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A recent Federal Aviation Administration audit of the production of the Boeing 737 Max raised a peculiar question. Was it really appropriate for one of the plane maker’s key suppliers to be using Dawn dish soap and a hotel key card as part of its manufacturing process?

The answer, it turns out, may be yes.

The F.A.A. conducted the audit after a panel known as a door plug blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. The New York Times reported last month that the agency’s examination had identified dozens of problems at Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage of the 737 Max.

Boeing and Sprit have both come under intense scrutiny after the episode involving the Alaska plane, which appears to have left Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., missing four bolts used to secure the door plug in place. Spirit has had its own share of quality problems in recent years and has been bruised by financial losses, and Boeing said last month that it was in talks to acquire the company, which it spun out in 2005.

But in the aftermath of the Alaska episode, Spirit says one thing has been misunderstood: its use of the dish soap and the hotel key card.

In fact, the company says it is now properly authorized to use the soap as well as a newly created tool that resembles a key card. Both have been approved by the appropriate engineering authorities at Boeing and documented for use under F.A.A. standards as factory tools known as shop aids, according to Spirit.

“People look at the hotel key card or Dawn soap and think this is sloppy,” said Joe Buccino, a Spirit spokesman. “This is actually an innovative approach to solving for an efficient shop aid.”

A Boeing spokeswoman confirmed that the company had approved the use of the soap and the key card tool as shop aids. The F.A.A. said it could not comment because the audit was part of its continuing investigation in response to the Alaska episode.

As part of the audit, agency employees visited Spirit’s factory in Wichita, Kan. One aspect of the manufacturing process they scrutinized was how Spirit handled door plugs, which take the place of emergency exits that would be needed if a plane was configured with a denser seating arrangement.

At one point, the F.A.A. observed Spirit mechanics using a hotel key card to check a door seal, which was “not identified/documented/called-out in the production order,” according to a document describing some of the audit findings.

Spirit officials said the key card was used to check the gap between the seal and the door plug to make sure there was no obstruction, rolling or pinching. Workers had previously tried other tools that either were too brittle or did not bend enough. But Spirit engineers found that the key card, with rounded corners and just the right amount of flexibility, allowed them to check the gap without damaging the seal.

After Spirit workers were spotted using the key card, the company’s engineers developed a similar tool for its employees to use moving forward. The new device, which is green and square, is meant to be a scraping tool, but Spirit smoothed its serrated edges and rounded its corners.

Sean Black, Spirit’s chief technology officer, led the effort to get the new tool approved for use by Boeing and properly documented.

“Our workers routinely find creative ways to make the process of building fuselages more efficient,” Mr. Black said. “In this case, workers created the door rigger seal tool, which allows our teams to test the door seals without any risk of degrading the seal over time.”

Then there was the matter of the dish soap.

At another point during the audit, the F.A.A. saw Spirit mechanics apply liquid Dawn soap to a door seal “as lubricant in the fit-up process,” the document describing some of the audit findings said. The agency also saw the door seal get cleaned with a wet cheesecloth to remove the soap and debris, according to the document, which said that instructions were “vague and unclear on what specifications/actions are to be followed or recorded by the mechanic.”

Those observations dealt with the process in which workers make sure the seal is properly installed against the door frame. Mr. Buccino said the Dawn soap was to ensure there were not tears or bulging when the seal was being installed. He said the chemical properties of the soap were found not to degrade the resilience of the seal over time. Spirit again worked to get Boeing’s approval to use the soap and to get it properly documented.

Spirit workers did not land on the dish soap on the first try. Mr. Buccino said that other common products had been used in the past — including Vaseline, cornstarch and talcum powder — but that they ran the risk of degrading the seal over time.

The outbreak of dengue fever that has unfolded in Latin America over the past three months is staggering in its scale — a million cases in Brazil in a matter of weeks, a huge spike in Argentina, a state of emergency declared in Peru, and now another, in Puerto Rico.

It forewarns of a changing landscape for the disease. The mosquitoes that spread dengue thrive in densely populated cities with weak infrastructure, and in warmer and wetter environments — the type of habitat that is expanding quickly with climate change.

More than 3.5 million cases of dengue have been confirmed by governments in Latin America in the first three months of 2024, compared with 4.5 million in all of 2023. There have been more than 1,000 deaths so far this year. The Pan-American Health Organization is warning that this may be the worst year for dengue ever recorded.

The rapidly shifting disease landscape needs new solutions, and researchers in Brazil delivered the lone shred of good news in this story with the recent announcement that a clinical trial of a new dengue vaccine, delivered in a single shot, had provided strong protection against the disease.

There are two existing vaccines for dengue, but one is an expensive two-shot regimen, while the other can only be given to people who have already had a dengue infection.

The new one-shot vaccine uses live, weakened forms of all four strains of the dengue virus, and it was created by scientists at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The vaccine was licensed for development by the Instituto Butantan, a huge public research institute in São Paulo, and Merck & Co.

Butantan will make the vaccine. It already produces most of the immunizations used in Brazil, and has the capacity to make tens of millions of doses of this new one. The institute plans to submit the dengue vaccine to Brazil’s regulatory agency for approval in the next few months and could begin producing it next year.

But that won’t help with this outbreak, and by the time the production gears up and a national rollout gets started, it may not be enough to help with the next one, either; dengue typically surges in three- or four-year cycles.

And it won’t necessarily be of help to the rest of Latin America: Butantan will only make the vaccine for Brazil. Other countries in the region struggling with dengue will have to purchase it from Merck, which has not said what it plans to charge for the shot.

And there is, of course, demand for a dengue vaccine beyond the Americas: mosquitoes are spreading the disease to Croatia, Italy, California and other regions that haven’t seen it before. Places used to handling mild outbreaks now face record-breaking ones: Bangladesh had 300,000 cases last year.

Dengue is commonly known by the name breakbone fever, after the excruciating joint pain it causes. Not everybody experiences that pain: Three-quarters of people infected with dengue don’t have any symptoms at all, and among those who do, most cases resemble only a mild flu.

But about 5 percent of people who become sick will progress to what’s called severe dengue. Plasma, the protein-rich fluid component of blood, can start to leak out of blood vessels, causing patients to go into shock or suffer organ failure.

