The actor is playing the character for the final time in the fifth instalment of the franchise.

On an empty patch of land in my hometown, a new economic order may be taking shape.

Growing up around Syracuse, New York, at the turn of this century had its share of joys: post-blizzard sledding, minor-league baseball games, chance sightings of Syracuse University basketball players at Wegmans. But the area’s best days seemed to be slipping ever further into the past. One major employer after another abandoned the area for leaner workforces and cheaper pastures abroad. To those of us coming of age then, the blaring signal was that if we wanted opportunity and security, we’d better get out. So many of us did—leaving home, and our families, for the “superstar” cities (in my case, New York) where the good-paying jobs were.

That story of decline and exodus was repeated in any number of cities and towns around the country during those years. It was driven in no small part by place-agnostic policy choices that let the “invisible hand” of the market pick where jobs would go. This led to concentrated growth in a few big cities, while regions like Central New York and much of the Midwest were relegated to stagnation or worse. It fostered animosity among the people who had been sold out, forging a ready-made constituency for Donald Trump and the politics of resentment.

[Ronald Brownstein: Bidenomics really is something new]

But perhaps that story is changing. In October, the semiconductor manufacturer Micron Technology announced that it will spend as much as $100 billion over the next 20 years to build a plant outside Syracuse. It’s an unheard-of amount of money for Central New York. The deal was sealed by last summer’s CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan $50 billion investment in American-made semiconductor chips. It is, to date, the biggest example of—and the biggest bet on—the Biden administration’s rediscovery of an old idea about the economy: that geography matters. This approach recognizes that when it comes to growth and opportunity, the question is not just how much, but where and for whom. If it succeeds in places like Syracuse, it could transform the American economic and political landscape.

An earlier era of government policy put Syracuse on the map. Nineteenth-century nation-builders such as Henry Clay pushed for an “American System” to support domestic industry and build connective infrastructure. The shining success was the Erie Canal, running from Albany to Buffalo, as upstate–New York schoolchildren still learn through field trips and song. Syracuse sat at its center and was soon transformed from empty swampland into a boomtown. The city grew into a full-fledged manufacturing hub by the 1900s, producing everything from automotive gears to steel to typewriters. The name of my hometown and Micron’s new base just north of Syracuse memorializes the area’s American System heritage: Clay, New York.

During the Great Depression, Syracuse was among the earliest beneficiaries of place-conscious New Deal policy. Then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1931 regional-relief legislation put hundreds of residents to work building a park and parkway along Onondaga Lake, on the city’s northwestern edge. (He would nationalize this type of initiative as president to support hard-hit places through programs such as the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority.) In the 1940s, the parkway was essential for transporting workers to a massive new General Electric campus north of the city known as Electronics Park. GE joined the air-conditioner producer Carrier and other manufacturers to form the area’s economic backbone during the postwar boom.

That golden age came under strain in the 1970s. After decades of American industrial dominance, competitors in Europe and Japan began catching up. At the same time, Milton Friedman–style laissez-faire economics was on the rise. So was inflation. Policy makers prioritized national growth and low prices for consumer goods above all else and believed that the best way to achieve them was to get government out of the way. Where that growth took place and those consumer goods were produced was mostly irrelevant. The proceeds, it was claimed, would trickle down to everyone.

This combination of macroeconomic forces and policy choices bludgeoned industry in Syracuse. The GE plant started shifting jobs—including in semiconductor production—overseas during the ’70s. About 20 years after Ronald Reagan visited the Syracuse plant as a GE spokesman, the company closed operations there entirely during his presidency. Other companies followed suit, shedding thousands of jobs in the ’80s and ’90s. Then, after China was admitted into the World Trade Organization in 2001, with the United States’ support, a flood of cheap Chinese imports further undercut the local manufacturing base. In the biggest blow, Carrier moved production overseas in 2003, explaining that it could make air conditioners “three times cheaper in Asia.”

Deindustrialization left a void that Syracuse has struggled to fill. There are fewer private-sector jobs in the area today than there were in 2001. The city’s population fell for decades. It has one of the highest child-poverty rates in the nation. GE’s old Electronics Park campus, where 17,000 people once worked, is surrounded by a sprawl of mostly empty parking lots; its current tenants employ fewer than 3,000 people. Until last year, Carrier’s name still graced the university’s famed sports dome, two decades after the company last produced an air conditioner in Syracuse.

The dramatic rise in economic inequality in the U.S. since the 1980s is usually pictured in vertical terms, as a pulling-away of the top earners from everyone below. But the shift toward market fundamentalism also had drastic horizontal effects, creating a map of winners and losers. Merger-friendly regulators waved through corporate acquisitions that saw regional businesses gobbled up by large multinationals headquartered in coastal hubs. The Midwest was already seven years into a recession before the 2008 financial crisis. The few elite cities where job growth clustered, meanwhile, became crushingly expensive to live in. And a pandemic exposed the downsides of place-agnostic economics: Crises anywhere could snap supply chains and throttle economies everywhere.

In response, President Joe Biden’s administration has embraced industrial policy—that is, direct government support for particular domestic industries—through legislation investing in semiconductors, clean energy, and infrastructure. Crucially, but with less fanfare, the administration has also been designing these efforts to reverse decades of geographic redistribution. It aims to invest “in places and communities that risk being left behind,” as the White House economic adviser Heather Boushey said in a recent speech. Brookings Institution researchers identified $80 billion worth of place-based programs in Biden’s laws, with the CHIPS Act leading the pack.

