both a useful chaos agent in 2024 race and a big name who could help stoke anti-vax sentiment around the country.” It’s just as Ibn Khaldun predicted: By the third generation of a dynasty, mercenaries and outsiders have become the powers behind the throne—or at least behind the vanity campaign for the Oval Office.

This cheat sheet tracks who’s in, out, up, and down in the 2024 races. It will be updated as the campaign develops, so check in regularly.

DEMOCRATS (Joshua Roberts / Getty) Joe Biden

Who is he?
After decades of trying, Biden is the president of the United States.

Is he running?
Not officially, but in every other respect, yes. Every time he’s been asked, he says he expects to run, and when his longtime aide Ron Klain departed as chief of staff, Klain said he’d be there “when” Biden runs in 2024. An announcement could come soon, now that the State of the Union has passed.

Why does he want to run?
Biden has always wanted to be president and is proud of his work so far; he also seems to believe that he may be the only person who can defeat Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup.

[Mark Leibovich: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]

Who wants him to run?
There’s the catch. Some prominent Democrats support his bid for a second term, but voters have consistently told pollsters they don’t want him to run again.

Can he win the nomination?
If he runs, it’s probably his for the taking. No incumbent president has lost the nomination in the modern era, and Biden has pushed through changes to the Democratic-primary process that make him an even more prohibitive favorite.

What else do we know?
Biden is already the oldest person elected president and to serve as president, so a second term would set more records.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Kamala Harris

Who is she?
Harris is the vice president of the United States.

Is she running?
No, but if Biden does not, she’s expected to be the favorite.

Why does she want to run?
One problem with her 2020 presidential campaign was the lack of a clear answer to this question. Perhaps running on the Biden-Harris legacy would help fill in the blank.

Who wants her to run?
Some Democrats are excited about the prospect of nominating a woman of color, but generally Harris’s struggles as a candidate and in defining a role for herself (in the admittedly impossible position of VP) have resulted in nervousness about her as a standard-bearer.

Can she win the nomination?
It’s too soon to tell, but she’d start with an advantage if Biden sits this out.

(Matthew Cavanaugh / Getty) Pete Buttigieg

Who is he?
Mayor Pete is Secretary Pete now, overseeing the Department of Transportation.

Is he running?
No, but he would also be a likely candidate if Biden bows out.

Why does he want to run?
Just as he was four years ago, Buttigieg is a young, ambitious politician with a moderate, technocratic vision of government.

Who wants him to run?
Buttigieg’s fans are passionate, and Biden showed that moderates remain a force in the party.

Can he win the nomination?
Possibly.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Bernie Sanders

Who is he?
The senator from Vermont is changeless, ageless, ever the same.

Is he running?
No, but if Biden doesn’t, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t seriously consider another go. A top adviser even says so.

Why does he want to run?
Sanders still wants to tax billionaires, level the economic playing field, and push a left-wing platform.

Who wants him to run?
Sanders continues to have the strong support of a large portion of the Democratic electorate, especially younger voters.

Can he win the nomination?
Two consecutive tries have shown that he’s formidable, but can’t close. Maybe the third time’s the charm?

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Gretchen Whitmer

Who is she?
Whitmer cruised to a second term as governor of Michigan in 2022.

Is she running?
Say it with me: No, but if Biden doesn’t, she might.

Why does she want to run?
It’s a little early to know, but her reelection campaign focused on abortion rights.

Who wants her to run?
Whitmer would check a lot of boxes for Democrats. She’s a fresh face, she’s a woman, and she’s proved she can win in the upper Midwest against a MAGA candidate.

Can she win the nomination?
Perhaps.

(Lucas Jackson / Reuters) Marianne Williamson

Who is she?
If you don’t know Williamson from her popular writing on spirituality, then you surely remember her somewhat woo-woo Democratic bid in 2020.

Is she running?
Yes. Williamson announced her campaign on March 4 in D.C.

