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The challenge, from two of the families who filed the initial lawsuit, raises the possibility that access to I.V.F. could once again be in jeopardy in the state.Two Alabama families at the center of the wrongful-death lawsuit that led to the temporary suspension of in vitro fertilization procedures in the state have asked a judge to overturn a new law that shields clinics and doctors from civil and criminal liability.Their challenge to the law raises the possibility that access to I.V.F. could once again be placed in jeopardy in Alabama. And it could further inflame tensions across the country over whether to enshrine protections for I.V.F., as influential Christian conservatives look to curb the use of the popular reproductive treatment.Alabama lawmakers quickly pushed through the shield law in early March after the State Supreme Court weighed in on the lawsuit and ruled that frozen embryos could legally be considered children. The families had filed the claim over the accidental destruction of their embryos at a Mobile clinic in 2020.Multiple clinics had shuttered to avoid the threat of legal challenges, adding to the emotional, financial and physical toll of infertility for Alabama families suddenly left in medical limbo.The swift passage of the shield law led clinics to reopen and restart embryo transfers. But the law did not explicitly address the legal question of “fetal personhood” raised by the State Supreme Court opinion, and many in the Republican-dominated Legislature acknowledged they would very likely need a more permanent solution.This week, after the clinic asked for the wrongful-death lawsuit to be dismissed, the families argued that the shield law was a violation of their constitutional rights, including equal protection, due process and the Alabama Constitution’s “guarantees of life, the right to bear children and the right to a remedy for wrongful deaths of such children.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

American paintings were largely overlooked and undervalued until he came along. A scholar, curator and collector, he oversaw important exhibitions over the last 50 years.John Wilmerding, a towering figure in American art whose eclectic career as a scholar, museum curator and collector was instrumental in elevating the cultural significance and market value of painters such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and Fitz Henry Lane, died on June 6 in Manhattan. He was 86.His brother, James Wilmerding, said the cause of death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was complications of congestive heart failure.When Mr. Wilmerding began teaching in the 1960s, American art was underappreciated, if not totally unknown. There were virtually no university survey courses in the subject, textbooks or major exhibitions.“American art just didn’t hold the same sort of attention and respect that European art did, and certainly the art of the Renaissance or the old masters,” said Justin Wolff, chairman of the art history department at the University of Maine and a former student of Mr. Wilmerding’s. “It was behind culturally. It didn’t really have an identity.”Mr. Wilmerding helped give it one.Mr. Wilmerding’s book “American Masterpieces” (2019) is a collection of his columns on art for The Wall Street Journal. He published 19 other books. David R. GodineHe published more than 20 books, including “American Masterpieces: Singular Expressions of National Genius” (2019), a collection of his columns on art in The Wall Street Journal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

For the island’s cannabis dispensaries, a sudden change in regulations came just in time.Until recently, Geoff Rose, the proprietor of a cannabis business on Martha’s Vineyard, believed he was in for a bleak summer.That was because his marijuana dispensary, Island Time, had run out of product — and it seemed as if he would be unable to replace it during the busy tourist season on the 96-square-mile Massachusetts island that has long been a haven for vacationers.But on Thursday, state regulators issued an order that would allow cannabis products to be transported across the ocean to licensed businesses.Mr. Rose closed his shop — temporarily, as it turns out — on May 14. At the time, the display cases were empty. No gummies. No tinctures. No pre-rolls. The only item of interest to some of his customers was the chocolate.“I believe there were 14 chocolate bars left,” Mr. Rose said in a phone interview. “They were the last to be sold. More than 14 people came in. Some were disappointed: ‘I don’t want chocolates.’ But some said, ‘OK, I’ll take it.’”The shortage, first reported by The Associated Press, had to do with conflicting laws surrounding the sale and transport of marijuana.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