[Read: Why the economic fates of America’s cities diverged]

“There is no doubt that without the CHIPS Act, we would not be here today,” Micron’s chief executive said upon announcing its Syracuse investment. Micron stands to reap billions from the act’s pot of money for new semiconductor plants and could collect even more from a separate investment tax credit. In exchange, the 20-year project is forecasted to directly create 9,000 good-paying jobs, generate another 40,000 jobs at local companies, and raise $17 billion in state tax revenue. Micron has also pledged to fund local child care, achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and spend millions on other community investments. (New York mandated some of these commitments to unlock state subsidies, in part to avoid the kind of blowback that killed the Amazon HQ2 deal in Queens.)

Having been burned before by big promises of new industry that never materialized, many in Syracuse are taking a believe-it-when-we-see-it caution with Micron. But the economics of hope are already gaining visible momentum. Even before Micron breaks ground, the county is preparing for a house-building spree. Underused spaces are being targeted for residential and commercial development. Public transit is being expanded to get workers to and from Micron. Colleges are adding degrees and training programs to seed a semiconductor workforce. Local breweries are crafting semiconductor-inspired lagers.

Biden, who attended Syracuse University for law school, has been a vocal booster of the Micron project. Effective place-based economics may prove politically beneficial for him and the Democratic Party. In 2020, Biden drew support overwhelmingly from the most economically vibrant parts of the country. As opportunity has concentrated in fewer places, so too have the college-educated voters whom Democrats rely on. If more areas grow, the party’s electoral map may too.

Ultimately, Bidenomics will be judged by whether it actually delivers for the people and places that lost out under the old economic-policy consensus. From my adopted home 250 miles away, I’m watching Micron’s arrival with cautious optimism. Americans have long been lauded for our willingness to pick up and move, to “go west” toward new frontiers and opportunities. But maybe we shouldn’t have to. And maybe, in a few decades, we won’t. A generation from now, Syracuse may be churning out semiconductors like it once did televisions and air conditioners. Maybe more children will be able to envision a good middle-class life where their roots are—not just in Syracuse, but in places like Detroit, Columbus, northwestern Indiana, and more. The old order had too little use for too many places. We may be witnessing the birth of a new one that spreads possibility and meaning across more of America.

A common trope in the hero’s journey, if you consult Joseph Campbell’s work, is the “refusal of the call”—the moment when the protagonist declines the adventure ahead of them, upping the stakes for whatever comes next. But in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the latest installment of the Indiana Jones series, our familiar hero (played by the now-80-year-old Harrison Ford) is too jaded to bother with much of anything. Instead, shirtless on his easy chair and toting a glass of whiskey, he’s introduced fast asleep before he shuffles to his professorship at New York’s City College and accepts a cheesy retirement gift from his co-workers. “Thanks for putting up with me,” he mumbles, to a few scattered claps.

This is the fifth Indiana Jones film but the first in 15 years, following 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—a movie that was itself happy to dispense gags about Ford’s increasing creakiness. Dial of Destiny knows it cannot retreat from its star’s advancing age, so it leans all the way in, spinning a yarn in which the whip-toting archeologist confronts—and eventually rebuffs—his perceived uselessness by going on one more quest around the world in search of an ancient doohickey. The film, directed by James Mangold, still has a streak of defiance, but it’s a gentle one, working to avoid the relative strangeness of Crystal Skull and instead give viewers exactly what they might expect.

Mangold is an incredibly reliable purveyor of blockbuster fare who can punch above his weight in almost any genre. His two comic-book movies, The Wolverine and Logan, were gritty and thoughtful works; he also makes an excellent noir (Cop Land), Western (3:10 to Yuma), romantic comedy (Kate & Leopold), and biopic (Walk the Line and Ford v Ferrari). Still, he’s given an impossible task here: jumping on board a series where every prior entry was made by Steven Spielberg, who practically redefined the adventure film in 1981 with the first Indy movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Spielberg always recognized that sequels should push against audience expectations as much as work to satisfy them. Although two of his four Indiana Jones entries (Temple of Doom and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) are deeply bizarre and sometimes outright hostile to their viewers, they’re very interesting and watchable works. Each reflects the director’s mindset at the time—the former was made after he went through a breakup, the latter as he confronted an encroaching digital revolution in cinema. Crystal Skull ended with Indiana Jones married to his erstwhile companion Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), and clearly, Spielberg saw nowhere else to take the character as he approached his dotage.

[Read: Hollywood doesn’t make movies like The Fugitive anymore]

Mangold doesn’t have a new angle either, instead taking Indiana down memory lane for his last hurrah. Yes, there’s personal hardship for the character to overcome: Along with his creaky bones, he’s once again estranged from Marion, having failed to assuage her grief when their son, Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), died in the Vietnam War. But Mangold figures the audience wants something familiar, so he brings a whole ensemble. Indiana quickly meets Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), his fast-talking goddaughter, who drags him on a chase across the globe in search of a Greek artifact supposedly connected to time travel. There’s even a plucky street urchin named Teddy (Ethann Isidore) along to help out, plus a cameo appearance by John Rhys-Davies as the garrulous excavator Sallah.

