Seven Surprises

This is my first newsletter after a four-month book leave, and I want to try something a little different. As I prepared to come back, I spent time talking with Times colleagues and outside experts about how the world has changed while I was gone.

Which news developments will have lasting import? What has been surprising? What do we know now that we didn’t before?

As I was making the list, I realized that it would be worth sharing it with readers. It helps give some perspective to a dizzying news environment in which all of us struggle to distinguish between stories that are ephemeral and those with lasting significance. During a cynical time in American life, the list also offers a reminder that there has been good news along with the bad.

In descending order of significance — and, yes, this ranking is subjective and weighted toward the U.S. — here are the seven biggest stories of the past few months.

The list

7. A.I. arrives. Artificial intelligence felt theoretical to many people until November, when OpenAI, a technology company in San Francisco, released ChatGPT. Since then, millions of Americans have experimented with the software or read some of its output.

“ChatGPT is still young — only 2 months old! — and yet we’re already getting a glimpse of the many ways these A.I. chatbots could change our lives,” my colleague Kevin Roose says. Some of the implications seem scary: A.I. can write a solid college essay. Other implications are exciting: Surely, a computer can learn to write more comprehensible instructions for many household gadgets than is the norm today.

6. A milder Covid winter. In each of the past two winters, the country endured a terrible surge of severe Covid illnesses, but not this winter.

It’s a sign that the virus has become endemic, with immunity from vaccinations and previous infections making the average Covid case less severe. If anything, the best-known Covid statistics on hospitalizations and deaths probably exaggerate its toll, because they count people who had incidental cases. Still, Covid is causing more damage than is necessary — both because many Americans remain unvaccinated and because Covid treatments are being underused, as German Lopez has explained.

5. Milder inflation, too. The pace of consumer price increases has declined more in recent months than most economists expected. Why? The pandemic’s supply-chain disruptions have eased, and the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases are starting to have their intended effect. “Inflation is still very elevated, so it’s not mission accomplished for the Fed by any means,” said Jeanna Smialek, an economics correspondent based in Washington, “but we are finally headed in the right direction.”

It remains unclear whether the Fed can engineer the soft landing — reducing inflation further without causing a recession — that is its goal. The strong job market captured in Friday’s employment report suggests that the economy may still be running hot enough to require significantly higher interest rates.

4. Peak China? China’s ruling Communist Party has had a rough few months. It abruptly abandoned its zero-Covid policy in December, effectively acknowledging a huge failure (without actually acknowledging it). Weeks later, China released data showing that its population had peaked, which creates a major economic challenge. The number of workers relative to retirees will be declining for the foreseeable future.

Of course, China has long been preparing for this challenge and has defied repeated predictions of looming decline in recent decades, my colleague Max Fisher points out. It would be a mistake to assume that decline has now begun. But Xi Jinping’s government will need to do a better job of managing the situation than it has of managing the pandemic.

(The spy balloon isn’t hugely significant on its own, but it adds to the sense that Beijing’s competence has been exaggerated. Here’s the latest.)

3. The final days of affirmative action. When the Supreme Court heard arguments about race-based affirmative action in October, the six Republican-appointed justices seemed ready to ban it. A ruling is expected by June.

One big question is how colleges, the military and other organizations will try to replace the current programs. A focus of this newsletter in 2023 will be the future of class-based affirmative action. It is unquestionably legal, yet many colleges do relatively little to take into account economic class, as measured by income, wealth, neighborhood conditions and more. There are large racial gaps in those indicators.

2. Russia’s miscalculation. The overall situation in Ukraine has remained similar since late last year: Russia controls parts of the east and the south, but far less than its strategic goals, and both sides are hoping for a breakthrough soon. Elsewhere, though, the war has shifted geopolitics.

Japan and western Europe have been spooked enough by Russia’s invasion to increase their military spending after years of largely outsourcing military power to the U.S. If the trend continues, the global alliance of democracies will be strengthened. And the U.S. might be able to shift some of its own military spending to invest in technologies of the future.

1. Democracy won. The biggest surprise of the past four months to me was the defeat of nearly every major election denier who was on the ballot this year. “A critical segment of the electorate is not interested in Trumpism,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, said.

Nate estimated that Trump-aligned candidates performed about five percentage points worse than other Republicans, with the effects seeming to be largest in states where Trump tried to overturn the 2020 result, like Arizona and Pennsylvania. It happened even as many other conservative Republicans fared well.