When patients with severe dengue are treated with blood transfusions and intravenous fluids, the mortality rate tends to be between 2 and 5 percent. But when they don’t get treatment — because they don’t realize it’s dengue and don’t seek treatment quickly enough, or because health centers are overwhelmed — the mortality rate is 15 percent.

In Brazil, the current dengue outbreak is hitting children hardest; those under 5 have the highest mortality rate of any age group, followed by those aged 5 to 9. Adolescents between 10 and 14 have the highest number of confirmed cases, according to the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, a national public health research center.

As clinics began to be overwhelmed with dengue patients in January, the Brazilian government bought the entire global stock of a Japanese-made vaccine for dengue called Qdenga. Public health nurses are delivering it to children ages 6 to 16, but there will only be enough vaccine to fully vaccinate 3.3 million of Brazil’s 220 million people this year.

This big national effort will protect a few million children, but it won’t contribute anything to its herd immunity.

Qdenga is not cheap: It’s about $115 per dose in Europe and $40 in Indonesia. Brazil is paying $19 per dose, having negotiated a lower price for its huge purchase.

Takeda Pharmaceuticals, which makes Qdenga, announced a deal last month with Biological E, a large Indian generic drug maker, to license and produce up to 50 million doses a year, part of a race to accelerate production. The Indian vaccine should cost considerably less. But Biological E is unlikely to have regulatory approval to market it before 2030; it’s a slow process that involves transferring technology, setting up a production line and getting a new version of even a well-known product approved by regulators.

Dengue costs Brazil at least $1 billion a year in health care treatment and lost productivity. And that figure doesn’t take into account the human suffering involved.

There four different strains of the dengue virus complicate more than the process of making a vaccine: the potentially fatal form of the disease is more common when a person has a second infection, with a different strain than they had the first time. Qdenga protects against all four strains of dengue, and the hope is that the new Butantan vaccine does too, although the data released so far show it tested only against the two types that were circulating during the first part of the trial; more results are expected in June.

Millions more people will have been exposed to dengue when this outbreak finally passes. But they’re going to need that new vaccine more urgently than ever.

A quest to find living descendants of 36 enslaved people has transformed into a project that gives Black residents new clues to their ancestry, wherever it may lead.

April 11, 2024

When Edward Lee heard about a project collecting DNA from Black residents like him in Charleston, S.C., he had reason to be skeptical. Knowing that African Americans have been exploited before financially and in medical experiments, he feared that handing over his genetic identity could leave him vulnerable.

But he knew the people behind the Anson Street African Burial Ground Project, having worked with many of them before on similar efforts to preserve the region’s Black history.

And they came to him with a unique proposal: With DNA extracted from 36 enslaved people whose bones had been unearthed by a construction crew downtown, researchers were now searching for their living descendants.

Even if he wasn’t related to any of them, Mr. Lee figured, maybe a DNA test could still provide other answers that had eluded him. He could trace his ancestry to a great-great-grandmother on one side, but no further. So last spring, he sat still as a researcher gently swabbed the inside of his cheek.

“I had to have guarantees that we control the results — that’s the only reason I did it,” Mr. Lee said.

Now, dozens of Black residents have agreed to play their part in this genetic detective work. Their catalyst came in 2013, when workers building a concert hall stumbled upon what is believed to be the oldest known burial ground of enslaved people in Charleston.

The project’s supporters believe it can serve as a blueprint for how to handle the preservation of neglected aspects of Black history across the country, before development and time erode more of it.

That history is particularly poignant in Charleston, where ships once docked with hundreds of kidnapped Africans onboard, and where community leaders like Mr. Lee have spent years fighting to protect the graveyards of enslaved people.

“It feels like every piece of ground you step on — it is seeped with that history,” said Joanna Gilmore, an anthropologist and a member of the project who has devoted much of her career to chronicling African burial grounds.

In the decade since the burial ground was discovered, Ms. Gilmore and other researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, the College of Charleston and the Charleston community have shed light on the African and Indigenous ancestry of the 36 people buried along Anson Street in the late 18th century — several men, most likely a mother and a child among them.

Six were most likely born in Africa, and others were born in Charleston or nearby. While the graves had no markings, the bodies were carefully spaced, buried with shrouds or with coins meant to cover their eyes.

The “Ancestors” — as they are collectively known — have since been reinterred, and there are plans to construct a fountain ringed with bronze hands, all modeled from Black residents of similar ages to the 36 people found.

But another question remained: Were there any living descendants still in Charleston?

That quest, however, required persuading as many people as possible from the region to participate. Some agreed because they saw it as a way to safely answer fundamental questions about their family history, or to trace their roots beyond the Carolina shores.

“Time is not on our side, and I feel like if somebody doesn’t take a stand to actually bring the attention to the family ties, the younger generation, they’re not going to do it,” said Karen Wright-Chisolm, after submitting her swab in spring 2023. “In order to be able to teach them, then I need to know the information, so that I can pass it on.”

Others came as a way to pay their respects to the enslaved Africans, or simply because friends suggested giving it a try.

“It’s just a vessel to connect,” said Clifton R. Polite Jr., who also participated in the creation of hand casts for the fountain.

So far, no direct descendants have been found, something researchers acknowledge may never happen. But the project has shown that each individual result has the possibility to transform people’s understanding of their heritage.

La’Sheia Oubré, a teacher who has led community engagement for the project, saw not only different regions of Africa reflected in her results, but also markers of German and Asian ancestry.

“For the first time in my life, I know where I came from,” she said. “If everybody could do this, they would then realize that you’re related to somebody in one way or another.”

Months after their swabs were taken, dozens of participants gathered again in a darkened auditorium. Ms. Gilmore, Dr. Schurr and Dr. Raquel Fleskes, another anthropologist, dove into their findings and dissected how to interpret each sliver of genetic data.

Hushed in silence, audience members snapped photos of screens and jotted down the occasional note as Dr. Schurr described how to see which lineage was represented where in their results.

“Just as a reminder, we’re all 99.99 alike — everybody in this room, we’re all alike because we’re a very recent species,” Dr. Schurr told the room, adding that the results would not “reflect the deep divisions between human populations in genetic terms, because that’s not true.”

And then, finally, the participants had a turn to see their results in full.