In pursuit, as is often the case with Indiana Jones, are a bunch of Nazis. Because the movie is set in the late ’60s, the Nazis are a little quieter about their beliefs—the lead villain, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), is a rocket scientist recruited by NASA as part of Operation Paperclip. Still, their nefarious goals and love of ancient magical gear makes them fundamentally indistinguishable from the archenemies of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, also known as the Indiana Jones movies that everyone can agree are good. And just in case viewers didn’t get the message, there’s a nostalgia-focused opening action sequence that sees a de-aged Harrison Ford fighting a bunch of Nazis during a World War II mission—a set piece that is technically competent but can’t avoid the hollow, rubbery uncanny valley of Indy’s CGI face.

Most of the film has Indy and his traveling companions and Nazis in pursuit of the magic relic, functioning like clockwork as the company hops to locales such as Morocco and Greece. But though Ford invests his performance with as much longing and nuance as he can, underlining Indiana’s increasing disconnection from the modern world, the movie is too busy to really plumb those themes, instead zipping along to the next action sequence lest anyone get bored.

The closing act of Dial of Destiny is also in the grand tradition of Indiana Jones movies, throwing a mixture of history, pseudoscience, and supernatural elements into the plot and abandoning the relatively grounded material that preceded it. Still, I was happiest then, bouncing in my seat as Indiana and his pals were confronted with a head-scratching metaphysical quandary, which contained a lot more than the hoary wisecracking of the film’s first two-thirds. I thus left Dial of Destiny vaguely satisfied that this presumably final entry at least didn’t do anything to truly pervert the character’s legacy. But that sense of safety cuts both ways: Yes, it’s hard to be mad at this movie, but it’s also hard to summon any other strong emotion. If Ford really wants to bring the character out of the barn again, there’s clearly little to stop him—but I hope Indy retires back to his easy chair after this, and is left truly alone.

The victim's partner is injured and their log cabin home destroyed in the storms, authorities say.

An eyewitness has captured the moment a large funnel cloud tore through a neighbourhood in the US state of Indiana.

Remember Ron DeSantis?

Of course you know who Ron DeSantis is. But remember who he appeared to be just a few months ago? In the first days after the 2022 midterms, the Florida governor looked like the future of the Republican Party. Donald Trump had just led the GOP to its third straight underwhelming election, thanks largely to underperformance by the former president’s favored candidates. Meanwhile, DeSantis had romped to victory in Florida. The Republican Party seemed to need an alternative to Trump, and DeSantis looked like that guy.

DeSantis officially entered the race May 24 during a disastrous appearance with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces. The decision to appear virtually is a sign of exactly what ails his fledgling campaign: DeSantis’s reputation thrived online, but once he had to actually meet people IRL, he looked strange and anything but invincible. How he stumbled is partly a story about media narratives—how press coverage can inflate and then deflate a candidate in short order—and, ironically, partly a story about how politics is strange and unpredictable, no matter what the narrative shapers tell you.

What is striking is how little has materially changed about the presidential race since the midterms. Mostly, DeSantis has continued to add to his list of conservative triumphs in Florida, with some asterisks. DeSantis’s fight against Disney has stagnated a bit; the Mouse has good lawyers who have managed to run some circles around the governor. Just last week, Disney announced that it would cancel $1 billion in development in Orlando. DeSantis also signed a ban on abortion after six weeks of gestation into law, which he wanted but which some observers expect will be a liability for him. As for Trump, his major developments are getting indicted in Manhattan and losing a $5 million sexual-assault and defamation lawsuit. These are not the sorts of things you typically expect to help a candidate.

And yet, Trump has only gotten stronger over that period. In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Trump has gone from a low of 47.3 percent on November 18 to 56 percent today, while DeSantis has fallen from 29 to just less than 20 percent. (Everyone else is still a distant afterthought.) The former president has benefited from Republican voters rallying around him amid his legal troubles. As for DeSantis, he has less failed than declined to seize the moment: Many supporters have been frustrated that he is only now officially launching his campaign, even though it’s been a foregone conclusion for years. Until recently, he’s declined to really criticize Trump much. His wooden, clumsy appearances overseas, in Washington, and in New Hampshire have hurt him too, as has an uncharacteristically disciplined and methodical Trump effort to tear DeSantis down. Detractors say DeSantis is too online, an impression that his Twitter campaign launch did not exactly help.

How did DeSantis stock go from so high to so low? His crash began with being overrated in the first place. Reporters love a shiny new object, pundits don’t like Trump, and the prospect of a Trump-DeSantis battle royale got everyone excited. When people asked me what I thought was the biggest flaw in conventional wisdom, I would say that DeSantis was overrated—which made me feel pretty clever, until I realized that every other political reporter felt the same way. It just took a while for polls to catch up.

Today, DeSantis is probably underrated. Now that he’s officially in the race, he’ll get a bump in the polls, and we’ll start to hear about a “Ronaissance” (trademark pending). Just how underrated, though? If he’s really going to challenge Trump, he’s going to have to show that he has the stomach to really fight back. (The vapors in DeSantis land over a pretty mild tweet from his super PAC don’t augur well, though it’s early.) He’s also going to have to solve his 2020 conundrum: He can’t very well imply that Trump is a loser while also endorsing Trump’s view that the election was stolen. Only Trump can pull off that type of cognitive dissonance.

