The Opinions

Mirielle Silcoff received backlash when she wrote a guest essay for Times Opinion about paying her 12-year-old daughter $100 to read a novel. In this audio essay, Ms. Silcoff explains why she doesn’t regret her decision, and why she felt like the experience for her daughter was worth the cost.

Donald Trump has been on a tour of the Gen Z influencer ecosystem, from Theo Von to Adin Ross. In this episode of “The Opinions,” Daniel Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, argues that Trump is trying to win the support of young men, a once loyal Democratic constituency. Mr. Pfeiffer says Democrats ignore these voters at their peril, for the 2024 election and beyond: “There is no post-Trump era if Gen Z men become firmly adherents of MAGA philosophy,” he explains.

The last time Mosab Abu Toha, a poet and teacher, was in a classroom in Gaza, it was to shelter with his students and their families, all seeking refuge from Israeli airstrikes. Since then, he and his family have fled Gaza, and they temporarily reside in the United States. In this audio essay, he shares what it means when classrooms cease being places of learning and become a family’s only hope for survival.

Israeli anger toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been building in the year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Mairav Zonszein, an Israeli-American journalist and analyst, argues that this anger does not extend to the plight of the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. More than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza, and yet, she says, Israelis are stuck in a cycle of “apathy” and “indifference,” unable to fully realize the devastation befalling their neighbors.

M. Gessen, an Opinion columnist, watched Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate with a sense of dread. In their mind, the question was not who would win the debate but, rather: How much did we lose? In this audio essay, Gessen argues that when we put Trump and his acolytes on the same platform as regular politicians and treat them equally, “that normalization degrades our political life and degrades our understanding of politics.” Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].