Why does she want to run?
“It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,” she said at her campaign launch. She has also said that she wants to give voters a choice. “The question I ask myself is not ‘What is my path to victory?’ My question is ‘What is my path to radical truth-telling?’ There are some things that need to be said in this country.”

Who wants her to run?
Williamson has her fans, but she doesn’t have a clear political constituency.

Can she win the nomination?
Nah.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) J. B. Pritzker

Who is he?
The governor of Illinois is both scion of a wealthy family and a “nomadic warrior.”

Is he running?
If Biden, etc.

Why does he want to run?
After years of unfulfilled interest in elected office, Pritzker has established himself as a muscular proponent of progressivism in a Democratic stronghold.

Who wants him to run?
Improbably for a billionaire, Pritzker has become a darling of the Sanders-style left, as well as a memelord.

Can he win the nomination?
Maybe.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Who is he?
The son of a presidential candidate, the nephew of another, and the nephew of a president, Kennedy is a longtime environmental activist and also a chronic crank.

Is he running?
Yes. He has filed his paperwork and will reportedly announce the run on April 19.

Why does he want to run?
Running for president is a family tradition—hell, he wouldn’t even be the first Kennedy to primary a sitting Democrat. If he does run, you can expect a campaign arranged around his esoteric combination of left-wing interests (the environment, drug prices) and right-wing causes (vaccine skepticism, anger about social-media “deplatforming.”)

Who wants him to run?
Who knows? One report says Steve Bannon is encouraging his run in order to stoke chaos, which checks out. Kennedy’s wife, the actress Cheryl Hines—with whom he has clashed over vaccines—is at least willing to tolerate it. “I’m thinking about it, and I’ve passed the biggest hurdle, which is my wife has green-lighted it,” he said.

Can he win the nomination?
No.

REPUBLICANS (Joe Raedle / Getty) Donald Trump

Who is he?
You know him and you love him. Or hate him. Probably not much in between.

Is he running?
Yes. Trump announced his bid to return to the White House at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022.

Why does he want to run?
Revenge, boredom, rivalry, fear of prosecution, long-standing psychological hang-ups.

[Elaine Godfrey: Trump begins ‘retribution’ tour]

Who wants him to run?
A big tranche of the GOP is still all in on Trump, but it’s a little hard to tell how big. Polling shows that his support among Republicans is all over the place, but he’s clearly not a prohibitive front-runner.

Can he win the nomination?
Yes, but past results are no guarantee of future success.

What else do we know?
More than we could possibly want to.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Ron DeSantis

Who is he?
The second-term governor of Florida, DeSantis was previously a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Not officially, but clearly the answer is yes. DeSantis is getting a campaign and super PAC up and running, marshaling donors, and inserting himself into national politics. He reportedly might not announce until May or June.

Why does he want to run?
DeSantis offers the prospect of a synthesis of Trump-style culture war and bullying and the conservative politics of the early 2010s Republican Party.

Who wants him to run?
Members of the Republican establishment who want a pugilistic alternative to Trump, disaffected MAGA types, and maybe Jeb!

[From the March 2023 issue: How did America’s weirdest, most freedom-obsessed state fall for an authoritarian governor?]

Can he win the nomination?
No one quite knows how a Trump-DeSantis battle will play out, but it seems very possible.

(Roy Rochlin / Getty) Nikki Haley

Who is she?
Haley, the daughter of immigrants, was governor of South Carolina and then ambassador to the United Nations under Trump.

Is she running?
Yes. She announced her campaign on February 14, saying, “Time for a new generation.”

Why does she want to run?
Perhaps as a MAGA-friendly alternative to Trump? It’s hard to say, as my colleague Tim Alberta has chronicled. Haley served under Trump, condemned him over January 6, said she wouldn’t run if he ran, and now is running anyway.

[Sarah Isgur: What Nikki Haley can learn from Carly Fiorina]

Who wants her to run?
That’s also hard to say, but if DeSantis stumbles in the spotlight, she could make a play for his supporters.

Can she win the nomination?
Dubious.