Everyone thinks they know what it would take for Republicans to free themselves of Trump, but, like true communism, it’s never been tried: GOP politicians have never been willing or able to actually do it. DeSantis’s early hype was rooted in a belief that he had what it took to follow through. Now he has a chance, but, as Trump’s old defense secretary noted, the enemy gets a vote—and he’ll be starting from a more commanding advantage than ever over DeSantis.

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?
Yes. Biden formally announced his run on April 25.

Why does he want to run?
Biden’s slogan is apparently “Let’s finish the job.” He centered his launch video on the theme of freedom, but underlying all of this is his apparent belief 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?
Barring unforeseen catastrophe, yes. 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 were to bow out, she’d be the immediate 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?
Not right now.

(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 stepped away.

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?
Not at this moment.

(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 dropped out, 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?
No.

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?
Not if she isn’t running.

(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 a scion of a wealthy family and a “nomadic warrior.”

Is he running?
No.

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?
Not now.

(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 announced his 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. 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?
Despite his bizarre beliefs, he’s polling in double digits against Biden—though that may mostly be reflection of dissatisfaction with the president and of his own famous surname.

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 the ‘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?
Yes. He is slated to finally announce a long-awaited run in an appearance with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces on May 24.

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?
He doesn’t look like the Trump-toppler today that he did several months ago, but it’s 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 résumé (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. 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 the 2020 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?
No. On June 5, after weighing a campaign, he announced he would not run. Warning about the dangers of a Trump reprise, he said, “Every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out and getting out quickly if it’s not working.” Points for taking his own advice!

Why did he want to run?
Sununu seems disgusted by a lot of Washington politics and saw his success in New Hampshire, a purple-blue state, as a model for small-government conservatism. He is also a prominent Trump critic.

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

Could he have won the nomination?
No.

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

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

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign in North Charleston, South Carolina, on May 22.

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. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate minority whip, is his first high-ish-profile endorsement.

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?
No. On April 14, Pompeo announced he wasn’t running. “This is not that time or that moment for me to seek elected office again,” he said.

Why did 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 wanted him to run?
That’s not entirely clear.

Could he have won 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?
Probably not. He said on May 1 that he wasn’t running “this year.” But he seems to be rethinking that as Ron DeSantis’s campaign sputters.

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?
Certainly not if he isn’t running.

(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 is himself running, 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, okay, 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, okay?

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 really wants to, but 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. Moreover, he seems agitated to see other Republicans trying to run without criticizing Trump.

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 of a campaign-in-waiting or a clear constituency, except the Mooch.

Can he win the nomination?
Highly doubtful.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Larry Elder

Who is he?
A longtime conservative radio host and columnist, he ran as a Republican in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on April 20.

Why does he want to run?
Glad you asked! “America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable,” he tweeted. “We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there. That’s why I’m running for President.” We don’t have any idea what that means either.

Who wants him to run?
Impossible to say at this stage, but deep-blue California is a tough launching pad for any conservative, especially an unseasoned candidate. This recall campaign also dredged up various unflattering information about his past.

Can he win the nomination?
Hope springs eternal, but probability does not.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Rick Perry

Who is he?
Perry was a three-term governor of Texas before serving as energy secretary under Donald Trump. He’s also run for president three times: in 2012, 2016, and … I forget the third one. Oops.

Is he running?
Oh, right! The third one is 2024, maybe. He told CNN in May that he’s considering a run.

Why does he want to run?
He didn’t say, but he’s struggled to articulate much of a compelling case to Republican voters beyond the fact that he’s from Texas, he looks good in a suit, and he wants to be president, gosh darn it.

Who wants him to run?
Probably no one. As Mike Pompeo already discovered, there’s not much of a market for a run-of-the-mill former Trump Cabinet member in the primary—especially one who had such a forgettable turn as secretary, mostly remembered for being dragged peripherally into both the first Trump impeachment and election subversion.

Can he win the nomination?
The third time would not be a charm.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Doug Burgum

Who is he?
What? You don’t know? Do you even pay attention to politics? Nah, just kidding. A self-made software billionaire, Burgum’s serving his second term as the governor of North Dakota.

Is he running?
Apparently so! He was on approximately no one’s radar until a CBS News report on May 18 that kindly referred to his plans to run a “dark horse” campaign. Extremely dark.

Why does he want to run?
He told a North Dakota newspaper that he thinks the “silent majority” of Americans want candidates who aren’t on the extremes. (A wealthy outsider, targeting the silent majority? Where have we heard that before?)

Who wants him to run?
Lots of people expected a governor from the Dakotas to be a candidate in 2024, but they were looking at Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Burgum is very popular at home—he won more than three-quarters of the vote in 2020—but that still amounts to fewer people than the population of Toledo, Ohio.

Can he win the nomination?
“There’s a value to being underestimated all the time,” he has said. “That’s a competitive advantage.” But it’s even better to have a chance, which he doesn’t.

THIRD-PARTY AND INDEPENDENT (Tom Williams / Getty) Joe Manchin

Who is he?
A Democratic U.S. senator and former governor of West Virginia, he was the pivotal centrist vote for the first two years of Joe Biden’s term. I’ve described him as “a middle-of-the-road guy with good electoral instincts, decent intentions, and bad ideas.”

Is he running?
It’s very hard to tell how serious he is. He has visited Iowa, and is being courted by No Labels, the nonpartisan centrist organization, to carry its banner. He’s shown no signs of running, and would stand no chance, in the Democratic primary.

