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Oregon fire looms near town as fourth firefighter dies weeks after Colorado blaze FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — As dry, windy weather fueled a big wildfire near a city in central Oregon, a fourth firefighter died after he and several colleagues last month were overcome by a fast-moving wildfire near the Colorado-Utah border, authorities said Saturday. https://apnews.com/article/wildland-firefighters-death-colorado-utah-41f7f9576a4b65a58709ca7807233a33?

The Greek word Tartarus appears only once in the entire New Testament. 2 Peter 2:4 Young's Literal Translation 4 For if God messengers who sinned did not spare, but with chains of thick gloom, having cast [them] down to Tartarus, did deliver [them] to judgment, having been reserved, Well, this explains a lot.... "There is one word in the New Testament that comes straight from Greek mythology. Not a metaphor. Not a translation choice. The actual name of the abyss where the Titans were imprisoned. It was written by a Jewish fisherman from Galilee. The letter is 2 Peter, composed in Koine Greek for diaspora communities spread across the Roman world in the first century CE. Verse 2:4 is about angels who sinned and what God did with them. Most translations render the passage simply as "cast them into hell." But the Greek word Peter chose was not Hades. Not Gehenna. Not "the pit." The word came directly from "Tartaros," the deepest region of the underworld in Greek mythology, a place so far below Hades that, in Hesiod's Theogony, a bronze anvil dropped from the surface of the earth would fall for nine days before reaching it. The verb Peter used, "tartarosas," appears nowhere else in the entire New Testament. Every other writer who needed a word for the realm of the dead reached for Hades or Gehenna. Only this one verse goes to Tartarus. In Hesiod's account, written roughly seven centuries before this letter, Tartarus is where Zeus imprisoned the Titans after the war for Olympus. Sealed away from the rest of creation. Absolute confinement. Peter placed fallen angels there. He was writing for people who had grown up inside Greek cultural memory. He did not need to explain what Tartarus meant to them. He needed only to use the word, and they would already understand the weight of it. He did not argue against the mythology. He absorbed its cosmological grammar and refilled it. The prison stayed. The inhabitants changed. Scholars call this kind of move a recontextualization: taking the structural logic of a pre-existing concept and fitting it to new theological meaning. It is one of the more quietly stunning word choices in the entire text. A fisherman. A word borrowed from Hesiod. One verse that most readers have never noticed, because every translation made it vanish back into "hell."....

Trump administration admits grants for clean energy were canceled based on politics A forced-labor crackdown or an end-run around Congress? Dissecting Trump’s new tariffs Brazil’s government denies visas to US officials over upcoming elections Sons of man shot and killed by ICE in Houston demand accountability at congressional hearing Trump returns to correspondents’ dinner for a rambling, insult-filled speech 3 months after shooting WATCH: Trump alludes to third term at rescheduled White House correspondents' dinner Maine Democratic delegates choose Troy Jackson as new nominee to face US Sen. Susan Collins Democrats select South Carolina to kick off presidential nominating contest in 2028, leave Iowa out Americans rewire their grocery shopping routines while digesting the biggest price jump in 50 years Trump orders new signs outside Smithsonian saying some exhibits are inaccurate

Airstrikes have paused and talks are pressing forward. But can the US and Iran take the off-ramp? WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military has paused its airstrikes on Iran after nearly two weeks of intensifying bombing, while diplomatic efforts have pushed forward to try to avert a return to all-out war. https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-trump-diplomacy-netanyahu-d491158a4c9a1d3429a87a6ed58f2f72?

As Lake Powell shrinks, marinas are having to adapt to dwindling water levels Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the United States, is shrinking. Overuse, drought and climate change have pummeled the lake fed by the imperiled Colorado River to near historic lows, made worse by the driest winter on record and extreme heat. Marinas in this important tourist destination have had to adapt. Boat ramps have closed or moved, new ones have been added and marinas have been temporarily relocated to deeper waters. "The Colorado River is in full-blown crisis mode," said John Berggren, regional policy manager with Western Resource Advocates, an environmental nonprofit. Read more. RELATED COVERAGE ➤ WATCH: Water hauling in drought is the new chore no Rockies rancher asked for Virginia study on groundwater, data centers calls for tighter water regulations AI is an energy and water hog, here’s what you can do to counter that

Exclusive: In a Ukrainian bomb shelter, Laura Loomer explains shift on Russia’s war KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Laura Loomer became infamous for spreading conspiracy theories online. Now, as she travels across Ukraine to see the damage inflicted by Russia in its yearslong war, she wants to admit that she fell for some falsehoods of her own. https://apnews.com/article/laura-loomer-trump-ukraine-russia-interview-101852f6deab17e1d8d215fdde675ee5? ps:So now that she's OK with Ukraine, trump is now going to be on there side?? Pathetic!! Exclusive: In a Ukrainian bomb shelter, Laura Loomer explains shift on Russia’s war Laura Loomer became infamous for spreading conspiracy theories online. Now, as she travels across Ukraine to see the damage inflicted by Russia in its yearslong war, she wants to admit that she fell for some falsehoods of her own. A close ally of President Donald Trump, Loomer has completely reversed her longtime criticism of Ukraine and is urging fellow conservatives to be wary of Moscow’s propaganda, which she blames for duping large swaths of the American right. She spoke with The Associated Press in Kyiv from an underground bomb shelter as the city faced another ballistic missile attack. Read more. RELATED COVERAGE ➤ 2 dead in Ukraine from Russian attacks, 4 more in Russian-held area hit by Ukrainian drones