Mr. Lee was among those claiming a manila envelope with a broad summary of his DNA results. There was a surprise — a small, but unexpected, percentage of Middle Eastern ancestry.

“When the doctor said we’re all 99.9 percent the same, that hits you,” he said.

Jackson Hinkle has cultivated an online persona so incendiary that he has been kicked off YouTube, Twitch and Instagram.

He rages on undaunted, even energized. He produces a regular podcast on Rumble, a website popular with many prominent conservatives. He writes dozens of posts a day on X, where his following has surged to 2.5 million from 417,000 in the six months since Oct. 7 — the day Hamas fighters mounted their assault on Israel.

Along the way, he has employed false or misleading content, promoted manipulated images and made comments that watchdog organizations have denounced as antisemitic. He calls himself an American patriot even as he praises American adversaries, including Vladimir V. Putin, Xi Jinping and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“DROP A LIKE if you stand with IRAN in the face of ISRAELI TERRORISM!” he wrote last week on X after an Israeli airstrike in Syria killed several Iranian military officials. A day later he addressed the Houthi leadership in Yemen over video, praising the group for its attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

It has all made Mr. Hinkle an online celebrity at age 24, a Gen Z symbol of the modern internet: a place where authenticity is no longer a necessity, and outrage offers attention and even some financial reward.

“It was a godsend for me at the time,” he said in an interview about his surge in popularity on X amid the war in Gaza. “I was very fortunate.”

His sudden rise may stem from more than good luck.

Two Israeli research companies specializing in online threats, and that have focused on what they consider disinformation related to the war in Gaza, said they have identified coordinated and possibly state-sponsored networks of bots or inauthentic accounts that are amplifying Mr. Hinkle’s provocative brew of political views. China, Russia and other foreign actors are known to use such tactics to achieve their geopolitical goals — including efforts to influence this fall’s presidential election.

Mr. Hinkle has also benefited from changes by X’s owner, Elon Musk, including the cancellation of policies that once limited toxic content. With the addition of a premium subscription feature, he now charges certain followers $3 a month for what he calls “extra cool stuff,” including behind-the-scenes videos and “random thoughts.” X allows him to pocket up to 97 percent of the revenue — money that Mr. Hinkle has told subscribers helps him “continue exposing the Deep State.”

Imran Ahmed, the head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a research organization, said Mr. Hinkle was part of “a sort of new cadre of people who exploit the algorithms’ insatiable desire for highly contentious content to benefit themselves economically.”

In a new report, the center documented a staggering rise in followers for 10 prominent accounts on X that spread antisemitic content since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Mr. Hinkle’s was at the top, by far.

“It’s sort of a sick industry of creators and platforms who benefit from contention,” Mr. Ahmed said, “the sort of car-crash nature of how people react to hate.”

Mr. Hinkle, for his part, seems to relish the limelight.

To illustrate a post about the Gaza conflict, he used a stylized cartoon of himself dressed in military gear with a rifle in front of a fireball. His profile on X and other platforms includes a doctored image of his bloodied face surrounded by a ring of pistols.

Mr. Hinkle solicits donations and sells merchandise to support his “independent journalism” on platforms like Patreon, having already been banned on PayPal and Venmo.

In the interview, Mr. Hinkle emphasized that he did not accept any payments from foreign governments, but he spoke unapologetically about his support for — and from — often hostile foreign powers. He visited Russia and China this year at the invitation of organizations close to the governments, dining with Russia’s foreign minister and appearing on state-controlled television networks.

“I think they appreciate support wherever they can get it,” he said.

From Bernie bro to MAGA fan

From an early age, Mr. Hinkle understood that zealous support of a cause could win public attention. He grew up in San Clemente, in Southern California, a surfer who heavily marketed his own embrace of environmental activism, gun control measures and progressive politics.

As a teenager, he helped start an environmental cleanup organization and another to encourage young people to run for political office. Teen Vogue recognized him as a top young environmentalist; Reader’s Digest included him on a list of inspirational children. He posed in an Instagram photo with the actor Will Smith, whose son Jaden Smith worked with Mr. Hinkle to limit plastic water bottles in schools.

Perry Meade, a progressive organizer who worked with Mr. Hinkle on campaigns as teenagers, said that his “overarching understanding of Jackson was that he always wanted to be famous,” adding, Sure, he cared about things, but he came first.”

His activities soon turned political. At his high school graduation in 2018, he knelt during the national anthem in protest against police brutality and racial injustice. He twice ran unsuccessfully for San Clemente’s City Council, when he was 19 and 20. One local conservative blog called him “an extreme left-wing ideologue.”

He said in the interview that, after his political losses, he “decided to still pursue the issues I cared about — but on the national stage.”

Mr. Hinkle found that stage on YouTube, where one of his big coups, he says, was an interview with Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. At its peak, his channel reached 300,000 subscribers.

Like Ms. Gabbard, who once joined him surfing, his views have shifted. The Sierra Club, one of the largest environmental organizations in the world, included Mr. Hinkle in a get-out-the-vote video filmed in 2018. By 2022, he was on social media describing environmentalism as “anti-human.”

Today, he says he is a Stalinist and a Maoist who was expelled from the Communist Party of the United States. (Roberta Wood, a party leader in Chicago, said he subscribed to the newsletter but had never joined the party and did not reflect its values.) He once supported Bernie Sanders, but now praises Donald Trump.

He is, he wrote last year, an “American PATRIOT, GOD fearing, Pro-FAMILY, Marxist Leninist, Pro-PALESTINE, RUSSIA & CHINA, Anti-DEEP STATE, Anti-IMPERIALIST, Anti-WOKE, Pro-GROWTH, ANTI-MONOPOLY, Pro-GUN, Pro-FOSSIL FUEL.”

An international pivot

As Mr. Hinkle’s focus settled on international affairs, his audiences grew. He supported authoritarian leaders like Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom he called a “hero.” When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he embraced Mr. Putin’s rationale for the conflict.

Mr. Hinkle has become a “merchant of rage,” said Pekka Kallioniemi, who researches social media and disinformation at Tampere University in Finland.

“The way he moves on from one thing to another, it seems very opportunistic to me,” Mr. Kallioniemi said.

He drew critics’ attention for frequently spreading Russian propaganda about Ukraine, including disinformation linked to covert Kremlin campaigns. His affection for Russia was personal, too.