Why does he want to run?
Manchin would arguably have less power as a third-party president than he does as a crucial swing senator, but he faces perhaps the hardest reelection campaign of his life in 2024, as the last Democrat standing in a now solidly Republican state. He also periodically seems personally piqued at Biden and the Democrats over slights perceived or real.

Who wants him to run?
No Labels would love to have someone like him, a high-profile figure who’s willing to buck his party and has policies that would appeal to voters from either party. It’s hard to imagine he’d have much of an organic base of support, but Democrats are terrified he’d siphon off enough votes to hand Trump or another Republican the win in a three-way race.

Can he win?
“Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in April. If that is true, do not expect to see him in the presidential race.

(Frederick M. Brown / Getty) Cornel West

Who is he?
West is a philosopher, a theologian, a professor, a preacher, a gadfly, a progressive activist, an actor, a spoken-word recording-artist, an author … and we’re probably missing a few.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on the People’s Party ticket on June 5.

Why does he want to run?
“In these bleak times I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States,” he said in his announcement video. West is a fierce leftist who has described Trump as a “neo-fascist” and Biden as a “milquetoast neoliberal.”

Who wants him to run?
West was a high-profile backer of Bernie Sanders, and it’s easy to imagine him winning over some of Sanders’s fervent fans. The People’s Party is relatively new and unproven, and doesn’t have much of a base of its own.

Can he win?
Let’s hear it from Brother West: “Do we have what it takes? We shall see,” he said. “But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging, with style and a smile.” Sounds like a no, but it should be a lively, entertaining campaign.

In Louisville, Kentucky, not long ago, I heard the story of a woman named Mary. She grew up middle-class, cheerful at times, though she struggled with depression. She took antidepressants. After her marriage broke up in 2006, Mary switched to pain pills, and her life spiraled.

She had a son in 2016. A couple of years later, methamphetamine from Mexico flooded Louisville, and she began using meth too. After that, her mother, Carole, told me, Mary heard voices coming from a ceiling vent, saw a phantom hand reaching from the back seat of her car. She abandoned her son and lived on the street. Her teeth withered. “She became a person I didn’t recognize,” said Carole, who is now raising Mary’s son. (Carole asked that their last name not be used, because she’s concerned that the late father’s family might seek custody.)

Mary would show up on rare occasions, then head back to the street. In late 2021, she detoxed and came to her mother’s house sober, the daughter Carole remembered. Only two days later, at a playground with her son, who was then 4, Mary announced that she had to go see a friend. “I said, ‘Please don’t leave us,’” Carole told me. “‘You haven’t seen him for a year.’ We had an argument. She kissed [her son] goodbye and said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’”

Three days after that, a woman called saying that Mary was pale, hungry, and in need of insulin for her diabetes. She was living in a tent encampment in Jeffersonville, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville. Carole delivered money and clothes and then called the police. “I wanted them to arrest her, to get her off the streets. I wanted to save her life.” But the police could do nothing, she said, and even in midwinter, Mary refused to leave the encampment.

Early one morning in 2022, she froze to death in a tent.

A week later, I met Eric Yazel, a Jeffersonville emergency-room doctor and the county’s health officer. Yazel told me that cases of frostbite had surged as fentanyl, meth, and the ensuing tent encampments spread throughout the area. Countywide, he said, people were dying of fentanyl overdoses in record numbers. Still, like Mary, many refused to leave the encampments.

All addictive drugs, to some degree, redirect the brain’s immense power toward finding and using dope, often despite life-threatening risks. But the drugs that are prevalent now are different from what they were even a decade ago: more potent, easier to find, cheaper, and deadlier. Most people seem to have some inkling of this. Still, having spent more than a decade reporting on illicit drug distribution and use, I believe that few people truly understand the extent of the change, or its implications.

America’s approach to drugs and addiction today—which in many regions has shifted toward forbearance until users volunteer for treatment—is both well intentioned and out of date, given the massive street supplies of fentanyl and meth. It is failing just about everyone.

If we’re serious about curbing use of these most damaging illicit drugs, I believe we need to move to an approach that both the left and the right may find uncomfortable. We need to use arrests and the threat of confinement to break the hold of addiction. We also need to transform jail, and change what it means for people with a drug addiction to be in jail.

Over the past 40 years, the prevailing views on drug policy have slowly gone from one extreme to the other. In the decades following President Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” law enforcement was essentially the only tool used in the U.S. to address both drug trafficking and addiction. Harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug use proliferated; jails and prisons filled.

The social costs of the War on Drugs eventually pushed many jurisdictions to question this approach. By the middle of the 2010s, support for treatment of addiction had grown. Drug courts, which suspend prison sentences in return for closely monitored entry into treatment, began to proliferate. Acceptance of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) to calm or block opioid cravings grew too.

Over time, the old Reagan-era approach was displaced by a new convention, that of “harm reduction”: mitigating the bodily damage that addicts may inflict on themselves through their drug use; keeping them alive with syringe exchanges and naloxone—the antidote to opioid overdose sold under the brand name Narcan—until they are ready to voluntarily accept drug rehabilitation. Decriminalization of drug possession and use followed, at least partially, in some jurisdictions. The pandemic amounted to an unofficial experiment in decriminalization: Even if the laws didn’t change, many counties stopped making small-time drug arrests. Jails kicked folks loose.