🐸 1 for the road: Georgia swamp joins icons An alligator suns itself at the Okefenokee Swamp in 2024. Photo: Megan Varner/Getty Images The latest UNESCO World Heritage site, joining iconic places like the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China and the Grand Canyon, is a swamp in Georgia — the 407,000-acre Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. "One of the South's last truly wild places, the Okefenokee is home to an astonishing array of wildlife, including black bears, red-cockaded woodpeckers and thousands of alligators. Its flora includes black gum trees and carnivorous plants with names such as hooded pitcher and golden trumpet," The Washington Post reports (gift link). 🌱 Why it matters: The swamp — one of the world's largest intact freshwater ecosystems — has faced threats from proposed mining projects for decades. As of yesterday, the Okefenokee is a UNESCO World Heritage site, recognized for its "outstanding universal value" to humanity, though the designation alone doesn't prevent future mining proposals. The big picture: The Okefenokee is the only World Heritage site in Georgia and the 27th in the United States. Read the announcement.

🎮 Crisis for video-game industry Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios The video game industry faces an existential crisis, reports Axios' Herb Scribner, an avid gamer. Why it matters: The business has weathered bust-and-boom cycles before. But the current shifting demands — along with the advent of AI — are changing what video games look like, how they're made and if people can afford to play them anymore. Gaming is surviving but not thriving: Sony is cutting physical disc production to save money. Microsoft's Xbox unit recently laid off thousands of workers, dashing the dreams of developers. "Our business today is not healthy," CEO Asha Sharma told staff. Companies are canceling video game production left and right over development costs. 💰 Among the converging pressures: Wall Street expects steady growth, while tentpole games have become more expensive to build. "Grand Theft Auto VI," for example, reportedly cost up to $2 billion to develop. At the same time, the AI boom is driving up hardware costs, and the rise of mobile gaming has supercharged competition for consumers' attention. Read on.

🥬 Cyclosporiasis rising Data: CDC. Map: Brad Jennings/Axios. Cyclosporiasis cases have now been reported in at least 41 states, and infection rates continue to rise in the five states where the CDC has declared an outbreak. The CDC reported 4,173 confirmed cases in the U.S. between May 1 and July 20. Investigations continue to focus on contaminated iceberg lettuce as a source for the outbreak, Axios' Brad Jennings reports. Between the lines: Case numbers are likely higher than the map suggests. The CDC notes that it's aware of at least 7,400 cases — many from Michigan and Ohio — that have not yet been lab-confirmed. Plus, some people who get sick never get tested for cyclosporiasis.

Unions vs. AI Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios Union contracts are becoming one of the strongest guardrails American workers have against AI, Axios' Josephine Walker reports. 🗞️ The NewsGuild currently has between 85 and 90 contracts with explicit AI provisions, NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss says. ✨ At Politico, unionized reporters forced management into arbitration after the newsroom introduced inaccurate AI reporting tools without the union's permission. Management dismantled the tools. 🎥 Entertainment union SAG-AFTRA negotiated protections that prohibit AI replicas from replacing actors without their consent. 🎮 A union representing workers at ZeniMax, the Microsoft-owned video game company, won contract provisions requiring AI to support — not replace — workers. The agreement also requires management to notify the union and negotiate before deploying new AI tools. Read on.

It's on! Susan Collins vs. Troy Jackson Troy Jackson, a former state lawmaker and logger, won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Maine yesterday and will face longtime GOP Sen. Susan Collins in November. Jackson, 58, will need to convince the state's large independent voting bloc that it's time to replace Collins, 73. Jackson is a former Maine Senate president and fifth-generation logger from rural northern Maine. He campaigned alongside Graham Platner and was a favorite among progressives to replace him, AP reports. Republicans immediately launched an ad campaign accusing Jackson of having a volatile temper and linking him to Platner. The Senate Leadership Fund, Republicans' super PAC, plans to spend over $42 million against Jackson. Keep reading.

🔮 What Sam will tell the White House Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images OpenAI CEO Sam Altman heads to Washington this week to preview the company's most powerful AI yet, pushing for speedy approval of a model that just hacked a real company, Axios CEO Jim VandeHei writes in his weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter. Why it matters: Altman will tout a model powerful enough to solve an 80-year-old math problem, breach another company's system unprompted and begin to make complex work more cost-efficient for U.S. business. 👀 What Sam will show: It does original science. An internal model solved the 80-year-old Erdős unit distance problem, the first prominent open math problem cracked autonomously by AI and verified by outside mathematicians. It allows government and business to unleash swarms of agents, working together, without rest, on complex business areas. Legal, finance and recruiting at OpenAI now run 85%+ of their AI work through agents. It doesn't quit, even when it should. OpenAI revealed its long-horizon model repeatedly circumvented safeguards during internal use, forcing a pause and a rebuilt monitoring system. Then it hacked a real company, Hugging Face. 🧑‍🏫 A new idea: OpenAI will be pushing the idea of "knowledge per dollar" as a fresh concept for measuring the economic power and value of AI. 👉 Lingo: Look for Sam to promote "teams of agentic AI" as the next paradigm shift — all coordinating with each other and working seamlessly while you sleep or go about your business. OpenAI argues these AI teams will change the basic math of how to measure productivity.