That is a big deal. A democracy can survive intense policy disagreements over taxes, government benefits, abortion, affirmative action and more. But if the true winner of a major election is prevented from taking office, a country is not really a democracy anymore.

What’s missing

I recognize this list omits several important subjects on which the big picture has not changed much lately. The planet keeps warming. The U.S. immigration system is a mess. Police violence has continued. Crime, though down slightly, is far above its pre-Covid levels. We will cover all these stories — and any promising solutions — in 2023.

Give us feedback: What did I overlook, and what other stories do you want us to cover this year?

Related

• Can you tell the difference between text written by A.I. and text written by a fourth grader? Play our game.

• I learned a lot from Ezra Klein’s recent podcast with Yuen Yuen Ang in which she described how Xi Jinping ended China’s era of reformist policy.

• Times photographers are documenting the war in Ukraine. See their latest work.

THE LATEST NEWS

Turkey Earthquake

• An earthquake has killed more than 1,200 people in Syria and Turkey. The toll will almost certainly rise.

• The epicenter was in southern Turkey, as this map shows. The region was experiencing aftershocks.

• Syria, still scarred from its civil war, will be ill equipped to recover.

Politics

• President Biden plans to call for bipartisanship tomorrow in his first State of the Union address since Republicans took the House.

• The Chinese balloon incident shows how little Washington and Beijing communicate, The Times’s David Sanger writes.

• Kamala Harris made history by becoming vice president, but she has struggled to define her role.

• The Koch network, an alliance of conservative donors, is preparing to get involved in the 2024 presidential primaries to fight Donald Trump.

Other Big Stories

• A raid by the Israeli Army in the West Bank killed at least five Palestinians. The army said it had been seeking to arrest gunmen accused of attempting an attack.

• Rather than banning ChatGPT to prevent cheating, some teachers are asking their students to think critically about advances in artificial intelligence.

• The chief executive of Goldman Sachs has a side gig as a D.J. He says it’s a hobby, but it could pose conflicts of interest.

Opinions

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss tomorrow’s State of the Union.

Many cystic fibrosis patients thought they wouldn’t live past 30. A new treatment has drastically changed life expectancy, Dr. Daniela Lamas writes.

MORNING READS

Size 8 to 10: Midsize models are rarely cast in glossy brand campaigns. Why not?

Mystery: He disappeared after going to Alaska in 1976. Now, a skull may provide answers.

Metropolitan Diary: Spotting an ex across the subway tracks.

Quiz time: Take the latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 9.5).

Advice from Wirecutter: Warm up with a space heater.

Lives Lived: Charles Kimbrough was nominated for an Emmy Award for portraying the comically rigid news anchor Jim Dial on the sitcom “Murphy Brown.” He died at 86.

SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC

On the move: The Nets traded Kyrie Irving, whose Nets run was marred by scandals, to the Dallas Mavericks.

First and last? The announcers Greg Olsen and Kevin Burkhardt are calling their first Super Bowl together on Sunday. It could also be their last, because Tom Brady is joining the Fox booth soon.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Highlights from the Grammys

Beyoncé made history last night: She now holds the record for the most Grammy wins. But she didn’t win any of the top prizes. Those went to Harry Styles, who won album of the year for “Harry’s House,” and to Lizzo, who won record of the year for “About Damn Time.”

Other top prizes: Song of the year, which honors songwriting, went to Bonnie Raitt for “Just Like That.” Samara Joy, a jazz singer from the Bronx, won best new artist. (Here’s the full list.)

The centerpiece: A joyous performance celebrated five decades of hip-hop. The Times’s Jon Caramanica called it “unexpectedly emotional.”

Fashion: See Styles’s sparkling harlequin jumpsuit and other red carpet looks.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Barely salted chips, melted cheese and pickled jalapeños: Make classic nachos.

Five Minutes …

… that will make you love 21st-century jazz.

What to Read

“An Assassin in Utopia” links President James Garfield’s killer to an atmosphere of free love and religious fervor that gripped Oneida, N.Y., in the late 1800s.

Now Time to Play

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was mothball. Here is today’s puzzle.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Glossy (five letters).

And here’s today’s Wordle.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. King George VI died 71 years ago today. His daughter succeeded him, becoming Queen Elizabeth II.

Here’s today’s front page.

“The Daily” is about the Chinese balloon.

Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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