[From the May 2019 issue: The West Virginia doctor who got his patients—and himself—hooked on opioids]

Compassionate intentions may have fueled this progression, and many of the early steps made sense. Yet as this philosophical shift was happening, so too were seismic changes in the supply of illegal street drugs.

Two synthetic drugs—fentanyl and methamphetamine, both made in Mexico—have flooded the United States. They are produced year-round by sophisticated traffickers who have access through Mexican ports to global chemical markets. No plants or growing seasons are necessary; the supply is massive, cheap, continual, and difficult to suppress.

Illicit fentanyl kills users more quickly than any other drug to ever appear on American streets. Preliminary data from the CDC show that overdose deaths hit an all-time high in 2022, at nearly 110,000—almost 70 percent of which involved fentanyl.

Fentanyl is so potent and cheap that dealers add it to other street drugs, creating opioid-addicted daily customers from, say, casual cocaine users, even at the risk of killing them. It has all but chased heroin from the market. Users could live for decades on heroin. But as one Kentucky addict in recovery told me a few years ago, when fentanyl settled into his region, “There’s no such thing as a long-term fentanyl user.” He recently relapsed and died of what is believed to be a fentanyl overdose.

Methamphetamine, for its part, has achieved alarming potency over the past decade, and the way it’s made has changed. Ingredients now include an ever-evolving lineup of toxic industrial chemicals. Meth use is now often accompanied by rapid-onset symptoms of mental illness—paranoia, hallucinations—symptoms that in many cases seem to far outlast the high itself.

A person walks their bike under the 405 freeway, where homeless encampments are often set up, in Portland, Oregon. (Jordan Gale)

Homelessness has many causes, but partly because of the way the new meth tangles the mind of its users, the drug has undoubtedly made people homeless and kept many others on the street. It is a regular feature of tent-encampment life across the country. Many users, like Mary, prefer the encampments to homeless shelters because tents provide a place to use more freely.

[From the November 2021 issue: Sam Quinones on a new, more potent form of methamphetamine]

Meth and fentanyl upend many of the prevailing beliefs about drug policy. Perhaps the most important is that people must be “ready” to leave the street for treatment. The meth now being sold in the U.S. deprives many users of the mental ability to find readiness and opt into treatment. Fentanyl deprives them of the time to do so. Unlike heroin, it requires addicts to use several times a day to keep dope sickness at bay. Each use is potentially deadly.

The prevalence of these drugs does not reduce the need for some harm-reduction measures. Syringe exchange, for example, seems an essential tool in preventing the spread of HIV and hepatitis. The common use of Narcan to revive users who overdose is just as important for saving lives.

But when you zoom out, harm reduction alone looks perverse.

Take Narcan: It keeps people alive and is necessary in the moment of overdose. But the harm-reduction model holds that we should keep reviving people who overdose and then do nothing more than hope they come to their senses and opt into treatment. Paramedics I’ve spoken with report routinely reviving people who have overdosed on fentanyl a dozen times or more within a few months—sometimes twice in the same day.

In overdose, the brain’s oxygen is reduced. How much and for how long depends on the person and the time before she is revived. Any oxygen deprivation beyond some unknown threshold, however, damages parts of the brain that govern memory, motor skills, and, especially, reason and long-term decision making. A survey of studies published in 2021 in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence concluded that a period of oxygen deprivation was likely to cause “toxic injuries to multiple organs including the central nervous system, even when a fatal outcome is averted.”

John Corrigan, a psychologist at Ohio State University who has studied brain injuries since 1982, told me that, following brain impairment, a person is less likely to control harmful behavior, perceive an action’s consequences, postpone gratification, and make plans to change. Thus, damage from repeated overdoses makes it progressively more difficult for addicts to stop using. “There’s a cumulative effect,” Corrigan said.

Addiction specialists in Pasco County, Florida, are in the middle of a three-year federal-grant program studying the effects of repeated overdose—which has grown common since fentanyl arrived there five years ago—on about 100 female clients. So far, they have found that a greater number of overdoses correlates with lower reading levels among those clients, according to Robert Neri, who oversees programs and research for WestCare, the nonprofit treatment center that is managing the effort. Fifth- and sixth-grade reading levels are common within the group.

The ability to focus, follow schedules, understand new concepts, and remember things that have just happened is likewise lower than expected. Adding to the damage from overdose is the blunt-force brain trauma that so often accompanies addiction and street life: from falls, fights, accidents, beatings. A policy of allowing a person to return to the streets to use fentanyl after a Narcan-revived overdose is not compassion; it’s an invitation to more trauma, more overdose, death.

Fentanyl is weighed on a personal scale in Portland, Oregon. (Jordan Gale) A man smokes fentanyl inside the tent that he lives in, in Portland, Oregon. (Jordan Gale)

When I began reporting on these issues 13 years ago, I was agnostic about how to help the people who became addicted to illicit drugs. But those years—spent, in no small part, within communities ravaged by drug epidemics—have altered my perspective.

Taking away a person’s freedom is never something to be done lightly. But once addicted to fentanyl or the new meth, many users are not “free” to choose treatment—or any path out of addiction—in any meaningful way. Time away from these drugs, I believe, can help them regain their agency.

“Fentanyl is so powerful,” Robert Neri, of WestCare, told me. “Where somebody might have been able to pull their lives together on heroin,” many fentanyl addicts need structure, and time “away from access to the drug.”