In a new book, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci recounts a career advising seven presidents. The chapter about Donald J. Trump is titled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.”Three months into the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci was at home in northwest Washington when he answered his cellphone to President Donald J. Trump screaming at him in an expletive-laden rant. He had incurred the president’s wrath by remarking that the vaccines under development might not provide long-lasting immunity.That was the day, June 3, 2020, “that I first experienced the brunt of the president’s rage,” Dr. Fauci writes in his forthcoming autobiography.Dr. Fauci has long been circumspect in describing his feelings toward Mr. Trump. But in the book, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” he writes with candor about their relationship, which he describes as “complicated.”In a chapter entitled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” Dr. Fauci described how Mr. Trump repeatedly told him he “loved” him while at the same time excoriating him with tirades flecked with four-letter words.“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,” Dr. Fauci wrote. “He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars.’” (The president added an expletive.)“I have a pretty thick skin,” Dr. Fauci added, “but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The company has bet that new operas will attract new, more diverse audiences and revitalize a stale repertory. Is the gamble paying off?For years, the Metropolitan Opera — the nation’s largest performing arts institution, with a $300 million budget and 4,000-seat theater — was like an ocean liner, changing course slowly, if at all.But now it is trying to be more like a speedboat. Since the pandemic, with costs up and ticket sales down, the Met’s programming has taken a sharp swerve toward contemporary works, which used to come along once in a blue moon. In recent seasons, the Met has done fewer productions than it used to, but about a third of its operas now come from our times.Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, has staked a large part of his legacy on the bet that these new operas will attract new and more diverse audiences, revitalizing a house repertory better known for presenting “Tosca” and “La Traviata,” year after year. With the Met entering its summer break this week, is that bet paying off, artistically and financially?The experiment is, at best, a work in progress.The Met put on 18 operas during this so-so season, and if you line them up in order of paid attendance, only one of the six contemporary pieces, Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” is in the top half. Modern opera is not selling well, at least not better than classics like “The Magic Flute,” “Carmen” and “Turandot.”The Met’s economic model revolves around being able to efficiently bring back most pieces and have them find an audience. But this season raised alarms about how newer titles will do when revived. Gelb’s gamble on swiftly restaging two top sellers of recent seasons — Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and Kevin Puts’s “The Hours” — fizzled, with the theater over a third empty for both. (The average performance across the season was 72 percent full.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The second season of HBO’s very successful “Game of Thrones” prequel gets off to an earthbound start.Diplomacy versus violence. Dignity versus unbridled passion. Duty versus the selfish desire for revenge.Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be about dragons?HBO sent critics four of the eight episodes of the second season of “House of the Dragon,” its “Game of Thrones” spinoff. For three and three-quarters of those four hours, we are in one of this highly rated fantasy franchise’s less interesting regions: the land of the medieval civics lesson. Small Councils meet. Allies are recruited. Rivals for the throne strut and fret. When battles do start to break out, they take place offscreen.The two shows (based on the novels of George R.R. Martin) have traditionally used palace intrigue leavened with sex to fill the gaps between expensive scenes of mass violence and close-up dragon action. But nearly half a season is a long time to wait for the flames to fly.“Thrones,” which ended in 2019 after eight blockbuster seasons, compensated with the epic scale and sadistic frisson of its treachery and debauchery. It also had one great performance, by Peter Dinklage as the noble dwarf Tyrion Lannister, and big characters stylishly played by actors like Lena Headey, Charles Dance and Jonathan Pryce. And its dragons were truly terrifying beasts.“Dragon,” for all the money HBO has reportedly spent on it, is a more buttoned down and drab affair, a condition that carries into the second season. Besides Eve Best as the dragon-riding matriarch, Princess Rhaenys, and Ewan Mitchell as the fearsome Aemond, no one in the cast rises far enough above the show’s general level of dogged professionalism to make a significant impression. And when they do appear, its dragons look and sound more domesticated.The new season begins with the truculent alpha Targaryens, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), plotting in their respective castles. Rhaenyra, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne — it’s just easier to use the jargon — is in exile with her uncle-husband, Daemon (Matt Smith). Her half brother Aegon sits on the throne and governs like a petulant child, to the consternation of his mother, Alicent (Olivia Cooke), who was Rhaenyra’s best friend until she married Rhaenyra’s father, the previous king.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The actress in the hit superhero satire mulled her role in an age of online bullying and token feminism: “Thank God there are characters like this.”Erin Moriarty just stopped a stranger in his tracks. But it wasn’t because he recognized her as a star on one of TV’s most popular shows, or because he was taken by her charm.We were tucked into a quiet corner table on an outdoor patio in West Hollywood, where an attentive server had been mid-stride when he overheard Moriarty, a star of the hit Amazon show “The Boys,” describe her belief that feminism had become an “obligatory thing for studios to exhibit.” He tentatively performed the briefest of check-ins and scurried away.“I love how he hears the word ‘feminism’ and his approach starts to slow,” she said with a laugh. She took a sip of black iced coffee and resumed her thoughts.“I think it’s dangerous,” she said. “I feel like we’re putting a Band-Aid on systemic diseases that we’re not inoculating against.”As the highest-billed actress on “The Boys,” Moriarty, 29, has had to think a lot about performative feminism lately, and whether the show that made her famous is really part of the solution. On one level, the series, which returned for Season 4 on Thursday, is satire, centered on the exploits of a team of morally depraved superheroes known as the Seven.The show targets the steroidal conventions of the genre, along with the corporate pandering and exhibitionist feminism that often accompany it. Much of that critique is focused through Moriarty’s character, Annie January, better known as Starlight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The abrupt arrival of summer will bring stifling temperatures from Chicago to New York, with little relief overnight.Prepare to sweat on the East Coast through next week. The first heat wave of the summer is coming.The weather pattern is shifting, and a heat dome will traverse from the West to the Eastern United States, baking most of the eastern half of the country, including major cities from Chicago to New York, in stifling temperatures for days. More