He first traveled there in September 2023 with Anna Linnikova, a model crowned Miss Russia in 2022. For a time, they were engaged to be married. Mr. Hinkle posted a photo of the pair posing in front of Moscow’s Red Square last year and said they were moving to Miami together. (By the end of 2023, they appeared to have split acrimoniously.)

He visited Russia again recently to attend a conference organized by Konstantin Malofeyev and Aleksandr Dugin, both prominent nationalists who face sanctions in the United States. He said he had been attracted by Mr. Dugin’s writings, which glorify Russian culture, as an antidote to corrupted values in the West.

YouTube suspended his channel in October for “repeated violations” of the company’s policy that prohibits denying or trivializing major violent events, including the war in Ukraine, according to a company spokesman.

It was only when Hamas invaded Israel that month, though — when Mr. Hinkle began posting constantly about criticism of Israel and Russian support for Palestinians — that his account on X reached stratospheric heights.

Several organized networks of inauthentic accounts amplified his posts, according to Next Dim, an Israeli company that studies inauthentic activity online and that previously found evidence of an effort to amplify pro-Beijing messages on X.

One of the organized networks had previously boosted unrelated content — in Chinese — that criticized the Japanese government for releasing radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in August, the researchers found. Once the fighting began in Gaza, the same network, which had at least 20,000 accounts, began reposting Mr. Hinkle’s content.

Another research company in Israel, Cyabra, found that Mr. Hinkle’s account gained 1.2 million followers over the first 19 days of the war. A sample of 12,510 of them suggested that roughly 40 percent were fakes.

In the interview, Mr. Hinkle shrugged off the findings of inauthentic support for his account. “There’s always going to be bots on social media,” he said. He acknowledged that he had made mistakes in some posts, but said that they weren’t intentional, and he argued that the scale of Israel’s retaliation in Gaza vindicated his view of the conflict.

“I think if we’re going to focus on people who are putting out false information, an incorrect Twitter photo is not the biggest deal in comparison to lies that are used to sell a war,” he said.

Losing his YouTube subscribers, he said, had cost him three-quarters of his salary. He suggested he has recouped the loss with his activities on X, principally through subscribers. “I’m doing OK, I guess,” he said.

He declined to say how much his posts earned, or how many paid subscribers he had. In October, he noted that he had made $550 the previous month from X’s advertising revenue sharing model. His profile recently featured ads for a large Emirati airline, a major shoe brand and a popular travel blog, but he said revenue was limited because his posts were too controversial for some advertisers.

Mr. Hinkle spoke admiringly of Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who has peddled pro-Russian narratives, and Candace Owens, a conservative commentator who left The Daily Wire website last month. Mr. Hinkle, who said he turned down a job offer from a foreign media outlet that he declined to disclose, compared himself to Mr. Carlson and Ms. Owens: “We’re all independent — not by choice.”

“You know, of course, I’d be happy if there was any media outlet in the United States that wanted to hire someone like me,” he said, “but our values don’t align, so I don’t think that’s in my future.”

It’s no secret that many voters are not looking forward to the election in November.

A New York Times/Siena College poll from February found that 19 percent of voters held an unfavorable view of both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. And 29 percent of Americans believe that neither candidate would be a good president, according to a March poll from Gallup.

At the same time, the prospect of a new president is exciting for many, and nearly half of Republican primary voters are enthusiastic with Mr. Trump as their nominee, the Times/Siena poll found. About a quarter of Democratic primary voters said the same about Mr. Biden.

Those findings are broad measures of an issue Americans have complex feelings on. To dig a little deeper, we asked respondents in that Times/Siena poll to summarize their feelings about the upcoming rematch in just one word.

We received hundreds of distinct responses from a representative sample of more than 900 registered voters across the country. We combined responses like “anxious,” “apprehensive,” “concerned” and “worried” into a category we labeled “scared”; responses under the umbrella of “excited” and “hopeful” became “happy.” “Disappointed,” “annoyed” and “frustrated” were classified as “angry.”

About a third of voters gave responses indicating anger, disappointment or resignation. And nearly as many respondents — 30 percent — replied with words indicating that they were scared or apprehensive.

Fewer than 15 percent of voters in our poll gave some variation on happy, excited or hopeful.

Voters who said they planned to vote for Mr. Trump were about twice as likely to say they felt happy about the election as those who were planning to vote for Mr. Biden. Even so, Trump voters were still more likely to give a response indicating anger or fear than to say they were happy or excited.

Perhaps less expected is that nearly the same percentages of Trump voters and Biden voters said they felt scared or angry about the election. Biden voters were a bit more likely to say so in both cases, though, even accounting for the poll’s margin of error.

To hear more, we asked some respondents to explain why they chose the words they did.

‘Historical’

“I truly believe we are at a crossroads,” said Chris Dozois, 52, a Democrat from Castle Pines, Colo. He chose the word “historical” to describe his feelings about the election, which he believes has existential stakes.

“If Donald Trump wins, with the current Supreme Court and the rhetoric that I hear from him, I actually fear that we could have a constitutional crisis immediately,” Mr. Dozois said. “I could see him pardon himself.”

Mr. Dozois, who works in marketing, worries that re-electing Mr. Trump could have immediate consequences for his family members. “My oldest son is gay, so it’s an existential threat to him,” he said. “I have a daughter; they’re taking away body autonomy.” He added, “All of these things are terrifying, ”

“I think it is absolutely possible you could see the country we recognize and our democracy — you could see this whole thing unwind,” Mr. Dozois added.

‘Ecstatic’

Catherine Donnelly, a Republican in Somerset, Mass., is not simply happy about the election — she is ecstatic.

“I am a Republican 100 percent,” said Ms. Donnelly, who is in her mid-50s. “And when Donald Trump was in office, I actually favored every single one of his policies.”

Ms. Donnelly, who works as a nurse, said she had felt a rush of confidence last month after the Supreme Court ruled against efforts to bar Mr. Trump from appearing on the ballot in Colorado. “I feel even stronger,” she said. “I don’t know how anyone can say no to him.”

Ms. Donnelly said that she had benefited from Mr. Trump’s economic policies and that she was hopeful for their return.

“I’m a homeowner,” she said. “I have children. I want someone to understand that this country has to be run like a business.”