Tolerances among people who survive their first exposure to fentanyl grow quickly, and withdrawal symptoms are fiercer than they are even from heroin—“like living hell,” says Heather Moore, a drug-clinic director in Tucson, Arizona, where counterfeit pills containing fentanyl now go for a dollar or less. Counselors and recovering addicts in the city told me that users there sometimes smoke 50 to 100 pills a day. Choosing to enter treatment is uniquely difficult.

Neri said that treatment providers and advocates are still catching up to the many changes wrought by pervasive fentanyl: the cumulative effects of repeated overdoses on users’ brains, a stronger aversion to opting into treatment. The shift “from plant-based drugs to laboratory-based drugs” has been profound, he said, and the addiction-treatment industry has not yet adjusted.

The use of law enforcement to help address drug addiction will be tarred by some as a return to the drug war of old, just casting users into prison. I understand the concern, and—more on this later—that’s not what I’m suggesting. Still, it is worth noting that the drug war failed not because we used law enforcement, but because we only used law enforcement.

Addiction is a problem deeply set in the chemistry of the brain. Using just one tool to address it is folly. A community approach, enlisting everything at our disposal, is essential. That includes law enforcement, which can provide both leverage and a respite from drugs.

As one recovering addict in Ohio, who is now a paramedic, told me, “You’re not going to get better unless you’re willing to get better. Finding that emerging willingness is critical.” For some people, he said, that willingness may be self-generated. “For me, it was the threat of doing years in prison.”

“You’d think fentanyl would cause people to pause; it does not,” says Mary Ellen Diekhoff, a drug-court judge in Monroe County, Indiana. What has caused more people to opt into her court, Diekhoff told me—and what has also strengthened their engagement with the process the court requires—is a recent modification to state law making it more likely that those with the lowest-level drug felonies may face prison. “Treatment is not easy,” she said. “If there’s no impetus to stay, why would you? You need to have something to lose.”

A handful of cities, watching synthetic drugs ravage their communities, are moving away from convention and trying new ideas.

One of those is Denver. Supplies of methamphetamine and fentanyl have inundated the city in the past several years. In 2019, Colorado passed a law that, among other things, made possessing four grams or less of most drugs—including fentanyl—only a misdemeanor. (Fentanyl gets mixed into all kinds of substances, including other drugs and powders, but for reference: Four grams of pure fentanyl will yield roughly 2,000 potentially deadly doses.) Denver’s drug-overdose numbers are now higher than they have ever been.

The homeless population, some 6,900, is likewise believed by city officials to be at least a 10-year high. Housing prices are doubtless one reason: They doubled in the 2010s. But homelessness is nonetheless what initially prompted the city to rethink its approach to drug use.

Evan Dreyer, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff in charge of homeless response, told me when we spoke last spring that the city’s shelters housed more than 1,800 people a night—but also that 300 to 400 beds typically went unused, even in winter. (Since then, an influx of migrants and refugees have increased occupancy.) Dreyer, who has worked for the city on homelessness since 2011, said that people living on the street have routinely balked at accepting housing. When he asked them why, they would say they had pets, or romantic partners, or a lot of belongings. In some instances, the city wrote into contracts that shelters needed places for pets, for partners.

Still, Dreyer said, he and his colleagues struggled to find takers, and of those who went into housing, many returned to the street. For some, mental illness is to blame. But “what often goes unsaid in those conversations is the need to use” drugs, he told me. In February 2021, temperatures dropped below zero for several days. Relatively few people left the encampments. On each of those days, Dreyer said, an encampment resident died

The mayor’s office still believes in the importance of housing, especially in a city as costly as Denver, Dreyer said. Much of the $250 million the city will spend on affordable housing and homelessness response this year will be for lodging—shelters, single-occupancy rooms, apartments. But city officials have seen enough to understand that many factors contribute to homelessness, including addiction.

Michael Hancock, Denver’s mayor and a liberal Democrat who initially embraced some of Colorado’s drug-policy-reform measures as a way of reducing incarceration, told me he now believes that the move to decriminalize drug possession and drug use went too far. “What is it that will make individuals reject the opportunity to get off the street?” he asked. “It’s mental-health and substances issues. We have to make sure we can drive them to these services.” And as for people who are selling illegal synthetic drugs: “We must have a system that holds you accountable.”

City crews now regularly remove tent encampments, though some reconstitute. The people who are removed are offered shelter and services, including drug treatment if they are using. Last year, lawmakers made it a felony to possess more than one gram of a substance containing fentanyl, which city officials hope will lead to the prosecution of dealers. The law also made certain other crimes count as felonies unless the person charged agrees to drug treatment.

The city has expanded its use of drug courts to help push users toward treatment. Defendants can avoid prison and expunge a drug-related felony by following a program of sobriety, peer-led meetings, work, and in many cases MAT—all supervised by a judge, usually over two to three years.

In the drug courts I’ve observed across the country, the judge, prosecutor, probation officer, and others work collaboratively with the defendant as he battles for sobriety. It is not easy; screwups happen maddeningly often. But I’ve come to see a personal touch, combined with accountability, as essential when dealing with the complexities of an individual’s addiction.

Crucially, Denver is also rethinking its jail system with addiction treatment in mind. I spoke with Elias Diggins, Denver’s sheriff and jailer, who had recently opened a 64-bed men’s recovery pod in the jail. The unit now offers classes in life skills and understanding drug abuse, peer-run meetings, and MAT for opioid addiction; it also connects inmates to continuing medication once they leave the jail.

