The Agony of Pandemic Parenting

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard a case that could hand parents with religious objections a lot more control over what their kids learn in the classroom. Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court, explains how a case about children’s picture books with titles like “Pride Puppy” and “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” has broad implications for schools across the country.

In the increasingly bitter trade war between the United States and China, perhaps nobody has more at stake than America’s soybean farmers, whose crop has become the country’s single biggest export to China. Michael Barbaro speaks to an Iowa farmer who helped build that $13 billion market, and asks her what President Trump’s sky-high tariffs mean for her and for tens of thousands of other American farmers.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants by quickly labeling them as gang members and foreign enemies, and boarding them on planes to El Salvador. It’s sidestepping their rights to a court hearing where anyone might be able to scrutinize the claims against them. As a result, very little has been known about who these men are, or how they were targeted by immigration officials. Until now. Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times, explains who was actually on those planes, and discusses the secretive process that led to their deportations.

Church bells rang out across the world on Monday to mark the death of Pope Francis at the age of 88. Jason Horowitz, the Rome bureau chief at The New York Times, discusses the pope’s push to change the church, his bitter clashes with traditionalists, and what his papacy meant to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Across the country, millions of Americans with unpaid student loans are discovering that years of patience and forgiveness from the U.S. government have officially come to an end. Stacy Cowley, a business reporter for The Times, explains what is behind the change of heart, sets out its financial consequences for borrowers — and discusses the larger reckoning that it may cause about how Americans pay for higher education.