‘Angry’

Susan Fairchild, 55, expects the election will be manipulated in favor of Mr. Biden.

“I can’t believe — no matter how hard you try to do the right thing — that we’re going to end up right where we’re at,” said Ms. Fairchild, who is the vice president of operations for a company that distributes exercise equipment and who lives near Tampa, Fla.

“Their algorithm and how they cheat is just going to be better than ours is,” echoing Mr. Trump’s disproved claims of fraud during the 2020 election. “We’re not going to cheat,” she added.

Ms. Fairchild said she had felt safer when Mr. Trump was in office. “I felt I could trust more of what was being said because President Trump took questions in front of everyone a lot,” she said. “And he had no teleprompter.”

‘Frustrated’

There was a hint of anger in the voice of Hayden Carlos, 29, of Youngsville, La., as he described his feelings about the election.

Mr. Carlos, who works as a lawyer, is an independent voter who cast a ballot for Mr. Trump in 2016 and one for Mr. Biden in 2020. He plans to vote for Mr. Biden again in 2024. During the Trump presidency, he learned he disagreed with Mr. Trump’s policies on issues like immigration.

“What I think I bought into was the provocateur-type stuff,” said Mr. Carlos, who said he had volunteered for Mr. Trump’s campaign in 2016. “It was childish and immature and fun at the time, and I didn’t realize the real-world effects of the things he said and did and implemented.”

After the 2016 election, Mr. Carlos said, “I was educating myself and made changes in my personal life and the way I thought about things.”

He added, “And I just think I get frustrated seeing that other people can’t do the same thing.”

‘Trepidation’

Rebecca Murphy, 39, a stay-at-home mother and a Biden supporter who lives in Dickinson Center, N.Y., said she was apprehensive but “not scared or angry as of yet.”

“I know that those votes are out there” to re-elect Mr. Biden, she said, “but I’m just worried that they’re not actually going to show up.”

Fueling her feeling of anxiety, she said, was her sense that since Mr. Biden has been in office, the tumult of the Trump years has faded from collective memory.

“Things are OK” at the moment, Ms. Murphy said. “Protections are being put back in place. It’s back to normal. There’s this level of normalcy.”

But, she added, “It’s easy to forget how bad and how scared we were.”

The Biden administration has approved the broadest expansion of federal background checks in decades in an attempt to regulate a fast-growing shadow market of weapons sold online, at gun shows and through private sellers that has contributed to gun violence.

Under a rule being released on Thursday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will require anyone “engaged in the business” of selling guns at a profit to register as a federally licensed firearms dealer. That means those sellers must run background criminal and mental health checks on potential buyers.

The new regulation, which is likely to face legal challenges, could add as many as 23,000 federal dealers to the 80,000 already regulated by A.T.F., an underfunded division of the Justice Department that already struggles to monitor sellers.

The rule, which drew more than 380,000 public comments, will take effect in a month.

President Biden, repeatedly blocked from enacting universal background checks by Republicans in Congress, is leveraging a provision of the sweeping bipartisan gun control law passed in 2022 to achieve an elusive policy goal that enjoys widespread public support: closing the so-called gun show loophole.

Expanding the number of federal firearms licensees was one of several gun control measures included in an executive order Mr. Biden issued in March 2023 after several mass shootings.

Unlicensed private sellers in many states have been able to legally sell at gun shows, out of their houses and through online platforms without having to submit to the background check system created to prevent sales to children, criminals, domestic abusers, and people with mental illnesses or drug addictions.

Four in 10 illegal gun cases tracked by the bureau from 2017 to 2021 involved such unregulated sales, including thousands from shadow dealers who used legal loopholes to evade background checks, according to an analysis of firearms trafficking released last week.

The purpose of the new rule is twofold, officials said: first, to pull legitimate sellers into the regulatory sunlight and, second, to deprive brokers who knowingly traffic in criminal gun sales of a legal shield provided by the vagaries of federal firearms laws.

Dealers have previously been required to join the federal system only if they derived their chief livelihood from selling weapons. The bar is much lower now — the government has to prove only that they sold guns to “predominantly derive a profit” from their actions.

Failing to register carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Vice President Kamala Harris, tapped to lead White House efforts on a gamut of politically charged election-year issues, including gun policy, told reporters in a call on Wednesday that the new regulation addresses “one of the biggest gaps” in the federal background check system.

“This single gap in our federal background check system has caused unimaginable pain and suffering,” Ms. Harris said, who also noted that gun violence was now the leading cause of death among children.

“In the years to come, I do believe countless families and communities will be spared the horror and heartbreak of gun violence by this new rule,” she said.

Steven M. Dettelbach, the A.T.F. director, struck a similar tone. “This is about protecting the lives of innocent, law-abiding Americans as well as the rule of law,” he said.

Mr. Dettelbach, the first permanent director to be approved by the Senate in nearly a decade, has overseen a succession of more modest regulatory moves, including an effort to regulate deadly homemade firearms known as ghost guns.

The administration believes the new regulation is on solid footing, because it is rooted in a newly passed law, rather than a novel interpretation of an existing one. Nonetheless, it is likely to prompt legal fights.

After a preliminary version of the rule was announced last year, Gun Owners of America, a group that has opposed Mr. Biden’s efforts at gun control, called the regulation a “backdoor” universal background check and vowed that its “attorneys will be preparing a lawsuit.”

The announcement comes as the administration has ramped up its efforts to find workarounds to deliver on policy promises to key constituencies, like young voters and communities of color, on issues like gun violence, where Mr. Biden’s priorities have no chance of passing in a divided Congress.

The gun control bill, one of the administration’s most significant policy achievements, has provided the government with several tools to combat a flood of illegal firearms.

The most important, officials said, is a new drug-trafficking charge that is starting to be used in gun cases around the country. Enhanced background check provisions have enabled the Justice Department to stop more than 600 illegal gun purchases by people younger than 21, and stopped straw purchases by third-party buyers that account for roughly 40 percent of illegal gun cases brought by federal prosecutors.

Scores of guns used in crimes have been purchased through the shadow market, increasingly through online marketplaces, like Armslist, a Craigslist for firearms that matches buyers and sellers.

