Welcome to today’s episode. Last Friday in Butler County, Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst faced an angry crowd shouting “People are going to die!” during a debate over Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Ernst’s response was immediate: “Well, we all are going to die.” True enough, but as Ross Douthat argues in The New York Times, there’s a vast difference between dying after a long, full life with decent health care and suffering a premature, painful death because you can’t afford treatment. By the standards of 2025, her remark would have been a fleeting micro-scandal—one she could have defused by simply apologizing. Instead, she filmed an apology video in a cemetery, opening with “I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement I made yesterday,” only to let the message devolve. Douthat points out that in today’s “new normal,” there are no apologies—only doubling down, sometimes even wrapped in religious language. That, he warns, is cruelty masquerading as conviction.
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