(Dylan Hollingsworth / Bloomberg / Getty) Vivek Ramaswamy

Who is he?
A 37-year-old biotech millionaire with a sparkling resume (Harvard, then Yale Law, where he became friends with Senator J.D. Vance), Ramaswamy has recently become prominent as a crusader against “wokeism” and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on February 21.

Why does he want to run?
“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” Ramaswamy said in a somewhat-hectoring launch video. “Faith, patriotism, and hard work have disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like Covidism, climatism, and gender ideology.”

Who wants him to run?
As The New Yorker found in a long profile in December, he has some avid fans. So far, little evidence suggests this amounts to a winning coalition.

Can he win the nomination?
Almost certainly not. At this stage, Ramaswamy gives off Steve Forbes/Herman Cain/Morry Taylor vibes—an interesting character from the business world, but not a contender. Then again, Trump once did too.

(Alex Wong / Getty) Asa Hutchinson

Who is he?
Hutchinson, the formerly longtime member of Congress, just finished a stint as governor of Arkansas.

Is he running?
Yes. Hutchinson announced on April 2 that he is running, with a formal launch coming later in the month. It would have been funnier to announce a day earlier, though.

Why does he want to run?
At one time, Hutchinson was a right-wing Republican—he was one of the managers of Bill Clinton’s impeachment—but as the party has changed, he finds himself closer to the center. He’s been very critical of Trump, saying that Trump disqualified himself with his attempts to steal 2020’s election. Hutchinson is also unique in the field for having called on Trump to drop out over his indictment in New York.

Who wants him to run?
Some old-school Republicans would welcome his candidacy, but it’s hard to imagine a groundswell.

Can he win the nomination?
Unlikely.

(Drew Angerer / Getty) Larry Hogan

Who is he?
Hogan left office this year after serving two terms as governor of Maryland.

Is he running?
No. After giving a campaign “very serious consideration,” Hogan ruled himself out on March 5, saying he was worried that too large a field would help Trump win the nomination once more.

Why did he want to run?
Hogan argued that his experience of governing a very blue state as a Republican is a model: “We’ve been really successful outside of Washington, where everything appears to be broken and nothing but divisiveness and dysfunction.” He’s also a vocal critic of Donald Trump.

Who wanted him to run?
Moderate, business-friendly “Never Trump” Republicans love Hogan.

Could he have won?
No.

(John Locher / AP) Chris Sununu

Who is he?
The governor of New Hampshire, he’s the little brother of former Senator John E. Sununu and son of former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

Is he running?
“Maybe I run, maybe I don’t,” he said in early February. But he passed on a Senate run last year and just created a fundraising vehicle that typically presages a candidacy.

Why does he want to run?
Sununu seems disgusted by a lot of Washington politics and sees his success in New Hampshire, a purple-blue state, as a model for small-government conservatism.

Who wants him to run?
Trump-skeptical Republicans, old-school conservatives.

Can he win the nomination?
Maybe.

(David Becker / The Washington Post / Getty) Tim Scott

Who is he?
A South Carolinian, Scott is the only Black Republican senator.

Is he running?
Maybe. Scott has visited Iowa and considered a campaign, and says he doesn’t plan to run for another Senate term.

Why does he want to run?
Unlike some of the others on this list, Scott doesn’t telegraph his ambition quite so plainly, but he’s built a record as a solid Republican. He was aligned with Trump, but never sycophantically attached.

Who wants him to run?
Scott’s Senate colleagues adore him.

Can he win the nomination?
Who knows? The soft-spoken Scott is untested in this kind of campaign.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Mike Pompeo

Who is he?
Pompeo, a former member of Congress, led the CIA and was secretary of state under Trump.

Is he running?
Most likely. He’s released a campaign-style memoir, though he had to blurb it himself, and has pointedly distanced himself from Trump on some issues.

Why does he want to run?
Pompeo has always been ambitious, and he seems to think he can combine MAGA proximity with a hawkish foreign-policy approach.

Who wants him to run?
That’s not entirely clear.