In October 2022, a 19-year-old with a history of mental health issues was denied an AR-15-type rifle at a federally licensed dealer near St. Louis. Shortly thereafter, he bought one through Armslist — this time without a background check — then used it to kill two people and injure several others.

It was 1:53 a.m., and Peter Fink was on a barren mountain plateau near Campo, Calif., passing out blankets to people from four continents who had arrived there under the cover of night.

This was a nocturnal ritual for the 22-year-old, dressed in a ball cap and a wool overshirt, whose perch — just over 300 yards up a rocky incline from the United States-Mexico border wall — had become a round-the-clock boarding space for people who had crossed unlawfully onto American soil.

With Mexico’s armed National Guard now stationed at the most popular crossing sites along southeastern San Diego County, migrant routes have shifted further into the remote wilderness, where people face more extreme terrains and temperatures with little to no infrastructure to keep them alive.

For migrants who were aiming to be apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents and begin applying to stay in the country, Mr. Fink’s makeshift camp, a dirt patch under the lattices of a high-voltage tower, had become a first stop, where modest rations of donated food, water and firewood helped migrants survive while they waited for agents to traverse the landscape and detain them before their health languished dangerously.

At this site and others along the border, migrants have waited for hours or sometimes days to be taken into custody, and a Federal District Court judge ruled last week that the Border Patrol must move “expeditiously” to get children into safe and sanitary shelters. But unlike outdoor waiting areas that had arisen in more populated areas, Mr. Fink’s site had no aid tents or medical volunteers, no dumpsters or port-a-potties — just a hole that he had dug as a communal toilet, and Mr. Fink himself.

By the morning, there were Indians, Brazilians, Georgians, Uzbeks and Chinese.

Officials say federal funding and personnel are far too limited to keep up with the influx of border crossings in the region, and operations like these have become a source of great tension in San Diego County.

Asked whether he worried that his humanitarian aid might encourage more people to come unlawfully, Mr. Fink shook his head.

“People do not spend their life savings and risk the lives of their children so they can taste these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” he said.

Peter Fink is blond and fresh-faced, and grows a beard just to look his age. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and learned Spanish working a summer job picking cherries. Captivated by the immigration crisis in 2020, he spent months in Arizona, walking over the border to volunteer at a Sonora migrant shelter by day and, by night, earning an international studies degree online, using free Wi-Fi at a local McDonalds.

He did not create this mountaintop camp; he found it. A local man had noticed fires burning on the plateau each night, and Mr. Fink, a wildland firefighter and avid camper who was traveling through the region, volunteered to spend the night on the plot in a tent to see what transpired. Within hours, over 200 migrants came on foot — among them pregnant women, children and elderly people — huddled together in the biting wind.

Word spread through the southern communities of what’s known as the Mountain Empire, an area so isolated that the small desert town of Jacumba Hot Springs (population 857) 30 miles away, became operation headquarters. Volunteers gathered firewood from the discards of an ax throwing venue and a live-edge table maker. An abandoned youth center was used to sort nonperishable donations. A shipping container in someone’s yard became a sort of depot for crates of water and tarps.

After that first night in early March, Mr. Fink spent another, then another. He pitched a series of four-person tents in a tidy line, cramming 10 people into each when the wind became particularly unbearable. He used white paint to label the drawers of old office filing cabinets in four languages, denoting rations of applesauce for children and formula for infants. He established guidelines for his campsite: one snack per person; no littering; conserve firewood; women and children receive priority in the tents.

On this day, the sun was almost directly overhead when Mr. Fink peered out through his binoculars and saw a couple being dropped off by an unmarked vehicle on a dirt road in Mexico and trekking through the arid brush toward the United States. The woman began slowing down. She was visibly pregnant.

Mr. Fink grabbed two water bottles and began his descent into the canyon below, waiting for the two a safe distance back from the border wall so as not to encourage them. Once on U.S. soil, the woman panted heavily and lowered herself to the ground. Her husband squatted in front of her and took her face in his hands.

“Está bien?” he whispered, wiping the sweat from her brow. She nodded.

For a moment, there was silence. Then Mr. Fink asked in Spanish where they were from (San Salvador), how soon the baby was due (one month) and whether the two had been extorted for cash by Mexican authorities on their way to the border wall. The couple said they had not.

“Buena suerte,” he said.

He led them on the ascent to camp, passing abandoned bags and clothing, and using footholds he had carved into the earth with a technique he had learned fighting wildfires. As soon as they arrived at the camp, he turned and began sprinting down into the valley again. He had spotted a young girl in polka-dot pants and a ponytail wandering with her mother, and could see that they were about to make a wrong turn.

Once the girl, Briana Lopez, 5, arrived at the camp, she ate Welch’s fruit snacks from Mr. Fink, and spoke by phone to her father, still back home in Guatemala.

“How are you, my child? You happy?” he asked in Spanish.

“Bien!” she said. “Sí!” Good! Yes!

Her parents discussed how she and her mother might navigate immigration detention once they were apprehended. Briana chimed in, excited — she believed they were going to Disneyland.

The last group of migrants was picked up by dusk, and Mr. Fink crouched in his tent, munching on a piece of pita bread and arranging donation drop-offs via his cellphone.

This was around the time he usually went to sleep, hoping for a few hours before the first overnight wave arrived. But in the distance he heard exasperated breaths, and a woman appeared alone, collapsing into his arms, weeping.

Her travel companions had left her behind, she said, following an underground railroad track and bearing too far to the west, disappearing into the wilderness. Now they were missing.

Mr. Fink climbed to the highest point on the rocky ledge, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted in Spanish: “Here, we have water and food! Do not be afraid — come this way!” his voice echoing through the valley. “Hey, welcome to the United States!”

He wrapped the woman in a blanket as she waited. “Dios te bendiga,” she said. God bless you.

Finally, her two lost companions climbed over the crest from the other side of the plateau, sobbing and wrapping their arms around her. Mr. Fink packed a bag for each of them as they followed Border Patrol orders to strip down to one layer of clothing and climb into a government van.

At 8:13 p.m., the site was silent again, except for power lines buzzing overhead and dogs cooing their evening songs on the Mexico side. In the darkness, Mr. Fink sanitized and tidied the tents, then lit garden lights and glow sticks along the path up to camp for those who would arrive in the night.