The idea, Diggins said, is to make jail into a place where solutions can begin—an opportunity presented when a person is in custody, detoxed, and away from dope on the street. Entry into the recovery pod is voluntary, and the people who choose it, with good behavior, serve out their sentence there.

Paramedics respond to an overdose call at an apartment complex in Portland, Oregon. (Jordan Gale)

Fentanyl and meth have made rethinking jail essential. County jail, where sentences of less than a year are usually carried out, is the first and most common interface an addict has with the criminal-justice system. These encounters don’t always stem from drug-possession charges; many sentences result from property crimes or other crimes involving drug use, in one way or another.

Even the traditional jail system has been a boon to many people whose lives have been captured by drugs—a time to be away from dope, to eat, to get health care, to think a bit more clearly. I’ve known quite a few people—too many to ignore—who credit their recovery to their arrest, saying they’d be dead otherwise.

In its current form, however, jail is too often traumatic, throwing lives even further off course. The clarity that drug users may achieve away from dope tends to be wasted. Typical jail activities don’t extend much beyond sleeping, playing cards, watching the History Channel, and trading crime stories. Negativity and tedium often mix with predation to intensify mental illness, criminality, and addiction. Street drugs are prevalent in many jails—overdoses among inmates have risen nationally in recent years. Those in custody trying to leave dope behind are sometimes ostracized as “quitters” or accused of snitching.

But in a growing number of places—Denver and Columbus, Ohio, among them—jail is being redesigned as an opportunity for addicts and a long-term investment in recovery.

One model for this new approach is Kenton County (population 166,000), in Northern Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. In August 2015, Kenton County’s jail opened a 70-bed men’s recovery pod for inmates who were in and out of custody because of addiction. As in Denver, medication-assisted treatment—Suboxone or naltrexone—is provided to block cravings. Inmates volunteer to go into the pod, agreeing to participate daily in their recovery. They rise by 6 a.m. and make their bed. Their day is then filled with GED classes, plus classes on parenting, anger management, and other life skills. Inmates run 12-step meetings. The jail employs nine social workers. This is the kind of treatment addicts would receive in a rehab center on the outside. Jail ensures that they stay long enough for their brain to get a needed respite from dope.

Judges can also order people into the recovery pod, or offer it as a chance for defendants to knock time off their sentences. Marc Fields, Kenton’s jailer, told me that plenty of people opt in hoping to game the system. But as their mind defogs, he said, many slowly find readiness for sobriety in a way they don’t on the street.

Kenton County has added a 35-bed recovery pod for women. Both pods are policed and kept up by inmates committed to recovery. They are the cleanest pods in the facility, generally free of drugs, weapons, and fights, Fields said. At a time when fentanyl overdoses are taking place in jails and prisons nationwide, Kenton’s recovery pods report none. Inmates who don’t abide by the rules can be booted to traditionally run parts of the jail, from which they can work their way back to a recovery pod, if they wish. A waiting list to get into the pods has existed since soon after they opened.

Kenton County’s jail experiment has helped forge a local constituency to support recovering drug addicts once they’ve resumed life on the outside, as well. The Life Learning Center, a large nonprofit, expanded its mission in response to the jail experiment and now serves inmates leaving Kenton’s recovery pods. As an inmate’s release date nears, jail staff help them arrange sober housing. When they’re released, a shuttle first takes them directly to the center, allowing them to avoid city buses, where they might meet old friends and use again. A Life Learning Center social worker signs them up for Medicaid and helps get them continued treatment with Suboxone or naltrexone. The center provides clothes, food, a workout space, tattoo removal, visits to a salon to get hair and nails done, and 12-step meetings. A continuum of care is common in other forms of medicine, but not in addiction treatment. In Kenton County, it began with the jail recovery-pod experiment.

Those who complete their jail time in a recovery pod and get post-release care seem to do much better than those who serve time in other parts of the jail. The Life Learning Center’s study of graduates from 2018 to 2020 found a 24 percent recidivism rate among those who came out of the jail’s recovery pod and completed the center’s after-release program; nationwide, recidivism rates hover above 80 percent for inmates who get no treatment in jail or in an after-release program.

Communities across America are now beginning to receive funds dislodged from drug companies as part of settlements for their role in creating the opioid epidemic. The country will be stronger if these billions of dollars help create recovery-ready communities. Addiction recovery, among many benefits, is a key to the resuscitation of many neighborhoods and small, rural American towns.

In an era of rampant fentanyl and meth use, drug courts and a reimagined jail—alongside robust support for voluntary treatment—should be foundations for that revival. An arrest can be an act of compassion when the odds are that, outside, meth will drive a user mad and fentanyl will kill him.

Kenton’s recovery-focused jail pods—and those being developed in Denver, in Columbus, and elsewhere—are giving us ideas of what works and what doesn’t. They are not panaceas; this crisis has no single solution. But in a polarized debate, they offer a third way—rejecting both the “throw away the key” philosophy of yore and the “harm reduction” doctrine that we should simply wait for addicts in tents to develop readiness for treatment on their own, or that selling fentanyl ought to be a misdemeanor. I find them to be welcome jolts of innovation at a time when towns everywhere are desperate for new ideas.