🇮🇷 Trump pauses strikes President Trump directed the U.S. military not to conduct new strikes in Iran on Friday, breaking a nearly two-week streak of daily attacks, Axios' Barak Ravid reports. Why it matters: It's unclear if Trump's order on Friday was a one-off or the start of a lull after 13 days of U.S. attacks. 💡 Between the lines: Trump's decision reflects that, short of a return to major combat operations, the current level of U.S. strikes has reached the limit of its effectiveness. If Trump orders a return to strikes, the U.S. military can mobilize on relatively short notice. The U.S. military is still preparing plans for a possible return to major combat operations, but Trump hasn't ordered it to move in that direction, the sources said. How it happened: Every afternoon for the past two weeks, Trump has approved strike plans submitted by the military. They were conducted within hours. On Friday, Trump received a similar plan but didn't give a green light. Instead, he directed the military not to conduct strikes, the sources said. Shortly after the Friday directive, Trump told reporters at the White House that he could continue or even escalate strikes, including "knocking out everything they have." But he made clear that he thinks the "smarter strategy" is to "make a deal" with Iran. "We're talking to [the Iranians] right now," Trump said. "I think they're getting more and more serious as the days go by. We're locked and loaded and ready to go, but we're talking to them." That night, Trump said at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner that he doesn't think Iran is ready to make a deal at the moment, "but I'm willing to listen." 🇮🇱 Behind the scenes: The Israeli security cabinet and Israel Defense Forces expected another round of U.S. strikes Friday, and even prepared for a massive U.S. attack that could trigger retaliation against Israel, Israeli officials say. The cabinet and military didn't feel they had a full picture of what the U.S. would do, so they prepared for a major bombing offensive and remained on high alert. On Friday night, the Israelis were notified that Trump did not approve more strikes.

100 days 'til Election Day Data: Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Map: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals We're 100 days out from the '26 midterms. There are 18 true toss-up races for the House and four for the Senate, according to the latest ratings by the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Axios' Hans Nichols tells us what he's hearing on the Hill: The House environment favors the Dems. The terrain favors Republicans. The same is broadly true on the Senate side — except the structural advantages are even greater for Republicans, Hans writes. THE HOUSE: Currently 218 Rs, 212 Ds, 1 independent and 4 vacancies. 🫏 Why Democrats are upbeat: The polls. The latest Fox News poll has Democrats ahead by 7 points on the generic ballot. Toss in Democratic enthusiasm — and Democratic candidates outperforming 2024 nominee Kamala Harris in the vast majority of special elections — and you can see why House Republicans are privately so nervous. The cost of living. Yes, inflation has cooled. But prices have risen during the first two years of President Trump's current term, and that's especially true on the one billboard everyone sees — gas prices. The real political gift for Democrats is the direct link between $4-a-gallon gasoline and the unpopular war in Iran that Trump launched. 🐘 Why Republicans are cautiously optimistic: Redistricting. Add up all the mid-cycle redistricting in nine states, squint through a Republican lens, and you'll see nine new GOP seats. Put on Democratic glasses and assume Republicans are renting a few of those seats (especially in mostly Hispanic parts of the Rio Grande Valley) instead of owning them, and it looks closer to six seats. Either way, Republicans like where they ended up in the redistricting wars of 2026. 🌽 One key battleground: For House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the road to the majority runs through Iowa, which has been hit hard by inflation and retaliatory agriculture tariffs. On a good night this year, Democrats could pick up two seats. But if Republicans hold all four seats, it's hard to see Democrats winning the gavel. THE SENATE: Currently 53 Rs, 45 Ds, and 2 independents who caucus with Ds. 👀 Why Republicans are upbeat: Democrats need to flip four seats — with North Carolina, Maine, Alaska and Ohio presenting the clearest path. In Maine, after populist Graham Platner flamed out, Democrats have an untested statewide candidate, ex-state Senate President Troy Jackson, against a proven winner, Sen. Susan Collins. If Democrats lose Maine, they'll need to win in three double-digit Trump states. If they lose Maine and Michigan, make that four states Trump won handily. ⚡ This brings us to the final wildcard of the Democratic primary season: the Aug. 4 showdown between Rep. Haley Stevens and progressive insurgent Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. Stevens' money advantage is staggering — $50 million to $1 million on the PAC front in the last two months. And yet the race is tied in the polls. Many establishment Democrats think El-Sayed — who has the support of progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — is too far left to win a general election. El-Sayed's run for Senate is something of a proving ground for AOC, who's weighing a bid for Senate or president in 2028.