Within a week, Mr. Fink would depart for the Northwest, where planting season for sorghum and amaranth would begin, and where he had landscaping and construction jobs waiting for him. But his tarps, firewood and filing cabinets atop the mountain remain, and supplies are restocked periodically by volunteers.

When a group of Colombians were released from Border Patrol custody into the United States the following week, an aid worker heard them discussing “an angel” who had kept them alive and won their hearts — “un güerito” who spoke very good Spanish, they said, and who they had found hanging out in a tent.

Computers seem methodical, deliberate and utterly predictable. But they can also behave in ways that are completely random. As researchers build increasingly powerful machines, one key question is: What role will randomness play?

On Wednesday, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, announced that this year’s Turing Award will go to Avi Wigderson, an Israeli-born mathematician and theoretical computer scientist who specializes in randomness.

Often called the Nobel Prize of computing, the Turing Award comes with a $1 million prize. The award is named for Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped create the foundations for modern computing in the mid-20th century.

Other recent winners include Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan, who helped create the computer-generated imagery, or C.G.I., that drives modern movies and television, and the A.I. researchers Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio, who nurtured the techniques that gave rise to chatbots like ChatGPT.

Although computers typically behave in deterministic ways — meaning they follow a predictable pattern laid down by their creators — scientists have also shown that random behavior can help solve some problems. In an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Wigderson said randomness played a role in smartphone applications, cloud computing systems, microprocessors and more.

“It is everywhere,” he said.

Randomness is essential to cryptography, where unique digital keys are used to lock down data and applications. Algorithms that involve random behavior can also help analyze complex situations, like activity in the stock market, a storm moving across the country or the spread of diseases.

Dr. Wigderson, a mathematics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., was among a group of academics who published a series of papers that explored the role of randomness in solving extraordinarily hard problems, like predicting the weather or finding a cure for cancer.

The ultimate lesson of this work, said Madhu Sudan, a theoretical computer scientist at Harvard University, is that computers can resolve many complex problems that humans will never completely understand, but some things will remain a mystery, even to machines.

“It shows that there are many things we can solve with computers,” Dr. Sudan said. “It also shows that this progress will not be limitless.”

Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer whose pitched battles with former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters on and after Jan. 6, 2021, vaulted him to political stardom, was greeted Tuesday evening in Annapolis, Md., like a celebrity.

But there was also an undercurrent of skepticism among attendees at the Beacon Waterfront Restaurant, where he appeared at a campaign event to bolster his candidacy for the U.S. House.

“We have a person here with a proven legislative record,” Jessica Sunshine, an Annapolis Democrat, told Mr. Dunn, referring to State Senator Sarah Elfreth, his main opponent in next month’s Democratic primary. But, she added, “You have heart.”

But Mr. Dunn, an imposing former offensive lineman who stands 6-foot-7-inches and 325 pounds, didn’t shy away from the reason he is running: to save what he sees as democracy on the edge. “This moment, right now? It calls for a fighter,” he said.

He is not the only one making that case to Democrats.

Over the next three months, primaries in three Mid-Atlantic House districts — from the exurbs of Washington, D.C., to Harrisburg, Pa. — will test the strength of Jan. 6 memories and whether the battle cry of “save democracy” will be enough even for Democratic voters who have many other concerns.

For many voters, partisan celebrity is virtually the only factor in their support for candidates like Mr. Dunn, who played a starring role in the Jan. 6 hearings, and Yevgeny Vindman, who goes by Eugene and along with his identical twin brother, Alexander, played a key role in highlighting Mr. Trump’s effort to strong-arm Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Margaret Pepin, 71, could hardly believe it when Mr. Vindman rang her video doorbell on Tuesday afternoon in Occoquan, Va., and his unmistakable face, made famous during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, popped on her security screen. “I looked at my Ring. I said, ‘Is it really him?’” she said, acknowledging that she might have confused him for his better-known twin brother. “I am thrilled.”

The celebrity-candidate factor has allowed the “save democracy” candidates to raise so much money nationally that these less-experienced Democrats will dominate the airwaves. But with issues like abortion, guns, inflation and immigration competing for attention, their victories are not guaranteed — even in Democratic primaries where a threat to democracy will be a key issue in a year with Mr. Trump on the ballot.

“There are certainly a small subset of folks that it is not enough for,” Mr. Vindman said of his campaign’s focus. “But the vast majority of folks do think that democracy is the most important issue, because they see it very much like I see it. Every other issue is rolled into it.”

The voters will soon get their say.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic voters will go to the polls on April 23 to choose from among the two leading candidates, Janelle Stelson and Mike O’Brien, and four others, all hoping to take on Representative Scott Perry, a conservative Republican who was deeply entangled in Mr. Trump’s effort to remain in power after he lost the 2020 election.

Mr. O’Brien, a former Marine Corps officer and fighter pilot, has made the preservation of democracy central to his candidacy. Ms. Stelson, a former television news broadcaster with strong name recognition, has made that issue one of many.

Mr. Dunn is one of 22 Democrats vying to succeed Representative John Sarbanes, who is retiring, in Maryland’s May 14 primary that will almost certainly decide the next House member for the state’s heavily Democratic Third District. His opponents include Ms. Elfreth, a state senator with the backing of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, two veteran members of the Maryland House of Delegates, and a prominent gun control activist.

Mr. Vindman — another new candidate — is seeking to replace Representative Abigail Spanberger, who is running for governor and hopes primary voters in her marginally Democratic district will side with him on June 18 over seven other Democrats.

Mr. Vindman, an Army colonel who was fired from Mr. Trump’s National Security Council for his connection to the first impeachment investigation, and Mr. Dunn, the former Capitol Police officer, have become darlings of the Democratic activist set, parlaying fame into huge fund-raising advantages.

The money has followed the ‘save democracy’ movement.

Mr. Vindman raised more than $2 million through the end of last year, $1.5 million from donors whose contributions were too small to require disclosure. Those with larger gifts include Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, and the actor Mark Hamill, known widely for playing Luke Skywalker and more narrowly as an ardent foe of Mr. Trump.

His closest fund-raising rival, Margaret Franklin, a Prince William County supervisor, raised $122,894.

