Opinion | How two governors came to regret the executions they oversaw

Their op-ed analyzes how the abuses of emboldened prosecutors, the caprices of non-unanimous juries and the excesses of elected judges all work together to make a mess of capital punishment.

Do what we should have done but didn’t, they urge sitting governors: End executions.

And what of cases in which “life” isn’t the merciful option? Associate editor Ruth Marcus saw only cruelty in the 99 minutes baby Milo Evan Dorbert was forced to endure alive.

As Post reporting chronicled, Milo was born without kidneys or fully developed lungs. Doctors knew that this would happen, and that Milo would die; Florida’s antiabortion law stopped them from being able to do anything about it.

Instead, Milo and his watching family were subjected to “pure torture,” as Milo’s grandfather called it. Ruth writes that Baby Milo’s story is a perfect illustration of the “cruel new world the Supreme Court has ushered in” by overturning Roe v. Wade.

Birth defects, horrific crimes — humanity faces enough tragedy as it is. Must the state meddle to make things that much worse?

Chaser: Columnist Molly Roberts sees a silver lining in states’ approval of firing squads: The barbarity of the death penalty is harder to ignore.

America’s kids are failing civics — but to be fair, civics are failing them, too.

That’s because, as contributing columnist Danielle Allen writes, adults have fought for three decades over how to teach the subject, “and the result is that the kids don’t get taught much at all.”

Danielle might have a way out of that mire — a consensus paradigm she assembled with funding from the Trump and Biden administrations, alongside experts spanning the political spectrum. Her op-ed dives right in, explaining how the curriculum tackles, gulp, the 1619 vs. 1776 debate.

All this new material won’t mean much, though, if kids can’t even read it.

Columnist Catherine Rampell is fed up with the silly disputes over what books students can be introduced to, not least because “a much more basic question plagues our educational system: whether children can process texts, period.”

The rebound from the pandemic’s learning losses has been slow and incomplete. Students need to read — read anything — to catch up, but attacks on lesson plans and librarians alike are making that harder and harder.

And when reading isn’t easy, there’s always TikTok. Does anyone want that?

Chaser: A solid political media is key to civic education, too. Columnist Perry Bacon points to seven promising ways journalism is also getting a revamp.

From Alyssa Rosenberg’s column bemoaning how the United States sees caring for its children as a discretionary expense. Her simple solution? “Treat kids more like retirees,” whose care is very, very much not discretionary.

I, for one, welcome preschool pickleballers, but Alyssa has some more cogent ideas about what kids-as-seniors should mean, including how to rework CHIP and the child tax credit. When the expanded version of the latter expired in January 2022, some 3.7 million kids fell back into poverty. Alyssa writes that the country ought to be able to stop that sort of thing from happening.

Chaser: We’re letting kids — and their parents — down on social media, too, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy writes. That’s why he’s issuing an advisory aimed at helping them.

Like an It’s a Small World boat mowing down animatronic toreadors, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential bid is way off track. He was once within 13 points of former president Donald Trump; now, he’s 37 behind.

Columnist Eugene Robinson says it’s a consequence of DeSantis’s “brittle ego,” which has manifested in vindictive grudges (as with massive employer Disney) and a tendency to take things way too far (as with his suburbs-repelling six-week abortion ban).

But there’s plenty to be won by losing a nominating contest, contributing columnist Matt Bai writes. Otherwise, very-long-shot Republicans such as Chris Sununu and Asa Hutchinson probably wouldn’t have thrown their hats in this round.

Matt walks through a roster of former primary contestants — John Kasich, Jon Huntsman, John McCain — who pioneered the “Republican strategy of winning over just about everybody but Republican voters.” It might not get you the presidency, but a book deal isn’t out of question.

• Jennifer Rubin says CNN needs to put a real journalist in charge. She has just the person.
• Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta just got fined $1.3 billion in Europe. Tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker writes that it’s a warning shot on data privacy.
• Mental-health practitioners Thomas Insel, Arvind Sooknanan and Ken Zimmerman explain the “clubhouse model” of care and how it could save lives.

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s… The Bye-Ku.

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!