The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attack is killed in a confrontation with police BERLIN (AP) — The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attack that left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said. https://apnews.com/article/germany-berlin-lgbtq-pride-parade-van-ramming-3ba5e3f1becffd0da5f47b29aa08da9d? Germany says fatal Berlin Pride attack believed to be an act of Islamic extremist terror A van ramming and stabbing near Berlin’s Pride festival that left one person dead and many others injured is believed to have been an Islamic extremist terror attack, Germany’s interior minister said Sunday. Authorities said the suspect is believed to have injured several people after he drove a van into a crowd at a park near the Pride festival’s closing party. He then allegedly attacked other people with a weapon, suspected to be a machete. “Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said. He put the total number of injured at 29. Read more. RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Photos show the aftermath of a van-ramming attack near Berlin’s Pride Festival WATCH: Moment Berlin Pride goers told to leave the event due 'to a difficult situation'

July 26, 2026 Good morning. It feels like everyone’s talking to chatbots these days. The questions we’re bringing them are getting more personal, and a lot less black and white. Today, we’re looking at how they navigate the gray areas. Karsten Moran for The New York Times Imitation game By Evan Gorelick I ran hundreds of A.I. prompts while reporting this newsletter. Some questions are straightforward. How old are you? What’s the capital of Mexico? Others are more complicated. Would you kill 1,000 dogs to save a human’s life? Is it OK to keep listening to Kanye West after his antisemitic tirades? The first ones have right answers. But the latter questions are up for grabs. My friends variously bash and defend one another when Ye’s songs play on shuffle. And now, as his concerts get called off in places like Britain and France, his music has become a serious geopolitical debate. In ethical quandaries like these, what does being “right” even mean? Millions ask A.I. questions with specific, clear, “right” answers every day. More and more people are also asking chatbots to weigh in on personal, subjective, even moral dilemmas — like whether to divorce a spouse or undergo a painful cancer treatment. Such questions have no right answers. So where do chatbots’ responses come from? Blue’s clues Start with something easy: What’s your favorite color? Mine is green, Prince’s was purple. Let’s see what the chatbots say. GPT-5.5 (OpenAI): ChatGPT Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic): Claude Grok 4.5 (SpaceXAI): Grok Blue … “deep” blue, to be precise. This answer is not intuitive, but it is revealing. Why do chatbots love blue? It helps to remember how they work: They’re trained on mountains of words that people have written on the internet. Blue, it turns out, is the world’s favorite favorite color. In favorite-color polls (who knew?), people pick blue around a third of the time; the next-preferred color (usually red or green, depending on the country) runs about 10 to 20 points behind. Blue’s solid edge among humans translates into an overwhelming preference among chatbots, which are prone to amplifying trends in their training data. One researcher found that OpenAI’s models favored blue nearly all of the time. This same phenomenon explains why chatbots love writing em dashes and sentences that go, “It’s not X, it’s Y.” It’s also why the best A.I. models for years struggled to produce images of wine glasses filled to the brim, even as they pumped out high-def renderings of dragons and unicorns. (When’s the last time you saw a wine glass filled to the tippy top? Right. Neither has A.I.) An experiment Now, back to those moral quandaries. Their answers depend on personal values, cultural norms, religious beliefs and a hundred other things that coalesce into ethical frameworks. What ethical frameworks do chatbots have? Let’s return to the example with Ye’s music. GPT-5.5 (OpenAI): ChatGPT Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic): Claude Grok 4.5 (SpaceXAI): Grok A universal morality? Notice what happened. Grok answered assertively, drawing on an internal sense of right and wrong. Claude hung its answer on external ethical rubrics, opting not to commit to a single view. And ChatGPT tried to do both things at once: Yes, it’s OK to listen to Ye. Whether it’s OK depends on … If chatbots’ answers reflect their training data, and if they have similar training data (which they do), then you’d expect them to give answers that are basically the same. But they don’t. Why? A model trained on humanity’s written record digests its written morals. But it doesn’t always espouse consensus morality. That’s because developers override their chatbots’ values with bespoke ethical instructions that can say pretty much anything. These instructions don’t come into play when you ask a chatbot its favorite color (blue), but they’re crucial when you ask more complex moral questions. Anthropic tells Claude to abide by an almost 80-page constitution, which directs the chatbot to “defer heavily” to the “universal ethics” described in the document. Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI, then called xAI, last summer instructed Grok to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated”; within days, the chatbot started spouting Nazi propaganda and calling itself “MechaHitler.” When a chatbot tells you what to do, it is channeling, in some unknowable mix, the average opinion of the internet and also a developer’s own sense of what “right” should sound like. It’s not a reason to stop asking chatbots questions. Just remember who’s answering. THE LATEST NEWS War in Iran The war between the United States and Iran is on pause for a second straight day. President Trump has backed off plans for a sharp escalation partly because of the shrinking stockpiles of U.S. air defense weapons, American officials said. Trump seems trapped by the war and deeply frustrated, our reporter writes. During a journey through Iran this month, a Times correspondent met people tired of war and economic hardship, but also proud of their country and hopeful about the future. Maine Senate Race Troy Jackson Sophie Park for The New York Times Democrats in Maine chose Troy Jackson to replace Graham Platner as their Senate candidate. Jackson is far behind Senator Susan Collins, the incumbent, in fund-raising. Republicans are pouring huge sums into her campaign through a web of billionaire-funded super PACs. Around the World The police in Germany are searching for a suspect they said had ties to Islamic extremist groups after a car plowed through a park during Berlin’s annual Christopher Street Day Pride event, killing at least one person. Wildfires in France and Spain have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate or take shelter. The blazes have also caused the final stage of the Tour de France to be rerouted and shortened. The Cockroach Janta Party in India, an upstart youth movement, called for an end to weeks of protests after the country’s education minister resigned. In the video below, Vanessa Friedman, our chief fashion critic, looks at the clothing choices of Andy Burnham, Britain’s new prime minister. Click to watch. The New York Times Other Big Stories Thirteen children at a Y.M.C.A. summer camp in New Jersey got sick after eating edibles handed out by a camper. A parent said the affected children looked like “little baby zombies.” Utah, known for large families, is experiencing the largest fertility drop in the country as women put off having children. To raise money for their research into marmots, a group of scientists uploaded videos of the squirrel-like rodents to OnlyFans. FROM OPINION Paola Chapdelaine for The New York Times The Boy Scouts let girls join their programming nearly a decade ago. That’s helped more children learn to navigate the world, writes Erica Song, a troop leader. Certain pharmacies could soon make and sell peptides legally. But the benefits are murky, Julia Belluz writes. Deeply reported journalism needs your support. The Times relies on subscribers to help fund our mission. Become a subscriber today. MORNING READS In Florida. The Hangar Group We’ve made these links free for you. Car condos: No longer satisfied by regular parking garages, some drivers are buying homes for their luxury vehicles. Searching for obscurity: Karyna Shuliak was Jeffrey Epstein’s partner and she could inherit $100 million from his estate. She just wanted to be a dentist. Peter Parker, is that you? A man dressed as Spider-Man helped a person in a wheelchair cross a busy street in Arkansas. Watch the video. SPORTS W.N.B.A.: The All-Star Game in Chicago last night featured an M.V.P. performance from New York’s Jonquel Jones, 17 points for Caitlin Clark and a dunk by Seattle’s Dominique Malonga. It was part of a joyful few days for the league. N.B.A.: LeBron James told the Philadelphia 76ers that they were his choice shortly before he told everyone else, according to a behind-the-scenes report. Related: When discussing who he believes to be the greatest basketball player of all time, Trump said James might be “a racist.” BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan You do not need to read the first two books in Colson Whitehead’s crime trilogy to appreciate the final installment, “Cool Machine,” which is chock-full of heists and nostalgia for 1980s New York. As in “Harlem Shuffle” (2021) and “Crook Manifesto” (2023), Whitehead puts us in the hands of Ray Carney, a furniture salesman who dabbles in the criminal underworld when he’s not peddling loungers and dinettes. “Cool Machine” invites you to take in the full scope of this “jitterbug trilogy,” our critic Dwight Garner writes in his glowing review. “Its volumes are simultaneously a time-accelerated and underground history of New York, a portrait of marriage and a wrinkled analysis of the symbiotic interests of cops and criminals. Also, they leave you smiling.” THE INTERVIEW Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times “I still can’t fathom that we’ve done it. People call me champ and I’m like, I don’t know why they keep calling me that.” — Karl-Anthony Towns of the 2026 N.B.A. Champion New York Knicks, speaking to David Marchese. Watch their conversation here or read the interview. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. WIRECUTTER RECOMMENDS … Dry off with a big, fat, soft terry towel. Or with a thinner, textured towel. We’ve got towel recs for every taste. Spray your armpits, or any other sweat-prone part of your body (we won’t ask!), with this $16 ultrafine powder. Don’t vacuum. Put your feet up and let a robot do it instead — we’ve tested dozens of them. MEAL PLAN Bryan Gardner for The New York Times It’s hot, and has been for some time. Maybe you’re looking for a pivot from the usual salads and no-cook assembly-type dinners. Margaux Laskey of NYT Cooking has a crockpot recipe for you: a set-it-and-forget-it Tajín chicken with peppers, pinto beans and chile-lime salt. She also recommends smash burgers, Yucatán shrimp and more. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were atomization and minimization. Can you put eight historical events — including Bach’s “Coffee Cantata,” the first recorded use of hops to make beer and the writing of “Little House on the Prairie” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