Because Mr. Dunn did not formally begin his campaign until January, he has not yet had to disclose his fund-raising numbers, but campaign officials say he will announce totals for the first quarter next week nearing $3.7 million. His closest competitor, Ms. Elfreth, raised just over $400,000 last year, but has significant financial support from outside groups.

Not surprisingly, the celebrity candidacies of Mr. Vindman and Mr. Dunn have raised some hackles among elected Democrats who had served in local offices waiting for a chance to run for the House. In both races, women, many of them minorities, are feeling particularly aggrieved.

“Yes, this campaign is about saving democracy, but it’s also about reclaiming civil, human and women’s rights gains that people fought and died for, and that are being lost,” said Terri L. Hill, a physician who has served in the Maryland House of Delegates for nearly a decade.

“I have great respect for his heroism,” she said of Mr. Dunn. “I really respect what he did on Jan. 6, 2021, but I’m really focused on Jan. 6, 2025,” when the next Congress takes office.

The race for Maryland’s Third District may be the purest version of the tension between the celebrity and the laborer, with Mr. Dunn, a political newcomer, facing Ms. Elfreth, an experienced legislator who has secured 84 bills since being elected as the youngest female state senator in Maryland history in 2018.

Mr. O’Brien called Mr. Perry’s role in the 2020 effort to overturn the election his “No. 1 issue,” and believes voters agree. “In the primary, Democrats do care first and foremost about democracy itself,” he said.

But with the April 23 primary just weeks away, Mr. O’Brien is considered the underdog against Ms. Stelson, who is more nuanced as she talks about women’s rights, abortion access and the price of gasoline and groceries.

“It’s certainly a large part of the story,” she said of Jan. 6 and Mr. Perry. “It’s not the whole story.”

But for national Democrats, the district with the most at stake might be in Virginia, since the party cannot afford to lose a seat it now holds. Democratic opponents fret over Mr. Vindman’s vulnerabilities — he’s a relative newcomer to Northern Virginia, voting for the first time there in 2022.

His 25 years of service as an Army lawyer should serve him well even with some Republican voters in a district with four military installations, he said. But at times he slips into the language of the ardent Trump foes who have embraced him.

“Are there going to be folks who hate my guts for what I did to their orange prophet?” he asked, referring to Mr. Trump. “Undoubtedly.”

Yuxin Sun, a psychologist in Seattle, sees a lot of clients at her group practice who insist they aren’t perfectionists. “‘Oh, I’m not perfect. I’m far from perfect,’” they tell her.

But perfectionism isn’t about being the best at any given pursuit, Dr. Sun said, “it’s the feeling of never arriving to that place, never feeling good enough, never feeling adequate.” And that can make for a harsh internal voice that belittles and chastises us.

Perfectionism is so pervasive that there’s a test to measure it: the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. When researchers looked at how college students have responded to the scale’s questions over time, they found that rates of perfectionism surged in recent decades, skyrocketing between 2006 and 2022.

Thomas Curran, an associate professor of psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science who led the analysis, said the type of perfectionism with the steepest rise — socially prescribed perfectionism — was rooted in the belief that others expect you to be perfect. Today’s young person is more likely to score much higher on this measure than someone who took the test decades ago. There could be a number of causes for the uptick: increasing parental expectations, school pressures, the ubiquity of social media influencers and advertising.

The feeling of not being good enough or that “my current life circumstances are inadequate or not sufficient” has created an “unrelenting treadmill,” Dr. Curran said, where there is “no joy in success and lots of self-criticism.”

Regardless of whether you consider yourself a perfectionist, experts say there are a number of small things you can try to keep your inner critic in check.

Get some distance from your thoughts.

Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and the author of “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters and How to Harness It,” said a process called distancing is his “first line of defense” against negative thoughts.

Distancing is a way of zooming out on our inner chatter to engage with it differently. If you’re agonizing over something in the middle of the night, for example, that’s a cue to “jump into the mental time-travel machine,” he said.

Begin by imagining: “How are you going to feel about this tomorrow morning?” Anxieties often seem less severe in the light of day.

The time period could also be further into the future. Will the fact that you stumbled a few times during your big presentation today truly matter three months from now?

Another way to practice distancing is to avoid first-person language when thinking about something that upsets you.

Instead of saying: “I cannot believe I made that mistake. It was so stupid of me,” someone might gain a new perspective by saying: “Christina, you made a mistake. You’re feeling bad about it right now. But you aren’t going to feel that way forever. And your mistake is something that has happened to a lot of other people.”

In Dr. Kross’s research, he found that when people used the word “you” or their own name instead of saying “I,” and started observing their feelings as though they were an impartial bystander, it “was like flipping a switch.” It resulted in an internal dialogue that was more constructive and positive than that of the people who spoke to themselves in the first-person. A number of studies have reported similar benefits to assuming a more detached point of view.

Accept what’s good enough.

Dr. Curran, who writes about his own struggles in his book “The Perfection Trap,” explained that he has worked to embrace “good enough” over perfectionism and its accompanying negative thoughts.

With perfectionism it can feel as though nothing is ever “enough.” Accepting what’s “good enough” requires letting go, Dr. Curran said. Working nights, weekends and holidays had become part of his identity, but after the birth of his son he scaled back his hours, which became “liberating.”

His decisions in the past were driven by an anxious need to better himself, he added. Now, when thinking about how to spend his time, he tries to focus on the things that bring him joy, purpose and meaning.

It’s a philosophy that’s shared by the Canadian physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté, who said on a recent podcast that the feeling of being legitimate or worthy needs to come from within, lest people “sacrifice their playfulness, their joyfulness” for external validation.

Practice self-compassion.

In general, perfectionism is usually a survival strategy — it’s “like an armor that you wear” to feel less vulnerable, Dr. Sun said. So don’t beat yourself up for having perfectionist tendencies, she added.

But if that armor is weighing you down, it may be time to thank your perfectionism for its service and move on, much like the home organizer Marie Kondo does when discarding possessions, Dr. Sun said.

“Maybe you can take off the arms first,” she said, then work on taking off the metaphorical legs. You might want to seek out a mental health professional to help with the process.

“A lot of times I work with people on building that internal safety,” which is the ability to give yourself the validation you need to feel calm and at peace, Dr. Sun said, so that one day they can say to themselves: “I accept the way I am today, versus the way that I’m ‘supposed’ to be.”