Can he win the nomination?
Maybe, but probably not.

(Misha Friedman / Getty) Glenn Youngkin

Who is he?
Youngkin, the former CEO of the private-equity Carlyle Group, was elected governor of Virginia in 2021.

Is he running?
He hasn’t said, but he’s been traveling to stump for Republicans and meet with donors, and he’s limited to a single term as governor.

Why does he want to run?
Youngkin is a bit of a cipher; he ran largely on education issues, and has sought to tighten abortion laws in Virginia, so far to no avail.

Who wants him to run?
Republicans who see him as able to run on Trumpy cultural issues while keeping some distance from Trump.

Can he win the nomination?
Possibly.

(Megan Varner / Getty) Mike Pence

Who is he?
The former vice president, he also served as governor of Indiana and U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Pretty likely, though he hasn’t declared.

Why does he want to run?
Pence has long harbored White House dreams, and he has a strong conservative-Christian political agenda. His time as Trump’s VP both makes him more plausible and probably rules him out, because he’s fallen afoul of his old boss.

Who wants him to run?
Conservative Christians, rabbit lovers.

[Read: Nobody likes Mike Pence]

Can he win the nomination?
It’s hard to see it happening.

(Mandel Ngan / Getty) Francis Suarez

Who is he?
Suarez is the popular second-term mayor of Miami and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Is he running?
He’s been telling reporters for months that he’s considering, most recently in March.

Why does he want to run?
Suarez touts his youth—he’s 45—and said in October 2022, “I’m someone who believes in a positive aspirational message. I’m someone who has a track record of success and a formula for success.” He’s also someone who voted against the Republican Ron DeSantis in the 2018 governor’s race and did not vote for Trump in 2020.

Who wants him to run?
Is there really room for another moderate-ish Republican in the race? Suarez reports that Trump said he was the “hottest politician in America after him,” but the former president would probably not be a supporter, and with DeSantis a presumptive candidate, Suarez would be an underdog in his home state.

Can he win the nomination?
Highly unlikely.

(Sam Wolfe / Bloomberg / Getty) Mike Rogers

Who is he?
Rogers is a congressman from Alabam—wait, no, sorry, that’s the other Representative Mike Rogers. This one is from Michigan and retired in 2015. He was previously an FBI agent and was head of the Intelligence Committee while on Capitol Hill.

Is he running?
He is thinking about it and has formed a group with the suitably vague name “Lead America.”

Why does he want to run?
He laid out some unassailably broad ideas for a campaign in an interview with Fox News, including a focus on innovation and civic education, but it’s hard to tell what exactly the goal is here. “This is not a vanity project for me,” he added, which, OK, sure.

Who wants him to run?
“I think the Trump, Trump-lite lane is pretty crowded,” he told Fox. “The lane that is not talking about Trump, that is talking about solutions and the way forward and what the real challenges we face—I just don’t find a lot of people in that lane.” Which, again, OK?

Can he win the nomination?
Nope.

(Ida Mae Astute / Getty) Chris Christie

Who is he?
What a journey this guy has had, from U.S. attorney to respected governor of New Jersey to traffic-jam laughingstock to Trump sidekick to Trump critic. Whew.

Is he running?
He is “trying to figure out” if there’s a way to run against Trump and DeSantis, he told Fox News in late March. A former aide told The New York Times that Christie “wants for sure” to run.

Why does he want to run?
Anyone who runs for president once and loses wants to run again—especially if he thinks the guy who beat him is an idiot, as Christie clearly thinks about Trump. Whether he’d rerun his 2016 campaign or adapt to a new GOP era is yet to be seen.

Who wants him to run?
“I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations with donors over the course of the last few weeks,” Christie has said, as is obligatory of long-shot candidates. But he doesn’t seem to have much campaign-in-waiting or a clear constituency.

Can he win the nomination?
Highly doubtful.

Michigan's Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday signed a repeal of the state's 1931 abortion ban, which the Democratically controlled state legislature had passed last month.