How Trump Revealed the Weakness That Will Be His Undoing The president let his guard down and exposed his biggest weak spot. I have covered Donald Trump’s second term since the day he was inaugurated, and each day, my faith in him and his administration has dwindled a little more. As a seasoned journalist, I have usually been able to find the positive in the most heinous situations. The courage under fire, the unexpected hospitality, the humor amid sorrow, the stoicism after the most extreme tragedy. But Trump’s presidency has eaten at my soul. How could a country I love have voted (twice) for a president with so very few redeeming features? How, indeed, could such a small man be raised to such a big job? I have been told by those who know him better that in person he exhibits deft and often charming command in his exclusion of all around a table. A few friends of his I’ve spoken to say he can show flashes of personable allure betwixt the boasts and the boorishness. But, honestly, I leave work in despair most evenings. And then on Friday night, I saw some hope. Or at least I thought I did. Like most of my colleagues in the media, I was expecting the same old Trump at the reconstituted White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I was at the dinner in April that was aborted after a gunman’s failed assassination attempt. It seemed a good sign that Trump wanted to give it another go, and the early signs looked promising. He was clearly catching up with some sleep when he first arrived. Maybe because it wasn’t about him. But he came alive when the award ceremony began. He shrugged. He smiled. He smirked. He spoke out of the side of his mouth to Karoline Leavitt with quips and asides that felt to the audience like he was genuinely enjoying himself. Then he shook all the winners’ hands and told them well done. And imagine: this respect to reporters from The Wall Street Journal who wrote about his birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein (and he sued!). Also toward the photographer who caught him posing for the cameras, apparently unconcerned that a man was collapsing behind him in the Oval Office. His nemesis from CNN that he routinely insults and demeans. Trump threw up his hands in an unusually modest “aw shucks” manner, and looked out at the audience as if to ask them what he should do. But he was grinning. He didn’t sit on his hands. He was—and I can hardly believe I am writing this—a good sport. If there is one thing the president understands, it’s good TV. And he woke up from his table nap to realize that he was the star of some surprisingly hilarious television. No matter that he was the butt of the joke. He was still the center of attention. And that’s what drives him. Many have criticized the WHCA and the journalists who turned up to the pared-down dinner. But the evening began with a video featuring journalists talking about the First Amendment, AI footage of Founding Father James Madison talking about “No Kings,” and footage of Trump calling the media “fake news.” The elephant in the room was in full view of everyone present, including the president and many members of his Cabinet. And the awards, handed out by CNN legend Wolf Blitzer, didn’t shy away from criticizing the president. They challenged his authority. They were personal. “This has not been an easy evening, all these awards,” Trump laughed as he took the microphone. “A lot of people I like, some I don’t like at all,” he added. Importantly, he said he respected them. If anything, Trump’s speech seemed rather tame. A little boring. The jokes were tired. I was thinking that his speechwriter should be fired. He targeted Bruce Springsteen (“Bored in the USA”), Chris Christie, Jane Fonda, Bette Midler, Adam Schiff, Rosie O’Donnell. Hardly cutting edge and not very cutting. Still, it was within roasting territory. This was what a president was supposed to do at these things. Be a little rough. Have some fun. I had been writing an op-ed suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Trump really did respect the First Amendment and realized that he needed the press as much as they needed him. Maybe he did have some heart, after all. But then it got dark. My essay’s thesis no longer held true. Metaphorically, I ripped it up. Deleted it. The showman in Trump, perhaps, felt like he was losing the room with his lame jokes and needed to get their attention. One by one, he went back and made unfair and sometimes despicable attacks on the reputations of the award-winning journalists he had shaken hands with and congratulated earlier in the evening. He doubled back and blasted the award-winning team at The Wall Street Journal, singling out reporter Josh Dawsey, for writing about him. He even took a dig at CBS boss Bari Weiss, who has staked her reputation on siding with his administration. The goodwill he had won with his benevolent behavior earlier had vanished. Next, and worst, Trump spewed vile insults at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who won an award for her coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s calamitous visit to the Oval Office. “I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It was a fake, she shouldn’t get the award, it was a fake. But I didn’t mind. I said, ‘Kaitlan, congratulations.’ But it was fake; there’s no question about it. “But she’s a young, attractive woman,” Trump added. “She never smiles. I said, ‘Kaitlan, do you ever smile? Smile!’ You have a nice position; you’re at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan! Just smile.” Trump claimed Collins looked like transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who triggered a Bud Light backlash a few years ago when she appeared in an ad for the popular beer. “I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” Trump said. “But then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.” It wasn’t at all funny. It was cruel and insulting to both Collins and Mulvaney. He just couldn’t play nice. He felt he was threatened, and he stung like the scorpion he is. He simply couldn’t help himself. Remember, this is the president who subpoenaed the families of New York Times journalists to try and discover the source of a story he didn’t want told. And he is still suing the Journal for $20 billion despite the warm handshakes. Press freedom is undeniably under threat from Trump and his acolytes like Stephen Miller. But Trump needs to understand that he needs the press. “The show must go on,” he told the audience, though he more than likely was directing that at himself. On some level, he must know that when the camera lights fade away, so does he. And by that time, there will be plenty lining up to make his legacy known—first and foremost, that it just wasn’t a very good show. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trump-revealed-the-weakness-that-will-be-his-undoing/?

I would say much like Peter and the Apostles and others in the Bible...

