The Politics of Masks

Six years ago, the face mask was a totem of mystery, reserved for hospitals, costumes and superheroes. Then Covid made medical masks ubiquitous. Now, once again, masks are everywhere — but for very different reasons. Government agents wear them while searching for undocumented immigrants. Protesters shield their identity from doxxing or prosecution.

In can be a discomfiting image, especially as law enforcement agents obscure their faces. Neck gaiters or scarves cover the mouth and the nose. Baseball caps or helmets hide the crown of the head, and shades shroud the eyes. Once they are anonymous, officers round up their immigration targets. Lawmakers in Congress and in several blue states have introduced bills to prohibit the agents from hiding their faces while doing their jobs.

In other words, masks can put accountability and privacy on a collision course. Today’s newsletter is about the role masks play in our culture.

Power

A mask is the rare accessory that is both functional and fantastical. It is a multilayered repository of meaning that stretches across centuries and cultures. Masks were beloved in ancient Greek theater and medieval Japanese dance. Outlaws and revelers (on Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night) use them. So do the rappers Ayleo and Mateo Bowles. Recently, Glenn Martens put every model in his couture show for Maison Margiela in a mask.

Masks turn people into archetypes, said Darren Fisher, a senior lecturer in comic and concept art at the University for the Creative Arts in Britain. And those archetypes are rooted in history, religion, art, politics and Hollywood.

In almost every case, the masks serve a dual purpose: They protect or disguise a “real” identity and transform the person wearing one into something else. Masks are the means by which a character moves beyond the real world and toward something larger. In this way, though a mask is nominally a disguise, it is also a means to reveal the “true self,” said Nicola Formichetti, a stylist who has often explored the use of masks in his work with Lady Gaga. It can allow a repudiation of an identity that conforms to expectations and society.

That’s liberating and terrifying because it takes away not just identity but also accountability. In becoming something else, you suddenly have license to act in a different way. This was the function of the mask during Venetian masked balls, where debauchery replaced proper behavior for a night. It was also the basis of “The Mask,” the 1994 film starring Jim Carrey as a nerdy guy whose id essentially takes over when he discovers an ancient mask.

Protection

Perhaps that is what has worried many people about ICE agents. It is not just because the masks tap into age-old horror movie motifs, but also because they seem to convey permission to act in ways that would otherwise be constrained. They represent a place beyond the norms. It is also why others may see the masked men as saviors — agents willing to do what their predecessors would not, or could not, to right what they believe is wrong.

The idea that a covering could enable a taboo but laudable behavior came up often in the dark online chatter about Luigi Mangione, who is accused of being the masked gunman who fatally shot a health care executive. Some cast him as a social bandit, a Robin Hood figure of sorts, fighting for the victims of the insurance industry.

Faces are how we recognize one another as well as how we read the meaning and the emotions behind words. By your face, others do know you. Thus to cover the face is to protect yourself — not just from germs or smog but from other people’s prejudices or government overreach.

This theory of masks posits them as a beneficial shield from the ills of the world, its judgment and retribution. See, for example, the phantom in “The Phantom of the Opera,” who wears a mask to conceal his disfigurement, and the superheroes who hide their faces to safeguard their private identities.

That quest for privacy is also evident in the student protests over Gaza and the Hong Kong democracy demonstrations. The difference when it comes to ICE is that, in the protests, the opposition was between the rights of individuals to state their beliefs without fear of reprisal versus the right of the state to maintain order. With ICE, the individuals arguing that they need cover to carry out orders from the state.

All of this is going to become only more confusing with the widespread use of plastic surgery, artificial intelligence and filters, along with other digital tools that have popularized the ability to transform the theoretically unmasked face into — yes — its own kind of mask.

President Trump said he would upend the global trade system. He’s doing it.

Last night, just hours before his sweeping tariffs were set to take effect, he announced new, steep rates for more than five dozen countries. And he delayed the deadline again; most of the tariffs are now set to take effect next week.

Today, countries around the world are wrestling with how to respond. Many now have weaker currencies, and stock markets opened sharply lower in Europe and Asia.

What are the rates?

• The highest tariffs appear to be on goods from Syria, Laos and Myanmar, at around 40 percent, as well as Brazil at 50 percent. Tariffs that high could cripple those country’s exports. See a map of the countries affected.

• Trump raised the tariff rate on Canadian goods to 35 percent from 25 percent. But he exempted goods covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which economists say includes most Canadian exports to the U.S.

What else is happening?

• Trump agreed to extend trade talks with Mexico — America’s biggest trading partner — for another 90 days.

• The Justice Department defended the legality of Trump’s tariffs in federal court.

War in Gaza

• Arab states called for new leadership in Gaza. “Hamas must end its rule,” reads a declaration endorsed by the 22 member nations of the Arab League.

• Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, is visiting an aid distribution site in Gaza to see the hunger crisis firsthand.

• Mounting anger over starvation in Gaza is isolating Israel from some of its most important allies, Steven Erlanger writes.

• France, Britain and Canada recently announced plans to recognize the state of Palestine. Most countries already do so, as this map shows.

Trump Administration

• A legal watchdog accused three Justice Department lawyers of lying to a federal judge to defend the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

• The Trump administration plans to add a $200 million ballroom to the White House, which officials said would be paid for by Trump and other donors.

• The family of Virginia Giuffre, a woman who accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse, expressed outrage about Trump’s claim that Epstein “stole” her from Mar-a-Lago.

• The Energy Department published a report by climate skeptics that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.

More on Politics

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Matt Deitke is one. He’s a 24-year-old A.I. researcher working at Meta who makes more than Stephen Curry, the highest-paid player in the N.B.A. And he’s not the only fresh-faced techie making bank.

Companies are shoveling money at twentysomethings to lure them onto their A.I. teams. The software for this new tech doesn’t work like older code, and only a few people have the technical chops or the experience to work on advanced artificial intelligence systems.

So tech executives are recruiting them like sports stars, with nine-figure compensation packages and huge signing bosses. Read more about the cash that A.I. hotshots are raking in.

OPINIONS

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Versailles has a new attraction: a chatbot powered by OpenAI to let visitors commune with the art. The god Neptune explains that the area around him was once a pine grove. An Ancient Greek wrestler speaks admiringly of Pierre Puget, the artist who chiseled him from white marble.