WHEN PHIL PERLMUTTER objected to something I'd written, he was quick to tell me.

The phone would ring, and when I answered it, he wasted no time on introductory pleasantries. In his unmistakable voice, pure Brooklyn gravel, he would growl: "Jeff, are you out of your mind?"

When it came from Perlmutter, who headed the Jewish Community Relations Council in Boston for 15 years, criticism was as welcome as praise. Whatever issues we might have differed on, there was never any danger of our disagreement becoming personal. While he was never shy about saying what was on his mind, he was equally curious to understand what was on mine — especially if we were at odds.

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MAKING AN appearance as the "Grumpy Old Man" on Saturday Night Live in December 1990, comedian Dana Carvey inveighed against the abundance of merchandise for sale.

"I don't like holidays," he raged. "Christmas shopping? In my day, we didn't have shopping malls with hundreds of stores with gifts people really want. We had one store and it had no gifts.... That's the way it was, and we liked it!"

That skit clearly made an impression on me. Because when President Trump recently said it was fine that his policies would mean fewer toys for children, my mind immediately flashed back to that long-ago rant by the Grumpy Old Man.

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REPUBLICANS LIKE to think of themselves as upholders of law and order — never more so, it often seems, than when railing against undocumented immigrants.

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MOST OF this year's high school graduating class was born 18 years ago. In 2007 American families welcomed more than 4.3 million new babies. They have been welcoming fewer ever since. Only about 3.6 million were born in 2024, roughly the same as a year earlier, when US births hit a new low. In other words, the Class of 2025 is the largest we are likely to see for the foreseeable future. The US baby bust is well underway, with all the grim social and economic changes that implies.

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AS PRESIDENT Trump's first term in the White House was coming to a close in January 2021, I recalled in a column how, as a candidate for president, he had assured voters that his election would launch an era of "so much winning." He had indeed scored some important wins, I acknowledged. But those successes were overshadowed by more numerous and more comprehensive defeats and debacles. In the end, Trump's first presidency had been marked by so much losing.

His second presidency is off to a similar start.

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