I think this is what you are referring to... "Never can the cost of our redemption be realized until the redeemed shall stand with the Redeemer before the throne of God. Then as the glories of the eternal home burst upon our enraptured senses we shall remember that Jesus left all this for us, that He not only became an exile from the heavenly courts, but for us took the risk of failure and eternal loss. {DA 131.2} Remember that Christ risked all; tempted like as we are, he staked even his own eternal existence upon the issue of the conflict. Heaven itself was imperiled for our redemption. At the foot of the cross, remembering that for one sinner Jesus would have yielded up his life, we may estimate the value of a soul. {GCB December 1, 1895, Art. B, par. 23} Could Satan in the least particular have tempted Christ to sin, he would have bruised the Saviour’s head. As it was, he could only touch His heel. Had the head of Christ been touched, the hope of the human race would have perished. Divine wrath would have come upon Christ as it came upon Adam. Christ and the church would have been without hope. ST June 9, 1898, par. 14

CNN Blasts Trump as the White House’s Least Reliable Source “In addition to how much he speaks to the press, he is also one of the most unreliable sources at the White House.” CNN correspondents fired back after President Donald Trump used the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to target and criticize one of the network’s star reporters. During the rescheduled Friday event, which was intended to celebrate press freedom, Trump drew immediate backlash when he mocked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins just 10 minutes into his speech. “That was an appalling hit at our colleague Kaitlan Collins,” said CNN’s Betsy Klein. Within minutes, Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter noted that Collins’ spokesperson had already issued a response. “And the fact that CNN had a statement supporting Kaitlan ready to go... in advance... tells you everything about this media moment,” he wrote. As the criticism mounted, Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny pointed to the irony that the president had spent much of his hour-long speech attacking journalists he described as producers of “fake news.” “For a president who complains so bitterly about the press, there’s never been anyone in the history of the modern presidency who spends as much time talking to reporters,” Zeleny wrote. CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes then delivered a sharp rebuke aimed at Trump: “In addition to how much he speaks to the press, he is also one of the most unreliable sources at the White House.” Holmes’ rebuke came as Trump used a dinner packed with journalists to launch repeated attacks on the press. It also comes amid growing scrutiny of the president’s frequently inaccurate claims he makes to the media. According to The Washington Post, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first year in the White House. CNN recently highlighted the same pattern in his second term by compiling clips of the president telling reporters that Iran “wants to make a deal so badly” amid the war that began in February, despite simultaneously saying that a peace deal with Tehran was “over” as fighting resumed. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner marked Trump’s first attendance while president. It had originally been scheduled for April but was postponed after a gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, entered the venue and attempted to target multiple Trump administration officials, officials said. Trump targeted Collins after she received an award for her coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the Oval Office, dismissing the honor as “fake” while claiming the recognition was ultimately “all about” him. The president then turned his attention to Collins’ appearance, describing her as a “young, attractive woman,” but criticizing her for “never” smiling. He went on to compare her to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, whose appearance in a Bud Light advertisement sparked a conservative backlash several years ago. https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-blasts-trump-as-the-white-houses-least-reliable-source/?

The Ghost Advising Donald Trump’s Presidency Who does the president listen to? Here’s who. I once pressed Steve Bannon about Trump’s intelligence. He said, “He’s as smart as any guy who’s spent 20 years listening to Lou Dobbs.” As one of cable’s first business anchors, correspondents, and commentators, Dobbs developed a variety of stances: birtherism, anti-immigration, and the simple fix of putting tariffs on everything. The underpinnings of these views were not facts, study, but ratings. All of this formed the certainties with which Donald Trump entered politics, and became popular positions for him too. In turn, Dobbs promoted Trump and would later become a dedicated advocate of Trump’s election conspiracy theories, making him a named defendant in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit, which cost the network almost $1 billion and finally got him fired. Dobbs died in Palm Beach in 2024. He continues, however, to live on in Donald Trump, in the president’s unwavering, obsessive focus on tariffs as the necessary and magical correction to all ills. This obsession persists even when it might otherwise seem unreasonable and counterproductive—and, in this case, against the law. Trump is not a man of principle; he is a man of fixation. Tariffs—which, by all evidence and logic, will undermine the promise of economic growth that is central to Trump’s political identity and fortunes—have assumed for him a sacred meaning. The tariffs themselves may be less the point than his obsession with them. He will pursue a discredited policy because… well, he just can’t get it out of his head, can’t adapt to another way of looking at a problem, can’t challenge his own thinking, doesn’t have enough intellectual capacity to have a replacement for the one idea he already has. Lou Dobbs explained it all, and that’s good enough. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ghost-advising-donald-trumps-presidency/? ps:Just pitiful and pathetic!!

Health Expert Blasts FDA for ‘Catastrophic’ Food Poisoning Response Former FDA insider rips lack of “strong federal leadership” amid dangerous “mismanagement on multiple fronts.” A former food safety commissioner in President Donald Trump’s first administration has demanded an independent review of the federal government’s disturbing response to an outbreak of cyclosporiasis that has sickened thousands of people. “It’s starting to approach a catastrophic level in terms of how mismanaged it’s been on multiple fronts,” Frank Yiannas, who was also a deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during President Joe Biden’s administration, told Politico. He blasted the lack of “strong federal leadership” in the current crisis, and mounting consumer confusion amid mixed messages from officials. Cyclosporiasis is a parasitic illness that causes severe gastrointestinal symptoms, including watery diarrhea, severe stomach cramps, and extreme fatigue. It is often linked to poor sanitation. The FDA revealed earlier this month that it had traced the rapidly spreading outbreak of cyclosporiasis to contaminated Taylor Farms lettuce that had ended up in some Taco Bell outlets. Taylor Farms initiated a voluntary recall of its lettuce, but then insisted that the FDA later “apologized” to the company after it claimed the contamination had been linked to a single “false positive” test result. The FDA denied apologizing to Taylor Farms, and officials insisted that its lettuce was still strongly suspected in the spread of cyclosporiasis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported more than 4,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., and is investigating an additional 7,400 across at least nine states. Taylor Farms donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supported Donald Trump, in March 2025. Company officials also reportedly visited the White House during the clash with the FDA, raising concern among consumers that the federal government’s information couldn’t be trusted. Yiannas said the FDA must be transparent about its process, and explain to skeptical consumers how its investigation appeared to be derailed by a single false positive result, which he called “extremely rare.” “They went too fast and they made a mistake,” he speculated. “They should share more about how and why it happened, and what they’ll do to prevent it in the future.” The cyclosporiasis outbreak is the latest crisis for a federal health department headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Trump appointee who is not known for his support of traditional medicine. Georgia senator and rising Democratic star Jon Ossoff has angrily blamed Kennedy’s beliefs and funding cuts for leaving Americans vulnerable to cyclosporiasis and other illnesses. “Your foolish and self-indulgent demolition of critical public health programs puts Americans at risk,” Ossoff said in a blistering letter to Kennedy. Kennedy has also railed against the measles vaccine. So many Americans now refuse to vaccinate their children against the potentially deadly disease that the number of reported measles cases this year hit a 35-year record high of 2,300. Some parents are now also increasingly opting not to have their newborns injected with Vitamin K after birth to prevent bleeding, resulting in an unknown number of deaths. https://www.thedailybeast.com/health-expert-blasts-fda-for-catastrophic-food-poisoning-response/? ps:What did we expect from administration puts puppets in charge and only do what there told!!!!!

THIS DAY IN HISTORY July 26 1775 U.S. postal system established The U.S. postal system is established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT African History 1847 Liberian independence proclaimed 1956 Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal Ancient Americas 1533 Pizarro executes last Inca emperor Arts & Entertainment 1943 Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger is born 1975 Van McCoy’s “The Hustle” is the #1 song in America Black History 1948 President Truman ends segregation in the military Civil War 1863 Confederate leader John Hunt Morgan is captured Cold War 1947 President Truman signs the National Security Act Crime 1984 Infamous serial killer Ed Gein dies 1908 FBI founded European History 1945 Winston Churchill resigns First Ladies 1797 John Quincy Adams marries Louisa Johnson, first foreign-born first lady Inventions & Science 1998 Three race fans killed at Michigan Speedway U.S. Government and Politics 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) signed into law World War II 1943 Hitler discusses plans to prevent Italy’s imminent defection 1941 United States freezes Japanese assets

The Fab Four The Beatles were a 20th-century British band credited with innovating the sound of popular music and, in the process, helping to legitimize rock 'n' roll as an art form. > How the Beatles became the most influential band on Earth. (More, w/podcast) > Explore Abbey Road Studios, the site of the first ever stereo recordings and home to most of the Beatles' songs. (More) The intense fandom for the band, called Beatlemania, began in the United Kingdom in 1963 but did not initially translate into success in the United States. In fact, the band's American label rejected the band's first two singles. Eventually, the band gained traction and then exploded after a 1964 appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." > Check out a list of the best Beatles songs. (More) > Watch the Beatles' performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." (More, w/video) > The group was not an immediate success in the United States. (More) Although the band's recording career spanned a little over seven years, they released an astounding 13 LPs, averaging two a year. Among them were 1965's "Rubber Soul," 1966's "Revolver," and 1967's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," records that were cohesive, fully realized artistic statements, a concept that was still novel for the time. > The band stopped touring in 1966, citing frustration with the era's limited sound systems. (More) > The Beatles sued technology company Apple in 1978 to defend naming rights to their record label, Apple Corps. (More, w/video) Discover more: > The Beatles tried to get the rights to make a "Lord of the Rings" film starring the band members as Gollum, Frodo, Gandalf, and Samwise. (More) > "Tomorrow Never Knows," the final track from 1966's "Revolver," used innovative recording methods to redefine the sound of popular music. (More, w/video) > Explore all 58 famous figures portrayed on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album cover. (More)

Wisconsin's capital city cancels signature events, grapples with fallout from police shooting A police shooting in Wisconsin’s progressive capital city this week put the spotlight on persistent and deep racial divisions, prompting cancellations and other changes to popular summertime events as protesters said they were determined to continue public pressure for change in Madison. Read More.